Transgenderism Is Propaganda Designed To Humiliate And Compel Submission - "In the collection of rhetorician Richard Weaver’s essays entitled In Defense of Tradition, Weaver describes the different forms which propaganda can take and their intended effects. Type 1 Propaganda is the “Big Lie” of the Soviet Union or Orwell’s 1984. The nature of the “Big Lie” is that the lie should be so big and so obvious that no sane person could believe it."
The Transgender War on Women - WSJ - "House Democrats introduced a bill this month that would outlaw safe spaces for women. The Equality Act—so called because, to put it charitably, Democrats excel at branding—purports merely to extend protections of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to people who are gay and transgender. Insofar as it would prohibit landlords from evicting tenants and employers from firing employees based on sexual orientation, it is no doubt long overdue.But the bill goes further, proposing to prohibit discrimination based on “gender identity.” That claim directly competes with the rights of women and girls. Any biological males who self-identify as females would, under the Equality Act, be legally entitled to enter women’s restrooms, locker rooms and protective facilities such as battered-women’s shelters. This would put women and girls at immediate physical risk.Because courts typically interpret Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 according to the provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, amending the latter would alter the understanding of the former. Biological boys who identify as girls would gain an instant entitlement to compete on girls’ teams in all 50 states. No more democratic discussion of accommodation, competing interest, sacrifice and fairness. No more debate about whether we should really allow girls’ scholarships and trophies to go to male athletes who were unable to excel on the boys’ teams. No more discussion about whether it’s right to allow, as we have, biological men to pick off championships in women’s and girls’ powerlifting, cycling, wrestling and running. These emergent public discussions would be locked away in a vault of civil rights... As Kara Dansky, media director of the Women’s Liberation Front, put it to me, the Equality Act would eliminate “women and girls as a coherent legal category worthy of civil-rights protection.” It would do so by redefining the category of “women” to include “women and those who say they are women”—which means women and people who aren’t women at all. Activists typically counter this argument with the claim that men wouldn’t pose as men-who-believe-they-are-women unless they sincerely believed it. There are too many taboos, and the transgender life is too hard for anyone to want to fake it, they claim. But under the Equality Act, pretending to be transgender would sometimes be rational.It doesn’t strain the human imagination to picture a male convict renaming himself “Sheila” and heading for the women’s prison. Nor would it surprise anyone if rapists began to “identify” as women—no physical alteration is required to change your gender identity—to gain free access to women’s showers. What pedophile wouldn’t want open access to girls’ bathrooms? And many a biological man with no place to sleep would prefer the quieter, gentler confines of a shelter for battered women to the dodgy enclosure of one for homeless men."
Maya McKinney Attorneys Tell Court to Respect Client's Pronouns - "The second suspect in a Tuesday shooting at STEM School Highlands Ranch in Colorado is a 16-year-old transgender boy who goes by the name Alec McKinney... lawyers for McKinney – who is a biological female legally named Maya – asked that their client’s preferred pronouns be respected and that McKinney be referred to as “he.”Disability justice advocate Lydia X.Z. Brown echoed the McKinney legal team’s sentiments on Twitter Thursday, urging journalists not to “deadname” the suspect.“Dear every reporter writing about the #STEMShooting #ColoradoShooting: There is zero reason to publish a trans person’s deadname. Especially a minor’s deadname,” Brown said. “This dude is a murderous asshole. Neither being trans nor having psych disabilities made him an asshole.”... Colorado officials declined to use McKinney’s preferred pronouns... Erickson does not have a criminal record. However, the young man has a well-documented record of anti-conservative activism on social media.Erickson, a registered Democrat who expressed support for LGBT rights, said on Facebook in 2014 that he hated Christians for their beliefs about homosexuality.“You know what I hate? All these Christians who hate gays, yet in the bible, it says in Deuteronomy 17:12-13, if someone doesn’t do what their priest tells them to do, they are supposed to die. It has plenty of crazy stuff like that. But all they get out of it is ‘ewwwwww gays,’” he said.In 2015, Erickson shared a post from the left-wing Occupy Democrats Facebook page praising then-President Barack Obama. In 2016, he shared a video of NBC talk show host Seth Meyers delivering one of his many monologues criticizing President Donald Trump."
Strangely enough, "assholes" who happen to be from "majority" groups are supposedly assholes because of their group membership
If you use someone's non-legal name in a legal setting, is the legal action still valid?
(Occupy Hypocrisy - Posts - "Isn't it crazy how a kid in a MAGA hat smirking at an old indian dude was a much bigger story than an Obama supporter and a transguy shooting up a school in Colorado?"
Teacher Decides 2nd Grader Is Trans Because He Uses Staff Bathroom - "the teacher at Nellie Muir Elementary School became concerned that the 8 year old was using the staff restroom. Assuming he must secretly identify as female, she allegedly developed a lesson plan “in an effort to promote [him] becoming transgender.” In reality, the boy and his parents had arranged for him to use the staff restroom because he had a digestion-related medical condition. Yet on at least three occasions, the teacher kept the boy during recess and showed him videos and books with the message that “it is acceptable to become transgender,” the lawsuit said. Among other materials, she allegedly required him to watch episodes of the reality TV show “I Am Jazz” and read the “I Am Jazz” children’s book, both of which star transgender teenager Jazz Jennings.At the end of the school week, the teacher allegedly told the boy to take the books home and share them with his family. Only then did his parents learn about the lessons... In a disciplinary letter to the teacher, administrators said evidence was found that she had removed the student from regular activities and shared potentially controversial materials with him without informing his parents, which it recommended she do. According to the parents, the school was dismissive of their concerns, saying: “If this happened in Portland, it would not be a big deal.” The lawsuit said that the teacher’s actions caused lasting damage to the boy. He began avoiding feminine toys and games for fear of turning into a girl and became more depressed, aggressive and isolated, according the lawsuit, which added that he had started counseling."
Is transgender indoctrination a myth?
Twitter Blocked Ray Blanchard, a Ph.D. Psychologist Who Helped Write the DSM V Rules on Gender Dysphoria, for ‘Hateful Conduct’ in Expressing His Clinical Views on Transgender Identity - "[He] was blocked on Twitter for expressing his opinion informed by clinical experience. His well-reasoned position was flagged for "hateful conduct."... Ray Blanchard — the Ph.D. psychologist and adjunct professor at the University of Toronto who served on the working work for gender dysphoria (the persistent condition of identifying with the gender opposite your biological sex) for the DSM V, the gold standard of definitions helping psychologists diagnose disorders for patients — tweeted out his clinically-informed opinion on transgender identity.He still affirmed the controversial idea that sex-change surgery is the "best treatment" for "carefully screened, adult patients, whose gender dysphoria has proven resistant to other forms of treatment," but he opposed "treating" children who may change their minds. (Even this position is debatable, as people who have undergone sex-change surgery after persistent gender dysphoria have later rejected their transgender identity and lamented the mutilation of their bodies.)... Blanchard explained his clinically-informed opinion that "sex change surgery should not be considered for any patient until that patient has reached the age of 21 years and has lived for at least two years in the desired gender role." This delay is controversial, as many transgender activists encourage hormonal and surgical treatments for minors, even children. Some researchers have received government grants to try such treatments on 8-year-old children, and a British transgender activist took her 15-year-old son to Thailand to get him castrated. When a Catholic woman complained about this child abuse on Twitter, U.K. police investigated her for abuse... Although the Ph.D. psychologist supported sex-change surgery for 21-year-old adults whose gender dysphoria has persisted against other forms of treatment, he acknowledged that even post-operative transgender individuals are still biologically male or female beneath the surgical changes. No matter how good transgender surgery gets, a biological male still has X and Y chromosomes in virtually every cell of his body and a biological female still has two X chromosomes. No surgery or identity can alter this... "The sex of a postoperative transsexual should be analogous to a legal fiction," he tweeted. "This legal fiction would apply to some things (e.g., sex designation on a driver’s license) but not to others (entering a sports competition as one’s adopted sex)."... transgender activists reported his tweets to Twitter, and the company chose to ban him. Helen Joyce, an editor at The Economist, called this decision "unreal."... "He is a world expert in the field. Twitter has just suspended his account for a thread setting out his findings from A lifetime of research. Unreal."... Jesse Singal, contributing writer at New York magazine, expressed his fear that "as a journalist who often writes about science," he worries that he will not be able to continue using Twitter's platform."Gender dysphoria is in the DSM-5. Despite endless rumor-mongering and misinformation to the contrary, it *is* considered a mental disorder... it's beyond insane to suspend someone for expressing an opinion which lines up with the DSM"... " this is part of a larger problem of a complete meltdown, in elite progressive spaces, of the ability to accurately convey science on stories having to do with social justice. Journalism, academia, social media -- same story everywhere. It's a slow-motion disaster"... "This is how you get the most important outlet in the world running an extremely misleading column on testosterone, the ACLU arguing women can compete w/and beat men in competitive sports. etc. We're approaching a Soviet/fundamentalist/take your pick level of science denialism""
Science is transphobic!
Twitter Suspends a Woman Reporting on Caroline Farrow Facing Harassment for Supporting Biological Sex Over Transgender Identity. Kaeley Triller Harms Says Trans Activism Is a ’New Patriarchy' - "Twitter banned the co-founder of a women's coalition dedicated to defending biological sex over gender identity. Her crime? Tweeting about a biological man harassing a Catholic mother whose family has been targeted because she disagrees with transgender identity."I’m in Twitter jail for calling Caroline Farrow’s male stalker a man," Kaeley Triller Harms, co-founder of Hands Across the Aisle Women's Coalition, posted on Facebook... "It’s 2019, and people are supposed to be listening to women, not allowing entitled bully men to silence us," Harms added bitterly. "The new patriarchy wears a dress and pronoun buttons.""
Derogatory Language in Philosophy Journal Risks Increased Hostility and Diminished Discussion (guest post) (Update: Response from Editors) - "We write to register in public a complaint with a recent issue of Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (PPR). Two papers in this issue, the first by Rachel McKinnon and the second by Jason Stanley, used the term ‘TERF’, which is at worst a slur and at best derogatory. We are extremely concerned about the normalization of this term in academic philosophy, and its effect in reinforcing a hostile climate for debate on an issue of key importance to women. Furthermore, one of the papers also included a false empirical claim which misrepresents an ongoing disagreement between trans activists and gender critical and radical feminists... the term “TERF” likely doesn’t refer to any existing person, but rather caricatures a wide range of feminist positions and gives opponents an easy way to pigeonhole and dismiss them... Apparently, under the present conditions, holding any of the following beliefs is more than enough to attract the label ‘TERF’: believing that humans are sexually dimorphic; that it is not evident that “self-identification” is a sufficient basis for determining that someone is a woman; and that we should be able to discuss changes to law and social practice which impact women’s sex-based protections. Whether or not it’s a slur, it is undeniable that”‘TERF” is a term used to harass, shame, dismiss, and denigrate women’s ideas and opinions. The fact that PPR has printed two papers that both deploy, rather than merely discuss, this term is unacceptable... Our second main concern is with a dubious empirical claim made in McKinnon’s paper. On p. 485, in the context of arguing that women’s concerns about sex-segregated space are “unfounded’ and “based only a flawed ideology,” she asserts that “there’s never been a verified reported instance of a trans women [sic] sexually assaulting a cis woman in such spaces”. (Indeed, she insists that the reverse is true, without providing any sources.)... A recent freedom of information request in the UK revealed 48% (60/125) of the known-trans population in UK jails to be sex offenders... only 3% of the female population in UK jails are sex offenders... 1/3 women in prison have been sexually abused, usually by males, making it especially traumatic to share space with offenders against women"
Saturday, May 25, 2019
Thursday, May 23, 2019
Links - 23rd May 2019 (2)
As the Obama DOJ Concluded, Prosecution of Julian Assange for Publishing Documents Poses Grave Threats to Press Freedom - "the grand irony is that many Democrats will side with the Trump DOJ over the Obama DOJ. Their emotional, personal contempt for Assange – due to their belief that he helped defeat Hillary Clinton: the gravest crime – easily outweighs any concerns about the threats posed to press freedoms by the Trump administration’s attempts to criminalize the publication of documents. This reflects the broader irony of the Trump era for Democrats. While they claim out of one side of their mouth to find the Trump administration’s authoritarianism and press freedom attacks so repellent, they use the other side of their mouth to parrot the authoritarian mentality of Jeff Sessions and Mike Pompeo that anyone who published documents harmful to Hillary or which have been deemed “classified” by the U.S. Government ought to go to prison.. let’s assume for the sake of argument that it’s true that WikiLeaks acted to help the Trump campaign and therefore should be disqualified from the protections of the First Amendment. To see how pernicious this argument is, look at how it was recently expressed by former Pentagon official Ryan Goodman and Obama WH Counsel Bob Bauer in justifying the prosecution of WikiLeaks... Just ponder the implications of this incredibly restrictive definition of journalism. It would mean that any outlets that favor one candidate over another, or one political party over another, are not engaged in “legitimate press functions” and therefore have no entitlement to First Amendment protections.Does anyone on the planet doubt that outlets such as MSNBC and Vox favor the Democratic Party over the Republican Party, and the people they employ as journalists spent the last year doing everything they can to help the Democrats win and the Republicans lose? Does anyone doubt that MSNBC and Vox journalists spent 2016 doing everything in their power to help Hillary Clinton win and Donald Trump lose? No person with even the most minimal amount of intellectual honesty could deny that they did so. Does this mean that Rachel Maddow and Ezra Klein – by virtue of favoring one political party over the other – are not real journalists, that they are not engaged in “legitimate press functions,” and thus do not enjoy the protections of the First Amendment, meaning they can be prosecuted by the Trump DOJ without the ability to claim the rights of a free press? To state that proposition is to illustrate the tyrannical impulses underlying it"
Julian Assange evicted after smearing faeces on embassy walls, Ecuador president says - "Ecuador’s president has said that one of the reasons Julian Assange’s asylum was revoked was because he allegedly smeared faeces on the walls of the London embassy... “From verbal insults against Ecuador when he referred to our country as a completely insignificant country, and excuse me that I have to say this here, but even smearing his faeces on our embassy’s walls,” he said in an interview with the BBC.Mr Moreno said the 47-year-old had “exhausted our patience and pushed our tolerance to the limit” during his seven-year stay at the embassy. He also claimed that the Australian journalist had treated embassy staff in a “very bad” way – and that he even installed cameras to spy on them and broke into his phone. “The group he led tapped and hacked into my phone, my wife’s, and published private pictures of my family, my wife and my daughters,” the president alleged.One of the photos showed the president on a bed in a hotel room eating lobster.Some have suggested the photo was the final straw for the leader as it emerged at a time when austerity was being introduced into the South American country... Mr Moreno also claimed that Assange had interfered in his country’s politics, the Vatican, the US elections and the question of Catalonian independence in Spain... Mr Moreno finished by saying he thought “all Ecuadorians are relieved” Assange has gone and cited a recent survey that showed 80 per cent of the country’s population wanted him to leave."
Julian Assange Got What He Deserved - "London’s Metropolitan Police dragging Assange from his Knightsbridge cupboard as he burbled about resistance and toted a worn copy of Gore Vidal’s History of the National Security State.Vidal had the American national-security establishment in mind when he narrated that polemic, although I doubt even he would have contrived to portray the CIA as being in league with a Latin American socialist named for the founder of the Bolshevik Party. Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno announced Thursday that he had taken the singular decision to expel his country’s long-term foreign guest and revoke his asylum owing to Assange’s “discourteous and aggressive behavior.” According to Interior Minister María Paula Romo, this evidently exceeded redecorating the embassy with excrement—alas, we still don’t know whether it was Assange’s or someone else’s—refusing to bathe, and welcoming all manner of international riffraff to visit him. It also involved interfering in the “internal political matters in Ecuador,” as Romo told reporters in Quito. Assange and his organization, WikiLeaks, Romo said, have maintained ties to two Russian hackers living in Ecuador who worked with one of the country’s former foreign ministers, Ricardo Patiño, to destabilize the Moreno administration... I might further direct you to Assange’s own unique brand of journalism, when he could still be said to be practicing it. Releasing U.S. diplomatic communiqués that named foreigners living in conflict zones or authoritarian states and liaising with American officials was always going to require thorough vetting and redaction, lest those foreigners be put in harm’s way. Assange did not care—he wanted their names published, according to Luke Harding and David Leigh in WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy. As they recount the story, when Guardian journalists working with WikiLeaks to disseminate its tranche of U.S. secrets tried to explain to Assange why it was morally reprehensible to publish the names of Afghans working with American troops, Assange replied: “Well, they’re informants. So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.” (Assange denied the account; the names, in the end, were not published in The Guardian, although some were by WikiLeaks in its own dump of the files.)... He has put innocent people’s lives in danger; he has defamed and tormented a poor family whose son was murdered; he has seemingly colluded with foreign regimes not simply to out American crimes but to help them carry off their own; and he otherwise made that honorable word transparency in as much of a need of delousing as he is."
Europe’s Ancient Great Stone Monuments Probably Had A Single Origin - "evidence suggests megalith building began in western France, and became an early meme."
I Interviewed the Sage of the Alt-Right. No, It's Not Ben Shapiro. - "The Economist recently profiled the well-known conservative pundit Ben Shapiro. The article itself was inoffensive, but the headline initially described Shapiro as "the alt-right sage without the rage." That is simply wrong, and it betrays The Economist's unfamiliarity with what the term "alt-right" means. No, Shapiro is not part of it. In fact, Shapiro has been a target of online harassment from some of the alt-right's members.Shapiro was understandably displeased about being casually lumped in with the tiki-torch marchers of Charlottesville. "If you lump me in with people who are so evil I literally hire security to walk me to shul on Shabbat, you can go straight to hell," he tweeted... In brief, the alt-right is a white nationalist movement that promotes an identitarian worldview: They think a person's worth is determined by his membership in a race-based group. The alt-right wants the U.S. to be a place for white Europeans and their descendants, and for the government to promote and protect the interests of white Europeans and their descendants. This is not a movement for black people, Hispanic immigrants, or Jews—all of whom represent a kind of "other" from the standpoint of the alt-right. Needless to say, these are ugly and overtly racist beliefs. They are also at odds with what Shapiro, as a Jewish man, represents.They are also at odds with what Shapiro thinks. To take just one example, Shapiro-style conservatives constantly bemoan identity politics. But the alt-right is all about identity; Spencer is actually in favor of identity politics"
The Washington Post Prints an Inexcusable Smear Against Ben Shapiro - "The Notre Dame fire — like every single significant tragedy — brought out some of the usual bottom-dwelling conspiracy theorists, and it is perfectly fine (good even!) to call them out for their irresponsible speculation. So it wasn’t terribly surprising to see a Washington Post piece this afternoon called “How the far right spread politically convenient lies about the Notre Dame fire.” It’s by Talia Lavin — who resigned from the New Yorker last year after falsely suggesting that a combat-wounded former Marine had an Iron Cross tattoo — and it takes aim at a number of the usual suspects, such as Alex Jones and Katie Hopkins... To any sensible reader, Ben is paying tribute to the apparent loss of one of the most magnificent buildings on the face of the earth. He’s lamenting the loss of a house of worship of a faith not his own. He is not casting blame. He is not trafficking in conspiracy theories. Moreover, he’s right — Western civilization is rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Moreover, the cathedral itself demonstrates the Jewish roots of Christianity... He’s not only right, he’s gracious. As virtually any person with a passing knowledge of history knows, the history of the Catholic Church in France is stained with anti-Semitism. In this age, when historic grievances often cause people to actually exult in the suffering of old foes, Ben’s tribute to the destruction of a Christian cathedral in a land that did not always welcome Jews (and struggles to keep them safe today) is a welcome example of — dare I say it? — tolerance.Lavin glories in her status as a troll. But the Washington Post should know better. Instead, it printed an opinion that has no connection to fact, and in doing so they reproduced the gutter reasoning of a low-rent comment board in the pages of one America’s great papers. Its mistake is only magnified by the fact that Lavin connects Ben’s rhetoric to the likes of Richard Spencer and the New Zealand shooter. Does she not know (or care) that Ben happened to be one of the principal targets of the alt-right during the 2016 election? He spoke out against racism and anti-Semitism at great risk to himself and his family."
Anti-racism is just anti-whiteness
Meme - "straight up cracker here from the most crackery part of the US.
The reason white racism is increasing is because this generation of young white men were raised to be the least racist generation of whites to ever exist in the history of this planet. We grew up being taught that racism was bad, that we were ALL going to move past it and work together towards a better future. Even here in the most traditionally racist part of the country, nearly every young white boy in my generation grew up watching black athletes, black actors, listening to black musicians, etc. It was all normal. We were 95% post-racial.
So as we got older, we stuck our hands out in friendship to EVERYONE, like we'd been taught to... and then every nonwhite group on the planet came by and sucker-punched us from behind, called us evil white devils, and told us we deserved to die. We were ready and willing to move on from the past, the rest of you weren't. Instead of shaking our hands and marching off together, you chose revenge against the only white people whove ever let their guard down.
So now you's cant be our friends, and we're reforging the identity we were taught to shed."
Or, they got gang banged by white liberals for being white
Library Journal on Twitter - "Library collections continue to promote and proliferate whiteness with their very existence and the fact that they are physically taking up space in our libraries"
When you hate white people so much that you hate books and knowledge despite being a library
When will the book burnings start?
Facebook Bans White Nationalism and White Separatism - "Experts say that white nationalism and white separatism movements are different from other separatist movements such as the Basque separatist movement in France and Spain and Black separatist movements worldwide because of the long history of white supremacism that has been used to subjugate and dehumanize people of color in the United States and around the world... the decision is likely to be politically controversial both in the United States, where the right has accused Facebook of having an anti-conservative bias... The new policy will not ban implicit white nationalism and white separatism, which Casseus said is difficult to detect and enforce. It also doesn’t change the company’s existing policies on separatist and nationalist movements more generally; content relating to Black separatist movements and the Basque separatist movement, for example, will still be allowed. "
Basically white people are evil
Facebook To Start Removing Content Promoting White Nationalism And Separatism - ""In its attempts to police the speech of over two billion people, Facebook runs the risk of censoring those that attack white nationalism, too," says Eidelman. "Further, every time Facebook makes the choice to remove content, a single company is exercising an unchecked power to silence individuals and remove them from what has become an indispensable platform." Eidelman says nothing is stopping Facebook or other platforms from using the same power to censor content on other topics, such as abortion rights or climate change. "For the same reason that the Constitution prevents the government from exercising such power, we should be wary of encouraging its exercise by corporations that are answerable to their private shareholders rather than the broader public interest""
Daniel Jordan - Facebook choosing only to ban apparently white... - "Facebook choosing only to ban apparently white people for 'hate' but openly allow dozens of Islamist groups to run pages on here and millions of Muslims openly celebrating Brunei stoning gays speaks to their double standards."
Comments: "That Mr. Zuckerberg is Jewish is quite besides the point. As you suggest, I think that he, and many other white elites, believe, consciously or unconsciously, that whites in virtue of their elevated social status are commanded by *noblesse oblige* to hold themselves to a higher ethical and moral standard than what is to be expected from the "people of color" . You could glimpse the same phenomenon in how the United States and Western Europe approached human rights abuses in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1970s and 1980s : the South African apartheid regime was the target of relentless moral condemnation and political pressure, and rightly so, for its human rights abuses; on the other hand, there were tinpot tyrannical black dictatorships in Africa that were extremely brutal to their citizens, and yet the Western powers said almost nothing about this because of what may be called the *bigotry of low expectations*, which is a way, perhaps, of saying "whites are better". The white South Africans were held to a higher standard of behavior. Noblesse oblige."
It is telling how muted the response to South Africa's contemporary persecution of whites today is. Or indeed how being concerned about it is seen as racism Considering it's the same country involved the inconsistency is especially apparent
Platform, or Publisher?: If Big Tech firms want to retain valuable government protections, then they need to get out of the censorship business. - "While the First Amendment generally does not apply to private companies, the Supreme Court has held it “does not disable the government from taking steps to ensure that private interests not restrict . . . the free flow of information and ideas.” But as Senator Ted Cruz points out, Congress actually has the power to deter political censorship by social media companies without using government coercion or taking action that would violate the First Amendment, in letter or spirit. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes online platforms for their users’ defamatory, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful content. Congress granted this extraordinary benefit to facilitate “forum[s] for a true diversity of political discourse.” This exemption from standard libel law is extremely valuable to the companies that enjoy its protection, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, but they only got it because it was assumed that they would operate as impartial, open channels of communication—not curators of acceptable opinion... Section 230 encourages Internet platforms to moderate “offensive” speech, but the law was not intended to facilitate political censorship... platforms could not be held liable as publishers of user-generated content and clarifying that they could not be held liable for removing any content that they believed in good faith to be “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.” This provision does not allow platforms to remove whatever they wish, however. Courts have held that “otherwise objectionable” does not mean whatever a social media company objects to, but “must, at a minimum, involve or be similar” to obscenity, violence, or harassment. Political viewpoints, no matter how extreme or unpopular, do not fall under this category."
On Big Tech censorship
Julian Assange evicted after smearing faeces on embassy walls, Ecuador president says - "Ecuador’s president has said that one of the reasons Julian Assange’s asylum was revoked was because he allegedly smeared faeces on the walls of the London embassy... “From verbal insults against Ecuador when he referred to our country as a completely insignificant country, and excuse me that I have to say this here, but even smearing his faeces on our embassy’s walls,” he said in an interview with the BBC.Mr Moreno said the 47-year-old had “exhausted our patience and pushed our tolerance to the limit” during his seven-year stay at the embassy. He also claimed that the Australian journalist had treated embassy staff in a “very bad” way – and that he even installed cameras to spy on them and broke into his phone. “The group he led tapped and hacked into my phone, my wife’s, and published private pictures of my family, my wife and my daughters,” the president alleged.One of the photos showed the president on a bed in a hotel room eating lobster.Some have suggested the photo was the final straw for the leader as it emerged at a time when austerity was being introduced into the South American country... Mr Moreno also claimed that Assange had interfered in his country’s politics, the Vatican, the US elections and the question of Catalonian independence in Spain... Mr Moreno finished by saying he thought “all Ecuadorians are relieved” Assange has gone and cited a recent survey that showed 80 per cent of the country’s population wanted him to leave."
Julian Assange Got What He Deserved - "London’s Metropolitan Police dragging Assange from his Knightsbridge cupboard as he burbled about resistance and toted a worn copy of Gore Vidal’s History of the National Security State.Vidal had the American national-security establishment in mind when he narrated that polemic, although I doubt even he would have contrived to portray the CIA as being in league with a Latin American socialist named for the founder of the Bolshevik Party. Ecuador’s President Lenín Moreno announced Thursday that he had taken the singular decision to expel his country’s long-term foreign guest and revoke his asylum owing to Assange’s “discourteous and aggressive behavior.” According to Interior Minister María Paula Romo, this evidently exceeded redecorating the embassy with excrement—alas, we still don’t know whether it was Assange’s or someone else’s—refusing to bathe, and welcoming all manner of international riffraff to visit him. It also involved interfering in the “internal political matters in Ecuador,” as Romo told reporters in Quito. Assange and his organization, WikiLeaks, Romo said, have maintained ties to two Russian hackers living in Ecuador who worked with one of the country’s former foreign ministers, Ricardo Patiño, to destabilize the Moreno administration... I might further direct you to Assange’s own unique brand of journalism, when he could still be said to be practicing it. Releasing U.S. diplomatic communiqués that named foreigners living in conflict zones or authoritarian states and liaising with American officials was always going to require thorough vetting and redaction, lest those foreigners be put in harm’s way. Assange did not care—he wanted their names published, according to Luke Harding and David Leigh in WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy. As they recount the story, when Guardian journalists working with WikiLeaks to disseminate its tranche of U.S. secrets tried to explain to Assange why it was morally reprehensible to publish the names of Afghans working with American troops, Assange replied: “Well, they’re informants. So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.” (Assange denied the account; the names, in the end, were not published in The Guardian, although some were by WikiLeaks in its own dump of the files.)... He has put innocent people’s lives in danger; he has defamed and tormented a poor family whose son was murdered; he has seemingly colluded with foreign regimes not simply to out American crimes but to help them carry off their own; and he otherwise made that honorable word transparency in as much of a need of delousing as he is."
Europe’s Ancient Great Stone Monuments Probably Had A Single Origin - "evidence suggests megalith building began in western France, and became an early meme."
I Interviewed the Sage of the Alt-Right. No, It's Not Ben Shapiro. - "The Economist recently profiled the well-known conservative pundit Ben Shapiro. The article itself was inoffensive, but the headline initially described Shapiro as "the alt-right sage without the rage." That is simply wrong, and it betrays The Economist's unfamiliarity with what the term "alt-right" means. No, Shapiro is not part of it. In fact, Shapiro has been a target of online harassment from some of the alt-right's members.Shapiro was understandably displeased about being casually lumped in with the tiki-torch marchers of Charlottesville. "If you lump me in with people who are so evil I literally hire security to walk me to shul on Shabbat, you can go straight to hell," he tweeted... In brief, the alt-right is a white nationalist movement that promotes an identitarian worldview: They think a person's worth is determined by his membership in a race-based group. The alt-right wants the U.S. to be a place for white Europeans and their descendants, and for the government to promote and protect the interests of white Europeans and their descendants. This is not a movement for black people, Hispanic immigrants, or Jews—all of whom represent a kind of "other" from the standpoint of the alt-right. Needless to say, these are ugly and overtly racist beliefs. They are also at odds with what Shapiro, as a Jewish man, represents.They are also at odds with what Shapiro thinks. To take just one example, Shapiro-style conservatives constantly bemoan identity politics. But the alt-right is all about identity; Spencer is actually in favor of identity politics"
The Washington Post Prints an Inexcusable Smear Against Ben Shapiro - "The Notre Dame fire — like every single significant tragedy — brought out some of the usual bottom-dwelling conspiracy theorists, and it is perfectly fine (good even!) to call them out for their irresponsible speculation. So it wasn’t terribly surprising to see a Washington Post piece this afternoon called “How the far right spread politically convenient lies about the Notre Dame fire.” It’s by Talia Lavin — who resigned from the New Yorker last year after falsely suggesting that a combat-wounded former Marine had an Iron Cross tattoo — and it takes aim at a number of the usual suspects, such as Alex Jones and Katie Hopkins... To any sensible reader, Ben is paying tribute to the apparent loss of one of the most magnificent buildings on the face of the earth. He’s lamenting the loss of a house of worship of a faith not his own. He is not casting blame. He is not trafficking in conspiracy theories. Moreover, he’s right — Western civilization is rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Moreover, the cathedral itself demonstrates the Jewish roots of Christianity... He’s not only right, he’s gracious. As virtually any person with a passing knowledge of history knows, the history of the Catholic Church in France is stained with anti-Semitism. In this age, when historic grievances often cause people to actually exult in the suffering of old foes, Ben’s tribute to the destruction of a Christian cathedral in a land that did not always welcome Jews (and struggles to keep them safe today) is a welcome example of — dare I say it? — tolerance.Lavin glories in her status as a troll. But the Washington Post should know better. Instead, it printed an opinion that has no connection to fact, and in doing so they reproduced the gutter reasoning of a low-rent comment board in the pages of one America’s great papers. Its mistake is only magnified by the fact that Lavin connects Ben’s rhetoric to the likes of Richard Spencer and the New Zealand shooter. Does she not know (or care) that Ben happened to be one of the principal targets of the alt-right during the 2016 election? He spoke out against racism and anti-Semitism at great risk to himself and his family."
Anti-racism is just anti-whiteness
Meme - "straight up cracker here from the most crackery part of the US.
The reason white racism is increasing is because this generation of young white men were raised to be the least racist generation of whites to ever exist in the history of this planet. We grew up being taught that racism was bad, that we were ALL going to move past it and work together towards a better future. Even here in the most traditionally racist part of the country, nearly every young white boy in my generation grew up watching black athletes, black actors, listening to black musicians, etc. It was all normal. We were 95% post-racial.
So as we got older, we stuck our hands out in friendship to EVERYONE, like we'd been taught to... and then every nonwhite group on the planet came by and sucker-punched us from behind, called us evil white devils, and told us we deserved to die. We were ready and willing to move on from the past, the rest of you weren't. Instead of shaking our hands and marching off together, you chose revenge against the only white people whove ever let their guard down.
So now you's cant be our friends, and we're reforging the identity we were taught to shed."
Or, they got gang banged by white liberals for being white
Library Journal on Twitter - "Library collections continue to promote and proliferate whiteness with their very existence and the fact that they are physically taking up space in our libraries"
When you hate white people so much that you hate books and knowledge despite being a library
When will the book burnings start?
Facebook Bans White Nationalism and White Separatism - "Experts say that white nationalism and white separatism movements are different from other separatist movements such as the Basque separatist movement in France and Spain and Black separatist movements worldwide because of the long history of white supremacism that has been used to subjugate and dehumanize people of color in the United States and around the world... the decision is likely to be politically controversial both in the United States, where the right has accused Facebook of having an anti-conservative bias... The new policy will not ban implicit white nationalism and white separatism, which Casseus said is difficult to detect and enforce. It also doesn’t change the company’s existing policies on separatist and nationalist movements more generally; content relating to Black separatist movements and the Basque separatist movement, for example, will still be allowed. "
Basically white people are evil
Facebook To Start Removing Content Promoting White Nationalism And Separatism - ""In its attempts to police the speech of over two billion people, Facebook runs the risk of censoring those that attack white nationalism, too," says Eidelman. "Further, every time Facebook makes the choice to remove content, a single company is exercising an unchecked power to silence individuals and remove them from what has become an indispensable platform." Eidelman says nothing is stopping Facebook or other platforms from using the same power to censor content on other topics, such as abortion rights or climate change. "For the same reason that the Constitution prevents the government from exercising such power, we should be wary of encouraging its exercise by corporations that are answerable to their private shareholders rather than the broader public interest""
Daniel Jordan - Facebook choosing only to ban apparently white... - "Facebook choosing only to ban apparently white people for 'hate' but openly allow dozens of Islamist groups to run pages on here and millions of Muslims openly celebrating Brunei stoning gays speaks to their double standards."
Comments: "That Mr. Zuckerberg is Jewish is quite besides the point. As you suggest, I think that he, and many other white elites, believe, consciously or unconsciously, that whites in virtue of their elevated social status are commanded by *noblesse oblige* to hold themselves to a higher ethical and moral standard than what is to be expected from the "people of color" . You could glimpse the same phenomenon in how the United States and Western Europe approached human rights abuses in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1970s and 1980s : the South African apartheid regime was the target of relentless moral condemnation and political pressure, and rightly so, for its human rights abuses; on the other hand, there were tinpot tyrannical black dictatorships in Africa that were extremely brutal to their citizens, and yet the Western powers said almost nothing about this because of what may be called the *bigotry of low expectations*, which is a way, perhaps, of saying "whites are better". The white South Africans were held to a higher standard of behavior. Noblesse oblige."
It is telling how muted the response to South Africa's contemporary persecution of whites today is. Or indeed how being concerned about it is seen as racism Considering it's the same country involved the inconsistency is especially apparent
Platform, or Publisher?: If Big Tech firms want to retain valuable government protections, then they need to get out of the censorship business. - "While the First Amendment generally does not apply to private companies, the Supreme Court has held it “does not disable the government from taking steps to ensure that private interests not restrict . . . the free flow of information and ideas.” But as Senator Ted Cruz points out, Congress actually has the power to deter political censorship by social media companies without using government coercion or taking action that would violate the First Amendment, in letter or spirit. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes online platforms for their users’ defamatory, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful content. Congress granted this extraordinary benefit to facilitate “forum[s] for a true diversity of political discourse.” This exemption from standard libel law is extremely valuable to the companies that enjoy its protection, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, but they only got it because it was assumed that they would operate as impartial, open channels of communication—not curators of acceptable opinion... Section 230 encourages Internet platforms to moderate “offensive” speech, but the law was not intended to facilitate political censorship... platforms could not be held liable as publishers of user-generated content and clarifying that they could not be held liable for removing any content that they believed in good faith to be “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable.” This provision does not allow platforms to remove whatever they wish, however. Courts have held that “otherwise objectionable” does not mean whatever a social media company objects to, but “must, at a minimum, involve or be similar” to obscenity, violence, or harassment. Political viewpoints, no matter how extreme or unpopular, do not fall under this category."
On Big Tech censorship
Quantifying Trump Derangement Syndrome: New York Times's Comment Section
How bad is Trump Derangement Syndrome?
This phenomenon leaves (presumably) once rational and reasonable people apoplectic and incoherent, and is arguably the most amazing outcome of the US's 2016 Presidential election
While a casual survey would show that this affliction is prevalent, I decided to formally measure it by looking at the top 100 Facebook comments of The New York Times's post on Trump's skills-based immigration plan (out of 1,041 in total).
The post is dated May 16th 4:17 AM (Singapore time, presumably) and I write this at 10+pm on 21st May, so after 5 days it surely has gotten the vast majority of comments it's ever going to get. In other words, the dataset should have stabilised by now.
I did not weight them by likes or other forms of popularity like replies, partially for simplicity and partially because I can't think of a good way to do so, but the raw numbers should speak for themselves, especially since these are the top 100 comments. Also I had a quick look at the rest and they were more of the same.
I looked only at top level comments (ignoring replies) and have classified them into one of the following categories, trying to be generous in divining that they were trying to be relevant:
Mocking Melania and/or her family and/or Trump
Mocking native-born Americans
Snide remarks about what Trump will do next related to this measure
Slamming Trump's motives, or insulting the Republican Party and/or white men
Irrelevant general commentary on the US and/or its history or culture (e.g. deploring the state of education in the US, asking if this is to deter asylum seekers despite being totally irrelevant)
Other irrelevant comments
Talking about (or alluding to) possible problems with the policy (even if they are very vague about it)
Relevant general commentary on the US and/or its history or culture (I am being generous here and even including a remark about throwing a tarp over Lady Liberty)
Comparison to other countries' immigration systems
You will note that only the last three categories are directly related to the article (one could argue that insulting the Republican Party and/or white men might be too if you want to look at a possible partisan political angle for this proposed policy, or slamming Trump's motives).
And the results are:
Mocking Melania and/or her family and/or Trump: 66
Mocking native-born Americans: 1
Snide remarks about what Trump will do next related to this measure: 2
Slamming Trump's motives, or insulting the Republican Party and/or white men: 7
Irrelevant general commentary on the US and/or its history or culture: 2
Other irrelevant comments: 1
Talking about (or alluding to) possible problems with the policy : 10
Relevant general commentary on the US and/or its history or culture: 8
Comparison to other countries' immigration systems: 4
(This adds up to 101 so either Facebook gave me one extra or there was a double count somewhere, but that won't materially change the results).
What stands out is that a full two thirds of comments are unequivocably irrelevant (not to mention puerile), consisting as they do of mocking Melania, her family and/or Trump. Mostly Melania actually. Given that their hatred is for him, bashing her seems cruelty on the level of, dare I say, Donald Trump himself.
Were you expecting New York Times readers to leave intelligent comments about the policy and its implications, or thinking about how other countries do their merit-based migration? Well, me neither, and indeed only 14% did.
It looks like more than 2 years on, liberals are still ree-ing at the sky.
This phenomenon leaves (presumably) once rational and reasonable people apoplectic and incoherent, and is arguably the most amazing outcome of the US's 2016 Presidential election
While a casual survey would show that this affliction is prevalent, I decided to formally measure it by looking at the top 100 Facebook comments of The New York Times's post on Trump's skills-based immigration plan (out of 1,041 in total).
The post is dated May 16th 4:17 AM (Singapore time, presumably) and I write this at 10+pm on 21st May, so after 5 days it surely has gotten the vast majority of comments it's ever going to get. In other words, the dataset should have stabilised by now.
I did not weight them by likes or other forms of popularity like replies, partially for simplicity and partially because I can't think of a good way to do so, but the raw numbers should speak for themselves, especially since these are the top 100 comments. Also I had a quick look at the rest and they were more of the same.
I looked only at top level comments (ignoring replies) and have classified them into one of the following categories, trying to be generous in divining that they were trying to be relevant:
Mocking Melania and/or her family and/or Trump
Mocking native-born Americans
Snide remarks about what Trump will do next related to this measure
Slamming Trump's motives, or insulting the Republican Party and/or white men
Irrelevant general commentary on the US and/or its history or culture (e.g. deploring the state of education in the US, asking if this is to deter asylum seekers despite being totally irrelevant)
Other irrelevant comments
Talking about (or alluding to) possible problems with the policy (even if they are very vague about it)
Relevant general commentary on the US and/or its history or culture (I am being generous here and even including a remark about throwing a tarp over Lady Liberty)
Comparison to other countries' immigration systems
You will note that only the last three categories are directly related to the article (one could argue that insulting the Republican Party and/or white men might be too if you want to look at a possible partisan political angle for this proposed policy, or slamming Trump's motives).
And the results are:
Mocking Melania and/or her family and/or Trump: 66
Mocking native-born Americans: 1
Snide remarks about what Trump will do next related to this measure: 2
Slamming Trump's motives, or insulting the Republican Party and/or white men: 7
Irrelevant general commentary on the US and/or its history or culture: 2
Other irrelevant comments: 1
Talking about (or alluding to) possible problems with the policy : 10
Relevant general commentary on the US and/or its history or culture: 8
Comparison to other countries' immigration systems: 4
(This adds up to 101 so either Facebook gave me one extra or there was a double count somewhere, but that won't materially change the results).
What stands out is that a full two thirds of comments are unequivocably irrelevant (not to mention puerile), consisting as they do of mocking Melania, her family and/or Trump. Mostly Melania actually. Given that their hatred is for him, bashing her seems cruelty on the level of, dare I say, Donald Trump himself.
Were you expecting New York Times readers to leave intelligent comments about the policy and its implications, or thinking about how other countries do their merit-based migration? Well, me neither, and indeed only 14% did.
It looks like more than 2 years on, liberals are still ree-ing at the sky.
Links - 23rd May 2019 (1)
This Too Shall Pass: Unassailable Monopolies That Were, in Hindsight, Eminently Assailable - "Elizabeth Warren wants to break up the tech giants — Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple — claiming they have too much power and represent a danger to our democracy. As part of our response to her proposal, we shared a couple of headlines from 2007 claiming that MySpace had an unassailable monopoly in the social media market."
Life of Brian is 40 years old, but is it still controversial? - "Watching it today, it strikes me that, as parody goes, it is a pretty gentle, even, respectful sort. Ironically, to be properly offended by it or even to get the joke — then or now — requires a good knowledge of the life of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels... The virtue of the film today is its capacity to offend a whole new generation of viewers for different reasons. It is now more likely to be criticised for breaching the boundaries of "political correctness" around issues of gender, race, class and disability than blasphemy."
Men With Beards Have More Germs Than Dogs: Study - "seven of the men had so much beard bacteria they were at risk of getting sick"
5 Reasons Why Donating To The Poor Makes Them More Poor - "Reason #1: The Communities Can’t Sustain The Things Donated To Them
Reason #2: It’s Misguided And Doesn’t Solve The Problem
'Disinfection household water treatments don’t seem to have any public health benefit'
Reason #3: The Solutions Aren’t Fully Developed
the tech companies haven’t fully developed the solutions in conjunction with local governments and businesses. If the underlying infrastructure isn’t in place, these tech solutions are like a band aid on a cannon ball wound. They may stop the bleeding for a few minutes, but they don’t solve the problem.
Reason #4: Donors Don’t Have A Sustainable Plan
Reason #5: It Kills Local Economies"
Siobhan Thompson on Twitter - "My mum studied cults ("new religious movements" mum please don't tell me off) and her first and only rule of how to not get into a cult was "do not. Under ANY CIRCUMSTANCE!!! Debate them." Because they got debated into the cult and know the arguments that work.
So yeah that's why all those Alt-Right chodes are always yelling DEBATE MEEEEEEE every chance they get. Debate isn't a fair and reasoned discussion, it's an extremely effective recruitment tool. You don't have to debate them. Nobody does."
Comments: "On second thought. What she is proposing is to not debate. To withdraw from contact. This is one of the FIRST fucking signs of cult mentality. Disassociate from friends and family that don't immediately go along with the Cult doctrine. The fact that people will take this and run with it is amazing! You think Jim Jones got to Africa trying to debate people on the merits of cool-aid?"
"When you're not smart enough to argue with logic you come up with shit like this"
As per Popper's Paradox of Tolerance, which liberals love to misquote, we are justified in censoring this person
Infographic: Mapping the Global Migration of Millionaires - "Unlike the middle class, wealthy citizens have the means to pick up and leave when things start to sideways in their home country. An uptick in HNWI migration from a country can often be a signal of negative economic or societal factors influencing a country.This is the case in Turkey, which has been rocked by instability, mass protests, and an inflation rate estimated to be in the triple-digits by some sources.For the third straight year, Turkey lost more than 4,000 millionaires. An estimated 10% of Turkey’s HNWIs fled in 2018, which is concerning because unlike China and India, the country is not producing new millionaires in any significant number. Time-honored locations – such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands – continue to attract the world’s wealthy, but no country is experiencing HNWI inflows quite like Australia."
European Hypocrites on US Peace Plan for Israel - "Donald Trump’s Mideast peace plan has yet to be published, but that hasn’t stopped 37 former Europeans politicians and officials from publishing a joint letter against it"
Some thoughts, facts, and charts for Tax Day: Bring us back to 1913; or better yet, bring us back to 1912! - "Almost all federal income taxes (97%) are paid by the top 50%, more than 2/3 of income taxes are paid for by the top 10% and more than 40% of taxes are paid by the top 1% of taxpayers. For all of the criticism and negative publicity the “Top 1%” get, I’d like to personally thank that group this year at tax time for shouldering such a disproportionate share of our collective tax burden – that group of Americans with income above $481,000 in 2016 generated 19.7% of the nation’s Adjusted Gross Income but that group’s share of federal income taxes at 37.3% was about twice that... In 2016, the top 1% earned 19.7% of the total income reported to the IRS (as mentioned above) and paid more than 37% of all federal income taxes collected ($538 billion). The bottom 95% of US taxpayers earned 64.8% of total income (almost three times as much as the top 1%) and paid only 41.8% of the total income taxes collected ($602 billion)... If we scored bowling the way we tax income, we would subtract, not add pins for a spare or strike, i.e., penalize successful bowling. If we taxed income the way we score bowling, we would have lower, not higher, tax rates on our most successful income-earners."
I was once told that no economist supports a regressive tax system (the richer you are the less you pay, to incentivise you to earn more money) but...
Cher Totally Destroyed A Random Woman Who Replied To Her Tweet About DACA And People Are Shook - "The icon also declared that she would personally be welcoming DREAMers into her own home for protection:
"Those Who Can Must Take a DREAMER In2 Their Home & Protect ThemI’m Ready 2 Do This & Others in MY BUSINESS WILL DO THE SAMESANCTUARY"
One woman (name blurred to protect the dragged) decided to challenge Cher on her promise. It did not go well:
"Sure you will Cher.. I'll believe it when I see it!"
Cher not only noticed the woman's response, but responded with FIRE. "Then keep your eyes open bitch.""
From September 2017
Cher on Twitter - "I Understand Helping struggling Immigrants,but MY CITY (Los Angeles) ISNT TAKING CARE OF ITS OWN.WHAT ABOUT THE 50,000+🇺🇸Citizens WHO LIVE ON THE STREETS.PPL WHO LIVE BELOW POVERTY LINE,& HUNGRY? If My State Can’t Take Care of Its Own(Many Are VETS)How Can it Take Care Of More"
From April 2019
Cory Booker says Trumps stoking of fear would "make us less safe" with sanctuary cities idea - "Democratic presidential candidate Senator Cory Booker, of New Jersey, accused President Trump of trying to incite anger and divide Americans with his threat to release undocumented immigrants from the border into sanctuary cities... So-called "sanctuary cities" offer safe harbor for undocumented immigrants who might otherwise be deported by federal immigration authorities. The president complained Friday about the increasing numbers of migrants crossing, whom he referred to as "illegals," and said, "We'll bring them to sanctuary city areas and let that particular area take care of it, whether it's a state or whatever it might be." He added, "California certainly is always saying, 'Oh, we want more people.' And they want more people in their sanctuary cities. Well, we'll give them more people. We can give them a lot. We can give them an unlimited supply. And let's see if they're so happy.""
Great admission that sanctuary cities make them less safe. So it's clearly just political maneuvering
Alyssa Milano - "This is so sick and twisted.
White House proposed releasing immigrant detainees in sanctuary cities, targeting political foes."
"You are truly a special person.
You have painted these sanctuary cities as bastions of hope, and now when an opportunity arises to prove to everybody that these illegal immigrants are the best part of mankind, now you are disgusted?
You hypocritical piece of shit."
Sanctuary Cities Pegged by Trump as Possible Sites for Immigrants - "Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who in the past has expressed a willingness to go to jail to defend sanctuary city policies, said the president’s plan to bring immigrants to districts like her was an “outrageous abuse of power and public resources. CNN commentator Jeffrey Toobin accused the president of using immigrants as “a pestilence to spread around the country” and called the plan “grotesque.”... Some progressives even cheered the move. “sending migrants and refugees to cities with robust pro bono legal infrastructure and growing support for freedom of movement to own the libs,” quipped left-leaning journalist Brendan O’Connor.GOP National spokeswoman Liz Harrington dismissed the idea floated by some Democrats that Trump was “targeting his political opponents.“He’s just asking the Democrats to live by their own values,” she said in a tweet. “Just like they aren’t brave enough to vote for their Green New Socialist Deal, they apparently do not want any more immigrants in their ‘sanctuary’ cities.”Harrington was referring to the Green New Deal’s failure to pass the Senate last month. In a 57-0 vote, the Senate rejected the much-hyped proposal, with 43 democrats declining to go on record as voting “yes” for the plan and instead voting “present” in accordance with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s strategy."
Is it racist for liberals to call immigrants a pestilence?
Wealthy residents raise $60,000 to stop homeless shelter being built in San Francisco - "Residents of an affluent San Francisco area have launched a crowdfunding appeal in a bid to block a homeless shelter being built in their area.Donors have raised more than $60,000 (£46,000) to fund a legal battle over plans for the 200-bed centre in a city gripped by a housing crisis... The coalition of residents from surrounding neighbourhoods claims the plans would make the area less safe."
It is good to be liberal and compassionate until it affects your backyard
ICE nabs dozens of illegal immigrants, some with sex crime convictions, in New York - "Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced Tuesday that it arrested 118 illegal immigrants in New York in a five-day raid this month, more than 107 of whom were convicted criminals or had pending charges against them -- and the agency slammed local politicians for protecting them and endangering the public. “In years past, most of these individuals would have been turned over to ICE by local authorities upon their release from jail based on ICE detainers," ICE said in a statement on Tuesday. "Now that many sanctuary cities, including New York City, do not honor ICE detainers, these individuals, who often have significant criminal histories, are released onto the street, presenting a potential public safety threat.”... Both New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo have criticized ICE. After a raid last year, Cuomo said he was sending a cease-and-desist letter to ICE, and he threatened to sue the agency if such raids continued."
Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people - "Edward Tufte’s full report makes for fascinating reading. Since being released in 1987 PowerPoint has grown exponentially to the point where it is now estimated than thirty million PowerPoint presentations are made every day. Yet, PowerPoint is blamed by academics for killing critical thought. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos has banned it from meetings. Typing text on a screen and reading it out loud does not count as teaching. An audience reading text off the screen does not count as learning. Imagine if the engineers had put up a slide with just: “foam strike more than 600 times bigger than test data.” Maybe NASA would have listened. Maybe they wouldn’t have attempted re-entry. Next time you’re asked to give a talk remember Columbia. Don’t just jump to your laptop and write out slides of text. Think about your message. Don’t let that message be lost amongst text. Death by PowerPoint is a real thing. Sometimes literally."
'Math Is Unforgiving To That Concept': McCaskill Warns Against 'Far-Left' Ocasio-Cortez - "Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) warned against nominating "far-left" Democrats like socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this week, saying that candidates like her "have not been in a place where the math is unforgiving to" their political views... McCaskill cautioned that if Democrats go too far to the left, they will not be successful in 2020, warning that far-left Democrats "turn off people and make election victories impossible.""
Nancy Pelosi on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ election success: ‘A glass of water with a D next to it’ could win New York district - "Pelosi’s argument about keeping to the centre are almost identical to comments she made about AOC on 60 Minutes a few days ago.The House speaker told interviewer Lesley Stahl that those who prescribe to AOC’s left-wing, progressive ideals were “like, five people”."
So much for only insecure and sexist Republican men having anything not flattering to say about her
AOC suffers social media gaffe by criticizing photo of 'GOP' politician who is actually a Democrat - "One of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's, D-N.Y., tweets seemed to backfire on Thursday when she tried attacking Republicans over a picture of a politician stood next to a cardboard cutout of her."GOP: Let's pose our older male members next to cardboard cutouts of young female legislators," she tweeted. Her tweet included a post from the Republican Party of Kentucky. However, the politician pictured was Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth, Ky., not a Republican as she claimed... "It literally says in the tweet that she is quoting that Yarmuth is a Democrat"... This wasn't the first time the freshman congresswoman appeared to mix up her political parties. While appearing in a video with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., she enthusiastically declared that she would turn a Kansas house seat "red" — the color often representing the Republican Party."
I’d rather trust Bernie Madoff with my money than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - "What’s the point of a bank?To make money, take care of our money and offer us professional guidance on how best to save our money.I mean it’s pretty much as simple as that isn’t it?So it was entirely unsurprising to see Chase, one of America’s largest banks, tweet the following words of advice to its customers this week:‘You: why is my balance so low Bank account: make coffee at home. Bank account: eat the food that’s in the fridge Bank account: you don’t need a cab, it’s only three blocks You: I guess we’ll never know Bank account: seriously?’ The tweet ended with the hashtag, #MondayMotivation... the Chase tweet... soon attracted the attention of socialist firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted back this snarky response... she specifically chose to mock the bank’s very uncontroversial advice to customers that they should be more careful in how they spend their money.She wasn’t the only high profile Democrat to attack Chase over the tweet... As financial expert Dave Ramsey told NBC News: ‘No one should ever shame someone for being poor, but all of us should be open to having our bad habits called out so we can live better lives.’... Ironically, this gutless surrender to Ocasio-Cortez and her merry band of shrieking virtue-signallers, made me furious in a way the original tweet never did.Why delete perfectly sensible advice?Why make such a snivelling expression of gratitude to a baying mob?Why give an increasingly shrill, aggressive and often woefully informed young congresswoman the completely unnecessary pound of flesh she so desperately wanted?"
Life of Brian is 40 years old, but is it still controversial? - "Watching it today, it strikes me that, as parody goes, it is a pretty gentle, even, respectful sort. Ironically, to be properly offended by it or even to get the joke — then or now — requires a good knowledge of the life of Jesus in the New Testament Gospels... The virtue of the film today is its capacity to offend a whole new generation of viewers for different reasons. It is now more likely to be criticised for breaching the boundaries of "political correctness" around issues of gender, race, class and disability than blasphemy."
Men With Beards Have More Germs Than Dogs: Study - "seven of the men had so much beard bacteria they were at risk of getting sick"
5 Reasons Why Donating To The Poor Makes Them More Poor - "Reason #1: The Communities Can’t Sustain The Things Donated To Them
Reason #2: It’s Misguided And Doesn’t Solve The Problem
'Disinfection household water treatments don’t seem to have any public health benefit'
Reason #3: The Solutions Aren’t Fully Developed
the tech companies haven’t fully developed the solutions in conjunction with local governments and businesses. If the underlying infrastructure isn’t in place, these tech solutions are like a band aid on a cannon ball wound. They may stop the bleeding for a few minutes, but they don’t solve the problem.
Reason #4: Donors Don’t Have A Sustainable Plan
Reason #5: It Kills Local Economies"
Siobhan Thompson on Twitter - "My mum studied cults ("new religious movements" mum please don't tell me off) and her first and only rule of how to not get into a cult was "do not. Under ANY CIRCUMSTANCE!!! Debate them." Because they got debated into the cult and know the arguments that work.
So yeah that's why all those Alt-Right chodes are always yelling DEBATE MEEEEEEE every chance they get. Debate isn't a fair and reasoned discussion, it's an extremely effective recruitment tool. You don't have to debate them. Nobody does."
Comments: "On second thought. What she is proposing is to not debate. To withdraw from contact. This is one of the FIRST fucking signs of cult mentality. Disassociate from friends and family that don't immediately go along with the Cult doctrine. The fact that people will take this and run with it is amazing! You think Jim Jones got to Africa trying to debate people on the merits of cool-aid?"
"When you're not smart enough to argue with logic you come up with shit like this"
As per Popper's Paradox of Tolerance, which liberals love to misquote, we are justified in censoring this person
Infographic: Mapping the Global Migration of Millionaires - "Unlike the middle class, wealthy citizens have the means to pick up and leave when things start to sideways in their home country. An uptick in HNWI migration from a country can often be a signal of negative economic or societal factors influencing a country.This is the case in Turkey, which has been rocked by instability, mass protests, and an inflation rate estimated to be in the triple-digits by some sources.For the third straight year, Turkey lost more than 4,000 millionaires. An estimated 10% of Turkey’s HNWIs fled in 2018, which is concerning because unlike China and India, the country is not producing new millionaires in any significant number. Time-honored locations – such as Switzerland and the Cayman Islands – continue to attract the world’s wealthy, but no country is experiencing HNWI inflows quite like Australia."
European Hypocrites on US Peace Plan for Israel - "Donald Trump’s Mideast peace plan has yet to be published, but that hasn’t stopped 37 former Europeans politicians and officials from publishing a joint letter against it"
Some thoughts, facts, and charts for Tax Day: Bring us back to 1913; or better yet, bring us back to 1912! - "Almost all federal income taxes (97%) are paid by the top 50%, more than 2/3 of income taxes are paid for by the top 10% and more than 40% of taxes are paid by the top 1% of taxpayers. For all of the criticism and negative publicity the “Top 1%” get, I’d like to personally thank that group this year at tax time for shouldering such a disproportionate share of our collective tax burden – that group of Americans with income above $481,000 in 2016 generated 19.7% of the nation’s Adjusted Gross Income but that group’s share of federal income taxes at 37.3% was about twice that... In 2016, the top 1% earned 19.7% of the total income reported to the IRS (as mentioned above) and paid more than 37% of all federal income taxes collected ($538 billion). The bottom 95% of US taxpayers earned 64.8% of total income (almost three times as much as the top 1%) and paid only 41.8% of the total income taxes collected ($602 billion)... If we scored bowling the way we tax income, we would subtract, not add pins for a spare or strike, i.e., penalize successful bowling. If we taxed income the way we score bowling, we would have lower, not higher, tax rates on our most successful income-earners."
I was once told that no economist supports a regressive tax system (the richer you are the less you pay, to incentivise you to earn more money) but...
Cher Totally Destroyed A Random Woman Who Replied To Her Tweet About DACA And People Are Shook - "The icon also declared that she would personally be welcoming DREAMers into her own home for protection:
"Those Who Can Must Take a DREAMER In2 Their Home & Protect ThemI’m Ready 2 Do This & Others in MY BUSINESS WILL DO THE SAMESANCTUARY"
One woman (name blurred to protect the dragged) decided to challenge Cher on her promise. It did not go well:
"Sure you will Cher.. I'll believe it when I see it!"
Cher not only noticed the woman's response, but responded with FIRE. "Then keep your eyes open bitch.""
From September 2017
Cher on Twitter - "I Understand Helping struggling Immigrants,but MY CITY (Los Angeles) ISNT TAKING CARE OF ITS OWN.WHAT ABOUT THE 50,000+🇺🇸Citizens WHO LIVE ON THE STREETS.PPL WHO LIVE BELOW POVERTY LINE,& HUNGRY? If My State Can’t Take Care of Its Own(Many Are VETS)How Can it Take Care Of More"
From April 2019
Cory Booker says Trumps stoking of fear would "make us less safe" with sanctuary cities idea - "Democratic presidential candidate Senator Cory Booker, of New Jersey, accused President Trump of trying to incite anger and divide Americans with his threat to release undocumented immigrants from the border into sanctuary cities... So-called "sanctuary cities" offer safe harbor for undocumented immigrants who might otherwise be deported by federal immigration authorities. The president complained Friday about the increasing numbers of migrants crossing, whom he referred to as "illegals," and said, "We'll bring them to sanctuary city areas and let that particular area take care of it, whether it's a state or whatever it might be." He added, "California certainly is always saying, 'Oh, we want more people.' And they want more people in their sanctuary cities. Well, we'll give them more people. We can give them a lot. We can give them an unlimited supply. And let's see if they're so happy.""
Great admission that sanctuary cities make them less safe. So it's clearly just political maneuvering
Alyssa Milano - "This is so sick and twisted.
White House proposed releasing immigrant detainees in sanctuary cities, targeting political foes."
"You are truly a special person.
You have painted these sanctuary cities as bastions of hope, and now when an opportunity arises to prove to everybody that these illegal immigrants are the best part of mankind, now you are disgusted?
You hypocritical piece of shit."
Sanctuary Cities Pegged by Trump as Possible Sites for Immigrants - "Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, who in the past has expressed a willingness to go to jail to defend sanctuary city policies, said the president’s plan to bring immigrants to districts like her was an “outrageous abuse of power and public resources. CNN commentator Jeffrey Toobin accused the president of using immigrants as “a pestilence to spread around the country” and called the plan “grotesque.”... Some progressives even cheered the move. “sending migrants and refugees to cities with robust pro bono legal infrastructure and growing support for freedom of movement to own the libs,” quipped left-leaning journalist Brendan O’Connor.GOP National spokeswoman Liz Harrington dismissed the idea floated by some Democrats that Trump was “targeting his political opponents.“He’s just asking the Democrats to live by their own values,” she said in a tweet. “Just like they aren’t brave enough to vote for their Green New Socialist Deal, they apparently do not want any more immigrants in their ‘sanctuary’ cities.”Harrington was referring to the Green New Deal’s failure to pass the Senate last month. In a 57-0 vote, the Senate rejected the much-hyped proposal, with 43 democrats declining to go on record as voting “yes” for the plan and instead voting “present” in accordance with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s strategy."
Is it racist for liberals to call immigrants a pestilence?
Wealthy residents raise $60,000 to stop homeless shelter being built in San Francisco - "Residents of an affluent San Francisco area have launched a crowdfunding appeal in a bid to block a homeless shelter being built in their area.Donors have raised more than $60,000 (£46,000) to fund a legal battle over plans for the 200-bed centre in a city gripped by a housing crisis... The coalition of residents from surrounding neighbourhoods claims the plans would make the area less safe."
It is good to be liberal and compassionate until it affects your backyard
ICE nabs dozens of illegal immigrants, some with sex crime convictions, in New York - "Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced Tuesday that it arrested 118 illegal immigrants in New York in a five-day raid this month, more than 107 of whom were convicted criminals or had pending charges against them -- and the agency slammed local politicians for protecting them and endangering the public. “In years past, most of these individuals would have been turned over to ICE by local authorities upon their release from jail based on ICE detainers," ICE said in a statement on Tuesday. "Now that many sanctuary cities, including New York City, do not honor ICE detainers, these individuals, who often have significant criminal histories, are released onto the street, presenting a potential public safety threat.”... Both New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo have criticized ICE. After a raid last year, Cuomo said he was sending a cease-and-desist letter to ICE, and he threatened to sue the agency if such raids continued."
Death by PowerPoint: the slide that killed seven people - "Edward Tufte’s full report makes for fascinating reading. Since being released in 1987 PowerPoint has grown exponentially to the point where it is now estimated than thirty million PowerPoint presentations are made every day. Yet, PowerPoint is blamed by academics for killing critical thought. Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos has banned it from meetings. Typing text on a screen and reading it out loud does not count as teaching. An audience reading text off the screen does not count as learning. Imagine if the engineers had put up a slide with just: “foam strike more than 600 times bigger than test data.” Maybe NASA would have listened. Maybe they wouldn’t have attempted re-entry. Next time you’re asked to give a talk remember Columbia. Don’t just jump to your laptop and write out slides of text. Think about your message. Don’t let that message be lost amongst text. Death by PowerPoint is a real thing. Sometimes literally."
'Math Is Unforgiving To That Concept': McCaskill Warns Against 'Far-Left' Ocasio-Cortez - "Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) warned against nominating "far-left" Democrats like socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez this week, saying that candidates like her "have not been in a place where the math is unforgiving to" their political views... McCaskill cautioned that if Democrats go too far to the left, they will not be successful in 2020, warning that far-left Democrats "turn off people and make election victories impossible.""
Nancy Pelosi on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ election success: ‘A glass of water with a D next to it’ could win New York district - "Pelosi’s argument about keeping to the centre are almost identical to comments she made about AOC on 60 Minutes a few days ago.The House speaker told interviewer Lesley Stahl that those who prescribe to AOC’s left-wing, progressive ideals were “like, five people”."
So much for only insecure and sexist Republican men having anything not flattering to say about her
AOC suffers social media gaffe by criticizing photo of 'GOP' politician who is actually a Democrat - "One of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's, D-N.Y., tweets seemed to backfire on Thursday when she tried attacking Republicans over a picture of a politician stood next to a cardboard cutout of her."GOP: Let's pose our older male members next to cardboard cutouts of young female legislators," she tweeted. Her tweet included a post from the Republican Party of Kentucky. However, the politician pictured was Democratic Rep. John Yarmuth, Ky., not a Republican as she claimed... "It literally says in the tweet that she is quoting that Yarmuth is a Democrat"... This wasn't the first time the freshman congresswoman appeared to mix up her political parties. While appearing in a video with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., she enthusiastically declared that she would turn a Kansas house seat "red" — the color often representing the Republican Party."
I’d rather trust Bernie Madoff with my money than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - "What’s the point of a bank?To make money, take care of our money and offer us professional guidance on how best to save our money.I mean it’s pretty much as simple as that isn’t it?So it was entirely unsurprising to see Chase, one of America’s largest banks, tweet the following words of advice to its customers this week:‘You: why is my balance so low Bank account: make coffee at home. Bank account: eat the food that’s in the fridge Bank account: you don’t need a cab, it’s only three blocks You: I guess we’ll never know Bank account: seriously?’ The tweet ended with the hashtag, #MondayMotivation... the Chase tweet... soon attracted the attention of socialist firebrand Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted back this snarky response... she specifically chose to mock the bank’s very uncontroversial advice to customers that they should be more careful in how they spend their money.She wasn’t the only high profile Democrat to attack Chase over the tweet... As financial expert Dave Ramsey told NBC News: ‘No one should ever shame someone for being poor, but all of us should be open to having our bad habits called out so we can live better lives.’... Ironically, this gutless surrender to Ocasio-Cortez and her merry band of shrieking virtue-signallers, made me furious in a way the original tweet never did.Why delete perfectly sensible advice?Why make such a snivelling expression of gratitude to a baying mob?Why give an increasingly shrill, aggressive and often woefully informed young congresswoman the completely unnecessary pound of flesh she so desperately wanted?"
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
Links - 22nd May 2019 (2)
University of Alberta academic staff consider pay bump for only women profs - "A proposed memorandum of agreement between the university and the Association of Academic Staff University of Alberta (AASUA) would give more senior female professors a 5.8 per cent base salary increase, effective the month after members ratify the agreement, and a one-time lump sum for past salary loss, according to documents obtained by Postmedia.All female professors, regardless of rank, would receive $1,500, tax free, for “damages to dignity and self-worth,” the proposal said."
Tolkien's guide to contemporary politics - "In the back story to the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien tells us that, in addition to the One Ring, 19 subsidiary ‘Rings of Power’ were created and distributed among the movers-and-shakers of Middle Earth. The recipients thought they were getting a free gift; in reality they were plugging themselves into a network under the ultimate control of the One Ring, which Sauron retained for himself.Now can you think of anything like that in our own world? A networked service whose benefits are given away for nothing and yet which amply repays the ‘generosity’ of those who control it? Doesn’t that sound like certain big tech companies one could mention? I’m not saying that Mark Zuckerberg is Sauron, just that the business model of Mordor isn’t entirely unknown in Silicon Valley... constitutions can be amended and treaties abrogated. But when they’re allowed to proliferate and entangle themselves around the life of a nation, breaking free of their binding power can only come at great cost. It is what the Greeks found out in the Eurozone crisis and what the British are finding out as we struggle through Brexit."
The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems - "The BBS concept was a digital version of a push-pin bulletin board that might flank a grocery store entrance or a college student union hallway... Even today, a small community of people still run and call BBSes. Many seek the digital intimacy they lost years ago; 373 BBSes still operate, according to the Telnet BBS Guide, mostly in the United States. Many are set up to be accessible via internet-connected tools like Telnet, a text-based remote-login protocol originally designed for mainframes."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Friday's business with Rob Young - "‘You don't think that companies should have to publish this [gender pay gap] data. Why not?’
‘Why don't think the data tells us very much, it's meaningless, in most respects. Deloitte is a good example of the majority of companies that aren't having their full story told. By these crude pay gap reporting measures. There are an infinite number of gender pay gaps that you can calculate, you can come up with a statistic for almost anything you want. The question is which ones are meaningful and which ones aren't. And these pay gap reporting measures don't break down job, age, background, experience, you are comparing the CEO of a company to the junior researcher… I'm not sure they should be publishing the data at all, because you're producing thousands upon thousands of statistics that get put into the public domain without a lot of context. But if you are going to do this, you must break down simple things like job and age and experience. And without context, we can't say whether an increase or decrease in the gender pay gap is a good thing, as we just heard from Deloitte, and with many other companies. The gender pay gap could be increasing, because you're not promoting women into senior roles. It could also be increasing because you're hiring junior level women into your company. Surely that would be a good thing but your gender pay gap wouldn't reflect it... I've heard a lot of people say well, at least it has started a conversation. I don't buy into this. We don't condone teaching children that one plus one equals three because it might spark their interest in maths. Bad data is going to lead to bad public policy. And if you want to have a good conversation about women's issues and women in the workplace, you have to start with legitimate facts and stats. I don't think these pay gap reporting measures are giving us that... I think you'd have a better shot of women getting what they actually wanted in the workplace [if you scrapped gender pay gap reporting]. Employers, you know, whole list, M power, Thomas Cook, they have said in their writeups around this, that they try to give a lot of benefits to employees and women are more likely to take them up. But that has an impact on their gender pay gap because their salary sacrificing benefits. Now that's what women and employers are saying they want. But if you only care about your pay gap stats, you're going to roll back those benefits. So I care about getting women in the workplace what they're asking for. I think that's easier to do when you don't have crude measures that tell us very very little being put into the public domain'"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Monday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "‘The GDP of Brunei has shrunk for each of the last three years.’...
‘If you look at Brunei 90% of its GDP is actually based on those oil reserves. It's the fourth largest producer in Southeast Asia. Increasingly, it is depending on investment from China to improve its economic fortunes. And there is some analysis that this decision to move towards a harsher, stricter form of Islam won't be seen, particularly in a harsh light by the Chinese who have typically not bothered that much about human rights as other countries have when it comes to making investment decisions.’"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Brexit: Can a compromise be made? - "[On changing his mind despite voting Remain] I was, I still regard myself as a proud European, europhile. And I had always wanted for remain because I thought that EU was bound to reform. It had to eventually listen to these millions of voices saying no, you stuck in the late 90s mindset. We need, for example, border control. You need to compromise with the people. And it hasn't done and since the referendum, I've actually found myself strangely, more happy with the decision that they took to vote to leave, because the EU’s behavior has underlined the fact that it was never really going to change. And I was naive to think otherwise... the reason that Brexit support is still so high, still strikingly high, is that people expected politicians to behave in this way. They expected to capsize the boat and say no, you guys are in the wrong direction. Like a sort of tugging the leash of politicians saying come back here, because here we are. And just because we're from Sunderland, it doesn't mean to say we've got the hump with the polls. You're trying to correct all of these rather incorrect assumptions"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Israeli elections - "There is one thing about Israeli politics, you have to know. That ever since the founding of the State of Israel, no one party has ever got the magic 61 seats in order to govern on their own. And that was right from the beginning. They wanted the main political party to work with some of those smaller religious ones in the State of Israel"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Tuesday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "A detention is arbitrary when there are strong violations of the right to a fair trials. And they are so serious that they amount to the detention being arbitrary, basically. And we found that with respect to Mr. Ghosn case, those violations were numerous. First of all, the Japanese legal system allows very long police custody periods. 23 days and he had to face that three times because he was rearrested three times, on charges that were split up in time so that the prosecution could actually rearrest him and during this 23 days he doesn't see a judge, he cannot contest his detention. He cannot be heard by the prosecution with the presence of his lawyers. He cannot have access to the case file, he cannot meet with his family, and he's basically treated in a way that he's pressurized in order to basically weaken him so that he can make false confessions... [his wife] has been the second victim of the very brutal rearrest on Thursday morning. She has not fled, she was not under search or arrest warrant, she was not suspected on anything. So she didn't flee, she just decided to leave. It has to be recorded the conditions under which Mr. Ghosn was rearrested. 20 people came, 20 people from the prosecution's office at 5:50am on Thursday morning. He was sleeping, you know, in his little flat with his wife. They came with a lot of photographers outside, to show, to take photos, make a scene in a way that he would appear as guilty as they did the first time. She was there. She was very shocked. And she asked to take a shower and she was not allowed to take a shower without the presence of a female policeman in the bathroom, who had to hand over her towel. She was subjected to a few body searches. They took her passport, they took her computer, they took her cell phones although they have no warrant against her. They tried to interview her when her husband had left without the presence of any lawyer, to make her sign documents. Basically was extremely brutal. To be honest, she felt like she was in danger to the point that the French ambassador personally escorted her until she got on the plane to Paris to make sure she could leave"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Thursday's business with Katie Prescott - "[On Boeing] It is unprecedented to lose two brand new aircraft within a matter of months as they they really need that reassurance. And failing that, it was the first time I have witnessed the breakdown in relationship between the manufacturer and its airline customers. The manufacturer insisted it has full confidence in the aircraft, the airline customers, were not 100% satisfied with that."
Father raped 15-year-old daughter after drunkenly mistaking her for his wife, Hong Kong court hears - "the girl directed “anger and displeasure” against the social worker who reported the case without her consent. She accused the social worker of putting her through the guilt of splitting her family of four, which also included her older brother, according to an impact report read in court."
Young men score highest on “bullshit calculator” - "Young men are more likely to be “bullshitters” compared to their female counterparts, particularly if they are American or Canadian and hail from an advantaged socio-economic background... We found that male participants were much more likely to bullshit about their knowledge of the fake constructs than their female counterparts,” says Professor Jerrim. “This holds true for respondents from all nine countries, although the gender gap is significantly weaker in North America than Europe.”... “Our study shows that bullshitters express much higher levels of self-confidence in their skills than non-bullshitters, even when they are of equal academic ability,” says Nikki Shure (UCL Institute of Education), co-author of the study. “They are also much less likely to say that they give up easily when faced with a difficult problem and claim to have particularly high levels of perseverance when faced with challenging tasks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they are also more likely to believe they are popular at school.”"
Religion, Violence, And ‘Apocalpyto’ - "When you hear people condemning the Spanish conquest for what it did to the native inhabitants, think of the fact that within a decade of the Spanish conquest, human sacrifice ended. That is something to be grateful for, and indeed proud of. We do not need to believe that the conquistadores were saints — they certainly were not — to recognize this."
Free speech policies now in effect at Ontario’s colleges and universities - "Last August, after incidents on campuses across North America where speakers faced protests, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities Merrilee Fullerton told colleges and universities they needed to implement free-speech policies and have them in place for the New Year.In Ontario, protests — and even arrests — have followed controversial speakers such as University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson and Lindsay Shepherd, a Wilfrid Laurier graduate student and teaching assistant. "
Paul Embery on Twitter - "My timeline seems to be full of woke political activists saying, 'Why is the media giving so-and-so airtime to spout his views?' I shudder to think what these people would do if they ever won power. Pluralism, open debate and a free press would be in peril."
Half of Millennials and Generation Z want employers to prioritize diversity over ability when hiring - "Roughly half (51 percent) of Millennials (age 22-39) and Generation Z (age 18-21) said that 'fair representation of race, ethnicity and religion is paramount to creating the ideal workplace,' according to the poll of 2,002 Americans conducted by John Zogby Strategies. By comparison, 48 percent of Generation X (age 40-54) and 42 percent of Baby Boomers (age 55-74) agreed with that statement. Just 15 percent of Generation Z and 32 percent of Millennials agreed with the statement that 'merit and competition supersede all, even if that results in a workplace that creates minimal diversity.'... Among all Americans, 47 percent prioritized diversity in workplace hiring, while 37 percent said merit should matter most."
The Rise of China is inevitable
Benefits Of Open Office Not Extended To CEO - "Deeply saddened that one of their own was confined to such punishing solitude, employees of DigiMax Solutions expressed concern Friday that the benefits of the company’s open-office floor plan had not been extended to the media firm’s CEO, Carter Foss. “I feel so bad that he doesn’t get to enjoy the intense collaborative synergy of this work environment the way the rest of us do”"
Logic, Empathy, Honesty - Posts - "this article from leftwingnews.com says I'm right"
"yeah but this article from rightwingnews.com says you're wrong"
"lol that's a biased source you idiot"
Liberal logic - Poisoning the well isn't a logical fallacy when deployed for progressive causes
Tolkien's guide to contemporary politics - "In the back story to the Lord of the Rings, Tolkien tells us that, in addition to the One Ring, 19 subsidiary ‘Rings of Power’ were created and distributed among the movers-and-shakers of Middle Earth. The recipients thought they were getting a free gift; in reality they were plugging themselves into a network under the ultimate control of the One Ring, which Sauron retained for himself.Now can you think of anything like that in our own world? A networked service whose benefits are given away for nothing and yet which amply repays the ‘generosity’ of those who control it? Doesn’t that sound like certain big tech companies one could mention? I’m not saying that Mark Zuckerberg is Sauron, just that the business model of Mordor isn’t entirely unknown in Silicon Valley... constitutions can be amended and treaties abrogated. But when they’re allowed to proliferate and entangle themselves around the life of a nation, breaking free of their binding power can only come at great cost. It is what the Greeks found out in the Eurozone crisis and what the British are finding out as we struggle through Brexit."
The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems - "The BBS concept was a digital version of a push-pin bulletin board that might flank a grocery store entrance or a college student union hallway... Even today, a small community of people still run and call BBSes. Many seek the digital intimacy they lost years ago; 373 BBSes still operate, according to the Telnet BBS Guide, mostly in the United States. Many are set up to be accessible via internet-connected tools like Telnet, a text-based remote-login protocol originally designed for mainframes."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Friday's business with Rob Young - "‘You don't think that companies should have to publish this [gender pay gap] data. Why not?’
‘Why don't think the data tells us very much, it's meaningless, in most respects. Deloitte is a good example of the majority of companies that aren't having their full story told. By these crude pay gap reporting measures. There are an infinite number of gender pay gaps that you can calculate, you can come up with a statistic for almost anything you want. The question is which ones are meaningful and which ones aren't. And these pay gap reporting measures don't break down job, age, background, experience, you are comparing the CEO of a company to the junior researcher… I'm not sure they should be publishing the data at all, because you're producing thousands upon thousands of statistics that get put into the public domain without a lot of context. But if you are going to do this, you must break down simple things like job and age and experience. And without context, we can't say whether an increase or decrease in the gender pay gap is a good thing, as we just heard from Deloitte, and with many other companies. The gender pay gap could be increasing, because you're not promoting women into senior roles. It could also be increasing because you're hiring junior level women into your company. Surely that would be a good thing but your gender pay gap wouldn't reflect it... I've heard a lot of people say well, at least it has started a conversation. I don't buy into this. We don't condone teaching children that one plus one equals three because it might spark their interest in maths. Bad data is going to lead to bad public policy. And if you want to have a good conversation about women's issues and women in the workplace, you have to start with legitimate facts and stats. I don't think these pay gap reporting measures are giving us that... I think you'd have a better shot of women getting what they actually wanted in the workplace [if you scrapped gender pay gap reporting]. Employers, you know, whole list, M power, Thomas Cook, they have said in their writeups around this, that they try to give a lot of benefits to employees and women are more likely to take them up. But that has an impact on their gender pay gap because their salary sacrificing benefits. Now that's what women and employers are saying they want. But if you only care about your pay gap stats, you're going to roll back those benefits. So I care about getting women in the workplace what they're asking for. I think that's easier to do when you don't have crude measures that tell us very very little being put into the public domain'"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Monday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "‘The GDP of Brunei has shrunk for each of the last three years.’...
‘If you look at Brunei 90% of its GDP is actually based on those oil reserves. It's the fourth largest producer in Southeast Asia. Increasingly, it is depending on investment from China to improve its economic fortunes. And there is some analysis that this decision to move towards a harsher, stricter form of Islam won't be seen, particularly in a harsh light by the Chinese who have typically not bothered that much about human rights as other countries have when it comes to making investment decisions.’"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Brexit: Can a compromise be made? - "[On changing his mind despite voting Remain] I was, I still regard myself as a proud European, europhile. And I had always wanted for remain because I thought that EU was bound to reform. It had to eventually listen to these millions of voices saying no, you stuck in the late 90s mindset. We need, for example, border control. You need to compromise with the people. And it hasn't done and since the referendum, I've actually found myself strangely, more happy with the decision that they took to vote to leave, because the EU’s behavior has underlined the fact that it was never really going to change. And I was naive to think otherwise... the reason that Brexit support is still so high, still strikingly high, is that people expected politicians to behave in this way. They expected to capsize the boat and say no, you guys are in the wrong direction. Like a sort of tugging the leash of politicians saying come back here, because here we are. And just because we're from Sunderland, it doesn't mean to say we've got the hump with the polls. You're trying to correct all of these rather incorrect assumptions"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Israeli elections - "There is one thing about Israeli politics, you have to know. That ever since the founding of the State of Israel, no one party has ever got the magic 61 seats in order to govern on their own. And that was right from the beginning. They wanted the main political party to work with some of those smaller religious ones in the State of Israel"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Tuesday's business with Dominic O'Connell - "A detention is arbitrary when there are strong violations of the right to a fair trials. And they are so serious that they amount to the detention being arbitrary, basically. And we found that with respect to Mr. Ghosn case, those violations were numerous. First of all, the Japanese legal system allows very long police custody periods. 23 days and he had to face that three times because he was rearrested three times, on charges that were split up in time so that the prosecution could actually rearrest him and during this 23 days he doesn't see a judge, he cannot contest his detention. He cannot be heard by the prosecution with the presence of his lawyers. He cannot have access to the case file, he cannot meet with his family, and he's basically treated in a way that he's pressurized in order to basically weaken him so that he can make false confessions... [his wife] has been the second victim of the very brutal rearrest on Thursday morning. She has not fled, she was not under search or arrest warrant, she was not suspected on anything. So she didn't flee, she just decided to leave. It has to be recorded the conditions under which Mr. Ghosn was rearrested. 20 people came, 20 people from the prosecution's office at 5:50am on Thursday morning. He was sleeping, you know, in his little flat with his wife. They came with a lot of photographers outside, to show, to take photos, make a scene in a way that he would appear as guilty as they did the first time. She was there. She was very shocked. And she asked to take a shower and she was not allowed to take a shower without the presence of a female policeman in the bathroom, who had to hand over her towel. She was subjected to a few body searches. They took her passport, they took her computer, they took her cell phones although they have no warrant against her. They tried to interview her when her husband had left without the presence of any lawyer, to make her sign documents. Basically was extremely brutal. To be honest, she felt like she was in danger to the point that the French ambassador personally escorted her until she got on the plane to Paris to make sure she could leave"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Thursday's business with Katie Prescott - "[On Boeing] It is unprecedented to lose two brand new aircraft within a matter of months as they they really need that reassurance. And failing that, it was the first time I have witnessed the breakdown in relationship between the manufacturer and its airline customers. The manufacturer insisted it has full confidence in the aircraft, the airline customers, were not 100% satisfied with that."
Father raped 15-year-old daughter after drunkenly mistaking her for his wife, Hong Kong court hears - "the girl directed “anger and displeasure” against the social worker who reported the case without her consent. She accused the social worker of putting her through the guilt of splitting her family of four, which also included her older brother, according to an impact report read in court."
Young men score highest on “bullshit calculator” - "Young men are more likely to be “bullshitters” compared to their female counterparts, particularly if they are American or Canadian and hail from an advantaged socio-economic background... We found that male participants were much more likely to bullshit about their knowledge of the fake constructs than their female counterparts,” says Professor Jerrim. “This holds true for respondents from all nine countries, although the gender gap is significantly weaker in North America than Europe.”... “Our study shows that bullshitters express much higher levels of self-confidence in their skills than non-bullshitters, even when they are of equal academic ability,” says Nikki Shure (UCL Institute of Education), co-author of the study. “They are also much less likely to say that they give up easily when faced with a difficult problem and claim to have particularly high levels of perseverance when faced with challenging tasks. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they are also more likely to believe they are popular at school.”"
Religion, Violence, And ‘Apocalpyto’ - "When you hear people condemning the Spanish conquest for what it did to the native inhabitants, think of the fact that within a decade of the Spanish conquest, human sacrifice ended. That is something to be grateful for, and indeed proud of. We do not need to believe that the conquistadores were saints — they certainly were not — to recognize this."
Free speech policies now in effect at Ontario’s colleges and universities - "Last August, after incidents on campuses across North America where speakers faced protests, Minister of Training, Colleges and Universities Merrilee Fullerton told colleges and universities they needed to implement free-speech policies and have them in place for the New Year.In Ontario, protests — and even arrests — have followed controversial speakers such as University of Toronto professor Jordan Peterson and Lindsay Shepherd, a Wilfrid Laurier graduate student and teaching assistant. "
Paul Embery on Twitter - "My timeline seems to be full of woke political activists saying, 'Why is the media giving so-and-so airtime to spout his views?' I shudder to think what these people would do if they ever won power. Pluralism, open debate and a free press would be in peril."
Half of Millennials and Generation Z want employers to prioritize diversity over ability when hiring - "Roughly half (51 percent) of Millennials (age 22-39) and Generation Z (age 18-21) said that 'fair representation of race, ethnicity and religion is paramount to creating the ideal workplace,' according to the poll of 2,002 Americans conducted by John Zogby Strategies. By comparison, 48 percent of Generation X (age 40-54) and 42 percent of Baby Boomers (age 55-74) agreed with that statement. Just 15 percent of Generation Z and 32 percent of Millennials agreed with the statement that 'merit and competition supersede all, even if that results in a workplace that creates minimal diversity.'... Among all Americans, 47 percent prioritized diversity in workplace hiring, while 37 percent said merit should matter most."
The Rise of China is inevitable
Benefits Of Open Office Not Extended To CEO - "Deeply saddened that one of their own was confined to such punishing solitude, employees of DigiMax Solutions expressed concern Friday that the benefits of the company’s open-office floor plan had not been extended to the media firm’s CEO, Carter Foss. “I feel so bad that he doesn’t get to enjoy the intense collaborative synergy of this work environment the way the rest of us do”"
Logic, Empathy, Honesty - Posts - "this article from leftwingnews.com says I'm right"
"yeah but this article from rightwingnews.com says you're wrong"
"lol that's a biased source you idiot"
Liberal logic - Poisoning the well isn't a logical fallacy when deployed for progressive causes
How long have you been smoking?
A father came in the bedroom to find his 13-year-old daughter smoking a cigarette.
"My God! How long have you been smoking?" screams the father.
"Since I lost my virginity," replies the girl.
"You lost your VIRGINITY!!! When the hell did this happen?" shrieks the father.
"I don't remember," says the girl. "I was completely drunk."
"My God! How long have you been smoking?" screams the father.
"Since I lost my virginity," replies the girl.
"You lost your VIRGINITY!!! When the hell did this happen?" shrieks the father.
"I don't remember," says the girl. "I was completely drunk."
Links - 22nd May 2019 (1)
‘Beyond fanaticism’: Crosses in Italian cemetery covered to avoid offending other religions - "Locals were surprised, then, when someone at a cemetery in Pieve di Cento erected black sheets to hide crucifixes on the graves, Il Giornale reported on Monday. The sheets went up as part of renovations at the chapel, in case any workers of different faiths were offended. Inside the chapel itself, blackout curtains on motorized rails obscure the crosses when work is being carried out... In 2016, then-Prime Minister Matteo Renzi caused a public outcry when he had a series of nude statues at the Capitoline Museum in Rome covered before Iranian President Hassan Rouhani arrived for a state visit."
Shopping centre bans nativity scene to avoid upsetting non-religious shoppers - "A shopping centre is refusing to stage a nativity scene this Christmas because it might offend customers who are not religious.Bosses at Thistles in Stirling, Scotland, flatly declined a request for the traditional display saying customers did not want to be "subjected to individual organisation's beliefs"."
Shopping centre bans nativity scene to avoid upsetting non-religious shoppers - "A shopping centre is refusing to stage a nativity scene this Christmas because it might offend customers who are not religious.Bosses at Thistles in Stirling, Scotland, flatly declined a request for the traditional display saying customers did not want to be "subjected to individual organisation's beliefs"."
Lawsuits Say Harvard Is Sexist For Trying To Shut Down Single-Sex Clubs - "Several fraternities and sororities sued Harvard University on Monday over its restrictions on students joining off-campus single-sex social groups, saying the rule aimed at combating sexism is itself sexist.Harvard created a rule in spring 2016 that punishes students if they are members of fraternities, sororities, and final clubs — a type of social group unique to Harvard — unless the organizations go coed. The lawsuits filed Monday — one in federal court and one in state court — say the rule disproportionately hurts women by targeting all-female clubs created to counter Harvard’s male-dominated history. They also say the rule is rooted in sexism against men, whose fraternities and private clubs have been the subject of criticism by university officials over alleged sexist behavior. “Unrecognized single-sex social organizations are the only kind of organizations that Harvard punishes students for joining,” one of the lawsuits said. “A Harvard undergraduate could join the American Nazi party, or create an off-campus undergraduate chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, without running afoul” of school rules... The rule was first imposed by the dean of Harvard College, Rakesh Khurana, in spring 2016. The announcement followed a university report that cited a disproportionate percentage of sexual assaults were linked to final clubs and frats, partly because they host a lot of booze-filled parties. A group of students had filed a Title IX complaint against Harvard College in 2014 arguing that assaults at final clubs were not being addressed. Khurana privately told students that the Title IX complaint was one reason Harvard needed to do away with all-male clubs, according to the federal suit. In addition to final clubs, it has been expanded to include single-sex fraternities and sororities and all-male and all-female singing groups... The university believes that men’s final clubs and frats cause sexual assault because they are all-male, the suit alleged, and that women only join single-sex groups as a “coping” mechanism"
Wut. I'm confused trying to sort out all the differing layers of 'oppression' here
Waitrose pulls chocolate ducklings from sale after complaints of racism - "Waitrose has apologised over "racist" Easter ducks after customers complained that the dark brown one was labelled as "ugly"."
Chocolate is brown. This is racist
Yenni Kwok on Twitter - "As Indonesian elections are approaching, here is a Twitter thread on Southeast Asian names. I have been thinking to do it for a while since many foreign media apply their own default standard of using "family names" (or what they wrongly think is family name) on second mention.
Family names don't carry as much importance in many Southeast Asian societies, unlike in Western countries, or East Asia. Some people have family names, some don't. Javanese, for example, may have 3-part names, all of which are given names...
Indonesian names are more tricky because there are so many ethnic groups. Some have family names, some don't. But the general rule of thumb is use the first name, like Malay and Thai names... even people from ethnic groups who have family names, like the Bataks, they are still called with their given name. For example, Luhut Pandjaitan, it's Luhut; Hotman Paris Hutapea, it's Hotman. There are some exceptions in the first-name rule for Indonesian names. For example, names like Ahmad or Mohamad are never used on second mention... There are other exceptions -- the Indonesian section of the Asian names style guide I made for @TIME and @nytimes editors & journalists was the longest (largely thanks to the country's multitude of ethnicities!)."
Gerry Uswak's answer to Why do people in Canada like to ask 'where did you come from?' to non-White immigrants even they have already been a naturalized Canadian citizen? I don't identify with my former country and I choose Canada to be my new country and identity. - Quora - "I'm white.When I lived in North Carolina I was asked where I was from because I did not have a North Carolina accent.When I lived and worked in Bolivia I was asked where I was from because I was clearly not Bolivian.When I was in other Spanish-speaking countries I was asked where I was from because I spoke Spanish with a Bolivian accent and used words unique to the region where I learned my Spanish.Airport drivers in cities ask me where I am from because I'm in their cab.It is an ice-breaker. A conversation starter. People are generally interested in where you are from... Even as a white Canadian I am asked where I am from because people in one place can often detect you are not from there."
New polling proves President Trump is right — 'Americans are #Dreamers, too' - "According to a Harvard University-Harris Poll, a majority of Americans actually agree with not only one but all of Trump’s immigration proposals.A stunning 65 percent of Americans support a DACA deal that ends chain migration, eliminates the random visa lottery and secures the border with a wall. Only 35 percent of Americans did not agree.Nearly 70 percent of Americans oppose the visa lottery which allows immigrants to be picked at random for entry into the country.In fact, nearly 80 percent of Americans believe that immigration should be based on merit and skills, not just family ties. Even more interesting, the poll shows that 60 percent of Americans believe that even if dreamers are allowed to stay, they should not be given preference to bring relatives to the United States.When faced with a choice, nearly 80 percent want secure borders rather than open borders.Specifically, 61 percent think that current border security is inadequate, and more than half of Americans — 54 percent — support a physical barrier along the southern U.S. border"
Joe Wong Wants Asian America to Speak Up - "Yeah, your experience as an immigrant is more representative of Asian Americans in general, but the narrative is written by the next generation, who often stereotype their immigrant parents and blame them for all their problems...
Asians haven’t done much in this country yet, politically and socially. We gotta work harder to get more done in this country. It’s just like Jeremy Lin said. He was called a chink a lot more in Ivy League schools than in the NBA. The attitude is always there. We have to fight that...
DL: I also love that you talk about Korean convenience stores getting looted.
JW: Yeah in every single riot, it’s always the Asian working class who suffer the most, and nobody ever talks about it."
On liberal racism
BBC World Service - The World This Week, Vatican's First Child Abuse Summit - "A priest forced a boy aged nine to perform oral sex and then rinsed out the child's mouth with holy water, in the words of the priest, to purify him...
Alain Finkielkraut is one of the first to say: look, the media, the press are barking up the wrong tree when they keep going on about the far right demons of France being the real anti Semites or at least the problem now. He has been saying for 10, 15 years look the problem is young Arab youth in the banlieues… that's the new anti semitism in France and he's still saying that now and the fact that he was, it turns out that the person who's attacking him verbally for that was an Islamist kind of bears him out"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Brexit day... delayed - Mervyn King: "I don't think it's obvious there'd be jobs lost at all. If you look at since the referendum, and we were told there'd be a recession if we voted to leave. What actually happened is the British economy has grown since the referendum by slightly more, just a little more, than Germany. Now the idea therefore that voting to leave has been an economic disaster doesn't match the facts, and if you look at the exchange rate of sterling, one of the extraordinary facts about it is that the average value of sterling against other currencies is exactly the same this week as the day I left the Bank of England in middle of 2013"
Narcissism and self-esteem among homosexual and heterosexual male students. - "According to orthodox psychoanalytical theory, narcissism and homosexuality are strongly associated. This association played a major role in pathologizing homosexuality. The present study compared self-esteem and two measures of narcissism among 90 homosexual and 109 heterosexual male students, who filled in a demographic questionnaire, Rosenberg's Self-Esteem Scale, the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, and the Pathological Narcissism Inventory, which addresses both grandiose and vulnerable subtypes of narcissism. The homosexual students score higher in both measures of narcissism and lower on the self-esteem measure, compared to their heterosexual counterparts... , three interpretations could be suggested. One would
be intrapsychic, suggesting that homosexuals who are dominated by the
pursuit of pleasure have impaired frustration tolerance, and poor self-
esteem regulation would be considered narcissistic today (Socarides, 1978)."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Brexit indicative vote x2 - "‘The only way the public will call time on this argument and stop these politicians going on and on and on in their rival factions, their rival groups and their rival options is by having, allowing a compromise to emerge from this process, which is then put to the test of public opinion. And when the public signs off, when the public gives their consent to this compromise. That will end the argument because they will say to everyone else, you have to live this, that's an end, this is closure’
‘I want you to listen to something now. Because these promises were made before weren’t they? That this was going to be a decision only taken once and this was you yourself speaking during the referendum.’
‘It's so important, this decision. It's not like a general election where you can put your vote on one color and then three or four, five years later, just boot that team out and change direction. It's not like that. This is a decision, a once and for all decision. It's not, we will not be taking a decision like this again in our lifetime. That's why it's got to be the right decision and the right choice for the country’...
‘You said in the interview with Manchester Metropolitan University, you said in that interview that it was going to be a once in a lifetime decision. And people may have believed that’"
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Tuesday's business with Rob Young - "[On auditing and consulting for the same clients] The facts are the level of consulting work for audit clients has fallen away significantly because legislation has changed. For our firm, of our total revenue, only 7% of that revenue comes from audit clients paying us consulting advice. We've already recommended that the provision of this consulting services should be eliminated fully, to deal with that conflict. It was interesting, the CMA found no evidence that providing consulting services actually gave rise to a conflict despite the perception but we recognize the perception. So let's deal with it by banning non audit services."
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, Brexit: PM seeks Corbyn's help - "‘I want to ask you finally about your, the what you did the other day in, in retweeting and drawing attention to something that the AFD had put out. I know you've been asked about this quite a few times. And you've said so far that you don't agree with everything that they stand for. But you want to draw attention to this. But you have nevertheless chosen to shine a spotlight on a party whose core principles are anti immigration, anti Islam, whose leader in the German parliament’s views include Germany being overrun by Arabs and Roma. Is there nothing in that that gives you pause for thought that at least you should clarify what you put out and say that you don't support their other beliefs?’
‘Well, I think this is typical of the BBC’s obsession, dare I say the Today’s program’s obsession about this. Mr Naughtie quite shamefully said the other week that the ERG was like the National Front in France.’
‘He was quoting, he was quoting someone else as I'm sure you know’
‘No he wasn't, he said it himself. It was his view. And he's a BBC person, he's paying a license fee… you must be patient and not interrupt so much because the answer needs to be given properly. The BBC does have this obsession. What Mr. Naughtie said was an outrageous slur. And he wasn't challenged by whoever who was interviewing him. That wasn't raised which seems to be a matter of competence’
‘Again, it wasn't, it wasn’t his view’
‘Well, it was a view he expressed… hold on, just a moment. When Mr. Naughtie quotes somebody and it's not his view, that's fine. But when I quote somebody and it's not my view, that's a great shock. And that seems to me typical of the Today program’s leftie approach, an obsession with this issue’"
Tuesday, May 21, 2019
Links - 21st May 2019 (2)
Twitter informs critics of radical Islam that they have broken Pakistani laws - "Twitter’s legal team has sent official correspondence to at least two very vocal critics of radical Islam ‘in violation of Pakistani law’. Imam Tawhidi, a progressive Muslim scholar from Australia received an email on 3rd December informing him that a particular tweet of his has broken Pakistani law... Ensaf Haider, a Canadian human rights activist and wife of Raif Badawi, a Saudi writer and dissident who has been imprisoned for his satirical blogs against Saudi regimes, too received similar notice of having violated Pakistani law."
Jerusalem, Israel's Capital: Watch the Masks Fall - "While the mainstream media still shows the oppressor to be Israel and the oppressed to be the Palestinians, Palestinian polls tell a different story:
In a June 2015 poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (based in Beit Sahour, the West Bank), 52% of Palestinians living in Israeli-ruled East Jerusalem said they would prefer to be citizens of Israel with equal rights, compared to just 42% who would choose to be citizens of a Palestinian state...
Only 38% of the Palestinian public polled said West Bankers could criticize the Palestinian Authority (PA) without fear of reprisal; 59% said that people could not freely criticize the PA. Half of the public (50%) viewed the PA as a burden on the Palestinians. 77% perceived the PA as corrupt."
'Upskirt' porn website The Candid Board hit with data leak exposing 180,000 users - ""It's amazing how much personal data people will entrust sites of this nature with," Hunt said. "Members provided accurate email addresses and birthdates which combined with their IP address now very clearly ties them back to a site of very questionable legal status."... Over the past 12 months, there have been a number of high-profile data leaks due to misconfigured databases, often left connected to the web without adequate username and password protection.Last year Mexico, Turkey and the Philippines each suffered massive leaks of citizen voter registration data, while another incident saw the World-Check database, holding over 2.2 million records on individuals with suspected criminal links, leaked online."
On the West Side, the street shows no fear of Chicago police - "two police officers — TAC cops, not rookies — were making a drug arrest shortly after 2 p.m. on Sunday.A mob appeared, threatening the officers, surrounding them, threatening to reach for their own weapons to shoot them dead, and the cops let the suspect go.What is learned here? The street is officially no longer afraid of the Chicago police. If the cops had fired their weapons, news media would have been all over them, metaphorically skinning them alive. Politicians would have demanded their heads. Democratic presidential candidates, and the two campaigning for mayor, would have held repeated news conferences... “The criminals are emboldened to challenge the police because the politicians and media will not stand up for the police and are only too happy for any excuse to jump on the police to gain political support... Now there is no fear of going to jail.”
New NUS president has said that she wanted to 'oppress white people' and have an 'Islamic takeover' - "The incoming president of the National Union of Students has said that she wanted to “oppress white people” and have an “Islamic takeover”.Zamzam Ibrahim, 24, from Greater Manchester, also described the Government’s counter-extremism strategy as “disastrous” and “racist”.Using the hastag #IfIWasPresident, she wrote on Twitter in 2012: “I’d oppress white people just to give them a taste of what they put us through!” She signed off the message by writing “LMFAO”, which in urban slang is short for “Laughing My F***ing Arse Off”. Responding to questions online about what book everyone should read, she said: “The Quraan. We would have an Islamic takeover!”In another question about friendship between men and women, she wrote: “I've had this debate with many friends! Maybe in some cases but Islamically it's incorrect for girls to be friends with a guy anyway! So I'm gonna say NO not the kind of friendship they can have with the same gender there is always boundaries.”... Ms Ibrahim will take over running the NUS from Shakira Martin, 28, a self-confessed former drug dealer who did not go to university and once claimed to be more radical than the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn"
Afghanistan ’11, game with US and Taliban forces, removed from App Store - "This isn’t the first time that Apple has elected to remove historical wargames from its storefront. In 2015, the company chose to suspend the sale of Civil War games featuring the battle flag of the Confederate States of America. Titles such as Ultimate General: Gettysburg were eventually reinstated. It’s also unclear why Apple elected to single out a game featuring U.S. forces and the Taliban. Other historical wargames featuring real-life combatants that are still on the App Store include:
Twilight Struggle, which depicts U.S. and communist forces during the Cold War
Battle of the Bulge, which portrays Allied and Axis forces during World War II
Carrier Battles 4: Guadalcanal, which tells the story of Allied action against Imperial Japan
Panzer Corps, a WWII title also published by Slitherine
1812: The Invasion of Canada, which notably features historical units derived from Native American and First Nations populations
Modern Campaigns — Fulda Gap ’85, which focuses on a what-if scenario featuring NATO and Warsaw Pact forces
Sid Meier’s Civilization 6, which allows you to play as dozens of historical world leaders"
✠ Grass Tastes Good ✠ on Twitter - "I’ve been becoming more and more prone to believing “conspiracy” theories because almost (if not) all of the sketchy stuff that Christians and right-wingers say are going on with the left/liberals/atheists usually turn out to be true.
"They're turning animals gay" "Mercury Poisoning Makes Birds Act Homosexual"
"PP sells aborted baby parts on the black market" "Baby Parts Business Partners Admit Guilt in $7.8 Million Settlement"
"Homosexuals are affiliated with secret pedophile rings" "Model gay adoptive 'fathers' sexually abused 6-year-old for years: offered him to pedophile ring"
“The LGBT community is using cultural normalization of degeneracy to groom young children” "WATCH: Drag queen admits he's 'grooming' children at story hour events"
WATCH: Drag queen admits he’s ‘grooming’ children at story hour events - "“I am here to tell you: All that time I said I wasn't indoctrinating anyone with my beliefs about gay and lesbian and bi and trans and queer people? That was a lie,” wrote Canadian gay activist Sason Bear Bergman, a woman who identifies as a transgender man, in a March 2015 piece titled “I Have Come to Indoctrinate Your Children Into My LGBTQ Agenda (And I'm Not a Bit Sorry).” Bergman holds nothing back, stating she wants to make children “like us”... U.S. gay activist Daniel Villarreal penned a column for Queerty.com stating that the time had come for the homosexual lobby to admit to “indoctrinating” schoolchildren to accept homosexuality... Homosexual activist Michael Swift wrote in 1987 in the Gay Community News that school children would become explicit targets for homosexual indoctrination. “We shall seduce them in your schools…They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us,” he wrote at the time"
A new theory for why Americans can’t get a raise. - "Workers’ pay may be lagging because the U.S. is suffering from a shortage of employers... hiring is concentrated among a relatively small number of businesses, which may have given managers the ability to keep wages lower than if there were more companies vying for talent... If the U.S. really does have the sort of widespread monopsony problem this paper documents, it would be one more important point on the constellation of reasons workers have fallen so far behind this century. It would also change the way we need to think about certain public policy issues.Take the minimum wage. The classic argument against increasing the pay floor is that it will kill jobs by making hiring more costly than it’s worth. But in a monopsony-afflicted world where companies can artificially depress wages, a higher minimum shouldn’t hurt employment, because it will just force employers to pay workers more in line with the value they produce."
Stereotype Accuracy: A Displeasing Truth - "the ability to stereotype is often essential for efficient decision-making, which facilitates survival. As Yale psychologist Paul Bloom has noted, “you don’t ask a toddler for directions, you don’t ask a very old person to help you move a sofa, and that’s because you stereotype.”... People who say that grapes are sweet don’t mean to say that all grapes everywhere are always sweet, and they may not know the whole range of grape flavor distribution. Yet in real-world terms, the statement is more accurate and useful than it is inaccurate and useless. In other words, the stereotype is true, even if it is neither the whole truth nor nothing but."
On the straw stereotype
Corruption has become part of Malay culture, says Dr Mahathir - "Dr Mahathir said when a community accepts corruption as a normal act that is openly practiced, there is no more feeling of wrongdoing in both the briber and receiver.He said in the "cash is king" mentality, corruption has become a value in life and culture, especially amongst the Malays."Conflict with the law, and even sinning in terms of religion, is not taken into account.""The priority is getting something to fulfill their greed""
Feminist Comic Calls on Hollywood Women to Finally Rise Up Against ‘Good Men’ - "Hannah Gadsby delivered an impassioned call for moral revolution during what was supposed to be a stand-up comedy routine Wednesday at The Hollywood Reporter’s 2018 Women in Entertainment gala.Gadsby, 40, has lately taken the culture world by storm with her ultra-feminist brand of non-comedy, which involves angry testimonial about the harrowing abuse she has faced as a Tasmanian lesbian diagnosed with autism. In recent months, she has notched a Netflix special, a book deal, and a viral appearance at the Emmys, where she “joked” about how much she hates men... Gadsby seemed to be saying, not just women, but every identity group has the ultimate right to adjudge the morality of groups that oppress it, at least when it comes to how those groups treat them. Such ideas are fashionable to throw around, which may help explain Gadsby success.But as a number of leading thinkers ― from Columbia University historian Mark Lilla to Stanford University political scientist Francis Fukuyama ― have recently pointed out, the kind of identity politics that Gadsby advocates cannot serve as the moral or ideological basis of a society.How do you determine which group is the most oppressed by which? Who wins between an African-American man and an immigrant woman? What if the immigrant is Spanish, or Russian, or Chinese? What if a Mexican boy steals a white man’s car? Who is qualified to judge the boy? Does it make a difference if the white man is half American Indian?"
I guess they don't need 'allies' anymore
Lena Dunham admits she lied to discredit actor Aurora Perrineau's rape accusation - "Lena Dunham has admitted she lied about the extent of her knowledge of a rape accusation by actor Aurora Perrineau against Girls writer Murray Miller... "I didn't have the 'insider information' I claimed but rather blind faith in a story that kept slipping and changing and revealed itself to mean nothing at all. I wanted to feel my workplace and my world were safe, untouched by the outside world.""
2019 Edmonton Pride Festival cancelled - Edmonton - "the organizers have concerns they would not be able to host a “safe and enjoyable event” this year... members of Shades of Color, an Edmonton group that advocates for “queer and trans Black folks, Indigenous folks and people of colour,” attended the meeting.“The festival has been provided demands, involving a complete restructuring of our festival and our commitments to sponsors"... The society was presented with a list of seven demands including ending the Pride Parade and providing annual funding for Shades of Color and RaricaNow.“So no floats, no corporate, just community groups and it would be a protest march instead, and then they asked for each group to receive $20,000 a year in funding from us.” The society’s email said the other groups attending were told they could only have four people attend because of limited capacity in the meeting room but the groups told them “it was all of them or no one.”“We had been informed there would be protests,” the email reads. “We believe in the right to protest. When the protesters entered the meeting area, we were fearful for our safety and the safety of others and we moved our meeting to another location... The Pride Society’s decision not to act on a call to ban police and military officers from taking part in the festival boiled over during the Pride Parade last summer.The parade was stalled for about a half-hour when demonstrators blocked the route to demand that police, RCMP and military members be banned from marching in future parades"
Intersectionality does what Christian conservatives cannot! Maybe it's their secret weapon
Caldron Pool on Twitter - "Rugby Australia is set to sack @IzzyFolau for quoting 1 Corinthians 6:9 on his personal Instagram account.
Think about that...
Quoting the Apostle Paul can now cost you your career because Christianity will no longer be tolerated."
Israel Folau starting to regret not keeping his lifestyle and beliefs in the closet - The Stockton Times - "One of Australia’s most talented athletes has had his career terminated after a series of posts made on social media.The comments made by Folau, which are too horrible for us to print here, relate to his decision to come out as religious and have left him completely shunned by all decent society... "I had to be true to myself and stop living a lie. Coming out as religious is one of the most difficult things a young man can do.”“My friends act differently around me and mother’s have stopped letting me babysit their kids for fear I’ll corrupt them with my lifestyle.”“But God will help me through this”"
Teach "Don't Steal", not "Lock your doors" - Posts - "men need to stop shaming women for their sexual activities. aww, you disagree? incel"
Jerusalem, Israel's Capital: Watch the Masks Fall - "While the mainstream media still shows the oppressor to be Israel and the oppressed to be the Palestinians, Palestinian polls tell a different story:
In a June 2015 poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion (based in Beit Sahour, the West Bank), 52% of Palestinians living in Israeli-ruled East Jerusalem said they would prefer to be citizens of Israel with equal rights, compared to just 42% who would choose to be citizens of a Palestinian state...
Only 38% of the Palestinian public polled said West Bankers could criticize the Palestinian Authority (PA) without fear of reprisal; 59% said that people could not freely criticize the PA. Half of the public (50%) viewed the PA as a burden on the Palestinians. 77% perceived the PA as corrupt."
'Upskirt' porn website The Candid Board hit with data leak exposing 180,000 users - ""It's amazing how much personal data people will entrust sites of this nature with," Hunt said. "Members provided accurate email addresses and birthdates which combined with their IP address now very clearly ties them back to a site of very questionable legal status."... Over the past 12 months, there have been a number of high-profile data leaks due to misconfigured databases, often left connected to the web without adequate username and password protection.Last year Mexico, Turkey and the Philippines each suffered massive leaks of citizen voter registration data, while another incident saw the World-Check database, holding over 2.2 million records on individuals with suspected criminal links, leaked online."
On the West Side, the street shows no fear of Chicago police - "two police officers — TAC cops, not rookies — were making a drug arrest shortly after 2 p.m. on Sunday.A mob appeared, threatening the officers, surrounding them, threatening to reach for their own weapons to shoot them dead, and the cops let the suspect go.What is learned here? The street is officially no longer afraid of the Chicago police. If the cops had fired their weapons, news media would have been all over them, metaphorically skinning them alive. Politicians would have demanded their heads. Democratic presidential candidates, and the two campaigning for mayor, would have held repeated news conferences... “The criminals are emboldened to challenge the police because the politicians and media will not stand up for the police and are only too happy for any excuse to jump on the police to gain political support... Now there is no fear of going to jail.”
New NUS president has said that she wanted to 'oppress white people' and have an 'Islamic takeover' - "The incoming president of the National Union of Students has said that she wanted to “oppress white people” and have an “Islamic takeover”.Zamzam Ibrahim, 24, from Greater Manchester, also described the Government’s counter-extremism strategy as “disastrous” and “racist”.Using the hastag #IfIWasPresident, she wrote on Twitter in 2012: “I’d oppress white people just to give them a taste of what they put us through!” She signed off the message by writing “LMFAO”, which in urban slang is short for “Laughing My F***ing Arse Off”. Responding to questions online about what book everyone should read, she said: “The Quraan. We would have an Islamic takeover!”In another question about friendship between men and women, she wrote: “I've had this debate with many friends! Maybe in some cases but Islamically it's incorrect for girls to be friends with a guy anyway! So I'm gonna say NO not the kind of friendship they can have with the same gender there is always boundaries.”... Ms Ibrahim will take over running the NUS from Shakira Martin, 28, a self-confessed former drug dealer who did not go to university and once claimed to be more radical than the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn"
Afghanistan ’11, game with US and Taliban forces, removed from App Store - "This isn’t the first time that Apple has elected to remove historical wargames from its storefront. In 2015, the company chose to suspend the sale of Civil War games featuring the battle flag of the Confederate States of America. Titles such as Ultimate General: Gettysburg were eventually reinstated. It’s also unclear why Apple elected to single out a game featuring U.S. forces and the Taliban. Other historical wargames featuring real-life combatants that are still on the App Store include:
Twilight Struggle, which depicts U.S. and communist forces during the Cold War
Battle of the Bulge, which portrays Allied and Axis forces during World War II
Carrier Battles 4: Guadalcanal, which tells the story of Allied action against Imperial Japan
Panzer Corps, a WWII title also published by Slitherine
1812: The Invasion of Canada, which notably features historical units derived from Native American and First Nations populations
Modern Campaigns — Fulda Gap ’85, which focuses on a what-if scenario featuring NATO and Warsaw Pact forces
Sid Meier’s Civilization 6, which allows you to play as dozens of historical world leaders"
✠ Grass Tastes Good ✠ on Twitter - "I’ve been becoming more and more prone to believing “conspiracy” theories because almost (if not) all of the sketchy stuff that Christians and right-wingers say are going on with the left/liberals/atheists usually turn out to be true.
"They're turning animals gay" "Mercury Poisoning Makes Birds Act Homosexual"
"PP sells aborted baby parts on the black market" "Baby Parts Business Partners Admit Guilt in $7.8 Million Settlement"
"Homosexuals are affiliated with secret pedophile rings" "Model gay adoptive 'fathers' sexually abused 6-year-old for years: offered him to pedophile ring"
“The LGBT community is using cultural normalization of degeneracy to groom young children” "WATCH: Drag queen admits he's 'grooming' children at story hour events"
WATCH: Drag queen admits he’s ‘grooming’ children at story hour events - "“I am here to tell you: All that time I said I wasn't indoctrinating anyone with my beliefs about gay and lesbian and bi and trans and queer people? That was a lie,” wrote Canadian gay activist Sason Bear Bergman, a woman who identifies as a transgender man, in a March 2015 piece titled “I Have Come to Indoctrinate Your Children Into My LGBTQ Agenda (And I'm Not a Bit Sorry).” Bergman holds nothing back, stating she wants to make children “like us”... U.S. gay activist Daniel Villarreal penned a column for Queerty.com stating that the time had come for the homosexual lobby to admit to “indoctrinating” schoolchildren to accept homosexuality... Homosexual activist Michael Swift wrote in 1987 in the Gay Community News that school children would become explicit targets for homosexual indoctrination. “We shall seduce them in your schools…They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us,” he wrote at the time"
A new theory for why Americans can’t get a raise. - "Workers’ pay may be lagging because the U.S. is suffering from a shortage of employers... hiring is concentrated among a relatively small number of businesses, which may have given managers the ability to keep wages lower than if there were more companies vying for talent... If the U.S. really does have the sort of widespread monopsony problem this paper documents, it would be one more important point on the constellation of reasons workers have fallen so far behind this century. It would also change the way we need to think about certain public policy issues.Take the minimum wage. The classic argument against increasing the pay floor is that it will kill jobs by making hiring more costly than it’s worth. But in a monopsony-afflicted world where companies can artificially depress wages, a higher minimum shouldn’t hurt employment, because it will just force employers to pay workers more in line with the value they produce."
Stereotype Accuracy: A Displeasing Truth - "the ability to stereotype is often essential for efficient decision-making, which facilitates survival. As Yale psychologist Paul Bloom has noted, “you don’t ask a toddler for directions, you don’t ask a very old person to help you move a sofa, and that’s because you stereotype.”... People who say that grapes are sweet don’t mean to say that all grapes everywhere are always sweet, and they may not know the whole range of grape flavor distribution. Yet in real-world terms, the statement is more accurate and useful than it is inaccurate and useless. In other words, the stereotype is true, even if it is neither the whole truth nor nothing but."
On the straw stereotype
Corruption has become part of Malay culture, says Dr Mahathir - "Dr Mahathir said when a community accepts corruption as a normal act that is openly practiced, there is no more feeling of wrongdoing in both the briber and receiver.He said in the "cash is king" mentality, corruption has become a value in life and culture, especially amongst the Malays."Conflict with the law, and even sinning in terms of religion, is not taken into account.""The priority is getting something to fulfill their greed""
Feminist Comic Calls on Hollywood Women to Finally Rise Up Against ‘Good Men’ - "Hannah Gadsby delivered an impassioned call for moral revolution during what was supposed to be a stand-up comedy routine Wednesday at The Hollywood Reporter’s 2018 Women in Entertainment gala.Gadsby, 40, has lately taken the culture world by storm with her ultra-feminist brand of non-comedy, which involves angry testimonial about the harrowing abuse she has faced as a Tasmanian lesbian diagnosed with autism. In recent months, she has notched a Netflix special, a book deal, and a viral appearance at the Emmys, where she “joked” about how much she hates men... Gadsby seemed to be saying, not just women, but every identity group has the ultimate right to adjudge the morality of groups that oppress it, at least when it comes to how those groups treat them. Such ideas are fashionable to throw around, which may help explain Gadsby success.But as a number of leading thinkers ― from Columbia University historian Mark Lilla to Stanford University political scientist Francis Fukuyama ― have recently pointed out, the kind of identity politics that Gadsby advocates cannot serve as the moral or ideological basis of a society.How do you determine which group is the most oppressed by which? Who wins between an African-American man and an immigrant woman? What if the immigrant is Spanish, or Russian, or Chinese? What if a Mexican boy steals a white man’s car? Who is qualified to judge the boy? Does it make a difference if the white man is half American Indian?"
I guess they don't need 'allies' anymore
Lena Dunham admits she lied to discredit actor Aurora Perrineau's rape accusation - "Lena Dunham has admitted she lied about the extent of her knowledge of a rape accusation by actor Aurora Perrineau against Girls writer Murray Miller... "I didn't have the 'insider information' I claimed but rather blind faith in a story that kept slipping and changing and revealed itself to mean nothing at all. I wanted to feel my workplace and my world were safe, untouched by the outside world.""
2019 Edmonton Pride Festival cancelled - Edmonton - "the organizers have concerns they would not be able to host a “safe and enjoyable event” this year... members of Shades of Color, an Edmonton group that advocates for “queer and trans Black folks, Indigenous folks and people of colour,” attended the meeting.“The festival has been provided demands, involving a complete restructuring of our festival and our commitments to sponsors"... The society was presented with a list of seven demands including ending the Pride Parade and providing annual funding for Shades of Color and RaricaNow.“So no floats, no corporate, just community groups and it would be a protest march instead, and then they asked for each group to receive $20,000 a year in funding from us.” The society’s email said the other groups attending were told they could only have four people attend because of limited capacity in the meeting room but the groups told them “it was all of them or no one.”“We had been informed there would be protests,” the email reads. “We believe in the right to protest. When the protesters entered the meeting area, we were fearful for our safety and the safety of others and we moved our meeting to another location... The Pride Society’s decision not to act on a call to ban police and military officers from taking part in the festival boiled over during the Pride Parade last summer.The parade was stalled for about a half-hour when demonstrators blocked the route to demand that police, RCMP and military members be banned from marching in future parades"
Intersectionality does what Christian conservatives cannot! Maybe it's their secret weapon
Caldron Pool on Twitter - "Rugby Australia is set to sack @IzzyFolau for quoting 1 Corinthians 6:9 on his personal Instagram account.
Think about that...
Quoting the Apostle Paul can now cost you your career because Christianity will no longer be tolerated."
Israel Folau starting to regret not keeping his lifestyle and beliefs in the closet - The Stockton Times - "One of Australia’s most talented athletes has had his career terminated after a series of posts made on social media.The comments made by Folau, which are too horrible for us to print here, relate to his decision to come out as religious and have left him completely shunned by all decent society... "I had to be true to myself and stop living a lie. Coming out as religious is one of the most difficult things a young man can do.”“My friends act differently around me and mother’s have stopped letting me babysit their kids for fear I’ll corrupt them with my lifestyle.”“But God will help me through this”"
Teach "Don't Steal", not "Lock your doors" - Posts - "men need to stop shaming women for their sexual activities. aww, you disagree? incel"