Links - 15th December 2017 (1)

Anti-Semitism in Europe: New Official Report - "a new study, Antisemitic Violence in Europe, 2005-2015 -- written by Johannes Due Enstad of the Oslo-based Center for Studies of the Holocaust and the University of Oslo, and jointly published by both institutions -- is refreshingly, even startlingly, honest about its subject. Enstad notes that while anti-Semitic violence has declined in the U.S. since 1994, it has been on the rise worldwide. That, of course, includes Europe -- most of it, anyway. Examining statistics from France, Britain, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Russia, Enstad points out that one of these seven countries "clearly stands out with a very low number" of anti-Semitic incidents despite its "relatively large Jewish population"; the country in question, he adds, "is also the only case in which there is little to indicate that Jews avoid displaying their identity in public." In addition, it is the only one of the six countries in which the majority of perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence are not Muslims. Which country is Enstad referring to? Russia... Enstad weighs official statistics from all of the countries under examination, but finds that while those from most of the countries essentially jibe with the results of independent studies, those published by both Germany and Sweden are fishy, in some cases betraying an apparent effort by officials to massage the numbers to avoid certain uncomfortable facts. While an independent survey, for example, concludes that right-wing extremists make up a small minority of perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence in Germany, German police statistics blame most such violence on just right-wingers. Enstad, in his polite way, suggests that this discrepancy is the result of "a categorisation problem." Could it be possible, Enstad wonders, that "German police considers antisemitism a right-wing type of ideology and thus categorises most anti-Semitic attacks as right-wing, regardless of the perpetrator's ethnic or religious background?" Another problem is that German officials categorize some incidents -- including the fire-bombing of a synagogue -- as anti-Israeli, not anti-Semitic... The Swedish government's numbers are also dubious. While attributing a "minority" of anti-Semitic incidents to "right-wing extremists," official Swedish reports prefer not to say who is responsible for the majority of them... Absurdly, whenever a perpetrator draws a swastika, the Swedish government automatically considers it a "right-wing" act... Yet, after examining both official and independent figures, Enstad concludes that right-wingers, in all four of the major Western European countries in his study, "constitute a clear minority of perpetrators." Indeed, "in France, Sweden and the UK (but not in Germany) the perpetrator was perceived to be left-wing more often than right-wing.""

Bogus Hate Crimes: Trump, Conservatives Blamed by Clueless Leftists - "Democrats find themselves in the odd position of simultaneously suggesting 1. that Donald Trump is a closet anti-Semite and 2. that his son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, is a nefarious Jewish agent of Israel hoping to turn Washington into the Jewish state’s “Santa Claus.”... the fake hate crimes and other politically charged fictitious horrors did not begin with Trump’s election. In her memoir, Lena Dunham made up a story about being raped by an Oberlin College Republican named Barry; after reporting here at National Review and elsewhere (and a lawsuit threat from an Oberlin graduate), Random House was obliged to emend the book. Two black students were charged with pro-KKK vandalism at the University of Miami. Terroristic threats made against Muslim students at Concordia University turned out to come not from right-wing Muslim haters but from a Lebanese-Canadian man named Hisham Saadi. Anti-Arab graffiti on the home of an Arab family in Ohio was put there by a fellow named Osama (!) Nazzal. A large Internet archive of such fake hate crimes, with links to local media reporting, is available here."... The Democratic party just came within a hair of elevating to its highest institutional position a man who has long associated with the worst kind of anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists, racists, and lunatics, who has worked with them and apologized for them: As it turns out, Keith Ellison will only be elevated to the rank of No. 2 rather than given the top leadership position in the party"

Black-on-white crime in America - "While most violent crime is indeed intrarracial, 26.7 percent of homicides where the victim is a stranger are interracial. And in 2008, the offending rate for blacks (24.7 offenders per 100,000) was seven times higher than the rate for whites (3.4 offenders per 100,000), according to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). Accounting for population differences, whites are simply far more likely to be victims of interracial crime than blacks. That, of course, didn’t stop Jesse Jackson from telling the Los Angeles Times at the height of the Zimmerman frenzy that “targeting, arresting, convicting blacks and ultimately killing us is big business.” The data, once again, suggest something quite different. In the mid-1990s, the Center for Equal Opportunity analyzed 55,512 felony cases filed in state courts for the 75 largest counties, representing 37 percent of the U.S. population. The weighted data, taken from the BJS, revealed that juries actually acquit blacks at a higher rate than whites for 12 of the 14 types of crime studied — including murder, rape, robbery and assault. The only category that had a higher conviction rate for African-Americans was felony traffic offenses."

London Christian girl, 5, forced into care with Muslims - "A white five-year-old girl told her mother Christmas and Easter are 'stupid' and European women are alcoholics after being fostered to two Muslim families, it was claimed today. The child, who is a native English speaker, also refused to take back her favourite meal - spaghetti carbonara - because it contained bacon - which Muslims do not eat. The child, who is a native English speaker, spent the past six months in two Muslim households after being placed into foster care... She was forced to live in Muslim foster homes where nobody spoke English and her carers took away her Christian cross and encouraged her to learn Arabic... Local authority reports describe how the little girl sobbed and begged not to be returned to her niqab-wearing carer’s home... Local authorities are required to give due consideration to a child’s religion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background’ when placing them into a foster home... In 2011, it was reported a 31-year-old Asian woman who worked in a local chemist’s had received death threats for refusing to wear a veil, even though she was not a practising Muslim."

Christian girl, 5, forced into conservative Muslim foster home - "In the reports, a social services supervisor describes how the child cried and begged not to be returned to one foster home because ‘they don’t speak English’... Tower Hamlets refused to explain why it had chosen to place a white English-speaking Christian child with Muslim non-English-speaking foster families. As there is a longstanding shortage of foster carers from ethnic minority backgrounds, non-white children are frequently placed in the care of white British foster parents"
Maybe liberals will say there're no scandals when non-white children are placed with white parents because of media racism

Council admits mistakes over Ukip foster parents storm - "A council that sparked outrage after taking three eastern European children away from their Ukip-supporting foster parents has apologised over its handling of the case after a review concluded that mistakes were made but the decision was taken in the children's best interests. Rotherham borough council said it accepted that the impression given was that the removal was solely because of the foster carers' membership of Ukip"

Safe spaces and ‘ze’ badges: My bewildering year at a US university | The Spectator - "As a child in Glasgow, I learned that sticks and stones might break my bones but words didn’t really hurt. I’m now at New York University studying journalism, where a different mantra seems to apply. Words, it turns out, might cause life-ruining emotional trauma. During my ‘Welcome Week’, for example, I was presented with a choice of badges indicating my preferred gender pronouns: ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’ or ‘ze’? The student in front of me, an Australian, found this hilarious: ‘Last time I checked, I was a girl.’ Her joke was met with stony silence. Later I realised why: expressing bewilderment at the obsession with pronouns might count as a ‘micro-aggression’. Next stop, ‘transphobia’. It was soon obvious to my fellow students that I was not quite with the programme. In a class discussion early in my first semester, I made the mistake of mentioning that I believed in objective standards in art. Some art is great, some isn’t, I said; not all artists are equally talented. This was deemed an undemocratic opinion and I was given a nickname: the cultural fascist. I’ve tried to take it affectionately. After a year on campus, on a course entitled ‘Cultural Reporting and Criticism’, I still feel unable to speak freely, let alone critically... the threat of micro-aggressions (i.e. unintended insults) makes frank discourse impossible. Then there is the infamous ‘safe space’ — a massage-circle, Play-Doh-making haven — where students are protected from offence (and, therefore, intellectual challenge). During class discussions, I’ve learned to discreetly scan my classmates’ faces for signs that they might be fellow free-thinkers. A slight head tilt at the mention of Islamophobia, a gentle questioning of what exactly is meant by ‘toxic masculinity’. I was thrilled to see a scribbled note — ‘This is utter shit’ — on someone’s copy of one of the reading requirements, Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts (an introduction to queer theory). In this way, I found the members of my secret non-conformist book club. We met in a disused convent in Hell’s Kitchen and discussed campus-censored ideas... It seemed to the members of my book club that academia is losing its way. It is riddled with paradox: safe spaces which are dangerously insular; the idea of ‘no absolutes’ (as an absolute); aggressive intolerance for anything perceived as intolerant; and censorship of ideas deemed too offensive for expression. It’s a form of totalitarianism and it’s beginning to infect British universities, too... I spent a slightly surreal Thanksgiving with my friend’s family in the DC area. My friend’s father is the former Republican senator and twice presidential candidate Rick Santorum. As I stuffed my face with turkey, I couldn’t believe my luck. Santorum’s insights into the new administration were as close to an insider’s scoop as any student journalist could hope for. I was sure that, despite their differences in outlook, my classmates would be fascinated to hear about what he had to say. But before I had mustered the courage to share my experience, I received the following email from a professor: ‘Dear all, hope you are all recovering well from any encounters with Trump-supporting relatives over Thanksgiving. I should be all right myself in a day or so.’ Naturally, when this professor asked me, ‘How was your first Thanksgiving?’ I chose to speak exclusively about marshmallow yams. This is daft, certainly. Even funny, in a macabre way. But it also raises a serious point: the university experience in America is now not one that will adequately prepare students for real life"

Police send busker home to practise: 'Just because you can play Wonderwall, doesn't mean you should' - "Officers in the city of Aalborg stopped the guitarist from performing his set, claiming he was playing "very badly and loudly"... The police statement, titled: "TODAY IS GONNA BE THE DAY THAT THEY'RE GONNA THROW IT BACK TO YOU""

Free Speech: The Left Moves In for the Kill - "The Left is mounting an all-out assault against the freedom of speech, and is using Charlottesville as its Reichstag Fire moment to try to crush all dissent...
Have you ever lived in a totalitarian state, where the powerful determine the parameters of the public discourse and cut off all voice from the powerless? Do you really want to live in one now? You might find, once you get there, that it isn’t as wonderful as you thought it would be...
The SPLC never contacts its targets to ask them to respond to charges that they are “hate groups”; it simply hands down its ruling, which the establishment media uncritically accepts. And that’s that."

Sons of US defector to North Korea confirm his death - "Their mother is said to have been Doina Bumbea, a Romanian whose family say she was kidnapped by Pyongyang. In a searing 2014 report on human rights in North Korea, a UN commission of inquiry said: 'Women abducted from Europe, the Middle East and Asia were subjected to forced marriages with men from other countries to prevent liaisons on their part with ethnic Korean women that could result in interracial children.'"

Inside Mozilla: Firefox fights back - "Mozilla will use Firefox to challenge Google’s cash cow, search. Mozilla acquired the makers of Pocket this year, a service that lets people save websites and discover others, for undisclosed terms. Not only does that discovery service bring in money, but it helps Mozilla’s ambition to offer an alternative to Google search results through a new way to present websites you might be interested in"

Body Hair Transplantation: Case Report of Successful Outcome - "Transplantation of body hair in to scalp has been suggested as an option to treat extensive cases of baldness with poor donor scalp. However, evidence about its long-term efficacy is yet lacking, with very few published reports and the routine use of the technique is still controversial. We report the satisfactory outcome in a case of extensive baldness in whom hairs from different donor areas such as chest, abdomen, arms, thighs were transplanted on to scalp."

Billionaire porn king reinvents himself as Japan’s startup guru - "Imagine the publisher of Pornhub.com being asked to address Harvard University undergraduates on the virtues of running a socially responsible business. That’s basically what happened in Japan this past December, when the country’s most prestigious private university extended an invitation to adult entertainment mogul Keishi Kameyama... Kameyama Kameyama has expanded into an eclectic portfolio of businesses that now include a currency trading platform, video games, an online English school and solar farms. Last year, porn was less than a third of the group’s US$1.7 billion (S$2.31 billion) in sales... “I don’t think everything we do is right,’’ he says, “but in this business we’re better than most. If my own daughter told me she wanted to be an adult film actress, I’d tell her, ‘look, there are risks, but it’s something for you to decide.”’"

Ghosts of White People Past: Witnessing White Flight From an Asian Ethnoburb - "The white parents in Johns Creek, who in the same breath decry the police killings of unarmed African Americans, do not hesitate to tell me they do not want their children measured against Asians during the critical four years of grades that will make up the bulk of college application materials. This white fragility informs their decisions to insulate themselves from the “racial stress” of living next to Asians by moving to a different suburb. Somehow white parents’ liberal politics and progressivism do not inform them that the decision to relocate to avoid Asians is racism. They’ve defined the term so narrowly, their own individual acts of prejudice don’t meet it... The ability to secure affordable housing and childcare is another significant hurdle for Asian immigrants, one they overcome by living together in multigenerational homes. Mobility, a particularly problematic issue in the suburbs of Atlanta where public transportation is virtually non-existent, can be solved by living near Asian businesses, such as grocery stores, restaurants, and bakeries, allowing Asian patrons the option of walking to shops that cater to their needs. Who wouldn’t want this kind of support?"
Liberal White Flight: proof that words speak louder than actions

Male Statutory Rape Victim Nick Olivas Must Pay Child Support - "Olivas' case is not the first of its kind. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled unanimously in 1993 that 13-year-old Shane Seyer who impregnated his 17-year-old babysitter Colleen Hermesmann was responsible for paying child support even though he was under 16, the age of sexual consent. In that decision, the court ruled that the state's interest in ensuring parental support for the young child — "the only truly innocent party" — outweighed its interest in protecting juveniles like Seyer... "The idea that a woman would have to send money to a man who raped her is absolutely off-the-charts ridiculous""

Suzanne Lucas's answer to What is the most French thing about France? - Quora - "My husband called a small hotel in the middle of nowhere France. “Parlez vous anglais?” he asked. The man said no, so my husband proceeded, with his high school French, to ask for what we wanted. After about two minutes, the man said, “Fine. I speak English.”"

Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction / Uncanny Magazine by Lynne M. Thomas — Kickstarter - "Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction will be in the same vein as the previous Destroy special issues (Women Destroy Science Fiction, Queers Destroy Science Fiction, and People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction), featuring editors, writers (both solicited and unsolicited), and artists with representation from all across the sliding scale of disability
Maybe a spaceship will crash because someone in a wheelchair couldn't reach the controls fast enough

China bans tomb-sweepers' "vulgar" burned offerings - "China has banned its citizens from burning paper models of condoms, luxury villas and karaoke hostesses when paying respect at the graves of their ancestors... officials have discovered people burning paper offerings of the potency drug Viagra, extra-marital mistresses and even "Supergirls" -- dolls modeled on winning contestants of Chinese television's hugely popular American Idol spin-off, Mongolian Cow Sour Milk Supergirl"