The primary version of "Political Correctness Watch" is HERE The Blogroll; John Ray's Home Page; My Recipes. My alternative Wikipedia. Email John Ray here. See here or here for the archives of this site.


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

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

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

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



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31  May, 2018

'Blue Wednesday' in Chicago as union takes stand against 'anti-police' Mayor Emanuel

Democrats have a fellow-feeling for  crooks -- unsurprisingly

It’s being called “Blue Wednesday” in Chicago as the city’s Fraternal Order of Police organized a unified public demonstration against Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who the FOP calls “anti-police.”

During the city’s regularly scheduled city council meeting Wednesday morning, ranking members of the police union read aloud a strongly worded statement against Emanuel in which the FOP alleges the mayor has “turned his back” on his police department by being more concerned with “pandering to police-hating media” and by allowing the American Civil Liberties Union to have a seat at the negotiating table.

A protest organized by police officers became tense at City Hall. One woman was seen apparently spitting at a demonstrator marching with police officers.

The Fraternal Order of Police Chicago Lodge 7, which says it represents an estimated 15,000 active and retired members, recently sent out a notice to all of its members to attend Wednesday’s city council meeting to demand that “Mayor Rahm Emanuel back police.”

The move comes in response to the Chicago Police Board’s recent decision to put Officer Robert Rialmo on a no-pay status for a 2015 fatal shooting that was deemed unjustified by the board—but was ruled justified by Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson.

Emanuel does not sit on the independent Chicago Police Board, which made the ruling on Rialmo’s job status. A spokesperson for the mayor responded to some of the FOP’s allegations.

“When you have people on either side of the police reform issue criticizing, it’s a sign we’re hitting it down the middle of the fairway as we continue to build trust between officers and residents, ensure oversight and accountability, and give officers the tools and training they need to be proactive in the crime fight,” the spokesperson said.

Tension between Emanuel and his police department has been growing in recent years —beginning in 2015, when a video was released showing Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting a 17-year-old teen armed with a small knife 16 times. The shooting occurred in 2014 but the video was withheld by the prosecutor’s office until a journalist fought for its release.

The public was outraged over the video and eventually Emanuel abruptly fired his police chief, Garry McCarthy. McCarthy, who is now running against Emanuel for mayor, has said Emanuel “threw him under the bus.”

The city also entered into an exclusive agreement with the ACLU in which officers are required to fill out reports for every single stop and frisk they’re involved in— which police say is an intentional move to use stats against them.

Emanuel is in the midst of running for his third term as mayor of Chicago. The FOP’s public move against him could serve as a thorn in his side, just nine months prior to the election.

The city of Chicago is also in midst of finalizing a consent decree with the federal government that will give a federal court oversight over the Chicago Police Department.

The consent decree came down during the Obama administration amid allegations of racism and police brutality. A months-long DOJ patterns and practices investigation concluded CPD needs a major overhaul in training and sensitivity.

Chicago Police said the decree is a shroud for even more anti-police policies.

SOURCE







Furious mother slams other parents for buying her seven-year-old son toy guns for his birthday

A mother has called giving a toy gun to a child as a birthday present 'inappropriate' - after her son was gifted three.

The anonymous woman posted on British parenting site Mumsnet that she was torn over taking the fake weapons away from her seven-year-old as he appeared to be enjoying playing with them.

Revealing her discomfort with the toys, the mother received a flood of responses on the online community from parents who agreed with her views.

A minority of people argued that preventing children from playing with toy guns is unreasonable.

Posting under the name Juneau, she wrote: 'Now I know it's up to people what they give and that as the recipient's parent I don't get a say, and I should be grateful that these DC came to his party and brought him a gift (and I am), but I would never give a gun as a gift.

'I think it's really inappropriate and I'm very uncomfortable with having even toy guns in my house.

'Seeing my 7-year-old running around with a gun (albeit a plastic one), and shooting at us and laughing is horrible. And of course he loves them and he was given them and if I took them away then I'd be the bad guy.'

A large number of parents revealed they discourage their children from playing with toy weapons such as guns and swords.

One person said: 'You Are Not Being Unreasonable. My four year old is going through a WWII phase that involves building guns out of lego and pretending to shoot the Germans (I. E. Us). I have to keep telling him off.'

Another wrote: 'I wouldn't give a gun as a gift so I get where you are coming from. My son has been given one which went 'missing' after a couple of weeks.

it is just for make believe play though, he's not going to turn into a violent thug because he pretended to be a cowboy when he was 7. Just get rid of it when the novelty has worn off'

Many others revealed that although they wouldn't approve of traditional toy guns, they make an allowance for water pistols.

One person wrote: 'I really don't like toy guns. Weapons should not glamourised as a toy. I know one day, one or both of my children might want one, but I'm trying to stall as long as I can. Water guns, yes no problem. But toy guns that make shooting noises no.' 

Another wrote: 'Mine aren't allowed guns and they know I'll take them off them. I know I'm a cow but I hate them.'

Speaking under the handle 'titchy', one person mocked those who don't allow toy guns but haven't made an effort to ban alternative toys.

She said: 'Those that don't allow guns, I assume you've removed all twigs from your surroundings and amputated your child's index and middle fingers?'

Another parent attempted to defend guns as the safest toy weapon in comparison with swords. 

She wrote: 'Guns are better than swords for pretend play at that age. Swords end up with injuries as fighting involves hitting. Have you banned swords too?

One mother revealed she had compromised with her daughter playing with a toy gun by being strict on the targets she could use to play with it.

She said: 'My daughter is going through a gun phase where her fingers or anything else is a gun. She must have got it from preschool. I showed her people shooting at the Olympics on YouTube and she now pretends to shoot targets instead of people, usually'.

SOURCE






The arrogant EU elite is playing with fire: STEPHEN GLOVER says Italy's pain could be Britain's gain as Brussels struggles to contain an even bigger problem than Brexit

British Eurosceptics sometimes overestimate the likelihood of the EU and the euro falling apart under the weight of their in-built contradictions.

Many were convinced a few years ago that the huge debt problems of Greece would force it to crash out of the euro. In the event, the country has so far remained part of the single currency, though at a terrible cost to its economy.

But dramatic developments in Italy over the past 48 hours entitle one to say that the trouble brewing in that country is likely to dwarf anything that has happened in Greece.

This is a full-blown crisis in the Eurozone's third largest economy, nearly ten times the size of Greece's.

What is taking place is a stand-off between the increasingly unpopular Italian Europhile class represented by President Sergio Mattarella on the one hand and, on the other, two populist parties, both critical of the EU, which together won half the vote in March's general election.

Mattarella has vetoed the appointment of Paolo Savona, a distinguished veteran Eurosceptic put forward by the anti-Establishment Left-leaning Five Star Movement and the hard-Right League as their finance minister in a prospective populist coalition.

As a result, both parties have given up their attempt to form a government, and are calling for President Mattarella's impeachment. Meanwhile Mattarella has asked Carlo Cottarelli, a pro-EU stooge who has worked for the International Monetary Fund, to lead an interim administration.

It is certain this won't last more than a few months since Cottarelli only enjoys the support of a minority in parliament. There will soon be another election in which, it can be confidently predicted, Five Star and the League will do even better than they did in March.

The truth is that, by rejecting the Eurosceptic Savona in such a high-handed way, Mattarella (who has no democratic mandate) has behaved as the Europhile ruling class usually does in most EU countries, including our own. The democratically expressed view of the electorate is ignored.

Whether the insufferable Jean-Claude Juncker or Germany's Angela Merkel actually picked up the telephone to tell Mattarella what to do we don't yet know. But both Brussels and Berlin have swiftly welcomed Mattarella's actions. The Italian President was doing what was expected of him.

Paolo Savona is a hate figure in Europhile circles because of his intelligent appraisal of the disastrous effect membership of the euro has had on Italy. A euro exchange rate that suits Berlin is throttling the sclerotic Italian economy, which has scarcely grown since the country joined the single currency 19 years ago.

Savona has even blamed Germany for Italy's plight. He has written of the 'German cage' and criticised Berlin in forthright (and to my mind accurate) terms: 'Germany didn't change its idea on its role in Europe after the end of Nazism, even if it abandoned the idea of imposing itself militarily.'

In fact, there is nothing to suggest that the 81-year-old Savona would have taken Italy out of the euro had he been allowed to assume his position as finance minister. But he would undoubtedly have been less friendly to the EU than his pliant, Brussels-approved predecessors.
      
Mattarella's behaviour is almost certain to increase suspicion of the EU in Italy. Many Italians believe Brussels has ignored its serious migrant problem, and there is little doubt that the plan of the Five Star/League alliance to deport 500,000 illegal immigrants carries widespread popularity.

Five Star and the League certainly have some wacky policies – not least lower tax rates combined with a grant of about £690 a month for those deemed at risk of poverty. The bill could run into billions, and boost Italy's already stratospheric national debt.

But Mattarella's EU-backed policy of undermining the two populist parties seems certain to backfire in a country where, according to a poll last week, 61 per cent of Italians believe their voice isn't being heard by Brussels.

In the short term, there is very likely to be mounting political and economic chaos in Italy, which is sad for that wonderful country. In the longer term, though, the chances of Italy escaping the stranglehold of the euro must have improved.

Meanwhile, Italy's pain could be Britain's gain as Brussels struggles to contain an even bigger problem than Brexit – a problem which really does threaten the disintegration of Jean-Claude Juncker's tottering, and increasingly unloved, empire

SOURCE






Cyclists in London are too white, male and middle class, says bike tsar in diversity push

More nagging authoritarianism

Lycra-clad packs of middle aged men zooming around the capital are becoming a 'problem' according to the London Mayor's cycling tsar, Will Norman.

So-called 'mamils' (middle-aged men in lycra) are dominating the cycling scene in London, leading to a false perception that cycling is not for everyone, Mr Norman claimed.

Too few females and people from ethnic minority backgrounds are taking to two wheels around the capital and the Mayor's office could introduce 'diversity targets' to combat the figures.

Despite millions being pumped into the cycling infrastructure in London the majority of those making use of it are middle aged men.

At present, black, Asian and minority ethnic groups account for about 15 per cent of cycled journeys in London – around two-thirds less than Transport for London (TfL) estimates it could be.

Mr Norman told The Independent: 'There is a problem with cycling and the way it is perceived of getting middle-aged men cycling faster around the city, which is not the objective at all.

'It touches on something which is a real challenge for London cycling, which is diversity.'

London mayor Sadiq Khan said he would make cycling safer around London. However, members of the London Assembly said it is not being done quickly enough.

Now Mr Norman said more groups should be benefitting from the changes made. He added: 'Even when we have seen the growth in the number of cyclists, we haven't seen that diversity.

'There are a number of reasons for that. One is that safety is paramount for getting different people from different walks of life cycling: older people, younger people, those from different backgrounds.'

The way in which the gap will be filled, Mr Norman says, is through projects such as promoting electric bikes, cycling courses and grants for community groups who do not typically cycle.

There was a six per cent recorded rise in female cyclists after the opening of Quietway 1, which links Waterloo with Greenwich, from 29 per cent to 35 per cent.

Mr Khan promised an average of £169m annually for cycling schemes over the next five years. 'Is it ambitious enough in the longer term? I think we need a higher level of change,' Mr Norman told The Independent.

'The target that we have set out in the mayor's transport strategy is over that 25 years we want to shift to 80 per cent of journeys to be walking, cycling or by public transport.

'That is a much more ambitious target and really is fundamentally rethinking the way that we move around our city.'

SOURCE

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

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

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

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30 May, 2018

Allah is honoured once again

Two police officers and a civilian have been shot dead by a man reportedly shouting Allahu Akbar, which led to a hostage situation at a high school in east Belgium.

The unnamed man opened fire in the centre of the city of Liege, at around 10.30am local time, after being stopped by officers for a routine document check

He killed two officers, a female bystander in a car, and injured a third officer.

The man then reportedly took a female cleaner hostage inside the nearby secondary school, before being shot dead himself by an elite police unit.

During the document check, he managed to disarm one of the officers and opened fire, killing the pair and the female bystander sat in a nearby car.

It has been claimed that the attacker stole the weapon as he disarmed the police officer, but it is not clear whether he used it to open fire, or if he was already armed.

Local news website DHnet.be reported that the man had shouted 'Allahu Akbar' as he fired on on Liege's central Boulevard d'Avroy, citing police sources.

Videos posted on social media showed people scurrying for safety on Liege's central boulevard d'Avroy with shots and sirens being heard in the background.

One video showed two police officers in body armour moving into position on the street.

Minutes later, anti-terrorist special forces police could be seen surrounding the area, which went into lock down. 

The kidnapper was 'neutralised' at 11am, ending the siege, and officials say they are now considering the crime to have been an act of terrorism.

'There are elements that point in the direction that this is a terrorist act,' said Eric Van Der Sypt, spokesman for the Belgian federal prosecutors office.

All students in the school were successfully evacuated, and the female hostage was released without being caused any harmed.

According to Belgian broadcaster RTBF, the shooter was released from prison on Monday and was only known for minor infractions with no known links to extremism.

Catherine Collignon, a spokesman for Liege prosecutors, confirmed 'four deaths in total', with two other police officers seriously wounded.

She confirmed that 'terrorism' was currently considered the principal motivation for the attack by those leading the judicial enquiry. 

Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon said Belgium's Federal Crisis Centre was monitoring the situation.

'Our thoughts are with the victims of this horrible act. We are in the process of establishing an overview of exactly what happened,' Jambon wrote on Twitter.

The crisis centre said a security cordon had been set up around the area and urged people to stay away.

Liege, an industrial city close to the German border in the French-speaking Wallonia region, was also the scene of a shooting in 2011.

A gunman killed four people and wounded over 100 before turning the gun on himself.

Belgium has been on high alert since a Brussels-based ISIS terror cell was involved in attacks on Paris in 2015 that killed 130 people, and Brussels in 2016 in which 32 died.

The UK Foreign Office advises British citizens that 'terrorists are very likely to try to carry out attacks in Belgium.'

The Foreign Office's travel advice website adds that 'attacks could happen anywhere, including on public transport and transport hubs and in other places visited by foreigners'.


SOURCE






A real mother



A mummy blogger with 18-month-old identical twin boys and a two-year-old daughter is 'unapologetically' refusing to bring up her children as 'gender neutral'.

Sydney mum Eliza Curby, 28, told Daily Mail Australia she won't 'create some unreasonable neutral gender playing field' for her children - because she isn't 'afraid of gender'.

Ms Curby made headlines after giving birth to her twin boys Jack and Wolfe in December 2016 - after conceiving just six weeks after the birth of her first child, Charlie in January.

The mum gave birth to three children in 2016 - Charlie, her daughter in January, and her sons in December    +9
The mum gave birth to three children in 2016 - Charlie, her daughter in January, and her sons in December

The busy mum noticed her young boys 'gravitating towards the few toy cars' in the house - and says they are 'obsessed' with the garbage truck.

'It got me thinking about boys and girls and why we are so afraid of the difference,' she said.

So she wrote a post about it on Facebook - challenging new-age ideals about gender.  'Why are we so scared of gender these days?' she asked.

'We are so concerned with equality, blurring the lines in such a way that we expect men and women be treated the same, act the same, be judged the same, 'be' the same,' she wrote.

'But here's the thing - we are not the same.'

She went on to say she is 'proud to be a woman' and that she expects to be treated as one.

'I'm honoured to have an incredible man who opens the door for me, pulls out my chair, who 'looks after me' - not in a sense that I cannot do these things myself, but to show me a certain respect and love in doing them.

'And I intend to raise my boys - unapologetically - in the same manner,' she wrote.

And it appeared to hit the mark with her 'Twingenuity' blog followers. 'Love this !! What's wrong with girls being 'girls' and boys being 'boys'!' wrote one mum.

'I am raising my son just as that - a boy. With respect, manners and chivalry for women. A gentleman. And there is nothing wrong with this!' said another.

'Hear, hear! Because a man treats (and respects) a woman differently to a man, like opening a door or giving up a seat, it in no way means men think of them as inferior. We are in all ways equal but just different. And the differences should be celebrated,' a father wrote.     

'If my kids decide they are the wrong gender I will support them, if they are boys boys or if my daughter is a girly girl I will support them - I just don't intend to overthink the matter,' she said.

SOURCE 







Tempers at boiling point as female protesters break into a men-only lido in Hampstead and leap into the pool as they claim to 'self-identify as male'

They didn't look like men and they didn't sound like men – but these women insisted they had every right to swim in a male-only pool.

Tempers were as hot as the weather yesterday as they arrived en masse and jumped in to the water as part of a protest against proposed gender laws.

One put on a bushy beard while another swam in a lime mankini – a joke male version of a bikini – to make their point that they 'identified' as men.

But regulars at the men's bathing pond in Hampstead, North London, didn't see the funny side.

And neither did the police who arrived and escorted the women out amid fears that they could be breaching the peace.

The invasion was part of a nationwide campaign set up on Mumsnet called #ManFriday which encourages women to 'self-identify' as men for the day on Fridays in a protest against possible changes to gender laws.

Campaigners say changes to the Gender Recognition Act could enable people to simply declare themselves to be a man or woman to get all the legal rights of either sex.

Amy Desir, 30, who wore the mankini and led the protest group of around 20 women, said yesterday: 'We are here to raise awareness. There's a legal consultation due to come out this summer asking for the law to change to say that any man that says he is a woman can get all the legal protections that women do.'

The mother of two and her fellow campaigners are concerned that the proposed legislation would enable predatory men to target women in single-sex facilities.

Hampstead has three ponds for swimming: one for men, one for women and one mixed. In order to cater for transgender women, the women's pond changed its rules last December to allow men in who say they identify as female.

Yesterday the women protesters told staff at the pond that they 'identified as male' and said they had the right to swim there. But police arrived 15 minutes later and they were forced to leave.

Yesterday the women protesters told staff at the pond that they 'identified as male' and said they had the right to swim there

'We're clearly not men, but we've just been allowed in by Hampstead's own policy,' Mrs Desir said. 'Women's safeguarding has gone out the window.'

Hannah Clarke, 39, who also attended the protest yesterday, said: 'I would hate to think that I had upset anybody here today, but this is the point of a protest. We want to keep single-sex places single-sex and that was the aim of today. And clearly it's not just women that want them to stay single-sex, is it?'

There was widespread anger among the male swimmers at the pond. Peter John, 81, said he thought the invasion by the women was 'ridiculous' and urged the them to use the pond for female swimmers.

Mr John, from Hackney, said: 'They're saying, 'I want to identify as a man today'. That's not how this works. Women have their own female-only pool, we have ours and if you want to swim with men then go to the mixed pond.

'Women have their own pool where they can bathe topless. This is absolutely ridiculous. This has been here since Victorian times!'

Ken Menczer, 70, from Camden, said: 'We should be introducing disability measures over transgender measures.

'That's more important. I think they're completing abusing a situation.'

One man shouted: 'They aren't men!' Another said: 'This is ludicrous. If I turned up at the female-only pond and claimed to be a woman I would never get let in. This is our space and that's how it should stay.'

PC Barry Macefield of Hampstead Heath constabulary, said: 'They've been peaceful, when we've asked them to leave they've left so we've got no issues with that.

'There were some men annoyed because they felt their privacy had been invaded and some who were concerned about photography.

'They've had a chance to make their point which they have done peacefully – but you can't enter a facility designated for the opposite sex, and if this occurs with men in the women's ponds we'd deal with that too.' He added: 'The rules need clarity.'

SOURCE






Now the nanny state wants control of YOUR chocolate bar: Calls for graphic tobacco-style warnings on junk food - with claims 80% of Australians will be overweight by 2025

Just a small problem:  How do we decide what is "junk" and what is not?  A big Mac was once said to be junk because it contained fat.  But fat is now said to be good for you. A big Mac may be unprestigious but there is no certainty that it is bad for you.  Its bad name is most likely pure snobbery


There are calls for graphic warnings, similar to those on cigarette packets, to be introduced on junk food packaging to fight skyrocketing obesity rates.

Health experts want graphic images including fat-covered hearts, to be branded across junk foods after it was revealed 80 per cent of Australians would be overweight by 2025 if drastic action wasn't taken.

The call comes after a study found images like fatty hearts or decayed teeth displayed on packaging would successfully deter someone from making unhealthy choices.

Speaking on Sunrise on Thursday, commentator and lecturer Jane Caro supported the idea. 'It would literally put you off your food,' she said. 'It's proved very effective with [cigarettes] it's something we should look at with junk food.

'I think all of society has to come together and make junk food as socially unacceptable as cigarettes have become.'

Melbourne's 3AW presenter Tom Elliott disagreed. 'Can you imagine going to a kids party and having to display all these pictures of diseased organs?' he said. 'If you have it on junk food how do you separate it from kids and adults. 'If it's up there at a Maccas and kids are being taken to Maccas, kids are not going to enjoy the experience too much.'

The University of Melbourne and Cancer Council Victoria study, which was published on Thursday, found negative text combined with explicit images, was twice as effective at sending a message, than negative text without the image.

For the study, 95 hungry participants were shown colour pictures of 50 different snack foods ranging from chips, chocolate bars and biscuits to nuts, fruits and vegetables.

They were asked to rate on a scale how much they would like to eat each food at the end of the experiment.

In addition, participants' brain activity was monitored with electrodes attached to their heads.

The results revealed the warning labels prompted participants to exercise more self-control rather than act on impulse.

'The study shows that if you want to stop people choosing fatty and sugary packaged foods, health warnings actually work,' said study co-author, Dr Stefan Bode.

'It sheds light on the mechanisms in the brain that underlie the effects of health warning messages on food processing,' Dr Bode said.

Cancer Council Victoria behavioural researcher Dr Helen Dixon said the graphic images worked because they 'disrupt' the strong cues - like taste - that images of junk foods elicit. This then allows a person to consciously consider the health implications of their food choices, she explained.

Obesity Policy Coalition executive director Jane Martin says the use of packaging should be used for good, not for bad. 'This research demonstrates that powerful, relevant information on food packaging can influence people and push them away from junk food,' said Ms Martin.

'Poor diets and being above a healthy weight are risk factors for heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and cancer. To address this Australia needs a comprehensive strategy, which should consider improved labelling,' she said.

The public health advocates have called on the government to make the graphic labelling mandatory, as part of the revised Health Star Rating System.

SOURCE 

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

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

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

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29 May, 2018

Study: Women Who Have Abortion Face 81% Increased Risk of Mental Health Problems

Some of the women concerned would not have been too good to start with, but not all.  Some would simply have been young and naive

An analysis of 22 studies on abortion and mental health showed that women who had an abortion faced an "81% increased risk of mental health problems" and that nearly 10% of the incidence of mental health problems was "shown to be directly attributable to abortion," according to a report published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, and posted online in January of this year.

The report also found that women who carried their babies to term experienced a "protective effect," in that the suicide rate for mothers (per 100,000) was nearly 50% lower than that of women of reproductive age (per 100,000) who had not had children. Further, "several other studies conducted in different countries have revealed even lower rates of suicide following birth when compared with women in the general population," according to the report.

The report, "Abortion and Mental Health: Quantitative Synthesis and Analysis of Research Published 1995 - 2009," is written by Priscilla K. Coleman. She is the Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. Coleman also is the co-author of Post-Abortion Trauma: Possible Psychological and Existential Aftermaths, published by the Pontifical Academy for Life at the Vatican.

In the report, Coleman examined 22 peer-reviewed studies -- 15 from the United States and seven from other countries.

In total, there were 877,181 participants in the studies, "of whom 163,831 had experienced an abortion," reported Coleman. The studies looked at abortion and its potential impact through 36 "measures of effect," which included "9 alcohol use/misuse, 5 marijuana, 7 anxiety, 11 depression, 4 suicidal behavior."

"Based on data extracted from 22 studies, the results of this meta-analytic review of the abortion and mental health literature indicate quite consistently that abortion is associated with moderate to highly increased risks of psychological problems subsequent to the procedure," reads the report.

"Overall, the results revealed that women who had undergone an abortion experienced an 81% increased risk of mental health problems, and nearly 10% of the incidence of mental health problems was shown to be directly attributable to abortion," said Coleman.

"The strongest effects were observed when women who had had an abortion were compared with women who had carried to term and when the outcomes measured related to aubstance use and suicidal behavior," wrote Coleman.

She also reported, "The finding that abortion is associated with significantly higher risks of mental health problems compared with carrying a pregnancy to term is consistent with literature demonstrating protective effects of pregnancy delivered relative to particular mental health outcomes. For example, with regard to suicide, Gissler et al reported the annual suicide rate for women of reproductive age to be 11.3 per 100,000, whereas the rate was only 5.9 per 100,000 in association with birth."

In conclusion, Colman said, "The composite results reported herein indicate that abortion is a statistically validated risk factor for the development of various psychological disorders."

SOURCE





Farage to FB's Zuckerberg: Conservatives 'Are Being Willfully Discriminated Against' by Facebook

While questioning Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the European Parliament on May 22, UKIP founder and MEP Nigel Farage said that Facebook was instrumental in helping Brexit pass and Donald Trump get elected, but now had changed its algorithms to restrict conservative content.

Contrary to Zuckerberg's repeated claims, Facebook today is not a "platform for all ideas," said Farage, and "mainstream" conservatives "are being willfully discriminated against." He added that it may be time to establish a "social media bill of rights to basically protect free speech."

During his questioning, Farage, a Member of the European Parliament, said to Zuckerberg, "The one slight problem I have – I’m watching very carefully the testimony you gave on Capitol Hill. Time and again, people asked you, is this genuinely a neutral, political platform? And you come up with the same line again and again -- it’s well-crafted -- you say that Facebook is a platform for all ideas."

“Now historically, of course, it’s true, that through Facebook and other forms of social media there is no way that Brexit or Trump or the Italian elections could ever possibly have happened," said Farage, the founder of the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP).  It was social media that allowed people to get round the back of mainstream media."

“Now, perhaps you’re horrified by this creation of yours and what it’s led to, I don’t know," said Farage. "But what is absolutely true is that since January of this year, you’ve changed your modus operandi, you’ve changed your algorithms, and it has led directly to a very substantial drop in views and engagements for those that have got right-of-center political opinions."

He continued, “The facts are very clear. Just look at President Trump’s numbers, which are at a much smaller scale. Look at mine. Look at thousands of other conservative commentators. On average, we’re down about 25% over the course of this year. And, you know, that’s happening on a 'platform for all ideas.'"

“I’m not talking here, Mr. Zuckerberg about extremism," said Farage.  "I’m not talking about encouraging violence. I’m not talking about hatred of anybody. I’m talking about people who have majority, mainstream opinions."

"Frankly, I feel they are being willfully discriminated against," he said.

“What interests me is who decides what is acceptable?" said Farage.  "Who are these people you referred to earlier, these third-party fact-checkers? Who are these people? Why is there no transparency in this process at all?"

"I’m not generally someone that calls for legislation on the international stage," he said, "but I’m beginning to wonder whether we need a social media bill of rights to basically protect free speech. … Would you accept that today Facebook is not a platform for all ideas that is operated impartially?"

On Twitter, May 22, Farage stated, "Stop telling us Facebook is a 'platform for all ideas.' The evidence shows your algorithms censor conservative opinions."

A new report by the Media Research Center, "Censored! How Online Media Companies Are Suppressing Conservative Speech", details numerous instances of deliberate censorship of conservative content on the major social media platforms: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Google.

Facebook and Twitter combined reach 1.8 billion people, and 68% of Americans use Facebook. The left-leaning Facebook and other social media platforms are dialing down and restricting, burying conservative information.

"War is being declared on the conservative movement in this space and conservatives are losing -- badly," states the MRC report. "If the right is silenced, billions of people will be cut off from conservative ideas and conservative media. It's the new battleground of media bias. It's a war against ideas. It's a clear effort to censor the conservative worldview from the public conversation."

SOURCE






Demo Identity Politics Chasing Whites Away



You may have heard that whites are becoming Republican because they feel at home venting their anti-immigrant sentiments in a party led by a president whose alleged dog whistles have called the racist hounds home.

But that nasty and simplistic explanation doesn’t quite cut it. Nor does it tell us why so many working-class whites who voted for Barack Obama jumped ship to support a businessman and television celebrity for president.

Democrats, who have long believed that tribalism and identity politics would rack up Electoral College votes, still fail to realize that promising a multicultural, gender-neutral society isn’t enough for millions of Americans who can’t find jobs, pay their bills or send their kids to college.

In 1992, Democrat campaign strategist James Carville famously told an inner-circle of Bill Clinton’s staff, “It’s the economy, stupid.” In doing so, he got the campaign to focus on a powerful issue that President George H. W. Bush was neglecting.

It seems like Democrats could use a little bit of that old-fashioned common sense in their campaigns these days, but they’re clearly not getting the message. Instead, the party is moving farther and farther to the left, seemingly unable or unwilling to recognize what’s driving Donald Trump’s support among white voters.

Jim Geraghty writes at National Review that years after Bill Clinton pledged to restore the American promise by focusing on economic issues, “The Hillary Clinton campaign reflected Democrats’ increasing obsession with identity politics, contending that the country’s most pressing injustices explicitly broke along the lines of gender, race, immigration status, and sexual identity.”

The numbers show a downward trajectory in white support of Democrats since the Clinton years, which happens to correlate with the decision by many Democrat candidates to abandon the white working class.

In 1996, Clinton won 49% of the white vote in a two-party race. In 2000, Al Gore attracted only 43%. After pulling a bit more whites into his camp in 2008, Barack Obama’s support from whites dropped to 39% in 2012. Hillary Clinton won about the same percentage in 2016. And if Hillary Clinton had matched Obama’s 2012 support among blacks, she still would have lost to Trump.

Identity politics is clearly backfiring on Democrats.

Vox provides more evidence that Democrats are abandoning non-educated whites at their own peril: “White non-college voters remain a larger group than white college voters in almost all states — and are far larger in the Rust Belt states that gave the Democrats so much trouble in 2016: Iowa is 62 percent white non-college versus 31 percent white college; Michigan is 54 percent white non-college versus 28 percent white college; Ohio splits 55 percent to 29 percent; Pennsylvania 51 percent to 31 percent; and Wisconsin 58 percent to 32 percent.”

Joshua Zingher of The Washington Post further explains the loss of white voter support in the Democrat Party to two factors. One is that more white, conservative Democrats have moved over to the Republican Party than white, liberal Republicans have become Democrats, and that Democrats have “courted and won more votes from ethnic and racial minority groups” while “at the same time, in response to these demographic changes, more whites have shifted rightward on economic issues.”

What white voters were looking for in 2016, and what drives their loyalty to President Trump through the sagas of Stormy Daniels and off-the-wall tweet storms is the hope that an outsider in the White House just might be able to offer them something that no other candidate has.

Deep down, many coal miners in West Virginia and unemployed steel workers in Pennsylvania probably know that the Rust Belt might never fully recover. But a president who at least offers them a vision of what’s possible is a lot more attractive than candidates offering gender-neutral bathrooms, unabashed globalism, and promises of green jobs as a cure-all for America’s economic woes.

And branding the white working class neo-Confederates isn’t a wise strategy.

Thomas B. Edsall suggested in The New York Times earlier this year that “a Democratic Party based on urban cosmopolitan business liberalism runs the risk not only of leading to the continued marginalization of the minority poor, but also — as the policies of the Trump administration demonstrate — to the continued neglect of the white working-class electorate that put Trump in the White House.”

Yet, many Democrats continue to believe the party can gain seats in Congress or take back the White House by appeasing every identity group except white working-class voters. They’re counting on the fact that the burgeoning electorate of women, Millennials, educated professionals and minorities will be enough to make up for the loss of whites. For now, their calculations have resulted in Republicans holding more power nationwide than at any point since the early 20th century.

The GOP shouldn’t rest on its laurels heading into the 2018 midterms, though. It’s newfound support in the working class is tentative at best, especially if the party doesn’t keep producing results. But until Democrats stop focusing on “white privilege” and start listening to white voters, the balance of power will continue to favor Republicans in the coming years.

Democrats hoping for a “blue wave” this fall must fight a rising tide of working-class Republicans. Sure, they can do this by practicing identity politics. But unless they start identifying with the hopes and dreams of the white working class, Nancy Pelosi can forget about taking the speaker’s gavel from House Republicans in November.

SOURCE






Here’s What Happened After Liberal Activists Shut Down Catholic Adoption Providers in Illinois

For the past decade, left-wing activists have targeted faith-based adoption agencies if they do not assist same-sex couples who wish to adopt. Through lawsuits and legislation, these activists gave faith-based agencies an ultimatum: Comply with politically correct views on sexuality and marriage and place children with same-sex couples, or shut down.

Faced with this dilemma, Steve Roach, executive director of Catholic Charities for the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois, closed the foster care and adoption programs he ran in the state. The cost? In an interview with The Daily Signal, Roach estimates that 3,000 children were affected and thousands of  foster parents no longer will be part of the system.

Now, he advocates passage of the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act, federal legislation to prohibit discriminating or taking other adverse action against a child welfare service provider that declines to provide, facilitate, or refer for a service that conflicts with the provider’s sincerely held religious beliefs. Learn more in the transcript of the interview, which was lightly edited for clarity.

Kelsey Harkness: Tell us what happened to your adoption and foster care program run through Catholic Charities, and how you found yourself in this situation.

Roach: In 2011, the state of Illinois passed a law which effectively ended up shutting down foster care and adoption programs for Catholic Charities and a couple of other faith-based organizations in Illinois.

We were definitely forced out of foster care and adoption. The law was called the Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act. The language in that law required that all agencies providing this service must place children in the homes of same-sex couples.

My faith and our religion believes in the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, and we could not abide by that new state requirement. So after 50 years of providing quality foster care for children, for tens of thousands of children all across Illinois, the state said, “Well, if you do not surrender that religious belief, you will be eradicated.” And that’s what happened.

Harkness: But you do allow single mothers to adopt—can you explain why? I think some people look at that and don’t understand why you’re OK facilitating adoptions for single mothers versus facilitating adoptions for same-sex couples.

Roach: We believed that a child is raised best with a mother and a father. Married mother and father. We did provide homes with single parents as long as those parents were not cohabitating. Research shows that a lot of abuse happens in homes via the live-in paramour. So our policy was if you’re a single adult, and you qualify, we will work with you.

Harkness: What do you say to someone from the ACLU or from the other side that calls you “anti-gay?”

Roach: We just say that’s not the case. What we were was an organization that tried to provide quality foster homes for abused and neglected kids, and we did it very well. We were one of the best at it. I want to say, what’s the solution for these kids who are suffering? That’s what we need to be doing.

Harkness: Can same-sex parents still adopt children, whether faith-based agencies are a part of the system or not?

Roach: Absolutely. The [proposed] Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act does not prevent anyone from becoming a foster or adoptive parent. In Illinois, we know all same-sex couples can be served because without Catholic Charities, they all are being served.

So with Catholic Charities in the picture, it wouldn’t change that. This [proposed] law does not prevent anyone from the opportunity to become a foster and adoptive parent.

Harkness: What were the consequences of being shut down?

Roach: Thousands of children and foster parents were forced to leave Catholic Charities and go to other agencies. I think altogether there were about 3,000 children that were disrupted, and thousands more foster parents that were no longer allowed to work with Catholic Charities.

The consequences were something that we had predicted. We were one of the most effective organizations in the state of Illinois in recruiting quality foster parents. And now, one only has to look at the headlines and see that there is a shortage of quality foster homes, not only in Illinois but across the country.

That’s only been exacerbated now in the last few years by the opioid epidemic. And so at a time where foster parents were in desperate need, you have quality organizations with a long-standing history of being able to find them being forced to the sidelines.

Harkness: Why is Catholic Charities so good at recruiting foster parents compared to your average organization?

Roach: It has a lot to do with our long history. Not only had we been providing foster care and a partnership with the state of Illinois since the early ’70s, late ’60s, but for over 100 years Catholic Charities had been finding adoptive homes, working with various Catholic orphanages.

So we have this huge, long history. It is a mission, it’s something that we hold very near and dear to our hearts. Children need homes and that’s what the church has been involved with for a long, long time. And I think that’s why we’re really, really good at what we do.

Harkness: What happens if other faith-based adoption agencies get pushed out of the system?

Roach: I think the travesty is perpetuated. The crisis will be made worse. The children are the one who’ve suffered in all this. This was clearly an argument on rights. Our side believe this was a religious liberty argument, and we will always believe that. The other side believes that this was a civil rights argument, and so we had a conflict within the public-private partnership that had worked well since the Great Depression.

And instead of resolving the conflict by putting the kids first and coming up with a solution that would help those kids, all we did was shout at each other, and that’s all they’re doing right now. You discriminate, or you’re anti-gay, or you’re anti-God, and all we do is we argue and fight.

In the meantime, you have thousands of kids who are suffering. So if this continues to happen, the number of kids suffering will only grow. We have to be adults in the room; we can’t be shouting, we’ve got to help these kids. There is a solution. The Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act provides that solution.

The solution should do two things. One, it should ensure that anyone who wants to do this difficult work, and it is very difficult work—it’s not a right, no one has a right to become a foster parent or adoptive [parent]—anyone who wants to do this work should allow religious organizations to abide by their religious faith in providing these services. The second thing should be that the solution should be done in the best interest of kids.

This act does all of that. It takes away the argument and says we’re gonna focus on kids. So if everyone can be served who wants to be a foster parent or adoptive parent, and religious organizations can practice this service according to their faith, then everyone wins because the kids then will have the maximum opportunity to find a quality forever home. And that’s what we need to be focused on. That’s not what happened in Illinois.

Harkness: You’re now advocating to address this from the federal level. Why?

Roach: The fight that I described earlier, religious liberties versus civil rights, is happening in several other states around the country. The ACLU is continually perpetuating lawsuits to try and attempt to drive out religious organizations that have the radical belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Harkness: In general, how bad is the foster care and adoption crisis?

Roach: Do a simple Google search. You’ll see headline after headline after headline in states across the country where there’s a foster home shortage. Not only in Illinois but in many, many other states. I’ve read articles where they can’t find homes and so kids are staying in offices because there’s no home for them to be placed in. It has reached a crisis proportion, and it’s been exacerbated by the opioid crisis.

There have been studies that have shown that the need for foster homes has increased because there are a lot more kids now coming into care because [of] neglect, because the parents are so addicted that their addiction is their only focus. Children are being left home alone, children are being not fed, children are not going to school. And so the state is coming in and removing those children because they’re in dangerous situations. And so it has definitely grown the need.

We are in a very difficult situation right now, and these kids are suffering. We need to think about how can we, as a society, reach out to all segments of our population to find people who would provide care and homes for these children. We don’t need to be shunning people and organizations. We need to be maximizing our opportunities to find these parents.

Harkness: Where do you go from here?

Roach: One of our strengths is that we are able to provide a wide array of services. And so after this happened to us, our bishop and our board began planning to see what else we could do out there to fulfill the mission of providing mercy and love to people who are hurting.

We’ve developed other programs—legal service programs, rural outreach programs, immigration programs—since we lost foster care and adoption.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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28  May, 2018

An attack on Jordan Peterson by a former friend

Furious denunciations of Jordan Peterson from the Left are a dime a dozen but there is a more reasoned article here by BERNARD SCHIFF, an old associate of Jordan Peterson which has a serious claim to uncover Peterson's feet of clay.  His obviously intimate and long term association with Peterson gives his words some claim to authority.

I am not going to attempt a systematic reply to the article.  That would be absurd when Peterson himself is far better placed to do that.  So I just want to offer a few notes:

Some of the accusations Prof. Schiff makes are serious ones. He actually hints that Peterdson is behaving like a Fascist dictator.  But his principal claim is that Peterson is not a systematic thinker and that he therefore is prone to serious self-contradictions and inconsistencies.

But his own knowledge of the sort of things that Peterson discusses looks very shallow at times.  I was amused that he repeats the ignorant Leftist accusation that HUAC and Joe McCarthy were somehow one and the same.  He says:

"In the 1950s a vicious attack on freedom of speech and thought occurred in the United States at the hands of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee".

How a Senator could be part of a House committee is an abiding mystery and yet to conflate the two is a common Leftist mistake that shows how utterly shallow and unscholarly Leftist thought usually is. HUAC was a Democrat creature established in 1938 which ran to 1975. It was initially chaired by Martin Dies Jr. (D-Tex.). McCarthy was active from about 1950 to 1954 and had no association with HUAC.

Another accusatory paragraph from Prof. Schiff:

Jordan has a complex relationship to freedom of speech. He wants to effectively silence those left-wing professors by keeping students away from their courses because the students may one day become “anarchical social revolutionaries” who may bring upon us disruption and violence. At the same time he was advocating cutting funds to universities that did not protect free speech on their campuses. He defended the rights of “alt right” voices to speak at universities even though their presence has given rise to disruption and violence. For Jordan, it appears, not all speech is equal, and not all disruption and violence are equal, either.

That is a fairly absurd paragraph in several ways. It's hard to believe but Schiff really is saying that the Alt-Right should not be heard because that provokes Leftists to attack them!  Prof. Schiff admits to being a Leftist but that is singularly one-eyed for a Leftist academic.  You could justify the Nazi attacks on Catholics with that sort of argument. "He who controls the Streets is the only one with any right to be heard" is the underlying argument.

And what about Peterson's wish to de-politicize academe is inimical to free speech?  It is an argument about keeping politics out of a certain venue, not an aim to completely muzzle one kind of speech -- which is what Leftists aim to do when they ban or obstruct conservative speakers from campus. Peterson is consistently defending free speech, on campus or off.

And Prof. Schiff's other arguments are of that sort.  He sees things from a completely Leftist perspective, with all the limitations that entails, where a broader perspective would see Peterson's ideas as quite reasonable, defensible and consistent.  Schiff is simply objecting to Peterson's conservatism, nothing more. Any competent conservative writer could show that Peterson's arguments are not inchoate, inconsistent or unreasonable -- JR






Make more babies, America

by Jeff Jacoby

FROM THE National Center for Health Statistics came some disturbing news last week: The US birthrate, which has been on the skids for a decade, hit another record low.

About 3.85 million babies were born in the United States in 2017. That was down from 3.95 million births in 2016, which in turn was down from 3.98 million in 2015. For every 1,000 American women of childbearing age, there were just 60.2 births last year, the lowest birthrate ever recorded. A related yardstick is the fertility rate — the number of babies each woman, on average, will have over her lifetime. It takes a fertility rate of 2.1 just to keep a nation's population stable, neither growing nor shrinking. Last year, the US rate dwindled to 1.76, a 40-year low.

Americans are less inclined than ever, it seems, to be fruitful and multiply. That should trouble anyone who hopes that America's best days are yet to come. Nothing is more indispensable to the growth of any society than its human capital — the knowledge, skills, imagination, and energy of human beings. As the late, great economist Julian Simon famously argued, people are the ultimate resource in any society, since human beings over time create more than they destroy.

When nations retreat from marriage and children, their outlook tends to become bleaker and less prosperous. Japan, which has one of the lowest fertility rates in the world, illustrates the phenomenon well. As Japanese births have dwindled, the working-age cohort has accounted for a smaller and smaller share of an older and older population. Economic decline has followed demographic decline. And with Japan's labor force doomed to keep shrinking, the worst is yet to come.

There are many reasons for the plunge in fertility rates, and some of those reasons are unequivocal blessings. First and foremost is the near-eradication of infant mortality. In the 1850s, wrote Jonathan V. Last in his 2013 book What to Expect When No One's Expecting, one-fifth of white American babies, and one-third of black babies, died during infancy. Today, by comparison, the infant mortality rate is minuscule: 5.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. When children are more likely to survive, parents have fewer children.

Other positive changes have also helped bring down fertility rates. Among them: the explosive increase in women's education, the availability of modern contraception, and the surge of women into the workforce. Added to those have been still other social transformations. The establishment of Social Security and Medicare eroded the need for children to support their parents in old age. The waning of religion in modern America has weakened the conviction that getting married and raising a family are moral imperatives. And the din by environmental alarmists about the dangers of "overpopulation" have convinced many people that childlessness is a virtue.

But it isn't.

It should go without saying that Americans are perfectly free to delay getting married or having children, or to decide that they want no part of the expense, commitment, and restrictions of parenthood. This isn't Margaret Atwood's Gilead. Individual men and women who choose not to have kids are exercising a reproductive liberty that most of us regard as inviolable.

Yet that doesn't mean we're obliged to close our eyes to the aggregate impact of those individual choices. A society that ceases to "be fruitful and multiply" is a society that sows the seeds of its own decay. The retreat from child-rearing, in columnist Ross Douthat's words, is a form of "decadence" — an attitude that "privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be." A plummeting birthrate has ramifications that go beyond the economic burden of a swelling elderly population and fewer people of working age to bear that burden. To opt out of having children is to opt out of the most meaningful investment in the future — and to thereby make it more likely that America's best days are not to come.

Government can't make people have babies, and shouldn't try to. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't encourage parenthood, or remind ourselves how important babies are to American success, enterprise, and optimism. America's children are its most valuable asset, and a persistently sinking birthrate is a warning: That asset is being dangerously depleted. Life with kids is undoubtedly a challenge. But as America is on the verge of finding out, life without them will be more challenging by far.

SOURCE






Hero cop wins almost £900k after suffering sexist bullying from female boss

A MALE cop has won £870,000 compensation after suffering sexism from his female boss. Chief Inspector Adrian Denby, 49, was in charge of a tactical unit when he was victimised by Met deputy assistant commissioner Maxine de Brunner.

She wanted to challenge the squad’s macho culture and flipped after seeing a cop with only a towel round his waist in the office on his way from the shower to the locker room.

De Brunner ordered a probe after beer was found in a fridge with a price list on the front.

The Met also investigated unfounded claims of homophobic bullying.

Mr Denby, who has nine commendations, was later removed from his post. A tribunal found he was discriminated against and the Met has paid up in an out-of-court deal.

It is also understood the London force is helping him to set up a business as part of the settlement. With legal costs, the case has cost it more than £2million, a source said.

It is thought to be the first case in which a male cop sued his force over sexist bosses.

He regretted not stopping male staff crossing the room in towels but blamed poor design of the office. He claimed he was unfairly punished for failings, while a female colleague in a similar position was not.

He is on sick leave. De Brunner has retired. The Met declined to comment.

SOURCE







The decadent ADL.

The ADL has been irrelevant for 50 years. Its full organizational name, the Anti-Defamation League, like that of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, is rarely used because that identity and mission lie in another era.

The ADL was founded in 1913 to promote the acceptance of Jews in mainstream society. Its founding charter was concerned with "the caricaturing and defaming of Jews on the stage, in moving pictures". Its original plan was to fight anti-Semitic prejudice by lobbying theater managers and newspaper editors.

Jews won acceptance in mainstream society over 50 years ago. Hollywood has more Jewish caricatures than ever. The revival of Murphy Brown means that CBS now will have three sitcoms featuring grotesque caricatures that play every negative Jewish stereotype for laughs. But that’s okay.

The ADL long ceased fighting that battle. And all the others. It’s an irrelevant organization on its last legs.

Its original mission became irrelevant when Jews won mainstream acceptance. Jews are the best liked (or perhaps least disliked) religious group in America. Yet anti-Semitic hate crimes dominate the roster.

How can both be true?

As anti-Semitism declined nationally, it receded to the racial and political margins. Instead of a lukewarm prejudice of many, it became the passionate creed of political extremists. The ADL shifted to combating anti-Semitism on the margins instead of in the mainstream. Instead of critiquing movies, it monitored hate groups. But, unlike mainstream lobbying, its monitoring of the margins was ineffectual.

Neo-Nazis wouldn’t be dissuaded by the ADL. Neither would any other fringe group. The ADL’s monitoring only fed into their anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and gave them an enemy to fight. But the ADL also needed an enemy to fight, a reason to exist and an incentive to keep the donations coming.

Meanwhile it was ignoring the threat of a breakout from the margins becoming mainstream.

The far right had been growing less relevant for most of the ADL’s existence. The Klan had gone from marching in the tens of thousands and dominating entire cities to being unable to fill a small room. But the far left had been steadily growing in influence. And its takeover would change everything.

By the sixties, anti-Semitism in America was profoundly changing. But the ADL didn’t change.

Anti-Semitic violence was now largely a feature of urban life. The new Jewish middle class, many of them Holocaust survivors and accented immigrants who had worked tirelessly in sweatshops to put their kids through college, was driven out of its comfortable urban enclaves by racial violence.

Jewish neighborhoods and businesses built by the immigrant generation vanished in riots, firebombs, muggings and stabbings. The second act of the civil rights movement was an anti-civil rights movement that, had it been directed at blacks, would have been met with protests and outrage. Instead the left defended the perpetrators and condemned the victims. Black leadership jettisoned Martin Luther King’s calls for equality and co-existence, replacing them with nationalism and racial supremacism.

And the left cheered.

That’s how Al Sharpton went from leading anti-Semitic pogroms to addressing the DNC. It’s why Obama and the Congressional Black Caucus met with Farrakhan. It’s why Bernie Sanders backed Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson despite his anti-Semitism. It’s why anti-Semitic black literature is celebrated.

That is how Tamika Mallory ended up in the audience at a Farrakhan speech. And that’s how Eric Holder likely contrived to help Mallory boot the ADL from Starbucks for calling out her anti-Semitism. When two black men were kicked out of Starbucks, there was outrage. When a Jewish organization was kicked out of Starbucks at the behest of the fan of a black supremacist who admires Hitler, there were shrugs.

The left has been dismissing concerns about black nationalist anti-Semitism for 50 years.

Defenders and condemners of this phenomenon will blame the unique issue of race in America. But that doesn’t hold up. The left did the same exact thing with pogroms in Russia. Whether it was Russian peasants or urban thugs, the left defended the violence as the outcry of an oppressed class or race against the privileged Jewish bourgeoisie, even though the targets were inevitably the Jewish poor.

American Jews, whose ancestors largely arrived from Russia before the Communist violence, were under the impression that anti-Semitic violence was a feature of Czarist life being combatted by the left. This distorted view of what was really going on was encouraged by lefty propaganda rags like The Forward.

Both sides opportunistically encouraged anti-Semitic violence (while occasionally condemning it) when it served their political interests. One mob would shout, “Death to the Jews and the Commissars!” The other mob would shout, “Smash the Jews and the bourgeoisie!” And often, they were the same mob.

Few American Jews have ever heard of the Glukhov pogrom by the Red Army in which leftists massacred 450 Jews, including children, to shouts of, "We are going to slaughter all the bourgeoisie and the Yids." The Communist Pravda described this anti-Semitic massacre as a victory over the “counter-revolution.”

Soviet anti-Semitism was not a break from its revolutionary principles, as some liberals liked to think. It was the execution of those principles. The Bolsheviks had repeatedly hounded their Menshevik rivals as the “yids” or “kikes”. As they consolidated power, they discouraged pogroms by individual bands and instead implemented a national Jewish pogrom of gulags, torture, execution and religious repression.

The attacks on Jewish neighborhoods and stores by black nationalists like Sharpton were a carbon copy of the pogroms that had been organized in Russia and Ukraine, by the same leftist ideology. A decade after the Glukhov pogrom, the Young Communist League and the Young Liberators were already working Harlem trying to stir up riots against Jewish storeowners.

The glamorization of Hitler in the black community did not begin with Farrakhan. Back in the thirties, Sufi Abdul Hamid, now known as a “pioneering labor leader”, but then dubbed the Black Hitler, was vowing, "an open bloody war against the Jews who are much worse than all other whites."

Neither Tamika Mallory, nor Sharpton, are a break with a mythological past dominated by a black-Jewish civil rights alliance that the ADL and its base are obsessed with, instead they are the fulfillment of a the long, ugly alliance between the left and anti-Semitic black nationalists that grew on the ADL’s watch.

The left’s anti-Semitic tactics have been consistent across countries and cultures. When its regimes rise, they persecute the Jews, whether it’s in the USSR, Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela or the United States.

But the ADL’s liberalism was its undoing. Like most American Jews, it viewed the rise of the left as a progressive phenomenon. It did not matter that the same mistake had been made countless times with the same outcome. There could be no harm in the Democrats leaning further and further to the left.

Except maybe to Israel.

The debate about lefty anti-Semitism centers largely on Israel. And that’s how the left wants it.

Unlike nationalist anti-Semitism, transnationalist anti-Semitism is cloaked in in abstractions. The Red Army pogromists were fighting the bourgeoisie. Sharpton was fighting racism. BDS is battling Zionism.

Leftist anti-Semitism identifies Jews with an ideological abstraction and then attacks the actual people.

The Red Army thugs, Sharpton’s thugs and BDS thugs are anti-Semitic. Capitalism, racism and Zionism are excuses. Lefty anti-Semitism neither began with Zionism nor will it end there. The Jews who were murdered by the Soviet Union, who fled Nicaragua and Brownsville, had nothing to do with Israel.

The ADL wants to be a lefty organization fighting anti-Semitism. Replacing Abe Foxman with Jonathan Greenblatt was meant to adapt it to the new landscape. But the left doesn’t want to fight anti-Semitism.

There is no future for an organization fighting anti-Semitism on the left.

The left has built its own Soros lobby coalition of anti-Jewish organization staffed by activists with Jewish last names. Like their counterparts in the Soviet Union, the Yevsektsiya or Jewish Section, they redefine anti-Semitism as a ‘bourgeois’ phenomenon that the left is immune to. These activist groups seek to destroy Israel and the Jewish community because they interfere with their task of mobilizing Jews as lefty activist cannon fodder. They defend lefty anti-Semitism and accuse the right of anti-Semitism. 

Despite the ADL agreeing with 99% of their agenda, the left is determined to destroy or control it. And the ADL still refuses to confront the left because, like most liberals, it believes that it is on the left.

The leftward drift of the people who were once liberals had left them incapable of confronting lefty illiberalism. They know that they agree with the left’s causes, they only question some of its tactics. They talk a great deal about extremism, but they only whisper about the extremism on their own side.

And when the argument becomes about tactics, instead of worldview, the left wins.

The left’s tactical illiberalism isn’t impatience or passion; it’s the product of an illiberal worldview. Anti-Semitism isn’t an aberration on the left. It’s inevitable. A fundamental difference between liberalism and the illiberal left is that the latter defines solutions to social problems through destroying groups.

Destroy the bourgeoisie, smash the deniers, eliminate religion, crush whiteness and wipe out the Jews.

The left needs an “other” to personalize its abstract hatreds. Jews fill the traditional role of the “other” as scapegoat. And anti-Semitism serves the same function on the left as it did throughout history.

It’s no accident that the star of 1984’s Two Minutes Hate was Emmanuel Goldstein.

Multiculturalism doesn’t mean that there is no “other”. It means that there are a plethora of “others”. And when there are a thousand “others”, an “other” that everyone can agree on is urgently needed.

The left can make Jews embody capitalism, whiteness, nationalism, war crimes, exploitation and every evil. The Jews control the weather, a lefty councilman claims, and the left rushes to defend him. The Jews are killing Palestinian babies, stealing organs, training police to shoot black people and controlling the world’s wealth. It’s the same old bigotry in a keffiyah. And it serves the same tawdry function.

Anti-Semitism is the sewer, sausage factory and the boiler room of the leftist soul.

The ADL has tried to find common ground with the left. But the left is not in the common ground business. Where the left takes institutional power, in a country, a state, a college or a profession, ideological diversity quickly vanishes leaving behind its ruling activists and a silent majority.

As a liberal consensus vanishes, the ADL is becoming an organization with no base. The ADL is too pro-Jewish for the left and not pro-Jewish enough for the right. The left has its own collection of organizations that it wants to impose on the Jewish community. The Soros lobby’s JFREJ, Bend the Arc and If Not Now were hurled into action against the ADL. Eventually they will cannibalize the ADL.

The ADL failed to stand up the left. And like other liberal collaborators, it will be replaced with a leftist Yevsektsiya that will divide its time between condemning Israel and denouncing Jews as bigots who need to be reeducated about their privilege and their complicity in whiteness. And then it will get ugly.

When the ADL was founded, there was a mainstream consensus for it to influence. The consensus has been replaced by political and racial tribalism. The margins are becoming mainstream. And it’s dying.

The ADL may choose to shut down. Or like HIAS, it may jettison its Jewish identity and join the anti-Jewish left. Or it can do what it should have done all along. It tried colluding. It promoted Black Lives Matter and signaled softness on BDS. But its efforts to collude with intersectional anti-Semitism failed.

Now an irrelevant organization in its final years has one last chance to stand up to the left.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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27 May, 2018

Trump gets it

Speaking at the annual gala of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List on Tuesday night, President Donald Trump cited Jeremiah 1:5 in explaining his belief that “every life is totally worth protecting.”

“As the Lord says in Jeremiah, ‘Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I set you apart,’” said Trump. “When a mother and a father hold a new baby in their arms, they are changed forever.”

“When we look into the eyes of a newborn child, there is no doubt we see the beauty of the human soul and the mystery of God’s great creation,” said Trump. “We know that every life has meaning and that every life is totally worth protecting.”

“When we stand for life, we stand for the true source of America’s greatness,” said Trump. “It’s our people. Our people are great.”

Here is an excerpt from Trump’s remarks:

"As the Lord says in Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you; before you were born, I set you apart.” When a mother and a father hold a new baby in their arms, they are changed forever. When a child says “Mommy” or “Daddy” for the first time, there is nothing like it anywhere in the world. No matter what you do, there is nothing like it. And when parents watch their children thrive and grow, they’re filled with joy beyond words, and a love beyond measure. You know that—everybody in this room.

"When we look into the eyes of a newborn child, there is no doubt we see the beauty of the human soul and the mystery of God’s great creation. We know that every life has meaning and that every life is totally worth protecting. Thank you. Thank you very much.

"When we stand for life, we stand for the true source of America’s greatness. It’s our people. Our people are great. It’s the people who grace our lives, who sustain our communities, and who make America a nation, a home, and this magnificent land that we all love so much.

"As long as we have faith in our citizens, confidence in our values, and trust in our God, then we will never, ever fail. Our nation will thrive. Our people will prosper. And America will be greater than ever before. And that’s what’s happening.

SOURCE






Hungary’s maverick prime minister, Viktor Orban, is questioning current Western values

Four years ago, Orban gave his critics ammunition when he said he was constructing an “illiberal democracy.” This month he doubled down, declaring liberal democracy dead and urging other European leaders to stop trying to revive the corpse.

Instead, Orban exhorted them to get busy invoking a new democracy based on Christian principles.

“Liberal democracy is no longer able to protect people’s dignity, provide freedom, guarantee physical security or maintain Christian culture,” he said in Hungary’s parliament earlier this month. “Some in Europe are still tinkering with it, because they believe that they can repair it, but they fail to understand that it is not the structure that is defective: The world has changed.”

The response, he added, is “to replace the shipwreck of liberal democracy by building 21st-century Christian democracy.”

For many reasons, Orban deserves our attention when he says his ambition—“now we want to hunt really big game” is precisely how he put it—is to change the course of Europe.

He is flushed with an electoral victory in which his party last month captured more votes than all of the opposition combined. He has defeated German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the important philosophical debate over immigration (Orban says it should be lowered). And he has vanquished the leftist billionaire George Soros, who just announced his nongovernmental organization is leaving Hungary.

Most importantly, the question of values is the fundamental issue confronting the Continent. Unlike the United States, modern European states are not founded upon creedal documents that lay out the constituting character and culture of the nation, and how to preserve them.

When “Europe” was more or less coterminous with “Christendom,” that text was the Bible. The culture that defined all the European nations—the paintings, the music, the festivals, the folk wisdom—was suffused with Christianity and its imagery. Greco-Judeo-Christian ethics bonded Portuguese and Finns in the absence of DNA or language links.

As Europe has de-Christianized, at best it has evolved into a values-free, empty husk. At worst it has become a supranational entity that pretends adherence to hate-speech codes, mandatory work rules, open borders, and coercion of everyone into publicly affirming lifestyles they find repugnant—all violations of different freedoms, and ironically of liberalism itself—now form “European values.”

Orban thumbs his nose at European Union pieties with gusto, which is why he can be forgiven if he uses provocative terms to attract attention to an important project.

But first it is important to note obvious downsides. Orban is no Thomas Jefferson, and his emphasis on ethnicity, not civic nationalism contained within borders, is sui generis.

If you believe that all men are created equal, are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that governments are instituted “to secure these rights” and “the blessings of liberty,” then the type of state that Orban wants to build is likely not your bag.

He says he believes that Hungarians are exceptional innately, not as a result of national traits that are acquirable. “We are a unique species,” he said last week. “There is a world which we alone see.”

This Hungarian nation is not geographically defined within juridical and electoral boundaries. The Hungarian nation, Orban said four years ago, “sometimes coincides with the country’s borders, sometimes doesn’t.”

Most important, securing individuals’ liberties is most assuredly not the central purpose of the state he is busy creating. As he said, again, in the 2014 speech:

“The new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state. It does not reject the fundamental principles of liberalism such as freedom, and I could list a few more, but it does not make this ideology the central element of state organization, but instead includes a different, special, national approach.”

There is good reason why ethnic, rather than civic, nationalism gives us pause. Though ethnic nationalism is unassailable from a natural rights perspective, it does de-emphasize the individual’s agency by making citizenship (belonging) non-volitional.

All of this is less of an indictment of Orban than one would think, however. First, he’s building a state for Hungarians, not Americans—and we must remember that even though safeguarding freedom must be our central animating spirit, to do that, we too, must preserve America’s unique culture.

Also, Hungarians are more ethnically separate than­­­­­ most. They are descended from seven tribes that emerged out of Central Asia more than a millennium ago and settled eventually in the Carpathian Basin.

Surrounded by a sea of German and Slavic, they continue to speak a language that is Asian in origin, not European, and to have distinct foods and customs. They are highly homogenous at home, and have enclaves in neighboring countries who are still considered part of the “Hungarian nation.”

And Orban is not—with due respect to his critics—vowing to pursue his project by depriving Hungarians of their freedom or property. He really doesn’t have a beef with liberal democracy, if understood as a system of representative government where the rule of the majority is checked by constitutional guarantees for minority rights and checks and balances prevent tyranny. Though he does not make freedom “the central element” of his project, he does secure people’s rights. He’s not Putin, Castro, or Xi Jinping.

It is instructive that for Orban, the inflection point for systemic change was the 2008 financial crisis. What he saw, what many saw, was intellectual and financial elites, transnational in outlook, suffering less than their working-class compatriots. He is trying to reconstruct a sense of nation.

By attempting to reintroduce the Judeo-Christian ethic into a secularized Europe, Orban arguably is giving Europe a chance to do just that. Even if the ethnic model he and his electorate may be pursuing is irreplicable in America or most of Western Europe, the values model could have a lot to offer.­­­

SOURCE






Morgan Spurlock’s Alcoholism Confession Casts Doubt on His ‘Super Size Me’ Health Claims

Just another Leftist crook

Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock caused waves with Super Size Me, the 2004 film in which he claimed eating McDonald’s gave him multiple health problems — but his recent admission to decades of heavy drinking call into question his dramatic claims about his health ailments being the result of fast food.

With his film, Spurlock won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and was even nominated for an Academy Award. Phelim McAleer reminded readers of Super Sizes Me’s theatrical acclaim in a recent editorial in The Wall Street Journal.

Spurlock’s super-sized claims were quite dramatic. Before he started filming the expose about the effects of McDonald’s food on a human body, the filmmaker said that he was in a “good spot” with his health. But after a full month of eating fast food, Spurlock insisted that his health took a dramatic, downward turn.

In that one month, the filmmaker insisted that he gained an unhealthy amount of weight, he said he got “the shakes” from the burgers and fries, felt depressed, lost sexual function, and he even made the claim that his liver was damaged by the temporary fast food diet.

In a subsequent interview, Morgan Spurlock congratulated himself on “opening people’s eyes” on the ills of fast food. He also claimed that the experience hurt his body to the point where he gains weight easily.

But, the liver problems were his most dramatic claims. Did eating McDonald’s for a month straight really do so much harm to his liver? He has always maintained that his liver problems were a result of Super Size Me. But new information raises important questions.

Phelim McAleer found that Spurlock himself recently made a statement that seems to put his earlier health claims in doubt. McAleer notes that after he was accused of sexual harassment, Spurlock made a shocking admission:

Fast-forward to December 2017, when Mr. Spurlock issued a #MeToo mea culpa titled “I Am Part of the Problem,” detailing a lifetime of sexual misdeeds. As a result, YouTube dropped its plans to screen his Super Size Me sequel, and other broadcasters cut ties. But overlooked in all this was a stunning admission that calls into question the veracity of the original Super Size Me.

After blaming his parents for his bad acts, Mr. Spurlock asked: “Is it because I’ve consistently been drinking since the age of 13? I haven’t been sober for more than a week in 30 years.”

“Could this be why his liver looked like that of an alcoholic? Were those shakes symptoms of alcohol withdrawal?”McAleer asked.

McAleer also pointed out that Spurlock’s admission about his drinking raises a question about earlier claims:

Mr. Spurlock’s 2017 confession contradicts what he said in his 2004 documentary. “Any alcohol use?” the doctor asks at the outset. “Now? None,” he replies. In explaining his experiment, he says: “I can only eat things that are for sale over the counter at McDonald’s — water included.”

Morgan Spurlock’s recent admission about a possible chronic alcohol problem appear to be at odds with the claims he made that eating fast food damaged his health.

Naturally, Spurlock has refused to respond to questions about these contradictory statements.

SOURCE





Fake Black Activist Rachel Dolezal Accused Of Welfare Fraud

She's just a fraud, period. She'll make a good Leftist

Rachel Dolezal, the former Washington state NAACP president thrust into the spotlight after media revealed she was a white woman posing as black, is facing welfare fraud charges.

Dolezal, who legally changed her name to Nkechi Diallo in 2016, could face up to 15 years in prison after authorities say she received thousands of dollars in public assistance. She’s accused of welfare fraud, perjury and false verification for public assistance, TV station KHQ reports.

Rachel Dolezal faces felony theft charges illegally receiving $8,747 in food assistance and $100 in childcare assistance from August 2015 through November 2017.  She could face 15 years in jail.

FOX News reported:

Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP chapter leader who resigned after her parents revealed she’s not African-American, is facing a felony theft charge in Washington state after she allegedly made false statements to secure nearly $9,000 in food and childcare assistance.

The charges against Dolezal, who changed her name to Nkechi Diallo in October 2016, were first reported by KHQ-TV.

According to court documents, investigators with Washington state’s Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) started looking into Dolezal’s finances in March 2017 after the publication of her autobiography, “In Full Color: Finding My Place in a Black and White World.”

DSHS investigator Kyle Bunge said Dolezal had claimed that “her only source of income was $300.00 per month in gifts from friends.” However, the department found that she had deposited nearly $84,000 in her bank account between August 2015 and September 2017 without reporting it.

According to the investigation, the money came from sales of Dolezal’s autobiography as well as “the sale of her art, soaps, and handmade dolls.”

Authorities say Dolezal illegally received $8,747 in food assistance and $100 in child care assistance from August 2015 through November 2017.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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25 May, 2018

Why American men are getting less marriageable

The article below is rather naive -- perhaps blinded by feminism.  The author is male but does look rather epicene.


Drake Baer

The decline in marriage is no mystery at all. Feminist-inspired  divorce laws have made marriage into a financial disaster for most men. And hardly a day goes by without some story appearing in the papers that features such disasters.  Men now know what they are in for and choose to cohabitate rather than marry. Cohabitation is the new marriage. Nearly 50% of births are now ex nuptial in some jurisdictions.

The point about employment made below does however also have some validity -- but it is not limited to manufacturing jobs. ANY man without a job or in a low paying job is unlikely to be a target for a marriage-minded woman.  It's simply practical.  The less money you have, the fewer are your options in life.  Using Occam's razor, that's all there is to this issue.

OK, I will admit that instincts have a lot to do with it too. Women do like to look up to a man and see him as a good provider. And he's hard to look up to if he is not a good provider. And that instinct would go back to our cave-man origins. Feminism has been a total failure at changing human nature.

One cause of male unemployment that bears mentioning is the heavy push to get women into remunerative "male" jobs, particularly STEM jobs.  Women are now often given preferential access to such jobs.  But that is a zero sum game.  The more women in any job  the fewer will be the men.  So some unhappy ladies will have more money but no man. And lots of them regret that quite acutely --  as the Mulvey saga reminds us

I remember a singles party I was at decades ago.  There was a quite attractive lady there whom I knew.  She said to me: "Where are all the men?"  I remarked that there were actually more men present than women.  She replied: "Not THOSE men". She wanted a man she could respect and regretted the lack of one. She went home with me


We're in the middle of a great marriage decline in the US.
This phenomenon is partially explained by economic forces that are making men less appealing partners. Traditional gender roles are also to blame.

If it seems like the number of complaints from your female friends about not being able to find a man is growing, we may finally know why. Somewhere between 1979 and 2008, Americans decided it was much less worth it to get hitched: the share of 25- to 39-year-old women who were currently married fell 10 percent among those with college degrees, 15 percent for those with some college, and a full 20 percent for women with a high-school education or less.

This great American marriage decline—a drop from 72 percent of U.S. adults being wed in 1960 to half in 2014—is usually chalked up to gains in women's rights, the normalization of divorce, and the like. But it also a lot to do with men. Namely, economic forces are making them less appealing partners, and it ties into everything from China to opioids.

The most revealing data comes from University of Zurich economist David Dorn. In a 2017 paper with an ominous title ("When Work Disappears: Manufacturing Decline and the Falling Marriage-Market Value of Men"), Dorn and his colleagues crunched the numbers from 1990 to 2014. They found that employability and marriageability are deeply intertwined.

The flashpoint is a sector of the economy that politicians love to talk about: manufacturing. It used to be a huge slice of the employment pie: In 1990, 21.8 percent of employed men and 12.9 percent of employed women worked in manufacturing. By 2007, it had shrunk to 14.1 and 6.8 percent. These blue-collar gigs were and are special: they pay more than comparable jobs at that education level in the service sector, and they deliver way more than just a paycheck. The jobs are often dangerous and physically demanding, giving a sense of solidarity with coworkers. Not coincidentally, these jobs are also incredibly male-dominated—becoming even more so between 1990 and 2010. But since 1980, a full third of all manufacturing jobs—5 million since 2000—have evaporated, making guys less appealing as husbands.

Dorn and his colleagues find that when towns and counties lose manufacturing jobs, fertility and marriage rates among young adults go down, too. Unmarried births and the share of children living in single-parent homes go up. Meanwhile, places with higher manufacturing employment have a bigger wage gap between men and women, and a higher marriage rate.

"On simple financial grounds, the males are more attractive partners in those locations because they benefit disproportionately from having those manufacturing jobs around," he tells Thrive Global.

It underscores how in the U.S., the norms around money, marriage, and gender remain—perhaps surprisingly—traditional. Marianne Bertrand, an economist at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, has found a "cliff" in relative income in American marriages at the 50-50 split mark. While there are lots of couples where he earns 55 percent of their combined income, there are relatively few where shemakes more than he does.

While the pay gap is certainly a factor here, Bertrand and her colleagues argue that the asymmetry owes more to traditionalist gender roles and remains a class issue. They reference recent results from the World Values Survey, where respondents were asked how much they agreed with the claim that, ‘‘If a woman earns more money than her husband, it's almost certain to cause problems.'' The results broke along socioeconomic lines: 28 percent of couples where both parties went to at least some college agreed, while 45 percent of couples where neither partner went beyond high school agreed. Spouses tend to be less happy, more likely to think the marriage is in trouble, and more likely to discuss separation if the wife outearns her husband, as well.

"Either men don't like their female partners earning more than they do," Dorn says, or women feel like "if the man doesn't bring in more money, then he's an underachiever."

As manufacturing jobs are lost, there are also increases to mortality in men aged 18 to 39, Dorn says, with more deaths from liver disease, indicative of alcohol abuse; more deaths from diabetes, related to obesity; and lung cancer, related to smoking—not to mention drug overdoses. (These "deaths of despair" have taken over a million American lives in the past decade.) Ofer Sharone, a sociologist at the University of Massachusetts, has found that while Israelis blame the system when they can't find a job, Americans see themselves as flawed when they can't find work, which sounds a lot like perfectionism. And remarkably, half of unemployed men in the U.S. are on some sort of painkiller. Unremarkably, all that makes long-term monogamy less appealing. "This is consistent with the notion that males become less attractive partners because they have less money and start doing drugs," Dorn says.

The precarious situation that American men face has a lot to do with the nature of the jobs they're doing. Germany and Switzerland, which are bleeding manufacturing at a much slower rate, do more precision work (read: watches and cars), which is harder to ship overseas to hand over to robots and algorithms. Traditionally masculine, American blue collar jobs tend toward repetitive tasks, making them easier to replace. (One British estimate predicted that 35 percent of traditionally male jobs in the UK are at high risk of being automated, compared with 26 percent of traditionally female jobs.) There's a race to automate trucking, a traditionally male role, but not so much nursing.

And the working-class jobs that are being added tend toward what's traditionally taken to be "women's work." Care-oriented jobs like home-care aides continue to go up—a trend that's only going to continue as America gets older and boomers move into retirement. These are not trends that add to the marketability of guys. "The lack of good jobs for these men is making them less and less attractive to women in the marriage market, and women, with their greater earnings, can do fine remaining single," says Bertrand, the Chicago economist. "For gender identity reasons, these men may not want to enter into marriages with women who are dominating them economically, even if this would make economic sense to them."

So what's a man to do within change like this? Dorn recommends, if one is able, to specialize in areas that are harder to automate—jobs that require problem-solving and creativity. But those jobs also often require more education. Then comes the much woolier, complex issue of gender norms. There are individual choices to be made at a personal level for men to take on traditionally feminine work, or for heterosexual couples to settle on a situation where the wife brings home the bacon. But these individual choices don't happen in a vacuum—they're necessarily informed by the broader culture.

"Traditional masculinity is standing in the way of working-class men's employment," Johns Hopkins sociologist Andrew Cherlin said in an interview. "We have a cultural lag where our views of masculinity have not caught up to the change in the job market." (This was captured in a recent New York Times headline: "Men Don't Want to Be Nurses. Their Wives Agree.") Parents and educators will play the biggest role in teaching more gender neutral attitudes regarding who belongs in the home and who belongs in the marketplace, Bertrand says. And eventually, she adds, gender norms "will adjust to the new realities" that are already present in the economy: women are getting better educations and are more employable, and the work opportunities that are growing are—for now—thought to be feminine.

SOURCE





Want to fire your congressman? There's a fund for that

by Jeff Jacoby

A new, nonpartisan political action committee aims to help candidates who challenge incumbent members of Congress.

NORBERT RICHTER, an engineer whose business is the construction of ultra-light turbine helicopters, has a knack for getting innovative contraptions off the ground. That skill may prove handy as he attempts to gain altitude for a different sort of vehicle: a scheme to disrupt the shield of incumbency that makes it almost impossible to dislodge a sitting member of Congress.

Richter has created Fire Your Congressman, a political action committee designed to help candidates of any party who challenge incumbent senators and representatives.

The near-invulnerability of congressional incumbents is one of the most demoralizing phenomena in US politics. Richter, a resident of Gainesville in Florida's 3rd congressional district, got a first-hand taste of that demoralization in 2016. He had been thinking of running in the Republican primary against US Representative Ted Yoho, and was astonished at how the party mobilized to shelter the incumbent from challenge.

"I was aghast," Richter told me in a recent conversation. "The party had no interest in allowing competition." The GOP establishment made clear, he says, that it would thwart his efforts to raise funds or schedule debates. Yoho had a hefty campaign war chest, name recognition, and access to party loyalists with deep pockets. Richter soon realized that he couldn't hope to raise enough money to run a credible race. In the end, Yoho faced no primary opponent. In November, he was easily re-elected from his safe GOP district.

And that, Richter learned as he analyzed his experience, was typical.

Though Americans despise Congress, most incumbents are routinely returned to office. On Election Day in 2016, congressional job approval averaged a miserable 15 percent in national polls. Yet only eight of the 388 members of the House of Representatives running for re-election that day were defeated; five others had previously been ousted in primaries. In short, 97 percent of House incumbents seeking another term had been re-elected. And of the 29 senators on the ballot, 93 percent prevailed.

"In a year that was defined by a political outsider, Donald Trump, winning the presidency," wrote political scientist Larry Sabato, "it was still a really good year to run as an incumbent."

It's always a really good year to run as an incumbent. In the abstract, Americans cherish their power to throw the bums out. But the bums rarely have anything to worry about, so barricaded are they behind the advantages of incumbency — gerrymandered districts, local media coverage, franked mail privileges, government-paid staff, and, perhaps most important, the flow of campaign contributions from those willing to pay for access and goodwill.

The only way to curtail the lopsidedly pro-incumbent dynamic in American elections, Richter decided, is with a counterflow of contributions to challengers. That's the idea behind Fire Your Congressman, his newly launched PAC.

Here's how it works: Donors wishing to remove incumbent members of Congress contribute to the PAC, which creates pools of money to be spent in support of challengers. Donations can be made to pools targeting specific incumbents, or to a general pool that will be used against a "Top 10" list of sitting lawmakers — five Democrats, five Republicans — that PAC researchers determine to be the highest priority for defeat.

In its first weeks, the fledgling PAC has received only contributions from small-dollar donors, but those dollars are trickling in. (The total to date, according to Richter, is in "the low tens of thousands.") Most of the money has been earmarked for pools to defeat two Florida House members: Yoho, the Gainesville Republican, and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the South Florida Democrat. "I haven't had a million-dollar donor come up to me yet," Richter says, but he is hopeful that as word spreads, Fire Your Congressman will become a significant vehicle for challenging heretofore untouchable incumbents.

Richter emphasizes the PAC's nonpartisan structure. "Libertarian, Berniecrat, super-right-winger, conventional liberal — it doesn't matter" where a donor falls on the spectrum, he stresses. "If you are fed up with incumbents, if you want to support challengers, we can help."

Why would donors funnel campaign contributions through Fire Your Congressman PAC rather than give directly to the campaigns of individual challengers? For two reasons, says Richter.

First, so a war chest can be amassed against an incumbent even before a credible challenger emerges. In some cases, the knowledge that a pool of funds already exists may give challengers the reassurance to get into a race that might otherwise be unrealistic.

The second advantage to channeling contributions through the PAC? To prevent angry incumbents from taking revenge.

The PAC's website makes the point explicitly: "Challengers can find fundraising particularly difficult, because potential donors are concerned about losing favor with their incumbent representative if they publicly donate to an opponent." Since money given to the PAC is not reported to the Federal Election Commission as a donation against any named lawmaker, donors can "maintain their relationship with incumbents, while making undisclosed donations against them."

The pro-incumbent bias in American politics won't be dismantled overnight. Ultimately it can be whittled away only by emboldening and strengthening challengers. Fire Your Congressman gives fed-up voters a way to leverage the power of money against the fortress of incumbency. Can Richter make it fly? It's too soon to know for sure, but I'm rooting for the engineer.

SOURCE







Social Justice Warrior Accuses Conservative Women of ‘Appropriating’ Feminism—but We’re Not Having It

Kelsey Harkness

Fake news, move over—there’s a new con (wo)man in town. It’s called fake feminism, and according to a woman on the left, conservative women are the culprits.

Liberal feminist writer Jessica Valenti, author of books such as “Sex Object: A Memoir,” and “Why Have Kids?”, took to The New York Times Sunday to argue Republicans are “appropriating” feminist rhetoric in their use of the term. How dare they not ask for permission?

In her article, “The Myth of Conservative Feminism,” Valenti writes:

Conservatives appropriating feminist rhetoric despite their abysmal record on women’s rights is, in part, a product of the president’s notorious sexism. Now more than ever, conservatives need to paint themselves as woman-friendly to rehab their image with female voters.

In an attempt to justify the hypocrisy of feminists refusing to celebrate historic achievements such as Gina Haspel becoming the first female to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, Valenti argues, “Feminism isn’t about blind support for any woman who rises to power.”

Pay no mind to the many faces of the Democratic Party who have long argued women should vote based on their reproductive body parts.

“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said in support of the Democrats’ nominee on the 2016 campaign trail.

Women supporting President Donald Trump are “publicly disrespecting themselves,” woman-splained Hillary Clinton.

“Any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice,” said Michelle Obama just last year.

So which way is it—does feminism champion individuality and free thought, or is it “my way or the highway”?

Conservative women have long been divided on whether they identify as a feminist. Speaking on a 2018 women’s panel at the Conservative Political Action Conference, I publicly embraced the term to acknowledge that women throughout history were not always equal, and to honor all the work of the first-wave feminists who came before us.

Others argue the term was so badly hijacked to mean supporting an anti-male, pro-abortion without limits agenda, that it’s a lost cause to use the term.

“It’s difficult for me to call myself a feminist in a classic sense because it seems to be very anti-male, and it certainly is very pro-abortion, and I’m neither anti-male or pro-abortion,” White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway said at CPAC in 2017. “I look at myself as a product of my choices, not a victim of my circumstances.”

Disagreement among right-leaning women about the feminist identity exemplifies a healthy debate seldom seen or allowed on the left. As the world witnessed at the inaugural Women’s March, unless you unequivocally support abortion, you’re not welcome to be one of them.

In response to the threat posed by right-leaning women who identify as feminist, Valenti said:

Now we have a different task: protecting the movement against conservative appropriation. We’ve come too far to allow the right to water down a well-defined movement for its own cynical gains. Because if feminism means applauding ‘anything a woman does’—even hurting other women—then it means nothing.

In truth, Valenti is right to feel threatened by those of us who’ve embraced the term “feminism.”

We’re reaching out to young women and explaining that disagreement is OK, and we’re showing that standing up for women can also mean standing up for issues such as tax reform, and a strong national defense.

After all, the Trump administration has one of the most pro-women foreign policy agendas we’ve seen in decades. Instead of sending planes filled with cash to regimes such as Iran who arrest women for taking off their hijabs, we’ve exited the Iran deal, sending the message that we stand in solidarity with women and no longer excuse violations of their most fundamental human rights.

And despite being pariahs within the culture, conservative women have played a healthy role in the #MeToo movement, proving that feminism can accomplish so much more when everyone’s involved.

Feminism has evolved, and it appears we’ve reached a breaking point. Lined with Planned Parenthood’s pocketbook, the left’s goal is to define it based on the single issue of abortion.

Conservatives, on the other hand, argue it’s time for a more inclusive version of feminism that focuses on the plights of women worldwide—not just here in the United States.

Valenti and her allies can work overtime trying to discredit our perspective and accuse us of “appropriating” the term. But those of us who embrace it aren’t backing down to her school girl bully approach.

Instead, we’ll use the attack as an opportunity to have a conversation, not just with America but the entire world, about why feminism is about so much more than the single issue of abortion.

We’ll show that real feminism is about furthering equality for all women around the world. And how selecting Gina Haspel as the first woman to lead the CIA was a great first step.

SOURCE






Sexism? Australian Medical clinic comes under fire for charging patients an EXTRA $7 to see a female GP

Patients have been left outraged after a medical centre charged MORE money for them to see female GPs.

The Melbourne clinic, Myhealth North Eltham, has come under scrutiny after it was found charging patients more for standard consultations with female GPs than it does for a consultation with male GPs.

A sign displayed in the clinic showed the discriminatory pricing policy - and it's attracted criticism online.  

The photograph was uploaded to Twitter with the caption: 'This is so f***ed. My friend goes to Eltham North Clinic in #Victoria, and they've just instituted extra fees for female doctors because "women's issues take longer". Surely this is illegal ... if it's not illegal, it's still outrageously sexist.'

The post was shared online by the user's followers, who also vented their anger.

One user said: 'If you're asking people who are paid 30 per cent less to fill that 30 per cent wage gap, it doesn't help. It means even greater financial inequality for those at the bottom.'

Another added: 'I don't think this is the scandal you think it is. I'd pay more to see a female colleague knowing they get ~30% less take home pay than their male counterparts. On top of fewer opportunities, and institutional/societal sexism.'

According to Fairfax, Federal Health Minister Greg is calling for an urgent investigation of the matter.

Kristen Hilton, Victoria's Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner told The Guardian, the Melbourne clinic may be breaking the law and it can be considered discriminatory for charging patients more to see female GPs.

'It is against the law for doctors to treat someone unfavourably because of their gender,' Ms Hilton said.

SOURCE 

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

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

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

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24  May, 2018

Canada: What we learned at last weekend’s “political correctness” debate, starring Jordan Peterson

The Munk debates are not monk debates.  They are a dignified Canadian phenomenon.  With immodesty unusual in Canada they announce themselves as:  "The Munk Debates are the world’s preeminent public debating forum. From gender and geopolitics, to nuclear weapons and neoliberalism, the Munk Debates tackle the most important questions of our time with passion and critical thought"

They are prestigious within Canada and attract a large paying audience so are very orderly and civilized.  They often feature well-known speakers


Venue: The Roy Thompson hall

On Friday, the city’s culturatti spent the first night of the May 24 weekend packed into Roy Thomson Hall for the latest Munk Debate, where the topic couldn’t possibly have been more timely: “Be it resolved that what you call political correctness, I call progress.” On the pro side: New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg and African-American academic and author Michael Eric Dyson. Arguing against: British thespian Stephen Fry and Jordan Peterson, who became the Justin Bieber of internet free-speech zealots after he posted YouTube lectures decrying PC culture on university campuses. The debate was moderated by Munk Debates chair Rudyard Griffiths.

All four debaters presented impassioned, intermittently effective, occasionally off-topic arguments. But who won? Who came to blows? And which two debaters should definitely be starring in a postmodern buddy cop movie? Here’s what we learned:

Toronto’s elite are anti-PC

Upon entering RTH, the crowd was asked to fill out a survey where they voted for or against the resolution. Going into the debate, 36 per cebt of attendees agreed that political correctness was a form of progress, while 64 per cent were opposed.

It may be politically incorrect to identify political correctness
One of the most remarkable things about the debate was that actual political correctness didn’t get discussed a whole bunch. On stage was Peterson—the guy who has famously refused to use they/them pronouns to address gender non-conforming students (at his job at a publicly funded university). And yet, that didn’t come up. Instead, the debaters discussed why perceived censorship is different from censorship (Goldberg), how the right are the true perpetrators of identity politics (Dyson), the value of hierarchies and the sovereignty of the individual (Peterson) and why nobody on this continent seems to have any bloody idea what political correctness is (Fry).

A New York Times profile of Jordan Peterson loomed large
On the day of the debate, the New York Times published a profile of the prof, in which the author lays out Peterson’s support for “enforced monogamy” and patriarchy based on innate male superiority. Goldberg quoted from the profile in her opening statement—presumably as a way of articulating the dangerous ideologies that could prevail in the absence of PC culture. Peterson accused her of attacking him personally.

It’s okay not to like your teammate

While Goldberg and Dyson were essentially coming from the same place on the Pro side, the men on the Con side were not exactly two anti-PCs in a pod. Fry, who is gay, opened his argument by noting that he was “standing next to someone with whom I have, you know, differences.” He appeared to be avoiding Peterson’s attempts at comradely eye contact throughout.

It’s also okay to call Stephen Fry offensive names

Or so says Fry himself. He argued that the problem with PC culture is that we have become too uptight about words, including a certain unprintable epithet for gay men. This would have been a great time for one of the Pro debaters to jump in and point out the myriad ways in which language influences thought and indicates societal values—but alas, that may have been a little too on-topic.

But it’s not okay to call Jordan Peterson white

The evening’s emotional climax came during a heated exchange between Peterson and Dyson, in which the former asked if there was a tax he could pay so he could stop hearing about his white privilege. Dyson responded by asking, “Why the rage, bro? You’re doing well, but you’re a mean white man. I have never seen so much whining and snow-flaking—there’s enough whine in here to start a vineyard.” The mean-white-guy thing earned Dyson the night’s only boos. Peterson came back saying that while he may indeed be mean, he was not okay with being called white: “The fact that race got dragged into that comment is a better example of what’s wrong with the politically correct left than anything else that could have happened,” he said, prompting a big cheer from the audience.

Nobody wants to appear dead-set against #MeToo

When Griffiths asked the debaters to address whether #MeToo has gone too far, Goldberg made the point that, in fact, the punishments have largely fit the crimes: “When you look at who has actually lost their jobs—it’s not based on random McCarthyist rumours, it’s people who took their dicks out at work…and now they’re staging comebacks!” Fry said that post-#MeToo political correctness has lead to a “genuine fear” in his industry amongst men who feel like they can’t say what they think. “It’s worrying,” he said, before adding that the revelations of decades of rampant and institutionally condoned sexual assault and harassment perpetrated against women are…also worrying.

Following a heated exchange, Dyson suggested that Peterson might better understand the notion of privilege if he accompanied Dyson to a black Baptist church. Peterson accepted the invitation, and Griffiths vowed to make sure this real-life buddy cop movie would actually happen.

Toronto’s elite are still anti-PC

In the end, the Cons were the winners by a significant margin—a result that probably had a lot to do with Stephen Fry’s wit, Michael Eric Dyson’s name calling and the particular biases of the well-heeled audience.

SOURCE






Australia: "Righteous" critics of a reasonable statement

In the age of Twitter, you must emote appropriately.  A plea for balance is not possible amid grief

Former Queensland premier Campbell Newman is standing by a series of tweets he made about police "creating total and utter chaos" around the Brisbane CBD when responding to a pedestrian hit and killed by a bus this morning.

A woman was crossing Ann Street near the intersection of Wharf Street just before 7:00am when she was struck by a bus. She died at the scene.

Police closed the intersection for hours and asked motorists to avoid the area.

In response, Mr Newman shot out a series of tweets, saying police could have handled the situation better to minimise traffic disruptions:

"There must be a better way for the Qld Police to deal with a tragic pedestrian death than to shut down the entire northern side of Brisbane and create total and utter chaos extending more than 5 km from the CBD."

"And for those of you who don't agree, what about the surgeons and doctors who didn't get to the hospitals on time, the cancer patients who were heading for treatment, the kids who had exams, the people who missed job interviews etc. etc.

 Gee. What would they say if someone had died in the back of an ambulance this morning that had been injured in an incident elsewhere but couldn't get to the RBH in time due to the traffic? Let's stick to the point rather than name calling and invective"

They were quick to attract criticism.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said Mr Newman's criticism was uncalled for. "Someone has lost their life, a family will be grieving tonight and I think it's very sad to hear that Campbell Newman has come out and criticised police," Ms Palaszczuk said. "The police have to undertake an investigation as quickly as they can where that event occurred."

Queensland Police Minister Mark Ryan said police took appropriate action at the scene.  "I must say that I was appalled by comments made by former premier and former Brisbane lord mayor Campbell Newman about the police management of traffic while they were taking the necessary steps to investigate and respond to this morning's tragedy," Mr Ryan said.

Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington also voiced her disappointment at the comments made by her party's former leader. 

Speaking to the ABC, Mr Newman said he stood by his tweets, that he recognised the tragedy of the situation, but there was a need to examine if there was a better way of handling such incidents.

Mr Newman said police needed to consider the potential danger of delaying medical staff on other urgent tasks elsewhere in the city. He said if he were still premier, he would have invited the Police Minister and Police Commissioner to his office to discuss the matter.

A Queensland Police Service (QPS) spokesman said it handled the scene of Tuesday morning's fatality by the book. "It is standard procedure to close a road where a fatality has occurred while investigators from the Forensic Crash Unit conduct thorough scene examinations without interference from traffic," the spokesman said. "The QPS is also conscious of ensuring scenes of fatalities are managed with dignity and respect for the victims and their families.

"On this occasion, a traffic alert was issued to the public within minutes of the incident and local diversions were put in place while the intersection was closed to traffic for two hours."

SOURCE 






'Just work a little bit harder': Australian Liberal Party politician is heckled by an ABC audience for calling on women to stop being 'bitter' about not being promoted at work

A female politician was heckled by an ABC studio audience for declaring women needed to work harder and stop being bitter if they had failed to get promoted in the workplace.

First-term Victorian Liberal senator Jane Hume told the Q&A program that women, being half of the population, needed to stop thinking of themselves as a minority.

'I really dislike being patronised as if I am a minority,' she said.

The 47-year-old Melbourne-based senator, who is opposed to gender quotas, stirred up the Monday night audience when she suggested women needed to get by on their abilities instead of demanding special treatment. 'We are capable of anything but we are entitled to nothing,' she said.

'We have to work for what we want and for women that don't get there, the trick is work that little bit harder.

'Don't get bitter, get better. Work hard. Nothing that is worth getting doesn't come without hard work.'

Senator Hume's call for women to work harder antagonised the Q&A audience, where 41 per cent of the studio spectators identified as either Labor or Greens voters, compared with 32 per cent who declared themselves as Liberal or Nationals supporters.

The panel discussion took a tense turn when Senator Hume, a former banker, suggested an African schoolgirl in the audience from Melbourne's western suburbs, Sarah Ador Loi, could get ahead if she joined the Liberal Party and was mentored.

Macquarie University research fellow Randa Abdel-Fattah hit back by referencing the senator's skin colour. 'Spoken like a white, female politician,' she said as she sipped on a glass of water.

The Muslim academic, who grew up in Melbourne, suggested Sarah would not have the same connections to become a politician as someone who came from the wealthy suburb of Toorak.

The discussion had also focused on how just 21 per cent of federal Liberal Party politicians were women, compared with 44 per cent in the Labor Party, which has had gender targets since the mid-1990s.

SOURCE 





Catholic Therapist Allegedly Fired For Her Religious Beliefs Against Gay Marriage

The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) filed a federal lawsuit against HealthSource Saginaw, Inc., on behalf of social worker Kathleen Lorentzen who was fired, apparently, because her Catholic religious beliefs precluded her from providing marriage counseling to a homosexual couple.

In addition to HealthSource Saginaw, Inc., defendants Mark E. Kraynak and Mark Puckett are also being sued. The Thomas More Law Center contends in its May 11 filing that Lorentzen's civil rights were violated under federal law and Michigan law, that there was a breach of contract, tortious interference, and termination in violation of policy.

"Kathleen Lorentzen, a Catholic and licensed clinical social worker was told by her supervisor that she had to be 'a social worker first and a Catholic second,' and was fired because she refused to compromise the Catholic faith which teaches that marriage is between one man and one woman," said the TMLC in a press release.

"Mrs. Lorentzen had an exemplary employment record of providing psychological counseling for over 20 years to a diverse group of patients," said the TMLC. "But despite her outstanding record, her former employer, HealthSource Saginaw (“HealthSource”), located in Michigan, terminated her."

“This case shows that people of faith are under assault in the workplace," said TMLC Senior Trial Counsel Tyler Brooks. "The fact is, however, that Christians need not choose between their faith and their jobs. Despite what many would have us believe, discrimination against Christians is a civil rights violation that will subject employers to legal liability.”

In the summer of 2017, Lorentzen -- who worked under contract as an Outpatient Behavioral Therapist and had treated many patients for HealthSource since 2011 -- provided some counseling on two occasions. She then decided that, as a Catholic, she could not provide further "marriage" counseling to a gay couple because such unions are contrary to her religious and moral beliefs.

On Aug. 23, 2017, Lorentzen asked her supervisor, Mark E. Kraynak, "if she could refer the couple to another therapist in the practice because of the conflict with her religious beliefs," reads the lawsuit. "In response, Mr. Kraynak became very angry. Mrs. Lorentzen then excused herself and left the meeting."

On Aug. 29, 2017,  Lorentzen "was summoned into a meeting with Mr. Kraynak and Colton Reed, HealthSource's outpatient manager," reads the lawsuit. "Mrs. Lorentzen was then interrogated in an aggressive and condescending manner about her faith and her work at HealthSource. During this exchange, Mrs. Lorentzen objected that she felt like she was being harassed and discriminated against because of her religion. Mr. Kraynak told Mrs. Lorentzen that eh had to be 'a social worker first, and a Catholic second.'"

When Lorentzen tried to her explain her views further by referencing certain clergy, Kraynak "hatefully said, 'They are just priests!'" reads the lawsuit.

On Sept. 6, 2017, Lorentzen received a letter form HealthSource's Program Executive Mark Puckett stating that she would be terminated in 30 days. After she received the letter, according to the lawsuit, Lorentzen "was subjected to a number of actions that undermined, embarrassed, and humiliated her" by Kraynak and Reed.

These actions reportedly included pushing Lorentzen, blocking her from walking down the hallway, and eavesdropping on her.

The lawsuit further states that when HealthSource's "medical director found out the actual reason Mrs. Lorentzen was leaving, he told Messrs. Reed and Kraynak that the gay couple seeking counseling could have simply been referred to another therapist and that they should not have terminated her without consulting him first."

The TMLC, on Lorentzen's behalf, is seeking a trial by jury on all claims, compensatory damages, past and future medical expenses, "damages for past and future mental and emotional distress," punitive damages, attorney's fees, tax costs of the legal action, and "other and further relief as the Court may deem just and proper."

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on May 11, 2017.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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23 May, 2018

Black surgeon who gave bride-to-be 'permanent brain damage' during a tummy tuck filmed videos of herself dancing and singing during surgeries

She sounds hebephrenic. There is a high incidence of mental illness among blacks.  Most probably an affirmative action graduate



An Atlanta plastic surgeon is facing a slew of lawsuits after it was revealed she had filmed herself singing and dancing over her exposed patients during surgeries.

Dozens of videos have been found that show Dr Windell Boutte cavorting in the operating room, even while making incisions on her patients.

In one video Boutte sings the to the rap lyric 'I'm 'bout to cut it', from an OT Genasis rap song, before slicing into one of her patients.

'You could not present a patient in a more undignified manner,' Susan Witt, an attorney representing one of Boutte's former patients, told WSBTV. 

More than 20 videos of Boutte's antics were found on YouTube. She is now facing seven malpractice lawsuits.

Ojay Liburd, 26, has blamed Boutte for leaving his mother Icilma Cornelius with permanent brain damage.

Cornelius was just weeks away from getting married and earning her PhD when she visited Boutte for a tummy tuck and liposuction in 2016.

Cornelius was just weeks away from getting married and earning her PhD when she visited Boutte for a tummy tuck and liposuction in 2016

But Cornelius' heart stopped after she was left on the operating table for more than eight hours. She will now need care for the rest of her life.

'She just wanted to be perfect for her wedding dress,' Liburd said. 'She had everything going for her.' 'That was the first time I ever saw my mom helpless.' 

Mitzi McFarland, who also underwent an operation with Boutte, said the results looked 'more like Freddy Krueger cut my stomach'.

This isn't the first time Boutte has come under fire for her work. In 2013, a woman who went to see Boutte at Premiere Dermatology and Surgery for a scalp irritation said she contracted MRSA during the treatment. She said she suffered permanent scars on her scalp as a result.

SOURCE






Refugee slowdown under Trump

The flow of refugees to the United States has slowed nearly to a halt, demonstrating that what President Trump’s administration could not achieve by executive order, it is accomplishing by bureaucracy.

The administration has cut the staff that conducts clearance interviews overseas, intensified the screening process for refugees, and for those people it characterizes as high-risk, doubled the number who need to be screened. As a result, if the trickle of refugees admitted continues at its current pace, just 20,000 are projected to enter the United States by the end of this year, the lowest figure since the resettlement program was created with passage of the Refugee Act in 1980.

The machinery of refugee resettlement has ground down accordingly.

“Every stage in the process works like the assembly line in a factory — each station knows exactly what to do and how to do the handoff to the next step,” said Barbara Strack, who retired in January as the chief of the Refugee Affairs Division at United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. “This fiscal year,” she added, “the administration essentially ‘broke’ the assembly line in multiple places at the same time.”

The steepest decline has been in the number of Muslims who have been resettled. In fiscal 2016, 38,900 Muslim refugees came to the United States, according to statistics from the State Department. The following year, that number fell to 22,861. This fiscal year, just 2,107 have arrived.

A total of 13,051 refugees of all backgrounds have been admitted, making it unlikely that the administration’s originally planned cap of 45,000 — about half the number that came during the last year of the Obama administration — will be met.

“It’s death by a thousand papercuts,” said Jennifer Sime, senior vice president at the International Rescue Committee, one of the nine national resettlement agencies contracted by the State Department. “Little by little — until you get to the point where nobody is coming.”

A State Department spokesperson did not dispute that there was a slowdown and said that processing times may be slower as the government implements new screening procedures. And refugee resettlement, the department insisted, was not the only way to help displaced people.

“The United States will also continue to lead the world in humanitarian assistance and support displaced people close to their homes in order to help meet their needs until they can safely and voluntarily return home,” Carol T. O’Connell, principal deputy assistant secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, said in a statement.

Even before Mr. Trump took office, resettlement of refugees was a protracted, interagency process, with vetting often taking two years.

Soon after Mr. Trump became president, he moved to shut down the flow of refugees to the United States through a series of executive orders, an effort that was initially stymied by the federal courts. Still, in June 2017, the Supreme Court allowed the administration to pause admissions for 120 days. In October, the administration then put into place another 90-day pause for refugees from countries the administration identified as “high-risk,” of terrorism, including the mainly Muslim nations of Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Syria and Sudan. That hold ended in January, at least on paper.

Refugees from all nations who had already been through initial screenings waited to be interviewed by officers of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services at camps and cities around the world. But the frequency of those interviews slowed considerably.

One of the reasons was a large backlog in applications from immigrants seeking refuge in the United States under a different process — filing applications for asylum from persecution in their homelands, mainly Central America. Under international law, the United States cannot turn away or place caps on applicants who, unlike those applying for refugee status from the other side of the world — actually show up at the border.

In recent months, the immigration agency diverted 100 of its 215 refugee officers to conduct asylum interviews. That, said Jennifer Higgins, associate director of Refugee, Asylum and International Operations, part of the Department of Homeland Security, is part of “an effort to address the massive asylum workload.”

Refugees interviewed overseas undergo extensive background checks by United States law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The administration has now required refugees to list phone numbers and addresses going back 10 years, instead of five, as well as social media and email accounts, adding to the paperwork. And it has ordered an additional layer of vetting for refugees from 11 high-risk countries, meaning that many in the pipeline already approved had to be rescreened, leading to further delays.

Previously only male refugees were subject to such vetting, but now it includes females ages 14 to 50, which has exacerbated the backlog.

During the Obama administration, Ms. Strack, the former head of the Refugee Affairs Division, said there was pressure to reach the 85,000-person cap, but under Mr. Trump, there is no commitment to attain the allowed number.

“What is strikingly different this year is that there is no apparent urgency to address the dramatic backlog in completing security checks,” she said. The backlog has left refugees in limbo abroad.

Few refugees from the designated high-risk countries have arrived in the United States since January: 11 from Syria, 36 from Iraq and 22 from Sudan.

SOURCE






Democrats Love Playing Sexism Games

Hillary Clinton’s blame-everything-but-me tour is continuing in Australia, where she called a large part of America a bunch of sexists. Again. In an interview Down Under, Clinton pontificated, “There is still a very large proportion of the population that is uneasy with women in positions of leadership, so the easiest way to kind of avoid having to look at someone on her merits is to dismiss her on her looks.” Clinton further opined, “There is this fear, there is this anger, even rage about women seeking power, women exercising power, and people fall back on these attacks like you’re a witch or you should go to prison.” She added, “It’s not a majority, thank goodness, it’s not, but it’s a very vocal minority, at least in my country. And sometimes these tropes are very much part of the press coverage.”

This latest Clinton excuse comes straight out of the Democrats’ gender warfare playbook. You see, the real reason Hillary lost was not because of her record of dishonesty and leftist politics, but because conservatives — a.k.a. the “vocal minority” — just didn’t want a woman to become president, full stop. It’s pure sexism at play, they say; nothing else could possibly explain it.

The trouble is the excuse is simply not true. There are numerous examples proving that the charge of sexism is fraudulent as well as that the reason for conservatives not voting for Hillary and Democrats in general is primarily due to character issues (especially when it comes to Hillary) and policy reasons. How else does one explain, for example, the popularity of Nikki Haley? A recent Quinnipiac University Poll showed that a whopping 63% of American voters approve of Haley and her handling of the job of U.S. ambassador to the UN.

Secondly, two can play this “blame everything on sexism” game. Are the vast majority of Senate Democrats opposed to confirming Gina Haspel because they don’t want a woman heading the CIA? Clearly, they must be uncomfortable with a woman leading an agency that has only always been directed by a man.

The truth is, Democrats seek to elevate the lowest and least significant factors of an individual, such as their sex or ethnicity, as the issue of primary significance, while lowering and degrading those uniquely meritorious aspects of an individual that should be the basis upon which they are judged. That mindset and political strategy explains why Hillary is so keen to direct attention away from her many glaring faults to focus on non-factors.

SOURCE






Southern Baptists Are at It Again, Providing Disaster Relief During Hawaii's Volcano Eruption

Time and time again, we hear the refrain from progressives that conservative Christians fail to love their neighbors. And time and time again, stories emerge that reveal conservatives Christians quietly and faithfully loving and serving their neighbors. Southern Baptists in Hawaii are doing just that during this most recent eruption of Kilauea.

As the eruption of Kilauea continues, more and more people on Hawaii's Big Island have been displaced. Geologists are now warning that a large, explosive eruption could happen soon, sending ash and rocks miles into the sky. The dangerous gases being released by one of the world's most active volcanoes poses the greatest threat to the most people. Presently, close to 2,000 people have been evacuated. However, as the eruption event continues, it's difficult to estimate just how many people are going to be affected by Kilauea.

Chris Martin, executive director of the Hawaii Pacific Baptist Convention, told Baptist Press:

"Congregations on Hawaii's Big Island have banded together to pray, secure housing for some of the area's 2,000 evacuees and, beginning next week, operate a mobile shower unit.
"The main focus of our people so far," Martin told Baptist Press, has been ministry "to the needs that are immediate. But our history and our practice has been a long-term presence with those that have been affected by disasters."

"Stepping in to meet needs," Martin added, will "open great doors" for Gospel witness.

The Southern Baptist Disaster Relief efforts have been well-documented, and the HPBC is proving to be no exception. On top of the official relief aid being provided, individual pastors and church members have been busy assisting families displaced by the volcano eruption. Using trucks and other vehicles, they have been helping move belongings out of homes threatened by the lava flow.

Members of area Baptist churches have been affected alongside their fellow community members,

At Puna Baptist Church in Pahoa, Hawaii, 10 member families have had to evacuate their homes and two of those homes have been destroyed by lava, associate pastor Rob Thommarson told BP.
"What we've done immediately is try to help all the families get into some immediate emergency housing," said Thommarson, himself among the evacuees. "Everybody is staying with family, friends and church members."

If the evacuation "continues for weeks or months," Thommarson said, Puna will attempt to move its evacuated members into "intermediate housing" with more privacy.

The local Big Island Baptist Association's mobile shower unit has been moved onto Puna's parking lot and likely will begin serving residents early next week, said Thommarson, a retired International Mission Board missionary. A prayer tent nearby will be manned by volunteers available to pray with evacuees.

Local churches of various denominations will band together to provide evacuees with food and clothing, Thommarson noted. A community prayer meeting is scheduled for Friday evening.

As the eruption continues—with the possibility that the worst is yet to come—it's great to hear stories about Christians demonstrating the love of Jesus to those who have been affected by Kilauea's eruption.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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






22 May, 2018

The Royal wedding

As a confirmed monarchist I did watch the Royal wedding on TV, mostly on Australia's channel 9.  So I thought I might note here a few desultory impressions of it.

The first thing I liked was all the splendid cars, old and new.  The old Rolls bringing the bride was particularly magnificent.  It was a 1950 Rolls-Royce Phantom-iv.  But there were a lot of impressive vehicles delivering the wedding party.



Then I was pleased to see Prince Philip looking so well -- in remarkable health for age 96

I was pleased to see that both Princes wore military uniform. They wore the frockcoat uniform of the Blues and Royals  -- which is Harry's old regiment.  Both men were of course fully entitled to wear uniform as both had served in the armed forces in their younger days.  The Royal family is a military family -- as most European monarchies once were. I thought Prince Charles would be in uniform too but he wore a tailsuit in a rather horrible shade of grey.  He obviously didn't want to outshine his sons

It was good too that Harry kept his red beard.  Red-headed kids traditionally got bullied in British schoolyards but with the very popular Prince Harry being a red-head that must have been ameliorated. My father was a redhead so I have sympathy for redheads

It was good to see how Harry and William stopped to greet their Gurkha guards as they entered. Harry did of course work with Gurkhas when he was in the army in Afghanistan. They were the only people the Royal brothers stopped for.  That would have been noted and justly celebrated in Nepal.  The Gurkhas are held in huge respect in England. Here is one reason for that respect.

It was also good to see how the two brothers interacted while they were waiting. They are obviously a great support for one another.

The Dean of Windsor seemed rather tremulous.  He sounded like he might break down.  Since he was running the show, that would not have done.

When it came to the actual marriage service, Cantuar was in good voice -- a most experienced preacher. 

There certainly were a lot of Christian expressions from all who spoke. It went on and on, very repetitiously. God was so frequently invoked that one got the impression that he must be hard of hearing. Harry must have been bored but military men learn patience so he outlasted it without apparent difficulty.

There was a pronounced African presence throughout the proceedings, presumably in deference to Meghan's partial ancestry.  The cellist was good but I was unimpressed by the rest of it.  Episcopalian Bishop Michael Curry was very active and dramatic in his speech but all he did was state some extremely anodyne comments repetitiously and with a lot of noise. 

But you can't expect much more from the Episcopalians. Homosexuality seems to be the only thing Episcopalians care about. Had the bishop quoted Romans 1:24-27 that might have livened things up.  As it was, his  speech was just way too long.  It was supposed to last 6 minutes but in a rather good demonstration of black ego he performed for 17 minutes. Never in the field of human preaching has so little been said for so long. 

The  media generally praised his speech highly but what else could they do with a black bishop from the world's most politically correct church?

Karen Gibson and The Kingdom Choir performed Ben E King's soul classic Stand By Me during the service. It was repetitive but sung with a lot of energy.  I noted that Camilla looked horrified when they came on.  I thought it was just noise.

I noted that St George’s Chapel had a medieval "rude screen", behind which all the "magic" happened -- out of sight of most of the congregation. The chapel was built in the 14th century so it reflects its times.



And I was rather pleased to see beadles in use guiding people.  Is it only Anglicans who have beadles?  I have never seen one on the more Protestant services I am accustomed to.

The departure of the married couple in an Ascot Landau with a big Household Cavalry escort was of course what one expects of a great Royal occasion.  Some of the carriage horses were clearly a bit spooked by the cheering etc but they were well managed. If there is one thing the Royal family and their attendants know about it is horses.  It's an equestrian monarchy.  Even the Queen still rides -- but only ponies these days.

The bride:  I was rather surprised by the strong resemblance between Meghan and her mother, though I suppose I should not have been.  I had supposed that Meghan's fine features would have come from her Caucasian father but clearly she got a bit from both -- JR.






When Social Media Debunk Conspiracy Theories

A few days after the Parkland high school massacre, an aide to a Florida state legislator lost his job for claiming that two survivors were "not students here but actors that travel to various crisis [sic] when they happen." Such "crisis actor" rumors, which have spread after several recent public tragedies, are a reminder that people are capable of believing bizarre stories that are supported by only the thinnest alleged evidence. But some pundits think they represent something more: a breakdown in the media ecosystem.

A February 20 ThinkProgress article, to pick one representative example, announces in its lede that crisis-actor tales "have spread like wildfire across social media platforms—despite the repeated promises of Big Tech to crack down on fake news." The author circles back to that idea at the end, arguing that "the viral spread of the 'crisis actor' theory, along with other recent examples of highly-shared fake content, shows that [Facebook] is still ripe for misinformation and exploitation." One Facebook post touting the theory, he notes, has gotten more than 110,000 shares, and some of the videos promoting the idea have been "viewed tens of thousands of times."

That sounds less impressive when you start thinking about the context. We do not know how many of those 110,000 shares were trolls or bots, those crisis actors of the online world. Nor do we know how many people watch a video because they're inclined to believe it, how many watch because they're inclined to laugh at it, and how many just turn it off after 30 seconds. And what other numbers should we be examining? The day after the ThinkProgress piece appeared, MSNBC posted a video of a Parkland student reacting disdainfully to the idea that he's an imposter; within 24 hours, it had been viewed more than 94,000 times. That is also in the "tens of thousands." (Of course, we don't know how many of those viewers believed what they were hearing either.)

In my Twitter feed, the overwhelming majority of tweets mentioning crisis actors have denounced, debunked, or just made fun of the idea. That could simply reflect who I choose to follow, so shortly after the Florida aide was fired, I did a full Twitter search for "crisis actors" to see what cross-section of opinion would appear. Of the first 30 tweets that came up, two-thirds disdained the idea. When I did the same test on Facebook, I got roughly the same results. Meanwhile, some (though not all) of the Facebook posts promoting the idea were getting pushback in the comments, so this wasn't just a matter of conversations taking place in separate bubbles. Actual arguments were underway.

Obviously, these are not scientific samples. I'm not going to make grand claims about how many people have embraced or rejected the rumor. But what I saw reinforces what common sense would suggest: Widespread discussion of a bizarre belief is not the same as widespread support for a bizarre belief.

That is especially true when you remember three more things. First, many of the people who believe the crisis-actor theory—probably almost all of them—are already predisposed to believe tales like this. In an earlier era, with an earlier urban legend, they may well have whispered the story to each other in person.

Second, social media tend to make marginal ideas more visible. But this increased visibility does not always go hand in hand with increased popularity.

Third, more people still get their news primarily from TV than from social media. And TV coverage of the crisis-actor thesis has been overwhelmingly critical of it. Indeed, just about all the mainstream coverage has been negative.

The idea that the crisis-actor story is replicating unchallenged in some endless cancerous pattern may play to people's anxieties about social media. For anti-gun activists, it may also play to the pleasures of highlighting the most idiotic arguments on the other side. But out there in the actual internet, people were knocking these stories down. The criticisms of the conspiracy theory may well have been more viral than the theory itself.

SOURCE






Iraqi 'Republic': No Christian Converts

The 2017 State Department report on human rights in Iraq, which was released last month, begins by unambiguously declaring: "Iraq is a constitutional parliamentary republic."

It says, "The outcome of the 2014 parliamentary elections generally met international standards of free and fair elections and led to the peaceful transition of power from former prime minister Nuri al-Maliki to Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi."

Sounds like a bastion of freedom and representative government.

When you actually read the report, however, you quickly discover it is not.

"The (Iraqi) penal code stipulates that any person convicted of promoting Zionist principles, association with Zionist organizations, assisting such organizations through material or moral support, or working in any way to realize Zionist objectives, is subject to punishment by death," says the report.

This means that if you are an Iraqi and you join a group that gives "moral support" to the belief that Israel has a right to exist, the government of Iraq's "constitutional parliamentary republic" can arrest you and execute you.

Freedom of conscience in the Iraqi republic is a one-way street.

"The National Identity Card Law automatically registers minor children as Muslims if they are born to at least one Muslim parent or if either parent converts from another religion to Islam," says the human rights report.

"Personal status laws and regulations prohibit the conversion of Muslims to other religions," elaborates the State Department's most recent report on religious freedom in Iraq.

An Iraqi Christian can become a Muslim and automatically bring all their minor children with them, but if one of those minor children, having reached adulthood, decides he believes that the Christian faith he was initially raised in is in fact the true faith, he may not rejoin it.

This is the policy of the Iraqi government the U.S. helped save from the Islamic State — which the State Department correctly declared was committing genocide against Iraqi Christians as well as against Yazidis and Shiite Muslims in the areas it controlled.

President George W. Bush, who in 2003 ordered the U.S. military to overthrow the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, was re-elected in this republic in 2004.

On Jan. 20, 2005, he stood in front of the U.S. Capitol and delivered an inaugural address in which he sought to give this nation a global vocation. "Ending tyranny in our world," he called it.

"So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," Bush said.

"This is not primarily the task of arms, though we will defend ourselves and our friends by force of arms when necessary," he continued.

"Freedom, by its nature, must be chosen, and defended by citizens, and sustained by the rule of law and the protection of minorities," Bush said. "And when the soul of a nation finally speaks, the institutions that arise may reflect customs and traditions very different from our own. America will not impose our own style of government on the unwilling. Our goal instead is to help others find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way."

In December, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who came to power after that 2014 Iraqi election, declared victory over the Islamic State "caliphate."

"Our battle was with the enemy that wanted to kill our civilization, but we have won with our unity and determination," he said.

On Saturday, Iraq held another election, which The New York Times reported was "remarkably peaceful."

"In a country awash with weapons and random violence, Election Day was notably quiet, without any major incidents," the Times reported on Sunday.

The results indicate that a coalition backed by Shiite clergyman Muqtada al-Sadr was the leading vote getter. Sadr, as the Times noted, was formerly "a firebrand militia leader whose forces once battled American troops in Iraq and were implicated in widespread atrocities against civilians."

The lesson: Bush was wrong.

America's foreign policy should aim at advancing the liberty, security and prosperity of the American people, and our leaders must put aside any idea that they can use American power to rearrange the world to fit some Utopian ideal.

SOURCE






Scandinavian Approach to Counterterrorism, Islamist Ideology Is Flawed

How Western democracies should respond to terrorist attacks is an ongoing concern. One such dilemma is whether the state should just focus on preventing attacks or whether it has an obligation to challenge the ideology that spurs those attacks in the first place.

Two countries currently grappling with that are Sweden and Finland. Individuals inspired by ISIS, the Islamic State terrorist group, attacked both countries last year.

In April 2017, Rakhmat Akilov committed a vehicular attack in the center of Stockholm, using a truck to kill five and injure 10.

Four months later, in August, Abderrahman Bouanane killed two people and injured eight in a series of stabbings in the southwestern Finnish city of Turku.

Bouanane, currently on trial in Helsinki, told the court, “I honestly felt like I was controlled remotely … The idea was to keep attacking as long as a head falls.”

Akilov and Bouanane were both asylum-seekers who either had no right to be in the country or were in the process of being deported.

Recently, I visited both Sweden and Finland, speaking to dozens of government officials, police officers, and academics to gain insights into how the countries have responded.

Threat Assessment

Sweden suffered its first Islamist terrorism attack in December 2010. Taimour Abdulwahab al-Abdaly, an Iraqi, packed explosives into a car in the heart of Stockholm and then detonated his suicide vest in a busy shopping center nearby.

Abdulwahab died, but fortunately, nobody else did. The plot had clear links to a precursor group to ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI).

There were only 200 Islamists on Stockholm’s intelligence radar at the time of Abdulwahab’s plot. Now, according to Anders Thornberg, the head of Sweden’s security police, that number is 2,000.

An additional reason for concern is that Sweden has seen about 300 foreign fighters head to Syria and Iraq (although nongovernmental sources speculate the actual number is higher, between 400 and 500). A Swedish Defence University study states that about 150 of them have returned, 100 are still fighting overseas, and about 50 have been killed.

Thankfully, the numbers leaving Sweden have dried up—with only about 10 last year, and 2018 is presumably unlikely to see an increase.

Finland, meanwhile, has about 370 people connected to international terrorism on its intelligence radar, with about 80 going to join the conflict in Syria (about one-fifth of them women).

With a population of between 75,000 and 100,000 Muslims, that’s an unusually high number. About 20 foreign fighters have returned to Finland, and a similar number were killed in the fighting.

Prevention of Violent Extremism

Sweden has placed special emphasis on the “prevention of violent extremism” in its counterterrorism strategy, with the intent to “counter and reduce the intent to commit or support terrorist attacks.”

Responsibility for the prevention of violent extremism lies with the Ministry of Justice. Yet responsibility for implementation often lies within Sweden’s 290 municipalities, which have great autonomy over local governance.

There’s concern in Stockholm that while these municipalities are familiar with warning signs for far-right movements, they are much less familiar with radical Islamists.

Finland is also focused on prevention. Integral to that are two complementary government-backed initiatives, Anchor and Radinet.

Anchor, which operates throughout Finland, deals with young offenders by allowing arms of the state that deal with troubled youth—police and social workers, for example—to share data about those individuals.

Radinet is a voluntary program, led by nongovernmental organizations, that seeks to integrate far-right and Islamist extremists into Finnish society.

While these NGOs can get financial assistance from the government, they surprisingly have no obligation to report to the state on the progress of their work with the extremists.

Finland is only interested in preventing acts of violence, not dealing with ideology. As a result, its work on the prevention of violent extremism stresses the importance of dialogue and a willingness to discuss foreign policy, stigmatization, and marginalization—but not Islam or theology.

This focus on grievance over ideas is a mistake. Islamist groups have an endless supply of grievances to work through, and the notion that Finnish foreign policy is causing radicalization is a stretch, to put it politely.

By only focusing on grievances and downplaying the power of ideas, Finland is doomed to misunderstand the nature of the threat.

Integration of Asylum-Seekers

Finland and Sweden face a challenge of integrating the almost 200,000 asylum-seekers they took in between them in 2015 alone.

Sweden, a country of under 10 million people, took in 163,000 of them. (As a proportion of the population, that is like the U.S. taking in about 5.3 million.)

The government acknowledges that about 50,000 have no legal right to be in the country, and yet it is resigned to them staying anyway and is attempting to provide housing for these new arrivals. It has also launched job creation and youth education initiatives.

Finland took in 32,000 asylum-seekers in 2015, many of whom are Shia Muslim Iraqis. That has had an unsettling effect on some within the pre-existing Sunni Muslim population in Finland, who fear an effort to shift the ethnic composition of the Muslim community there.

That in turn has led to some levels of hostility toward new asylum-seekers among Finland’s Muslims.

That is just one of the difficulties. Another example cited was that there are also those who were tortured in Iraq living in refugee centers with those who tortured them.

Full Speed Ahead

The most striking thing about the Swedish and Finnish responses to the terrorist attacks last year was how little response there was.

There appears to be few regrets within those governments at taking in so many asylum-seekers, which is seen as a global obligation. Perhaps they are right, and they can painlessly integrate so many newcomers into such small populations.

However, there is scarce precedent suggesting such a radical policy can work.

One noticeable consequence of the terrorist plotting is cities’ physical transformation in an attempt to prevent future vehicular attacks.

The area of central Stockholm attacked last year is incredibly well-fortified with barriers. Meanwhile, barriers placed around a Helsinki church last summer after authorities received a tip-off that a vehicular attack was being planned remain in place.

An attack takes place, and barriers go up. Or it’s thwarted and the result is the same. Yet until the policies that led to Sweden and Finland being imperiled in the first place are addressed—excessive levels of immigration and an unwillingness to deal with Islamist ideology—they are destined to require such defenses for many years to come.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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21 May, 2018

THE RELIGION OF RACISM

Only believing in white evil can save you now

Obama once called slavery, “America’s original sin”. Jim Wallis, a member of Obama’s White House Faith Council, has a book out titled, "America's Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege".

Accusations of sinfulness usually tell us more about the values of the accuser than the accused.

If racism is America’s original sin, then its redemption lies in anti-racism. For liberal theologians, Christian and Jewish, who no longer believe in the traditional biblical sins, racism is a godsend. It provides the moral drama of damnation and redemption, confession and absolution, in a way that is compatible with the larger secular culture and their own political ambitions.

Fighting racism isn’t just a cause, it’s a religion. And all that remains of major religious denominations.

The most resonantly dramatic events for Christian and Jewish liberal denominations remain the fight against slavery and the struggles of the civil rights movement. They revisit and recreate them ceaselessly. And each protest movement, whether it’s Muslim migrants at airports, illegal aliens from El Salvador at the border or Black Lives Matter racists at coffee shops, is a religious revival experience.

The trouble is that the hunt for this particular sin has come to pervade our legal system, taint workplaces, terrorize campuses and unleash social media mobs on random offenders. We are not in a libertine age just because sexual morality is as dead as disco and drugs are on the verge of being legalized. The sins of traditional morality have been replaced by an even more ruthless moral code.

Employees, employers, students and businessmen still fear being fired, expelled and hounded out of society for offending the sensibilities of a fanatical sect and its zealous enforcers. They hide behind hypocrisy, denouncing others while living in terror that their own private offenses will be outed.

A drunken tweet, an indiscreet joke or a mere implication can end even the most respected career.

The religion of racism has become a twisted creed that has perverted its own origins. What began as a unitary effort to bring together different races around religion has instead become a cult that uses its beliefs to divide us with white people as perpetual sinners and black people as unstained saints.

Its fetishization of black victimhood is bad for black people and its conviction that white people are inherently sinful is bad for everyone. As real racism has diminished, its conviction in the ubiquity of this particular sin has not. Fighting the overt discrimination of segregation turned into hunting for covert bigotry by working backward through disparate impact creating a guilt through lack of association.

If black people weren’t visiting national parks or living in sufficient numbers in Utah, it was evidence that national parks and Utah were racist. Racism was no longer something to be discovered by witnessing its presence, but by noting the absence of some ideal multicultural diversity statistic. Civil rights shifted from lifting state sanctions that mandated discrimination against black people to imposing state sanctions that mandated discrimination on behalf of black people. Like the segregationists, they were abusing government power to impose the version of the ideal racial balance that they wanted to see.

The absence of the realization of this vision became its own evidence of racial sinfulness.

One fundamental difference between a free society and an oppressive society is that the former punishes bad behavior while the latter punishes the absence of good behavior. A free society, such as America, punishes theft. An oppressive society, such as the Soviet Union, punished the failure to work.

When civil rights shifted from punishing mandatory segregation to punishing the lack of integration, it ceased to be a movement pursuing freedom and instead became a totalitarian movement.

Racism diminished, but the religious, emotional and financial need for its existence on the part of the religion of racism did not. Their mission became manufacturing racism. The most mundane interactions were reinterpreted through the discriminating eye of the microaggression. Otherwise neutral institutions were accused of pervasive whiteness. Racism ceased to be an observable interaction between individuals and became the unseen gluonic binding block of all social matter in America.

The religion of racism had reached its logical conclusion. It was no longer the absence of black people, but the presence of white people that was racist. Racism was America’s original sin. White people carried it everywhere with them like radiation. To be white was to have your body and your mind, your thoughts, your writings and even the inanimate objects around you be infected by racial radioactivity.

Racism was no longer an objectively measurable phenomenon. It had taken on all the characteristics of metaphysics. It was everywhere and yet undetectable. It was transmitted by the immutable nature of race, a phenomenon that was paradoxically a construct and yet inflexibly inescapable.

Every tragedy, grievance and outrage was ultimately attributed to this primal evil and original sin.

Political opposition to Obama, poor water management decisions, infant mortality rates, environmental shifts, the vagaries of entertainment industry casting, gun violence and a thousand others could be put down to racism. The religion of racism, like all religion, had found something that explained everything.

To understand America, all you had to do was understand racism. And then you would know that we were a country perpetually divided between privileged white people and powerless minorities.

Implicit bias is the final catechism of a faith in racism. It is a pseudo-religious ritual whose purpose is to force its victims to confess their sins and assert its doctrinal belief in the innate racism of white people. Like all cults, it does this through the familiar brainwashing process of challenging and breaking down identity, through twisted reasoning and emotional abuse, and then reconstructing it in its own image.

To its believers, implicit bias is the truth that we are all racist. But that we can be saved from our racism by confessing it. Activism is penance. Denounce others and you too can make it to multicultural heaven.

The religion of racism has the right to believe in its hateful creed. What it does not have the right to do is enforce it on others. And yet the left has made a mockery of the separation of church and state by making its own secular religion, obsessed with planetary and racial damnation, into a national creed.

And, like all efforts at imposing a religion, it has led to a religious war which some call a culture war.

The religion of racism is less concerned with actual racists, than with racial unbelievers. The ultimate heresy, the one it’s rooting out with implicit bias and extreme prejudice, is that racism isn’t everywhere. And it’s not a burning national crisis that requires handing out unlimited witch hunting powers.

The theocrats of social justice prefer opposing views to skepticism. The existence of racists reaffirms their belief in the defining power of racism. It’s the skeptics of racism who are the real threat.

If you don’t believe that racism is significant, you challenge their entire reason for being.

And the religion of racism meets these challenges by manufacturing a racial crisis as it strings together anecdotal incidents from a Waffle House to a New York City apartment to a student dorm to a coffee shop, to support its unified field theory of universal bigotry and suppress skepticism about its powers.

The puritanical panic has less to do with fear of racism than the emotional needs of the witch hunters. Informing on your neighbors, denouncing fellow students and becoming the center of attention is emotionally fulfilling for the same psychological reasons that it was for the Salem accusers, the Parisian mobs of the French Revolution and the rampaging Communist students of the Cultural Revolution.

But beyond the twisted psychology of the activist accusers, the judges of kangaroo courts and the town criers of the media eager for scalps, the human sacrifice of the purge releases social tensions. This was the social function of human sacrifice. The shocking spectacle of bloodletting, the mob psychology and adrenaline release, relieved the fears and anxieties bedeviling society and left them feeling cleansed.

The constant hunt for scapegoats is a feature of an anxious society fearful for the future. Social justice scapegoating gives a generation on the edge of history a temporary sense of control by abusing others.

The left likes to believe that it’s a positive movement, defined by its utopian aspirations, not its brutal tactics. But it is a movement built on fear and hate, on a historical inevitability that is premised not on human progress, but on human collapse, on inescapable problems and necessarily ruthless solutions.

The religion of racism isn’t unique to America. But there is something special about it in this country. It stinks of the soured beliefs of liberal religious denominations, their loss of faith in God and man, and their growing conviction that salvation lies only in wielding the unlimited power of their governments.

SOURCE





MIT professor Eric Lander apologizes for praising controversial Nobel winner James Watson

Watson's statements on IQ were well-grounded in psychometrics

Eric Lander, the founding director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has apologized for toasting 90-year-old Nobel Prize winner James Watson over the weekend.

In a contrite e-mail to colleagues, first reported Monday by Stat, Lander said he was aware of Watson’s racist and misogynist views, and had even been present when the celebrated scientist made anti-Semitic statements, but ultimately agreed to praise Watson for his role in the Human Genome Project.

In his tribute to Watson at a Biology of Genomes meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Saturday, Lander credited Watson for “inspiring all of us to push the frontiers of science to benefit humankind.” He neglected to mention that the man who helped discover the double helix also has suggested there’s a link between exposure to sunlight and sexual urges, and argued that there is racial disparity in intelligence based in biology.

In his e-mail Monday, Lander said he should not have toasted Watson. Though he did make an oblique reference to Watson’s past statements when he called him “flawed,” that wasn’t enough, Lander said.

“I’d like to do that now: I reject his views as despicable,” Lander wrote, according to Stat. “They have no place in science, which must welcome everyone. In retrospect, I should have followed my first instinct, which was to decline the invitation. As someone who has been on the receiving end of his abhorrent remarks, I should have been sensitive to the damage caused by recognizing him in any way.”

Before the apology, social media reacted angrily to Lander’s remarks.

“By toasting Jim Watson, Eric Lander is saying that sexism, racism, anti-semitism, and all sorts of forms of harassment and vile behavior by someone in power in science is A-OK — disgusting,” tweeted University of California-Davis professor Jonathan Eisen, who also posted a video of Lander’s tribute, calling it “a horrific action.”

“I hope we can all pause and think deeply about which scientists we choose to honor & why,” tweeted Michael Eisen, a biologist at UC Berkeley. “How it is that someone everyone knows to be racist, sexist & anti-semitic is still among us, let alone toasted. And how many lives and careers have been & are being ruined by our silence?”

SOURCE





Rev. Graham Slams Episcopal Church on 'Marriage' Change: 'Caving to the Gay Agenda'

Commenting on the Episcopal Church's decision to change marriage terminology from "husband and wife" to "union of two people," evangelical leader Rev. Franklin Graham said that to "change what God has defined" is "disobedience," sin, and added that "all of this is caving to the gay agenda."

In a May 18 post on Facebook, Rev. Graham said, "I have many friends in the Episcopal Church and I was saddened when I recently learned that the church wants to remove the terms 'husband' and 'wife' from their standardized marital vows. They want to replace the phrase the 'union of husband and wife' with the 'union of two people.'"

"I’ve got news for them -- just changing their words in their ceremony won’t make it right," said Graham. "You cannot change what God has defined."

"Through the centuries, people have tried to reinterpret, repackage, or rewrite God’s laws to suit themselves and their own evil desires," he said.  "It’s nothing new; but the end result is always the same. It’s called disobedience—it’s called sin. And sin brings God’s judgment."

"All of this is caving to the gay agenda," said Rev. Graham.

He continued,  "I read that the Church of England’s Secretary-General William Nye has been an outspoken critic of this change—good for him. More Christians and more people in church leadership should speak up about the sins that are within the church and stand against things that would not be aligned with the authority of God’s Word.

He ended his post with the passage from 1 Peter 1:25:  "the word of the Lord remains forever."

SOURCE





Against hate-speech laws

Nadine Strossen’s new book makes an important case for the importance of free speech without limits.

Hate speech is the thorniest of issues for defenders of free speech. When asked where those who champion freedom of expression would draw the line on ‘acceptable’ speech, many of even the usually most stalwart proponents of free speech draw it here.

In particular, attitudes towards hate speech are what divides a European approach to free speech from a US, First Amendment-based approach. In Europe in recent decades the net on what speech is permitted has been drawn ever tighter as governments seek to rein in speech they say harms individuals based on a variety of their characteristics: from race and religion, to sexual orientation. In the US, backed by a First Amendment that places far more protection on speech, courts have traditionally firmly resisted temptations to place limitations on speech, even when it is deemed hateful.

Nevertheless, with the rise of nationalist rhetoric in the US, and in particular following a number of protests against speakers on university campuses that have in some instances turned violent, there has been a renewed interest in the US in potentially introducing some kind of hate-speech measures.

It is this that has spurred veteran free-speech campaigner, Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008, to revisit the question of hate speech in her new book Hate: Why We Should Resist It With Free Speech, Not Censorship.

Hate considers the way in which the First Amendment has been interpreted in the US over the past century, examines the use of hate-speech laws in developed democracies elsewhere, and explores some of the arguments used to defend hate-speech legislation – and why they do not stand up to scrutiny.

Strossen provides an excellent overview of the ‘neutrality’ and ‘emergency’ principles. The former guarantees that speech will be protected no matter the viewpoint of the speaker. This is essential in a democracy because it ensures that the government does not become the arbiter of the acceptable viewpoint at any given time. Strossen points out how vital this principle has been in defending not just what society might now classify as ‘hate speech’ such as racism but also pro-civil-rights messages. Proponents of hate-speech laws would do well to study the 1972 Chicago v Mosley case Strossen cites, in which an African-American postal employee was only allowed to protest outside a high school, with a sign that read ‘Jones High School practices black discrimination’, on the basis of the First Amendment.

The cases covered by Strossen demonstrate time and again how freedom-of-expression protections – as opposed to limitations offered by hate-speech laws – protect minority and persecuted groups, citing US Civil Rights leader, Congressman John Lewis’s observation: ‘Without freedom of speech and the right to dissent, the Civil Rights movement would have been a bird without wings.’ And she goes on to show how hate-speech laws can often have the opposite effect – that they end up targeting the very minority groups such laws purport to protect. Examples include that of a prominent journalist and member of the Uzbek minority in Kyrgyzstan who was charged with ‘inciting ethnic hatred’ for reporting on conflicts between Uzbeks and the majority Kygryz.

Too often free-speech advocates seem to want to have it both ways: arguing that speech is so vital to a democratic society that it needs to be protected and yet not powerful enough to cause hurt

Strossen also lays out clearly the ‘emergency’ principle in which the government may suppress speech only when it directly causes specific, imminent and serious harm, citing an opinion from a 1927 case in which Justice Louis Brandeis wrote: ‘Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of speech… Men feared witches and burned women.’

Strossen is a lawyer and the book is strong on legislation and the court rulings that have interpreted such laws, both in the United States and Europe. She also does not shy away from the notion that words can harm. This is refreshing. Too often free-speech advocates seem to want to have it both ways: arguing that speech is so vital to a democratic society that it needs to be protected and yet not powerful enough to cause hurt.

‘[W]e cherish speech precisely because of its unique capacity to influence us, both positively and negatively’, she writes. ‘But even though speech can contribute to potential harms, it would be more harmful to both individuals and society to empower the government to suppress speech for that reason.’

Strossen gives a brief overview of various research that shows both that hate-speech laws do little to limit the hateful views they seek to suppress, and that by limiting the exposure individuals have to hateful views, the less resilient they become to a whole raft of potentially distasteful and intolerant viewpoints.

However, at 208 pages, this element of Hate felt a little light, and while overall it provides an excellent overview of the legal frameworks of hate speech and their impacts, I would have liked more examples and personal stories exploring the sociological and psychological arguments against hate-speech laws. Given that the psychological and social effects of hate speech is are a key element in the demands of various groups for increased restrictions on speech, it seems to me this is a vital part of the polemic on hate-speech legislation.

One of Strossen’s challenges is that she lays out the direction of her argument – and her conclusions – from the outset, meaning that the conclusion (hate-speech laws do not protect us from harm or promote greater tolerance in societies) often comes before the evidence that supports this argument. This is particularly true of the overview, which meant that at times I felt Strossen failed to bring me along with the thread of her arguments. I agree wholeheartedly with Strossen’s views on hate speech – 45 years of evidence from the work of Index on Censorship chimes entirely with her conclusions. But I did wonder whether Hate would be as convincing to a reader who currently either sits on the fence or is firmly in favour of hate-speech law.

However, in these times of censure by the mob, and of major corporations with the power of governments to limit speech, it is welcome to hear voices like Strossen’s making themselves heard and reminding us why the urge to limit speech in the name of protection ultimately offers no protection at all.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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20 May, 2018

Sex-crazed Muslims again

Their religion consigns many men to celibacy.  Under polygamy, rich old guys get most of the women. Celibacy works about as well for them as it does for Catholic priests

A brave woman has revealed how she was gang raped as a teenager after being drugged at a party that her friend had lured her to.

Philippa Briggs, now 21, from Buckinghamshire, has described how she was raped by a group of older men at the age of just 14.

Two of her attackers Kashif Amjad, 31, and Sakib Ali Sadiq, 35, were jailed for ten years following the horrific incident, but her other attackers remain free.

Philippa explained how her friend, who was 16 at the time, had persuaded her to go to the house party - but put the blame on her when she told her she'd been attacked.

The friend, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was later given a two year detention training order for causing a child to engage in sexual activity, for her role in the attack.

Philippa, who was adopted at the age of six but placed into a children's home after difficulties at home, described how her friend, who had managed to persuade her to go to the party in 2009.

She explained how she had been desperate to 'fit in', having met the older friend at the children's home she was living in.

At the party, she said her 'head started to spin' after having a drink a man gave her, despite asking for just an orange juice.

She remembers another man asking her whether she was 'okay', before 'everything went black'.

Philippa recalled: 'When I opened my eyes, I was on a cold bathroom floor and my vision was blurry.

'I tried to get up, but to my horror I realised I was being pinned down by something extremely heavy. Terror ran through me as I realised there was a man on top of me.

'I couldn't make out his face, and when I opened my mouth to try to scream no sound came out. I drifted in and out of consciousness as he raped me, too weak and woozy to fight him off.'

Philippa described the intense pain she felt the next time she woke up, this time alone.  'Pain tore through me as I tried to get up and I looked down to see my legs were covered in blood,' she said.

'I felt sick, but I knew I had to get help - and fast. I was distraught when I realised the door was locked. I was completely trapped. As I desperately tried to figure out how to escape, I passed out again.

'When I woke some time later, my trousers were round by my ankles again. My stomach knotted with fear as I realised I must have been raped for a second time.'

Philippa described how she had 'screamed and banged' on the door, until her friend came to get her. However, even though she told her that she'd been attacked, she was dismissed by her friend, who she says gave her 'a look of disgust'. Her friend told her that she was staying at the party, saying: 'It's not my problem if you're too drunk to enjoy yourself. You're a disgrace, you look a total mess.'

Philippa said the friend then took her outside, before telling her to find her own way home, despite the freezing conditions.

Eventually, she was found by the police, who had been contacted by her children's home when she missed her curfew.

Philippa was taken to a rape centre, where medics told her she had been drugged and that her injuries suggested she had been attacked by as many as five men.

She was also given the morning after pill, and told to take a pregnancy test after a few weeks.

Police managed to track down two of her attackers through DNA, with the pair jailed in 2011.

However, the other men involved in the attack were never caught.

Describing the impact that the attack has had on her life, Philippa said: 'I'll never forget the horrifying evening my entire life changed.

'Justice had been done for two of my attackers, but knowing that there was at least three others out there was difficult.

'I suffered with post-traumatic stress after the attack and doctors put me on antidepressants.'

However, Philippa says she feels a lot stronger now, explaining: 'I won't let those monsters steal a second more of my future.'  

SOURCE






UK Proposes Six Year Prison Sentences for Online Posts Against Religion, Transgender

People promoting “hostility” towards a religion or the transgendered online could get much harsher sentences, of up to six years in jail, especial if they have a large online audience according to new proposals.

The Sentencing Council for England and Wales has drafted changes to public order offences, including anyone perceived as targeting online a “protected characteristics” including “race; sex; disability; age; sexual orientation; religion or belief; pregnancy and maternity; and gender reassignment.”

The most severe punishments will be handed to those “in a position of trust, authority or influence and abuses their position to stir up hatred,” such as political leaders or figureheads and anyone whose offences are “persistent.”

If an “offender was a member of, or was associated with, a group promoting hostility based on race or religion,” their sentence will also be harsher.

The Sentencing Council believes that the use of social media, YouTube, and other “websites” to stir hatred is a growing problem – despite the number of prosecutions remain relatively low.

“Volumes of these offences are extremely low and there have been no offenders sentenced for some offences,” the Sentencing Council said.

“However, given the recent social climate and an enhanced focus on this type of offending, the council considers it would be useful for sentencers to be equipped with guidance on sentencing these offences,” they continue.

“Other cases involved publication on YouTube of content inciting serious violence towards particular racial or religious groups, websites being published including abusive and insulting content, with some activity continuing over a long period of time and intended to reach global audiences.”

The proposals will now be subject to a three-month public consultation ending in August.

The launch comes nine months after the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) promised to peruse online “hate crime” as vigorously as those taking place face-to-face, saying they hope to see more prosecutions, with longer sentences for those convicted of “hate” online.

Separate “hate crime” guidelines from the CPS released in January last year reaffirmed that no evidence is needed to report a “hate crime”, and they only need to be “perceived” by the alleged victim or someone else.

An investigation by Breitbart London last year also confirmed that many UK Police forces consider “unfriendliness” and “dislike” as signs of “hostility” and “hate,” with the CPS admitting there is “no legal definition” of “hostility.”

Germany recently went further than any Western democracy in efforts to control online speech, legally requiring social media companies like Facebook and Twitter to quickly remove “hate speech” from their sites.

However, the law is set to be revised following evidence that too much online content is being blocked, and critics claiming there was a widespread “chilling effect” on speech.

The legislation has led to satirical posts being removed and a leader of the populists AfD party being censored for criticizing police policy and Islam.

SOURCE





Compromise in Transgender Debate Demands Rejection of Reality

Conservatism is rooted in the pursuit of objective truth, and the truth is there are only two genders.

By its very nature, truth exists independent of our beliefs, opinions, prejudices and superstitions. It does not bend to our will and is not subject to a majority vote. We may reject truth, we may rage against it, but truth remains, unfazed. “Facts don’t care about your feelings,” as Ben Shapiro put it.

It is curious, then, that the conservative National Review would publish an article calling for a societal rejection of biological truth in the name of compromise. Conservatism, after all, is a philosophy rooted in the pursuit of objective truth.

In “Time for a Compromise on Transgenderism,” NR’s J.J. McCullough calls on conservatives, in the name of compromise, to set aside rational thought and biological reality and embrace the delusion behind transgenderism; namely, that sex/gender is not rooted in our DNA, but in our feelings. Though laudable in its attempt to strengthen social cohesion, it is nevertheless a study in falsehoods and contradictions.

McCullough declares, “Homosexual people are unavoidable and common. … Through education, and especially exposure, homosexuality is no longer regarded as bizarre, threatening, or mysterious.”

First, homosexuals and transgenders are actually only a tiny subset of the population. According to ULCA’s Williams Institute, just 1.7% of the U.S. population identifies as homosexual, and just 0.3% as transgender. Other studies put the number of homosexuals at 3-4%. But fewer Americans identify as transgender than have heterochromia (two different colored eyes). It should also be noted that both homosexuality and transgenderism are behaviors, not biological traits.

Second, social acceptance of a behavior does not convey moral validity. The Communist Chinese implemented the one-child policy, but social acceptance of the policy does not make the tens of millions of abortions it brought about any less murder. Or you could go the Nazi Holocaust route. Enough said.

McCullough declares resistance to the normalization of deviant sexual behavior is an “immature, demagogic phase” of American life, ignoring the fact it is the LGBT proponents who are aggressively trying to overturn thousands of years of social order and proven biological science.

Americans who hold to traditional morality and biological reality are accused of hatred and bigotry, forced by the state to deny reality and violate deeply held religious beliefs, or face hate-crimes charges, public vilification and even the loss of their livelihoods.

McCullough’s “compromise” is for the reality-based population (i.e., “cultural conservatives and traditionalists”) to extend “broad tolerance for the reality that transgender men and women exist, and are entitled to basic human dignity, just like everyone else.” This is a straw man. No conservative calls for mistreating transgenders or denying basic human rights. Just the opposite; Christians proclaim the eternal worth of every soul as a child of God.

However, dignity is a subjective term. It flows outward from dignified people, and cannot be granted. Despite being mocked, cursed and spat upon, Christ could not be robbed of his regal dignity by the offending Jews. On the other hand, those engaged in the most flamboyant displays of sexual deviancy during LGBT parades cannot obtain dignity, regardless of the coercive power of the state.

Though McCullough claims transgenderism is a “persistent aspect of humanity,” that is demonstrably false. Examples of effeminate homosexual men, or “butch” lesbians, have long been with us, but the claim that a biological male is an actual woman, or vice versa, is very recent, not to mention delusional.

More important than these battles in the culture wars are the implications for life itself.

According to Johns Hopkins University, the first U.S. institution to perform “sex reassignment” surgery, “The belief that gender identity is an innate, fixed human property independent of biological sex — so that a person might be a ‘man trapped in a woman’s body’ or ‘a woman trapped in a man’s body’ — is not supported by scientific evidence.”

Furthermore, studies show a staggering 41% of transgendered people attempt suicide in their lifetimes, and that suicide rate is relatively constant regardless of other variables, like living in an area where homosexuality/transgenderism is widely accepted. Nurturing their delusion, rather than providing treatment, is cruel and deadly.

Even McCullough admits, “The risk of psychologically and physically damaging children by encouraging or enabling them to embrace transgender identities before pubescence must be acknowledged as a valid concern backed by credible evidence.”

Yet if the first phase of the compromise is for conservatives to accept the delusional altered reality of transgenderism, then on what basis does one then reject allowing a sexually confused child to “transition”?

The problem with McCollough’s entire argument is that the Rainbow Mafia is not interested in compromise; they simply demand our surrender. Prior to the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling, LGBT proponents mockingly asked conservatives to tell them how our lives would change if same-sex marriage was legal. As we predicted, so they have done. Christians are being persecuted by the state, ostracized by society and denied their constitutionally protected rights to freedom of religion, speech and association. Their livelihoods are being destroyed.

So while McCullough’s intentions are worthy, his approach is completely wrong. No person should be forced to accept biological falsehoods, nor violate their moral and religious beliefs, to appease a few militant, biologically confused people. We should never, ever allow the compulsive power of the state to silence debate, especially when one side is rooted in delusion.

SOURCE







The PC sickness in Australia

“I’M GOING to miss this,” said the comedian. And for a moment nothing was very funny anymore.

We had been chatting about our respective mongrel ancestries when we realised we were both part Scots-Irish.

“I never understood exactly what Scots-Irish was,” I said. “As far as I can tell some Scots went to Ireland because they didn’t like the Scottish and then when they got there they decided they didn’t like the Irish — or the English for that matter.”

“Yep,” he said. “They basically just rocked up and said to everyone: ‘If you don’t like it then f*** off!’”

“They’re so disagreeable!” I said. And that’s when my friend paused.

“I’m going to miss this,” he said.

For a moment I was scared he was about to tell me he had some terminal disease but then the penny dropped — and like a true Scotsman I noticed it.

“Soon we won’t be able to talk about this anymore,” he said. “We won’t be able to laugh or take the piss out of people for their differences. Everybody will just be exactly the same.”

It was an extremely depressing thought and for a moment I wished he really had told me he had a terminal disease.

Comedians are of course notoriously melancholy creatures but there have been several recent developments that make me more sure than ever that my mate is on the money.

One was a report this month that the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions had ordered his Newcastle office to complete a sexual harassment course after a lawyer “tweaked” a colleague’s nipple.

Sounds fair enough, you might think, until you read on. You see, it wasn’t a lecherous old man groping a young vulnerable clerk. It was a female solicitor mucking around with a male colleague when she gave him a little nipple-cripple over his shirt. Call the prosecutors!

And it gets better. It wasn’t even the bloke who had his nipple tweaked who made the complaint. He wasn’t fussed at all. Instead it was someone in the office who witnessed it and reported it as “inappropriate”.

As a source rather plaintively told The Daily Telegraph: “It was just a joke.”

But as my comedian mate now knows, there are no jokes anymore. There’s just appropriate and inappropriate behaviour.

And so, as a result of a playful exchange between two friendly colleagues who were completely untroubled, dozens of legal experts have to sit through an interminable sexual harassment lecture delivered perhaps by some po-faced bureaucrat or perhaps by a disembodied online portal. It’s hard to know which would be a bigger waste of the taxpayer’s time or money.

Moreover, the female solicitor is said to be “highly embarrassed” by the whole affair. So well done to the #metoo mole who called it in. You’ve just humiliated a woman for having too much fun at work. What a victory for progress that is.

It would be tempting to write this off as just a rogue PC absurdity — even if it did come from the highest prosecutor in the nation’s biggest state. If only this were so.

Recently I learned of colleagues at another government organisation who were forced to undergo cultural awareness training after an eerily similar incident.

In this case, two people, one white and one black, were talking about how absurd it was that a certain derogatory racial term was still allowed to be used in some contexts. Another person in the office overheard the conversation and reported them.

And so it was back to the re-education camps for that happy little workplace. Yes, even a black person discussing a racist word can now be sanctioned for racism.

Again, you could be forgiven for thinking that this is as dumb as society could possibly get but, again, you’d be wrong.

Because just last week an educator infamously suggested that parents should ask their babies for consent babies before changing a nappy [diaper]. Needless to say, in any such exchange it would not just be the nappy that was completely full of it.

I had words about this on Studio 10 and apparently it became a “Twitter Moment”, so I don’t want to add further to the mob frenzy. All I would offer is that anyone who compares changing a nappy to rape needs to seriously consider their world view.

SOURCE 

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

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

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

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18 May, 2018

Trump administration rolls back rules protecting transgender inmates in federal prisons

President Trump’s Justice Department moved Friday to roll back a series of Obama-era rules applying to transgender inmates in federal prisons.

The Bureau of Prisons released a policy change to its manual, which now says that the department will use “biological sex” as the basis for assigning facilities and bathrooms.

The order strikes a provision in the manual that said officials would “recommend housing by gender identity when appropriate,” and now says that designating inmates to facilities based on their identified gender “would be appropriate only in rare cases.”

The manual also now includes language stating that when considering recommendations to transfer transgender inmates to facilities in line with their identified gender, officials will consider whether such placement would “threaten the management and security of the institution and/or pose a risk to other inmates.”
The changes, which were first reported by BuzzFeed News, also include the addition of the word “necessary” to guidelines about when institutions will facilitate medical treatment.

The move comes after four women in a Texas prison challenged the transgender protection regulations put in place in 2012, arguing that being housed with transgender women ”creates a situation that incessantly violates the privacy of female inmates; endangers the physical and mental health of the female Plaintiffs and others, including prison staff; [and] increases the potential for rape.”

SOURCE





Black Woman Accuses Cop of Racism, But Bodycam Footage Proves She’s a Liar

A South Carolina woman who apparently hoped to gin up some sympathy in Black Lives Matter circles after a routine traffic stop in Virginia is finding out the hard way that when cops wear bodycams, they might end up showing what really happened.

And what really happened in Dawn Hilton-Williams’ case was nothing like what she tried to pretend.

In a 12 minute Facebook video, recorded shortly after an April 27 traffic stop in rural Brunswick County, Virginia, 50-year-old Hilton-Williams painted her roadside interaction in the most dangerous terms.

“I was just bullied by a racist cop who threatened to pull me out of the car,” a sometimes tearful Hilton-Williams said on the Facebook Live video.

“This is where we got lynched. This is where we got lynched, even in today’s (world).”

Hilton-Williams claimed not to have known how fast she was going above the speed limit, and said the deputy was such a “bully” that she was in fear of her life.

Check it out here. (Warning: It’s almost 12 minutes long. It won’t take more than a few minutes to get the gist of it.)

According to WTVR, a CBS affiliate in Richmond, Hilton-Williams’ video was shared more than 800 times, and brought enough attention that Brunswick County Sheriff Brian Roberts decided to release video footage from the bodycam worn by the sheriff’s deputy who pulled Hilton-Williams over.

Let’s just say it doesn’t quite match Hilton-Williams’ story (partial transcript below). In fact, Hilton-Williams story doesn’t even come close to a true recounting of events.

Here’s a partial transcript of the end of the conversation after the deputy returned to Hilton-Williams’ vehicle. Does this cop sound like a “bully”?

Hilton-Williams: “I will not be paying this ticket.”

Deputy: “If you don’t want to prepay it, you’ll have to come to court on June 6th at 10:30.”

Hilton-Williams: “I’ll hire an attorney.”

Deputy: “I need you to sign right here.”

Hilton-Williams: “I’m not going to sign that ticket.”

Deputy: “Uhh ma’am, OK.

Hilton-Williams: I don’t have to sign it.”

Deputy: “So ma’am.”

Hilton-Williams: “But I appreciate it.”

Deputy: “Hold on… So, what you are signing here is a promise to either come to court or promise to prepay. It is not an admission of guilt. It’s only a promise to me that you’re going to get it taken care of by either coming to court or prepaying it.

If you refuse to sign the summons at this point, I’m gonna have to get you out of the side of the police car, place you under arrest and take you in front of a magistrate. I will get your vehicle towed and go from there. So, yes ma’am you do not have a choice…”

Hilton-Williams: “My cousin is on the phone.”

Deputy: “I don’t care about that. I don’t care who’s on the phone. I’m talking to you right now. You do not have a choice but to sign the summons. See thank you. I knew you was gonna sign it. I appreciate it very much and you have a safe day. OK, thank you.”

That wasn’t exactly “Birth of a Nation” was it? If anything, it was a tribute to the kind of professionalism Americans respect in their law enforcement officers.

There’s no way of knowing how sincere Hilton-Williams really was when she recorded that Facebook video. Everyone’s perceptions of a given encounter will be different. But from the evidence, it looks like she has precious little regard for the truth of the situation.

The problem here is that even if she hasn’t been conditioned to think a war exists between American law enforcement and blacks, she certainly thinks her viewers have been. She thought her viewers would believe it.

And if the deputy in this case hadn’t been wearing a body camera that proved what really happened, the country might well have been in another Starbucks-like vortex of he-said/she said.

Fortunately, though, the deputy was wearing a bodycam. And in this case, the camera trumped the race card. Hands down.

SOURCE






Say the unsayable about "gender": read the speech Brendan O’Neill gave at Oxford this week

This week, to the horror of student campaigners, Brendan O’Neill was invited to speak at a dinner at The Queen’s College, Oxford. This is what he said

It is my sincerely held belief that a man can never become a woman. That no matter how many hormones he takes, or operations he has, or fabulous outfits he buys, a person who was born male can never become female.

I accept a man can be a trans-woman. I accept the right of every man to claim to be a woman. And to change his name to a woman’s name, if he likes. And these trans-women should of course enjoy the same rights as every other citizen: the right to vote, the right to free speech, the right to work. But to my mind, they are not women. The slogan ‘Trans women are women’ is a lie. This is my sincerely held belief.

Recently, however, this belief has become virtually unutterable in respectable society. It has become tantamount to heresy. To deny that men can become women is the modern equivalent of denying that a wafer of bread and a cup of wine became the flesh and blood of Christ during Mass. If you deny the magic of transgenderism, you will be subjected to a similar wild-eyed fury that was once visited upon those who denied the magic of transubstantiation.

There is a religious-style zeal to the protection of transgenderism from criticism or denial or blasphemy. The word ‘transphobia’ is used to demonise the belief that men cannot become women. Fighting transphobia isn’t about ending discrimination against trans people – it is about silencing moral views that are now considered unacceptable; it is about turning certain beliefs into heresies. ‘Transphobia’ is really a new word for blasphemy. To accuse someone of ‘transphobia’ is to accuse them of having sinned or libelled against the new orthodoxy that says gender is fluid, some men have female brains, binaries are a myth, and so on. Make no mistake: transphobic means heretic.

Witness how feminists who question the magic of transgenderism are hounded off campuses and blacklisted by the NUS. These feminists are referred to by the most awful names online: bitches, cunts, whores. Or TERFs. TERF, meaning trans-exclusionary radical feminist, has become the most common insult hurled at these blasphemous women. TERFs are blacklisted by student officials, most recently at Bristol University. They have been physically prevented by trans activists from holding public meetings. They have been violently attacked: last year trans activists assaulted a 60-year-old grandmother, or TERF, to give her the dehumanising name they gave her as they punched her in the face.

A TERF is a witch. That is really what TERF means: troublesome woman, uppity woman, defiant woman, heretic. Just as the medieval fear and fury with witches was driven by the Church’s urge to root out heresy, to discover and punish unorthodox thinking, so today’s blacklisting and assaulting of TERFs is driven by the establishment’s intolerance of dissent towards the new religiosity of genderfluidity. Especially among women. Religious-style wars on heresy always hate female dissenters even more than male ones. That the TERF-finders, like the witch-finders of old, hate female heretics more than male ones – more than me, for example – is testament both to the trans movement’s intolerance of any view of womanhood that differs to its own elastic, eccentric view of womanhood, and also to its commonalities with earlier movements against witch-like female defiance of religious diktat.

So, recently we had the spectacle of 300 female members of the Labour Party resigning in protest at the party’s decision to include people who were born male on all-women shortlists. And other party members, including male ones, cheered as the women left. ‘Get the TERFs out’, they tweeted. That is, cast the witches out. Expel them. Heretics not welcome. That many left-wing men laugh at these women’s concerns, or approve of the censorship of their ideas, or conspire in the demonisation of them as TERFs, suggests the ideology of transgenderism has a strong streak of misogyny. Indeed, trans activism looks increasingly like misogyny in drag.

Witness, also, how criticism of the trans ideology is written off not only as wrong, but as dangerous, as morally corrupted and morally corrupting. Apparently, these people’s beliefs are a kind of poison, liable to pollute souls and minds and maybe even cause young trans people to kill themselves. A certain point of view, the point of view that says you cannot magically change sex, is imbued with awesome, devastating power, the power to kill.

This, too, is in keeping with earlier crusades against heresy. Then, as now, unorthodox thinking, whether it went against Vatican law or raised questions about Biblical scripture, was treated not only as ill informed but as ill, a sickness, and a sickness that might spread. As one historical account puts it, people and sometimes entire communities were viewed as being ‘infected with heresy’. Today, that profoundly censorious idea finds expression in the war on the blasphemy of transphobia. As one headline put it recently, ‘Transphobia is the mental illness, not transsexuality’. Or as a writer for the Los Angeles Times said, it is the critics of transgenderism who are ‘truly sick’. That is, their ideas are a contagion that cause harm and sometimes death. They are infected with heresy, and they infect others with their heresy.

What we are witnessing is a classic act of demonology: the transformation of an entire group of people, trans-critical people, into demons. Through demonology, censorship and occasionally violence, the belief that you cannot magically change sex – a belief I hold to – has been turned from an acceptable point of view into a heresy you utter at your risk. I find this fast and unforgiving transformation of a moral view into mortal sin fascinating, because it is a modern case study in the making of witches, and in the imposition of orthodoxy. It deserves study, this moral and physical assault on an idea, because it represents a 21st-century version of the diseasing of critical thinking that was more commonplace in darker moments in history.

As I have watched all of this unfold, I started to ask myself a question: what happens when you become a heretic? What happens when, through no fault of your own, your beliefs are deemed to be dangerous? What happens when the parameters of acceptable thinking shrink, suddenly and violently, and you find yourself outside of them, an intellectual leper? What should this newly christened heretic do?

It seems pretty clear to me that he or she has a choice. A difficult choice, but a choice nonetheless. At this point it’s worth noting that heresy actually means choice. The word heresy comes from the Greek for ‘choice’, for ‘the chosen thing’. To be a heretic is to make a choice – the wrong choice, in the view of the guardians of orthodoxy. And the choice faced by today’s accidental heretics, by those who woke one day to find that the thing they have been saying for years is now verboten, is this: you either accept your status as ‘evil’ and silence yourself for the supposed good of social stability; or you reject this status and continue to utter your so-called heresy because you believe, sincerely, that it is true. This is your choice, this is your heresy.

And I expect it will not surprise many of you here tonight that my advice is to do the latter: continue to speak your heresy, and damn the consequences. You should do this for two reasons. First, because it will be good for you as an individual. And secondly, because it will be good for society as a whole.

Of course it isn’t only trans-critical thinking that has been rebranded heresy. The industry of demonology has been working overtime of late, busy discovering new demons, busy delegitimising certain beliefs. The language of demonology is rampant in public life today. The two most common brands imposed on those judged to hold heretical beliefs are ‘phobic‘ and ‘denier’. They are fascinating terms. The first, ‘phobic’, speaks to the treatment of certain views as irrational fears, as forms of mental illness, essentially. And the second, ‘denier’, echoes precisely the terminology used against those who were dragged before the Inquisition. They, too, were deniers: deniers of the light of Christ.

So if you criticise trans thinking, you are transphobic. If you think gay marriage is not a good idea, and that the institution of marriage plays a specific social role best filled by heterosexual couples, you are homophobic. Criticise Islam, and you’re Islamophobic. Indeed, when the Runnymede Trust first popularised the term ‘Islamophobia’,  in the 1990s, it included in its definition any expression that treats Islam as ‘inferior to Western values’. So to make a particular moral judgement, in this case that Western ideals are better than Islamic ones, is to be unstable, diseased. This is a clear example of the language of demonology being used to make a heresy out of a perfectly legitimate moral view.

Worry about mass immigration, and you’re xenophobic. Oppose the EU and maybe you suffer from the mental malaise of Europhobia. One pro-EU observer says Europhobia is a species of racism that is ‘alien to the postwar European culture’. And so a political perspective – opposition to the Brussels oligarchy – is refashioned as irrationalism.

Alongside the phobics, there are the deniers. If phobics are morally ill, deniers are straight-up sinful. The most commonly made accusation of denial is against climate-change deniers. Anyone who questions not only the science of climate change, but also the political proposals put forward for dealing with environmental problems – which usually involve discouraging large-scale development – is likely to be denounced as a ‘denier’. And again, their words are treated not only as wrong but as morally depraved, even as a threat to life on Earth. Their ideas are imbued with a devil-like power to corrupt and harm existence itself. So it was that one environmentalist said there should be ‘international criminal tribunals’ for these deniers, where they might be made to ‘answer for their crimes’. That is, an Inquisition. Their words are crimes, their ideas a kind of moral pollution which might be even more dangerous than industrial pollution itself. They are heretics as surely as ‘Christ deniers’ were heretics.

Those who have conspired in this creation of a scientific orthodoxy that mere mortals question at their peril should reflect on the fact that science itself is heresy. Or it certainly starts as heresy. In the words of Isaac Asimov, ‘Some of the greatest names in science have been… heretics. Startling scientific advances usually begin as heresies.’ That science and its adherents now contribute to the policing and punishment of heresy represents an abandonment of the openness to rebuke and falsification that makes science such an important endeavour in the first place.

Phobics and deniers, everywhere. Heretics, everywhere. Sometimes their heresy is punished by law, as we have seen in Europe in recent years with the arrest and fining of those who have expressed Islamophobic thoughts or homophobic ideas. And sometimes their heresy is controlled through what John Stuart Mill called ‘the tyranny of custom’, where non-state social pressure is used to silence corrupted and corrupting individuals. Student officials at universities like this one excel in the enforcement of this tyranny of custom through their drawing up of blacklists of heretical speakers, their No Platforming of trans-blasphemous women, and their promiscuous use of the brands of phobia, denier, fascist and hater to make demons of anyone who dissents from their narrow, illiberal, identitarian orthodoxy. In both cases, whether the heresies are reprimanded by law or by polite society’s unforgiving demand for moral conformism, the result is the same: people feel they cannot say what they believe to be true.

But they should say it. Regardless of the consequences. First because to censor yourself, to silence your convictions, is to conspire in the diminution of your own autonomy and even humanity. It is to confess to the sin others see in you and to punish yourself for that sin. It is to internalise the Inquisitorial mindset and save the new heresy-hunters the task of punishing you because you are willing to punish yourself. To refuse to express your deeply held belief – or, conversely, to express an idea you don’t believe to be true – is a terrible abdication of the moral responsibilities of the free citizen.

This is why the case of the Northern Ireland bakery, Ashers, is so important. Ashers, which is operated by Christians, is currently appealing against the £500 fine imposed on it for refusing to make a cake with the words ‘Support gay marriage’ on it. We should support Ashers, on the basis that compelling people to say something they don’t believe, to utter what they consider to be a wicked or wrong idea, is entirely antithetical to the free society. Indeed, this, too, echoes the Inquisitorial approach, when people were likewise compelled, though by fire rather than fines, to make public declarations that went against the contents of their soul. You should speak your heresy, and you should refuse to say things others believe but you do not, because that is what it means to be a free, self-respecting individual.

And the second reason you should utter your heretical beliefs is because heresy is good for society. Pretty much every liberty and comfort we enjoy is the gift of heretics. From the religious heretics, including at this university, who suggested the Bible should be published in English, to the scientific heretics who promoted a heliocentric view of our corner of the universe, to the political heretics who proposed that women are just as capable of political thought as men, every idea that has helped to make society a better, freer, more reasoned place started out as a form of heresy whose utterance might earn you death or expulsion from Oxford or media ridicule.

Heresy enlivens society. It expands the parameters of acceptable thought that so many today want to shrink and control and police, and in doing so it creates the space for new and daring thinking, and for new and daring social breakthroughs. We should heed the words of Robert Ingersoll, the 19th-century American lawyer and politician and defender of free thought. He said:

‘Heresy is the eternal dawn, the morning star, the glittering herald of the day. Heresy is the last and best thought. It is the perpetual New World, the unknown sea, toward which the brave all sail. It is the eternal horizon of progress. Heresy extends the hospitalities of the brain to a new thought. Heresy is a cradle; orthodoxy, a coffin.’

Heresy is a cradle. That’s it. Difficult and supposedly dangerous ideas are precisely the ones you should expose yourselves to. That is the New World of thought and debate you should venture into. So stop No Platforming, stop hounding heretics off campus, stop treating ideas as diseases and disagreement as violence and dissenting speech as hate speech. Instead, say what you believe, and let others say what they believe. Express your true thoughts. Give voice even to your heretical beliefs. Here’s mine: bread can never become flesh, and a man can never become a woman.

SOURCE






The word 'Aboriginal' is REMOVED from birth, marriage and death certificates after politically-correct bureaucrats rule the term is offensive

What an insult to Aborigines!

The word 'Aboriginal' is being removed from birth, marriage and death certificates after politically-correct bureaucrats ruled the term offensive.

The practice of eradicating the word was implemented by the Western Australian Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages when it made its records digital between 2007 and 2015, the ABC reported.

The practice came to light when family historians Garry Smith, from Perth, and his cousin John Chandler, from Queensland, discovered the word had been whited out on their ancestors' certificates.

Mr Smith claimed a staff member told him the word Aboriginal was removed because it was deemed offensive. He said it made him feel as if he should be ashamed of his aboriginal heritage.

Mr Smith also slammed the movement as hypocritical. 'If you're Aboriginal, it's offensive and deemed offensive – but the government calls us Aboriginals,' he said.

Mr Smith's cousin, Mr Chandler, said the news brought back painful memories for his family. 'We feel like we have people making decisions on behalf of us, just like in the past,' he told the ABC.

The men called for the registrar to stop whitewashing documents and apologise for any offence caused.

Mr Chandler and Mr Smith have together lodged a claim of racial discrimination against the registrar in the Federal Court, however their claim was unsuccessful.

History Council of Western Australia's Dr Cindy Solonec said the practice repulsed her. She said the movement was 'hogwash' and would undoubtedly offend every Aboriginal person in Australia. 

University of Western Australia history professor Jenny Gregory said she would contact the WA Attorney-General to call for the 'bizarre' practice to be stopped. 'The registrar is tampering with history,' Dr Gregory said.

WA Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages' Brett Burns told Daily Mail Australia there was no legal requirement to note the race or ethnic background of a person on documents such as birth certificates. 'This applies whether a person is Aboriginal, Greek, Italian, or from any other heritage,' he said.

Mr Burns said the practice was in no way fuelled by racism. 'I completely refute any suggestions that I, or my staff, have acted in a racist way in this matter. That suggestion is ridiculous and hurtful,' he said.

He said the change was made after offensive terms were used by past registrars. Mr Burns said offensive terms such as 'Abo', 'Chinaman', 'native', 'nomad' or 'half-caste' were once used on official documents.

'That has prompted the removal of all references to race, which were never required to be included in the first place, from the Registry's records,' he said.

'This does not just apply to Aboriginal people and any suggestion we are 'white-washing' history is wrong.' 

SOURCE 

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

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

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

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17 May, 2018

Will Posting Nutritional Information on Menus Prod Diners to Make Healthier Choices?

Some studies say no effect.  Others say a very small effect. The article comes from a major medical journal so the authors  conclude in favour of providing the dietary information.  But that is more an expression of political correctness than anything else.  A conclusion that the doubtful benefits don't justify the costs would also be warranted.

Note that the authors are also politically correct in demonizing salt (sodium). That is very poorly informed from a medical viewpoint.  There is now much evidence that salt is helpful rather than harmful. See here, here and here

On May 7, all US chain restaurants with 20 or more locations—and that includes coffee shops, bakeries, and movie theaters that sell food—had to start posting the calorie content of their menu items.

The rationale behind the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) mandate, set forth in the Affordable Care Act in 2010, was that it might make customers think twice about ordering a meal that contained more calories than they should consume in an entire day. But whether posting calorie counts will help trim the proportion of US adults and children who are overweight or obese remains to be seen.

“About half of consumers’ annual food dollars are spent on, and a third of total calories come from, foods prepared outside the home,” according to the FDA’s final rule on menu nutrition labeling, published in December 2014 (implementation of the rule has been postponed twice from its original date of December 1, 2015). “Research indicates that many people do not know, or underestimate, the calorie and nutrient content of these foods.”

US consumers have had nearly a quarter of a century to familiarize themselves with nutrition labeling on packaged foods, required by the FDA since 1994. Mandating the posting of calories in restaurants “is a really good start to be more consistent with the way we have labeling on packaged foods in grocery stores,” said Heather Eicher-Miller, PhD, an assistant professor of nutrition science at Purdue University.

A number of jurisdictions already require chain restaurants to post calories, beginning in 2008 with New York City. In addition, some nationwide chains, such as Krispy Kreme and Subway, already post calories.

Evidence Is Thin

Evidence that providing calorie counts on restaurant foods spurs customers to ditch fettuccine alfredo for filet of sole is pretty thin. Even if diners do opt for the lower-calorie items, it’s not known whether they’ll compensate by eating more than they normally would at their next meal.

Eicher-Miller coauthored a meta-analysis in 2017 that concluded that menu labeling in restaurants did not result in a change in quantity or quality of calories consumed by US adults. “But that doesn’t mean it can’t be helpful or important,” she said, explaining that only time and further research will tell whether the FDA’s mandate might eventually have the desired effect.

A recent Cochrane Review found that adding calorie information to menus in restaurants, coffee shops, and cafeterias could reduce calories purchased by about 8%, or by about 50 calories out of a 600-calorie meal. And there was no evidence that posting calories caused unintended harm by increasing the number of calories purchased or consumed.

The authors’ conclusion was not a ringing endorsement of menu nutritional labeling though, due to a dearth of high-quality studies. “We tentatively suggest that nutritional labeling on menus in restaurants could be used as part of a wider set of measures to tackle obesity,” they wrote. “Additional high-quality research in real-world settings is needed to enable more certain conclusions.”

Higher-quality studies are needed to answer 2 key questions, said Theresa Marteau, PhD, director of the Behavior and Health Research Unit at the University of Cambridge Institute of Public Health in the United Kingdom and a coauthor of the Cochrane Review. How should nutrition labeling on menus be designed to optimize the impact on purchasing and consumption, particularly for those in lower socioeconomic groups who might be more likely to benefit? And how effective are menu nutrition labels alongside other efforts to promote healthier diets, such as availability of healthier options and smaller portion sizes?

While these questions have yet to be answered, Marteau said, “we believe that there is sufficient evidence of effectiveness for the FDA to proceed with required nutritional labeling on menus and for the UK, and other jurisdictions, to move toward mandating this.”

Nutritional Illiteracy

One reason the research so far has failed to find much of an effect from posting calories is because relatively few consumers use the information, said Punam Ohri-Vachaspati, PhD, RD, a professor of nutrition at the School of Nutrition and Health Promotion at Arizona State University. At restaurants, Ohri-Vachaspati said, “we are all impulsive eaters, and we are all used to making impulsive decisions.”

In a study published in 2015, Ohri-Vachaspati and her coauthors found that 60% of people interviewed outside of McDonald’s restaurants said they had noticed nutritional information on the menu boards, but only 16% of them said they had considered it when deciding what to order. Higher income and having a bachelor’s degree or higher were independently associated with a greater likelihood of noticing as well as using the menu calorie labels.

Simply slapping calorie totals on a menu isn’t enough, Ohri-Vachaspati said. Diners need to understand what calories mean in the context of their daily diet. The FDA is requiring that menus must say “2000 calories a day is used for general nutrition advice, but calorie needs vary.” However, not everyone grasps what that means, Ohri-Vachaspati said.

“I think that the average American consumer does not understand what calories are” or how many they should consume in a day, said Sara Bleich, PhD, professor of public health policy at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. “It’s unfortunate that it’s just calories that are being reported.”

Beyond Calories

Besides posting total calories on menus or menu boards, restaurants must have available “on the premises” printed information about 10 other nutrients in their dishes, including grams of fat, carbohydrate, protein, and fiber and milligrams of cholesterol and sodium, according to the FDA.

Whether customers will actually use that information is another matter. “People generally do not ask for nutrition information beyond what’s printed on the menu,” said Karen Byrd, PhD, MBA, a registered dietitian and professor of nutrition, dietetics, and food management at Murray State University in Kentucky.

A recent study by Byrd and Eicher-Miller and coauthors suggests that it might be more useful to post sodium content on menus instead of calories, especially considering that US adults get approximately a third of their total daily sodium intake from restaurant foods.

Many US adults consume more than the recommended daily limit of 2300 mg of sodium, according to a recent study in JAMA led by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) researchers. They estimated that the average daily sodium intake of US adults was 3608 mg.

In her study, Byrd examined whether sodium warnings required on chain restaurant menus in New York City since 2015 had any effect. The restaurants are supposed to place a triangular icon with a salt shaker in the middle next to menu items that have 2300 mg of sodium or more.

“Based on my research, that’s not effective,” possibly because only 17% of all menu items contained at least 2300 mg of sodium, making it easy for consumers to overlook the icon, said Byrd, who conducted the study while on the Purdue faculty.

However, posting the number of milligrams of sodium next to each item on the menu did make a difference, although it depended on whether people perceived relatively healthier foods as tasty. Those who liked to eat healthy food selected meals with lower sodium content, Byrd found. On the other hand, 1 in 5 participants in her study said they thought lower-sodium foods weren’t tasty, so posting the sodium content drove them to order higher-sodium menu items.

In contrast, posting calories made no difference in the calorie content of the meals ordered, even among participants who thought healthy foods were tasty, Byrd’s study found.

Restaurants’ Role

Even participants in Byrd’s study who opted for lower-sodium menu items were unable to reduce their sodium intake at one meal to below 2300 mg, the maximum recommended daily intake, because so many dishes came close to or exceeded that level.

“Additional action by the restaurant industry to reduce the sodium content of restaurant foods, as proposed by the FDA, may be necessary to make a significant public health impact,” she and her coauthors wrote.

The problem is that simply eliminating salt added in the preparation of food or at the table might not meaningfully alter sodium intake in the population because it remains high in commercially processed foods, Joachim Ix, MD, MAS, and Cheryl Anderson, PhD, MPH, MS, both of the University of California, San Diego, wrote in an editorial accompanying the CDC study in JAMA. “Because of this, strategies to reduce sodium intake should focus at the population level first and should include the industries that supply processed foods, beverages, and menu items,” Ix and Anderson wrote.

Recent research by Bleich suggests that large US restaurant chains are moving in that direction by cutting calories and sodium in their new menu items.

In one study, she and her coauthors found that the calorie-adjusted sodium content in newly introduced menu items in the 66 top-earning restaurant chains declined by 104 mg from 2012 to 2016. “However,” they wrote, “sodium content of core and new menu items remains high, and reductions are inconsistent across menu categories and restaurant types.”

In another study, Bleich and her coauthors found that items dropped from the chains’ menus during that period contained 71 more calories than the items that remained on the menu. “I think that’s probably a reflection of shifting consumer demands,” Bleich said.

Diners’ behavior is resistant to change, but eliminating higher-calorie menu items might have a “significant and positive impact on population health,” she and her coauthors wrote.

“The overarching point is it’s an overall good trend,” she said of the lowering of sodium and calories in restaurants, although “we want to keep an eye on some red flags.” For example, Bleich said, to cut calories, restaurant chains are often replacing healthy fats with sugar, which could leave customers less sated.

The mandated posting of calories in restaurants will likely motivate them to reformulate more dishes, Bleich predicted. “You don’t want to be known as the restaurant that has the highest-calorie appetizer.”

SOURCE





How Liberal Activists Are Shutting Down Choice for Birth Moms

For birth moms who want to place their children with married moms and dads, that option is now at risk.

Across the country, liberal activists are accusing faith-based adoption and foster care agencies of discrimination because they prefer placing children with married moms and dads. The situation has left faith-based agencies with a difficult choice: violate their religious beliefs about sexuality and marriage, or shut down.

“I would never tell a gay couple, ‘Oh, because you two are in love with each other and you’re not a heterosexual couple, don’t even think about adopting a child.’ That’s not what I’m saying,” Kelly Clemente, a birth mother who placed her son for adoption, told The Daily Signal. “What I’m saying is that birth mothers have the right to choose.”

In at least four states, birth mothers don’t have the right to choose because faith-based agencies were pressured to close. In Illinois, after serving the community for more than 50 years, Catholic Charities was forced to stop its adoption and foster care services. At least 2,000 children were disrupted, and thousands more foster parents were lost as a result.

In all of these states, plenty of agencies exist that will facilitate adoptions to same-sex couples. But still, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are moving forward with lawsuits trying to force all adoption providers, including those of faith, to facilitate adoptions to same-sex couples.

As a result, some are turning to the federal government to pass the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act, a bill that would protect the rights of birth moms, and the rights of faith-based adoption and foster care agencies to continue operating in accordance to their religious beliefs.

“Birth mothers already sacrifice so much,” said Clemente. “I don’t think that they should have to sacrifice their faith, too.”

SOURCE





Look at What’s Going to Happen to Sweden’s Fabled Welfare State

By 2025, its entire workforce is expected to grow by 207,000 people—yet it needs more than that number just to staff its fabled welfare state. The worker shortfall could crimp services and raise labor costs, especially in a political environment less hospitable to immigration.

The mismatch is one of the biggest headaches facing Sweden’s next government. Past precedents don’t bode well. The workforce rose by 488,000 between 2007 and 2017, with less than a third of that increase absorbed by the public sector.

Local authorities recruiting 208,000 workers is “not a credible scenario,” said Annika Wallenskog, chief economist at the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions. The real risk is that the public and private sectors end up competing for the same workers, she said.

The government is going to have to come up with some seriously big ideas on how to make up for future labor shortages. Immigration has also become an especially sensitive topic since the country re-imposed border controls in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis.

Sweden needs to accelerate the speed of automation, increase employment and reform its welfare state, Wallenskog said. Otherwise “we won’t have enough people to continue working the way we do.”

Financial Hurdles

There are also financial hurdles. So far, a fast-growing economy has come to the rescue, helping Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson run a budget surplus and slash public debt to its lowest level since 1977.

But with the economy now expanding at a more traditional clip, whoever governs after the Sept. 9 general election will not be able to ignore the conundrum. Andersson has so far promised 5 billion kronor ($580 million) a year to local authorities, which run welfare services such as schools, hospitals and care centers for the elderly.

That is far from enough.

Sweden’s population is forecast to grow by 10 percent over the next decade, reaching about 11 million, due mostly to a recent rise in immigration (the Scandinavian nation accepted more asylum seekers than most of its European partners during the 2015 refugee crisis). An aging population and the growing need to integrate foreigners are also piling pressure on its welfare state, widely regarded as one of the world’s most generous.

Speaking last week at a conference in Gothenburg staged by the opposition Moderate Party, Wallenskog estimated that the central government will need to increase taxes by 0.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2020 (and 0.4 percent in 2021) in order to meet the needs of the welfare state while sticking to the surplus target that governs Swedish budgets.

In the absence of more generous transfers from the central government, “the risk is quite big that municipalities and regions will raise taxes, with the negative consequences that would have,” said Wallenskog.

SOURCE






Cultural Appropriation and Cultural Imperialism

You may have seen the uproar caused by an American student wearing a Chinese-style dress to her prom, bringing her widely publicized criticism that she was guilty of cultural appropriation. What is cultural appropriation?

This commentary says cultural appropriation is “taking intellectual property, traditional knowledge, cultural expressions, or artifacts from someone else’s culture without permission. This can include the unauthorized use of another culture’s dance, dress, music, language, folklore, cuisine, traditional medicine, religious symbols, etc.”

Following that definition, it would seem that American (and perhaps more broadly, Western) culture is the most appropriated culture in the world today. Everywhere in the world, people have adopted Western styles of dress, music, language, and cuisine.

The definition above included the word “unauthorized” and when a McDonalds opens somewhere outside the US, that’s not unauthorized. Maybe that qualifies as cultural imperialism. But people choose Western-style dress, they choose to speak English, they choose to watch American movies, and they choose to eat American-style food. When a Subway restaurant opens in South Korea, is that cultural appropriation or cultural imperialism? When English phrases infiltrate other languages, is that cultural appropriation or cultural imperialism?

Those who use these terms tend to associate both with dominance and power. When a dominant group adopts cultural aspects of a dominated group, that is cultural appropriation. When a dominated group adopts cultural aspects of a dominant group, that is cultural imperialism. For example, when aspects of Mexican culture come into the United States, that is cultural appropriation, but when aspects of US culture migrate into Mexico, that is cultural imperialism.

Following this line of reasoning, as aspects of different cultures diffuse around the world, countries like the United States are guilty of both cultural appropriation and cultural imperialism, whereas countries like Peru (I just chose Peru as an example) are victims of both cultural appropriation and cultural imperialism.

I’m not saying that the United States and Western Europe are dominant nations—those who accuse those countries of cultural appropriation and cultural imperialism are. The whole idea appears demeaning to those countries that are claimed to be victimized. (Note that in the prom dress case, it was not the Chinese who claimed cultural appropriation, but other Americans.)

This is, as I see it, a small issue, but also a symptom of a larger one: the victim mentality that keeps some people and some nations from advancing. The claimed victims of cultural appropriation are saying others are taking what’s theirs without their permission, and the claimed victims of cultural imperialism are saying that they are having the culture of others forced upon them without their permission.

This victim mentality is evident in many economic issues, such as trade policy, the international operations of Western corporations, immigration policy, laws governing intellectual property, and more. There may be real issues there, so I’m not dismissing them. I am saying that victim mentality must be widespread, and is likely pernicious when an issue like the design of a prom dress gets the reaction it has.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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16 May, 2018

LGBT Activists Falsely Smear Those Protecting Children in Need

Oklahoma is just shy of a major victory for children in the adoption and foster care system—but LGBT activist groups are now threatening the state with boycotts if leadership follows through.

Senate Bill 1140 passed the Oklahoma Legislature and is currently sitting on the desk of Gov. Mary Fallin. The bill ensures that faith-based foster and adoption providers can continue to operate according to their religious and moral beliefs as they serve children and families in need.

But now LGBT activist groups like the Human Rights Campaign are attacking the bill, claiming that it “shrinks the pool of prospective parents” and “is a blatant attempt to discriminate against LGBTQ Oklahomans.”

These accusations could not be further from the truth.

SB 1140 has no effect whatsoever on who can adopt. LGBT individuals are free to adopt in all 50 states, and this bill wouldn’t change that. Instead, this bill would maintain the current status of Oklahoma’s child welfare system, where faith-based agencies play a small but crucial role in meeting children’s needs.

As the opioid crisis drives more and more kids into the foster care system, America needs an “all hands on deck” approach to child welfare, where the maximum number of quality providers are available to serve.

In fact, the Department of Health and Human Services found “a particularly strong positive relationship between overdose death rates and foster care entry rates” in various parts of the country—including Oklahoma. In other words, when parents die because of overdoses, their children too often enter the foster care system.

Most states are completely unprepared to meet this influx of children. Foster families are needed now more than ever, but they are in short supply. Eighty percent of prospective foster parents who train with public agencies drop out within the first two years.

And of the remaining 20 percent who persevere, most are motivated by their faith, according to Chuck Johnson, president of the National Council for Adoption.

Here a diversity of providers is key. Not only does the presence of faith-based agencies increase the number of places able to help, but they create unique recruitment opportunities. These agencies can provide personalized resources that make the foster or adoption process less intimidating and more personal, making it easier to recruit and retain families.

These unique qualities make faith-based agencies a tremendous asset to the child welfare system. So why target these agencies after decades of service?

This is not the first time that activists have used adoption and foster care as a tool to impose their sexual ideology. Activists leveraged the power of government to drive out faith-based agencies in Massachusetts, Illinois, California, and Washington, D.C. These shutdowns did nothing to increase LGBT individuals’ access to the adoption or foster care system. In the end, playing politics with child welfare ended decades of service from trusted providers, reduced both manpower and resources, and displaced thousands of children.

Further, Oklahoma is not the only battleground in this culture fight. Liberal activists have filed lawsuits against faith-based agencies in Michigan and Texas in an attempt to drive out even more religious groups.

This dangerous precedent is now spreading. In Philadelphia, the city suspended its contracts with Catholic Social Services and Bethany Christian Services to investigate whether these agencies were discriminatory—just days after the city released an urgent call for 300 families to provide foster care while children flood in due to the opioid crisis.

These lawsuits and legislative battles are pointless. They do nothing to increase access to adoption or foster care and they only put children’s futures at risk.

Policymakers must meet these challenges with policies that protect a diversity of providers. Commonsense solutions like SB 1140 at the state level or the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act would shore up these protections and enable the maximum number of agencies to serve kids and families.

Oklahoma has a golden opportunity to do something for kids in need. The state should put down the weapons of the culture war and prioritize children’s best interests.

SOURCE





Welfare With No End in Sight Is a Terrible Fate. Let’s Help Americans Avoid It

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP or "food stamps") is high on the Republican list of programs targeted for reform—and justifiably so.  The program has gone from 17 million enrollees in 2000 to about 43 million today, with outlays up from about $25 billion to more than $70 billion.

The Trump administration’s budget submitted last February includes major reforms to the program, designed to save $216 billion over the next decade. Now the House Agriculture Committee has put forth its own reforms as part of the bill reauthorizing the budget of the Department of Agriculture for the next five years.

The problem with the food stamp program is similar to the problem of the other anti-poverty, welfare programs on which we spend almost 25 percent of the federal budget. That is, what is directed in the spirit of compassion, to provide temporary assistance to those who have fallen on hard times, transforms into a way of life.

As we might expect, food stamp enrollees skyrocketed as the recession set in heavily in 2008. The number of recipients went from approximately 26 million in 2007 to a peak of 47.6 million in 2013. With the economic recovery, the number has dropped off to about 43 million.

The Labor Department now reports that unemployment has fallen to 3.9 percent—the lowest since December 2000. Unemployment peaked during the recession at almost 10 percent. Why, when unemployment has dropped by 61 percent, has the number of food stamp recipients dropped by only 10 percent? The number of recipients is about 17 million higher than before the recession.

The answer is that it’s a lot easier to get aid recipients onto a welfare program than get them off.

Although the unemployment rate has dropped dramatically, the employment rate—the percentage of the population over 16 working—is still far below where it was prior to the recession. The latest jobs report shows the employment rate at 60.3 percent. Just prior to the recession in 2007, it was at 63.4 percent.

If today’s employment rate stood where it was before the recession, there would be 8 million more Americans working.

These 8 million Americans are not sitting on the sidelines just because of food stamps. Disability insurance and other welfare programs also leave the door open to not working.

How to solve this problem? Start with the Reagan rule: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

The more government we have, the more we make food stamps into the big business it is today. Why do we want corporate lobbyists for firms selling to food stamp EBT cardholders—Walmart, Target, Kroger, and even Amazon—lining the halls of Congress to lobby for these programs?

The Department of Agriculture is proposing that the government provide a food basket instead of cash. There is also the idea that government should manage the nutrition of food stamp recipients. The House bill incentivizes purchases of fruit, vegetables, and milk. But do we really want a huge new government bureaucracy buying and packaging food baskets for 40 million enrollees?

I say no. We should not expand government interference in anybody’s life.

Instead, the best idea is to expand work requirements for getting benefits. The House bill requires 80 hours of work per month to receive ongoing benefits. This for those 18-49, with no dependents, and parents of school-age children, up to the age of 60. For any new or changed requirements, let’s have the states decide.

Government assistance should not be about changing anybody’s life. Changing lives should be left to family, friends, and private charity.

SOURCE






How Have Men been Affected by Feminism?

I am reading Professor Janet Fiamengo's new book entitled Sons of Feminism: Men Have Their Say in which she asks men what it's like to be male in a feminist culture. She presents 26 stories of the accounts of men who have been "belittled, disliked, dismissed, blamed, falsely accused, and discriminated against under law--all while being expected to apologize for their 'male privilege.'"

Like me, Dr. Fiamengo, wanted to know what it was like for men who have to listen day in and day out about how women are vulnerable and good, and men are dangerous and despicable. In my book, Men on Strike , I tried to get across the legal and psychological obstacles that men face in today's female-centric society, but "Sons of Feminism" goes a step further: it gives the reader more detailed accounts into the world of men who have dealt with a variety of political and personal injustices against them.

The stories ranged from an immigrant from India who felt that "feminism was a cultural force that had the effect of dehumanizing me in a manner far more severe than the experience of racism"... to a man who was fired from his job due to baseless allegations. In-between, there are other accounts of men who did not have children because they were afraid of having them taken away after seeing this happen to so many others, men whose fathers were abused by their wives without intervention, and men who no longer wanted relationships with women because of the psychological (and sometimes physical) pain they have caused, all without concern or empathy.

This book brings these stories to life, it's gives a voice to the voiceless. As one man stated after a lifetime of dealing with an abusive mother: "My aim is to go through life as a ghost. "Un-noticed. No footsteps. No trace. No arguments....I seek isolation and invisibility...Now I know the patriarchy is a conspiracy theory designed to shut men up."

Those of us who seek justice cannot let this sick and twisted culture shut men up: that is the real purpose of this book in my view. It is an important piece of work that deserves to be read and discussed. Men in our country are not the enemy; and if feminism says they are, then we should fight it every step of the way.

SOURCE






The politically correct madhouse that is Ballard, a neighborhood of Seattle

The Seattle area, once the trendsetter for the counter cultural movement complete with daring piercings, Doc Martens, and the heroin second hand smoke infused despondent guitar solo of the grunge movement, now readily imports chilling narratives of mind numbing politics leading to short-sighted decisions of governing bodies, and the grotesque craziness threatens to propagate in other regions with the fervid sociopathic enthusiasm of a copycat to a serial killer. The current culture of policy is truly this bad and there is no turning back.

The Seattle City Council, as residents search for answers of how these people were ever elected, passed a controversial business head tax Friday, where larger commercial entities will be forced to pay approximately $500 a year per employee for funding homeless programs. Although the city is already facing a deluge of bums, thanks to a system that basically enables individuals to live a rent free college dormitory lifestyle funded by the middle class, and complete with car camping privileges and nurse-assisted injection sites, the additional $75 million per year will certainly fuel a cottage industry of discontent as downtown streets are transformed into a post apocalyptic dystopian world of detritus, the constant harassment of consumers and tourists, and of course the needles. It’s all about the damned needles. The propensity towards socialism is simply a microcosm, when weighed against the overall level of corruption at the civic level.

Politically, if Seattle is Caracas, then Ballard, just to the North of downtown, is Port-au-Prince or maybe even Kinsasha. Portland and San Francisco would be the most apt metaphors, but that would entail giving too much credit to the powers that be. After a series of truly ugly events that merit mention, the historically vibrant Scandinavian fishing community is at the front lines of a nasty battle involving jobs, rights, bikes and beer.

Last Friday night, one of the dubious members of the Seattle City Council, Mike O’Brien, was ceremoniously tossed from a private reception, after he knowingly barged his way into an angry hornet’s nest of constituents and opposition. O’Brien and a non-profit lobby group disguised as an advocacy organization, the Cascade Bicycle Club, have been aggressively pushing for a bike trail extension along the Ballard waterfront filling the gap in a regional cycling route. The $12 million per mile planned development, has local businesses and residents up in arms, as the illogical route will adversely affect commerce and jobs.

Ballard is not only a major hub for the local fishing fleet, but also boasts various industries. O’Brien’s bizarre decision to attend the soiree predominately consisting of fishermen and workers enjoying a beer or two at a local shipyard which will have to relocate if the trail is approved, is just the tip of the iceberg in a messy under the radar scandal. The whole incident smacks of a set-up conjured up the overzealous politician, who is appallingly out of touch with the majority of the population he represents. To culminate the evening, O’Brien’s wife shouted a few popular four letter words to the crowd as the couple was leaving. An alternative route a couple of blocks away and only 100 feet longer (a few more seconds when on a bicycle), that makes more sense logistically and financially, has been effectively shouted down by the downtrodden duo of O’Brien and the Cascade Bicycle Club.

According to Mynorthwest.com and talk show radio host Dori Monson, who is a lifelong resident of Ballard, the ulterior motives of the politically active bike club were clearly evident way back in 2014 as displayed in this pointed email from a staff member in regards to the trail extension. “Once it’s built, the operations of Salmon Bay Sand & Gravel and other light industry will likely have to be limited during evening hours due to noise issues — especially if the development is a hotel, apartment, or condo,” he wrote. “Once their hours are limited, it’s only a matter of time before they sell out and give up the litigation.”

When the author of the memo was questioned as to the real motives of the trail, the individual balked and claimed a faulty memory in failing to acknowledge the existence of the email.

But this is what it boils down to in cities that are overrun by progressives, thuggish ideological guerilla tactics where politics are dangerously intermixed with business ventures in targeting selected industries. In the case of Ballard the startling equation works out like this. The city benefits from replacing blue-collar industries with droves of tech workers and increased tax revenue, the bike club gets their sacred pathway, and “associates” of the bike club and the club itself profit from the multi-use developments. It’s the new mafia, marked with a twinge of socialism and fraud.

On the other side of the fence, the middle class non-techie demographic of society again takes a hit as skilled labor positions dissipate into the Puget Sound fog and the cost of living goes up in proximity to the luxury developments.

These pseudo-intellectual radicals elected into office only because of necessity, as reasonable and sane individuals understand that bureaucracy is implacable, continue to perpetuate a complete detachment to balance and what is best for the greater good, in caving to the minority and special interests groups in forming alliances which are borderline criminal. As residents in Ballard and other neighborhoods attempt to protect their families, homes, and businesses, they are continually shouted down by the elitist members of an extremism so noxious and counterproductive, that duty and accountability are completely obscured by overspending and the belief that government is the necessary force in ensuring a successful future.

What complicates the Ballard controversy, is that the quite liberal local mainstream media continues to recreationally bunk with the homeless and bike lobby, and any content that would be a detriment to the two causes goes unreported or is eloquently spun in favor of an agenda. The only possible recourse for residents is in organizing public outreach events and future voting efforts, however the powerful lobby groups on the opposite side, tend to spend large sums of capital in hosting protests and employing bullying tactics.

While the Seattle City Council just set a gruesome precedent in giving away the downtown key to a tens of thousands of nomads and potentially losing the Amazon corporate headquarters in the process, the reprehensible actions of O’Brien and the Cascade Bicycle Club completely redefine the concept of underhanded corruption in engineering society for selfish purposes. In the new Ballard, bikes supplant jobs and cars, as the priority.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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15 May, 2018

No, Jordan Peterson Is Not An Anti-Semite

Peterson's comment on Ari Feldman: "The most contemptible journalist I ever had the carelessness and naivete to talk with produces the most contemptible piece yet written about me"

The hit piece by Ari Feldman was published in the Jewish Forward, the historic home of Jewish Leftism in NY

Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychology professor turned best-selling author and unlikely cult figure in the anti-“political correctness” counterculture on the Internet, has been the subject of much discussion lately—including harsh critiques accusing him of authoritarian tendencies.

But probably none have generated as much controversy and backlash as the Forward piece by Ari Feldman with the incendiary title, “Is Jordan Peterson Fueling Jew Hatred?”

The article, which many have decried as a smear, does not quite answer its own question in the affirmative. It examines Peterson’s commentary on the causes of high Jewish achievement and quotes Peterson himself as saying that he despises anti-Semitism and is seeking to combat it; it also acknowledges his attacks on the “pathology of racial pride” on the far right. But this material is presented in a way that suggests Peterson is, intentionally or not, appealing to anti-Semitic sentiment, with Emory University historian and eminent Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt calling his comments “suspicious.”

One need not be a Peterson enthusiast to think that Lipstadt’s implication is troublingly unfair.

The article links to a seven-and-a-half-minute video clip from one of Peterson’s lectures titled “Why Jews Are So Successful,” in which he argues that the reason Jews are disproportionately represented in many elite fields is that their average intelligence is higher than that of other groups and that the disparity is even greater in the small cluster of the very brainy at the top of the scale. Lipstadt is quoted as saying that she “begin[s] to get leery” when people start asking such questions. She also compares Peterson to Kevin MacDonald, a retired psychology professor at California State University-Long Beach and a major figure on the alt-right, suggesting that both may be using “academic language” to cloak anti-Semitism.

Yet the anti-Semitism of MacDonald, the founder of the white supremacist website The Occidental Observer, is not particularly cloaked. (The site has such topic tags as “Holocaust Industry” and “Jewish aggressiveness.”) MacDonald’s thesis, articulated in such books as “The Culture of Critique,” is that Judaism is a “group evolutionary strategy” aimed at advancing Jewish interests at the expense of others and that part of this strategy for diaspora Jews is to subvert “host” societies—for instance, by questioning traditional social norms, promoting political radicalism, or advocating mass immigration.

Peterson, however, actively rejects such views. Indeed, his discussion of Jewish intelligence is largely a response to MacDonald and his fans. Feldman himself notes that Peterson’s blogpost on the subject links to a critique of MacDonald’s theories.

There are certainly alt-righters besides MacDonald whose interest in Jewish IQ goes hand-in-hand with either overt anti-Semitism or creepy Jew-bashing innuendo (such as blogger Steve Sailer’s comment that America’s “wealthiest, most powerful” minority uses its media influence to “demoralize and divide” others). But Peterson’s detractors have yet to point to anything remotely similar to such rhetoric from him.

Lipstadt is concerned that even to answer questions about “Jewish success” and Jewish intelligence may validate anti-Jewish tropes; elsewhere in the article, Feldman calls this “an old anti-Semitic dog whistle.” Yet such discussions have also appeared in mainstream liberal venues. New York magazine ran a cover story by Jennifer Senior titled “Are Jews Smarter?” in 2005; the following year, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker wrote about the Jewish genetic heritage, including the question of intelligence, in The New Republic. (Both articles acknowledged fears that claims of a Jewish advantage in brainpower can feed insidious notions of Jewish domination and that attributing it to biology can smack of “race science.”)

Moreover, criticizing Peterson for his “willingness to answer questions” is particularly misguided in today’s information environment. For both better and worse, cultural gatekeeping has been drastically weakened by the Internet, and people don’t need to make much of an effort to discover fringe, “beyond-the-pale” opinions including MacDonald-like conspiracy theories about Jewish dominance. To many, ignoring such questions is taken as evidence that there is no good answer. The purpose of Peterson’s discussion of Jewish intelligence is to stress that there is “no conspiracy,” no stealthy Jewish “nepotism” or behind-the-scenes cabal that maintains a hidden grip on power and influence.

It is also worth noting that, in the blogpost and the video, Peterson never ascribes Jewish intelligence to biological causes; the scientific consensus today is that IQ levels are the product of a complicated mix of heredity and sociocultural environment.

Another Peterson critic quoted in the article, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Heidi Beirich, finds fault with Peterson’s claim that almost anyone could have become a Nazi if they lived in Germany under Hitler and that culpability for the Holocaust was widely shared. Yet given that Peterson sees the Holocaust as the ultimate evil, it’s difficult to see how this can be, as Beirich suggests, a form of “signaling” to an alt-right base.

Whether Peterson’s fan base actually includes neo-Nazis or white supremacists is, at best, highly questionable. He has been frequently attacked by these groups; while it is true that the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer recently hailed him as “the Savior of Western Civilization,” that post (a snapshot of which can be found here) is a typical troll post, calling Peterson a “sleeper agent extraordinaire” whose critiques of anti-Semitism are actually “5D chess” covertly advancing a white supremacist agenda.

There are legitimate questions about Peterson’s coziness with certain segments of the alt-right. In January, libertarian blogger Stuart Hayashi, who agrees with Peterson’s critiques of leftist identity politics, posted an open letter to Peterson about his guest appearances on the podcast of alt right guru Stefan Molyneux, who is (as Hayashi demonstrates with numerous examples) a bona fide advocate for white supremacy often presenting a falsely moderate front.

Peterson has not replied to these concerns, though on other occasions he has said that his lectures have helped people on the far right move away from extremism.

If Peterson is joining the podcast of a racist crank in the hope of helping some of his listeners see the light, I think that’s a deeply misguided strategy. But after listening to his comments on (in his words) “the so-called ‘Jewish Question,’” I think it’s clear that he is actively trying to counter the alt-right’s anti-Semitic propaganda, whether or not he’s always going about it the right way.

One may disagree with Peterson about a lot of other things. But on this point, I believe the evidence is in his favor.

SOURCE





Is There Room in Diversity For White People?

It’s tempting to snicker at snowflake culture, with its noisy campus gauntlet of trigger warnings, microaggressions, and in-your-face privilege-checking—but transpiring quietly off-stage at academia’s administrative levels is a far more sinister phenomenon undertaken in the name of one of society’s more theoretically desirable goals: diversity.

Here a disclaimer seems in order. Regardless of political affiliation, fair-minded observers will concede that educational facilities for minorities have remained decidedly separate, and in no way equal, in the several generations since 1954’s Brown v. Board of Education. Such inequities naturally show up in college enrollment and performance: minority students who are products of inferior grade-school systems find it harder to negotiate the realm of higher education, in terms of both gaining entry and keeping up once they’re there. Accordingly, colleges have implemented various programs and protocols designed to boost campus diversity and help at-risk students feel more at home.

Now, reasonable people can differ about whether academia, as the ancestral home of white guilt, has been overzealous at micromanaging outcomes. Significant race-based preferences remain widespread, and lawsuits continue to be filed by white and Asian students who feel they bore the brunt of academia’s attempt to realize its vision of a utopian society in which minorities are represented at demographically correct levels. Eyebrows also raise at the way in which black students may be acculturated upon their arrival: ironically, some colleges “ghetto-ize” incoming minorities by creating for them separate advising systems, housing, academic tracks, and even graduation ceremonies. Still, it’s hard to dispute the wholesomeness of the mindset from which such tokens of affirmative action spring.

And yet wholesome is not the word that comes to mind when one assesses the newest wrinkle in academia’s attempt to balance the scales: an all-out, unapologetic assault on ‘whiteness’ itself. Today’s college administrators increasingly frame diversity and inclusion as lessons that must be learned by whites alone—and they’re lessons that too often unfold as interventions that force whites to regard themselves less as full partners in diversity than an obstacle to be overcome so that other constituencies might thrive. (This flows from another favored academic trope, the concept of the zero-sum society, wherein white success necessarily comes at the expense of non-white failure.) Colleges require the injection of units—if not whole introductory courses—on diversity in major subject areas “from physics to forestry,” as the Atlantic put it, and syllabi confirm the prevailing view of whiteness as something of an anachronistic disease that, like cholera, has no place in modern life.

A tale of two coasts: New York’s Hunter College promotes coursework for poli-sci majors in “the abolition of whiteness.” Stanford examines “abolishing whiteness as a cultural identity.” Elsewhere, to cite just a few examples, classes at Grinnell and UW-Madison confront “the problem of whiteness.” New Mexico’s St. John’s College takes on the “depravity” of whiteness. Moreover, academic theorists crusade to purge whiteness from STEM courses, because critical thinking and research are regarded as tools of “white hegemony.” Engineering students at Purdue must contend with the school’s indictment of “racist and colonialist projects in science,” while a UC-Irvine professor condemns even “technical prowess” as a white male construct. A Linfield college Gender Studies professor even condemns her peers for putting “stellar” colleagues in leadership roles, because stellar individuals, she notes, tend to be white and thus have benefited unfairly from “a logic of meritocracy that is built on this racist assumption that everyone has had the same access and opportunities.” UCLA pays students a stipend to act as professional social justice activists who will diagnose, expose, and combat “whiteness” and “the patriarchy” in all campus manifestations.

Most of these initiatives surfaced within the past few semesters, so a Geiger reading on fallout is premature, but the message and predictable effects are worrisome. Aside from simple issues of fairness, academe’s crusade is almost guaranteed to backfire. Today’s white college students have little to do with the active bigotry of the past; treating them as if they arrive on campus with some endemic moral deficit is almost certain to foment a stronger sense of racial identity among students who deem the attacks unwarranted. (77 percent of today’s freshmen describe themselves as somewhere between liberal and middle-of-the-road.) No matter how erudite the packaging, labeling a race “depraved” is the textbook definition of bigotry (if not, some might argue, an institutionally sanctioned hate crime).

Consider, too, the implications for black self-reliance. It seems unhelpful to suggest to blacks that resolving the gap in minority performance remains a problem that somehow falls to whites; this undercutting of black agency subliminally echoes the very paternalism that colleges decry. For that matter, what is the message to non-whites of identifying such concepts as excellence, prowess, and stellar performance with whiteness?

On the meta level, these campaigns reinforce the legitimacy of racist thinking itself: if it is permissible to link whiteness and depravity, why is it not permissible to link blackness and criminality? This is the antithesis of the mindset that true diversity should foster. All students should be encouraged to conceive themselves as individuals united by some overarching lingua franca.

Most egregiously, in writing such positions into its canon, academia abdicates its commitment to both critical thinking and political neutrality. The philosophical question of whether orchestrated diversity is preferable to pure meritocracy remains a topic of heated disagreement between liberals and conservatives; for colleges to summarily “settle the matter” internally forecloses debate on numerous corollary issues and abrogates the rights of those who may differ for reasons that have nothing to do with racism. (Foolhardy indeed is the professor who takes a position against the academic concept of diversity. I may be foolhardy in merely making that point.)

Similarly, to teach that black failure is a function of white malfeasance—the key underpinning of the “white toxicity” narrative—is to endorse a foundational talking point in radical leftist demagogy. Likewise, the contention that “mass incarceration” is a stealthy way for white America to disenfranchise blacks and maintain its loathsome “hegemony.” Such beliefs have no place as stipulated truths in higher education. They are political platforms.

SOURCE






Left and right wing Anti-Semitism/Zionism

The ancient hatred of Jews is back. Anti-Semitism continues to rise in America, as it has throughout the Western world, throughout Europe, and elsewhere around the world. It has been growing for several decades.

This infectious disease with no known cure, (according to Ruth Wisse, Professor Emeritus of Yiddish literature and comparative literature at Harvard University and a Senior Fellow of the Tikvah Fund, and author of “Jews and Power”) has once more morphed, this time into two divergent forms: the old religious/racial form used by the Christian West for centuries, which has never entirely receded, and is a powerful hatred; and the latest form contains religious hostility but is actually politically based with emphasis on the State of Israel, its closest allies, and Jewish groups that advocate on behalf of the State of Israel.

The feminist movement in America, and the postmodern Marxists or progressive leftists in particular, have co-opted this ancient hatred and joined it with Arab and Muslim world ideology, using Zionism (the national liberation movement of the Jewish people) as the contemporary form of Jew-hatred, demonizing, boycotting, and propagandizing about the State of Israel. These forms of Jew-hatred, whether far-right Nazi-based Jew hatred, religious hatred, or leftist/Islamist Israel bashing are dangerous.

The hostility currently plaguing the American polity and the Jewish community have given credence to a view that anti-Semitism is a singular problem that “exists on the other side of the aisle.” This results in cognitive dissonance and is shortsighted.

All forms of this deadly disease—far-right Nazi-based, religious-based and leftist anti-Israel-based—are responsible for deadly attacks against Jews worldwide, having escalated during the past 25 years.

In 1967, when the Arabs were roundly defeated by Israel in the “Six Day War,” the Khartoum Resolution was passed. It consisted of three NO’s: no peace, no recognition, no negotiations, as a means of heightening the historic and deep hatred exhibited against Jews and Israel. The present Islamist terrorists openly call for the annihilation of the state of Israel and have, successfully, propagandized the UN (which no longer is a “peacekeeping” agency), and infiltrated the universities.

Right-wing anti-Semitism is mainly associated with Nazi sympathizers. Conservatives who often are in actual opposition to the liberal social agenda of Jewish advocacy groups, e.g., AIPAC, which includes minority rights, church-state separation, and multiculturalism/pluralism in its platform are being accused of anti-Semitism. 

The postmodern Marxists spread anti-Semitism through BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), Gender and Ethnic Studies, and Middle Eastern Studies (all identified through proven research by AMCHA Initiative), and echoed by Islam scholar Daniel Pipes, who says there no longer exists any scholarship in Middle Eastern Studies, strictly ideology only.

Israel gets singled out for boycotts, threats and intimidation, and hatred of the “other,” which happens when society doesn’t leave room for difference.

The left-right divide is not new to Jewish communal politics. In fact, at a Tikvah conference in N.Y. in December 2017, Professor Ruth Wisse challenged Jews to examine why they continue to be part of a destructive and murderous movement (communist/socialist) in whose name tens of millions of people have been oppressed and murdered (under Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot to name just a few). Now they must add an examination of anti-Israel hatred to the mix.

The “progressive” left continues to think that social justice is vital, making coalitions with other minority groups, including Muslims. Social justice has been conflated with Judaism (Tikkun Olam). The actual long-term gains from these coalitions appear to be negligible. A case in point is Black Lives Matter (BLM), a group linked to the left and BDS, which has taken up the pro-Palestinian cause while not helping its own black community. It is clear that this group, BLM, has lost all moral authority.

The old anti-Semitism is thriving in Europe, in Greece through the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, the anti-Semitic Jobbik Party in Hungary, and worldwide intolerance and violence perpetrated by a murderous Islamic fundamentalism that has turned 7th-century barbarism into a new phenomenon of terrorism.

The left has accepted the outright lies told by the Islamists as a means of undermining political opponents. This is the old tactic of scapegoating/blaming the Jews/Israel for the ills of the world, again failing to take responsibility for their own behavior.

The postmodern Marxists have successfully inverted the meaning of anti-Semitism. It is no longer hatred of Jews. It is acceptable (normative) to attack pro-Israel Jews for their Jewish identity (part of their program of identity politics and intersectionality.)

Linda Sarsour, women’s movement activist and representative of the terrorist organization Hamas in America, recently redefined anti-Semitism at the New School in N.Y.  She reformulated the age-old hatred of Jews so that progressive left activists could continue to be anti-Zionist or anti-Israel.

Hating Jews is not the definition of anti-Semitism under this new language formulation.

Criticizing progressive left activists for being anti-Israel is the new definition of anti-Semitism. Thus, this is a corruption of language and evidence of compelled speech, the very kind that Dr. Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto refused to use in Canada.

This redefinition by a Muslim who represents a terrorist organization in America is a ploy and a shield to protect its own anti-Israel activities. It is benefiting the leftists to the detriment of the Jews and of Israel.

The American Jewish community needs to have the necessary discussion about its safety and security. The time to educate is now so that the community has the tools to take collective action on its behalf.

SOURCE





Mayday! Britain’s heroic lifeboat volunteers are drowning in a sea of political correctness imposed by highly-paid pen pushers... with one rescuer sacked after 34 years taking an unauthorised passenger aboard

When Andy Hibbs isn’t hauling lobster pots aboard his fishing boat Matauri Bay, he devotes himself to helping those who, as the hymn goes, find themselves in peril on the sea.

The son of a lifeboatman, he joined the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) at the age of 21 and has spent his adult life serving at its station in his hometown St Helier, the capital of Jersey.

For doing this skilled, time-consuming, and often dangerous job, the 45-year-old father of one hasn’t earned a penny (like almost all RNLI crew members, he’s an unpaid volunteer). But it offers other rewards.

His crew have saved countless lives, becoming pillars of their seafaring community.

One morning in 1995, to cite perhaps their greatest triumph, Hibbs was part of a team which helped a catamaran carrying 300 passengers that had hit rocks off the coast of Jersey, and was sinking.

With disregard for their safety, they got alongside the vessel, which was listing dangerously, and plucked off men, women and children.

‘It was a real eye-opener,’ he recalls. ‘It brought home how serious the job was, and the responsibility in our hands.’

More recently, Hibbs was coxswain (the effective captain of a lifeboat) when his 25-strong crew featured in an ITV News item about the ‘brilliant’ and ‘capable’ RNLI teams in the Channel Islands.

Yet this summer, one aspect of their job will be different.

When they motor out of St Helier harbour to save lives, they won’t fly the RNLI flag. They are no longer associated with the famous charity.

It follows an extraordinarily bitter row, initially centring on an alleged breach of a health and safety procedure, which has placed the island’s lifeboatmen in conflict with the wealthy maritime charity’s headquarters in Poole.

The dispute — which led to allegations of bullying, intimidation and mendacity on both sides — rumbled on for more than a year. It has seen public demonstrations and rumours of corruption and cover-ups.

Matters culminated before Christmas with the entire St Helier lifeboat crew resigning.

Hibbs and his team have relaunched as an independent operation, the Jersey Lifeboat Association, and will soon take delivery of their first vessel.

‘I’m sad that it has come to this, but the RNLI caused this mess,’ Hibbs says. ‘They have been unpleasant and confrontational, and treated us volunteers with contempt.’

We’ll explore this ugly business (in which no side seems blameless) later.

But first, an important point: the lifeboatmen of Jersey are not alone.

Two other crews are embroiled in public disputes with RNLI leadership.

One, in Whitby, North Yorkshire, revolves around jokey Christmas gifts exchanged by lifeboatmen, including a mug with a picture of a naked woman on it and one of the crew’s faces superimposed on to the model’s head. A female superior found the mugs in a cupboard and the pair were sacked.

The offending items were either saucy or obscene, depending on your point of view. The RNLI insists they were ‘pornographic’.

Either way, an investigation talked of ‘safeguarding’ issues and found the images on the mugs ‘could have been seen by visiting schoolchildren’.

It also uncovered ‘conduct issues’ related to the crew’s social media use, which compromised the station’s status as a ‘safe and inclusive environment’.

In protest at the men’s sacking, four crew members resigned. Some 11,000 people have signed a petition demanding their reinstatement.

Down the coast in Scarborough, the Mail this week revealed that RNLI coxswain Tom Clark has been sacked, after 34 years of service, for allegedly breaking health and safety guidelines by going on a sea exercise with unauthorised passengers on his lifeboat.

He accused the RNLI of ‘bullying and intimidation’, saying that volunteer lifeboatmen were being ‘bombarded’ with ‘new rules, forms, acronyms and health and safety’.

A petition to reinstate him has 5,000 signatures.

Drowning sailors are, of course, unlikely to care whether their rescuer owns an inappropriate item of crockery, or once set sail with unauthorised passengers.

Yet the RNLI insists its actions are warranted, arguing that it’s duty-bound to protect staff from bullying and harassment, and must enforce its safety protocols.

This clash, between what one might call traditional lifeboat culture and the forces of political correctness, turns out to be the source of heated conflict in RNLI stations nationwide.

Before Christmas, Coxswain Tommy Yule, of the Scottish fishing port of Arbroath, was sacked after an incident at a party where visiting Dutch lifeboatmen were entertained.

Reports of what happened vary. But it appears to have involved a prank known as a ‘three-man lift’, in which a crew member exposed his backside. Yule was seemingly fired after failing to intervene.

Fellow crewman Jamie Robertson also went. A third man, Alan Russell, who served the RNLI for two decades, quit in protest, saying it was just ‘a practical joke’.

As a result of their departure, Arbroath went without a lifeboat for months. Meanwhile, in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, two senior helmsmen lost their jobs after allegedly taking incorrectly trained staff on a rescue.

In Moelfre, on Anglesey, a cancer-stricken Coxswain was sacked (and an ally resigned) in 2016 after a mysterious ‘personnel issue’. In New Brighton, Merseyside, 12 crew members were sacked that same year after falling out with RNLI management over the sacking of a former colleague.

Thanks to the latter rebellion, the station had a restricted service, or was ‘off watch’ on more than 70 occasions over the next 12 months.

To have mass resignations at one lifeboat station might be considered unfortunate, but to suffer at least seven such cases in a period of around 18 months is somewhat more worrying.

One possible explanation to the situation is, ironically, that the RNLI has become too popular for its own good — at least when it comes to fundraising.

The charity has enjoyed near-universal support since its foundation in 1824. In addition to substantial public donations, sailing enthusiasts often leave the organisation a large bequest when they die.

Its most recent published accounts, for 2016, show income of £191 million, including £130 million from legacies — more than the £177 million it takes to run its 238 stations.

Overall assets (including property and boats) have grown to £712 million, of which £271 million is now held in ‘investments’.

In the past, the charity’s cash pile has spawned controversy. In 2001, a group of campaigning accountants called ‘Ethical Audit’ criticised it for having £200 million tucked away, arguing that many donors would not give if they knew the scale of its wealth.

For lifeboat crews, the biggest recent change (and a key factor in squabbles) has been a ‘restructuring’ of middle management last year by a senior executive called Leesa Harwood, formerly of Save The Children, who was hired as the RNLI’s ‘community lifesaving and fundraising director’ on a salary of about £95,000

For lifeboat crews, the biggest recent change (and a key factor in squabbles) has been a ‘restructuring’ of middle management last year by a senior executive called Leesa Harwood, formerly of Save The Children, who was hired as the RNLI’s ‘community lifesaving and fundraising director’ on a salary of about £95,000

The Charity Commission agreed that the figures were ‘on the high side’ and asked the RNLI to reduce them. So the charity came up with a way to dispose of cash: changing its historic remit from rescuing people at sea and on inland waterways to a role including ‘drowning prevention’.

The Times reported that the charity was ‘awash with so much money that it has decided to introduce Baywatch-style beach lifeguards, inland waterway patrols and a fleet of hovercraft’.

Seventeen years later, the RNLI employs 523 lifeguards in Britain. It has invested in a £25 million HQ at Poole with a roof in the shape of a wave and windows that resemble portholes — which was opened by the Queen in 2004.

Crucially, RNLI’s payroll has risen dramatically in other areas, too. In 1999, it had 750 employees, but within five years it had 1,000. By 2016 there were 2,366, with 35 senior executives earning more than £60,000, overseen by chief executive Paul Boissier, on a total package of £162,705.

Its French equivalent employs just 75 and 1,200 managerial roles are filled by volunteers.

Speak to disgruntled lifeboatmen and supporters, large numbers of whom contacted Mail columnist Richard Littlejohn after he highlighted the Whitby scandal last week, and you’ll hear a simple answer: many head office staff have become pointless jobsworths.

‘Like many big charities, the RNLI has become an empire builder’s dream,’ is how one fundraiser put it.

‘There are whole departments making up ridiculous health and safety protocols or human resources codes of conduct. It drives crews up the wall.’

They added that many are ‘third-sector careerists with no knowledge of the sea, or what makes lifeboats tick, who try to import Left-wing values.

‘Lifeboatmen, who are often working-class lads, won’t buy it.’

Evidence of this apparent trend — typical of the way the Left has taken hold of so many public bodies — can perhaps be seen in the RNLI’s annual report.

Though it used to limit its operations to the UK and Ireland, the RNLI now boasts of running ‘drowning prevention programmes’ in Tanzania, Zanzibar, Bangladesh, Ghana and Lesbos. (The latter refers to helping migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean in unseaworthy boats.) It talks of trying to ‘influence policy makers and partners’ and lobbying the UN to reduce deaths at sea.

It has a ‘new national team of health, safety and environment advisers’ winning ‘health and safety’ awards, speaks of creating a ‘diversity leadership group’ among staff and supporting the ‘International Day Against Homophobia.’

Posts currently advertised include a ‘safeguarding officer’ earning up to £41,926 — a job that generally involves responsibility for ‘health, safety and wellbeing’.

For lifeboat crews, the biggest recent change (and a key factor in squabbles) has been a ‘restructuring’ of middle management last year by a senior executive called Leesa Harwood, formerly of Save The Children, who was hired as the RNLI’s ‘community lifesaving and fundraising director’ on a salary of about £95,000.

The exercise created 42 ‘area lifesaving managers’ to supervise half a dozen lifeboat stations each.

As a result, there have been dramatic changes in the relationship between crews and RNLI HQ.

In the past, ‘regional managers’ responsible for dozens of stations would visit every six months. Under the new regime, local volunteers are inspected monthly or even weekly. That often causes friction.

According to Tom Clark, who was sacked after 34 years of service: ‘Too many area managers, including the one who got rid of me, are young graduates who have never been to sea, and have no idea of the skill and effort required to be a lifeboatman. They rely on forms and procedures to make up for their lack of experience.’ As a result, volunteers such as Clark — nominated for an MBE by the RNLI in 2016 — complain of disciplinary investigations over breaches of protocol which, they say, would in previous years have been dealt with informally, if at all.

‘We are having our hands held by politically correct busybodies,’ is how one puts it.

In Clark’s case, one element that led to his sacking were claims that he swore at a colleague — an apparent breach of the RNLI’s code of conduct (‘Yes, I swore. It’s a rufty-tufty place at sea and people do swear,’ he admits). Other lifeboatmen say this new culture of micro-management means basic operations are preceded by risk assessments and team briefings.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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14  May, 2018

Child psychologist slams woman's claim parents need to ask babies for consent before changing their diaper

Words fail me

A child psychologist has hit out at claims made by a 'sexuality expert' that parents should begin asking children for consent before changing their nappies to foster a 'culture of consent'.

Child psychologist Andrew Fuller told The Daily Telegraph that changing nappies was 'not abusive', but simply a regular part of parenting.

'Families work best when kids trust their parents to do things in their best interest, it's not about consent it's about trust,' he said.

His comments came after Body Safety Australia chief Deanne Carson called for parents to not change nappies without asking for their child's consent first.

My Fuller said the advice was 'impractical' and could not be applied to daily parenting life in a viable way.

'If we don't get consent to change their nappy, do we just allow them to develop a rash or sit there feeling uncomfortable?' he said.

Child behaviour expert Nathalie Brown also spoke with The Daily Telegraph and said babies don't understand the whole concept let alone being able to give consent.

'Babies don’t know what permission is and so trying to teach such a young child about consent in this situation is wrong,' she said.

'If parents didn’t change their child’s nappy every time they cried or were upset then we’d have a country full of kids with soiled nappies.

The ABC also came under fire for airing the segment in which Miss Carson made the comments.

Sky News commentator Rowan Dean slammed the segment, which was aired on Tuesday, labelling it as 'lefty lunacy'.

In the video, Deanne Carson talks about how to establish a 'culture of consent' in homes, starting at birth.

Ms Carson provided an example of how parents can begin to implement the culture when changing nappies.  

She said: '"I'm going to change your nappy now, is that okay?" Of course the baby is not going to respond "yes mum, that's awesome. I'd love to have my nappy changed.

'But if you leave a space, and wait for body language and wait to make eye contact, then you're letting that child know that their response matters.'

Mr Dean appeared to be lost for words after viewing the segment, saying: 'Consent for changing nappies. I'm not sure that would - I think that might get a bit - anyway, I won't go there.'

According to her Twitter platform, Ms Carson is a 'sexuality educator, speaker and author' at Body Safety Australia.

The official website states the social enterprise works to protect children from sexual abuse with whole community solutions.

'We work to ensure that communities work together to create a safer world (online and offline).

'In empowering children with their rights' while educating families and professionals, the burden of responsibility is placed squarely on adults to protect children.'

In a statement provided to Daily Mail Australia, Ms Carson said there are restrictions on when it is appropriate to care for and protect children.

'One in twelve girls are sexually abused before the age of six. Most of those by a family member or someone trusted by the family, she said.

'If the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has taught us anything, it's that it's never too early to tell children that we care for them, respect them and will protect them.'

Social media users on Twitter and Facebook have since questioned Ms Carson's comments made on Tuesday, with some passionately disagreeing with her stance.

Kirralie Smith, who ran as a Senate candidate with the right-wing Australian Liberty Alliance in 2016 and joined Liberal defector Cory Bernardi's Australian Conservatives party last year, was among those who were outraged.  She wrote on Facebook: 'This goes way beyond lunacy! This is neglect and child abuse!!!!

'Many children never want you to change their nappy. Asking them for consent is a serious indication of severe mental problems. Nappies must be changed to prevent serious skin damage and pain for the child. 'What is worse is the fact the ABC actually spent our tax dollars on this moronic opinion.'   

Another dismayed commentator took to social media to citing: 'The left winged in Australia are seriously impaired to be imposing this BS FFS'. 

On Thursday morning, Ms Carson posted a note to her Facebook page 'Deanne Carson: relationship and sexuality education' explaining further context behind her statements.

Her words included: 'Sadly, some people have chosen to ridicule me (oh no! Pink hair! Must be a lesbian!) and the notion of giving infants bodily autonomy (poo in nappies har har amiright?!)

'Troll me all you want, add to your blog inches, but remember that when you do, you are negating the voices of these brave survivors of sexual abuse.'

SOURCE






Jewish genius abounds but why? The film Australia may never air

It’s the weekend, so here’s a little quiz: what do the following items — the Barbie doll, the condom, the biro, the hydrogen bomb and psycho­­analysis — have in ­common?

Jews.

They were all invented by Jews, as was the cure for polio and the treatment for syphilis, and if that doesn’t have you sitting back in gratitude, how about we give a ­little thanks for Bob Dylan and ­Leonard Cohen?

Maybe not also to Karl Marx — what a seriously bad set of ideas he had — but what about Albert Einstein, Marc Chagall, Marcel Proust and Viktor Frankl? They are Jews and, according to a new and somewhat controversial documentary, so too are 22 per cent of Nobel prize winners, 40 per cent of chess grandmasters, and a staggering 53 per cent of the recipients of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.

Statistically, it’s ridiculous: Jews comprise just 0.2 per cent of the population.

How do they do it? To put it another way: Why the Jews?

That’s the name of the new documentary, produced not here of course, because who’d have the guts, but by a Canadian filmmaker, John Curtin, whose distributor is already worried about whether Australians will ever get to see it because, as everyone surely knows, debates about race, they’re tricky in this country.

They’re tricky everywhere. You can’t say this and you can’t say that, when really you should be allowed to say anything.

Curtin, whose previous documentaries include one about Muslim converts in the US prison system and at least three about Britain’s royal family, had a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. ­Judaism follows matrilineal descent, meaning Curtin is not Jewish, but because his father was a Holocaust survivor, he’s always been curious about Jewish achievement, historically and more recently in Israel, where Jews are applying for patents at the rate of 300 per citizen, and where Jewish inventors can lay claim to such gems as the Intel processor and the cherry tomato.

It’s loaded language, but what are they, the Chosen People? Some kind of master race?

See what I mean? You just can’t say things like that.

Curtin says Jewish genius “remains a giant elephant in the room that everyone kind of notices, but no one really wants to talk about it”. He was wary, in making his documentary, of feeding stereotypes — the “crafty” or “clever” Jew, for example — but as Jews know better than anyone, fear is no good reason not to do something.

“I think Jews talk (about it) between themselves, but they don’t really talk to other people about it. That made me curious,” Curtin says via Facebook Messenger (creator: Mark Zuckerberg).

“I realised it was a touchy subject for many of them, but I don’t think anyone who watches the film will feel anxiety about it. My brother-in-law — who is Jewish, from Toronto — he was sceptical, worried about it, but when he watched it, he was touched.”

Curtin concedes that “getting the budget together (for a documentary) is always a challenge” but a lot of broadcasters were particularly leery about this project, because “it’s a brave idea, I guess”. But he got it done, in two formats: the TV version, called What’s With the Jews?, premiered on Canada’s documentary channel in March, and the theatre version, Why the Jews?, premiered in New York in April.

So, what does explain Jewish accomplishment?

“Almost everyone I spoke to mentioned the cultural aspects of Judaism,” says Curtin, “but Jewish accomplishment is so ridiculously disproportionate, it can’t be explained by culture alone. We have to talk about elevated IQ. You can’t have 11,000 per cent of over-representation in Nobel prizes without some elevated IQ.

“But it’s a complex phenomenon: Jews as a group have elevated IQ but how did they get it?”

German-born psychologist Ruth Westheimer tells Curtin in the film that the Jewish religion places heavy emphasis on reading and learning. Also, having been orphaned at age 10 — Westheimer’s family died in the concentration camps — she grew up feeling “she had an obligation to make something out of myself”.

In an interview before his death, the former Israeli prime minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres seems to agree, saying: “Jews have had more history than geography.” Education and skill could not be taken from them as they got shoved around the globe. Historically, Jews have struggled to hold on to property, and therefore didn’t go into agriculture as much as into, say, medicine, which is where the Nobel prizes are.

So, when will we in Australia get to see it?

The film’s distributor, Jan Rofekamp, tells Inquirer that he hadn’t yet found a local host, adding: “Knowing the ABC and SBS very well, I doubt they will have the guts to buy this film.”

To be fair, he may well be jumping at shadows. SBS spokeswoman Katie Morgan says: “It hasn’t been offered to SBS. No one has seen it, so it is hard to speculate as to whether it’s something we would be interested in.” (The ABC said only: “No comment.”)

Curtin is more optimistic, saying: “I don’t know why Jan is so pessimistic. Film Festivals can be a bit conservative, but other films I’ve made have sold in Australia, so hopefully we’ll get a deal.”

He’s studying audience reaction, and says most Jews come away from the film feeling a little pleased with “the family group they’re from, which is how I think of the Jewish people, not as a race, but as a family”.

He’s also noticed that many don’t want to be seen to be boasting because, as the US lawyer Alan Dershowitz — you may know him from the OJ Simpson trial — puts it in the film: “Jewish accomplishment is the other side of the coin of why so many people have historically hated the Jews.”

That’s why it’s best to keep a sweet, dry Jewish sense of humour about it: Curtin also includes a clip from Fiddler on the Roof, in which the protagonist, Tevye, makes this plea: “Dear G-d, I know, I know, we are Your chosen people, but once in a while, couldn’t You choose someone else?”

SOURCE







Michelle Obama Goes Low: Slams The Way Female Trump Voters ‘Think'

Who cares what that dumb old bovine thinks?

On Saturday, Michelle Obama gave a speech at the United State of Women Summit in Los Angeles. The divisive speech continued to divide women based on their political views. Michelle shamed female Trump supporters for not voting for the “most qualified” candidate because she was a female.

“In light of this last election, I’m concerned about us as women and how we think. What is going on in our heads where we let that happen, you know?”

“When the most qualified person running was a woman, and look what we did instead, I mean that says something about where we are,” she stated. “That’s what we have to explore, because if we as women are still suspicious of one another, if we still have this crazy, crazy bar for each other that we don’t have for men … if we’re not comfortable with the notion that a woman could be our president compared to … what, then we have to have those conversations with ourselves as women.”

The Daily Caller savagely points out:

It is, of course, entirely possible that women are capable of independent thought, and are not influenced by the general “sexism” of their Patriarchal community, and in comparing Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump decided that they would rather vote for Donald Trump based on any number of factors including, but not limited to, that he was not Hillary Clinton.

It’s also deeply ironic that Obama, at a conference meant to “unite” women, used her speech to criticize other women rather than making even a vain attempt at finding common ground. Feminism!

Maybe Michelle is right. Hillary was the most qualified candidate. The most qualified because she has the most experience controlling the swamp of Washington D.C. The most qualified because she was connected to every media outlet and pundit. Not to mention, Hillary Clinton rigged the DNC and had the entire DOJ weaponized.

Just weeks ago, Hillary Clinton insulted women for being coerced by their husbands, bosses, and sons to vote for Donald Trump.

The Democrats just can’t get away from insulting women and blaming them for Hillary’s loss.

So much for the Democratic Party fighting for women.

 SOURCE





Australian governent's plan to dock welfare for debtors savaged by advocates

Getting money you are not entitled to seems to be OK with the Left

The Coalition’s plan to dock people’s welfare if they repeatedly fail to pay fines has been denounced as a “brutal” measure that will drive those on the lowest incomes into homelessness.

Tuesday’s federal budget delivered a string of hits for welfare recipients, as the Coalition continued its push to glean savings from its social security spending.

There was no increase to the poverty-level Newstart payment, despite the pleas of community groups, and the already overstretched Department of Human Services was targeted with 1,200 job cuts.

The Coalition’s controversial debt recovery program has been extended, and new migrants will have to wait four years, instead of the current two, before accessing Newstart.

Advocates say the most punitive measure is a plan to dock the welfare of people who are repeatedly unable to pay fines. The commonwealth would be able to make compulsory deductions from the welfare of “serial fine defaulters who have outstanding state and territory court-imposed fines”. The government would also be able to suspend or cancel welfare for anyone with an outstanding arrest warrant for a serious criminal offence.

The National Social Security Rights Network has warned the measure will compound the plight of Australia’s most disadvantaged. The network’s executive director, Leanne Ho, said it risked pushing welfare recipients into homelessness or, in some cases, prison.

It also flew in the face of programs designed to ensure the inability to pay a fine didn’t snowball into more serious problems for the lowest paid.

“The same kind of people who generally end up with an amount of fines they just can’t deal with are going to end up homeless or, in a lot of these cases, possibly in prison,” Ho told Guardian Australia.

“It’s probably one of the most urgent measures we want to discuss with the department. The reality of people’s lives when they’re in that position is that things snowball out of control, one fine leads to another, and the capacity for people to deal with those [diminishes].”

The chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, Cassandra Goldie, described the measure as “particularly brutal”.  “People on low incomes are just going to be sent into homelessness,” said Goldie.

“It’s completely out of touch with the reality of people on very low incomes and the capacity for people to pay these kind of fines and debt.” Goldie said anyone who believed last night’s budget was “victimless” was clearly out of touch. “There are clear victims from this budget. It is not a budget for people on a low income, and it certainly doesn’t guarantee essential services,” Goldie said.

It is unclear how much the government is looking to save through the fine recovery measure. It requires negotiation with the states and territories before it can be implemented.

SOURCE 

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

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

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

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13 May, 2018

An interview with a counseller who got fired for failing to toe the feminist line



Rob Tiller was fired from Relationships Australia WA for posting Bettina Arndt's domestic violence article on Facebook.

Rob Tiller is an experienced, well-respected counsellor who worked for this government-funded counselling organisation for the past eight years. He was respected by his colleagues and much in demand as the only male counsellor working in Perth, running workshops in addition to seeing his clients.

He was fired for posting on his personal Facebook page an article: "Always Beating Up on Men", published in Weekend Australian and reproduced here (Scroll down), which gave the latest official statistics and research on domestic violence, providing evidence that most family violence is two-way, involving women as well as men. RAWA promotes a “feminist framework” which denies women’s role in family violence.

Bettina says: "We need a huge email campaign to protest RAWA’s action. You will see on my website I have put together full details of what has happened, with all the relevant links, the addresses of the Relationship Australia Board members and other key people for you to write to plus a draft protest letter.

I’m hoping we can use this to show there are lots of people who really care about the undue influence of extreme feminist views in this country. I’ve spent the whole week organising media coverage of The Dismissal, only to discover Relationships Australia has been busy trying to stop newspapers and radio programmes from giving it any coverage. They have sadly succeeded in getting some of my media stories cancelled – if you have good contacts at the West Australian please politely encourage them to cover the story next week. 

Rob has taken RAWA to the Fair Work Commission claiming unfair dismissal. A crowd-funder is Here to help Rob with his legal fees and costs of establishing full-time private counselling and workshops.






Hundreds of women to quit the British Labour Party over transgender candidate row

New rule allows all transgender Labour candidates to be included in women-only shortlists

More than 300 female Labour Party members are due to quit today over a decision to include transgender candidates on all-women shortlists even if they have not legally changed gender.

Under the recent change to shortlist rules - which are used to select candidates, from parliamentary elections down to local government - Labour will “guarantee candidates the right to self-identify as female without the need for a medical test or other certification showing that they [have] biologically changed sex”, reports the Daily Mail.

A draft resignation letter penned by Labour activist group Mayday4Women warns that its supporters “cannot continue to be in a party that takes women for granted”.

The letter, sent to The Times, continues: “We are dismayed at the Labour Party’s support for sex as a self-identified characteristic for all-women shortlists.

“We now face a situation in which any man can simply claim to be a woman and be included on all-women shortlists.

“Sex is not a self-defined characteristic and it is disingenuous for Labour to pretend that it is. Self-identity - ‘I am what I say I am’ - reeks of male authority and male supremacy.

“In contrast, women are rarely believed about the sexual violence we face or about harassment on the streets and domestic violence in the home. It is for that reason that we - alongside 300 other women - are resigning from the Labour Party today.”

A party spokesperson responded: “All women shortlists are and always have been open to all women, which of course includes trans women. The Labour Party recognises the vital importance of self-definition for the trans community. The Labour Party continues to have an inclusive definition of women.”

Leigh Drennan, a councillor and vice-chair of Young Labour, believes much of the debate relates to “casual transphobia”.

Speaking to The Observer, he said: “I think that the overwhelming majority of the Labour Party certainly support the inclusion of trans women on all-women shortlists. In 40 years’ time people will look back and view campaigns for the exclusion of trans women as bizarre.”

SOURCE






Labour Party anti-Semitism crisis: Holocaust survivor blasts Corbyn over row as he receives MBE

A JEWISH holocaust survivor who was today honoured by the Queen has lashed out at Jeremy Corbyn over his handling of the anti-Semitism row which has dogged the Labour party.

Martin Stern, a retired doctor and immunologist, said he had “serious concerns” about recent reports of anti-Semitism. And he accused Mr Corbyn of building his reputation as a humanitarian "on false premises”.

Dr Stern was awarded an MBE at Buckingham Palace this morning for his services to Holocaust education. He arrived in the UK aged 12 in 1950 after both of his parents were killed during the Second World War.

After receiving his award today, the 79-year-old said: "It concerns me very seriously and it is not only Jews who are affected. We need politicians not only of high intellectual calibre but with intellectual courage.

"In politics a lot of trouble comes from people who have got a theory according to which they can run the human race. "They make the facts conform to their theory. A human being needs to be open to new facts.

"I think currently we have a problem with the quality of top politicians, and in the case of one of them he is a kind of a Don Quixote for whom Israel is the windmill that he imagines to be an evil giant."

Asked what he would say to Mr Corbyn if they were to sit down together, Dr Stern said: "The problem with being an ideologue is you're not open to discussion. "There are people far better than me doing that.

“It seems to me that my task is to talk to people whose minds have not been frozen into rigidity yet and to teach them and question and think and not necessarily hold my view but to keep searching for facts, keep looking at the possibility that I might be wrong or they themselves may be wrong.

"As human beings we are not infallible and humility and self-questioning needs to be part of any healthy human being and even more so of any politician."

Dr Stern’s comments come after Labour candidates fighting for control of Barnet council admitted the anti-Semitism row had played a part in their failure to win a majority.

The party did win more council seats than the Tories across the country, but yesterday’s election saw Labour gain just one council despite hopes of a much bigger win.

Labour’s Barnet leader Barry Rawlings today admitted the anti-Semitism row had “made a difference”, particularly given the area’s high Jewish population.

He said: “I must say that in some wards where there is a large Jewish community, it has made a difference, I'm not sure yet how much.  Members of the Jewish community have protested against Labour's perceived anti-Semitism

SOURCE






Killing Jews - a European sport to this day

by Jennifer Oriel

It was a normal flight home from Canberra. Passengers fidgeted with seatbelts, put on headphones in a pre-emptive strike against chatty strangers and jostled for armrest territory in cattle class. There was nothing ­remarkable as cabin crew helped with overhead lockers and a proud, elderly man declined ­assistance from a female attendant. As he lifted the baggage overhead, wobbling slightly from the strain, his coat sleeve slipped away. There, on his arm, was a row of numbers; the indelible tattoo of a Holocaust survivor.

The Holocaust is a curiosity shop, a fun event for collectors of the weird and wacky. At a recent fair held in Melbourne, replica canisters of Zyklon B were sold. What a great way to prop up your makeshift bar in the pool room!

We forget the Holocaust at our collective peril.

The final solution came into effect with the first mass gassings of Jews. The word "final" was defined by Nazi Reinhard Heydrich as the planned biological destruction of the Jewish race. In Modern Times, historian Paul Johnson traced the operative date for the final solution to April 1942. During the preceding year, Nazi command had experimented with various killing methods. Rudolf Hoess, commandant of Camp A at Auschwitz-Birkenau, had tried shooting but it was too messy. Another tried and failed method was the use of carbon monoxide gas. In her book Eichmann in Jeru-salem, political theorist Hannah Arendt recounted Adolf Eichmann's testimony on preparations for CO chambers at the death camp Treblinka. In Poland, the gas was in mobile execution vans to kill en masse. Eichmann recalled the horrific screaming of Jews huddled in moving vans as the gas killed them slowly.

In late 1941, Hoess discovered a killing method so efficient it put his mind at rest: Zyklon B. The Nazis issued a massive order for gas to the pest control manufacturer Degesch, whose parent company was I.G. Farben. Johnson records that the company's dividends doubled from 1942-1944.

The Nazi genocide of Jews was exceptionally shocking for its ­orderly and premeditated nature. It was a genocide industry. German firms competed for tenders to fit out different parts of the death camps. The killing chambers at Auschwitz were designed to ensure minimum wastage of Zyklon B. There were gas-proof doors with thick glass to prevent Jews breaking through in a last, desperate bid for breath and life. We know how desperate death camp victims were from testimony. The people killed in gas chambers were told they were going to bathe. When the gas started seeping into the room, they screamed and ran for the doors. Dead people were found in heaps leaning against them. Where insufficient gas had been used, Jews were transported to the ovens and burned alive.

The Anti-Defamation Commission condemned the sale of the Zyklon B replicas, describing it as perverse and obscene. But think about the possible manufacturing process. Someone had the idea to produce them. Presumably they were designed, manufactured and sold for profit. At each step of the way, someone could have remembered the horror of what they represent. Did no one remember the millions who died? Do we simply forget the children marched from the trains to the gas chambers because they were too tiny or too weak for slave labour?

In the 21st century, laws in civilised countries prevent incitement to harm a person on the basis of ­religious belief or ethnicity. But violent anti-­semitism is on the rise.

The recent attack on a boy wearing a kippah in Germany is significant. He wore the kippah as a social experiment to challenge a Jewish friend's fear of anti-­semitism in Berlin. On the way to the train station, they were allegedly attacked by a man shouting "Jew" in Arabic.

The attack came after a year of increasingly barbarous anti-­semitic acts, including the murders of Jewish women Sarah Halimi and Mireille Knoll. Halimi was tortured by Kobili Traore, who reportedly recited the Koran before throwing her out of a window. Holocaust survivor Mireille Knoll died after being stabbed several times in the throat. The suspects are 28-year-old Yacine Mihoub and 21-year-old Alex Carrimbacus. The Nation reports that Mihoub served time in prison for sexually molesting the young daughter of Knoll's care provider. Both suspects blame each other for the killing and ­Carrimbacus reportedly said that Mihoub yelled "Allah akbar!" ­during it.

In response to the rise of violent anti-semitism, some have urged Jews not to wear the kippah or display other symbols of faith in public. Germany's Jewish ­leader, Josef Schuster, advised people against wearing the kippah for fear of further attacks. In 2016, the head of the Jewish Consistory of Marseilles, Zvi Ammar, also ­advised Jews not to wear ­religious dress after a jihadi struck teacher Benjamin Anselem on the ­yarmulke.

There are many ways to make a people disappear. Genocide is the most violent method, but forcing Jews to hide their faith in the public square is another way to ­effectively disappear them.

In response to the Berlin attack, Germans of all faiths took to the streets wearing a kippah in solidarity with Jews. Collective solidarity is the right response. We should regard as intolerable any call for Jews to retreat from public life, whether it comes from a place of genuine concern or ­resurgent anti-semitism.

In the decades since the end of World War II, an endless array of books and treatises were written on Nazism. We want to regard the Nazi regime as exceptional because it creates a comforting sense of distance between humanity and our capacity for inhumanity. But communists killed 100 million people in the past century. Islamists are leading the charge in 21st century genocide. All we know after a century of genocide is that chasing after the ideal of human perfectibility ­ whether in the image of ideology, the master race or religion ­ leads us into the valley of death.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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11 May, 2018

Don't Call Them 'Boy' Scouts

After 108 years, the BSA's Boy Scouts program is changing its name so as to eliminate "Boy" altogether.

The Boy Scouts of America has long been the target of leftists bent on reshaping American culture. First, it was lawsuits to attack and obstruct the BSA. Then it became a strategy to undermine the Scouts from the inside. The latter has been far more successful, as the Scouts allowed homosexual boys in 2013 and leaders in 2015, and it wasn’t long before the ranks were opened in 2017 to girls and transgender kids.

Now, after 108 years, the BSA’s Boy Scouts program is changing its name so as to eliminate “Boy” altogether. It will soon be rebranded “Scouts BSA,” though the parent organization will remain Boy Scouts of America.

At least until rebranding as the “Social Justice Warrior Scouts of America.”

“We wanted to land on something that evokes the past but also conveys the inclusive nature of the program going forward,” said Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh. “We’re trying to find the right way to say we’re here for both young men and young women.” For an organization founded to help boys become men, that’s quite a shift.

Even still, the integration won’t be total. The Associated Press reports, “The program for the older boys and girls will largely be divided along gender lines, with single-sex units pursuing the same types of activities, earning the same array of merit badges and potentially having the same pathway to the coveted Eagle Scout award.”

One organization isn’t happy with the move. “Girl Scouts is the premier leadership development organization for girls,” Girl Scouts CEO Sylvia Acevedo insisted, while promising to add more badges and focus on outdoor activities, science, math and technology. Girl Scouts attributes some of its membership decline to the Boy Scouts allowing girls.

As Mark Alexander, a longtime BSA Council member, Scoutmaster and father to two Eagle Scouts, once explained, the BSA’s transformation has been driven by its National Board, which is “under the ‘leadership’ of wealthy corporate-types completely out of touch with grassroots Scouting values.” In other words, these leftists are driven not just by achieving their social agenda but by corporate profits. The BSA’s Faustian bargain with these sponsors has allowed the once-venerated organization to rot from the inside.

Fortunately, many individual troops retain solid leadership and membership, as is the case with this author’s son’s troop. But that situation becomes less tenable with each crumbling pillar of morality and common sense at the national level. Membership rolls are already little more than half their peak of four million as boys opt for alternatives like Trail Life USA. And the BSA’s decline will no doubt continue as leftists destroy even the fundamental scientific truth that boys and girls are different.

SOURCE






Walt Disney World Cancels Christian Music Festival After 34 Years

No more "Night of Joy" at Disney World.

For 34 years, Walt Disney World has hosted a "Night of Joy" event that featured Christian music artists; the park has now canceled it.

A spokeswoman for the park reportedly confirmed to the Orlando Sentinel that "last year was our last event," adding that the decision was made in the interest of "continually changing our offerings." The Facebook page for the "Night of Joy" has also been deleted.

"The resort has hosted the Christian concerts in September since 1983, mostly in Magic Kingdom but with two years at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and at ESPN Wide World of Sports complex for its final two years," reports LifeSiteNews.

Famed Christian musical artists like Steven Curtis Chapman, Amy Grant, Newsboys, Casting Crowns, Chris Tomlin, Kirk Franklin, Michael W. Smith, and Debby Boone have performed at the "Night of Joy" over the years.

The signs for its decline began to show last year when Hurricane Irma forced it to cancel after just one night. Despite the cancelation, Disney World's Epcot Center will still host the annual "Eat to the Beat" concert featuring Christian artists MercyMe and Tauren Wells.

The park's West Coast twin, Disneyland, has surprisingly continued a Christian tradition since the 1950s. Whatever the reason for its mainstay, once a year Disneyland actually holds the "Candlelight Ceremony," where choirs sing classic Christmas carols and someone reads the Nativity story from Luke's gospel.

This past year's "Candlelight Ceremony" featured "Thor" actor Chris Hemsworth reading the gospel. Past narrators include Darth Vader's voice James Earl Jones, Dick Van Dyke and Ginnifer Goodwin, whose vocal talents could be heard in "Zootopia."

SOURCE






STD — Sexually Transmitted Discrimination?

Reports indicate a rise in STDs, and some are blaming — you guessed it — racism  

The Los Angeles Times on Monday published an article chronicling the rise of sexually transmitted diseases. According to the author, “Officials think racism and stigma may be to blame.” In other words, the acronym STD might as well stand for “sexually transmitted discrimination.” But make no mistake: The details included in the Times’ account make it obvious that the government is what’s making a bad situation even worse.

“In just the past five years, the number of gonorrhea cases in Los Angeles County doubled, with minorities suffering more than most,” the Times reports, later adding: “Nationwide, STD rates have been climbing for the past five years. More people were diagnosed with syphilis, chlamydia or gonorrhea in 2016 than ever before.” That’s troubling, for sure, but what’s the catalyst? And how is it effectively mitigated?

“Many health experts,” the Times claims, “say that public health problems are best tackled outside the doctor’s office — that fixing the culture that perpetuates them is more effective than changing a single patient’s behavior. For sexual health, that means combating the stigma around sex.” Yet the Left’s idea of “fixing the culture that perpetuates” illnesses and the “stigma around sex” is Spring Into Love, described by the Times as “the brainchild of a coalition of L.A. County health advocates trying to bring down STD rates.” These health advocates argue that the STD problem is directly linked to a lack of contraceptives, ostensibly because they’ve been stigmatized.

Some of the grossly mislabeled “sexual education” activities that Spring Into Love sponsors are quite disturbing. For example, the Times says an 18-year-old “showed a group of students how to safely open a condom wrapper,” which took place inside a church auditorium. A church is supposed to discourage debauchery, not cultivate it. You can chalk up the lack of moral certitude among even some of our supposedly Christian institutions as one reason for today’s STD environment.

Adding insult to injury, the Times “went there” by playing the race card. It’s story promotes the idea that “officials need to evaluate what’s called structural or systemic racism, the way housing or education policies may negatively impact people and their health.” The report continues: “Studies have found … that people with HIV who had low levels of literacy were less likely to follow their treatment, and that poorer Americans were more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior, increasing their risk of STDs.” Furthermore, “Poverty or a lack of opportunity may be forcing women to exchange sex for resources, leading to the spread of STDs. … There also tends to be a mistrust of the medical system among African Americans, making them reluctant to seek care.”

Consider the irony: The same statist government system that perpetuates poverty — and by extension STDs, using the Left’s argument — among minorities is the same system leftists allege can mitigate STDs. That’s paradoxical, but there’s also a parallel. The same person who thinks more government is the solution to minority well-being is just a likely to think government-led sexual education that promotes contraceptives, not abstinence, is the answer to our STD problem.

Because it can be awkward, many parents have delegated the discussion about physical intimacy to the government. And that’s where the 18-year-old from the church auditorium has a point. She said, “Sexual health was something in my household that was taboo. All I heard was, ‘Don’t get pregnant.’” That’s not good enough. Parents have to have a detailed and prolonged dialogue about sex and the importance of premarital abstinence with their children, not leave it to the state. Otherwise, STDs will continue rising, and the government’s only response will be to demand more control of your lives and education — while blaming racism, of course.

SOURCE






Sexism in the Australian Army

Medals for women, students over male soldiers

FEMALE recruits are being awarded the Australian Defence­ Force medal in half the time it takes their male counterparts.

And gap year students who join up for a 12-month “adventure” have that service taken into account, also cutting­ the time it takes them to qualify for a medal.

Critics say the rules have made the medal, which honours­ military attendance, “meaningless”, claiming they have taken “discrimination against men” to “farcical” levels.

Female members of the Al Muthanna Task Group in Iraq.
Last year The Daily Telegraph revealed ADF recruiters were told to actively target females­, including for combat roles, but were given no targets­ to hire men for 35 of 50 army positions.

To encourage women to join up, Defence cut the minimum four-year period of service that applies to men to just two years for females. The gap year program also targets women.

The Australian Defence Medal is given to members of the military after four years, or at the completion of their enlistment period — meaning female­ recruits get the medal in half the time of males.

Those who spend a gap year experiencing “what a career in the navy, army or air force could be like” have that 12 months included in their service time if they then enlist full-time.

Ex-soldier and military commentator Bernard Gaynor said he had been contacted by defence personnel­ who said morale was suffering over this latest example­ of political correctness­. “The defence force’s discrimination­ against men has become farcical,” Mr Gaynor­ said.

“Males who sign up for frontline combat roles now need to serve double the time as females­ to get the same medal. This is blatant discrimination­ and it is having a serious impact on morale.

“If females­ want to serve alongside the men, they should do so with exactly the same entitlements­ and requirements. Anything else is just politically correct social engineering.”

Australian Conservatives Senator Cory Bernardi said Defence was “creating an unequal workplace for men”.

“The morale of troops has been squandered on this diversity­ agenda and it is about time they got back to what they are supposed to do which is defending Australia,” he said.

A Defence spokesman said there was “no intent” to change the policy regarding ­required service periods for the Australian Defence Medal.

“The length of service is determined­ by the required training needed to ensure­ the member is proficient in their role,” the spokesman said.

SOURCE 

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

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

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

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10 May, 2018

If the Met Gala was Islam or Jewish-themed, all hell would break loose – so why was it OK for a bunch of flesh-flashing celebrities to disrespect Catholicism?

My background is evangelical Protestant.  Some of us even used to refer to the Pope as "old red socks" (He wears red shoes) but even I found the Met Gala distasteful -- JR

By Piers Morgan

 I have some breaking news. Next year's Met Gala is going to have an 'Islam' theme. Yes, guests in 2019 will be encouraged to wear skimpy, provocative dresses that 'celebrate' the Prophet Mohammad, Islamic clothing including hijabs and burqas, and the Koran.

I can also reveal that the 2020 Met Gala will have a 'Jewish' theme.  Yes, a bunch of celebrities and models will be posing for the world's paparazzi dressed in all manner of Jewish attire and regalia, including dressing up as Rabbis and wearing kippahs.

Oh, wait.

Neither of these things is actually going to happen. In fact, just by suggesting it, I'm sure I will be subjecting myself to immediate anger from many Muslims and Jews.

Yet apparently it's absolutely fine to have a 'Catholic' theme, as we saw at last night's Met Gala.

Christianity, it would seem, is fair game for a mocking fashion parade.

Now I'm not a big one for 'cultural appropriation' fury.

When Utah teenager Keziah Daum recently wore a Chinese style prom dress, I found the backlash that exploded against her utterly absurd given that nobody in China seemed to be remotely offended.

But there was widespread rage towards her from PC-crazed liberals across America, and it's the inconsistent and hypocritical LACK of widespread rage from PC-crazed liberals across America about last night's Met Gala that ironically makes me angry.

Why is it deemed unacceptable to wear a red Chinese dress to a prom, but acceptable to lampoon an entire religion at a celebrity gala?

This particular subject is personal to me.

I'm a Catholic.

Not the most devout you'll ever meet, I'll admit.

But I was brought up a Catholic – I even received not entirely successful spiritual guidance from nuns as a teenager! – and I still consider myself to be a Catholic.

I know many people don't believe in any God or religion, let alone Catholicism, and I respect that.

All I ask in return is for my beliefs not to be rudely disrespected.

Just as I always respect other religions even if I don't believe in what they represent.

To me, this year's Met Gala crossed a line and was openly, brazenly disrespectful.

By doing so, it confirmed itself as an organisation of rank double standards, because everyone knows they'd have never dared do it to Islam or Judaism.

Apparently – staggeringly - the Vatican gave permission for the Gala to be 'Catholic-themed' because it has already provided a variety of clothes and other items for an accompanying exhibition at the Met.

To which my response is: what the hell was the Vatican thinking?

There is a massive difference between seeing religious artefacts tastefully and respectfully laid out in a museum and seeing them stuck on some flesh-flaunting celebrity's head at a party.

The night was titled 'Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination' and the stars and their designers threw themselves into the theme with maximum creative gusto.

Rihanna came as a silver Pope, complete with Mitre.

'It feels expensive, it would be a sin not to wear it!' she told Vogue, without it would seem a thought for whether it felt offensive.

Jennifer Lopez came as a jewel-encrusted multi-coloured cross.

Kim Kardashian wore a Versace gold gown with large crosses emblazoned on her hips and torso (The same hips and torso she's spent the past two weeks flashing naked online). She had two more necklace crosses perched above her bulging cleavage.

The Hadid sisters: Gigi went as a stain glass window and Bella went with crosses and black leather. Bella Hadid went for the black leather and PVC look, complemented by crosses.

A lot of the imagery was highly sexualised, which you might think not just inappropriate for a religious theme but also incredibly offensive to the many victims of sex abuse in the Catholic Church.

Victoria's Secret model Stella Maxwell thought it fun to have images of the Virgin Mary all over her strapless dress.

Ruby Rose wore a red tunic showing off her vulgar tattoos and a cross.

Greta Gerwig came as a nun.

Madonna, who looked preposterous in a black Jean Paul Gaultier gown and tiara, later sang her hit Like A Prayer at the after-party. When it first came out, Madonna enjoyed enraging Catholics by making a video featuring burning crosses, statues crying blood and her seducing a black Jesus. What a nice touch to have this blasphemous old crone returning in all her unedifying glory to insult us all over again.

But comfortably the worst offender was Sarah Jessica Parker who had an entire Nativity Play scene on her head.

Really, Ms Parker? You think it's perfectly OK to do that? I don't.

The bottom line is that the Met Gala would never even consider an Islamic or Jewish theme for its big night.

The organisers know full well that if they did, they'd be closed down within hours of it finishing.

They chose Catholicism, and Christianity, because they calculated that we wouldn't mind as much.

Well, I do mind.  And I think a lot of other Catholics and Christians will mind, too.

Those celebrities who took part in this offensive fiasco need to ask themselves one question: 'Would I have gone dressed as a Muslim or a Jew if I were not Muslim or Jewish?'

If the obvious answer is 'No, of course not' then they should all be ashamed of themselves.

SOURCE






Facebook’s War on Speech

By Brigitte Gabriel

The tech revolution has had a profoundly positive effect on advancing freedom of thought and expression. Unfortunately, Facebook’s recent unveiling of a so called “hate speech” button, foreshadows a dangerous future in which this precious principle will no longer exist.

For decades, leftists enjoyed a monopoly on media and entertainment.  Their ability to control the dissemination of information allowed them to advance their anti-American culture war, and silence those who attempted to sound the alarm.

With the exception of Fox News, traditional media outlets such as ABC, NBC, CBS, etc. continuously spew the same leftist talking points on a nightly basis and remain united in their coup against President Trump. But what these ideologues didn’t realize throughout the 2016 Presidential campaign was, Americans weren’t buying their fake news propaganda anymore. Why? Because the way Americans and the world itself retrieves information has changed.

With the tech revolution, Americans have a more customizable means of getting their news and being entertained. Instead of sitting down at the same time every night watching the evening news, they can stay updated on current events through Facebook, or Twitter throughout the day, by simply glancing at their phone.

Gone are the days when Americans couldn’t fact-check leftist pundits and politicians on television, who deceptively frame stories in order to advance their agenda. More to it, gone are the days when the mainstream media could bury a story, simply because it contrasted with their worldview. Now, information is everywhere, and the left’s ability to control the culture is dwindling.

Consequently, the left has gone into panic mode, after the wake-up call they suffered in November 2016. They’ve since attempted to reframe this rebuke of their propaganda efforts by doubling down on them and spewing fake news about so called “collusion” between the Trump campaign and mysterious Russian operatives.

While they wear their poker face on a nightly basis, continuing this factless and embarrassingly absurd narrative, they know that deep down, it wasn’t Putin who elected President Trump, it was the American people.

“But how could this be?” They must’ve asked themselves this question a thousand times.

After all, from the day he announced his candidacy, every mainstream media outlet in America united to attack, malign, and smear then candidate Trump on almost a 24/7 basis, and yet, he was legitimately elected by the American people.

Acknowledging this terrifying reality that they no longer have the ability to control information, the left has turned to tech outlets themselves to try to put the cat back in the bag before it’s too late.

Facebook Founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently testified before joint Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees about a massive Facebook data breach. During his testimony, Senator Ted Cruz appropriately took Zuckerberg to task over political bias at Facebook, which led to the removal of pages and stories that were apparently deemed by Facebook administrators to be too conservative.

Senator Cruz specified how stories relating to the IRS scandal, Mitt Romney, Glenn Beck, and the annual Conservative Political Action Conference were all suppressed. In one egregious example, the page of renowned black female Trump supporters, Diamond & Silk, was deemed to be “unsafe to the community.”

Zuckerberg tried to reassure Senator Cruz that he was committed to keeping political bias out of Facebook and allowing freedom of expression to flourish.

“We're proud of the discourse and the different ideas that people can share on the service. And that is something that, as long as I'm running the company, I'm going to be committed to making sure is the case," said Zuckerberg.[1]

Unfortunately, it appears those words were just words.

A recent Facebook test, which was supposed to remain internal, gave users the option to click below the post if they thought it contained so-called “hate speech.”

A spokesperson for Facebook proclaimed that a "bug caused it to launch publicly," but has since been disabled.

Facebook’s explanation that they were merely trying to understand what users thought was hate speech, is hard to believe, given their track record of political censorship.

One thing is certain, the left is on a mission to silence their political opponents and using “hate speech” as justification for suppressing opposing views is their newest strategy.

The radical left hates freedom of speech because it knows it cannot win in the arena of freedom of expression. Consequently, they will now infiltrate tech outlets like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google to suppress opposing voices and take back control of their monopoly on the dissemination of information.

Beware of this emerging trend, because if the left is able to suppress information through these new streams of freedom, there may be nowhere else to go for advocates of liberty. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, political correctness must die, so that freedom can live.

SOURCE






Britain: Drug gangs spread knife crime epidemic to shires; City drug gangs bring bloodshed to counties

No mystery about the ethnicity of the "gangs"

Britain’s knife crime epidemic has spread from the cities to the suburbs and shires.

Sunday Times analysis of the most recent Home Office figures show that knife crime in Hertfordshire, Warwickshire, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire, Essex and Norfolk has almost doubled in three years. Official statistics suggest people are now more likely to be a victim of a knife attack in Bedfordshire than in Greater Manchester or Merseyside.

This extraordinary picture emerged after the US president, Donald Trump, in a speech to the National Rifle Association on Friday, criticised the extreme level of knife crime in London. He compared one hospital to a “war zone . . . knives, knives, knives”.

 SOURCE





Bank of America to provide financing to "assault" gun maker

FBN's Cheryl Casone on Bank of America to provide financing to Remington Outdoor weeks after its pledge to stop loaning money to companies that make assault weapons.

Bank of America may be making an about-face when it comes to financing certain gun makers.

Bank of America is preparing to provide financing to Remington Outdoor, which makes assault-type rifles, just weeks after the bank said it would stop financing “military-style” firearms for civilians, according to the New York Post.

The bank, reportedly contributing $43.2 million to a $193 million lending package funded by seven banks, according to court documents.

The plan will help stabilize Remington as it comes out of bankruptcy later this month.

Remington makes the Bushmaster assault-style rifle — the one used in the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut in 2012.

In April, the bank said it was going to stop lending to those companies, according to Bloomberg.

At the time, Bank of America was joining Citigroup as the second major U.S. lender to address gun sales since the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting that left 17 dead on Feb. 14.

Bank of America's vice chairman, Anne Finucane, told Bloomberg, in an interview, at that time, that the company is in discussions with a few manufacturers who make military-style firearms for civilians.

"It is not our intent to underwrite or finance military-style firearms on a go-forward basis," she said.

The Parkland shooting, reignited the long-running national debate over gun rights, pitting the students who survived against gun-rights advocates like the National Rifle Association.

The bank said it does not comment on client matters, according to the New York Post.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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9 May, 2018

NRA Cheers Trump's 2A Promises

In 2017, President Donald Trump became the first sitting president to address the National Rifle Association’s Annual Meetings & Exhibits. In Dallas on Friday, Trump made it two years in a row, even after the Parkland school shooting that yielded a wave of calls for gun control efforts ranging from banning certain types of guns and magazines to the repeal of the Second Amendment.

Walking on stage to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” which has become the anthem of Trump rallies, the president was greeted by a wall of applause and rowdy calls of support, characteristic of a college football game or NASCAR race. The Leadership Forum held in Dallas featured its largest crowd to date.

Trump’s remarks were hardly distinguishable from his Washington Township event held just a week earlier in Michigan. So vividly “Trump,” the president played to his crowd with off-the-cuff rhetoric and a few punchlines. Trump spoke effectively about the hypocrisy of demanding we outlaw guns after mass shootings versus the silence after the use of trucks, vans and knives in recent public terror events. Classic Trump.

Furthermore, make no mistake: Trump was standing before some of the most intense voters out there.

An analysis in The New York Times back in October 2017 looked at the 2016 November election results through the lens of gun ownership. Following the Las Vegas mass shooting, the Times noted, “No other demographic characteristic created such a consistent geographic split.” The paper created a red-blue electoral map according to gun ownership voters. In short, if only voters in homes with guns had voted in the last presidential election, Donald Trump would’ve won every state except Vermont. This backs up both Pew Research and Gallup that have demonstrated that gun owners are both more likely to contact an elected official about policy and to vote for someone who shares their position on guns.

So what? Well, you know all those attacks leveled at the NRA after the Parkland shooting, where an armed school resource officer waited outside while 17 victims were murdered by a known-to-be-troubled 19-year-old? The critical placards and harsh talking points were aimed at the NRA, but those who actually own guns and value gun rights were always the intended target. As Democrats would frame it, you either love kids and hate guns or love guns and hate kids. Don’t mistake the real target of Democrats’ hatred — gun owners, not their organization.

The dripping disdain of the celebrity media mobilized to do the Democrats’ bidding was ever present in the coverage of the NRA’s annual convention. The perfect example was in the completely manufactured lie that the NRA banned guns at its own meeting for the purpose of the safety of Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. Democrats and gun-control advocates pounced on the constructed narrative that students should be equally protected by gun bans in schools with only law enforcement armed for a response.

We suppose they forgot that what they claim to want — a gun-free zone with guns only in the hands of the police — was exactly the situation in Parkland. Other than the actual shooter, the armed school resource officer failed to respond to a man known to most everyone at the school as volatile and even too dangerous to have a backpack on campus.

As Americans have grown to know, fake news outlets lie. They did not report that the layers of systems already in place failed to prevent the Florida school shooting. That includes the politically correct approach to screening troubled individuals, all to keep statistics in a range to get federal funding. Leftmedia outlets completely fabricate a storyline to continue their never-ending badgering of law-abiding gun owners.

While President Trump’s remarks served up red meat to a crowd fed up with the direction America’s been taken by Democrats, the NRA membership is not only a group devoted to voting. Members put their cash on the barrelhead through personal contributions.

The first full month following the Parkland shooting featured a wave of marches, walkouts and regular railings against responsible and lawful gun ownership. And yet the NRA marked a 15-year fundraising high of $2.4 million from March 1 through March 31. All but $500,000 of this total came from donations of $200 or less, reflecting a wave of support to defend the right to bear arms in the face of the steady drumbeat of mass media opposition.

Among the wide-ranging remarks made by the president — he covered everything from the humming economy to the appointment of conservative judges to the Russia collusion investigation — came a line that captured Trump’s endearing trait. As he addressed the drawn-out inquiry by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Trump declared, “We’re all fighting battles. But I love fighting these battles. It’s really a disgrace what’s happening to our country.”

The NRA crowd is hated by coastal elites for knowing that their God-given rights to worship and speak freely, as well as to own property and the rest, are protected only by the right to bear arms. They love this fight, too. And they love a president who won’t back down when there’s a fight for the average American. “Americans will never surrender,” Trump promised. “We will never give up our freedom. Americans were born free, we live free, and we will die free.”

 SOURCE





How Big Government-Backed Bad Science Made Americans Fat

When the U.S. adopted dietary guidelines in 1980, its wrong recommendations made us fatter

“Government made a big mistake with the dietary guidelines,” says Nina Teicholz, author of New York Times bestseller The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet. “Given the track record that they have so far, you can really make a plausible argument that they’ve done more harm than good.”

Consumption of meat, butter, eggs and cheese were once encouraged as part of a healthy diet. Then in the 1950s, a Minnesota doctor named Ancel Keys put forth his diet-heart hypothesis, claiming that saturated fats raise cholesterol levels and cause heart attacks.

Keys produced landmark studies of the relationship between diet and heart disease that transformed nutrition science. He became a powerful figure in the science community. Contemporaries who publicly questioned the validity of his findings risked losing their research funding or becoming pariahs. When the U.S. adopted dietary guidelines in 1980, Keys’ recommendations became enshrined in national food policy.

“We have made our policy based upon this weak kind of science called epidemiology which shows association, but not causation,” Teicholz explains. “We have the situation where we just cannot reverse out of these policies that were originally based on really weak science.”

Keys’ flawed research is one reason Americans have been getting fatter and unhealthier for decades. Despite major advances in treatment, heart disease is still the leading cause of death for men and women.

“The really dominant view is that the dietary guidelines are good … and the reason America is fat and sick is that America has failed to follow them,” Teicholz says. “That’s when you start looking at the data. … By every food category you can find, we have faithfully, dutifully followed the guidelines.”

Today the science behind Keys’ dietary findings is once again being challenged. Teicholz has launched the Nutrition Coalition, which aims to inform food policy with rigorous science.

“Our goal is educate people about how the dietary guidelines have not been successful … and to bring this alternative policy viewpoint to policy makers,” says Teicholz. “More and more experts are willing to talk out about the science, and I think that will support change.”

 SOURCE





Marx at 200: Classical Marxism vs. Cultural Marxism

May 5, marks the bicentennial of Karl Marx’s birth, a cause for literal celebration in certain quarters of the academy

It’s often charged among the political Right that America is going communist, or at least socialist, or toward some form of Marxism. My concern is less classical Marxism than cultural Marxism, a strain of communist thought that even most of those engaging in it aren’t consciously aware of. If you Google “cultural Marxism,” the first thing that pops up is a Wikipedia definition dismissing it as a “conspiracy theory which sees the Frankfurt School as part of an ongoing movement to take over and destroy Western culture.”

A conspiracy theory? Well, that merely affirms the point. The vast majority of those advancing cultural Marxism aren’t even aware they’re doing so. Tell them and they’ll either blankly stare or mockingly laugh at you as a conspiracy monger.

In truth, cultural Marxism not only exists but exists as a dominant form of Marxism in America and much of the West today.

Classical Marxism, by contrast, continues to dwindle.

Just this week I caught a rare admission that slipped from the lips of the current chairman of Communist Party USA, John Bachtell. He said that CPUSA has a mere 5,000 members.

Yes, only 5,000. You could find more members of Unicorn Party USA.

Even more pathetic is that CPUSA has been pounding its chest lately claiming a “surge” in membership under the siege of President Donald J. Trump. Really? Some surge.

Of course, CPUSA never had big numbers. At its heyday in the 1930s, it probably never had more than 100,000 members. That’s why communists have always sought out dupes among the broader liberal Left. It’s why Marxist ringleaders like Angela Davis show up at the Women’s March not quoting Lenin but stumping for same-sex marriage and condemning “climate change.” Davis didn’t dare openly agitate for the KGB at the March; she agitated for LGBT.

The communist movement has always needed liberals as props to enlist at rallies. Rarely could CPUSA ever have filled Central Park with its own members. Bachtell’s cohorts today might not fill a sandbox at a Manhattan playground.

The reason for that is good news: The original ambition of an economic/class-based revolution has failed in America. And so, instead, today’s Marxists — including those in CPUSA, once the home of classical Marxism — have gone cultural.

It’s a form of Marxism so radical in its redefinition of human nature that Marx himself would blush and find it bewildering. As I write, the lead article at CPUSA’s website is titled “The Capitalist Culture of Male Supremacy and Misogyny” — a piece breathtaking in its cultural radicalism. And it personifies the communist movement’s thrust today.

Frankfurt School of Freudian-Marxism

So, what is this cultural Marxism, and how did it emerge?

It began not on May 5, 1818, with Marx’s birth but over 100 years later with the birth of what came to be known as the Frankfurt School.

These 1920s and 1930s German Marxists were Freudian-Marxists. For them, orthodox/classical Marxism was too limiting, too narrow, too controlled by the Soviet Comintern that strong-armed national communist parties. This rigidity prevented these more freewheeling neo-Marxists from initiating the cultural transformation they craved, including revolutionary changes in marriage, sexuality, and family. These Frankfurt-based theorists were left-wing intellectuals who looked to the universities as the home base from which their ideas could be launched. They spurned the church and looked to Marx and Freud as the gods they believed would not fail. Rather than organize the workers and factories, the peasants and the fields and the farms, they would organize the students and the academy, the artists and the media and the film industry.

One can look at the Frankfurt School’s cultural Marxism not as a replacement for classical Marxism but as the accelerator pedal that was missing from the wheezing, stalling vehicle. The cultural Marxist agrees with the classical Marxist that history passes through a series of stages on the way to the final Marxist utopia, through slavery and capitalism and socialism and ultimately to the classless society. But the cultural Marxist recognizes that communists will not get there by economics alone. In essence, cultural Marxists shrewdly realized that the classical Marxists would utterly fail to take down the West with an economic revolution; capitalism would always blow away communism, and the masses would choose capitalism. Cultural Marxists understand that the revolution requires a cultural war over an economic war. Whereas the West — certainly America — is not vulnerable to a revolt of the downtrodden trade-union masses, it is eminently vulnerable when it comes to, say, sex or pornography. While a revolution for wealth redistribution would be unappealing to most citizens of the West, a sexual revolution would be irresistible. Put the bourgeoisie in front of a hypnotic movie screen, and it would be putty in your hands.

The key figures of the Frankfurt School included Georg Lukacs, Herbert Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich — who literally wrote the book and coined the term The Sexual Revolution — Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and others. The formal school began in 1923 as the Institute for Social Research at the University of Frankfurt in Germany. Among its driving forces from within Moscow was Willi Munzenberg, the so-called Red millionaire. “We must organize the intellectuals,” exhorted Munzenberg.

And so they would. And how did they slide into America?

The threat of Hitler’s Germany drove the Frankfurt School out of Europe and into the welcoming arms of America’s left-wing academics. Most to all of the leading practitioners of the Frankfurt School were Jews who needed a safe haven from Hitler’s madness. So they and their institute came to New York City, specifically to the campus of Columbia University, already a hotbed of communist thought.

Pleading the case for them at Columbia was John Dewey, founding father of American public education and communist sympathizer. (Dewey described himself as a small “c” communist, objecting only to “official Communism, spelt with a capital letter.”) Thus, their primary area of operation would be the educational system — the schools, the universities, and particularly the teachers’ colleges. It was no coincidence that Columbia housed the nation’s top teachers’ college — a creation of John Dewey.

From there, the cultural Marxists spread their ideas to campuses nationwide. Their extremist notions would sweep up the ‘60s New Left, to which the likes of Herbert Marcuse became an ideological guru to the radicals who today are tenured at our universities.

 SOURCE







How Russia Lost WWII

Seventy-three years ago, in May of 1945 hardly anyone outside of the Jewish diaspora heard of the small town on the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean called Tel-Aviv. While its population of two hundred thousand or so was not insignificant for the region, it was a provincial backwater in the British Empire, with its inhabitants traumatized by the recently revealed and utterly incredible dimensions of the Holocaust of their own people, the European Jewry.

In Moscow, on June 24th, 1945, three year before Israel’s declaration of independence, tens of thousands of German prisoners of war were paraded in the Red Square. Passing by the ten foot high pile of Nazi standards flung at the feet of Lenin’s Mausoleum on their way to years of captivity many never to return, they were spat on by Russian bystanders. The Russians were furious, and rightly so; it is impossible to overestimate the carnage and the cruelty, the wanton torture and murder, the wholesale destruction of priceless cultural assets that the German invaders have wrought upon their homeland. But they were also proud; proud of the unambiguous defeat they have handed to the Germans and their many European collaborators.

Proud of the enormous sacrifices they have made in gaining that glorious victory. Proud of finishing the war with the Red Army firmly in control of vast territories that were once part of the Russian Empire and others that weren’t. Yes, they were sucker punched exactly four years earlier, but now they were in control of what used to be Prussia and of Poland and of Hungary and of Romania. The Red Army was feared across the better part of the globe from the Kuril Islands that were freshly ripped away from Japan to the Brandenburg Gate in Hitler’s erstwhile capital, Berlin.

The Russian Army was on that day the biggest and best equipped land-based fighting force that the world has ever seen. In those heady days, before Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed that America was not exactly to be trifled with, nothing seemed out of reach for the victorious Russians; they ruled the world.

Today, the people who witnessed those days are nearly all dead and their descendants can only wonder what could have gone so horribly wrong. No longer is the Russian army in Poland or Hungary or Romania, let alone anywhere on German soil with the exception of the tiny Russian enclave in Konigsberg (Kaliningrad), bursting as it is with ballistic missiles.

But forget about those foreign lands; how about territories that were integral parts of Russia for centuries? How about Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia? Face saving acronyms like CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States), or new half-baked ideas of Eurasian free market zones, don’t fool anyone.

The truth is that in the west and in the south erstwhile Soviet republics, now independent states, are trying to figure out how quickly they can join the West without incurring an uncomfortable degree of Moscow’s wrath.

In the East, in the vast Siberian taiga (boreal forest), China rules the day. Chinese companies are clearcutting virgin forests, Chinese companies rip out of the ground valuable resources. Chinese are masters and the Slavs are, well, slaves.

In the early 1990’s, with the collapse of the USSR, vast lines formed at the doors of the Dutch consulate in Moscow representing Israel’s interests since Russia cut diplomatic ties with Israel in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War. All of a sudden, Russians, Ukrainians, Moldovans, you name it, were discovering that at some point they had Jewish roots.

“It’s true that our last name is Zakharov, but grandma’s maiden name was Eisenberg and I remember her lighting Shabbat candles before the War”, they would tell Jewish Agency officials. And the officials wielded their life-saving official stamps and admitted these newly self-discovered Jews under the Law of Return to the ancient and newly reconstituted Jewish homeland: Israel.

Over a million of them came to Israel over a short period of only a few years, and they have made a big positive difference for the Jewish State. Russian is now quasi-officially the third official language in Israel and one can get by knowing no other language. Israel is also one of the very few Western destinations that Russians can travel to without a visa, a document that is often exceedingly hard to obtain.

So the children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of the generation that looked with hate, disgust, condescension, and maybe even a degree of human compassion at the starving, defeated hordes of Westerners paraded in front of them on their way to (in many cases) slowly dying of starvation and disease never to see their beloved Deutschland again, have to beg for visas to visit, however briefly that land that their ancestors sacrificed so much to defeat.

Those that can afford it fly to Tel-Aviv, now a sprawling metropolis of over a million, a city that is on most (good) top-ten lists in the world. A city of gleaming beaches, of peak high and popular culture, and yes, the best food scene in the world. But most can’t afford to even set foot inside an airport, let alone travel to Tel-Aviv, which of course is on the top-ten most expensive cities list. No, 40% of Russian citizens survive on less than ten dollars a day, truly a marker of a third-world country.

There can be no doubt that among all the major participants in WWII both in the European and the Pacific theatres, now, seventy-three years later, Russia is by far the least developed, the least prosperous, and the most likely to occupy top positions on all the wrong lists. Drug and alcohol abuse, infant mortality, expected lifespan for women and especially men, GDP per capita, income per capita, you name it, Russia is at or near the bottom of all major countries.

Forget about the US, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan. Even those WWII combatants that were back then entirely marginal like Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, and above all China have left Russia in the dust.

This week, Russia will spend millions of dollars to put up yet another WWII victory parade in the Red Square. Tanks will rumble and jets will fly overhead. Nuclear-capable ballistic missiles will slowly crawl past the same old mausoleum with the same old corpse inside.

But what about the people watching? Some are clinging to old glory. Many are beginning to see the absurdity of celebrating in superpower style victory over countries that are now vastly more prosperous than their own. Russia is a poor country that does not even have the technological and business expertise to exploit its own natural resources, letting foreign powers do it instead, akin to the literal banana republics of early 20th century Central America.

Russia has roughly half the population it had a hundred years ago and in many metrics such as consumer goods production has yet to reach pre-revolutionary levels or levels that were achieved by Stalin’s GULAG slave labor in the 1930’s. In all ways that count, Russia is the sole loser of the Second World War.

So what happened? Why were the hopes and aspirations of those attending the first WWII victory parade so cruelly dashed against the rocks of history? The answer is not hard to come by; all it takes is to ask those Russians who lived through post-war Soviet history and did not belong to the communist or technocratic elites.

In the USSR, there was simply no reason for anyone to work hard. It was not possible to make more money, to open a business, to invest for profit. If any disposable income materialized (a rare event indeed), there was nothing to buy, certainly nothing of any quality. The best way to live was to engage in tufta (pretend work) and whenever possible steal from your employer, the government. After all, the government shafted you, so why not shaft it back? As long as extra effort does not produce extra rewards, why bother? No dream, no aspiration, no amount of well-justified national pride can survive a system that rewards mediocrity and minimal effort.

A life or barely clinging to the communist safety net of minimal (but guaranteed!) nutrition and healthcare is hardly a life worth living. It is a life that brings out the worst in people; it makes them lazy, stupid, belligerent.

This week the world “celebrates” the centennial of the birth of a converted Jew who became the visionary of the hell of low expectations better known as communism. The New York Times sent him an ardent birthday card beyond the grave. “Marx was right!”, the Paper of Record noted.

The tale of two cities, Tel-Aviv and Moscow, shows that they couldn’t possibly be more wrong.

 SOURCE

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

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

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

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8  May, 2018

An Irishman's insight on Africa

Kevin Myers (born 30 March 1947) is an Irish journalist and writer. This essay appeared in The Irish Independent some years ago:

Somalia is not a humanitarian disaster; it is an evolutionary disaster. The current drought is not the worst in 50 years, as the BBC and all the aid organizations claim.
   
It is nothing compared to the droughts in 1960/61 or 73/74.  And there are continuing droughts every 5 years or so.

It's just that there are now four times the population; having been kept alive by famine relief, supplied by aid organizations, over the past 50 years.

So, of course, the effects of any drought now, is a famine. They cannot even feed themselves in a normal rainfall year.

Worst yet, the effects of these droughts, and poor nutrition in the first 3 years of the a child's life, have a lasting effect on the development of the infant brain, so that if they survive, they will never achieve a normal IQ .

Consequently, they are selectively breeding a population who cannot be educated, let alone one that is not being educated; a recipe for disaster

We are seeing this impact now, and it can only exacerbate, to the detriment of their neighbors, and their environment as well. This scenario can only end in an even worse disaster; with even worse suffering, for those benighted people, and their descendants. Eventually, some mechanism will intervene, be it war, disease or starvation.

So what do we do? Let them starve?

What a dilemma for our Judeo/Christian/Islamic Ethos; as well as Hindu/Buddhist morality.  And this is beginning to happen in Kenya, Ethiopia and other countries in Asia, like Pakistan.  Is this the beginning of the end of civilization?

AFRICA is giving nothing to anyone outside Africa -- apart from AIDS and new diseases. Even as we see African states refusing to take action to restore something resembling civilization in Zimbabwe, the begging bowl for Ethiopia is being passed around to us out of Africa, yet again.

It is nearly 25 years since the famous Feed The World campaign began in Ethiopia, and in that time Ethiopia's population has grown from 33.5 million to 78+ million today.

So, why on earth should I do anything to encourage further catastrophic demographic growth in that country? Where is the logic? There is none. Now they want to move to other countries to continue to breed and commit crime.

To be sure, there are two things saying that logic doesn't count.  One is my conscience, and the other is the picture, yet again, of another wide-eyed child, yet again, gazing,yet again, at the camera, which yet again, captures the tragedy of children starving.

Sorry. My conscience has toured this territory on foot and financially.  Unlike most of you, I have been to Ethiopia; like most of you, I have stumped up the loot to charities to stop starvation there.  The wide-eyed boy-child we saved, 20 years or so ago, is now a low IQ, AK 47-bearing moron, siring children whenever the whim takes him and blaming the world because he is uneducated, poor and left behind.  There is no doubt a good argument why we should prolong this predatory and dysfunctional economic,  social and sexual system but I do not know what it is.  There is, on the other hand, every reason not to write a column like this.

It will win no friends and will provoke the self-righteous wrath of, well, the self-righteous hand wringing, letter writing wrathful individuals; a species which never fails to contaminate almost every debate in Irish life with its sneers and its moral superiority. It will also probably enrage some of the finest men in Irish life, like John O'Shea, of Goal; and the Finucane brothers, men whom I admire enormously.

So be it.

But, please, please, you self-righteously wrathful, spare me mention of our own Irish Famine, with this or that lazy analogy. There is no comparison!

Within 20 years of the Famine, the Irish population was down by 30%. Over the equivalent period, thanks to western food, the Mercedes 10-wheel truck and the Lockheed Hercules plane, Ethiopia's population has more than doubled.

Alas, that wretched country is not alone in its madness.
Somewhere, over the rainbow, lies Somalia, another fine land of violent, AK 47-toting, khat-chewing, girl-circumcising, permanently tumescent layabouts and housing pirates of the ocean.

Indeed, we now have almost an entire continent of sexually hyperactive, illiterate indigents, with tens of millions of people who only survive because of help from the outside world or allowances by the semi-communist Governments they voted for, money supplied by borrowing it from the World Bank!

This dependency has not stimulated political prudence or common sense.

Indeed, voodoo idiocy seems to be in the ascendant, with the president of South Africa being a firm believer in the efficacy of a little tap water on the post-coital penis as a sure preventative against AIDS infection.  Needless to say, poverty, hunger and societal meltdown have not prevented idiotic wars involving Tigre, Uganda, Congo, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea etcetera.

Broad brush-strokes, to be sure. But broad brush-strokes are often the way that history paints its gaudier, if more decisive, chapters.

Japan, China, Russia, Korea, Poland, Germany, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia in the 20th century have endured worse broad brush-strokes than almost any part of Africa. They are now -- one way or another -- virtually all giving aid to or investing in Africa, whereas Africa, with its vast Savannahs and its lush pastures, is giving almost nothing to anyone, apart from AIDS.

Meanwhile, Africa's peoples are outstripping their resources and causing catastrophic ecological degradation.
By 2050, the population of Ethiopia will be 177 million; the equivalent of France, Germany and Benelux today, but located on the parched and increasingly Protein-free wastelands of the Great Rift Valley.  So, how much sense does it make for us actively to increase the adult population of what is already a vastly over-populated, environmentally devastated and economically dependent country?

How much morality is there in saving an Ethiopian child from starvation today, for it to survive to a life of brutal circumcision, poverty, hunger, violence and sexual abuse, resulting in another half-dozen such wide-eyed children, with comparably jolly little lives ahead of them?

Of course, it might make you feel better, which is a prime reason for so much charity!

But that is not good enough. For self-serving generosity has been one of the curses of Africa.

It has sustained political systems which would otherwise have collapsed.

It prolonged the Eritrean-Ethiopian war by nearly a decade.

It is inspiring Bill Gates' programme to rid the continent of malaria, when, in the almost complete absence of personal self-discipline, that disease is one of the most efficacious forms of population-control now operating. If his programme is successful, tens of millions of children who would otherwise have died in infancy will survive to adulthood, he boasts.

Oh good: then what? I know, let them all come here (to Ireland). Germany and the rest of Europe is already inundated and there are literally millions queuing up who want a hand out, taking in refugees because you feel sorry for them will end in the demise of those countries taking part.

You will note that; No Gulf State is taking any refugees, and the head of the human rights commission is Saudi Arabian !?!







Now Mr Men and Little Miss stories are branded sexist: Study says the simple tales portray female characters as less powerful

The Mr. Men books are great. We had a collection of them when the kids were young. I am rather absent-minded so when I forgot something the kids would inform me that I was "Mr. Forgetful".  It helped them not to get bothered by my frailties


There's Mr Tickle, Mr Bump, Mr Messy and now apparently...Mr Sexist.

Roger Hargreaves’s simple tales of the Mr Men and Little Misses portray the female characters as less powerful, according to a study of the books.

The Little Miss characters have to be ‘saved’ in the stories more than half the time, compared with less than a third for the Mr Men, the study found.

And the male characters also have more to say in the books – with an average of 12 extra words.

The study claims that even the names of some characters, such as Little Miss Bossy, pictured below, might play to gender stereotypes.

It also cites examples of ‘stereotypical’ passages including ‘I know what that naughty little lady needs’ and: ‘She managed to find herself the perfect job. She now works for Mr Lazy! She cooks and cleans for him.’

The findings, based on an analysis of 47 Mr Men and 34 Little Miss books from 1971 to 2014, were presented at the British Psychological Society’s annual conference in Nottingham.

The University of Lincoln study concludes: ‘Generally female characters were more passive, had less direct speech and relied on being saved more than male characters.’

The series, aimed at children aged two and older, started with Mr Tickle in 1971. The Little Miss books followed a decade later.

Researcher Madeleine Pownall assessed the direct speech of characters in the books and found females were given an average of 53.5 words per story, compared with 61.5 for males.

She also found that as stories progressed the Little Misses had to be saved by another character in 51.5 per cent of cases, compared with 32.6 per cent of cases for Mr Men.

Egmont, which publishes the books, did not respond to requests for comment.

SOURCE






Trump Initiative Protects Religious Rights, Faith Groups’ Equal Access to Federal Dollars

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday focusing on protecting freedom of religion and exploring new ways faith-based agencies can partner with government to effectively provide services.

“The prayers of religious believers helped gain our independence, and the prayers of religious leaders like the Reverend Martin Luther King—great man—helped win the long struggle for civil rights,” @POTUS says.

“We condemn all crimes against people of faith, and today we are launching another historic action to promote religious freedom,” Trump said at a National Day of Prayer ceremony in the Rose Garden before signing the executive order to create a White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative.

“The faith initiative will help design new policies that recognize the vital role of faith in our families, our communities, and our great country,” the president said. “This office will also help ensure that faith-based organizations have equal access to government funding and the equal right to exercise their deeply held beliefs.

“We take this step because we know that, in solving the many, many problems and our great challenges, faith is more powerful than government, and nothing is more powerful than God,” Trump continued.

The White House initiative will be made up of faith leaders and experts on charity and religious freedom from outside the government and will be led by the newly created position of adviser to the White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative.

It will make recommendations about providing services to the poor and to apprise the Trump administration of any executive branch failures to comply with religious liberty protections under law.

During his remarks in the Rose Garden, the president talked about the Rev. Billy Graham, the legendary evangelist who died earlier this year, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the iconic civil rights hero assassinated 50 years ago in 1968.

“Today, we remember the words of Reverend Graham, ‘Prayer is the key that opens us to the treasures of God’s mercies and blessings,’” Trump said. “Always beautiful, and when he said it, it meant so much. When I say it, it means something, but I liked when he said it better. … I think he did that a little better than I do.”

Trump continued:

The prayers of religious believers helped gain our independence, and the prayers of religious leaders like the Reverend Martin Luther King—great man—helped win the long struggle for civil rights.

Faith has shaped our families, and it’s shaped our communities. It’s inspired our commitment to charity and our defense of liberty, and faith has forged the identity and the destiny of this great nation that we all love.

Trump signed a religious freedom executive order last year at a similar Rose Garden event.

A Family Research Council analysis released Wednesday found the religious freedom executive order Trump issued in May 2017 allowed charities and other entities to provide up to 13.7 million people with health care and other social services, and enabled at least 44 schools that provide education for more than 148,000 students to continue operating.

“The announcement of President Trump’s faith initiative is further evidence that this administration is not only committed to protecting our first freedom, but in also acknowledging that our faith in God contributes to the guidance and well-being of our country,” said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a social conservative advocacy group.

“I look forward to working with the president to make sure the community of faith will be able to bring hope and help to people in the United States and around the globe,” he said in a statement.

However, Americans United for Separation of Church and State contends the executive order will instead trample on religious freedom.

“Our government should protect religious freedom, not use it as a sword to harm others,” Rachel Laser, the group’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “Our country is strongest when we are all free to believe, or not, as we see fit and to practice our faith without hurting others.”

Executive departments and agencies will designate a liaison to the White House faith initiative.

Similar initiatives were begun under the previous two administrations.

President George W. Bush established the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. President Barack Obama continued with the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Both focused on charity. Trump’s version extends the focus to also protecting religious freedom.

The executive order on Thursday shows that Trump understands the benefit of the government partnering with faith-based groups, said Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, legal adviser for the Catholic Association, a group advocating the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

“The order also restates the government’s commitment to protect freedom of conscience and religious liberty by increasing oversight of federal programs,” Picciotti-Bayer said in a statement. “Everyday Americans respond to God’s call to serve, offering their time and talents to aid and assist their neighbors. People of all faiths, and those with no faith at all, find compassion and professionalism in the care they receive from groups motivated by faith.

“Today’s executive order hails their work—a wonderful product of the rich religious pluralism of our country,” she said.

SOURCE





PFAS chemicals not linked to disease but health effects 'cannot be ruled out', expert panel finds

PFAS is the latest false alarm from the disastrous Erin Brockovich

There is limited or no evidence to link exposure to PFAS chemicals with human disease, but health effects cannot be ruled out, an independent panel has advised the Australian Government.

An expert health panel was set up in October 2017 to advise the Government on the potential health impacts associated with exposure to the chemicals, which were historically used in firefighting foams, and to identify priority areas for further research.

It found there was "mostly limited or no evidence" for any link with human disease and there is "no current evidence that suggests an increase in overall cancer risk".

While it concluded there was no increase in overall cancer risk, it did note the "most concerning signal reported" in the scientific studies was a "possible link" with an increase risk of testicular and kidney cancer.

Per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS chemicals, were used in firefighting foams at 18 Defence bases across the country starting in 1970.

Use of the foams was phased out from 10 years ago but caused widespread contamination in the soil, groundwater and surface water around some of the bases.

Since revelations about contamination, residents who live near Defence facilities in Katherine in the Northern Territory, Williamtown in New South Wales and Oakey in Queensland were offered blood tests, and some offered alternative sources of drinking water.

Katherine was exposed to the chemical from firefighting foam used at the nearby Tindal RAAF base in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Voluntary blood tests got underway in Katherine in March this year, following an interim human health risk assessment that warned against eating local seafood and home-grown produce.

The entire town has been on water restrictions since August 2017, while a permanent solution for an alternative water supply could take up to two years.

PFAS chemicals build up in animals and humans, and remain in the body for many years, the panel report said.

"Importantly, there is no current evidence that supports a large impact on a person's health as a result of high levels of PFAS exposure," the report found.

"However, the panel noted that even though the evidence for PFAS exposure and links to health effects is very weak and inconsistent, important health effects for individuals exposed to PFAS cannot be ruled out based on the current evidence."

The panel reviewed 20 recently published reports and academics reviews.

It found that "although the scientific evidence on the relationship between PFAS exposure and health effects is limited, current reports, reviews and research provide fairly consistent reports with several health effects".

The panel noted, however, the level of health effects in people with the highest exposure was generally still within "normal ranges" for the whole population.

Considering all the evidence before it, the expert health panel advised Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt any health screening for exposed groups should be for research purposes only.

"The evidence does not support any specific health or disease screening or other health interventions for highly exposed groups in Australia, except for research purposes," the report stated.

SOURCE 

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

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

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

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






7 May, 2018

Israel Strikes Hamas Position in Gaza Used to Send 'Kite Bombs'

Military says airstrike targeted position next to border fence

The Israel Air Force on struck a Hamas position in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday night, the Israeli military said Sunday morning. The strike, near the border fence, occurred after a position next to the fence was used by Palestinians to send firebombs tied to kites into Israel, the military said.

On Friday, the health ministry in Gaza said 70 Palestinians had been wounded by Israeli live fire as thousands protested along the Gaza-Israel border fence. According to the Israeli military, riots broke out at five locations along the fence, with protesters burning tires, throwing stones and flying kites with flammable material with the aim of starting fires in Israeli territory.

On Saturday night, Hamas' military wing blamed Israel for the killing six of its men in an explosion in the central Gaza Strip. The Israeli military denied any involvement in the blast.

Wednesday saw ten firefighters gaining control of a fire that destroyed some 60 acres of land near Kibbutz Be'eri near the Gaza border, which local regional councils said was caused by a firebomb tied to a kite.  

SOURCE





STARBUCKS FIGHTS RACISM, BOWS TO ANTI-SEMITISM

When a Philadelphia Starbucks manager called the police after two black men refused to leave, the chain of events ended with the burnt taste of the overpriced coffee chain colluding with anti-Semitism.

Starbucks reacted to the brief arrest by blaming the police, but Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross, who is African-American, initially said that his officers, “did absolutely nothing wrong”. But then he was forced to offer a bewildering apology to the arrested men, the officers and the entire city.

“It is me who in large part made most of the situation worse than it was,” he announced.

But that wasn’t Ross. It was Black Lives Matter and other black nationalist groups which targeted the coffee chain, chanting, “Starbucks coffee is anti-black”. And to appease them, Starbucks rolled out a major company retraining effort overseen by former Attorney General Eric Holder, along with Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP, Heather McGhee of Demos and Jonathan Greenblatt of the ADL. Greenblatt was the only non-black civil rights leader on the list.

And, like a cup of overpriced Starbucks coffee, the burnt taste got worse the deeper you went.

In February, Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam had delivered a violently anti-Semitic speech to an appreciative audience that included Tamika Mallory. "White folks are going down," the hate group leader had declared. "And Farrakhan, by God's grace, has pulled the cover off of that Satanic Jew."

Farrakhan had praised Mallory and the Women’s March leader had dubbed him the greatest of all time. Nor was she the only Women’s March leader with a crush on the black nationalist bigot. Linda Sarsour and Carmen Perez had their own Farrakhan fandom. And despite pressure, the radical leftist org had refused to condemn Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, but continued to defend the hate group.

In the Greenblatt era, the ADL had become even more tentative about challenging anti-Semitism on the left. It had been largely absent in the battles over campus anti-Semitism, had defended some forms of BDS and had attacked Jewish civil rights activists, such as Canary Mission, for fighting for Jewish rights.

But the ADL took credit for condemning Mallory’s attendance and support for Farrakhan. The Nation of Islam’s anti-Semitism had been widely denounced. And the ADL didn’t think it was taking much of a risk.

When Starbucks made its retraining announcement, Mallory and her allies were quick to pounce. They berated the coffee chain for working with an “anti-black” organization. The dispute split the left between black nationalists and establishment groups. Mallory was joined by Patrisse Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, while Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress, called them out.

“Women of color who promote anti-Semitism -- defending Farrakhan and attacking ADL - are deserving of criticism and I say that as a woman of color.” Tanden had retorted sharply.

But the brief shining moment of decency on the left quickly vanished as Starbucks dumped the ADL.

In the dispute between black nationalist Farrakhan fans and the ADL, Starbucks chose anti-Semitism. The coffee chain was spending money buying immunity from protests by Tamika’s allies. There was no reason for it to continue working with the ADL if the organization not only couldn’t protect it from angry protesters, but if its Jewish associations might actually incite even more attacks on its businesses.

And the rest of the Starbucks social justice deck would have been more likely to lean toward Mallory.

As Attorney General, Eric Holder had become notorious for his collaboration with black racist and anti-Semitic groups, including The New Black Panther Party and Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund had participated in the Women’s March. And the NAACP has its own troubling history with Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam.

Tossing the ADL overboard, the corporate leadership of Starbucks showed that it would fight racism, but collude with anti-Semitism. And it wasn’t the first time Starbucks had colluded with anti-Semitism.

In 2014, Starbucks had issued a bizarre statement assuring Muslims that it didn’t fund Israel.

"Neither Starbucks nor the company’s chairman, president and CEO Howard Schultz provide financial support to the Israeli government and/or the Israeli Army in any way," the press release assured.

It stated that its Israeli stores were closed and that its business plans for the region would be developed with a Kuwaiti family. Kuwait has been known to boycott companies doing business with Israel.

The press release insisted that Starbucks is "a non-political organization." Except that’s a lie.

Starbucks had pushed for gun control, cheered gay marriage and refugee migration. The coffee chain hadn’t been worried about the resulting boycotts. It was only concerned about offending customers with certain views. Those views have always included anti-Semitism.

The politically correct coffee chain dropped the ADL for the same reason it had disavowed Israel.

It would have been unthinkable for Starbucks to have put out a press release assuring the KKK that it didn’t do business with black people. Or that it didn’t donate to gay marriage or to Muslim groups.

It’s never been proven that the Philly Starbucks had racist motivations, but the entire company has a consistent history of blatantly pandering to anti-Semites that is as bitter as its dark roast.

The Starbucks double standard on anti-Semitism is the same one that pervades the left.

From Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson to the Women’s March, civil rights has required a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with anti-Semitism. Al Sharpton led a race riot through a Jewish neighborhood and was rewarded for it with a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention, an MSNBC show and easy access to Obama and Holder. Mallory had been photographed with Farrakhan, but so had Obama.

And then there’s the NAACP, whose legal defense fund had also been enlisted by Starbucks.

NAACP leaders have repeatedly appeared with Farrakhan. Benjamin Chavis, who had become notorious for convening a summit with the Nation of Islam, later joined the hate group. Ben Jealous, currently running for the governor of Maryland, appeared at forums attended by Farrakhan.

Muslim advocacy has followed the same pattern with groups such as CAIR, whose leaders have made anti-Semitic statements and who have hosted Neo-Nazis, being elevated while their bigotry is ignored.

That’s how we ended up with Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour. And Louis Farrakhan.

The post-King era has erroneously conflated racial tribalism with civil rights. Its civil rights leaders are invariably black nationalists and that’s why they find it so hard to resist Farrakhan’s racist supremacism.

Starbucks could have rejected both racism and anti-Semitism. But that’s too much work. Like most corporations, it doesn’t partner with racial healers, but racial dividers. They’re the ones who threaten its bottom line. And they’re the ones who are seen as having credibility with the radicals on the street.

The real lesson here is for the ADL which tried to have it both ways. Under Greenblatt, it wanted to belong to the social justice axis while paying lip service to the fight against anti-Semitism. It did the least that it could do to challenge anti-Semitism on the left. And even that proved to be too much for the left.

There’s no room on the left for even the mildest criticisms of anti-Semitism from the left.

Like Starbucks, the ADL will have to choose between fighting anti-Semitism and pandering to the left. And, like Starbucks, it is likely to drop anti-Semitism as the price of admission for staying on the left.

Starbucks will go on touting its commitment to fighting racism even as it colludes with anti-Semitism. And the ADL will criticize anti-Semitism from white nationalists, but not black nationalists, from the right but not the left, and hope that the overpriced coffee chain will welcome it back with some burnt coffee.

 Because there’s no price to pay for anti-Semitism, but there is a bitter price for fighting anti-Semitism.

SOURCE





Boy Scouts Nix the Word ‘Boy,’ Showing They No Longer Believe in Masculinity

It seems the Boy Scouts of America would prefer not to exist.

On Wednesday, the Boy Scouts announced that their signature program known simply as the “Boy Scouts”—which serves ages 10 to 17—will no longer bear the word “boy.” Beginning in February, it will be known as Scouts BSA.

This change comes only months after the Boy Scouts announced girls would be allowed into the program. Chief Scout Executive Mike Surbaugh said they wanted to choose a name that “evokes the past but also conveys the inclusive nature of the program going forward.”

This name change, and the “inclusive” policy change that preceded it, indicates a fundamental shift away from the mindset that first gave rise to the Boy Scouts in the early 20th century. One can’t shake the impression that if the Boy Scouts were starting from scratch, they’d ditch even the acronym “BSA” and go completely gender-neutral.

It’s worth probing that fundamental shift in mindset.

The very existence of Boy Scouts, as separate from Girl Scouts, suggests a belief that boys and girls are fundamentally different, and that some good could be achieved by separating them for certain purposes. Otherwise, we would have simply had the “Scouts.”

The Boy Scouts emerged out of a culture that valued boyhood and girlhood as distinct realities, rooted in maleness and femaleness. Each gender had its own unique set of virtues that our culture sought to cultivate in the next generation.

Those virtues are captured in the Boy Scouts’ 1916 congressional charter, which read:

The purpose of this corporation shall be to promote, through organization and cooperation with other agencies, the ability of boys to do things for themselves and others, to train them in Scoutcraft, and to teach them patriotism, courage, self-reliance, and kindred virtues, using the methods which are now in common use by Boy Scouts.

Courage. Self-reliance. Virtues accessible to all, no doubt, yet which were considered integral to the masculine ideal.

The Girl Scouts came into being just two years after the Boy Scouts. Their motto was even more explicitly tailored to a single gender: to train girls “first as good women, then as good citizens, wives, and mothers.”

If the founders of these organizations believed men and women are essentially the same, and that the same ends could be achieved by mixing Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts together, then again, we would simply have inherited the “Scouts of America.”

But instead, two years after the Boy Scouts were founded, Juliette Gordon Low founded the organization that became the Girl Scouts. Though she took inspiration from Sir Robert Baden-Powell, who founded the Boy Scouts, she wanted to start a different organization.

So the legacy we have is two separate institutions premised on the idea that masculine and feminine identities actually matter—that they are unique, special, each worthy of celebration in their own right, and worth cultivating in the next generation.

Yet today, the Boy Scouts organization is perpetually at war with itself—at war with the very premise of its own existence.

The Boy Scouts rightly recognize that male and female are inherently equal. But equal doesn’t mean the same. The Boy Scouts seem to have conflated the two. If boys and girls are essentially the same, what’s to be gained from keeping them separate? That would be arbitrary and perhaps even wrong.

But if boys and girls are in fact different, and generally oriented toward their own unique masculine and feminine virtues, then it makes perfect sense to nurture them in separated settings—at least for discrete activities like scouting.

Yet the Boy Scouts have jettisoned that thinking in favor of radical inclusion. They may have achieved greater inclusivity, but at what cost? Their very definition is exclusive, just as so many other groups are exclusive (think of AARP, the NAACP, or the National Organization for Women). The Boy Scouts have sacrificed their identity to the left’s absolutist vision of inclusion.

That vision will be the death of any group that seeks to define itself by any unique trait.

Definitions are by necessity exclusionary, and any group that defines itself as A and not B will face pressure from the left to embrace B as well.

Except then, there’s no point to having a group at all. We’ll all just be absorbed into the left’s all-consuming impulse to “include” everyone. The left’s crusade for inclusion will redefine and un-define every group it touches.

Ironically, such radical inclusion is the death of any real diversity, because without real difference, there can be no diversity.

SOURCE





How a ‘Far-Left Propaganda Machine’ Got a Respected Legal Group Expelled by Amazon

Alliance Defending Freedom has won seven cases at the U.S. Supreme Court in as many years, including one that upheld an Arizona school choice program and another that prevented the state of Missouri from discriminating against a Christian preschool.

The legal powerhouse, which fights for religious freedom, is awaiting decisions in two more landmark free speech cases it argued this term before the high court. It is counted as one of the most successful legal advocacy organizations in the country.

But even that stellar record was not enough to prevent Alliance Defending Freedom from being banned from participating in AmazonSmile, which allows Amazon.com customers to contribute “0.5% of eligible purchases” to “almost one million eligible 501(c)(3) public charitable organizations.”

ADF had been one of those charities since the 2013 launch of AmazonSmile until recently, when those who had assigned the legal organization as their charity were notified that it was no longer eligible.

The reason? Southern Poverty Law Center.

Those who had selected ADF as their charity received the following explanation of why they’d no longer be able to give to the religious freedom group through the program:

The AmazonSmile Participation Agreement states that certain categories of organizations are not eligible to participate in AmazonSmile. We rely on the Southern Poverty Law Center to determine which charities are in certain ineligible categories. You have been excluded from the AmazonSmile program because the Southern Poverty Law Center lists Alliance Defending Freedom in an ineligible category.

For those unfamiliar with SPLC, they are the hysteria-stokers responsible for producing a slanderous list of “hate groups” that lumps together actual violent extremists with respectable organizations such as Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council and with international human rights activists such as Maajid Nawaz and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

So, the “ineligible category” to which Amazon’s statement refers is really nothing more than a hit list of groups and people SPLC disagrees with. Amazon’s decision to rely on the false accusations of such a bad actor is inexplicable.

In response to the ban, Alliance Defending Freedom’s CEO, Michael Farris, sent a letter urging entrepreneur and philanthropist Jeff Bezos’ Amazon to reconsider its alliance with the widely discredited Southern Poverty Law Center:

Although the SPLC did good work many years ago, it has devolved into a far-left propaganda machine that slanders organizations with which it disagrees and destroys the possibility of civil discourse in the process. The group has been discredited by investigative journalists and charity watchdogs as a ‘direct mail scam’ that has seen its leaders amass enormous fortunes. It is no surprise that the United States Department of Defense and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have severed ties with the SPLC.

Lest one think that Southern Poverty Law Center is a misunderstood group of would-be do-gooders just trying to provide a public service, but not quite hitting the mark, consider the words of a senior executive, Mark Potok, who said: “Sometimes the press will describe us as monitoring hate crimes and so on … I want to say plainly that our aim in life is to destroy these groups, to completely destroy them.” (Emphasis mine.)

By its own admission, SPLC is in the game not to inform, but to obliterate. Nice set of friends you have there, Mr. Bezos.

“Southern Poverty Law Center spends its time and money attacking veterans, nuns, Muslims who oppose terrorism, Catholics, evangelicals, and anyone else who dares disagree with its far-left ideology,” ADF Senior Vice President Kristen K. Waggoner said. “Meanwhile, ADF works every day to preserve and affirm free speech and the free exercise of religion for people from all walks of life and all backgrounds because we believe freedom is for everyone.”

I can affirm the truth in the above statement, as I spent 13 years working alongside Kristen and many other honorable people at Alliance Defending Freedom. From firsthand experience, I know ADF is committed to building freedom’s future, while Southern Poverty Law Center is hell-bent on vaporizing any opposing views.

With SPLC having been repeatedly exposed as a huckster racket for decades by voices from across the ideological spectrum, it is mind-boggling that one of the largest companies in the world would align itself with its  destructive bigotry.

As a private business, Amazon has the freedom to make choices like this.

But faithful Amazon customers should know that Amazon’s choice is to side with a torch-and-pitchfork fear merchant over millions of people who have the audacity to believe in religious freedom, free speech, strong families, and the sanctity of human life. Those are all causes that Alliance Defending Freedom has spent a quarter of a century ably defending.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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




6 May, 2018

GOP Senate Candidate Says Military Service Is Inherently Conservative

It is a fact that when the votes from military bases come in, they heavily favor conservative candidates

A Republican candidate in Wisconsin’s heated Senate race questioned the thinking of military service members who are Democrats, arguing that their service contradicts their political views.

During an interview on Wednesday with WTMJ radio host Steve Scaffidi, Marine veteran and GOP Senate candidate Kevin Nicholson discussed his military service and cited former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as an example of a Democrat who signed up to serve the country.

He continued, “Those veterans that are out there in the Democrat Party, I question their cognitive thought process because the bottom line is, they’re signing up to defend the Constitution that their party is continually dragging through the mud.”

Nicholson also told Scaffidi that “to defend the Constitution ... is, of course, a conservative value” and that the “Democrat Party has wholesale rejected the Constitution and the values that it was founded upon.”

VoteVets, a progressive veterans advocacy group, called on Nicholson to apologize for his comments.

“What a horrible thing to say about his brothers & sisters,” the group tweeted Wednesday. “We disagree with conservative veterans, but their views are their right.”

After the radio interview, VoteVets shared several tweets from veterans and veteran advocates who said they were insulted by Nicholson’s remarks.

Despite his declarations about conservative values, Nicholson’s own GOP credentials have been questioned during his campaign to challenge Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) for her seat in the U.S. Senate.

Nicholson’s primary opponent Leah Vukmir, a GOP state senator, questioned his “track record as a Republican” last week during the candidates’ first public debate. Nicholson, a corporate consultant, was an active Democrat during his college years, leading the College Democrats of America as president and even speaking at the 2000 Democratic National Convention.

“We know more about Kevin’s track record as a Democrat than we do about his track record as a Republican,” Vukmir said, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

After Nicholson’s interview with Scaffidi on Wednesday, Democratic Super PAC American Bridge released a statement accusing Nicholson of insulting fellow veterans based on their political views.

“Our servicemen and women lay their lives on the line every day to protect Americans’ right to freedom of expression,” American Bridge spokeswoman Amelia Penniman said. “That Kevin Nicholson imagines otherwise is an affront to those who serve, and to the Constitution he claims to protect.”

“Kevin Nicholson is so desperate to hide from Republican primary voters that he used to be a Democrat that he is willing to publicly disparage his fellow veterans,” Penniman added. “That’s the very worst of political opportunism.”

Nicholson’s campaign clarified his comments to CNN’s KFile by focusing on his criticism of the Democratic Party and Democrats, claiming they have “shown overt disrespect to our veterans.”

“Kevin made clear that all members of the military ? regardless of their political party ? sign up to defend and protect the Constitution and its principles,” campaign spokesman Brandon Moody told CNN.

“But Kevin also believes that the Democrat Party has become unmoored from the Constitution and has lost its way.”

Nicholson’s parents made news in February after they gave the largest possible donation to Baldwin’s primary campaign, months after their son had announced his bid to run against her.

SOURCE






Secretive Commissions Determine Who Violated Anti-Discrimination Laws. Now Republicans in 1 State Are Fighting for Reform

The nation has been transfixed with the story of Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Colorado, and how the Supreme Court will hold in his landmark First Amendment case.

But his story didn’t begin at the Supreme Court. It never does.

As the highest appellate court, the Supreme Court reviews the facts and issues of law at the trial level. Usually, this means that a judge previously made some ruling, perhaps in the context of a jury trial or preliminary issues that come before the court.

But Phillips’ case didn’t start out that way. He never saw a judge who was duly appointed in Colorado through the judicial merit system on the trial level, and he never had the opportunity to demand a jury.

Instead, Colorado’s current system for claims of discrimination in public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation go through the Colorado Civil Rights Commission—an agency of the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies.

The seven members on its panel are not required to be attorneys or have any legal education. At least four of them (the majority) must be “members of groups that have been or might be discriminated against,” and per the commission’s own website, the proceedings are “confidential”—meaning that there is very little transparency or oversight regarding how the commission actually makes its findings of fact and conclusions of law.

In Phillips’ case, a complaint was filed before the commission, which conducted its secretive investigation and hearings, and determined that Phillips was in violation of Colorado’s anti-discrimination law. This was followed by a closed proceeding before a panel, which very likely may have been biased toward claims being made on the basis of sexual orientation.

In fact, during oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Dec. 5, 2017, Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor questioned the commission’s hostility and the comments from one of its commissioners.

This raises the question: What else goes on in this Civil Rights Commission and other similar commissions across the country?

According to the ACLU, Colorado is one of 21 states as of 2017 that has anti-discrimination laws on the basis of sexual orientation, and seven more states limit anti-discrimination claims to public employment only.

All states have similar commissions to Colorado, or another similar government agency that is responsible for enforcing civil rights laws, including a state’s anti-discrimination laws. (A state-by-state list compiled by FindLaw can be found here.)

What is particularly alarming about states like Colorado is that the Civil Rights Commission has virtually no accountability or transparency, with no ability for people who are defending against claims of discrimination to obtain meaningful due process through a judge or jury.

Public perception of the commission on both sides of the political aisle is that the commission is biased toward LGBT community members, which is to say that the commission lacks legitimate public trust for being an independent arbiter.

This type of required submission to an agency that is wholly administrative in nature (not judicial) deprives both parties of due process.

Just last week, Justice Neil Gorsuch’s concurrence in the Supreme Court case Sessions v. Dimaya underscored the constitutional principle that administrative law often invites unpredictability and arbitrariness, which cuts directly against fundamental notions of fairness to litigants.

So too, administrative agencies invite unpredictability and arbitrariness. After all, what the composition of a Civil Rights Commission may be today might vary widely from what the Colorado commission was in 2012 for Phillips’ hearing. There is no consistency in what is required for appointees and no form of oversight other than a court appeal on the merits.

So what can be done?

The Colorado Legislature is currently evaluating this exact question in the context of a legislative sunset review of the Colorado commission. This review process should act as a “job performance” evaluation of sorts, and seek to answer the question: Is the commission fulfilling the job for which it was created? Can it be more effective? Can it be enhanced? Can it be more transparent? Can it build more public trust through more legitimacy?

Obviously, none of those questions should have a partisan response, and both sides of the aisle should be concerned with legitimacy in the process of arbitrating claims of discrimination.

And this is about much more than just Masterpiece Cakeshop. The seven members of this commission are assigned to Colorado’s population of 5.2 million people. That’s one commissioner for every 800,000 people, who collectively represent a wide variety of viewpoints and trust that their government will not itself discriminate.

Initally, Republicans in the Colorado Senate have proposed several amendments to the bill. Those amendments would reauthorize the commission in the area of public accommodation, including in making substantive changes to the appointments process, its transparency, reporting, oversight, and due process in the form of allowing both parties to “opt out” of the commission’s jurisdiction.

These enhancements to the commission absolutely make sense. Not all claims are appropriate for the commission to hear (similarly to a judge recusal), and both parties should be able to go to a traditional judicial forum rather than an administrative agency if they wish, even if they later agree to mediate their dispute with the court’s oversight.

For claims that parties agree to bring to the commission, it is always good to make the commission as prepared as possible to perform its job.

Predictably, the LGBT lobby in Colorado is opposed to any changes to “their” biased commission, and testimony earlier this month before the Senate Judiciary Committee revealed this bias. Testimony from community members stated that “the commission has our back,” and other similar statements suggested the commission is not an impartial arbiter.

As of this week, Republicans in the Senate dropped the opt-out amendment in favor of a bipartisan agreement with Democrats to provide two main enhancements: First, the commission would increase in size to nine members and appointments would have to maintain a 5-4 split between Republicans and Democrats; and second, the commission would be subject to legislative audit for purposes of transparency and accountability.

This new amendment passed Monday morning by a vote of 35-0. Both parties in the Senate appear hopeful that House Democrats will support this bipartisan effort to enhance the commission’s legitimacy. Otherwise, the commission should not be reauthorized, period.

States need to take a good, hard look at their administrative enforcement process, particularly for claims of discrimination. Impartiality, legitimacy, and due process matter, and they are constitutionally required.

Hopefully, Colorado will pave the way for other states to use the legislative review process meaningfully and prove that equal protection under the law is something everyone should enjoy, not just some.

SOURCE





Homophobes, Hypocrites and Joy Reid

If "progressives" didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all   

In 2014, Mozilla founder and former CEO Brendan Eich was forced to resign from the company and the board of the nonprofit foundation that owns it. The reason? In 2008, he donated $1,000 to support Proposition 8, which stated that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Despite the fact that Eich kept his personal beliefs to himself, Mozilla Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker insisted Eich “cannot lead Mozilla in this setting.” What “setting” is that? The one that brooks no deviation whatsoever from progressive orthodoxy — unless one happens to be an MSNBC news host named Joy Reid.

Reid wrote a slew of anti-homosexual blog posts in 2006. The archives of those posts were initially discovered by Twitter user @Jamie_Maz who noted they were “far worse than 1st reported” and “had nothing to do with Republican hypocrisy on gay marriage.” Maz further revealed that Reid “gleefully accused people of being gay and posted a number of questionable things.”

That Twitter thread appeared on April 19. Five months prior, on Dec. 3, Reid had apologized for other anti-homosexual posts she had written, and given her stature as a reliable purveyor of the progressive agenda, it is likely another apology would have been more than enough to put this refueled controversy behind her. Or she could have done what many people do, (such as Barack Obama who opposed same-sex marriage before he approved of it), and simply said her views had “evolved.”

Instead, Reid released a statement to the leftist website Mediate on April 23, declaring the additional posts had been written by an “external party” that “manipulated material from my now-defunct blog.” Reid further insisted she had discovered the hacking in December, and that she “began working with a cyber-security expert who first identified the unauthorized activity, and we notified federal law enforcement officials of the breach.”

The following day, NBC released two letters from Reid’s attorney, dated Dec. 19 and Dec. 22. The former letter was sent to the Internet Archive and the latter one was sent to Alphabet, which owns Google. Both demanded the companies remove the “hacked” archives of Reid’s blog. The network also released a statement from Reid’s “security consultant,” Jonathan Nichols, who purported to have “significant evidence” of the hacking.

Unfortunately for Reid, such an absurd assertion was a bridge too far, even for some on the same side of the ideological divide. The Daily Beast suspended Reid’s column “amid mounting scrutiny of the MSNBC host’s claims that she was the victim of a cyberattack that posted dozens of homophobic statements on her former blog,” the Huffington Post reported April 26. That same day, Daily Beast columnist Kevin Poulsen explained why, noting that Reid’s consultant “had trouble producing the promised evidence. And what he did produce failed to withstand scrutiny, according to a Daily Beast analysis. Blog posts that Nichols claimed do not appear on the Internet Archive are, in fact, there. The indicators of hacked posts don’t bear out.”

Again on April 26, Reid backed off her original claim. “I hired cybersecurity experts to see if somebody had manipulated my words, or my former blog,” Reid said. “And the reality is they have not been able to prove it. But here’s what I know: I genuinely do not believe I wrote those hateful things because they are completely alien to me. But I can definitely understand based on things I have tweeted and have written in the past why some people don’t believe me.”

So why isn’t Reid being held to the same standard that applied to Brendan Eich? Or the one applied to former CNN commentator Jeffrey Lord, who was fired for using the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil” in a sarcasm-laden Twitter exchange with Media Matters president Angelo Carusone, whom Lord had accused of using fascist tactics to organize a sponsor boycott of Fox News commentator Sean Hannity?

A Feb. 10, 2018, New York Times headline says it all: “How Joy  Reid Became a Heroine of the Resistance.” The article mentions her apology to Crist — along with the need for it, which Reid attributes to the nation’s “polarized” political climate. “People don’t just want to disagree with the people they disagree with,” she asserted. “They want to destroy them.”

Reid should know. In an effort to deflect the spotlight away from her own past positions, she brought supporters from the radical homosexual Left onto her show. One of them, Brandon Wolf of the Dru Project, declared that America has “homophobic psychopaths running the United States government today,” and that if Vice President Mike Pence were in the White House, “he would have us all in concentration camps hoping to pray away the gay!” In response, Reid expressed appreciation Wolf was “bringing that up.”

Thus, some efforts to destroy people one disagrees with are “more equal” than others.

In stark contrast to CNN and Lord, NBC has circled the wagons around Reid. An NBC spokesperson who declined to be identified told Politico that Reid would remain on the air while the investigation into her claims is conducted. The spokesperson declined to say whether the network itself will conduct its own investigation.

Last Wednesday, Reid’s lawyer, John H. Reichman, released a statement through MSNBC, confirming that the FBI “has opened an investigation into potential criminal activities surrounding several online accounts, including personal email and blog accounts, belonging to Joy-Ann Reid.”

Americans might be forgiven for wondering why the same FBI that demonstrated an appalling lack of curiosity regarding possible felonies committed by Hillary Clinton would enmesh itself in an investigation of a TV host’s 12-year-old blog entries. They might also be forgiven for wondering if ordinary Americans would enjoy similar efforts conducted on their behalf by the nation’s foremost law enforcement agency, or whether such efforts are undertaken only for the powerful and privileged.

Regardless of what the FBI finds, Reid will likely remain on the air. In an appearance last week on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” Boston Herald columnist Michael Graham offered great insight as to why. He revealed he was sent a series of tweets by people who stated that while they are homosexual and liberal, as long as Reid hated Trump, all else is forgivable.

That “standard” speaks volumes about the progressive mindset. Moreover, when one adds to the mix the Left’s infatuation with “intersectionality” — as in “overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage,” as blog ywboston.org puts it — it’s easy to see why protecting black, female progressive Joy Reid is far more palatable than protecting Caucasian, male progressive Brendan Eich. As for Lord, simply being conservative is tantamount to having two strikes before stepping up to bat.

Some “sinners” are also more equal than others.

“It’s possible that in the end Reid will discover her adversary isn’t a determined hacker, but a far more dogged foe: The Joy-Ann Reid of years past, writing in a voice she can no longer recognize as her own,” concludes Poulsen.

The bet here is most Americans recognize that if “progressives” didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards at all.

SOURCE





Universal Basic Income fails in Finland, but will the left learn its lesson?

Finland tried, and Finland failed. To combat high unemployment and wage stagnation, Finland’s government decided to try a universal basic income (UBI) experiment with a portion of their population. Establishing a UBI has been viewed as a favorable by liberals and Silicon Valley elites who view a UBI as a necessary method of injecting capital into the economy.

Unfortunately, as Finland just learned, giving citizens money without restriction does not fuel growth, it wastes money. Now, Finland is backtracking on their UBI program to instill real reforms to end individual dependency on the government.

The unemployment rate in Finland has exceeded eight percent since long before the UBI program began in January 2017. Petteri Orpo, Finland’s finance minister, told the Financial Times, “Working life has changed through globalization, automation. We have to reform our society in order to activate people to reach a higher employment rate…”

These fears of a more globalized future led Finland to a two-year experiment in basic income. The Financial Times continues to explain, Finland selected a large group of unemployed individuals to be given €560 (about $670) a month without any conditions on what individuals must do to receive the funds or where they could be spent.

The first glaring problem with the program was, of course, the cost.

One of the reasons the experiment could not continue or be expanded is because of the extreme tax hike it would require. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found in a Feb. 2018 report on Finland’s economy, while a UBI might enhance work incentives — a dubious finding, but okay, let’s play along — in order to universally adopt the policy, Finland would have to increase taxes by nearly 30 percent causing an increase in overall poverty.

Finland was placing their hopes in a system they could not afford, which is why they have decided against renewing the program at the end of this year. Instead, Finland is now pursuing the exact opposite style of reforms to fix their broken welfare system.

Jon Henley, the European affairs correspondent for The Guardian, explains, Finland has now introduced legislation to make some benefits for unemployed people contingent on the completion of work or work training.

Even finance minister Orpo had to admit to the Financial Times that the UBI system in fact made people “passive”. Orpo explained, “When we look at our economy that is now growing, we have tens of thousands of free jobs [that cannot be filled] and more than 200,000 unemployed people. We have to look at the incentives to work.”

Giving individuals free money while hoping they get a job might seem like a distant European concept, but it hits much closer to home. More and more people in the United States have advocated for a similar UBI model over the years.

Michael Hiltzik of the L.A. Times reports, from Martin Luther King Jr. to Elon Musk to apparently everyone in San Francisco, UBI is seen as a great way to kick-start economic growth and offset the impacts of automation taking jobs.

While the Finnish government insists full results on their experiment will not be gathered for several years, the country’s top economists believe it failed to do exactly what they had hoped, instead widening the free jobs gap and maintaining stagnant employment numbers.

For an example closer to home, techies like Musk should look no further than our own Social Security system.

While Social Security, including Supplemental Security Income, is not a UBI program because it is not universal, it does mirror how the program works: a select group receives a monthly guaranteed income from the state. Social Security can be seen as our own experiment in UBI and highlights the insurmountable revenue problem if it were to be made universal.

Sean Williams of the Motley Fool explains in April 2018, according to the Social Security Board of Trustees’ annual report, “Social Security is expected to begin paying out more in benefits than it’s generating in revenue by 2022. That’s only four years away. By 2034, after just 12 years of cash outflows, its roughly $3 trillion in asset reserves, which is primarily invested in special-issue bonds, is expected to be completely exhausted.”

This means in order for our Social Security system to survive; it will be forced to engage in dramatic benefit cuts or just borrow the money. If we cannot maintain the closest thing to a UBI system which we currently have, where there is an incentive to work, because there is still not enough revenue, it is clear we cannot universalize it in a context when there will be far less of an incentive to work. People will stop working and the system will collapse.

Finland tried the system people around the world claim will end the welfare state, but they found out the real truth. Universal basic income is the welfare state. The only way to truly end the welfare state is to incentivize people to be less reliant on the state, not more.

SOURCE


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

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

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

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4 May, 2018

Black/white intermarriage

In 1941, sociologist Robert Merton proposed a status exchange theory to explain the high proportion of black men—white women marriages. He suggested that men who have high economic or professional status, but who carry the stigma of being black,  trade their social position for whiteness by marriage.

And that continued for a long time. The white women who married black men were usually in fact of lower social class.  In a 1993 study, for instance we read: "The status characteristics of these marriages have remained traditional in the sense that intermarriage still occurs primarily when the white woman marries up in socioeconomic status". 

In other words the woman was trading her white skin for a richer/better educated black husband. From a social psychological point of view that seems perfectly reasonable.  Social psychologists usually regard all marriage as a trade:  Each partner gives the other some things that they want.

In a 1997 study, however we see that things have changed slightly.  We read:

"Interracial marriage tends to be educationally homogamous and the odds of interracial marriage increase with couples ’ educational attainment. Among interracially married couples with different educational attainments, both men and women from lower status racial groups but with high education levels tend to marry spouses from a higher status racial group with low education levels."

So we now have two groups:  Most interracial couples are now of EQUAL status but there are still some unions following the old pattern of low status white woman and higher status black man

And in this century the situation has become overwhelmingly of equal status between the couples, probably associated with the fact that the rate of black/white intermarriage has increased markedly.  The influences at work on such marriages have obviously changed.  Recent studies tend to show that, as in most marriages, the black/white partners now tended to be of equal status.  We read:

"Just as researchers’ assumption that women trade beauty for men’s socioeconomic status may have led to erroneous findings that seemed to support the “trophy wife” stereotype (McClintock 2014), researchers’ tendency to problematize interracial relationships may have generated a misleading focus on race-status exchange. In fact, interracial couples (like other couples) tend toward similarity in socioeconomic status (e.g., they have similar levels of education: Rosenfeld 2005). While I do not deny that social exchange may be a factor in romantic relationships, I think it is time that researchers reconsider the assumptions underlying their theoretical explanations. Do interracial couples really believe that the white partner married “down” in racial status? Or might they believe that in racial equality? Are minority women trading beauty and sexual access for white men’s race and income? Or might the white men also be good-looking? And might not women want sex too?"

And

"Minorities outmarried to Whites are often assumed to exchange their higher achieved status for an ascribed racial status. This study challenges this traditional exchange perspective by examining three SES measures (education, job prestige and income), using census 2000 PUMS data. Findings indicate that couples have similar statuses in all types of marriages, either endogamous or exogamous, and there is no evidence of status-caste exchange in intermarriage to Whites"

And:

"Socioeconomic status has little effect on whether adolescents choose an interracial partner"

Something else that all observers seem to agree on is that the rate of domestic violence is much higher in Black-man/white-woman marriages. So has that diminished as the marriages have become more equal?  A 2009 study is much more interesting than a social survey would be:

"The number of interracial couples in the U.S. is growing, but they often receive little support. Although previous studies have explored the relationship between low social support and decreased relationship satisfaction in interracial couples, there are few studies on intimate partner violence (IPV) in these couples. To better understand IPV in interracial couples compared to monoracial couples, all police-reported IPV events across a municipality were examined. Odds ratios showed differences between interracial and ethnic minority monoracial couples. Interracial couples were more likely to have a history of prior IPV (OR = 2.60), engage in mutual assault (OR = 2.36), and result in perpetrator arrest (OR = 1.71) than ethnic minority monoracial couples. Victims of IPV in interracial couples were also more likely to be injured (OR = 1.37). There were no significant differences between the couples in terms of substance use or children present during the IPV event. Differences between IPV in interracial and White couples also emerged. Interracial couples were more likely to have children present (OR = 1.84), to have a prior report (OR = 1.98), to result in victim injury (OR = 1.73), and to result in perpetrator arrest than White couples (OR = 2.18). Interracial couples were more likely to engage in mutual assault than White couples (OR = 2.94). However, interracial couples were about 50% less likely than White couples to use drugs or alcohol before or during the IPV event. Research is needed to better understand the unique challenges and needs faced by interracial couples to help them sustain healthy partnerships."

So it would seem that the levelling out of social status between black/white partners may have reduced domentic violence in such relationships but it has certainly not eliminated it.  Mixed marriages are still much more violent than white/white marriages -- JR.






The 'Uncle Tom' Card Is Dead

Michelle

Here is a short list of prominent conservatives and independent thinkers who've been accused by their critics of being an "Uncle Tom" or some other vitriolic variation on the overplayed left-wing theme of being a traitor to their race or gender ("Aunt Tomasina," "Uncle Juan," "Aunt Jemima," "Uncle Wong," etc.):

—White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders.

—U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley.

—HUD Secretary Ben Carson.

—Rapper Kanye West.

—Lt. Col. Allen West.

—Former Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal.

—Attorney Miguel Estrada.

—Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

—Judge Janice Rogers Brown.

—Author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza.

—Author and CRTV host Deneen Borelli.

—ACT for America founder and author Brigitte Gabriel.

—Former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

—Former GOP vice presidential candidate and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

—Attorney and author Ann Coulter.

—Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke.

—Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C.

—Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

—Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.

—Economist Thomas Sowell.

—Economist Walter Williams.

—Scholar Glenn Loury.

—Turning Point USA activist Candace Owens.

—Conservative radio talk show host Larry Elder.

—Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson.

—Author Erik Rush.

—Actress Stacey Dash.

—Former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain.

—Former University of California regent and businessman Ward Connerly.

—Former ambassador and GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes.

—Conservative activist Niger Innis.

—Tea party organizer Lloyd Marcus.

—Author and columnist Star Parker.

—Author Shelby Steele.

—Social media stars Diamond and Silk.

—ESPN's Sage Steele.

—Radio host Charlamagne tha God.

—Me.

Surveying this short list, you'll notice that all of us public enemies of the progressive diversity-mongers possess an incredibly diverse array of life and work experiences.

We are black, white, brown, native-born citizens, immigrants and naturalized Americans.

We are Republican, libertarian, moderate, hard-right and unaffiliated.

We are politicians, diplomats, academicians, writers, economists, entrepreneurs, entertainers, lawyers, doctors and pastors.

Like I said, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Pretty much any "person of color" who doesn't adhere militantly to Democrat Party orthodoxy has or will face the barbed charge of self-loathing or tribe betrayal.

And legions of women, famous and obscure, wealthy and poor, have been labeled "female impersonators" or "Stepford Wives" for embracing everything from unborn life to gun ownership, high border walls, low taxes and local control.

According to the self-appointed arbiters of color-coded and chromosomal fealty, if you marry outside your race, you're a traitor. If you adopt your husband's name, you're a traitor. If you're happy with stay-at-home motherhood, you're a traitor. If you straighten your hair, or culturally appropriate some other culture's hair, or bleach your hair the wrong color, you're a traitor.

Lord, what dreary killjoys these p.c. police be.

I catalogued my favorite malicious mutations of the Uncle Tom card for years on my blog, from "white man's puppet" to "Tokyo Rose" to "Manila whore," "Subic Bay bar girl," banana, coconut and Oreo. Instead of dissuading me from espousing heretical opinions, these insults spurred me on. Now, the increasing exposure and public ubiquity of unapologetic and unorthodox women and minorities seems to have triggered the collectivists' bile production at the highest levels.

Most recently, the White House Correspondents' Association gave "comedian" Michelle Wolf a lofty platform upon which to denigrate Sarah Sanders' womanhood by sniping:

"I'm never really sure what to call Sarah Huckabee Sanders, you know? Is it Sarah Sanders, is it Sarah Huckabee Sanders, is it Cousin Huckabee, is it Auntie Huckabee Sanders? What's Uncle Tom, but for white women who disappoint other white women? Oh, I know. Aunt Coulter."

Ultimately, the problem with the whinnying Wolf's schtick isn't that it's mean and divisive. It's that it's boring, unfunny and ineffectual. When everyone qualifies as an "Uncle Tom" in the eyes of the left's raging resistance, there will be no one left to pretend to laugh at their anemic jokes.

SOURCE






Adviser to Pope Francis Praises Karl Marx, Claims No Link to Communist Atrocities

Cardinal Reinhard Marx, head of the German Bishop's Conference and among the nine closest advisers to Pope Francis, applauded the teachings of Communist Karl Marx, whose 200th birthday occurs on May 5, claiming that the Communist Manifesto "impressed" him, helped to shape Catholic social doctrine, and was in no way responsible for the Communist atrocities and class-genocide committed by Marx's followers over the last 100-plus years.

Marxist regimes, starting with the Soviet Union in 1917 and Red China in 1949, have killed more than 100 million people worldwide for political and class reasons, all justified on the teachings of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and his co-author and financial backer Friederich Engels (1820-1895). The Catholic Church has repeatedly condemned Communism, with one of the earliest denunciations pronounced by Pope Pius IX in 1849.

Despite the Catholic Church's teaching against Communism, a utopian scheme that was Karl Marx's sole objective in life,  Cardinal Reinhard Marx told the magazine Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszitung, as translated and reported in Katholisch.de, that the Communist Manifesto "impressed" him and that "without Karl Marx there would be no Catholic social teaching."

The German cardinal criticized capitalism, claiming there are "enormous social inequalities and ecological damage that capitalist dynamics are answerable to," and adding that any improvements are "not an achievement of capitalism but the result of a struggle against these excesses."  Communist China and the predominantly socialist India are two of the most polluted countries in the world, according to the World Health Organization; the United States and Western Europe are among the least polluted nations in the world.

Thanks to Karl Marx, said the Cardinal, the world knows that the "market is not as innocent as it appears in the textbook of economists, behind which are powerful interests."

As for the Communist atrocities and class-genocide committed by Karl Marx's disciples, such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Castro, Cardinal Marx told the magazine that there was no "direct connection" between Karl Marx and those crimes. There is "totalitarian" thought in Marx's work, but you can't draw a clear line from Marx to the Gulag, said the cardinal, as reported in Katholisch.de.

As for Karl Marx's May 5 birthday, Cardinal Reinhard Marx said there was no reason for him "as a Catholic bishop" to celebrate it, but it is something "we should commemorate."

In his 1937 encyclical letter "On Atheistic Communism," Pope Pius XI said, "See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived! Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever.

"Those who permit themselves to be deceived into lending their aid towards the triumph of Communism in their own country, will be the first to fall victims of their error. And the greater the antiquity and grandeur of the Christian civilization in the regions where Communism successfully penetrates, so much more devastating will be the hatred displayed by the godless."

SOURCE






Control the Words, Control the Culture

The culture war is largely a war of words. Right now, the Left is winning

What’s in a word? Why does it matter whether we call someone who breaks the law to enter the country an “illegal alien” or a “undocumented immigrant”? What’s the difference between a Christmas tree and a “holiday tree?”

It’s just semantics, right?  Yes…and no.

It is just semantics, but “semantics” means the meaning of words. Words exist so that we might discriminate one thing from another. Without words we have chaos. And it starts with the first words; a baby says mama to distinguish mommy from daddy. Words shape how we think; they color how we view the world.

No one understands this better than the Left. They are the masters of words. Because they know that words matter.

The Left has a special gift for euphemisms — soft words selected to sugarcoat harsh realities so as to make those harsh realities easier for us to swallow. But these soft words are insidious. Their sole purpose is to deceive.

Race discrimination in hiring and college admissions is refashioned as the much nicer sounding “affirmative action.” Who would ever oppose an affirmative action?

Global warming, which can be measured and challenged, has morphed into “climate change,” which means essentially nothing because the climate is always changing.

When Barack Obama became president, George Bush’s war in Afghanistan suddenly transformed into the far less ominous and threatening “overseas contingency operation.” That’s one way to try to end a war. Just rename it.

The examples are endless. There’s a new euphemism every week.

In the make-believe world of leftist language, young criminals have become “justice-involved youth.” Mandates and taxes are “individual shared responsibility payments.” Government spending becomes an “investment.” Wanting to keep more of your hard-earned money becomes “greed”; taking more of someone else’s money is them “paying their fair share.” Opposing a Democrat in the White House is “obstruction.” Opposing a Republican in the White House, “resistance”!

In the name of “diversity” the left enforces intellectual conformity. It censors opposing views in the name of “tolerance.” And it labels all non-left views “hate speech.”

Consider the ongoing battle over pronouns, whether to call a man who thinks he’s a woman “he” or “she.” Very few people in the country suffer from gender confusion, and we should have compassion for those who do, but the Left has invested countless funds, time, and energy to make everyone refer to some men as she and some women as he.

Why? Is it because the Left is so compassionate? Or is it more likely because so much of the Left’s cultural agenda is about blurring, even denying, the natural distinctions between men and women?

Sometimes it’s just an adjective that can change or even negate the entire meaning of the word it describes.

Take “social justice.”

Justice means getting what you deserve without favor. “Social justice” means getting what you don’t deserve because you are favored.

Here’s one we hear a lot these days. “My truth.” Truth is reality regardless of any individual’s feelings or perceptions. “My truth” is how I perceive things regardless of how they really are.

And how about “Same-sex marriage.” Let’s not get into the politics; let’s just look at the language.

Throughout history, in every culture, marriage has been the union of husbands, men, and wives, women. “Same-sex marriage” is the union of men with men or women with women, but it is most certainly not the union of husbands and wives.

Once the phrase “same-sex” was placed before the word marriage — that is, once the definition of marriage changed, the debate changed. It became about “marriage equality.” It was suddenly an act of bigotry to limit marriage to husbands and wives.

All this manipulation of language has paid off for the left: because whoever controls the words controls the culture.

Don’t believe me? Just try using plain language instead of the Left’s politically correct jargon. But be careful. Use “the wrong words” and you might lose your job, your home and your reputation.

The culture war is largely a war of words. Right now, the Left is winning. You can see the consequences everywhere: in politics, in education, in media.

It’s time to fight back. We should not cede another syllable.

What’s in a word? Everything.

SOURCE


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

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

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

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3 May, 2018

Time for UNRWA to go

It is past time for two things to happen: the disbanding of UNRWA and its mandate, and the assumption of its duties by the UNHCR.

Palestinian Arabs have occupied everyone’s attention in recent weeks as a result of the rioting and disturbances on the Israeli/Gaza border. Yet few wonder why the refugees, on whose explicit behalf these days of rage have been launched, are there at all. Most refugee problems are dealt with in a matter of months or at most years, yet few pause to consider why a Palestinian Arab refugee problem still exists after 70 years.

The reason is actually simple: from the outset, the Arab world has resisted their resettlement. As a result of this concerted opposition, the international community has fallen in line and long ago discarded the goal of their resettlement.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the relief agency charged with overseeing the Palestinian Arab refugees of the 1948-9 Arab/Israeli war, is a perfect reflection of this fact. While other refugee relief organizations seek to resettle the refugees in their charge quickly, UNRWA does not: it seeks to maintain and sustain them in their current predicament – in large, sprawling refugee camps, many of which have essentially become towns and cities, in the West Bank (Judea/Samaria), Gaza and neighboring Arab countries.

UNRWA exists in its current form only because it operates under a mandate that uniquely defines as “refugees” not only Palestinian Arabs who fled the fighting and chaos during the 1948-9 war – which would be in accord with the standard definition of “refugee” as applied in all other cases – but also successive generations of their descendants.

Thus, Palestinian Arab refugees and their millions of descendants under UNRWA care live in limbo, prohibited from living and working in the economy of the wider society in which they are located. UNRWA-run camps are thus entering their eighth decade of existence, housing sometimes the third- or even fourth-generation descendants of the refugees they were originally built to serve temporarily.

UNRWA also serves to perpetuate the conflict that created the refugees by permitting their radicalization and irredentism. To receive an education in UNRWA camp is to be raised to accept the fabricated Palestinian Arab narrative of original Israeli aggression and deliberate dispossession of Palestinian Arabs. A seething determination to return to and eliminate Israel has been the social consequence.

Indeed, the abortive 2000, 2000-1 and 2008 American-endorsed peace offers that encompassed the creation of a Palestinian state within almost the entirety of the West Bank and Gaza were most likely rejected by the Palestinian Authority (PA) for the simple reason that PA leadership could not sign off on any peace plan that encompassed Israel’s continued existence and survive.

All this stands in stark contrast to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the international body that deals with all refugee problems other than the Palestinian Arab one. UNHRC observes a universal definition of refugee status, one that applies solely to those who actually fled their country during hostilities, civil war, natural disaster or other disturbances. UNHCR works to resettle refugees quickly and to dismantle the temporary refugee camps housing them. Nor does it count as refugees subsequent generations of descendants of refugees.

This has immense practical ramifications: in literally all other cases other than the Palestinian Arab one, the number of refugees shrinks over time, chiefly through successful resettlement. In contrast, in the Palestinian Arab case, their numbers continue to expand ceaselessly.

Thus, instead of the Palestinian Arab refugees officially numbering 30,000 – the approximate number of original refugees still alive today – their number, according to UNRWA, is some 5.3 million.

Accordingly, if all major refugee problems of the past century have been solved through resettlement rather than repatriation, then it needs to be understood that UNRWA is a central component of the problem rather than of the solution regarding Palestinian Arab refugees.

It is past time for two things to happen: the disbanding of UNRWA and its mandate, and the assumption of its duties by the UNHCR.

Such a huge administrative adjustment can occur only if becomes the policy of the United States that it should occur. No other country has either the clout or will to propose this outcome and to persuade and, if necessary, pressure friends and foes into supporting it. No other country has the ability to firmly place this proposal on the international agenda. And no peace agreement worthy of the name can be achieved one day without the disbanding of the UNRWA system of maintaining and entrenching a hostile, unsettled and irredentist population as a permanent impediment to peace.

Short of this occurring, the current situation, with the “refugees” continually growing in number and determined on Israel’s elimination, no Israeli/Palestinian Arab peace can be expected at any time.

SOURCE





Liberal political correctness is intimidatory, like the Crips, or Soviet Cheka.  It's gang-land style

But liberals themselves can be as abusive as they like, of course.  They demand extreme politesness from others while they themselves pour out hate-speech towards anyone they disagree with

The election of Donald Trump as president showed the facade of virtue-signaling political correctness – the left-wing’s counterfeit morality – is cracking and, quite frankly, easily upended.  It’s destructive gangs, like the Crips or Soviet Cheka, no longer hold sway over people like Donald Trump and Kanye West.

Defeating them requires one to, in the words of former First Lady Nancy Reagan, “Just Say No.”

While Republicans met at their 2016 national convention in Cleveland, Ohio, Mark Hannah, a supposed expert on global media freedom and public culture at New York University, wrote in Time magazine:

“The opposite of political correctness is not unvarnished truth-telling. It is a political expression that is careless toward the beliefs and attitudes different than one’s own. In its more extreme fashion, it is incivility, indecency or vulgarity. These are the true alternatives to political correctness. These are the traits that Trump tacitly touts when he criticizes political correctness. And these are the essential attributes of Trump’s candidacy.”

So, it’s more than a little ironic that the defeated Democratic presidential candidate of 2016, Hillary Clinton, felt no compunction in calling Trump voters misogynistic, racist and just plain deplorable.

New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow, a good man of the left, attacked the triumphant Trump, and indirectly his supporters, saying: “The Trump Doctrine is White Supremacy. Yes, he is also diplomatically inept, overwhelmed by avarice, thoroughly corrupt and a pathological liar, but it is to white supremacy and to hostility for everyone not white that he always returns.”

And when Republicans were moving a tax reform bill through Congress last December, Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi described it as a debate over “life and death” and its passage the equivalent of “Armageddon.”

A bludgeon of the left

Contrary to the claims by Professor Hannah, political correctness is the exclusive tool by which the LEFT promotes “incivility, indecency, “vulgarity,” and is, “careless toward the beliefs and attitudes different than one’s own.”

“I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct,” said Trump during the campaign. “I’ve been challenged by so many people, and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time either.”

Paralysis in the face of the left is PC’s true function.

President Trump’s “dragon energy,” to quote Kanye West, freed him from the tyranny of the left’s “party truth” of political morals. This explains what is at the heart of Trump Derangement Syndrome.

SOURCE






Political correctness is butchering Australian comedy

The PC brigade is killing comedy for Australian audiences.

Aussie comedian Vince Sorrenti says “comedy is part of the solution” and “not the problem”. “There’s a place for political correctness. I think it serves a purpose,” he tells Ben Fordham.

“But I do think the pendulum has swung a little bit too far.  “People will get offended about anything.”

Vince says comedians shouldn’t edit their humour to suit everyone. “If you go through your life just trying to avoid offending anyone, you’re pretty much going to say nothing for the rest of your life.

“You need to chill out… and think someone’s just trying to make you laugh.

“Sweeping it all under the carpet, to me, just highlights the problem.”

SOURCE 





The Negative Impact of the #MeToo Movement

Our nation is about to be transformed, thanks to the #MeToo movement. I am not speaking about a cessation of sexual predation in the workplace. If that were the only consequence of #MeToo, the movement would clearly be a force for good. Unfortunately, its effects are going to be more sweeping and destructive. #MeToo is going to unleash a new torrent of gender and race quotas throughout the economy and culture, on the theory that all disparities in employment and institutional representation are due to harassment and bias. The resulting distortions of decision-making will be largely invisible; we will usually not know of the superior candidates for a job who were passed over in the drive for gender parity. But the net consequence will be a loss of American competitiveness and scientific achievement.

Pressures for so-called diversity, defined reductively by gonads and melanin, are of course nothing new. Since the 1990s, every mainstream institution has lived in terror of three lethal words: “all white male,” an epithet capable of producing paroxysms of self-abasement. Silicon Valley start-ups and science labs quake before the charge of being all or mostly male; their varied ethnic demographics earn them no protection from the diversity racket. The New York Times recently criticized the board of fashion giant H&M for being “entirely white.” We can therefore infer that there are females on the H&M board, or else the Times would have let loose with the bigger gun: “all white male.” When both categories of alleged privilege—white and male—overlap, an activist is in the diversity sweet spot, his power over an institution at its zenith.

But however pervasive the diversity imperative was before, the #MeToo movement is going to make the previous three decades look like a golden age of meritocracy. No mainstream institution will hire, promote, or compensate without an exquisite calculation of gender and race ratios. Males in general, and white males in particular, will have to clear a very high bar in order to justify further deferring that halcyon moment of gender equity.

Hollywood and the media are already showing the #MeToo effect. At this year’s Oscar awards lunch, the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, John Bailey, prefaced his remarks by noting that he was a “75-year-old white man.” Bailey was trying to get out ahead of the curve, since if he hadn’t pointed out this shameful status, feminist crusaders in the press and the industry would have done so for him. Witness actress Natalie Portman’s sneer in presenting the best director prize at the 2018 Golden Globe awards: “And here are the all-male nominees.” Such shallow bean counting is now going to become the automatic response to any perceived lack of “diversity” in entertainment.

Naturally, Bailey announced reparations for the Academy’s predominantly white male profile: henceforth it would “balance gender, race, ethnicity, and religion” in all its activities and would double its female and minority members by 2020. Needless to say, this was not enough. Outside the lunch, the National Hispanic Media Coalition protested the lack of proportional ethnic representation in Oscar nominations and acting roles.

CBS is considering only females to fill the anchor slot at Face the Nation, to catch up with The Today Show, which now has two female anchors. The Recording Academy, which oversees the Grammys, has promised to overcome the “unconscious biases that impede female advancement” in the music industry, after bean-counting complaints from The Wall Street Journal’s pop music critic and female music executives.

The prospect of left-wing entertainment moguls having to sacrifice their box office judgment to identity politics is an unalloyed pleasure, and of little consequence to society at large. But quota-izing will hardly be limited to Hollywood.

Major publishing houses are analyzing their author lists by gender and race and making publishing decisions accordingly. What books get reviewed and who reviews them will increasingly be determined according to gender and race. There are likely no major newspapers that are not tallying reporter and op-ed bylines, as well as the topics they cover, by gender and race. In 2005, professional feminist Susan Estrich preposterously accused Michael Kinsley, then running the Los Angeles Times editorial pages, of excluding female writers. Naturally, Estrich ignored the fact that males are disproportionately interested in public affairs, as demonstrated by lopsided sex ratios among op-ed submissions and letters to the editor. Eighty-seven percent of contributors to Wikipedia are male. There are no allegedly sexist gatekeepers at Wikipedia screening out females; contributions are anonymous and open to all. But males are more oriented towards highly fact-based realms.

Now, however, sterile bean-counting exercises such as Estrich’s have gone in-house. In response to the #MeToo movement, The New York Times created a “gender editor” who presides over a “gender initiative” to infuse questions of gender throughout all the Times’ coverage. A recent front-page product of this #MeToo initiative covered the earth-shattering problem facing NFL cheerleaders: to wit, they have a dress code and are forbidden from fraternizing with the players. Despite these allegedly patriarchal conditions, females are still lining up to be hired, to the puzzlement of the Times.

Publisher Meredith Corp. has come in for the usual criticism after buying the floundering Time, Inc. late last year. “They’re basically all middle-aged white males from the Midwest,” grumbled a Time staffer, who, you would think, would be in no position to complain. Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, is offering leadership training exclusively to females to try to meet its short-term goal of 40 percent female executives.

Corporate boardrooms, executive suites, and management structures are going to be scoured for gender and race imbalances. Diversity trainers are already sensing a windfall from #MeToo. Gender, diversity, and inclusion were the dominant themes at this January’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The conference was chaired exclusively by women. Windows were emblazoned with slogans like “Diversity is good for business” and “Gender equality is a social and economic issue.” CEOs shared their techniques for achieving gender equity. It’s actually quite simple: pay managers based on their record of hiring and promoting females and minorities, as Hilton CEO Christopher Nassetta explained. Never mind the fact that by introducing irrelevant criteria such as race and gender into an evaluation process, you will inevitably end up with less qualified employees.

U.S. banks and financial institutions are facing pressure from shareholder groups to release data on the number and compensation of females and minorities in their upper ranks. Immediate punishment befalls anyone in business who has the courage to criticize this war on merit. The chief creative officer of the advertising firm M&C Saatchi wrote last year that he was “bored of diversity being prioritized over talent.” Saatchi atoned for this heresy with a frenzy of female hirings and promotions.

Amazingly, John Williams—a white man—squeaked into the presidency of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York this April, to the outrage of the diversocrats. Don’t be surprised if he is the last to do so. “The New York Fed has never been led by a woman or a person of color, and that needs to change,” announced New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. Williams’ “progress,” as The New York Times called it, in “diversifying” senior leadership when he was president of the San Francisco Fed undoubtedly made his unfortunate race and sex more palatable to the search committee.

#MeToo enforcers are even going after classical music. New Yorker music critic Alex Ross triggered outrage against the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Philadelphia Orchestra in February when he tweeted that they had programmed no female composers in their 2018-2019 seasons. Never mind that the CSO was even then performing Jennifer Higdon’s Low Brass Concerto—a piece commissioned by the Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore orchestras—at Carnegie Hall. It is ludicrous to suggest that these institutions are discriminating against female composers, but Ross and his followers demand affirmative programming quotas.

More HERE

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

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

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

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2 May, 2018

Socially unacceptable Christians

The HBO series “Silicon Valley,” a trenchant satire of the rich and digital, devoted a recent episode to Christianity. The story took a strange turn.

An entrepreneur named DD was pitching his gay dating website, and fretted to Richard Hendricks, the show’s protagonist, that it might be perceived as exclusionary. That won’t be a problem, Hendricks replied: “Exclude all the straight people you want.”

But a larger concern heaved into view. The entrepreneur was inconveniently “outed” as a . . . Christian. In the Valley, a colleague explained, that is a problem: “Here, you can be openly polyamorous and people will call you brave. You can put microdoses of LSD in your cereal and people will call you a pioneer. But the one thing you cannot be is a Christian.”

DD grew up in Palo Alto, and explains: “My dad says my lifestyle makes him sick. He just wants his gay son back.”

The creators of “Silicon Valley” are TV comedy veterans, in effect tipping their hats to the famous 1993 “Seinfeld” episode, “The Outing.” In that program, close friends Jerry Seinfeld and George Costanza volubly asserted that they weren’t gay, insisting all the while — “not that there is anything wrong with that.”

Remember when gay people were outsiders? The “Silicon Valley” writers are asking. That’s the way cultural sophisticates treat Christians now.

In places like New York City, for instance. Last month, The New Yorker published an article headlined, “Chick-fil-A’s Creepy Infiltration of New York.” The writer noted that his fellow city dwellers seem to like the food, in fact they were lining up to eat it. “Yet the brand’s arrival here feels like an infiltration,” he wrote, “in no small part because of its pervasive Christian traditionalism.”

Chick-fil-A’s owners are conservative Christians who have voiced opposition to same-sex marriage, but The New Yorker doesn’t mention any crosses or gay conversion therapies being foisted on unsuspecting chicken-eaters.

I had a meal at a Chick-fil-A last week and you will never guess what happened: They served me food, and I paid for it. There was no Jesus-mongering, no hidden baptismal pools awaiting unwary customers who might be christened against their will. Unlike my favorite fast-food chain, In-N-Out Burger, they don’t print tiny Bible citations on the bottoms of their soft drink cups.

The super-secular Cambridge Public Library, which still displays the Ten Commandments in its original, 1899 building at the request of a 19th-century benefactor, has more religion going on than any Chick-fil-A I’ve ever been in.

Nonetheless, The New Yorker informs us, “[Chick-fil-A’s] arrival in the city augurs worse than a load of manure on the F train.” The writer notes that, like many restaurant chains, Chick-fil-A donates thousands of pounds of food to New York Common Pantry. “Still,” he writes, “there’s something especially distasteful about Chick-fil-A. . . .”

Yeah, OK, we get the point.

If only the great poet, writer, playwright, and aphorist Oscar Wilde were alive to savor our unexpected cultural inversion. Prosecutors of the nominally Christian Queen Victoria tossed Wilde in jail for two years in 1895 for the crime of being gay. Prison broke him, and he died three years later.

A century or so later, Gay is OK, as the famous T-shirt proclaims. Now Christianity, to paraphrase the Victorians’ euphemism for homosexuality, is The Religion That Dares Not Speak Its Name.

SOURCE





War on Guns: Microsoft Joins Google, Facebook, Twitter in Changing Pistol Emojis Into Water Guns

The great Leftist War on Firearms of 2018 continues apace. News broke this week that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Samsung would scrap their old pistol emojis and replace them with bright fluorescent images of water guns. Microsoft, the last holdout, announced its decision to follow this trend on Wednesday.

This move represents a reversal of Google's decision in 2016 not to mimic Apple's bright water gun design. "We’re always evaluating our emoji designs to ensure that messages are displayed consistently across platforms," a Google spokesperson told PJ Media on Thursday.

Emojipedia reported the change Tuesday, and posted a graph showing the historic emojis from previous years.

"The decision to make the change is to minimize issues with cross-platform communication, avoiding a scenario where a user may pick a toy gun from their native emoji keyboard on Apple, Google or Samsung devices, and have it show as a weapon on Facebook," Emojipedia reported.

At the time, Microsoft declined to comment. Even so, Emojipedia predicted Microsoft's eventual change. "It's worth noting that Microsoft were first to use a toy ray gun in place of a real gun for this emoji. Having brought it into line with other vendors once, it seems likely that they might opt to do the same again."

While Emojipedia suggested the change represented no more than a cosmetic alteration to enable cross-platform translation, current events suggest another explanation.

Following the tragic mass shooting on February 14 in Parkland, Fla., gun control activists have launched a new movement against Americans' access to firearms. Students launched multiple school walkouts. Children's television networks even suspended their programming for the walkout. Mainstream media outlets provided a huge platform for Parkland survivors who urged gun control. Even Ohio's Republican governor, John Kasich, seemed to evolve on the issue.

Meanwhile, Americans seem to have overlooked the fact that guns were in schools thirty years ago, and few tragedies happened. A new study found that gun deaths have actually dropped by almost a third since 1990. Many non-gun control options would also result in fewer school shootings, and President Trump has presented a large reform package on the issue.

The decision of Facebook, Google, Twitter, and even Microsoft to reject pistol emojis, in this context, seems a politically charged cave toward the anti-gun Left. This seems even more likely given a recent survey showing that employees at Silicon Valley tech firms identify their companies as liberal, and conservative employees are afraid to reveal their political beliefs for fear of reprisal.

Eventually, however, these efforts against guns are likely to peter out. As these companies decided to make this move, the second season of HBO's "Westworld" launched, in all its gun-infused violent glory. Gun control activists might demand the removal of firearms from media, but movies featuring guns, firearm television shows, and violent video games (which do not lead to real-life violence) aren't going away any time soon.

SOURCE






How did Britain end up at No40 on the world press-freedom rankings?

The 2018 World Press Freedom Index shows we have a fight on our hands

Britain prides itself on being an historic home of freedom and the free press. So how come we are languishing in 40th place in the international press-freedom table?

Imagine the crowds singing an updated version of Rule Britannia at the Last Night of the Proms, about how Britain ‘shall flourish great and free / The dread and envy of them all / Except for the 39 freer nations, obvs’.

According to the 2018 World Press Freedom Index, published on Wednesday by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the UK is now ‘one of the worst-ranked countries in Western Europe in terms of respect for press freedom’.

Its 40th place puts the UK one ahead of Burkina Faso and two clear of Taiwan, and suggests that journalists working in Britain have less freedom to hold the powerful to account than those in such liberal states as South Africa, Chile or Lithuania.

British observers are far more likely to bemoan how far we have fallen down the world rankings in football, another field we claim to have invented. Unlike the glorious irrelevance of football, however, freedom of the press really is a matter of life and death for a democratic society.

The UK’s 40th place is unchanged from 2017. But that is 18 lower than its ranking in the first Index, published in 2002 – and 12 places down on six years ago, before the publication of the Leveson report.

That should give a clue as to the new threats press freedom faces in the UK. Unlike in some other illiberal parts of the world, we are not confronted by old-fashioned government repression and state control of the press. Instead, and especially since the Leveson Inquiry, press freedom in the UK has been threatened by a more underhand assault from allegedly liberal political and cultural elites – backed, to their shame, by the Labour Party leadership and the Corbynite left.

Few in UK public life will openly admit that they detest press freedom these days. Instead they pursue their crusade to tame the troublemaking press behind ethical-looking banners. Hence Lord Justice Leveson’s inquiry, ostensibly into phone hacking at the News of the World, became a showtrial of the entire ‘culture, practices and ethics’ of the tabloid press.

Similarly, today’s attempts further to hobble UK press freedom might claim to be pursuing such innocent-sounding goals as data protection or defending privacy. But the underlying message is always the same: that the press in Britain, in print and online, is somehow ‘too free’ to reveal truths that some want kept secret.

The RSF’s annual report notes some of the dangerous UK trends of the past year. There is the continuing struggle over the dreaded Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013, which would make publishers who are sued liable to pay the punitive court costs of both sides, even if they won the case. Theresa May’s Tory government has now said it will not enforce Section 40. Yet it remains on the statute book, with members of the House of Lords and Labour MPs chomping at the bit to see it imposed.

Meanwhile, the House of Lords passed amendments to the Data Protection Bill that would reduce the protection for journalists even if their stories are in the public interest. Of course, investigative journalism is impossible without trying to access hidden data. Which is why the Lords are keen on measures to keep the scandalous secrets of their unelected, unaccountable house hidden beneath their ermine robes.

The threats of Section 40 and the data-protection amendments are intended to force the press to sign up to the official state regulator, Impress, set up after Leveson by royal charter in a late-night deal between the leaders of Britain’s political parties and the celebrity-led press-hating Hacked Off lobby.

This is the first system of state-backed press regulation in Britain since Crown licensing of the printed word ended in 1695. Since national newspaper publishers understandably refused to submit to being policed by Impress, they have been threatened with parliamentary blackmail and coercion. It is a sad sign of the times that opposing state-backed regulation by royal command remains a priority in the 21st century.

Reporters Without Borders list other dangerous developments in the UK over the past year, from the Law Commission proposal to replace the Official Secrets Act with an ‘Espionage Act’ that could have seen journalists using leaked information jailed for up to 14 years as ‘spies’, to offshore law firm Appleby suing the BBC and the Guardian over their reports of the Paradise Papers – ‘the only two media outlets out of 96 in 67 countries that analysed the Paradise Papers to be taken to court’.

All in all, it might seem a wonder that the UK remains as high as 40th in the press-freedom index. The other wonder is that the liberal elite’s insidious assault on press freedom has been fulsomely supported by Labour and the left.

Freedom of the press has for centuries been a cause of radicals and the left, as the lifeblood of democracy. Yet the British left long since abandoned any notion of liberty in favour of greater state control. Labour figures such as deputy leader Tom Watson and (anti-)Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer could rival the most reactionary lords in their disdain for press freedom.

Outside parliament, meanwhile, the Corbynite left has adopted the role of stage army for the elites’ press-taming campaign. ‘There must be a reckoning between the people and the media’, one pro-Corbyn columnist ranted recently: ‘We are being let down and lied to by a press that serves elite interests….We’ve got to do something about it.’ Thus is an elite plot to curb the popular press perversely recast as a people’s crusade.

The radical British heroes who fought for press freedom down the centuries, from the Levellers through John Wilkes to Thomas Paine and the Chartists, might have something to say about that. People like them went to jail and even the gallows in the fight to free the press from state interference. Their ambitions were slightly higher than making Britain the 40th freest nation on Earth.

It might not be quite so bad to be ranked mid-table in a world where real press freedom was the norm. But the truth is that nowhere in the world is the press ‘too free’. And in Britain, in 2018, it is nowhere near free enough.

SOURCE





Who Controls Your Kids' Lives?

Ben Shapiro
   
Former Republican Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas was fond of telling a story about his time stumping for educational change. “My educational policies are based on the fact that I care more about my children than you do,” Gramm once said to a woman. “No, you don’t,” she replied. “OK,” said Gramm. “What are their names?”

Gramm’s fundamental premise is inalterably correct: Parents care more about their children than do the members of the bureaucracy. But parents are being gradually curbed in their authority by precisely those bureaucrats across the West.

On Tuesday, a British court condemned a not-yet-two-year-old child to die. Now, make no mistake: The child, Alfie Evans, is expected to die in the near future anyway; he suffers from an undiagnosed brain condition that has robbed him of much of his function. But his parents simply wanted to be able to transfer him from a British hospital to an Italian hospital to seek experimental care.

And the British court system refused.

Citing the expertise of Evans’ doctors, the courts declared that Evans’ best interests are not served by his parents’ attempts to save his life. Instead, the little boy would be deprived of life support, left to die without oxygen or water. The ruling, the judge said, “represents the final chapter in the life of this extraordinary little boy.” But that chapter was written by the British bureaucracy, not by his parents — the ones who will have to engrave his epitaph and visit his grave.

This appalling result isn’t the first of its kind; just last year, a little boy named Charlie Gard was taken off life support thanks to the British court system, which prevented his parents from sending him to the United States for further treatment. Again, the courts made the argument that the best interest of the child lay in his death.

All of this is the final result of a system of thought that places parental control of children below the expertise of bureaucrats on the scale of priorities. It’s one thing for the government to step in when parents are preventing children from receiving life-saving care. It’s another when the government steps in to prevent parents from pursuing potentially life-saving care. And yet that’s just what has happened repeatedly in the United Kingdom.

Why? Why would British society place parents’ wishes below the wishes of the state? Because a bureaucratic society of experts generally sees parents as an obstacle to proper development. Parents, in this view, treat their children as chattel to be owned and trained — but the state can treat children with the dignity they are due. This means placing parental wishes to the side in every case in which those wishes come into conflict with the priorities of the state.

The bureaucrats of Britain don’t merely usurp parental rights in the realm of life and death; they do so in the realm of upbringing as well. They have threatened religious Jewish schools for failing to inculcate children with LGBT propaganda; meanwhile, they have ignored the targeting of young women in Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford and Newcastle because the perpetrators are disproportionately Muslim.

All of this is untenable, both morally and practically. Parents will not continue to give the power to control their children away to bureaucrats who do not know their children’s names.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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1 May, 2018

Feminists Attack Tomi Lahren's Appearance

If there is one thing consistent about modern feminists, it is their blatant hypocrisy. These alleged warriors for gender equality claim it's sexist and wrong to attack a woman's appearance, for example, unless that woman happens to hold some conservative views. ?

Case in point, Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren is being mocked by feminists over at Babe.net for her looks. The feminist site has dug up "embarrassing" old photos of Lahren which they suggest were taken pre-plastic surgery.

"Revealed: We found embarrassing videos of Tomi Lahren before she got plastic surgery," reads a headline run by the site earlier in the month. "An expert told us she probably had a TON of work done," reads the sub-heading.

Babe.net used the "uncovered" photos as an excuse to post nasty comments about Lahren's appearance from social media users and effectively shamed the political firebrand for allegedly getting plastic surgery — which is especially odd since the site has previously praised plastic surgery as "absolutely a feminist statement" (h/t Paul Joseph Watson).

"Last week, as her high school photos resurfaced, people on Twitter pointed out that Lahren looked like a 'garden variety gremlin' and a 'I f*** my cousin lookin ass b****,'" notes the enlightened piece.

Social media users "also pointed out that Lahren looked so different that she must have had plastic surgery at some point between that photo and ranting about Beyoncé and Colin Kaepernick. The photos and videos we found from her time in college would agree," Babe.net continued.

This was the excuse the feminists use to shame Lahren for the alleged surgery. "So we asked two plastic surgeons, both experts in their field, to find out for certain – has Tomi Lahren had surgery?"

The rest of the piece was used to speculate about Lahren's alleged surgery.

Babe.net has previously hit Lahren for her looks. Last month, the site published a piece titled, "Is this what Tomi Lahren looked like before plastic surgery?" The entire post was composed of vile social media comments about Lahren's appearance.

Whatever you think about Lahren, it's indisputable that she's consistently the victim of sexist attacks that are ignored by feminists, if not committed by them. While there are many fair criticisms that can be made about the political commentator, it's curious that "feminists" are obsessed with mocking her looks. It's almost as if modern feminism has nothing to do with gender equality and everything to do with advancing a politically Left agenda wherein conservative female thinkers are given the "Mean Girls" you-can't-sit-with-us treatment.

SOURCE







Why We Marched to Defend Free Speech in the UK

Writers Helen Dale and Shazia Hobbs both attended the ‘Free Dankula’ protests on Monday April 23, Shazia in Airdrie, Scotland and Helen in London, England. Here, they report exclusively for Quillette.

Helen: I’m not sure speaking at a protest was ever on my bucket list but at least I can say I’ve done it now.

In circumstances I still find peculiar — outlined here to American journalist Tim Pool at 17:10 — I finished up speaking at the London ‘Free Dankula’ cum ‘Free Speech’ protest.

Shazia: I arrived at Airdrie Sheriff Court on Monday morning not knowing what sort of turn out to expect.

I was delighted to see lots of people had travelled from England to support Markus Meechan, but I was disappointed to see Scots hadn’t turned out in their thousands. Scottish law is different from English law and Scottish people should have been a more visible presence, since the outcome of the case could curtail their freedom of speech. This man was also at risk of ‘going in the gaol’ as Scots say.

Helen and Shazia: In the end, of course, Markus Meechan — aka ‘Count Dankula’ — didn’t go to gaol for his ‘Nazi pug’ video. That said, the £800 fine he copped probably makes it the most expensive joke in Britain. We have gone through some sort of looking glass, but from what to where is unknown and perhaps unknowable.

A man trains his girlfriend’s pet pug to do Nazi salutes in response to the trigger phrases ‘gas the Jews’ and ‘sieg heil’. At one point in the video he makes of this exercise, the pug — whose name is ‘Buddha’, by the way — is in front of a television screen as a Nazi rally plays. Police see the video on YouTube but are in a jurisdiction where police cannot bring prosecutions on their own motion. So they go looking for complainants — Jews who may be ‘grossly offended’ by what they see. The video is shown, presumably multiple times, to people who have not seen it and do not know of it. Some people are indeed offended and produce complaints, notably a Jewish Rabbi in Glasgow. The complaints are taken to the Procurator Fiscal, Scotland’s equivalent of the CPS or DPP.

It’s like the old joke: ‘Eugh! Look what I nearly stood in!’ [holds up dog shit in bare hand.]

The video joker is duly charged. He becomes famous. Many more people see the Nazi pug video. The video joker is convicted. He becomes still more famous, although in response to the conviction, YouTube ‘demonetises’ his videos, so he can no longer earn income from his fame. He is likely saved from a custodial sentence by the uproar surrounding his case. His story competes for headlines with the latest addition to the Royal Family. In words to chill the blood, during his sentencing statement, the Sheriff tells the joker the reaction by employers in the local area suggests that not only Jewish people found this material highly offensive: you say you lost a number of jobs as a result.

Helen has written elsewhere why she thought this prosecution utterly unworthy, damaging to freedom of speech but also of a type to reduce British law enforcement to a global laughing-stock. This time, it’s not only Americans — protected by the strong shield of their First Amendment — laughing at us. Other people are as well, even in countries with hate speech laws.

However, the law under which the charges were brought — Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 — is not a hate speech law. In some respects, this makes it more dangerous. Hate speech laws — whether one agrees that ‘hate speech’ exists or not — are narrowly drafted. This is so because both common law and Roman law (‘civilian’) systems have long recognised that constraints on speech need to be narrow or civic life becomes impossible.

As originally enacted — in 1935, no less — Section 127 was to stop people harassing others by telephone. During the protest, Helen had to explain to one of the youthful organisers what it was like to be called up in the middle of the night and sworn at, or to have heavy breathing down the telephone. Subsection 2 of the Act is clearly directed to a sibling under the skin of harassing midnight calls: phoning the emergency services and telling them granny is doing the watusi on the living room carpet when in reality granny is alive and well and on holiday in Brighton.

Section 127 of the Communications Act has become one of the principal means by which the Internet is policed in the UK. It has done so with little debate about whether it is appropriately worded to deal with modern technology. It is one thing to protect individuals from ‘grossly offensive’ personal telephone calls. It is quite another to protect groups of people from what are in effect public performances. That it is now being used to regulate YouTube is frankly bonkers.

*   *   *

Helen: When I was invited to speak at the London protest, for a time it seemed I’d be sharing a platform with Tommy Robinson, which I admit gave me pause. Robinson — although he’s cleaned himself up of late — leaves a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths, chiefly because he started out in football ‘firm’ culture and the EDL and has quite a rap sheet.

I had anxious friends contact me and suggest appearing on the same side was ‘bad for my reputation’, would ‘lose me my column at [x outlet]’ or even see me answering ‘please explains’ from my Conservative constituency association or the Law Society. There was also a risk his presence would attract Antifa, leading to a riot instead of a protest.

Robinson then went to Scotland to protest outside Airdrie Sheriff Court and my two concerns evaporated. Nonetheless, ideas don’t become wrong because of who believes in them. Guilt by association can get in the bin.

People marching were also not of a type commonly associated with protests. A few were in suits, but others waved American Gadsden flags, or the flag of an invented country, Kekistan. One joker had modified the Gadsden flag so the rattlesnake was transformed into a pug, with its tagline also altered: don’t tread on meme. London’s other main speaker was a man better known as ‘Sargon of Akkad’. Sargon of Akkad’s real name is Carl Benjamin, and he comes from Swindon (home to the Magic Roundabout). He invented the land of ‘shitposters’ known as Kekistan, although perhaps not their flag.

Benjamin’s Kekistanis were overwhelmingly young, wan in the weak spring sun and unfamiliar with the traditions of protest: they chatted amiably to Met officers scattered thereabouts. It took an older man, an obvious Boomer, to point a bullhorn at the police and shout. Later, Benjamin apologised for using a megaphone at the march’s terminus in front of Number 10. He was not, he said, the sort of annoying person who bellowed his amplified thoughts at unwilling listeners.

*   *   *

Shazia: Meechan and his girlfriend Sue — and Buddha the pug’s true owner — arrived at Airdrie Sheriff Court hand in hand. They walked past the press who had gathered, refusing to answer questions. I saw a cameraman from Sky News stick his foot out. It looked like an attempt at making Sue trip and fall.

The two of them waited outside the doors, Meechan smoking a cigarette. Supporters approached him, shaking his hand, wishing him good luck and asking for selfies. I asked him how he was feeling and he said, a little nervous. He kept his back to the paparazzi and camera crews the whole time; he didn’t want to give them a picture.

I spoke to police officers standing around the courthouse, waiting. They agreed the trial was farcical and a waste of police time and resources. They said they’d rather be out catching real criminals and solving real crimes.

SOURCE







University of Texas to treat masculinity as a 'mental health issue'

A new program at the University of Texas Counseling and Mental Health Center will promote "healthy masculinity" through "public events, educational workshops, and other forms of student involvement."

The goal is "to impact campus culture to increase acceptance of gender diversity, promote healthy relationships with an emphasis on consent, and prevent interpersonal violence."

PJ Media:

The program is predicated on a critique of so-called “restrictive masculinity.” Men, the program argues, suffer when they are told to “act like a man” or when they are encouraged to fulfill traditional gender roles, such as being “successful” or “the breadwinner.”

Though you might enjoy “taking care of people” or being “active,” MasculinUTwarns that many of these attributes are actually dangerous, claiming that “traditional ideas of masculinity place men into rigid (or restrictive) boxes [which]... prevent them from developing their emotional maturity.”

“If you are a male student at UT reading this right now, we hope that learning about this helps you not to feel guilty about having participated in these definitions of masculinity, and instead feel empowered to break the cycle!” the program offers.

Please. Make it stop.

The program is currently without leadership, but not for long. The school is in the process of hiring a “healthy masculinities coordinator” to run the program, and a school official tells PJ Media that some hopeful hirees are interviewing for the position later this week.

While many schools now have similar programs, this appears to be the first run directly out of a Counseling and Mental Health Center. Though the school seems to justify this by claiming that masculinity can cause men to lash out at other people and themselves, the school did not respond to a request for comment to clarify.

What is "healthy masculinity? This poster will give you an idea.

"Flowers in their beard or something"? This is "healthy"? Yikes.

Here's the clincher:

There is no evidence that masculinity itself contributes to violence. Universities that run similar programs, such as UNC-Chapel Hill and Northwestern, have admitted that their programming isn’t supported by any evidence.

Yes, but men sure look pretty with flowers in their beards, don't they?

This is just another effort by the left to deny or try to change human nature. It would be funny if it weren't so futile. There are physical, biological, and chemical attributes men have that women don't. No amount of "healthy masculinity" programs will alter that singular fact.

There are men who act like pigs and there are men who are a genuine threat to women. But it's not because of their "masculinity" but rather the male role models they had growing up. There is nothing inherent in being a man that causes them to treat women and others disrespectfully or unkindly.

That an institution of higher learning should ignore that is beyond belief.

SOURCE






Germany: Amid Rising Anti-Semitism, Community Leader Urges German Jews Not To Wear Religious Head Dress

After a recent anti-Semitic assault in Germany, Jewish leaders are telling their community to avoid wearing the kippah religious head dress.

As BBC News reports, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany is urging discretion, especially in urban areas.

“Defiantly showing your colors would in principle be the right way to go [to tackle anti-Semitism],” Josef Schuster said. “Nevertheless, I would advise individual people against showing themselves openly with a kippah in a big-city setting in Germany, and wear a baseball cap or something else to cover their head instead.”

German Justice Minister Katarina Barley expressed her concern this month that anti-Semitism was growing in her country.

“We have to admit that anti-Semitism is becoming socially acceptable again,” Barley told the Funke Media Group.

Schuster has issued warnings in the past. In 2015, he advised Jews to eschew the kippah in Muslim-dominated sections of a city.

The remarks prefaced a “Berlin Wears Kippah” demonstration on Wednesday that encouraged Germans to show their support for Jews after two men were targeted and assaulted last week while wearing their kippahs.

One of the men attacked told Isaraeli media that he was wearing the head gear specifically to demonstrate how Berlin was a safe city for Jews to visit.

According to reports, the attacker hurled anti-Semitic slurs at the two men while assaulting them. The incident has become a defining moment of racial unrest and a grim reminder in a country that was once characterized by the systemic and homicidal anti-Semitism of the Nazi era that ultimately led to the Holocaust.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has encouraged the mass migration of Muslim refugees to Germany, recently suggested that the current wave of anti-Jewish sentiment could be called the “new anti-Semitism” and might be blamed in part on some of those Muslim refugees.

SOURCE

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

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

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

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IN BRIEF



HOME (Index page)

BIO for John Ray






(Isaiah 62:1)


A 19th century Democrat political poster below:








Leftist tolerance



Bloomberg



JFK knew Leftist dogmatism



-- Geert Wilders



The most beautiful woman in the world? I think she was. Yes: It's Agnetha Fältskog



A beautiful baby is king -- with blue eyes, blond hair and white skin. How incorrect can you get?


Kristina Pimenova, said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair



Enough said


Islamic terrorism isn’t a perversion of Islam. It’s the implementation of Islam. It is not a religion of the persecuted, but the persecutors. Its theology is violent supremacism.



There really is an actress named Donna Air. She seems a pleasant enough woman, though


What feminism has wrought:

There's actually some wisdom there. The dreamy lady says she is holding out for someone who meets her standards. The other lady reasonably replies "There's nobody there". Standards can be unrealistically high and feminists have laboured mightily to make them so


Some bright spark occasionally decides that Leftism is feminine and conservatism is masculine. That totally misses the point. If true, how come the vote in American presidential elections usually shows something close to a 50/50 split between men and women? And in the 2016 Presidential election, Trump won 53 percent of white women, despite allegations focused on his past treatment of some women.


Political correctness is Fascism pretending to be manners


Political Correctness is as big a threat to free speech as Communism and Fascism. All 3 were/are socialist.


The problem with minorities is not race but culture. For instance, many American black males fit in well with the majority culture. They go to college, work legally for their living, marry and support the mother of their children, go to church, abstain from crime and are considerate towards others. Who could reasonably object to such people? It is people who subscribe to minority cultures -- black, Latino or Muslim -- who can give rise to concern. If antisocial attitudes and/or behaviour become pervasive among a group, however, policies may reasonably devised to deal with that group as a whole


Black lives DON'T matter -- to other blacks. The leading cause of death among young black males is attack by other young black males


Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves. Leftist motivations are fundamentally Fascist. They want to "fundamentally transform" the lives of their fellow citizens, which is as authoritarian as you can get. We saw where it led in Russia and China. The "compassion" that Leftists parade is just a cloak for their ghastly real motivations


Occasionally I put up on this blog complaints about the privileged position of homosexuals in today's world. I look forward to the day when the pendulum swings back and homosexuals are treated as equals before the law. To a simple Leftist mind, that makes me "homophobic", even though I have no fear of any kind of homosexuals.

But I thought it might be useful for me to point out a few things. For a start, I am not unwise enough to say that some of my best friends are homosexual. None are, in fact. Though there are two homosexuals in my normal social circle whom I get on well with and whom I think well of.

Of possible relevance: My late sister was a homosexual; I loved Liberace's sense of humour and I thought that Robert Helpmann was marvellous as Don Quixote in the Nureyev ballet of that name.

Bible references on homosexuality: Jude 1:7; 1 Timothy 1:8-11; Mark 10:6-9; 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11; 1 Corinthians 7:2; Leviticus 18:32; Leviticus 20:13


I record on this blog many examples of negligent, inefficient and reprehensible behaviour on the part of British police. After 13 years of Labour party rule they have become highly politicized, with values that reflect the demands made on them by the political Left rather than than what the community expects of them. They have become lazy and cowardly and avoid dealing with real crime wherever possible -- preferring instead to harass normal decent people for minor infractions -- particularly offences against political correctness. They are an excellent example of the destruction that can be brought about by Leftist meddling.


I also record on this blog much social worker evil -- particularly British social worker evil. The evil is neither negligent nor random. It follows exactly the pattern you would expect from the Marxist-oriented indoctrination they get in social work school -- where the middle class is seen as the enemy and the underclass is seen as virtuous. So social workers are lightning fast to take children away from normal decent parents on the basis of of minor or imaginary infractions while turning a blind eye to gross child abuse by the underclass


Racial differences in temperament: Chinese are more passive even as little babies


The genetics of crime: I have been pointing out for some time the evidence that there is a substantial genetic element in criminality. Some people are born bad. See here, here, here, here (DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12581) and here, for instance"


Gender is a property of words, not of people. Using it otherwise is just another politically correct distortion -- though not as pernicious as calling racial discrimination "Affirmative action"


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


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


So why do Leftists say "There is no such thing as right and wrong" when backed into a rhetorical corner? They say it because that is the predominant conclusion of analytic philosophers. And, as Keynes said: "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”


Children are the best thing in life. See also here.


Juergen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."


Consider two "jokes" below:

Q. "Why are Leftists always standing up for blacks and homosexuals?

A. Because for all three groups their only God is their penis"

Pretty offensive, right? So consider this one:

Q. "Why are evangelical Christians like the Taliban?

A. They are both religious fundamentalists"

The latter "joke" is not a joke at all, of course. It is a comparison routinely touted by Leftists. Both "jokes" are greatly offensive and unfair to the parties targeted but one gets a pass without question while the other would bring great wrath on the head of anyone uttering it. Why? Because political correctness is in fact just Leftist bigotry. Bigotry is unfairly favouring one or more groups of people over others -- usually justified as "truth".


One of my more amusing memories is from the time when the Soviet Union still existed and I was teaching sociology in a major Australian university. On one memorable occasion, we had a representative of the Soviet Womens' organization visit us -- a stout and heavily made-up lady of mature years. When she was ushered into our conference room, she was greeted with something like adulation by the local Marxists. In question time after her talk, however, someone asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution". The consternation and confusion that produced among my Leftist colleagues was hilarious to behold and still lives vividly in my memory. The more things change, the more they remain the same, however. In Sept. 2007 President Ahmadinejad told Columbia university that there are no homosexuals in Iran.


It is widely agreed (with mainly Lesbians dissenting) that boys need their fathers. What needs much wider recognition is that girls need their fathers too. The relationship between a "Daddy's girl" and her father is perhaps the most beautiful human relationship there is. It can help give the girl concerned inner strength for the rest of her life.


A modern feminist complains: "We are so far from “having it all” that “we barely even have a slice of the pie, which we probably baked ourselves while sobbing into the pastry at 4am”."


Patriotism does NOT in general go with hostilty towards others. See e.g. here and here and even here ("Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia: A Cross-Cultural Study" by anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan. In Current Anthropology Vol. 42, No. 5, December 2001).


The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence "correct". Who said this? "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything". It was V.I. Lenin


"An objection I hear frequently is: ‘Why should we tolerate intolerance?’ The assumption is that tolerating views that you don’t agree with is like a gift, an act of kindness. It suggests we’re doing people a favour by tolerating their view. My argument is that tolerance is vital to us, to you and I, because it’s actually the presupposition of all our freedoms. You cannot be free in any meaningful sense unless there is a recognition that we are free to act on our beliefs, we’re free to think what we want and express ourselves freely. Unless we have that freedom, all those other freedoms that we have on paper mean nothing" -- SOURCE


RELIGION:

Although it is a popular traditional chant, the "Kol Nidre" should be abandoned by modern Jewish congregations. It was totally understandable where it originated in the Middle Ages but is morally obnoxious in the modern world and vivid "proof" of all sorts of antisemitic stereotypes


What the Bible says about homosexuality:

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; It is abomination" -- Lev. 18:22

In his great diatribe against the pagan Romans, the apostle Paul included homosexuality among their sins:

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.... Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them" -- Romans 1:26,27,32.

So churches that condone homosexuality are clearly post-Christian


Although I am an atheist, I have great respect for the wisdom of ancient times as collected in the Bible. And its condemnation of homosexuality makes considerable sense to me. In an era when family values are under constant assault, such a return to the basics could be helpful. Nonetheless, I approve of St. Paul's advice in the second chapter of his epistle to the Romans that it is for God to punish them, not us. In secular terms, homosexuality between consenting adults in private should not be penalized but nor should it be promoted or praised. In Christian terms, "Gay pride" is of the Devil


The homosexuals of Gibeah (Judges 19 & 20) set in train a series of events which brought down great wrath and destruction on their tribe. The tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out when it would not disown its homosexuals. Are we seeing a related process in the woes presently being experienced by the amoral Western world? Note that there was one Western country that was not affected by the global financial crisis and subsequently had no debt problems: Australia. In September 2012 the Australian federal parliament considered a bill to implement homosexual marriage. It was rejected by a large majority -- including members from both major political parties


Religion is deeply human. The recent discoveries at Gobekli Tepe suggest that it was religion not farming that gave birth to civilization. Early civilizations were at any rate all very religious. Atheism is mainly a very modern development and is even now very much a minority opinion


"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)


I think it's not unreasonable to see Islam as the religion of the Devil. Any religion that loves death or leads to parents rejoicing when their children blow themselves up is surely of the Devil -- however you conceive of the Devil. Whether he is a man in a red suit with horns and a tail, a fallen spirit being, or simply the evil side of human nature hardly matters. In all cases Islam is clearly anti-life and only the Devil or his disciples could rejoice in that.

And there surely could be few lower forms of human behaviour than to give abuse and harm in return for help. The compassionate practices of countries with Christian traditions have led many such countries to give a new home to Muslim refugees and seekers after a better life. It's basic humanity that such kindness should attract gratitude and appreciation. But do Muslims appreciate it? They most commonly show contempt for the countries and societies concerned. That's another sign of Satanic influence.

And how's this for demonic thinking?: "Asian father whose daughter drowned in Dubai sea 'stopped lifeguards from saving her because he didn't want her touched and dishonoured by strange men'

And where Muslims tell us that they love death, the great Christian celebration is of the birth of a baby -- the monogenes theos (only begotten god) as John 1:18 describes it in the original Greek -- Christmas!


No wonder so many Muslims are hostile and angry. They have little companionship from women and not even any companionship from dogs -- which are emotionally important in most other cultures. Dogs are "unclean"


Some advice from Martin Luther: Esto peccator et pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide et gaude in christo qui victor est peccati, mortis et mundi: peccandum est quam diu sic sumus. Vita haec non est habitatio justitiae


On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


Germaine Greer is a stupid old Harpy who is notable only for the depth and extent of her hatreds


Even Mahatma Gandhi was profoundly unimpressed by Africans



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To be continued ....
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