Saturday, March 15, 2008

APA inconsistency. Deviant behaviour rediscovered

Comment below from Joseph Farah. Note also that the research underlying the latest APA folly is bunk

You know what I think of the American Psychological Association. I think it should have its head examined. Or, at the very least, the likely non-parent who issued the anti-spanking report at the group's summit on violence and abuse in relationships should be held in a rubber room for his own protection and the protection of the next generation of Americans. Murray Straus, who bills himself as "a spanking expert," told the summit he has uncovered evidence to suggest spanking can lead children into risky sexual behaviors and sexual deviancy. He says parents should never spank.

Now what is so ironic about this is that the APA even acknowledges there is something called "risky sexual behavior" or "sexual deviancy." I wish the group would define those terms for us, because it is the APA that rewrote its definitions back in the 1970s to conform with the political agenda of homosexual activists who insist there is nothing risky about their behavior and certainly nothing deviant about it. So what is sexual deviancy, according to the study?

* verbally or physically coercing a dating partner to have sex;

* premarital sex without a condom;

* masochistic sex such as spanking during sex.

I think the S&M crowd is going to have a field day with Mr. Straus and the APA for this one. How long do you think they will be permitted to get away with this kind of hate speech? Imagine - "sexual deviancy"!

Many folks thought it was hysterical when WND columnist Jim Rutz toyed with the idea that eating soy makes you homosexual. The "gay" blogs had a laugh riot with that one. My colleagues in the news business thought that was the funniest thing they ever read. Yet, the story about Straus' research that spanking makes one an S&M pervert has been met with nothing but reverence by reporters and pundits. Listen to this quote from Straus: "If a person says, 'I was spanked, and I don't have any interest in bondage and discipline sex,' that's correct. But it's not because spanking is OK, it's because they're one of the lucky ones."

Let's see, tens of millions of children are spanked in the U.S. and maybe a few thousand people in San Francisco like whips and chains. I'm willing to bet it's the latter who were not spanked. And that's why they want it. In fact, I can prove that spanking doesn't lead to S&M. Is spanking on the decline in our society? Yes. Is S&M on the increase? Yes.

It used to be that practically everyone spanked their kids. That's the way it was 40 years ago. It was normal and healthy. "Spare the rod, spoil the child," was the conventional wisdom of the day, and there were precious few S&M bars around in those days. In fact, no one even knew what S&M was. But with the popularity of Benjamin Spock's child-rearing tips came a decline in spanking. Within a decade, came the rise of sexual deviancy in all forms.

I can prove it another way, too. God says parents should spank their children and be firm disciplinarians. That's really enough for me. But I'm sure it won't be for the American Psychological Association. Members of that group are probably ready to have me committed for taking the Bible quite literally as the inspired, inerrant Word of our Creator.

I actually believe that God in heaven understands human nature better than the politically correct shrinks at the APA - who cower and bend to the whims of activist pressure groups, even to the point of redefining what mental illness is. Imagine that.

Source



SLAUGHTER AND JUBILATION

By Jeff Jacoby

The slaughter of eight young yeshiva students and the wounding of nine others by an Arab terrorist in Jerusalem last week was a cold-blooded act of evil. It is difficult to make sense of the depraved fanaticism of someone like Ala Abu Dhaim, who calmly entered the school's busy library, took three guns from a box, and sprayed the room with hundreds of bullets, emptying clip after clip until finally being shot dead by an off-duty military officer and a part-time student who heard the gunfire and came running.

Even more perverse and revolting that Abu Dhaim's massacre, howevere, was the behavior that followed it. In Gaza, the news that unarmed Jewish students, most of them kids, had been gunned down while at study set off paroxysms of joy. Thousands of jubilant Palestinians whooped it up in Gaza's streets, firing guns in the air to celebrate and distributing candy to passersby. Many residents went to mosques to offer prayers of thanksgiving before joining the festivities. Television cameras recorded the revelry; you can see it for yourself on YouTube.

Hamas, the terror organization that controls Gaza, issued a statement applauding the bloodshed. "We bless the [Jerusalem] operation," it said. "It will not be the last."

Hamas is monstrous, but give it this much: It makes no secret of its bloodlust. The same cannot always be said of Fatah, the other main faction in the Palestinian Authority. Fatah is headed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, whose polished spokesman, Saeb Erekat, was quick to assure journalists -- in English, for Western consumption -- that Abbas condemned the killings and "reiterated his condemnation of all attacks that target civilians, whether they are Palestinians or Israelis."

Yet just a few days before the yeshiva massacre, Abbas had told the Jordanian daily Al-Dustur -- in Arabic, for Arab consumption -- that he is against terrorist attacks only for tactical reasons "at this time" and that "in the future, things may change." He boasted of his long involvement with PLO violence -- "I had the honor of firing the first shot in 1965" -- and claimed with pride that Fatah "taught resistance to everyone, including Hezbollah, who trained in our military camps."

Abbas's supposed condemnation notwithstanding, the Palestinian Authority's official daily newspaper, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, hailed the killer on its front page, prominently displaying his picture and identifying him as a "shahid" -- a term of approval and reverence denoting an Islamic martyr. And the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a violent Fatah subsidiary identified by the US government as a terrorist organization, praised the slaughter as a "heroic operation."

Meanwhile, the family of Abu Dhaim erected a mourning tent near their East Jerusalem home, where, amid banners of Hamas and Hezbollah, visitors came to honor the dead terrorist. Incredibly, the Israeli government made no effort to prevent this public display of respect for a mass-murderer; it insisted only that the Hamas and Hezbollah flags be taken down.

By contrast, when Abu Dhaim's relatives in Jordan put up a similar tent to receive well-wishers, Jordanian officials ordered them to dismantle it immediately. The terrorist's uncle was indignant. "We were hoping that people would come to congratulate us on the martyrdom of my nephew," he said. "This is a heroic operation that must be celebrated by everyone." It is a mark of how feckless the Israeli leadership has become that the Arab government of Jordan shows more common sense than the Jewish state in reacting to those who would lionize the killer of Jewish kids.

And that is indicative of the most perverse behavior of all: the refusal of Israel to face the fact that it is in a war for survival -- a war that it will win only by fighting and defeating its enemy, not by clinging blindly to a phony "peace process" that has brought it nothing but terror, tears, and a mounting toll of death.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's reaction to last week's massacre of the innocents was to announce that he would "not give up on making a tremendous effort to take another significant, important, and dramatic step that might bring us to an opportunity for real reconciliation."

The Israeli Foreign Ministry spouted the same drivel: "These terrorists are trying to destroy the chances of peace," its spokesman said, "but we certainly will continue the peace talks." The White House chimed in too: "The most important thing is that the peace process continue and that the parties are committed to it."

Wrong. The most important thing is to recognize that there is a war against Israel by enemies profoundly committed to its elimination -- enemies who regard negotiations, concessions, and all the trappings of the "peace process" as evidence that the Jews are in retreat, and that hitting them even harder will bring victory even closer. That is why there was such jubilation in Gaza. And why last week's atrocity in Jerusalem was only the latest such horror -- not the last.

Source



Hillary's Scheme to Revamp the Traditional Family

Hillary Clinton's personal life has long made a mockery of traditional family values - her betrothal to a serial womanizer, the refusal to have a traditional wedding, and her smears of the females who later accused her husband of sexual impropriety.

Let's recall her acrid put-down of stay-at-home moms: "I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do is fulfill my profession." And when Jennifer Flowers claimed she had had a 12-year affair with Bill, Hillary ludicrously remarked, "I'm not sitting here, some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette." If that's not contempt for women in traditional roles, I don't know what is.

And no surprise, Hillary Clinton's vision for families is, might we say, unconventional. And it's not just her opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment that would define marriage as the union between a man and a woman.

Back when she was a student at Yale Law School, Hillary wrote in the Harvard Educational Review that "marriage, slavery, and the Indian reservation system" constitute dependency arrangements that must be abolished. Ridiculing the notion that families are "private, nonpolitical units," she demanded that we "remodel" the time-honored institution. Two decades later she wrote It Takes a Village, the socialist manifesto that justifies governmental intrusion into the most intimate aspects of family life.

And Clinton's 2003 book Living History reads like the autobiography of a woman obsessed with feminist activism, a power-mad princess in a pantsuit. She boasts immodestly, "I represented a fundamental change in the way women functioned in our society."

Remember that Hillary Rodham Clinton, former protege of Rules for Radicals author Saul Alinsky, is at heart a cultural Marxist. Inducing a fundamental change in motherhood would be insufficient to assure the social transformation that she seeks. Time to put dear ol' dad on the chopping block.

European social philosopher Wyndham Lewis once noted: "The male, the Father, is in all these revolutions, the enemy. It is he that has been cast to represent authority. Therefore in modern revolutionary Europe it was he, the male head-of-the-family, who has been aimed at in every insurrection. The break-up of the Family...must begin and end with the eclipse of the Father principle." So no surprise, Hillary Clinton has trained her sights on fatherhood.

A few weeks ago researcher Anna Sarkadi published a review in the Acta Pediatrica journal on the impact of fathers on children's developmental outcomes. The studies showed paternal engagement helped to reduce behavioral problems in boys and psychological problems in girls. Sarkadi concludes a father's "active and regular engagement with the child predicts a range of positive outcomes."

But Hillary's Living History leans over backwards to ignore any meaningful role of dads. On page 132 she writes about "issues affecting women, children, and families." On page 380 she repeats the identical phrase: "issues affecting women, children, and families." And on page 269 she notes "Women handle a large share of the responsibility for the welfare of their families," again ignoring the essential role of fathers.

Then there's the abortion issue, where Hillary has staked out the most radical of positions, even supporting partial-birth abortion and a teenage girl's right to get an abortion absent parental permission.

Abortion-on-demand strikes a chilling blow to a father's natural rights. As Justice White wrote in his stirring dissent to Planned Parenthood v. Danforth, "It is truly surprising that the majority finds in the United States Constitution, as it must in order to justify the result it reaches, a rule that the State must assign a greater value to a mother's decision to cut off a potential human life by abortion than to a father's decision to let it mature into a live child." Dr. Alan Carlson of Howard University adds cogently, "on the question of abortion, the father is irrelevant, with no more interest in the fate of the baby than a stranger from Mars."

In her famous 1993 "politics of meaning" speech, Clinton called for a redefinition of personhood itself. She told the startled audience, "Let us be willing to remold society by refining what it means to be a human being in the 20th century."

As presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton has billed herself as the proponent of "real" change. One has to wonder where her "real" change will lead us -- to the hollow shell of a family structure that all but shuns traditional notions of fatherhood and motherhood?

Source



Australia: Life in black communities very dangerous for whites

Nurses need shelters from attack in black communities but the Leftist State government doesn't want to know about it

An internal Queensland Health report on nurses' security in remote locations in the Torres Strait has recommended that secure "bomb shelters" be provided for staff where they could hide when under attack. The report, which was provided to Queensland Health 16 months ago but tabled in parliament by Health Minister Stephen Robertson only on Wednesday, described the risk level posed to most employees working in the Torres Strait as "very high" or "extreme". As revealed this week by The Australian, the report has not been acted on since it was compiled in October 2006.

Mr Robertson tabled the report after The Australian revealed the case of a nurse who worked alone on Mabuiag Island in the Torres Strait. Last month, the 27-year-old woman was attacked while she slept and raped by an intruder.

The full report details how "strongrooms" needed to be established in each isolated facility. "A strongroom is a selected area within a building that has two exits, but all walls and doors are built to a standard that can keep a staff member safe until help (exit strategy) arrives," the report states. "This room should be self-contained and hold emergency bottled water and pre-packed food. It should have several lines of communication ... be able to withstand physical aggression and be fire resistant." The report says that if these initiatives were put in place, staff could also keep patients safe if under threat of violence.

On Wednesday, Mr Robertson said that a bureaucrat in Queensland Health had not passed on the report, but yesterday he asked the Crime and Misconduct Commission to investigate after a former district manager in the Torres Strait said he never received the risk assessment report. Mr Robertson had earlier accused the officer, who has since retired, of being responsible for the inaction on the report which saw it "lie on a desk for 16months".

The Queensland branch of the Australian Medical Association weighed into the controversy yesterday, saying there were clearly unacceptable inadequacies in the safety of health staff working in the Torres Strait. AMA president Dr Chris Davis said his organisation was concerned that Queensland Health appeared to have been made aware of the issues but had decided not to take action. "Queensland Health has a duty of care to provide a safe workplace for its employees," Dr Davis said. "The Queensland Government is very quick to ensure that employers discharge their obligations under the Act but as an employer themselves have not done this."

Nurses in remote communities have issued an ultimatum to the Government, demanding their facilities be brought up to safe and secure standards by March 28 or they will refuse to staff the island community health centres. The Queensland Nurses Union has also said there will be no more single-nurse assignments in island communities, and that at least two must be appointed at all times. If that is not done, they will provide only fly-in/fly-out day clinics.

Source

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

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

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

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