The primary version of "Political Correctness Watch" is HERE The Blogroll; John Ray's Home Page; Email John Ray here. Other mirror sites: Greenie Watch, Dissecting Leftism, Education Watch, Gun Watch, Socialized Medicine, Recipes, Australian Politics, Tongue Tied, Immigration Watch, Eye on Britain and Food & Health Skeptic. For a list of backups viewable in China, see here. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing). See here or here for the archives of this site.


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

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

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30 September, 2010

A rare attack of sanity in a British court

But no credit to the useless British police

A desperate homeowner who injured a group of thugs with a catapult as they terrorised his neighbourhood has won backing from a judge who threw out the teenagers' claims for damages.

Bruce Harwood, 38, and his neighbours in a converted Georgian townhouse were subjected to a two-year reign of terror by 20 youths who urinated on the front door, threw eggs at the windows and regularly caused disturbances into the early hours.

The electrician finally snapped when the louts followed a car through the electronic gates protecting the Grade II listed building in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire.

As the female driver ran into the building fearing for her safety, electrician Mr Harwood grabbed a catapult he needs for his business and fired a several 'warning volleys' of small ball bearings at them. Three of the louts were accidentally hit, leaving them with minor injuries to their legs and groins, and he was arrested by police.

He has now admitted causing actual bodily harm and been ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid community work. But in a common sense victory for victims of anti-social behaviour, the judge threw out the hoodie-wearing yobs' claims for £1,200 compensation each, saying they 'brought this very much upon themselves'.

Sitting at Cambridge Crown Court, Judge Gareth Hawkesworth said: 'In this incident, it is entirely clear to me that you and the other residents were subjected to a lot of incidents of anti-social behaviour that were deliberate provocations by local youths.

'On this occasion you and other residents had suffered from a number of disturbances that amounted to deliberate provocation. 'You responded by taking a catapult and firing it. Such action easily could have caused serious harm. Your fault was in not notifying police. 'But I think it wholly inappropriate that I should make a compensation order given that they brought this very much upon themselves.'

Speaking after the hearing, Mr Harwood, who has moved out of his £520-a-month penthouse flat and now lives with his fiancee in Northamptonshire, said: 'I was just trying to scare them away and I didn't think I had hit them. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt anyone. 'The police seem to have said to these lads "Poor you, let's get you some compensation" instead of "What the hell were you doing there?" 'This flat was my dream home and we've been under constant bombardment. Most people have moved out because they can't cope.'

It was on the evening of April 11 that 15 teenagers took advantage of the open gate to surge into the grounds of the four storey building, which had eight flats, forcing the terrified car owner to flee into her home. When Mr Harwood went to his window to see what was happening, the gang began chanting 'rich bastards' and started banging on the communal entrance.

Fearing they were going to break in and go on the rampage inside the building, he grabbed the catapult - which he bought for work to fire wire through tubes - and a handful of 38mm ball bearings which he used to fire several warning shots.

During the court case on September 21, Benedict Peers, defending, was reading out a long list of incidents involving the youths when he was stopped on the 13th example. Judge Hawkesworth told him he had heard enough to prove there had been 'provocation'.

Mr Harwood added yesterday: 'We've called police on so many occasions they sometimes don't turn up and have never arrested any of these kids. 'When you have 15 or 20 hoodies screaming and shouting you have to figure some way of getting them out. I was scared they'd get into the building.'

Three of the flats are empty at present because the occupants have had to move out. One of the other residents, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisals, said: 'It's been going on well before Bruce moved in. I'm glad he did something because the police wouldn't.'

SOURCE





Free speech means the freedom to offend

A 'gang' (say the newspapers) of six British men have been arrested after a video of them burning copies of the Koran was posted on YouTube. Frankly, I'm revolted.

I'm revolted that people should publicly burn an artefact that millions of people revere, whether it is the Koran, the Bible, or even the American flag. These are actions which are intended to distress and outrage other people. Why do it?

I'm even more revolted that the laws in the United Kingdom allow people to be arrested for any such action.

Burning a flag or a religious or political book is an expression of an opinion, usually a deeply held opinion, that the item symbolises, or is the cause, of malign actions or beliefs. People should be able to express such opinions, even if it upsets and annoys others, without fear of being arrested and possibly imprisoned.

The United States has been served well for two centuries by a general presumption of free speech, encapsulated in an important amendment to the Constitution. It is felt there that free speech is vital if we are to have frank and open debate and a contest of ideas from which we can all learn and benefit. It is thought so important that it cannot be left to the judgement of officials or the police whether any particular statement is acceptable or not. We should have the same.

Many people in the UK think that the police are more inclined to prosecute attacks on the Islamic faith than on the Christian faith because Christians usually turn the other cheek while Muslims often get very angry indeed. They argue that Christians have even been prevented, by the police, from handing out Christian literature near a mosque; while it is unimaginable that Muslims would be stopped for handing out their texts near to a Christian cathedral.

The correct way to deal with these issues is simple. The right to free speech should apply equally to everyone. We might think that particular words or actions are gratuitously offensive – such as the disparaging nicknames given to racial groups – and as social beings we should argue with people to do that and try to get them to respect other people's sensibilities. But it shouldn't be against any law to offend people. It should certainly be against the law to threaten them or promote violence against them. And it should be against the law to use or threaten violence, even in response to some offensive remark or action. But there's a big difference between calling people offensive names and encouraging people to kill them.

SOURCE






Another attack on breastfeeding in prudish Britain

A young mother breast-feeding her baby was ordered into a changing room at High Street chain Primark

Aimee Edwards, 24, was feeding four-week-old George when a worker told her to use the changing room - or leave the store. The married mother-of-four was so angry that she left her shopping and walked out.

Mrs Edwards said: 'A woman shop assistant said if I wanted to breastfeed I had to go in the changing rooms or leave the store. 'She said it was offending other customers, but there were hardly any other shoppers near me. 'I thought she was joking at first as I have never had a problem in any other shop before.'

Mrs Edwards was shopping with her husband Ben and their children Ruby, three, and Morgan, 20 months, when baby George needed feeding. Mrs Edwards said: 'It's natural for a mum to feed her baby. Why should people feel offended? It's not as if they can see anything. 'I don't see why I should have to hide it. I was with my daughter and I want her to grow up thinking it is a natural part of life. 'I should not be made to feel ashamed. If that's their attitude then I don't know if I want to shop in a place like that.

'I have breast-fed all my children and I have never had this reaction. I don't even think about doing it now after having four children.'

Mrs Edwards from Bridgend, South Wales, was in the Swansea branch of the discount clothes store when the row broke out. She said: 'I put my shopping down and left the store. 'I think it's disgusting that I was doing something natural and I was faced with an ultimatum. 'If people don't like it then don't look. As campaigns say "breast is best", and then you get this kind of reaction.'

A spokesman for Primark, which has 143 stores across the UK, told Mail Online that the company had 'taken steps to ensure breastfeeding is better understood by all employees'. 'A supervisor in Primark Swansea approached a customer who was breastfeeding in the store and offered her the use of a fitting room cubicle which she felt would be more comfortable and would afford some privacy,' said the spokesman.

'Unfortunately, she inadvertently caused offence to the customer who mistakenly perceived that she was not welcome to breastfeed in the store. 'It was not the supervisor's intention to cause any offence - rather to offer assistance.

'However, we sincerely regret any upset that this incident may have caused and have taken steps to ensure that the company policy on breastfeeding is better understood by all Primark employees.

'Primark customers are welcome to breastfeed whilst shopping in our stores should they wish to do so. If any customer requires privacy for this purpose, every effort will be made to accommodate this request where possible.'

SOURCE





Indianapolis bakery refuses order for rainbow cupcakes for a national homosexual coming out day

OFFICIALS in Indianapolis are turning up the heat on a bakery that refused to take an order from a student group seeking rainbow-colored cupcakes for next month's National Coming Out Day.

A spokesman for Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard said city officials are conducting an inquiry into the bakery, Just Cookies, which declined to take the order last week from a diversity group at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, which ordered the cupcakes for October 11.

"The city's position is, it's the city's Market, it's a public place," mayoral spokesman Robert Vane said "There is no litmus test for buying services or products at the City Market."

Just Cookies owner Lilly Stockton defended her bakery's decision last week, first claiming that the shop does not make cupcakes, and then telling a reporter that she did not have sufficient materials to make the rainbow colors.

But her husband, David Stockton, said he had a different reason for refusing to take the order. "I explained we're a family-run business, we have two young, impressionable daughters and we thought maybe it was best not to do that," he said.

The controversy has prompted an Indianapolis radio station to hold a "Gay Cupcake Party" tomorrow. As of early yesterday, nearly 400 people had indicated that they planned to attend the event.

Vane, meanwhile, said city officials are working to determine whether the order was refused because the bakery could not provide the desired product or because something else was at play.

"It's the other proprietor stating his personal views, that's the problem, because that's not the image of the City Market and the image Mayor Ballard is trying to portray," Vane told FOXNews.com. "That's beyond the pale."

Stevi Stoesz, a spokeswoman for City Market, a nonprofit organization with a 13-member board of directors, said officials there found the bakery's alleged conduct inappropriate. "As a public marketplace, we find it unacceptable, and this is very much an equal accommodations establishment," Stoesz told FOXNews.com. "We are working with the mayor's office and city [attorneys] to resolve the issue expediently."

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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29 September, 2010

New British Labour party leader talks out of both sides of his mouth

Union power yes and no. Budget cuts yes and no -- etc.

Ed Miliband attempted to shake off his ‘Red Ed’ nickname yesterday – insisting he would not back ‘waves of irresponsible strikes’ or oppose every spending cut proposed by the coalition. He sought to put some distance between himself and the union barons who enabled him to inflict a stunning defeat on his elder brother David.

Mr Miliband wanted to portray Labour as the ‘optimists’ who could change the face of Britain. But he immediately prompted confusion over his position on public finances, saying the ‘starting point’ was the last Labour government’s plan to halve the deficit – but then opposing a list of coalition cuts.

He suggested the deficit should be tackled more slowly than Labour had previously proposed to avoid damaging the economic recovery. He added that it was ‘not responsible, it’s irresponsible’ for the Government to call a halt to school building projects or to deny Sheffield Forgemasters an £80million taxpayer-funded loan.

The new Labour leader insisted he was ‘serious’ about reducing debt, and admitted the party would have been making cuts if it was still in power. ‘There will be cuts and there would have been if we had been in government. 'Some of them will be painful and would have been if we were in government,’ he told the conference.

Despite his attempts to shake off the ‘union puppet’ jibes, Mr Miliband’s debut conference speech was shot through with left-wing rhetoric. The new leader said he would back the unions’ key demand to improve rights of temporary and agency workers. He also backed union calls for a so-called ‘living wage’ of £7.60 an hour, which would effectively raise the minimum wage by 30 per cent.

He hit out at executive pay, suggesting that it should be capped, and also suggested there should be limits to Britain’s flexible labour market rules, which unions claim allow employers to exploit staff.

But as he delivered his message on strikes, Derek Simpson and Tony Woodley, joint general secretaries of the giant Unite union, sat grim-faced. Mr Simpson was caught on camera mouthing the word ‘rubbish’.

Mr Miliband said he would not support a return to 1970s-style industrial chaos threatened by some unions. He said: ‘I have no truck, and you should have no truck, with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes. The public won’t support them, I won’t support them. And you shouldn’t support them either.’

But he left the door open to supporting individual strikes, and union leaders later appeared to be relaxed about his rhetoric.

Mr Miliband also lavished generous praise on the union movement for its work – leading the Tories to warn last night that it was still unclear whether Mr Miliband would stand up to his union backers or ‘pander’ to them.

The coalition’s plans to slash the number of prisoners won support from Mr Miliband, who ignored warnings from senior Labour figures about going soft on crime. He said he would not oppose Justice Secretary Ken Clarke’s contentious cuts to short sentences.

Only hours before, Alan Johnson, the shadow Home Secretary who backed David Miliband for the leadership, had given a coded warning to Ed Miliband not to turn his back on tackling crime. But a defiant Mr Miliband said Labour should become the party of civil liberties again – despite its support for draconian DNA databases and ID cards.

SOURCE





Criminals must stop dodging the blame: Britain's black archbishop wants tougher prisons

Criminals should not make excuses for their wrongdoing, the Archbishop of York said last night. Instead of blaming their background, poverty, drink or drugs, they should face up to the cost of their crimes, Dr John Sentamu, the Church of England’s second most senior figure said.

In a tough speech on crime and society, the archbishop said prisons were necessary and condemned the way some offenders are rewarded in jail by being given cable TV and computer games.

But he called for more education in prisons, the jailing of fewer women and lesser criminals, and greater use of ‘restorative’ justice in which the offender gets a chance to make up for his or her crime.

Dr Sentamu acknowledged that some might be more likely to go to jail because of their neighbourhood, poverty, joblessness, drugs or alcohol. But he said: ‘We cannot simply blame society for the rising numbers we see going to prison each year. ‘We are accountable for what we do and what we are – in spite of all aids or hindrances from outside. ‘We are all too prone to find fault with the circumstances in which we find ourselves and this becomes our ready and familiar excuse when our conduct is found wanting.’

He said that since the 1980s there had been a steady drift towards personal interest at the expense of duty. ‘It seems that in modern culture, the rights of the individual are now paramount. But you cannot have rights without obligations and responsibilities. ‘We need to get back to valuing ourselves and our neighbours and understanding that there is a cost involved when a crime is committed – a cost to the criminal, a cost to the victim, and a cost to the community.’

Dr Sentamu said some offenders need to be jailed, and some should never be released. But he added: ‘We need to get away from the Victorian bang ‘em up culture that has been prevalent over recent decades.’ Backing the idea of community punishments, he said: ‘We need to think of a better way to tackle the underlying problems that have contributed to the choices criminals make.’

However, he continued: ‘It is common sense to say that criminals should not be rewarded for being in prison. ‘It is patently not right when we read stories of institutions that offer inmates such things as cable TV and PlayStations, and other non-essential items that many outside of prison cannot afford for their families despite working hard and sticking to the rules.’

The views of Dr Sentamu carry weight because of his long experience in dealing with the aftermath of some of Britain’s most disturbing crimes.

He was a key member of the Macpherson inquiry which produced the influential report into the 1993 murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence. He was also involved in reviews following the murders of Damilola Taylor in London and Letitia Shakespeare and Charlene Ellis in Birmingham.

SOURCE





Making Muhammad safe

Deepak Chopra

For the past decade Islam has been suffering from fear almost everywhere you look. Arab countries are afraid of being invaded by the U.S. in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. Sunni Muslims are nervous about the rise of Iran to a nuclear state dominated by Shiites. But on a far more personal level, everyone is afraid to say anything about Muhammad that would inflame the faithful. I've experienced this recently myself. On tour for a book about Muhammad — one that I wrote primarily to tell Westerners that the Prophet led an exciting, inspiring life — the first word that comes up in every interview is fatwa. The first question is "Aren't you afraid to write this book?"

Every religion takes sole possession of its founder. That's what makes it strong. That and claiming that your version of God is the only correct one. But nobody who writes books about Jesus or Buddha does so in fear. The irony is that the stronger the faith, the more open it is to intolerance. Fundamentalist Christians believe that everyone else is an outsider to the true faith, including other Christians. But Islam has become locked down to an extraordinary degree. Those of us who want to write as sympathetically as possible about Muhammad, without giving in to official hagiography, are warned off. We are made to walk on eggshells. Saddest of all, those Muslims who are pleased to see a novel about Muhammad's life scan it nervously to make sure that nothing is out of place.

Isn't it time to make Muhammad a safe topic? The Danish cartoonist who lampooned the Prophet stepped into taboo territory since Islam forbids any physical depiction of him. But Islamic art over the centuries has come to terms with the strictures against painting portraits and taking photos of people's faces. Adaptation means survival, and those forces in Islam that don't want to adapt, far from preserving their faith for eternity, are endangering it.

The irony of the situation is double, actually. Muhammad recognized Jews and Christians as people of the Book, along with Muslims. They are not outsiders but fellow worshipers. Islam was meant to be an umbrella that includes them and tolerates their faith. So the fundamentalist streak in Islam isn't true to the spirit of the Prophet. The very notion that the Koran should never be translated from the Arabic and never commented upon was born (so far as I can ascertain) among his followers after the Prophet's death. As a result, the other people of the Book have passed through reform movements and adaptations that have been denied to the Muslim faithful.

Surrounding the Prophet with veneration is one thing. We can all understand and respect that. But surrounding him with threats, a kind of theological barbed wire, is another thing. It isn't acceptable to the outside world, and moderate Arabs would be well served to speak out against it. I don't mean to dictate to anyone how they should follow their religion. But we've come to an impasse if no one is allowed to speak the truth about Muhammad or comment upon his life. As long as freedom of thought is considered the enemy, the Islamic world will be embroiled in fear forever.

SOURCE






Ultimate evil calls for ultimate punishment

by Jeff Jacoby

ELECTED OFFICIALS don't usually acknowledge wanting to torture people in dark alleys, so it made news recently when Boston Mayor Thomas Menino expressed such a wish during a talk at Emerson College.

Menino had been speaking about the murder of Richel Nova, a Domino's pizza delivery driver who was brutally stabbed to death after being lured to an abandoned house in Hyde Park on Sept. 2. The suspects charged with Nova's late-night slaughter -- two [black] teens and a 20-year-old -- are accused of lying in wait with knives, stabbing him repeatedly in the chest and throat, and rifling his pockets for money as he lay dying. Then, prosecutors say, the three drove off in Nova's car and ate most of the pizza from its blood-stained box.

It was a horrific crime. And it hit Menino especially hard since Nova's two daughters, 20-year-old twins Marlene and Michelle, had worked the last two summers in his City Hall office. The killers were "animals," the mayor said, and he couldn't fathom their wanton cruelty. "Maybe you guys can tell me," he said to the Emerson students, "what do they think when they do that? Don't they think life is worth anything?"

A student asked Menino whether the three suspects ought to be tried in a state that, unlike Massachusetts, authorizes the death penalty. "I'm not in favor of the death penalty," he answered. The death penalty is "a hot-button issue that doesn't solve anything. . . It's unfair. I just don't think the death penalty is the way to go."

Then came the rumination about torture. "If I saw these guys in a dark alley, I'd like to have a fight with them," the mayor said. "I'd do some things that would be worse than the death penalty. . . . I would slowly torture them." Predictably, Menino's words generated some criticism -- one former prosecutor warned that they would "make it very difficult to select an unbiased jury" -- and in short order he retracted them. "I would not torture anybody," he told WBZ Radio. "I do regret it, yes, I do."

But the mayor took back the wrong words. It is his blanket opposition to the death penalty he ought to rethink, not his healthy and perfectly understandable urge to give Nova's killers a taste of the unspeakable evil they inflicted on their victim. It may not have been very genteel to speculate out loud about making the perpetrators suffer, but Menino was only giving voice to an innate and normal human craving: the desire to see justice done, to see those who prey on the weak or innocent get what they deserve.

Of course we don't permit individuals -- not even mayors -- to carry out such urges. An essential function of our criminal-justice system is to prevent self-appointed vigilantes from taking revenge on those who commit savage crimes. A civilized society understands the hatred and revulsion and thirst for vengeance such crimes can inspire. But it insists that punishment be meted out only by the state, not by outraged private parties -- and only after due process of law, complete with a fair trial, an impartial judge, the right of appeal, elaborate protections for the accused.

And punishments that fit the crime.

It is all well and good for Menino to publicize his fury at what was done to Richel Nova; I wish he were as vehement about every murder. But ultimately it is what a society does to murderers, not what its politicians say about them, that lets the world know what it really thinks about their crimes. Our attitude toward acts of evil is revealed in the punishment we mete out to those who commit those acts. Greater crimes call for greater punishments, with the very worst punishment, death, reserved for the very worst crime -- deliberate, cruel murder. Like it or not, a criminal-justice system in which no murderer, however vicious and calculating, can ever forfeit his life conveys the message that murder is not all that terrible.

How, Menino wonders, could the pitiless savages who murdered Marlene and Michelle's father be so callous about human life? No doubt he would ask the same about those who massacred four human beings -- including a 2-year-old -- in Mattapan yesterday. "I would slowly torture them," he fantasized at Emerson. But in real life, the mayor doesn't want even the bloodiest savages to face anything worse than prison. Perhaps, between visiting crime scenes and attending funerals, he should consider what happens to a society in which murderers have a greater right to life than their victims.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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28 September, 2010

How this twisted obsession with race makes Britain MORE divided

Munira Mirza

Are race relations in Britain getting worse? If you read the official ­ statistics and look at the ­massive increase in the number of anti-­racism policies and ­initiatives, you might be forgiven for thinking that we are ­suffering the kind of ­race-hate ­epidemic you would ­expect to find in ­apartheid South Africa.

Children as young as three could now be accused of ­racism, reported by zealous teachers who have been ordered to ­highlight any aspect of their pupils’ ­behaviour that might be ­construed as having racist overtones.

Thanks to legislation ­introduced by New Labour, schools now have to inform local authorities of all ‘racist ­incidents’ in the playground - resulting in the reporting of an estimated 250,000 cases. And yet some of these involve primary school children ­calling each other names like ‘chocolate’.

Along with a growing number of people from ethnic minorities, I believe these anti-­racism ­policies are outdated and - more to the point - damaging. By obsessing about race and exaggerating the scale of ­racism, the authorities sow the seeds of mistrust and make ­communities more divided. It is time for a fresh approach that brings people together and emphasises how much we all have in common.

The truth is, Britain is a far more tolerant place than it was 30 years ago, when there was much prejudice and ignorance. People now are increasingly relaxed about living in a multi-ethnic Britain. Indeed, young people have known nothing else and mixed marriages are increasingly common.

Of course, racism still exists, but relations have now improved to a point where many ethnic minority people do not ­experience it as a feature of their everyday life. Research in many fields, such as education and employment, shows that if there is a barrier to achievement today it is social class, rather than race.

Yet, ironically, as racism declines and public attitudes change, government agencies have become ever more ­preoccupied with the issue. It was in 2000 that the Labour government passed a heavy-handed law imposing a duty on all public authorities, such as schools, councils, hospitals and universities, to ‘promote good relations between persons of ­different racial groups’.

As a result, a lot of money is spent on legions of well-paid ‘diversity professionals’ in workplaces, whose job it is to ­monitor racism, run training courses and ensure no one offends anyone.

But rather than stamping out the problem, I believe all this hyper-awareness is ­achieving the opposite result. All the monitoring, training and meddling serve to do is exaggerate the scale of the ­problem and create more ­mistrust between communities. It means that someone of a ­different race ­sitting next to you at work can become a ­potential victim of unwitting racism. As a result, people become afraid to speak their mind or ask difficult questions of anyone of a different ethnicity in case they ‘say the wrong thing’.

To see the negative effects of officialdom’s anti-racism ­policies, I only have to look my hometown of Oldham. In the summer of 2001, it was scarred by serious rioting, ­involving Asian and white youths. Both groups were angry that summer.

The media had reported the existence of alleged ‘no-go areas’ for whites and a sharp rise in racist incidents - but it was the use of clumsy, official diversity policies that helped to heighten the tension.

Professor Ted Cantle, of the Institute of Community ­Cohesion, who was asked to investigate the disturbances, found that the local white and Asian communities lived ­‘parallel lives’.

Although pupils of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin accounted for around a third of the primary school population in the town, there was not as much integration as there should have been because eight out of ten were in schools that were mostly non-white.

Indeed, the riots in Oldham erupted after more than a ­decade of diversity policies that had encouraged people to see ­themselves as different to each other.

A year before the riots, the local police force had followed the recommendation of ACPO, the Association of Chief Police Officers, and adopted a new ­definition of a racist incident as ‘any incident which is ­perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person’. In consequence, the police went into communities and sought to increase the reporting of anything that could be seen as a racist incident.

From being fairly steady throughout the Nineties (with 246 racist incidents reported in Oldham in 1994, 256 in 1996 and 290 in 1998) the number suddenly jumped by 56 per cent in 2000 to 452 - the ­highest rate of incidents in the whole Greater Manchester area). But it wasn’t because race crime had increased - merely that a change in the definition of so-called racist incidents wrongly suggested it had.

More generally, the drive to ‘promote good relations’ in ­Oldham means there has been a clampdown on any behaviour which might be deemed ­offensive. This naturally ­creates resentment.

When I was conducting ­interviews in the town in 2007, I kept hearing claims from locals that the council had banned St George’s flag. I asked various council staff about this claim, but none of them could confirm whether it was true or not. One official guessed it might have been done out of ­sensitivity to local ethnic minorities who ­associated the flag with ­far-Right groups that were resentful of the ­immigrant population. Another even suggested that, if the flag had been banned, it might have been for ‘health and safety reasons’.

Yesterday, a council ­spokesman said that it had not been banned. But, ­crucially, ­everyone I asked - Asian or white - felt that this sort of unnecessary, ­meddlesome decision would have been­ ­‘typical’ of the council.

Similar mistakes are being repeated across the UK, as revealed by reports of over-­zealous council officials, schools and police who have banned Christmas or English flags or other cultural ­expressions for fear of ­offending minority groups.

Even ethnic minorities often see such ­measures as over-­the-top and are irritated when they get the blame.

We know that some stories of political correctness gone mad are exaggerated - but many are not. Ted Cantle, returning to­ ­Oldham some years after his original report into the cause of rioting in the town, noted that there were complaints from the public about the police’s over-zealous ­restrictions on any expression of national pride or cultural festivals.

He also said that, despite all the diversity training and race equality guidelines, people in Oldham wanted to ask ­questions about different faiths and cultures but were afraid to do so because it might be thought ‘politically incorrect’.

Despite the well-intentioned efforts of council officials, teachers and diversity ­professionals, community ­tensions still remain. Inevitably, these grievances can grow and fester in areas of high deprivation.

No doubt, many people ­working in the field of race ­relations sincerely want to make things better. But the trouble is, they are now part of an ­infrastructure costing millions which — by ­constantly drawing attention to racism and trying to ­­micro-manage ordinary people’s behaviour - is actually making things worse.

It is time for all of us - whites and ethnic minorities alike - to put a brake on these anti-racism policies and call for the Government to review the laws that have spawned them. Let’s trust each other and talk about the things we have in common. That’s the real way to ­promote good relations.

SOURCE






More petty bureaucratic tyranny in Britain (1)

Council workmen blast residents for sweeping up leaves 'because it's against the rules'

Community-minded residents have had a ticking off for sweeping up leaves from outside their homes - because it is against council rules.

With the first autumn leaves falling onto their street, families in Blakenall, West Midlands, have dutifully been sweeping them up and putting them into their garden recycling bins. But their actions have been met with a stark warning from binmen, who told them depositing leaves in the brown containers was against council rules.

One pensioner in Guild Avenue was rapped by binmen for going against Walsall Council’s policy, which has been branded 'ridiculous'.

The rules outlined in Street Pride documents state leaves off the highway should not be put into brown bins because of 'contamination'.

Persistent offenders who break waste collection rules, including placing the ‘wrong’ materials in bins, could potentially face a fine of up to £1,000.

Council guidelines state that only grass cuttings, tree and shrub prunings, old plants and flowers, hedge clippings, weeds and leaves from residents’ own gardens can be put into brown bins.

The elderly woman who fell foul of the policy, who does not want to be named, complained to Walsall Councillor Pete Smith, who said it was 'crazy'. 'It’s still good to know some residents still take the trouble to keep the public footpath outside their own home clean,' he said. 'They should be encouraged, not discouraged.'

Now council leader Mike Bird has called for a common sense approach. He said: 'Anyone who has made comments to people about sweeping up leaves is taking the rules to the extreme. 'We are trying to encourage more pride in the community and this is the perfect example of a lady doing that and she should be praised.'

Retired lorry driver, Bill Pittam,79, from, Blakenall, said: 'I’ve always swept up leaves from outside my home and put them in my bin and have been doing for the last 30 years or so.'

Walsall Council, named the best authority in the country for its recycling targets, earlier this month approved a new rubbish collection policy, meaning it can now take enforcement action over those putting the wrong waste in the wrong bins.

SOURCE





More petty bureaucratic tyranny in Britain (2)

Professor slapped with £155 railway fine for getting off his train one stop EARLY

A professor who got off his train one stop before the destination on his ticket was ordered to pay a £155 penalty to leave the station. Martyn Evans was told he would be fined for disembarking at Darlington, near his home, rather than waiting until Durham, where he works at the university’s philosophy department.

The state-run East Coast train company said ticketing regulations meant he could get off only at the stop he had paid for – and nowhere else.

But transport campaigners warned the restriction risked driving passengers off trains and back into their cars.

Professor Evans said: ‘Anyone would understand that you’d be liable to pay extra if you stayed on the train too long. 'But by getting off early, you aren’t even using all of the product that you’ve paid for.’

The father of two bought three advance first-class single tickets from East Coast to cover his triangular journey from Durham to London, London to Birmingham and then back to Durham.

It was nearly 8pm when he arrived back in the North-East, so he decided to disembark one stop early, at Darlington, close to his home in the village of Hurworth. However, when he tried to leave the station, the automatic barrier would not let him out. Station staff told him his ticket was invalid because he had got off the train too early.

He was ordered to pay £155 – the price of a full first-class ticket from Birmingham to Darlington. After complaining, he was allowed to sign an invoice and told he must pay the penalty later.

Professor Evans said: ‘Like most people, it did not enter my mind that I was in default of the terms and conditions by getting off the train early. ‘The whole process made me feel like a wrongdoer from the beginning and that disgusted me more than just the money itself. 'It’s absolute madness – no-one would anticipate you’d be at fault for getting off too early.’

Alexandra Woodsworth, from the Campaign for Better Transport, said: ‘The Government has promised us fair rail fares, but being charged excessively for getting off a stop early doesn’t seem like a fair deal. ‘Passengers need greater flexibility if they are to choose the train over driving or flying, and information about ticket restrictions needs to be made much clearer.’

East Coast has cancelled Professor Evans’s penalty as a ‘goodwill gesture’, but insisted that the policy was standard across the train industry. A spokesman said: ‘The terms and conditions of the advance purchase first-class ticket – the ticket which Professor Evans had used for his journey – clearly state that breaking a journey en route, or starting from an intermediate station, is not permitted.’

A spokesman for the Association of Train Operating Companies said: ‘Hundreds of thousands of people take advantage of cheap advance tickets every week with no problem at all. 'In return for significantly reduced prices, there are certain conditions which apply that are clearly advertised when the tickets are bought.’

Amy Bradley, from the Passenger Focus consumer group, said: ‘There are some very good deals to be had on the railway, but passengers tell us the price of flexibility is too high.’

Earlier this month, Emma Clark and her fiancé Davyd Winter-Bates were fined £57 each by South West Trains for disembarking two stops early during a £6 journey from London to Southampton.

SOURCE




Anti-Violence Bill Promotes Abortion and Gender Quotas

This week the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will begin addressing the proposed International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA) — S. 2982 and H.R. 4594. With a price tag of over $1 billion over the next five years, the bill will add to the hodge-podge collection of “progressive” initiatives that are pushing the U.S. to the brink of financial crisis. Feminist groups are pushing action on the legislation before the November elections — for obvious reasons. Like so many feminist proposals, the rhetoric sounds great. Is there anybody, other than the jihadists, who is not opposed to violence against women? The problems with I-VAWA are hidden in the fine print under the lofty rhetoric; the agenda is predictable: anything promoting so-called “women’s rights” is a thinly-veiled push for anti-family policies, gender quotas, and, of course, abortion-on-demand, all on a global scale.

The issue of violence against women has a sketchy past, where facts are obscured by emotional accounts of battering and other violence. Any normal person is appalled anytime a stronger person takes advantage of or abuses a more vulnerable person. Decent people are outraged at real abuse, but false accusations and trumped up campaigns to promote hidden agendas are equally outrageous. By now, everybody knows that the old 1993 story about violent attacks on women increasing on Super Bowl Sunday was false; the “study” was debunked just days after it first appeared. Even so, periodically the “fact” still gets reported as truth. By now, everybody should also know that the majority of “domestic violence” incidences are committed by the boyfriends of mothers, not husbands and biological fathers. Sadly, however, statistics are now kept on “intimate partner” violence, and we refer to “domestic abuse” rather than breaking the violence into types of intimate partners (whether a husband, former husband, or boyfriend) or domestic household arrangement (whether marriage or cohabitation).

The facts are clear: the breakdown of marriage and family has been a major factor in increasing violence and abuse against women and children. The sad reality is that we are spinning our wheels as a nation in trying to keep up with the problems of women who are not protected by their husbands and of children who are denied the presence and protection of mature, concerned fathers. How many more women and children will be abused before we acknowledge that the investment America needs to make for the nation’s women and children is to encourage and support marriage? A married father-mother home is the safest and most nurturing place for the nation’s women and children.

Further, the urban myths continue alongside the long-standing practice of feminists equating a lack of “reproductive services” with “domestic violence.” The I-VAWA (Section 3) acknowledges U.N. Security Council Resolution 1325 — which, as those who are knowledgeable about the U.N. recognize, is the section that is cited as mandating the protection of reproductive rights. The I-VAWA would allocate $10 million a year to the United Nations Development Fund for Women, UNIFEM (Section 201), one of the major U.N. agencies devoted to promoting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which prominently feature reproductive and gender rights. First, note that the UNIFEM definition of domestic violence includes “psychological violence perpetrated or condoned by the government of the country in which the victim is a resident” (Section 4). Second, what the American public needs to be aware of is that the U.N.’s interpretation of “psychological violence” includes “mental distress” brought on by lack of access to abortion services.

Plus, the money trail is a maze of symbiotic relationships. For instance, the I-VAWA bill (Section 112) includes provisions for grants to Women’s Nongovernmental Organizations and Community-Based Organizations. The organization that has taken the lead in promoting I-VAWA is the Family Violence Prevention Fund (FVPF), “which stands to receive a major portion of I-VAWA funds.” The FVPF promotes “training and sensitization” programs for judges and judicial officials that will solidify “access to reproductive services.”

Other concerns regarding I-VAWA are equally troubling. The broad definitions of “violence” and the use of terms like “psychological harm” and “coercion” leave plenty of room for false accusations of abuse that will break up families and increase welfare dependence. The bill establishes an “Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues” — what some have called a “feminist czar” — (Section 101) that would establish powers under one person’s control that would supersede current and established policy-making and financial procedures.

Ironically and unbelievably, the I-VAWA does not address sex-selective abortion, which is one of today’s most egregious policies perpetuating violence against women. Both China and India are facing shortages of marriageable-age women as a result of decades of this practice, a demographic fact that has sociologists and politicians concerned about the future of those nations.

The I-VAWA is promoted as a “groundbreaking bill” that will “apply the force of U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance to preventing gender-based violence.” That loose term — gender-based violence — can mean anything and generally covers a wide range of ideological goals from the “women’s rights” agenda. In the U.S., the bill will seek to “change public attitudes” and “social norms,” efforts that are potentially “biased in their content and ideological in their purpose.”

Though these vague, nebulous goals are dressed up to sound wonderful and disguise the intent of the ideologues who promote them, their meaning can be as misleading — and disastrous — as the campaign slogan of “hope” and “change.”

SOURCE

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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27 September, 2010

Some secular hatred of the Vatican

BOOK REVIEW OF "The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse", by Geoffrey Robertson, a prominent Leftist lawyer in Britain who dreams of a worldwide Leftist tyranny -- in the guise of anti-tyranny, of course. The reviewer is Brendan O'Neill, a modern Marxist (or something) from a Catholic background! Brendy has a good heart, though -- JR

Robertson wants to throw open the doors of the Holy See, which he views as an irritating island of stick-in-the-mud sovereignty, and drag the pope of Rome himself before the kangaroo courts of so-called international justice. Truly, he will not be happy until his righteous writ extends everywhere.

The most alarming thing about Robertson’s book - The Case of the Pope - is that it is being treated so seriously by commentators. Written in the style of a legal document, with a list of 245 points against the Vatican, the book covers everything from the child abuse scandal that has rocked the church to the phoney nature of the Holy See’s sovereignty to the role that the Holy See plays in pressuring small nations at the UN to accept its dogma on condoms and abortion.

Yet those who have welcomed the book as a simple, clear-eyed, lawyerly argument against Holy See sovereignty, and for the potential arrest and trial of the pope, are overlooking the full-on political war that Robertson has spearheaded against the institution of sovereignty for more than 10 years now. His new attack on the Vatican, published by Penguin to coincide with Benedict’s visit to Britain, should be properly seen, not as a radical assertion of liberal humanist values over the institutionalisation of religious obscurantism, but as the latest salvo by a leading figure in the meddle-hungry human rights industry against the old ideals of sovereign equality and non-interference in other states’ affairs.

It will come as no surprise that Robertson’s tract is infused with some of the middle-class prejudices against Catholics that came to the fore of liberal public debate in Britain during Benedict’s visit. There’s the old line about Catholics being brainwashed by their priests; they are ‘indoctrinated from their childhood’ until they develop such ‘emotional and psychological respect’ for their priests that they’ll do anything the men in dog collars ask.

There’s the idea that Third World Catholics in particular are prone to turning priestly propaganda into real acts of violence, a bit like attack dogs. We’re told that ‘in Brazil and other Catholic countries’ there have been ‘macho muggings’ of gays, possibly brought about by Benedict’s decision to ‘unleash the full force of [the Catholic Church’s views on homosexuality]’. The priest speaks and the people act, because, as one expert quoted by Robertson puts it, ‘priests take the place of Jesus Christ and are to be obeyed at all costs, and never questioned or criticised’. They’re easily brainwashed, these Caflicks.

Then there is the argument that some Catholic views are so out there, so off the wall, that when they are spouted by Benedict, who exercises great influence over his flock, they become dangerous and might therefore have to be censored. Robertson argues that while it is wrong to censor ordinary individuals who make religious anti-gay comments in public, ‘Pope Benedict XVI is no voice in the wilderness’ – ‘were he to repeat in a public sermon [in Britain] his oft-stated view that homosexuality is “evil” and gays are all people with defective personalities, he would be using the full force of his spiritual office to vilify a section of the population protected by equality legislation and public order law’. In such circumstances, ‘the Home Office could not… permit his entry’, decrees Robertson.

However much Robertson tries to dress this up in the language of equality and protecting certain sections of the population from harm, it still amounts to suggesting that the state ought sometimes to interfere with and restrict people’s freedom of religion. In the Catholic case in particular – where Robertson and others seriously believe that Catholic kids are turned into priest-respecting automatons and the pope has a special hold over every Catholic’s heart and mind – the state might have to curb religious speech in the interests of preventing public disorder. And macho muggings.

While this kind of outlook has become par for the course in liberal, atheistic, so-called humanist circles in Britain, the more striking part of Robertson’s book is his stinging attack on the idea of Holy See sovereignty. I should state right now that I am no old-fashioned defender of sovereignty, especially not the Vatican’s sovereignty. As an internationalist, I can think of far better ways to organise world affairs than to divide mankind into different, often conflicting sovereign territories. I do, however, defend a people’s right to fight for and assert their self-determination against both international intervention and tyrannical rulers. And as a radical humanist, I am implacably opposed to the tiny, population-less Holy See having permanent observer status at the United Nations, where it does indeed lobby behind the scenes for restrictions on the exercise of reproductive rights, especially in the Third World.

Yet it’s important to recognise why Robertson and other intervention-happy human rights activists are so hostile to the institution of sovereignty: it’s because they view it as a barrier to having the ‘international community’ barge its way into usually small, normally black or brown states to arrest the ‘scoundrels’ who run them. In short, the sins of the tradition of sovereignty pale almost into insignificance when compared with the gung-ho, border-busting, World Police-style system that Robertson and Co. would like to replace sovereignty with.

Those championing Robertson’s apparently liberal assault on Vatican sovereignty are overlooking, or ignoring, the fact that he has previous form on this issue. In the post-Cold War period, Robertson has been amongst the most vehement critics of sovereignty. It’s a ‘pernicious doctrine’, he has argued; a ‘stumbling block for the development of international justice’; it is ‘the refuge of scoundrels’. In 1998, in that liberal interventionist moment which culminated in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia (600 civilians dead), Robertson was on the side of ‘humanitarian’ interventionists such as Tony Blair and Bill Clinton when he said, ‘It has taken half a century but we seem at last to be working out a way to bring tyrants to justice. Why did it take so long? The problem is that the world has always been organised on the principle of “sovereignty” of the state, [the idea that] there must be no intervention in their internal affairs.’

This principle of non-intervention (which, for the record, from Aden to Vietnam to Panama, was never adhered to by Western powers during the Cold War period) is viewed by Robertson and others as a barrier to them fulfilling their fantasy about being knights in shining armour who can save the destitute and downtrodden of the world. Robertson has over the years attacked any state that jealously guarded its sovereignty rather than opening itself up to ‘international justice’. China is ‘the most obsessive defender of state sovereignty’, he has declared; that pesky Colonel Gaddafi, when elected chairman of the African Union, turned it into ‘the main opponent of the International Criminal Court, guaranteeing to protect Omar al-Bashir from its arrest warrant over his alleged crimes in Darfur’.

In an interview with the Guardian in 2008, Robertson even shared his fantasies about setting up a ‘Convention Against Tyranny’, which, the interviewer told us, would be ‘capable of giving legal justification in order to overthrow evildoers’. This is how Robertson sees himself: as a warrior against the ‘Machiavellian doctrine’ of sovereignty because it stands in the way of his pursuit of those whom the ‘international community’ decree to be ‘evil’.

In Robertson’s ideal world, the basis upon which the righteous of the international community (the West) should be permitted to force their way into those scoundrel-like states that hide behind sovereignty (the rest) should be expanded. At present, intervention is largely confined to situations where ‘genocide’ is occurring; Robertson argued in 2008 for a situation where ‘other forms of barbarism’ could be cited as a justification for the overthrow of evildoers, including, for example, ‘the Taliban’s denial of education to women and girls’. In short, any sinning state, any entity judged by international law to be wicked, should be subject to Robertson and Co.’s sword of justice.

And what a terrible sword it can be. A great irony of The Case of the Pope is that such is the extent of Robertson’s fervour for war against evil that he makes the pope look like a paragon of peace and justice in comparison. Robertson slams the Vatican for ‘regularly condemn[ing] wars – no matter how just’. And one of those ‘just’ wars that the Vatican opposed was ‘the first Gulf War, to drive Saddam out of Kuwait, which he had unlawfully invaded’. Otherwise known as the war that left 180,000 Iraqis dead, entire towns destroyed, and most of Iraq in a state not too far from the ‘Stone Age’, as one boastful American official described it. It seems that any level of tyranny is justified in combating tyranny; all forms of barbarism can be deployed in the fight against ‘other forms of barbarism’. When you have right on your side, you can do no wrong. The kind of one-eyed self-righteousness that can make someone think that the ‘international community’ is combating tyranny even as it massacres thousands really puts so-called Catholic self-delusion into perspective, and makes the idea of papal infallibility seem almost meek in comparison.

The authoritarianism and divisiveness of the post-sovereignty system of ‘international justice’ is best summed up in the International Criminal Court. Robertson was an early cheerleader, of course, arguing in 2000 that the ICC would be a ‘court for all the world’. Really? Finally instituted in 2002, the ICC is in reality a racist institution which drags African leaders to be tried for crimes against humanity. Its cases have included Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Darfur/Sudan.

What do all the defendants have in common? That’s right, they are all what the old colonialists would have at least more honestly described as ‘niggers’. As Courtenay Griffiths QC, the defence lawyer for Charles Taylor at The Hague, recently said: ‘How is it possible that in 2010 we have a situation where every indicted individual at the ICC is African and every investigation is, guess where, Africa…? [T]he ICC was set up to try those lesser breeds without the law – the Africans. This is the same civilising mission from the late nineteenth century and I find it, as a black man, totally objectionable.’

This is what the liberal-elite war on sovereignty has resulted in: not increased internationalism and global equality, but their opposite – the jungle-style division of the world into the righteous forces of the West and the savages ‘over there’, and wars which have left thousands dead (but it doesn’t matter, because they died in the name of ‘combating tyranny’). Robertson’s arguments against Holy See sovereignty need to be seen in this light. Far from being a positive assertion of secularism over the international privileging of a particular religion, this looks to me more like an attempted final blow against the institution of sovereignty, the haranguing of an institution that continues jealously to guard its right to sovereign independence and integrity and the non-interference of other states and their agents in its affairs. Okay, there’s nothing positive about Holy See sovereignty; but nor is there anything positive in what motivates the main arguments against Holy See sovereignty today.

The great irony is that the human-rights lobby today plays a role that is not too dissimilar from the Catholic Church’s role of yesteryear. Robertson quotes a nineteenth-century historian who said that the then Vatican was attempting to ‘establish a power which would be the most formidable enemy of liberty… throughout the world’. In short, the Vatican had global ambitions; it longed to make everyone submit to its religious ethos and worldview and to assert its moral authority across the nations. Ring a bell?

SOURCE





The British Labor Party lurches Left

It's in their genes --but it should ensure a Tory victory at the next election

In his first interview since his surprise win over his brother David in the party’s leadership election, Mr Miliband insisted he was his “own man” and not in thrall to the unions, whose support gave him victory.

The former energy secretary said he was tough enough to make difficult decisions and pledged to fight for hard-working “Middle England” families.

But despite insisting that the party would not “lurch to the Left” under his leadership, he spoke of plans for new taxes for higher paid workers, an assault on City bankers and new trade union rights for employees. He refused to condemn forthcoming strikes and indicated he would oppose Coalition plans to reform public sector pensions.

In a direct attempt to appeal to those traditional Labour voters alienated by Mr Blair’s premiership, Mr Miliband said: “The era of New Labour has passed. A new generation has taken over.”

But he left himself open to accusations that his attempt to reposition the party is less significant than he has suggested when it emerged that he may offer his brother – an arch Blairite – the crucial post of shadow chancellor. His claim to be working to unite the party was also weakened when, within hours, his comments drew criticism from MPs close to Mr Blair and David Miliband.

At a Progress Rally in Manchester, where the party’s annual conference is being held, Ben Bradshaw, the shadow culture secretary, said activists should declare “very firmly” that “New Labour is not yet dead”.

Jim Murphy, another former Cabinet minister and a close ally of David Miliband, said the party did “absolutely remarkable things as New Labour”.

Margaret Hodge, the MP for Barking, said she was worried the party might “write off all the things that brought Labour three election victories in a row”. Ed Miliband must use his first conference speech as leader to demonstrate the party “was not in the pockets of the trade unions”, she said.

One angry Blairite MP said: “We cannot just put Tony Blair in a box. We cannot totally disown New Labour as this lot seem to want to.”

Mr Miliband beat his brother by a wafer-thin margin after four rounds of voting. He had been consistently behind in support from fellow MPs and party members, and only edged ahead with the help of the unions. He yesterday insisted he would not be in thrall to the unions, and told the BBC: “I’m nobody’s man. I’m my own man and I’m very, very clear about that.” He added: “It’s not about some lurch to the Left, absolutely not.”

He dismissed claims that he wanted to do to Labour what Margaret Thatcher did to the Tories when she took over as leader. He described his nickname “Red Ed” as “both tiresome and rubbish”.

Mr Miliband denied that he lacked the required steel to lead his party. “I can take the toughest of decisions that you’re required to do as Leader of the Opposition and hopefully as prime minister.”

He claimed to want to represent the middle classes. “I think there are big injustices that we need to deal with in Britain — many of them affecting so-called Middle England in this country.

“People who are working hard, working long hours. They don’t have enough time to see their kids. They’re worried about their kids getting into debt. They’re worried about housing. They’re the people I want to speak for in this country.”

Labour has been thrown into turmoil by Mr Miliband’s shock victory. Tory insiders are known to be delighted by the outcome because they believe that, despite his claims to the contrary, his Left-wing leanings will alienate the middle class vote at the next election.

The election of the younger Miliband could provoke his brother to stand down. David Miliband is clearly devastated at being deprived of the leadership after coveting it for several years. Asked what role his brother might play in opposition, Ed Miliband said: “He needs time to think about the contribution he can make. I think he can make a very big contribution to British politics, but he needs the space to do that.”

Last night, David Miliband gave the strongest hint yet he was considering stepping away from front-line politics, if not immediately then in six to 12 months. In Manchester, he said he would not do anything yet to distract from his brother’s first day in the job. “Today is not a day to take anything away from what Ed is doing. I think he has made a great start.”

Yesterday it emerged that Ed Miliband is considering offering his brother the job of shadow chancellor to make up for the disappointment. There is no guarantee he would accept but if he did, the new leader risks angering Ed Balls, who is keen to shadow George Osborne.

Ed Miliband was asked to condemn the long-running British Airways dispute and planned BBC industrial action which is threatening to blackout the Conservative conference. But he replied: “I’m not going to adjudicate on every strike. But what I am going to say to you is that they should always be a last resort.” He also failed to back what will be controversial changes to the gold-plated system of public sector pensions. Mr Miliband indicated that he would not oppose all the public sector cuts being planned by the Coalition.

He also said he would look again at Alistair Darling’s plan to halve the deficit in four years, suggesting that a greater tax take was possible to compensate for fewer cuts. His declaration of the death of New Labour was welcomed by the union bosses.

Paul Kenny, the general secretary of Unison, said: “It had its time and now it has gone. The general public don’t trust it any more. People like Mandelson, and a certain degree Tony Blair, are harking back to a golden era, which of course people do when they get older like that. But the reality is it has had its time.”

Other union bosses were also quick to back Ed Miliband, but warned him to remain true to what he had said during the four-month leadership campaign.

Yesterday, Lord Kinnock [The Welsh windbag: a famous loser], a supporter of Ed Miliband, claimed David Miliband lost out because Tony Blair and Lord Mandelson both backed him. “I think Peter Mandelson’s book and his utterings afterwards may have made a difference that damaged the case of David Miliband,” he said

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Every British parent will end up on vetting database unless it is scrapped, warns think tank

A national anti-paedophile database is "poisoning" relations between generations and even increasing the risk to children, a report has warned.

The controversial vetting system, designed to check adults who work with children, has become so out of control that it could eventually cover the majority of the population because most people come in to regular contact with youngsters, think tank Civitas predicts. The system, which is under review by the Government, also threatens to undermine David Cameron's desire for a "Big Society".

Unless the rules are dramatically scaled back, the report warns that volunteering will plummet. Adults will also become less willing to intervene when children are misbehaving, or help those in distress for fear of being seen as potential child abusers.

The proposed Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) was created by the last Labour Government and would involve at least nine million people who want to work with children or vulnerable adults having to register on a database and have criminal record checks.

The plan was met by a wave of intense criticism amid claims it was over restrictive and would even hit parents who signed up for driving rotas for weekly sports events or clubs.

In June, the new Coalition Government halted the scheme, which was due to start the following month, and is currently reviewing it's future, with plans to scale back its scope to "common sense" levels.

But in the report for Civitas today, respected sociologist Prof Frank Furedi, and co-author Jennie Bristow, warn unless the Government gets rid of the scheme altogether then nothing will change. Their study, Licensed to Hug, calls for a radical new approach to the way adults and children can interact that is "based on the assumption that the majority of adults have no predatory attitudes towards children".

The previous Government stressed the vetting system would not target those parents who make private arrangements that bring them in to contact with children, such as picking up a neighbour's child. But Prof Furedi said such assertions "ignores the reality that adults interacting with their own children in public will generally be interacting with other people's children as well, and on that basis they can be targeted for vetting".

The report said the system has resulted in society widely accepting "the principle that adults spending time with children who are not their own should have some kind of licence to do so".

"The logical consequence of demanding that some adults need to 'pass the paedophile test' is to set up an expectation that other adults, organising play dates or giving children lifts in their car, should have their motives similarly scrutinised," it adds. "Given the extent to which this scheme seems likely gradually to encompass all parents, as well as adults working or volunteering with children, the logic is that the majority of the adult population will sooner or later find itself on the vetting database."

The report, a revision of a study first published in 2008, said the Vetting and Barring Scheme is "gaining the dubious distinction of being the most unpopular piece of regulation ever developed". "Under the guise of protecting children from abuse, heavy-handed regulations not only discouraged volunteering and undermined trust, but also created a false sense of security."

Prof Furedi also warned that most adults now will simply comply with vetting rules for fear that refusing will fuel suspicion or leave them barred from being involved in whatever the activity.

He said a criminal records check is starting to be seen in similar terms to having a First Aid certificate or teaching qualification, "as though being officially cleared of child abuse give these adults some particular knowledge of, and skill with, children, whilst the rest of the adult population is effectively blacklisted and cautioned to keep its distance."

A Home Office spokesman said: "Registration with the Vetting and Barring Scheme (VBS) was halted in June to allow the new Government to bring the criminal records and Vetting and Barring regime back to common sense levels. "The terms of reference for the remodelling of the VBS and of the criminal records regime are currently being considered and a further announcement will be made shortly.”

SOURCE





Stephen Colbert, Castro Spies and Extremism

Say Glenn Beck regularly hosted a “Christianity-expert” on his show. And say this expert was also an author who thanked Timothy Mc Veigh in the acknowledgements to his book. Say these thanks read as follows, “Timothy Mc Veigh spent long hours with me, helped open doors I could not have pushed through myself: and offered friendship and warmth to myself during research for my book. Timothy Ms Veigh championed this (book) project.” Then say Glenn Beck held a rally in Washington D.C. to counter “Extremism” in America.

Might the MSM raise a ruckus? Might they, at the bare minimum, chuckle and snark? Well, change “Christianity-expert” to “Cuba-expert”. Change Glenn Beck to Stephen Colbert. Change Timothy Mc Veigh to Jose Gomez Abad, and it’s on tap—and without the mildest MSM ruckus, chuckle or snark.

“What?!” some readers ask. “So who’s that Cuba-expert? And who’s the Spanish-named guy? And how can you possibly equate him with Timothy Mc Veigh?” The Cuba-expert is the MSM’s go-to expert on Cuba/Castro and a frequent Colbert quest, Julia Sweig. The Spanish-named guy is a Castroite terrorists whose bomb-plot to incinerate and entomb thousands of New York Holiday shoppers was foiled in the nick of time by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, and is among the six Castro agents who (Colbert guest) Julia Sweig thanks in her book’s acklowlegements.

And since you asked, here’s a link to Ms Sweig’s book acknowledgements where she thanks Jose Gomez Abad and fellow Cuban terrorist Elsa Montero. And here are these Cuban terrorists shortly before the FBI slapped on their handcuffs.

A little background: On Nov. 17, 1962, the FBI cracked a plot by Cuban agents that targeted Macy's, Gimbel's, Bloomingdale's and Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. The massive attack was set for the following week, the day after Thanksgiving. Macy's get's 50,000 shoppers that one day. Full details and documentation here.

Had those detonators gone off, 9/11’s death toll would have almost certainly taken seconds. The intent and will by Castroite terrorists (and subsequent Julia Sweig friends and champions) to commit mass-murder against Americans was certainly present, only our FBI foiled it.

The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg’s recent interviews with Fidel Castro’s in Havana were arranged by Julia Sweig. Goldberg himself described Ms Sweig as “a friend at the Council on Foreign Relations…a preeminent expert on Cuba and Latin America.” “We shook hands,” writes Goldberg about meeting Castro. “Then he greeted Julia warmly. They (Castro and Sweig) have known each other for more than twenty years.”

Seeking light on Fidel Castro’s “stunning!” (to those abysmally ignorant of his regime’s history, i.e. most MSM “reporters”) comment to him that “the Cuban Model doesn’t even work for us,” a perplexed Jeffrey Goldberg turned to nearby Julia Sweig for illumination.

In true Carnac the Magnificent mode the CFR’s “preeminent Cuba expert” seemingly held the envelope to her tilted head …”what does Castro really mean?” Then she ripped it open, blew into it, and revealed:

"He wasn't rejecting the ideas of the Revolution. I took it to be an acknowledgment that under 'the Cuban model' the state has much too big a role in the economic life of the country Ms Sweig indeed holds pre-eminence in one field: no “scholar” in modern American history—much less any honored guest on Glen Beck--thanks six different Stalinist spies and terrorists in the acknowledgements to their book, three of whom were expelled from the U.S. for terrorism and/or espionage. And no other scholar’s website references as an authority a Communist spy convicted for the same crimes as Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and currently serving 25 years in a U.S. maximum security prison.

Regarding the latter: “In 1998, a comprehensive review by the U.S. intelligence community concluded that Cuba does not pose a threat to U.S. national security,” this from the Council on Foreign Relations (Julia Sweig’s employers) website.

You’d think the CFR might know that this “1998 comprehensive review” was authored by the Clinton Defense Department’s Ana Belen Montes, who dodged the fate of the Rosenberg’s only with a plea bargain and currently serves 25 years in a U.S. federal prison for the crime of espionage. The Montes case ranks as the most damaging (for us) spy case since the “end” of the Cold War. “Ana Montes compromised our entire program against Cuba, electronic as well as human.” admitted Joel F. Brenner, National Counterintelligence Executive.

Now regarding the former: in her book’s acknowledgements, (frequent Colbert guest) Julia Sweig also thanks Ramon Sanchez Parodi, Jose Antonio Arbesu, Fernando Miguel Garcia, Hugo Ernesto Yedra and Josefina Vidal for their “warmth, their friendship and their kindness in opening Cuban doors.” All the above rank as veteran officers in Castro’s KGB and STASI-trained intelligence service. “Says who?!” some snort.

Says the retired Defense Intelligence Agency officer with a key role in nabbing Ana Belen Montes herself, that’s who. His name is Liet. Col. Christopher Simmons. He made the above allegations against the Cuban spies and Sweig accomplices, and in fact alleges that (frequent Colbert guest) Sweig herself qualifies as a “Cuban-agent-of-influence.”

In 2003 Lieut. Col. Simmons helped root out 14 Cuban spies who were promptly booted from the U.S. One was Julia Sweig accomplice, Josefina Vidal.

We will certainly look for “America’s ballsiest reporter” Stephen Colbert to address this vital issue of extremism within “America’s most influential think tank,” the Council on Foreign Relations

Granted, given Comedy Central’s mindset, Stalinist terrorism might not qualify as “extremism.” Also possible: the prospect of challenging The Council on Foreign Relations just might cause those outsized organs advertised on Colbert’s website to cravenly shrivel into their quiver.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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26 September, 2010

I Think, Therefore I’m Guilty

Everyone can agree that today’s Britain — which we’re always being told has become so much more liberal — is the very model of a forward-looking, tolerant society in which freedom of expression is paramount. Correct?

If only. In fact, the intellectual trend in Britain is a remorseless slide towards a dark age of intolerance, reverting to a reason-suppressing, heresy-hunting culture in which certain opinions are being turned into thought crimes.

Astoundingly, people are being arrested by the police — even if the case against them eventually falls — because of what they have said. They are not inciting violence or any criminal activity. They are merely expressing a point of view. Yet for that they may find the police feeling their collars.

It is difficult to say when, exactly, the priorities of the British police shifted from the prevention of criminal offences towards criminalising people for causing offence. The police have become the thin blue line against the Wrong Opinion. Instead of protecting society against oppression, British police officers have become the agents of oppression.

Freedom of religious expression, for example, is a bedrock principle of an open society. Yet if Christians express their religious opposition to homosexuality, they are treated like criminals.

Dale McAlpine, a Christian preacher in Cumbria, was carted off by the police, locked in a cell for seven hours and charged with using abusive or insulting words or behaviour after telling a passer-by that he believed homosexuality was a crime against God.

Harry Hammond, an evangelist, was convicted of a public order offence and fined for holding a placard saying ‘Stop Homosexuality, Stop Lesbianism, Jesus is Lord’ at a street demonstration in Bournemouth — even though he was attacked by members of the public who poured soil and water over him.

Pensioners have even found the police on their doorstep accusing them of ‘hate crime’ for objecting to the local council about a gay pride march or merely asking if they could distribute Christian leaflets alongside the gay rights literature.

Such Christians are far from alone in finding that certain opinions are now forbidden. Across public life — in academic, legal, governmental, scientific and media circles and beyond — an atmosphere is being engendered which is inimical to independent thought.

And this is often amplified to incendiary levels through the electronic lynch-mob of the internet. Writers who bust the boundaries of permitted thinking may become the target of frenzied denunciation by a global army of haters whipping up a campaign for the dissident to be boycotted, banned or sacked.

After Jan Moir suggested in the Daily Mail that the death of the gay Boyzone singer Stephen Gately was linked to a louche lifestyle, she was subjected to a fireball of vilification on the internet, Twitter and Facebook.

The Crown Prosecution Service then said ‘the Metropolitan Police passed the article’ to them ‘to determine whether or not any crime had been committed’, but Moir would not be prosecuted.

Prosecuted! For making what at most was a tasteless remark? What on earth has Britain come to when the CPS entertains this as a serious possibility?

Moir’s particular thought crime was unwittingly to desecrate the hallowed shrine of victim culture. Certain groups of ‘victimised’ people — lone mothers, ethnic minorities, Muslims, gays — enjoy a kind of Protected Species status, in that they must never be offended; nor can any fault ever be laid at their door.

To offend or criticise them is to be guilty of hate crime. But since hatred is a subjective notion, this has opened the way for an oppressive culture of coercion, double standards and injustice.

Offending such groups has become a hanging offence — and that includes protesting against this very phenomenon.

It took Robin Page, chairman of the Countryside Restoration Trust, some five years to clear his name after he was arrested for remarking at a 2002 rally against the government’s anti-hunting laws: ‘If you are a black vegetarian Muslim asylum-seeking one-legged lesbian lorry driver, I want the same rights as you.’

To enforce the dogma of thought crime, language has been hijacked and turned inside out. Dissent has been relabelled as either hatred or insanity. Those who disagree with current orthodoxies are therefore deemed to be either bad or mad.

These modern heretics are demonised as Europhobes, homophobes, xenophobes or Islamophobes. They can therefore safely be purged from all positions of influence and their ideas trashed without any discussion.

The taunt of ‘phobia’, or irrational fear, is used along with outright accusations of insanity to place rational dissent beyond the pale. As the former Today programme editor Rod Liddle recently revealed, a BBC apparatchik said to him of Lord Pearson of Rannoch and other Eurosceptics (whose views happen to be shared by half or more of the population): ‘Rod, you do realise that these people are mad?’

Just such a charge was made by totalitarian movements from the medieval Catholic church by way of the Jacobins all the way to Stalin’s secret police.

In similar vein, the rational anxieties of millions about mass immigration or militant Islam destroying the culture of the country are held merely to demonstrate that ordinary people are racist bigots or Islamophobes.

The great gift bequeathed to us by the 18th-century Enlightenment is the freedom to disagree. This is now in eclipse. The intelligentsia — the supposed custodians of reason and intellectual freedom — has turned itself into an inquisition, complete with an index of prohibited ideas.

Nowhere is this more starkly displayed than in the hounding of scientists and others who question man-made global warming theory.

Such sceptics are vilified, smeared, denied funding and even — according to the renowned meteorologist and IPCC reviewer Professor Richard Lindzen — intimidated into telling lies to shore up the theory.

Assertions wholly inimical to science, such as ‘the argument is over’ or that global warming is the belief of a scientific ‘consensus’ — the claim once used by the medieval church to stifle Galileo — are deployed to ensure the argument is over before it can begin.

More viciously still, these dissenters have been dubbed ‘climate change deniers’ to equate their views with Holocaust denial. Not only are they thus likened to Nazi sympathisers, but rejecting man-made global warming theory — for which many of the best brains in climate-related science say there is scant or no evidence — is equated with the genocide of the Jews.

Without the freedom to question and argue, science cannot thrive — and without science, reason would be crippled and modernity would grind to a halt. Which is of course the aim of the environmental movement, whose roots lie in a stream of pagan, irrational and proto-fascist thinking which goes back to the counter-Enlightenment.

‘Politically correct’ views all derive from anti-Western, secular ideologies such as anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, utilitarianism, feminism, multiculturalism and environmentalism. These all share the aim of overturning the established order in the West.

So any groups who have power within that order can never be offended or hurt because they are themselves offensive and hurtful, while ‘powerless’ groups can never be other than victims.

This obsession with power is, of course, a Marxist position; indeed, ‘political correctness’ is a form of cultural Marxism. But how has good old empirical, pragmatic, anti-ideological Britain succumbed to such extremism?

Part of the explanation is that, with the collapse of Soviet communism, the left shifted its focus from economics and politics to the cultural arena. Employing Gramsci’s tactic of ‘the long march through the institutions’, it captured the citadels of the culture for a variety of utopian ideas.

Class divisions would give way to equality, capitalist despoliation of the earth would be replaced by pre-lapsarian agrarian communes and all hatred, prejudice and irrationality would be excised from the human heart.

Like all ideologies, these utopian fantasies wrenched facts and evidence to fit their governing idea. Independent thought thus became impossible — which inevitably resulted in an attack upon freedom, because reason and liberty are inseparable bed-fellows.

Because these creeds purported to embody unchallengeable truths, they could permit no dissent. Reason was thus replaced by bullying, intimidation and the suppression of debate.

What we are living through is therefore a fresh mutation of the previous despotisms of first the medieval church and then the totalitarian political movements of the 20th century.

The West has now fallen victim to a third variation on the theme: cultural totalitarianism, or a dictatorship of virtue. For, in a pattern that goes back to the French Revolution, the left believes that its secular, materialistic, individualistic and utilitarian values represent not a point of view but virtue itself.

To oppose such coercive behaviour or uphold factual evidence in the face of ideological distortion is thus to be damned automatically as evil, mad and extreme.

But here’s the really striking thing. Progressive intellectuals who scorn ‘the right’ as knuckle-dragging extremists are themselves promoting a range of secular fantasies which uncannily mirror pre-Enlightenment religious fanaticism.

Anti-imperialism, anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, environmentalism, scientism, egalitarianism, anti-racism, libertinism, moral relativism and multiculturalism are all quasi-religious movements — evangelical, dogmatic, millenarian and with enforcement mechanisms to stamp out heresy.

Some would call all this tyranny. But to progressives, tyranny occurs only when their utopia is denied. Virtue therefore has to be coerced for the good of the people at the receiving end.

Since progressivism is all about creating the perfect society, it is therefore incontestably virtuous; and so — like Robespierre’s Committee of Public Safety, like Stalinism, like Islam — it is incapable of doing anything bad. Unlike everyone else, of course, for whom it follows they can do nothing but bad.

Accordingly, progressives feel justified in trying to stifle all dissent. Never engaging with the actual argument, they instead use gratuitous abuse to turn their opponents into pariahs (while they themselves, failing to grasp the point about evidence, characterise all reasoned arguments against them as outrageous ‘insults’).

So if you are a white Christian man upholding traditional family values and expressing a desire to stop immigration and leave the EU, while being sceptical of man-made global warming and believing that Darwinian evolution does not explain the origin of life on earth, Britain is no longer your country.

But don’t worry. Utopia is taking its place. The police are on their way to tell you.

SOURCE




Equality -- or Freedom?

If you would understand why America has lost the dynamism she had in the 1950s and 1960s, consider the new Paycheck Fairness Act passed by the House 256 to 162.

The need for such a law, writes Valerie Jarrett, the ranking woman in Barack Obama's White House, is that "working women are still paid only 77 cents for every dollar earned by a man." But why is that a concern of the U.S. government, and where is the empirical evidence that an inequality of pay between the sexes is proof of sexist hostility to women?

On average, Asians earn more than Hispanics; blacks less than whites. Mormons earn more than Muslims; Jews more than Jehovah's Witnesses. And Polish Americans earn more than Puerto Ricans. Does that prove America is a racist and religiously bigoted country?

The assumption of the Jarrett-backed law is that the sexes are equal in capacity, aptitude, drive and interest, and if there is a disparity in pay, only bigotry can explain it. But are there not other, simpler answers for why women earn less?

Perhaps half of American women leave the job market during their lives, sometimes for decades, to raise children, which puts them behind men who never leave the workforce. Women gravitate to teaching, nursing, secretarial and service work, which pay less than jobs where men predominate: mining, manufacturing, construction and the military.

Over 95 percent of our 40,000 dead and wounded from Afghanistan and Iraq were men. Men in prison outnumber women 10 to one. Is that the result of sex discrimination?

Sports have become a national obsession, and among the most rewarded professions in fame and fortune. And TV viewers prefer to watch male athletes compete in baseball, basketball, football, hockey, golf, tennis and boxing. Is unequal pay for men and women professional athletes a matter for the government?

Larry Summers lost his job as president of Harvard for suggesting that women have less aptitude for higher math and that may explain why they are underrepresented on Ivy League faculties in the sciences, economics and math. Would not that male aptitude help explain why men are dominant in investment banking and corporate finance, where salaries are among the highest?

Jarrett wants to empower the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to more closely monitor all businesses until women reach pay parity.

But if inequality of pay is a result of human nature and a free society, a greater equality of rewards can only be achieved through coercion, a government declaring its value, economic parity, to be supreme, and imposing its value and its preferred pay structure upon employers.

If this is where America is headed, why not go all the way and dictate that Asians and Hispanics, Muslims and Jews, women and men, blacks and whites, gay and straight must all be paid the exact same for the same work -- and let the EEOC hire 100,000 more bureaucrats to see that it happens? Would that be a great country or a socialist hell?

And before we empower the EEOC to monitor every business for sexism and racism, perhaps the commissioners will explain why African-Americans are 40 percent of all EEOC employees, while only 10 percent of the civilian labor force. Not a single white male sits on the commission.

Whence comes this egalitarian fanaticism? Not from our Declaration of Independence, which spoke of all men being equal in their Creator-endowed rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Nor from the America Revolution, which was about liberty not equality, not this alien ideology of egalitarianism.

Equality is not even mentioned in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, and the 14th Amendment's "equal protection" clause did not even make an appearance until after the Civil War. And that was about equal justice under law, not the socioeconomic equality of all Americans.

No, this egalitarian ideology is traceable to the French Revolution, where the royalty and aristocracy went to the guillotine in the name of "egalite."

Under the Paycheck Fairness Act, writes Jarrett, "employers will be required to prove in court that any wage differences were based on factors other than sex -- such as education, training or experience -- and were consistent with business necessity."

In short, women alleging sexist practices by their bosses do not have to prove their guilt. The boss must prove his innocence. This is another way of saying businessman are to be presumed guilty when charged. If that is not un-American, it surely once was.

Should this bill become law, the effects are predictable: more forms to be filled out by businesses, more bureaucrats for the EEOC, more charges of sex discrimination, more class-action suits, more fines, more lawyers getting rich via the litigious looting of the private sector.

America's decline is directly related to the growth in government power and the concomitant loss of freedom.

Except in God-given and constitutional rights, we are not equal. We are all unequal. The utopian promise of equality is but the banner of every power-hungry politician in modern history. And the rise of the egalitarian society means the death of the free society.

SOURCE





Contraceptive pill better for men than for women

Far from bringing equality, contraception has redistributed power away from women, says Cardinal Pell

THIS year is the 50th anniversary of the contraceptive pill, a development that has changed Western life enormously, in some ways most people do not understand. While majority opinion regards the pill as a significant social benefit for giving women greater control of their fertility, the consensus is not overwhelming, especially among women.

A May CBS News poll of 591 adult Americans found that 59 per cent of men and 54 per cent of women believed the pill had made women's lives better.

In an article in the ecumenical journal First Things that month, North American economist Timothy Reichert approached the topic with "straight-forward microeconomic reasoning", concluding that contraception had triggered a redistribution of wealth and power from women and children to men.

Applying the insights of the market, he points out that relative scarcity or abundance affects behaviour in important ways and that significant technological changes, such as the pill, have broad social effects. His basic thesis is that the pill has divided what was once a single mating market into two markets.

This first is a market for sexual relationships, which most young men and women frequent early in their adult life. The second is a market for marital or partnership relationships, where most participate later on.

Because the pill means that participation in the sex market need not result in pregnancy, the costs of having premarital and extra-marital sex have been lowered.

The old single mating market was populated by roughly the same number of men and women, but this is no longer the case in the two new markets.

Because most women want to have children, they enter the marriage market earlier than men, often by their early 30s. Men are under no such constraints.

Evolutionary biology dictates that there will always be more men than women in the sex market. Their natural roles are different. Women take nine months to make a baby, while it takes a man 10 minutes. St Augustine claimed that the sacrament of marriage was developed to constrain men to take an interest in their children.

Men leave the sex market at a higher average age than women to enter the marriage market. This means that women have a higher bargaining power in the sex market while they remain there (because of the larger number of men there) but face much stiffer competition for marriageable men (because of the lower supply) than earlier generations.

In other words, men take more of "the gains from trade" that marriage produces today.

Reichert also claims that this market division produces several self-reinforcing consequences, including more infidelity.

From a Christian viewpoint it is incongruous and inappropriate to consider baby-free infidelity as an advantage for women or men.

But younger women are likelier to link up with older, successful men than older women with young men, as any number of married women can attest after rearing children, only to find their husband has left for a younger woman.

Another consequence is a greater likelihood of divorce. Because of their lower bargaining power, more women strike "bad deals" in marriage and later feel compelled to escape. This is easier today because the social stigma of divorce has declined and because of no-fault divorce laws. More women also can afford to divorce and, in some cases, prenuptial agreements provide insurance against the worst.

Only the official teaching of the Catholic Church remains opposed to the pill and indeed all artificial contraception, but this is not even a majority position among Catholic churchgoers of child-bearing age. Indeed, this particular Catholic teaching is often cited as diminishing the church's authority to teach on morality among Catholics themselves, as well as provoking disbelief and even astonishment among other Christians and non-believers.

Catholic teaching does not require women to do nothing but have children but it does ask couples to be open to kids and to be generous. What this means in any particular situation is for each couple to decide.

Progressive Catholic opinion 40 or 50 years ago urged believers to follow their consciences and reject the church's opposition to artificial contraception. Today's advocates of the primacy of personal conscience urge Catholics to pick and choose among the church's teachings on marriage, sexuality and life issues, although they generally allow fewer liberties in social justice or ecology.

These changes, regarded as progressive or misguided depending on one's viewpoint, are not coincidental but follow from the revolutionary consequences of the pill on moral thinking and social behaviour; on the broadening endorsement of a moral individualism that ignores or rejects as inevitable the damage inflicted on the social fabric. This revolution was reinforced by the music of the 1960s, for example Mick Jagger's Rolling Stones, or the Beatles.

While early Catholic supporters of the pill claimed it would diminish the number of abortions, this has not eventuated. Whatever the causes, abortion rates have increased dramatically since the mid-60s in Australia and the US, although the number has peaked.

Real-life experience suggests that the "contraceptive mentality" pope Paul VI warned about in 1968 has had unforeseen consequences. To paraphrase Reichert, an unwanted baby threatens prosperity and lifestyle, making abortion seem necessary. It is the women who bear most of the burden of trauma and grief from abortions.

Even women who believe deeply in the Christian notion of godly forgiveness, and those who do not believe in God at all, can battle for years with unassuaged guilt.

In support of his claims that women are bearing a disproportionate burden in the new paradigm, Reichert cites evidence that in the past 35 years across the industrialised world women's happiness has declined absolutely and relative to men.

We have a new gender gap where men report a higher subjective wellbeing. This decline in women's happiness coincides broadly with the arrival of the sexual revolution, triggered by the invention of the pill.

The ancient Christian consensus, which lasted for 1900 years, linking sexual activity to the lovemaking of a husband and wife to create new life, was first broken by the Anglican Church's Lambeth Conference approval of contraception in 1930.

In this new contraceptive era, where no Western country produces enough children to maintain population levels, the Catholic stance is isolated, rejected and often despised.

But the use of the contraceptive pill not only changes the dynamics within a family between husband and wife, it is also changing our broader society in ways we understand imperfectly. But 50 years is not a long time; it is still early in the story.

SOURCE





Sydney artist protests burqa



SECURITY has been called in after tensions threatened to boil over a provocative mural to ban burqas at a Newtown workshop. Following artist Sergio Redegalli's painting opposing the Islamic face covering veils with the slogan "Say no to burqas", security outside the premises has been called in after tensions threatened to boil over.

Police also attended the unit at Wilford and Station St after a female resident allegedly unleashed a foul mouthed tirade against the picture and attempted to deface it with paint.

Security guard Nathan Daniels, called in by Mr Redegalli to protect his work, said there had been a lot of abuse - nearly all from women. "The trouble has been mainly from feminists saying it was sexist and racist. This one woman was abusing the artist - shouting and swearing at him as well as making threats that she's `going to get him', so we had the police called in," Mr Daniels said.

"The thing is Mr Redegalli is trying to get the message across that by women wearing the burqa their identity is being wiped out. A policeman said to me it has practical problems for them, such as identifying people," he added.

A resident, who did not want to be named in case of reprisals, said: "I'm only a pensioner but I would like to give the guy $50 for doing this. "These people come to our country so the least they should do is try and integrate a bit. I don't want to be named because I fear for the safety of my family and friends - everyone's scared of them."

Mr Redegalli said the painting was a rallying call against the creeping growth of extremism in Australia and was not anti-Islam. "It's about the burqa and extremism and not Islam. This mural has come from frustration," he said. "You can't say anything about Muslims without getting in trouble."

The image, which faces one of CityRail's busiest corridors, has been defaced twice since painting began on Monday.

Marrickville Mayor Sam Iskandar said he "condemns" the painting but council did not have the right to remove it.

Muslim Women's National Network Australia president Aziza Abdel-Halim said the image was disrespectful, insulting and an "immature way" of starting a debate. "I don't think [Mr Redegalli] is really even worth thinking about," she said. "[Wearing a burqa] is a matter of personal choice."

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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25 September, 2010

British carpenter who paid for 5,000 leaflets to find a job loses benefits...because he was 'not actively looking for work'

The insanity of bureaucratic Britain again

After two months claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance and no sign of work on the horizon, Adam Pay decided to do something about it.

The carpenter, who had been made redundant, printed and distributed 5,000 leaflets around his neighbourhood advertising his handyman skills. He also placed adverts in four local papers, all at his own cost. But when he reported to his local jobcentre he was told his £65.45-a-week benefits would be stopped because he had not been ‘actively looking for work’.

Staff told the father of two that trying to generate customers for his own handyman business did not count as searching for a job. If he had told them untruthfully that he had only searched the internet, checked local papers and made phone calls to look for work, the money would have continued to be paid into his account.

Mr Pay, 38, from Gillingham, Kent, said: ‘I told staff at the job centre I’d been spending six hours a day distributing the flyers and they wanted to know if I had done anything else. I thought they were having a laugh. It didn’t seem to count for anything at all in their eyes. I’m just trying to do the right thing. I have a family to look after.

‘The building industry isn’t good at the moment so it seemed the logical step to try to find my own work.’

Mr Pay’s case has now been passed to a senior official who will decide whether his claim for Jobseeker’s Allowance can be reactivated.

He worked at his last firm for two-and-a-half years on a salary of £22,000 but was laid off in July when the company lost an NHS contract due to public spending cuts.
Since then he has been rejected for a job as a Tesco delivery driver and as a maintenance man at a private mental hospital.

When he was told he needed a qualification to apply for sub-contracting work he signed up to the exam and passed on Tuesday. His wife, Louise, 37, a psychiatric nurse, is currently receiving £120-a-week maternity pay while she cares for their eight-month-old son Ben.

The couple also have a daughter, Scarlett, three, and are using their savings to cover the mortgage on their three-bedroom home.

Mr Pay spent £90 on printing 5,000 leaflets advertising his handyman skills, and another £220 for five weeks of advertisements in four local papers. He and his wife then spent 30 hours in the past week distributing the flyers throughout Gillingham.

When Mr Pay visited the job centre in Basildon, Essex, on Thursday he was given the bombshell news that he could no longer claim Jobseeker’s Allowance.

Claimants are told to keep a diary to ‘prove’ they have been looking for work which must be presented for their fortnightly visits.

Mr Pay’s plight emerged after official figures revealed 1.5 million Britons had never done a day’s work in their lives, with whole communities dependent on welfare.

He said: ‘It’s ridiculous. I’m going a step further than just looking for a job by trying to establish my own company and make my own work.’ His wife said: ‘Adam was applying for everything he could find. He came home from the job centre very upset. We are both exhausted. We thought they would be impressed that we had taken the initiative.

‘I agree with having a system to support those who can’t work through no fault of their own or when they’re hit by hard times. It’s a great thing about this country. ‘But it makes me angry as a taxpayer to be supporting a tickbox mentality with a system that can be scammed. The whole set-up is ludicrous. It seems as if they are telling us not to go out and look for a job. ‘We would have been better off doing nothing and just putting on the form that we had checked the internet and the papers every day.

‘We are staying hopeful that there is the need for a handyman in the local area and that something will come of our hard work.’

SOURCE






Britain's insane welfare state at work

What a depressing snapshot of Broken Britain Keith Macdonald gave us this week. The jobless 25-year-old has fathered 15 children by 14 different women (though he denies some of them are his). His illegitimate brood will cost the taxpayer £ 1.5million in welfare support.

As for Macdonald himself, he has no involvement in their upbringing whatsoever, save to contribute £5 per child per week out of his own benefits — less than the price of a packet of cigarettes.

Shocking? Yes. Surprising? Not really. As despicable as Macdonald is, the whole sordid tale begs the question: what kind of girl has unprotected sex with a virtual stranger with a violent past and a string of abandoned children to his name?

One answer is: the kind who wants a fast track to a council home and state benefits that are greater than she could earn in a lowly-paid job.

But, for me, the real blame for this travesty should be laid at the door of Britain’s well-intentioned but hopelessly naive ruling class, who condone a welfare system that unquestioningly and unapologetically indulges the feckless, calculating and work-shy.

These ‘people who know best’ have created a massively flawed welfare system that supports parasites like Macdonald and his low-rent conquests.

Of course, it’s only right and proper that the State should assist families who — through no fault of their own — have fallen on hard times. But benefit entitlement is now institutionalised among some sections of Britain’s underclass society. The generous handouts lavished on girls like Macdonald’s harem enable them to behave without censure or penalty.

If you need further evidence of the culture that’s causing this social decay, then just look at the health watchdog NICE’s recommendation this week that pregnant teenagers should have their antenatal classes at school — because waddling along to their local GP is far too embarrassing, apparently. Well, so it should be! Perhaps if society showed a modicum of disapproval of teen pregnancy, Britain would not be the single-mum capital of Europe.

Until we have the courage to say that NICE — which denies money for some cancer drugs — should not be squandering our money in this way, and until the Government finds the backbone to stop these girls using their womb as a fast track to a council home, nothing will change.

The Coalition has begun the bonfire of the quangos; surely it’s now time for a bonfire of the benefits, before we lose another tragic generation to worklessness, fatherlessness and hopelessness.

SOURCE






Polymorphous Propaganda

The sexual revolution always seems to have another frontier. Indeed, the very idea of a "revolution" would be negated were there no frontiers to conquer. So deeper, ever deeper, we plumb the depths. Look at television: Every new frontier is just another titillating, initially shocking plot for a fictional or "reality" show, until there's a "new normal" and the novelty and naughtiness wears off. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The latest example is a brand-new show on the TLC cable network called "Sister Wives," all about a likeable, longhaired Utah man named Kody Brown and his three wives and 13 children. But this isn't enough drama for a "reality" show, so the plot twist has Brown taking on a fourth wife with three of her own kids from a previous marriage. We've gone down a very strange path from "The Brady Bunch."

HBO started the normalization of polygamy with its drama "Big Love," but TLC is openly pushing for the walls of judgment to come falling down. Its slogan for the show is "Rethink love. Rethink marriage. Rethink family reality." In the first promo, one of the wives argues, "I think we're normal, and I go out and go, 'Oh, yeah, I can't tell everybody about my normal family.'" Kody Brown insists, "If you're good with one marriage, they figure you'll be good with two. I hope they think I'll be good with four."

They're not kidding. Off camera, there's more religion and politics at work. Kody Brown and his wives are in fact "fundamentalist Mormons" who have been political activists to legalize polygamy in Utah. The name of their lobbying group is Principle Voices. The group promotes a book called "Jesus Was Married," in which the disciples Martha and Mary, as well as Mary Magdalene, were all married to Jesus. It's "The Da Vinci Code" on Viagra.

This isn't the only TLC show to promote the "poly" -- yup, the hip new word -- lifestyle. They also aired a series this summer called "Strange Sex," which also had a plot about "polyamory," which is described as "consensual, responsible non-monogamy." TLC started as the Learning Channel; it's fast becoming the Libertine Channel.

The TLC show promoted a woman named Jaiya who lives with two men, having a baby with one of them. The bloggers at Polyamorous Percolations were delighted by its favorable spin: "the very picture of a respectful, insightful, beautiful poly documentary." A Chicago Tribune critic explained it "definitely aims to establish a sense of normalcy to an otherwise hard-to-understand situation" and "offers a great deal of education about human sexuality."

We're never being indoctrinated, just "educated." The abnormal is replaced by "a sense of normalcy."

Jaiya also appeared on "The Joy Behar Show" on CNN Headline News on Aug. 27 to promote her revolving-bedroom-door lifestyle: "It's great to have both, to be able to morph in and out of lots of different relationships." She's not kidding. Her more reluctant partner asks her how many boyfriends she wants. Her motto, she declares, is "If a man can love five persons, he should love five. If a man can love 50, he should love 50. If a man can love 500, he should love 500. Love is so rare that the more you can spread it, the better." (And CNN wonders how it lost the title of "most trusted name in news.")

For the more conventional polyester '70s "open marriage" types, there's a new adultery-promoting movie called "The Freebie," in which it's suggested the best way to spice up a marriage is a "free pass" for a one-night stand. Sept. 17 was dubbed "National Freebie Day" and the movie has a website at Untie-theknot.com. The site offers free-pass "Do's and Don'ts," lists the "Top Five Items You Must Have on Your Special Night" (don't ask) and even insists, "It's Time to Start Planning" and links to New York's Craigslist ads for "Casual Encounters" so you can "find a random partner."

Throughout this sudden avalanche of polygamy propaganda, a question persists: Where is the market demand for this? What significant segment of the vast American tapestry is being served by this message?

This is Hollywood blazing a trail because it wants to tear down the family, for once and for all. The barrage of libertine entertainment should remind us that it's become countercultural to champion the Judeo-Christian tradition. As strange as it may sound, the advocates of tradition can't rest on their laurels. Marriage as we've always known it has to be not just revered, but saved.

SOURCE





Who should libertarians hope for as the next leader of the British Labour party

Excerpt from Sean Gabb:

This leaves us with the two Miliband brothers. And these are certainly worth considering. They have the great advantage for us of being Jewish. Now, while there are Jewish organisations that get money and support by insisting that England is two steps from our own Kristallnacht, I doubt if many English people have even noticed the shape of the Miliband noses. Of those who have noticed, I doubt if more than a few thousand think ill of it. Native anti-semitism is so rare that it has to be hunted out, where not actually fabricated. And do bear in mind that the British National Party, which is our largest white nationalist organisation, welcomes Jewish members and is vaguely pro-Israel in its foreign policy. However, the non-white population is solidly anti-semitic. Moslems, black Christians, whatever – they largely hate Jews with a ferocity not known in England since the middle ages.

It may be disagreeable that we must share a country with such people. But it would be rather funny to see Labour hoist by its own petard. After 1997, Labour Governments knowingly encouraged the immigration of between seven and ten million non-whites into this country. They did so because it accelerated the upward redistribution of wealth to which modern ruling classes are all committed. They did so because it helped break up the solidarity of the ruled that is another ruling class project. They also did so because they believed that the new arrivals, once they had been waved through the citizenship formalities, would mostly vote Labour. And they will – so long as an English or a Scotch man or a black woman is in charge. They will not vote, I think, for a Labour Party led by a Jew. And this is regardless of how seldom either Miliband goes into a synagogue, and regardless of how little public enthusiasm either has shown for Israel.

This will be still more the case if the Liberals get the electoral reform that the Conservatives may not be able to deny them. So far, the two main parties have been held together by the iron logic of the first past the post system. I, for example, voted Conservative in this year’s election not because I thought David Cameron would be a good Prime Minister – but because the Conservatives were the only force able to get Labour out of office. I normally vote for the UK Independence Party. I would, in other than general elections, and if a candidate were to stand where I live, vote for the Libertarian Party. But I voted Conservative in the general election because not to vote Conservative would have risked another Labour Government.

It is the same with non-white electors. They might swallow their prejudices and vote for a Labour Party led by a Jew if the alternative was to let in a Conservative Government. But the alternative vote system will allow them to give their first preferences to Islamic and black nationalist parties. Their second preferences might be enough for Labour. But the loss of first preferences might be enough to keep Labour from ever winning a majority of the English seats. And the accompanying redistribution of seats would make Scotch votes far less important than they have been.

And so, my prayers are with the Milibands. I should now say, though, which of the two brothers I prefer. My preference is for David......

David Miliband, however, is irremediably tainted with all the horrors of the Blair and Brown regime. He supported those wars. He supported every police state law that was brought forward. And he has all the commitment in his speaking manner of a Kremlin teleprinter. He looks thick. If we leave aside his ability to crawl nearly to the top of the Labour dung heap, he probably is thick. But, where his brother does not, he also manages to look like a supercilious fraud. I do hope he wins. Indeed, I am so convinced he would be the right man for the job, that I did briefly think of handing over a £1 joining fee to the Labour Party in order to vote for him. With David Miliband in charge, we might hope for a repeat at the next election of Labour’s 1983 performance.

Now, here I must say, as clearly as I can, that, I do not want a melt-down of Labour support because it might give a clear run to the Conservatives. The reason I want the Labour Party to vanish up its own bottom is because this enables our own attack on the Conservative Party.

The new order that I want – and that I largely believe is wanted across our Movement – is one in which most state agencies will have been shut down, and in which the legal and administrative privileges that maintain big business, the credentialed professions, the centralised media, and all other sinister interests, in existence will have been revoked. This does involve a revolution of one kind or another – a revolution, or a counter-revolution, or just a reaction: call it what you will. But, if the people ever take to the streets to demand change, this will have been preceded by a delegitimisation of the present order of things – just as the ancient régime in France withered after the 1770s, and the traditional autocracy in Russia withered after the 1880s. Long before a visible blow can have been landed against it, this present order of things will have been made incapable of defending itself. Of course, it must - as will every order founded on a denial of human nature - perish from within. But this inevitable fall will have been hastened by our own relentless critique.

Much 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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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24 September, 2010

Six arrested in Britain for 'burning Korans' on YouTube

This arrest is a mockery of the law. Muslims are not a race so how can this be racial hatred? People of all races are Muslims. It's a police State when police can make up the law as they go along. I am thinking of burning a few Korans myself and looking forward to my day in court

BRITISH police have arrested six people on suspicion of inciting racial hatred over a YouTube video apparently showing them setting fire to copies of the Koran. Police in northeastern England said that they had detained two men on September 15 and four more on Wednesday, adding that all of them had been bailed pending further inquiries.

"The arrests followed the burning of what are believed to have been two Korans in Gateshead on September 11," a spokesman for Northumbria Police said. "The incident was recorded and a video placed on the internet."

The YouTube video shows a group of masked men shouting "September 11, International Burn a Koran Day" and "This is for the boys in Afghanistan" before pouring petrol on what they claim are two copies of Islam's holy book. They then cheer and chant slogans as the books burst into flames, before kicking them.

The police force and the local authority issued a joint statement saying that the "kind of behaviour displayed in this video is not at all representative of our community as a whole. "Our community is one of mutual respect and we continue to work together with community leaders, residents and people of all faiths and beliefs to maintain good community relations."

SOURCE






Defeating Militant Islamist Ideology

Al-Qaida has always been a propaganda power. Its dark genius has been to connect the Muslim world's angry, humiliated and isolated young men with a utopian fantasy preaching the virtue of violence. That utopian fantasy seeks to explain and then redress roughly 800 years of Muslim decline.

Al-Qaida's rage predates any offense at Danish cartoons of Muhammad, protests over the ground zero mosque or goofy sectarian grandstanders in Florida threatening to burn the Quran. Al-Qaida's dedication to the destruction of its ideological enemies -- including its Muslim enemies -- lies at the organization's malign spiritual and savage philosophical core.

That malignant ideological core is the target of U.S. Navy Commander Yousef H. Aboul-Enein's extraordinary new book, "Miltant Islamist Ideology" (Naval Institute Press, 2010).

Aboul-Enein is an officer with a stellar professional resume and a compelling personal background. His book is immediately valuable to everyone engaged in the fight against Militant Islamist terrorism -- and Aboul-Enein would insist on militant with a capital M.

When viewed as a treatise on information warfare (which is what the book is, though the author might debate this description), the volume's utility extends well beyond combating Militant Islamists. Aboul-Enein provides an intellectual framework for analyzing and countering the ideology for every transnational terror organization, whether its creed is secular political, tribal, anarchist or religious.

As for the fascinating background: Aboul-Enein is a U.S. Navy Medical Service Corps officer who advises the Department of Defense and the U.S. intelligence community "at the highest levels." He was born in Mississippi and raised in Saudi Arabia, and has a master's degree in strategic intelligence from the National Defense Intelligence College.

Aboul-Enein establishes a goal: He intends to distinguish Islam as a religion from two other groups, Islamists and Militant Islamists. He then seeks to "disaggregate" Militant Islamists from both Islamists and Islam. This, he argues, is key to defeating Militant Islamists, the violent actors who scar Islam, harm Islamists, and murder Muslims and non-Muslims alike. He makes an insistently strong, and often profound, intellectual argument.

"Militant Islamist" Aboul-Enein defines as "a group or individual advocating Islamist ideological goals, principally by violent means." Islamists are a group who advocate "Islam as a political as well as religious system. Chief Islamist objectives include implementing sharia (Islamic) law "as the basis of all statutory issues." Islam is "the religious faith of Muslims, involving ... belief in Allah as the sole deity and in Muhammad as his prophet."

Militant Islamist ideology he condemns as a vicious fraud, for it "is composed of fragmented pieces of Islam ... they are recombined out of context to make up the bulwark of Militant Islamist ideology, which is not the religion of Islam." Militant Islamist ideology "seeks to establish a totalitarian state steeped in the language, symbols and narrowly selective aspects of Islam."

Aboul-Enein says faithful Muslims play a central role in defeating Militant Islamism, arguably the key role. "Unlike communism," he writes, "against which free enterprise and democracy were used as ideological counterweights, Militant Islamist ideology can be opposed among the Muslim masses only by Islamic counter-argumentation. We cannot contain Militant Islamist ideology but only work to marginalize, de-popularize, and erode its influence and mass appeal by identifying it as different from Islam or even from Islamist political groups."

Aboul-Enein does not dismiss the ideological warfare effects of defeating al-Qaida militarily on its home ground, such as Iraq. His chapter titled "Marginalizing al-Qaida" has definite operational implications for exploiting tensions and divisions in a terrorist organization when it is engaged militarily in a decisive theater.

Chapter 20, titled "Mindsets That Hamper America's Capabilities," begins with a quote from Saint Augustine: "When (men) go to war, what they want is to impose on their enemies the victor's will and call it peace." The chapter is a strong riposte to the imposing "Clash of Civilizations" argument Samuel Huntington made in the 1990s.

While Aboul-Enein specifically addresses Militant Islamism, with a tweak of terms and a slight adjustment of the historical dial, his analysis of American information warfare weaknesses applies to World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the great ideological and economic struggle we call the Cold War.

SOURCE





Language Diversity = Divisiveness

The U.S. is an English speaking country, not a bi-lingual or multi-lingual speaking country. Our government conducts all business in English. Our military communicates only in English. Can you envision military commanders giving commands to attack in numerous languages? U.S. businesses typically communicate in English. One of the many strengths of this country is its outstanding communications system.

All roadside signs, instructions, business correspondence, school classes, and general communications should be in English, with no references to any foreign languages.

Immigrants have to learn English and our children have to be proficient in English..

It can be beneficial for people to be fluent in a second language such as Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, etc. Our country needs expertise in foreign languages, but this should be subservient to fluency in English. U.S. citizens who cannot speak and write English as a primary language are probably placing themselves at a disadvantage on the ladder to success in this country.

We should not promote language diversity, because it will lead to divisiveness, the same type of divisiveness we see in numerous foreign countries.

SOURCE




Hands off our testicles

“Two men have been found guilty of ‘providing sperm without a licence.’ But is there a man in Britain who hasn’t done that? … Any talk of ‘sperm’ and ‘licences’ in the same breath should set alarm bells ringing.”

How can it be a crime to ‘provide sperm without a licence or third-party agreement’? That is what two British men have been found guilty of, after it was discovered that they were acting as ‘sperm brokers’, introducing would-be donors of the white stuff to around 800 women who, for various reasons, could not conceive. Yet every man in Britain who has sex with a woman ‘provides sperm without a licence’ (unless he’s wearing a condom); what’s so different when there’s a middle man involved, a broker, who passes the sperm from the man who produces it to the woman who wants it? Any talk of ‘sperm’ and ‘licences’ in the same breath should set alarm bells ringing.

Nigel Woodforth and Ricky Gage, the two businessmen (or ‘fertility conmen’ as they have been branded by the tabloids), made around £250,000 from their ad hoc sperm-donation scheme. The press has gone all out to make the scheme sound as seedy as possible – it was ‘run from a basement’ for the benefit of ‘desperate women’; the two men first got the idea ‘over a drink in the Slug and Lettuce pub in Reading’ – yet presumably it involved men consensually donating sperm and women consenually paying for it and later injecting it. If Gage and Woodforth had been offering cut-price amputations or under-the-radar gall-stone operations, I could understand the outrage. But neither the production nor the ingestion of sperm is a serious medical procedure; men and women do it all the time in the traditional fashion, in beds, on sofas, in alleyways, far from the prying eyes of the would-be fertility police.

And yet at Southwark Crown Court in London last week, Gage and Woodforth were found guilty of providing sperm without a licence. They will receive their sentences this week. The judge has told them to expect to be banged up.

This bizarre case shines a light on the increasingly stiff (no pun intended) regulation of people’s fertility. For many years, only fertility treatments involving frozen sperm required a licence. That’s fair enough: the long-term storing, freezing and unfreezing of sperm requires expertise, and the organisations that do it should adhere to certain agreed standards. But the provision of fresh sperm – that is, unfrozen sperm, the kind that men carry around with them at all times – was traditionally unregulated. Until 2007, that is. Then, the Human Tissue (Quality and Safety for Human Application) Regulations were introduced, and they included the decree that any provider wanting to ‘procure, test, process or distribute’ fresh sperm also had to hold a licence from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). That is why Gage and Woodforth - who organised the provision of fresh sperm - could be found guilty of a crime.

The legal regulation and potential criminalisation of the ‘procurement’ and ‘distribution’ of fresh sperm take us into dangerous territory. This makes something that men and women do all the time into a potential crime. Women ‘procure’ fresh sperm when they sleep with a man with the intention of getting pregnant; is there really a moral difference if they procure that man’s fresh sperm without sleeping with him? Men ‘distribute’ sperm day in, day out – whether into hankies, condoms or into women whom they love, want to make pregnant, or whatever. How can the distribution of fresh sperm be seriously policed? What is the significant difference if the man ‘distributes’ his sperm into a cup first rather than directly to the woman? The tighter regulation of what men and women do with sperm – which is different to blood, for example, in that it can be produced and distributed without risk of injury – is to invite the policing of what for thousands of years was a simple everyday relation between people.

The discussion of the alleged dangers of Woodforth and Gage’s fresh sperm captures what is behind much of the fury over their antics: official fearfulness about the sex act itself. Fertility experts are disgusted that these two men were providing untested sperm. This sperm is not ‘quarantined’ or tested for ‘bacterial and viral infection’, said one scary-sounding report. ‘These fresh sperm delivery services just fill me with horror. There is no way on earth that they can guarantee that [the sperm] is infection-free’, one expert told the Daily Telegraph.

This looks like a proxy debate that is really about the alleged dangers of sex in general – ‘unsafe sex’, that is – where it is also the case that men and women pass fluids that have not been quarantined or tested for infections. Across the country, on a daily basis, unregulated, unpoliced ‘sperm delivery services’ take place – that is, men and women have sex – and the contemporary view of such interactions as potentially dangerous and diseased has definitely informed the discussion of Woodforth and Gage’s horror-inducing fresh-sperm business. Would Those Who Know Better also like us to require a licence before we are allowed to share sperm in the traditional way? Perhaps we shouldn’t give them ideas – their answer to that question would almost certainly be ‘yes’.

What is happening here is that experts are taking a rather Catholic view of sperm. They are treating fresh sperm almost as something sacred, something which cannot possibly be passed from one party to another without the okay of the overlords of the fertility regulation industry. Ironically, it is likely to have been the overregulation and secular sanctification of fresh sperm that gave rise to a business like Gage and Woodforth’s in the first place. In recent years, new rules have been introduced stipulating that any child produced through sperm donation has a right to know who the donor was – and not surprisingly, this bizarre idea caused something of a crisis in the sperm-donation world, as men became less keen to donate their sperm if they thought that 18 years later the product of their masturbation might knock on their front door and say ‘Hello dad’. The tightening of fertility rules, the treatment of sperm donation as a fatherly act – all of this no doubt contributed to the creation of a space for an enterprise like Gage and Woodforth’s.

People’s fertility is already way too regulated. The HFEA may be one of the bodies set to be hurled on to the Lib-Cons’ ‘bonfire of the quangos’, but first its immense powers of fertility-policing will be distributed to other, already exisiting bodies. We need less regulation of our fertile interactions, not more – and a recognition from the powers-that-be that they have no business poking their Victorian snouts into what they call ‘sperm delivery services’, and the rest of us call relationships.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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23 September, 2010

The "good old days" for kids have gone forever in Britain

It's now illegal to play in the street near their homes -- something kids did for generations

Police were accused today of being 'heavy handed' after three officers were dispatched to issue a ticking off to two boys - for playing football in the street.

Henry Worthington, 12, and his brother Alex, 11, were told their kick-abouts in a cul-de-sac outside their home after school were illegal and could result in them getting anti-social behaviour orders. Their father Anthony, 43, of Timperley, Greater Manchester, was also sent a letter from officials at Trafford Council warning him his two sons could be in breach of the 1980 Highways Act which outlaws ball games.

The incident comes after Greater Manchester Police revealed it was preparing to cut more than 3,000 jobs due to the government's anticipated 25 per cent cut in spending.

Today, Mr Worthington, an engineer, said: 'Sending three officers over simply to give a warning about kids playing football in the street is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

'My boys are not hooligans. They are good lads who cause no trouble and I prefer them to play outside the house so I know they are safe. They haven't interfered with a car or any pedestrians so I don't see what the problem is.

'They play for a local football club on the weekend and they just want to practise their skills outside their house with their friends. It's not as if they're out all hours 24/7, it's just half an hour after school.

'I'm absolutely appalled that the police are not out there catching real criminals. I feel like my family is being persecuted. 'When I was a lad the police were not out persecuting children for playing football. Now you get three policemen coming to my door to tell us off for it.

'It's a joke-and a total waste of police resources given that they are facing massive cuts. 'At this rate the England soccer squad will never get better if the future team can't practise playing football anywhere.'

Mr Worthington added: 'It's a quiet street, and we live on the corner of a close. They've been playing out since the year dot, and since they've got a bit older they've started playing football.

'About three months ago, the boys got stopped by officers driving a patrol car up the street and they told them not to play football in the street. A few weeks later they came round to my house.

'The first time there was only one uniformed officer, in his patrol car. He was polite and just said it's against the law to play football in the street and that they were monitoring the situation.

'I thought fair enough, I'm not going to argue with a police officer, but I did say I couldn't see why it was a problem when it is a quiet street.

'Apparently it is illegal under the Highways Act 1980. I told the boys not to play, but the other kids on the road are still playing, and from the next road so it's the same situation for them. 'Then three officers turned up. One stayed in the patrol car and the other two came to my door. I couldn't believe it. They have always been very polite, and I told them that I had asked the boys not to play in the street.

'Two weeks ago I had a letter from the council regarding street football outlining what anti-social behaviour is and referring to an on-going problem regarding street football.

'It also talked about section 161 of the Highways Act 1980. But I don't see how it is anti-social behaviour. I feel the police and the council have been very heavy handed, and that they are not using their common sense at all.

'It is not like my lads are out 24/7 and it's not like they've kicked a ball at a pedestrian or at a car. There are areas where we could take them to play but you can't take them all the time when it's only going to be for half an hour.'

Inspector Simon Wright from Greater Manchester Police said: 'Playing football in the road obviously has clear dangers and the man in this case was simply reminded of this by officers looking out for his children's safety.

'It is actually a criminal offence and is often perceived as a nuisance to local residents, especially as there are plenty of parks for the children to go and play in a safe environment.

'I am not aware of a complaint being made to police but would be more than happy to discuss any concerns the father has with him.' He added: 'I think the police action amounted to common sense. You should not let your kids play on the road - it is not a playground.'

Jonathan Coupe of Trafford Council said: 'Anti-social behaviour is defined as any behaviour that causes alarm or distress to another person. 'In this particular case a letter has been sent to the parents to explain that a complaint has been received about their child's behaviour with a request to address the issues outlined in the complaint.

'This is in no way a formal warning or prosecution. Through action such as this, issues can be resolved in an appropriate manner through the parents themselves without having to involve the authorities.'

SOURCE





We have let yobs rule streets, says top British cop

Police have staged a 30-year ‘retreat from the streets’, allowing the ‘disease’ of anti-social behaviour to blight Britain, a devastating report reveals today. Millions of acts of drunken loutishness and vandalism are going unreported as they have become ‘normalised’, it claims.

Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Denis O’Connor said the basic task of keeping the peace had been relegated to a ‘second-order consideration’ for officers who were obsessed with meeting targets for actual crimes. This had led to officers being pulled off the beat, handing control to yobs and allowing anti-social behaviour to ‘gather momentum’, he said.

Sir Denis pointed to the rise of ‘happy slapping’ attacks – where yobs hit strangers, often filming it on a mobile phone – as evidence that random street violence had become commonplace and acceptable.

The ‘Stop the Rot’ report published by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary showed that last year, 3.5million incidents of anti-social behaviour were reported. But this represents only one in four of the estimated real total, meaning an astonishing 14million acts of antisocial behaviour were carried out – one every two seconds.

The landmark report warned that police forces are routinely ignoring thousands of repeat victims of harassment and thuggery. Forces often mark such calls as ‘low priority’ because they do not qualify as crimes. As a result, no action is taken.

Worryingly, less than a third of forces use systems to identify both repeat victims whose lives have been made a misery by a string of incidents, and those such as the disabled who are particularly vulnerable.

Sir Denis said a ‘strategic error’ was made in the 1970s that downgraded the importance of street patrols. From the late 1990s, the relentless focus on crime statistics led to forces neglecting their core duty to keep the peace, he added. ‘The truth is that despite its high public profile in recent years, anti-social behaviour does not have the same status as “crime” for the police,’ he said.

‘The police record of accomplishment and failure has been expressed, increasingly strongly, in terms of crime statistics.

‘Meanwhile, the “non-qualifying” antisocial behaviour issue, and its variants, that signal lack of control on our streets, have grown and evolved in intensity and harm. ‘Anti-social behaviour matters a lot to people but it doesn’t count in the formal system in the same way crime does. ‘That retreat from the streets has, in some senses, undermined [the police’s] connection with the public, and allowed some of these things to gather momentum.’

The report contains a series of victims’ accounts which Sir Denis described as ‘harrowing’. One unnamed man endured 400 incidents including stones being thrown at his wife. Despite making 200 reports to the police and the council, he said ‘no action’ had been taken.

The report revealed a growing gap between what the public wanted, namely ‘boots on the ground’, and what the police were delivering.

Sir Denis added: ‘The public do not distinguish between anti-social behaviour and crime. 'For them it’s really a sliding scale of grief.’ Despite the scale of the problem, some officers don’t think dealing with it is ‘real policing’, Sir Denis said.

He called for early intervention to ‘nip in the bud’ problems so they did not spiral out of control, and an end to underestimating anti-social behaviour. He added: ‘Make no mistake. It requires feet on the street.’

Sir Denis repeated his fears that as in earlier recessions, front-line officers would be the first to go as spending cuts bit.

A HMIC report in July found that just 11 per cent of officers are visible and available to the public at any one time, and more were available on Monday morning than when they might most be needed, on Saturday nights when there is more drunken aggression.

A study commissioned by HMIC for the Stop the Rot report found nearly one in three victims surveyed were unaware of any police action taken in response to their complaint. One in three victims also reported reprisals from their tormentors after complaining to the police, according to the Ipsos Mori poll.

Among the most damning conclusions were those reserved for Community Safety Partnerships, introduced by Labour, which were supposed to ensure co-operation between councils, police and other Government agencies. The report said that academics at Cardiff University found that significant numbers of partnerships were ‘problematic’, despite tens of millions spent on them. They ‘lacked focus’ in helping victims, were swamped in red tape and a ‘meetings culture’, and showed little evidence of value for money.

Home Secretary Theresa May said the report showed that ‘ antisocial behaviour ruins lives and scars communities’. She said: ‘This report, yet again, shows that for too long this problem has been sidelined and victims, especially those who are vulnerable, have been let down.’

Labour introduced a multitude of policies aimed at combating antisocial behaviour, including Asbos. But last year then Home Secretary Alan Johnson admitted Labour had ‘coasted’ on the issue.

More action was promised following the inquests into the deaths of Fiona Pilkington and her disabled 18-year-old daughter Francecca, who were tormented by a gang of youths despite making 33 desperate 999 calls over seven years.

Miss Pilkington was accused of ‘over-reacting’ and, unable to bear the torment any more, she killed herself and her daughter by setting fire to their car near their home in Barwell, Leicestershire, in October 2007.

Blair Gibbs, head of crime and justice-at the Policy Exchange thinktank, said: ‘Tolerating anti-social behaviour lets down victims of crime and breeds more serious criminality.’

Assistant Chief Constable Simon Edens from the Association of Chief Police Officers said: ‘Tackling antisocial behaviour must be achieved alongside keeping people safe through less visible parts of policing such as tackling serious organised crime or terrorism.’

SOURCE





Penny-Wise on Crime

Thomas Sowell

For more than 200 years, the political left has been coming up with reasons why criminals should not be punished as much, or at all. The latest gambit in Missouri is providing judges with the costs of incarcerating the criminals they sentence.

According to the New York Times, "a three-year prison sentence would run more than $37,000 while probation would cost $6,770." For a more serious crime, where a 5-year imprisonment would cost more than $50,000, it would cost less than $9,000 for what is described as "five years of intensive probation."

This is only the latest in a long line of "alternatives to incarceration" schemes that are constantly being pushed by all sorts of clever people, not only in Missouri but across the United States and across the Atlantic, especially in Britain.

The most obvious question that is being resolutely ignored in these scientific-sounding calculations is: What is the cost of turning criminals loose? Phrases like "intensive probation" may create the illusion that criminals at large are somehow under control of the authorities but illusions are especially dangerous when it comes to crime.

Another question that ought to be obvious is: Why are we counting only the cost to the government of putting a criminal behind bars, but not the cost to the public of turning him loose?

Some may say that it is not possible to quantify the costs of the dangers and anxieties of the public when more criminals are walking the streets. That is certainly true, if you mean the full costs. But we can quantify the money costs-- and just the money costs to the public vastly exceed the costs to the government of locking up criminals.

In Britain, where the "alternatives to incarceration" vogue has led to only 7 percent of convicted criminals being put behind bars, the annual cost of the prison system has been estimated at just under two billion pounds sterling. Meanwhile, the annual financial cost alone of crimes committed against the public has been an estimated sixty billion pounds sterling.

In the United States, the cost of incarcerating a criminal has been estimated as being $10,000 a year less than the cost of turning him loose.

In all these calculations we are leaving out the costs of violence, intimidation and the fears that people have for the safety of themselves and their children, not to mention the sense of helplessness and outrage when the society refuses to pay as much attention to innocent victims as they lavish on the criminals who victimize them.

These are all important costs. But it is unnecessary to take them into account, when just the money costs of turning criminals loose is enough to show what reckless nonsense is being preached to us by arrogant elites in the media, in academia and elsewhere.

Deception of the public by advocates of leniency to criminals has been institutionalized in legal practices that create the illusion of far more punishment being meted out than is actually the case. "Concurrent sentences" are one of the most blatant of these frauds.

When a criminal has been convicted of multiple crimes, having him serve his sentences for these crimes "concurrently" means that he actually serves no more time for five crimes than he would serve for whichever of those crimes has the longest sentence. In other words, the other four crimes are "on the house."

Sentences in general overstate how long the criminal will actually spend behind bars. Probation, furloughs, parole and time off for good behavior lead the list of reasons for turning a criminal loose before he serves the sentence that was announced to the public when he was convicted.

Even "life imprisonment without the possibility of parole"-- often offered as a substitute for execution for first degree murder-- can be misleading. There is no such thing as life imprisonment without the possibility of a liberal governor being elected, and then commuting or pardoning the murderer later on. And, of course, the murderer can commit murder again behind bars.

With all the things that liberals are willing to spend vast sums of money on, it is a little much to have them become penny-wise when it comes to keeping criminals off the streets.

SOURCE




Leftist hysteria over the fact that there is one major Australian newspaper that regularly questions them and their policies

(Rupert Murdoch's The Australian is relentlessly under attack from miffed media progressives)

Like taking a drag on a post-coital cigarette, after each election in recent years the political Left has a habit of letting off some steam after the big event. They reach for their keyboards or grab a microphone to take a swipe at the media. Make that the media with which they vehemently disagree.

After the 2007 election, progressives within the media were calling for a "cleansing" of conservatives from News Limited newspapers under the ruse that such voices were no longer required in the new left-wing era under Labor and Kevin Rudd.

It made for an amusing misread of politics: Rudd campaigned as a conservative. And a hypocritical one: there was no similar call for a purging of left-wing voices when John Howard was elected in 1996. Not to mention disingenuous: the same group complaining about a stifling of dissent during the Howard years wanted to stifle dissent in 2007.

This time left-leaning critics are busy scolding the news coverage and news analysis in The Australian with the same reckless disregard for facts. Same hypocrisy, too. Same Orwellian language about improving the national debate.

As media crimes go, the post-election accusers are guilty of committing the partisan offences they wrongly convict others of having committed. Travelling in an ideological pack, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Brown, ABC journalists at Media Watch, Insiders and Radio National, the echo chamber bloggers at Crikey and Laura Tingle in The Australian Financial Review assert The Australian has gone too far in scrutinising the record of the Rudd government and the anti-growth policies of the Greens, a party now part of the minority Gillard government. Add John Menadue to that list.

Last week, the Whitlam-era head of the Office of Prime Minister and Cabinet - a self-described "grumpy old man" - accused the media of failing "almost absolutely" in examining critical issues such as the two-speed economy and Julia Gillard's citizens' assembly. Wrong on both counts.

This newspaper has reported, analysed and editorialised at length about the consequences of this country's two-speed economy and has been highly critical of the vacuous citizens' assembly.

Describing this newspaper as "the Mad Hatter's Tea Party", Menadue claimed The Australian was "pernicious" in the way it reported waste within the schools building program when in fact the Auditor-General's report showed that "Australians got very good value for money". Wrong again.

The report by the Australian National Audit Office did not audit value. It did find 82 per cent of schools that were self-managing projects - mostly private schools - believed they had received value for money compared with just 40 per cent for other schools. The Orgill interim report released last month revealed Building the Education Revolution cost premiums of 5 per cent to 6 per cent (or $800 million) and extreme variations among BER projects, with centralised systems such as those in NSW costing double those of ACT public schools and Catholic schools in Tasmania and Queensland. That is not value for money.

Indeed, The Australian has uncovered a steady stream of mismanagement, rorts and waste under the $16.2 billion stimulus program. And unashamedly so. That's the role of quality media. Other so-called quality media outlets - such as Fairfax and the ABC - dropped the ball here, picking it up late and half-heartedly.

Menadue's spray continued: "And you watch them, [The Australian] will be doing the same thing on the NBN." Yes, The Australian will continue to report, analyse and editorialise about taxpayers getting value for money under the Gillard government's latest big spending initiative, the $43bn National Broadband Network. And unashamedly so.

Menadue took particular aim at Dennis Shanahan for living off Newspoll, creating news out of Newspoll and beating up stories against the Rudd government. Wrong again. As political editor of this newspaper, Shanahan's job is to report Newspoll results. When Labor's primary vote started to fall, he reported it.

Critics who claimed Shanahan was guilty of "playing down" Labor's two-party preferred vote were disconnected from reality. Rudd publicly admitted he was being "whacked" in the polls. Then, in June, the falling primary vote led to Rudd's removal.

Menadue was smoking some cigarette during last Wednesday morning's hissy fit. And so was ABC local radio host Deb Cameron. As Shanahan said in an email to Cameron, her failure to challenge Menadue about errors of basic facts suggested she was either ignorant about the election coverage or in complete agreement with Menadue's misinformation.

As chairman of the Centre for Policy Development, Menadue lectures about the "lack of honesty and transparency in public discourse", of holding people to account for their "mistakes and untruths". So let's do what Cameron should have done and get honest and transparent about Menadue's contribution to public discourse. Let's hold him to account for his mistakes and untruths.

Menadue is not an independent, objective observer. He is a player and his attack is political. Harbouring a long history of unhappiness with sections of the media which do not toe his leftist views, he set up the New Matilda website to provide "independent political commentary". Of course, it's just his platform to run a predictable genre of political whinge.

Menadue's philosophical leanings are diametrically opposed to those of The Australian on everything from economics to social policies. More Keynesian than Keynes, Menadue advised the worst government in Australia's history.

In fact, academic writings record that Menadue has the distinction of criticising a May 1975 cabinet submission about budget strategy by then treasurer Jim Cairns for not being Keynesian enough. (Cairns, not Menadue, was willing to consider the inflationary warnings from Milton Friedman when the economist visited Australia in April 1975.)

Menadue has been a long-time political activist, opposing the Iraq war as a signatory to the Gang of 43 letter, a vocal lobbyist for a human rights act where a handful of judges, not the Australian people, dictate social policy, and a prominent refugee advocate highly critical of the Howard government's policies, reaffirmed at election after election by the Australian people. Loved at writers' festivals and by the comrades at Workers Online, his obsession with the Murdoch papers - like that of others before him - betrays a moralising dismissal of Australians who may share this newspaper's values about smaller government, lower taxes, freer trade, economic liberalism and social polices that sit at the pragmatic centre of Australia.

Menadue, like his progressive comrades, is entitled to his political positions. But let's put those political views on the table in the interest of disclosing all relevant facts when assessing the cacophony of leftist claims that the media failed in its role at the last election.

When the facts are known, it's clear enough that Menadue has not provided serious or independent analysis of the media's performance at the last election.

Indeed, his ill-informed tirade last week - and the gushing response from Cameron - exposes the consistently shabby state of the so-called intellectual Left. By all means let's have a debate about the media, but progressives will need to lift their game if they want to make a meaningful contribution to that debate.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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22 September, 2010

Snooping on teens reduces their American individualism

Downtown D.C.'s booming Gallery Place corridor has lately been plagued by disruptive, loitering teens. Two weeks ago, after meeting with District officials, business owners hit on a novel solution: installing the latest in crowd-control technology outside the Chinatown Metro entrance.

Like a reverse dog whistle, the "Mosquito" emits a piercing beep at a frequency only young ears can hear. "Cool stuff," brags a spokesman for the British company selling the device. "Drives kids crazy."

Nobody likes getting jostled by unruly punks, but there's something a tad creepy about "fixing" the problem with a human "bug zapper" — a machine that harasses guilty and innocent alike.

Kids are getting used to this sort of thing, though. This generation has been poked, prodded, monitored, and controlled more than any other in American history.

When you look at our public schools, which educrats are busily turning into high-tech dystopias, you wonder how the regimented teen is supposed to grow up into an independent, free-thinking citizen.

Several school districts have begun tracking students' whereabouts with radio-frequency chips in student ID cards. "Information from those sensors is displayed on a map of the school," explains a Richmond, Calif., administrator, letting school officials, like counterterror agents on 24, pinpoint the students' location at any time.

Earlier this year it emerged that a Pennsylvania school district used "anti-theft" software in school-issued laptops to surreptitiously take thousands of webcam snapshots of students in their own homes. The federal government recently declined to prosecute the administrators, but such programs clearly bring enormous potential for abuse.

Public education is increasingly coming to resemble a 12-year shuffle through a giant TSA security line, with drug-sniffing dogs and "zero-tolerance" policies that make pocketknives and aspirin grounds for arrest and expulsion.

Children raised in this atmosphere grow up far more deferential to authority than their elders. William Strauss and Neil Howe, authors of Millennials Rising, call the generation born after 1981 "America's New Conformists," favoring "political order" over individualism.

Millennials' confidence in the federal government is 14 percent higher than older generations', according to a new report from the Obama-phile Center for American Progress. That study purports to explain "why and how the Millennial Generation is the most pro-government generation and what this means for our future." I can answer that last bit. It means: Be afraid; Be very afraid.

Generational changes in parenting philosophy have surely contributed to Millennials' pro-authority bent. Gone are the days when mom shoved you outside in the morning, telling you to get home by dark.

Howe and Strauss document a rapid decrease in unstructured free time for kids growing up in the '90s. But even if government policy isn't the only factor driving the new conformity, the schools shouldn't strive to make it worse.

Britain has been a pioneer in building a school system that conditions students for life in a cradle-to-grave surveillance state. It's no surprise that the "Mosquito" is a British import.

That may be changing, thanks to the civil-libertarian-leaning Cameron-Clegg government. Among the coalition's first moves were revoking schools' authority to demand children's fingerprints, and shutting down Labor's ContactPoint database of personal information on all 11 million Britons under 18 (slogan: "every child matters.") "The culture of snooping and mistrust has become so ingrained that we must tackle it with renewed vigor," said Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

Too often today, our schools actively promote that culture, quashing independence in the name of student security. The good news is, as our cousins across the pond are showing, that trend can be reversed.

SOURCE







Socialism vs. God

Sanity vs Honor? Socialism vs God? The debate is not new, hip or modern. It is a centuries old debate.

1790, France, the revolutionaries tried to establish the cult of Reason as an attempt get rid of Christianity.

The National Assembly took over the responsibilities of the Church, which included caring for the poor and the sick. The revolutionaries proceeded forward to take care of everything in France. They did such a wonderful job that four years later the Guillotine was working really hard to instill order in the country, spreading terror instead of love.



The print, according to the US Library of Congress, shows monks and nuns enjoying their new found liberty, some are loading possessions onto horses and wagons, some embrace, one couple kisses while another rides off together on horseback.” Translation: “Decree of the National Assembly which dissolved all orders of monks and nuns. Tuesday, February 16, 1790.

Fast forward to 1873, Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, Fyodor Dostoyevsky is reflecting on his past relationship with the famous critic Belnskiy, whose work for ‘Westernizing’ the czardom was inspiration for future communists. 1873 was decades before the Reds toppled the crosses and the bells of the Russian Orthodox churches.

“He knew that the moral principles are the basis for everything. He believed in the new moral principles of socialism (which to date, however, has shown nothing but vile distortions of nature and common sense) to the point of folly with no reflection at all: here there was only enthusiasm.

But as a socialist he first had to dethrone Christianity. He knew that revolution must necessarily begin with atheism. He had to dethrone the religion that provided the moral foundation of the society he was rejecting. He radically rejected the family, the private property, and the moral responsibility of the individual. Certainly he understood that in denying the individual moral responsibility he was also denying personal freedom; but he believed with all his being … that socialism would not only not destroy personal freedom but would, to the contrary, restore it to unheard-of grandeur, but on a new adamantine foundation.

There remained, however the radiant personality of Christ himself, which was most difficult to contend with.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Writer’s Diary, Old People

The debate is really about what are the common moral values.

‘Personal responsibility’ vs ‘government that cares’. Individuals taking care of themselves, their family and neighbors vs. cesars, kings, emperors, popes, presidents and general secretaries taking care of individuals.

Socialism gaves the people the perfect excuse to blame somebody else for their problems. Here is the socialist principle that was circulating in 1850s in the Russian Empire (as explained by Belinsky debating Dostoyevsky on the role of God in society):

Do you know that man’s sins cannot be counted against him and that he cannot be laden down with obligation to turn the other cheek when society is set up in such a mean fashion that a man cannot help but do wrong; economic factors alone lead him to do wrong, and it is absurd and cruel to demand from a man something which the very laws of nature make it impossible for him to carry out, even if he wanted to…

Socialism gave the people the green light to blame somebody else for their own wrongdoings and to fight those who they blame for their misfortune (about 80 million folks were killed in the process).

Today America is debating again the moral values of personal responsibility vs. victimhood. It is amazing that for hundreds of years the same debate is still alive. It is so much easier to blame somebody else. It is so easy that if it was working we all would have been socialists by now.

Unfortunately for the socialists after they get rid of the people who they blame (and run out of their money) comes a time when there is nobody else to blame. This is the time when, out of necessity, everybody goes back to personal responsibility and starts rebuilding… until they find somebody new to blame.

SOURCE





Australia: Woman charged for false rape report

False rape claims are common in Britain. Is that cathching on in Australia? Feminists used to say that false rape claims don't happen and they probably still do

A 21-YEAR-OLD Melbourne woman who claimed she was raped on a beachside track in broad daylight will be charged with making a false report to police.

The woman told police she was jogging on a dirt track beside The Esplanade in Mount Martha, south of Melbourne, when she was attacked just after 5.30pm (AEST) on September 13.

Police today said detectives had completed their investigation and were now satisfied no such event happened.

"Police wish to allay community fears and reinforce the fact that this incident did not occur and there is no one sought in relation to the matter," a police spokeswoman said. "The 21-year-old woman is expected to be charged on summons with making a false report to police."

The woman had told police she was startled by a man standing on the dirt track exposing himself. She said the man tackled her to the ground, removed her pants and then sexually assaulted her on the track. She told police the attack only stopped when she bit him on the neck. She then fled to a nearby house to raise the alarm.

SOURCE








Everyone is special in the therapy culture

A new report blames teachers for overdiagnosing kids with special needs. But the whole of society is playing this game

There are currently 8.5 million schoolchildren in England. There’s nothing particularly startling about that. What is incredible though is this: 1.7 million of them – that is, nearly a quarter – have been diagnosed as suffering from a special educational need (SEN).

Though there are varying gradations of SEN, from the severely disabled to the merely hyperactive, that is still a remarkable number of children with needs considered special. Indeed, given that so many are now requiring extra support, special needs are ceasing to appear quite so special.

What’s more, the number of kids with learning disabilities is rising. In 2003, there were 1,169,780 diagnoses of the less severe level 1 and level 2 SEN. This year, the figure had risen to 1,470,900. Those with more severe impediments are also increasing, with a three per cent rise in level 3 SEN diagnoses in the same period.

Now, if it seems improbable that English children are increasingly afflicted with learning diabilities, especially given the concomitant year-on-year improvement in GCSE and A-Level grades, then last week’s report from Ofsted calling for schools ‘to stop identifying pupils as having SEN’ and concentrate on teaching might seem welcome. As Ofsted’s chief inspector Christine Gilbert said: ‘We felt that schools and teachers were well intentioned but they were over-diagnosing the problems - teachers in the classroom weren’t confident they could deal with the problem. We feel teachers and schools need to have more confidence about looking at what are the barriers to learning.’

This is surely a positive recognition on the part of officialdom that too many surmountable problems are being passed off as special needs - right? After all, as the Ofsted report points out, to diagnose a pupil lacking the motivation to revise before his GCSEs as suffering from an SEN sounds more like an abdication of pedagogic responsibility than pastoral concern. But there are problems with Ofsted’s report, and they lie in its diagnosis of what is behind the problem of ever-expanding special needs, its examination of why this is happening.

For Ofsted, or at least those interpreting Ofsted’s report, it seems that it is all the schools’ fault. They are seduced by the extra funding that comes with SEN diagnoses and their teachers are glad of the extra help that the funding provides. Not only that, expanding SEN diagnoses tap into a ‘culture of excuses’. That is, according to the Ofsted report, some schools are passing off their poor academic performance as a consequence of having a high number of special needs pupils. No wonder Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers considered the report ‘insulting’.

Can everything really be laid at the feet of cynical and opportunist schools? Aside from the fact that there is no actual money to be made from getting a kid with poor concentration diagnosed with a SEN, the phenomenon of medicalising, of pathologising, many everyday behaviours is hardly limited to schools. And it is this broader therapeutic culture, where many social and individual problems are increasingly turned into diagnostic categories, that lies at the root of the rapid expansion of SEN in schools. Schools may be playing a game, but the terms of that game have been politically and socially determined. Given the attempt to pin the blame solely on schools, it is little wonder that the Lib-Con coalition’s solution of ‘overhaul[ling] the system’ and ‘improv[ing] diagnosis and assessment’ is so underwhelming.

That the root of the problem lies not within schools but within the society in which they acquire their meaning and purpose becomes clear with the example of that increasingly common SEN diagnosis: dyslexia. Back in 2007, as reported by James Panton on spiked, Durham University education professor Julian Elliott made the news by saying that there was little scientific evidence for dyslexia. This was not to suggest that certain people are pretending to have difficulty reading and writing. Rather, he was arguing that the criteria for diagnosis was so variable, so broad – from mentally inverting letters to untidy writing – that it was, well, meaningless. Hence the diagnosis could proliferate so rapidly.

So, if dyslexia is not a medical phenomenon, then what accounts for the fact that it is being more commonly diagnosed? Elliott’s explanation is key: ‘[The condition] persists as a construct largely because it serves an emotional, not a scientific, function.’ That is, in a society in which we, as its increasingly isolated, individuated members, pale before big social or, in this case, educational problems and challenges, it becomes easier to turn them into facts of life, of nature. It is emotionally reassuring that there is nothing that can be done about the challenges we face.

No doubt the emotional benefits of this trick of the light are great. If your child is struggling at school, it’s a relief to know that it is not because he is lazy or thick. And if you yourself have trouble with your spelling, it is a weight lifted to know that it is not your fault. So while the Department of Education might not be able to solve any large-scale educational problems, it can certainly make people feel better about these problems.

But the problems with hyperactive diagnoses of this type are twofold. First, they devalue the existence of genuinely inhibiting conditions. So, for children suffering from a severe mental disability, for children struggling to overcome a genuine impediment to learning, their travails are rendered equivalent to those of a child who makes a lot of noise while running around, or as they’re otherwise known these days: an ADHD sufferer.

Secondly, the expansion of SEN diagnoses does a disservice to those children tagged with a mild condition. It doesn’t encourage children to strive, to improve their reading, to develop their mental arithmetic skills; instead it reconciles them to their troubles. It explains failure, even makes children feel good about these failures.

In the context of expanding SEN diagnoses, poor spelling or a lack of concentration cease to be problems to be overcome; they are just the way things are. The prospect of low achievement ceases to be a spur to doing better - it becomes an SEN-diagnosed child’s destiny.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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21 September, 2010

Sad and angry, the millions of British women who dream of more babies: Thwarted by cash worries

Another consequence of blundering Left-inspired economic policies

Millions of women are being left ‘sad, devastated or angry’ after failing to have the number of children they dreamed of, a survey has found. Only one in 25 imagined having just one child when they grew up, but for nearly a third this becomes reality.

More than a quarter would like one more child than they have at present and a further one in ten would like two or more – but just 23 per cent believe this will happen.

The main reason for the ‘baby gap’ is financial constraints, with 45 per cent blaming household budgets. Just over a third of women reluctantly hold back on repeating pregnancy because they fear they would not be able to give enough attention to their existing children, either because their families already take up too much of their time or because of work pressures. More than a quarter say their plans for more children have been thwarted because of a reluctant partner.

One in five women revealed they were ‘sad’ at the size of their family, while one in eight were ‘jealous’ of others with more children. Three per cent described themselves as ‘angry’ and two per cent as ‘devastated’.

If the proportion of women interviewed who wanted to have more children was applied nationally, it would mean an extra 3.6million babies – swelling the current population of 61million by around 6 per cent. Instead, families have been shrinking in the UK, with the average number of children in each household standing at 1.3. In recent decades the figure was typically around 2.4.

Marital therapist and author Andrew G Marshall, who arranged the online survey of 2,304 woman with the BabyCentre website, warned this ‘fertility crisis’ had divided women into two camps – those with children and those without – and diverted attention from mothers who ‘ache for children they never had’.

The problem is so great in some cases that it can lead to the collapse of relationships. Almost one in 30 women admitted they were so determined to expand their family they would stop using contraception without telling their partner. ‘I discovered, almost by chance, how couples can be haunted – even broken – by the children they never had,’ said Mr Marshall.

‘While counselling a couple with one daughter I asked, on a moment’s intuition, if they’d have liked a larger family. Suddenly, all the repressed pain came tumbling out – tears, recrimination, anger.

‘Though it wasn’t an issue they’d raised themselves, talking about it proved a turning point for their counselling, so I started asking all my couples about family size. For most it was a source of contention, for many an open wound.’

He added there were two points at which disputes between couples about their number of children was most likely to lead to a split. ‘The first is when the desire for another baby peaks – generally 18 months to three years after the birth of the previous child – when the age difference would not be too big,’ he said.

‘The second point is reaching 40 and starting to reassess the first half of your life. I often counsel people who thought they’d come to terms with fewer children but are hit with a searing regret – just when it’s too late.’

The survey, published in Psychologies magazine, found just under a fifth of mothers have three children yet 32 per cent want to have a third child.

Only 6 per cent have four children but 16 per cent want this size of family. Most people, 54 per cent, said they were resigned to waiting for grandchildren to fill the gap in their lives. Just over a third said the their partners would change their minds.

Louise Chunn, editor of Psychologies, said: ‘The focus today has reverted to being a really good old-school mother but the reality is that having that kind of family is very expensive and time-consuming compared to when people grew up in those kinds of families. ‘Financial restraints during the recession and pressures of work for modern mothers mean the situation is not likely to improve in the near future.’

SOURCE





Britain goes halal... but no-one tells the public

A Mail on Sunday investigation – which will alarm anyone concerned about animal cruelty – has revealed that schools, hospitals, pubs and famous sporting venues such as Ascot and Twickenham are controversially serving up meat slaughtered in accordance with strict Islamic law to unwitting members of the public.

All the beef, chicken and lamb sold to fans at Wembley has secretly been prepared in accordance with sharia law, while Cheltenham College, which boasts of its ‘strong Christian ethos’, is one of several top public schools which also serves halal chicken to pupils without informing them.

Even Britain’s biggest hotel and restaurant group Whitbread, which owns the Beefeater and Brewers Fayre chains, among many others, has admitted that more than three-quarters of its poultry is halal.

Animal welfare campaigners have long called for a ban on the traditional Islamic way of preparing meat – which involves killing animals by drawing a knife across their throats, without stunning them first – saying it is cruel and causes unnecessary pain.

Sharia law expressly forbids knocking the animal out with a bolt gun, as is usual in British slaughter­houses. Instead, it must be sentient when its throat is cut, and the blood allowed to drip from the carcass while a religious phrase in praise of Allah is recited.

The extent of halal meat consumption, even in areas of Britain with a very small Muslim population, was revealed as the Pope, on his first visit to Britain, expressed fears that the country was not doing enough to preserve traditional Christian values and customs.

In a strongly worded speech to Parliament, he said: ‘There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none.’

But it is animal rights groups which have been most vociferous in their opposition to halal slaughter. Campaign organisation Viva!, whose supporters include Heather Mills and Joanna Lumley, said in a statement: ‘Other practices which may be undertaken for religious reasons, such as polygamy or the stoning of adulterers, are not permitted in the UK.

‘Religious freedom does not override other moral considerations and the suffering caused by this form of slaughter is so severe that it cannot be allowed to prevent action to be taken. Consumers can do their bit by boycotting places that persist in selling meat from unstunned animals.’

An RSPCA spokesman added: ‘The public have a right to know how their meat is produced. Many people are extremely concerned about animal welfare. What The Mail on Sunday has discovered shows that people are not being kept informed. The key to a more humane death for these animals is that they are stunned before slaughter.’

A spokesman for Twickenham, which sells only halal chicken despite not advertising the fact, insisted that the lack of transparency ‘had never been an issue’ and said: ‘Our consideration is more for those who want halal, to ensure they get it.’

Other institutions secretly serving up meat that is halal – or ‘permissible’ – include Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust and one of London’s ­biggest NHS Trusts, Guy’s and St ­Thomas’. A spokesman for the London hospitals admitted: ‘The only way ­people using the canteen would know they were ­eating halal chicken would be if they asked a member of staff directly.’

Whitbread, which also owns Table Table restaurants, Costa Coffee shops and Premier Inn hotels, admitted last night that 80 per cent of the chicken it served comes from halal poultry ­suppliers, including some in Muslim-dominated Turkey. A Whitbread spokesman said: ‘We don’t specify halal as a requirement in our procurement. We base our ­decision on quality and price. ‘It just turns out that we source that amount of chicken from suppliers that happen to be halal.

‘It is not mentioned on any of our menus because we don’t think there is customer demand for that information. But if people started asking, then we would definitely provide it.’

Rival operator Mitchells & Butlers, which owns the Harvester, Browns and Toby Carvery restaurant chains as well as pub chains All Bar One and O’Neill’s, was even more opaque about the source of its meats. A spokesman said it had a ‘broad range of suppliers’ but declined to say how many were halal-certified.

Ascot racecourse said it was easier to store and cook only one type of meat. ‘All our chicken is halal. This is not advertised as the menus are kept as simple as possible,’ said a spokesman.

A Football Association spokesman confirmed: ‘All the beef, chicken and lamb sold at Wembley Stadium is halal which means a large proportion of the meat on offer to our customers falls into this category.’ Pork, which is ­forbidden to Muslims, is also served at the stadium.

Britain’s Muslim community is exempt from regulations that require animals to be stunned before death, as is kosher meat prepared for the Jewish market.

Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell, secretary of the Associate Parliamentary Group for Animal Welfare, said: ‘I don’t object to people of different religious groups being catered for but it’s not something that should be imposed on everybody else.

'The vast majority of people in this country would not want meat of this origin. The outlets have a duty to let their customers know because some will object very strongly, not least because of the animal welfare implications of halal.’

Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said: ‘We suspected that meat killed by the halal and kosher methods was being used for general consumption but we never imagined it was so widespread. It is disgraceful that ­people aren’t being told if the food they are being served is from meat that has not been stunned prior to slaughter.’

More HERE







Was Mao the greatest criminal of all time?

Mao's Great Leap Forward 'killed 45 million in four years'

Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, an expert who had unprecedented access to official Communist Party archives said yesterday.

Speaking at The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival, Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian, said he found that during the time that Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in an effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, he was responsible for overseeing "one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known".

Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants to the Second World War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years; the worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55 million.

Mr Dikötter is the only author to have delved into the Chinese archives since they were reopened four years ago. He argued that this devastating period of history - which has until now remained hidden - has international resonance. "It ranks alongside the gulags and the Holocaust as one of the three greatest events of the 20th century.... It was like [the Cambodian communist dictator] Pol Pot's genocide multiplied 20 times over," he said.

Between 1958 and 1962, a war raged between the peasants and the state; it was a period when a third of all homes in China were destroyed to produce fertiliser and when the nation descended into famine and starvation, Mr Dikötter said.

His book, Mao's Great Famine; The Story of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, reveals that while this is a part of history that has been "quite forgotten" in the official memory of the People's Republic of China, there was a "staggering degree of violence" that was, remarkably, carefully catalogued in Public Security Bureau reports, which featured among the provincial archives he studied. In them, he found that the members of the rural farming communities were seen by the Party merely as "digits", or a faceless workforce. For those who committed any acts of disobedience, however minor, the punishments were huge.

State retribution for tiny thefts, such as stealing a potato, even by a child, would include being tied up and thrown into a pond; parents were forced to bury their children alive or were doused in excrement and urine, others were set alight, or had a nose or ear cut off. One record shows how a man was branded with hot metal. People were forced to work naked in the middle of winter; 80 per cent of all the villagers in one region of a quarter of a million Chinese were banned from the official canteen because they were too old or ill to be effective workers, so were deliberately starved to death.

Mr Dikötter said that he was once again examining the Party's archives for his next book, The Tragedy of Liberation, which will deal with the bloody advent of Communism in China from 1944 to 1957.

He said the archives were already illuminating the extent of the atrocities of the period; one piece of evidence revealed that 13,000 opponents of the new regime were killed in one region alone, in just three weeks. "We know the outline of what went on but I will be looking into precisely what happened in this period, how it happened, and the human experiences behind the history," he said.

Mr Dikötter, who teaches at the University of Hong Kong, said while it was difficult for any historian in China to write books that are critical of Mao, he felt he could not collude with the "conspiracy of silence" in what the Chinese rural community had suffered in recent history.

SOURCE






The truth about Tet

Today is the publication date of This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive, by James Robbins. Jim is an editorial writer for the Washington Times on defense policy. He also teaches International Relations at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. He is a former Special Assistant in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and a frequent commentator on national security issues for The Wall Street Journal, National Review and other publications.

I vividly remember following news of the Tet offensive in 1968 and subsequently fell for virtually every element of the myth of Tet that Robbins exposes in this lucid, important book. The book thus rings a bell with me, as I suspect it will for many readers of this site. The myth of Tet lives on, as Robbins argues, to do much damage. As soon as I read the book in galley proof, I invited Jim to write something that would allow us to draw it to the attention of our readers. He writes:

The 1968 Tet Offensive is remembered as a surprise attack by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces on symbolic targets in South Vietnam that turned American public opinion against the war and drove President Lyndon Johnson to the bargaining table. It is heralded as the turning point in the Vietnam War that ultimately led to the American withdrawal and victory of the communist forces.

For over forty years the myth of Tet has inspired America's adversaries as a model for achieving low-cost strategic victories, and has provided American commentators with a shorthand means of conjuring the specter of inevitable U.S. defeat. Whenever terrorists or insurgents lash out in dramatic fashion, regardless of how swiftly they are crushed, the Tet analogy is sure to follow. Whether it was the fighting in Fallujah, scattered Taliban attacks in Kabul, or Wikileaks' publication of 91,000 classified documents on the Afghan War, the American pundits' Tet reflex hands the enemy a roadmap to a low-cost route to victory.

Tet provides a ready story line to journalists and terrorists alike; but the problem is that it is not true.

The Tet Offensive Was Not a Surprise Attack

When the main Tet attacks kicked off on January 31, 1968, the Tet Offensive was quickly dubbed a "surprise" by the home front press who dogged the Johnson administration with questions about "intelligence failure." But Tet was not a surprise. Documents captured the previous November outlined the overall scheme of the attack, and the enemy plan had been briefed to journalists at the U.S. Embassy the first week in January. Three weeks before Tet kicked off, Army Lieutenant General Frederick C. Weyand, who commanded the forces around Saigon, received permission from MACV Commander General William Westmoreland to deploy his troops to meet the expected enemy action. The South Vietnamese government shortened the traditional Tet holiday furlough, and U.S. forces across Vietnam readied for the coming battle.

Even the press understood something was about to happen. "For months any journalist with decent sources was expecting something big at Tet," wrote Don North of ABC News. General Weyand gave off-the-record briefings detailing his preparations for the attacks. Three days before the Tet Offensive began the Washington Post noted that "the Communists appear to be preparing for a major push in their winter-spring offensive." And due to a command and control error that launched a number of enemy attacks a day early, all U.S. forces were already on alert status by the time the main thrust arrived. If anyone should have been surprised it was the Viet Cong.

The Communists Wanted to Win Not "Send a Message"

The Tet Offensive involved attacks on over 100 cities and towns by up to 84,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars. That fact alone makes comparisons to the odd multiple car-bomb attack or firefight at an obscure outpost seem misplaced. But the Tet analogy is usually applied on the symbolic level, where the scope of the attacks are irrelevant.

The most potent symbol of Tet was the failed assault by 19 Viet Cong sappers on the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon. While fighting raged across the country, the embassy attack was given a disproportionate amount of press coverage. It seemed as though the enemy had mounted a suicide strike at a symbol of American power to send a message that the VC could hit the U.S. even in its most secure sanctuaries.

But just because the embassy attack turned out to be suicidal did not mean it was a suicide mission. The VC strike force was ordered to seize and hold the embassy until reinforcements arrived from the expected South Vietnamese revolt. This was a microcosm of the overall communist plan, known as the General Offensive/General Uprising. The strategists in Hanoi, beguiled by American press reports, believed that their tripwire attacks would foment a mass, spontaneous revolution of the South Vietnamese people against the "corrupt" Saigon regime and the American "imperialist occupiers." But when the people refused to rally to the communist cause, the VC attackers were left exposed, outnumbered and outgunned. Rather than achieving total victory they suffered a humiliating, historic defeat.

The communists never intended any of their Tet attacks to be purely symbolic. But because their plan was so severely flawed and had no chance of succeeding, a snap analysis by the CIA concluded that the enemy must have been trying simply to "send a message." This analysis was inserted into talking points used by President Johnson and Defense Secretary McNamara, and the press obligingly picked up the story line. By unilaterally redefining enemy objectives down to that which they actually achieved, the United States gave the communists credit for a strategic impact they never sought.

Tet Did Not Turn the American Public Against the Vietnam War

The public response to Tet is the least understood, most misrepresented aspect of the offensive. According to Gallup, in the week after Tet began 54% of Americans disapproved of Johnson's conduct of the war, a seven percent increase since early January 1968, but still six points below the 60% disapproval he had charted five months earlier.

Proponents of the Tet myth read disapproval of Johnson's policies as indicating sentiment for peace, but this is not the case. The same Gallup poll that showed public disaffection with Johnson's limited war approach to Vietnam indicated that only 24% of Americans identified themselves as anti-war "doves," a number which had declined 11% since December, with 4% of the drop coming after Tet kicked off. But in the same poll 60% of Americans declared themselves pro-war "hawks," whose numbers had increased eight percent since December and four percent since the Tet Offensive began. And by the end of February the number of "doves" in the country was two percent lower than the number of Americans who thought the U.S. should "win a military victory in Vietnam using atom bombs."

So rather than engendering a sense of futility and swelling the ranks of the peace movement, the Tet Offensive made Americans more bellicose. The communists had deliberately violated a truce to mount a large-scale attack which had been decisively thwarted. The time was ripe for a massive counter-stroke that would destroy what remained of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces and end the war in allied victory.

LBJ Wanted Negotiations All Along

The turning point in the Tet myth is the "Walter Cronkite Moment," when the veteran newscaster took an editorial stand against the war and called for a negotiated peace. "If I've lost Cronkite," Johnson allegedly said, "I've lost middle America." The power that has been attributed to that moment has become legendary--the honest newsman as a bellwether of a nation, inducing despair in a President who understands that he had finally reached the end of the road.

Middle America had not actually rallied to Cronkite's defeatist posture, but Johnson did not need to be driven the peace table. He had always sought a negotiated end to the conflict in Vietnam. Between 1964 and 1968 the United States proffered 70 separate peace initiatives attempting to draw the communists into negotiations. Hanoi had rejected every one. When the president called for talks on March 31, 1968 it was just the latest offer. The difference was that this time the communists were so weakened after their failure during Tet that they saw negotiations as their best chance of survival. The North Vietnamese were the ones who had been driven to negotiate; Johnson had been waiting at the table from the start.

Tet's Legacy

In late 1968, Jack Fern, an NBC field producer, suggested that the network produce a program "showing that Tet had indeed been a decisive victory for America." Senior producer Robert Northshield vetoed the idea, explaining that Tet was "established in the public's mind as a defeat, and therefore it was an American defeat." But as former South Vietnamese Ambassador to the United States said, "history is written by the victors but eventually the truth comes out."

SOURCE

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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20 September, 2010

Bonfire of elf 'n' safety: British Prime Minister plans to tear up regulations which 'have become a music hall joke'

David Cameron is to unveil sweeping changes to ‘mad’ health and safety rules which are putting a massive burden on British business and public services. The Prime Minister will launch a bonfire of rules and will declare war on the mushrooming compensation culture at his party’s conference next month.

A whole slew of regulations on police, teachers and ambulance workers will be lifted so they no longer face the threat of being sued for making common sense decisions. Mr Cameron will tear up Labour rules which have been blamed for creating a culture where someone must be to blame for every mishap.

Teachers will no longer have to fill in reams of ‘risk assessment’ forms before taking youngsters on school trips, and killjoy council officials will find it much harder to ban firework displays and street parties.

Ambulance-chasing law firms will also be targeted. Personal injury lawyers will face restrictions on advertising and the fees they can charge.

And Mr Cameron wants to slash red tape which means even ‘low risk’ work places like offices are subject to the same tough rules as factories. A government source said: ‘The PM thinks the current health and safety rules are mad. The system needs drastic reform. ‘What we are determined to see is a great extension of personal freedom, at the same time as a rolling back both of the state and the power of the courts.’

The changes are contained in a report by Margaret Thatcher’s former trade secretary Lord Young, whose 40 recommendations will be published at the Tory conference. He is expected to conclude that a barrage of legal cases have made health and safety laws ‘a music hall joke’.

Earlier this year, Mr Cameron told the Daily Mail that the health and safety obsession had ‘encroached into various different parts of national life, whether it’s stopping Bonfire Night or stopping an ambulance getting to an emergency. We need to deal with it all in a comprehensive way. ‘We all want our children to have great experiences outside the classroom, whether it’s visiting museums or farms or geography field trips or residential courses.

'We want all the things we had in our own childhood to be available today. There is a worry that it’s becoming too difficult to do because there are too many forms to fill in, too many risks to assess.’ He added: ‘We do have a good record of health and safety at work in this country, and we have a low level of industrial accidents and that’s important. ‘You can deal with this problem without jeopardising that at all.

'The neurosis comes from excessive litigation fears, unclear law, mission creep, Europe, town halls. It’s all of those things and we have to deal with each one. That’s what we will do.’

The changes aim to exempt the emergency services from lawsuits or prosecution for breaching health and safety laws when they are taking necessary action or risking their own safety to help others or stop crime. The rules will include part-time police officers.

And it says claims should no longer be considered by courts after ‘Good Samaritan’ situations which have seen people sued for trying to give first aid. It will mean people will no longer be able to be sued for causing a personal injury through no fault of their own, when they had been trying to do the right thing, or had been trying to stop someone else injuring themselves.

There is likely also to be crackdown on lawyers’ ‘no win, no fee’ arrangements, which encourage lawyers to take on speculative lawsuits because they can demand huge costs from defendants like the NHS if they win. Personal injury law firms will be limited in what they can say and what sort of advertising they can engage in.

Other changes would see success fees charged by lawyers in ‘no win, no fee’ agreements no longer recoverable from defendants – instead they would take their cut from the victim’s pay out.

Judges would also be given the power to cap the costs individual claimants can recover in personal injury cases.

Lord Young would also like to see a reduction in the huge number of risk assessment forms that teachers have to fill in before going on trips. There will instead be a simple consent form for parents to sign.

SOURCE





Will all we have turn to dust and ashes, just like my Soviet roubles?

Britain cannot go on as it is. Either our dominant elite will recognise that their ideas are wrong, and must be changed. Or a series of avalanches will sweep away our comfortable lives. I think I know which is more likely. Catastrophes do happen, and people survive them after a fashion, though their lives are never really the same afterwards.

The post-1968 ruling class are so convinced of their own rightness that I can no longer believe that anything will persuade them they might be even a little bit wrong.

And once again I am reminded of the complacent fools’ paradise that was the Soviet Union in its last years. Somewhere I still have the bank book I acquired in communist Moscow, after a lengthy interro­gation about my class background. In it are recorded the few hundred roubles I deposited there and will never see again. But Russians often had many thousands stored away. All of it was dust and ashes when reality finally burst through the broken Iron Curtain. Great mountain ranges of savings were abolished in an evening, as the currency was ‘revalued’ out of existence.

Supposedly generous health schemes collapsed – though in truth they had long been short of drugs, especially painkillers and antibiotics, and the filthiness of the hospitals had been a grave danger to recovery. Jobs that had been meant to last for life were abolished, and the places where those jobs were done vanished. Pensions went unpaid or became valueless.

The money, the jobs, the Welfare State were all based on an illusion. When the illusion became unsustainable, they crumbled.

Well, how can we afford to carry 1.5 million people who have never worked? How can we afford to house jobless migrant families in Notting Hill grandeur? How can we sustain the enormous NHS which we gorged with cash in good times, while quietly loading it with enormous long-term debts to finance a building splurge?

None of this is real. Our economy continues to function out of habit and faith rather than because we are paying our way in the world.

Our state education system is a gigantic international joke, so bad that the remaining employers here would mostly much rather hire Poles with hardly a word of English than the products of our anarchic classrooms, where multitudes have ‘special needs’ and failure is the only thing that is rewarded.

The people who said that manufacturing doesn’t matter now admit they were wrong, but that does not bring back the lost factories. The North Sea money that carried us over much of the worst is nearly all spent.

We have acquired a Government whose main reason for existence is to protect the status quo, which hates to think and which loves to pose – but to which there is no sensible opposition.

Only a contrite confession of failure, combined with a readiness to reconsider every policy from welfare to crime to schools to immi­gration, could possibly avert the great smash which seems increasingly likely to me. We had our first warning in the failure of the banks. What will follow, if we pay no attention, will I think be worse.

The sly, dishonest propagandists who claim that the ‘War on Drugs’ has failed really do need to explain what war this is, exactly, and when it was ever fought. Look at the pathetic case of George Michael, who – drugged out of his mind with supposedly harmless, supposedly soft cannabis – drove his powerful spoilt brat’s car into a shop.

It occurs to me that he could just as easily have hurled his machine at a family with young children, or have caused a gory pile-up on a motorway. Those unmoved by this possibility might look at the man himself, a pitiable husk whose long-term admirers must be increasingly embarrassed by him.

And is it not reasonable to suggest that much of this folly, crime and degradation results from his repeated use of drugs which are supposedly illegal? Yet what has happened to Mr Michael when he has been caught breaking that law, as he has been over and over again?

Meaningless ‘cautions’, that is what – though his case has not been so spectacular as that of the ‘singer’ Pete Doherty, who has been in court for drugs offences so many times that the Criminal Records computer overheats when his name is fed into it.

If these famous people were properly punished, and if the police did not constantly seek excuses to fail to do their jobs, then we might actually have that war. And we would have much less drug use.

Laws that are enforced are effective. Look how quickly the market traders of Britain surrendered to kilograms after the prosecution of Steve Thoburn. When did you last see anyone smoking on an aeroplane, where such an act can have you led off the flight in handcuffs?

Meanwhile, those which are not enforced are worthless – like the non-existent ban on using a hand-held mobile phone while driving, which the police cannot be bothered to put into effect.

Let us please have a real war on drugs, especially on the brain-wrecking poison cannabis, the dangers of which have been concealed by decades of falsehood. There will of course be casualties. But, as the wretched George Michael has shown, there are plenty of casualties now, when no war is taking place.

Christians cannot be right about anything these days. If Stephen Fry had remarked that returning to Britain via Heathrow was like arriving in the Third World – which it so often is – then his worshippers and sycophants would have said what a clever and original thought it was.

And BBC Radio 4, or Radio Fry as it should be renamed as he is on it so much, would have hired him to make a series of programmes about the awfulness of airports, to be delivered in that insufferable, giggly golden syrup voice of his.

But when a Cardinal says the same thing, he is denounced by all Left-thinking people for racism, even though there is not the slightest evidence that any such thought had crossed his mind.

It is the slovenly shabbiness, and the general feeling of arriving somewhere worse than the place that you have come from, which is the problem with Heathrow and many other places in this country too.

Once the police forces of this country could have relied on fierce public support against cuts in their funds and manpower. Now I think they will get very little.

For years I have said they should sell the helicopters and fast cars and get back on foot. I said they should reopen police stations and man them. I said they should remember that the middle classes are their friends. And almost all I heard in return was moaning that I was anti-police and unfair to a fine body of men. Piffle.

The police forces of this country have broken their covenant with law-abiding people and now they lack friends when they need them most. If they had listened to me instead of being so sensitive, this would not have happened. Flattery is not the same as friendship, and criticism is not necessarily hostile.

SOURCE





British council treats HETEROsexuality as abnormal

Town Hall bosses are asking staff to take part in a 'heterosexuality quiz' so they can gain a greater understanding of what it is like to be gay. The quiz, devised by managers at Buckinghamshire County Council, is part of an equality and diversity course called 'Respecting Sexuality'.

Questions, which are described as a 'twist' on those routinely asked of homosexuals, include 'What do you think caused your heterosexuality?', 'Is it possible your heterosexuality stems from a neurotic fear of others of the same sex?', and 'If you've never slept with a person of the same sex, how do you know you wouldn't prefer it?'

The course, which encourages staff to 'have a better understanding' of the challenges faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender colleagues, includes a film which follows the experience of four fictitious employees.

The film is said to 'build in intensity' and can provoke a variety of reactions. Trainers' notes state: 'Initial reactions to the stories vary widely, with heterosexual (straight) people often dismissing the stories as exaggerated or rare and homosexual (gay people) immediately recognising the issues and emotions explored here as honest and relevant.'

The Buckinghamshire council course is just one of a series of publicly funded equality and diversity sessions uncovered in a series of Freedom of Information requests by The Mail on Sunday.

Cardiff, Slough and Cheshire West and Cheshire councils have also incorporated quizzes in their sessions. In Slough, employees ask colleagues questions from a specially prepared grid such as 'Can you sing a few lines from a Supremes song?' and 'Do you read The Guardian?'

Staff at Cardiff City Council are challenged to name the inventor of the 'great British classic car the Mini', and to identify the symbol used to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

Matthew Sinclair, director of the TaxPayers Alliance, said: 'With huge pressure on the public finances, and council tax nearly doubled over the last decade, it is vital that councils show they can start cutting back on waste to keep down taxes and avoid unnecessary pressure on services.

'To see councils wasting money on such a ludicrous, politically-correct exercise in that environment is disgusting. 'Ensuring that councils don't discriminate doesn't require such insane attempts at a superficial understanding of different communities.'

A spokesman for Buckinghamshire County Council said its quiz was devised to help staff in its adoption service. He was unable to say how many had taken part or at what cost.

'The questions from the quiz are not used as a quiz directed at individuals, but some of the questions are used as a tool during the course to provoke the attendees' thought process and to enable the attendees to put themselves in someone else's shoes,' he added.

SOURCE




The Right to Blaspheme

A Response to the President on Ground Zero, the Koran, Gitmo, and 9/11

Islam has been the talk of the country. In New York, a jihadi-sympathizing cleric with shadowy foreign connections seeks to put a mosque near Ground Zero. He forewarns: if he does not get his way, “anger will explode in the Muslim world.” In Florida, a Yosemite Sam-type pastor wants to conduct a public burning of the Koran. As with the beer summit, President Obama has managed to embroil himself in these local disputes –– thereby nationalizing the debate. His series of statements have been nothing more than boilerplate leftist dogma, proving a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of this war, and the issue at hand.

On the Ground Zero mosque, Obama said:

… If you could build a church on a site, you could build a synagogue on a site, if you could build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on the site.

We are not at war against Islam. We are at war against terrorist organizations that have distorted Islam or falsely used the banner of Islam to engage in their destructive acts… And fortunately, the overwhelming majority of Muslims around the world are peace-loving, are interested in the same things that you and I are interested in…

… We’ve got millions of Muslim Americans, our fellow citizens, in this country. They’re going to school with our kids. They’re our neighbors. They’re our friends. They’re our coworkers. And when we start acting as if their religion is somehow offensive, what are we saying to them?

I’ve got Muslims who are fighting in Afghanistan in the uniform of the United States armed services. They’re out there putting their lives on the line for us.

This is all straw-man stuff. No American denies the legal right of Muslims to practice their faith or construct a house of worship. Freedom of religion is our constitutional idea, after all. It can’t be found in the Koran. Most of those protesting the mosque’s location would not support the government intervening to rip up this local real estate contract. Rather, their opposition stems from the inflammatory intentions of the mosque’s founders. So they are making themselves heard. The majority of Americans oppose the mosque not due to bigotry, but because they believe tolerance is a two-way street. And tolerance with the Muslim world has fallen victim to diminishing returns. We would not build an Enola Gay tribute museum in Hiroshima–– and then subtly forecast indiscriminate violence on Japanese civilians if our plans were not approved. Nobody likes being spoken to in that tone. We are no different. Whether the mosque gets built or not, it would have been nice to have seen Obama take this posture.

Obama then turns to Islam. He speaks of our Muslim friends, coworkers, our kids’ schoolmates. “I’ve got Muslims” in the armed services, he says. But we know all this. We know there are good Muslims. We’ve long ago accepted this fact. We’re passed it. Our concern is with the Muslim world’s interpretation of Islam, as a whole. There are many verses and stories in the Koran and Hadith that promote violence against non-Muslims in the name of Islam. An unsettling number of the planet’s Muslims accept this scripture as literal and obligatory. That is a real world-impacting problem with which the United States has not yet dealt. We say they’re distorting their religion –– when the evidence suggests they are heeding it. We say this because we do not want to fight that war; their war. But that war, their war, exists. We may be unwilling participants, but we are participants nonetheless.

Like Bush, Obama refuses to take on Islamic doctrine itself. Perhaps that shouldn’t be the job of the president, but someone has to do it. Continuing to define “Islam” as all good-things-Muslim –– friends, coworkers, algebra, the magnetic compass, etc. –– and insisting all bad-things-Muslim have nothing to do with Islam, even if it can be recited in Islamic text, is an intellectually dishonest stance. Our enemies view this naiveté as cultural capitulation and for it loathe us even more.

On the Koran-burning pastor, Obama said, “The idea that we would burn the sacred text of someone else’s religion is contrary to what this country stands for. It’s contrary to what this country, this nation was founded on… And it’s also the best imaginable recruiting tool for al-Qaeda.” Obama called the possible burning a “stunt” and “a recruitment bonanza for al-Qaeda.”
So on the one hand, at Ground Zero, we believe the Islamists’ legal right to intentionally offend us should override consideration for the sensitivities of 9/11 families. On the other hand, in Florida, we believe the importance of respecting the Islamists’ sensitivities should override the constitutional right of a citizen from free expression, albeit offensive. According to the administration, burning the Koran is un-American. What if the pastor were instead burning the American flag in protest? Would he be barred from doing so, or would upholding his right to free expression — to burn the symbol which gives him the right to do so — be considered the most American of ideas? You see where I am going. Offending people through free expression is as American as apple pie. It isn’t principles we are adhering to — it’s submission to Muslim intimidation. It’s cowardice.

Obama brought up Guantanamo Bay, yet to be closed. “You know,” Obama told the press, “al-Qaeda operatives still cite Guantanamo as a justification for attacks against the United States.” So now potential prisoners are allowed to justify their crimes due to the existence of prisons? Ed Morrissey phrased it succinctly: “We opened the Gitmo facility after 9/11… was that a preemptive strike against opening Gitmo as a detention facility?” The jihadists will always find a grievance to murder non-Muslims, whether it’s Guantanamo or female bartenders. This effort to recite our adversaries’ talking points is sheer masochism. Let’s start talking more about what it is our enemies must and must not do in order to assuage our anger at them, rather than they us.

During his September 11 address, Obama echoed a similar theme. “The perpetrators of this evil act didn’t simply attack America; they attacked the very idea of America itself,” Obama declared at the Pentagon, continuing:

We will not let the acts of some small band of murderers who slaughter the innocent and cower in caves distort who we are… They may wish to drive us apart, but we will not give in to their hatred and prejudice. They may seek to spark a conflict between different faiths, but as Americans we are not — and never will be — at war with Islam. It was not a religion that attacked us… it was al-Qaeda, a sorry band of men which perverts religion.

And just as we condemn intolerance and extremism abroad, so will we stay true to our traditions here at home as a diverse and tolerant nation. We champion the rights of every American, including the right to worship as one chooses — as service members and civilians from many faiths do just steps from here, at the very spot where the terrorists struck this building (emphasis added).

Those who attacked us sought to demoralize us, divide us, to deprive us of the very unity, the very ideals, that make America — those qualities that have made us a beacon of freedom and hope to billions around the world. Today we declare once more we will never hand them that victory. As Americans, we will keep alive the virtues and values that make us who we are and who we must always be.

Such sentiments appear reasonable on its surface, but consider the mindset — and the message — at its core. President Obama seems to think the purpose of this war is our not offending Muslims. He seems to think the first thing we ought to be doing is countering al-Qaeda’s propaganda that we are a racist country, intolerant of Muslims. He points to al-Qaeda’s grievances and threats and implores us to treat our Muslim countrymen with equality.

Obama has it completely backwards. This war is not about proving to the world that al-Qaeda cannot change who we are. We prove that effortlessly every day. No, quite the contrary; this war is about changing them, encouraging a culture of tolerance over there. This war isn’t about refraining from giving offense to Muslims, lest we blaspheme their religion and end up dead. No, this war is about proclaiming our right to say, or criticize, or mock, or blaspheme whatever we wish free from the threat of murder.

That is true equality: demanding the Islamic world conducts itself in the same manner we conduct ourselves; requiring Muslims to react the same way Jews, or Christians, or Hindus would react should their beliefs be ridiculed by a cartoonist, or director, or South Park writer, or comedian, or pastor. Accepting Obama’s premise — if it offends Muslims, don’t do it, say it, or write it — is the real inequality and prejudice. It holds Muslims to a lower behavioral standard. It epitomizes the soft bigotry of low expectations.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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19 September, 2010

Sweden heads to the polls

The Sweden Democrats have been demonized and are referred to below as "far-right" but they are in fact little different from any other conservative party except that, unusually for Sweden, they are very critical of Muslim immigration, which is apparently very naughty of them.

A similar party in Denmark has succeeded in getting very tough immigration laws passed so they do seriously threaten the Swedish establishment. There is a lot of public support for a crackdown on immigration in Sweden but that will not translate to similar support for the Sweden Democrats -- as most Swedes will vote as they always have done

SWEDES go to the polls on Sunday with surveys hinting voters will re-elect the centre-right government, as the far-right makes its debut in parliament and could be handed the role of kingmaker.

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, 45, is vying to see his four-party coalition become the first rightwing government to win a second term in nearly a century.

That would spell a decisive break with the hold on power of the Social Democrats, who have dominated Swedish politics for 80 years and are considered the caretakers of the country's famous cradle-to-grave welfare state.

Three separate polls published a day before the vote showed the gap between Mr Reinfeldt's coalition and the left-wing opposition was shrinking, but still handed the government a lead of between four and nine percentage points.

Social Democrat leader Mona Sahlin, 53, who heads up the three-party leftwing coalition, however said she had not given up hope of becoming Sweden's first female prime minister.
There is still a chance we can achieve a 'red-green' government,: she said.

Towards the end of a campaign focused largely on the economy and the future of the welfare state, both Ms Sahlin and Mr Reinfeldt have meanwhile stressed the importance of achieving a majority government to offset the sway of the far-right Sweden Democrats, who are expected to make it into parliament for the first time.

"Don't expose Sweden to this experiment (of allowing the Sweden Democrats into parliament). Make sure they don't get any power," Mr Reinfeldt said, urging Swedes to vote in "a stable majority government".

Even with a handful of seats, the far-right party could play kingmaker in a tightly split parliament with minority rule and, analysts caution, could even make it so difficult to govern that new elections would need to be called.

The three latest surveys handed the current government between 49.2 and 51.2 per cent of voter intentions, which even in the worst case is enough votes to secure a clear parliamentary majority with 175 of the 349 seats.

Saturday's surveys meanwhile indicated the Sweden Democrats, who won just 2.9 per cent of the vote in the 2006 elections, would garner between 3.8 and 5.9 per cent of votes, while the party itself has said it expects to win as much as eight per cent.

Polling stations open at 8am and will close 12 hours later, with 7.1 million Swedish citizens eligible to vote, including a record number of first-time voters. Turnout in Sweden is traditionally high and stood at nearly 82 per cent in the last elections.

SOURCE






The Airbrushing of Middle East History

In the Guardian, Giles Tremlett writes about Europe’s first Christian theme park in Mallorca. He writes:

Exact details are scant, but the Buenos Aires park offers its re-enactments of the creation of mankind, the birth of Christ, the resurrection and the last supper eight times a day. With a cast of extras in the costumes of Romans and early Palestinians, the park advertises itself as ‘a place where everyone can learn about the origins of spirituality..

‘Early Palestinians’, eh? And just who were these ‘early Palestinians’? Well, they were what we would otherwise call... Jews. Jesus was a Jew. The ‘last supper’ was the Jewish Passover seder. The land of the New Testament was called Judea and Samaria. The people who lived there and were persecuted by the Romans were not called Palestinians. They were Jews.

Yet Jews do not figure at all in Tremlett’s story (whether they figure as such in Mallorca’s theme park itself is not clear). This is not some idle mistake. This is the wholesale adoption of the fictional Arab narrative which airbrushes the Jews out of their own story and claims, falsely, that Jesus was a Palestinian.

Much of this rewriting of history comes from Arab Christians based at the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Centre in Jerusalem under the aegis of Father Naim Ateek (who is such a personal favourite with so many in the Church of England), and which is a crucial source of systematic, theologically-based lies and libels about Israel. Ateek has revived the ancient Christian doctrine of supersessionism, or replacement theology – the doctrine which said the Jews had forfeited all God’s promises to them which had been inherited instead by the Christians, and which fuelled centuries of Christian anti-Jewish pogroms -- and fused it with ‘Palestinianism’ to create the mendacious impression that the Palestinian Arabs were the original inhabitants of the land of Israel and that Jesus was a ‘Palestinian’.

Ateek has sought to plant the impression that the Jews are crucifying the ‘Palestinians’ just as they helped crucify Jesus. In December 2000, he wrote that Palestinian Christmas celebrations were ‘marred by the destructive powers of the modern-day ‘Herods’ in the Israeli government.’ In his 2001 Easter message, he wrote: ‘The Israeli government crucifixion system is operating daily. Palestine has become the place of the skull.’ And, in a sermon in February 2001, he likened the Israeli occupation to the boulder sealing Christ’s tomb. With these three images, Ateek has figuratively blamed Israel for trying to kill the infant Jesus, crucifying him and blocking the resurrection of Christ. And in 2005 Sabeel issued a liturgy titled ‘The Contemporary Stations of the Cross’ that equates Israel’s founding with Jesus’ death sentence and the construction of a security barrier with his crucifixion.

It is a narrative which gives the lie to the naive belief that the Middle East impasse is a fight over land boundaries. It is instead an attempt to excise from the region not just the Jewish state of Israel, not just every single Jew from a future state of Palestine, but the historical evidence that this land – including Judea and Samaria – was the Jewish national home centuries before Arabs invaded and conquered it, and many more centuries before Arabs started to style themselves as Palestinian. It is an attack on Jewish historical national identity in order to justify the attempt to destroy the Jewish nation state.

That is why the Arabs have destroyed so much archeological evidence of the ancient kingdom of Judea gathered from excavations on the Temple Mount. That’s why the Jews are being airbrushed out of the history of the region, the origins of Jesus and of their own story.

Isn’t it wonderful to have quality newspapers written by educated writers?

SOURCE






British Airways caterer dishes up plans to make most of its meals halal

Cringing nonsense -- but it could be worth it if it leads to some good Balti curries

The world’s largest independent airline caterer has announced plans to make the majority of its meals halal. GateGourmet, which provides meals for all long-haul British Airways flights from Heathrow, wants to standardise production to drive down costs and boost profits.

The caterer has been tempted into the switch by lucrative business available from Middle Eastern and Asian airlines. Most carriers currently offer a halal option, but these meals need to be prepared, stored and transported separately in order to comply with Muslim dietary rules – making them more expensive.

Removing halal meals from the menu is not an option for a company serving airlines across the globe, but managers at the Swiss-based catering giant believe it makes financial sense to ensure most meals meet with the strict Islamic rules.

‘My aim is to make our large hub operations halal compliant,’ said Guy Dubois, GateGroup. Mr Dubois said the plans were not driven by social or religious considerations, but simply by cost. He said: ‘If I produce everything according to halal standards, I will reduce complexity and increase cost effectiveness.’

The catering firm is about to open a dedicated halal kitchen at Heathrow – where meals are prepared for 14 airlines including BA. The specialist kitchen will be smaller than the main kitchen that already exists at the airport, but could be the first stage in a gradual switch.

The move follows the sharp growth of carriers such as Emirates, of Dubai, and Etihad, of Abu Dhabi, which require all meals to be halal. But GateGourmet caters for numerous airlines from non-Muslim countries, which would also be affected by the changes. The company prepares more than 200million meals a year from its 100 flight kitchens in more than 25 countries.

Compelling customers to eat food prepared in accordance with the Muslim faith could be controversial in some countries, including the UK.

Yesterday British Airways played down the significance of the catering firm’s proposals. A spokesman said: ‘British Airways has no plans to change its current menus or halal meal process.’

Peter van Niekerk, head of GateGroup in the UK, said: ‘We are at the moment competing for some more halal business and when we make that, the scale tips.’ He said the company would consult with customers such as BA and Cathay Pacific to ‘manage perceptions and manage such a transition’.

SOURCE






How can a nation ring fence foreign aid but slash defence? How the British taxpayer's money is misspent... and even makes poverty worse

As an idea, it is beyond reproach. An end to child labour, education for all and free school books for every Indian primary school pupil. It is called Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan — Education For All — and the logo for the project is a jaunty cartoon of two tiny Indian children sitting astride a giant pencil, happily learning to read.

The reality, however, leaves a lot to be desired. This Indian development programme has been tragically pillaged by officials, who have robbed impoverished children of their hopes. Auditors have discovered that around £70 million of aid money has gone missing from the gigantic scheme, which was designed to fund schools for India’s 350 million children.

A report by India’s Auditor General, seen by the Daily Mail, reveals widespread ‘diversions and mis-utilisations’, showing that almost £14 million has been spent on items that have nothing to do with schools. Instead, corrupt officials bought cars and other luxuries. In one instance, aid money was used to buy four luxury beds, at a cost of £17,754.

In the state of Andhra Pradesh, money was wasted on 7,531 colour televisions — despite the fact that many of the classrooms have no electricity. Computers were bought and now lie idle in stockrooms.

Tens of thousands of pounds were allocated to 2,369 schools in the district of Jharkhand that do not even exist, and £150,000 was paid into a mystery bank account with no reason given.

In Muzaffarpur, Bihar state, it was found that only £400,000 out of an allocated £1.1 million had gone to schools. One woman involved in the widespread fraud has been accused of siphoning off up to £6 million from the funds, reportedly even using £44,000 of it to make a movie directed by her son.

Money was also used by officials to finance religious festivities. Auditors checking individual state accounts found sums of up to £4.8 million missing from the books — although an investigation into the precise figures involved is ongoing.

And who is paying for the Education For All project? You are, of course — and it is your money that has gone missing.

Surprised? Don’t be — this extraordinarily ill-advised million-pound expenditure is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Britain’s multi-billion-pound overseas aid bill.
Indeed, our country’s vast aid budget has just been ring-fenced by the Conservative Government, despite the swingeing cuts facing ordinary Britons.

This week, the Mail revealed the same spend thrift attitude extended to overseas aid officials, who are living the high life at taxpayers’ expense. Devastating documents showed that executives at the Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC) stayed at luxury hotels and dined in London’s finest restaurants.

Taypayers paid more than £700 for the bosses of the CDC fund to dine at a Michelin-starred restaurant, and one official claimed £336.54 for a taxi from Brussels to Paris.

So just how much is Britain spending on foreign aid, where is it spent and why? And can the country really afford to lavish such largesse around the world as it confronts its own huge national debt?

This year, Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) has spent a staggering £9.1 billion on aid, funding 90 different countries.

Some money goes to nations which are desperately in need of help, such as impoverished African states on the brink of famine. Here, the concern is often not just whether the money is needed, but whether it is getting to those in need. Every year, millions of pounds of British taxpayers’ money leaks into the pockets of corrupt officials and warlords.

In other cases, however, Britain is paying huge amounts in aid to projects of questionable worth. In South America, for example, DFID indirectly funds an organisation which represents sex workers called RedTraSex. It refers to itself as ‘a movement in high heels’.

Then there is China. Last year, Britain paid £32 million to the Communist superpower, which is now officially classified by the World Bank as a middle-income country.
Britain has given Beijing on average £34.5 million a year since 2004 to fund schools, fight Aids and provide fresh water.

Ironically, as we face hard times in Britain, China is forecast to become the biggest economic power in the world within five years. Indeed, the latest figures from the World Bank show China’s GDP was £2.8 trillion in 2008 — eclipsed only by the U.S. and Japan. So why on earth are we giving them aid?

Even the Left-wing Baroness Symons, Tony Blair’s former Middle East envoy and an ex-Foreign Office minister, has questioned the Government’s priorities on aid to China. She acknowledged parts of China had ‘real poverty and deprivation’, but added: ‘I would not have thought by any standards that China can resile (step back) from the responsibility of dealing with its own poverty, given its enormous, and growing, wealth.’

She added: ‘The primary responsibility for dealing with that poverty should be with the government, which is now presiding over a huge and growing economy, an enormous sovereign wealth fund and which is such a strong competitor to our own companies when they are doing business abroad.’

The Tories now plan to bring the Chinese programme to an end in 2011 — but by then many more millions of pounds will have been spent on the Chinese economy.

And then there’s India, the single largest recipient of UK overseas aid — between 2003 and 2008, it benefited from £1 billion in aid. And two years ago, Gordon Brown agreed to give the former colony another £825 million by 2011.

In the past ten years, British development aid to the country has almost trebled — despite the fact the Indian economy is ranked 11th in the world and is predicted to overtake the British economy as the world’s fifth largest by 2015.

Canit be right that British taxpayers give such vast sums to a nation that can afford nuclear weapons, a space programme and has a defence budget of £25 billion?
Of course, India has hundreds of millions of poor people. But it is now so well-off that it has started an overseas aid programme of its own.

Indeed, MPs on the International Development Select Committee recently said India ‘seems to have become tired of being cast in the role of aid recipient’.

And on a visit to India in July, even our own Prime Minister suggested Britain should bend its knee to the former colony. He said: ‘I have come to your country in a spirit of humility. I know that Britain cannot rely on sentiment and shared history for a place in India’s future. Your country has the whole world beating a path to its door.’ The Indian government now refuses to allow DFID to work directly with most local charities, insisting that payments be processed through official channels.

This, said the MPs, caused ‘ difficulties in tracking money trails, and problems in determining outcomes’. One might ask why Britain gives such huge amounts in the face of such an attitude. The majority of DFID’s spending — although at 56 per cent, perhaps less than you might expect — does go to what are known as the ‘least developed countries’, mostly in Africa.

Here, the problem is often what happens when the aid reaches these desperate countries. Earlier this year, for example, the House of Commons Public Affairs Committee (PAC) looked at the case of Malawi, in southeast Africa.

Britain has spent £312 million helping the country since 2003, despite evidence of widespread corruption.Indeed, a commission has recommended 118 cases for prosecution for aid fraud in the past year alone. MPs also expressed concern that around £23 million had been wasted buying surplus fertiliser at peak prices. The chairman of the PAC cited it as a case of ‘gross mismanagement’.

There were questions over whether the matter was down to corruption or sheer ineptitude. Either way, the money has gone.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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18 September, 2010

Stigma and suspicion a reality for male childcare workers

This is a risk for me too as I love little kids and instinctively smile at them when I see them. I could easily be misjudged these days. Report below from Australia -- JR

Childcare centres are being encouraged to attract more male employees in order to combat staff shortages. But it’s not an easy task. With more than 95 per cent of childcare workers currently female, there’s a clear stigma attached to men working with children.

A male friend of mine used to work in a Queensland childcare centre and says he faced what he considered obvious discrimination. For example, he wasn’t permitted to change any nappies. He was highly offended by this rule, which applied only to him as the only male working in the centre.

It does seem unfair, not to mention sad - if he was trustworthy enough to employ, surely he could be trusted to change a nappy?

But the fact remains, many parents are uncomfortable with male childcare workers. According to Care For Kids, men who choose to work with children are often considered suspicious in their motives. Those funny looks and accusatory enquiries almost certainly a deterrent for men to work in an industry already considered women’s work.

But one childcare centre in NSW is breaking down barriers, with five of its current employees male.

Despite many parents welcoming access to male role models for their children, the men still report falling victim to stereotypes. In an age where parents are acutely aware of child predators, unfortunately it’s difficult to avoid.

To alleviate parents’ concerns, this centre also asks male employees not to change nappies, leaving that task to the female workers. If centres are prepared to hire male carers in the first place, it seems inconsistent not to grant them the same level of trust.

Sadly though, it’s not just the childcare industry that’s impacted by these sorts of stereotypes and concerns. Several men I know say while once they’d smile or wink at children, they no longer do so for fear of being judged or upsetting the child’s parents.

Others freeze if little ones try to play, often wanting cuddles or piggy-backs, as children do. It’s a sad fact, based on an unfortunate reality.

SOURCE





Straight talking from the Holy Father



The Pope issued a clarion call to defend Christianity last night, saying Christmas was at risk of being struck from the calendar. In a strongly worded speech delivered in Parliament, Benedict XVI bluntly told politicians not to ‘silence’ religion and discourage public celebration of its most important festivals.

And in a thinly veiled attack on controversial equality legislation, he said laws which forced Christians to act against their consciences were wrong.

‘There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or at least relegated to the purely private sphere,’ he told senior politicians and public figures. ‘There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none.’

Benedict, who is now half way through his UK trip, insisted Christianity should not be forced to the sidelines and festivals including Christmas and Easter altered to avoid offence.

In his speech, the Pope said he was voicing his concern at the growing marginalisation of religion - particularly of Christianity - even in nations which place a great emphasis on tolerance.

'There are those who would advocate that the voice of religion be silenced, or least relegated to the purely private sphere,' he said.

'There are those who argue that the public celebration of festivals such as Christmas should be discouraged, in the questionable belief that it might somehow offend those of other religions or none.

'And there are those who argue - paradoxically, with the intention of eliminating discrimination - that Christians in public roles should be required at times to act against their conscience.

'These are worrying signs of a failure to appreciate not only the rights of believers to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion, but also the legitimate role of religion in the public square.'

The Pope said a moral failure was to blame for the global financial crisis. He said: 'There is widespread agreement that the lack of a solid ethical foundation for economic activity has contributed to the grave difficulties now being experienced by millions of people throughout the world.'

And he said that, just as governments had come to the rescue of the banks, judged 'too big to fail', they must now act to help the world's poorest people. He said: 'Here is an enterprise, worthy of the world's attention, that is truly "too big to fail".'

He then urged those present to use their 'respective sphere of influence' to ensure religion was involved in discourse 'in every sphere of national life'.

After the speech, the Pope went to Westminster Abbey to participate in a joint service with Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

Dr Williams welcomed the Pope and spoke of the historic visit as 'a special time of grace and of growth in our shared calling'. He said: 'It is a particular pleasure that on this historic occasion we are able to come together as bishops of the Roman Catholic and Anglican Churches in this country to greet you, Your Holiness, during a visit which we all hope will be of significance both to the Church of Christ and to British society.

'May this historic visit be for all of us a special time of grace and of growth in our shared calling, as you, Your Holiness, bring us the word of the Gospel afresh.'

Dr Williams said Christian leaders must be ready to fight back against the critics of religion. He said their duty 'involves a readiness to respond to the various trends in our cultural environment that seek to present Christian faith as both an obstacle to human freedom and a scandal to human intellect'.

Dr Williams continued: 'Our presence together as British bishops here today is a sign of the way in which, in this country, we see our task as one and indivisible.

The Pope said society was moving away from its Christian heritage. He said: 'On the one hand, the surrounding culture is growing ever more distant from its Christian roots, despite a deep and widespread hunger for spiritual nourishment.

More HERE




Straight talking British judge

Highlights the Gypsy problem

A judge has launched an astonishing attack on criminal Eastern European gangs who come to Britain to target elderly and vulnerable people. District judge Bruce Morgan said he was 'deeply concerned' about the impact of criminals who arrive in the country to steal from innocent people.

His comments came as he sentenced teenager Ceca Dadic, who is believed to be a Roma gypsy from Bosnia, to six months for her 'despicable' role in trying to steal a 78-year-old woman's purse. The 19-year-old mother-of-two admitted attempted theft as she appeared at Worcester Magistrates' Court on Wednesday. She distracted her elderly victim by asking her advice on a cream cake while her underage accomplice tried to unzip the woman's purse.

Mr Morgan said Dadic was part of a criminal gang and added that he had dealt with six similar cases in the previous five days.

Dadic wept as the judge told her – through an interpreter – that he hoped her six-month sentence in youth custody would act as a deterrent to others. He added that she and an accomplice, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had acted in a 'despicable' way.

He said: 'There is no doubt in my mind that you are part of a criminal gang who come to this country from Eastern Europe for the purpose of committing crime. 'I'm deeply concerned about the number of young people like you who I deal with who come from Eastern Europe, find addresses in Birmingham and then go to the neighbouring counties to commit crime.'

The court heard that Dadic had been convicted four times in the past year of theft or attempted theft.

The court heard that Dadic, from Birmingham, was in a Somerfield supermarket in Worcester on August 12 when she asked the elderly shopper whether a particular cake contained strawberry jam. Liam Finch, prosecuting, said: 'She asked her: "would my grandmother like it?"' Security guards then saw Dadic's accomplice try to unzip the woman's purse and called police.

Mr Morgan said: 'You say you are sorry – I don't accept that at all. 'I accept you may be a small part of a large organisation but you are an essential part of it. 'To pick on and try to distract elderly ladies for the sole purpose of financial gain is quite frankly despicable'.

SOURCE





The Obamacare Inquisitions: A Brief, Brutish History



Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius [above] is just the latest creepy keeper of the Obamacare enemies list. The White House has been keeping tabs on individual and corporate critics of the federal health care takeover for more than a year. It started with the health czar's Internet Snitch Brigade. Remember?

Last August, the White House Office of Health Reform called on its ground troops to report on fellow citizens who talked smack about the Democratic plan. Team Obama issued an all-points bulletin on the taxpayer-funded White House website soliciting informant e-mails:

"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

Then-health czar office spokeswoman Linda Douglass appeared in an accompanying video singling out conservative Internet powerhouse Matt Drudge. Why? Because his website featured a video compilation of Obama and other Democrats -- in their own words -- exposing the "public option" as a Trojan Horse for government-run health care and the elimination of private industry.

The Obama dog whistle rang out loud and clear: Report online dissidents immediately.

Calling on the White House to cease and desist, GOP Sen. John Cornyn pointed out that "these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program. ... I can only imagine the level of justifiable outrage had your predecessor asked Americans to forward e-mails critical of his policies to the White House." The flagging operation was shut down, but a plethora of federal disclosure exemptions protect the Obama administration from revealing what was collected, who was targeted and what was done with the "fishy" database information.

In February, the White House coordinated a demonization campaign against Anthem Blue Cross in California for raising rates. Obama singled out the company in a "60 Minutes" interview, and Sebelius sent a nasty-gram demanding that Anthem "justify" its rate hikes to the federal government. A private company trying to survive in the marketplace was forced to "explain" itself to federal bureaucrats and career politicians who have never run a business (successful or otherwise) in their lives. Sebelius went even further. She called on Anthem to provide public disclosure on how the rate increases would be spent -- a mandate that no other private companies must follow.

We already have a federal pay czar requiring companies to justify their pay raises and claiming authority to claw back bonuses already paid. Will the White House next demand that other businesses -- not just health insurers -- justify price increases deemed unreasonable, excessive or "extraordinary?"

On Capitol Hill, Democratic chief inquisitor Henry Waxman trained his sights on executives from Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon and AT&T in a brass-knuckled effort to silence companies speaking out about the cost implications and financial burdens of Obamacare. He scheduled an April 21 show trial of corporate heads who dutifully reported writedowns related to the Obamacare mandates. Obama Commerce Secretary Gary Locke joined in on the witch-hunt, pummeling the companies on the White House blog and TV airwaves for their "premature" and "irresponsible" disclosures.

After the Democrats' own congressional staff pointed out that the companies "acted properly and in accordance with accounting standards" in submitting filings that were required by law, Waxman called off the hounds. But it was a temporary reprieve. Sebelius' threat last week against individual market health insurers who raise rates to cope with new federal coverage mandates will be far from this desperate administration's last.

As health costs skyrocket, doctors abandon the profession, hospitals lay off workers and private insurers shut down, the only way to quell the Obamacare backlash will be through an even more thuggish campaign to demonize, marginalize and silence nationwide dissent.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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17 September, 2010

Apple correctness in British prisons

The guy is nuts

Prisoners must be served perfectly-sized and shaped apples to prevent 'fruit riots' in Britain's jails, prisons minister Crispin Blunt has warned.

'It is worth remembering that discontent about the quality of food, changes to menus and failure to deliver what was previously promised have been known to be the catalyst for serious disturbances,' he said. 'An undersize apple handed out at the servery will create issues of order and control, so we use suppliers that are sensitive to that need and that use their sourcing ability to maintain consistency from their supply base.'

The Tory minister's bizarre warning in a Commons debate on prisons prompted ridicule from Labour and will trigger speculation about his future.

It will also anger farmers who have argued for years that undersized or misshapen fruit and vegetables are just as tasty and nutritious as those that are perfectly formed.

For generations-Britons enjoyed all shapes of fruit and vegetables. But they disappeared from the shelves once EU bureaucrats brought in minimum standards. Restrictions covering most fruit and vegetables have now been scrapped.

Labour MP Michael Dugher said: 'The government is preparing cuts to vital local services and jobs. You would think the minister would have more important things to worry about than the size of fruit for lags.'

Mr Blunt caused a storm in July when he revoked an order banning prisoners from having parties in jail. Last month he said he had left his wife of 20 years to 'come to terms with his homosexuality'.

Last night a senior Tory source said: 'Mr Blunt's career seems to be going pear-shaped.'

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: 'The minister was not suggesting oddly-shaped fruit causes riots in prisons. He was simply making the point incidents of disorder can sometimes be triggered by arguments about the quality and quantity of food provided. '

SOURCE





Riddled with the bone idle: Fire chief's devastating verdict on British public sector

The public services are riddled with ‘bone idle people’ who have damaged the productivity of the state sector, a leading fire chief has claimed. In a withering attack on the malaise gripping the public sector, Tony McGuirk has warned that unless bosses are prepared to sack lazy workers, they will never make the kind of savings necessary to put the economy back on course.

Mr McGuirk, chief fire officer of Merseyside, sparked outrage at the TUC conference yesterday by saying that he has been able to slash staff numbers by 40 per cent and actually provide a better service. He advised other public sector bosses to show ‘muscle, sack some people’. ‘We’ve got some bone idle people in the public sector. There, I said it – bone idle people.’

Mr McGuirk said he had slashed the number of firefighters from 1,550 to 850 during the past decade. ‘There is no need to close a fire station, we haven’t touched a single fire station. ‘Frontline is fire engines and fire stations, not firefighters. We provide a far better service with those 850 – more with less.’

He claimed that lazy workers had led to an ‘epidemic of sickness leave’ which had damaged productivity. ‘Here’s one of the things we did, get a grip on sickness. It is deficit reduction plans need not hurt public services epidemic in the public sector.’

Mr McGuirk spoke out at a seminar organised by the centre-right think tank Reform – a transcript of which was circulated at the TUC yesterday.

His claim that it is possible to maintain frontline services with fewer staff will boost the Government’s case that its Mr McGuirk said bosses should ‘manage performance, reward good performance, develop people with poor performance or ultimately sack them. ‘If they are not doing their job you have got to get rid of some people.’

The fire chief said that his cuts had led to personal abuse. ‘There were 2,000 people walking through Liverpool wearing shirts saying on the back “I hate McGuirk”,’ he said.

The Fire Brigades Union last night condemned his view. General Secretary Matt Wrack said: ‘It’s very easy for people who do not risk their lives fighting fires to sneer at people who do. ‘Mr McGuirk is among the highest paid fire chiefs in the country, getting more than £200,000 a year. He is massively overpaid. ‘For that money we could get six fully trained firefighters, which would be a much better use of scarce resources.’

SOURCE






Too Few Women In Tech? Stop Blaming The Men

Success in Silicon Valley, most would agree, is more merit driven than almost any other place in the world. It doesn’t matter how old you are, what sex you are, what politics you support or what color you are. If your idea rocks and you can execute, you can change the world and/or get really, stinking rich.

For the most part I’ve sat on the sidelines over the years during the endless debates about how we need to do more to encourage more women to start companies. What I mean by “sat on the sidelines” is this – until today I haven’t really said what I felt. Now I’m going to.

Here’s why. Yet another article, this time in the Wall Street Journal, takes a shot at us and others for not doing enough to help women in tech. Says Rachel Sklar, a perennial TechCrunch critic:

“Part of changing the ratio is just changing awareness, so that the next time Techcrunch is planning a Techcrunch Disrupt, they won’t be able to not see the overwhelming maleness of it,” said Ms. Sklar, referring to the influential tech conference.

Yeah ok, whatever Rachel. Every damn time we have a conference we fret over how we can find women to fill speaking slots. We ask our friends and contacts for suggestions. We beg women to come and speak. Where do we end up? With about 10% of our speakers as women.

We won’t put women on stage just because they’re women – that’s not fair to the audience who’ve paid thousands of dollars each to be there. But we do spend an extraordinary amount of time finding those qualified women and asking them to speak.

And you know what? A lot of the time they say no. Because they are literally hounded to speak at every single tech event in the world because they are all trying so hard to find qualified women to speak at their conference.
What’s The Real Problem?

I could, like others (see all the links in that Fred Wilson post too), write pandering but meaningless posts agonizing over the problem and suggesting creative ways that we (men) could do more to help women. I could point out that the CEO of TechCrunch is a woman, as are two of our four senior editors (I’m one of the four). And how we seek out women focused events and startups and cover them to death.

But I’m not going to do that. Instead I’m going to tell it like it is. And what it is is this: statistically speaking women have a huge advantage as entrepreneurs, because the press is dying to write about them, and venture capitalists are dying to fund them. Just so no one will point the accusing finger of discrimination at them.

That WSJ article also criticizes Y Combinator for having just 14 female founders out of their 208 startups to date. But I know that Y Combinator wants – really, really wants – female founders and that there just aren’t very many of them. I know this because Y Combinator cofounder Jessica Livingston has told me how excited they are to get applications from women, and that they want to do everything they can to get more female applicants. What they probably won’t admit, but I suspect is true anyway, is that the rate of acceptance for female applicants is far higher than for male applicants.

The problem isn’t that Silicon Valley is keeping women down, or not doing enough to encourage female entrepreneurs. The opposite is true. No, the problem is that not enough women want to become entrepreneurs.

Why? I was asked that question as part of a New York Times interview earlier this year. I dodged it completely, and referred them to Cyan Banister, the founder of Zivity, instead:

Q. Do you anticipate that there will be more companies led by women at the TC50 and Disrupt this year?

A. Women are really tough. I have no idea why. We invited a team founded by a woman to Disrupt. But they canceled. There just aren’t a lot of female tech entrepreneurs out there relative to the number of men, I think. We celebrate the ones we find whenever we find them. There’s a chance we’ll write about what they’re doing, simply because they’re a fairly rare thing in our world. But it is really hard to find female entrepreneurs in tech, in my experience. I really think this is an industry-wide problem.

Q. How do the female tech entrepreneurs and investors in your community feel about this situation?

A. There’s a fascinating company, Zivity, it’s a venture-funded, adult photography community — yes, they put up pictures of naked women online — it was co-founded and is run by a woman, Cyan Banister. She wrote me in response to a post about women who are entrepreneurs, saying, basically, though these are not her exact words, women [stink] as entrepreneurs a lot of the time because they are nurturing and not risk-taking enough by nature. She also said when men roll the dice and take risks, that society doesn’t punish them at all, and it’s in their nature to take stupid risks.

I didn’t respond to that. I didn’t want to jump into that debate. And I guess I still don’t.

Is Cyan right? I don’t know, I’m from Mars, not Venus and I cannot speak intelligently about the nurturing and risk tolerance needs of women. But I will say this. The next time you women want to start pointing the finger at me when discussing the problem of too few women in tech, just stop. Look in the mirror. And realize this – there are women like Sklar who complain about how there are too few women in tech, and then there are women just who go out and start companies (like this one). Let’s have less of the former and more of the latter, please. And when you do start your company, we’ll cover it. Promise.

SOURCE





All Australians must observe Muslim clothing rules while visiting a public swimming pool?

It's only for one event so far but it sets a precedent

What's wrong with Muslims wearing their gear and everybody else dressing as they please? Answer: The "anti-discrimination" body behind this is so notoriously pro-Muslim that it is now ENFORCING discrimination against normally-dressed Australians

Families in Victoria are being ordered to cover up before attending a public event to avoid offending Muslims during next year's Ramadan. The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) has approved a ban on uncovered shoulders and thighs for a community event to be held at the Dandenong Oasis, a municipal pool.

"Participants aged 10 and over must ensure their bodies are covered from waist to knee and the entire torso extending to the upper arms," a request by Dandenong City Council and the YMCA states in an exemption application to the Equal Opportunities Act. "Participants must not wear transparent clothing." The request has been approved by VCAT and applies to a family event to be held at the pool next August.

"The applicant intends this to be an event where people of all races and religions and ages may attend, use the Centre's facilities and socialise together," VCAT notes. "The holy month of Ramadan has a particular focus on families and the applicant wishes to encourage families to attend and socialise together with others. "The minimum dress requirements are set having regard to the sensitivities of Muslims who wish to participate in the event."

The ban on skimpy clothes will apply between 6.15 and 8.15pm on August 21 next year, a time when the pool is closed to the public and normally used by a Muslim women's swimming group.

The ban was yesterday compared by the Human Rights Commissioner Helen Szoke to a ban on thongs in a pub. "Matters such as this are not easy to resolve and require a balance to be achieved between competing rights and obligations," she said. "Dress codes are not uncommon: eg singlets, jeans, thongs etc in pubs/hotels."

Sherene Hassan, vice-president of the Islamic Society of Victoria, said she didn't support the dress restrictions. "My preference would be that no dress code is stipulated," Ms Hassan said.

But Liberty Victoria said the ban was reasonable because the event was to be held out of hours. A spokeswoman for the City of Greater Dandenong said the ban would help Muslims feel part of the community. [Really? It sounds more like insulating them from it]

SOURCE

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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16 September, 2010

British taxpayers fund council 'adventures in Sindia and Lesbianandgayland' as part of sessions on equality and diversity

Council bosses are being asked to imagine they are English economic migrants in the fictitious region of Sindia, or go on an `adventure in Lesbian-andgayland' as part of publicly-funded training sessions on equality and diversity. More than 30 managers from Brighton and Hove City Council have been on the two-day `Leading on Diversity' course in the past year - at a cost of several thousand pounds.

In the session entitled Adventures in Sindia, the English Exodus, staff are asked to imagine that it is 2030 and the `world is a very different place'. In this scenario, much of the South-East of England and East Anglia is under water.

Millions of English families desperate for work have been forced to uproot to Sindia, an economic federation which is made up of China and India. All the participants are asked to imagine that they are a seven-year-old child called Sarah Hardy, whose family has just moved to Delhi.

They are also warned that the English are largely despised in India because they have a reputation for `illegality, criminality, cultural conservatism and an inability to learn the host language'.

The course material states: `Your seventh birthday was a miserable occasion. Your parents invited all the children in your class to a party. All but one failed to turn up and none sent an RSVP. `The only child who came was a Jewish girl from Hungary. Somehow you felt that she understood what you were going through, even though you never talked about it.'

The course attendees are told that while in Sindia they can expect to hear comments such as: `Why do you insist on eating that bland food? What you need is a good masala', `Do your parents really force you to drink alcohol at the age of ten?', and `What do you call an English virgin? A contradiction in terms'.

In the other session, staff are asked to imagine that `while asleep one night they have slipped through a wormhole in space' and woken up in a parallel world where it is
normal to be lesbian or gay.

They are told that they are now in a country where `heterosexual teachers are very reluctant to come out', `the ideal family consists of a lesbian or gay male couple', and `that conceiving a child by heterosexual intercourse is viewed with distaste'.

They are then asked to consider how they would respond if people asked them: `What do you actually do in bed?', `Don't you think heterosexuality may be a phase you are going through?', and `Is it possible that what you need is a good gay lover?'

The course for staff at Brighton and Hove Council was organised and run by Aziz Associates, a training consultancy founded in 1996. The company is run by Razia Aziz, 45, a politics graduate, and clients include health trusts, local councils and Government departments. Its website describes Ms Aziz as a `coach, facilitator, and performance and workshop artist' with a `holistic style that embraces the intellect, body and heart'.

A Mail on Sunday investigation also found that other councils which ran equality and diversity projects last year included Preston, which spent œ1,500 sending staff on three Journeys of Faith sessions, Kensington and Chelsea, and Test Valley Borough Council in Hampshire, which spent œ2,800.

Meanwhile, Hertfordshire County Council has produced a Making Our Mark On Equality And Diversity guide that says references to `girls in the office' is inappropriate because it implies `dependence and immaturity'. The same council also has problems with `lady' which has `over-tones of decorum and conformity' and even woman `which has overtones of sexuality'.

Officials at East Devon District Council have banned `little old lady, pensioner, youth and youngster' and guidance to staff states: `White European people are also subjected to prejudice and stereotyping - Swedish ("porn and nudity"), Germans ("Hitlers who want to rule the world"), Irish ("thick"), Scottish ("mean, tight with money").'

A spokesman for Brighton & Hove City Council said: `At a cost that is low by any comparison, our training role-plays are proven to do what they are supposed to do, which is to reduce inappropriate discrimination based on race, faith, disability,
gender, sexuality or age.'

SOURCE






Arrogant British bureaucrat

But I repeat myself

Britain's chief tax collector was accused of astonishing arrogance last night after appearing to complain about having to ‘serve’ every taxpayer. As she was quizzed by MPs about the tax fiasco affecting millions of people, HM Revenue & Customs chief executive Dame Lesley Strathie insisted ‘no mistakes’ had been made by her staff.

And she suggested it was unfair to compare the shambolic performance of HMRC with top businesses because they have the privilege of choosing which customers they want.

Tax chiefs hauled to give evidence to the Treasury Select Committee admitted that a staggering 24 million people could have had their tax bills miscalculated over recent years. Six million will get letters before Christmas either demanding an average of £1,400 or offering a refund by cheque after a new computer system identified errors in their PAYE accounts.

But MPs heard there is a backlog of a further 17.9million ‘unresolved’ tax cases dating back to 2005, which HMRC is hoping to process by 2012. Many of those could now face demands for underpaid tax.

Ministers have ordered HMRC to make another climbdown to try to appease public anger. Yesterday they agreed that those facing tax demands of £2,000 or more as a result of errors will not be charged interest on the money they owe. Mr Hartnett said: 'Only those who will not engage with us will be charged interest'

The Revenue has already agreed to waive bills of £300 or less, meaning 900,000 taxpayers will be spared paying any money back – at a cost of £160million to the Exchequer.

Dame Lesley Strathie is a career civil servant who has worked in the public sector for almost 40 years. She joined the civil service in 1971, and worked as a clerical assistant. In her role as HM Revenue & Customs chief executive she receives an annual salary of up to £175,000 – £30,000 a year more than Prime Minister David Cameron.

Dame Lesley, who was born in 1955, was appointed permanent secretary and chief executive of HMRC in November 2008. One of her predecessors quit in 2007 with a pay-off worth £2.3 million when HMRC managed to lose discs containing the personal details of 25 million people. Since Dame Lesley’s appointment, she has struggled to tackle a number of problems.

The Commons Treasury committee criticised the performance of the organisation earlier this year and revealed that morale among its staff was low.

Despite questions over the success of her management, in June she was named a dame in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.

Defending her performance amid a barrage of hostile questioning from MPs from all parties, Dame Lesley pointed out that if she were head of a large business she would be able to pick and choose her customers. ‘In any commercial business, you will have a customer strategy. You will decide which customers you want to acquire and which customers you want to divest yourself of,’ she said. 'We serve everybody. We don’t have a choice about who we serve.’

She also insisted the fiasco was not all bad news, since while 1.4million people will have to pay an extra £1,400 in tax, 4.5million people will get refunds of £400 on average.

Labour MP George Mudie, a member of the Treasury committee, accused Dame Lesley of ‘arrogance’. ‘I thought her remark about businesses being able to pick and choose their customers told you everything you need to know about HMRC. ‘They seem to regret the fact that as public servants they have to serve all the public.

'[She] appeared to suggest she would cheerfully drop people and not bother with them if they act in a way that gives the Inland Revenue the slightest trouble. ‘The question we should be asking is whether she and her colleagues would still b e in their positions if they ... were running a company like Marks & Spencer. ‘What on earth do senior civil servants have to do to get sacked?’

SOURCE







Hijacking the First Amendment and Flying it into the Jefferson Memorial

We have heard more angry attacks on Americans from the so-called peaceful Muslim world for the mere mention that a Koran might be burned than we have ever heard from them in condemning their fellow Muslims for perpetrating terrorist attacks on behalf of their religion.

Just this week, in a 1,000 word op-ed in The New York Times, Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam leading the effort to build the Ground Zero Mosque, dismissed the concerns of 70% of America, labeling us “radicals,” thus giving us the same identifier that Obama gives to terrorists; gave short, arrogant shrift to the victims’ families; and he refused to denounce his own vitriolic statements regarding the U.S. in the aftermath of 9/11. Remember, he claimed America’s policies were an “accomplice” to the slaughter of 9/11…and “the U.S. must acknowledge the harm they have to done to Muslims before the terror can stop.” Quite a “peaceful” diplomat, this guy, this “universally well-regarded” “man of faith.” But Rauf did something else in his Times op/ed; he threatened Americans with violence if his Ground Zero Mosque location was moved away from the site of the devastating attacks:

“These efforts by radicals at distortion, endanger our national security and the personal security of Americans worldwide… Americans must not back away from completion of this project. If we do, we cede the discourse and, essentially, our future to radicals on both sides.”

There were no Korans burned or mosques opposed before the Islamic terrorists burned nearly three thousand Americans. And yet, we are not supposed to burn the book they say inspired them to do it…or there will be more violence, Obama and Hillary Clinton tell us. Let’s get this straight: not burning the Koran lead to the burning of nearly three thousand Americans. And now, burning the Koran – we are told – will lead to more Americans dying?

Here’s a dinner table-worthy question: What puts more American lives in danger than burning a Koran in Florida? Answer: having an unqualified, anti-American street punk for a president! So, if you liberals take Obama at his word, then you must call for his immediate resignation with the same enthusiasm that you are now denouncing the kookie Koran-burner.

Obama and Jabba the Hillary want to allow Osama bin Laden to rewrite the First Amendment. Boy, that will surely teach those “radicals” who is winning the war on terrorism! Killing unborn children causes violence too, and not only to the murdered children themselves, it turns out; the occasional abortion provider finds himself in danger too. So, the same lunatics demanding that the First Amendment be abrogated in order to shield Islamists from the slightest offense, are the very ones loudly declaring that the right to kill unborn babies is so sacrosanct, they must send federal marshals out to protect the abortionists. Mind boggling. It’s a shock some of these Democrats can even walk straight and upright, so contorted they become defending their so-called “principles.”

When Muslims threaten violence in response to any Constitutionally-protected act, the proper response should be to multiply those acts to demonstrate that this country is governed by laws, not threats. And wasn’t that the exact lecture they – the “peaceful” Imam and his wife, the pedantic Mayor Bloomberg, and all the newly minted Leftist First Amendment stalwarts – gave us about the Ground Zero mosque?

The media and the Far Left have labeled Tea Partiers as violent and racist due to the alleged paper signs and shouting of a very few. However, these elitists refuse to use the same filter of condemnation when talking about the Muslim faith and the murderous actions of the 19 Muslim hijackers on 9/11, or the Muslim underwear bomber on New Year’s Day, or the Muslim Fort Hood attacker, or the Muslim Times Square bomber, or pretty much any other Muslims like Osama Bin Laden, the rest of Al Qaeda, Hamas and the Taliban. In fact, anyone opposed to the Ground Zero Mosque, tea partier or not, is labeled insensitive, ignorant and racist.

The Left has attacked Christianity for decades and has succeed largely in taking God out of our classrooms, ensuring the Pledge of Allegiance is rarely recited, and removing Christ from Christmas. How ironic they are the first to stand up and fight for the Muslim faith. Anyone with even peripheral knowledge of the Muslim faith and Sharia Law understands how absurd it is for the Left – self-heralding champions of the feminist movement and the pushers of “gay rights” – to adopt this charge.

But since Obama seems to take such threats seriously, here is a thought: You know how the Democrats are constantly telling us how dangerous we Tea Partiers are? Okay. Why don't we apply the same policy domestically; Democrats in the media are always spouting shrill warnings that Tea Partiers are on the tipping point of violence, so shouldn't they then advocate for lower taxes, a halt in spending, and a hurry-up-and-appease us attitude before someone gets hurt?

Once again, the Left has constructed a box, tied themselves in knots, and climbed right in; they either really believe in appeasing dangerous people, or they have been lying about how dangerous they think we are.

SOURCE






Lessons of the Koran's non-burning

by Jeff Jacoby

TERRY JONES'S 15 minutes of fame have run out, the foreign media have left Gainesville, and we aren't likely to hear much more about the fringe Florida preacher and his abandoned plan to burn copies of the Koran on Sept. 11. But as Jones and his non-bonfire recede in the rear-view mirror, there are some lessons worth taking away from the whole episode. Here are three:

1. While it's fashionable in some precincts to smear Americans as a nation of Islamophobes whose bigotry plays into the hands of extremists, the reverse is closer to the truth. A nation of Islamophobes would have rallied around Jones and his benighted band, but Americans of every stripe condemned them. Jones's proposed "stunt," President Obama said in a TV interview, is "completely contrary to our values." Attorney General Eric Holder called it "idiotic and dangerous." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton slammed it as "outrageous and . . . disgraceful."

The administration's denunciations were echoed across the political and social spectrum -- by Sarah Palin and Franklin Graham, by Angelina Jolie and Glenn Beck, by the National Council of Churches, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, and the National Association of Evangelicals. The mayor of Gainesville called Jones's group "an embarrassment to the community." There was criticism from Florida's Republican and Democratic gubernatorial candidates and from dozens of members of Congress. The conservative Manchester Union Leader labeled the Koran-burning idea "deadly stupid." The liberal Los Angeles Times implored: "Don't fan the flames."

Americans hear frequently that they are a people hopelessly and endlessly divided, arguing with each other across gaping political and cultural chasms. But they weren't divided on this. If Jones accomplished nothing else, he has reminded us that there are still some issues on which nearly all Americans agree.

2. You don't have to admire Islam or revere the Koran to have regarded Jones's talk of book-burning as barbaric. "Where they burn books," the German poet and playwright Heinrich Heine wrote in 1821, "they will ultimately burn people also." Heine's works were among the tens of thousands of books torched in public bonfires by the Nazis after their accession to power in 1933 -- and Hitler and his followers did indeed "ultimately burn people also."

This is not to say that everyone who burns a book eventually sheds blood. But the depravity of book-burning inescapably suggests more deadly evils. The brutal lust to suppress, the hatred of free thought and expression, the manic determination to physically annihilate disfavored ideas rather than challenge them intellectually -- from these to the destruction of human beings is no very great leap. Only the imbecilic preach, like Jones, that "Islam is of the devil" (he says the same, incidentally, about Hinduism, Buddhism, and Judaism). Setting books on fire, however, really is diabolical.

3. In the effort to get Jones to back down, great stress was laid on the danger of a backlash by Muslim fanatics. General David Petraeus warned that "images of the burning of a Koran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan . . . to inflame public opinion and incite violence." Defense Secretary Robert Gates phoned Jones to express "grave concern" that a Koran-burning could put American personnel at risk. The president himself called it "a way of endangering our troops -- our sons and daughters, fathers and mothers, husbands and wives who are sacrificing for us to keep us safe."

But since when do US officials tell Americans or anyone else not to do something because unhinged radicals won't like it? Jihadist violence was erupting long before Jones appeared on the scene. There is no end to the pretexts used by Islamist extremists "to inflame public opinion and incite violence." Danish cartoons, Iraqi elections, a papal lecture, a beauty pageant, even a teddy bear named "Muhammad" -- Muslim militants have raged, sometimes lethally, against them all. Osama bin Laden did not declare war on the United States because of a publicity-seeker's antics in Florida.

Jones's threat to burn the Koran was ugly and offensive. It deserved to be reviled as an affront to civility, to American values, and to the millions of good Muslims who stand with us in the war against the radicals. But it is never right for the president or his aides to pressure US citizens into silencing themselves or stifling their liberties in order to conciliate violent zealots. If the years since 9/11 have taught us anything, it is that jihadists must be resisted, not appeased.

SOURCE. (See the original for links)

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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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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15 September, 2010

British banks' contempt for customers revealed as investigation finds thousands of complaints ignored

This corresponds with my experience of British banks more than a quarter of a century ago. Obviously nothing has changed.

Their arrogance is unparalleled. Combine an oligopoly with a deep British resentment of serving others and that is what you get.

That resentment is why most hotels and retailers in Britain are now in the hands of Indians. They provide service at a level which most Brits would regard as "beneath" them. The Brits would rather live on welfare and many do.

It was a grave mistake to bail out these arrogant institutions during the financial crisis. The Labor government should have allowed them to go broke and then sold them off to Indians for what little they were worth.

The British government should sell them off right now as a way of recovering the funds poured into them

Tens of thousands of legitimate complaints are being fobbed off and ignored by our High Street banks. Damning figures released yesterday by independent disputes arbitrator the Financial Ombudsman service lay bare the contempt shown by some of our biggest banks to customers who dare to complain.

The figures, which cover the six months to June 2010, show in some instances, more than nine in ten cases previously rejected by the banks are being decided in the customers’ favour.

They also come two years after taxpayers spent more than £65 billion propping up Royal Bank of Scotland/NatWest and Lloyds Banking Group.

‘Highlights’ of the FOs report include:

* A shocking 23 pc surge in complaints about insurance products, including payment protection insurance;

* A staggering 95 pc of Barclays insurance complaints upheld;

* State-backed Lloyds Banking Group received 22,420 complaints — more than a quarter of the total complaints received across more than 100,000 businesses;

* Five companies — including state-backed Lloyds TsB — received more than 3,000 complaints.

Consumer groups say the high proportion of complaints being upheld by the Ombudsman is further evidence the banks are failing to investigate grievances properly. Mark Gander from Consumer Action Group says: ‘This is proof of the disgusting way banks are dealing with disgruntled customers. ‘The whole complaints handling process is designed to exhaust customers so they give up. Incredibly, they are allowed to get away with it.’

For customers, the Ombudsman is the last resort. It can investigate complaints that have been rejected by the firm or that are not resolved within eight weeks.

Kay Blair, vice-chairman of the Financial services Consumer Panel, says: ‘It is appalling that so many High street banks continue to reject valid complaints so customers have to go to the Ombudsman for a fair assessment.

The number of overall complaints increased slightly (84,212, from 82,136) compared with the last six months of 2009. Overall, almost half (44 pc) were upheld in the customer’s favour.

There was a huge 23 pc increase in complaints about insurance policies. This was mainly driven by an increase in complaints from customers mis- sold payment protection insurance (PPI) alongside loans and credit cards. An estimated two million customers hold PPI policies they are unable to claim on.

The percentage of insurance complaints upheld against the big banks was high across the board, with more than nine in ten upheld against Barclays (95 pc) and Black Horse — part of the Lloyds Group (96 pc). More than eight in ten customers won their complaints against Lloyds TsB (86 pc) and Clydesdale Bank (89 pc).

Last year the Ombudsman accused banks of appearing to deliberately fob off complaints in the hope they go away, or using it as a cheap disputes-resolution service.

Mike O’Connor, chief executive of Consumer Focus, says the situation doesn’t seem to be improving. He says: ‘Consumers want companies to take complaints seriously and put problems right first time. These results suggest that too many companies are not taking complaints seriously and are content to leave customers to pursue problems with the Ombudsman instead.’

Overall, Lloyds- owned Black Horse was the worst culprit — nine in ten of all new complaints against the firm were upheld in the customer’s favour. It sells PPI alongside personal loans and car finance. James Daley from Which? Money says: ‘This adds insult to injury to the millions of taxpayers who have bailed out the banks.’

Barclays was one of the main offenders overall , with the Ombudsman upholding six in ten general complaints. Last year hundreds of readers who were persuaded by Barclays salesmen to invest their life savings in risky funds contacted Money Mail after their complaints were thrown out by the bank. Many of these complaints were later backed by the Ombudsman.

A British Bankers’ Association spokesman says: ‘The UK banking industry manages more than 140 million bank accounts, and the biggest conduct many billions of transactions each year, so it is important to keep these figures in context. The Ombudsman upholds only seven complaints per 100,000 products provided by banks.’

SOURCE





Good riddance to bad rubbish

An enemy of free speech to retire

The controversial judge who pioneered privacy law in Britain is to step down from his post in charge of media cases. Mr Justice Eady, 67, whose landmark rulings have protected the rich and famous from publicity about their sexual adventures, will quit his role at the end of the month.

He will be replaced by another senior judge who is regarded as less sympathetic to the wish of sports stars and celebrities to keep their infidelities private. The new judge in charge of libel and privacy cases is Mr Justice Tugendhat, who earlier this year allowed newspapers to report allegations about the sex life of England footballer John Terry. He said sports stars were interested in sponsorship contracts as well as privacy, and that it is important to protect the freedom to criticise behaviour on moral grounds.

During Sir David Eady's reign as judge in charge, an English privacy law has grown up in the courts. Developed from judges' interpretations of human rights rules, it has made it unlawful to speak or write the truth about matters covered by privacy decisions.

His most famous case involved a report in the News of the World about motor racing boss Max Mosley and his sado-masochistic orgy with five prostitutes. Mr Justice Eady ruled against the paper and fined it for breaching Mr Mosley's privacy.

Sir David can continue hearing cases until he reaches 70, the retirement age for High Court judges.

SOURCE




French Senate passes ban on burqas

THE French Senate has passed a bill prohibiting the burqa in public, and the ban will come into force next year if it is not overturned by senior judges.

The Senate passed the bill by 246 votes to one and, having already cleared the lower house in July, the bill will now be reviewed by the Constitutional Council, which has a month to confirm its legality. It will need President Nicolas Sarkozy's signature.

The text makes no mention of Islam, but President Nicolas Sarkozy's government promoted the law as a means to protect women from being forced to wear Muslim full-face veils such as the burqa or the niqab.

Once in force, the law provides for a six-month period of "education'' to explain to women already wearing a face veil that they face arrest and a fine if they continue to do so in any public space.

A woman who chooses to defy the ban will receive a fine of $200) or a course of citizenship lessons. A man who forces a woman to go veiled will be fined ($41,000) and serve a jail term.

"This law was the object of long and complex debates,'' the Senate president, Gerard Larcher, and National Assembly head Bernard Accoyer said in a joint statement explaining their move. They said in a joint statement that they want to be certain there is "no uncertainty'' about it conforming to the constitution.

The measure effects less than 2,000 women.

Many Muslims believe the legislation is one more blow to France's second religion, and risks raising the level of Islamophobia in a country where mosques, like synagogues, are sporadic targets of hate.

However, the vast majority behind the measure say it will preserve the nation's singular values, including its secular foundation and a notion of fraternity that is contrary to those who hide their faces.

France would be the first European country to pass such a law though others, notably neighbouring Belgium, are considering laws against face-covering veils, seen as anathema to the local culture.

"Our duty concerning such fundamental principles of our society is to speak with one voice,'' said Justice Minister Michele Alliot-Marie, opening a less than five-hour-long debate ahead of the vote.

The measure, carried by Sarkozy's conservative party, was passed overwhelmingly by the lower house of parliament, the National Assembly, on July 13.

SOURCE






Australian grandad falsely accused of rape and incest

Another gross "child safety" bungle. And the bureaucrats refused to admit their error until the light of publicity was shone upon it -- again as per usual

THE Queensland Department of Child Safety has refused for 18 months to correct a file that falsely accused a man from Toowoomba of being a rapist who was jailed for fathering his own grandchild. The 64-year-old man was told by the department to prove he was not a rapist.

When he presented a certificate from the police service saying he did not have a criminal record and a DNA blood test showing he was not the father of his granddaughter, the department still refused to believe him. The man was banned from having contact with his nine-year-old granddaughter, and she was not allowed to stay with him and his wife for holidays, which she had done for the preceding eight years.

The grandfather repeatedly wrote to Child Safety Minister Phil Reeves, his local state MP and former attorney-general Kerry Shine, and the Parliamentary Ombudsman - all to no avail. When The Australian contacted Mr Reeves's office on Monday, it took just three hours to confirm the error and for a departmental officer to be ordered to contact the accused grandfather and apologise for the "inaccuracy recorded in the file". The file contained details of a criminal with an identical surname and first initial, according to department officials.

The accusation of being an incest rapist was discovered by the grandfather last year when he sought access to his file under Right to Information legislation. One document, from August last year, alleged the girl "was a product of rape and the father/grandfather is now currently in prison".

The grandfather yesterday told The Australian he was "shattered" when he read the document and immediately questioned it with department officers but was told the file would not be altered.

He pointed out the obvious: he could not be the person in the document because he was sitting opposite them, not in prison.

"Finally the DCS complaints officer told me that I had to prove I was not a rapist and had not fathered my grandchild," he said yesterday, breaking down in tears. "So I asked the police to detail my criminal history - there was no history of crime - and my wife and I sold our caravan to get the $800 to pay for a DNA test which showed I was not the father of my granddaughter."

"Yet despite having this evidence before them, until your newspaper contacted minister Reeves, nobody would do anything, and we were warned about going to the media."

The nightmare began when the grandfather sought kinship carer status for his daughter's two children. She had difficulty looking after them because she was the victim of domestic violence from a drug-addicted husband who is in prison for stealing. The application by the grandparents was refused, with no reason given. Instead the two children were put in foster care for several months until their mother was again able to cope.

The mother of the children yesterday told The Australian it was "abhorrent" to accuse her hard-working father of rape. "What this department has done to my parents is indescribable," the mother said.

Yesterday Toowoomba police held the grandfather in the watchhouse for 30 minutes after saying they had received a complaint from his DCS case officer, Nicole Steele, alleging that he had threatened her in a telephone conversation with other staff. "I made no threats and I refused to give a statement, so they let me go," the grandfather said.

"The apology given to me by the department meant nothing. Why didn't it come a year ago - and what about all the money it has cost me in telephone calls and running around. The least they could do is refund the $800 it cost for the DNA test."

A statement released yesterday, said Department of Communities acting director-general Bette Kill "has apologised to the person in this case for an inaccuracy recorded in his file". "The department will undertake a review of the file and confidential information handling procedures to ensure an issue such as this does not happen again," the statement said.

SOURCE




Australian judge blocks 14-year-old Muslim girl's arranged marriage

A 14-YEAR-old girl has been banned from leaving Australia and has had to surrender her passport to save her from an arranged marriage. Just days before the girl's father planned to whisk her overseas to marry a man she has never met, the Family Court ordered she must stay.

The Melbourne teenager is one of a number of Australian girls forced into arranged marriages overseas each year. Her plight came to light when child protection officers received a report in June that the then-13-year-old had been taken out of school ahead of her intended marriage. In a landmark decision published on Monday, the Family Court barred the girl, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, from travelling abroad until she turns 18.

Federal Police were ordered to place the girl's name alongside the names of accused serious criminals and tax cheats on the official Watch List at departure points around the nation.

Her family, who are believed to be Muslims from the former Yugolsav Republic of Macedonia, has had to surrender the girl's passport and cannot apply for a new one.

According to court documents, the girl had been interviewed by two child protection workers at her home while her parents were at work. One of the officers said the girl told them she had been engaged for a month to a 17-year-old boy from another country but did not know what she felt about marrying him because she had never met him and had only ever seen a photograph of him.

The officer said he formed the opinion the girl had not considered the prospect of having sex with her new husband or the possibility of being abused. He said the girl indicated she had not discussed her feelings with her parents and did not know her mother's opinion of the marriage.

"It is my belief that it would not be in [the child's] best interests to travel . . . to be married as she is a child and she does not appear to understand the consequences of marriage," the officer's affidavit concluded. "Furthermore she would be deprived of a school education and she may be at risk of sexual exploitation and emotional harm."

Islamic Council of Victoria vice-president Sherene Hassan said arranged child marriages were a perverse practice not mandated by Islam. "According to Islamic law a woman must give her consent to marriage without any form of collusion," she said yesterday. "Sadly there are some Muslims that fail to discern [the difference] between culture and religion."

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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14 September, 2010

Official bigotry in British courts: Men now second-class citizens

Official guidance issued by feminist judges

Judges have been told to treat female criminals more leniently than men when deciding sentences. New guidelines declare that women suffer disadvantages and courts should `bear these matters in mind'.

The rules say women criminals often have poor mental health or are poorly educated, have not committed violence and have children to look after. "Women's experiences as victims, witnesses and offenders are in many respects different to those of men,' according to the Equal Treatment Bench Book. `These differences highlight the importance of the need for sentencers to bear these matters in mind when sentencing.'

The controversial advice comes from the Judicial Studies Board, which is responsible for training the judiciary. In the past, the board has caused upset by suggesting Rastafarians have religious beliefs which allow them to use cannabis. It has also tried to ban words such as immigrant, asylum-seeker and even West Indian from the courts on the grounds they are offensive.

The latest guidelines have also caused anger, this time among campaigners for male victims of domestic violence.

The Bench Book tells judges that the problem `consists mainly of violence by men against women'. It adds `the reality is that some of the most physically violent incidents are committed by men on female partners'. The document also suggests that aggression against men by women is rare, saying that `men and partners in same-sex relationships might also be victims of domestic violence'.

However, campaigners for male victims of domestic violence claimed that men are being treated as second-class citizens by the new guidelines. They also point to analysis of official figures by the Parity campaign group which last week concluded that four out of ten victims of domestic violence were men.

Mark Brooks, of the ManKind campaign group, said: `For a document that claims to be about gender equality, it clearly leaves the impression that male victims are seen as being second class when, of course, all should be seen the same. `It is unacceptable that men, often suffering in silence at home, are being shown to be second-class victims by those running the legal system.'

He added: `To say grudgingly that men might also be victims is sweeping their problems under the carpet, when the Government's own figures show hundreds of thousands of men every year are suffering.' The study from Parity based its assessment on Home Office statistics and the British Crime Survey, the measure of crime most trusted by Whitehall. The campaign group said that the average proportion of domestic violence victims who are men has been 40 per cent.

Updated guidance on how to sentence female criminals was distributed in April in a new section on `gender equality'. It told judges: `Women remain disadvantaged in many public and private areas of their life; they are under-represented in the judiciary, Parliament and senior positions across a range of jobs; and there is still a substantial pay gap between men and women.'

On women accused of crime, the guidance quoted Judge Baroness Hale, the only woman among the 11 at the Supreme Court, who describes herself as a `soft-line feminist'. She said: `It is now well recognised that a misplaced conception of equality has resulted in some very unequal treatment for women and girls.'

The rules were prepared by a team headed by High Court judge Dame Laura Cox. She wrote: `It is hardly revolutionary that judges should know of the matters central to the lives of those who attend courts and to aim to provide judges with that knowledge.'

SOURCE






More petty bureaucratic tyranny in Britain

Council threatens father for not walking his daughter, 7, to school bus stop... 20 yards from family home

A father could face legal action after he was reprimanded for allowing his seven-year-old daughter to walk alone to a school bus stop - just 20 yards from their home. Mark McCullough received a letter from Lincolnshire County Council threatening to report the situation as a 'child protection issue' unless his daughter Isabelle was accompanied the short distance to and from the bus stop.

The 32-year-old makes sure either he or his partner, Natasha Fegan, 33, is at home to see Isabelle off in the morning, and meet her when she returns home from school. But the couple, of Glentham, Lincolnshire, have now been told there must be a 'change in arrangements' or they will face action. Mr McCullough, who has four other children, has also been criticised for sending Isabelle to Normanby by Spital Primary School without a jumper.

He said today: 'This is more than upsetting. It has made me angry. 'I am happy for Isabelle to walk from home to the end of the road and, if necessary, cross a country lane and walk home. 'I'm not going to wrap my children up in cotton wool. 'When I was a child I would go anywhere during the school holidays. I would be out at eight in the morning and not back until teatime.

'Admittedly I would not let the kids do that now because times are different. But for a seven-year-old not to be able to walk 20 metres to the top of the courtyard and cross a quiet country road is an absolute joke. 'I'm going to carry on as normal even if it means going to court.'

Mr McCullough, a refuse collector, received the letter from the council on Friday. It claimed the bus driver felt 'obliged' to help Isabelle safely cross the road at the end of the day. It added: 'Should there be no change in the arrangements for Isabelle's delivery to and collection from the bus stop, I will have no option but to consider reporting this as a child protection issue.'

Denise Carr, Lincolnshire County Council's head of transport services, said: 'As a responsible authority we have expressed our concern that a seven-year-old is standing on a busy road alone each morning and then crossing the road unaccompanied. 'As the child was also left standing by the roadside on a cold morning without warm clothing we have raised our concern with the parents.' [A threat is "raising concern"?]

SOURCE






FreedomWorks fights back against NAACP's accusations of Tea Party `racism'

Dick Armey's conservative organization FreedomWorks is readying for the launch of a comprehensive political program aimed at debunking the NAACP's race-charged attacks on the Tea Party movement.

FreedomWorks President and CEO Matt Kibbe said the organization will roll out Diverse Tea, a platform and advertising campaign that will showcase diversity in the Tea Party movement, sometime this week or early next week. "The idea is to create a platform for African-American Tea Party leaders, Hispanic Tea Party leaders and Jewish Tea Party leaders to get out there and talk about why they're involved and why these issues matter so much to them," Kibbe said.

Kibbe said the NAACP is trying to change the conversation from the "failed policies of the stimulus and they don't want to talk about unemployment and they sure as heck don't want to talk about a government takeover of health care."

The NAACP is just one of the many left-wing organizations that fear the Tea Party, Kibbe explained.

"It's ironic that the left that so eagerly celebrates the notion of diversity is attacking what I believe to be the most diverse political movement in my lifetime," Kibbe said. "They [the left] are afraid of the Tea Party and, frankly, they're afraid of the diversity of the Tea Party. If you actually take the time to get to know the people in the Tea Party movement, you see an amazing amount of diversity - not just different skin colors but people literally from all walks of life that have united around the idea that the government is too big and is spending too much money it doesn't have."

As a part of FreedomWorks' overall counter to the NAACP's teapartytracker.org, former Garland, Texas NAACP chapter president and current Tea Party leader, The Rev. C.L. Bryant, is developing a feature-length documentary called "Runaway Slave."

Bryant, who left the NAACP because he was upset with what he perceived to be the organization's focus on liberal politics and lack of interest in civil rights, said the film will show viewers how organizations like the NAACP use their clout to keep people under their control. He says he's a "runaway slave" in modern terms because he isn't accepting the status quo.

The whole idea behind the film, Bryant said, is to encourage Americans to "flee economic slavery, run toward the blessing of liberty." "Two Octobers ago, when John McCain and then-Senator Barack Obama came off the campaign trail to sign onto to TARP, I realized that this was going to enslave the American people," Bryant said.

Bryant said the film is going to take on the ideas of the current left establishment by showing viewers stops along the Underground Railroad between Atlanta and Delaware.

"There are people in the world who do have shackles on them, but here in America, a person has full rights of the Constitution, regardless of their skin color," Bryant explained. "In fact, I defy anyone to name one thing in this country at this point in time that would hinder you from being whatever you want to be because of your skin color - it just does not exist."

More HERE





Judaism's Sexual Revolution: Why Judaism Rejected Homosexuality

DENNIS PRAGER

When Judaism demanded that all sexual activity be channeled into marriage, it changed the world. The Torah's prohibition of non-marital sex quite simply made the creation of Western civilization possible.

Societies that did not place boundaries around sexuality were stymied in their development. The subsequent dominance of the Western world can largely be attributed to the sexual revolution initiated by Judaism and later carried forward by Christianity.

This revolution consisted of forcing the sexual genie into the marital bottle. It ensured that sex no longer dominated society, heightened male-female love and sexuality (and thereby almost alone created the possibility of love and eroticism within marriage), and began the arduous task of elevating the status of women.

It is probably impossible for us, who live thousands of years after Judaism began this process, to perceive the extent to which undisciplined sex can dominate man's life and the life of society. Throughout the ancient world, and up to the recent past in many parts of the world, sexuality infused virtually all of society.

Human sexuality, especially male sexuality, is polymorphous, or utterly wild (far more so than animal sexuality). Men have had sex with women and with men; with little girls and young boys; with a single partner and in large groups; with total strangers and immediate family members; and with a variety of domesticated animals. They have achieved orgasm with inanimate objects such as leather, shoes, and other pieces of clothing, through urinating and defecating on each other (interested readers can see a photograph of the former at select art museums exhibiting the works of the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe); by dressing in women's garments; by watching other human beings being tortured; by fondling children of either sex; by listening to a woman's disembodied voice (e.g., "phone sex"); and, of course, by looking at pictures of bodies or parts of bodies. There is little, animate or inanimate, that has not excited some men to orgasm.

Of course, not all of these practices have been condoned by societies --- parent-child incest and seducing another's man's wife have rarely been countenanced --- but many have, and all illustrate what the unchanneled, or in Freudian terms, the "un-sublimated," sex drive can lead to.

De-sexualizing God and religion

Among the consequences of the unchanneled sex drive is the sexualization of everything --- including religion. Unless the sex drive is appropriately harnessed (not squelched --- which leads to its own destructive consequences), higher religion could not have developed. Thus, the first thing Judaism did was to de-sexualize God: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" by his will, not through any sexual behavior. This was an utterly radical break with all other religions, and it alone changed human history. The gods of virtually all civilizations engaged in sexual relations.

In the Near East, the Babylonian god Ishtar seduced a man, Gilgamesh, the Babylonian hero. In Egyptian religion, the god Osiris had sexual relations with his sister, the goddess Isis, and she conceived the god Horus. In Canaan, El, the chief god, had sex with Asherah. In Hindu belief, the god Krishna was sexually active, having had many wives and pursuing Radha; the god Samba, son of Krishna, seduced mortal women and men. In Greek beliefs, Zeus married Hera, chased women, abducted the beautiful young male, Ganymede, and masturbated at other times; Poseidon married Amphitrite, pursued Demeter, and raped Tantalus. In Rome, the gods sexually pursued both men and women.

Given the sexual activity of the gods, it is not surprising that the religions themselves were replete with all forms of sexual activity. In the ancient Near Fast and elsewhere, virgins were deflowered by priests prior to engaging in relations with their husbands, and sacred or ritual prostitution was almost universal. Psychiatrist and sexual historian Norman Sussman describes the situation thus: "Male and female prostitutes, serving temporarily or permanently and performing heterosexual, homosexual oral-genital, bestial, and other forms of sexual activities, dispense their favors in behalf of the temple."

Throughout the ancient Near East, from very early times, anal intercourse formed a part of goddess worship. In ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Canaan, annual ceremonial intercourse took place between the king and a priestess. Women prostitutes had intercourse with male worshippers in the sanctuaries and temples of ancient Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Cyprus, Corinth, Carthage, Sicily, Egypt, Libya, West Africa, and ancient and modern India.

In ancient Israel itself, there were repeated attempts to re-introduce temple prostitution, resulting in repeated Jewish wars against cultic sex. The Bible records that the Judean king Asa "put away the qdeshim [temple male prostitutes] out of the land"; that his successor, Jehosaphat put away out of the land ...the remnant of the qdeshim that remained in the days of his father Asa"; and that later, King Josiah, in his religious reforms, "broke down the houses of the qdeshim."

In India until this century, certain Hindu cults have required intercourse between monks and nuns, and wives would have intercourse with priests who represent the god. Until it was made illegal in 1948, when India gained independence, Hindu temples in many parts of India had both women and boy prostitutes. In the fourteenth century, the Chinese found homosexual Tibetan religious rites practiced at the court of a Mongol emperor. In Sri Lanka through this century, Buddhist worship of the goddess Pattini has involved priests dressed as women, and the consort of the goddess is symbolically castrated.

Judaism placed controls on sexual activity. It could no longer dominate religion and social life. It was to be sanctified --- which in Hebrew means "separated" --- from the world and placed in the home, in the bed of husband and wife. Judaism's restricting of sexual behavior was one of the essential elements that enabled society to progress. Along with ethical monotheism, the revolution begun by the Torah when it declared war on the sexual practices of the world wrought the most far-reaching changes in history.

Inventing homosexuality

The revolutionary nature of Judaism's prohibiting all forms of non-marital sex was nowhere more radical, more challenging to the prevailing assumptions of mankind, than with regard to homosexuality. Indeed, Judaism may be said to have invented the notion of homosexuality, for in the ancient world sexuality was not divided between heterosexuality and homosexuality. That division was the Bible's doing. Before the Bible, the world divided sexuality between penetrator (active partner) and penetrated (passive partner).

As Martha Nussbaum, professor of philosophy at Brown University, recently wrote, the ancients were no more concerned with people's gender preference than people today are with others' eating preferences:

Ancient categories of sexual experience differed considerably from our own... The central distinction in sexual morality was the distinction between active and passive roles. The gender of the object... is not in itself morally problematic. Boys and women are very often treated interchangeably as objects of [male] desire. What is socially important is to penetrate rather than to be penetrated. Sex is understood fundamentally not as interaction, but as a doing of some thing to someone...

Judaism changed all this. It rendered the "gender of the object" very "morally problematic"; it declared that no one is "interchangeable" sexually. And as a result, it ensured that sex would in fact be "fundamentally interaction" and not simply "a doing of something to someone".

To appreciate the extent of the revolution wrought by Judaism's prohibiting homosexuality and demanding that all sexual interaction be male-female, it is first necessary to appreciate just how universally accepted, valued, and practiced homosexuality has been throughout the world.

The one continuous exception was Jewish civilization --- and a thousand years later, Christian civilization. Other than the Jews, "none of the archaic civilizations prohibited homosexuality per se," Dr. David E. Greenberg notes. It was Judaism alone that about 3,000 years ago declared homosexuality wrong.

And it said so in the most powerful and unambiguous language it could: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is an abomination." "And if a man lie with mankind, as with womankind, both of them have committed an abomination." It is Judaism's sexual morality, not homosexuality, that historically has been deviant.

The Hebrew Bible, in particular the Torah (The Five Books of Moses), has done more to civilize the world than any other book or idea in history. It is the Hebrew Bible that gave humanity such ideas as a universal, moral, loving God; ethical obligations to this God; the need for history to move forward to moral and spiritual redemption; the belief that history has meaning; and the notion that human freedom and social justice are the divinely desired states for all people. It gave the world the Ten Commandments, ethical monotheism, and the concept of holiness (the goal of raising human beings from the animal-like to the God-like). Therefore, when this Bible makes strong moral proclamations, I listen with great respect. And regarding male homosexuality --- female homosexuality is not mentioned --- this Bible speaks in such clear and direct language that one does not have to be a religious fundamentalist in order to be influenced by its views. All that is necessary is to consider oneself a serious Jew or Christian.

Jews or Christians who take the Bible's views on homosexuality seriously are not obligated to prove that they are not fundamentalists or literalists, let alone bigots (though, of course, people have used the Bible to defend bigotry). Rather, those who claim homosexuality is compatible with Judaism or Christianity bear the burden of proof to reconcile this view with their Bible. Given the unambiguous nature of the biblical attitude toward homosexuality, however, such a reconciliation is not possible.

Much 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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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13 September, 2010

Now apple trees are "dangerous" in Britain

When an apple fell from a tree in the 17th century, it led Isaac Newton to the concept of gravity. Fast forward 350 years, however, and falling fruit seems to be a far more weighty problem for officials at one housing association, who ruled that it posed a health and safety risk.

After the association complained that crab apples on a quiet residential street were a ‘possible trip hazard’, council workers chopped down all six apple trees, to the fury of locals.

One resident, pensioner Jose Williams, told how no warning was given of the work, and claims her formerly picturesque view of the trees from her flat has now been ruined. The retired shop worker, 80, said that several of her neighbours in the street in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, were also shocked by the decision, adding: ‘Those trees made the street look beautiful. They were there for 35 years – if they were dangerous then why did they leave them there all that time?

Mrs Williams, who lost husband Ben 13 years ago, added: ‘They were only tiny apples and when they did fall I used to go outside and sweep them up. 'It’s just so ridiculous. Even if they do plant something else there instead, most of the residents are elderly so we are not going to be around to see it.’

Mike Randall, housing services manager for Yorkshire Coast Homes, the charitable organisation which owns the properties, said he was looking to plant new greenery in the street to replace the apple trees.

He said: ‘The warden had complaints about the trees. They had grown to the extent that they were catching on windows and were blocking the light. There is also the issue of fruit falling to the ground and being a possible trip hazard.’

SOURCE






Pope launches defence of religious freedom in Britain

Pope Benedict XVI will this week urge the Government to protect religious freedoms to allow Christians to follow their beliefs. In a speech to political and religious leaders in Westminster Hall, the Pontiff will deliver a thinly veiled attack on the perceived liberal direction of the country.

He will praise Britain's role in establishing religious liberty, but warn that it will suffer if it allows a secular agenda to destroy its Christian heritage.

Senior Roman Catholic sources said his message would be seen as a criticism of the introduction of equality laws that have impinged on the freedom of religious groups, although he will not directly refer to government policy.

A number of Christians have lost their jobs or faced disciplinary action for practising their faith at work by wearing a crucifix or sharing their views on biblical teaching.

The Pope will also use the visit to try to heal the rift with the Church of England following his offer last year to disaffected Anglicans to defect to Rome.

Writing in The Sunday Telegraph, the Most Rev Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, says Pope Benedict XVI will stress that religious belief should not be seen as divisive, but as "a source of energy and inspiration".

Archbishop Nichols added: "When we forget, minimise or even reject this inheritance, then we risk losing our profound identity and creating a vacuum of values at the heart of our society." He described the visit as "an event of great cultural and historic resonance".

The Pope will travel to Edinburgh to meet the Queen on Thursday before going to London for his speech in Westminster Hall on Friday. It is being viewed as one of the major speeches of his Pontificate and it is understood that Pope Benedict plans to use the address to defend the place of religion in society. He will refer to Thomas More, the Lord Chancellor whom Henry VIII had executed, as an example of the tension between following one's conscience and one's obligations to the state.

While the Pope will acknowledge Britain's record of tolerance, he will highlight the dangers of pursuing equality at the expense of religious freedom. The German Pontiff made an unprecedented attack on the Labour government's introduction of equality legislation earlier this year, describing it as "unjust" and claiming it "violates natural law" because it stopped worshippers remaining true to their beliefs.

He is not expected to address this directly, but will make it clear that Christians and people of other faiths should not lose their freedoms at the expense of a secular state's emphasis on equality. This carries particular significance in Britain following the Catholic Church's clash with the previous government over the introduction of homosexual equality laws, which led to the closure of the church's adoption agencies.

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, claimed earlier this year that Christians in Britain were being persecuted and "treated with disrespect". He and six other prominent bishops described the "discrimination" against churchgoers as "unacceptable in a civilised society".

Fr Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's spokesman, said the Pope's speech would be offered as "a positive contribution" to the debate over British society. "It will be presented as an attempt to show that the Church engages with the world around it and will not be delivered in a polemic way," Fr Lombardi said.

He added that the Pope would address ecumenical relations with Anglicans, concentrating on the issues that unite the two Churches rather than focusing on the Ordinariate, the structure introduced to allow Anglicans to join the Catholic Church.

Other issues which the Pontiff is expected to address include the environment and international development, but it is understood he will not directly refer to the sex abuse crisis, which has engulfed the Church over the last year.

However, Pope Benedict will meet privately with victims of clerical abuse amid calls for him to apologise and threats from some groups they will attempt a citizen's arrest of the Pope over his alleged cover-up of abuse. Yesterday, victims of abuse by Catholic priests appealed to the Pope for "action not words" to tackle paedophiles in the Church. At a meeting in London, they called on the Pontiff to set up a worldwide database, naming known "predators" and remove them from the priesthood. They called for a statutory inquiry into abuse, proper pastoral care and funding to support victims of paedophiles in the Church.

Dr Margaret Kennedy, the founder of Minister And Clergy Sexual Abuse Survivors, said the head of the Roman Catholic Church would travel with the "accolade and dignity" given to a head of state. "Sadly we are not afforded the same respect or dignity or status," she told a press conference before the meeting. "Many survivors have to almost live in fear, shame and guilt because . they are made to feel like pariahs, disloyal, aggressive, money-grabbing, and accused of making false allegations."

Survivors had written about their experiences of abuse in a book she would attempt to present to the Pope during his visit. "We don't want words any more from the Vatican, we want action ... concrete decisions about how they will repair the lives of survivors of clergy abuse."

A ComRes poll of 500 Catholics, published yesterday, found 52 per cent said the scale of abuse and the way it was handled had "shaken their faith" in the Church leadership.

Peter Tatchell, the homosexual rights campaigner, will claim in a Channel 4 documentary broadcast on Monday that the Pope's moral authority has been called into question by his handling of the scandal.

Pope Benedict will be greeted by the Duke of Edinburgh when he arrives in Britain this week for the first papal visit since Pope John Paul II came here in 1982.

The visit will cost more than œ20 million, with taxpayers shouldering at least œ12 million of the total, but the Catholic Church hopes that huge crowds will attend events in London, Glasgow and Birmingham.

SOURCE




Southern Poverty Law Center Completes Its Descent Into Madness

I have written many times before about the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization to which I contributed for many years back in the late 1970s and 1980s, when SPLC was fighting Klan groups.

In the past two decades, however, after the Klan ceased to be a significant force in the nation, the SPLC has descended into an organization which seeks to demonize legitimate opposition to Democratic Party policies and the Obama administration.

Here are some of my prior posts:

* Confirmed - SPLC Exaggerated About Klan In Rhode Island
* The Klan In Rhode Island? SPLC Exaggerates Again
* SPLC's Democratic Party Mission
* Saturday Night Card Game (Southern Poverty Law Center)

So why am I writing today about the SPLC? Because I just read an article in The Daily Caller (h/t Instapundit) in which the author notes that the SPLC lists Sarah Palin's speech in Nashville last February at the National Tea Party Convention as one of the landmark events in the "Patriot Movement" historical timeline.

When SPLC speaks of the "patriot movement," it doesn't mean it as a compliment. Instead, here is how SPLC defines the movement:

The 1990s saw the rise and fall of the virulently antigovernment "Patriot" movement, made up of paramilitary militias, tax defiers and so-called "sovereign citizens." Sparked by a combination of anger at the federal government and the deaths of political dissenters at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, the movement took off in the middle of the decade and continued to grow even after 168 people were left dead by the 1995 bombing of Oklahoma City's federal building — an attack, the deadliest ever by domestic U.S. terrorists, carried out by men steeped in the rhetoric and conspiracy theories of the militias. In the years that followed, a truly remarkable number of criminal plots came out of the movement. But by early this century, the Patriots had largely faded, weakened by systematic prosecutions, aversion to growing violence, and a new, highly conservative president.

They're back. Almost a decade after largely disappearing from public view, right-wing militias, ideologically driven tax defiers and sovereign citizens are appearing in large numbers around the country....

A key difference this time is that the federal government — the entity that almost the entire radical right views as its primary enemy — is headed by a black man. That, coupled with high levels of non-white immigration and a decline in the percentage of whites overall in America, has helped to racialize the Patriot movement, which in the past was not primarily motivated by race hate.

Why would SPLC put Sarah Palin's Nashville speech in a timeline of this movement? Here is the entry on the timeline by SPLC:

Feb. 6, 2010: One-time GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin tells the first National Tea Party Convention in Nashville "America is ready for another revolution."

Here is the link to the text of Palin's speech. It is clear that SPLC is being purposefully misleading and deceptive in suggesting, by including this sentence from the speech in the timeline, that Palin was calling for violence consistent with the "Patriot movement" (as defined by SPLC).

In reality, Palin was speaking of the electoral revolution epitomized by Scott Brown's then-recent victory in Massachusetts. Just three sentences after using the phrase quoted by SPLC, here is what Palin explained she meant by a "revolution" (emphasis mine):

Now in many ways Scott Brown represents what this beautiful movement is all about. He was just a guy with a truck and a passion to serve our country. He looked around and he saw that things weren't quite right in Washington, so he stood up and he decided he was going do his part to put our government back on the side of the people. And it took guts and it took a lot of hard work, but with grassroots support, Scott Brown carried the day. It has been so interesting now to watch the aftermath of the Massachusetts shout-out revolution.

The sentence quoted by SPLC and the sentence I quote above are the only times Palin used the word "revolution" in her speech. Why would SPLC quote one, without quoting the other which explained what Palin meant?

So is Scott Brown also part of the "Patriot movement"? Shouldn't Brown's election, under SPLC's standard, also be on the timeline? And the people of Massachusetts, are they now radicalized by the "Patriot movement"?

Perhaps SPLC could have quoted this part of Palin's speech, in which she called for civility and a focus on electoral change:

Because we are the loyal opposition. And we have a vision for the future of our country, too, and it is a vision anchored in time tested truths.

That the government that governs least, governs best. And that the Constitution provides the best road map towards a more perfect union. And that only limited government can expand prosperity and opportunity for all and that freedom is a God given right and it is worth fighting for. God bless you. And that America's finest, our men and women in uniform, are a force for good throughout the world and that is nothing to apologize for.

These are enduring truths and these enduring truths have been passed down from Washington to Lincoln to Reagan and now to you. But while this movement, our roots there, in our spirit, too, they are historic. The current form of this movement is fresh and it's young and it's fragile. We are now the keepers of an honorable tradition of conservative values and good works. And we must never forget that it is a sacred trust to carry these ideas forward. It demands civility and it requires decent constructive issue-oriented debate.

Whatever SPLC once was, it now is a bastion of political hackery which, by equating legitimate political opposition with criminal violence, is doing substantial damage to our national fabric. It is time for people of conscience to speak out against SPLC's tactics.

SOURCE (See the original for links)






Time and NYT Again Show More Bias Against Israel

In textbook examples, both Time magazine and The New York Times have once again shown their hostility toward Israel. Bias comes in many shapes and forms. It can be through misleading headlines, location of a story within the publication, selective use of photos, facts omitted, sources sought and choice of words. A couple of glaring examples from this past week highlight such bias against Israel.

The same week that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Abbas came to Washington to restart negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Time magazine came out with a cover story titled "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace."

To support this preposterous assertion, Time editor Richard Stengel made his regular appearance on Thursday's "Morning Joe" on MSNBC to reveal the new cover and cover story coming out last week in Time. The image on the cover of the September 13th issue is the Star of David made of gerbera daisies, which means cheerfulness. I discovered that by putting my cursor over the image of the cover, and it says so. So the message Time wanted to get out is that Israel is positively cheerful and doesn't care about peace.

Stengel went on the show and actually said the cover article is "Why Israel Doesn't Want Peace," which is quite different from the notion of the actual title, "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace." Both titles are absurd constructions. If the editors at Time were attempting to more honestly characterize Israel's position, they might have awkwardly titled it, "Why Israel is Opposed to the Current Formulation of the Two-state Solution." That title would lead them to a more honest answer.

There can be no two-state solution until Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) unite and decide that they no longer have the destruction of Israel, or the liberation of Palestine, as they prefer to say, as their goal. There can be no "right of return" as the Palestinians envision it, in which Jews in Israel would be outnumbered by people staking a false claim to property and residence within Israel's borders. It would also become more plausible if Hamas and the PA ended their incitement against Israel, their attacks against Israeli civilians, and celebration of terrorists, such as those who planned the Munich massacre of 1972.

Stengel went on to say that "Most Israelis have basically decided, you know what, the Palestinians are not a threat, the real threat is Iran, `we're having a good life, we don't really care.' That's it, and in fact, what we're seeing with Netanyahu-I mean Netanyahu is a little bit out ahead of a lot of his constituents, which I think is true, but in fact most Israelis just don't even care about peace any more. Don't even think it's possible."

Stengel said "they haven't had a car bombing in two and a half years," and added that "The sad truth really is that the wall with the West Bank has actually worked. Most Israelis in the course of their life don't come into contact with any Palestinians at all. The wall is functioning."

Yes, Stengel actually said that the success of the security fence is a "sad truth."

The Time article itself, by Karl Vick, reads like a parody. Among photos of Israelis on the beach, or in clubs, or otherwise whiling away the time, Vick states, "The truth? As three Presidents, a King and their own Prime Minister gather at the White House to begin a fresh round of talks on peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the truth is, Israelis are no longer preoccupied with the matter. They're otherwise engaged; they're making money; they're enjoying the rays of late summer. A watching world may still define their country by the blood feud with the Arabs whose families used to live on this land and whether that conflict can be negotiated away, but Israelis say they have moved on."

Victor Davis Hanson noted Vick's tone and accusations in his National Review piece titled, "For the Jews in Israel, Money Trumps All?" "You see," writes Hanson, "Vick has discovered that the rather worldly Israelis, after stealing their land from Arabs, don't much care for the hard negotiations that the Obama administration is now engaged in ("big elemental thoughts"), not when it is a matter of-yes, making money: `With souls a trifle weary of having to handle big elemental thoughts, the Israeli public prefers to explore such satisfactions as might be available from the private sphere, in a land first imagined as a utopia.'"

You get the idea. After seeing Stengel on Morning Joe, it is unclear how much of this article is really the sentiments of Vick as opposed to those of Stengel the editor, who has openly defended Time's shift to transparently becoming an opinion magazine, rather than obliquely being one. He has celebrated Time's role as a promoter of Barack Obama and his agenda.

Time has had a long history of distorting stories about Israel, and CAMERA, the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, has done an excellent job documenting it over the years.

Of course Israel wants peace, but they don't want a deal that looks like the deal being demanded by Abbas and Hamas, and being pushed by Obama. It is not sustainable and would likely lead to more war. But until that day of peace comes, Israelis hopefully will live with security, as enabled by a security fence, and first-rate intelligence that is not handcuffed by political correctness. They don't want another phony Oslo process that is meant to deceive the world and gain advantage for the long term and oft stated goal of the complete "liberation of Palestine," meaning the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

The highly regarded website Honest Reporting responded to Time this way: "Perhaps the real reason Israelis have become apathetic to the peace process (not peace itself, as the cover suggests), is because of the way the world quickly forgets Israel's numerous peace moves-Ehud Barak's offer of a state at Camp David, Ariel Sharon's withdrawal from Gaza, Binyamin Netanyahu's settlement freeze. Yet the media blames Israel for years of stalemate.

"While there have been no parallel moves from the Palestinians to advance the peace process, only ever-increasing demands on Israel, Vick gives the impression that the Palestinians have been doing everything they can to make peace possible."

Ironically, Stengel's comment that there hadn't been a car bombing in two and a half years came the same week that Hamas terrorists killed four Israelis. No, it wasn't a car bomb. As described by the New York Post, in a front-page story, "Hamas terrorists yesterday murdered four innocent Israelis, one of them pregnant, in a twisted attempt to derail President Obama's peace summit in Washington . the soulless thugs sprayed a car on the West Bank with dozens of bullets, leaving behind a gruesome scene on a blood-stained road."

Compare that to how The New York Times covered the same story, on page 4: "The killing of four Israeli settlers, including a pregnant woman, in the West Bank on Tuesday evening rattled Israeli and Palestinian leaders on the eve of peace talks in Washington and underscored the disruptive role that the issue of Jewish settlements could play in the already fragile negotiations."

The Times did one of its classic depictions of a terrorist act against Israel in terms of it being a setback for peace, with no mention of the victims, the brutality of the crime, and the only thing regrettable is that this will now set back the phony "peace process."

Phyllis Chesler, author and professor, writing for Pajamas Media, did an excellent job in analyzing and parsing how the story was handled in the Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post. Chesler states that "My point here is simply this: If American journalists, professors, scholars, and teachers read and trust only the New York Times, they will continue to view `militant Israeli settlers' as more blameworthy than Islamist Palestinian terrorists. This view is confirmed by articles, editorials, and op-eds which appear in their pages almost daily, often two or three in each issue. In edition after edition, this point is made over and over again."

Another irony here is that the current sticking point in negotiations is about whether or not Israel is prepared to extend its self-imposed moratorium on expanding settlements in the West Bank. Ironic because until President Obama made a settlement freeze his earliest demand on Israel, it wasn't really a sticking point at all. Israel was expanding on a natural growth basis in the existing settlements, and the Palestinians weren't demanding otherwise as a condition for negotiations, choosing instead to focus on other issues.

Once again the media-in this case Time and the Times-are doing their best to prepare the world for a failed peace effort by preemptively blaming Israel for not caring enough about peace to bring a deal to fruition.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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12 September, 2010

German chancellor faces Muslim wrath after praising Danish cartoonist who caricatured Prophet Muhammad



German chancellor Angela Merkel praised what she described as 'the bravery' of a Danish cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Muhammad at an award ceremony honoring his achievements for freedom of speech.

In her speech praising illustrator Kurt Westergaard, 'who has had to fear for his life since the publication of the cartoons in 2005,' Merkel emphasized Wednesday that media freedom is an important element of rights in Europe. 'It does not matter if we think his cartoons are tasteful or not, if we think they are necessary and helping or not,' Merkel said at the ceremony in the city of Potsdam. The question, she said, was, 'Is he allowed to do this? Yes, he is.'

There have been at least three attempted attacks on the 75-year-old Westergaard or his Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, since he and 11 other artists angered Muslims around the world by creating the Muhammad cartoons four years ago. Protesters in Muslim countries have torched Danish and other Western embassies.

Westergaard's cartoon, which he said took 45 minutes to draw, was considered by many Muslims the most offensive of the 12. He has rejected calls to apologize, saying poking fun at religious symbols is protected by Denmark's freedom of speech.

Merkel's appearance at the award ceremony drew criticism from Muslim groups, who perceived it as an endorsement of Westergaard's cartoon. Aiman Mazyek, general secretary of Germany's Muslim Council, told public radio Deutschlandradio that Merkel is honoring the cartoonist who sullied 'our Prophet ... and thereby all Muslims'.

Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert, rejected the criticism and said Merkel's message was to underscore the importance of freedom of speech.

Merkel condemned plans by a pastor in the United States to burn the Muslim holy book to commemorate the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. 'If a fundamentalist evangelical pastor in America wants to burn the Quran on September 11, I find that - in a word - disrespectful, also abhorrent and false,' Merkel said.

Westergaard has been under police protection since February 2008, when Danish newspapers reprinted his caricature in a gesture of solidarity after police revealed a plot to kill him. In January, a Somali with a residence permit in Denmark broke into Westergaard's home wielding an ax and a knife, but Westergaard was unhurt.

Westergaard retired from Jyllands-Posten in June.

SOURCE






The BBC completely fails to understand the Tea Party movement

With the smug incomprehension in which it takes so much pride (can’t understand – won’t understand!), the BBC sets about the American Tea Party Movement as if it were a cross between the Klu Klux Klan and the German neo-fascist brigade. Not once in all the demonic depictions I have seen and heard (last week’s Newsnight package was particularly outrageous) have I heard a mention of what the TPM is actually about: taxation. (Note to BBC editors: the movement is named after the Boston Tea Party because it is protesting about the imposition of higher federal taxes and over-weening controls on citizens who believe their voices have been ignored.)

The British generally and the BBC in particular have a real problem understanding the obsessive suspicion in which the power of central government is held in the US. This is not some funny redneck eccentricity: it is fundamental to the Constitution which gives individual states much greater sovereignty than the countries of the European Union enjoy. The states have independent judicial systems (some states have capital punishment, others do not) and separate taxation systems (some have sales taxes, others do not). Only a Supreme Court ruling can over-turn state law by, for example, declaring something (such as abortion) to be a legal right which a state legislature may not deny.

Traditionally there is only one nationally imposed tax - federal income tax – which is designed to pay for those functions that must be carried out by national government. Resistance to the Obama healthcare reforms is as passionate as it is precisely because it imposes a federal requirement to purchase health insurance which seems to contravene the basic economic freedom guaranteed by the Constitution. The BBC obviously finds it impossible to believe that ordinary people could actually take issues like this seriously. (They can only be racists or hillibilly know-nothings.) The Corporation really ought to encourage its correspondents to get out more and talk to some of the articulate Americans who don’t spend their lives in liberal salons.

SOURCE




The media fail to ask WHY Muslims behave so badly

Recall the 2005 report in Newsweek (later retracted) about a US interrogator at Guantanamo flushing a Quran down a toilet that set off violent riots in the Middle East. Recall how the publication of cartoons of Mohamed in a Danish newspaper resulted in much death and mayhem.



It is not unusual for bibles to be confiscated by the omnipresent Saudi authorities (and presumably later destroyed), for synagogues and churches (with bibles therein) to be burned with alarming regularly in the Muslim world. Yet I do not recall a single death or riot resulting from these events. Are not Jews and Christians sufficiently insulted? Are they not similarly committed to their own religion? Do they not also revere their own God?

When Christians or Jews are massacred in riots or by terrorists or suicide bombers, no rampage occurs in the Western World. When Muslims died in the Twin Towers, in restaurant bombings in Israel, in car bombings in Karbala-all at the hands of other Muslims-did Muslim extremists riot the world over? No; a resounding no! Yet the mere desecration of an inanimate Quran, or even the pictorial representation of Muhammad, can set off lethality in the "Muslim street."

To those searching vociferously for an explanation (i.e. an excuse), one must point out that there is no lack of provocations available to any group, culture or religion worldwide. Why is it that the moderate majority of Muslims does not rise up to stop-or at least loudly object to-these supremely over-sensitive killing sprees, irrespective of their personal feelings or anger?

What is it about the extremists' beliefs, politics and support systems that engender such callous disregard for life, where symbols are valued more than human beings? That is what the media, the politicians and the conciliators should understand, and to which they should react.

These are the real questions, the real news that should be on the front page - the elephant(s) in the room to which the media is congenitally blind. At our peril, to be sure.

SOURCE





Peace: The Invention That Doesn’t Work

The eminent historian Sir Michael Howard opened his brilliant essay "The Invention of Peace (Yale University Press, 2001) with a quote from the 19th century conservative thinker Henry Maine, "War appears to be as old as mankind, but peace is a modern invention." Maine was well positioned to make this observation. The attempt to substitute peace as the objective of foreign policy rather than the pursuit of national advantage in a perpetually contentious world was the project of classical liberalism. This movement came to maturity in the years after the Napoleonic Wars, though its roots were in the same Enlightenment tradition that set off a quarter century of conflict with the French Revolution.

Howard traces its core concepts to Immanuel Kant, author of the 1795 essay "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch." Kant set out the three principles that have been common to all liberal policy since: disarmament, free trade and a world federation, often cited as the inspiration for the United Nations. All are aimed at removing the nation-state from the center of global affairs, and shifting the focus of individual allegiance to something other than national citizenship. People are to become “citizens of the world” or simply “consumers” satiated with material decadence and devoid of any communal identity.

The 215 years since Kant’s essay have not been kind to his ideas despite all the ink that has been used to advance them in philosophical circles. Maine made his observation in 1875, after the wars of German and Italian unification had profoundly impacted the European balance of power, and on the eve of a new series of Balkan wars. These conflicts demonstrated a rising feeling of popular patriotism and collective loyalty.

The first disarmament conference was called by Tsar Nicholas II in 1899 and held at The Hague. Behind the flowery rhetoric, everyone knew that Russia’s objective was to slow an arms race with Germany it could not afford. Nothing was accomplished in 1899 or at the Second Hague Conference in 1907. A third conference set for 1915 had to be cancelled because World War I had broken out in 1914. That “war to end all wars” did not do so. The League of Nations and a bevy of disarmament treaties failed to prevent World War II. The United Nations, formed by the victors, has been paralyzed by disputes among the major powers on the Security Council, which the passing of the Cold War has not ended. National, ethnic and religious sentiments are as strong as ever, fueling armed conflict and trade wars. None of Kant’s three pillars of peace have shown any strength because there is no underlying global harmony of interests.

So what are we to make of the Obama administration’s attempt to promote “peace” in the Middle East? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sept. 7, “In the weeks and months ahead, President Obama and I will do everything we can to help advance the cause of a comprehensive peace, not only in the Middle East, but across the world, and inside the hearts and minds of our fellow Americans…..As I said when I welcomed Israeli and Palestinian delegations, peace needs champions on every street corner and around every kitchen table, and not just there, but everywhere.” In the same speech, she mentioned a project called “Partners for a New Beginning” where “influential leaders from the private sector and civil society are to advance opportunities in Muslim communities around the world.” One of the vice chairs is Muhtar Kent of Coca-Cola. What could be a more classical liberal notion than the hope that if people just share the same soft drink, they won’t want to shoot at each other!

President Barack Obama would like to join his Democratic predecessors Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton in achieving some sort of Middle East “peace” agreement. But he does not seem to understand the nature of the agreements signed in the past between Israel and its neighbors or what the central strategic issue is today. He is stuck in the past when as a child the Arab-Israeli wars were making the headlines.

President Carter’s achievement was the 1979 treaty between Egypt and Israel following the1978 Camp David Accords. Egypt recognized Israel and the state of war that had existed since 1948 was ended. The U.S. began economic and military aid to Egypt, making Washington an alliance bridge between the two former adversaries. President Clinton’s achievement was similar; the signing of a treaty between Jordan and Israel in 1994. The two treaties signaled the abandonment of the Palestinians by the two Arab governments. The 1993 Oslo Accords set up a framework for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, but nothing came of it except to give Jordan cover.

The big strategic change in the region came in 1979 and has become ever more dangerous; the overthrow of the pro-Western Shah of Iran and his replacement by a radical Shiite theocracy that poses a threat to both Israel and the Sunni Arab states.

President George W. Bush understood the current divisions in the regime. He downgraded “peace” talks and worked to build coalitions to counter aggression. Halting Tehran’s regional ambitions became the top priority, not the formation of a Palestinian state. New arms were offered to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, along with coordination of missile defense efforts. When the Hamas terrorist group, backed by Iranian money, weapons and training, took control of Gaza, Egypt and Israel cooperated in blockading the area. And when Israel attacked another Iran-based militia group, Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006, the Arab states gave it the diplomatic room it needed. And no Arab state lifted a finger against Israel during its invasion of Gaza in the weeks just before President Obama’s inaugural.

Israel’s action was prescient. Upon taking office, President Obama immediately activated a time machine and shifted American focus from Iran back to Palestine. The diplomatic relic George Mitchell was sent as special envoy to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks. Meanwhile, President Obama offered an olive branch of direct talks to Iran “without pre-conditions.” Tehran, understanding the change in outlook in Washington, has felt no need to trim its sails in any way. Within days of Secretary Clinton’s August 20 announcement of new Israeli-Palestinian talks, Iran began loading Russian fuel rods into its Bushehr nuclear reactor and unveiled a "drone" bomber with a range of more than 600 miles. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) a "messenger of death" to the regime’s enemies. The American response was minimal.

Perhaps the Obama administration is not as naïve as it seems. Certainly Secretary Clinton has taken a harder line in the past, as a Senator and presidential candidate. She has even issued warnings to Iran from her current office, though the White House has not done much to back her up. The talks in Washington between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (two men well aware of their identities and interests) did not reach an agreement on anything more than to continuing talking. Maybe it was just a “check the box” exercise. Maybe Netanyahu and Abbas even quietly agreed to work against their common foe, Hamas (with backing from Egypt and Jordan).

But why should people who are not fools, make foolish statements about peace? The test will be whether the Obama administration continues to sit passively as Iran advances its nuclear weapons program and gives support to terrorist groups across the region, including in Iraq and Afghanistan where American lives are at risk. Actions speak louder than words. But if there are no actions, then the foolish words have to be taken at face value.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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11 September, 2010

Australia: A strict Christian background excuses pedophilia?

This is crazy. It's an insult to Christians. There are many millions of people from a strict Christian background and almost all develop normal relationships and marry. It's the individual who is at fault, not the religious background.

I was very religious in my teens and so was something of a late-starter with male/female relationships but it did me no harm and probably protected me from a lot of follies

A teenager who sexually abused four girls aged under six has been released without conviction because of his sexually repressive upbringing in a family of charismatic missionaries.

In an unusual judgment in the Northern Territory Supreme Court yesterday, judge Judith Kelly accepted psychiatric evidence that the lifestyle and religious attitudes of the parents had distorted the "normal psycho-social development" of the accused, who was 15 when the offences occurred.

Quoting a psychiatric report, Justice Kelly said: "The normal developmental sexual curiosity of an adolescent boy was artificially constrained by his parents and his church culture.

"In particular, there was a taboo against normal sexual experimentation with peers. "That has resulted in (the defendant) pushing to one side what is usually a much stronger taboo in relation to sexualised contact with much younger children. Whilst that might be described as psycho-pathological and a distortion of normal psychological development, it is not a psychiatric illness phenomenon and readily reversible should the external circumstances be changed."

Justice Kelly told the defendant to get an apprenticeship, start making friends with girls his own age and "just grow up like any other normal boy".

"You are not sick. You are not abnormal. You made a very bad mistake and did some very bad things," Justice Kelly said. "It appears you did not fully realise the effect your actions could have on the little girls. "I accept that you are very sorry. You need to put it behind you now and move on with your life."

Justice Kelly said it was sad the family of one victim were grieving because they believed their little girl's innocence had been "destroyed".

She rejected a prosecution submission that the defendant be sentenced under the adult Sentencing Act rather than the Youth Justice Act because at least one of the victims was subject to "stage-two grooming".

The offences occurred at various locations between September and December last year and involved the defendant placing his hands and fingers on the vaginas and bottoms of the victims. There was no evidence of penetration and the accused had told police: "I just wanted to find out what it felt like."

The psychiatric report urged the defendant's parents to be involved in joint counselling.

SOURCE






The Eternal Flame of Muslim Outrage

Michelle Malkin

Shhhhhhh, we're told. Don't protest the Ground Zero mosque. Don't burn a Koran. It'll imperil the troops. It'll inflame tensions. The "Muslim world" will "explode" if it does not get its way, warns sharia-peddling imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Pardon my national security-threatening impudence, but when is the "Muslim world" not ready to "explode"?

At the risk of provoking the ever-volatile Religion of Perpetual Outrage, let us count the little-noticed and forgotten ways.

Just a few months ago in Kashmir, faithful Muslims rioted over what they thought was a mosque depicted on underwear sold by street vendors. The mob shut down businesses and clashed with police over the blasphemous skivvies. But it turned out there was no need for Allah's avengers to get their holy knickers in a bunch. The alleged mosque was actually a building resembling London's St. Paul's Cathedral. A Kashmiri law enforcement official later concluded the protests were "premeditated and organized to vitiate the atmosphere."

Indeed, art and graphics have an uncanny way of vitiating the Muslim world's atmosphere. In 1994, Muslims threatened German supermodel Claudia Schiffer with death after she wore a Karl Lagerfeld-designed dress printed with a saying from the Koran. In 1997, outraged Muslims forced Nike to recall 800,000 shoes because they claimed the company's "Air" logo looked like the Arabic script for "Allah." In 1998, another conflagration spread over Unilever's ice cream logo -- which Muslims claimed looked like "Allah" if read upside-down and backward (can't recall what they said it resembled if you viewed it with 3D glasses).

Even more explosively, in 2002, an al-Qaida-linked jihadist cell plotted to blow up Bologna, Italy's Church of San Petronio because it displayed a 15th century fresco depicting Mohammed being tormented in the ninth circle of Hell. For years, Muslims had demanded that the art come down. Counterterrorism officials in Europe caught the would-be bombers on tape scouting out the church and exclaiming, "May Allah bring it all down. It will all come down."

That same year, Nigerian Muslims stabbed, bludgeoned or burned to death 200 people in protest of the Miss World beauty pageant -- which they considered an affront to Allah. Contest organizers fled out of fear of inflaming further destruction. When Nigerian journalist Isioma Daniel joked that Mohammed would have approved of the pageant and that "in all honesty, he would probably have chosen a wife from among them," her newspaper rushed to print three retractions and apologies in a row. It didn't stop Muslim vigilantes from torching the newspaper's offices. A fatwa was issued on Daniel's life by a Nigerian official in the sharia-ruled state of Zamfara, who declared that "the blood of Isioma Daniel can be shed. It is abiding on all Muslims wherever they are to consider the killing of the writer as a religious duty." Daniel fled to Norway.

In 2005, British Muslims got all hot and bothered over a Burger King ice cream cone container whose swirly-texted label resembled, you guessed it, the Arabic script for "Allah." The restaurant chain yanked the product in a panic and prostrated itself before the Muslim world. But the fast-food dessert had already become a handy radical Islamic recruiting tool. Rashad Akhtar, a young British Muslim, told Harper's Magazine how the ice cream caper had inspired him: "Even though it means nothing to some people and may mean nothing to some Muslims in this country, this is my jihad. I'm not going to rest until I find the person who is responsible. I'm going to bring this country down."

In 2007, Muslims combusted again in Sudan after an infidel elementary school teacher innocently named a classroom teddy bear "Mohammed." Protesters chanted, "Kill her, kill her by firing squad!" and "No tolerance -- execution!" She was arrested, jailed and faced 40 lashes for blasphemy before being freed after eight days. Not wanting to cause further inflammation, the teacher rushed to apologize: "I have great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone, and I am sorry if I caused any distress."

And who could forget the global Danish cartoon riots of 2006 (instigated by imams who toured Egypt stoking hysteria with faked anti-Islam comic strips)? From Afghanistan to Egypt to Lebanon to Libya, Pakistan, Turkey and in between, hundreds died under the pretext of protecting Mohammed from Western slight, and brave journalists who stood up to the madness were threatened with beheading. It wasn't really about the cartoons at all, of course. Little-remembered is the fact that Muslim bullies were attempting to pressure Denmark over the International Atomic Energy Agency's decision to report Iran to the UN Security Council for continuing with its nuclear research program. The chairmanship of the council was passing to Denmark at the time. Yes, it was just another in a long line of manufactured Muslim explosions that were, to borrow a useful phrase, "premeditated and organized to vitiate the atmosphere."

When everything from sneakers to stuffed animals to comics to frescos to beauty queens to fast-food packaging to undies serves as dry tinder for Allah's avengers, it's a grand farce to feign concern about the recruitment effect of a few burnt Korans in the hands of a two-bit attention-seeker in Florida. The eternal flame of Muslim outrage was lit a long, long time ago.

SOURCE






Sheriffs want lists of patients using painkillers

Given the many abuses of the "war on drugs", this would terrify me if I needed pain relief in NC --JR

Sheriffs in North Carolina want access to state computer records identifying anyone with prescriptions for powerful painkillers and other controlled substances.

The state sheriff's association pushed the idea Tuesday, saying the move would help them make drug arrests and curb a growing problem of prescription drug abuse. But patient advocates say opening up people's medicine cabinets to law enforcement would deal a devastating blow to privacy rights.

Allowing sheriffs' offices and other law enforcement officials to use the state's computerized list would vastly widen the circle of people with access to information on prescriptions written for millions of people. As it stands now, doctors and pharmacists are the main users.

Nearly 30 percent of state residents received at least one prescription for a controlled substance, anything from Ambien to OxyContin, in the first six months of this year, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. Nearly 2.5 million people filled prescriptions in that time for more than 375 million doses. The database has about 53.5 million prescriptions in it.

Sheriffs made their pitch Tuesday to a legislative health care committee looking for ways to confront prescription drug abuse. Local sheriffs said that more people in their counties die of accidental overdoses than from homicides.

For years, sheriffs have been trying to convince legislators that the state's prescription records should be open to them. "We can better go after those who are abusing the system," said Lee County Sheriff Tracy L. Carter.

Others say opening up patients' medicine cabinets to law enforcement is a terrible idea. "I am very concerned about the potential privacy issues for people with pain," said Candy Pitcher of Cary, who volunteers for the nonprofit American Pain Foundation. "I don't feel that I should have to sign away my privacy rights just because I take an opioid under doctor's care." Pitcher is receiving treatment for a broken back.

The ACLU opposed a bill in 2007 that would have opened the list to law enforcement officials, said ACLU lobbyist Sarah Preston. The organization would likely object to the new proposal.

"What really did concern us is the privacy aspect," she said. Opening the record to more users could deter someone from getting necessary medicine because of the fear that others would find out, she said, "particularly in small towns where everybody knows everybody."

The state started collecting the information in 2007 to help doctors identify patients who go from doctor to doctor looking for prescription drugs they may not need, and to keep pharmacists from supplying patients with too many pills. But only about 20 percent of the state's doctors have registered to use the information, and only 10 percent of the pharmacies are registered.

Many chain pharmacies aren't connected to the Internet, said Andy Ellen, a lobbyist for the N.C. Retail Merchants Association. Pharmacy computers work on closed systems so they won't be vulnerable to viruses that could slow or crash their networks. Pharmacies are trying to figure out a way around that obstacle to the controlled-substance prescriptions list, he said.

Bettie Blanchard, a woman from Dare County whose adult son is recovering from addiction to prescription drugs, said doctors should be required to consult the list when prescribing controlled substances.

She also wants doctors to get more education on prescribing narcotics. Doctors should be required to tell patients that the medicine they are being prescribed can be addictive, she said.

William Bronson, who works in a drug control unit at DHHS, presented what could be a compromise to the sheriffs' request - allowing local drug investigators to request information related to ongoing investigations, but not let them go in to the computer records themselves.

Eddie Caldwell, lobbyist for the N.C. Sheriff's Association, said the level of access to the data is up for discussion.

"There's a middle ground where the sheriffs and their personnel working on these drug abuse cases get the information they need in a way that protects the privacy of that information," he said. "No one wants every officer in the state to be able to log on and look it up."

SOURCE






Fighting against slavery? Pull the other one

Anti-traffickers promiscuously use the s-word in order to present themselves as heroic rescuers of fallen women

Following a series of Channel 4 TV programmes that charted the shocking stories of abuse and exploitation of so-called ‘modern-day slaves’ – women and children from abroad coerced to work in Britain as domestic servants and prostitutes – it is important to make one thing clear: slavery was abolished 200 years ago and it has not returned.

Thankfully, for all Channel 4’s promiscuous use of the s-word, today there are no open markets where men, women and children of a certain colour are bought and sold like cattle, shipped across the world in horrific conditions, and forced to labour against their will with no remuneration. Of course, Channel 4 didn’t literally claim that these eighteenth-century practices still occur; instead it suggested that thousands of foreign women and children are made to work in slave-like conditions, behind closed doors. Nevertheless, the moral imperative to free these people from their metaphorical chains is as strong as the one that eventually abolished the transatlantic slave trade, the programmes implied.

Does it really matter if well-intentioned individuals and TV producers are taking liberty with labels? Isn’t objection to the use of the word slavery simply academic nitpicking, when the main aim should be to help exploited people by any means necessary?

Actually, a critical look at the Channel 4 programmes makes clear that all this ‘slavery’ talk and ‘anti-slavery’ campaigning is only helping to put migrants and would-be migrants into a submissive relationship with police, charities and feminist activists who fancy themselves as modern-day abolitionists. These self-styled rescuers may get a moral boost from their campaigning against ‘modern-day slavery’, but there aren’t many clear benefits for the victims they purport to be rescuing. In fact, often these fantasy, feministic rescue operations result in the deportation of migrants who have invested a great deal of time and money in coming over here to work.

The Channel 4 programmes were: Britain’s Secret Slaves, an investigative documentary about domestic workers; I am Slave, a drama based on the real story of a Sudanese girl kidnapped, sold to an Arabic family, and then brought to Britain as their domestic servant; and The Hunt for Britain’s Sex Traffickers, in which a film crew followed police carrying out a nationwide investigation into enforced prostitution in Britain.

In all programmes, three distinct roles were assigned to those involved. First, there were the Dodgy Foreigners – Middle Eastern diplomats who abused their Asian domestic servants; African rebels raiding villages and kidnapping children to sell to wealthy Arabs; Asian pimps. Second, there were the Foreign Victims – impoverished women and children, adrift in the world and with no power to exercise personal agency. And third, there were the rescuers – white and British police, charities, feminists and filmmakers.

These films did show that history is repeating itself – but what is really making a comeback is not slavery, but the ‘white slavery’ panic of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Only where that panic focused on the potential for Western women to be forced into prostitution abroad by evil Chinese, Indian or African men, today’s trafficking panic focuses on the potential for Third World women to be forced into prostitution by evil Chinese, Indian or African men. It was during the white-slavery scare that the term ‘trafficking’ first emerged. The way in which this alleged ‘trafficking’ was reported back in the nineteenth century, and the moral impulses of those who tried to fight it, are eerily similar to today’s anti-trafficking initiatives.

In a 1999 paper, Jo Doezema, a British academic, outlined how fears and anxieties around mass migration, sexuality and the role of women have infused both the old white-slavery panic and the new trafficking panic. At the turn of the century, the white-slavery scare was triggered by a rise of Western women, at a time of increased mobility, venturing abroad to find work, including as prostitutes. And the modern trafficking panic also emerged at a time of borders opening up and people from poorer parts of the world gaining more opportunities to travel.

During the white-slavery scare, there was a growing concern that foreign men – especially Africans, Jews and the Chinese – might kidnap Western women and force them to work as prostitutes. As with today’s traffickers, they were said to have used force, deceit and drugs to lure women across borders. Then, as now, there was a disproportional focus on women and children – and little appreciation of the fact that women, even if in circumstances of duress, are capable of taking active decisions to leave home.

Back then – just like today – conferences were organised, international agreements were signed and new laws were passed, including restrictions on women’s travel. Media reports, novels and plays were written, and state authorities, early feminists, religious associations and puritanical organisations collaborated to put an end to the trafficking of women by foreign sex pests and money-hungry thugs. The victims of ‘white slavery’ were presented as innocent, pure and virginal girls who were subjected to extreme violence, humiliation and disease. The perpetrators were depicted as mafia-like, often working in collusion with corrupt governments – much like those Asian mafia men and Arab diplomats featured in Channel 4’s documentaries.

As Doezema points out, various studies have shown that the white-slavery scare had little basis in reality, and was instead driven by fears that foreigners would violate respectable Western women and corrupt Western society. And while protective measures were introduced under the guise of ‘helping women’, the underlying moral concern, Doezema argues, was with controlling women.

Today, too, undocumented migrants are widely regarded as being pawns in the debased games of trafficking rings. Yet while kidnapping, coercion and maltreatment certainly occur, the fates of undocumented migrants to the West are really in the hands of what Laura María Agustín has termed ‘the rescue industry’.

In her book Sex at the Margins, Agustín (interviewed on spiked here) describes how ‘rescuers’, even when well-intentioned, end up denying the agency of large numbers of working-class migrants. They treat them as ‘passive subjects rather than as normal people looking for conventional opportunities, conditions and pleasures’. Agustín argues that ‘the victim identity imposed on so many in the name of helping them makes helpers themselves disturbingly important figures.’

Just consider the British police officers featured in The Hunt for Britain’s Sex Traffickers who helped carry out Pentameter Two. That operation was heralded as ‘the largest-ever police crackdown on human trafficking’, and it led to the conviction of precisely zero people for forcing women into prostitution. As one journalist has pointed out, the key witness relied on by the police officers – and by Channel 4’s documentary makers – was not actually rescued by the police, but by one of her punters and his ex-wife. Yet viewers were made to believe that there is a clear link between the hundreds of raids carried out as part of Pentameter Two and the rescue of this witness (who was genuinely forced into prostitution in demeaning circumstances).

On Channel 4, the police were allowed to present themselves as knights in shining armour. There was no mention of the fact that two thirds of the 255 women ‘rescued’ by police during the Pentameter raids in 2006 and 2008 quickly dropped off the radar, declining to be helped by the authorities. This led one researcher to conclude that many of these women were simply in Britain to earn money – just like other migrant workers – and just wanted to get on with it rather than be ‘rescued’. The fact is that migrants from poor parts of the world can earn a lot more money in the sex industry than in other lines of work and they would not regard being arrested in a police raid as a form of ‘rescue’. Sixteen women – alleged victims of trafficking – were deported following the Pentameter raids. How helpful.

Illegal migration involves great risks for migrants. They are vulnerable to exploitation, with some held in flats against their will or forced to work long hours for very little pay. Yet the government and anti-trafficking campaigners only end up strengthening borders, by raising suspicions about every man, woman or child moving here from ‘over there’. It is not in migrants’ interest to be described as slaves. This only gives a moral boost to their self-appointed rescuers, who are involved in what Agustín has labelled ‘a colonialist operation’.

Overblown anti-slavery campaigns are really about rescuing the flagging reputation of the British police, government officials and others. Most migrants probably experience these campaigns as patronising and restrictive.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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10 September, 2010

What have we come to when middle-class girls see whoring as a career choice?

Bel Mooney bemoans modern Britain where "There is no such thing as right and wrong". While Left-dominated schools preach that, the sort of thing she deplores below will be encouraged. Unlike the USA, few people are churchgoers in Britain so they hear very little that counters the nihilistic gospel of Leftism. In fact they are much more likely to hear Christianity mocked by the BBC and other Left-dominated media



When it comes to human failings, I always try to be understanding. In fact, readers of my Saturday advice column in the Mail will know that it’s my stock-in-trade. But there are times, I’m afraid, when sympathy fails me and I am left nursing a deep anger which needs putting into words.

Sometimes, even those words fail me. How else to respond to this week’s story of well-educated girls — brought up in decent homes with every privilege — choosing to sell their bodies for a fast buck, not caring how many footballers use them in one week?

Frankly, I am dumbstruck at their stupidity, their vulgarity and their degradation of what it means to be a woman today, in a world where sexual equality was won through great courage and at great cost by the generations who came before them.

I think of all those who fought hard for women’s equality, and I can hear them turning in their graves at the sleazy stories of Jennifer Thompson and Helen Wood — the two young women who earned £1,200 each for threesomes with Wayne Rooney.

Of course, in one sense we read of Rooney’s tawdry transactions with these young women and feel little surprise. The man is a rough, over-paid, self-indulgent fool who doesn’t deserve a loyal wife and the gift of an innocent child.

The only shock is that he wanted to pay for sex, since so many foolish girls seem willing to offer it to footballers for free. (Even ones who are as ugly on the outside as they are inside.) but what of the girls themselves? To read the detail of their stories is to realise, with utter disbelief, that no amount of education can prevent a greedy and deluded young woman from choosing prostitution.

Having intelligent, well-heeled parents, a stable home, moral guidance, a private education, and all the opportunities that modern life can offer a girl with brains, is no guarantee against them wanting to sell their bodies, it seems. What sort of world do we live in when middle-class girls see whoring as a viable career choice?

The beaten and abused women (often children) who are trafficked for sex all over the world have no choice about what happens to them. The abject females who stand on street corners in the red-light areas of our major cities, peddling sex (and risking their lives) to feed savage drug habits, do, at least, have some sort of ‘excuse’.

In the UK alone, 75 per cent of prostitutes started when still under-age, nearly three-quarters of all British prostitutes were at some point in care, and nearly half have suffered sexual abuse — with far more than that having suffered physical abuse within their families.

Yet the ‘happy hooker’ myth (think Pretty Woman and Belle de Jour) continues to persist, and it seems that an increasing number of middle-class teenage girls find it exciting, rather than shocking or dangerous. They fantasise about the glitzy world of overpaid sportsmen who will, as Rooney did, fork out £200 for a pack of cigarettes — and six times that for a fumble — and they want a piece of it.

Now, let’s face it; there have always been ‘groupies’ — dim girls willing to sleep with famous men for the thrill of it. But what of those from stable, respectable homes who actively rebel against their upbringing and enter the oldest profession? These girls will sleep with any stranger for cash, whether a famous footballer or a sleazy businessman on an overnight work trip. They are something different; something very, very troubling.

To be honest, I’ve grown tired of feminists who defend so-called ‘sex workers’ on the grounds that what they do is somehow ‘empowering’. It is not.

When intelligent women make a free choice to shame themselves, and boast about bedding half a football team, they betray everything that women of my generation hold dear. Their behaviour pollutes the lives of younger girls they will never meet — by setting a terrible example.

Twenty-one-year-old Jennifer Thompson (or ‘Juicy Jeni’ as she chooses to style herself) was once a churchgoing teenager who went to a private school. Her father was an oil executive, her mother a PA.

Jennifer’s fellow prostitute (and alleged enthusiastic participant in lesbian scenarios) is 23-year-old Helen Wood — also from a middle-class home. Her mother is a primary school teacher, for heaven’s sake, and her father a university lecturer. I have no doubt the parents of both girls are asking themselves: ‘What went wrong?’

Of course, no outsider can answer that. But we can look at the world those girls have grown up in, and perhaps find some clues.

As a children’s author, I have found myself in many schools over the past 25 years and noticed one significant change — nowadays, girls of ten and over seem to have grown up far too quickly.

So many aspects of popular culture — from fashion, to pop lyrics and videos, to advertising, through to TV programmes like Big Brother and The X Factor — peddle a combined message of sleaze and greed.

This corrupting influence is very hard to avoid. Once, a little girl might have wanted to be a teacher or a doctor (and of course, many still do), but now, sadly, she is likely to say she wants to be a model, a pop star or a WAG.

The most frequent answer I get, when I ask little girls what their ambitions are, is: ‘I want to be famous.’

The disturbing truth is that many teenage girls will read the lurid stories about £1,200-a-night sex and think it sounds a very easy way of making a living. Better than studying; more interesting than a nine-to-five job; even ‘glamorous’. They do not realise that the line between wannabe WAG and girl-on-the-game is very fine indeed.

Just as bad — many teenage boys will think that what they learn from internet porn is clearly right and all girls are cheap slappers, up for anything if the price is right. Little by little, the gutter has become the cultural main street — and morality be damned.

How can women have changed so much in the space of less than a century? On the one hand, you have the noble history of active suffragettes and other brave women who took on the establishment and were punished most severely for merely demanding the right to vote. You have the women who played a vital role at home and as nurses at the Front in the two World Wars. You have the women who challenged institutionalised sexism in the workplace — and bequeathed us a world where equality is no longer an aspiration but a reality. We owe them all so much.

By sickeningly depressing contrast, just a few decades later, we have Juicy Jeni and Helen Wood, who have taken that precious inheritance and wiped their hookers’ stilettos all over it.

They are not the only ones, of course. Less than a year ago I wrote about the famous call girl known as Belle de Jour who was revealed to be Dr Brooke Magnanti, a high-powered scientist casually unabashed about her secret life as a hooker. She boasted of being ‘unbelievably fortunate’ because she enjoyed her horizontal job and had never had a bad experience with a client.

Everything she said proved that you can be blessed with a brain and a privileged life — and still be very, very stupid.

I wonder if ‘Juicy Jeni’ and Helen Wood read Belle de Jour’s lurid, self-serving ramblings as once they might have read fairytales. Or watched the sanitised TV series starring Billie Piper?

They are deluded indeed to believe that there is anything glamorous about this life of vice, well-paid though it is — for a while. The day will come, all too quickly, when they are raddled, used up and unwanted — and wondering what happened to the happy-ever-after they dreamed of, back when they were little girls.

And — you know what? It will be nobody’s fault but their own. They think they are selling their bodies. They end up selling their souls.

SOURCE





Outspoken German banker squeezed out

He had a lot of support for his views from the German public but Germany is a very stratified society and the elite did not approve -- so out he goes

For more background, see here

A BOARD member of Germany's central bank dramatically resigned overnight after causing weeks of uproar with inflammatory comments on immigrants and Jews. "The Bundesbank board and its member Thilo Sarrazin are aware of their responsibilities to the institution of the Bundesbank," the bank said in a surprise statement posted on its website. "Given the public debate, the parties concerned are going, of mutual accord, to end their cooperation at the end of the month."

The Frankfurt-based Bundesbank had previously wanted the German president to fire him, as it was unable to do so itself, and Mr Sarrazin had been refusing to go quietly. But on Thursday the bank said it had "withdrawn its request" and that the 65-year-old had asked President Christian Wulff to relieve him of his duties. It even thanked Mr Sarrazin "for the work he has done".

The furore followed the publication of a new book by Mr Sarrazin, "Germany Does Itself In", and controversial remarks saw him branded racist and anti-Semitic and earned him sharp criticism from top politicians.

In the book, he says Europe's top economy is being undermined, overwhelmed and made "more stupid" by poorly educated, fast-breeding, badly integrated and unproductive Muslim immigrants and their offspring. "If I want to hear the muezzin's call to prayer, then I'll go to the Orient," he says in the book, saying that allowing in millions of "guest workers" in the 1960s and 1970s was a "gigantic error".

He also says that Turkish and Kurdish "clans" have a "long tradition of inbreeding", leading to higher rates of birth defects, and ponders whether this might be one reason for immigrants' poor school performance. He also told a newspaper that "all Jews share a certain gene", a property he said was shared by the Basques.

Chancellor Angela Merkel called the remarks "completely unacceptable" but surveys have indicated that Sarrazin enjoys considerable sympathy among the population at large. Backing for Sarrazin is so strong that a survey published on Sunday indicated that if he set up his own new political party, almost one in five (18 per cent) would vote for him.

Sarrazin has no intention of starting a political party, but the survey raised fears that a charismatic right-wing populist in Germany, like anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, could win considerable political support.

The German Government admits that its record on integrating immigrants into society has been less than perfect. According to official figures, nearly one in five young people without German nationality, which many second and third generation immigrants do not have, leave school with no qualifications.

Other figures show that people in Germany of Turkish origin, who number around three million and make up the largest minority, are significantly more likely to be living below the poverty line.

This week, the Government published a national integration programme with a focus on improving immigrants' German language skills.

SOURCE





Completely mad at Microsoft

You've just signed up for Xbox LIVE. You're entering your personal information, and when you get to the city and state fields, you tap in 'Intercourse, Pennsylvania'. A couple days later you get an email from Microsoft notifying you that your account's been suspended. Why? Because you violated the online gaming service's code of conduct by using a term with overtly sexual connotations.

Except Intercourse, PA really exists, an unincorporated hub where "many Amish and local folks do their business." Sound like an honest mistake? Change the city name to Fort Gay and the state to West Virginia--an actual place situated between the Tug Fork and Big Sandy Rivers with a population of around 800--and you wind up with Microsoft, egg on its face, apologizing for banning Josh Moore, a proud resident of the perfectly real West Virginia city.

The 26-year-old simply typed in the name of his city, but was subsequently accused of violating Microsoft's LIVE Code of Conduct. Among other things, the code stipulates that you shouldn't "create a gamertag, profile content, or in-game content that other users may be offended by, this includes comments that look, sound like, stand for, hint at, abbreviate, or insinuate any of the following: profane words/phrases, topics or content of a sexual nature, hate speech (including but not limited to racial, ethnic, or religious slurs), illegal drugs/controlled substances, or illegal activities."

Apparently someone spied Moore's city name, was offended (or assumed Moore was trying to offend), and reported it to Microsoft.

Instead of verifying whether the town's name was real by, you know, taking five seconds to Google it, Microsoft suspended Moore from LIVE for several days--until he managed to convince them Fort Gay was really a town in Wayne County, West Virginia, near the state's border with Kentucky.

"I was mad. ... It makes me feel like they hate gay people," Moore told AP News. "I'm not even gay, and it makes me feel like they were discriminating."

Moore attempted to resolve the situation by contacting customer service, but was warned off using the name--even after asking the rep to Google Fort Gay's zip code. The town's major David Thompson got involved, but was reportedly told by Microsoft that the veracity of the city's name didn't matter, and that the word "gay" was inappropriate regardless.

By the time the issue was escalated to LIVE policy and enforcement director Stephen Toulouse's attention, the damage was done. Toulouse acknowledged it as an unfortunate mistake, and says he'll be contacting Moore to apologize.

Weirder still, Microsoft recently updated its Xbox LIVE code of conduct policy to allow gamers to use sexual orientation identifiers like lesbian, gay, bi, transgender, and straight in their Gamertag or profile.

SOURCE. Also here






Racial Stupidity and Malevolence

Walter E. Williams

The white liberal's agenda, coupled with that of black race hustlers, has had and continues to have a devastating impact on ordinary black people. Perhaps the most debilitating aspect of this liberal malevolence is in the area of education.

Recently, I spoke with a Midwestern university engineering professor who was trying to help an inner-city black student who was admitted to the university's electrical engineering program. The student was sure that he was well prepared for an engineering curriculum; his high school had convinced him of that and the university recruiters supported that notion. His poor performance on the university's math placement exam required that he take remedial math courses. He's failed them and is now on academic probation after two semesters of earning less than a 2.0 grade point average.

The young man and his parents were sure of his preparedness. After all, he had good high school grades, but those grades only meant that he was well behaved. The college recruiters probably knew this youngster didn't have the academic preparation for an electrical engineering curriculum. They were more concerned with racial diversity.

This young man's background is far from unique. Public schools give most black students fraudulent diplomas that certify a 12th-grade achievement level. According to a report by Abigail Thernstrom, "The Racial Gap in Academic Achievement," black students in 12th grade dealt with scientific problems at the level of whites in the sixth grade; they wrote about as well as whites in the eighth grade. The average black high school senior had math skills on a par with a typical white student in the middle of ninth grade. The average 17-year-old black student could only read as well as the typical white child who had not yet reached age 13.

Black youngsters who take the SAT exam earn an average score that's 70 to 80 percent of the score of white students, and keep in mind, the achievement level of white students is nothing to write home about.

Under misguided diversity pressures, colleges recruit many black students who are academically ill equipped. Very often, these students become quickly disillusioned, embarrassed and flunk out, or they're steered into curricula that have little or no academic content, or professors practice affirmative-action grading. In any case, the 12 years of poor academic preparation is not repaired in four or five years of college. This is seen by the huge performance gap between blacks and whites on exams for graduate school admittance such as the GRE, MCAT and LSAT.

Is poor academic performance among blacks something immutable or pre-ordained? There is no evidence for such a claim. Let's sample some evidence from earlier periods. In "Assumptions Versus History in Ethnic Education," in Teachers College Record (1981), Dr. Thomas Sowell reports on academic achievement in some of New York city's public schools. He compares test scores for sixth graders in Harlem schools with those in the predominantly white Lower East Side for April 1941 and December 1941.

In paragraph and word meaning, Harlem students, compared to Lower East Side students, scored equally or higher. In 1947 and 1951, Harlem third-graders in paragraph and word meaning, and arithmetic reasoning and computation scored about the same as -- and in some cases, slightly higher, and in others, slightly lower than -- their white Lower East Side counterparts.

Going back to an earlier era, Washington, D.C.'s Dunbar High School's black students scored higher in citywide tests than any of the city's white schools. In fact, from its founding in 1870 to 1955, most of Dunbar's graduates went off to college.

Let's return to the tale of the youngster at the Midwestern college. Recruiting this youngster to be a failure is cruel, psychologically damaging and an embarrassment for his family. But the campus hustlers might come to the aid of the student by convincing him that his academic failure is a result of white racism and Eurocentric values.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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9 September, 2010

I disagree with many of his teachings. But it's those who oppose Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Britain who are the real bigots

By Stephen Glover

When Pope Benedict XVI touches down in Edinburgh next Thursday at the start of a four-day state visit to Britain, he may be forgiven for thinking he is not particularly welcome. The Devil himself could hardly have got a worse press.

For the first time in my memory, there has been constant coverage in parts of the media, especially the BBC, about the costs to the taxpayer of such a visit, put at some £10 million. At a time of belt-tightening this expenditure is considered by some to be scandalous.

Yet I can’t recall many people querying the costs of previous state visits to Britain. President Jacob Zuma of South Africa is a misogynist polygamist, whose corrupt government is now bearing down on a free Press. Very few complained that the red carpet was being rolled out for him, and the fine wines uncorked, when he came here in March.

Worse still, Pope Benedict is being treated in some quarters as though he were a war criminal.

In a newspaper article yesterday, the well-known Leftist barrister Geoffrey Robertson suggested that instead of offering him a state visit we should be preparing a legal case against him because he has not dealt with sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church as robustly as he should have.

In an even more extreme — if not lunatic — vein, the militant atheist and Christian-hater Richard Dawkins suggested a few months ago that he might orchestrate a ‘citizen’s arrest’ of Pope Benedict during his visit to Britain for ‘crimes against humanity’.

Mr Dawkins was only 37, and perhaps too young to contemplate a citizen’s arrest, when the blood-soaked tyrant President Nicolae Ceausescu made a state visit to Britain in 1978, staying at Buckingham Palace with the Queen. But I can’t remember anyone else advocating locking up Mr Ceausescu.

Many of the things being said and written about Pope Benedict XVI are not merely discourteous to an 83-year-old man who is leader of more than a billion Catholics in the world, not to mention six million in this country. They are also nasty, and reveal disturbing traits of intolerance among this country’s supposedly liberal intelligentsia.

Let me declare that I am not a Roman Catholic. If I am wholly honest, I suppose that, like many Englishmen brought up on tales of the Spanish Armada and the Roman Catholic Queen ‘Bloody Mary’, I retain a few traces of anti-Catholicism that are largely irrational. More rationally, as an Anglican whose father was a clergyman in the Church of England, I resent the Roman Catholic view, promulgated as recently as 1896, that Anglican orders are invalid.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is by this definition little better than a witch doctor. As for the doctrine of ‘Papal Infallibility’, first proclaimed in 1870, that seems barmy.

Nor do I agree with some of the moral teachings of this Pope, or his charismatic predecessor, Pope John Paul II, on matters such as birth control or women priests or homosexuality, which Pope Benedict once described as a tendency towards an ‘intrinsic moral evil’, though he has on other occasions demonstrated some understanding for gays.

Despite these reservations, which will be shared in varying degrees by lots of people, including many Roman Catholics, I nonetheless acknowledge that Pope Benedict expounds what he believes is Christian doctrine in a courageous way.

Unlike many bishops in the Anglican Church, he does not bend to fashionable secular trends, and holds fast to beliefs which are those of the traditional Church. Isn’t that admirable?

And before he is dismissed as a fuddy-duddy ultra conservative, we should remember that he criticised the Anglo-American imbroglio in Iraq, and recently spoke out against the sudden forced expulsion of Roma gipsies by the French Government. Whatever else, Pope Benedict is a humane man.

As for the countless heinous cases of child abuse involving Catholic priests, it can certainly be argued that, like his predecessor, Pope Benedict was slow to grasp the severity and extent of the problem. But despite ingenious attempts to implicate him in some way, there is no evidence at all that he condoned what took place. I believe in the sincerity of his expressions of regret.

Here, surely, is a good, clever and holy man with whom we can disagree on some, or even many, issues. But he is not a monster and child abuser to be vilified as though he has deliberately committed acts of evil.

In his newspaper article Geoffrey Robertson imagined the Pope ‘engaging in hate-preaching against homosexuals or allowing the Catholic Church to operate a worldwide sanctuary for child abusers’. Who is the extremist here?

I have been trying to puzzle out the sheer bloody mindedness and unreasonableness of some of the Pope’s critics. In part it must arise from ancient feelings of fear and hatred about the Vatican and the Papacy which run very deep in this country for well-known historical reasons, and which I have owned up to sharing, albeit in a tiny degree.

But there is something else at work, even more intolerant. It is the voice of secular humanism. I accept, of course, that lots of secular humanists are tolerant and reasonable people. But there is a hard-core which embraces and promotes atheism with the blind fervour of religious zealots. Richard Dawkins is my prime exhibit, but there are many others.

Such people can just about put up with wishy-washy Anglican clerics who substitute fashionable secular platitudes for traditional beliefs, and often display a very faint faith in God.

What these zealots find detestable in Pope Benedict is not only his utter refusal to buy into their secular liberal beliefs, but also his power and effectiveness in sustaining an alternative, God-based moral system.

Parts of the BBC — the Today Programme on Radio 4, for example — offer the secularist zealots an ever-increasing platform from which to undermine Christian belief. Mr Dawkins is a great favourite. So is a philosopher called Anthony Grayling, who campaigns against Christianity. He was at it again on the Today Programme yesterday morning.

It is difficult to disagree with Cardinal Keith O’Brien, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, who recently accused the BBC of ‘a consistent anti-Christian bias’.

The Cardinal noted that the BBC — whose director-general Mark Thompson is, strangely, a Catholic — is broadcasting a programme on the eve of the Pope’s arrival called Trials Of A Pope. He suggested, rightly I am sure, that this will be a ‘hatchet job’.

Notwithstanding all the hatchet jobs that have been executed and others that are planned, Pope Benedict’s visit will probably make a deep impression on many people, including non-Christians.

We may not agree with everything he says, or even with his most fundamental beliefs. But his visit should be welcome because he is something rare in the modern world. A decent man of principle.

SOURCE





Affirmative action loses its gloss

It's been a rough year, politically, for the glass-ceiling smashers. Neither feminism nor the civil rights movement, which claimed credit a couple of years back for the golden gifts of Nancy Pelosi and, especially, Barack Obama, cannot have anticipated what their breakthrough moment in 2008 would lead to.

In 2008, the United States had never had a black -- or, if you like, mixed-race -- president. Nor had it had a woman speaker of the House. In 2009, it got both. Are we glad yet?

If we judge officeholders by the now-inane touchstones of sex and class, why, yes, we're ecstatic. Whoopee, let's break out the champagne!

If, on the other hand, the proper electoral criteria in these cases are sound judgment, prudence, tact and such like, well, that's another matter. When it comes to those long-admired attributes of leadership, both the president and the House speaker now come up short, as voters apparently see it.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Not in the parlance of those who have long lectured us about the death grip of white males on the leadership corps. No, we had to do something about that grip. We had to have Barack. We had to have Nancy. They had to bring new perspectives, new outlooks, new ways of doing things; they had to weave new constituencies into the political fabric.

Well, now, that was fine: The only trouble being that America's first black president and its first woman House speaker inspire many to question the whole premise of promotion based on biological tendencies. On affirmative action, that's to say.

It's a premise very 20th-century American in its origins -- and completely nutty in its implications. Affirmative action in electoral politics makes no more sense than it makes on the factory floor or in the corporate office. The content of one's character, as Martin Luther King Jr. is celebrated for having said, should be what counts. Indeed, it was to embrace this truth that Americans knocked down at last the segregative walls that had divided the citizenry. Show us what you can do, was supposed to become the operative injunction directed at job-seekers and political candidates.

Race wasn't the only factor that propelled Barack Obama to the White House, but it was a big one, as the mixed-race scholar Shelby Steele noted during the campaign. Whites wanted to feel good and affirming about backing a black candidate, Steele said, so they embraced Obama.

Pelosi, congresswoman as she was from San Francisco, was a different kettle of fish. No national constituency chose her; rather, her Democratic colleagues elevated her to leadership. Still, the moment of her elevation became an occasion for congratulations all around. A woman speaker! No good ole boy, she! Man, O man, as we said in more barbaric times than these, things are sure gonna be different now.

Well, er, yes. Things are sure different -- starting with the widespread sense that the Obama administration and its allies have worn out their welcome. Poll after poll suggests disaster for the Democrats this fall, as partial punishment for the present 9.6 percent jobless rate. Never mind, Democrats don't read polls. If they did, they might not, under Pelosi's leadership, have enacted a health care program for which there was no great demand, and instead worked to bring the economy back.

Might not a white male team have done as badly? Yes, certainly. That's part of the point. Many voters saw, and some still see, race and sex rather than good ideas and basic competence, as the governing considerations for leadership. They got their way, didn't they, for better and, as often, worse.

It won't be that easy again: which is good. A candidate of any race or either sex who has great ideas, coupled with impressive skills and deep experience, qualifies for the vote of any intelligent American. A candidate who's merely -- yes, merely -- black or female, or for that matter white or male, hardly qualifies for a second look. It's been a chewy lesson to ingest. But nutritious.

SOURCE





My Hate Speech Conviction

Mike Adams

Over the summer, I was convicted of anti-gay hate speech. The most incredible thing about it was that I never set foot in Canada. The conviction happened while I was in Colorado. But the offense took place almost 15 years ago.

In the 1990s, a friend of mine announced that he was divorcing his wife because he had decided (after a couple of unhappy marriages) to pursue the gay lifestyle. My decision to support him was born out of ignorance. Not only was I harboring the illusion that there actually was such a thing as a gay gene. I was also ignorant of the fact that gays could be successfully cured through therapeutic efforts.

My decision to label my own verbal support of his lifestyle choice as “hate speech” makes sense only after one becomes educated about that lifestyle. According to the Centers for Disease Control, over 82% of all known sexually-transmitted HIV cases in 2006 were the result of male-to-male sexual contact. Moreover, gay and bisexual men account for over 60% of all syphilis cases.

Some will say that homophobia is the indirect cause of such numbers. They claim that fear of stigmatization keeps gays from seeking information before they become ill and from seeking medical help afterwards. But, clearly, that is not the case. In cultures where homosexuality is more accepted the numbers are worse. That is why I steadfastly maintain that supporting my friend’s decision to turn to the homosexual lifestyle was indeed an example of hate speech.

Most gays become angry when someone tells the truth about the health consequences of their lifestyle choice. The reason they get angry over the facts is because their conscience convicts them. When I came to realize that I helped make it easier for my friend to pursue his unhealthy lifestyle my conscience was convicted. I have regretted my verbal support of his decision ever since.

No sane person could ever posit that the act of rectal sodomy is safe, normal, or healthy. The rectum is a one-way street. It is a sewer meant for the expulsion of poison. Treating the rectum as a sex organ is damaging to the health – especially for the recipient of such abuse. That is why it is an act of hate, regardless of whether some choose to call it “love.”

But the gay lifestyle has never been about love. The average number of lifetime sex partners is four for a heterosexual, fifty for a homosexual. Monogamy is the norm (82%) among heterosexuals, and an aberration (2%) among homosexuals. This promiscuity is routed in the pairing of similar traits, which is an inevitable result in homosexual relationships.

It should go without saying that women have greater emotional needs than men, while men have greater physical needs than women. They need each other to balance one another out. And that is why when two men are together the physical aspects of the relationship spiral out of control to the point of compulsion. That is why estimates show that anywhere from 21-43% of homosexual males have had several hundred sex partners.

One study of white male homosexuals, published in the 1970s, showed that 43% of white males had sex with over 500 partners. Over one-quarter (28%) had sex with over 1000 partners. When these drives are unchecked they often go in dangerous directions. Although homosexual men are only about three percent of the population, they commit about one-third of all acts of child molestation.

Even pseudo-conservative Andrew Sullivan knows that homosexuality is about unbridled sexual pursuit rather than love. He openly claims that homosexuals need more than one sex partner and that heterosexual relationships are too restrictive. But he refuses to see succumbing to sexual temptation as a weakness. Instead, he calls it a sign of “honesty” and “flexibility.”

Andrew Sullivan thinks we should all become more like gays. In his calls for the majority to conform to the minority he reveals the fundamental narcissism that is at the core of the gay lifestyle. From Andrew Sullivan’s perspective, homosexuality is all about self-gratification.

But love, by definition, seeks the ultimate good of the loved one by forsaking all others. That is why we must steer our loved ones away from the homosexual lifestyle and suffer the slings and arrows of the true perpetrators of hate speech.

SOURCE




Australia: More Muslim violence against a young girl

A man who broke into a house to attack his sister for "slutting around" has pleaded guilty to charges in Darwin Magistrates Court. Ahmed Al-Tai, 21, was expected to contest the charges, but yesterday pleaded guilty to aggravated assault, property offences and breaching a domestic violence order.

Prosecutor Sergeant Brett Verity told the court Al-Tai flew to Darwin from Broome about 3pm on June 18 after his parents told him his 17-year-old sister had run away from home. He went straight to the house the girl was staying at, smashed a window and glass door to get inside, punched her, stomped on her, kicked her and dragged her out by her hair - while their mother watched.

Sgt Verity said Al-Tai said during the attack: "You want to run around and slut around? I'm back. Where do you think you're going to go now?".

Their mother drove Al-Tai to the hospital, and then took the girl home to wash, telling her to make up a story to tell doctors before she took her to the hospital. When the girl arrived at Royal Darwin Hospital, she told medical staff she had been assaulted, and police were called.

The girl needed surgery to repair a broken tooth, and had a swollen face and a number of bruises.

Al-Tai spent about 25 days in custody after his arrest. Chief Magistrate Hilary Hannam indicated she would need a pre-sentence report and more evidence before sentencing. "It's a very serious set of facts, (committed) on two suspended sentences," she said.

Al-Tai's lawyer Gus Bernadi said the offence was "unique". "I know the offences are serious, but it came out of a particularly unique set of background circumstances," he said. [It's not the least bit unique. It is common Muslim behaviour]

Ms Hannam adjourned the matter until November. Al-Tai's bail was continued.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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8 September, 2010

Swedish Leftists want to stop women breastfeeding in the name of equality

Left Party leader Lars Ohly has been slammed by breastfeeding experts and Red-Green coalition colleagues for advising nursing mothers to pump milk out of their breast so that they can go back to work earlier.

The Left Party stands for a policy of dividing parental leave equally between parents - meaning around seven months of paid leave each. Currently couples have 60 allocated days each with the remaining 270 days divided freely.

The party has not managed to impose the requirement on its Red-Green coalition partners, the Social Democrats and Green Party - despite their respective party members also being in favour - as it was deemed to lack support among parents and the wider electorate.

But despite the fact that the centre-left trio's joint election manifesto does not include the demand, Ohly took the opportunity of Sunday evening's party leader cross-examination on Sveriges Television (SVT) to push the case for the introduction of legally stipulated quotas.

Ohly recommended the use of a breast milk pump to address any problems of the mother not having finished breastfeeding the child prior to handing over the parental ropes to her partner.

"I was home with each of my children for eight months. My ex-wife used a breast pump, one of those modern tools that exist which... meant that it worked very well to enable me to continue to give my children breast milk. That still works today, as far as I understand," Lars Ohly said.

Ohly's comments raised ripples of laughter in the studio and became something of a talking point in the mainstream and social media on Monday. Green Party spokesperson and mother of two, Maria Wetterstrand, was not as amused. "I am not going to have any opinions on whether people should use a breast pump or not. I don't think it is of interest for voters," she said to news agency TT.

Social Democrat leader Mona Sahlin rejected the assertion that Ohly's comments should be interpreted as a political manoeuvre to raise the profile of the issue. "It was no manoeuvre, it was a less clever way of answering a question," Sahlin told TT.

Anna Herting at breastfeeding advice service Amningshjälpen told The Local on Monday that the proposal is hardly practical if the child is still breastfeeding full time. "If the woman wants to go back to work, and the family want to carry on with breast milk, then it would require a flexible employer to allow the working mother to pump out her milk and transport it home during the day."

When asked whether a mother could pump out sufficient milk in the evening to be used the following day, Herting replied: "She would need that milk to feed the child in the evening, and using a breast pump can be problematic for many women."

Lars Ohly on Monday morning also seemed to distance himself from his breast pump comments. "I think that most women are okay with finishing breastfeeding after five or six months," Ohly said on SVT's God morgon programme, a comment which has drawn further criticism. "It is not for a politician, but for every family, to decide how long to breastfeed. It has to depend on the family's situation," Anna Herting told The Local.

Herting explained that Swedish recommendations are for full-time breastfeeding for six months and then part-time for the remainder of the year, but that the choice has to belong to the families themselves on what is best for all parties.

SOURCE





Bollywood Can Show Hollywood How to Fight Terror and Bigotry

Reconquista is the New Cool in Racist Left-wing Hollywood

The Anarchists, Marxists, and Revolutionary Zapatistas I photographed in May now have a movie championing their lunatic vision of America. James P. Pinkerton’s review of Hollywoods latest anti-American killing spree, “Machete” is aptly titled “The Reconquista is Here”.

One could figure that the current drug-war in Mexico–nearly 30,000 people murdered in just three years–would generate a cultural reaction. And one could further figure, of course, that the tens of millions of people who have crossed the U.S.-Mexican border in recent decades would have an enormous cultural impact, including on the movies. But who knew that Hollywood would blame everything that’s gone wrong in Mexico on the “Anglos”?

Well, actually, come to think of it, maybe Hollywood’s adversarial stance toward the majority culture is no surprise at all. Yet rarely has the “case” against Anglo America been made as strongly, albeit cartoonishly, as in “Machete.” …. all the Anglos are either evil or stupid.

By contrast, almost all the Hispanics in the film are virtuous, especially the character portrayed by Michelle Rodriguez, reprising her hot-but-tough-girl role in “Avatar.” In “Machete,” she plays a selfless underground community worker, giving selflessly to “the people.” Her character, who comes to be known as “She,” is meant to remind us of “Che,” as in Che Guevara, of course. Indeed, She/Che has the most political lines in the film: “We didn’t cross the border–the border crossed us!” And using words directly taken from advocates of “comprehensive immigration reform” in Washington, she adds, “The system doesn’t work, it’s broken.”

More than just another movie exemplifying liberalism’s self-loathing and glorification of violence, Machete goes further in advocating the radical justification for leftist war against America. Machete is nothing less than Psycho-political incitement to violent revolution against American society and sovereignty.

John Nolte at Big Hollywood puts it this way:

The story of a former Mexican “Federale” (the great Danny Trejo) framed for the attempted assassination of a racist Texas State Senator (the hammy Robert DeNiro) is both racial and racist. “Machete” isn’t about a political call for the powerless to fight THE corrupt MAN, it’s a call for revolution; Mexicans against Americans – and in the words of the character meant to be our evolving conscience, Jessica Alba’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Sartana, it’s about how those who believe in only LEGAL immigration “deserve to be cut down.” This is her rousing fist-in-the-air message to a gathered army of illegal day laborers who have been patiently waiting for the call away from their jobs as dishwashers, gardeners and hotel maids to wage war against a cruel America whose immigration laws, by the way, are nowhere near as harsh as Mexico’s.

In Machete Americans are shown committing atrocities like killing a pregnant woman while saying “Welcome to America” or nailing a dope smoking priest (Cheech Marin) to a cross while hurling racist hate speech as Hollywood imagines it.

Meanwhile it’s been 9 years of non-stop terrorism and terror plots here in the real world and Hollywood has not offered one critical portrayal of the world of the Islamic jihadist. It takes Bollywood to show the way in 2009 with Kurbaan, which is set inside the muslim community in the United States. The movie, made in Hindi with English subtitles, courageously portrays the infiltration of academia and suburbia by foreign born jihadists and also provides a portrait of liberated (moderate) muslims as heroes fighting against the terrorists next door.

It depicts a liberated muslim woman who is forced to participate in a suicide terror plot after unwittingly marrying a foreign jihadi. A liberated muslim couple who work in the news industry are brought into the plot as tragic heros to combat the terrorists. Go to the second half (instant view on Netfix) of this movie (skipping the Bollywood romance) and see what Hollywood should be doing to help combat the world of Jihad terror that has imbedded itself into the very fabric of American society. The moderate muslim heros are credible and complex and go a long way to present positive role models for the muslim community.

Hollywood has no doubt yearned to make jihad supporting movies reflecting their true sympathies for America’s Islamist enemy. The only question is why they haven’t. My guess is that they are afraid of the impact it might have on their wallets but not out of any conscientious restraint. The idea of loving America or valuing western civilization above all others is anathema to the lewd liberal lushes and dopers that run Hollywood. Having imbibed their anti-American marxism with their LSD in the 60s they can’t help but cheer on the reconquista and turn a blind eye to the Stealth jihad. It’s just a new chapter in their long hoped for smashing of “the system.”

Truth is much weirder than fiction when it comes to the mindset of American’s homegrown Hollywood left.

SOURCE






Greek daily distributes Turkish film to mark Sept. 6-7 pogrom

Slaughter of Christians by Muslims again

On the 55th anniversary of a pogrom that precipitated the exodus of thousands of Istanbul’s ethnic Greek minority, the best-selling newspaper here has marked the date with the distribution of a movie on the events – one made by a Turkish director.

“We – filmmakers – should work more for the two peoples’ wounds to be healed. For this [to be achieved], four films were made in the scope of Turkish cinema, of which two are mine. Unfortunately we do not see such examples from Greek Cinema. I expect similar works from Greek colleagues who share my artist sensitivity,” said Tomris Giritlio?lu, director of the film “Pains of Autumn,” which is being distributed by one of Greece’s top-selling dailies, Ta Nea.

The pogrom, which occurred on Sept. 6-7, 1955, was directed at the non-Muslim residents of Istanbul and resulted in many deaths, huge property damage an exodus by a huge proportion of Turkey’s remaining Greek population.

Ta Nea devoted four pages to covering the pogrom, in which it featured memories from Greece’s top-selling crime fiction novelist and screenwriter, Petros Markaris.

Markaris, who was 18 at the time, spoke about the events at Heybeliada Island, where he was on holiday.

“The commander of the Marine School on Heybeliada convinced the police chief not to let demonstrators set foot on the island. The police chief pulled his gun and halted the demonstrators when they arrived. I faced total devastation the following day when I went to the Beyo?lu, Fener and Kurtulu? [neighborhoods of Istanbul]. Wherever Greeks lived, that neighborhood’s school and church had been destroyed. It was impossible to walk in Beyo?lu because of the broken glass from shop windows and the rolls of fabric that had been thrown onto the street,” he said.

“It is wrong to say that all Turks took part in or supported the events. There were Turks who helped their Greek neighbors, who protected and hid them,” he said.

Reminiscing over some of his friends at the Austrian High School, he remembers being told, “‘Tell your complaints to Greece.’” Another student, however, said, “‘We do not approve of what has been done.’”

Markaris said he never forgot his literature teacher telling him, “‘Petro, I want you to know, I am ashamed in the name of my people. I am apologizing to you.’ What my then 27-year-old literature teacher said, Turkey repeated 50 years later.”

The atmosphere in Istanbul had been tense in the lead-up to the pogrom, especially because of Cyprus and demands from some for “Enosis,” or union, with Greece.

“The word ‘Enosis’ was perceived as a curse by the Turks. The Greeks sensed they would be the scapegoats in this matter. The slogan ‘Speak Turkish, Citizen’ was becoming popular in Istanbul,” he said.

“They blamed Adnan Menderes [first PM of Turkey in the multi-party era] for the Sep 6-7 events. However, we now understand years later that is not really an accurate reflection of what was happening. The Greek, Armenian and Jewish minorities who dominated trade in Istanbul had been living in fear since the start of World War II. There was an evil person who wanted to ‘reset’ those minorities: ?smet ?nönü.”

Markaris said President ?nönü was a fan of the Germans and accused him of intending to emulate the Nazis and cleanse Istanbul of religious minorities.

“The ‘20th Draw Safeguards’ in 1941, and the ‘Wealth Tax’ in 1942, were implemented in this scope,” Markaris said, in reference to various official policies essentially designed to economically impoverish non-Muslims.

?nönü, however, was forced to loosen the measures after the Nazis were defeated at Stalingrad, giving religious minorities some time to recover, he said.

As for Menderes, Markaris said he supported a liberal economy. “He let the minorities take initiative. The same Prime Minister Adnan Menderes, who the Istanbul Greeks saw as a ‘savior,’ left those people to the mercy of the mob.”

Whether Turkey’s then-prime minister was notified of the pogrom beforehand or not, or whether the attack was a conspiracy from the secret services remains unknown.

“The Greeks of Istanbul held Greece and Cyprus [responsible] for what happened to them. The generation that experienced those events has no sympathy for Greek Cypriots because of this,” he said.

SOURCE





A licence to interfere in our everyday lives

The [British] Liberal-Conservative coalition government’s proposed licensing reforms were whisked out for a brief consultation in August, which comes to a close this Wednesday (8 September). The anodyne title of the consultation (‘Rebalancing the Licensing Act’) and the rhetoric of ‘empowering communities’ are little more than pretty wrapping: the content is sinister stuff.

Far from empowering communities, the proposed changes would increase the power of local councils, the police and other authorities, who will be removed from necessary checks and balances. Far from rolling back New Labour’s hyper-regulatory regime, the proposed changes would roll it out much further and faster.

After the Licensing Act 2003, New Labour created a network of Licensing Committees, based in each local authority, to issue licenses to sell alcohol to pubs and other premises. This replaced the previous system of licenses issued by local magistrates. In theory, replacing magistrates with local councillors could have been a good thing - except that the Licensing Act set out four ‘licensing objectives’, which meant that the committee started to play a much more interfering role in licensed premises.

The objectives were wide-ranging: 1) the prevention of crime and disorder; 2) improving public safety; 3) the prevention of public nuisance; and 4) the protection of children from harm. In pursuing these aims, Licensing Committees have imposed petty conditions on pubs and bars that have little to do with genuine public order or legality issues. At the Manifesto Club, we have had cases reported to us of pubs asked to install CCTV cameras or CRB-check their staff, put up ‘responsible drinking’ notices, search customers, or install a ‘Think 30’ ID check policy. These same Licensing Committees were responsible for issuing licenses for what the Licensing Act termed ‘regulated entertainment’, covering everything from live music to the mere possession of a piano, not only in licensed premises but in village halls and old people’s homes.

If this current government is committed to civil liberties, as it claims, then the powers of Licensing Committees should be reduced and not massively increased, as this consultation document proposes.

In our view, the problems with the government’s proposals are as follows.

Overturning principles of due process

The Lib-Con consultation document proposed allowing licensing authorities to bring cases for licence removal before themselves. It also suggests reducing the burden of proof required for a licensing authority to remove a pub’s or bar’s licence - and that licensing authorities hear their own appeals, rather than the appeal being heard in a magistrate’s court as it is at present. Finally, it suggests enacting licensing authorities’ decisions as soon as they are made, rather than pending an appeal.

These proposals go against the basic elements of justice: that a person is innocent until proven guilty; that a state authority must have a very good reason before stopping people from doing things; that an appeal is heard by a different authority from the authority that made the original decision. These proposals essentially give licensing authorities unchecked powers to close down, or impose their conditions on, licensed premises, without being subject to due process.
Accepting the police’s word as truth

The consultation document proposes that licensing authorities accept all representations from the police – for example, to close down a bar – unless there is strong evidence to the contrary. This is a big shift from the current situation, where evidence from the police is generally treated with the same weight as evidence from other bodies.

This is a worrying development. The police have a very particular set of interests, which do not marry with those of civic interest groups. The police, if given the choice, would doubtless not have any bars or nightlife at all, since this would mean less crime and rowdiness and a quieter life for them. In Barking and Dagenham, two police officers put in 22 applications for licence review in the course of a single year; there were even local supermarkets on their list. Should their opinion always prevail? No. The police’s views on these matters must always be tested and weighed in courts or by other independent bodies, not only for their truth but also for their reasonableness when countered against other social interests, such as members of the public wanting to be able to buy beer at their supermarket.

Empowering the health police

The consultation document suggests allowing health authorities to bring licence review cases. It also suggests designating ‘health harm’ as the fifth ‘licensing objective’.

Most local health authorities would no doubt be too busy treating patients to get involved in licensing proceedings. But there is an element of the medical establishment which, like the police, has a particular set of interests that are not necessarily the same as the general public’s. Statements from the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and other health bodies show a growing penchant for interfering in people’s liberties for the alleged sake of our health – for example, NICE’s recent call for a minimum alcohol price and for a complete ban on alcohol advertising.

From a pure health perspective, it might be better not to drink at all and to be in bed early every night. However, we do not organise our lives solely around our physical wellbeing, which is why it is better that doctors do not get too involved in politics. Giving health authorities more political powers would encourage the authoritarian strand of the medical establishment. As a licensing objective, it would also give Licensing Committees even more powers to interfere in city nightlife.....

The consultation document proposes increasing the regulation of what are known as ‘temporary events’, with the proposal that holders of temporary events must give longer periods of notice. It also proposes that the police have more time in which to object to applications, and that the number of applications that can be made by one person or in one area are limited.

There is already too much bureaucracy covering applications for ‘temporary events’ – a category that includes carnivals, village fetes, public concerts, beer festivals, and so on. Temporary events are essential and spontaneous parts of community life; it should not be too onerous for members of the public to organise these events, even if they lack expertise in licensing regulation or other forms of local council bureaucracy. The proposal to increase the regulation of temporary events, requiring more procedures, greater notice and more potential for objection from the authorities, would greatly increase the administrative burden and make it harder for local events to go ahead...

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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7 September, 2010

Catholic church accuses BBC of 'anti-Christian' bias

Britain’s most senior Catholic has accused the BBC of harbouring an institutional bias against “Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular”. Cardinal Keith O’Brien said the BBC’s news coverage is contaminated by “a radically secular and socially liberal mindset”.

The Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh said the corporation’s intolerance of religion is equivalent to its “massive” political bias against the Conservatives in the 1980s.

He also accused the corporation of plotting a “hatchet job” on the Vatican in a documentary about clerical sex abuse on the eve of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain.

Cardinal O’Brien believes that atheists like Professor Richard Dawkins are given a disproportionate amount of airtime while mainstream Christian views are marginalised.

He is also angered by a 15 per cent slump in religious programming over the past 20 years and believes the broadcaster should appoint a religion editor to address the decline.

He said: “This week the BBC’s director general [Mark Thompson] admitted that the corporation had displayed ‘massive bias’ in its political coverage throughout the 1980s, acknowledging the existence of an institutional political bias.”

“Our detailed research into BBC news coverage of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular, together with a systematic analysis of output by the Catholic church, has revealed a consistent anti-Christian institutional bias.”

He added that insiders at the BBC had privately admitted that there is a cultural intolerance of Christianity at the corporation. “Senior news managers have admitted to the Catholic church that a radically secular and socially liberal mindset pervades their newsrooms. “This sadly taints BBC news and current affairs coverage of religious issues, particularly matters of Christian beliefs.”

Cardinal O’Brien joined calls by the Church of England for the BBC to appoint a religion editor to spearhead the corporation’s coverage of faith issues.

The Rt Revd Nigel McCulloch, Bishop of Manchester and the Church of England’s lead spokesman on communications, made the request last month in a submission to the BBC Trust’s ongoing review of BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio 7. He wrote: "We see no logical distinction between the genre of arts, science and business (all of which include reflecting and discerning between different opinions and perspectives, and have BBC editors) and that of religion.”

Cardinal O’Brien also voiced fears that the broadcaster will use a forthcoming documentary called Benedict –Trials of a Pope to humiliate the pontiff on the eve of his visit to Britain.

The programme, which charts the clerical child abuse crisis that has dogged the Catholic church, has been made by Mark Dowd, a homosexual former Dominican friar. It will be aired on September 15.

Senior Catholic figures have suggested that the Pope could meet with victims of abuse by Roman Catholic priests when he visits Britain later this month. Cardinal Vincent Nichols told BBC1’ Andrew Marr show yesterday: "The pattern of his last five or six visits has been that he has met victims of abuse. "But the rules are very clear, that is done without any pre-announcement, it is done in private and it is done confidentially, which is quite right and proper so I think we have to wait and see.”

The BBC dismissed Cardinal O’Brien’s criticism of its religious coverage and denied that it had marginalised mainstream religious issues, which it said were placed “at the heart” of its schedule.

A spokeswoman said: “The BBC’s commitment to religious broadcasting is unequivocal. BBC news and current affairs has a dedicated religion correspondent, and works closely with BBC Religion, ensuring topical religious and ethical affairs stories are featured across all BBC networks.”

In response to the Cardinal's attack on the forthcoming documentary by Mr Dowd, she said: "Mark is just one presenter in a range of programming that will include live news and events coverage of the visit itself, and other documentaries across radio and TV."

SOURCE






Some Leftist racists

Using their own standards

Recall that during the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama's candidacy was rocked by YouTube videos of his unhinged, America-denouncing, whitey-condemning, anti-Semitic pastor of 20 years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Several Journolist members cried Mayday! and traded e-mails on how to control the damage.

Spencer Ackerman's Huffington Post bio describes his position with The Washington Independent as "senior reporter." This Journolist "journalist" offered this game plan: "If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us. Instead, take one of them -- Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares -- and call them racists." You know, eenie, meenie, minie, moe.

To be fair, some lefties actually want a plausible reason to call someone a racist. So, what makes Beck one?

As we were constantly reminded this past weekend, Beck once called President Obama "a racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people, or the white culture."

Beck says he regrets what he said. He says he should have referred to and condemned the "black liberation theology" preached by Wright. But only liberals are allowed regrets.

Here is The Glenn Beck Rule: When one recklessly, irresponsibly and with absolutely no basis calls someone a racist, or accuses him or her of racism or of racial insensitivity, or uses incendiary, racially tinged language -- the person who makes the accusation is the racist.

Let's apply The Rule:

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif.: Then-President George Herbert Walker Bush is "a racist."

Sen. (then-candidate) Claire McCaskill, D-Mo.: Then-President George W. Bush "let people die on rooftops in New Orleans because they were poor and because they were black."

Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y.: "George (W.) Bush is our Bull Connor," referring to the racist Southern lawman who sicced dogs and turned water hoses on civil rights marchers. Of the GOP, Rangel said, "It's not 'sp--' or 'n-----' anymore; they just say, 'Let's cut taxes.'"

Donna Brazile, Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign manager: The GOP has "a white-boy attitude," which means the GOP "must exclude, denigrate and leave behind."

Rep. (then-state Sen.) Diane Watson, D-Calif., on black affirmative action foe Ward Connerly: "He's married to a white woman. He wants to be white. He wants a colorless society. He has no ethnic pride. He doesn't want to be black."

Then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.: In a speech in a black Baptist church, she said: "When you look at the way the (then-Republican-controlled) House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation. And you know what I'm talkin' about."

Director Spike Lee: Then-Sen. Trent Lott is a "card-carrying member" of the Ku Klux Klan; and about his dislike for interracial couples, Lee said, "I give interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on the street."

The Rev. Al Sharpton: Falsely accused an assistant district attorney of sexually assaulting a black teenager; called the Central Park Jogger "a whore"; called black then-New York Mayor David Dinkins a "n----- whore"; denounced as "white interlopers" people wishing to do business in Harlem; and, during the deadly Crown Heights affair, said, "If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson: Jews are "Hymies," and New York is "Hymie-Town." First he denied saying it. Then came an admission, after that an apology, followed by collective media amnesia.

Any questions?

More HERE




Victims on the road to 'peace'

by Jeff Jacoby

TALIA AND YITZHAK AMES met as students at Moscow University, as they waited in line one day to register for their classes. They got married in 1985, and had two children by the time they emigrated to Israel in 1991. Four more children followed in the next 19 years, and Talia was nine months pregnant with their seventh when she and Yitzhak were murdered by Palestinian terrorists last week.

The killers ambushed them as they were driving home Tuesday night, heading south on Highway 60 toward Beit Haggai in the Hebron Hills. With Talia and Yitzhak in the car when the killers opened fire were two other residents of Beit Haggai: Avishai Schindler, a newly-married yeshiva student, and Kochava Even-Haim, a nursery school teacher and the mother of an 8-year-old daughter. Kochava's husband Maimon, an emergency-aid volunteer, was one of the first responders to arrive at the scene, unaware that he would find his wife among the dead. All of the victims were shot repeatedly at close range, and the car was riddled with dozens of bullets.

Hamas, a terrorist organization whose charter extols the murder of Jews, promptly claimed responsibility for the massacre, describing it as "part of the repelling operations against the occupation assaults on Gaza Strip and West Bank." In Hamas-controlled Gaza, the bloodshed was celebrated; the news was broadcast from loudspeakers and there was a "victory" rally in the Jebaliya refugee camp. The Palestinian Authority, headed by Fatah's Mahmoud Abbas, issued a tepid statement condemning the Hamas "operation" -- not because the slaughter of innocent civilians is a brutal atrocity, but merely on the tactical grounds that it "contradicts Palestinian interests" by making it more difficult for "the Palestinian leadership to garner international support."

The killings on Highway 60 took place as Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was en route to Washington for a new round of negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. When word of the bloodbath reached him, he could have cancelled the talks and immediately returned home to attend the victims' funerals and focus on restoring security. But he declined to alter his itinerary. "We are committed to peace," his spokesman said. His position didn't change even after a second attack along the same highway Wednesday night, when terrorists opened fire on an Israeli car, wounding a young rabbi and his wife.

A persistent myth of the Arab-Israeli conflict is that Palestinian terrorists kill Jews in order to "disrupt the peace process," and that the best response to terrorism is to persevere with negotiations. That explanation for last week's carnage was repeated everywhere, from the White House ("This brutal attack underscores how far the enemies of peace will go to try to block progress") to Israel's opposition leader Tzipi Livni ("[the terrorists had a] "cold, political motive: to prevent the peace process" to the international media.

But far from opposing a "peace process" meant to push Israel into ever-deeper concessions, retreats, and self-endangerment, terrorists -- whether affiliated with Hamas or with Fatah -- seek to accelerate it. The two Palestinian factions may be at war with each other, but they have always been as one in rejecting Israel's existence as the sovereign state of the Jewish people. So long as they refuse to budge from that position, Israeli-Palestinian peace is impossible.

Yet rather than say so forthrightly, Israeli leaders keep insisting that diplomacy can end the conflict, and that they are prepared to sacrifice greatly for peace. It was once Israel's policy never to bargain with terrorists, and to pursue peace through deterrence and patience and strength. But with the advent of the Oslo Accord, deterrence gave way to appeasement, negotiations, and a yearning for peace at any price. To both Fatah and Hamas, that desperation has made the Jewish state seem weak -- and vulnerable to further pressure. In an opinion survey released last week, 55 percent of Palestinians endorsed anti-Israel violence as "essential" or "desirable," while less than 14 percent called it "unacceptable." "Israel's very pursuit of peace," journalist Evelyn Gordon wrote in Commentary earlier this year, "has spurred its enemies to go for the jugular."

Netanyahu should have walked away from the table after last week's butchery. Instead, he publicly anointed Abbas "my partner for peace" and reasserted his commitment to negotiations. When those negotiations fail, as they inevitably will, the impasse will be blamed on the insufficiency of Israel's concessions. That will further enrage its enemies, some of whom will turn to terror.

And so the peace process proceeds. The victims on Highway 60 were only the latest of Israel's "sacrifices for peace." They are not likely to be the last.

SOURCE





TIME Magazine's Latest Blood Libel About Israel

by Prof. Phyllis Chesler

The September 13, 2010 issue of TIME Magazine arrived yesterday. The cover story is titled "Why Israel Doesn't Care About Peace" and is illustrated by a large Jewish star composed of daisies. Yes, daisies-as in "counting daisies, don't have a care in the world." This is precisely the point of Karl Vick's article. He writes:

Israelis are no longer preoccupied with the matter [of peace with the Palestinians]. They're otherwise engaged: They're making money; they're enjoying the rays of the late summer... they have moved on.

Vick quotes an Israeli real estate agent in Ashdod, one Eli, who tells him: "People are indifferent. They don't care if there's going to be war. They don't care if there's going to be peace. They don't care. They live in the day."

According to Vick, Israelis don't care about peace, peace negotiations, or about the Palestinians because they are simply having too good a time: sunbathing, swimming, caf‚-hopping, profiting from start-up companies, and, according to polls cited by Vick, utterly disconnected from "politics;" indeed Vick suggests that Israelis resemble Californians more than they resemble Egyptians. These are all points which scream: Israel does not fit in; if Israelis were only more impoverished, more indolent, and paradoxically, even more "laid back," they might be recognizable as indigenous to the region, a true part of the Middle East.

These are Vick's thoughts, not mine.

Of course, Jews are the original Palestinians and the most indigenous of the region's inhabitants; yes, there are many impoverished Israelis, both Jews and non-Jews; and, let's not forget that there are even some Israelis who remain permanently on high alert for the next terrorist attack, permanently scarred by the last ones. For a moment, let's forget about all that. Allow me to ask: Why doesn't Vick also point out that Palestinians are leading the high life on the West Bank and in sumptuous villas on both the West Bank and in Gaza; that they, too, are sunbathing, swimming, shopping, dining out, and relaxing at the beach-at least as much as the Islamist thugs who run the lives of Palestinians will allow it?

Vick and his editors at TIME seem to think that showing six photos of Israelis at leisure: blowing smoke on a beach chair, lounging on a beach chair, resting in an army uniform on the beach without a chair, playing with one's baby in a stroller, sitting at a caf‚-are proof that Israelis are engaging in activities which are not admirable, are, in fact, "proof" that they are not suffering but rather, proof that Israelis simply don't care about peace with the Palestinians. And Vick brings in polls as well as expert and person-in-the-street opinions to back up this claim.

Vick writes that real estate is booming, as is business in general, Israeli "brainiacs" have helped their nation avoid the economic disasters that have plunged Europe and America into a recession. He literally writes this. "Israel avoided the debt traps that dragged the U.S. and Europe into recession. It is known as a start-up nation-second only to the U.S. companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange."

Is Vick aware that, consciously or not, intentionally or not, he is counting on the world's long-held resentment about Jewish creativity, genius, and scientific and economic success-counting on the world's willingness to scapegoat Israel once again for crimes that it has not committed? Or because Jews seem to "know something," maybe they are channeling God directly and thus, the deck is stacked against non-Jews. Vick presents Israel's "success" as somehow unseemly, because it makes other nations look bad. Does he harbor the suspicion that Jewish prosperity has been "stolen" from non-Jews or is he merely advertising that Jewish gold is there, ripe for the taking?

Buried-but really buried-- in Vick's four page cover piece are snippets of true facts: That the Israelis are weary of peace negotiations which never succeed because the Palestinians do not want peace; that Arabs and Palestinians want to destroy the Jewish state and as many Jews as possible.

But Vick fails to convey that negotiations cannot work as long as the ultra-Nazified Arab Islamic propaganda against Jews and Israel continues to turn out children who hate Jews and who become human homicide bombs, snipers, kidnappers, kassam rocket throwers, etc.

Here is what Vick utterly fails to comprehend, namely, that the Israelis are not merely tired, disenchanted, living in la-la land a la southern Californians (hence, the Jewish star made of daisies on the cover). The Israelis are actually showing the entire world how to embrace life, even as they live, trembling, in the shadow of death. They are teaching the world how to "love life more than they fear death." A new and wonderful book A New Shoah. The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism by Italian journalist Giulio Meotti, which is not yet out, makes precisely this point.

The Jewish insistence on life may be the key to our survival as a people despite ceaseless persecution. It might be the lesson, the model, for all humanity in an era of genocides, civil wars, torture chambers, tyrannies, and totalitarian regimes. Why is TIME turning things on their head and refusing to recognize the courage and the heroism of Jewish Israelis who choose to live in the moment when the moment is all they have? Against all odds, the Jews simply refuse to give up. As Meotti writes of the numerous victims of terrorism during the ongoing Intifada of 2000, "Israel teaches the world love of life, not in the sense of a banal joie de vivre, but as a solemn celebration."

Meotti begins where I began in early 2004, when I wrote about a new Holocaust in the pages of The Jewish Press, a Holocaust which is now based in Israel. At the time, I was not heard beyond a small circle. I did what Meotti now does in his opening pages. Meotti fully understands that Israel is the "first country ever to experience suicide terrorism on a mass scale: that more than 150 suicide attacks have been carried out plus 500 have been prevented." According to Meotti, there have been "1,723 people (murdered) and 10,000 injured" in Israel. Meotti does what I did: He converts these numbers into the demographic equivalent of attacks on Americans. When I did so there were somewhat fewer people in both categories. Thus, Meotti writes that in American population terms, this means that "74,000 Americans" would have been killed and "400,000 injured."

Vick does not factor this grave reality into his article. Nor does he seem to know how high the Jewish population growth was in the DP camps right after the Holocaust. Can he comprehend that permanently endangered Jews-a people that has survived as a people for nearly six thousand years-the Chosen People-have always chosen life in the moment, have chosen to seize life with both hands, even as they memorialize their dead and make sense of their persecution in a way that illuminates this particular Hell for all humanity?

What Meotti is doing is remembering the lives and the deaths of the Israeli victims of Palestinian terrorism during the last decade. I have only read the first few chapters but cannot put it down. These are unknown stories, unnamed victims, whose mortal remains have often evaporated, disintegrated as surely as those Jews who literally went up in smoke during the Nazi Holocaust. His stories are mainly of victims who were unarmed and helpless and who, it turns out, were actually exceptionally kind to others, often to the very Arab Palestinians who shot them down, bludgeoned them to death, or blew them up into unrecognizable bone fragments, drops of blood, perhaps a few teeth.

I look forward to completing Meotti's book. I hope that people more fully understand that TIME Magazine as well as countless other media in the Western world, can no longer be trusted to tell the truth.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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6 September, 2010

The Latest Outrage Against Arizona And America

The latest betrayal of the nation came with the State Department’s submission of its “Report to the UN Council on Human Rights” on August 27. In this document, the Administration attempts to make the case that its opposition to Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070 constitutes an effort to restore human rights in the Grand Canyon State. Conversely, the effort by Arizona to stem the invasion of illegal aliens from Mexico must be presumed as an infringement and abuse of those rights.

Reality has long ago been driven far from the entire illegal immigration debate. Whereas throughout the rest of the world, flagrant and horrific abuses of human rights have occurred against oppressed citizens at the hands of their own imperious governments, which have often forcibly and violently prevented them from escaping from their control, the ostensible “victims” of the Arizona law are attempting to unlawfully enter and remain within the purview of this nation, facing at worst, the potential for eviction from its borders.

In the Administration’s despicable world, America is no longer a nation with legal boundaries, put in place to preserve and protect its assets and its culture for the ultimate service of its own citizens. Instead, it is merely an accumulation of ill gotten material wealth, which should be rightly distributed amongst those who covet a portion of it. To deny anything to such people, on any basis is, in the thinking of Obama and his leftist minions, to violate their “rights.”

Nowhere in this discussion is any consideration given to the fact that each fragment of America being doled out to an illegal invader was first produced though the toil and industry of the people of the nation. Obama’s “compassion” and “generosity” amount to a pillaging of those resources from the people who forged and built the nation and now seek to pass its blessings on to their posterity.

Efforts by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer to protect the lives and property of the good people of her state are, in reality, no infringement whatsoever on the “human rights” of law abiding people. And in fact, they are the surest guarantee that all future legal citizens of Arizona, or any state in this nation, whether immigrant or natural born, will benefit from the opportunity to thrive and flourish in a safe and wholesome society, free of the encroaching dangers of a burgeoning subculture with neither a reverence for its heritage nor a concern for its future.

In contrast, the Administration’s latest betrayal of Arizona and the United States is not the behavior of a sincere patriot who holds any serious regard for his oath of office. Rather it is the sordid conduct of a committed leftist and his political minions who maintain no allegiance to the nation or respect for its institutions and integrity, and who regularly demonstrate their intentions to undermine and ultimately eradicate it.

By now it has become grimly obvious that their despicable actions will continue unabated until “We the People” decide that we have had enough, and correct the mistake of ever having so cavalierly allowed such unworthy and malignant individuals access to the hallowed reins of power.

SOURCE




Anti-men tirade

No comment on hesitant women drivers wasting fuel, apparently

Men waste more than $3,000 in fuel costs because they refuse to ask for directions when lost, according to a British study released as motorists across the U.S. prepare to load up their cars for the long Labor Day weekend.

The research, commissioned by British insurance company Sheila's Wheels, revealed that male drivers travel 276 unnecessary miles each year because they stubbornly reject help when lost.

In what might not be shocking news for female passengers, the survey found that more than a quarter of men polled said they would wait at least half an hour before asking for directions when lost. One in 10 male drivers refuses to ask a stranger for help at all, the survey found.

The survey suggested that "lost drive time could cost as much as 2,000 pounds [just over $3,000 at current exchange rates]" in gas in a driver's lifetime.

The survey results also found that three-quarters of women polled had no problem with asking for directions. "Men aren't quite as confident behind the wheel as they make out when it comes to navigation," said Jacky Brown, a Sheila's Wheels representative.

SOURCE






Age discrimination in Silicon Valley

It would be amusing to see somebody trying to prosecute this. "Disproportionality" could easily be proved

An interesting paradox in the technology world is that there is both a shortage and a surplus of engineers in the United States. Talk to those working at any Silicon Valley company, and they will tell you how hard it is to find qualified talent. But listen to the heart-wrenching stories of unemployed engineers, and you will realize that there are tens of thousands who can’t get jobs. What gives?

The harsh reality is that in the tech world, companies prefer to hire young, inexperienced, engineers.

And engineering is an “up or out” profession: you either move up the ladder or face unemployment. This is not something that tech executives publicly admit, because they fear being sued for age discrimination, but everyone knows that this is the way things are. Why would any company hire a computer programmer with the wrong skills for a salary of $150,000, when it can hire a fresh graduate—with no skills—for around $60,000?

Even if it spends a month training the younger worker, the company is still far ahead. The young understand new technologies better than the old do, and are like a clean slate: they will rapidly learn the latest coding methods and techniques, and they don’t carry any “technology baggage”. As well, the older worker likely has a family and needs to leave by 6 pm, whereas the young can pull all-nighters.

At least, that’s how the thinking goes in the tech industry.

In their book Chips and Change, Professors Clair Brown and Greg Linden, of the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed Bureau of Labor Statistics and census data for the semiconductor industry and found that salaries increased dramatically for engineers during their 30s but that these increases slowed after the age of 40. At greater ages still, salaries started dropping, dependent on the level of education. After 50, the mean salary of engineers was lower—by 17% for those with bachelors degrees, and by 14% for those with masters degrees and PhDs—than the salary of those younger than 50.

Curiously, Brown and Linden also found that salary increases for holders of postgraduate degrees were always lower than increases for those with bachelor’s degrees (in other words, even PhD degrees didn’t provide long-term job protection). It’s not much different in the software/internet industry. If anything, things in these fast-moving industries are much worse for older workers.

For tech startups, it usually boils down to cost: most can’t even afford to pay $60K salaries, so they look for motivated, young software developers who will accept minimum wage in return for equity ownership and the opportunity to build their careers.

Companies like Zoho can afford to pay market salaries, but can’t find the experienced workers they need. In 2006, Zoho’s CEO, Sridhar Vembu, initiated an experiment to hire 17-year-olds directly out of high school. He found that within two years, the work performance of these recruits was indistinguishable from that of their college-educated peers. Some ended up becoming superstar software developers.

Companies such as Microsoft say that they try to maintain a balance but that it isn’t easy. An old friend, David Vaskevitch, who was Senior Vice-President and Chief Technical Officer at Microsoft, told me in 2008 that he believes that younger workers have more energy and are sometimes more creative. But there is a lot they don’t know and can’t know until they gain experience. So Microsoft aggressively recruits for fresh talent on university campuses and for highly experienced engineers from within the industry, one not at the expense of the other.

David acknowledged that the vast majority of new Microsoft employees are young, but said that this is so because older workers tend to go into more senior jobs and there are fewer of those positions to begin with. It was all about hiring the best and brightest, he said; age and nationality are not important.

So whether we like it or not, it’s a tough industry. I know that some techies will take offense at what I have to say, but here is my advice to those whose hair is beginning to grey:

1. Move up the ladder into management, architecture, or design; switch to sales or product management; or jump ship and become an entrepreneur (old guys have a huge advantage in the startup world). Build skills that are more valuable to your company, and take positions that can’t be filled by entry-level workers.

2. If you’re going to stay in programming, realize that the deck is stacked against you. Even though you may be highly experienced and wise, employers aren’t willing or able to pay an experienced worker twice or thrice what an entry-level worker earns. Save as much as you can when you’re in your 30s and 40s and be prepared to earn less as you gain experience.

3. Keep your skills current. This means keeping up-to-date with the latest trends in computing, programming techniques, and languages, and adapting to change. To be writing code for a living when you’re 50, you will need to be a rock-star developer and be able to out-code the new kids on the block.

My advice to managers is to consider the value of the experience that the techies bring. With age frequently come wisdom and abilities to follow direction, mentor, and lead. Older workers also tend to be more pragmatic and loyal, and to know the importance of being team players. And ego and arrogance usually fade with age. During my tech days, I hired several programmers who were over 50. They were the steadiest performers and stayed with me through the most difficult times.

Finally, I don’t know of any university, including the ones I teach at, that tells its engineering students what to expect in the long term or how to manage their technical careers. Perhaps it is time to let students know what lies ahead.

SOURCE





Scholar says West should treat radical Islam the way Byzantine generals did the Huns

We should use intelligence, not 18-year-olds, to fight terror, argues Edward Luttwak. There is something in that but the Byzantines are not a terribly good role model for a modern secular society. There were religious fanatics: Christian fanatics but fanatics all the same. So they had the courage of their convictions.

Lutwak's point about recognizing the enemy is however of central importance. The failure to recognize that hostility to the West is central to Islam is unbelievably stupid and blind to both the present and the past

The Byzantines brought three skills to their foreign policy: intelligence, diplomacy and military force. Their superiority in each kept the eastern half of the Roman Empire intact for a millennium after the famed legions of the West fell to invading barbarians.

Today, in the contemporary West, we don't even begin to approach the sophistication in these skills of Byzantium, later known as Constantinople and now Istanbul, according to Edward Luttwak, author of The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire.

"The Romans had fought approximately 80 different foes in the process of [their] imperial expansion," Luttwak said from Washington this week, on the eve of attending the Creative Innovation conference in Melbourne. "And then came one more: the Huns. They had such superior weapons, such superior agility on the battlefield and rapid mobility across vast spaces . . . The Romans were completely outclassed."

But the Byzantines in their surviving Eastern Roman Empire figured out how to manage the Huns with skilful intelligence gathering and wily diplomacy.

The best historical sources on Attila the Hun are still those intelligence reports, Luttwak says. "Intelligence in the broadest sense. Not just counting how many spears the enemy has but knowing where he's from, how he dresses, what he eats, what frightens him, what he hopes for.

"Intelligence blinded by ideology cannot see. . . . You need to have an open mind and you need to have the freedom to call a spade a spade. They did and we can't."

Luttwak's scholarship is contested and his politically incorrect views may leave readers gasping. But there's something about his logic: in a jam, you don't want an idealist covering your back but a hard-nosed pragmatist.

The most obvious spade we can't name is Islam. We pussyfoot around motives for going to war. And we lack the intellectual curiosity that fuels serious intelligence gathering.

The lack of Arabic and Pashtun language skills in US intelligence, even as the US was leading the coalition into the Middle East after 9/11, is legend. Luttwak refers scathingly to Michael Scheuer, the bestselling author of Imperial Hubris, who headed the CIA's hunt for Osama bin Laden for three years, not knowing Arabic, not trying to learn it and not ordered to by his superiors.

This lack of professionalism, in all three spheres in which Byzantium excelled, is Luttwak's core message. A senior associate at the conservative Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, he has advised the White House, the State Department and all branches of the US military, and clearly relishes telling truth to power.

"Look at the casualty lists from Afghanistan," he says. "Some of the people who have been killed there are 18 years old, which means they went to Afghanistan with less than a year's training.

"A Byzantine general would be horrified by the idea of sending someone into combat with less than two years' training."

It's not a matter of resources, he says, but philosophy. The Byzantine empire went to war as a last resort, but when they did, they went with superior forces, not with cannon fodder, and with concrete goals: to preserve the tax-paying lands of empire and defend the Orthodox faith. Our philosophy, by contrast, is ideological.

"Why are we in Afghanistan? To bring democracy?" Luttwak asks rhetorically. "The US is spending $US7 billion [$7.7bn] a month doing things like funding the Afghan parliament. What has a frigging parliament got to do with Afghanistan? All the generals and statesmen who make these wars are slaves of words and concepts. The Byzantines fought for real things, not to save this or liberate that. Their soldiers were skilled craftsmen of war, and you cannot be skilled craftsman of war if you are an 18-year-old boy."

Phew. Mostly, Luttwak seems to think we should keep our noses out of other people's business. And we should think very carefully before we blunder in. He uses the example of Americans arriving to save Europe during World War II, and the speed with which they called up millions of men, gave them "shake and break" training, and sent them off to fight.

The Byzantines would have sat down and said: "Hitler's not very nice guy but, after all, if we defeat him with the Soviet Union, the next thing will be a conflict with the Soviet Union. So we should just take him down several pegs first, make sure these real bad guys get replaced by good German army people, and then we'll wean them off some of the more embarrassing things." Then "you call in your army chiefs and say, 'How long would it take you to get the army ready to go over to Europe?' and they will say, 'For proper training we'll need 18 months' ."

But what about the Holocaust? You can't take a long-term view when that is in train.

"But, as you know, they [the US] did nothing about that," he replies without missing a beat. "What interrupted the Holocaust was the advance of the Russians. And the Russians advanced because they were counter-fighting. They had been attacked first.

"The Holocaust should have been a reason to go to war. I'm Jewish myself, I would have been very happy if it had been interrupted. But it was not even attempted."

Luttwak was born in Romania in 1940. The family fled while he was a toddler and fetched up in Italy, where the battled-scarred environment moved him not to play soldiers, he says, but to wonder about the causes of war, the conditions for peace.

"I wanted to look at who were the really good practitioners, and they were the Romans, the Byzantines and the Mongols. Everybody else was second league."

He studied at the London School of Economics, then earned a doctorate in Roman Empire strategy at Johns Hopkins University. Next he tackled Byzantine strategy.

Post-Enlightenment prejudice against Byzantium, a society permeated with religiosity, was so intense that scholars had barely touched it. Instead of the organised wealth of primary sources he was used to, Luttwak had to hunt down documents and often translate them himself (he is fluently multilingual). His studies reinforced an uncompromising view of the world.

He says the Rwandan genocide could easily have been stopped if the world had had the will.

"All you had to do was fly in 3000 European troops," he says. "Not UN troops in their baby-blue berets standing around watching while the massacres take place. Combat troops, and you tell them to kill any Hutus they see carrying machetes. And Sudan -- which is a cardboard government with a cardboard army and jellybaby influence -- has killed at least 200,000 people in Darfur. But nobody has gone in, knocked off the Sudanese, and stopped it cold."

Which brings us to Luttwak's view of Islam. He pays no lip service to the idea of Islam as a religion of peace: it has been militaristic from the outset.

"We are actually fighting Islam exactly as the Muslims say we are, but we pretend we are not," he says. "If you take Islam out of the picture in Afghanistan, who would you be fighting? Politically, militarily, or culturally, absolutely nobody."

What we have created in Afghanistan, he says, is a cargo cult. "All you have to do, if you have a really tin-pot no-good nuisance country, is get a few men together, get them to wear long beards and go round saying death to everybody, and next thing you know the Americans will come and build schools and hospitals for you. And they will give you lots of money so you can build all the villas that are going up in Kabul and stash money in Swiss banks."

The reality, he says, is that we ought to be fighting Islamism. "But we should be doing it Byzantine way: by staying out of their territory, securing our own and leaving them to fight each other. Instead of going in to your neighbour's garden to straighten up his weeds, look to your own garden."

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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5 September, 2010

The History and Psychological Roots of Anti-Semitism Among Feminists, Their Gradual Palestinianization and Stalinization

Excerpts from a speech by long-time feminist Phyllis Chesler

Are women racists? We might as well ask: Are women human beings? But are women also anti-Semites? Are educated women, human right activists, feminists, lesbian feminists, Jewish lesbian feminists anti-Semites too?

Hell yes. Neither education, talent, ambition, privilege—nor vulnerability, pariah status, or a sense of grievance—seems to inoculate people against the virulent virus of anti-Semitism.

Thus, I have lived to see the day when feminists—most, but not all of whom, are women—seem to care more about the alleged “occupation” of a country which does not exist (Palestine) than they care about the real Islamist occupation of women in “Palestine.” American and European feminists are postcolonial, postmodern, anti-interventionists; in the name of “political correctness,” “cultural relativism,” and “cultural sensitivity,” they no longer believe in men and women’s universal human rights and no longer take a stand against apartheid—at least not when it is practiced by Muslims.

Instead, many feminists scapegoat Israel as an apartheid state and refuse to understand that Islam is the largest practitioner of gender and religious apartheid in the world.

Anti-racism, not anti-Semitism, is the feminist priority—except where Israel is concerned. To such feminists, Zionism still equals racism. They do not understand that precisely the opposite is true: Anti-Zionism equals racism. And that it is the new anti-Semitism—that and its Islamic version.

For the last decade, Jewish and non-Jewish feminists have marched in pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel rallies, signed newspaper ads and petitions to divest from and boycott Israel—yes, even gay and lesbian feminists who would be tortured to death in Muslim countries, did so.

These professed “humanitarians”—who carry on about the recent Turkish assassination flotilla—do not take as strong a stand against stoning or forced face-veiling. Some feminists think it’s “liberating” or even the ultimate feminist choice. Most feminists do not take a stand against forced marriage, child marriage, first cousin marriage, polygamy, and honor-related violence, included honor killing. They fear that doing so might be seen as “racist” or as culturally insensitive.

Like Stalinists, they saved their fire to protest Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, former President George Bush, and American and Israeli military “occupation” of Muslim lands. If challenged, they turn stone-faced and accuse their challenger of racism and of McCarthyism. Thereafter, they slander and shun you.

In the last twenty to thirty years, many feminists misapplied hard-won feminist concepts in the service of demonizing Judaism and Israel. For example, in 1988, I persuaded my friend, famed anti-pornography and anti-prostitution activist, Andrea Dworkin, to join me on her first-ever trip to Israel.

In 1990, in her novel Mercy, she compared the Jewish God to a Nazi without mercy. And, in a 2002 work of non-fiction, Scapegoat: The Jews, Israel, and Women’s Liberation, she compared the Jewish state to a “pimp” and a “John” and viewed the Palestinians as their “prostitutes.” Truly, I have no comment but, at the time, I did publish a short one in the Jewish media.

In 2002, at a feminist conference at the state university at New Paltz, Dr. Ruchama Marton, an Israeli Jewish psychiatrist, likened Israelis to “batterers” in a marriage. Guess who is the “battered wife?” None other than the Palestinians. Are the Israelis and Palestinians married? Is the feminist view of marriage that it is like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Why was only Israel and Palestine discussed at a conference which was advertised as a conference about “Women, War, and Peace”?

The academic postcolonial literature is infected by an across-the-board view of Palestinians as the symbol of all things noble and the Jews and Israelis as symbols of evil.

Women’s Studies programs offer a steady stream of anti-Israel speakers. At the University of California, for example, moderate Muslims, ex-Muslims, anti-Islamist Muslims, and pro-Israel Muslims are never invited or funded, and Women’s Studies professors do not attend their very rare lectures.

From 1980 to 2010, feminist left organizations and leaders, both male and female, did not condemn the Palestinian Arab Muslim plane hijackings and homicidal bombings of Israeli civilians. Instead, they glamorized the terrorists, marched wearing kaffiyehs, signed petitions to boycott and divest in Israel. They did not offer to ride the buses in Israel in 2002 as “human shields.”

Feminist writers and activists persistently demonized Israel and glorified Palestinian terrorists. British journalist and feminist Jan Goodwin did so in her 1995 book Price of Honor: Muslim Women Lift the Veil on the Islamic World, as did feminist activist, Ms. magazine editor and writer Robin Morgan in her 1989 book The Demon Lover, two books which the authors updated after 9/11. Both authors blamed the suffering of Palestinian women, children, and men on the Israeli occupation, not on Islamic misogyny or Arab tribal customs.

The Betrayal of the Ideologues

The American and European Left and feminist and gay movements have made a marriage in Hell with Islamist terrorists. The same Left that has still never expressed any guilt over their devotion to communist dictators who murdered one hundred million of their own people in the service of a Great Idea, have now fatefully joined the world Jihadic chorus in calling for the end to “racist” Zionism and to the Jewish Apartheid and “Nazi” state.

These westerners share an extraordinary psychological rage which requires a scapegoat and cleaning messianic promises, a refusal to look within, an overwhelming need for group approval, an inability or refusal to think as independent individuals, an adolescent in-your-face rebelliousness towards certain authorities—coupled with an adolescent, slavish adoration of other authorities, a desire for cathartic violence, for the ecstasy of mob action, and the most uncanny and frightening ability to scapegoat Jews precisely because leftists have not been able to achieve their desired New World Order. If some ideal can’t be achieved, then the Jews must pay.

In 2007, a Jewish Israeli feminist researcher at Hebrew University, doctoral candidate Tal Nitzan, blamed Israeli soldiers because they refused to rape Arab and Palestinian women; she claimed this constituted “racism” against Palestinians.

Earlier this year, 2010, a team of researchers led by a female Harvard social scientist blamed Israel in the pages of The Lancet, a British medical journal, for an increase in Palestinian wife-battering in Gaza and on the West Bank. The researchers did not even consider the role that radical Islamification might play in the oppression of women or the fact that Gaza is ruled by terrorist gangsters and this might cause an escalation of violence towards women. Honor killings (and a relevant, recent study actually existed) were not included in their measures of violence against Palestinian women. Why? Because that cannot be blamed on Israel or on the West.

Closing Points

Some academics and activists are merely opportunists. Anti-Zionism (which is one of the things that is “new” about anti-Semitism, something I identified in 2002-2003—that plus the Islamification of anti-Semitism) is seen as a necessary ideology in order to succeed as professors, authors, journalists—and in a wide variety of other professions.

Some academics and activists are not capable of original thinking and simply follow the herd. They are dreadful conformists. They have literally been indoctrinated to believe that America and Israel are evil and are the cause of world suffering. They want to abolish world suffering by abolishing Israel.

Some academics and activists are nostalgic for the 1960s and are still so furious at America that they want the barbarians to bring down Wall Street in a way they themselves never could. They believe they alone will be spared as America and Europe goes down because they are “politically correct.” They do not believe the barbarians will come for them.

They are also slumming, erotically thrilled by contact with real outlaws, real killers, Really Bad Men. Look: Male serial killers have no end of fans, including marriage proposals after they have been jailed.

Some academics and activists—and here I am thinking especially about Jewish feminists and lesbians—believe that they will lose their pariah status if they scapegoat Jews, indeed, if they are the first to do so. This alone will allow them to live. This is what makes them tough and trendy “radicals.”

Such feminists, leftists, and gay liberationists have not thought through what their lives might be like under Islamic rule.

More HERE







How Political Correctness Destroys the Brain

Political Correctness is often viewed as just a nuisance regarding choice of words or telling “offensive” jokes. Wrong. It is a mental condition that debilitates our genetically wired ability to defend ourselves. As a long-time student of this disorder, let me explain its character, how it renders us defenseless and offer suggestions on fighting back.

Political Correctness (PC) is the subordination of truth, often forcefully, to political ideology. PC vigorously converts “ought” into “is” even if nearly everyone knows that “ought” is not “is.” As Larry Summers discovered, if feminist doctrine insists that women and men have innate equal mathematical talent, then this is a “scientific fact” despite all contrary objective evidence. PC turns lies into truths, for example, the perpetrator becomes the victim, to advance an ideology or religious doctrine.

PC can be summarized by its Five Commandments.

First, Thou Shalt Not Offend. This is the preeminent value even if human life is at stake. If a visiting friend wants to visit a black neighborhood with a sky-high crime rate, you give no warning since broaching “black crime” offends blacks, even if no blacks are present.

Second, Thou Shalt Not Even Think Offensive Thoughts. Entertaining “bad” thoughts even subconsciously, is impermissible. In the PC world, “bad thoughts” inevitably leads to “bad behavior” and even unexpressed thoughts can harm, e.g., a male math teacher may unwittingly ignore female students due to unconscious stereotypes about their innumeracy and thus discourage them from obtaining a Ph.D. in math.

Third, Thou shalt purge Society of Evil Thoughts. Purification must be 100%. PC mirrors epidemiology—just one case of smallpox can spread and kill everyone, so one hate crime in an otherwise peaceful society requires immediate action.

Fourth, Thou Shalt Be Thine Own Censor. Utopia arrives when offensive thoughts never enter the brain, and this requires constant self-imposed vigilance. In the meantime, expelling “dangerous thoughts” requires sensitivity training and censoring materials potentially promoting bad thinking. In a phrase, willful blindness.

Five, Thou Shalt Reward the Offended by Taking from Sinners. Today’s political landscape overflows with hyper-sensitive advocacy groups. To offend them, no matter how true the offending remark, will instigate immediate cries for restitution. In universities, for example, broaching a hate fact must be ameliorated with more jobs and programs for the offended group (often called “justice”).

Clearly, PC runs contrary to human nature. Homo Sapiens has survived for over 180,000 years only by confronting harsh reality. PC turns off our hard-wired early-warning radar. Cavemen did not send Cavewomen into battle since admitting male superiority in fighting might offend sensitive women. If they did, the tribe quickly exited the gene pool. Ditto for the ancients who welcomed violence-prone strangers to promote diversity—very few of their offspring live to tell the tale. The survival instinct is often disguised with hypocrisy—white liberals will always be PC on race until their children are bused to a largely black school, then junior is enrolled in a private, nearly all-white school. Worse, achieving “offensive free” brains will inevitably lead to totalitarianism since mild measures like voluntary sensitivity training will be replaced by more Draconian Communist-style brainwashing. In any case, one way or another, PC is antithetical to America as we know it.

PC has become the weapon of choice among gold medal winners in today’s victimhood Olympics. It is just so easy and the PC attack—your words are harmful, insensitive, you are a bigot—can effectively kill bad news messengers and cover the accuser’s own evil. It also can pay-off handsomely. As per Commandment Five, let an FBI agent criticize a Muslim proven group’s terrorist ties, and the predictable outrage will be, “This is dangerous hate, so let us run paid seminars for FBI agents to prevent similar future “hateful” outbursts (and, left unsaid, learn the identities of FBI agents).

PC is an intellectual equivalent of AIDS. It invades the brain, eats out its natural immunity system against legitimate threats and the helpless victim quickly succumbs. And all the while the victim feels great about being caring, tolerant and virtuous. At the national level, this is painless suicide. Hard to imagine a more potent weapon to defeat one’s enemies.

PC cannot be defeated by marshalling sound evidence, no matter how compelling. Forget about “dialogue,” even if “meaningful.” The PC crowd are masters of duplicitous rebuttal—opponent’s facts are “only” dangerous stereotypes, somewhere in the universe exists a contrary fact, the objectionable fact is uncertain (the term, “controversial” often signifies this rejoinder), and, for the academically inclined, all truth is socially constructed so my “truth” is as valid as yours. Particularly popular is that while admitting your fact may technically be true, its expression will cause terrible harm, even violence, and so it is best suppressed. For the PC-infected, what is to be gained by publishing statistics on IQ by immigrant group or the proportion of boys and girls who score above 750 on the math SAT?

The only solution is a blunt public commitment to truth-telling regardless of inflicting discomfort. The doctor visit model is the appropriate approach—don’t mince words when explaining where that nasty rash was acquired. Leave white lies for friends. Admittedly, this is difficult since frankness often risks being ostracized, hostile stares and rebukes about being “harmful” and “insensitive.” But, when the topic is important, just treat this “you-are-offensive” rebuke as a sign that complainers suffer a medical disorder. Their half-eaten brain renders them unable to recognize the truth. PC is a hallucinogenic disorder, a throwback to the 1960s when people fried their brains with LSD.

There is some good news here. The PC folk are cowardly bullies, far more bark than bite, whose key ability is to sense fear in those who might express a plain-to-see truth. PC intimidation is the weapon of choice among the weak. Larry Summers’ feminist attackers had a weak hand and thus had no other choice that to cry “male chauvinist.” That blatantly false epitaph far outshined conducting serious research on male/female cognitive differences (and research might have confirmed Larry’s speculations).

Second, expressing a forbidden but widely recognized truth will embolden like-minded thinkers. PC succeeds when heretics feel isolated. If a second person chimes in, other will join, and soon there is a chorus. Look at the “unexpected” opposition to the ground zero mosque—it only took a few to marshal widespread outrage. Being first, admittedly, requires courage but, on the plus side, stepping forward often brings accolades. I myself have often been told, “Thank goodness you spoke the truth, and now we can all say it though, of course, we may just quote you to be on the safe side.”

Remember, there is no reason to offend needlessly, but we have survived both individually and as a nation by confronting harsh realities. Every person alive today had ancestors who abhorred PC. Let’s hope that 180,000 years of human survival skills have not vanished. When push comes to shove, trust your instinct s about the bad guys.

SOURCE





Some inconvenient history

Will Bunch's CNN.com tirade earlier this week against television host Glenn Beck and David Barton -- the founder and president of WallBuilders, a national pro-family organization that emphasizes history's "moral, religious and constitutional heritage" -- for allegedly creating "pseudo history" reveals more about Mr. Bunch than it does about what Mr. Beck and Mr. Barton are presenting.

Mr. Bunch seems, above all, to be annoyed that many people are no longer staying on the liberal plantation of secularized American history. He offers little in the way of examples of error, just differences of opinion, such as his own assertion about "the much-debunked idea that America's creation was rooted in Christianity."

Much debunked? That would have been news to many of the Founding Fathers, whose biblical understanding of man as created in the image of God informed their insistence in the Declaration of Independence that people have "unalienable rights" to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." This was tempered by the biblically informed idea that man is prone to sin. In the Federalist Papers, No. 51, for example, James Madison wrote, "But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary."

Therefore, any government formed by men needs checks and balances to avoid tyranny. On a more elementary level, the signers of the Declaration and the Constitution were mostly Christian. You can look it up.

Bunch complains that, "In April, Barton told Beck's 3 million TV viewers that 'we use the Ten Commandments as basis of civil law and the Western world [and it] has been for 2,000 years.' "

Glenn Beck rewrites civil rights history

Perhaps this is why the Ten Commandments numerals are represented at the bottom of a door to the U.S. Supreme Court courtroom and why Moses, revered as the lawgiver to Jews in the Hebrew bible, and Christians in the New Testament, appears holding two tablets elsewhere in the Supreme Court building.

He appears between the Chinese philosopher Confucius and Solon, the Athenian statesman -- at the center of a frieze of historic lawgivers on the building's East Pediment. Moses is also among an array of lawgiver figures depicted over the Court's chamber.

Tellingly, Mr. Bunch does not dispute the accuracy of the quotes that Mr. Barton cites that spell out a Christian understanding of law and man among some of the Founding Fathers.

In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, written 37 years after the Declaration of Independence, John Adams wrote: "The general principles, on which the Fathers achieved independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young gentlemen could Unite. ... And what were these general Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity, in which all these Sects were United: ... Now I will avow, that I then believe, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System."

John Jay, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court, wrote in a letter to a friend, "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."

Mr. Bunch further complains that Barton "gives less than short shrift to the real achievement of the Founders in separating church and state."

I would argue that their real achievement was elsewhere. Their real achievement was far larger: creation of a unique, limited government with protections for the freedoms of religion, speech, press and assembly and protection of property rights, without which no freedom exists. The result was the most prosperous and freest nation in history.

And property rights are endorsed throughout the Bible.

The "wall of separation between church & state," by the way, is not in the Constitution. It's from a letter from President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptists, who were concerned that the national government would favor one Christian denomination over others. But Mr. Jefferson's phrase has become a sacred totem used by activist judges to drive Christian symbols from the public square.

The real reason that Mr. Bunch is so exercised is that the truth about America's Christian founding is getting out, despite media hostility, politically correct schoolbooks and rising intolerance toward any public expression of faith -- unless it advances leftist goals.

America is a unique beacon of freedom precisely because of its founders' Christian perspective, which has protected the right of conscience and thus freedom of religion for Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and nonbelievers. Try to identify another nation on Earth that similarly advanced individual rights without being influenced by Christianity.

Beck and Barton are striking what Abraham Lincoln described in a different context as the "mystic chords of memory." It makes perfect sense that many Americans are tuning in.

SOURCE





Mothers’ Intuition Trumps Feminist Ideology

Belying the image of the “liberated” working mother, a recent National Review Online commentary cites research by Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, showing that, for the vast majority married moms, the workplace is not the top choice of where they want to spend their days.

In reviewing data from the 2000 National Survey of Marriage and Family Life, Wilcox found that only 18 percent of married women with children said they would prefer to work full-time, in contrast to 46 percent who would prefer to work part-time and 36 percent who said that they would prefer to stay at home. In addition, among married moms who were working full-time, nearly 75 percent said they would rather work fewer hours or not at all.

A bevy of sociological studies show that the mother’s intuition regarding what is best for her children is on the mark. Research throughout the last two decades reveals that children who attend day care centers are more likely to exhibit problem behavior and poor social skills than those being cared for by their parents. Furthermore, the children’s problem behavior is more pronounced the younger they are when they enter day care and the more hours they spend in center care each week.

The association between hours in day care and behavioral problems is prevalent regardless of socioeconomic status. And, sadly, the effects of time spent in day care centers can be long-term, with problem behavior extending even to middle-school years.

Research also indicates that the link between day care center attendance and problem behavior might be traced to an insecure mother–child attachment associated with extended hours in non-maternal care.

In addition to these socio-emotional difficulties are the health risks and propensity to infections and illness that numerous studies have found to be associated with day care center attendance.

In sum, years of research underscore the importance of mothers’ instinctive desire to be with their children: Mother’s intuition trumps the feminist icon. Taxpayers and policymakers should work to promote policies that would enable moms to make the choice to stay at home and care for their children.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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4 September, 2010

A hopelessly politicized public broadcaster

Is the 'biased' BBC now try to cosy up to the Con/Lib Coalition? Corporation boss lets slip notes for meeting at No 10

The BBC was caught in a political row last night after its boss Mark Thompson was apparently attempting to cosy up to the Government following complaints over Left-wing bias.

The corporation's director general was photographed arriving at No 10 clutching a memo insisting the BBC is ready to put its coverage of public spending cuts into 'context'. The move will prompt claims that the broadcaster is trying to curry favour with an increasingly hostile Coalition Government to preserve its generous licence fee funding.

Labour leadership contender Ed Miliband said Mr Thompson appeared to be offering to 'showcase' Government proposals for spending cuts in the middle of delicate negotiations over the future of the levy.

The Daily Mail understands Mr Thompson was hauled int o Downing Street for showdown talks with David Cameron's strategy chief Steve Hilton amid increasing Government displeasure over the BBC's coverage of the forthcoming spending review.

The Tories and the Liberal Democrats have become concerned that BBC reports rarely mention the reason for budget reductions - the £15billion deficit left behind by the Labour government.

A Government source said: 'Coverage of spending cuts always seems to take the most negative slant possible and never sets out the context of why they are necessary or of how the mess we have been left to clear up is not of our making.'

As he arrived at No 10 yesterday, Mr Thompson was pictured with a memo from his head of news Helen Boaden clearly on view. It revealed she had met Mr Cameron's press chief Andy Coulson for lunch, at which he had expressed 'concern' about the impartiality of a forthcoming BBC 'season' on the spending review. The memo promised to make viewers aware of the 'whys and wherefores', adding: 'I said that's what we always try to do.'

Miss Boaden went on to defend coverage of cuts over the summer – including claims that the poorest would be hardest hit and the possibility, now ruled out, of free school milk being axed.

She said the BBC had been 'driven by news lines'. The document went on to list plans for various output, including Newsnight, the Today programme and Five Live, and suggest an interview with Chancellor George Osborne.

A BBC source said Mr Thompson had discussed upcoming coverage and which ministers might appear on various shows to explain the cuts. The source insisted the director general was 'not embarrassed' to have unwittingly revealed the content of his meeting.

As part of an apparently concerted charm offensive by the BBC, earlier this week Mr Thompson admitted the corporation had in the past been guilty of 'massive' Left-wing bias but said it was now a 'broader church'.

The BBC governing body is also thought to be preparing to postpone a planned rise in the licence fee by 2 per cent next April, from £145.50 to £148.50, to fend off deeper cuts being imposed by the Government.

Mr Miliband said: 'The BBC must remain a fully independent organisation without bias. It is deeply worrying that when he was summoned to Downing Street, the director general of the BBC had a list of programme ideas which appeared to showcase Tory economic policies of savage, indiscriminate cuts.

'David Cameron must stop his bully boy tactics and threats to withdraw the licence fee now, before they undermine the status of the BBC as a valued and trusted institution.'

Labour MP Michael Dugher said: 'The political independence of the BBC should be absolutely sacrosanct and it is very odd that the director general is going into Downing Street for this kind of meeting. The BBC is within its rights to publicise the cuts to public spending in whatever way it sees fit.'

Last night, a Downing Street source responded: 'For the Labour Party to attempt to suggest that we somehow are trying to bully or control the BBC is a bit rich considering their track record.'

The BBC said it had regular meetings with parties of all sides. A spokesman said: 'The director general has made it repeatedly clear that the impartiality and independence of the BBC is paramount.

'In the meeting today, the director general, in his role as editor-in-chief, discussed the possible participation of a number of members of the Government in the BBC's coverage of the spending review this autumn.'

SOURCE





Little Girls and Mad Men

Two little girls I know, age 6, showed up the other day at a public pool in Washington for a swim. They were excited by the prospect of escaping, if only for a little while, the heat pushing the thermometer close to 100.

Alas, they were wearing the only bathing suits they had: bikini bottoms, no tops. No go, they were told by the pool manager. There was a dress code, and no one was allowed to dress "inappropriately in a way that may offend others." Did I say these were 6-year-olds?

"Don't worry," their grandfather said. "They're boys." The enforcer at the gate was not amused. Rule-enforcers, as a rule, rarely are.

The enforcer told the disappointed little girls they could wear their dresses in the pool, or she would find inflatable tops that children who can't swim wear so they're covered up "up there." The little girls knew how to swim, and they didn't want to ruin their dresses. They left in tears.

I've heard similar stories about rigid dress codes for small children at pools, and I've been surprised that many adults are so terrified of perverts and molesters that they applaud such harsh rules. I understand the fear, but have we gone nuts?

Our "liberated" culture, drenched in anything-goes sex (or "gender," for those who regard the very word as something as scary as a topless 6-year-old) now demands that we cast a dark shadow over genuine innocence in the name of protecting children. We must send innocence underground, robbing children of their incorruption.

I thought about all this the other night watching an episode of "Mad Men," the television drama enthralling millions, set in the long ago, the early 1960s. The ad men and their clients argue about how to sell Jantzen bathing suits. The ad men prescribe a "sexy" campaign for a "two piece" -- not a bikini. The Jentzen folk want to maintain modesty; the ad men want to sell bathing suits.

We've changed a lot in six decades, and not always for the better. At its best, television drama holds up a mirror to a reality we can measure ourselves against, for better or worse. The appeal of "Mad Men" is its drama-in-costume, entertaining us with retro-fashion trends. But it's also a reminder of how sexual mores operated in a more repressed time, before we made everything illicit explicit.

Few of us want to go back to the '50s, though the decade was better than its reputation, but "Mad Men" warns us not to be so smug about our hyperactive "progressive" world. Rebellions then were about the individual, not so much about society. We've come to think of the two decades following World War II as an "Age of Conformism," but passion in a sea of conformity required more self-reliance, more "gumption" than the oppressive political correctness that smothers us in the name of protecting us.

When one of the "girls" in the office of "Mad Men" submits to a brief sexual fling -- a "quickie" -- with her boss, they both regret it. They show their regret in different ways. He gives her money, in the form of a bonus, and she wrecks his office to punish him for giving her money, not respect. She has the last word, screaming an anachronism: "You're not a nice person." Her hurt feelings resonate today, when "hook-ups" reflect no discernment of what's even meant by "nice."

Critics speculate why "Mad Men" drew an estimated 3 million viewers to its opening episode this season. Some suggest that we like to feel superior (sexually liberated) and healthier (less booze and fewer cigarettes, more organic celery and fewer sweets, more exercise and the war against flab and blubber). Others applaud the way women are no longer the "second sex," having burst at last through the glass ceiling.

The writers are canny (as well as occasionally campy) when they intrude between the actors and the audience in life-parodies of the way we were. When the boyfriend of one of the "girls" in the office tells her that they should do "it" the moment they feel attracted to each other, "like they do in Sweden," she knows better. She understands that the problem in Utopia is that the "good life" quickly becomes the tyranny of a new norm.

And before you know it, 6-year old girl children must wear a bikini top or get out of the pool.

SOURCE







Misogynist and violent Islam, gaining hold, requires passionate opposition

Why isn't the poison gassing of Afghan girls simply for attending school generating international outrage? Blood tests have verified that a main ingredient of chemical weapons was the cause of the severe sicknesses suffered by hundreds of girls in two schools in Kabul this last week--just the latest in a series of nine poisonings spanning the last two years. Many of the girls rushing to escape the scene fainted; some collapsed hours later. Scores were hospitalized, requiring oxygen and intravenous drugs.

And yet, the still-ailing girls resolutely resume their educations. "One 12th grader, 18-year-old Khalida Bashir Ahmed, said she was determined to return to school even though she still felt dizzy; she still had a medical tube dangling from her right wrist," reports the New York Times. "As she recounted her ordeal, she fainted and fell to the ground."

The attacks were more than a week ago, but only now, with blood tests revealing the nerve gas ingredient organophosphates, earn any attention: "Many local officials had dismissed the cases as episodes of mass hysteria provoked by acid and arson attacks on school girls by Taliban fighters and others who objected to their education," the article notes. Those pesky Taliban.

Where are the feminists? Where are those vocal for "women's rights" to abortions, who now seem painfully quiet about girls' rights to learn to read without biological attack? It's not enough that the custom of female genital mutilation continues, affecting 140 million women worldwide, most in Africa, though The London Observer reported a few weeks ago that in England this very summer, 500-2,000 girls have undergone the horrifying procedure designed to preclude any sexual pleasure.

Muslim women are regularly beaten by husbands, with little international protest--and complicit support by local authorities. "Wife beating in Islamic countries is more prevalent than one can imagine," writes Brigitte Gabriel in They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It. Stories of "honor killings" abound internationally, and Muzzammil Hassan, the Muslim head of the "Bridges" TV outlet, formed to reconcile Muslim and American feeling, beheaded his wife last year in Orchard Park--a murder widely attributed to his religious bent.

And it seems things are getting worse. "In a world where education for females was generally accepted only a generation or two ago, women are again being infantilized, writes journalist Jan Goodwin in The Price of Honor: Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic World. "In the name of religion, they are being banned from traveling, working, studying, divorcing, voting, holding positions of power, in effect, from making their own decisions about major and minor aspects of their lives."

A page of discussion by an assortment of "moderate" Muslim thinkers in today's Wall St. Journal includes Akbar Ahmed's distinguishing Muslims into peaceful "mystics," "modernists" who want to fit in with present culture, and "literalists" who seek a throwback to "seventh-century Arabia," often employing violent tactics. Mr. Ahmed, former Pakistani ambassador to Britain, doesn't quantify percentages in each group, but if, as many writers assert, just 10% of the total are the "literalists" who use violence in the name of heaven, there are millions willing to kill to oppress women and convert "infidels," including those of differing Muslim strains.

I suspect it's difficult for "progressive" American feminists to defend Muslim women while honoring the "diversity" of Islam. Most Americans are taught that criticizing others' religions is taboo, and certainly post 9-11 there's a tiptoe-on-eggshells sensitivity about implying that Muslims' faith is in any way inferior to those who would not tolerate violence. The right to placement of the Islamic Center within a couple of blocks of 9-11 Ground Zero is universally defended; only the propriety of doing so is questioned, on the basis of compassion for those who lost their lives to fervent Muslims who, at the time of their deed, screamed their motivation.

So, here we have a cluster of stories, as we do every day. Girls gassed for attending school. Women mutilated and oppressed. A discussion of "moderation" in this murderous religion. On other days, we see suicide bombings of one Muslim sect to another, and uneasiness here about tolerating the proximity of potentially-threatening Muslims. Meanwhile, around the world, Muslims celebrate whenever America is injured or embarrassed.

Daniel Pipes, after exhaustively analyzing studies to determine the quantity of Muslim extremists, concludes: "Negatively, 10-15 percent suggests that Islamists number about 150 million out of a billion plus Muslims – more than all the fascists and communists who ever lived. Positively, it implies that most Muslims can be swayed against Islamist totalitarianism." Today's WSJ Opinion page on moderate Islam, however, suggests to me that "moderate" means "milquetoast" --and that some of the passion that motivates the extremists better spread to the Muslim masses, or that violent 10% will wreak havoc on our world.

SOURCE





Australia: Another big blunder in government ratings of websites

Such nincompoops are far too incompetent to be trusted with censoring the internet. A major and mainstream Australian news site rated as "adult"!

An audit of politicians' internet use that claimed the scalp of a state minister ranked news.com.au as the most visited "adult website".

NSW Ports and Waterways Minister Paul McLeay resigned this week after results of the audit were revealed. The audit supposedly showed whether MPs had been visiting adult links such as gambling and pornography sites.

However Legislative Council president Amanda Fazio yesterday revealed the audit had incorrectly classified news sites as adult because they contained links to or advertisements for adult dating sites. Both news.com.au and smh.com.au were classified as adult sites in the audit.

"The definition of what has been classed as an adult site is something we're reviewing," she said. "What surprised us... the biggest (site) of what is classed as an adult site being hit by the parliament is the news.com.au site. "Because there are adult matchmaking links or ads on their site, every time someone accesses news.com.au and they go from one article to another, that's counted as an individual hit on an adult site."

The bungle is one of the most embarrassing examples to date of the problems that can occur when governments and organisations try to regulate internet use.

The revelation could also absolve some MPs tangled in the web porn scandal at NSW parliamentary offices that erupted this week. Christian Democratic MP Fred Nile, for example, has defended his office's viewing of certain "adult websites", saying they were merely for "research purposes".

Opposition Leader Barry O'Farrell said every politician had been tainted by the scandal and asked for the matter to be settled quickly. His office had questioned a Nationals MP whose name emerged as part of the audit into online activity, including gambling websites.

But the nature of the audit has thrown up even more questions.

Earlier this week Ms Fazio and Legislative Assembly Speaker Richard Torbay said internal audits covered site categories but they did not commission any reports on MPs' internet use. Ms Fazio said she did not know how the internet use patterns of MPs were gathered.

News.com.au editor David Higgins said the auditing error showed governments could not be trusted to censor the internet. "News.com.au is one of Australia's most visited news websites featuring award-winning journalism from the country's most respected newspapers," he said.

"The fact that a government agency has classed us as an adult site only demonstrates the deep flaws in government-mandated internet filtering of the type put forward by the Gillard Government."

"If governments can't get it right within their own IT departments how could we possibly trust a nationwide mandatory web filtering system based on a secret list of banned websites put together by politicians?”

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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3 September, 2010

ABC, NPR and PBS Hosts Equate Christian and Muslim Violence

Dennis Prager

There was one thing more than any other that turned this New York, liberal, Jewish, Columbia University graduate student from modern liberalism. It was its use of moral equivalence to avoid confronting evil during the Cold War.

There was a time when liberalism was identified with anti-Communism; the liberal-led Korean and Vietnam Wars were examples. But the Vietnam War led liberals into the arms of the left, which had been morally confused about communism since its inception and had become essentially pacifist following the carnage of World War I.

After the Vietnam War, even liberals who continued to describe communism as evil were labeled "right-wingers" and "Cold Warriors." And the United States, with its moral flaws, was often likened to the Soviet Union. I recall asking the pre-eminent liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., in a public forum in Los Angeles in the late 1970s, if he would say that the United States was a morally superior society to that of the Soviet Union. He would not.

Little has changed regarding the Left's inability to identify and confront evil. And its moral equation of good guys and bad guys was made evident again in recent weeks by hosts on three major liberal networks -- ABC, NPR and PBS.

First, on May 25, PBS host Tavis Smiley interviewed Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the ex-Muslim Somali writer and activist for human, especially women's, rights in Islamic countries. After mentioning American Muslim terrorists Maj. Nidal Hasan (who murdered 13 and injured 30 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood) and Faisal Shahzad (who attempted to murder hundreds in Times Square), this dialogue ensued:

Ali: "Somehow, the idea got into their (Hasan's and Shahzad's) minds that to kill other people is a great thing to do and that they would be rewarded in the hereafter."

Smiley: "But Christians do that every single day in this country."

Ali: "Do they blow people up?"

Smiley: "Yes. Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that's what Columbine is -- I could do this all day long. There are so many more examples of Christians -- and I happen to be a Christian.

"There are so many more examples, Ayaan, of Christians who do that than you could ever give me examples of Muslims who have done that inside this country, where you live and work."

Then, on Aug. 22, Michel Martin, host of NPR's "Tell Me More," in discussing whether the Islamic Center and mosque planned for near ground zero should be moved, said this on CNN's "Reliable Sources" with Howard Kurtz: "Should anybody move a Catholic church? Did anybody move a Christian church after Timothy McVeigh, who adhered to a cultic white supremacist cultic version of Christianity, bombed (the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City)?"

And third, on Aug. 26, ABC "20/20" anchor Chris Cuomo tweeted this to his nearly one million followers: "To all my christian brothers and sisters, especially catholics -- before u condemn muslims for violence, remember the crusades....study them."

I have known Smiley since the 1980s when we both worked at the same radio station in Los Angeles. He is smart, and he is a gentleman who has accorded me great respect both on his television show and off air. How, then, does such a man equate Muslims who murder in the name of Islam with Americans who "murder every day," none one of whom commit their murders in the name of Christianity?

How does Martin equate the thousands of Islamic terrorists around the world, all of whom are devout Muslims, with a single American -- one who, in any case, professed no religion, let alone Christianity?

And how does Cuomo claim that Christians cannot condemn Muslims for violence because of the Christian Crusades?

First of all, the Crusades occurred a thousand years ago. One might as well argue that Jews cannot condemn Christian and secular anti-Semitic violence because Jews destroyed Canaanite communities 3,200 years ago.

Second, it is hardly a defense of Muslims to have to go back a thousand years to find comparable Christian conduct.

Third, even then there is little moral equivalence. The Crusades were waged in order to recapture lands that had been Christian for centuries until Muslim armies attacked them and destroyed most Christian communities in the Middle East. (Some Crusaders also massacred whole Jewish communities in Germany on the way to the Holy Land, and that was a grotesque evil -- which Church officials condemned at the time.) As the dean of Western Islamic scholars, Princeton Professor Bernard Lewis, has written, "The Crusades could more accurately be described as a limited, belated and, in the last analysis, ineffectual response to the jihad -- a failed attempt to recover by a Christian holy war what had been lost to a Muslim holy war."

So how did Smiley, Martin and Cuomo make such morally egregious statements?

The answer is not that these are bad people, let alone that they are not repulsed by terrorist violence. The answer is leftism, the way of looking at the world that permeates high schools, universities, news and entertainment media. Those indoctrinated by leftist thinking become largely incapable of accurate moral judgments: They regarded America and the Soviet Union as morally similar. And today, they claim that people they call "extremists" within Christianity (who are they?) and Islamist terrorists and their supporters pose equal threats to America and the world.

That is how bright and decent people become moral relativists and thereby undermine the battles against the greatest evils -- communist totalitarianism in its time and Islamic totalitarianism in ours.

The only solution is to keep exposing leftist moral confusion. One problem, however, is that in countries without talk radio, an equivalent to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, conservative columnists and a vigorous anti-left political party, this is largely impossible.

The other major problem is that the media that dominate American life have little problem, indeed largely concur, with the foolish and dangerous comments made by their mainstream media colleagues. That is why these comments, worthy of universal moral condemnation, were ignored by the mainstream (i.e., leftwing) media. Instead, they directed mind-numbing attention and waves of opprobrium toward Dr. Laura.

SOURCE




More governmental stupidity

You own a business, maybe a restaurant. You've got a lot to worry about. You have to make sure the food is safe and tastes good, that the place is clean and appealing, that workers are friendly and paid according to a hundred Labor Department and IRS rules.

On top of that, there are rules you might have no idea about. The bathroom sinks must be a specified height. So must the doorknobs and mirrors. You must have rails. And if these things aren't right -- say, if your mirror is just one inch too high -- you could be sued for thousands of dollars.

And be careful. If you fail to let a customer bring a large snake, which he calls his "service animal," into your restaurant, you could be in trouble.

All of this is because of the well-intentioned Americans With Disabilities Act, which President George H.W. Bush signed 20 years ago. The ADA was popular with Republicans and Democrats. It passed both houses of Congress with overwhelming majorities, 377 to 28 in the House and 91 to 6 in the Senate.

What does it do? The ADA prohibits discrimination against people with disabilities, requiring businesses to provide the disabled "equal access" and to make "reasonable accommodation" for employees. Tax credits and deductions are available for special equipment (talking computers, for instance) and modifying buildings to comply with the accessibility mandate.

The ADA was supposed to help more disabled people find jobs. But did it? Strangely, no. An MIT study found that employment of disabled men ages 21 to 58 declined after the ADA went into effect. Same for women ages 21 to 39.

How could employment among the disabled have declined? Because the law turns "protected" people into potential lawsuits. Most ADA litigation occurs when an employee is fired, so the safest way to avoid those costs is not to hire the disabled in the first place.

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of the Overlawyered.com blog, says that the law was unnecessary. Many "hire the handicapped" programs existed before the ADA passed. Sadly, now most have been quietly discontinued, probably because of the threat of legal consequences if an employee doesn't work out.

Under the ADA, Olson notes, fairness does not mean treating disabled people the same as non-disabled people. Rather it means accommodating them. In other words, the law requires that people be treated unequally.

The law has also unleashed a landslide of lawsuits by "professional litigants" who file a hundred suits at a time. Disabled people visit businesses to look for violations, but instead of simply asking that a violation be corrected, they partner with lawyers who (legally) extort settlement money from the businesses.

Some disabled people have benefited from changes effected by the ADA, but the costs are rarely accounted for. If a small business has to lay off an employee to afford the added expense of accommodating the disabled, is that a good thing -- especially if, say, customers in wheelchairs are rare? Extra-wide bathroom stalls that reduce the overall number of toilets are only some of the unaccounted-for costs of the ADA. And since ADA modification requirements are triggered by renovation, the law could actually discourage businesses from making needed renovations as a way of avoiding the expense.

A few disabled people speak up against the law. Greg Perry, author of "Disabling America: The Unintended Consequences of the Government's Protection of the Handicapped," says that because the disabled now represent an added expense to businesses, many resent them.

Finally, the ADA has led to some truly bizarre results. Exxon gave ship captain Joseph Hazelwood a job after he completed alcohol rehab. Hazelwood then drank too much and let the Exxon Valdez run aground in Alaska. Exxon was sued for allowing it to happen. So Exxon prohibited employees who have had a drug or drinking problem from holding safety-sensitive jobs. The result? You guessed it -- employees with a history of alcohol abuse sued under the ADA, demanding their "right" to those jobs. The federal government (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) supported the employees. Courts are still trying to sort it out.

More money for the parasites.

SOURCE





Yes, BBC was biased: Director General Mark Thompson admits a 'massive' lean to Left

BBC Director General Mark Thompson has admitted the corporation was guilty of a 'massive' Left-wing bias in the past. The TV chief also admitted there had been a 'struggle' to achieve impartiality and that staff were ' mystified' by the early years of Margaret Thatcher's government.

But he claimed there was now 'much less overt tribalism' among the current crop of young journalists, and said in recent times the corporation was a 'broader church'. He claimed there was now an 'honourable tradition of journalists from the right' working for the corporation.

His comments, made in the New Statesman magazine, are one of the clearest admissions of political bias from such a senior member of its staff. The BBC has long been accused of being institutionally biased towards the Left, and an internal report from 2007 said it had to make greater efforts to avoid liberal bias.

That report criticised the BBC for coming late to several important stories including euroscepticism and immigration, which it described as 'off limits in terms of a liberal-minded comfort zone'.

Speaking of the time when he joined the BBC, Mr Thompson told the magazine: 'In the BBC I joined 30 years ago [as a production trainee, in 1979] there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people's personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the Left. 'The organisation did struggle then with impartiality. And journalistically, staff were quite mystified by the early years of Thatcher.

'Now it is a completely different generation. 'There is much less overt tribalism among the young journalists who work for the BBC.'

He told the New Statesman: 'The BBC is not a campaigning organisation and can't be, and actually the truth is that sometimes our dispassionate flavour of broadcasting frustrates people who have got very, very strong views, because they want more red meat.'

Mr Thompson also connected his religious faith as a Catholic with working at the corporation. He said people joined the BBC because it is an organisation moved by a sense of values. He added: 'I do think the BBC is very much - sometimes frankly, almost frighteningly so - a values driven organisation.'

'People's sense of what's right and wrong, and their sense of justice, are incredible parts of what motivates people to join. 'I'm part of that. For me, that's connected with my religious faith but the key thing is: you don't have to be Catholic.'

Mr Thompson described relations between the BBC and the recently ousted Labour government in its last few years as 'quite tetchy'. But he said he was optimistic about a good settlement in forthcoming licence fee discussions with the Coalition.

He denied the organisation was one of 'glorious freeloading' but conceded: 'We had our moments in the past'.

The interview came after Mr Thompson gave the prestigious MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival last month where he said millionaire stars face the axe or having their salaries slashed.

Yesterday it also emerged the BBC is facing the threat of strikes after thousands of journalists, technicians and other staff voted massively in favour of industrial action in a row over pensions.

Members of the National Union of Journalists and the technicians' union Bectu backed walkouts by more than 9-1 in protest at 'punitive' changes to the staff pension scheme. Unions held back from naming strike dates so that talks can be held over the next two weeks in the hope of resolving the dispute.

SOURCE






Australia: Online public broadcaster walks only on left side of the street

ANYONE trying to make sense of the recent election campaign would be advised to stay well clear of the articles on the ABC's opinion websites, The Drum and Unleashed.

With these sites established as an addition to the ABC's online news service late last year, the campaign was the first big test to see whether online opinion at the national broadcaster could, as ABC chairman Maurice Newman once dared hope, "walk both sides of the street".

But while Tony Abbott's 2010 campaign will be remembered as the most successful by a first-term opposition in 79 years - and, conversely, Julia Gillard's the least successful by a government - all of this seems to have eluded the chosen opinion holders at the ABC. I monitored both sites throughout the campaign. Here's the tally. Negative comments: Gillard, 327; Abbott, 353. Positive comments: Gillard, 197; Abbott, 65. In short, while Gillard and Abbott received roughly the same amount of criticism, Gillard was praised three times more often.

From the first week, articles published at these websites informed us that "Changing leaders has done no damage to Labor's chances at all because Tony Abbott is unelectable and his party is a rabble"; that cabinet meetings involving Abbott would be a "freak show" and the leader a "shameless political operator".

Marieke Hardy told us it was likely he would be "stupid enough to go strolling about the streets wearing nothing but his swimmers and a vaguely predatory leer". Bob Ellis chimed in to say Abbott should be asked about causing the premature death of asbestos-related diseases campaigner Bernie Banton.

Abbott started slowly in campaigning, but it seemed unlikely the tenor of the negative comments - running against him by about five to one at ABC online - could be easily justified.

Week two was the week of the leaks. Abbott performed well in the debate and by the weekend some polls put him in a winning position. This, you might think, would be reflected at the online opinion sites of our national broadcaster. In fact, in the week when it was revealed Gillard might not have been entirely truthful about her support for parental leave, her positive mentions doubled. Amazingly, the ABC published an item praising Gillard's announcement of a citizens assembly on climate change, somehow uncovering the only person other than Gillard known to think that "Boganhagen" would be a good idea.

Positive comment for Abbott came in otherwise negative stories: "It should be clear by now that the trend is towards the Coalition. That's despite anything they've done." But for every grudging bit of praise, Abbott was attacked many times over: "To be fair to Tony, he is a genuinely strange-looking man" and "Personally I'm of the firm belief that [Abbott's] personality is born of the loins of Satan, but it's still a personality regardless."

With the entry of Mark Latham and the advent of "Real Julia", Labor's campaign rapidly turned to farce, but we were told Gillard was "shrewd, tough and intelligent and with a modest manner". One writer followed her on the campaign trail, saying there was a "real buzz around her". Whether there was a buzz around Abbott we are yet to find out; none of them followed him on the hustings. Another concluded that the insulation scheme, which led to four deaths and wasted billions of dollars, "actually achieved some very successful outcomes in terms of retro-fitting Australian homes".

In the week of the Rooty Hill debate the ABC appeared to abandon any pretence of providing balanced opinion on its websites. Gillard and her campaign were praised 93 times - more than Abbott during the entire campaign, while he was showered with criticism. There was not a single online opinion article where a conservative substantially criticised Gillard or praised Abbott that week and at least 17 articles on the other side of the ledger.

Interestingly, the ineptitude of Labor's campaign seemed to have an inverse relationship to the rapturous reception at ABC's online opinion.

During this period, as an experiment, I submitted some comments: "To be fair to Julia, she is a genuinely strange-looking woman" and "She took a married man from his children and is likely to treat her country no better." These comments, created by substituting Gillard's name for Abbott and making small alterations to sentences that contributors had already published, were rejected by the moderators.

Unsurprisingly, an analysis of ABC online's election campaign coverage shows an enormous bias to the Left with an over-representation of policies held by the Greens.

I like to think that the work of the commentariat - or, as Kim Beazley Sr famously put it, the dregs of the middle class - contributed to Gillard's disastrous campaign, seducing her into believing that Abbott was unelectable. These assumptions came crashing down at Rooty Hill where, away from ABC land, the Prime Minister finally came face to face with people whose opinions really mattered.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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2 September, 2010

Evil British social workers again

'I was stolen from my mother': How Winona was handed over for a forced adoption

On a sunny station ­platform in a pretty Cornish town this summer, holidaymakers may have witnessed a touching, but at first glance unremarkable, scene. A mother and teenage son were ­nervously watching a train pull onto the platform, scanning the emerging crowd for the face of a loved one. Had she missed her train? Had they got the right time?

And finally, there she was: a pretty, petite 16-year-old, peering furtively through her fringe. Suddenly the boy broke away with a whoop. ‘It’s her!’

The three immediately became tangled in a hug, babbling, crying, their words tripping over each other. ‘You’ve grown so much!’ ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe you are here!’

A very unusual emotional reunion had just taken place. For Tracey Lucas, a 38-year-old mother from Truro, had just kissed her 16-year-old daughter Winona for the first time in nine years.

What took place on that station platform was a scene that the State had worked very hard for years to ensure didn’t happen. In fact, there is still a question mark over whether Tracey could face prosecution, even prison, for what happened that day.

For nine years previously, Winona and her ­little sister, now 12, were taken from their mother and adopted by another family, given new names and told to forget their natural mother. All contact between them was prevented.

Yet in a story that raises profound questions both about British social services and the power of the internet to challenge their secretive workings, Winona traced her birth mother through the Facebook social networking site and the pair are now determined never again to be parted.

‘For years the girls believed I was a bad mother, a horrible person who didn’t love them, while I was told the girls didn’t want to see me and were ­settled into a new life with new parents they loved. All lies.'

Tracey, Winona and her sister were subjects of a forced adoption, which critics — including family solicitors, MPs and wronged families — say are happening on a scandalously regular basis, on the ­flimsiest of evidence, in order to meet government targets to raise the number of adoptions by 50 per cent.

There have been cases cited of babies taken from women considered too young or not clever enough to look after them. One boy was removed on the grounds that his mother might shout at him in the future.

In Tracey’s case, her children were sent for adoption because they were deemed ‘at risk of emotional abuse’.

No one can really know the truth, and doubtless social services would argue they acted in good faith and in the ­children’s best interests, but Tracey is adamant she never abused, neglected nor abandoned them.

Yet because she was a young single mother, who by her own admission sometimes struggled to cope, she was forced to surrender the most precious things she had. Worse, she says the children believed that she had simply stopped loving them.

‘For years the girls believed I was a bad mother, a horrible person who didn’t love them, while I was told the girls didn’t want to see me and were ­settled into a new life with new parents they loved. All lies,’ says Tracey.

‘The birthday and Christmas cards I wrote were never passed on. The letters Winona wrote to me never reached me. That’s real emotional abuse.’ ‘Yet my son, who’d refused to be adopted, was returned to me after a year, and I went on to have another two ­children with a new partner, neither of whom has come to any harm. How could I have been a danger to my girls?’

Winona is just as angry as her mother about the stolen years: ‘Everyone told me what a terrible person she was, but all my memories of her were good: making Christmas decorations, reading Roald Dahl’s James And The Giant Peach in bed. I never felt anything but love from her.’

Today, that love is palpable. The pair cannot stop sneaking looks at each other as they hold hands on the sofa of their ­modest but cosy home.

More HERE






Is America Only for White People?

Joseph C. Phillips

Is America only for white people? The question stuck in my mind following yet another e-mail exchange with a friend of mine, regarding my conservatism. For this particular gentleman, being black in America is at odds with conservatism. As he put it:

“…Particularly as African-Americans, I feel we are in no real position to idealize the American experience and get too choked up about institutions and symbols that were not created with us in mind. Certainly, we cannot cast our lot with those who are actively seeking to destroy those gains we have made.”

I have a number of issues with the above statement, not the least of which is that the principles that inspired the American founding were always viewed as universal principles, which applied to all of mankind. Curiously, it wasn’t until the introduction of Historicist and Darwinian philosophy (which gave birth to Progressivism) that some Americans began to argue otherwise. And of course, I disagree that conservatives are actively seeking to destroy all of the gains black America has made.

It is important to note that the sentiments that my friend expresses are similar to the political attitudes which continue to permeate much of the black community. These same attitudes are also particularly present in the thinking of the black leftists, who have long held the conviction that the existence of slavery at our nation’s founding renders our Constitution a hollow document; the institutions and symbols that sprang from the founding were bereft of moral authority; the founders were hypocrites and liars, and the American dream is little more than a cruel myth.

From this conviction a kind of “cultural revolutionary defiance” has arisen, that is to say: black authenticity began to be increasingly measured by the degree to which black people defined themselves by way of their ethnicity, expressed anger at historical injuries, and were critical of, or rejected American symbols and institutions.

In this respect, my friend is a true new-revolutionary. But the issue he raises is not a new one, neither is it exclusive to American blacks.

In July of 1858, Abraham Lincoln addressed the question of how almost half of the citizens of this country could take pride and ownership in the accomplishments of the nation when they were not “historically related” to the founders, or those living on these shores at the time of the founding.

Lincoln answered: “If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together--that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world."

The essential element that my friend and the black leftists have missed is that what binds us together as Americans is not shared blood, race, ethnicity, or tribe; it is the unshakable belief in certain universal principles. The American experience is not attached to men who were flawed, but is instead fixed to ideas that remain flawless.

The institutions and symbols of America are reflective of the revolutionary idea that all men are the property of God, created with an equal right to life, liberty, private property, and the free pursuit of bettering their station in life. Martin Luther King, Jr., put it more succinctly: “The American dream reminds us…that every man is an heir of the legacy of dignity and worth.”

All of us, whether our ancestors arrived through the gates of Ellis Island or survived travel through the Middle Passage are heirs to that grand idea. It is this idea that animates true conservatism and moreover, it is ONLY that idea—those principles—that made possible the huge gains that black Americans have made in this country and indeed in the world. It is, perhaps, also the reason that more Africans have freely chosen to come to America than were ever imported in slave ships.

In response to my friend, all Americans should ask: If not America, where? If not American symbols, which symbols? If not American institutions, which institutions will do? If not the principles of the American founding, upon which principles do the black left propose to build a new America—an America they can “idolize” and “get choked up about”?

Ask Van Jones. These forward-thinking paragons, nursed on the mother’s-milk of Marx and Mao, would build their new America on the bedrock of economic redistribution and racial favoritism. I believe we tried that once in this country…

SOURCE





Islamism: Humpty Dumpty Style

Isn't it surprising, how many people get duped or sucked into Sharia law when the Muslims link it to democracy or our fundamental democratic principles. Why is this so?

The most obvious is the event at Ground Zero and how the Muslims use "our" democratic principles as having applicability to them. This is what we are referring to as "upside down" Humpty Dumpty democracy. They scream "religious freedom." An example of this upside down democracy, is how they harass women into wearing the burqa and call it "freedom of choice."

Then, there is the Danish cartoon and death threat attacks which speak to their inability to accept criticism of their faith. Another example is that once a Muslim building has been built, the Waqf, the Islamic endowment, their upside down entitlement fantasies take over and they feel they own the property forever - hence to their endowment they claim Jerusalem when it is not even mentioned in the noble Quran. To this scandalous list we add pseudo-martyrdom suicide attacks and the flotilla of alleged humanitarian aid-cum-weapons.

We believe this happens because as Americans we are preprogrammed and prescripted to jump at just the mere word "democracy.' We treasure this special value in freedom and justice for all. EQUALITY in caps!

The problem with Americans is that when it comes to democracy, we don’t even take a pause to think about the psychological undertones of such an uncritical autonomic response. There should be religious freedom for all, for example. Yet under Islam this is not the case -- when the rights of many do not even matter if you are female, homosexual, non-Muslim etc. along with Sharia's cruel concrete punishments.

We can describe this knee jerk reaction as a facile unsophisticated collective wish, to be seen as the "good Americans," the good kid on the block, or just a good team player where everyone is equal. In psychological terms this is idealizing the intentions of the other to our own detriment because we wish to be seen as good at all costs. Giving deference to a principle to the extent that reality is lost, i.e. there is no equality in that!

This leads to the key problem - no one picks up on the distortions, misperceptions and manipulations. Everyone pretends that everything is okay. Voila! you have the Emperor's New Clothes syndrome, in this case the Imam is naked along with Mayor Bloomberg.

Why, too, is this so? Because when reality gets out of whack like Humpty Dumpty, it becomes more difficult to reassemble the real communication. It is utterly terrorizing and disorganizing to the point of causing a cacophony. Terrorizing that there are that many people out there who manipulate reality and its cruel truth in order to save their behinds while sacrificing some of us. Sort of like cutting off a finger to feed angry Allah. It's called intimidation and bullying; under Sharia it is qital = slaughtering of the infidels.

Moreover, there is no equality among the Abrahamic faiths. Judaism is utterly vilified in Islam. The Muslims seek to destroy the Jews because they built Islam on top of Judaism and then Christianity. Rarely is this point noted and routinely only Islam and Christianity are talked about. Like evidence in a legal case, the proof is so strong in favor of the Jews, that the Muslims have to destroy the Jews in order to lay claim to their perfect religion. We are not cousins going to some Iftar party though the invitation may have been sent out from the Cordoba House. Let's get over it, already.

What can we do to get the fence sitters to join forces in combating this myth of Muslim democracy? Recently we have thought of starting a fourth new Abrahamic religion. We don't have a name for it yet. All suggestions are welcomed but in this new Abrahamic faith, it comes along and steals the prophecy from Muhammad. Then, its new charismatic leader reopens revelation and claims that Islam has perverted the text. What if the fourth religion started to create a protected class for Muslims with a yellow crescent to be worn on their limited choice in apparel, a reworking of what happened to Jews in Baghdad in the 9th century? That way they can have a taste of their own medicine, a democratic move to be sure. But this won't happen; we know that. Nor would we really wish that upon anyone.

While there may be millions of moderate Muslims out there as Ibn Warraq likes to say - Islam itself is not moderate. What needs to be done is to foreground the pseudo-equality of the Islamic project by calling them on it. In facing the brutal reality, we do not succumb to the terrors they seek to inflict.

Would Obama or any of his cohorts pause for a moment and say, Hey, you are manipulating us! You are taking a terrorist regime and wanting to insert it into our democratic principles. Your square does not fit into our hole especially the one at Ground Zero. No, they like it the way it is, because in their warped mind's eye, they feel themselves so righteously entitled as self-chosen victims.

SOURCE






Australia: Opposing same-sex adoption is not bigoted

By Peter Kell (Peter Kell is chief executive of Anglicare Sydney. The Sydney diocese is a Bible-believing one -- unlike most dioceses in communion with Canterbury)

The optimal family arrangement is for a biological mother and biological father raising their children in a committed long-term relationship. Where this is not possible, the next best arrangement should replicate as closely as possible the primary arrangement of biological mother and father.

This would lead us to err on the side of supporting adoption by heterosexual over same-sex couples to replicate those optimal conditions, in which the unique physical and emotional traits of each parent provide appropriate role modelling and nurturing for the child in a complimentary way.

Under the NSW Adoption Act, the best interests of the child are paramount. The act conforms to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Therefore, the onus is on those supporting an amendment to the Adoption Act to demonstrate the ability by same-sex couples to provide equivalent optimal care.

This is not quite as easy as it might at first seem. The research cited on both sides of the same-sex argument to support their claims was at best inconclusive and at worst methodologically flawed.

Last year, an inquiry by the Legislative Council into adoption by same-sex couples considered a range of evidence about parenting by mothers and fathers and by same-sex couples.

A submission by Anglicare Sydney noted that research on same-sex carers had been affected by both methodological flaws and ideological debates. Anglicare Sydney concluded that, in the best interests of children, the state should err on the side of caution on adoption - even more so in areas where research, at best, appears ambiguous. And the members of the committee were far from unanimous about the research evidence.

The position we took in the inquiry drew on 45 years of direct experience in the provision of adoption services in NSW. Anglicare Sydney works every day with birth families, with children who have been put up for adoption (including many children with special needs) and with people seeking to adopt a child.

One thing we have sought to pursue is an optimal outcome for the child. It is a child's right to have the best possible family environment.

It is important to consider that the proposed amendment as it stands does not distinguish between "known" and "unknown" adoptions. This is a vital distinction when considering the best interests of a child.

All the examples of same-sex parenting cited by those in favour of the amendment refer to known adoptions, where a child is already part of a family unit in which the parenting role is undertaken by a same-sex couple.

There may be instances where it might be in the best interests of a child already in a relationship with a carer for adoption to occur with the consent, as required, of the child's biological parents.

However, the amendment also applies where a child or infant is unknown to the prospective adoptive parents. In this instance, the best interests of children would be served by seeking to provide them with the optimal care offered by both a mother and a father.

In unknown adoptions, birth parents select potential adoptive parents from profiles presented to them. They usually prefer a mother and a father over single adoptive parents. When the Adoption Act in Tasmania was amended, it maintained this important distinction, allowing for known same-sex adoption, but not for unknown adoptions.

Anglicare Sydney is not seeking to perpetuate and condone discrimination against gay people. The Adoption Act makes it clear that adoption is a service for the child, not the adoptive parents, and that no one has the right to adopt.

We believe that the proposed amendment is not a proper application of the law against homosexual discrimination.

Discrimination issues should have no bearing on reasons to promote same-sex adoption. The only relevant consideration ought to be whether same-sex adoption is in the best interests of the child.

Amending the Adoption Act ought not to be a vehicle for sending a message to people about removing prejudice against same-sex relationships and encouraging the general acceptance of same-sex relationships.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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1 September, 2010

Heed the message, whatever you think of the messenger

A good old-fashioned sermon below

I have seen the effect an old fashioned revival can have on a community. I have seen lives changed, for the better, in a moment of introspection keyed by something that raspy-voiced old bible thumping preacher said, or a single line of scripture that burned with the intensity of a laser deep into the heart and soul of a person weighed down by the cares and woes of a life squandered.

I have seen, first-hand, those “redeemed” people pick up the pieces of their shattered lives and begin to rebuild it, restore it, and honor it. I have seen this – and it left a life long impression on this scribe.

So – what did I learn? I learned an extremely important truth. It does not matter who the messenger is, what matters is – the message. The power is not in the messenger. The power is in the message. And if that message is truth, then, them believe me when I tell you, freedom is close behind.

Our nation is in dire straits. In my seventy years of life, I have seen America go from a God-fearing nation to a “fearing” nation. Of all those hell fire and brimstone preachers I was exposed to as a child, not a single one of them wore a bulletproof vest, as I believe Mr. Beck did last Saturday. (A faint outline of the vest was visible through Mr. Beck’s shirt. At least, that is what I took it to be.) That, alone, speaks volumes about the state of our country.

Another thing I learned as a youth was this truth: God uses people who are broken, who have failed, who have buckled under the stress of their lives, who are physically imperfect, and who are reluctant to stand out from the crowd, even for a moment, even to work great wonders.

Yes, Moses had a speech impediment. He was reluctant to go back to Egypt where he was a wanted man – wanted for murder. He asked that his brother Aaron be sent instead of him. In the end, he went — and the rest, as they say, is history (at least bible history, anyway.) In the New Testament book of Hebrews chapter 13, verse 31, the writer says the following: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Consider that Mr. Beck may have fallen into the hands of the living God. Look at the life history of the Apostle Paul. Early in his life he took on the task of destroying the early Christian church. After his experience on the Damascus Road, he became the messenger of the gospel to all the Gentiles of the world including those of us who live today, 2000 years later.

I watched the entire telecast of the Restoring Honor Rally, last Saturday, and within ten minutes I exclaimed to my wife that I recognized it as an old-fashioned outdoor revival meeting. Because that is exactly what it was. And, I hasten to add – I don’t see that as a problem.

In the Old South, dishonoring a man could cost you your life. The man whose honor was questioned could demand satisfaction and, more often than not, the debate was settled by a duel to the death on the Field of Honor.

Honor was, and ought to be, a precious thing. The honor of a nation is a mirror image of the honor of that nation’s people. Our very own leaders have called our honor, as Americans, into question. The people are now demanding satisfaction. As was said at the Restoring Honor Rally, Now is not the time to fundamentally change America, now is the time to RESTORE America.

Look, I do not walk in lock step with Mr. Beck, or with any man or woman. Anyone who knows me personally will tell you that of all the birds perched on the power line facing north; I am the lone bird facing south. It is my nature.

I would ask only this: Consider the message from Saturday’s rally. Restoring America’s honor is restoring America. The restoration of America is vital, not just to Americans but to the nations of the world. Consider which nation will slip into the leadership position that America gives up. THAT is truly frightening.

The restoring Honor Rally, last weekend, sent chills of fear through the ranks of the leftists, progressives, liberals, and the very few real democrats left in our government. They have now seen the evidence of just how far they have distanced themselves from the American people. When half a million people journey to the nation’s seat of government to PERSONALLY register a protest, any reasonable person would have to take notice and reconsider the course they have plotted for America. But they won’t.

I submit that half a million gathered on the national mall Saturday was just the vanguard of a nationwide movement retake America from those who are determined to “fundamentally change” her from the constitutional republic The Founders meant her to be into a socialist sewer.

They must be stopped. The Mid-Term Election, on November 2nd. That is our new “D” day.

You may not care for the messenger – but, for the sake of America, for your sake, heed of the message.

More HERE







A real grassroots protest

Not like the rent-a-crowd "demonstrations" regularly mounted by a small cadre of Leftists

Hugh Hewitt interprets the tremendous support for the Palin/Beck gathering on the Mall last weekend: It's a way for regular people to tell the elites "enough!" -- that it's time to "rewind and restart" the last two years. In my view, what we are witnessing is a collective gag reflex from the body politic at the policy poison we've been force-fed over the past two years.

Indeed, the Obama administration regularly affronts the good sense and good judgment of more than two-thirds of Americans; the most recent example? Its decision to report to the UN the federal government's suit against Arizona's immigration law as an example of the protection of "human rights."

When Jeanne Kirkpatrick decried the "blame America first" orientation of the left, this is exactly what she meant. The Obama administration can't bring itself to discuss the links between terrorism and radical Islam, but is willing to denounce one of the United States for a law that does nothing but attempt to protect a state's security and sovereignty from illegal immigrants.

America repudiated the "blame America first" approach before, and will do so again. Soon. And it can't come soon enough.

SOURCE





Obama's Fictitious "Moderate Muslim Majority"

Webster’s Dictionary defines the word “story” as ‘an imaginary account of real people and events’ and ‘a yarn’. President Barack Obama has long dispensed the following fiction to Americans: the Muslim world is divided between “radicals” and “moderates.” Unfortunately, this narrative is at the forefront of US foreign policy, and its lack of basis in reality is leading to the failure of US efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, while raising a false sense of security at home.

Television news provides daily graphic depictions of "radical Muslims." However, if they really exist, where are the "moderate Muslims" that President Obama speaks of so often? Americans are left to imagine what "moderate Muslims" look like, where they might be located, and whether they have organizations with websites they can visit. And, if there are "radical Muslims" and "moderate Muslims,” mustn’t there also be "liberal Muslims? Why doesn’t CNN cover those “liberal Muslim” pro-Israel street demonstrations?

In fact, there are no such groups as “radical Muslims” or “moderate Muslims.” These designations do not exist in the Islamic world. These terms were invented in recent times only because Islamic goals and values are not understood or shared by the West.

In the early 1900's, Europeans began referring to Islam as “Muhammadism,” and Muslims as “Muhammadans,” incorrectly assuming the Prophet Muhammad had the same role in Islam that Jesus did in Christianity. To this day, misunderstandings continue: Westerners describe the mosque as a “Muslim church,” equate the Muslim Friday to the Christian Sunday, refer to the Koran as the “Muslim Bible,” and believe sheiks to be “Muslim priests.”

Westerners also incorrectly group Muslims politically, using Western terms such as “moderate,” “conservative,” and “radical.” So different are Western and Muslim world views, that identical words can have two different meanings. In the West, “freedom” is the right of individuals to participate in the formation, conduct, and lawful removal of governments from power - the basis of constitutionalism and parliamentary government.

For the Islamic world, “freedom” means “independence”from foreign rule, which they equate with “tyranny.” In the West, the opposite of tyranny is “freedom.” In Islam, the opposite of tyranny is “justice.” For Muslim thinkers, “justice” is the ideal, and justice distinguishes good leaders from bad leaders. For the majority of Muslims, bad leaders are those who have Western values and are allied with the West. The rise to power of Islamist political parties everywhere free elections are held in the Middle East speaks volumes.

Because the West considers its development of “separation of church and state” and "secularism" as the highest evolution of humanity, those not sharing Western values are dismissed as “radical,” or essentially “nuts.” Though lacking a shred of evidence, President Obama insists there exists a “vast majority” of “moderate Muslims” who do share Western values. After all, part of the “story” is that "radical Muslims" are just a small group of former "moderate Muslims" who have been "radicalized," as one can become a "radical Muslim" only through brainwashing.

A more accurate description of political loyalties in the Islamic world is that the majority of Muslims are either active or passive supporters of the movement of Islamism. The movement for Islamic Revival or “Islamism,” is an indigenous, grass-roots movement championed by both poor and educated Muslims throughout the Muslim world. "Islam is the solution!" is the Islamist call to action against Westernization and secular governments in the Muslim world, which provide the masses with little hope or future.

Islamists do not consider themselves to be revolutionaries, in the sense of revolution changing society in a new way. Rather, Islamists strive to rebuild internally by applying traditional principles to reestablish the past strength and glory of Islam. A return to success necessitates the purification of Islamic society from secular government systems, legislation, and institutions borrowed from or imposed by the West.

For Islamists, political upheaval, if needed by the sword, is a necessary part of the purification of their society, hundreds of years in the making. Islamism advocates the implementation of Shari’ah (Islamic law) and the restoration of the Koran as the sole authority for government in Muslim countries. Meanwhile, Western military presence in Muslim countries constitutes an affront to Islamists. Islamists believe that dominance by unbelievers is blasphemous, as it can lead to abasement of faith, immorality, and violations of Holy Law.

Discarding President Obama’s fictitious “story” of “moderate Muslims” and “radical Muslims,” the true reality emerges with regard to Iraq and Afghanistan: America has no real allies in these countries, and there is little or no support for secular, Western democracy. Following a US withdrawal, its only a matter of time before the US backed governments collapse and Islamist forces seize power, leaving the American public to ask “what happened to our allies, the moderate Muslim majority?” The answer is that this was only a “story,” a yarn composed by politicians due to their lack of understanding.

More HERE





Here's a Concept: Let's Not Talk About Race

On a regular basis, we are enjoined, usually by a leading Democrat, to overcome our reticence -- or, in Attorney General Eric Holder's formulation, "cowardice" -- and engage in a hearty national conversation about race.

No, thanks. As anyone with eyes can see, we are far from avoiding the subject -- in fact, it often seems that we are unable to talk about anything else. With our national debt ascending like Jack's beanstalk, our economy coughing blood, a maniacal, extremist regime in Iran close to getting the bomb, a loose worldwide network of Islamic fanatics trying to blow us up, violence flaring along our southern border, the after-effects of a massive oil spill hobbling the Gulf region, and a government in Washington determined to implement a social Democratic agenda despite vigorous public opposition, we are talking, of course, about race.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger gave up her three-decade-old radio program after using the "n" word on the air. Not that she wielded it as an epithet. No, she was just insensitive (no irony intended here, she really was). And racial insensitivity, more than any other kind, is a ticket to American purgatory.

Though Dr. Laura could be flippant and even cruel at times, she was a one-woman corrective to the therapeutic culture that treated everyone as a victim and required responsibility from no one. Over the course of 30 years, she never gave any indication of racist tendencies (and she gave plenty of solid advice to boot). But she touched the third rail one time, and now she's silenced.

Dr. Laura made it easy for her critics by a lapse of taste and judgment. But even in the absence of such blunders, the left can make anything about race.

Two rallies were held in Washington over the weekend. One was hosted by TV and radio phenom Glenn Beck to "restore American honor" (whatever that means), and the other by the Rev. Al Sharpton, to whine about the Beck rally.

The Beck rally happened to fall on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's "Dream" speech. OK. Does that make Beck a racist? So said any number of axe-grinders. National Urban League President Marc Morial said Beck's rally is "an effort to embarrass and poke a finger in the eye of the civil rights community."

Martin Luther King III, invoking his father, protested that "his dream rejected hateful rhetoric and all forms of bigotry or discrimination..."

A New York Times story about the coincidence of dates started this way: "It seems the ultimate thumb in the eye: that Glenn Beck would summon the Tea Party faithful to a rally on the anniversary of the March on Washington."

But consider this: The one piece of evidence cited by Beck's leftist critics to prove that he is a racist is that Beck once called Obama a racist! Oh, and then he apologized. Now we're really in the weeds of race talk as only 21st century Americans can do it.

In fact, Beck (who can never be accused of reserve) has become moist (his default mode) when discussing the great legacy of Martin Luther King. He has explained that the timing of the march was accidental but that he has come to think of it as "providential." His rally was rich with tributes to the civil rights icon, and included a speech by King's niece, Alveda King.

Nothing daunted, The New York Times insinuated away. "In the Tea Party's talk of states' rights," wrote reporter Kate Zernike, "critics say they hear an echo of slavery, Jim Crow and George Wallace." Yes, naturally. Just as New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd "heard" the word "boy" when Congressman Joe Wilson blurted "You lie" at President Obama. And just for the record, tea party groups don't tend to use the term "states' rights."

Times columnist Paul Krugman, too, is in a lather (his default mode). Denouncing the "ugliness" he sees coming down the pike (that would be a big Republican victory in November), Krugman fulminates that "a significant number of Americans just don't consider government by liberals . . . legitimate." Krugman is aghast that a Republican majority might initiate a "wave of investigations," which would be "dangerous." Well, let's see, these supposedly lawless Republicans will be exercising their right to vote and will elect representatives who may choose to discharge their congressional oversight responsibility zealously. How is that "dangerous" or "ugly"?

In fact, it is the left that regards all criticism as illegitimate. No matter what you say, if you hold a rally opposing the liberal agenda, or attend a town hall meeting critical of a Democrat, you will be tarred as a racist. As the radio host Chris Plante puts it: "The definition of a racist today is anyone who is winning an argument with a liberal."

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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Examining political correctness around the world and its stifling of liberty and sense. Chronicling a slowly developing dictatorship


BIO for John Ray


Sarah Palin is undoubtedly the most politically incorrect person in American public life so she will be celebrated on this blog


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 chidren 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


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.


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."


The Supreme Court of the United States is now and always has been a judicial abomination. Its guiding principles have always been political rather than judicial. It is not as political as Stalin's courts but its respect for the constitution is little better. Some recent abuses: The "equal treatment" provision of the 14th amendment was specifically written to outlaw racial discrimination yet the court has allowed various forms of "affirmative action" for decades -- when all such policies should have been completely stuck down immediately. The 2nd. amendment says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed yet gun control laws infringe it in every State in the union. The 1st amedment provides that speech shall be freely exercised yet the court has upheld various restrictions on the financing and display of political advertising. The court has found a right to abortion in the constitution when the word abortion is not even mentioned there. The court invents rights that do not exist and denies rights that do.


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.


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


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