Links - 12th October 2018 (2)

Chinese birth tourism in Canada isn’t a loophole, grey area or oversight. It’s 100 per cent legal - "Canada’s immigration authorities are well aware of the phenomenon of birth tourism, which has led to more than two dozen private “baby houses” being set up in British Columbia’s lower mainland to accommodate pregnant mainland Chinese travellers. Infants with non-resident mothers made up 22.1 per cent (474 babies) out of all newborns in the 2017/2018 financial year at Richmond Hospital, where the practice is soaring... If Chinese authorities were alerted when an infant born to a birth tourist was headed their way, the parents would be forced to decide whether the “insurance” of holding a Canadian passport was worth the immense inconvenience for their child to grow up in China as a foreigner. “Then the choice is, alright, my baby is Canadian. The baby needs a visa, as a foreigner, to remain in China, and they will not receive free education, free medical care,” said Kurland. Canadian citizenship would be promptly renounced, and tipping off Chinese authorities in such a way would stop birth tourism dead, he said... "Only 34 countries grant the automatic acquisition of citizenship through birthplace regardless of parents’ nationality or status."... No European countries, said the submission, grant unqualified automatic citizenship by birth, “they have no obligation to do so”, and “nothing in international law requires Canada to bestow citizenship on the basis of birth”."

Senior Met Police officer could face the sack for using 'racist' 'whiter than white' phrase - "the detective superintendent addressed colleagues about the need to be faultless and above reproach in carrying out inquiries, saying that they needed to be “whiter than white”... A “good egg” is also thought to be discouraged in police ranks because it is deemed to be too closely associated with “egg and spoon”, rhyming slang for a highly offensive racist term"
The English language is racist

Poh Kok Ing - "My reply to someone who says gays do not face discrimination in Singapore - As a gay person, there are certain things I can’t do in Singapore.
1. Get married...
2. Buy a flat from HDB as a couple...
3. Have a child (in my case, adopt one)."
It's interesting that this round of the 377A circus, many homophiles are upfront about admitting that they are not going to stop at repealing 377A - so it's not just about the Freedom to Love, but the Freedom to get HDB Subsidies

LGBT Activists Target Singapore Schools To Support “Repeal S377A” Petition

Will Repealing Section 377A End "Online Assaults, Vitriol and Abuse Against the LGBTQ Community"? - "Implicit in this reasoning is that Section 377A causes or is responsible for "online assaults, vitriol and abuse against the LGBTQ community", and therefore repeal of Section 377A would put an end to all these. I genuinely wonder if anyone who supports the repeal of Section 377A, including Ong himself, actually believes this. If this is correct, then we would expect that, if Section 377A is repealed, there would be no push for "hate speech" laws or any other laws or measures prohibiting or restricting "online assaults, vitriol and abuse against the LGBTQ community", because these would be plainly unnecessary. We would also expect, in the event of repeal, a complete cessation of complaints from people who identify as LGBTQ of any form of "online assaults, vitriol and abuse" because these would no longer happen, if Section 377A is repealed... Section 377A neither legitimises "online assaults, vitriol and abuse" against persons who identify as LGBTQ, nor would the repeal of Section 377A put an end to such "online assaults, vitriol and abuse". Indeed, even with Section 377A on the books, a man was convicted and fined in November 2016 for asking for "permission to open fire" on the LGBT community in an online post."

Raheem Kassam on Twitter - "Oooh, "Trump *Nearly* Tweeted Us Into War" says CNN headline.
Meanwhile, every other President/Prime Minister for decades has marched us into perpetual, pointless wars costing lives, money, and stability.
We're not stupid, you sleazy fucks."

Combatting Cryptocurrency Mining - "A colleague bought some LED, Wi-Fi-enabled light bulbs that allowed him to control when and where the lights came on in his house through his mobile phone. A user of Senrio Insight at home, he noticed a significant increase in outbound connections to an Internet address in China.* His light bulbs. Turns out the small computer chips in the light bulbs he bought had bitcoin mining code on them, as well as the promised functionality of being able to adjust brightness. To reiterate: someone at a factory in China figured out how to get people around the world to make him rich by screwing in a lightbulb."

National anthem protest: 9yo refuses to stand because anthem is for 'white people of Australia' - "Teachers at a Brisbane primary school have disciplined a nine-year-old girl for refusing to stand for the national anthem during assembly. Primary school student Harper Nielsen was given a lunch time detention on Friday for peacefully protesting against the song she said is "wrong"... Associate Professor Nielsen said despite meeting with the school to discuss the issues, they claimed the school rules would not allow his daughter to continue to protest. "They have said that she has to stand or she has to leave the assembly area""
Apparently the school is racist for not providing her a venue to grandstand

Rare old photos of S’pore capture 1960s life, including sale of exotic meats - "Back when wildlife was in abundance, exotic creatures such as the pangolin and tapirs were commonly spotted in the market. Pangolins, which are endangered today, were (and still are) prized for their scales and meat."

Chinatown’s Sago Lane was once a street of death houses, they were a necessary part of life in the past - "Chinese superstition dictates that death must never occur in a house or it would bring bad luck to its inhabitants."

The Left Can’t Meme So They’ve Just Decided To Ban Memes Instead - "Following studies that proved the political right was more successful at creating and spreading memes than the left, Facebook has announced it is developing a new AI algorithm that can detect and ban “offensive” memes... A study undertaken by researchers at University College London found that the most effective memes largely originated in two places – the subreddit r/the_donald – a forum devoted to boosting President Donald Trump, and 4chan’s politically incorrect /pol forum... In addition to Facebook developing artificial intelligence to detect and censor “offensive” memes, the European Union just voted in favor of Article 13, which would require websites to automatically filter uploaded material for copyright violations, which would lead to transformative memes being blocked."

Do White Law Enforcement Officers Target Minority Suspects? - "although minority suspects are disproportionately killed by police, white officers appear to be no more likely to use lethal force against minorities than nonwhite officers."
Maybe the explanation is that nonwhite police officers have internalised racism

Where was Philando Castile's gun? Yanez jury hears 4th account - "St. Anthony police officer Jeronimo Yanez had no option but to shoot Philando Castile when Castile ignored the officer’s commands and reached for his handgun during a traffic stop last summer, an expert witness testified Thursday for the defense... when Castile told him he had a firearm, Yanez reacted within the bounds of his training when he told him not to reach for “it.” “It” meaning the gun, Dutton said. But Castile did not comply and continued going for the handgun later found in his right pocket, Dutton said, putting Yanez in imminent danger of bodily harm or death if he failed to react quickly. Under those circumstances, Yanez was left with no other choice but to draw his firearm and shoot, Dutton testified... Yanez used “due caution” to avoid injury to the two passengers in the car — Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, and her 4-year-old daughter — when he stepped to the left of the vehicle and pointed his gun downward before firing... The instructor at the gun range in Ramsey where Castile took his permit-to-carry safety class also testified Thursday. James Diehl said he teaches studentsthat, when they’re pulled over by police, first to tell officers they have a permit to carry. Then they should say they have a firearm on them, Diehl said. He said he also tells them to follow all police commands while keeping their hands visible."

Roxanne Pallett: the making of a victim - "Celebrity Big Brother has provided a rare insight into the nature of victimhood... She entered into a role which overtook her, because it was such a compelling, powerful role. Today’s cultural script, in which to be the victim accords you an unprecedented moral authority, has real social power. In what actually makes for remarkable footage, you can almost see Pallett warming to the role of abused woman... It showed how victimhood is, in part, an imagined condition, something one can either cultivate, as the script encourages us to, or resist. Pallett clearly relished the role, as indeed many others do. And this proved to be her undoing. Because if it wasn’t for the harsh truth of the camera’s eye, she might have been able to sustain this self-image. And keep hold of her alleged £750,000 appearance fee."

Report: Las Vegas professor shot himself in arm to protest Trump - "A longtime College of Southern Nevada sociology professor is facing felony gun charges in connection with an on-campus shooting on the second day of classes."

Bronx teacher who performed oral sex on 14-year-old gets 10 years probation, avoids jail, keeps teaching certificate - "A Bronx high school teacher who admitted to performing oral sex on her 14-year-old student won’t face jail time — and she might even return to the classroom."
Male privilege!

School staff member, 25, who had sex with schoolboys ‘took part with enthusiasm and excitement’ - "A former female staffer at an elite boarding school has been slapped with an 'extraordinarily lenient' suspended sentence after having sex with five male students during her tenure."

No enthusiasm for enthusiastic consent reforms | The Spectator Australia - "The key legal issue is that enthusiastic consent laws undermine due process and the presumption of innocence. When we require consent to be affirmatively established we are starting from the presumption that there is no consent, meaning that all sexual intercourse is unlawful until proven otherwise. This is contrary to the fundamental legal precept that individuals are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty... A ‘yes means yes’ standard makes it disturbingly easy for an individual to re-evaluate a regretted sexual encounter and to retrospectively withdraw consent, with some advocates in the USA going so far as to claim that ‘regret equals rape’."

Judge upholds accused student's gender-bias claim - "She also attended a presentation by W&L's Title IX officer Lauren Kozak. Kozak claimed that "regret equals rape," and introduced the concept as a new idea people were now supporting. Once Jane learned that John had been accepted into the study abroad program, she filed a sexual assault claim, now eight months after the encounter. Kozak conducted the investigation. John alleges in his lawsuit that he was given six hours notice to meet with the investigators but was not told why. When John met with Kozak and learned of the allegations against him, he was not shown a copy of Jane's complaint. John was denied legal representation, and when he tried to postpone a meeting with Kozak, she allegedly told him: "That's fine. We'll just submit the investigation report without your side of the story.""

The quickening: The momentous pregnancy event that became a relic. - "For thousands of years, the quickening was arguably the most significant turning point in the average woman’s pregnancy. It had both philosophical and practical significance for women, and for centuries it also marked the legal and moral dividing line for when an abortion could be performed. Today, the quickening is noticed in passing, if at all. But it’s worth remembering this now-antiquated milestone, and celebrating it for what it can still mean... British common law, eventually imported to Colonial America, outlawed abortion only if it took place after the quickening. Likewise, a pregnant woman could not be executed post-quickening... The Catholic Church, which had long treated pre-quickening abortion as the destruction of only potential human life, finally forbade abortion at any stage in 1869... The quickening, by contrast, is unabashedly subjective. It isn’t the fetus’ first movement, but rather the mother’s perception of it"

The Top Five Ways Obama Attacked the Free Press - "Obama’s war with the media wasn’t limited to Fox News. Obama’s treatment of the media as a whole was so bad that New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan criticized the Obama administration in 2013 for its “unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free press.” David E. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, said of the Obama administration in 2013, “This is the most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered.” According to a report on press freedoms by the highly respected Committee to Protect Journalists, “In the Obama administration's Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press.”...
5. Manipulating media coverage
4. Proposed government monitors in newsrooms
3. Threatening journalists for negative coverage
2. Spying on the media
1. Trying to jail journalists and whistleblowers
For all of Donald Trump’s mean words and use of the term “fake news,” I think we can all agree that such things aren’t nearly as bad as threatening and spying on journalists, right?... The Obama administration used the Espionage Act six times in eight years to go after government sources, more than double the number of all previous administrations combined. Risen would later describe the Obama administration as “the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation.” Leonard Downie Jr., the former executive director of the Washington Post, said “the administration’s war on leaks and other efforts to control information are the most aggressive I’ve seen since the Nixon administration.”"