The primary version of "Political Correctness Watch" is HERE The Blogroll; John Ray's Home Page; Email John Ray here. Other mirror sites: Greenie Watch, Dissecting Leftism, Education Watch, Gun Watch, Socialized Medicine, Recipes, Australian Politics, Tongue Tied, Immigration Watch, Eye on Britain and Food & Health Skeptic. For a list of backups viewable in China, see here. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing). See here or here for the archives of this site.


Postmodernism is fundamentally frivolous. Postmodernists routinely condemn racism and intolerance as wrong but then say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. They are clearly not being serious. Either they do not really believe in moral nihilism or they believe that racism cannot be condemned!

Postmodernism is in fact just a tantrum. Post-Soviet reality in particular suits Leftists so badly that their response is to deny that reality exists. That they can be so dishonest, however, simply shows how psychopathic they are.

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8 November, 2009

Islam's world peace: Now or later?

Islam is a religion of peace, but in the world of paradoxical definitions, perhaps some explanation is needed. The word "Islam" means submission to the will of Allah. A "Muslim" is one who has submitted.

Whereas most think world peace will be when people just learn how to get along, faithful Muslims think world peace will be when the whole world submits to the will of Allah. In other words, world peace means world Islam.

To a fundamental Muslim, submission to Allah means submitting to Islamic law, called Shariah. Islamic Shariah law governs every aspect of human life, including:

* what to believe
* what to eat
* how to dress
* when to pray
* in what direction to pray
* what position to be in when you pray
* how many wives to have
* the correct way to beat a wife
* who must accompany a woman in public
* who cannot be your friends
* how to treat a non-Muslim infidel
* whether to drink alcohol
* when to lie
* when to kill an apostate
* how to run a government
* how to cut off the hand of a thief
* how many times to whip a woman who has been raped
* whether one can listen to music
* whether one can play a musical instrument
* what pets are permitted
* how to wash parts of your body
* the correct way to clean you teeth with a twig
* and even what direction to face when using the restroom!

Islamic Shariah law is the complete submission of one's life, marriage, family, community and country to the will of Allah as revealed to Muhammad. In its fullest sense, the word "Islam" actually means the opposite of the words "freedom" and "liberty."

But what about the majority of moderate Muslims? Moderate Muslims believe the world will submit to Allah later, maybe at the end of the world, or maybe just figuratively. Since it is so far off in the distant future, moderate Muslims have a more relaxed, patient attitude that allows them to get along in a friendly way with non-Muslim infidels. Moderate Muslims can live comfortably in a free, democratic society.

Fundamental Muslims, on the other hand, think the world is in the process of submitting to Allah now. They are very excited and want to establish Shariah law, even justifying threats of violence and terrorism.

What are moderate Muslims, who believe the world will submit to Allah later, supposed to think when they see unprecedented acts of acceptance of Islam right now?

Such as:

* U.S. Postal Service issuing Islamic postage stamps (September 2001; October 2002)
* President Bush removing his shoes and visiting a mosque (Dec. 5, 2002)
* President Bush putting a Quran in the Presidential Library (October 2005)
* President Bush celebrating Ramadan for the first time in the White House (Oct. 18, 2005)
* U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim, taking his oath of office upon a Quran (2007)
* Presidential candidate Obama reciting Muslim prayers in Arabic, saying it is "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset" (New York Times, Feb. 27, 2007)
* U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi putting on Muslim hijab veil during a trip to Syria (April 2007)
* President Bush appointing a Muslim, Zalmay Khalilzad, to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (April 17, 2007)
* President Bush removing his shoes and visiting a Mosque a second time (July 27, 2007)
* U.S. First Lady Laura Bush putting on Muslim hijab veil during trip to Persian Gulf (Oct. 29, 2007, Jerusalem Post)
* A second Muslim, Andre Carson, is elected to the U.S. Congress (2008)
* Presidential candidate Obama mistakenly says in a George Stephanopoulos interview, "My Muslim faith" (Sep. 7, 2008)
* President Barack Hussein Obama elected, whose middle name is that of Muhammad's grandson (November 2008)
* President Obama bows to Saudi King Abdullah (April 1, 2009)
* President Obama says America is not a Christian nation (April 6, 2009)
* President appoints devout Muslim Arif Alikhan to key position in the Department of Homeland Security (May 6, 2009)
* President Obama does NOT publicly recognize America's traditional National Day of Prayer (May 6, 2009)
* President Obama says America is one of the largest Muslim countries (June 3, 2009)
* President appoints Syrian-born devout Muslim Kareem Shora to key position in the Department of Homeland Security (June 5, 2009)
* President Obama broadcasts a Ramadan message to Muslims of the world (Aug. 22, 2009)
* President Obama publicly recognizes the Muslim Ramadan with a dinner at the White House (Sept. 1, 2009)
* Hundreds of Muslims gather at the U.S. Capitol to bow toward Mecca (Sept. 25, 2009)
* White House's first full-veiled Muslim woman adviser, Egyptian-born Dalia Mogahed, praised Shariah law as "gender justice" (Oct. 4, 2009, on London-based TV discussion program "Muslimah Dilemma," hosted by Ibtihal Bsis, a member of the extremist Hizb ut Tahrir party)

Again, the question is, what is a moderate Muslim, who believes the world will submit to Allah later, supposed to think when they see these unprecedented acts of acceptance of Islam right now, especially in a nation where 77 percent still identify themselves as Christian, 2 percent Jewish, etc., ... and only 0.6 percent Muslim? (Pew Religious Landscape Survey, 2008)

Understandably, the bipartisan actions of America's leaders showing tolerance and acceptance of Islam are exciting for Muslims, resulting in an increased enthusiasm for their faith. As a result, many moderate Muslims are being persuaded that the world is submitting to Allah now rather than later.

Thus, the dilemma for the West is that the more it bends over backwards in unprecedented ways to show acceptance of Islam, the more moderate Muslims become enthused and gravitate to become fundamental Muslims. They move from the moderate "LATER" peaceful camp into the fundamental "NOW" camp, which advocates Shariah law and justifies threats of violence and terrorism.

So in the world of paradoxical definitions, world peace means world Islam, and the more the West accepts Islam, the more it can expect threats of violence. Now or later � are you ready for Islam's world peace?

SOURCE



British couple flee to save their unborn baby from Nazi social workers after girl, 17, is told she is not clever enough to look after her child

A heavily pregnant woman and her fiance have gone on the run after social workers threatened to take away their baby at birth. Kerry Robertson, 17, and Mark McDougall, 25, had been told that she was not bright enough to raise their child and that they would have to give him up. It was another blow for the couple, whose wedding this year was halted just 48 hours before the ceremony in a row over whether Miss Robertson was intelligent enough to marry.

Miss Robertson, who is 29 weeks pregnant, has since been told the couple will be allowed only a few hours with their baby - a boy they have already named Ben - before he is taken into care and placed with foster parents. Desperate to keep their family together, the pair fled their home yesterday for a secret safe house.

Last night, Miss Robertson, who has mild learning difficulties, said: 'I have been out of my mind with worry about my unborn baby being taken away. 'Although Ben isn't born yet, I already love my baby and know I will be a good mum. Mark and I talk to him inside me every day and tell him we love him. 'We've already bought him clothes and my cousin, who recently had a baby, has handed down a beautiful crib for him. 'But social workers aren't even giving me a chance to be a mum. It's as if social workers are trying to rule my life and I just couldn't take the pressure from them any more.'

Mr McDougall, an artist, said they had made their decision after seeing minutes of a meeting this week where social workers claimed their baby could suffer 'emotional harm' if left with Miss Robertson - an allegation they say is 'ridiculous'. He said: 'It was clear to Kerry and I that although social workers recently appeared to backtrack, telling us they would not make any decision about our baby until he is born, the truth is they intend to take him away. Kerry was in pieces. 'She is pregnant with her first baby so we don't see how, before he is even here, social workers can say she won't be a good parent. The pressure that social workers have been putting both of us under is huge.

'When Kerry found out she was pregnant, a care worker mentioned she might not be able to keep the baby but we never believed they would do something as cruel as to take him away. 'We are constantly lying awake at night worrying what the next day will bring. 'Not only am I extremely angry and upset about the way we've been treated, I have become worried for Kerry's and our unborn baby's health. I defy anyone to put up with what we've had to put up with.'

The couple, who left their home in Fife, Scotland, after a leaving party for friends and family, say they do not know how long it will be before they can return.

A family law expert said: 'If Miss Robertson gave birth in Fife and then fled with the baby, after the local authority had got a care order, she would be liable for child abduction. 'But by fleeing while pregnant, Miss Robertson has not broken any law, as far as I'm aware. 'If she has her baby outside the jurisdiction of Fife council, they no longer have any power to take the child into care. 'Rather, they would have to locate her and alert the relevant council who would have to apply for a removal order themselves.'

Miss Robertson has been in the care of her grandmother since she was nine months old after her parents were unable to care for her, with her welfare overseen by social workers at Fife Council. She and Mr McDougall decided to marry after she became pregnant. But in a highly unusual step, Dunfermline Register Office refused to sanction the marriage after Fife Council wrote a letter of objection. Under British law, a registrar can refuse to marry a couple if he believes one or both parties lack the mental capacity to understand what marriage is about. Their case has been referred to the European Human Rights Commission, which is investigating whether Fife has broken human rights laws.

Mr McDougall said: 'Kerry and I always wanted our baby to be born to married parents and we are still hoping to get married. 'We have also offered to go to parenting classes and have a lot of support from family and friends. We feel if Fife really wanted to help us they would allow us to get married.'

SOURCE



Useless British police kill oldster

Elderly man lost will to live after five burglaries in three months

An elderly man starved to death in his home after losing the will to live following a series of burglaries. Vincent Adcock, 74, locked himself away and stopped eating after his terraced house in Bury, Greater Manchester, was targeted by thieves five time in three months. When police broke in they found him lying on the floor upstairs with his dog at his side. Mr Adcock was taken to hospital but died the next day from malnutrition and kidney failure.

Mr Adcock�s Alsatian dog, Prince, is thought to have stood guard over him for four days before officers arrived. The animal was so distressed that it was put down a few days later.

Neighbours said that the pensioner, who had no close family, was a proud, independent man before the burglaries began in May. Each incident was reported to Greater Manchester Police, but those responsible have not been traced.

One of his closest friends, Margaret Boswell, said that Mr Adcock was �driven to his death� by the intruders, who stole cash, valuables, a watch, a coat and hundreds of CDs and DVDs. Mrs Boswell, 71, said: �He used to go out every day with his dog and he came to town with me three times a week for coffee and toast in Asda. He was quite independent and his dog was his life. �But after five break-ins he just gave up. It really shook him up and he was scared of leaving the house. He stopped going out and stopped buying food.�

Mr Adcock, who was single and had lived in Bury for 50 years, had worked at a paper mill until he was made redundant 14 years ago. Until the burglaries began, he would walk his dog several times a day and was capable of looking after himself. He �used to bake, cook, everything�, said Mrs Boswell. After the fourth burglary, she said he told her: �I give up. I just can�t take any more. I�ve not done any harm to anybody, so why are they doing that to me?�

One of the burglaries happened while Mr Adcock was shopping, another while he was having a hospital check-up. On a third occasion, he returned home to find thieves � who fled empty-handed � inside the property. The final theft happened with Mr Adcock inside the house. A woman knocked on his front door and distracted him while her male accomplice broke through the back door and stole his coat.

Chief Superintendent Jon Rush said that the Bury Safeguarding Adults Board may be asked to investigate the case to establish whether �anything further could have been done to support him�. [How about making an effort to find the crooks?]

SOURCE



Crime-Fighting, Beyond Black and White

Big cities are ignoring race baiters and hiring the best police chiefs, whatever their color

The most hopeful signs that we may be slowly inching toward a post-racial America are coming from the unlikeliest of places: big-city police departments. Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has just selected Charles Beck as his new police chief out of a field of three finalists, all white males. Those finalists were presented to Villaraigosa, a Latino, by the Los Angeles Police Commission, which is headed by a reformed race and police baiter, former Urban League president John Mack. There was almost no moaning in the media or among activists over the lack of �diversity� in the final slate of candidates for LAPD chief; instead, coverage of the selection process has focused almost exclusively on the candidates� actual qualifications.

Two years ago, Chicago mayor Richard Daley chose Jody Weis, an FBI special agent in charge from Philadelphia, to replace Police Superintendent Philip Cline, who had presided over a significant crime drop in Chicago but whose tenure was marred by several officer scandals. Both Cline and Weis are white, and while a few of Chicago�s black politicians, agitators, and columnists denounced Daley�s choice on racial grounds, their manufactured controversy quickly died down.

Edward Flynn, an insightful and hard-charging police leader from Massachusetts, became Milwaukee�s chief in 2007 to widespread acclaim, even though the white Flynn�s two predecessors were a black male and a female chief.

The race-muted selection process for the next LAPD chief isn�t just good news for American race relations; it�s also good news for public safety�not just in LA but across the country. Beck�s final two rivals, Assistant Chief Jim McDonnell and Deputy Chief Michel Moore, enjoy superb reputations within the department; they would have undoubtedly made excellent chiefs. Perhaps if I had had the privilege of knowing McDonnell and Moore as I have Beck, I would have been rooting as hard for them. But my exposure to Beck over the years�interviewing him about the LAPD�s highly charged political and racial history, accompanying him on tours through the gang-ridden Rampart district and downtown Los Angeles�led me to hope that he would be chosen as Chief William Bratton�s successor.

The motorcycle-riding Beck, son of an LAPD deputy chief and father of two LAPD officers, represents the best of Los Angeles policing: laid-back, accessible to the press and the public, unflappable, tough, and open to change. Chief Bratton tapped Beck to run the Rampart police division after a corruption scandal there led to an unjustified federal consent decree over the entire department. Beck corrected the localized supervisory failures that had allowed the Rampart anti-gang unit to run amok, but he never lost sight of the fact that the biggest threat to the poor Latino district came not from a handful of rogue cops but from the gangs that still terrorized the streets. He understood the difficult balance that police commanders need to strike between restricting officers� discretion to avoid potential abuse of power and giving them sufficient discretion to fight crime. �If you screw �em down too tight, you get nothing,� he said. �You gotta realize what kind of horse you�re riding.�

Even before Bratton became police chief in 2003, officially bringing the philosophy of broken-windows policing to the LAPD, Beck had launched an initiative to clean up the Skid Row homeless encampments, the most concentrated 50 blocks of depravity and squalor in the U.S. �I was abhorred by it, it drove me nuts,� he said. �You need collective will to say: �This standard of conduct is not allowed any longer.�� What Beck began on Skid Row, Captain Andrew Smith magnificently concluded starting in 2006, with the assistance of 50 additional officers whom Bratton finally persuaded the City Council and mayor to fund.

As head of the South Bureau, which encompasses LA�s most violent neighborhoods, Beck has thrived on Bratton�s Compstat regime of data-driven, accountable policing. And it�s the promise of maintaining that regime in LA that constitutes such good tidings for the entire country. The two cities where Bratton�s Compstat revolution has lasted the longest and penetrated the deepest into departmental culture�New York and Los Angeles�have had the most pronounced crime drops in the country. Yet the criminology profession and the media continue to ignore the implications of those twin crime successes: that police can drive crime down through rigorous, information-saturated tactics.

Such a discovery remains anathema to the reigning academic and press ideology of victimhood, which holds that crime is a natural response to racism and inequality and can only be eradicated by wealth redistribution and welfare programs. Beck faces enormous manpower and budgetary challenges in keeping Chief Bratton�s crime successes in LA going forward. Yet I�m confident that he will overcome those challenges and continue to drive crime lower. When he does so, maybe the media and the criminology profession will finally recognize the truth: that policing is the best urban reclamation strategy that government can devise. The fact that race consciousness appears to be losing its hold on police-chief selection suggests that we�re moving ever closer to a universal recognition of that truth.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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7 November, 2009

American Steakhouse Chain Pays the Price for Hiring Only Women Servers

Lawry's Forks Out More Than $1 Million to Settle Contra-Discrimination Suit

A federal discrimination lawsuit filed against high-end steakhouse chain Lawry's alleges that the company for decades made a policy of hiring only women as servers, even though the Civil Rights Act of 1964 clearly prohibits such a policy. The suit, which originated from a busboy's complaint that he was denied advancement opportunities as a result of the policy, is the opposite of more standard discrimination claims, usually filed by women.

For its part, Lawry's says it changed its outdated policy in 2004, and was happy to resolve the issue. "When we were first approached with the charge, we took substantial efforts to work with the [U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] to remedy the situation," said Rich Cope, director of marketing for Lawry's, the LA Times reports. "We started to hire male servers and have been in compliance with the law since 2004."

Lawry's policy of hiring women as servers dates to 1938, and the company has dressed the women in 1930s- and '40s-style fashions ever since. Women still dress in such costumes. The male waiters wear "complementary" clothing, but it does not reflect the fashions of the period, said Anna Y. Park, the EEOC attorney who handled the case, reports Times writer Jerry Hirsch.

SOURCE



Yet another false rape claim in Britain

At least she is on trial over it

A young woman cried rape after 'fulfilling a fantasy' of having sex with two strangers, a court heard yesterday. Chloe Dolton, 22, was 'bored' with her life and willingly engaged in the threesome after an argument with her boyfriend, it was alleged. A jury heard she had previously expressed her sexual fantasies in a diary, in which she wrote: 'I am in crisis. I am so bored of my life and need a miracle. 'I try to be nice and decent but I always end up one way or another trying to **** someone, a girl or a boy.'

The entry on a computer diary entitled The Life of Chloe Dolton continued: 'I should be out having fun with every boy I meet, having sex with whoever I like. 'I am such a hateful girl, such a selfish girl.'

The prosecution said she fulfilled her fantasy at the end of an evening spent drinking alcohol, and later accused the two men of rape because she was ashamed of what she had done. Dolton told police that Robert Joborski and Gregor Bukowski grabbed her as she walked home alone from a late-night party where she had played drinking games. She said they then raped her in a stone shelter built into the side of a cliff in the North Devon resort of Ilfracombe.

The two men were later arrested but never charged. They said the sex had been consensual and that Dolton had approached them late at night in a 'chatty and friendly' manner. Mr Bukowski said after they met he had put his arm around her and they started kissing before Dolton asked if he had a condom. He then had sex with her although the prosecutor said the 'sex came to a premature end' when Dolton received a phone call from her live-in boyfriend. Afterwards it is said she had sex with Mr Bukowski again and invited Mr Joborski to join them, and performed a sex act on him. She then returned home where she told her boyfriend she had been raped by the two Polish men.

Dolton's boyfriend went to the scene of the alleged crime where he found two condoms which were handed over to police. But officers who investigated the rape allegations in June 2007 noticed there were 'strikingly different' versions from Dolton and the two Poles who were arrested and interviewed separately.

Prosecutor Jo Martin told Exeter Crown Court: 'It is not unusual for rapists to claim that sex was consensual.' But she said CCTV evidence and other inconsistencies in mobile phone records of calls and texts would show that Dolton had met the two Poles before the 'alleged attack' and that the men had not grabbed and assaulted her. The jury heard that on her way home to her flat after the sex, Dolton also bumped into a friend but failed to tell him that she had been raped.

The two Poles gave evidence in court and said Dolton, from Braunton, North Devon, laughed with them and appeared happy after their encounter and that was the last they saw of her.

Dolton denies perverting the course of justice by making the false rape claims. Miss Martin said of the defendant: 'She deliberately lied to her boyfriend, her family and friends and to the police. 'She clearly lied because probably of her shame and regret. She had in fact had consensual sex with two complete strangers.'

SOURCE



The "Big Brother" State is real in Britain

A mother took a council to court yesterday after it used surveillance powers designed to combat terrorism to establish whether she had lied to get her children into a �good� school. Jenny Paton, her partner and three children were followed for nearly three weeks by officers from Poole Borough Council, using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa). They wrongly suspected that she did not live in the school�s catchment area.

Speaking before a two-day hearing of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, Ms Paton, 40, poured scorn on the council�s actions. She said: �Some of the operational aspects are ludicrous and completely outrageous and I think we all need protecting from the way local authorities are using Ripa. This is about saying �no more�. Let�s have more safeguards and better scrutiny.� She asked why the officials, if they doubted her story, did not knock on her front door and speak to her.

James Welch, a lawyer from Liberty, which is representing Ms Paton, said: �We are asking this tribunal to declare that the surveillance powers used to watch Ms Paton were unlawful. This is not about the money. It�s about the legal principle.�

It is alleged that a council official made notes documenting the whereabouts of Ms Paton and her partner, Tim Joyce, to find out whether the family lived at an address in the catchment area for Lilliput First School, Dorset.

Ripa was introduced in 2000 to define when covert techniques, such as secret filming, could be used by police, local councils and benefit fraud teams. The powers have been used almost 50,000 times by public authorities such as local councils and the health service since 2002. After public alarm the Government is about to curb the powers that councils have gained under Ripa.

Local authorities have used legislation intended to tackle terrorism and serious crime to deal with minor offences such as dog fouling. Conway council in Wales used the Act to spy on a worker who claimed to be sick, and Kensington and Chelsea council in London used it to monitor the misuse of a disabled parking badge.

Under reform plans, set out yesterday, junior council officials will lose their power to authorise surveillance operations on behalf of local authorities. There are, however, plans to extend its use to allow officials to trace parents who refuse to pay child support.

SOURCE



Australia: Killers, rapists and other criminally insane patients walking streets of Melbourne

Leftist sympathy for criminals again. The great majority of psychologists are Left-leaning

KILLERS, rapists and other criminally insane patients are walking the streets of Melbourne on outings to the movies, fishing and shopping. The controversial leave pass program at the Thomas Embling Hospital was hastily shut down after inmate Peko Lakovski allegedly committed a gruesome double murder with a carving knife. Lakovski was considered a low security risk and allowed out on day leave.

Almost a third of the inmates at the 118-bed facility in Fairfield have been approved for unescorted leave in the past year. The hospital sanctioned 8900 leave passes in 2008-09, most of them supervised trips for court and medical reasons. The hospital houses mentally ill patients including some offenders referred from the criminal justice system. Inmates include killers, sex offenders, arsonists and even a man who attempted to hijack a commercial plane. But the system allows the inmates to graduate from supervised walks within the grounds to unescorted visits to public locations.

A 2003 report said on a given day more than a dozen inmates are walking the streets near the hospital.

Embattled Minister for Mental Health Lisa Neville was forced to order a snap review of the hospital's internal processes after admitting that "something has gone wrong in this particular case". Ms Neville could not explain how patients in a secure psychiatric hospital, many of whom have killed before and are suffering with schizophrenia, had access to knives. Ms Neville has overseen a series of major departmental bungles in recent months including the shocking incest case with a man accused of fathering children with his daughter over a 30-year period.

The day leave program at Thomas Embling Hospital was cancelled after the alleged rampage left two people dead. The frenzied attacks were sparked by an argument between two room-mates and fishing buddies. Lakovski, 59 is facing charges of fatally stabbing Paul Notas, 36, and Raymond Splatt, 54. Police will allege Lakovski went on a stabbing rampage with a carving knife about 11pm on Wednesday in a low-security residential area of the hospital after getting into an argument with Splatt. It was alleged he then went to another room and repeatedly stabbed Notas.

The Department of Human Services increased security at the site in January but arrangements are again under review.

Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu said the "safety and security" of the community must be put ahead of the rehabilitation of patients.

Since the hospital opened in 2000, at least three inmates have escaped with a further 15 absconding while on day leave. Escapes by killers Neville Garden and Robert Debruyn while on the leave sparked major manhunts. Others on day release to escape include sex offender Sean Broaders and Peter John Evans, who both slipped their minders at the Austin Hospital.

A hospital insider told the Herald Sun in 2007 that David Mark Robinson, who tried to hijack a Qantas jet in May 2003, walked out of the hospital without minders. Robinson was armed with sharpened wooden stakes, a cigarette lighter and aerosol cans to use as flame-throwers when he threatened staff on the Melbourne-Launceston flight. A cabin manager and flight attendant thwarted his attempt to kill all 56 passengers.

There has been a significant increase in inmates applying for leave in the past decade.

The report into Wednesday night's rampage is expected to focus on the decision to allow Lakovski to move into Jardine Unit, which has the lowest level of security in the facility. Victoria's chief psychiatrist, Ruth Vine, admitted the leave assessment process was "not a perfect science" as it involved factors with regard to the patient and the community. All of the patients in the Jardine Unit are under active consideration for release. Dr Vine said patients must undergo a clinical assessment before they are moved to the unit, which has no security camera and allows patients access to kitchen knives.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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6 November, 2009

Murderer with 'aggression genes' gets sentence cut

Following that logic nobody is responsible for anything and no crime should be prosecuted. Upbringing could be blamed too -- and often is. It seems to me that anybody with any kind of dangerous background should be kept in jail LONGER -- to protect others from the heightened risk

A judge's decision to reduce a killer's sentence because he has genetic mutations linked to violence raises a thorny question � can your genes ever absolve you of responsibility for a particular act?

In 2007, Abdelmalek Bayout admitted to stabbing and killing a man and received a sentenced of 9 years and 2 months. Last week, Nature reported that Pier Valerio Reinotti, an appeal court judge in Trieste, Italy, cut Bayout's sentence by a year after finding out he has gene variants linked to aggression. Leaving aside the question of whether this link is well enough understood to justify Reinotti's decision, should genes ever be considered a legitimate defence?

No, says Nita Farahany, a legal scholar at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who tracks the use of behavioural genetics in the courtroom. She says genes may provide a guide as to how someone is likely to behave, but they will never tell us why they committed a specific act. "It doesn't tell us why they did the thing they did and that's what criminal cases are ultimately interested in."

What's more, the gene argument seems to cut both ways. Reinotti viewed Bayout's genes as mitigating his crime, but Farahany has noticed that US courts are increasingly using genes in evidence for the prosecution. "It's just as likely to be used against a criminal defendant as for," she says. "People don't recognise the double-edged potential of this evidence."

Even if technological advances allow researchers to better explain how genes and environment influence violent behaviour, courts may not take notice, says Terrie Moffitt, a geneticist at King's College London and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, whose previous work influenced the Italian court's decision.

Links between inherited genes, environment and violence are already bolstered by family histories and twin studies, she says. "Everything we know about family history still doesn't diminish our own responsibility for how we make choices."

SOURCE



A mock bonfire in safety-mad Britain

A virtual bonfire shown on a giant screen is expected to attract thousands of revellers to a rugby club�s Guy Fawkes celebrations tomorrow evening. It will be Ilfracombe Rugby Club�s third �non-fire� night, an event introduced amid concerns about health and safety restrictions on having a real bonfire.

The captain of the Devon club, Leo Cooper, 25, said: �Certain regulations make it difficult for us to have a real bonfire. It is not really a financially viable option. So we tried to come up with an original, imaginative and fun way to fill the void left by the bonfire. I think it was a brilliant idea. The idea of the virtual bonfire was to give our event an edge.�

Recorded images of a roaring fire will be projected on to a 16ft by 12ft screen at a cost of �300. There will be giant heaters, the sound of crackling wood from loudspeakers and even a smoke machine to give the smell of a real fire. With hot dogs on offer and a fireworks display costing �2,500, the club expects about 2,000 people

SOURCE



Deceitful British government feminist slapped down by statisticians over equal pay for women

Harriet Harman was yesterday slapped down by national statisticians over her claims that women are paid a fifth less than men. The Women and Equality Minister was told she must no longer use a single figure to describe the complex differences in the earnings of men and women. Instead she will have to give three measures - among them one which shows that far from earning less than men, women in part-time jobs are actually paid more on average than their male counterparts.

The ruling from the Office for National Statistics is the culmination of a running row between Labour's deputy leader and Whitehall watchdogs, who called her use of figures on the gender pay gap 'misleading'. It will also affect the workings of Miss Harman's Equality Bill, as until now the minister has insisted that public sector bodies - which will have to say whether their pay scales are unfair to women - should use her way of working out the pay gap.

A report from the ONS called Presenting Gender Pay Statistics said no one measure of the pay gap was adequate or appropriate for Government bodies to use. Instead, it said three different figures should be counted. One is Miss Harman's favourite measure. This lumps in all workers, both full-time and part-time, and gives a pay gap of 22.5 per cent. But this fails to take into account that because more women choose to work part-time than men, the average pay for women is artificially driven down.

In the past the ONS has favoured a figure that counts just full-time employees. This shows men earning 12.8 per cent more than women. From now on, yesterday's report said, both figures must be used, together with a third setting out the gap between male and female parttime workers, which is 3.5 per cent in women's favour.

During the summer, watchdog Sir Michael Scholar, head of the UK Statistics Authority, wrote twice to Miss Harman's department warning of misleading use of gender gap data. He told the Equalities Minister in the spring that her interpretation of state earnings surveys could 'confuse the general public' and 'undermine public trust in official statistics'.

Yesterday the ONS report pointed out that because 41 per cent of women in employment work part-time, compared with only 11 per cent of men, Miss Harman's preferred method skews the figures to make women look worse off.

Miss Harman's officials welcomed the acceptance by the ONS of the 22.5 per cent figure as one of the measures which will be used in future. The Government's equality watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said the ONS report was 'important' but insisted it should also have compared the pay of full-time men with part-time women - which gives a 39.9 per cent pay gap in men's favour.

SOURCE



Veterans' outrage as British shop-chain bans employees from wearing poppies

Veterans' groups today slammed a nationwide chain of shops that banned staff from wearing poppies in the run-up to Remembrance Day. Toiletries group Bodycare, which has around 120 stores across the country, ordered workers to take them off, saying they are 'not part of the uniform'.

Today, however, they faced a chorus of criticism from all sides amid accusations that they were insulting Britain's war dead as well as soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. Catherine Barr, 49, from Hindley, who works at the Bodycare branch in Wigan, Greater Manchester, said she was shocked when she was told to remove her poppy.

'I turned up for work wearing my poppy and was told by management I couldn't wear it for work. I was gobsmacked. 'I refused to remove it. I was quite upset and really annoyed. 'There were customers there and they were just as shocked as I was. I can't imagine a single person would agree with this. 'I have worn a poppy every year I have worked here, but apparently I shouldn't have done.' The area manager was called in and she was told she faced disciplinary action if she didn't take it off, and she had to relent.

Mrs Barr said she hadn't been asking Bodycare to back the Poppy Appeal. 'I was just asking to be able to wear a poppy for work.'

Bodycare - which also includes the Grahams toiletries chain - defended the ban, saying it covered all charity symbols including coloured wristbands. But veterans' groups demanded it back down. John Hardiman, Lancashire county secretary for the Royal British Legion, said: 'Obviously, we are disappointed to hear of the decision by Bodycare. 'The vast majority of employees do allow the wearing of the poppy as it's such a national emblem at this important time of remembrance. 'We would ask the company that, under the circumstances, it reconsiders this to allow the poppy as an exception.'

Mike Kirkby, treasurer of Wigan Borough Veterans' Council, said: 'It's a disgrace. 'They are not providing money for funding wars, they are providing money for the war survivors. 'They have to give a specific reason for a ban. They can't just say you can't wear poppies or wrist bands without a reason.'

Bodycare is owned by husband and wife Graham and Margaret Blackledge, whose wealth has been estimated at �40 million, and is based in Preston, Lancashire. It has more than 1,600 staff.

Preston veterans' council president Colonel Bernard Stam said: 'It's a very insensitive thing to do at a very sensitive time. 'It's very difficult to understand the rationale behind this decision.'

And the city's deputy mayor John Swindells said: 'It's staggering, really, that this is happening at this time in particular. 'I doubt it is good for business as I'm sure people will use their spending power to go elsewhere.'

Big stores including Tesco and Asda said staff were more than welcome to wear poppies, although some workers such as those on fresh food counters can't in case it falls off.

The row comes after libraries across Derbyshire were barred from selling poppies because it discriminated against other charities. The ruling was swiftly ditched.

Initially, Bodycare's parent company GR and MM Blackledge said the ban would remain in place for its 1,600 staff. 'Employees are only allowed to wear their uniform, and charitable pins would not be considered part of the uniform and they would not be allowed to wear them,' a spokesman said. 'They are just required to wear their uniform - no excessive jewellery, pins and brooches. It is not part of the uniform. It's a standard across the board.'

But tonight the company caved in to pressure, saying it was going to make poppies an exception. Managing director and co-owner Graham Blackledge said the blanket ban on symbols expressing personal beliefs had been brought in to avoid discrimination. 'We employ staff from many religious and political backgrounds, and our policy is in place to ensure that no offence is caused to other members of staff or our customers,' he said. 'Our understanding has always been that, for this policy to be valid, it has to apply to all badges or emblems, including poppies.'

But he said that after talks with local Labour MP Lindsay Hoyle, they now accepted that a mark of remembrance was a special case. 'Having received that assurance, we are happy to change our policy and allow our members of staff to continue wearing their poppies,' he said. Mr Blackledge apologised if anyone had been offended by the ban. [IF??]

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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5 November, 2009

Northern European political correctness imposed on Italy

Crucifixes in classrooms 'violate rights'. Italians care little for political correctness and are notorious scofflaws so I doubt that this ruling will alter much. If the woman persists in making a nuisance of herself, she could well end up dead. The Mafia are in many ways socially conservative

ITALY violates parents' right to educate their children along secular lines by displaying crucifixes in classrooms, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled. The judgment sparked anger in Catholic Italy, with the country's education minister attacking the decision, insisting the crucifix was a "symbol of our tradition".

The Strasbourg court found that: "The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used by the public authorities... restricted the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions." It also restricted the "right of children to believe or not to believe," the seven judges ruling on the case said. The case was brought by Sail Lactase, who was also awarded �5000 ($8173.27) in damages.

The ruling drew immediate criticism in Italy, where Ms Lactases efforts to change tradition have come up against stiff resistance from the Catholic establishment. Years of legal wrangling saw the case eventually thrown out by judges in Italy, who ruled the crucifix was patriotic and a sign of the country's tradition, not simply a symbol of Catholicism.

Italian Education Minister Meristically Domini lashed out at the European court for its decision. "The presence of the crucifix in classrooms is not a sign of belief in Catholicism, rather it is a symbol of our tradition," said the minister, cited by ANSA news agency. "No-one, and certainly not an ideological European court, will succeed in erasing our identity," she added.

Ms Lactase first brought the case eight years ago when her children, Addicted and Sami Aberdeen, aged 11 and 13, went to a state school in Abalone Terme near Venice. She was unhappy crucifixes were present in every classroom and complained to the school. After education chiefs refused to remove the crosses, she spent several years fighting the decision through the Italian courts. The case was heard by a regional court in the northern Veneto region, which passed it to the constitutional court, according to a statement from the European rights court. This court ruled it did not have the jurisdiction to judge the case.

It returned to the Veneto court, where it was dismissed on the grounds that the crucifix was "the symbol of Italian history and culture, and consequently of Italian identity," the European rights court said. Ms Lactase appealed to the council of state, which also slapped down her complaint on similar grounds. This paved the way for the battle to head to the European Court of Human Rights.

The Strasbourg court found the display of crucifixes "could reasonably be associated with Catholicism". This did not fit in with "educational pluralism", which was part of European rights charters recognised by Italy, the court said. The presence of a crucifix in classrooms could also be "disturbing for pupils who practised other religions or were atheists, particularly if they belonged to religious minorities". The court ruled that displaying crucifixes in classrooms breached articles 2 and 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

SOURCE



Militant atheists are driven by hate

Comment from an Australian Catholic: Attacking Christians is not really clever, witty or funny

FROM time immemorial, this world has been troubled by plagues. From bogong moths in Canberra to frogs in biblical Egypt, unwelcome and unlovely creatures have the awkward habit of turning up in bulk. Just now, we are facing one of our largest and least appealing infestations. Somewhat in advance of summer's blowflies, we are beset by atheists. Worse, they are not traditional atheists. These tended to be quiet blokes called Algie with ancillary interests in nudist ceramics, who were perfectly happy as long as you pretended to accept a pamphlet in Flinders Lane.

No, the new hobby atheist is as brash, noisy and confident as a cheap electric kettle. They want everyone to know that they have not found God, and that no one else should. Their particular target seems to be Catholics. On the surface, this is odd, as there are plenty of other religious targets just waiting to be saved from a vengeful, non-existent deity. Smaller herds, such as the Christadelphians or the Salvation Army, might seem more manageable. But the Catholic Church has two incomparable advantages as an object of the wrath of proselytising atheists. First, it is the biggie. Taking out the Catholics is the equivalent of nuking the Pentagon. Guerilla bands of Baptists and Pentecostals can be liquidated at leisure.

Second, the Catholics have the undeniable advantage that they do still demonstrably believe in something. Attacking some of the more swinging Christian denominations might mean upsetting people who believe a good deal less than the average atheist.

Mind you, the appeals of atheism as a diverting pastime are not immediately obvious to those of us who are on relatively easy terms with God. Why would anyone get so excited about the misconceptions of third parties as to the existence of a fourth party in which they themselves do not believe?

The answer is twofold. First, the great advantage of designer atheism is that you get to think of yourself as immensely clever. After all, you are at least much brighter than all those dumb-asses who believe in a supreme being, such as Sister Perpetua down the road, Thomas Aquinas, Isaac Newton and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. So satisfying.

The second factor has to do with wit. For some reason, contemporary Australian atheism seems to consider itself terribly funny. Its proponents only have to wheel out one of the age-old religious libels to lose control of their bladders. To outsiders, of course, it is a bit like watching a giggling incontinent drunk at a party. This is not to say that believers - and perhaps especially Catholics - do not get seriously irritated by atheists. They do, but not because atheists are fearfully clever or Wildely funny.

Frankly, the prime reason the average believer finds the common or garden atheist as appealing as a holiday in Birchip is because they consign them to that sorry category of individuals who spend their lives loudly congratulating themselves on their own intelligence without noticing that no one else is joining the chorus. Thus, as a Catholic, I do not normally sense in some tabloid atheist the presence of a supreme discerning intellect. I simply place him or her in much the same pitiable bin of intellectual vulgarians as the chartered accountant who cannot see the art in Picasso, the redneck who cannot admit of indigenous culture, and the pissant who cannot see the difference between Yeats and Bob Ellis.

It is not deep perception we encounter here, but a critical failure of imaginative capacity. It is a bit like the old joke: how many atheists does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None - no matter what they do, they just can't see the light.

The second wearying thing about the new atheism is that it is not new at all. It is so banally derivative of every piece of hate mail ever sent to God that I am amazed Satan has yet to sue for copyright infringement. No old chestnut is too ripe, rotten or sodden, especially when it comes to the Catholics as accredited suppliers of what apparently is the Christian equivalent of methamphetamine.

In an average week of atheistic bigotry in the Melbourne media, we can expect to learn that Catholics endorse child molestation, hate all other religions, would re-introduce the crusades and the auto de fe at the slightest opportunity, despise women, wish to persecute homosexuals, greedily divert public moneys for their own religious purposes, subvert public health care, brainwash children, and are masterminding the spread of the cane toad across northern Australia.

Applied to the average totalitarian dictatorship, this charge sheet would be over the top. Ascribed to virtually any ethnic minority, it rightly would result at least in public revulsion and quite possibly in criminal charges. But applied to Christians, it seems to be accepted as just another modern blood sport, like the vilification of refugees and the elimination of the private life of the families of public figures.

At the bottom, of course, lies hate. I am not quite clear why our modern crop of atheists hates Christians, as opposed to ignoring or even politely dismissing them, but they very clearly do. There is nothing clever, witty or funny about hate.

SOURCE



A hateful hate-crime law

By Star Parker (who is black)

President Obama has signed into law the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Actually, he signed into law the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act tacked onto what was the hate crimes legislation. Sen. Harry Reid, our brave Democratic majority leader, slipped the hate crimes bill into the defense authorization bill to avoid having to have our senators consider the controversial hate crimes bill on its own.

It�s for good reason that our Democratic legislators wanted to hide under a rock while passing this terrible piece of legislation. It may help them with the far-left wing of their party. But weakening and damaging our country is not something to be proud of. And that is exactly what this new hate crime law does. The bill adds extra penalties to punishment of violent crimes when it is deemed they were motivated by gender, sexual orientation or disabilities. It�s the first major expansion of hate crimes legislation originally passed in 1968, targeted then to crimes aimed at race, color, religion and national origin.

After signing this new law, Obama celebrated it by saying that in this nation we should �embrace our differences.� But law isn�t about embracing our differences. It is about providing equal and non-arbitrary protection to all citizens. Equal protection for every individual American under the law is what the 14th Amendment to our Constitution, passed after the Civil War, guarantees. That this nation takes this guarantee seriously � that there are no classes of individuals that are treated differently under the law � has been a justifiable obsession of blacks. A society in which all life is not valued the same, where murder of one citizen is not the same as murder of another citizen, is a horror that black Americans have known too well. So it is a particular irony that this major expansion of the politicization of our law has been signed by our first black president.

What could it possibly mean that the penalty for the same act of violence � for murder � may be different depending on what might be deemed to be the motivation? Can you imagine a football game where the penalty for roughing the passer is 20 yards rather than 15 if the referee concludes that the violence perpetrated was motivated because the quarterback was homosexual?

Is it not a sign of our own pathology that we now have codified that it is worse to murder a homosexual than someone who has committed adultery, even with your husband or wife, or who has slandered or robbed? Isn�t the point murder? Can we really believe that someone capable of murder is less likely to do so if the victim is a homosexual and the penalties are greater than for the other reasons above?

It should be clear that hate crime law has nothing to do with improving our law but rather with creating favored political classes. Something that should be hateful to everyone who cares about a free society. And particularly hateful to those, such as blacks, who have been so victimized by politicization of law.

How about the sad and pathetic recent murder of a 16-year-old Christian black honor student in Chicago by four teenage thugs, also black? A hate crime? Black-on-black homicides that are tearing up our inner cities? Hate crimes?

The social breakdown that produces the disproportionate violence in black America is the product of the same moral relativism and politicization of law that has produced hate crime bills. We already have a source that instructs against murder and to love your neighbor as yourself. But this has been banned from our schools and our public spaces. So once again, in what is becoming our godless nation, we mistake the disease for the cure.

SOURCE



Deepak Chopra�s hate speech against Evangelical Christians

President Obama signed �hate crimes� legislation last week, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a statement praising the new law, saying that in �this country, no one should suffer persecution, discrimination or violence because of who they are, how they look or what they believe.�

Amen to that thought, and amen especially to the idea of protecting belief, including beliefs unpopular within liberal opinion elites. Perhaps the president and the speaker can find some time to let their left-wing supporters know that the accusation of hate is itself hateful, and that slanders against Christians for holding to their beliefs and the beliefs of hundreds of generations of Christians before them are as repugnant to them as the verbal attacks by bigots on people of color.

Spiritualist Deepak Chopra comes to mind as one of the Left�s loudest purveyors of hate speech. Chopra has a problem with the beliefs of mainstream Christianity and its place in America and American history, but his deep prejudice goes unrebuked by champions of tolerance like Pelosi. Chopra�s first salvo against mainstream Christianity was fired in the Huffington Post after last fall�s presidential forum hosted by Pastor Rick Warren at Saddleback Valley Community Church. �For me,� Chopra wrote, �the God quiz that Barack Obama endured with barely concealed sweaty palms and that John McCain breezed through with seasoned casualness has no place in American politics.�

Chopra then served up a classic bit of �leftist tolerance�: �The reason that any contemporary presidential candidate is forced to suffer the indignity of confessing his religious beliefs in public goes back to the Reagan revolution. ... Reagan, after all, was the president who, if left to his own devices, would have let thousands more AIDS victims die through neglect and lack of funding for basic medical research. �The implicit reason, well understood by the right and endorsed by fundamentalists, was that gays deserve what they get if they pursue a lifestyle that doesn�t match right-wing Christian ideology. Minorities, women, immigrants, and progressivism in general were given the same back hand.�

The demonization of political opponents is routine on the Left, but Chopra�s poisonous rewrite of history has few parallels within the mainstream.

Chopra resurfaced with another screed when Obama�s inauguration featured the same Warren. More thunder from the New Age guru: �The right wing may posture as if Christianity deserves special privilege and pride of place. Their posturing has convinced a lot of people for the past 20 years, but it�s high time we threw the whole charade out the window.�

Still more Chopra invective surfaced in The Washington Post this September, again targeting Warren and reflecting the charm of the Left. �The abuse delivered by right-wing Christians is such an old story that we are long past irony,� Chopra wrote, before moving on to his favorite target. �The Rev. Rick Warren has a record for trying to smooth the waters, but he also flirts with intolerance � toward gay marriage, for instance � and since his rationale is that a �loving� God shares the same prejudices, what�s to stop others with worse tempers from following the same logic? When your God hates, you have permission to hate,� Chopra wrote.

When your guru hates, I guess that gives you permission to hate as well?

Chopra�s rage against mainstream Christianity may have its roots in nothing more complicated than a simple though vast jealousy at Warren�s enormous success, and not just success in selling books but in attracting tens of thousands of pastors and their congregations to a revitalized Christian faith in the new millennium. Warren�s call, heeded by millions of American Christians, to lead faith-filled lives, to give sacrificially and to work for the alleviation of suffering across the planet has been the focus of astonished applause by intelligent observers across the political spectrum.

Warren�s church and the millions of American Christians who hold similar beliefs and practice similar disciplines model authentic and traditional Christian belief. There isn�t much to hate there, but Chopra and others on the Left want to try to transform mainstream Christian belief in traditional marriage into a postmodern scarlet letter, and they will use the tactics of extremist hate if they have to. We are not �long past irony� here, just face to face with the unpleasant reality of the Left�s genuine agenda of silencing its opponents.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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4 November, 2009

Yet another false rape accusation in Britain

But the accused is still a victim of vicious British "justice". He should never have been prosecuted but feminists have been pressing prosecutors to get more rape convictions. Fortunately, verdicts in such matters are still decided by juries, who are less amenable to such pressures

Falsely accused of raping a lawyer after a drunken one-night stand, Peter Bacon thought his torment was over when a jury took just 45 minutes to clear him. But seven months after he walked free, the 26-year-old claims he has been forced to change his identity and, despite his acquittal, says he still feels he is being punished. He says the fact he was not given anonymity by the courts means his name continues to be linked to a crime that never happened.

However, his accuser - who admitted in court she was 'a recreational binge drinker' - was automatically granted lifelong anonymity as an alleged rape victim.

A student at the time he was charged, the former Mr Bacon decided to change his name by deed poll before he graduated, so his previous identity would not appear on his degree certificate. After changing the name on his passport, National Insurance and social networking websites, he now plans to leave the country to start a new life.

Explaining his decision to change his name before leaving Canterbury University in June, he said: 'If I didn't do it before graduating then I couldn't do it because I wouldn't be able to use my degree certificate without having to explain why I changed my name.' He added that he did not attend the graduation ceremony in order to avoid 'a whole load of awkward questions'. He gained a second class degree in sociology.

The former chef was charged with raping a woman following a night of heavy drinking in February last year, but jurors returned a unanimous not guilty verdict at Winchester Crown Court in March. During the trial it was claimed the woman was so drunk she was incapable of giving consent to sex and he took advantage of this. The defendant told the court that the woman, 45, whose identity was never revealed for legal reasons, had encouraged him and had consented to sex.

Describing his change of identity, he told BBC Radio 5 Live: 'I've changed my passport, I've changed my taxes, my National Insurance, my NHS records - everything basically. I've done Hotmail and Facebook. 'It is strange seeing a new name I suppose, but I've had a few months now to get used to it. [But] I still haven't got used to it in a social sense because none of my friends call me by my new name.'

Mr Bacon said despite being acquitted, having his name connected to the incident was 'nightmarish'. He added: 'It doesn't matter, really, what the outcome was, it's the fact that you've been connected to it.' Asked if he felt like an innocent man, he replied: 'Yeah, but punished all the same. It just seems to be that a load of doors are closed to me because of this, even though I've done nothing wrong.'

After he was acquitted, Mr Bacon's solicitor said: 'This case seriously calls into question the lack of anonymity for people like Peter who have been wrongfully accused of rape, and who are ultimately acquitted.'

The woman's claims that she could remember nothing of her alleged rape also raised questions about why the Crown Prosecution Service decided to continue with the case, at an estimated cost of �90,000 to the taxpayer. The woman said she found Mr Bacon in her bed one morning with no memory of what had happened.

SOURCE



Britain has overthrown the divine right of kings only to fall down before the divine right of experts

Sir Ian Blair thinks that policing should be run by people like him. Prof David Nutt thinks that drugs policy should be set by people like him. Jos� Manuel Dur�o Barroso thinks that the EU should be administered by people like him. And, to a large extent, they are getting their way, these apparatchiks.

Britain, even more than other states, is run by and for its standing officials. Our lives are less impacted by the decisions of our MPs or councillors than by those of the Local Education Authority, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence, the Child Support Agency, the Financial Services Authority, the Health and Safety Executive, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and the rest of the unelected functionariat.

The worst of it is that government by quango meets with the noisy approval of many voters. They like the �experts� to be in charge, they say. (If they�re such bloody experts, why have they made such a mess of things?) They fear �politicisation� they say. (Our quangocrats are political � their default setting is well to the Left of any of the main parties � they�re just not elected.)

We now have a situation in which a polical party can effectively be closed down at the whim of the Electoral Commission, and where MPs are more worried about staying on the right side of appointed regulators than about staying on the right side of their electorate. Some democracy!

I still see getting power back from Brussels as the most immediate issue in British politics. But there is no point in doing so if we simply swap one bureaucracy for another. We could leave the EU tomorrow, but we won�t be free country until we dismantle the quango state. If there�s anyone still wondering how to do it, read this.

SOURCE



The Myth of the World Community

From the fluttering blue flag of the U.N. with its stylized symbol of the map of the world enclosed by olive tree branches, to the whole collection of global organizations and imagery right down to posters featuring children from every country holding hands, and the rest of the globalist propaganda-Americans have been imprinted as never before from a very early age with the idea that they are part of a global community, rather than merely one nation. But behind the olive branches and the posters of smiling children, lies a very different truth entirely.

The entire notion that there is a world community is itself mostly a myth. The United Nations does represent most of the nations of the world, except for the really unpopular ones. But it does not represent the peoples of the world, only the heads of their regimes. And since most of the UN consists of nations that are not democracies and that do not have truly free and open elections-the UN's much ballyhooed global community is nothing more than the well paid lackeys of tyrants, dictators, sheiks and assorted Third World leaders, along with their First World enablers.

Paradoxically the more the UN's membership expanded, the less democratic it became-because most of the nations who joined were not democracies with open elections. As a result the expanding UN became a tool of tyrants, beginning with the USSR which successfully turned the UN into an Anti-Western body to serve its own agenda, with only the Security Council retaining some shards of decency.

Behind the fluttering blue flag and smiling multiracial children, are the representatives of a great many dictatorships dining out at expensive New York restaurants on your dime. Turtle Bay is not the home of a kinder and gentler world. It is the home of every two bit thug who wants to spend 3 hours ranting about his pet causes, as everyone from Khrushchev to Castro to Arafat to Chavez to Khadafi have demonstrated for us.

To accept the idea that tyrants and their appointed lackeys represent some sort of global consensus that supersedes the wishes of the free people of democratic nations such as the United States or Canada, is to embrace a global consensus that is undemocratic and even anti-democratic in nature, that rejects individual freedoms in favor of tyranny. And that in a nutshell is exactly what the United Nations is about.

Nor is it the exception to the rule. Centralization and federalization innately leads to less freedom and democracy, because the greater the scope of a system, the less veto power the public has over it. Even the EU, which is composed of individually democratic nations, openly disdained Ireland's No vote, insisting that the process would go forward regardless. That is an inevitable outcome when a political system becomes so large that it can only be run by bureaucrats and diplomats who have six degrees of separation between them and any actual electorate. a dangerous situation that eventually allows them to cut the electorate out of the process altogether.

A political elite that becomes indistinguishable from tyranny

The conglomeration of bureaucracy and politicians without an electorate, translates into a political elite that becomes indistinguishable from tyranny. That is what the EU is, and that is what the UN aspires to be, a global government that answers to the powerful, not to the people. Presenting the bureaucrats and diplomats as representing something higher and nobler, a larger unity, helps the bitter medicine of tyranny go down easier, but no amount of blue flags, smiling children and talk about unity can entirely obscure the fact that such a transition is one that leaves democracy behind in favor of oligarchy.

What is so appealing about that larger unity anyway? The United States had its chance at a larger unity within a semi-democratic system ruled from London. Instead the Founders chose to fight a war in order to be able to make their own decisions locally by the American people. The UN and virtually every international organization erodes that right, in the name of compromise, brotherhood or just plain international political consolidation.

Politicians who already work within large political systems, find the idea of upscaling those systems immensely appealing. Somehow a system that serves 100 million people is better than one that serves 10 million people, and one that serves a billion people is even better. But in fact larger systems have a way of being less efficient and more wasteful, as well as far less democratic. The larger the political system, the more it's meant to grind the town meeting under it, to reduce the individual to a single vote or a political crank if he insists on political involvement, without traditional forms of political affiliation.

We are told repeatedly that multilateral policymaking is better than the unilateral kind. Which is a fancy way of saying that a committee is smarter than an individual, a notion that simply doesn't hold up. A committee is best at achieving a compromise that serves the interests of the more numerous or the more powerful. It is however least likely to achieve a worthwhile solution, only one that its members can agree on. And if most of those members answer to tyrants rather than to citizens, those agreements will be ones that serve the interests of tyrants.

That is why the UN brays incessantly about human rights, but only as a cudgel with which to beat those few member states who actually do have human rights. You will not see the Saudi treatment of women or the Chinese treatment of political dissidents on the table at the UN. But should an American drone take out a terrorist, or Israeli soldiers stand guard to keep terrorists out, should Western countries refuse Third World refugees or try to hold on to their free speech-then the UN is naturally on the case.

The United Nations is not a world community, it is a community of tyrants

The United Nations is not a world community, it is a community of tyrants. There is no world community, because most of the people of the world are not free to have any say in their own lives. To talk about the UN as if it has any moral standing, is as ridiculous as getting the guards and inmates of a prison to vote together on what conditions inside the prison should be like. The UN is not a force for peace, it is a force for maintaining the political status quo for its louder voices, and for grinding under those free countries they consider their enemies.

One day when all men are free, when the citizens of Muslim nations may believe what they choose, when the Chinese and Russian secret police forces have gone the way of the Gestapo, when the people of every nation can vote in free and open elections for the candidates of their choice-then we may talk of a world community. But for now the rights of the citizens of free countries can only be vested in the autonomy of their own political systems. Any international agreements that compromise the independence of their political systems, also compromise the freedom of their citizens and the accountability of their representatives.

SOURCE



Silencing dissent in America

By Caroline B. Glick

Former ambassador to the UN Dore Gold should probably buy himself a flak jacket. Gold is scheduled to debate Richard Goldstone at Brandeis University next Thursday and the anti-Israel forces are organizing quite a reception for him.

Goldstone, who chaired the UN Human Rights Council's commission charged with accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, has become a darling of the anti-Israel Left in the weeks since his report accusing Israel of committing both war crimes and crimes against humanity was published last month. And anti-Israeli leftists don't like the idea of someone challenging his libelous attacks against Israel in a public debate at a university.

In an email to a campus list-serve, Brandeis student and anti-Israel activist Jonathan Sussman called on his fellow anti-Zionists to disrupt the event that will pit the "neutral" Goldstone against Gold with his "wildly pro-Zionist message." Sussman invited his list-serve members to join him at a meeting to "discuss a possible response." As the young community organizer sees it, "Possibilities include inviting Palestinian speakers to come participate, seeding the audience with people who can disrupt the Zionist narrative, protest and direct action." He closed his missive with a plaintive call to arms: "Fk the occupation." Apparently the aspiring political organizer never considered another possibility: listening to what Gold has to say.

It seems rather unfair to pick on a small fry like Sussman. A brief web search indicates that Gold's would-be silencer divides his time fairly equally between publishing rambling, Communist verses to paramours and calling for the overthrow of the US government.

The problem is that Sussman's planned "direct action" against Gold is not an isolated incident. On college campuses throughout the US, Israelis and supporters of Israel are regularly denied the right to speak by leftist activists claiming to act on behalf of Israel's "victims," or in the cause of "peace." In the name of the Palestinians or peace these radicals seek to coerce their fellow students into following their lead by demonizing and brutally silencing all voices of dissent.

This, by the way is true regardless of where the speaker fits on the pro-Israel spectrum. Earlier this month former prime minister Ehud Olmert - who during his tenure in office offered the Palestinians more than any of his predecessors � could barely get a word in edgewise above the clamor of students at the University of Chicago cursing him as a war criminal.

While many commentators claim that the situation on college campuses is unique, the fact is that the attempts of leftist activists on campuses to silence non-leftist dissenters regarding Israel and a host of other issues is simply an extreme version of what is increasingly becoming standard operating procedure for leftist activists throughout the US. Rather than participating in a battle of ideas with their ideological opponents on the Right, increasingly, leftist activists, groups and policymakers seek to silence their opponents through slander, intimidation and misrepresentation of their own agenda.

Case in point is J Street. The eighteen month old, multi-million dollar American Jewish political action committee held its inaugural convention this week in Washington. J Street seeks to present itself as the representative of a silent majority of American Jews. However, its signature positions -- while in line with the Obama administration's policies � are deeply discordant with mainstream American Jewish views.

J Street asserts that Israel must freeze all Jewish construction beyond the 1949 armistice lines; that Israel should withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines, including in Jerusalem and expel all Jews now living beyond the 1949 armistice lines; that the absence of peace is due to the absence of a Palestinian state; that Israel used excessive force in Operation Cast Lead and the Goldstone report is legitimate. J Street also opposes both sanctions on Iran and military strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Just how profoundly out of synch these positions are with the American Jewish community was made clear with last month's publication of the American Jewish Committee's 2009 Annual Survey of American Jewish Opinion. According to the survey, a majority of American Jews oppose the Obama administration's call for the prohibition of Jewish construction in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Similarly, the vast majority of American Jews rejects the call for Israel to surrender parts of Jerusalem to the Palestinians; believes the cause of the Palestinian conflict with Israel is the Arabs' desire to destroy Israel rather than the absence of a Palestinian state; and supports Israel's right to defend itself against Palestinian terror. A whopping 94 percent of American Jews believe the Palestinians should be required to accept Israel's right to exist as a precursor to any viable peace. Finally, a solid majority of American Jews supports either a US or an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear installations.

But no matter. Facts are no obstacle for J Street. Just as Sussman smears his opponents in order to discredit dissenting views, so J Street has not only misrepresented its own place on the American Jewish ideological spectrum. It has misrepresented the position of mainstream American Jewish groups on the ideological spectrum. Owing no doubt to the fact that most American Jews self-identify as liberals, J Street condemns organizations like AIPAC and the ADL as right-wing or conservative or hawkish to try to make American Jews feel uncomfortable supporting them.

At its conference this week J Street's radicalism was on full display. According to the JTA account, one panel discussion featured members of Congress debating the proposition that American Jewish money controls US foreign policy. Congressman Bob Filner was reportedly the darling of the crowd for arguing that indeed, Jewish money exerts inordinate and destructive influence over US foreign policy.

Filner related how in 1994 he was one of the few members of Congress who refused to sign onto a resolution condemning an anti -Semitic speech given by Nation of Islam lieutenant Khalid Abdul Muhammad. Filner claimed that by refusing to condemn a public figure's calumny against the Jewish people he lost some $250,000 in electoral contributions in each subsequent election cycle. "That kind of money is an intimidating factor. I raised a lot less in succeeding years, but my conscious was cleared," he bragged.

Filner went on to condemn pro-Israel lobbyists in general. Indeed he insinuated that the act of lobbying on behalf of Israel is inherently treacherous. Filner argued that unlike labor lobbyists who provide some public benefit, pro-Israel lobbyists are dangerous because they convince legislators to take "positions that can lead to war."

Then there was the self-professed "pro-Israel, pro-peace" group's panel discussion on Iran's nuclear program. As James Kirchick reported in The New Republic, the panel included two of Iran's most outspoken apologists in Washington. Both former National Security Council staffer Hillary Mann Leverett and National Iranian-American Council head Trita Parsi asserted a moral and security equivalence between Iran, Israel and the US.

Leverett accused opponents of Iran's nuclear program of racism. In her words, those calling for Iran to be denied nuclear weapons are "reinforcing stereotypes of Iranian duplicitousness," and their warnings are "fundamentally racist."

Here we see how just as Sussman seeks to demonize dissenting views, so J Street gives an open forum to radicals who castigate their opponents as illegitimate, racist and treacherous.

Perhaps the most outstanding feature of the far-left's behavior is its trenchant refusal to acknowledge that it is the far-left. Just as J Street fatuously claims to represent the American Jewish majority, so it claims to be the American Jewish equivalent of the Kadima party. J Street's Executive Director Jeremy Ben-Ami told the Jerusalem Post, "The party and the viewpoint that we're closest to in Israeli politics is actually Kadima."

This of course is pure nonsense. Kadima � like every other Zionist political party in Israel � supports strong sanctions on Iran. Indeed, Kadima supports taking whatever steps are necessary to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Beyond that, Kadima waged two wars while it was in office. Both Operation Cast Lead and the Second Lebanon War were opposed by the far left. J Street was outspoken in its criticism of Cast Lead. Moreover, Kadima's leaders have emphatically opposed the Goldstone report. So other than its support for the rapid establishment of a Palestinian state, Kadima shares none of J Street's positions.

The fact that J Street represents neither mainstream Israeli thinking nor mainstream American Jewish thinking is of little concern to its leadership. J Street represents the Obama administration. In his keynote address before the conference, National Security Advisor James Jones told his cheering audience that J Street has a friend in the Obama White House. As he put it, "You can be sure that this administration will be represented at all other future J Street conferences."

In recent weeks we have discovered that like its agent J Street, and indeed like Sussman at Brandeis, the Obama White House is also dedicated to silencing opposing voices by marginalizing and demonizing dissent. In fact, the White House's modus operandi is startlingly similar to theirs.

There are six national television networks in the US. Five of them support President Barack Obama. One � Fox News � does not. Rather than rejoice in what is an overwhelmingly favorable state of affairs for it, in recent weeks, the Obama White House has gone to war against Fox News. Obama's senior advisors have castigated the network as "the research arm of the Republican Party," and claim daily that it is "not a news organization."

Obama as well as top administration officials boycott Fox programs and are seeking to intimidate friendly news organizations into joining them in isolating Fox. In a spate of recent statements on the subject, Obama's top advisors have warned the other networks not to follow Fox's lead on any of the stories it reports, lest they discover they have allowed themselves to become the tool of the Republicans.

A straight line connects Sussman's rants, J Street's lies and the Obama administration's attempt to destroy a news organization. In each case, actions aimed at silencing debate are falsely characterized as the brave moves of an underdog seeking to confront the evil powers that be. Sussman writes of the need to overthrow the "oligarchs." J Street claims to be breaking the "right-wing stranglehold" on US Israel policy. And Obama's advisor Valerie Jarrett claims that by attacking Fox News, the White House is "speaking truth to power."

Luckily, the falseness of all of these claims has not been lost on the American public. Despite the actions of the likes of Sussman, "wildly pro-Zionist" voices still resonate on college campuses just as they do throughout the US. J Street has been unable to convince American Jews that its anti-Israel positions are the true expression of American Jewish Zionism. And Obama's approval ratings now stand at a mere 51 percent.

But the fact that these views have not become dominant in America is no reason to be sanguine about the future. That opponents of free speech today occupy the top echelons of power in Washington and are represented at all levels of American society constitutes a critical challenge to the continued vibrancy of American democracy.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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3 November, 2009

The slow-motion Labour Party putsch that swept British Britain away

Once again, one of the biggest stories of the week has been widely ignored by the official political reporters, who are not interested in politics. This is the disclosure, by a New Labour apparatchik, Andrew Neather, of the real purpose of his party�s immigration policy. The Blairites� aim was to undermine and get rid of traditional conservative British culture. They really did want to turn Britain into a foreign land.

Mr Neather wrote an article praising immigration because it provided lots of cheap nannies and gardeners for funky Londoners like him. Apparently thinking nobody would notice, he then revealed that there had been �a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the UK Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural�. He recalled coming away from high-level discussions �with a clear sense that the policy was intended � even if this wasn�t its main purpose � to rub the Right�s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date�.

I have to say I am not surprised. Nor am I so sure about the �main purpose�. In late 1996, an old friend of mine abandoned his long career as a distinguished journalist and went to work for New Labour. We held a sort of wake, since from now on we would be opponents. I asked him why he had done this awful thing. He replied: �You have no idea at all just how enormous the New Labour Project is.� This was one of those moments when a shiver really does run down the spine. Knowing the Labour leader to be a Blair of Very Little Brain, I had assumed he was no more than window-dressing for a standard-issue high-tax anti-British socialist government.

From then on, I began to suspect that something much bigger was afoot � a gigantic, irreversible cultural, social and sexual revolution, accompanied by huge constitutional change � a slow-motion putsch. I think that suspicion was borne out. Mass immigration, so vast that Britain would have to adapt to the migrants rather than the other way round, would be very useful in attaining this. You could smear your opposition as �racist� if they dared to resist. And they would run away.

Anthony Blair�s hysterical speech �attacking the �forces of conservatism� in September 1999 was a barely coded warning of what was to come. He all but blamed the Tories for murdering Martin Luther King and locking up Nelson Mandela. He specifically praised the curse of multiculturalism.

As my colleague Simon Walters points out, William Hague grasped what was happening, and in March 2001 he sought to oppose it with a bold speech. He warned that after two terms of Labour, Britain would be a �foreign land�. He was dead right.

I have searched out that speech and read it carefully. There isn�t a bigoted word in it. But Mr Hague was knifed in the back by liberal Tories and the power-worshipping Murdoch Press, and knifed in the front by Labour, all of whom accused him of somehow playing dirty, �playing the race card� or �playing the nationalist card�. A plot to replace him was openly leaked, months before a General Election. Rather than fight to the last, Mr Hague regrettably crumpled in the face of this onslaught.

And so perished the last attempt by any mainstream party to address this huge and dangerous issue honestly, or indeed to confront the revolutionary intentions of New Labour. A few weeks later, Mr Blair told the Tories to accept his revolution. They did. And the British people are left without a legitimate voice at Westminster.

SOURCE



Obama appointee consorts with Muslim extremists

by Cinnamon Stillwell

As reported last week by Campus Watch, Dalia Mogahed, appointee to President Obama�s Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, executive director and senior analyst of the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies, and co-author, along with Georgetown University�s John Esposito, of Who Speaks for Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, appeared (by phone) earlier this month on the UK-based Islam Channel television program �Muslimah Dilemma� (view here and read the complete transcript here.) Ibtihal Bsis, the show�s host, is a member of the Islamist group Hizb ut Tahrir; Mogahed�s fellow guest, Nazreen Nawaz, is the group�s national women�s media representative. Given these affiliations, it�s no surprise that the discussion included such extremist fare as the promotion of sharia law for�of all things�protecting women�s rights, condemnation for secular pluralistic democracy, and the revival of a mythical caliphate as the answer to the Muslim world�s woes.

Mogahed has been roundly criticized for appearing on the show and, in a transparent attempt at damage control, she told U.S. News & World Report last week she has experienced second thoughts about her decision. Stretching credulity, she claimed she �had no idea that the show�s host or the other guest was affiliated with Hizb ut Tahrir,� that she only �found out the affiliation on air, when the other guest was being introduced in the beginning,� and that her staff �checked the show with a PR firm in Britain who told us there were no problems with it.� Even if it�s true that Mogahed herself was ignorant of the nature of the show, it�s hard to imagine that her sophisticated vetting system missed what a simple Google search would have turned up in seconds. Moreover, if she was truly surprised to find herself among radicals, wouldn�t she be more likely to speak up against them?

One has to wonder if this was a case of incompetence or fabrication. When asked why she didn�t just hang up the phone, Mogahed, demonstrating further ignorance about the availability of data in the age of the Internet (apparently, she�s never heard of YouTube,) said: �I assumed that very few people would watch this show but that doing something more dramatic would bring more attention.�

But it was Mogahed�s tepid response to and, at times, backhanded support for the objectionable opinions expressed on the show that brought attention. To explain her reticence to speak out against such radicalism, Mogahed had another handy justification: �As an analyst, I don�t engage in ideological debates. I am always on programs to explain the views and opinions of others�in this case, Muslims around the world�not to discuss my own views. Being on a program with people who are representing ideological movements puts an analyst in a very awkward position, where they are unable to respond to objectionable comments because of the limits of our role as analysts.�

This is unconvincing. What are analysts for other than to analyze what is said in discussions of which they are part? Was she invited on the show in order to �not discuss [her] own views�? In fact, she had plenty of opportunities to rebut the extremist statements of those with whom she appeared, or at least to state for the record that she�particularly as Obama�s Muslim affairs advisor�disagreed. Yet she chose to remain silent. In doing so, she missed a monumental opportunity to publicly condemn Islamist ideology. Perhaps that was the point.

As for Mogahed�s own endorsements of sharia law�delivered, she claimed, as the will of billions of surveyed Muslim women, not her own�she had only this to say: �I don�t feel that I have regrets about what I said. I did a fair job of reporting the data. My one regret is appearing on the show to begin with.' It�s a little late for that.

SOURCE



NO CLASS, BAD MEMORY

Hillary Clinton continued her farcical visit to Pakistan today by blaming Obama's failure to make any progress with respect to Israeli-Palestinian relations on George W. Bush. Clinton told a group of Pakistani journalists:

"I think that, look, we all know that the Israeli-Palestinian issue is one that is a very serious and difficult problem that we are working hard also to try to resolve. We inherited a lot of problems. If you remember, when my husband left office, we were very close to an agreement because he worked on it all the time. The next administration did not make it a priority and did not really do much until toward the end. And unfortunately, we are trying to make up for some lost time, in my opinion."

Clinton's statement goes beyond the usual, ungracious Obama administration mantra that everything is Bush's fault. Here, Clinton has affirmatively misstated history. Thus, her comments are much closer to the administration's patently false claim that the Bush White House did no planning regarding Afghanistan.

It is true that Israel and the Palestinians appeared to be close to an agreement during the tail end of the Clintion administration. But the appearance of closeness does not even count in horseshoes. When Clinton left office, the parties were not only nowhere near an agreement, the Palestinians were conducting a robust terror campaign inside the state of Israel. This was the fruit of Clinton's years, which culminated with Arafat, Clinton's peace partner, unleashing the terror on the theory, or perhaps the pretext, that Clinton had not extracted more concessions from Israel than he had.

In short, Bush inherited a mess (as the Obama folks like to say) from his predecessor -- at least from the perspective of those who care about the security of Israel, as Hillary has claimed, at times, she does.

Bush, though, didn't publicly blame Bill Clinton for this parlous state of affairs. Instead, he supported the government of Israel in its eventually successful efforts to end the Palestinian terror campaign.

In addition, as Rick Richman points out, Bush endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state if the Palestinian Authority would renounce terrorism; developed the "road map" to peace; urged Israel to withdraw from Gaza (which it did); and helped arrange for the election of a successor to Arafat, one regarded by Clinton and Obama as a moderate and a viable peace partner.

All of this happened in Bush's first five years in office.

Frankly, I regard Bush's steps towards "peace" as a mixed bag, at best. But it is simply not true that Bush "did not really do much until toward the end." Nor is it true that "we were very close to an agreement" when Bill Clinton left office.

President Obama doesn't understand much when it comes to foreign policy. However, he appears to understand that Hillary Clinton is not ready for prime time diplomacy. Let's hope he acts on this insight.

SOURCE



Australia: Churches in NSW generously allowed to follow their faith

CHARITIES and religious groups could discriminate against gay people or anyone else who might offend their values after a landmark decision quashed a finding in favour of a gay couple who wanted to become foster parents. Both the Catholic and Anglican churches have praised the ruling and Cardinal George Pell said anti-discrimination cases threatened churches' ability to do charity work.

The couple were refused access to the Wesley Mission's foster care agency because they are homosexual. They took their case to the Administrative Decisions Tribunal and were awarded $10,000 and the Wesley Mission told to change its practices so it didn't discriminate. The charity appealed and a highly critical appeal panel overturned the decision and ordered the original tribunal to hear the case again.

The panel headed by Magistrate Nancy Hennessy even instructed the tribunal to this time take into consideration whether monogamous heterosexual couples are the norm for "Wesleyanism" and whether they might have had to reject the couple in order to preserve their beliefs and not offend people in their religion.



Wesley Mission and the couple both declined to comment, as the case must now be reheard, however Cardinal Pell [above] hailed the move as a great win for freedom of religion. "The decision is very helpful, a step in the right direction," he said. "It is important to protect people from unjust discrimination but it is ridiculous to claim discrimination every time we show a preference for some people over others. "Anti-discrimination laws should not be used to change how church agencies organise themselves."

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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2 November, 2009

Dehumanized Leftist Britain: Crazy law leaves a child out in the cold

Last winter a father I know went to collect his 12-year-old son from an evening at a youth club in a neighbouring village. It was dark and it was raining. There was only one other child left at the club � another 12-year-old whose mother had rung to say that she was delayed at work and couldn�t pick him up. My friend, who knew the family, offered to take him home.

The female youth worker was adamant. That was not allowed. No written permission had been given, so regulations forbade it. Nor could she drive the boy home, even though she, too, lived in the village; she wasn�t permitted, under child protection rules, to have an unaccompanied minor in her car. That left the boy with one option. He walked 1� miles home, in the dark, along an unlit country road. He might have been hit by a car, or even abducted by a stranger; he certainly arrived back wet, bewildered and a little scared. That didn�t matter. All the rules had been followed, and whether a child was more or less safe as a result was beside the point.

This is the lunatic universe that we are creating in our attempts to use regulation and legislation to make society safer. And the situation is about to get a great deal worse.

In the past three weeks a new and powerful organisation has started operating in Britain. Created as a response to the outcry over the Soham murders, its aim is to protect the vulnerable, obstruct the wicked and give us greater confidence in the trustworthiness of others. Instead it will make us increasingly suspicious of people, and anxious about how our own behaviour might be interpreted. It will kill off millions of the spontaneous acts of help and friendship that bind us to other people.

Worst of all, it marks the most fundamental change in the relationship of people to the state. If we do anything that brings us into regular, organised contact with other people�s children, or with vulnerable adults, we cannot do so without a licence.

We will have to apply for clearance to the Independent Safeguarding Authority, which will treat us all as suspects until our innocence has been proven. It will use �soft intelligence�, including evidence from work, the police or social services, along with rumours and accusations from any source, to decide whether we can be trusted. Having any organised contact with these two vulnerable groups without ISA approval will, from next year, be a criminal offence.

Most of us have no idea how far the tentacles of the ISA are going to spread. At least 11m people, a quarter of the adult population, will be required to apply to it. But its definitions of �regular�, �organised� and �vulnerable� are so broad that it is going to criminalise a huge range of normal behaviour.

The ISA defines regular as any activity that happens more than once a month, and �organised activity� includes any training, advice, care or transport. Old people being driven to tea parties; mothers who regularly look after one another�s children; fathers who are on a rota to give their sons� friends lifts to cricket matches; all these could be caught by the regulations.

The definitions of vulnerable adult are just as ludicrous. They include anyone receiving any form of healthcare, anyone detained in custody or on probation, any nursing or expectant mother in accommodation � whatever that means � and anyone who is receiving �any service or activity specifically for persons due to age, or disability, or prescribed physical or mental problem�.

This sounds like a monster, and it is. But anyone who imagines that its provisions are too ridiculous to be enforced is in for a shock. A few weeks ago there was an outcry when the question of parents giving lifts came up. Ed Balls, the children�s secretary, wanted to defuse the issue swiftly, and asked Sir Roger Singleton, the ISA chairman, to look again at the rules. It was widely assumed that they would be rethought. Singleton has yet to report, but last week he was on the Today programme and was asked how far he thought the work of the ISA might spread.

Singleton didn�t pull back. He said that rotas for driving children to activities were likely to remain within the scheme. �In that context, it is reasonable to expect of the person who is doing that driving that there�s no known reason why he shouldn�t work with children.� Indeed, he took the view that ISA registration would and should spread far beyond the people who would be obliged to seek it.

It is Singleton�s use of the word �reasonable� that chills the blood. He thinks it reasonable that adults who know one another should no longer be free to decide who should and shouldn�t be entrusted with their children. Instead of trusting the instincts that humans have evolved over millennia to make decisions about one another, the state is telling us that it�s better to have 200 quangocrats in Darlington sifting through documents on a computer screen and making the decisions for us.

Everything about this approach to the question of how to make society safer is wrong. The problem isn�t that most people are potential abusers of children or adults; it�s that a tiny and determined minority are. Vetting millions of people is not only horribly intrusive; it�s a waste of time. It will create a false sense of security. Even if all the rumours and accusations the ISA received were accurate, and even if it got a remarkable 99% of decisions right, that would still mean that hundreds of abusers would be cleared, and more than a hundred thousand innocent people would lose their jobs or their reputations by being ISA-barred.

More profoundly, this insistence on the importance of distrust is eating away at our society. One in three men claim to have been deterred from volunteering, and the Brownies cannot find enough Brown Owls. A churchwarden in Hertfordshire told me all the spontaneous activities his church used to organise, such as picnics on a sunny Sunday, had had to stop because nothing could be done unless officially signed for far in advance. The summer play scheme on the green, with rounders and parachute games and art, went when the parents who manned it were asked to have Criminal Records Bureau checks. Even though everyone in the village knew everyone else, they weren�t allowed to act on that trust. He described parents and church workers as paralysed by the fear of doing something wrong. �We�re organising out the idea of community,� he said.

Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, the executive director of Community Service Volunteers, an organisation with almost 230,000 people a year taking part in it, says that nobody is counting the cost as people decide to withdraw altogether from the legal and bureaucratic nightmare that helping others has become. In Cornwall, volunteer flower arrangers at a hospital chapel were informed that they could not continue unless they took CRB checks. Instead they left. Football clubs in deprived areas are, Hoodless says, becoming impossible for disadvantaged children to join. They don�t have parents with cars to get them to training or fixtures, and already the better-off parents are refusing to give lifts in case they are accused of illegal behaviour or assault. The CSV�s own procedures for scrutinising volunteers have worked without any serious problems for almost 50 years, but that means nothing now.

Hoodless warns that, far from society being improved, millions of children are going to be even more neglected because of the spread of these checks.

There is only one thing to be done in the face of this insanity, which is for us to campaign and protest. But we have to do so on the understanding that the government has created this nightmare because we, the public and the media, expect it to eradicate risk. It cannot be done, and the price we are paying as we try to do so is far too high.

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How TV is making the world a better place

When Duncan Bennett, a Cambridge systems analyst, stopped watching television, he wanted more time for �real life� than the goggle box. �I appreciate many people may enjoy television,� he said. �But I don�t think it�s good for me.� He is far from alone in voicing unease at the nation�s most popular pastime. Earlier this year Jeremy Paxman dismissed the British public as a �bunch of barbarians� for watching television rather than reading books or visiting art galleries.

Paxman, who is believed to earn �1m a year from the small screen, was promoting his latest TV series and book about Victorian art. His outburst resonated with middle-class Britons who worry that television is somehow a malign influence. But contrary to such views, some critics and academics argue that television is a powerful agent of change in the world � for the better.

It is a view advanced this month by Charles Kenny, a Washington developmental economist, who argues that in many places television has proved to be a remarkable force for political and social good. After reviewing studies on the impact of television in various countries, Kenny concludes that it is associated with improved rights for women, higher school attendance, reduced toleration of local corruption and other benefits.

Although it is difficult to determine cause and effect, it appears that television is a powerful educator � not through investigative journalism or public information broadcasts, but from the examples set by characters in daytime soaps and other popular dramas. In Kenny�s view, �soap operas and reality shows help solve real-world problems�.

Does popular television add up to more than many think? A closer observer of the small screen once called it a �vast wasteland of mayhem, violence, sadism and murder, private eyes, gangsters and more violence � and cartoons.� That is how Newton Minow, a US television regulator, described it in 1961. At that time crooner Perry Como was America�s most popular TV host and Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Men were stars of British screens.

Since then television language has become more colourful, violence more explicit and sex more prevalent. Lady Chatterley�s Lover has moved from the banned book shelf to a classic BBC serial. Concern over such changing standards has shaped our view of television � and masked its broader influence in developing countries.

To illustrate its effects, Kenny cites the case of Brazil. When television there began to show a steady diet of local soaps in the 1970s, Brazilian women typically had five or more children and were trapped in poverty. As the popularity of the soaps grew, birth rates fell. According to researchers, 72% of the leading female characters in the main soaps had no children and only 7% had more than one. One study calculated that such soaps had the same effect on fertility rates as keeping girls in school for five years more than normal.

It is not just birth rates that are affected. Kenny notes: �Kids who watch TV out of school, according to a World Bank survey of young people in the shanty towns of Fortaleza in Brazil, are considerably less likely to consume drugs.� Television appears to have more power to reduce youth drug use than the strictures of an educated mother and Brazilian soaps presenting educated urban women running their own businesses are thought to be compelling role models.

Television can also improve health, despite the perceived risks of turning into a couch potato. In Ghana a soap opera line that warned mothers they were feeding their children �more than just rice� if they did not wash their hands after defecating was followed by a seemingly permanent improvement in personal hygiene.

Why do such changes happen? Simple, says Kenny: soap operas, whether local versions of Ugly Betty or vintage imports of Baywatch, open up new horizons. �Some hours could be better spent planting trees, helping old ladies across the road or playing cricket,� he said. �But watching TV exposes people to new ideas and different people. �With that will come greater opportunity, growing equality and a better understanding of the world. Not bad.�

Other academics take a similar view. Nicholas Cull, the British-born professor of diplomacy at the University of Southern California, said Pop Idol has given many in the Middle East their first taste of voting. �Today they cast their votes in popular entertainments,� he said, �tomorrow they could be demanding to vote for their leaders.� When the first woman reached the finals of Afghan Star, a Pop Idol clone, the show�s director claimed it would �do more for women�s rights than all the dollars we spent on public service announcements for women�s rights on TV�.

For all the power of the internet, television remains a medium that spreads further and faster. In 2007 about 3 billion people had access to a television and more than 30m new TV sets are being turned on in Africa and Asia each year. Demand is so great that in rural Peru soap operas arrived before a national electricity grid: people powered their new television sets with car batteries. In India 50% of households watch television compared with 7% who surf the net. Such is the spread of television that Ghulam Nabi Azad, India�s health minister, has promoted it as a form of birth control � not so much through cultural influence as the sheer practicalities involved. �In olden days people had no other entertainment but sex, which is why they produced so many children,� he said earlier this year. �We must get electricity into every village so, by the time the serials are over, they�ll be too tired to have sex.�

For all the positive findings, the influence of television is still hotly debated in developed markets. Some claims for its benefits remain doubtful. Last week Disney stopped promoting its Baby Einstein DVDs for tots as �educational�, as it could not prove any such thing. After being threatened with legal action for �unfair and deceptive practices�, the company is offering refunds (only in the United States at present) to parents who bought the DVDs.

Experts in various countries, including Australia, France and the United States, have recommended limiting the amount of television to which infants are exposed, or banning them from watching altogether. There is much less consensus on whether television can have a damaging effect on older viewers. In particular, experts still dispute whether television violence influences real behaviour.

Attitudes to viewing seem to be changing, according to Paul Levinson, professor of communications at Fordham University in New York, a proponent of �positive television experiences�. Only now, he says, are westerners overcoming the �Protestant work ethic guilt� about enjoying the medium. �It�s partly because we now know viewing is not as passive as people always thought and also because our social fears have switched to a new enemy � the internet. By comparison, television seems quite benign,� he said.

Television is growing more sociable, others argue. �Big entertainment shows such as Strictly Come Dancing and The X Factor are getting bigger and bringing people together,� said Thinkbox, the research company. �People are using Twitter and mobile phones to share their opinions in real time, creating new communities.�

Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad is Good for You, goes further, saying television can give you a mental workout. �Popular television shows demand cognitive work from their audiences to keep up with multiple narrative threads and character shifts, exercising the mind in ways unthinkable 30 years ago,� he claims. �In 1981 Hill Street Blues became the first TV show to juggle more than three extended plot lines per episode and reaped the reward in complaints that it was too complicated. Now audiences embrace that complexity because we have been trained by decades of multi-threaded drama. These sell exceptionally well on DVD, so the market will reward the more demanding shows � and so we shall see more of them.�

This evolution in attitude towards television is reflected by the willingness of Barack Obama, the US president, to admit that he follows The Wire, a complex, gritty crime drama. David Cameron, the Tory leader, said he enjoys TV thrillers such as the series 24.

The biggest gains are evident in developing countries, although even that has its limits, of course. Tara McPherson, associate professor of critical studies at the University of Southern California, said television can provide �teachable moments� such as when the bully is defeated by a community of schoolkids. �It even made my grandmother less racist by showing her people not like her,� she said. However, in her view even the most magical television cannot counteract factors such as bad diet, schools without playing fields or neglectful parents: �That is where television stops and real life starts.�

SOURCE



Look at me

In our time, freedom of speech is almost a non-issue. True, we encounter some problems with multicultural sensitivities and especially Islamic ones. The craven decision by Yale University Press not to reprint the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed in a book ostensibly about the cartoons amounts to a bizarre if rather terrifying reminder of the moral terra incognita that lies just beyond the enchanted land of libertarian whimsy we have inhabited for most of the last half-century. The barbarian hordes with their unforgiving honor cultures and violent sensitivity to slights against their amour propre are as yet making only occasional and limited incursions among us to demand their tribute from our once treasured freedoms. For the most part, our fantasies of limitless free self-expression remain undisturbed by the only shadow that might realistically fall upon them. Someday.

Our concerns lie instead with that more recently discovered but, if anything, even more highly valued freedom, the freedom to be attended to by the world at large. You will of course tell me that there is no such freedom in reality, and you will be right. I have said so myself in this space ("The Shock Is Over," TAS, May 2008) in the course of noticing how Saskia Olde Wolbers, one of the army of mostly unattended-to artists in our heavily overpopulated "creative" world, has referred mournfully to "the meaninglessness of being unobserved." Since then, our national crisis of inattention has only grown more acute. Now it's not just those ever-growing numbers of obscure artists, poets, actors, and other such riffraff that the wider world is neglecting, but the once enormously popular news media, with their delightful fables and fantasies of American public life. Having grown rich on the spare pennies of eager "news" consumers for the past century and more, these media are now being abandoned by their audiences in such numbers and with such suddenness that Dan Rather, for one, thinks them in need of one of Mr. Obama's celebrated bailouts of old and now-bankrupt industries and technologies.

Dan is of course a fantasist, but then so is the president, as I have pointed out already (see "The Triumph of Fantasy," TAS, July/August, 2009). Why should we expect anything else when our whole culture, as the summer "blockbuster" movie season has so recently reminded us, is based on fantasy? If you were going to write the political history of fantasy, one good place to start would be with Adolf Hitler's conceit of himself as an artistic genius, which the German art historian Birgit Schwarz thinks was crucial to his later fantasies of world domination. "Genius" to him, she says, meant "a larger-than-life talent who was permitted to do anything, including evil things. The genius has outstanding ideas, and they must be implemented, even if they are completely amoral."

Of course, it would be tendentious and completely unfair of me to describe the millions of un-recognized, unappreciated artists whom the rest of us can't be bothered to read or watch or listen to, even when their works are readily available on the Internet, as little Hitlers in the making. Few of them, I imagine, harbor fantasies of either genocide or world domination, let alone the wherewithal to make such fantasies come true. But the problem with fantasy is also the point of it: that there are no natural limits. You can fantasize anything you want, just as, if you are a left-leaning Supreme Court justice with a hankering for some such progressive bibelot as abortion on demand, you can find it implied in the United States Constitution. Or if you are a left-leaning president, you can fantasize that it is possible to "reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals" and, therefore, hale the more zealous among those charged with protecting us from terrorist attack into criminal court, as a certain president has recently promised to do.

In Quentin Tarantino's artsy version of the summer blockbuster, Inglorious Bastards (I decline to join him in misspelling the words), the auteur fantasizes about the death of Hitler himself in a French cinema. The F�hrer is incinerated along with the rest of his Nazi henchmen and the German high command by one of his Jewish victims and her African lover, who have prepared his funeral pyre from a library of highly inflammable nitrate film -- a highly Tarantinian demise. As far as I know, I'm the only critic to have protested either that Hitler didn't, in fact, die in that fashion or that it was inconceivable -- though obviously not unfanciable -- that he could have done so. Oh please. Just imagine where Quentin Tarantino would be today if he had been expected by audiences to make movies that looked even as much like real life as the B-movies of the 1940s and '50s that he so often parodies. He'd be back in that legendary video store where (so the tale goes) he learned all that he knows about movie-making from the least lifelike of old movies, comic books, and "pulp fiction."

To most of us, there is something desperately uninteresting about other people's fantasies, just as there is about an account of his last night's dreams by the breakfast-table bore. QT's breakthrough as an artist was to find a way to make his fantasies interesting to others by means of what much more sophisticated critics than I call "intertextuality." Academic experts in the popular culture and movie antiquarians -- as more and more of us may aspire to be in the age of Netflix and YouTube -- can apparently find endless delight in spotting Mr. Tarantino's allusions to other movies or cultural memes in his "dense textured" movies. So much so, indeed, that they hardly have time to notice what crap they are as movies themselves. Still, you can't take away from his achievement the fact that these movies, no matter how crappy, have found a way over the wall of public indifference, and that they take him with them into the land of fame and fortune.

All art needs heroes. In modernist art, the artist was the hero on account of his art. Now he's a hero if he can just figure out how to get his art noticed. That's the whole point of conceptual art, which has little or no content qua art (in the old sense of something beautifully wrought) apart from the concept that promises to get it talked about. It's hard to tell whether this assimilation of art to publicity has percolated down from the high to the popular culture or risen up, like sap, from the popular to the high. But there's hardly any difference between the two now anyway. That's part of the message of the wildly popular but also ostentatiously highbrow AMC television series Mad Men, which fascinates at least in part because it both shows us and tells us that art is publicity and publicity is art. Jon Hamm's Don Draper has the kind of genius that even Hitler, had he escaped from both the Berlin bunker and Quentin Tarantino's French cinema and were alive today, might aspire to. And he has a lot more sex than Hitler ever had.

The talent for getting -- and staying -- noticed is the only art that counts. So Tom Shales inaugurates a new column in the Washington Post "about our culture" and proceeds to unreel a 1,500-word thumb-sucker on the prospects for success of a Mr. Conan O'Brien, who is apparently some kind of televisual comedian currently suffering from what he, Mr. Shales, fervently hopes will be only temporarily low ratings. We don't even need to know who this "Conan" is to root for him to stay in the public eye. Likewise, the audience of the popular summer film Julie & Julia by Nora Ephron were all rooting for spunky Julie Powell to break through to worldwide fame with the help of the then-new medium of blogging and the shameless gimmick of preparing all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year. The story, which also features Meryl Streep as the late Mrs. Child, of course has a happy ending. The real-life Julie got a book deal and now a movie out of her stunt, so any conceivable criticism is disarmed.

Hooray for Julie! Who could wish her less successful, less rich, less famous, or played in the movie by anyone less adorable than Amy Adams? But I'd prefer to rent the video of With a Friend Like Harry..., a French film of 2000 by the German-born Dominik Moll, about a poet whose comatose genius is shocked back into life by the discovery that his long-disregarded juvenile oeuvre has found an audience solely on its dubious merits and not on account of his mastery of publicity or compelling personal story. True, it is an audience of one, and that one a criminal madman, but for any real artist that ought to be enough.

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The Psychology of Collaborators in the War against Israel and the Jews

Frontpage Interview's guest today is Kenneth Levin, a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a Princeton-trained historian, and a commentator on Israeli politics. He is the author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege.

FP: Kenneth Levin, welcome to Frontpage Interview.

There have been some stories circulating of Ahmadinejad's supposed Jewish roots, but it appears that there is no substance to these stories. Even if it were true, however, no one should really be very surprised because it has been a recurrent phenomenon that some Jews would choose to join the Jews' tormenters and even seek a leading role among them.

Frontpage's new Collaborators series deals with this phenomenon. David Gutmann has also written a very profound analysis on this issue for us at Frontpagemag.com. As a psychiatrist and the author of the Oslo Syndrome, what would you bring to the table on this phenomenon?

Levin: Well, it's certainly true, Jamie, that time and again we've seen Jews joining forces with those who would do other Jews ill. But, as I wrote in The Oslo Syndrome, this is common within many communities under siege, whether minority communities under assault by the surrounding majority or small states under attack by their neighbors. Inevitably, some elements of the besieged group will embrace the indictments of the besiegers, however bigoted or absurd. They will do so in the hope of thereby extricating themselves from the wider group's dire predicament.

Some will simply abandon the community and seek to immerse themselves in an alternative identity. Within Jewish communities under siege, such people would convert to the dominant religion, whether Christianity or Islam, to escape the Jews' plight. Some among them, however, to more emphatically establish their distance from other Jews, and to allay any potentially dangerous suspicions among the majority that their conversion was insincere, would become spewers of anti-Jewish venom and high-profile endorsers of attacks on the Jews.

FP: And there's a long history of this.

Levin: Absolutely. This was, for example, a recurrent phenomenon in both the Christian and Muslim worlds throughout the Middle Ages and into modern times. One notable such individual was Solomon ha-Levi, who was chief rabbi of Burgos in Spain when, in 1391, a wave of murderous anti-Jewish riots and forced conversions decimated Spanish Jewry. Solomon was well enough connected that he could have escaped the choice of conversion or death, but - rather than remain a Jew under straitened circumstances and see his place in the world much diminished - he converted, underwent clerical training in Salamanca and Paris, and, as Paul de Santa Maria, ultimately became bishop of Burgos. When a second vast wave of forced conversions began in 1411, Paul took a leading role in the assault on Spain's remaining Jews and was responsible for drawing up edicts that isolated the Jews, stripped them of many communal rights, and, most importantly, deprived them of almost all means of earning a living, leaving them with the choice of death by privation for themselves and their families or conversion.

FP: What was this story about Ahmadinejad being a Jew?

Levin: The story was that Achmadinejad's family converted from Judaism to Shi'a Islam when he was a child. It is apparently false. But, reflecting a recurrent pattern in Persian lands, there were many episodes of forced conversion and massacre of Jews in Iran in the nineteenth century and in the early part of the twentieth century, episodes typically instigated by Shi'a clergy; and it is a virtual certainty that some among the converts became themselves enthusiastic persecutors of those who remained Jews, if for no other reason than to demonstrate the sincerity of their conversion to their fellow Muslims.

A variation on the same theme can be seen in nineteenth century Europe. Jews were no longer subjected to waves of forced conversion, at least in western Europe, but they lived with severe limits on the educational and vocational opportunities available to them and with other significant social disabilities. Many chose to convert to improve their prospects, and some again joined forces with the Jews' persecutors. Friedrick Julius Stahl, whose conversion enabled him to win a position on the law faculty of the University of Berlin, became head of the anti-Jewish Christian Conservative Party early in the nineteenth century and fought against the extension of political rights to Jews.

But those who abandoned their Jewish identity and became themselves defamers and attackers of the Jews did so much more typically from the political Left than from the Right, with Karl Marx being the leading example. Marx's father had converted, apparently for the sake of professional advancement, and had had his son baptized at age six, in 1824. From his earliest entry into the public arena, Marx was clearly interested in distancing himself from "the Jews," and he did so largely by rabidly attacking them. For example, his essay "On the Jewish Question" is both a regurgitation and an amplification of popular anti-Jewish calumnies. Marx - who knew virtually nothing about Judaism - declares that the religion of the Jews is "huckstering," that the capitalist system reflects the Judaizing of the Western world, and that the radical agenda is therefore the quest to liberate the world from the ethos of the Jews.

In eastern Europe, which then meant mainly Czarist Russia, Jews retained a greater sense of national identity than in the West, and those who embraced socialism did so largely because they had lost faith in left-of-center liberalism bringing an end to czarist anti-Jewish depredations - including forced impoverishment, forced conversion and state-instigated physical assaults - and hoped socialist reforms would improve the lot of the Jews. Very few embraced what ultimately became Bolshevism, with its own anti-Jewish tenets. In contrast, in western Europe most Jews who joined socialist or communist movements did so as an alternative to a Jewish identity - it meant for them conversion to a new religion - and it was common for such individuals to endorse and even embellish the anti-Jewish cant that was typically a fixture of European socialism and communism, and indeed continues to be so today, if transmogrified somewhat into "anti-Zionism."

Today, the Jews' high-profile enemies, such as Achmadinejad, other leaders of the Iranian theocracy, and key figures in Iranian satellites such as Hezbollah and Hamas, may not themselves have Jewish roots, but there are certainly Jews among their boosters and fellow travelers.

Hezbollah head Hassan Nasrallah has declared that "If [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide," and Hezbollah has in fact gone after them worldwide, as in its 1994 bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires that claimed 87 lives. But none of this has constrained Noam Chomsky from visiting with Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders, praising the organization and Nasrallah, and advocating the arming of Hezbollah. Norman Finkelstein has likewise met with Hezbollah leaders and praised the organization. It is not surprising that Nasrallah has at least temporarily exempted Chomsky and Finkelstein, and other like-minded Jews, from Hezbollah's general death sentence on Jews.

Hamas's charter quotes a Hadith according to which Allah declared that the Day of Judgement will not come until the Jews are all killed and even the stones and trees will help in killing them. The charter adds that Hamas "aspires to the realization of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take." Hamas has perpetrated innumerable attacks targeting Israeli civilians, including suicide bombings and rocket and mortar barrages, and Hamas children's television instructs its young audience to kill Jews. Yet Jewish member of Britain's Parliament Gerald Kaufman has affectionately compared Hamas to Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto.

FP: And there were Jews who opposed Israel taking defensive measures in Gaza.

Levin: To be sure. For years Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza, only accelerating its rocket and mortar assaults in the wake of Israel's total withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. It built and cached its rockets and other arms in, and unleashed its attacks from, heavily populated civilian areas. When Israel finally responded forcefully to Hamas's terror campaign, in December, 2008, myriad Jews - who almost invariably had been silent about the Hamas attacks - condemned Israel's actions and largely maintained their silence on Hamas's terror, instead often parroting Hamas's skewed version of events during the war.

Jewish groups across the world - such as Independent Australia Jewish Voices - rushed for media podiums from which to publicize their censure of the Jewish state. Jewish South African Richard Goldstone's recent report for the so-called United Nations Human Rights Council offered his conclusions from an "investigation" whose mandate preemptively condemned Israel and whitewashed Hamas. His report largely follows Hamas's narrative of events, minimizes Hamas crimes, ignores Israel's documented rebuttals of Hamas claims, and would deprive Israel of the right to defend itself against Hamas's genocidal campaign against the Jewish state. Goldstone is simply among the most notable examples of Jewish participation in such travesties.

Other Jews and Jewish groups, in their stances on Middle East issues, largely choose to ignore the genocidal Jew-hatred that pervades the media, mosques and schools of Israel's enemies. They likewise ignore or play down or relativize the explicitly trumpeted genocidal goals of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah.

FP: Your thoughts on the Jewish group J Street?

Levin: It has honed the relativist tack in its characterizations of last December's Gaza fighting, declaring that "neither Israelis nor Palestinians have a monopoly on right or wrong" and there are "elements of truth on both sides of this gaping divide"

J Street has curried support from Jews and non-Jews who have been rabid critics of Israel and supporters of, or at least apologists for, those in the Middle East who seek the Jewish state's destruction. They include Israel critics with close ties to Saudi Arabia, such as Ray Close, and Stephen Walt, co-author of the factual-error-filled anti-Israel screed The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

Former Senator Chuck Hagel was among the senators least supportive of Israel during his tenure and often exhibited greater sympathy for the Jewish state's enemies. When 88 senators wrote to the EU urging it to add Hezbollah to its list of terrorist organizations, Hagel was one of the handful who demurred. Yet J Street has seen fit to enlist Hagel as keynote speaker at its First National Conference this month.

In addition, while J Street incessantly declares itself to be "pro-Israel" its advisory board includes Jews and others who have long been not merely critics but defamers of the Jewish state and have even questioned the wisdom of its continued existence. For example, advisory board member Ayelet Waldman has been quoted as declaring, "I can't help fearing that the Zionist enterprise will one day be seen to have done the Jewish people more harm than good. Our tenacious hold on this strip of homeland has become the scapegoat for the world's terrorism and this wouldn't be the case if we remained a people of the diaspora."

The quote from Waldman, like perhaps most of the attacks on Israel by Jews, reflects a variation on the phenomenon of some within communities under siege seeking to separate themselves entirely from the community. In many instances, elements of communities or nations under attack will see the assault as directed at a particular segment of the community, and will seek to emphasize their own belonging to a different segment - a segment sympathetic to the besiegers' indictments - and so deserving of exemption from the attack. Here, Waldman directs no criticism against those who regard Jews as uniquely unfit for national self-determination and want Israel destroyed. Rather, she takes that bigotry as a given and reserves her criticism for Jews not readily bowing to it. Instead of criticizing the scapegoating of Israel, she embraces the delusion that if Israel would just disappear and Jews became again only a Diaspora community - the community of which she is a part - her life and that of Jews like her would be better.

FP: How about Tony Judt?

Levin: Judt is perhaps the poster boy for this kind of thinking. He has called for Israel's dissolution and sought to justify his stance by arguing that Israel's creation came too late, that a state based on religious or ethnic identity is pass�, and so it should be discarded into the dustbin of history.

While singling out Israel for dissolution, Judt ignores the fact that most of the world's states, including the other states of the Middle East, are based on a dominant ethnic or religious identity, and, Rip Van Winkle-like, he seems unaware that in the last two decades at least twenty new nations have been created based primarily on a dominant ethnic or religious identity.

But, in fact, this rationale is not the true spur to Judt's attack on Israel. Rather, as he makes clear elsewhere, he is upset that the circles in which he travels - primarily, academic circles - include many people who are not only censorious of Israel but regard all Jews suspiciously as likely sympathetic to the Jewish state. He feels this unfair, wishes therefore to trumpet his lack of any such sympathy, and desires the demise of the Jewish state, removal of the root cause, to more definitively spare himself - as well as others who may be similarly misunderstood - from coming under such unfair suspicion and suffering such discomfort.

The Jews thus far cited as ignoring or rationalizing the genocidal agenda of Israel's enemies and even in many instances siding with those enemies have all been Diaspora Jews. But even among Israeli Jews there are many who do the same, despite the fact that they and their families are directly threatened by Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas and those many others in the surrounding states who seek Israel's destruction.

The editors of Haaretz, for example, persist in downplaying the genocidal agenda of Hamas, urging Israel to be more forthcoming to the Islamist group, and castigating the government for not doing so. Haaretz writers such as Gideon Levi, Amira Haas and Akiva Eldar rarely have a critical word for Hamas or others of those dedicated to Israel's destruction, and when they do have something critical to say they almost invariably find a way nevertheless to lay the ultimate blame on Israel. The same pattern can be seen in the work of many Israeli academics, and even in the views of various Israeli politicians. This is true even though - in the wake of the terror war launched by Arafat and the PLO against Israel in 2000, the Second Lebanon War, and all that has transpired around Gaza in the period since Israel's total withdrawal from the area - many fewer Israelis entertain such thinking than did so formerly.

Of those Israelis who do embrace such thinking, some, like Diaspora Jews who choose such a course, may seem to do so out of far Left ideological commitment, according to which Israel must be condemned as representing Western imperialism and its enemies embraced as embodiments of transcendent Third World virtue. But even those devoted to such an ideology have the option to change when confronted with the reality of murderous assault and genocidal intent. Many apologists for Stalin and the Soviet Union changed their politics after the Hitler-Stalin pact while others did not. Similarly, many American devotees of far Left orthodoxies had a change of heart after 9/11, while of course many clung to their former views and blamed American policy for the attacks or even embraced the madness that the U.S. was itself the agent of the attacks.

So ideological commitment is not in itself an explanation for why some Israelis cling to blaming Israel for its enemies' hostility and ignoring or rationalizing those enemies' genocidal intent.

FP: So what are other explanations?

Levin: Some - like many of those who abandoned the Jewish community in past centuries - no doubt do so for personal gain. For example, Israeli academics who cultivate a reputation as critics of Israel are much more likely to win visiting professorships and other desirable academic perks in Europe and the U.S. Indeed, the more extreme their attacks on Israel the better their chances.

But most Israelis who adopt and cling to blaming Israel first, and who avert their eyes from the dimensions of the genocidal threat, do so out of wishful thinking - which is yet another response by some within communities under chronic attack. Some will rationalize the threat, close their eyes, ears and their minds to what the community's enemies are actually declaring to be their objective, and will embrace selected elements of the attackers' indictments in the hope that if the community will only reform itself in ways that address those elements - if Israel would only give up enough land, for example - the attackers will be appeased and peace will be won.

Yet whatever the psychological dynamics driving any particular individual, one thing is certain: As the genocidal threat facing Israel from Iran and its allies and satellites, and indeed from others among Israel's neighbors, persists and perhaps grows even more ominous, some Jews, in the Diaspora and in Israel, will respond by recognizing the threat and urging efforts to confront and defeat it, but others will respond by distancing themselves from the Jewish state and even embracing its genocidal enemies, or by seeking to rationalize the threat and advocating self-reform and appeasement, or by taking some other, related course that will likewise add to the threat rather than help diminish it.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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1 November, 2009

British Remembrance Day collectors banned from shaking tins to avoid 'intimidating shoppers'

Poppy sellers from the Royal British Legion have been banned from shaking their collection tins in case they are seen as a 'public menace'. Asking anyone if they want to buy one and even approaching people have also been declared illegal. Instead volunteers have been told they must remain still and silent or face being removed from their stands or prosecuted.

This is despite it being within the law for 'chuggers' - charity workers who are often likened to muggers hassling people for money on high streets - to do the same. They ask people to donate from their bank accounts rather than giving cash directly.

The rules for poppy sellers, which have been drawn up by the Charity Commission but are enforced by local councils, state that it is illegal for collectors to 'harass people' or act in a way that could be seen as 'aggressive'.

John Allen, member and former chairman of the Royal British Legion's Berkhamsted branch, in Hertfordshire, said: 'At this time we should be doing all we can to help our boys and their families at home who are fighting for our country in Afghanistan and elsewhere. 'We only get a few weeks a year to raise money and we should be allowed to make as much noise as we can.'

The Royal British Legion head office has been hastily sending out newsletters and holding meetings to ensure members are fully aware of the rules. Bill Copeland, chairman of the branch in Marlborough, Wiltshire, said: 'The rules are very silly - but we have to be very careful we stick to them. 'They've recently become much stricter. It never used to be like this in the past. 'In larger towns or cities it is very different and collectors may feel they need to rattle tins or ask for money just to get themselves noticed.'

But Dave Skitt, head of the group's branch in Nantwich, Cheshire, said collectors shouldn't need to ask people for donations anyway. 'If people want to give money to us they walk up to our stand, it shouldn't be the other way round,' he said.

Remembrance Sunday falls on November 8 this year. Last year the Royal British Legion raised �31million, a figure it hopes to match.

Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe said: 'It's absolutely ludicrous and people have been rattling tins while selling poppies for years. I think that most people would be happy to see someone rattling a tin and know that they could buy a poppy to support ex-servicemen.'

Philip Davies, Tory MP for Shipley, West Yorkshire, added: 'I don't think anyone has ever been offended by someone rattling a poppy tin. This sounds like a solution looking for a problem.'

Military historian Correlli Barnett said the ban was 'very sad' and 'an example of political correctness gone barmy'. 'It seems so ridiculous that these so-called chuggers working for all sorts of charities are allowed to come up to you and hassle you on the street but these veterans can't even offer you a poppy.'

A Charity Commission spokesman said: 'It could constitute a public menace. It's up to the local authority to enforce these rules and they will normally step in following complaints from the public.'

A poppy seller was this week ordered to move his supermarket collection stand and set up by the toilets because he was 'getting in the way'. Douglas Turtle, 87, was a crew member on HMS George V when it destroyed the German battleship Bismarck in the Second World War. He was told he was attracting complaints from customers at the Somerfield store in Ryde on the Isle of Wight. He moved and got half the donations of previous years. After negotiations between the Legion and store managers he was allowed to return to his usual spot.

SOURCE



Feral Detroit: A city destroyed by corrupt black Leftists in government

We usually apply the word �feral,� which means �reverting to a wild state,� to domesticated animals that are abandoned and must survive on their own. But in rapidly shrinking Detroit, where tens of thousands of structures have sat empty for years, people are starting to describe houses and neighborhoods as feral�that is, as places where human activity ceased so long ago that nature has reclaimed them.

Two Detroit residents writing for the blog Sweet Juniper describe these feral houses as places that �for a few beautiful months during the summer . . . disappear behind ivy or the untended shrubs and trees planted generations ago to decorate their yards. The wood that frames the rooms gets crushed by trees. . . . The burnt lime, sand, gravel and plaster slowly erode into dust.� The bloggers� striking photos show long-neglected houses completely enclosed in vegetation; only the outline of the architect�s design suggests something created by man buried beneath.

Feral houses are perhaps the most visible sign of Detroit�s long decline, and their troubling numbers are starting to create talk within the administration of Mayor Dave Bing, who is running for reelection in November, that the city must shrink to survive. Bing, the former National Basketball Association great who first won the mayor�s office in a special May election to replace the disgraced Kwame Kilpatrick, recalls how, during the campaign, he would travel through neighborhoods where only a house or two remained occupied on each block, where weeds had reclaimed abandoned lots, and where storefronts sat empty. Today, officials estimate, the city contains an astonishing 70,000 abandoned structures�many of them houses, but also some commercial properties. In downtown Detroit alone, a local newspaper identified 48 office buildings with �no outward sign of life.�

That�s not surprising, considering how many people have fled Detroit over the decades. Over the last half-century, the city�s population has shrunk by 50 percent, from about 1.8 million people to fewer than 900,000. Since 2000, the city has lost 35,000 residents. Detroit officials acknowledge that they see little prospect for a population turnaround soon.

Though any plan to downsize Detroit�a city where people now use only half the acreage within its boundaries�would be complicated, expensive, and time-consuming, it would let the city focus its resources, including crime-fighting and redevelopment efforts, where they could do the most good. The first phase in such a plan would involve tearing down abandoned houses and other empty structures that serve as focal points for criminal activity. But that itself is a daunting task. City officials say that it takes an average of $10,000 to demolish an abandoned house, which makes the city�s long-term tab potentially north of $700 million. This summer, Detroit used federal grants to start the task, demolishing some 226 abandoned houses in areas near neighborhood schools to reduce criminals� opportunities to prey on schoolchildren.

Downsizing Detroit also presents political obstacles. Officials must identify neighborhoods whose city services would be withdrawn and whose residents would be relocated, a process certain to set off political fireworks. A summer series in a Detroit newspaper quoted some residents of desolate neighborhoods as welcoming such relocation efforts; others vowed to resist.

Yet doing nothing is no longer an option: the city�s economic and fiscal woes are already forcing deep cuts in services. Detroit�s board of education, for instance, resisted downsizing for years and continued until 2007 to operate a school system with a capacity for 160,000 students, even though just 115,000 students attended that year. The hemorrhaging budget finally forced the city to close some 40 schools. But the system still faces insolvency and is even considering a bankruptcy filing. Similar budget crises will require rolling back various other essential services, from police and fire to sanitation.

Though some blame Detroit�s population losses on larger economic forces, economists Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer argue in a groundbreaking paper that the city�s problems are mostly self-inflicted. (The paper, called �The Curley Effect,� gets its name from legendary Boston mayor James Curley, who favored Irish residents and pushed other groups out.) After winning election in 1973, Detroit�s first black mayor, Coleman Young, consolidated his power, driving white residents, who had voted against him, out of the city by withdrawing services from their neighborhoods. Eventually, Glaeser and Shleifer write, Detroit became �an overwhelmingly black city mired in poverty and social problems��and shrinking fast.

SOURCE. More background here and here



Valerie Jarrett: A far-Leftist "power behind the throne"

Who is Valerie Jarrett? It's a question gaining increasing interest in the conservative blogosphere. And even some members of the mainstream media are starting to take a second look at this woman who has earned the sobriquet "Obama's eminence gris." Indeed, in the Obama household, Valerie Jarrett is considered nothing less than a member of the family. Asked about his unique relationship with the shadowy Ms. Jarrett, Obama told the London Independent's Robert Draper, "Well, Valerie is one of my oldest friends. Over time, I think our relationship evolved to the point where she's like a sibling to me � I trust her completely.' Added Michelle to the Chicago Tribune's Jodi Kantor, "She's always one of the people he and I talk to when we're about to make a move."

So, who is this pseudo sister, this Obama alter-ego, this sounding board with sign-off stature who has become the power behind the Obama throne? Simply put: Valerie Jarrett is a radical leftist with a rapacious appetite for power and wealth. In Richard Daley's Chicago, she was the turn-to person for flexing muscles, padding pockets, and covering tracks. In Barack Obama's Washington, she is the single advisor most responsible for both for originating and orchestrating his most brazen attempts to impose what many see as a socialist regime upon the American people.

Policy decisions and key appointments, brickbats and bouquets, the mendicants and the mercenary � they all come through Valerie Jarrett's office. As the New York Times recently wrote: "Jarrett is also the president's closest friend in the White House, and it is not lost on her colleagues that when senior staff meetings in the Oval Office break up, she often stays behind with the boss."

American Spectator offered an idea of what transpires at those intimate t�te-�-t�tes: "Jarrett's office isn't just about hiring anti-American presidential senior staff or inviting them to posh official dinners at the White House, though. Jarrett's office, according to White House sources, was influential in advocating for the creation of a "chief diversity officer" (CDO) at the Federal Communications Commission, as well as numerous other senior positions on regulatory and advisory commissions within the federal government bureaucracy."

Among her colleagues and fellow travelers Jarrett has stuck in top White House senior positions:

* Van Jones � the former Obama Green Czar, a self-avowed communist who believes that the United States engineered the attacks on the World Trade Centers. Of him, Jarrett enthused, "We were so delighted to be able to recruit him into the White House. We were watching him�for as long as he's been active out in Oakland�and all of the creative ideas he has�and now we've captured that�and we all that energy in the White House."

* Cass Sunstein � the Obama Regulation Czar who believes that farm animals should be able to sue their owners and that traditional marriage should be abolished.

* Kevin Jennings � the Obama Safe Schools Czar who believes that elementary school children should be taught that homosexuality is normal behavior (along with the techniques for "enjoying" it) and who in 1990, as a teacher in Massachusetts, founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN.

But to get the full flavor of Valerie Jarrett's august substance and cunning style, one has to go back to Chicago, to the seamy backrooms of Richard Daley's unholy empire. There, Valerie Jarrett established a stern reputation as the no-nonsense progenitor of pay-to-play run amuck; as the very embodiment of what celebrated columnist Mike Royko suggested as the Windy City's slogan: Ubi Est Mea? � "Where's Mine?"

In 1995, while serving as Executive Vice President of Habitat (more about that later), the ineffable Ms. Jarrett was also appointed by her good friend and guru Mayor Daly to chair the board of the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). There, under his direction, she approved two multi-million dollar property sales.

One parcel was sold to the city for the princely sum of $3.29 million. In an unusual move, the Board agreed to accept payments from the city through 2013 with a 5% interest rate. This transaction was a bit unorthodox in that normally a lump sum payment would be made. Within a remarkably short period of time � and despite the long-term payments due -- the city then sold the land to a certain Mr. Michael Marchese. Perhaps not so coincidentally, Mr. Marchese, like Ms. Jarrett, was a close friend and frequent traveling companion of Mayor Daley. Marchese's price: $1. In total.

Defending the unusual transaction, Ms. Jarrett commended the Mayor on his shrewd deal, telling the press, "It's been an enormous challenge to get anyone to step up." Even at one-3.29 millionth of the city's Jarrett-negotiated purchase price?

And that was just the beginning. The Jarrett-Daley-Marchese juggernaut was just picking up steam. The second multi-million-dollar deal Ms. Jarrett helped negotiate for the triad involved the sell another CTA property, this one to Limits LLC for $14.35 million. Predictably, the Mayor's friend Marchese's Harlem-Irving Companies was a part of Limits LLC.

What makes this transaction particularly fascinating is that in accepting the $14 million bid, Ms. Jarrett's CTA rejected a rival offer of $20 million. And it is more than fair to ask what hand she had in drafting the request for proposals for the property, including the following statement: "CTA reserves the right to make an award based on the greatest benefit to the CTA and the community and not necessarily on the highest amount proposed to be paid to the CTA." It is also fair to ask what Ms. Jarrett, the Mayor, and Mr. Marchese considered "the greatest benefit to the CTA and the [cash-strapped] community," if not $6 million in cold, hard cash.

And that brings us to what is, perhaps, the set piece of the Valerie Jarrett's Chicago bucket shop: the Habitat Company. As mentioned, Ms. Jarrett served as the Executive Vice President of that company while also serving at the Mayor's pleasure as the chair of the Chicago Transit Authority, shortly after leaving her powerful positions as the Mayor's Chief of Staff and the director of the Mayor's Department of Planning and Development.

The Habitat Company, it should be noted, is a property management company that had been appointed by Chicago's courts to oversee the construction of all public housing in the city. In short, hundreds of millions of dollars were funneled by the city into Ms. Jarrett's company.

And how did Valerie Jarrett handle that responsibility � and the attendant largess? Well, here's one fairly typical example: In the year 2000, Ms. Jarrett's Habitat Company helped implement the lofty-sounding "Plan for Transformation" that would replace existing public around Chicago's United Center. As of July of last year, according to the Chicago Tribune, "the city had lost more than 13,000 housing units for the poor at a time when low-income families face one of the worse housing crises in recent history. After years of neglect and abandonment, many residents doubt that Jarrett and CHA officials have their interests at heart."

Meanwhile, "Habitat has earned $6.8 million in fees and $10.8 million in administrative expenses since the plan started in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development �." And all the while, Valerie Jarrett lived very comfortably, thank you, at her lakefront apartment, pulling in a six-figure base salary � in addition to her hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for serving on boards.

Carl Sandberg once described Chicago as "The Hog Butcher of the World � Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness." Having conquered that piker's paradise, Valerie Jarrett has now moved on to the Pork Capital of the Universe, fiercely "lapping for action," cunning as ever in a wilderness long-since shorn of even the barest vestige of basic integrity, or the sheerest dictates of common decency.

And Barack Obama trusts her completely.

SOURCE



Australia: The State of Queensland becoming as authoritarian as Britain

Both have for some years been run by Leftist governments

With the government recently waging war on everyone from smokers to skateboarders, bikies to binge drinkers, civil libertarians warn Queensland is on the verge of becoming a nanny state.

Queensland Council for Civil Liberties president Michael Cope said the passing of state laws yesterday banning smoking in cars with children recalled the classic Mark Twain cry, "No one's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session." "You can see the justification for [non-smoking laws], but where does it stop?" Mr Cope said.

Further legislation, tabled by Attorney-General Cameron Dick yesterday, designed to dismantle outlaw gangs by tearing down clubhouses and banning members from associating with each other drew more ire from the long-term campaigner for civil rights.

"These days politicians have this great urge to be seen to be fixing everybody's social ills ... inevitably the minute you do that you reduce people's liberty," he said. "Every time a problem arises a politician passes a law to fix it - that is why we are creeping towards a nanny state. [The government] is slowly chipping away at people's freedoms; there is no doubt about that."

He said the State Government was ignoring the follies of outright bans. "The problem with any law is that it may cover problems B, C and D but it does more harm to people's liberty than what's intended."

Civil libertarians have widely opposed greater paternalism of "health and safety", but a spokesman for Premier Anna Bligh today maintained the government had introduced new legislation to "protect people".

In August this year the State Government banned skateboarders and rollerbladers riding after dark. The government cited safety reasons for the crackdown on riders of "wheeled recreation devices", claiming they became almost invisible to motorists after sundown.

Less than one month later Premier Anna Bligh announced the use of regular glass would be banned in bars deemed high risk by the end of the year. The government cited safety and health reasons, saying the glass ban would strip people of the "weapon of choice" in pubs and clubs. Glass is expected to be banned in at least 74 late-night watering holes throughout Queensland as the Government fine-tunes its list of high risk venues. Forty-one venues have until the new year to justify why they should not be made to serve drinks in plastic cups.

The Government's legislative reach may be further extended as a parliamentary inquiry seeks to curb the increasing incidents of alcohol-related violence in entertainment precincts in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. The Queensland Police Union this week proposed shutting down Brisbane's entertainment precincts at 2am and suburban hotels at 12pm. Fortitude Valley venues were quick to slam the ambitious proposal arguing the call signalled a return to the Joh Bjelke-Petersen era. "We're dangerously heading down the path of becoming a nanny state," chairman of the Valley Liquor Accord Danny Blair said.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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Examining political correctness around the world and its stifling of liberty and sense. Chronicling a slowly developing dictatorship


BIO for John Ray


Gender is a property of words, not of people. Using it otherwise is just another politically correct distortion -- though not as pernicious as calling racial discrimination "Affirmative action"


Postmodernism is fundamentally frivolous. Postmodernists routinely condemn racism and intolerance as wrong but then say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. They are clearly not being serious. Either they do not really believe in moral nihilism or they believe that racism cannot be condemned!


Postmodernism is in fact just a tantrum. Post-Soviet reality in particular suits Leftists so badly that their response is to deny that reality exists. That they can be so dishonest, however, simply shows how psychopathic they are.


Juergen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."


The Supreme Court of the United States is now and always has been a judicial abomination. Its guiding principles have always been political rather than judicial. It is not as political as Stalin's courts but its respect for the constitution is little better. Some recent abuses: The "equal treatment" provision of the 14th amendment was specifically written to outlaw racial discrimination yet the court has allowed various forms of "affirmative action" for decades -- when all such policies should have been completely stuck down immediately. The 2nd. amendment says that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed yet gun control laws infringe it in every State in the union. The 1st amedment provides that speech shall be freely exercised yet the court has upheld various restrictions on the financing and display of political advertising. The court has found a right to abortion in the constitution when the word abortion is not even mentioned there. The court invents rights that do not exist and denies rights that do.


Consider two "jokes" below:

Q. "Why are Leftists always standing up for blacks and homosexuals?

A. Because for all three groups their only God is their penis"

Pretty offensive, right? So consider this one:

Q. "Why are evangelical Christians like the Taliban?

A. They are both religious fundamentalists"

The latter "joke" is not a joke at all, of course. It is a comparison routinely touted by Leftists. Both "jokes" are greatly offensive and unfair to the parties targeted but one gets a pass without question while the other would bring great wrath on the head of anyone uttering it. Why? Because political correctness is in fact just Leftist bigotry. Bigotry is unfairly favouring one or more groups of people over others -- usually justified as "truth".


One of my more amusing memories is from the time when the Soviet Union still existed and I was teaching sociology in a major Australian university. On one memorable occasion, we had a representative of the Soviet Womens' organization visit us -- a stout and heavily made-up lady of mature years. When she was ushered into our conference room, she was greeted with something like adulation by the local Marxists. In question time after her talk, however, someone asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution". The consternation and confusion that produced among my Leftist colleagues was hilarious to behold and still lives vividly in my memory. The more things change, the more they remain the same, however. In Sept. 2007 President Ahmadinejad told Columbia university that there are no homosexuals in Iran.


It is widely agreed (with mainly Lesbians dissenting) that boys need their fathers. What needs much wider recognition is that girls need their fathers too. The relationship between a "Daddy's girl" and her father is perhaps the most beautiful human relationship there is. It can help give the girl concerned inner strength for the rest of her life.


The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence "correct". Who said this? "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything". It was V.I. Lenin


On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


Germaine Greer is a stupid old Harpy who is notable only for the depth and extent of her hatreds