Links - 8th June 2017 (2)

Billionaire George Soros has ties to more than 50 ‘partners’ of the Women’s March on Washington – Women in the World in Association with The New York Times – WITW - " The Guardian has touted the “Women’s March on Washington” as a “spontaneous” action for women’s rights. Another liberal media outlet, Vox, talks about the “huge, spontaneous groundswell” behind the march. On its website, organizers of the march are promoting their work as “a grassroots effort” with “independent” organizers... On the issues I care about as a Muslim, the “Women’s March,” unfortunately, has taken a stand on the side of partisan politics that has obfuscated the issues of Islamic extremism over the eight years of the Obama administration. “Women’s March” partners include the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has not only deflected on issues of Islamic extremism post-9/11, but opposes Muslim reforms that would allow women to be prayer leaders and pray in the front of mosques, without wearing headscarves as symbols of chastity. Partners also include the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which wrongly designated Maajid Nawaz, a Muslim reformer, an “anti-Muslim extremist” in a biased report released before the election. The SPLC confirmed to me that Soros funded its “anti-Muslim extremists” report targeting Nawaz. (Ironically, CAIR also opposes abortions, but its leader still has a key speaking role.)"

Averting France’s War of All Against All - WSJ - "Look at the Salafists (an estimated 15,000 among France’s five to seven million Muslims) whose radical-fundamentalist creed dominates many of the predominantly Muslim housing projects at the edges of cities such as Paris, Nice or Lyon. Their preachers call for a civil war, with all Muslims tasked to wipe out the miscreants down the street. At the same time, the right-wing extremists singled out by Mr. Calvar would be ideologically capable of shooting any Muslim. Here is despair on top of despair. But the response of most French politicians reflects opportunism, evasion and petty finger pointing... France hasn’t appeared this dysfunctional and politically riven since 1939"

Barbie sales fall by 15% after 'curvy' version introduced - "She was given a more ‘curvy’ figure for the first time in an effort to make her more realistic to young girls. But it seems Barbie’s image overhaul has failed to prove a hit – with sales tumbling by 15 per cent. Despite an initial rise when the change was introduced last year, US makers Mattel said revenues dipped in the first three months of the year to £574million... The new range, launched in January 2016 and introduced in the UK from March, also included a taller Barbie and a petite version. There are also seven skin tones and a range of hair styles... The latest gloomy figures represent the second consecutive quarter of falling revenues – and the biggest slide since 2009. Mattel was also forced to slash prices to sell stock that was unsold over the Christmas period."

Interview: This Male Student Was Expelled for Raping His Girlfriend Even Though She Said He Did Nothing Wrong - "the man in charge of investigating whether Neal had raped a woman—a woman who emphatically stated that Neal had not done so—first told Neal to open emails from his girlfriend, and later told him he could be disciplined for opening them... OCR's Title IX guidance is at the center of so much of the college war on due process. Universities are worried that they will lose federal funding if they do not obey the dictates of OCR, which requires the use of the preponderance of the evidence standard while discouraging cross-examination. This puts many accused students in a position where they are unable to prove their innocence, because they have been deprived of the means to do so."

No need for manned spaceflight, says astronomer royal Martin Rees - "Rees, professor of cosmology and astrophysics at Cambridge University, thinks sending people into space is a waste of money, given recent advances in unmanned space technology. He said European space scientists should focus on miniaturisation and robotics to remain competitive in a space sector dominated by Russia and the US. Rees, who is coming to the end of his five-year term as president of the Royal Society, made the comments during an interview for Cambridge Ideas – a series of videos, podcasts and slideshows from Cambridge University... Rees has long been an advocate of unmanned space exploration. In a BBC interview in 2008 he argued that routine shuttle launches and low-orbit flights didn't make headlines. "What actually makes the newspaper headlines are the marvellous pictures from the Hubble telescope and those of the surface of Mars and Jupiter and Titan, all obtained robotically," he said."
It is easy to get other people to pay for you to satisfy your romantic fetishes about manned spaceflight

Is this Chinese snack the next big Asian street food in the West? | South China Morning Post - "Western foodies have sunk their teeth into Vietnamese banh-mi and Hong Kong egg waffles, plus gobbled down bowl after bowl of Japanese ramen. But could the next Asian food trend to take the West by a storm be a humble Chinese breakfast favourite - the jianbing? Reuben Shorser, the co-founder of one of the first companies to bring the food to New York, Jianbing Company, certainly hopes so"

Muslim Who Threatened Christians in Facebook Live Charged As a Terrorist - "State Attorney General Marty Jackley made the announcement Friday, just days after Sioux Falls police said they would not press charges against Ehab Abdulmutta Jaber. "He had a lot of guns with him, but he wasn't breaking any laws," Sioux Falls police officer Sam Clemens told KDLT-TV after the incident... He pulled out several weapons and repeatedly told the camera "be scared" and "be terrified." He taunted believers in a speech laced with profanity. The conference, held on April 9, addressed the extreme dangers of Islamic teaching... He wore a shirt with a printed message that read "I am a Muslim," and indicated that he "conceal carried" a handgun... "With each brandishing of the five weapons, including two assault rifles, he would say 'be scared' or 'be terrified,' " Howse wrote in a Facebook post. "Ask yourself if a white 'Christian' did this at a Muslim conference would he be arrested or charged?""

Drexel Professor Who Called for ‘White Genocide’ Under Investigation After Donors and Students Flee - "“Numerous prospective students whom the university has admitted have written to the university stating that they will not attend,” Provost Blake wrote, noting that “at least two potential significant donors to the university have withheld previously promised donations.” In addition, due to Ciccariello’s inflammatory tweets have led to “the nearly unmanageable volume of venomous calls” received by the administration, according to Blake. The university even considered “turning off its phones” for a few days."

Mike Rowe - Posts - "This morning, for your consideration, I offer further proof that our country’s war on work continues to rage in all corners of polite society. Behold the latest assault from Nordstrom’s. The “Barracuda Straight Leg Jeans.”... Finally - a pair of jeans that look like they have been worn by someone with a dirty job…made for people who don't. And you can have your very own pair for just $425.00."

German Judge Acquits Turk of Rape Due to Cultural Difference - "A German judge has acquitted a Turkish man of rape, despite the fact that he forced a woman to have sex with him, and left her incapacitated. The judge argued that in "the mentality of the Turkish cultural circle," what the woman "had experienced as rape" might be considered merely "wild sex." The judge refused to convict the rapist, because "no intention is demonstrable."... the judge acquitted a rapist — whom the court had "no doubt" forced the victim to have sex with him — on the grounds that his culture might not have considered the sex — which left the girl unable to run for two weeks — to be rape."... According to the Märkische Allgemeine, "rape causes relatively few convictions before German courts." The paper cited a 2012 study showing that only 8.4 percent of men accused of rape were convicted."

Rachel Dolezal In South Africa - "she told local talk radio station 702 that she is “trans-black” which is a term that defies translation or comprehension... South Africans were left confused by her talk at the Joburg Theatre on Wednesday. Dolezal was asked many questions by attendees, who just did not seem convinced by her claims or theories... “She claimed that she had 'decolonised' her mind – although many in the crowd remained skeptical.” She certainly came here knowing what the big issues are and also has a grasp of the main buzzwords. Decolonising institutions and learning to decolonise the mind are projects of Black South African youth. Since the Fees Must Fall protests, this has been the language employed by Black youth, so that when Dolezal uses it, she is at once attempting to ingratiate herself and is also appropriating Black struggle in the South African context. It seems not to have worked, and people saw through it at once."

Rachel Dolezal: I was ‘too black’ for my husband - "Dolezal legally changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo, a West African way of saying "gift from the gods," to help with job searches but continues to use Dolezal for her public persona AP reports... Dolezal said in a release she wrote the book to "advance the conversation about race" and to set the record straight about her life. "I wish Americans understood that race is a social construct, even if we don't want it to be," she said in the release. "The system of racial classification is fiction, and we need to thoughtfully evaluate whether perpetuating it rigidly or allowing fluidity across the spectrum best supports human rights and social justice.""

Rachel Dolezal on brink of homelessness, living off food stamps - "she still believes she did nothing wrong... Dolezal eventually admitted she was “biologically born white to white parents” and compared herself to Caitlyn Jenner, claiming race is “not coded in your DNA.” The 39-year-old also lost her job as an adjunct instructor at Eastern Washington university because of the ordeal, and she hasn’t been able to get work since. The former professor and columnist told the Guardian she’s applied for more than 100 jobs, but not a single place will hire her. The only offers that have come her way have been for reality television and porn... When questioned about her race, Dolezal would just tell people that she was mixed, but she doesn’t feel as though she was lying. “The times I tried to explain more, I wasn’t understood more. Nobody wanted to hear, ‘I’m pan-African, pro-black, bisexual, an artist, mother and educator,’” she told the Guardian. “People would just be like, ‘Huh? What? What are you talking about?’"

Rachel Dolezal: ‘I’m not going to stoop and apologise and grovel’ - "When a local TV news crew arrived one afternoon to interview her, Dolezal thought they were there to talk about hate crimes. “Are you,” asked the reporter, “African American?” Like a cartoon, her features froze. “I don’t understand the question.” The reporter pressed, “Are your parents white?” Dolezal turned from the camera and fled... When it emerged that she had once sued a university for discriminating against her because she was white, Dolezal’s notoriety was complete. African American commentators called her a “blackface”, guilty of the worst extremes of cultural appropriation. She was “mentally ill”, and had cheated black people out of positions that were rightfully theirs. When Dolezal quoted the activist Dick Gregory to black talkshow host Loni Love – “White isn’t a race, it’s a state of mind” – the host exploded: “No, let me tell you something. I’m black. I can’t be you, I can’t reverse myself. That’s the difference.” Twitter span with comic memes, and still burns with comments along the lines of: “Why hasn’t anybody beaten her up already?”... Dolezal consulted African American women in her church about the protocol of braiding her hair. “And they were like, ‘To copy is to compliment.’ Everybody said that.”... Does she think some African Americans struggle to see that white people can suffer, too? “I think there’s definitely a stereotype of white privilege, and that stereotype gets expanded to mean rich, not oppressed, not suffering, et cetera. And yes, it’s a misperception.” The undeniable existence of white privilege, she argues, does not preclude the possibility of white pain... She has admitted to fabricating needless deceits in the past – she once claimed to have been born in a tepee – which makes me worry that her subjective concept of truth matters more to her than veracity... Nowadays we would not call someone who presents as a woman, but was registered a boy at birth, a liar"

The Psychology of an Ethnic Fraud: Behind Rachel Dolezal’s Invented Persecution - "she’s identified a third party (a black man) as her real father, and is alleged to have claimed one of her black adopted brothers is actually her son. Dolezal has accused her parents of child abuse, and specifically of using a “baboon whip” to beat her and her siblings. Dolezal has described this whip, presumably a sjambok, as “pretty similar to what was used as whips during slavery,” and said that her parents “would punish us by skin complexion” by beating them with it. In other words, Dolezal seems to be saying, not only is she black, but her family history and body itself bear the scars of the historical trauma of slavery... Her case suggests more than just a deep-seated problem, something more than just a highly narcissistic form of histrionic personal disorder, or an unhealthy need for obsession and approval."

Plus-size model says Uber driver called her fat - "Holliday faced backlash herself for calling her driver “fat” in the video, as one of her followers pointed out, “Looks like you’re doing some shaming yourself.” She defended herself by writing, “saying my driver is fat was obviously being used as a descriptor & not to insult him""

I’m a Fat Woman and I Think Tess Holliday Needs to Shut the Hell Up - "Maybe we should drop the stereotype that every skinny woman is a mean girl and that all fat women are bullied, victims, and therefore cannot bully anyone else? Now, if we are to flip the script for a moment and look back at her prior comment about perpetuating the image of what is wrong with America and society, let’s pretend she is what is looked to as the beauty standard in society. For many people, that is unrealistic. I’d feel as comfortable in her body as I would a Victoria’s Secret model (ie. I would feel uncomfortable in both). What I would have to do to maintain an image like Tess Holliday is too much work. Like the Victoria’s Secret Angel, I’d have to monitor my calories, monitor my activity level, change my diet accordingly, and no, I am not about to do that to meet some other person’s beauty standard"

Flailing Democrats Tell Pro-Life Candidates and Voters: You Can’t Join Our Party - “The Democratic Party is viewed as more out of touch than either Trump or the party’s political opponents. Two-thirds of Americans think the Democrats are out of touch—including nearly half of Democrats themselves.”

Report: Only 2.65 Percent of Immigrants into Italy Are Refugees - "A disturbing statistic that has recently come to light reveals that half of the migrants arriving in the country (90,334) never even requested asylum, but disappeared into the country as undocumented immigrants, commonly referred to by the Italians as “clandestini.”... Despite the fact that the vast majority of immigrants into Italy were denied asylum, fewer than 5,000 were deported in 2016, meaning that more than 175,000 remained in the country, most of them illegally."

Murderous Antifa With Bike Lock Outed As San Francisco Area Professor - "At the Battle of Berkeley on April 15th, an masked Antifa slid forward from the confusion and swung a bike lock into the head of an unarmed man, immediately drawing blood, before slipping back into the crowd. The act of violence, while predictable, was an unprovoked criminal assault with a deadly weapon intended to cause grievous bodily injury. It could easily have killed the victim. The criminal attacker was originally identified by /pol/ as San Francisco State University professor Eric Clanton. Jack Posobiec has since confirmed that Eric Clanton is at Diablo Valley College"
Yet Esquire is painting this as heroic anti-fascists defending society against Nazis

We Should Thank Emily Rose Nauert For Scaring Women From Becoming SJWs - "During the recent Berkeley fighting between free speech advocates and antifa, Emily Rose Nauert (or Emily Rose Marshall) tried to strike white nationalist Nathan Damigo with a weighted glove. But Damigo quickly falcon-punched her. Her literal downfall after the Berkeley free speech rally, which was attacked by hordes of masked antifa, led to an outcry from white knights everywhere, including Captain America actor Chris Evans... Nauert, who goes under the political name Louise Rosealma and pornographic name Venus Rosales, is profiting from being a hypocritical antifa and SJW... The third count would be her possession of a weighted/studded glove, one she used to strike at Nathan Damigo. This weapon, and it is a weapon, is illegal in the state of California... there’s the battery of her going at Damigo’s throat
"Headed to Berkeley to disrupt the neo nazi White Supremacist jerk circle. Nervous aff but determined to bring back 100 nazi scalps" wouldn't count as a true threat on its own, but given her glass bottle and the altercation...

More murder and violence in Germany - "one statistic stuck out in the report - while police had registered only 114,000 criminal incidents among asylum-seekers and refugees in 2015 - there were 174,000 in 2016. "Among the violent crimes, there were 1 percent more Germans, but 90 percent more migrant suspects," de Maiziere said - before adding that many of these crimes took place among the asylum-seekers themselves inside shelters... Ulbig also pointed out that many of the crimes among asylum-seekers were being carried out by repeat offenders - in Saxony, for instance, 1 percent of migrants are responsible for 40 percent of the crimes committed by migrants. Not only that, Syrians - who de Maiziere described as a group "truly in need of protection" - were much less likely to commit crimes than people from other countries... Anti-Semitic incidents climbed by some 7.5 percent (from 1,366 to 1,468)"