Links - 5th December 2017 (2)

With every sneer, liberals just make Trump stronger | Simon Jenkins - "How can a man run the country who is so uncouth, with that hair, those ties, those baggy suits? He is a Ba’athist generalissimo, the president of a banana republic. He is anti-Christ. There. Does that make you feel better? All the above phrases are culled from a brief Google scan on the current American president. They reflect a melange of national shame, liberal trauma, snobbery and class hatred. They extend across the Atlantic and around the world. They assume two things. One is that Trump is so appalling it is inconceivable he could win a second term in office. The other is that deploying the same language as he did to win office is the best way to send him packing."

On the Struggle Against Corruption in the Arab Regimes - "under existing Arab circumstances, 'fighting corruption' is impossible, because corruption is the foundation of these regimes and the main instrument enabling the continuation of their existence… Were the regimes to really fight corruption, as in Italy's 'clean hands' campaign in the 1990s, what happened in Italy would happen here: the entire political elite there ended up in the courts and in prison... the fight against corruption is like a fighting capitalism in the U.S. or Catholicism in the Vatican - that is, destruction of the foundations of the existing order. If only it would happen!"

Who Built the Pyramids? - "Redding's faunal evidence dealt a serious blow to the Hollywood version of pyramid building, with Charlton Heston as Moses intoning, "Pharaoh, let my people go!" There were slaves in Egypt, says Lehner, but the discovery that pyramid workers were fed like royalty buttresses other evidence that they were not slaves at all, at least in the modern sense of the word... Obligatory labor ranges from slavery all the way to, say, the Amish, where you have elders and a strong sense of community obligations, and a barn raising is a religious event and a feasting event. If you are a young man in a traditional setting like that, you may not have a choice." Plug that into the pyramid context, says Lehner, "and you have to say, 'This is a hell of a barn!'""

What I believe II (ft. Sarah Constantin and Stacey Jeffery) - "thinking about “representation” in science and technology reflects underlying assumptions that I think are quite dangerous. You expect interest groups to squabble over who gets a piece of the federal budget. In politics, people will band together in blocs, and try to get the biggest piece of the spoils they can. “Women should get such-and-such a percent of tech jobs” sounds precisely like this kind of politicking; women are assumed to be a unified bloc who will vote together, and the focus is on what size chunk they can negotiate for themselves... look at Piper Harron, an assistant professor in math who blogged on the American Mathematical Society’s website that universities should simply “stop hiring white cis men”... she’s explicitly saying, on America’s major communication channel for and by mathematicians, that whether you get to work in math should not be based on whether you’re actually good at math. For her, it’s all politics. Life itself is political, and therefore a zero-sum power struggle between groups... I care a lot more about whether my company achieves its goal of curing 100 rare diseases in 10 years than about the demographic makeup of our team. We have an actual mission; we are trying to do something beyond collecting spoils...
In Europe, in the Middle Ages, the Church would sometimes enjoy forcing the local Jews into “disputations” about whose religion was the true one. At these events, a popular tactic on the Church’s side was to make statements that the Jews couldn’t possibly answer without blaspheming the name of Christ—which, of course, could lead to the Jews’ expulsion or execution if they dared it. Maybe I have weird moral intuitions, but it’s hard for me to imagine a more contemptible act of intellectual treason, than deliberately trapping your opponents between surrender and blasphemy... We progressives deluded ourselves that we could permanently shame our enemies into silence, on pain of sexism, racism, xenophobia, and other blasphemies. But the “victories” won that way were hollow and illusory, and the crumbling of the illusion brings us to where we are now: with a vindictive, delusional madman in the White House who has a non-negligible chance of starting a nuclear war this week."

Sunni Muslim 'Extremists' Committed 70% of Terrorist Murders in 2011 - "Sunni Muslim terrorists committed “about 70 percent” of the 12,533 terrorist murders in the world last year, according to a report by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC)... According to NCTC, of the 12,533 terrorism-related deaths worldwide, 8,886 were perpetrated by “Sunni extremists,” 1,926 by “secular/political/anarchist” groups, 1,519 by “unknown” factions, 170 by a category described as “other”, and 77 by “Neo-Nazi/Fascist/White Supremacist” groups."

Australian Army bans male recruits to get female numbers up - "The Daily Telegraph revealed the weekly targets sent out to ADF recruiters showed no targets for men in 35 of 50 Army positions but the instruction to “recruit immediately” if a woman came forward for combat roles such as armoured cavalry. In response the ADF put out a statement saying: “All roles in the Australian Defence Force (ADF) are open for men and women to apply.” But an ADF recruiter told The Telegraph: “Yes they can apply – but only women will get the job.”"

First fitness test for women wanting to join Australian Army is just four push-ups | Daily Telegraph - "THE first fitness test women have to pass to join the Australian Army is just four push-ups, The Daily Telegraph can reveal. If potential female recruits can manage that they are then sent on a seven-week women-only Army Pre-conditioning Course to get them fit enough to take the actual Army recruit course. The graded fitness levels are part of the bid to double the number of women in the armed forces... despite the gentle introduction to required levels of fitness, less than one in eight women who get into the military and try for combat roles actually makes it to a fighting unit. Male recruits are also furious that they have to promise to give at least six years’ service once they sign up for combat roles in the infantry or artillery while that has been slashed to just two years for women. Former combat engineer Rod McGarvie, now Queensland director of the Australian Conservatives, has studied the number of women in defence forces around the world and found most had no more than 15 per cent. Australia’s target is for 25 per cent. “Once you try and artificially push beyond that level you start to negatively impact on your resources,” he said."
Equality is discrimination

Taiwan home owner blocks rescuers from dying man over fears of her house turning 'unlucky' - "A home owner in Taiwan reportedly refused to let first responders pass through her house to reach an injured man in a back alley. Her reason for that? She did not want her house to be linked to an unnatural death... the home owner's decision delayed the rescue by about 15 minutes. The injured man was later pronounced dead at the hospital. So it seems the home owner's alleged actions have ended up causing what she was seeking to avoid... In Taiwan, sellers of these "unlucky houses" are obliged to notify potential buyers of the properties' status, which is legally regarded as a flaw. Online databases, with many entries based on news reports, are a popular means for people to keep track of "unlucky houses"."

Black Pastors Demand Smithsonian Remove Statue of Planned Parenthood Founder Margaret Sanger - "The museum has the Sanger bust in their “Struggle for Justice” exhibit, which is supposed to honor those of the past who were “champions of justice.” A sign beneath the sculpture says that Sanger was “profoundly affected by the physical and mental toll exacted on women by frequent childbirth, miscarriage and self-induced abortion.” The pastors wrote the Smithsonian a letter explaining that Sanger was far from a champion for their race because of her strong ties to the eugenics movement... “Her association with the eugenics movement shadowed her achievements in sex education and contraception, making her a figure of controversy, one whose complexities and contradictions mirror her times. There is no ‘moral test’ for people to be accepted into the National Portrait Gallery”... Margaret Sanger wrote a few books that revealed how she viewed minorities and the poor. In her book, “Pivot of Civilization,” she describes African-Americans and immigrants as “human weeds,” “reckless breeders,” and “spawning… human beings who never should have been born.”"
Rhodes must fall! General Robert E Lee statues must be taken down! Gandhi statues must be demolished! Topple Theodore Roosevelt! Confederate flags must be burnt!

Let's Get Rid of Mount Rushmore
From Vice. Yet I'm sure people will still slam Trump for hyperbole when he asks where the removal of monuments will stop

CNN’s Angela Rye: Statues of Washington, Jefferson and Lee ‘All Need to Come Down’ - "It’s happening just as Donald Trump predicted. He said in a press conference Monday that if a confederate statue of Robert E. Lee comes down, what’s next? Statues of George Washington because he was a slave owner? Well that is exactly what CNN political analyst Angela Rye thinks should happen... John Avlon jumped in to warn Rye that she was playing right into “exactly the slippery slope argument” that Trump suggested."

Abe Lincoln Statue Vandalized In Chicago - Locals Take To Social Media To Call Him Racist
Actually by progressive standards Abraham Lincoln was indeed a hateful bigot

MLK: Homosexuality a ‘Problem’ With a ‘Solution’ - "No amount of leftist spin can muddy Dr. King’s lucid position on the homosexual lifestyle. He recognized it as a “culturally acquired” “problem” in need of a “solution” – a “habit” stemming from a series of negative “experiences and circumstances”... “If homosexual activists had been holding awards ceremonies back in 1958,” wrote Glenn, “they would have labeled Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. a bigot for his published views on homosexual attraction."

Brendan O'Neill - The events in Charlottesville are the logical... - "The events in Charlottesville are the logical consequence of the politics of identity... Apparently it is white privilege to say "I don't think about race". If you want to be thought of as a good person, you *must* think racially -- a complete reversal of how things were just 20 or 30 years ago. And people wonder why white nationalism is growing. It would be amazing if it wasn't. Over and over the cultural elite says, "You are white, you are a white man, everything you think and do is an expression of whiteness, your identity is white, that is your race and your history, admit it, own it", and some people have turned around and said: "Okay.""

Protesters start DIGGING UP body of Confederate general Nathan Forrest - "A group of protesters who want the body of an alleged Ku Klux Klan leader removed from their city have broken the soil over the grave... 'If he’s gone, some of this racism and race-hate might be gone. We got a fresh shovel full, and we hope that everybody else will follow suit and dig him up"... The move outraged a spokesman for Forrest's family, who said the act was vandalism and that the protesters had broken the law... he denied all membership of the organization, but has still been heavily associated with it"
Apparently the guy's body is magic, since it causes racism and race-hate though he's been dead for a century

7 Things You Need To Know About Antifa - "Over the weekend, Charlottesville erupted into chaos. White supremacists and neo-Nazis brawled with masked left-wing Antifa rioters in what could only be described as a battle between Satan and Lucifer. While the mainstream Left has attempted to frame this weekend’s insanity as a one-sided issue, video evidence clearly demonstrates that members of Antifa, or anti-fascists, heavily contributed to the violence. Here are seven things you need to know about Antifa:
1. Antifa uses fascist tactics to achieve its goals.
2. The Department of Homeland Security labeled Antifa’s actions as “domestic terrorism.”
3. Antifa uses "black bloc" attacks to promote violence, sow chaos, and evade law enforcement.
4. Antifa’s garbled ideology is grounded in Marxism.
5. The mainstream Left is praising Antifa.
6. The vast majority of Antifa members are pitiable losers.
7. Antifa conflates speech with violence, believing that “offensive” rhetoric, “hate” speech, and micro-aggressions should be counteracted with macro-aggressions, or physical violence."

A warning from George Orwell on the ‘monument wars’ - "It takes a lot of Communist commitment to believe Trump is worse than Kim Jong-un. There’s no reason to imagine that the left is going to settle for a few statues of Lee. The left wants to attack the very legitimacy of America, of which Washington is the real symbol. And going after statues and other cultural icons is part of the Marxist playbook. It was written about by George Orwell in his dystopian novel “1984,” a quote from which is making the rounds this week. In it, one of Orwell’s characters warns of how “every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered.” “And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute,” adds Orwell’s character. “History has stopped.”"

Who was responsible for the violence in Charlottesville? Here's what witnesses say - "“The streets were not barricaded. Violent antifa [anti-fascists] were not penned in their own area as per our agreement with the Charlottesville Police Department, but were roaming the streets and blocking the entrance to Lee Park. They immediately launched an attack on our group with mace, pepper spray, bricks, sticks and foul liquids. The police stood idly by on the sidelines while a brawl was allowed to ensue. We had to fight our way into Lee Park and dozens of our people were injured by mace and pepper spray as we marched through the gauntlet.”...
“Counter-protesters fought back, also swinging sticks, punching and spraying chemicals. Others threw balloons filled with paint or ink at the white nationalists. Everywhere, it seemed violence was exploding. The police did not move to break up the fights”...
“I was on Market Street around 11:30 a.m. when a counter-protester ripped a newspaper stand off the sidewalk and threw it at alt-right protesters. I saw another man from the white supremacist crowd being chased and beaten. People were hitting him with their signs. A much older man, also with the alt-right group, got pushed to the ground in the commotion. Someone raised a stick over his head and beat the man with it, and that’s when I screamed and ran over with several other strangers to help him to his feet.”"

Charlottesville Police Chief: There Were 'Mutually Combating Individuals In The Crowd' - "It seems utterly ridiculous to have to say this, but the alt-right weren't the only violent individuals at the Saturday rally. However, suggestions to the contrary have been harshly condemned."
Maybe he's really a KKK member and lying, since they supposedly have infiltrated all the police forces in the US

This Man Spent Decades Befriending KKK Members. Hundreds Have Left the Group Because of Him - "In his spare time, he befriends white supremacists. Lots of them. Hundreds. He goes to where they live. Meets them at their rallies. Dines with them in their homes. He gets to know them because, in his words, “How can you hate me when you don't even know me? Look at me and tell me to my face why you should lynch me.” He also is a collector of KKK robes. He collects them as souvenirs when KKK members decide to give up on racism because of his friendship. Davis, a Christian, has met with white supremacists for three decades. He never tries to convert the Klansmen. He simply becomes friends with them and they give up the KKK on their own"
Funny, I thought shouting at them, doxxing them and attacking them was more effective

Fifteen teenagers get rabies after raping donkey - "Fifteen youngsters developed an ‘admiration’ for a donkey spent a week in a Moroccan hospital after catching a highly-contagious disease from the beast."

Dutch porn makers let off for church sex film in Tilburg - "Prosecutors have rejected a complaint from a church in the Dutch city of Tilburg after two actors were filmed having sex in the confessional box. The video was posted on a Dutch porn website earlier this year. Dutch authorities said the pornographic film was offensive but there was no longer a law in the Netherlands against blasphemy... "Blasphemy is not a crime and there's no question here of anyone trespassing"... "Just imagine, if it happens now in a church, a town hall or restaurant, clearly it can happen anywhere""