JK Rowling and the Transformation of the West
Real life Dementors are swooping around JK Rowling and they’re coming for you too.
Murray Campbell
The Gospel Coalition
JK Rowling has found herself caught up in cancel culture. Both JK Rowling and Harry Potter are currently trending on Twitter. There are hundreds of thousands of comments and memes expressing outrage. Indeed many of these tweets are themselves outrageous and even abusive.
What did JK Rowling say to invoke such anger? She dared challenge the culture’s narrative by tweeting that biological sex is real:
Let’s be clear, JK Rowling hasn’t said anything radical. She has simply noted an established fact—a scientific, biological, and sociological fact. Indeed, sex is one of the few self evident truths that has been universally accepted in all human history and across cultures—that is, until the last few years. In today’s western world, to affirm that women are women and that men are men is to speak heresy. Suggesting sex is real will get you sent to Azkaban.
Our societies have been occupied by other important issues of late, especially the COVID-19 pandemic and now racism. The response to JK Rowling is a reminder however that not even pandemics and race-riots can dampen the ardour of those crusading for this latest chapter in the sexual revolution. Nothing is to excuse, distract, or dilute, full and unquestioned adherence to the sexual milieu. Half a million comments all agree.
Harmful Consequences
Yet the consequences of this campaign are already becoming apparent.
Tuesday, 18 August 2020
The Protection of Special Petals and Its Critics
Mr Bean Defends Free Speech
Rowan Atkinson Denounces Scottish "Hate" Crime Bill
Kurt Zindulka
Breitbart London
Famed British comedian and star of Blackadder and Mr Bean, Rowan Atkinson has signed an open letter decrying Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Bill, warning the law will infringe upon freedom of speech.
An open letter from Humanist Society Scotland — singed by artists, authors, journalists, and free speech campaigners, including Rowan Atkinson — warned that the left-separatist Scottish National Party (SNP) bill could stifle free expression.
The letter warned that the legislation as written “creates stirring up offences without any intent being examined; merely that the words, action, or artwork might do so. This offence could even be applied to being in possession of materials produced by someone else, where sharing the material could stir up hatred.”
“The unintended consequences of this well-meaning bill risk stifling freedom of expression, and the ability to articulate or criticise religious and other beliefs,” the open letter warned. The letter was signed by a cross-party “diverse group of individuals and organisations”, who warned that the hate crime legislation could “frustrate rational debate and discussion”, which has a “fundamental role in society including in artistic endeavour.”
“The right to critique ideas, philosophical, religious and other [sic] must be protected to allow an artistic and democratic society to flourish,” the letter concluded.
Though notionally on the left of the political spectrum, Mr Atkinson has long been a proponent of freedom of speech, and even defended Boris Johnson for making a joke suggesting burka-wearing Muslim women resemble “letterboxes”.
Rowan Atkinson Denounces Scottish "Hate" Crime Bill
Kurt Zindulka
Breitbart London
Famed British comedian and star of Blackadder and Mr Bean, Rowan Atkinson has signed an open letter decrying Scotland’s new Hate Crime and Public Order Bill, warning the law will infringe upon freedom of speech.
An open letter from Humanist Society Scotland — singed by artists, authors, journalists, and free speech campaigners, including Rowan Atkinson — warned that the left-separatist Scottish National Party (SNP) bill could stifle free expression.
The letter warned that the legislation as written “creates stirring up offences without any intent being examined; merely that the words, action, or artwork might do so. This offence could even be applied to being in possession of materials produced by someone else, where sharing the material could stir up hatred.”
“The unintended consequences of this well-meaning bill risk stifling freedom of expression, and the ability to articulate or criticise religious and other beliefs,” the open letter warned. The letter was signed by a cross-party “diverse group of individuals and organisations”, who warned that the hate crime legislation could “frustrate rational debate and discussion”, which has a “fundamental role in society including in artistic endeavour.”
“The right to critique ideas, philosophical, religious and other [sic] must be protected to allow an artistic and democratic society to flourish,” the letter concluded.
Though notionally on the left of the political spectrum, Mr Atkinson has long been a proponent of freedom of speech, and even defended Boris Johnson for making a joke suggesting burka-wearing Muslim women resemble “letterboxes”.
Monday, 17 August 2020
True Grit
Her Father's Blood
Aung San Suu Kyi and the Struggle For Burmese Freedom
We have just finished reading Peter Popham's biography of Aung San Suu Kyi. It is a well-done biography of Myanmar's famous leader. [Peter Popham, The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi (Croydon: Rider-Ebury Publishing, 2012.]
The whole book is valuable for a whole lot of different reasons. Suu Kyi, of course, is now a political leader in what is an increasingly progressive, emerging state, Myanmar (formerly Burma). We have had the privilege of visiting Myanmar twice in recent years. One does not have to travel far, nor meet many people, before one hears about Suu Kyi's work and exploits in helping Myanmar change from being a military dictatorship to a democratic republic.
What sort of a person is Aung San Suu Kyi, then? A remarkable one, is the straightforward reality. Try this on for size . . . .
Aung San Suu Kyi and the Struggle For Burmese Freedom
We have just finished reading Peter Popham's biography of Aung San Suu Kyi. It is a well-done biography of Myanmar's famous leader. [Peter Popham, The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi (Croydon: Rider-Ebury Publishing, 2012.]
The whole book is valuable for a whole lot of different reasons. Suu Kyi, of course, is now a political leader in what is an increasingly progressive, emerging state, Myanmar (formerly Burma). We have had the privilege of visiting Myanmar twice in recent years. One does not have to travel far, nor meet many people, before one hears about Suu Kyi's work and exploits in helping Myanmar change from being a military dictatorship to a democratic republic.
What sort of a person is Aung San Suu Kyi, then? A remarkable one, is the straightforward reality. Try this on for size . . . .
Saturday, 15 August 2020
The Desiccated Remains of Obama and His Once-Vaunted Administration
The Remains of an Administration
Obama’s policies are in tatters, and the worst scandals of his White House are coming to light
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
Each day that the Obama administration fades into the past, its wrongdoings manage to wander back into the present.
After years of suppression, all sorts of strange events keep popping up to remind us of what little is left of the Obama years — the Susan Rice memo, Christopher Steele deleting his computer records, FBI-doctored and lost 302s, text messages wiped clean, the bizarre Obama January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting, the ambush interview of Michael Flynn, the unmasking and leaking of redacted names swept up in reverse-targeting surveillance operations, the administration fraud perpetrated on the FISA courts.
The list is so overwhelming and bizarre that it ensures that anything at any time can now appear. And the result keeps reminding Americans of how corrupt were the years between 2009 and 2017 and how untruthful was the coverage of such institutionalized wrongdoing.
Feet of Clay
Emeritus Barack Obama now and then ventures out to go through the motions of an enfeebled defense for what is becoming an increasingly discredited administration. But his heart is not in it. His mind is elsewhere. His cause is no longer social activism and community organizing, if it ever was, but lucre and the perceived well-earned good life. The arc of his moralizing universe is long, but for the anointed like him, it apparently bends toward the just deserts of riches and material bounty.
First lady forever and bestselling memoirist Michelle Obama sometimes takes a hiatus from making millions to offer a half-hearted progressive warning about the sudden heartlessness of the country — reminiscent of her transitory 2008 warnings about a downright mean country and one of which she had previously not been especially proud.
The remains of the Obama team (Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Comey, Samantha Power) are not offering much of a defense for the Obama years — they are now too busy scrambling to hide their own legal culpability and exposure. The bending arc of the 2009 dream team finally ends in the platitudes of “I can’t remember” and “Not to my knowledge” that will eventually find their way from CNN and MSNBC into the court room.
Obama entered office to gushes that he was a living god and the smartest man ever to enter the White House. He quickly won the Nobel Peace Prize and was courted internationally through a series of overseas tours. His brand was that he was not so much a citizen of an unexceptional America as a citizen of the now globalized world.
Obama entered with a supermajority in the Senate and a large majority in the House, with the likelihood of remaking the Supreme Court. When he left eight years later, he had lost both houses of Congress, lost the Supreme Court for a generation, and lost more than 1,000 state and local offices.
Obama’s policies are in tatters, and the worst scandals of his White House are coming to light
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
Each day that the Obama administration fades into the past, its wrongdoings manage to wander back into the present.
After years of suppression, all sorts of strange events keep popping up to remind us of what little is left of the Obama years — the Susan Rice memo, Christopher Steele deleting his computer records, FBI-doctored and lost 302s, text messages wiped clean, the bizarre Obama January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting, the ambush interview of Michael Flynn, the unmasking and leaking of redacted names swept up in reverse-targeting surveillance operations, the administration fraud perpetrated on the FISA courts.
The list is so overwhelming and bizarre that it ensures that anything at any time can now appear. And the result keeps reminding Americans of how corrupt were the years between 2009 and 2017 and how untruthful was the coverage of such institutionalized wrongdoing.
Feet of Clay
Emeritus Barack Obama now and then ventures out to go through the motions of an enfeebled defense for what is becoming an increasingly discredited administration. But his heart is not in it. His mind is elsewhere. His cause is no longer social activism and community organizing, if it ever was, but lucre and the perceived well-earned good life. The arc of his moralizing universe is long, but for the anointed like him, it apparently bends toward the just deserts of riches and material bounty.
First lady forever and bestselling memoirist Michelle Obama sometimes takes a hiatus from making millions to offer a half-hearted progressive warning about the sudden heartlessness of the country — reminiscent of her transitory 2008 warnings about a downright mean country and one of which she had previously not been especially proud.
The remains of the Obama team (Susan Rice, Ben Rhodes, Hillary Clinton, John Brennan, James Comey, Samantha Power) are not offering much of a defense for the Obama years — they are now too busy scrambling to hide their own legal culpability and exposure. The bending arc of the 2009 dream team finally ends in the platitudes of “I can’t remember” and “Not to my knowledge” that will eventually find their way from CNN and MSNBC into the court room.
Obama entered office to gushes that he was a living god and the smartest man ever to enter the White House. He quickly won the Nobel Peace Prize and was courted internationally through a series of overseas tours. His brand was that he was not so much a citizen of an unexceptional America as a citizen of the now globalized world.
Obama entered with a supermajority in the Senate and a large majority in the House, with the likelihood of remaking the Supreme Court. When he left eight years later, he had lost both houses of Congress, lost the Supreme Court for a generation, and lost more than 1,000 state and local offices.
Democrats and Abortion
The Liberal Voters Biden Doesn’t Want
By Alexandra Desanctis
National Review Online
In the Wall Street Journal, two leaders of political-advocacy group Democrats for Life have an article called “The Democrats Biden Doesn’t Want,” pointing out that, although they’re liberal, their pro-life views have caused the Democratic Party to reject them.
“According to Gallup, roughly 1 in 3 Democrats consider themselves pro-life, but Mr. Biden has made no outreach to us,” write executive director Kristen Day and board member Xavier Bisits. “In fact, top Democrats have gone out of their way to make it clear that we are no longer welcome in the party.”
This is far from the first time that such a complaint has arisen from pro-life Democrats this year alone. At a townhall in late January, Day confronted former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg, asking, “Do you want the support of . . . pro-life Democratic voters? There are about 21 million of us. And if so, would you support more-moderate platform language in the Democratic Party to ensure that the party of diversity, of inclusion, really does include everybody?”
Buttigieg offered a lengthy, equivocating reply, but the gist of his response was, essentially, “Take a hike.”
By Alexandra Desanctis
National Review Online
In the Wall Street Journal, two leaders of political-advocacy group Democrats for Life have an article called “The Democrats Biden Doesn’t Want,” pointing out that, although they’re liberal, their pro-life views have caused the Democratic Party to reject them.
“According to Gallup, roughly 1 in 3 Democrats consider themselves pro-life, but Mr. Biden has made no outreach to us,” write executive director Kristen Day and board member Xavier Bisits. “In fact, top Democrats have gone out of their way to make it clear that we are no longer welcome in the party.”
This is far from the first time that such a complaint has arisen from pro-life Democrats this year alone. At a townhall in late January, Day confronted former South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg, asking, “Do you want the support of . . . pro-life Democratic voters? There are about 21 million of us. And if so, would you support more-moderate platform language in the Democratic Party to ensure that the party of diversity, of inclusion, really does include everybody?”
Buttigieg offered a lengthy, equivocating reply, but the gist of his response was, essentially, “Take a hike.”
Friday, 14 August 2020
Shoe's On Another Foot Entirely, It Would Seem
The Left’s New Civil-Rights Heroes
Molotov-Cocktail-Throwing Lawyers
Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman aren’t outliers; they’re living examples of how hatred of Trump has morphed into a willingness to justify the unjustifiable
By Jonathan Tobin
National Review Online
In the two months since the death of George Floyd, the nation has been beset by often-violent protests and riots. Yet the mainstream media and Democratic politicians have tended to describe the demonstrations as “mostly peaceful,” and to rationalize and minimize them. For many on the left, the real story has not been the violence directed at law-enforcement personnel, the assaults on federal courthouses and police precincts, the toppling of statues, or the destruction of private property; it’s been the use of federal personnel in response.
It is only in that context that we can hope to understand the sympathy being generated for Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman.
Mattis and Rahman are the lawyers who were caught on camera throwing a Molotov cocktail into an empty, already-vandalized NYPD patrol car in Brooklyn. After setting the vehicle on fire in full of view of the cops, they drove away in Mattis’s van and were quickly chased down and arrested. In their possession, officers found yet another Bud Light bottle turned into a homemade incendiary device and the makings of more in the back seat. Prosecutors later said Rahman had offered Molotov cocktails to other protesters, as well.
There could hardly be any doubt about their guilt.
Molotov-Cocktail-Throwing Lawyers
Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman aren’t outliers; they’re living examples of how hatred of Trump has morphed into a willingness to justify the unjustifiable
By Jonathan Tobin
National Review Online
In the two months since the death of George Floyd, the nation has been beset by often-violent protests and riots. Yet the mainstream media and Democratic politicians have tended to describe the demonstrations as “mostly peaceful,” and to rationalize and minimize them. For many on the left, the real story has not been the violence directed at law-enforcement personnel, the assaults on federal courthouses and police precincts, the toppling of statues, or the destruction of private property; it’s been the use of federal personnel in response.
It is only in that context that we can hope to understand the sympathy being generated for Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman.
Mattis and Rahman are the lawyers who were caught on camera throwing a Molotov cocktail into an empty, already-vandalized NYPD patrol car in Brooklyn. After setting the vehicle on fire in full of view of the cops, they drove away in Mattis’s van and were quickly chased down and arrested. In their possession, officers found yet another Bud Light bottle turned into a homemade incendiary device and the makings of more in the back seat. Prosecutors later said Rahman had offered Molotov cocktails to other protesters, as well.
There could hardly be any doubt about their guilt.
Self-Righteous Cant And It's Dangers
What a Wunnerful World
A serious problem has come to light in the Tasman District Council. We salute Tasman District councillor Dana Wensley who is in the midst of a thorough going expose. What is the problem? It is the alleged bias of some books contained in the library.
Some books about the Treaty of Waitangi on the shelves of Tasman District libraries are "very right-wing extremist", says Tasman District councillor Dana Wensley. Some material “that I know we've got in our library ... is by a publisher that is not academically robust," Wensley last week told a meeting of the council operations committee.Material in the Tasman District Council library must be approved by approved people. If they are not thus approved by approved people it is likely that some books will contain unapproved bias--and clearly we should have ZERO TOLERANCE for that.
“There's a number of these books in our library that are actually very worrying to me because they're free of charge,” she said. “The academic presses are more expensive for those books to buy but I think there's something to us having a mind to making sure that material in our library that has gone through that academic rigour of peer review is readily accessible.”
Wensley said she was concerned people were “picking up these books on our shelves that are very right-wing extremist ... and I think we should have zero tolerance for that”.
Thursday, 13 August 2020
Cheated
Deep Inside, Rioters Are Angry
How Come They Never Learned Anything But Lies?
Our institutions have stolen critical knowledge from young people and replaced it with the poison of identity politics and political correctness.
Stella Morabito
The Federalist
I suspect many members of today’s street mobs have a secret in common: At some deep level, they know they are awash in ignorance of core knowledge. Claiming to be “woke” is cover for the ignorance educrats have systematically instilled in them.
For decades, leftist academics have attacked the study of history and real humanities, and now an Illinois legislator has openly called to abolish the study of history. Recent episodes of Bible burning in the streets of Portland indicate the trashing of America’s cultural memory is well past the boiling point.
Our educational institutions have committed intellectual grand theft. They have withheld critical knowledge from students and replaced it with the poison of identity politics and political correctness. This makes it difficult for students to express independent thoughts, or even to think them. Where does that leave the victims who have been forcibly injected with this ignorance?
They can’t really articulate what has been stolen from them, but they seem to sense the loss deeply. How else can one explain their primal screams and street theater, in which they both accuse and confess “systemic racism?” After educrats and media hounded them for years with the talking point that Western culture is just tales of “dead white males,” how can they even be openly curious about it without the threat of being smeared?
It’s no wonder they can’t, since the rabbit hole into which they’ve been thrown is very deep. Imagine being trained to “think” only with your emotions.
How Come They Never Learned Anything But Lies?
Our institutions have stolen critical knowledge from young people and replaced it with the poison of identity politics and political correctness.
Stella Morabito
The Federalist
I suspect many members of today’s street mobs have a secret in common: At some deep level, they know they are awash in ignorance of core knowledge. Claiming to be “woke” is cover for the ignorance educrats have systematically instilled in them.
For decades, leftist academics have attacked the study of history and real humanities, and now an Illinois legislator has openly called to abolish the study of history. Recent episodes of Bible burning in the streets of Portland indicate the trashing of America’s cultural memory is well past the boiling point.
Our educational institutions have committed intellectual grand theft. They have withheld critical knowledge from students and replaced it with the poison of identity politics and political correctness. This makes it difficult for students to express independent thoughts, or even to think them. Where does that leave the victims who have been forcibly injected with this ignorance?
They can’t really articulate what has been stolen from them, but they seem to sense the loss deeply. How else can one explain their primal screams and street theater, in which they both accuse and confess “systemic racism?” After educrats and media hounded them for years with the talking point that Western culture is just tales of “dead white males,” how can they even be openly curious about it without the threat of being smeared?
It’s no wonder they can’t, since the rabbit hole into which they’ve been thrown is very deep. Imagine being trained to “think” only with your emotions.
Too Big To Indict
The Arts of Government Criminality
Destroying or altering evidence, lying under oath, leaking classified info … but no pre-dawn televised raid for any of the wrongdoers
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
In the entire 2016–19 efforts to derail the Trump campaign, transition, and presidency, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Steele, and the FBI, Department of Justice, CIA, and other government bureaus have consistently sought to distort reality. Some of our best and brightest have destroyed evidence, altered documents, lied, leaked, and pled amnesia when questioned about their reprehensible conduct. At each stage, they were aided and abetted by a compliant media.
The dissimulation over the past four years has fallen into four rough categories. Here are a few examples of each.
Deletion of Evidence
Christopher Steele, who bragged for years of his meticulous research and whose work has been quoted chapter and verse as proof of Trump wrongdoing, recently testified under oath to a British court that he now has no records of his supposed conversations with “sub source” Russian informants. His lawyers previously had insisted that his sources were “meticulously documented and recorded.” Now Steele sheepishly admits that such an assertion was a lie, given that he can produce no evidence at all for his meticulous allegations. He admits that his emails and documents were wiped clean from his devices by January 2017.
FBI operatives working with the Mueller investigation team admitted that thousands of undisclosed text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page simply disappeared. In addition, the phones of Strzok and Page apparently were wiped clean after Strzok was dismissed from the Mueller team. Most of these mysterious losses, according to the Mueller investigation, were supposedly a result of a software glitch or other computer malfunctions.
Hillary Clinton, remember, had her lawyers delete some 33,000 emails that were subpoenaed by the FBI; she claimed that they were private and not work-related. The FBI, however, subsequently recovered a few thousand of them from her private server. Among that trove, it found, to the contrary, several emails that were in fact work-related and could have easily been compromised.
Why destroy evidence if one has nothing to hide? And why would all these deleters and erasers at one time or another be found working for the most esteemed agencies of the U.S. and U.K.?
Destroying or altering evidence, lying under oath, leaking classified info … but no pre-dawn televised raid for any of the wrongdoers
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
In the entire 2016–19 efforts to derail the Trump campaign, transition, and presidency, Hillary Clinton, Christopher Steele, and the FBI, Department of Justice, CIA, and other government bureaus have consistently sought to distort reality. Some of our best and brightest have destroyed evidence, altered documents, lied, leaked, and pled amnesia when questioned about their reprehensible conduct. At each stage, they were aided and abetted by a compliant media.
The dissimulation over the past four years has fallen into four rough categories. Here are a few examples of each.
Deletion of Evidence
Christopher Steele, who bragged for years of his meticulous research and whose work has been quoted chapter and verse as proof of Trump wrongdoing, recently testified under oath to a British court that he now has no records of his supposed conversations with “sub source” Russian informants. His lawyers previously had insisted that his sources were “meticulously documented and recorded.” Now Steele sheepishly admits that such an assertion was a lie, given that he can produce no evidence at all for his meticulous allegations. He admits that his emails and documents were wiped clean from his devices by January 2017.
FBI operatives working with the Mueller investigation team admitted that thousands of undisclosed text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page simply disappeared. In addition, the phones of Strzok and Page apparently were wiped clean after Strzok was dismissed from the Mueller team. Most of these mysterious losses, according to the Mueller investigation, were supposedly a result of a software glitch or other computer malfunctions.
Hillary Clinton, remember, had her lawyers delete some 33,000 emails that were subpoenaed by the FBI; she claimed that they were private and not work-related. The FBI, however, subsequently recovered a few thousand of them from her private server. Among that trove, it found, to the contrary, several emails that were in fact work-related and could have easily been compromised.
Why destroy evidence if one has nothing to hide? And why would all these deleters and erasers at one time or another be found working for the most esteemed agencies of the U.S. and U.K.?
Wednesday, 12 August 2020
More Stars for the Dumb and Dumber Show
Math Is ‘White Supremacist Patriarchy’
So Claims Brooklyn College Education Prof.
Tom Ciccotta
Breitbart News
Brooklyn College Professor of Math Education Laurie Rubel argued this week on Twitter that the mathematical equation 2+2=4 “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.” Rubel’s tweet was retweeted and promoted by several academics at universities and colleges around the nation.
According to a report by Campus Reform, Brooklyn College Professor Laurie Rubel, who teaches math education, tried to make the case this week that basic math is “white supremacist.” The tweets are part of a larger trend in recent scholarship by American academics, many of which have argued that “objective truth” is a social construct.
“The idea that math (or data) is culturally neutral or in any way objective is a MYTH. I’m ready to move on with that understanding. Who’s coming with me?” Rubel wrote in a tweet. “Along with the ‘of course math is neutral because 2+2=4’ trope and the related (and creepy) ‘math is pure’ and ‘protect math.’ Reeks of white supremacist patriarchy,” Rubel added. “I’d rather think on nurturing people & protecting the planet (with math in service of them goals).”
Several academics from institutions around the nation chimed in. Harvard Ph.D. candidate Kareem Carr suggested that math should be reevaluated because it was primarily developed by white men.
“People say it’s subjectivism to ask if math is Western. I don’t get that. It’s an objective fact that some groups were more involved in the creation of modern math than others,” Carr said. “They may have been *trying* to make it objective but it’s not stupid to ask if they actually succeeded!”
A few academics have pushed back. James Lindsay, one of the academics behind a series of hoax papers that were published in “social justice” journals, reminded Rubel and her peers that mathematical truths are objective.
“It’s certainly the case, and the Woke need to be held firmly to the point, that feats of engineering like space travel and rocketry utterly depend upon accepting stable meanings of mathematical statements like 2+2=4 as objectively true, not mere accidents of culture,” Lindsay tweeted.
So Claims Brooklyn College Education Prof.
Tom Ciccotta
Breitbart News
Brooklyn College Professor of Math Education Laurie Rubel argued this week on Twitter that the mathematical equation 2+2=4 “reeks of white supremacist patriarchy.” Rubel’s tweet was retweeted and promoted by several academics at universities and colleges around the nation.
According to a report by Campus Reform, Brooklyn College Professor Laurie Rubel, who teaches math education, tried to make the case this week that basic math is “white supremacist.” The tweets are part of a larger trend in recent scholarship by American academics, many of which have argued that “objective truth” is a social construct.
“The idea that math (or data) is culturally neutral or in any way objective is a MYTH. I’m ready to move on with that understanding. Who’s coming with me?” Rubel wrote in a tweet. “Along with the ‘of course math is neutral because 2+2=4’ trope and the related (and creepy) ‘math is pure’ and ‘protect math.’ Reeks of white supremacist patriarchy,” Rubel added. “I’d rather think on nurturing people & protecting the planet (with math in service of them goals).”
Several academics from institutions around the nation chimed in. Harvard Ph.D. candidate Kareem Carr suggested that math should be reevaluated because it was primarily developed by white men.
“People say it’s subjectivism to ask if math is Western. I don’t get that. It’s an objective fact that some groups were more involved in the creation of modern math than others,” Carr said. “They may have been *trying* to make it objective but it’s not stupid to ask if they actually succeeded!”
A few academics have pushed back. James Lindsay, one of the academics behind a series of hoax papers that were published in “social justice” journals, reminded Rubel and her peers that mathematical truths are objective.
“It’s certainly the case, and the Woke need to be held firmly to the point, that feats of engineering like space travel and rocketry utterly depend upon accepting stable meanings of mathematical statements like 2+2=4 as objectively true, not mere accidents of culture,” Lindsay tweeted.
Germany Complains
British Insistence on Full Independence in Brexit Deal Not ‘Realistic’
Victoria Friedman
Breitbart London
Germany’s Europe minister has complained that Britain is not being “realistic or pragmatic” in Brexit negotiations, with British negotiators insisting on full sovereignty at the end of the transition period.
British negotiators have been consistent in demanding full sovereignty over the country’s laws, trade, and borders, while the EU insists the British stick to aspects of so-called regulatory alignment. There is also disagreement on the role of the European Court of Justice, and the EU continues to demand long-term arrangements for European fishermen to take fish from Britain’s lucrative territorial waters, as well.
Michael Roth said on Thursday that he was “disappointed” that the United Kingdom was standing firm by its red lines, claiming that “London is shifting further and further away from the political declaration agreed between us as a reliable basis for negotiations. I would love those responsible in London to be more realistic and pragmatic. The Brits are known for the latter,” the German minister told AFP, according to The Sun.
Reports from last month claimed that the United Kingdom was close to abandoning the prospect of achieving a deal with the bloc and was preparing for World Trade Organization (WTO) arrangements. Days later, the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier admitted that a trade deal was “unlikely” given the current deadlock.
In July, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who took over the rotating seat of the European Council presidency, said her country and the bloc “must be prepared … for the possibility that a deal doesn’t materialise”.
Victoria Friedman
Breitbart London
Germany’s Europe minister has complained that Britain is not being “realistic or pragmatic” in Brexit negotiations, with British negotiators insisting on full sovereignty at the end of the transition period.
British negotiators have been consistent in demanding full sovereignty over the country’s laws, trade, and borders, while the EU insists the British stick to aspects of so-called regulatory alignment. There is also disagreement on the role of the European Court of Justice, and the EU continues to demand long-term arrangements for European fishermen to take fish from Britain’s lucrative territorial waters, as well.
Michael Roth said on Thursday that he was “disappointed” that the United Kingdom was standing firm by its red lines, claiming that “London is shifting further and further away from the political declaration agreed between us as a reliable basis for negotiations. I would love those responsible in London to be more realistic and pragmatic. The Brits are known for the latter,” the German minister told AFP, according to The Sun.
Reports from last month claimed that the United Kingdom was close to abandoning the prospect of achieving a deal with the bloc and was preparing for World Trade Organization (WTO) arrangements. Days later, the EU’s chief negotiator Michel Barnier admitted that a trade deal was “unlikely” given the current deadlock.
In July, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who took over the rotating seat of the European Council presidency, said her country and the bloc “must be prepared … for the possibility that a deal doesn’t materialise”.
Tuesday, 11 August 2020
Swamp-Speak
Alienating Democratic Voters
Joe Biden’s Capitulation To The Crazy Left Is Alienating Democrats Like Me
Unlike Biden, Trump is delivering a clear and appealing message: Send kids back to school, support police officers, and get people back to work now.
Scott J. Street
The Federalist
Last year, Joe Biden’s path to the presidency seemed clear: Treat President Donald Trump as a historical anomaly whom Biden would replace, then restore American values, overcome petty politics, and get government working again. This message was designed to appeal both to Democrats, like me, and to Republican and Independent voters tired of the toxic political environment we’ve suffered since 2016.
That strategy initially worked well. Despite constant attacks from opponents and the press, by March 17, Biden had effectively wrapped up the nomination, and polls showed him trouncing Trump in key states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.
In recent weeks, however, Biden’s messaging has changed. Now it is pushing millions of voters toward Trump just as regular Americans start paying closer attention to the race. Most Beltway Democrats don’t recognize this, of course. They see polls showing Biden with a large lead over Trump and believe the former vice president is headed for a blowout win.
They might be right, but the winds seem to be changing. Polls that failed to predict the outcome of the 2016 presidential contest seem just as likely to fail now, with 62 percent of Americans afraid to say what they believe because of our toxic political environment. The more Biden caves to the left, the harder it becomes for him to win middle-class voters, especially those in the upper Midwest who typically decide presidential elections.
Joe Biden’s Capitulation To The Crazy Left Is Alienating Democrats Like Me
Unlike Biden, Trump is delivering a clear and appealing message: Send kids back to school, support police officers, and get people back to work now.
Scott J. Street
The Federalist
Last year, Joe Biden’s path to the presidency seemed clear: Treat President Donald Trump as a historical anomaly whom Biden would replace, then restore American values, overcome petty politics, and get government working again. This message was designed to appeal both to Democrats, like me, and to Republican and Independent voters tired of the toxic political environment we’ve suffered since 2016.
That strategy initially worked well. Despite constant attacks from opponents and the press, by March 17, Biden had effectively wrapped up the nomination, and polls showed him trouncing Trump in key states such as Michigan and Pennsylvania.
In recent weeks, however, Biden’s messaging has changed. Now it is pushing millions of voters toward Trump just as regular Americans start paying closer attention to the race. Most Beltway Democrats don’t recognize this, of course. They see polls showing Biden with a large lead over Trump and believe the former vice president is headed for a blowout win.
They might be right, but the winds seem to be changing. Polls that failed to predict the outcome of the 2016 presidential contest seem just as likely to fail now, with 62 percent of Americans afraid to say what they believe because of our toxic political environment. The more Biden caves to the left, the harder it becomes for him to win middle-class voters, especially those in the upper Midwest who typically decide presidential elections.
Perverse Soteriology
Soft-Touch Judiciary
Every so often in New Zealand a case comes before a judge who ends up ruling without proper regard to the safety of citizens. Instead, the focus falls rather upon "doing kindness" to repeat offenders.
Stuff provides the following account:
A judge has admitted he is taking a risk in not sending a man with a history of reckless driving and driving at police back to jail for the same offence. “It’s a huge risk, and I have to acknowledge that,” Judge Tony Greig said as he spared Dillan Mclellan in the New Plymouth District Court on Wednesday.The fundamental error with this kind of approach to sentencing is this: innocent members of the community have to bear the risk of the offender breaching his promises of "reformed behaviour". It is not the judge who bears the risks. It is his neighbours and fellow citizens. Did they have a say? Were their concerns taken into account? Not on your nellie.
Mclellan was being sentenced for a reckless driving incident involving a police pursuit. It took place after his release from jail for the same offending committed in 2018. “Somebody could have died in Mr Mclellan’s last set of offending, somebody could have died in this set of offending, and if he offends again somebody could die next time.”
However, Judge Greig said it was time to take a chance on the 22-year-old. Mclellan’s court appearance stemmed from his late night drive on January 10, two months after he had been disqualified from getting behind the wheel for a period six months.
Police spotted him on an Opunake road and attempted to pull him over. However, Mclellan ignored the order, accelerated and hit State Highway 45 (SH45). He crossed the centre line, causing two cars to stop, and switched off his headlights while reaching speeds of up 146kmh. He then slammed on his breaks, completed a U-turn, crossed the centre line and drove in the opposite lane towards the pursing patrol car. Police had to take immediate action to avoid a collision.
In court, prosecutor Georgia Milne accepted the recommended sentence for Mclellan’s latest offending was intensive supervision but said imprisonment remained the Crown’s position. Defence lawyer Rajan Rai said his client had been in custody since January which had provided time for Mclellan to “dry out” and adjust his attitude. He was determined to sort his life out, which included engaging with his Māori culture, Rai said.
Judge Greig said Mclellan’s latest lot of offending was almost the exact repetition of his last. In March 2018, police had used road spikes in an attempt to stop Mclellan, who had a warrant for his arrest, south of Omata on SH45. He had driven his van at an officer, who dived for cover, before an unsuccessful attempt to flee on foot ended in arrest.
At Wednesday's hearing, Judge Greig said a “compelling” cultural report advised Mclellan wanted to change and to lead a “solid life”. “And so if that’s what you want to do, that’s what I want to help you with.” He sentenced Mclellan to 18 months’ intensive supervision coupled with judicial monitoring.
“If you stuff up I’ll probably be the judge who re-sentences you. Good luck, Mr Mclellan.”
We applaud the fact that the offender promises to reform. It is appropriate that he engage in the variety of programmes available in prison to help remove potentially murderous behaviour. But not at the expense of the innocent public.
We suggest that such merciful judges be allowed to apply such accommodating sentences, if they felt so inclined. But, the priviso would need to be that the sentencing judge be made culpable for the subsequent behaviour of the repeat offender. Such a judge would need himself to be imprisoned if the offender subsequently failed to meet all his release obligations.
We wonder if that would change Judge Greig's particular outlook on the administration of justice?
Monday, 10 August 2020
Basics and Tradecraft for Christian Warfare
7 Rules for Reformers
Douglas Wilson
Blog & Mablog
A generation ago "community organizer" Saul Alinsky famously penned his Rules for Radicals, and it is my conviction that those interested in reformation should match his craft and self-awareness without trying to compete with the speed and depth of his revolutionary destructo-vision.
Some revolutionaries are patient and some are not. Gramsci argued for the "long march through the institutions" and Lenin wanted the massive meltdown all at once. Most revolutionaries have what Billingsly described as a "fire in the minds of men," but some are willing to go for the slow burn. So more than just simple patience is required to distinguish a revolutionary from a reformer.
So what are the basic rules for reformers?
1. Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. Reformation of culture is either a species of salvation or sanctification, and you can't have either one without Jesus. Secular conservatism will sometimes buy you time, but that is about all it can do - that and lure you into the complacent notion that it can do more than this. Secular conservatism is like trying to use your pocket handkerchief to slow you down after the main chute has failed. The person and work of Jesus is not optional.
2. Always remember the distinction between principles and methods. Say that the principle is to win the war against the enemy - the methods would be navy, artillery, air force, ground troops, etc. Someone enamored of method would think that the war can be won by their branch of the service alone, without any help from the others. Those who latch on to the methods being employed, without any awareness of the principles being served, are either simple-minded or partisans. The simple need leadership; they can make great foot soldiers, but don't ever make them generals. The partisans need a peculiar kind of leadership, but you have to be careful - they are the ones who are already a tad too gung ho about your leadership. And they think you are as gummed up about particular methods as they are.
3. Reformers are conservatives, which means they must prefer the concrete to the abstract.
Douglas Wilson
Blog & Mablog
A generation ago "community organizer" Saul Alinsky famously penned his Rules for Radicals, and it is my conviction that those interested in reformation should match his craft and self-awareness without trying to compete with the speed and depth of his revolutionary destructo-vision.
Some revolutionaries are patient and some are not. Gramsci argued for the "long march through the institutions" and Lenin wanted the massive meltdown all at once. Most revolutionaries have what Billingsly described as a "fire in the minds of men," but some are willing to go for the slow burn. So more than just simple patience is required to distinguish a revolutionary from a reformer.
So what are the basic rules for reformers?
1. Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. Reformation of culture is either a species of salvation or sanctification, and you can't have either one without Jesus. Secular conservatism will sometimes buy you time, but that is about all it can do - that and lure you into the complacent notion that it can do more than this. Secular conservatism is like trying to use your pocket handkerchief to slow you down after the main chute has failed. The person and work of Jesus is not optional.
2. Always remember the distinction between principles and methods. Say that the principle is to win the war against the enemy - the methods would be navy, artillery, air force, ground troops, etc. Someone enamored of method would think that the war can be won by their branch of the service alone, without any help from the others. Those who latch on to the methods being employed, without any awareness of the principles being served, are either simple-minded or partisans. The simple need leadership; they can make great foot soldiers, but don't ever make them generals. The partisans need a peculiar kind of leadership, but you have to be careful - they are the ones who are already a tad too gung ho about your leadership. And they think you are as gummed up about particular methods as they are.
3. Reformers are conservatives, which means they must prefer the concrete to the abstract.
Covid-19's Perpetual Alarm
The UK Government’s National Panic Service
Keeping Us In Condition of Perpetual Alarm
Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail
The most common symptom of Covid-19 is that you feel just fine. A huge number of those now being absurdly listed as ‘infected’ with this bogeyman disease are perfectly healthy.
If the trained hunters of the Government’s National Panic Service had not tracked them down, most of them would never have known they were supposed to be ill. Why do we take this seriously?
It is a fact, not a ‘conspiracy theory’, that the power of the state is now being used to keep us in a condition of perpetual alarm. We are ceaselessly threatened with a ‘second wave’ for which there is, in fact, no evidence.
As I began to write this, I received a ridiculous text message from my GP squawking urgently: ‘We have been made aware that the number of coronavirus cases in Oxfordshire is starting to rise.’ No doubt Oxford will be one of the next cities to undergo some sort of renewed shutdown, to keep us in our place. This fatuous propaganda is just preparing the way. The more scared we are, the more we obey.
It ended by intoning: ‘We must each do our bit to protect ourselves and others.’ The use of the phrase ‘do our bit’, of course, invokes the phoney Blitz spirit that is used against anyone who looks at the actual researched facts and says, as I do: ‘Don’t be silly.’ For daring to stay calm, I am then accused of being a collaborator with the wicked Nazi virus. The played-out, once-independent magazine Private Eye, now a boring mouthpiece of wokeness, actually did this to me last week.
The truth is that the number of deaths from Covid, even the fiddled and inflated version which the Government clings to, is falling closer and closer to zero. So, even more significantly, are hospital admissions, which would be rising steeply if these ‘infection’ figures actually represented large numbers of seriously ill people.
These things are true both of Britain and of Spain, whose supposed spike in Covid was used to destroy the holiday plans of more than a million people last week in an arbitrary decision of astonishing uselessness. At the peak of the epidemic in April, Spain at one point suffered 961 deaths in one day. According to the Coronavirus Worldometer, the daily Covid deaths in Spain for the past few weeks have rarely risen above five a day, and have often been fewer than that.
And for this we destroy the happy innocent pleasures of hundreds of thousands, and deal another smashing blow to a travel industry already devastated by Government folly? Why do we put up with it? I have no idea.
Keeping Us In Condition of Perpetual Alarm
Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail
The most common symptom of Covid-19 is that you feel just fine. A huge number of those now being absurdly listed as ‘infected’ with this bogeyman disease are perfectly healthy.
If the trained hunters of the Government’s National Panic Service had not tracked them down, most of them would never have known they were supposed to be ill. Why do we take this seriously?
It is a fact, not a ‘conspiracy theory’, that the power of the state is now being used to keep us in a condition of perpetual alarm. We are ceaselessly threatened with a ‘second wave’ for which there is, in fact, no evidence.
As I began to write this, I received a ridiculous text message from my GP squawking urgently: ‘We have been made aware that the number of coronavirus cases in Oxfordshire is starting to rise.’ No doubt Oxford will be one of the next cities to undergo some sort of renewed shutdown, to keep us in our place. This fatuous propaganda is just preparing the way. The more scared we are, the more we obey.
It ended by intoning: ‘We must each do our bit to protect ourselves and others.’ The use of the phrase ‘do our bit’, of course, invokes the phoney Blitz spirit that is used against anyone who looks at the actual researched facts and says, as I do: ‘Don’t be silly.’ For daring to stay calm, I am then accused of being a collaborator with the wicked Nazi virus. The played-out, once-independent magazine Private Eye, now a boring mouthpiece of wokeness, actually did this to me last week.
The truth is that the number of deaths from Covid, even the fiddled and inflated version which the Government clings to, is falling closer and closer to zero. So, even more significantly, are hospital admissions, which would be rising steeply if these ‘infection’ figures actually represented large numbers of seriously ill people.
These things are true both of Britain and of Spain, whose supposed spike in Covid was used to destroy the holiday plans of more than a million people last week in an arbitrary decision of astonishing uselessness. At the peak of the epidemic in April, Spain at one point suffered 961 deaths in one day. According to the Coronavirus Worldometer, the daily Covid deaths in Spain for the past few weeks have rarely risen above five a day, and have often been fewer than that.
And for this we destroy the happy innocent pleasures of hundreds of thousands, and deal another smashing blow to a travel industry already devastated by Government folly? Why do we put up with it? I have no idea.
Saturday, 8 August 2020
Ungodly Prejudice
L.A. Threatens John MacArthur And His Congregation
Face Fines, Arrest For Holding Services
Elle Reynolds
The Federalist
The city of Los Angeles has issued a cease-and-desist letter to Grace Community Church and its pastor, John MacArthur, for continuing indoor worship services, threatening a daily $1000 fine or MacArthur’s arrest, according to a press release the church’s legal counsel released on Wednesday.
“The state has absolutely no power to impose the restrictions it is demanding,” said Jenna Ellis, one of the attorneys representing the church. “This is not about health and safety, it is about targeting churches.”
On July 13, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered churches in 30 counties including Los Angeles County, where MacArthur’s church is located, to stop all indoor services indefinitely. In response, MacArthur and his church continued meeting and issued a public statement declaring their freedom to worship.
“It has never been the prerogative of civil government to order, modify, forbid, or mandate worship,” said MacArthur and the church’s elder board in their statement. “Freedom of worship is a command of God, not a privilege granted by the state.”
Face Fines, Arrest For Holding Services
Elle Reynolds
The Federalist
The city of Los Angeles has issued a cease-and-desist letter to Grace Community Church and its pastor, John MacArthur, for continuing indoor worship services, threatening a daily $1000 fine or MacArthur’s arrest, according to a press release the church’s legal counsel released on Wednesday.
“The state has absolutely no power to impose the restrictions it is demanding,” said Jenna Ellis, one of the attorneys representing the church. “This is not about health and safety, it is about targeting churches.”
On July 13, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered churches in 30 counties including Los Angeles County, where MacArthur’s church is located, to stop all indoor services indefinitely. In response, MacArthur and his church continued meeting and issued a public statement declaring their freedom to worship.
“It has never been the prerogative of civil government to order, modify, forbid, or mandate worship,” said MacArthur and the church’s elder board in their statement. “Freedom of worship is a command of God, not a privilege granted by the state.”
Fooling Nobody
Poll: More Than 8 In 10 Americans Say Media Is Biased
Political Division Caused by Media
Elle Reynolds
The Federalist
Eighty-six percent of Americans believe there is “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of political bias in the way the media covers news, according to a Knight Foundation/Gallup poll released on Tuesday. The number of Americans that see bias in the media is up almost 25 percentage points from 62 percent in 2007. Almost half of Americans — 49 percent — now say there’s a great deal of political bias in news coverage.
While Republicans are more likely to say there’s a “great deal” of bias and Democrats more often said there was a “fair amount,” large majorities of both political parties believed that some bias existed: 78 percent of Democrats and 94 percent of Republicans.
These numbers were collected from polling of more than 20,000 Americans between November and February, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd, and the resulting media coverage of both events.
Not only do most Americans recognize media bias, they also believe it’s intentional. When asked about their views of news organizations they distrust, 79 percent of poll respondents said those outlets were “trying to persuade people to adopt a certain viewpoint.” When news is inaccurate, 54 percent of Americans think it’s because reporters are “misrepresenting the facts,” while 28 percent assume they’re “making them up entirely.”
And more than 8 in 10 Americans — 84 percent — assign the media either a great deal (48 percent) or a moderate amount (36 percent) of blame for political division.
It’s not that Americans don’t have high expectations for what the media should be doing; they just don’t think the news industry is hitting the mark. Eighty-four percent said news media is critical or very important to democracy, and 92 percent believe that providing “accurate and fair news reports” is a critical or very important role.
But almost three-fourths (73 percent) of Americans believe it’s a “major problem” for so much bias to exist in news that’s supposed to be objective. That number has increased from 65 percent in 2017.
Over half — 56 percent — also admitted to recognizing bias in their own go-to publications.
Finally, younger Americans are trusting the media less than their parents and grandparents. Only 19 percent of Americans under 30 and 27 percent of Americans 30-49 had a favorable opinion of the news media, compared with 44 percent of those over 65.
Elle Reynolds is an intern at the Federalist, and a senior at Patrick Henry College studying government and journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.
Political Division Caused by Media
Elle Reynolds
The Federalist
Eighty-six percent of Americans believe there is “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of political bias in the way the media covers news, according to a Knight Foundation/Gallup poll released on Tuesday. The number of Americans that see bias in the media is up almost 25 percentage points from 62 percent in 2007. Almost half of Americans — 49 percent — now say there’s a great deal of political bias in news coverage.
While Republicans are more likely to say there’s a “great deal” of bias and Democrats more often said there was a “fair amount,” large majorities of both political parties believed that some bias existed: 78 percent of Democrats and 94 percent of Republicans.
These numbers were collected from polling of more than 20,000 Americans between November and February, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd, and the resulting media coverage of both events.
Not only do most Americans recognize media bias, they also believe it’s intentional. When asked about their views of news organizations they distrust, 79 percent of poll respondents said those outlets were “trying to persuade people to adopt a certain viewpoint.” When news is inaccurate, 54 percent of Americans think it’s because reporters are “misrepresenting the facts,” while 28 percent assume they’re “making them up entirely.”
And more than 8 in 10 Americans — 84 percent — assign the media either a great deal (48 percent) or a moderate amount (36 percent) of blame for political division.
It’s not that Americans don’t have high expectations for what the media should be doing; they just don’t think the news industry is hitting the mark. Eighty-four percent said news media is critical or very important to democracy, and 92 percent believe that providing “accurate and fair news reports” is a critical or very important role.
But almost three-fourths (73 percent) of Americans believe it’s a “major problem” for so much bias to exist in news that’s supposed to be objective. That number has increased from 65 percent in 2017.
Over half — 56 percent — also admitted to recognizing bias in their own go-to publications.
Finally, younger Americans are trusting the media less than their parents and grandparents. Only 19 percent of Americans under 30 and 27 percent of Americans 30-49 had a favorable opinion of the news media, compared with 44 percent of those over 65.
Elle Reynolds is an intern at the Federalist, and a senior at Patrick Henry College studying government and journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.
Friday, 7 August 2020
Yes . . . Why, Indeed?
Legalising Cannabis - Why Would We Be So Dumb?
Kate Hawkesby
NZ Herald
I was pleased to see some sense finally reported on the comparison between harm caused by alcohol versus that by cannabis.
A Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Youth Mental Health, from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dr Mary Cannon pointed out the argument - that alcohol is legal and more harmful to people than cannabis, therefore cannabis should be legal too - is redundant.
Or as the professor describes it, "a spurious argument along the lines of 'would you rather be run over by a truck or a bus'." It's a cop-out for pro-cannabis legalisation lobbyists to argue along these lines, because the one big elephant in the room is psychotic disorder.
Cannabis use is now the most powerful single environmental risk factor for psychotic disorder, according to studies both recent and ongoing. According to a Herald report, one study the professor was involved in found that "10 per cent of the young people who'd been using cannabis by age 15 developed a psychotic disorder in young adulthood".
She argues that the association between cannabis and psychosis appears to be getting even stronger in line with the increase in strength of cannabis. That's the THC content – which is now regularly over 20 per cent, and much higher than what it used to be.
Cannon says that in her clinical experience, she's seen an "increase in presentations of young men with psychosis related to cannabis over the past few years". This includes high levels of agitation, aggression and paranoia. She also cites "several large international studies ... which have shown that cannabis use in youth has a more detrimental effect on cognition and later functioning in adulthood ... than alcohol use does".
And if that wasn't enough, we have local examples too. A "study from Christchurch showed that young cannabis users had greater rates of school dropout, unemployment and dependence on social welfare payments ..."
And, a "Dunedin study showed that young cannabis users had lower incomes later in adulthood than their alcohol-using peers. Heavy, early onset cannabis use has been associated with up to 8-point drop in IQ that appears to be irreversible." So why are we playing with fire here? Why would we want to normalise this and pretend the harms aren't real?
Often the people arguing for cannabis legalisation are adult casual users, not young adolescents who'll be most impacted by it. The casual pot-smoking luvvie may well buy or grow the legalised amounts and varieties, but the kids won't. They'll still seek out black market cannabis with dangerously high levels of THC, still propping up gang manufacture.
So, what changes? The message. The message from the adults around them - and the government - that cannabis is OK.
You legalise something, you normalise it. If you want to stack up an argument around cannabis and alcohol – that's surely it. Look at all the harm alcohol has created. And you want to add cannabis to the mix? Why would we be so dumb?
Kate Hawkesby
NZ Herald
I was pleased to see some sense finally reported on the comparison between harm caused by alcohol versus that by cannabis.
A Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology and Youth Mental Health, from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dr Mary Cannon pointed out the argument - that alcohol is legal and more harmful to people than cannabis, therefore cannabis should be legal too - is redundant.
Or as the professor describes it, "a spurious argument along the lines of 'would you rather be run over by a truck or a bus'." It's a cop-out for pro-cannabis legalisation lobbyists to argue along these lines, because the one big elephant in the room is psychotic disorder.
Cannabis use is now the most powerful single environmental risk factor for psychotic disorder, according to studies both recent and ongoing. According to a Herald report, one study the professor was involved in found that "10 per cent of the young people who'd been using cannabis by age 15 developed a psychotic disorder in young adulthood".
She argues that the association between cannabis and psychosis appears to be getting even stronger in line with the increase in strength of cannabis. That's the THC content – which is now regularly over 20 per cent, and much higher than what it used to be.
Cannon says that in her clinical experience, she's seen an "increase in presentations of young men with psychosis related to cannabis over the past few years". This includes high levels of agitation, aggression and paranoia. She also cites "several large international studies ... which have shown that cannabis use in youth has a more detrimental effect on cognition and later functioning in adulthood ... than alcohol use does".
And if that wasn't enough, we have local examples too. A "study from Christchurch showed that young cannabis users had greater rates of school dropout, unemployment and dependence on social welfare payments ..."
And, a "Dunedin study showed that young cannabis users had lower incomes later in adulthood than their alcohol-using peers. Heavy, early onset cannabis use has been associated with up to 8-point drop in IQ that appears to be irreversible." So why are we playing with fire here? Why would we want to normalise this and pretend the harms aren't real?
Often the people arguing for cannabis legalisation are adult casual users, not young adolescents who'll be most impacted by it. The casual pot-smoking luvvie may well buy or grow the legalised amounts and varieties, but the kids won't. They'll still seek out black market cannabis with dangerously high levels of THC, still propping up gang manufacture.
So, what changes? The message. The message from the adults around them - and the government - that cannabis is OK.
You legalise something, you normalise it. If you want to stack up an argument around cannabis and alcohol – that's surely it. Look at all the harm alcohol has created. And you want to add cannabis to the mix? Why would we be so dumb?
It's Worse Than Y'all Think
The Policing Crisis in New York City
The city is sinking into lawlessness, and the mayor blathers on about ‘sensitivity.’
By Kyle Smith
National Review Online
On Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan, cops carried out a routine arrest of an 18-year-old New York activist who is suspected of disabling police cameras by spraying paint on them. The person is suspected of this for very good reason: There are videos starring the perpetrator carrying out the act in question. (Allegedly.) The arresting officers were plainclothes members of the NYPD. The video of the arrest, in which plainclothes officers and uniformed police using bikes as barriers efficiently collar the subject, went “viral,” meaning it became attractive to stupid people who evidently have never seen Serpico or The Wire and insisted this was a “kidnapping” carried out by “stormtroopers,” presumably acting at the behest of Darth Trumper.
Plainclothes officers, in unmarked vehicles, are an essential crime-fighting tool and have been deployed for a very long time. Even a lintbrain such as Mayor Bill de Blasio, or Governor Andrew Cuomo, knows this. Yet what did they both do? Explain to the public how policing works? Of course not. They both denounced the police.
Cuomo was especially obtuse, calling the cops’ actions “outrageous,” because when you’re governor of New York, you’re at a remove from municipal police activity.
The city is sinking into lawlessness, and the mayor blathers on about ‘sensitivity.’
By Kyle Smith
National Review Online
On Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan, cops carried out a routine arrest of an 18-year-old New York activist who is suspected of disabling police cameras by spraying paint on them. The person is suspected of this for very good reason: There are videos starring the perpetrator carrying out the act in question. (Allegedly.) The arresting officers were plainclothes members of the NYPD. The video of the arrest, in which plainclothes officers and uniformed police using bikes as barriers efficiently collar the subject, went “viral,” meaning it became attractive to stupid people who evidently have never seen Serpico or The Wire and insisted this was a “kidnapping” carried out by “stormtroopers,” presumably acting at the behest of Darth Trumper.
Plainclothes officers, in unmarked vehicles, are an essential crime-fighting tool and have been deployed for a very long time. Even a lintbrain such as Mayor Bill de Blasio, or Governor Andrew Cuomo, knows this. Yet what did they both do? Explain to the public how policing works? Of course not. They both denounced the police.
Cuomo was especially obtuse, calling the cops’ actions “outrageous,” because when you’re governor of New York, you’re at a remove from municipal police activity.
Thursday, 6 August 2020
Britain and a Liberal World Order
The Great British Comeback
Critics thought that post-Brexit Britain would fail to stand up for the liberal world order. Boris Johnson proved them wrong
By Mathis Bitton
National Review Online
Many commentators thought that Brexit would mark the end of Britain’s involvement in foreign affairs. Embracing the siren calls of nationalism, the reasoning went, the British people had decided to turn inwards, to retreat, to isolate themselves, to reject international alliances, and to focus on domestic problems. This analysis was understandable, particularly given that the shadow of past foreign interventions has haunted the British political establishment for years. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson has proven these commentators wrong. Over the past few months, Downing Street has shown itself capable of working with other democracies to fight for the liberal world order without relapsing into reckless interventionism.
The past ten years have seen a decline in British diplomatic involvement. Successive governments have reduced defense budgets, shut down military bases, and distanced themselves from playing an active role on the international stage. The Iraq War left an ineffaceable mark upon the British public, which has come to view NATO as a convenient way to justify otherwise unjustifiable interventions abroad. Voters no longer want their country to be America’s wingman, to get carried away in decade-long conflicts that do nothing but destabilize foreign lands and exacerbate anti-Western passions. The ultimate failure of the Libyan intervention reinforced that sentiment. Once more, the all-too-noble but unsuccessful desire to topple a murderous dictator came at the cost of British blood. Chaos ensued, the military dictatorship was replaced by a de facto Islamist theocracy, and the U.K. became even more hated in the region than it was before. One after the other, foreign interventions provided the British people with countless reasons not to trust the promises of their leaders. In 2013, the House of Commons refused to authorize air strikes against Bashar al-Assad — after he used chemical weapons against peaceful Syrian protesters. This vote, many thought, signified the beginning of the end for British influence abroad.
While popular discontentment vis-à-vis foreign interventions was more than warranted, Britain’s gradual retreat did no favors for its reputation as a military power. International observers derided the U.K. as a country obsessed with domestic politics, and Brexit appeared to prove them right. For months, mainstream newspapers and think tanks lamented the perils of isolationism. After centuries of dominance, Britain would disappear or get stuck between competing blocs. David Cameron’s attitude towards China corroborated the sense that the U.K. had abandoned its defense of liberalism: Unconcerned by the Chinese threat, Cameron welcomed Chinese investment in British infrastructure, including in strategic facilities such as nuclear-power plants. In 2015, he went so far as to call our present moment a “golden age” for Sino-British relations.
His successor, Theresa May, was no better.
Critics thought that post-Brexit Britain would fail to stand up for the liberal world order. Boris Johnson proved them wrong
By Mathis Bitton
National Review Online
Many commentators thought that Brexit would mark the end of Britain’s involvement in foreign affairs. Embracing the siren calls of nationalism, the reasoning went, the British people had decided to turn inwards, to retreat, to isolate themselves, to reject international alliances, and to focus on domestic problems. This analysis was understandable, particularly given that the shadow of past foreign interventions has haunted the British political establishment for years. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson has proven these commentators wrong. Over the past few months, Downing Street has shown itself capable of working with other democracies to fight for the liberal world order without relapsing into reckless interventionism.
The past ten years have seen a decline in British diplomatic involvement. Successive governments have reduced defense budgets, shut down military bases, and distanced themselves from playing an active role on the international stage. The Iraq War left an ineffaceable mark upon the British public, which has come to view NATO as a convenient way to justify otherwise unjustifiable interventions abroad. Voters no longer want their country to be America’s wingman, to get carried away in decade-long conflicts that do nothing but destabilize foreign lands and exacerbate anti-Western passions. The ultimate failure of the Libyan intervention reinforced that sentiment. Once more, the all-too-noble but unsuccessful desire to topple a murderous dictator came at the cost of British blood. Chaos ensued, the military dictatorship was replaced by a de facto Islamist theocracy, and the U.K. became even more hated in the region than it was before. One after the other, foreign interventions provided the British people with countless reasons not to trust the promises of their leaders. In 2013, the House of Commons refused to authorize air strikes against Bashar al-Assad — after he used chemical weapons against peaceful Syrian protesters. This vote, many thought, signified the beginning of the end for British influence abroad.
While popular discontentment vis-à-vis foreign interventions was more than warranted, Britain’s gradual retreat did no favors for its reputation as a military power. International observers derided the U.K. as a country obsessed with domestic politics, and Brexit appeared to prove them right. For months, mainstream newspapers and think tanks lamented the perils of isolationism. After centuries of dominance, Britain would disappear or get stuck between competing blocs. David Cameron’s attitude towards China corroborated the sense that the U.K. had abandoned its defense of liberalism: Unconcerned by the Chinese threat, Cameron welcomed Chinese investment in British infrastructure, including in strategic facilities such as nuclear-power plants. In 2015, he went so far as to call our present moment a “golden age” for Sino-British relations.
His successor, Theresa May, was no better.
More Mob Madness
The Mob Comes Calling For a Music Theorist
Blasphemy at the University of Texas
By Samantha Harris
National Review Online
You might think music theory is an academic area that’s safe from the illiberal mob, but a University of North Texas professor has learned otherwise.
Chances are you have never heard of the music theorist Heinrich Schenker or the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, a publication at the University of North Texas (UNT) devoted to “all facets of Schenkerian thought, including theory, analysis, pedagogy, and historical aspects.” But that journal, and, in particular, the UNT music-theory professor Timothy Jackson, who oversees it, are now at the center of a controversy that goes to the heart of whether we are truly a free society. Can people speak their minds, or will those who express dissenting opinions be destroyed by a mob they can neither challenge nor resist?
In the most recent issue of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, Jackson published a critique of a plenary address given by the music theorist Philip Ewell to the Society for Music Theory. Ewell posited “a ‘white racial frame’ in music theory that is structural and institutionalized.” In particular, Ewell accused Schenker (1868–1935) of being racist, therefore suggesting that his work in music theory is tainted.
For Jackson to have questioned Ewell’s thesis and defended Schenker against the charge of racism was seen as nothing short of heresy. UNT graduate students and faculty, as well as music professors across the country, are now demanding that Jackson be investigated, his journal shut down, and his position eliminated.
Blasphemy at the University of Texas
By Samantha Harris
National Review Online
You might think music theory is an academic area that’s safe from the illiberal mob, but a University of North Texas professor has learned otherwise.
Chances are you have never heard of the music theorist Heinrich Schenker or the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, a publication at the University of North Texas (UNT) devoted to “all facets of Schenkerian thought, including theory, analysis, pedagogy, and historical aspects.” But that journal, and, in particular, the UNT music-theory professor Timothy Jackson, who oversees it, are now at the center of a controversy that goes to the heart of whether we are truly a free society. Can people speak their minds, or will those who express dissenting opinions be destroyed by a mob they can neither challenge nor resist?
In the most recent issue of the Journal of Schenkerian Studies, Jackson published a critique of a plenary address given by the music theorist Philip Ewell to the Society for Music Theory. Ewell posited “a ‘white racial frame’ in music theory that is structural and institutionalized.” In particular, Ewell accused Schenker (1868–1935) of being racist, therefore suggesting that his work in music theory is tainted.
For Jackson to have questioned Ewell’s thesis and defended Schenker against the charge of racism was seen as nothing short of heresy. UNT graduate students and faculty, as well as music professors across the country, are now demanding that Jackson be investigated, his journal shut down, and his position eliminated.
Wednesday, 5 August 2020
What You Tax You Get More Of
Idiotic Taxation Policy
Man arrested for trying to smuggle 2.2m cigarettes in Customs' largest-ever tobacco seizure
According to NZ Herald reporter, Kim Moodie
The actual effect is quite different from that envisaged by dumb politicians. Higher prices merely encourage people to take the risks and sneak tobacco into the New Zealand marketplace and sell it on the black market at the present tax-inflated price. This results in huge profits to the smugglers--and plenty of ciggies to be had by anyone willing to pay the current market contraband price.
Which groups of politicians are responsible for this idiots' mess? The Greens. And the Maori Party.
Man arrested for trying to smuggle 2.2m cigarettes in Customs' largest-ever tobacco seizure
According to NZ Herald reporter, Kim Moodie
A Malaysian national has been busted trying to smuggle more than two million cigarettes into New Zealand in Customs' largest-ever tobacco seizure. He was arrested on Wednesday for attempting to evade $2.72m in duty and GST and trying to smuggle 2.2m cigarettes through the border.The final paragraph is the "tell all". New Zealand has amongst the highest tobacco prices in the world. But most of the price is tax. The idea is that higher taxes will (of course) result in higher "on the shelf prices". Is the government short of money, we hear you ask? Not at all. The higher taxes-higher prices model is designed to discourage people from buying smokes, thereby driving tobacco out of NZ society.
Customs' group manager of intelligence, investigations and enforcement, Dana McDonald, said the tobacco seizure - Customs' largest ever at the border in a single shipment - was "yet another example of organised crime involvement in tobacco fraud". Criminals will do whatever they can to make money, regardless of the commodity – it's just business for them," she said.
"With cigarette prices in New Zealand amongst the highest globally, tobacco fraud is seen as a lucrative business venture for criminals, and sadly we expect this trend to continue." [Emphasis, ours.]
The actual effect is quite different from that envisaged by dumb politicians. Higher prices merely encourage people to take the risks and sneak tobacco into the New Zealand marketplace and sell it on the black market at the present tax-inflated price. This results in huge profits to the smugglers--and plenty of ciggies to be had by anyone willing to pay the current market contraband price.
Which groups of politicians are responsible for this idiots' mess? The Greens. And the Maori Party.
Keeping Up The Pressure
Defunding UN Bodies Over Abortion
U.S. Lawmakers Renew Interest
Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. | July 30, 2020
C-Fam
NEW YORK, July 31 (C-Fam)
Funding for foreign aid cannot be used to lobby for or against abortion, according to U.S. law. There is growing interest among U.S. lawmakers in enforcing that standard against the UN and its various agencies.
Last year, the U.S. Department of State cited the Siljander Amendment when it cut funding to two organs of the Organization of American States (OAS) due to their pressuring Latin American countries to liberalize their abortion laws. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the cuts in March 2019, saying, “our reduction equals the estimated U.S. share of possible OAS expenditures on these abortion-related activities.”
This came about through a 2018 letter from a group of U.S. Senators led by James Lankford to Secretary Pompeo outlining OAS abortion lobbying and asking him to enforce the Siljander Amendment.
However, the OAS and its human rights bodies are not alone in lobbying for abortion at the international level and that receive U.S. funding. Multiple UN agencies that receive U.S. funding are engaged in similar activities, and the actions taken by the State Department toward the OAS provide a blueprint for how similar steps could be taken to reprimand pro-abortion overreach at the UN.
There is no internationally agreed human right to abortion, nor a right to abortion in international humanitarian law, and the consensus among UN member countries is that abortion laws are a national matter. Nevertheless, the UN Secretariat, the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the World Health Organization (WHO), UN Women, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and other agencies operating under the UN umbrella routinely pressure countries to decriminalize abortion or legalize it under more circumstances.
The most aggressive pressure comes from the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which includes the independent expert bodies that monitor compliance with the nine core multilateral human rights treaties. All but one of these treaty bodies have directly pressured countries to change their abortion laws, two of which did so for the first time in 2019, despite none of the related treaties mentioning abortion at all. The treaty body monitoring compliance with the treaty on women’s rights (CEDAW) pressured nations in 88 percent of the country reviews it conducted in 2018.
The treaty bodies accounted for 14 percent of OHCHR’s budget in 2017, and the U.S. is among the leading contributors to its operations, giving over $18 million in 2018.
The Secretariat of the UN, led by the Secretary-General, has issued multiple reports characterizing abortion as a right in humanitarian settings, particularly in cases of conflict-related sexual violence. Similarly, other UN agencies including UN Women, UNFPA, and the WHO, have issued manuals promoting abortion.
While the WHO and UNFPA have been defunded by President Trump as an executive action, a future Democratic administration could reverse those cuts. Nevertheless, as Secretary Pompeo pointed out, ensuring that U.S. contributions are not going to support abortion lobbying is a matter of federal law. Applying that standard to the UN, just as it was applied to the OAS, would be the next logical step.
U.S. Lawmakers Renew Interest
Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. | July 30, 2020
C-Fam
NEW YORK, July 31 (C-Fam)
Funding for foreign aid cannot be used to lobby for or against abortion, according to U.S. law. There is growing interest among U.S. lawmakers in enforcing that standard against the UN and its various agencies.
Last year, the U.S. Department of State cited the Siljander Amendment when it cut funding to two organs of the Organization of American States (OAS) due to their pressuring Latin American countries to liberalize their abortion laws. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced the cuts in March 2019, saying, “our reduction equals the estimated U.S. share of possible OAS expenditures on these abortion-related activities.”
This came about through a 2018 letter from a group of U.S. Senators led by James Lankford to Secretary Pompeo outlining OAS abortion lobbying and asking him to enforce the Siljander Amendment.
However, the OAS and its human rights bodies are not alone in lobbying for abortion at the international level and that receive U.S. funding. Multiple UN agencies that receive U.S. funding are engaged in similar activities, and the actions taken by the State Department toward the OAS provide a blueprint for how similar steps could be taken to reprimand pro-abortion overreach at the UN.
There is no internationally agreed human right to abortion, nor a right to abortion in international humanitarian law, and the consensus among UN member countries is that abortion laws are a national matter. Nevertheless, the UN Secretariat, the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the World Health Organization (WHO), UN Women, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and other agencies operating under the UN umbrella routinely pressure countries to decriminalize abortion or legalize it under more circumstances.
The most aggressive pressure comes from the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which includes the independent expert bodies that monitor compliance with the nine core multilateral human rights treaties. All but one of these treaty bodies have directly pressured countries to change their abortion laws, two of which did so for the first time in 2019, despite none of the related treaties mentioning abortion at all. The treaty body monitoring compliance with the treaty on women’s rights (CEDAW) pressured nations in 88 percent of the country reviews it conducted in 2018.
The treaty bodies accounted for 14 percent of OHCHR’s budget in 2017, and the U.S. is among the leading contributors to its operations, giving over $18 million in 2018.
The Secretariat of the UN, led by the Secretary-General, has issued multiple reports characterizing abortion as a right in humanitarian settings, particularly in cases of conflict-related sexual violence. Similarly, other UN agencies including UN Women, UNFPA, and the WHO, have issued manuals promoting abortion.
While the WHO and UNFPA have been defunded by President Trump as an executive action, a future Democratic administration could reverse those cuts. Nevertheless, as Secretary Pompeo pointed out, ensuring that U.S. contributions are not going to support abortion lobbying is a matter of federal law. Applying that standard to the UN, just as it was applied to the OAS, would be the next logical step.
Tuesday, 4 August 2020
A Cataclysm Too Far
Panicking UK Government
Boris Johnson's decision to force us to wear face nappies will kill the British high street
By Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail
The Government’s dedicated efforts to destroy our economy and an entire way of life have moved up a step. High streets had just begun to stir feebly back into life after months of enforced shutdown. Then the futile decree went out from Downing Street that customers must wear muzzles.
And what will happen? Why, more people will choose not to bother to go near shops at all. They will buy from the internet giants instead.
The Government has convinced itself that this idiotic measure will somehow increase confidence. Really? After deliberately terrifying us with horror stories about a huge and deadly plague poised to slay millions and to turn our hospitals into charnel houses? This did not happen because it was never going to happen, as more and more studies (the latest from Toronto University) are showing. The Government panicked over the wrong advice.
This superstitious, anti-scientific rubbish was challenged repeatedly by distinguished experts of all kinds, ignored by Government and BBC alike. But it has worked only too well. Travellers on public transport, where the muzzle edict has been in force for weeks, could have told them.
Forcing passengers to don facial nappies has not led to more travelling by train or bus.
Boris Johnson's decision to force us to wear face nappies will kill the British high street
By Peter Hitchens
Daily Mail
The Government’s dedicated efforts to destroy our economy and an entire way of life have moved up a step. High streets had just begun to stir feebly back into life after months of enforced shutdown. Then the futile decree went out from Downing Street that customers must wear muzzles.
And what will happen? Why, more people will choose not to bother to go near shops at all. They will buy from the internet giants instead.
The Government has convinced itself that this idiotic measure will somehow increase confidence. Really? After deliberately terrifying us with horror stories about a huge and deadly plague poised to slay millions and to turn our hospitals into charnel houses? This did not happen because it was never going to happen, as more and more studies (the latest from Toronto University) are showing. The Government panicked over the wrong advice.
This superstitious, anti-scientific rubbish was challenged repeatedly by distinguished experts of all kinds, ignored by Government and BBC alike. But it has worked only too well. Travellers on public transport, where the muzzle edict has been in force for weeks, could have told them.
Forcing passengers to don facial nappies has not led to more travelling by train or bus.
Honouring John MacArthur
Our Galvanizing Grandfather
Douglas Wilson reflects on John MacArther's public stand against Governor Gavin Newsom's lawless oppression of the Church of Christ
Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog
. . . civil government does have legitimate authority around sacred things (circa sacra), but no authority whatever in sacred things (in sacris). And when the government abuses this basic distinction willy nilly, as our governments have been doing in their overt and discriminatory treatment of the church, it is time for the leadership of the church to take a stand. So with all of that running in the background, my purpose here this morning is simply to honor John MacArthur for his leadership in this.
Douglas Wilson reflects on John MacArther's public stand against Governor Gavin Newsom's lawless oppression of the Church of Christ
Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog
. . . civil government does have legitimate authority around sacred things (circa sacra), but no authority whatever in sacred things (in sacris). And when the government abuses this basic distinction willy nilly, as our governments have been doing in their overt and discriminatory treatment of the church, it is time for the leadership of the church to take a stand. So with all of that running in the background, my purpose here this morning is simply to honor John MacArthur for his leadership in this.
“And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labour among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; And to esteem them very highly in love for their work’s sake. And be at peace among yourselves.”John MacArthur has been standing faithfully as a biblical expositor for decades, and I simply want to outline why I believe he was prepared by God to be just the man we needed to have step up in this moment. And Gavin Newsom could do far better if he would simply heed the words of the Staple Singers.
1 Thessalonians 5:12–13 (KJV)
If you don’t give a heck ’bout the man with the Bible in his hand
Just get out the way and let the gentleman do his thing
Monday, 3 August 2020
Let's Hope VDH is On the Money!
Waiting for the Counterrevolution
As the rioting continues, Democrats and the media attempt to blame it all on Trump, and most Americans watch and worry, in silence.
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
We are in the midst of a revolution, a cultural and racial one, that seeks to refute the past, damn the present, and hijack the future. So far, however, we have only heard from one side, the revolutionaries and their enablers themselves.
Those trying to reject and then reboot America are small as a percentage of the population, but their tactics are diverse, and their frightened abettors and closet appeasers numerous. The result for now is that, as with most cultural revolutions, a tiny percentage of the population seems to be ascending, given that there is no real organized resistance other than isolated and disgusted individuals.
The cultural revolutionaries are a tripartite group.
On the front lines are the shock troops. For the most part, middle-class urban and suburban white kids, many of them in college, graduated, or dropped out, make up Antifa and its affiliates. They seem to organize the statue toppling, graffiti, and vandalism, as well as the violence at the demonstrations. They show up in ridiculous black-clad Road Warrior outfits, fitted out with cobbled-together hoodies, bicycle helmets, knee pads, and various sports-equipment armor, and occasionally with testudo-like umbrellas and assorted fireworks, rocks, bottle, and bats. All that is a psychodrama far more interesting than showing up at Starbucks at 5 a.m. to start the day’s machinery.
They are the new superfluous elite, in that their college investments brought them neither prestige nor money, but only debt and sloganeering memorized from the sermons of their tenured and comfortable lounge professors. History shows that when would-be, self-important elites are in surfeit and extraneous, they grow volatile. They wake up to learn that their vaunted education and training were not appreciated and properly compensated by society.
And so they often can turn to violence and indeed revolution if it comes their way. In the profiles of the Jacobin, Bolshevik, and Arab Spring second-stage revolutions, the common denominators are frustration and the feeling that the agitators deserved honor, money, and influence that either never was forthcoming or went to undeserving others.
Antifa’s aim is to cause chaos and anarchy, in hopes of eliciting a police response that will fuel nonstop street brawling, akin to Germany’s in the 1920s, and a general sense of pandemonium that will leave the democratic capitalist state weak, directionless, and without a reply.
Then the more unhinged among them believe that they can carve out “autonomous” zones of “resistance” in places such as Portland and Seattle and gradually spread their revolution through threats and intimidation — and perhaps more formally hijack the Democratic Party and come to power. Cellphones, selfies, networking, and childish coloring-book graffiti make the whole thing a sort of carnival where the like-minded frustrated agitators can vent about the unfairness of the world.
Many of these self-righteous are indeed racist, as we see from the sheer joy they show at yelling in the face of black policemen and orchestrating the demonstrations while avoiding the televised looting.
As the rioting continues, Democrats and the media attempt to blame it all on Trump, and most Americans watch and worry, in silence.
By Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online
We are in the midst of a revolution, a cultural and racial one, that seeks to refute the past, damn the present, and hijack the future. So far, however, we have only heard from one side, the revolutionaries and their enablers themselves.
Those trying to reject and then reboot America are small as a percentage of the population, but their tactics are diverse, and their frightened abettors and closet appeasers numerous. The result for now is that, as with most cultural revolutions, a tiny percentage of the population seems to be ascending, given that there is no real organized resistance other than isolated and disgusted individuals.
The cultural revolutionaries are a tripartite group.
On the front lines are the shock troops. For the most part, middle-class urban and suburban white kids, many of them in college, graduated, or dropped out, make up Antifa and its affiliates. They seem to organize the statue toppling, graffiti, and vandalism, as well as the violence at the demonstrations. They show up in ridiculous black-clad Road Warrior outfits, fitted out with cobbled-together hoodies, bicycle helmets, knee pads, and various sports-equipment armor, and occasionally with testudo-like umbrellas and assorted fireworks, rocks, bottle, and bats. All that is a psychodrama far more interesting than showing up at Starbucks at 5 a.m. to start the day’s machinery.
They are the new superfluous elite, in that their college investments brought them neither prestige nor money, but only debt and sloganeering memorized from the sermons of their tenured and comfortable lounge professors. History shows that when would-be, self-important elites are in surfeit and extraneous, they grow volatile. They wake up to learn that their vaunted education and training were not appreciated and properly compensated by society.
And so they often can turn to violence and indeed revolution if it comes their way. In the profiles of the Jacobin, Bolshevik, and Arab Spring second-stage revolutions, the common denominators are frustration and the feeling that the agitators deserved honor, money, and influence that either never was forthcoming or went to undeserving others.
Antifa’s aim is to cause chaos and anarchy, in hopes of eliciting a police response that will fuel nonstop street brawling, akin to Germany’s in the 1920s, and a general sense of pandemonium that will leave the democratic capitalist state weak, directionless, and without a reply.
Then the more unhinged among them believe that they can carve out “autonomous” zones of “resistance” in places such as Portland and Seattle and gradually spread their revolution through threats and intimidation — and perhaps more formally hijack the Democratic Party and come to power. Cellphones, selfies, networking, and childish coloring-book graffiti make the whole thing a sort of carnival where the like-minded frustrated agitators can vent about the unfairness of the world.
Many of these self-righteous are indeed racist, as we see from the sheer joy they show at yelling in the face of black policemen and orchestrating the demonstrations while avoiding the televised looting.
Fallacy of False Causes
Stupid Is as Stupid Does
Getting Rid Of The Police, Or Trump, Will Only Enable More Riots
Our political and media elite think that Trump and the police are the cause of the ongoing unrest. They couldn’t be more wrong.
John Daniel Davidson
The Federalist
The conventional wisdom congealing among elites in Washington, D.C., is that the ongoing riots in cities like Portland and Seattle are the result of otherwise peaceful protesters simply reacting to the presence of police and federal law enforcement. If these officers stood down or were simply removed, so the thinking goes, all would be calm.
Video footage and images of violent mobs setting buildings on fire, lobbing bricks and explosives, cutting through fences with blowtorches, and assaulting police and federal officers are all, according to this fashionable theory, merely evidence of the grave threat posed by fascist federal stormtroopers that Trump has unleashed on a quiescent populace.
As Democrat Rep. Zoe Lofgren put it during a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, “People are showing up because the troops are there.” She was quick to add that most of them are nonviolent, which has become a kind of mantra adopted by Democrats and their courtiers in the mainstream press.
For their part, corporate media outlets have settled on variations of the phrase “mostly peaceful protests” to describe scenes of utter mayhem and violence.
Getting Rid Of The Police, Or Trump, Will Only Enable More Riots
Our political and media elite think that Trump and the police are the cause of the ongoing unrest. They couldn’t be more wrong.
John Daniel Davidson
The Federalist
The conventional wisdom congealing among elites in Washington, D.C., is that the ongoing riots in cities like Portland and Seattle are the result of otherwise peaceful protesters simply reacting to the presence of police and federal law enforcement. If these officers stood down or were simply removed, so the thinking goes, all would be calm.
Video footage and images of violent mobs setting buildings on fire, lobbing bricks and explosives, cutting through fences with blowtorches, and assaulting police and federal officers are all, according to this fashionable theory, merely evidence of the grave threat posed by fascist federal stormtroopers that Trump has unleashed on a quiescent populace.
As Democrat Rep. Zoe Lofgren put it during a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, “People are showing up because the troops are there.” She was quick to add that most of them are nonviolent, which has become a kind of mantra adopted by Democrats and their courtiers in the mainstream press.
For their part, corporate media outlets have settled on variations of the phrase “mostly peaceful protests” to describe scenes of utter mayhem and violence.
Saturday, 1 August 2020
National Surplus Destroyed
National a Better Manager of Economy, says Goldsmith
Labour--Destroyers of Value and Wealth
Arvind Kumar
Stuff
People need to remember that the National Party is a better manager of the New Zealand economy, says the party's finance spokesman, Paul Goldsmith.
In an interview with Radio Tarana today, Goldsmith said it was more important now than ever that the economy be managed properly post-Covid.
When asked if he had a message for voters, Goldsmith said he wanted to remind listeners that the Labour government had "squandered" within two years the surpluses it inherited from the National government. "The previous National government, we had to borrow a lot of money to get us through the Global Financial Crisis, and the Canterbury earthquakes - we had to borrow $50 billion," Goldsmith said.
"And then with good economic management, and careful spending and an absolute focus on growth, we got on top of that and restored New Zealand's prosperity to the extent that in 2017 when we left government, we left an inheritance of massive government surpluses, a rapidly growing economy, and jobs being created - 10,000 jobs a month.
"And within two short years, before the Covid-19 crisis, this government had taken that inheritance and squandered that entire surpluses and were projecting a budget deficit before the Covid-19 situation occurred," he said. "And that needs to be remembered, and your listeners can rely on the National Party being sound managers of the economy.
"I think that is more important now than ever," Goldsmith said. "We just hope we will have the opportunity over the next few weeks to talk about that and to reassure New Zealanders."
Labour--Destroyers of Value and Wealth
Arvind Kumar
Stuff
People need to remember that the National Party is a better manager of the New Zealand economy, says the party's finance spokesman, Paul Goldsmith.
In an interview with Radio Tarana today, Goldsmith said it was more important now than ever that the economy be managed properly post-Covid.
When asked if he had a message for voters, Goldsmith said he wanted to remind listeners that the Labour government had "squandered" within two years the surpluses it inherited from the National government. "The previous National government, we had to borrow a lot of money to get us through the Global Financial Crisis, and the Canterbury earthquakes - we had to borrow $50 billion," Goldsmith said.
"And then with good economic management, and careful spending and an absolute focus on growth, we got on top of that and restored New Zealand's prosperity to the extent that in 2017 when we left government, we left an inheritance of massive government surpluses, a rapidly growing economy, and jobs being created - 10,000 jobs a month.
"And within two short years, before the Covid-19 crisis, this government had taken that inheritance and squandered that entire surpluses and were projecting a budget deficit before the Covid-19 situation occurred," he said. "And that needs to be remembered, and your listeners can rely on the National Party being sound managers of the economy.
"I think that is more important now than ever," Goldsmith said. "We just hope we will have the opportunity over the next few weeks to talk about that and to reassure New Zealanders."
Clear Warnings Issued
Rowling on Trans Therapy for Kids
‘We’re on Brink of a Medical Scandal’
Jack Montgomery
Breitbart London
Harry Potter author Joanne ‘JK’ Rowling has weighed into the debate on “trans kids” once again, suggesting Britain is “on the brink of a medical scandal”.
Rowling, an idol-turned-hate-figure for social justice warriors since she went public with her belief that “[biological] sex is real and has lived consequences”, provoked the fury of so-called progressives on Saturday when she shared her thoughts on social media on an academic paper titled “Freedom to think: the need for thorough assessment and treatment of gender dysphoric children”.
“‘[British National Health Service] identity clinics have been functioning as if acting outside the ordinary requirement of good medical and psychiatric practice.’ Some may dismiss this paper… but they do so at their own peril,” she warned, quoting from the document directly. “It feels as though we’re on the brink of a medical scandal,” she added.
The former Labour Party donor went on to cite a second paper, titled “Sex, gender and gender identity: a re-evaluation of the evidence”, quoting its conclusion that “Psychiatry sits on this knife-edge: running the risk of being accused of transphobia or, alternatively, remaining silent throughout this uncontrolled experiment.”
“Since speaking up about gender identity theory, I’ve received thousands of emails — more than I’ve ever had on a single subject. Many have come from professionals working in medicine, education, and social work. All are concerned about the effects on vulnerable young people,” Rowling explained.
‘We’re on Brink of a Medical Scandal’
Jack Montgomery
Breitbart London
Harry Potter author Joanne ‘JK’ Rowling has weighed into the debate on “trans kids” once again, suggesting Britain is “on the brink of a medical scandal”.
Rowling, an idol-turned-hate-figure for social justice warriors since she went public with her belief that “[biological] sex is real and has lived consequences”, provoked the fury of so-called progressives on Saturday when she shared her thoughts on social media on an academic paper titled “Freedom to think: the need for thorough assessment and treatment of gender dysphoric children”.
“‘[British National Health Service] identity clinics have been functioning as if acting outside the ordinary requirement of good medical and psychiatric practice.’ Some may dismiss this paper… but they do so at their own peril,” she warned, quoting from the document directly. “It feels as though we’re on the brink of a medical scandal,” she added.
The former Labour Party donor went on to cite a second paper, titled “Sex, gender and gender identity: a re-evaluation of the evidence”, quoting its conclusion that “Psychiatry sits on this knife-edge: running the risk of being accused of transphobia or, alternatively, remaining silent throughout this uncontrolled experiment.”
“Since speaking up about gender identity theory, I’ve received thousands of emails — more than I’ve ever had on a single subject. Many have come from professionals working in medicine, education, and social work. All are concerned about the effects on vulnerable young people,” Rowling explained.
Friday, 31 July 2020
Good, Reliable Data Hard to Find
Doctor Dispels Coronavirus Fears
‘99.8 Percent of People Get Through this with Little to No Progressive or Significant Disease’
Hannah Bleau
Breitbart News
Dr. Dan Erickson, owner of Accelerated Urgent Care, spoke at Monday’s “White Coat Summit” on Capitol Hill as part of a greater effort to extinguish fears surrounding the Chinese coronavirus and reminded the public that “99.8 percent of people get through this with little to no progressive or significant disease.”
Erickson addressed the dominant narrative of rising cases of the virus within the U.S. and pointed out that it is causing undue fear. “A case is a person, healthy, that tested positive. The vast majority. But the public hears cases and thinks, ‘Oh my goodness. These are sick people!’ No the vast majority — 99.8 percent of people get through this with little to no progressive or significant disease,” Erickson said.
The focus should not center on cases, he continued. Rather, the narrative should focus on hospitalizations and deaths that “are appropriately coded on a death certificate,” he said, stressing “appropriately coded.”
‘99.8 Percent of People Get Through this with Little to No Progressive or Significant Disease’
Hannah Bleau
Breitbart News
Dr. Dan Erickson, owner of Accelerated Urgent Care, spoke at Monday’s “White Coat Summit” on Capitol Hill as part of a greater effort to extinguish fears surrounding the Chinese coronavirus and reminded the public that “99.8 percent of people get through this with little to no progressive or significant disease.”
Erickson addressed the dominant narrative of rising cases of the virus within the U.S. and pointed out that it is causing undue fear. “A case is a person, healthy, that tested positive. The vast majority. But the public hears cases and thinks, ‘Oh my goodness. These are sick people!’ No the vast majority — 99.8 percent of people get through this with little to no progressive or significant disease,” Erickson said.
The focus should not center on cases, he continued. Rather, the narrative should focus on hospitalizations and deaths that “are appropriately coded on a death certificate,” he said, stressing “appropriately coded.”
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