Links - 29th July 2015

BBC World Service - The World This Week, How Africans Brought 'Africa's Pinochet' To Book - "Robert Lacey: Until the middle of 1939, all of Britain wanted a peace deal with Hitler. And when Chamberlain came back from Munich with that disgusting agreement as we now saw it, the whole country was cheering and so for the Royal Family to go along with that, it seems to me, is not exceptional... Look at America. Where they have, theoretically, a marvelous democracy. What do they do? They immediately try and create royal people. Clintons. Bushes. Kennedies. We're dealing with a basic human need here, to have a human element at the heart of government. And that's what our monarchy is."

Goodbye Sweden | THE SWEDEN REPORT - "When I was a child, Sweden was a dull yet very safe place to live. Yes, there was a heavy blanket of socialism and collectivist values covering everything, but there was a core of pragmatism beneath the redness. The intention and goal was always to benefit the citizens, even though they went about things in a backwards manner. Today, it’s as if the inmates are running the asylum. The politicians are participating in a chicken race of “goodness” where everybody tries to one-up each other in caring for the citizens of OTHER countries while Swedish retirees, school children, handicapped and other vulnerable categories of people are thorougly ignored. Violence is exploding. Jihadist Trojan horses are flowing through the porous border along with the tens of thousands ID-less refugees. But what makes me the most pessimistic about Sweden’s future is how the social fabric itself has been undermined... There simply is no possible way to absorb and assimilate such volumes of people, period. Then you are merely creating ethnic enclaves, which due to incompatible language, culture and job skills become ghettos, which in turns brews crime, misery and extremism. Once the inflow has exceeded the capacity for absorbtion, further immigration only makes the problem worse. It’s like someone having read that a cup of green tea per day is healthy, so they make it a policy to chug four gallons per day, every day. It’s a good thing overdone to the extreme until it becomes toxic. Then you have the Swedish school system. There really is no nice way to put it; it’s a complete disaster. The minister of education is a man-boy who spends his time making Youtube-videos showing heart-signs with his hands to boost school results, while university-level students can’t read and comprehend the course literature. Since there is a delay in the changes in the school system, it is only in recent years the full impact of the knowledge-averse “progressive” school system is starting to be felt. Hard facts are largely irrelevant; the important thing is to sit in a group and discuss things until a consensus is reached. But with no hard facts to base the conclusions on, it becomes an exercise in futility because it’s all random assumptions and opinions. As a university-level history student (!) was quoted as saying in newspaper Svenska Dagbladet the other day: “Why would all these dates matter? Who cares in what order things happened?”"

The Education Crisis | Swedish Surveyor - "As the OECD noted no other country has experienced a steeper decline in student performance than Sweden in the past decade and in this very same decade the majority of the population growth has been a direct result of lax immigration policies... The only country whereas immigrant students do better than native students is Australia; a country that cherry picks individuals who are well-educated and have the skills required for the Australian labour market. This stands in stark contrast to Sweden which has prioritized immigration from the third world and some groups such as Somalis are, to a great extent, analfabetic."

Born this way? Society, sexuality and the search for the 'gay gene' - "Scientists are asking whether homosexuality is natural when we can’t even agree exactly what homosexuality is. Homosexuality, as with all sexualities, is a social construction... This picture of sexuality is where we stand today: our sexual desires help construct our social identity, one which we believe tells a fundamental truth about who we are... whilst almost all of the focus of research into the gay gene has focused on gay men, research into female sexual desires has continued as well. In 2006 for example, Linda Garnets and Anne Peplau presented research they described as a “paradigm shift” into female sexuality. Their research found that women’s sexual orientation is potentially fluid, shaped by life experiences and can change over the course of a life span. Of particular importance they found that female sexual orientation is “shaped by such social and cultural factors as women’s education, social status and power, economic opportunities, and attitudes about women’s roles”... Homosexuality therefore is not due to genes, but develops, as Julie Bindel says, due to “a mix of opportunity, luck, chance, and, quite frankly, bravery”... While gay gene arguments may seem like a way to push the rights agenda forward it can actually have the opposite effect — limiting the debate solely to those traits and behaviours seen as genetic. There is no genetic evidence for much of our behaviour. Does that mean, even when we are not creating harm, we have less of a right to engage in those acts than others?"

Are Some Men Born Pedophiles? New Science Says Yes, But Sexologists Say Not So Fast - "“Whatever the chain of events is, the chain begins before birth,” said James M. Cantor, a University of Toronto professor of psychiatry whose research team has made a series of startling correlations finding that pedophiles are likely to share physical attributes, such as slightly lower IQs, shorter body height, left-handedness and less brain tissue. “There is no way to explain the findings that we get for pedophelia without mentioning or without including biology”"

Short stint in jail for woman who killed partner by cutting off his penis - "A WOMAN who chopped off her ex partner's penis to stop him impregnating other women will serve less than four years in jail. Jian Chen was this morning sentenced to a minimum of three years and nine months in jail after pleading guilty to the manslaughter of her ex partner Xian Peng at her North Ryde home in February 2011. The court accepted the guilty plea to the lesser charge, and withdrew the murder charge, because Chen was suffering from an "abnormality of the mind" due to mental illness and the belief Peng was going to take their child to China. Chen believed her husband was "a conman" who wanted to impregnate wealthy woman to get money off them, the court heard."

Christian Man Denied Service By THIRTEEN Gay Bakeries After Requesting Pro-Traditional Marriage Cake - "when Shoebat.com decided to call thirteen pro-gay bakeries and ask for the words “Gay Marriage Is Wrong”, they were met with insults and hatred. In short, they were met with the same intolerance that the people wanting “Support Gay Marriage” cakes were met with at Christian bakeries… yet these pro-gay bakeries had no backlash against them. Yet, as Shoebat.com asked, it is curious what the reaction would be had the callers asked for “Support Polygamy” or “Polygamy is Wrong” cakes.. because we’re betting the slogans would be considered opinions, would be considered free speech. We’re also betting that the bakeries would have made the cakes."

'Sweden's integration debate skewed by political correctness' - "On August 19th, local politician and human rights activist Robert Hannah came out of the closet in dramatic fashion by publishing an article in the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper with the headline "From now on I will be myself". The article made waves as it was not only a personal story about his decision to come out as a homosexual, but also a public denouncement of the honour culture still prevalent in some parts of the Assyrian immigrant culture in which he was raised. Since then, the waves have become stronger as both support for and the attacks on Hannah have grown in intensity. His article exposed Sweden's sensitive nerve of political correctness for what it really is: a self-imposed straight jacket. Since he went public and shared his experiences as a gay man living under the moral oppression of the Assyrian honour culture, it seems the strongest criticism he has faced has come from within the ranks of Sweden's left-wing progressives. He has been accused of feeding xenophobia, abusing rhetorical techniques to "win a debate" and of using his own personal experiences as scientifically unsound evidence for making generic statements about immigrants. In short he has been accused of playing straight into the hands of the extreme right."
Is it worse to be "homophobic" or to be "racist"?

Of bare breasts and now vaginas: Will Swedish PC madness ever end? - "the Social Democratic Deputy Speaker of the Swedish Parliament, Susanne Eberstein, ordered the removal of a baroque painting featuring a (barely) naked woman -- see the picture in the article here -- from the parliamentary dining room where it had been hanging for 30 years. That was on the grounds that a pair of baroque breasts could cause offence to women in general and visiting Muslim dignitaries in particular. But if bare breasts are too much for grown men and women, vagina art is apparently perfectly ok for school kids."

Swedish political correctness goes into reverse as black teacher is excluded from "black film" class - ""A Swedish trainee teacher was asked to leave the classroom because the pupils were about to discuss a film with black actors, and her presence could "inhibit the debate". The school's "logic" was framed in terms of a deeply-held belief in Swedish officialdom that racial, religious and cultural groups think in terms of the groups to which they belong, rather than in terms of any given item that they are asked to talk about. The teaching student, from Malmo University, has filed an official complaint to Sweden's discrimination ombudsman. She said that the film had focused on criminality among young black boys. After it had been shown, the class teacher threw her out so that the students could discuss the matter without her presence getting in the way of the discussion."
This is like whites or men in US colleges being barred from ethnic studies/gender studies classes

Pork Politics: Why Some Danes Want Pig Meat Required On Menus - "Over the summer, the Danish tabloid Ekstra Bladet undertook a survey of public institutions and found that "at least 30" day cares had dropped pork from their menus so that children from different ethnic and religious backgrounds (primarily Muslim) would not have to queue up in different lunch lines. But 844 comments later, it became clear that many Danes thought this was a bad idea... the idea of a "pork quota" was something given fairly serious consideration at a recent national party meeting. That is, a requirement that the menu at public institutions for the young and old contain at least 20 percent pig. "People should have the freedom to live according to Islamic law," says Mikkel Dencker, the man behind the dream. "It's also fine with us that they don't want to eat pork. But there should be meatballs in day care centers, and on those days they can eat more potatoes or side dishes.""

Science minister doubts Darwin: God created Earth - "Esben Lunde Larsen – the new minister for education and research, who will be responsible for scientific research in Denmark – is making headlines due to his scientific scepticism and belief that God created the Earth."