Friday, August 28, 2009
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Britain's totally deranged justice system targets a good Samaritan over a fraction of a penny
When nine coppers turned up and found that there was nothing for them to do, they arrested the only guy who happened to be there. No doubt it helped with their "targets". Tick box: One villain arrested. They were really scratching to find something he had done wrong, however. One doesn't expect police to be bright but the lawyers in the Crown Prosecution Service were just as bad. No doubt they had government targets to meet too. It took the threat of a jury trial before anybody started thinking.
But if your car is stolen in Britain don't bother reporting it to the police. They're not interested. Looking into that matter would require some effort from them before they can tick a box. Leftist Britain's target-driven and box-ticking rules have destroyed sanity wholesale
A documentary film-maker was hauled into court on a charge of stealing electricity worth 0.003p. But by the time the ludicrous case was dropped, the bill to taxpayers was more than £5,000. Mark Guard, 44, had to appear at two separate hearings before the Crown Prosecution Service finally saw sense.
Mr Guard, who makes documentaries about crime and the homeless, was filming squatters entering a disused building through an open window at 10pm on August 1. A security sensor inside detected the movement and the alarm was triggered. The squatters fled but Mr Guard, a former electrician, decided to stay behind and turn off the alarm to save neighbouring families from the noise. To do so he had to turn on the electricity in the building for a few seconds, to give him light, and then turn it off.
Nine police then arrived in response to the alarm. When Mr Guard told them what he had done, he was arrested and held in a cell for six hours before being charged. At his first magistrates' court hearing last week, the film-maker pleaded not guilty and asked for the case to be tried at a crown court so a jury could decide.
He said last night: 'When I told the chairman of the bench I wanted a jury trial, he began to realise the ludicrous nature of the case. He said: "Why is this going to a trial in the crown court when it's going to cost £200,000?".' But Mr Guard had to appear again in front of Highbury Magistrates in North London, before the charge was dropped.
Experts estimate that the court hearings cost taxpayers £4,200 - Mr Guard's legal bills were paid from public funds - a night in police cells added £385 and the arrest operation around £600.
Mr Guard, from Knightsbridge, West London, said he was astonished the case went as far as it did. He added: 'I thought I was acting in the public interest. It was late in the evening and I knew families would have struggled to get to sleep if I hadn't done something. 'I even offered to pay 1p to the energy company which supplies electricity to the house, but it's not bothered about collecting such a paltry sum. I've been mugged three times and the police know who did it - but they have never been able to prosecute. 'But on the night in question officers wasted no time in slapping handcuffs on me. I feel this is double standards. If the charges had not been dropped I would have fought all the way.
'Part of me is relieved that I can get back to making my documentary, but most of me is angry that I've been forced to go through all this.'
Neither the squatters nor Mr Guard broke the law by entering the disused house in Camden, North London, because they did not force their way in. Mr Guard has been following and filming criminals and homeless people in London for two years. Using hidden cameras he has been able to capture drug deals and shop thefts as they happened. In 2006, Mr Guard made news when a building firm paid him £3.5million for a plot of land in Surrey he had bought 11 years earlier for just £1,000.
SOURCE
Slandering Christian Zionists
It is often said that ridiculing Christians and their beliefs is the last acceptable form of bigotry. Ultra-secular critics on the left, of course, usually scoff at this notion. But sometimes an example of anti-Christian bile comes along that is so blatant, misleading and littered with judgmental smugness, that I find it difficult to remain silent. Consider the left-wing organization J Street, which claims to be a pro-Israel advocacy group, but which, oddly enough, never misses a chance to slam Israeli policies, particularly when the Jewish State dares defend itself against Islamic terrorism. J Street released a bordering-on-hysteria press release last month to coincide with the annual Christians United for Israel (CUFI) conference in Washington, D.C. Here is the most relevant excerpt:
Indeed, J Street’s statement goes far beyond criticizing the views of Pastor John Hagee, who organized the CUFI conference. The group is, of course, perfectly free to criticize Hagee if it disagrees with his personal viewpoints. This is a free country. But by tarring all evangelical Christian supporters of Israel as part of some sinister movement that is “unholy,” “apocalyptic” and destructive for the Jewish people, J Street descends into stereotyping and demonization of the worst kind.
Since I spent two full days covering the CUFI conference at the Washington Convention Center on July 21 and 22 (watch my report on the event here and read my blog entry here), let me give some personal observations on what I saw and heard--and what J Street is so contemptuous of.
Not once--in the course of some 20 hours of coverage and countless conversations with conference-goers—did I hear the terms “apocalypse,” “Armageddon,” ‘Antichrist,” or “End Times,” mentioned. Nor did I hear any discussion of the Book of Revelation or of converting Jews. I realize this may come as a shock to J Street, which apparently views such events as fire-and-brimstone hatefests complete with snake taming and calls to nuke Mecca. What I witnessed instead were thousands of attendees, Christian, Jewish and secular, expressing a genuine, deep and heartfelt love for the Land of Israel--its history, beauty and legacy—and especially, its people. As you can see from my report, the place was literally a sea of Israeli and American flags: a true celebration of the Jewish State. There were Hebrew prayers, Hebrew songs, shofars, Torah readings and passionate speeches by Jewish leaders, lawmakers and religious figures. There were also some tears shed. I know it may all sound very “kumbaya,” but I have covered countless manufactured, shallow mega-events in DC over the past six years and let me tell you: what I saw at CUFI was 100 percent genuine.
If this was the kind of doom-and-gloom affair that J Street alludes to, I must have missed it. So must have Senator Joe Lieberman, Rep. Shelley Berkley and talk radio hosts Dennis Prager and Michael Medved: all prominent, proud Jews who spoke at the CUFI gala.
Since the folks at J Street obviously have a very narrow view of what it means to be a Christian supporter of Israel, let me enlighten them a bit by sharing my own personal story. I was raised in a heavily Catholic area of working class Philadelphia by a father who was a veteran of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division. Not surprisingly, my Dad was a big military history buff and a close follower of current events. He passed those passions on to my brother and me. By the time I reached my teen years, we would stay up, sometimes into the wee hours, discussing history’s great empires, battles and military leaders.
Maybe it was the fact that we Philly guys always love an underdog. But my dad was one tough dude, and there was no country he admired more for its grit and determination than Israel. “That tiny sliver of land,” he used to marvel. “They’re surrounded by enemies on all sides. And yet still they pull off victory after victory. Those are some tough Jews!” From Moshe Dayan to Entebbe, from King David to Camp David, through my father, I became well acquainted with Israeli history in my formative years and developed a lasting admiration for the Land and its people. As I reached high school, I was also fortunate enough to develop great friendships with Jewish teammates, teachers and coaches.
Nowhere did my religious beliefs factor into those friendships. As a matter of fact, all of this happened years before I even picked up a Bible or began taking my Christianity seriously. Interestingly enough, I found that my buddies from the neighborhood in Philly shared my positive view of Israel. They may not have been big observers of geopolitics, but they were hugely patriotic. common sense told them that the Israelis were fighting the good fight and were kindred spirits: a free, democratic people who were loyal allies of the United States.
When I finally did get around to picking up a Bible about seven years ago, I discovered a startling thing: this Book was essentially a history of Israel and the Jewish people up until the first century AD. Even more jarring to my senses was the realization that Jesus was a Jewish rabbi who fiercely loved his fellow Jews. His mother, Mary, was also a Jew. So were all twelve apostles. In fact, Christianity was founded by—you guessed it—Jews. In addition, Abraham, Moses, Joseph, King David and all the Old Testament heroes who I had grown to love and admire so much were Israeli Jews. I began to realize that Christianity owed a huge debt to Israel and the Jewish people. It may sound crazy to some, but let’s face it: this is both a historically and biblically undeniable fact, and--apologies to J Street--has nothing to do with the “end of the world.”
Bringing it back to the secular level, the friendships I have developed with Israeli colleagues over the past six years, and especially my trip to Israel last November, have solidified my support for the country. As if I didn’t realize it before, walking through the besieged city of Sderot and seeing Hamas missiles literally stamped “Made in Iran” truly brought home the fact that Israel’s enemies are America’s enemies. We share a common radical Islamic foe that seeks our destruction. That alone is reason enough for mutual understanding and support.
I strongly suspect that the vast majority of attendees at the CUFI conference view Israel in a similar way. Or as JTA’s Eric Fingerhut—who also covered the event—puts it: “I've talked to enough Christian Zionists over the past few years to believe that for the vast majority of them, their support for the Jewish state is genuinely motivated by Genesis's admonitition that God will bless those who bless the Jewish people, as well as their respect for Judaism as a foundation for Christianity or even their general beliefs about U.S. foriegn policy.”
In closing, if J Steet truly has Israel’s best interests at heart, why on earth would it seek to alienate an estimated 70 million American evangelical Christians who are strongly inclined towards Israel during a time of great need? What is really going on here? And when will J Street issue an apology to evangelicals for its inflammatory CUFI press release?
SOURCE
Oppressed British snappers focus on police
Photographers attempt to reclaim the right to photograph
Relations between police and photographers, already at an all-time low, look set to worsen this week as activists set up a new national campaign group to protect photography, and protesters get ready to take to the streets in Chatham. The national campaign launched last Saturday in the Foundry pub in East London, with more than 200 photographers showing their support for a new photographers' rights website by being snapped holding up a placard saying "I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist!"
Although the campaign is skewed very much toward professional photographers, it claims that it is the rights of all photographers that are currently under attack. According to the site: "Not only is [this attack] corrosive of press freedom but creation of the collective visual history of our country is extinguished by anti-terrorist legislation designed to protect the heritage it prevents us recording." It goes on: "This campaign is for everyone who values visual imagery, not only photographers."
Materials available on-site include a "bust card", that photographers should carry in case they are stopped under anti-terror legislation, as well as a Google map pin-pointing areas of the country known to be problematic for photographers. Supporters of the campaign are encouraged to upload a self-portrait including the campaign slogan "I’m a photographer, not a terrorist". There is also a fan page available on Facebook.
Meanwhile, in Chatham, to mark the recent arrest of local photographer Alex Turner for the heinous offences of being too tall and laying claim to his legal right not to give his name and address to the police, Medway Eyes is planning a meet up in the Riverside Gardens and photo walk on August 15th. Medway Eyes is an informal umbrella organisation that supports, promotes and collaborates with Medway artists and venues.
They have sent an open invitation to photographers and friends, stressing that the event is not a protest, but adding that they will be happy to speak on the subjects of photographers' rights and the value of social documentary photography whilst the group assembles.
SOURCE
Freedom is now flowing from West to East
In August 1989 as communism collapsed, Britain was a beacon to the new regimes. Today Britain is squandering that liberty
I’ve spent much of the past 20 years living in or reporting on the former communist countries of Eastern Europe. Nowadays, with Budapest, Prague and Warsaw two hours away by budget airline, it’s hard to imagine that before 1989, half a continent was imprisoned behind landmines and barbed wire, its citizens terrorised by secret police, intentionally ground down by the endless, intrusive demands of the one-party state. I saw those borders torn down, democracies arise and the basic freedoms that we take for granted — speech, movement and public protest — enthusiastically embraced.
Twenty years ago today the world witnessed the power of the crowd. Hungary’s reformist communist Government permitted the pan-European picnic near the city of Sopron, on the border with Austria, as a symbol of its commitment to a united Europe. The border was to be opened so that about 100 dignitaries and officially approved picnickers could cross freely back and forth. But Hungary was crowded with thousands of East Germans desperate to escape to the West. Many camped near the site of the picnic, waiting for the crucial moment. When the border was opened at three o’clock they surged forward. The guards did not open fire. They stepped back and allowed the East Germans to break through.
This, not the opening of the Berlin Wall in November, was the tipping point. August 19, 1989, accelerated a chain of events that brought down communism and the Soviet Union itself. Such is the power of the crowd.
After 1989 Big Brother was no longer welcome in Budapest, Prague or Warsaw — he moved to London to be ever more warmly embraced by successive Labour administrations. The birthplace of political liberties, the home of the Magna Carta, is now one of the most intrusive democracies in the world. Labour governments have introduced surveillance and monitoring systems of which the communists could only dream. Of course, Britain is not a real police state. But it is certainly sliding further into authoritarianism.
Perhaps because I live abroad, each time I return home I can clearly see quite how subtle and dangerous a process is unfolding. A series of Home Secretaries have presided over a steady, stealthy shredding of our civil liberties. I am amazed at how supine citizens allow local and national government to intrude ever further into their daily lives, logging, tracking and recording everything from household waste disposal to mobile telephone use.
These small changes seem to herald a more dramatic constitutional shift: the rewriting of the social contract under which citizens are apparently regarded not as active participants in society, but, at best as irritants to be monitored, and at worst as potential criminals to be pre-emptively arrested, just as George Orwell predicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The phrase Big Brother has entered common parlance. But Orwell’s book was published in 1949 as communist regimes in Eastern Europe cemented their control through “salami tactics”. These were invented by Matyas Rakosi, Hungary’s communist leader from 1948-56. He sliced away freedoms sliver by sliver, until he established one of the most feared dictatorships in Eastern Europe. When the communists took over a town, for example, they did not appoint the mayor, but a deputy, to work behind the scenes and stealthily take control of the police and municipal administration.
In my more cynical moments I imagine Labour ministers following a similar methodology. They would never say openly: “We intend to criminalise public protest; to grant sweeping blanket powers of arrest to the police and change the very foundation of law, making citizens prove their innocence, rather than have the police and judiciary prove their guilt while demonstrating.”
Nor would they say: “We intend to privatise formerly public spaces and hand over state functions of public order to armies of unaccountable security guards.” Instead, changes are introduced stealthily, rarely debated by Parliament and are nodded through with the acquiescence of the Opposition, in the name of that useful catch-all “security”. Whether by design or not, that seems to me to be happening.
Security is an issue. Communist regimes sought control for its own sake, to preserve their monopolies of power. The Labour Government has had to respond to a new wave of terrorism, perpetrated by British citizens who use the internet and covert communication techniques. Preventing further terrorist attacks is part of a government’s duty. But preventing government from intruding too far into our daily lives is our duty — one we have so far singularly failed to carry out.
In the communist era Hungarians, Czechs and Poles looked to Britain as a beacon of fairness. After 1989 our Parliament, judiciary and free press were models for them. The former one-party states are now vibrant democracies. Despite corruption and a sometimes prickly nationalism, most of the new EU members can be proud of their transformation into modern civic societies.
While our freedoms wither, theirs flourish. It’s a common sight to see far-right demonstrators in front of the Hungarian parliament, hurling abuse and calling for the resignation of the Government. The police watch, nobody is arrested and everyone goes home peacefully. And when the police do use force, there is a vigorous national debate about balancing the right to protest and public security.
Twenty years after the collapse of communism, Eastern Europe is showing us what freedom means. At last, there are signs that we are waking finally from our stupor. in 1989 the East Germans camped on the Hungarian-Austrian frontier showed the world the power of the crowd. So take to the streets, people. While you still can.
SOURCE
Australia: Murder a toddler? No jail if you are a feral
The toddler was Aboriginal. Welfare authorities knew of the case before the killing but probably threw up their hands from the beginning as Aboriginal families are very commmonly severely dysfunctional, with child abuse frequent. And it is absolutely VERBOTEN to take children away from black families. That used to be done sometimes but in recent years the Left set up a huge howl about "The stolen generation" (the black children fostered out to white families) in reference to the practice. The authorities obviously now feel that it is better to let black kids die than risk any more of that abuse
Rachel Pfitzner was ordered to address her anger management problem exactly a year before she murdered her toddler son, The Daily Telegraph reports. A judge handed her a suspended jail term so she could get the help she needed - and look after her children.
Twelve months later her two-year-old son Dean Shillingsworth was dead, his tiny body shoved into a suitcase and tossed in a duck pond. Pfitzner, 27, yesterday pleaded guilty to murder, the Crown rejecting her claim it was an accidental death. She now admits she murdered him - and meant to end his sad, short life.
Pfitzner faced Acting Judge Joseph Moore in October 2006 over a violent attack on Dean's grandfather and the judge had some sympathy for her. She was the mother of three small children with an alcoholic partner, Paul James Shillingsworth who was also prone to rages. Judge Moore made it a condition of her release that she get help - "especially anger management".
Perhaps if she had listened, or indeed the system had worked, Dean would still be alive.
More HERE
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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 readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.
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When nine coppers turned up and found that there was nothing for them to do, they arrested the only guy who happened to be there. No doubt it helped with their "targets". Tick box: One villain arrested. They were really scratching to find something he had done wrong, however. One doesn't expect police to be bright but the lawyers in the Crown Prosecution Service were just as bad. No doubt they had government targets to meet too. It took the threat of a jury trial before anybody started thinking.
But if your car is stolen in Britain don't bother reporting it to the police. They're not interested. Looking into that matter would require some effort from them before they can tick a box. Leftist Britain's target-driven and box-ticking rules have destroyed sanity wholesale
A documentary film-maker was hauled into court on a charge of stealing electricity worth 0.003p. But by the time the ludicrous case was dropped, the bill to taxpayers was more than £5,000. Mark Guard, 44, had to appear at two separate hearings before the Crown Prosecution Service finally saw sense.
Mr Guard, who makes documentaries about crime and the homeless, was filming squatters entering a disused building through an open window at 10pm on August 1. A security sensor inside detected the movement and the alarm was triggered. The squatters fled but Mr Guard, a former electrician, decided to stay behind and turn off the alarm to save neighbouring families from the noise. To do so he had to turn on the electricity in the building for a few seconds, to give him light, and then turn it off.
Nine police then arrived in response to the alarm. When Mr Guard told them what he had done, he was arrested and held in a cell for six hours before being charged. At his first magistrates' court hearing last week, the film-maker pleaded not guilty and asked for the case to be tried at a crown court so a jury could decide.
He said last night: 'When I told the chairman of the bench I wanted a jury trial, he began to realise the ludicrous nature of the case. He said: "Why is this going to a trial in the crown court when it's going to cost £200,000?".' But Mr Guard had to appear again in front of Highbury Magistrates in North London, before the charge was dropped.
Experts estimate that the court hearings cost taxpayers £4,200 - Mr Guard's legal bills were paid from public funds - a night in police cells added £385 and the arrest operation around £600.
Mr Guard, from Knightsbridge, West London, said he was astonished the case went as far as it did. He added: 'I thought I was acting in the public interest. It was late in the evening and I knew families would have struggled to get to sleep if I hadn't done something. 'I even offered to pay 1p to the energy company which supplies electricity to the house, but it's not bothered about collecting such a paltry sum. I've been mugged three times and the police know who did it - but they have never been able to prosecute. 'But on the night in question officers wasted no time in slapping handcuffs on me. I feel this is double standards. If the charges had not been dropped I would have fought all the way.
'Part of me is relieved that I can get back to making my documentary, but most of me is angry that I've been forced to go through all this.'
Neither the squatters nor Mr Guard broke the law by entering the disused house in Camden, North London, because they did not force their way in. Mr Guard has been following and filming criminals and homeless people in London for two years. Using hidden cameras he has been able to capture drug deals and shop thefts as they happened. In 2006, Mr Guard made news when a building firm paid him £3.5million for a plot of land in Surrey he had bought 11 years earlier for just £1,000.
SOURCE
Slandering Christian Zionists
It is often said that ridiculing Christians and their beliefs is the last acceptable form of bigotry. Ultra-secular critics on the left, of course, usually scoff at this notion. But sometimes an example of anti-Christian bile comes along that is so blatant, misleading and littered with judgmental smugness, that I find it difficult to remain silent. Consider the left-wing organization J Street, which claims to be a pro-Israel advocacy group, but which, oddly enough, never misses a chance to slam Israeli policies, particularly when the Jewish State dares defend itself against Islamic terrorism. J Street released a bordering-on-hysteria press release last month to coincide with the annual Christians United for Israel (CUFI) conference in Washington, D.C. Here is the most relevant excerpt:
" …J Street opposes an unholy alliance between right-wing Christian Zionist evangelicals and pro-Israel organizations. Besides being out of step with fundamental Jewish American values, Hagee’s so-called support for Israel is actually a means to an apocalyptic end of destruction or conversion for the Jewish people.Where to begin? First off, let’s try a little experiment. Substitute “devout, Koran-believing Muslims” or “Torah-believing Jews” for “right-wing Christian Zionists.” The outcry from leftist groups like J Street would undoubtedly be loud and intense. But slander Christian evangelicals as J Street does in this outrageously bigoted press release, and it registers nary a blip on the radar of the mainstream media or most civil rights groups.
In our search for allies in the fight to keep Israel secure, American Jews should neither compromise our core Jewish values of tolerance and justice, nor gloss over the reality of the damage the settlement enterprise causes to Israel and the prospects for peace.
Indeed, J Street’s statement goes far beyond criticizing the views of Pastor John Hagee, who organized the CUFI conference. The group is, of course, perfectly free to criticize Hagee if it disagrees with his personal viewpoints. This is a free country. But by tarring all evangelical Christian supporters of Israel as part of some sinister movement that is “unholy,” “apocalyptic” and destructive for the Jewish people, J Street descends into stereotyping and demonization of the worst kind.
Since I spent two full days covering the CUFI conference at the Washington Convention Center on July 21 and 22 (watch my report on the event here and read my blog entry here), let me give some personal observations on what I saw and heard--and what J Street is so contemptuous of.
Not once--in the course of some 20 hours of coverage and countless conversations with conference-goers—did I hear the terms “apocalypse,” “Armageddon,” ‘Antichrist,” or “End Times,” mentioned. Nor did I hear any discussion of the Book of Revelation or of converting Jews. I realize this may come as a shock to J Street, which apparently views such events as fire-and-brimstone hatefests complete with snake taming and calls to nuke Mecca. What I witnessed instead were thousands of attendees, Christian, Jewish and secular, expressing a genuine, deep and heartfelt love for the Land of Israel--its history, beauty and legacy—and especially, its people. As you can see from my report, the place was literally a sea of Israeli and American flags: a true celebration of the Jewish State. There were Hebrew prayers, Hebrew songs, shofars, Torah readings and passionate speeches by Jewish leaders, lawmakers and religious figures. There were also some tears shed. I know it may all sound very “kumbaya,” but I have covered countless manufactured, shallow mega-events in DC over the past six years and let me tell you: what I saw at CUFI was 100 percent genuine.
If this was the kind of doom-and-gloom affair that J Street alludes to, I must have missed it. So must have Senator Joe Lieberman, Rep. Shelley Berkley and talk radio hosts Dennis Prager and Michael Medved: all prominent, proud Jews who spoke at the CUFI gala.
Since the folks at J Street obviously have a very narrow view of what it means to be a Christian supporter of Israel, let me enlighten them a bit by sharing my own personal story. I was raised in a heavily Catholic area of working class Philadelphia by a father who was a veteran of the U.S. 101st Airborne Division. Not surprisingly, my Dad was a big military history buff and a close follower of current events. He passed those passions on to my brother and me. By the time I reached my teen years, we would stay up, sometimes into the wee hours, discussing history’s great empires, battles and military leaders.
Maybe it was the fact that we Philly guys always love an underdog. But my dad was one tough dude, and there was no country he admired more for its grit and determination than Israel. “That tiny sliver of land,” he used to marvel. “They’re surrounded by enemies on all sides. And yet still they pull off victory after victory. Those are some tough Jews!” From Moshe Dayan to Entebbe, from King David to Camp David, through my father, I became well acquainted with Israeli history in my formative years and developed a lasting admiration for the Land and its people. As I reached high school, I was also fortunate enough to develop great friendships with Jewish teammates, teachers and coaches.
Nowhere did my religious beliefs factor into those friendships. As a matter of fact, all of this happened years before I even picked up a Bible or began taking my Christianity seriously. Interestingly enough, I found that my buddies from the neighborhood in Philly shared my positive view of Israel. They may not have been big observers of geopolitics, but they were hugely patriotic. common sense told them that the Israelis were fighting the good fight and were kindred spirits: a free, democratic people who were loyal allies of the United States.
When I finally did get around to picking up a Bible about seven years ago, I discovered a startling thing: this Book was essentially a history of Israel and the Jewish people up until the first century AD. Even more jarring to my senses was the realization that Jesus was a Jewish rabbi who fiercely loved his fellow Jews. His mother, Mary, was also a Jew. So were all twelve apostles. In fact, Christianity was founded by—you guessed it—Jews. In addition, Abraham, Moses, Joseph, King David and all the Old Testament heroes who I had grown to love and admire so much were Israeli Jews. I began to realize that Christianity owed a huge debt to Israel and the Jewish people. It may sound crazy to some, but let’s face it: this is both a historically and biblically undeniable fact, and--apologies to J Street--has nothing to do with the “end of the world.”
Bringing it back to the secular level, the friendships I have developed with Israeli colleagues over the past six years, and especially my trip to Israel last November, have solidified my support for the country. As if I didn’t realize it before, walking through the besieged city of Sderot and seeing Hamas missiles literally stamped “Made in Iran” truly brought home the fact that Israel’s enemies are America’s enemies. We share a common radical Islamic foe that seeks our destruction. That alone is reason enough for mutual understanding and support.
I strongly suspect that the vast majority of attendees at the CUFI conference view Israel in a similar way. Or as JTA’s Eric Fingerhut—who also covered the event—puts it: “I've talked to enough Christian Zionists over the past few years to believe that for the vast majority of them, their support for the Jewish state is genuinely motivated by Genesis's admonitition that God will bless those who bless the Jewish people, as well as their respect for Judaism as a foundation for Christianity or even their general beliefs about U.S. foriegn policy.”
In closing, if J Steet truly has Israel’s best interests at heart, why on earth would it seek to alienate an estimated 70 million American evangelical Christians who are strongly inclined towards Israel during a time of great need? What is really going on here? And when will J Street issue an apology to evangelicals for its inflammatory CUFI press release?
SOURCE
Oppressed British snappers focus on police
Photographers attempt to reclaim the right to photograph
Relations between police and photographers, already at an all-time low, look set to worsen this week as activists set up a new national campaign group to protect photography, and protesters get ready to take to the streets in Chatham. The national campaign launched last Saturday in the Foundry pub in East London, with more than 200 photographers showing their support for a new photographers' rights website by being snapped holding up a placard saying "I’m a Photographer, Not a Terrorist!"
Although the campaign is skewed very much toward professional photographers, it claims that it is the rights of all photographers that are currently under attack. According to the site: "Not only is [this attack] corrosive of press freedom but creation of the collective visual history of our country is extinguished by anti-terrorist legislation designed to protect the heritage it prevents us recording." It goes on: "This campaign is for everyone who values visual imagery, not only photographers."
Materials available on-site include a "bust card", that photographers should carry in case they are stopped under anti-terror legislation, as well as a Google map pin-pointing areas of the country known to be problematic for photographers. Supporters of the campaign are encouraged to upload a self-portrait including the campaign slogan "I’m a photographer, not a terrorist". There is also a fan page available on Facebook.
Meanwhile, in Chatham, to mark the recent arrest of local photographer Alex Turner for the heinous offences of being too tall and laying claim to his legal right not to give his name and address to the police, Medway Eyes is planning a meet up in the Riverside Gardens and photo walk on August 15th. Medway Eyes is an informal umbrella organisation that supports, promotes and collaborates with Medway artists and venues.
They have sent an open invitation to photographers and friends, stressing that the event is not a protest, but adding that they will be happy to speak on the subjects of photographers' rights and the value of social documentary photography whilst the group assembles.
SOURCE
Freedom is now flowing from West to East
In August 1989 as communism collapsed, Britain was a beacon to the new regimes. Today Britain is squandering that liberty
I’ve spent much of the past 20 years living in or reporting on the former communist countries of Eastern Europe. Nowadays, with Budapest, Prague and Warsaw two hours away by budget airline, it’s hard to imagine that before 1989, half a continent was imprisoned behind landmines and barbed wire, its citizens terrorised by secret police, intentionally ground down by the endless, intrusive demands of the one-party state. I saw those borders torn down, democracies arise and the basic freedoms that we take for granted — speech, movement and public protest — enthusiastically embraced.
Twenty years ago today the world witnessed the power of the crowd. Hungary’s reformist communist Government permitted the pan-European picnic near the city of Sopron, on the border with Austria, as a symbol of its commitment to a united Europe. The border was to be opened so that about 100 dignitaries and officially approved picnickers could cross freely back and forth. But Hungary was crowded with thousands of East Germans desperate to escape to the West. Many camped near the site of the picnic, waiting for the crucial moment. When the border was opened at three o’clock they surged forward. The guards did not open fire. They stepped back and allowed the East Germans to break through.
This, not the opening of the Berlin Wall in November, was the tipping point. August 19, 1989, accelerated a chain of events that brought down communism and the Soviet Union itself. Such is the power of the crowd.
After 1989 Big Brother was no longer welcome in Budapest, Prague or Warsaw — he moved to London to be ever more warmly embraced by successive Labour administrations. The birthplace of political liberties, the home of the Magna Carta, is now one of the most intrusive democracies in the world. Labour governments have introduced surveillance and monitoring systems of which the communists could only dream. Of course, Britain is not a real police state. But it is certainly sliding further into authoritarianism.
Perhaps because I live abroad, each time I return home I can clearly see quite how subtle and dangerous a process is unfolding. A series of Home Secretaries have presided over a steady, stealthy shredding of our civil liberties. I am amazed at how supine citizens allow local and national government to intrude ever further into their daily lives, logging, tracking and recording everything from household waste disposal to mobile telephone use.
These small changes seem to herald a more dramatic constitutional shift: the rewriting of the social contract under which citizens are apparently regarded not as active participants in society, but, at best as irritants to be monitored, and at worst as potential criminals to be pre-emptively arrested, just as George Orwell predicted in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The phrase Big Brother has entered common parlance. But Orwell’s book was published in 1949 as communist regimes in Eastern Europe cemented their control through “salami tactics”. These were invented by Matyas Rakosi, Hungary’s communist leader from 1948-56. He sliced away freedoms sliver by sliver, until he established one of the most feared dictatorships in Eastern Europe. When the communists took over a town, for example, they did not appoint the mayor, but a deputy, to work behind the scenes and stealthily take control of the police and municipal administration.
In my more cynical moments I imagine Labour ministers following a similar methodology. They would never say openly: “We intend to criminalise public protest; to grant sweeping blanket powers of arrest to the police and change the very foundation of law, making citizens prove their innocence, rather than have the police and judiciary prove their guilt while demonstrating.”
Nor would they say: “We intend to privatise formerly public spaces and hand over state functions of public order to armies of unaccountable security guards.” Instead, changes are introduced stealthily, rarely debated by Parliament and are nodded through with the acquiescence of the Opposition, in the name of that useful catch-all “security”. Whether by design or not, that seems to me to be happening.
Security is an issue. Communist regimes sought control for its own sake, to preserve their monopolies of power. The Labour Government has had to respond to a new wave of terrorism, perpetrated by British citizens who use the internet and covert communication techniques. Preventing further terrorist attacks is part of a government’s duty. But preventing government from intruding too far into our daily lives is our duty — one we have so far singularly failed to carry out.
In the communist era Hungarians, Czechs and Poles looked to Britain as a beacon of fairness. After 1989 our Parliament, judiciary and free press were models for them. The former one-party states are now vibrant democracies. Despite corruption and a sometimes prickly nationalism, most of the new EU members can be proud of their transformation into modern civic societies.
While our freedoms wither, theirs flourish. It’s a common sight to see far-right demonstrators in front of the Hungarian parliament, hurling abuse and calling for the resignation of the Government. The police watch, nobody is arrested and everyone goes home peacefully. And when the police do use force, there is a vigorous national debate about balancing the right to protest and public security.
Twenty years after the collapse of communism, Eastern Europe is showing us what freedom means. At last, there are signs that we are waking finally from our stupor. in 1989 the East Germans camped on the Hungarian-Austrian frontier showed the world the power of the crowd. So take to the streets, people. While you still can.
SOURCE
Australia: Murder a toddler? No jail if you are a feral
The toddler was Aboriginal. Welfare authorities knew of the case before the killing but probably threw up their hands from the beginning as Aboriginal families are very commmonly severely dysfunctional, with child abuse frequent. And it is absolutely VERBOTEN to take children away from black families. That used to be done sometimes but in recent years the Left set up a huge howl about "The stolen generation" (the black children fostered out to white families) in reference to the practice. The authorities obviously now feel that it is better to let black kids die than risk any more of that abuse
Rachel Pfitzner was ordered to address her anger management problem exactly a year before she murdered her toddler son, The Daily Telegraph reports. A judge handed her a suspended jail term so she could get the help she needed - and look after her children.
Twelve months later her two-year-old son Dean Shillingsworth was dead, his tiny body shoved into a suitcase and tossed in a duck pond. Pfitzner, 27, yesterday pleaded guilty to murder, the Crown rejecting her claim it was an accidental death. She now admits she murdered him - and meant to end his sad, short life.
Pfitzner faced Acting Judge Joseph Moore in October 2006 over a violent attack on Dean's grandfather and the judge had some sympathy for her. She was the mother of three small children with an alcoholic partner, Paul James Shillingsworth who was also prone to rages. Judge Moore made it a condition of her release that she get help - "especially anger management".
Perhaps if she had listened, or indeed the system had worked, Dean would still be alive.
More HERE
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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 readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.
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Wednesday, August 19, 2009
British indifference to real crime again
But deny the Holocaust and you are in BIG trouble -- four years and six months in jail worth of trouble in fact
A mother has written to magistrates in disgust after four teenagers who viciously attacked her son walked free from court. Mary Jordan has demanded an explanation after the gang admitted to the unprovoked assault. Oliver Jordan, 18, was taken to hospital after the group of 16-year olds, who had been drinking, battered him to the ground, kicking and punching him as he fell.
Each of them was given a sixmonth referral order, which means they will have to appear before a youth offender panel which will suggest ways in which they can ‘repair the harm caused’. But Mrs Jordan, a driver for a private car-hire company, dismissed the punishment and has condemned the sentence in a personal letter to the magistrates in which she accused them of giving a green light to street violence. The 43-year-old, who also has a 14-year-old daughter, wrote: ‘Did my son need to be brain damaged or dead before you would have given him justice? ‘This is not justice for my son, his girlfriend, my family and her family – you have let us all down. ‘I disagree with what you have done and would like an explanation as to how and why you reached this verdict.’
Recalling the night of the attack in Gloucester, she went on: ‘I shall never forget arriving at the hospital, waiting till the ambulance crew brought my son in … covered in blood, his face all swollen and battered. He may be a teenager to you but he was still my baby. ‘It was the first time in my life that I felt defenceless. I wanted to take the pain away but I couldn’t. ‘His little sister broke down and cried when she saw her brother covered in blood. I stayed with him and watched him start to lose consciousness.’ She added: ‘Opposite my son was a teenager who was being treated for a sprained ankle and swollen hand – well, guess what, he was one of my son’s attackers.’
Gloucester Youth Court heard last week that Mr Jordan and his girlfriend were followed along a street before they were surrounded by a group of youths, some of whom were on bikes and a moped. Prosecuting solicitor Katherine Jones said: ‘The youth on the moped said, “Who’s going to do it?” 'Matters rapidly deteriorated and they rained kicks and punches on Mr Jordan, who fell to the ground and curled up into the foetal position. ‘His girlfriend tried to pull them off, but she was dragged away and thrown to the ground. 'Fortunately residents heard the commotion and came out and one of them phoned the police.’
She added: ‘Mr Jordan had a suspected broken nose, multiple cuts and bruises, a split lip and swollen jaw, while his girlfriend suffered bruising and swelling to the eye, nose and knee.’
Dealing with the four youths, the chairman of the court bench Sue Alexander told them: ‘This attack by a pack fuelled by drink was horrific, shocking and vicious. ‘It must have been a terrifying experience for the victim.’ She went on: ‘There is a stark choice between custody and a referral order – and I can say that you are not going to prison today.’
Mrs Jordan, whose husband Tim, 45, is a factory worker, also asked in her letter: ‘So what do they have to do before they go to prison?’ She went on to explain that her son, who has recently left school, and his girlfriend have suffered flashbacks since the attack in February and now drive everywhere because they are too nervous to walk around.
The parents of the four defendants, who admitted charges of assault causing actual bodily harm and affray, said they were ashamed by their sons’ actions. The solicitor for one of the youths, said: ‘He deeply regrets this. When drink goes in, sense goes out. He let himself and his parents down.’
SOURCE
The apparent Leftist derangement over George Bush was mainly just a tactic -- and now the tactic has new targets
There is an extensive body of writing from both sides of the political aisle that has analyzed the extraordinary depths of hatred leveled at former President George W. Bush.
His birth into a wealthy and politically connected family is where a lot of the animus starts. His rejection of his Connecticut roots and adoption of a rugged Texan persona naturally riled his birth-constituency. His disjointed speaking style also alienated many others - especially those who covered him in the Northeastern media. Naturally, some of his initiatives were controversial. His allies say he didn't do enough.
But all presidents make mistakes, pursue unpopular ideas, possess off-putting personality traits and don't do enough to appeal to their core supporters. Something far more insidious was at work in the hatred of our most recent former president.
Now that Mr. Bush is quietly going about his retirement, this strain of rage - the GWB43 virus - has spread like wildfire, finding unsuspecting targets, each granting us greater perspective into what not long ago seemed like a mysterious phenomenon isolated only on our 43rd president. The first person to catch the virus was Sarah Palin, whose family also was infected, including, unforgivably, her children.
Then it was Joe the Plumber, for asking a question.
Next were the Mormons.
Then it was Rush Limbaugh - who hit back.
Next, tax-day "tea party" attendees were "tea bagged."
Then there was a beauty contestant.
And a Cambridge cop, too.
And now we have town-hall "mobs."
Smile ... you've been "community organized."
When put on the media stage, these individuals and groups have been isolated for destruction for standing in the way of a resurgent modern progressive movement and for challenging its charismatic once-in-a-lifetime standard-bearer, Barack Obama. This is their time, we've been told. And no one is going to stand in the way.
The origins of manufactured "politics of personal destruction" is Saul Alinsky, the mentor of a young Hillary Rodham, who wrote her 92-page Wellesley College senior thesis on the late Chicago-based "progressive" street agitator titled, "There Is Only the Fight." Mr. Obama and his Fighting Illini, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, have perfected Mr. Alinsky's techniques as laid out in his guidebook to political warfare, "Rules for Radicals." In plain language, we see how normal, decent and even private citizens become nationally vilified symbols overnight - all in the pursuit of progressive political victory.
"Rule 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)"
With the complicity of the mainstream media and abetted by George Soros' money and netroots nation, Mr. Bush never stood a chance. But the more the virus spreads, the more we study it and, perhaps, find the cure. The repetitive use of the same technique against anyone who would dare stand up and oppose the progressive movement and especially its leader has exposed the game and rendered its tactics less effective.
In fact, one could make the argument that the Republican Party, usually slow on the uptake, has finally figured it out. There are no major Republican targets out there opposing Mr. Obama and his aggressive agenda. The conservative movement appears leaderless, but perhaps for the best. Maybe that is the strategy: Standing back and letting the Obama machine flail in its pursuit of its next victim. A grass-roots movement of average Americans has stood up, making it extremely difficult to isolate and demonize an individual.
Mr. Alinsky noted in "Rule 12" that it is difficult to go after "institutions." And attacking "tea baggers" and "mobs" has only created more resistance and drawn attention to the left's limited playbook. Even Americans expressing their constitutionally protected right to free speech are open game.
Now that many people are Googling the Alinsky rule book and catching up with the way Chicago thugs play their political games, Mr. Obama and the Fighting Illini are going to be forced to create new rules - or double down on the old ones. Worse yet, as his approval ratings descend rapidly - Rasmussen has him at 47 percent, the lowest of his presidency - angry citizens may be turning the tables on him, using Mr. Alinsky against him.
They won't have to "freeze" and "personalize" him either. He's got 3 1/2 years left with the klieg lights focused on him. And if Mr. Obama can't get the economy rolling and continues to demonize everyday folks for his failures, he will be further isolated from sympathy and even ridiculed.
Yes, it's cruel - and effective. Ask Mr. Bush, the magnanimous guy who gave the new president a heartfelt hug the day he took office. He knows. Boy, I wish I could see his famous smirk right about now. I always loved how much they hated that.
SOURCE
Australian lawyers who got holocaust denier locked up try to justify their attack on free speech
Freedom of speech should not be freedom to vilify, argue Steven Lewis and Peter Wertheim below -- without offering any evidence that such vilification leads to any physical harm to those vilified. What they offer is just a series of shallow and unsubstantited assertions. Can they name even ONE person who was moved by Mr. Toben's rants to attack a Jew? To show how shallow their argument is, contemplate this: I do my best to vilify the Queensland police, because I believe I have good grounds for doing so. Should I be prevented from doing that? It might also be noted that the lawyers concerned do a fair job of vilifying Mr. Toben. Why is that OK if vilification is of itself such a bad thing? I think that their argument reduces to nothing more than an aways-easy attack on unpopular speech. Wiser heads in the U.S. judiciary have of course ruled that holocaust denial is protected free speech, obnoxious though it may be
In a legal first, Australia's most notorious Holocaust denier, Fredrik Toben, has been jailed for three months following the failure of his appeal this week for contempt of court arising from breaches of Australia's anti-vilification laws.
The sentence follows seven years of Toben repeatedly ignoring court orders requiring him to remove racist material from his Adelaide Institute website.
His journey to prison began in 2002 when the Federal Court found Toben's website breached the racial-hatred provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act.
According to the court, material on the site suggested the Holocaust did not occur, that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, that Jewish people who believed in the Holocaust were of limited intelligence and that they have exaggerated the number of Jews killed during World War II to profit from what he described as "a Holocaust myth".
But it's not these claims, no matter how offensive they may be, that have landed Toben with a prison term. There are no criminal sanctions under the act.
Toben is going to jail for contempt of court. He was ordered to remove the offending material and he didn't. He promised to remove the material and then reneged. He apologised to the court but then recanted. True to form, he all but invited the court to lock him up.
Toben referred to judges as "the Jewdiciary" and, again true to form, accused them of bias without a shred of evidence. We all have to obey the law and court orders. There are no special rules and privileges for the Tobens of this world.
While the decision to jail Toben will be welcomed by most fair-minded people, questions will rightly be asked about free speech and turning Toben into a poster-boy for racist fringe groups.
The suggestion that Toben, and others like him, should be able to say whatever they like regardless of how hurtful, inaccurate and ugly it might be, goes to the heart of our dearly held belief in freedom of expression.
But does this sort of commentary, publicly attacking people because of their race, ethnicity or religion, really constitute community debate? Is it an exercise of free speech, or an abuse of it? When Jews in Australia are targeted, these questions take on a very sharp edge. Australia has the world's second highest percentage of Holocaust survivors after Israel.
Like all freedoms, the proper limits of free speech are exceeded when it is about causing harm. The basic question is whether vilification is sufficiently harmful to justify an intrusion by the law into this fundamental personal freedom.
Whether it's Jews, Muslims, homosexuals or women, the public vilification of entire groups of people can only undermine, and ultimately destroy, their sense of security, the birthright of every Australian.
Being constantly vilified as a member of a group, instead of being judged on one's individual merits, compromises one's social relationships. One is put on the defensive with workmates, friends, neighbours and anyone else with whom one interacts. Such is the power of modern communications. And vilification is the invariable precursor to violence against members of the targeted group.
The Racial Discrimination Act protects innocent people from this sort of harm.
But the harm has to be proved in court according to objective criteria. The act makes it clear that it is not unlawful to publish material in good faith as part of a genuine academic, artistic or scientific debate, whether anyone takes offence or not. What's clear in the Toben case, and what the court found, was that his material is not part of a genuine debate about history or politics, as he claimed. The real thrust of his material is to use the internet to stoke up hatred against Jews as a group.
Some argue that if Toben had been left alone to spruik from his Adelaide-based hate website he would have remained an obscure failed school teacher talking to like-minded nutters. Not so. Toben is a determined publicity hound. In 1999 he travelled to his native Germany and was convicted in Mannheim of incitement to racial hatred and Holocaust denial. In Germany, for obvious reasons, trying to whitewash the Nazis' crimes is a criminal offence. Toben spent seven months in jail.
In 2006, Toben went to Tehran for an anti-Semitic hatefest, hobnobbing in the media limelight with a cavalcade of some of the world's most notorious racists including Iranian President Ahmadinejad and US Ku Klux Klansman David Duke.
The publicity around the legal proceedings against Toben in Australia has been a mere zephyr in his international media whirl.
For reasons that defy conventional analysis, Toben has spent most of his adult life vainly working to rehabilitate the universally disgraced reputation of Nazi Germany. And for Toben, "the Jews" are the principal obstacle.
If Toben and his patsies confined their activities to ranting among themselves in private, few would care. But using our cherished freedoms and easy access to the mass media as a way of striking at the security of an entire group of people on racial grounds tears at the fabric of our community and ultimately threatens those very freedoms.
History has vividly demonstrated that the relentless infusion of racism into public discourse is like drip-feeding poison into the democratic body politic. And in the words of American philosopher George Santayana: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
SOURCE
Frontal attack on young families by Australia's Leftist Federal government
In the name of "safety", childcare is to be made far too dear for most families. This will lead to a lot of "backyard" operations or very impoverished families. Karl Marx thought that the family was a major obstacle to his revolution. He still has many disciples
QUEENSLAND parents could soon be paying $5000 more a year for child care, under a Federal Government plan to lift preschool education standards. The proposed changes will be rolled out in all Australian childcare centres in a bid to tighten up the industry by improving staff-to-child ratios and qualifications. But industry experts say the cost to parents is likely to be "substantial" and make it even harder to find childcare places. A government report by consultants Access Economics shows how, under one scenario, childcare costs could jump by $125 per child per week if all changes were implemented.
Childcare Queensland president Gwynn Bridge said initial costings suggested most childcare centres in Queensland would likely have to raise annual fees by $5000 a child. She said changes to staff-to-child ratios would force some centres to take even fewer children. "We are extremely concerned about this plan, as the incurring costs to families is looking to be substantial," Ms Bridge said. "The repercussions for Queensland are terrible, and we are in a unique and uncomfortable position compared with other states. "Childcare places for babies are already under high demand, and the proposed changes mean we will be able to take on even fewer. "We are advocating on behalf of families to ensure we get the best outcome for our Queensland families, who are already doing it tough."
The plan will be implemented by July 1 next year, following consultation with the industry, and be fully in place by January 2012. Childcare Queensland will make submissions to the Government by August 31.
Under the planned changes, one carer would be responsible for five children aged between 2½ and 3, rather than the current eight children, and one carer would look after 11 children aged between 3 and 5, rather than the current one staff to 12 children ratio. The current Queensland baby ratio is one to four aged up to 15 months, but this would change to one to three for up to 2 years. Childcare workers would also be required to have one staff member with a four-year teaching qualification at a tertiary level.
Child Care National Association president Chris Buck said families had been kept in the dark about the extra costs involved. "If perceived quality goes up, so do the costs," he said. "The risk being run by the Government is that fewer families will be able to afford child care."
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 readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.
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But deny the Holocaust and you are in BIG trouble -- four years and six months in jail worth of trouble in fact
A mother has written to magistrates in disgust after four teenagers who viciously attacked her son walked free from court. Mary Jordan has demanded an explanation after the gang admitted to the unprovoked assault. Oliver Jordan, 18, was taken to hospital after the group of 16-year olds, who had been drinking, battered him to the ground, kicking and punching him as he fell.
Each of them was given a sixmonth referral order, which means they will have to appear before a youth offender panel which will suggest ways in which they can ‘repair the harm caused’. But Mrs Jordan, a driver for a private car-hire company, dismissed the punishment and has condemned the sentence in a personal letter to the magistrates in which she accused them of giving a green light to street violence. The 43-year-old, who also has a 14-year-old daughter, wrote: ‘Did my son need to be brain damaged or dead before you would have given him justice? ‘This is not justice for my son, his girlfriend, my family and her family – you have let us all down. ‘I disagree with what you have done and would like an explanation as to how and why you reached this verdict.’
Recalling the night of the attack in Gloucester, she went on: ‘I shall never forget arriving at the hospital, waiting till the ambulance crew brought my son in … covered in blood, his face all swollen and battered. He may be a teenager to you but he was still my baby. ‘It was the first time in my life that I felt defenceless. I wanted to take the pain away but I couldn’t. ‘His little sister broke down and cried when she saw her brother covered in blood. I stayed with him and watched him start to lose consciousness.’ She added: ‘Opposite my son was a teenager who was being treated for a sprained ankle and swollen hand – well, guess what, he was one of my son’s attackers.’
Gloucester Youth Court heard last week that Mr Jordan and his girlfriend were followed along a street before they were surrounded by a group of youths, some of whom were on bikes and a moped. Prosecuting solicitor Katherine Jones said: ‘The youth on the moped said, “Who’s going to do it?” 'Matters rapidly deteriorated and they rained kicks and punches on Mr Jordan, who fell to the ground and curled up into the foetal position. ‘His girlfriend tried to pull them off, but she was dragged away and thrown to the ground. 'Fortunately residents heard the commotion and came out and one of them phoned the police.’
She added: ‘Mr Jordan had a suspected broken nose, multiple cuts and bruises, a split lip and swollen jaw, while his girlfriend suffered bruising and swelling to the eye, nose and knee.’
Dealing with the four youths, the chairman of the court bench Sue Alexander told them: ‘This attack by a pack fuelled by drink was horrific, shocking and vicious. ‘It must have been a terrifying experience for the victim.’ She went on: ‘There is a stark choice between custody and a referral order – and I can say that you are not going to prison today.’
Mrs Jordan, whose husband Tim, 45, is a factory worker, also asked in her letter: ‘So what do they have to do before they go to prison?’ She went on to explain that her son, who has recently left school, and his girlfriend have suffered flashbacks since the attack in February and now drive everywhere because they are too nervous to walk around.
The parents of the four defendants, who admitted charges of assault causing actual bodily harm and affray, said they were ashamed by their sons’ actions. The solicitor for one of the youths, said: ‘He deeply regrets this. When drink goes in, sense goes out. He let himself and his parents down.’
SOURCE
The apparent Leftist derangement over George Bush was mainly just a tactic -- and now the tactic has new targets
There is an extensive body of writing from both sides of the political aisle that has analyzed the extraordinary depths of hatred leveled at former President George W. Bush.
His birth into a wealthy and politically connected family is where a lot of the animus starts. His rejection of his Connecticut roots and adoption of a rugged Texan persona naturally riled his birth-constituency. His disjointed speaking style also alienated many others - especially those who covered him in the Northeastern media. Naturally, some of his initiatives were controversial. His allies say he didn't do enough.
But all presidents make mistakes, pursue unpopular ideas, possess off-putting personality traits and don't do enough to appeal to their core supporters. Something far more insidious was at work in the hatred of our most recent former president.
Now that Mr. Bush is quietly going about his retirement, this strain of rage - the GWB43 virus - has spread like wildfire, finding unsuspecting targets, each granting us greater perspective into what not long ago seemed like a mysterious phenomenon isolated only on our 43rd president. The first person to catch the virus was Sarah Palin, whose family also was infected, including, unforgivably, her children.
Then it was Joe the Plumber, for asking a question.
Next were the Mormons.
Then it was Rush Limbaugh - who hit back.
Next, tax-day "tea party" attendees were "tea bagged."
Then there was a beauty contestant.
And a Cambridge cop, too.
And now we have town-hall "mobs."
Smile ... you've been "community organized."
When put on the media stage, these individuals and groups have been isolated for destruction for standing in the way of a resurgent modern progressive movement and for challenging its charismatic once-in-a-lifetime standard-bearer, Barack Obama. This is their time, we've been told. And no one is going to stand in the way.
The origins of manufactured "politics of personal destruction" is Saul Alinsky, the mentor of a young Hillary Rodham, who wrote her 92-page Wellesley College senior thesis on the late Chicago-based "progressive" street agitator titled, "There Is Only the Fight." Mr. Obama and his Fighting Illini, Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, have perfected Mr. Alinsky's techniques as laid out in his guidebook to political warfare, "Rules for Radicals." In plain language, we see how normal, decent and even private citizens become nationally vilified symbols overnight - all in the pursuit of progressive political victory.
"Rule 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)"
With the complicity of the mainstream media and abetted by George Soros' money and netroots nation, Mr. Bush never stood a chance. But the more the virus spreads, the more we study it and, perhaps, find the cure. The repetitive use of the same technique against anyone who would dare stand up and oppose the progressive movement and especially its leader has exposed the game and rendered its tactics less effective.
In fact, one could make the argument that the Republican Party, usually slow on the uptake, has finally figured it out. There are no major Republican targets out there opposing Mr. Obama and his aggressive agenda. The conservative movement appears leaderless, but perhaps for the best. Maybe that is the strategy: Standing back and letting the Obama machine flail in its pursuit of its next victim. A grass-roots movement of average Americans has stood up, making it extremely difficult to isolate and demonize an individual.
Mr. Alinsky noted in "Rule 12" that it is difficult to go after "institutions." And attacking "tea baggers" and "mobs" has only created more resistance and drawn attention to the left's limited playbook. Even Americans expressing their constitutionally protected right to free speech are open game.
Now that many people are Googling the Alinsky rule book and catching up with the way Chicago thugs play their political games, Mr. Obama and the Fighting Illini are going to be forced to create new rules - or double down on the old ones. Worse yet, as his approval ratings descend rapidly - Rasmussen has him at 47 percent, the lowest of his presidency - angry citizens may be turning the tables on him, using Mr. Alinsky against him.
They won't have to "freeze" and "personalize" him either. He's got 3 1/2 years left with the klieg lights focused on him. And if Mr. Obama can't get the economy rolling and continues to demonize everyday folks for his failures, he will be further isolated from sympathy and even ridiculed.
Yes, it's cruel - and effective. Ask Mr. Bush, the magnanimous guy who gave the new president a heartfelt hug the day he took office. He knows. Boy, I wish I could see his famous smirk right about now. I always loved how much they hated that.
SOURCE
Australian lawyers who got holocaust denier locked up try to justify their attack on free speech
Freedom of speech should not be freedom to vilify, argue Steven Lewis and Peter Wertheim below -- without offering any evidence that such vilification leads to any physical harm to those vilified. What they offer is just a series of shallow and unsubstantited assertions. Can they name even ONE person who was moved by Mr. Toben's rants to attack a Jew? To show how shallow their argument is, contemplate this: I do my best to vilify the Queensland police, because I believe I have good grounds for doing so. Should I be prevented from doing that? It might also be noted that the lawyers concerned do a fair job of vilifying Mr. Toben. Why is that OK if vilification is of itself such a bad thing? I think that their argument reduces to nothing more than an aways-easy attack on unpopular speech. Wiser heads in the U.S. judiciary have of course ruled that holocaust denial is protected free speech, obnoxious though it may be
In a legal first, Australia's most notorious Holocaust denier, Fredrik Toben, has been jailed for three months following the failure of his appeal this week for contempt of court arising from breaches of Australia's anti-vilification laws.
The sentence follows seven years of Toben repeatedly ignoring court orders requiring him to remove racist material from his Adelaide Institute website.
His journey to prison began in 2002 when the Federal Court found Toben's website breached the racial-hatred provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act.
According to the court, material on the site suggested the Holocaust did not occur, that there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, that Jewish people who believed in the Holocaust were of limited intelligence and that they have exaggerated the number of Jews killed during World War II to profit from what he described as "a Holocaust myth".
But it's not these claims, no matter how offensive they may be, that have landed Toben with a prison term. There are no criminal sanctions under the act.
Toben is going to jail for contempt of court. He was ordered to remove the offending material and he didn't. He promised to remove the material and then reneged. He apologised to the court but then recanted. True to form, he all but invited the court to lock him up.
Toben referred to judges as "the Jewdiciary" and, again true to form, accused them of bias without a shred of evidence. We all have to obey the law and court orders. There are no special rules and privileges for the Tobens of this world.
While the decision to jail Toben will be welcomed by most fair-minded people, questions will rightly be asked about free speech and turning Toben into a poster-boy for racist fringe groups.
The suggestion that Toben, and others like him, should be able to say whatever they like regardless of how hurtful, inaccurate and ugly it might be, goes to the heart of our dearly held belief in freedom of expression.
But does this sort of commentary, publicly attacking people because of their race, ethnicity or religion, really constitute community debate? Is it an exercise of free speech, or an abuse of it? When Jews in Australia are targeted, these questions take on a very sharp edge. Australia has the world's second highest percentage of Holocaust survivors after Israel.
Like all freedoms, the proper limits of free speech are exceeded when it is about causing harm. The basic question is whether vilification is sufficiently harmful to justify an intrusion by the law into this fundamental personal freedom.
Whether it's Jews, Muslims, homosexuals or women, the public vilification of entire groups of people can only undermine, and ultimately destroy, their sense of security, the birthright of every Australian.
Being constantly vilified as a member of a group, instead of being judged on one's individual merits, compromises one's social relationships. One is put on the defensive with workmates, friends, neighbours and anyone else with whom one interacts. Such is the power of modern communications. And vilification is the invariable precursor to violence against members of the targeted group.
The Racial Discrimination Act protects innocent people from this sort of harm.
But the harm has to be proved in court according to objective criteria. The act makes it clear that it is not unlawful to publish material in good faith as part of a genuine academic, artistic or scientific debate, whether anyone takes offence or not. What's clear in the Toben case, and what the court found, was that his material is not part of a genuine debate about history or politics, as he claimed. The real thrust of his material is to use the internet to stoke up hatred against Jews as a group.
Some argue that if Toben had been left alone to spruik from his Adelaide-based hate website he would have remained an obscure failed school teacher talking to like-minded nutters. Not so. Toben is a determined publicity hound. In 1999 he travelled to his native Germany and was convicted in Mannheim of incitement to racial hatred and Holocaust denial. In Germany, for obvious reasons, trying to whitewash the Nazis' crimes is a criminal offence. Toben spent seven months in jail.
In 2006, Toben went to Tehran for an anti-Semitic hatefest, hobnobbing in the media limelight with a cavalcade of some of the world's most notorious racists including Iranian President Ahmadinejad and US Ku Klux Klansman David Duke.
The publicity around the legal proceedings against Toben in Australia has been a mere zephyr in his international media whirl.
For reasons that defy conventional analysis, Toben has spent most of his adult life vainly working to rehabilitate the universally disgraced reputation of Nazi Germany. And for Toben, "the Jews" are the principal obstacle.
If Toben and his patsies confined their activities to ranting among themselves in private, few would care. But using our cherished freedoms and easy access to the mass media as a way of striking at the security of an entire group of people on racial grounds tears at the fabric of our community and ultimately threatens those very freedoms.
History has vividly demonstrated that the relentless infusion of racism into public discourse is like drip-feeding poison into the democratic body politic. And in the words of American philosopher George Santayana: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
SOURCE
Frontal attack on young families by Australia's Leftist Federal government
In the name of "safety", childcare is to be made far too dear for most families. This will lead to a lot of "backyard" operations or very impoverished families. Karl Marx thought that the family was a major obstacle to his revolution. He still has many disciples
QUEENSLAND parents could soon be paying $5000 more a year for child care, under a Federal Government plan to lift preschool education standards. The proposed changes will be rolled out in all Australian childcare centres in a bid to tighten up the industry by improving staff-to-child ratios and qualifications. But industry experts say the cost to parents is likely to be "substantial" and make it even harder to find childcare places. A government report by consultants Access Economics shows how, under one scenario, childcare costs could jump by $125 per child per week if all changes were implemented.
Childcare Queensland president Gwynn Bridge said initial costings suggested most childcare centres in Queensland would likely have to raise annual fees by $5000 a child. She said changes to staff-to-child ratios would force some centres to take even fewer children. "We are extremely concerned about this plan, as the incurring costs to families is looking to be substantial," Ms Bridge said. "The repercussions for Queensland are terrible, and we are in a unique and uncomfortable position compared with other states. "Childcare places for babies are already under high demand, and the proposed changes mean we will be able to take on even fewer. "We are advocating on behalf of families to ensure we get the best outcome for our Queensland families, who are already doing it tough."
The plan will be implemented by July 1 next year, following consultation with the industry, and be fully in place by January 2012. Childcare Queensland will make submissions to the Government by August 31.
Under the planned changes, one carer would be responsible for five children aged between 2½ and 3, rather than the current eight children, and one carer would look after 11 children aged between 3 and 5, rather than the current one staff to 12 children ratio. The current Queensland baby ratio is one to four aged up to 15 months, but this would change to one to three for up to 2 years. Childcare workers would also be required to have one staff member with a four-year teaching qualification at a tertiary level.
Child Care National Association president Chris Buck said families had been kept in the dark about the extra costs involved. "If perceived quality goes up, so do the costs," he said. "The risk being run by the Government is that fewer families will be able to afford child care."
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 readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.
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Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Britain to ease up on Muslim fanatics and concentrate on whites instead
LABOUR slammed the brakes on its war against violent extremism yesterday - amid fears it had upset Muslim voters. Millions spent preventing Asian kids becoming terrorists will now be used to tackle right-wing racists in WHITE areas.
Community cohesion minister Shahid Malik admitted he was softening his stance because Muslims felt stigmatised. But a former Labour aide called the move a "dangerous dilution" of the Government's counter-terrorism strategy. Tories branded it a shameless bid to win back Muslim voters who deserted Labour over Iraq and Afghanistan.
More than £45 million a year has been spent on measures to prevent Al-Qaeda recruiting young Muslims in the UK. It included action to break up Islamic ghettos and stop university hate preachers. But Mr Malik, the first British-born Muslim MP, yesterday unveiled plans to broaden the scope of the campaign.
He announced: "We shall be putting a renewed focus on resisting right-wing racist extremism. We cannot dismiss or underestimate the threat." Mr Malik told Sky News: "You speak to any Muslim in this country and they are as opposed as you and I are to extremism and terrorism. "The frustration is they are constantly linked with terrorism as a community as a whole."
His action contrasts with the tough stance of ex-minister Hazel Blears. She broke links with Muslim groups that failed to denounce extremists. Her adviser Paul Richards said: "The good work by Hazel is being undone in the name of political correctness."
Former shadow home secretary David Davis said: "This has been watered down for purely political reasons. Labour has always seen Muslim voters as its own property."
SOURCE
In Britain today you approach others’ children at your peril
There’s just one element of the stories of my childhood that fascinates my own children. It’s not the absence of mobile phones, or the idea of a world before the internet. It’s the fact that so many of my small crises ended in the same way: with my being rescued by the kind intervention of an unknown man. Whether I was a nine-year-old being kicked to the ground by a gang of girls in the park, a 14-year-old lost in the Welsh hills on a walking holiday or a 12-year-old who had taken a bad fall from a horse and couldn’t ride home, it was adult men who stepped in without hesitation to stop the fighting or give me a lift or bandage my grazed arms.
I might as well be telling my children about life with the Cherokee Indians. This isn’t a world they know, where children expect to explore by themselves and where passing men and women are the people you turn to when things go wrong. Their generation have been taught from the time they start school that all strangers may be dangerous and all men are threats. So children have become frightened of adults, and adults – terrified that any interaction of theirs might be misinterpreted – have become equally frightened of them.
When my offspring and their friends have been mugged on buses, or attacked on the street by teenagers, no one has helped. Every passing adult has looked the other way. The idea that it’s the responsibility of grown-ups to look out for one another’s young is disappearing fast. That isn’t making our children safer. It’s making their lives more fearful, more dangerous and more constrained.
Last week the charity Living Streets reported that half of all five to 10-year-olds have never played in their own streets. Almost nine in 10 of their grandparents had played out and so had many of their parents, but now children were kept inside, imprisoned by the twin fears of traffic and paedophiles. As the Play England organisation has found, parents keep them in because they believe that if they aren’t watching over their child, no other adult will do it for them. Older children, too, are affected. Two years ago research by the Children’s Society showed that 43% of parents thought children shouldn’t be allowed out on their own until they were 14.
What began 25 years or so ago as an understandable desire to raise awareness of child abuse is turning into something extremely destructive – an instinctive suspicion of any encounter between grown-ups and unrelated children. It has happened without any political debate or rational discussion. It’s starting to poison our society. And with every passing month it’s getting worse.
Last month in Bedfordshire, 270 children from four primary schools had their annual sports day without the normal audience of proud parents watching them compete. All adults except teachers were banned. The reason? The organisers could not guarantee that an unsupervised adult might not molest a child. They preferred the certainty of ruining the pleasure of hundreds, and the instilling of general paranoia, to the phenomenally slight possibility of a sexual attack.
This is part of an insidious new orthodoxy that’s taking hold: that only authorised adults have any business engaging with children. It is no longer just about sexual abuse. In Twickenham last month the mother of a five– year-old who was being bullied decided to talk to the offender. She knelt by his chair and asked him politely to stop. The next day she was banned from the classroom for doing something that would have been regarded as rational and responsible behaviour at any other time in the past century.
Much worse was to happen a few days later to Anisa Borsberry, from Tyne and Wear, whose 11-year-old was being bullied by agroup of girls. She, too, asked the bullies to stop. In retaliation, and knowing what a powerful weapon this was to use against an adult, the girls claimed Borsberry had assaulted them. Within hours they admitted lying. Nevertheless, the accusation of assault against a child is regarded as so serious that Borsberry was handcuffed in her home and held in police cells for five hours before hearing that no further action was being taken.
Or there is the case of Carol Hill, the Essex dinner lady threatened with dismissal for telling a mother she was sorry her daughter had been tied up and whipped in the playground. Normal, empathetic human behaviour, you might think. That wasn’t the school’s reaction. Hill was suspended for breaching “pupil confidentiality”.
In every one of these cases a woman has been punished for daring to do what adults have always done in every society: uphold norms of behaviour by talking about them. But it has blown up in their faces because new unwritten rules about engaging with children are apparently being invented every day. The extent of society’s neurosis means the consequences of approaching children are becoming alarmingly unpredictable.
That’s as true for professionals as for anyone else. Traditionally, teachers have been thought of as potential mentors for children or confidants for those in distress. Increasingly they are being warned away from that role and told to keep their distance by schools. Nowhere is that made clearer than in a draft advice guide for teachers issued this spring by the Purcell school for young musicians.
The guide begins by telling staff: “Some adolescents experience periods of profound emotional disturbance and turmoil when they may be unable to differentiate between fantasy and reality. They may even be temporarily insane. They can thus present a danger to even the most careful of teachers.” This is child as wild animal; one that may bite at any moment. Teachers are told not to talk to pupils after coaching sessions, but to “usher them out of the room in a brisk no-nonsense manner”. They are told never to text pupils from their private mobiles, but to buy a second one for school use. This “should only be used for arranging appointments; chit chat should be avoided”. Nor can a teacher ever be alone with a pupil in a car, except in case of medical emergency, when the child must be seated in the back, a written record made of time, date and place and a telephone call made to the pupil’s parents to justify it.
The guide concludes that these procedures must become second nature, as any child may accuse a teacher and “your accuser could be of unsound mind”. It finishes with this chilling sentence: “It is helpful to think of current pupils as clients, rather than friends, as a doctor does.”
That these norms are taking hold is a sign of a sick society. What we are creating here is mass mutual distrust. First, children were warned about adults; now adults are being warned about children. It is bad for all of us; bad for our humanity, our happiness and our sense of belonging to anything but a narrow, trusted group. It is also disastrous for any hope of improving social mobility or social cohesion. The effects of this coldness and detachment will be worst for those who need adult guidance and contact most: those children who are growing up without strong social networks around them.
The Labour government appears to understand none of these dangers. Obsessed with physical safety, it is bringing in a screening authority this autumn, one that will cover perhaps one in four adults. It won’t acknowledge the psychological and social disaster that’s unfolding now, nor the pointlessness of much of the exercise. Most abuse is, after all, carried out in the home, and determined abusers will always evade the rules. David Cameron has made some of the right noises by saying children’s behaviour should be a matter for all adults. It will take extraordinary determination to dismantle the walls of suspicion that we have begun to build.
SOURCE
Some Hispanics don't count
"For the first time in a long time," said one "Hispanic" man in the street interviewed on cable TV, "I feel really proud." Others in the "Hispanic community" rejoiced as Sonia Sotomayor became the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in her statement at the beginning of Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, said: "Your nomination I view with a great sense of personal pride. You are indeed a very special woman. You have overcome adversity and disadvantages (emphasis added)."
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said, "Judge Sotomayor, you have overcome many obstacles (emphasis added) in your life that have given you an understanding of the daily realities and struggles faced by everyday people."
Let's talk about the obstacles, adversity and disadvantages of another Hispanic nominee, one who many thought — pre-Sotomayor — worthy of consideration as the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
Born in Honduras — the child of a broken home — this nominee immigrated to America at 17 years of age, arriving with a limited command of the English language. The nominee's mother spoke no English. Four years later, the nominee graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree from Columbia University. The nominee went on to Harvard Law School, served as editor of the Harvard Law Review and received a Juris Doctor degree magna cum laude.
The nominee served as a clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, practiced law in New York and served as an assistant U.S. attorney, later joining the Justice Department as an assistant to the solicitor general for the Clinton administration.
Overcoming personal adversity? The nominee's spouse died from an accidental overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills after the couple suffered through a miscarriage.
The American Bar Association — once hailed by Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., current chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as "the gold standard by which judicial candidates are judged" — unanimously gave the nominee its top "well qualified" rating. Yet the nominee — despite an admirable record of overcoming personal and professional "obstacles" and "adversity" — met with a hailstorm of opposition, including a filibuster to prevent an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.
The Senate had only 55 votes to end the filibuster; it required 60. If the Democrats had allowed a full vote, the nominee would have had enough Senate votes to reach confirmation. After all, Clarence Thomas got only 52 votes for his confirmation.
Finally, because of fierce opposition by Democratic senators — including a seven-month filibuster staged as a procedure-delaying tactic to deny a full Senate confirmation vote — the nominee withdrew in 2003. "This should serve as a wake-up call to the White House that it cannot simply expect the Senate to rubber-stamp judicial nominees," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
The nominee was Miguel Estrada. The year was 2001, and President Bush had nominated Estrada to the prestigious U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Had Estrada won the job — and had Republicans retained the White House in 2008 — many would have placed him on the list of possible Supreme Court justices. He, not Sotomayor, could have become that court's first Hispanic justice.
Instead, the "minority sensitive" Democrats treated him like a child molester. One staff strategy memo sent to Durbin in 2001 — when the Democrats ran the Senate Judiciary Committee — called Estrada "especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino (emphasis added) and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment."
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., days before chairing a Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearing on Estrada, told the liberal Nation magazine: "(Estrada) is like a Stealth missile — with a nose cone — coming out of the right wing's deepest silo (emphasis added)." When, however, President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor, Schumer regained his "compassion" for minorities: "(Republicans) oppose her at their peril."
Opposition to someone's nomination on ideological grounds or "judicial philosophy" is fair game — irrespective of the nominee's race, ethnicity or gender. But Democrats consider sob stories of Democratic nominees relevant to show "obstacles" overcome and "adversity" conquered. As to the sympathetic back story of a Republican nominee — who cares? It means little or nothing — even in the case of a racial or ethnic first — if nominated by the wrong party.
Democrats market themselves as the party of compassion and sensitivity to racial and ethnic minorities. But they do so only selectively. A Republican nominee like Miguel Estrada becomes a "sellout" or a "Tio Taco."
Similarly, Justice Clarence Thomas, following his nomination by President George Herbert Walker Bush, found himself caricatured on the cover of a national black magazine as a mammy-style, handkerchief-capped "Uncle Thomas."
"Hispanic pride" and "overcoming obstacles" count only when the "good guys" say so.
SOURCE
Mideast Peace Starts With Respect
Note to Obama: The Palestinians still haven’t recognized the Jewish state
More than one American president has tried to bring peace to the Middle East, and more than one has failed. So as the Obama administration outlines its own prospectus for a comprehensive settlement to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and the wider Arab world, it would do well to take note of some potential pitfalls.
Rule No. 1: Respect the sovereignty of democratic allies. When free people in a democracy express their preferences, the United States should respect their opinions. The current administration should not try to impose ideas on allies like Israel.
The administration would also do well to take heed of the Palestinian Authority’s continued refusal to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. This is not a trivial matter. A long-term settlement can only be forged on the basis of mutual recognition and respect. To deny the essence of the Zionist project—to rebuild the Jewish people’s ancient homeland—is to call into question the seriousness of one’s commitment to peace.
It is a sad statement of the Palestinians’ approach to peace-making that denial of the Jewish homeland is not simply contained in the openly anti-Semitic leadership of Hamas. It is a widespread belief across the spectrum of Palestinian opinion. This reality must be confronted.
Today’s leadership must never forget that the core historic reason for the conflict is the Arab world’s longstanding rejection of Israel’s existence. The two-state solution was accepted by Israel’s pre-state leadership led by David Ben-Gurion in 1947 when it agreed to the partition plan contained in United Nation’s General Assembly Resolution 181. The Arabs flatly rejected it. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knows all too well, President Bill Clinton’s peace plans in 2000 foundered due to Palestinian rejection of the Jewish state, even as Israel, once again, accepted their right to statehood.
More recent experience in Europe also offers lessons about the dangers of negotiating with terrorists. Over the past year, officials from Britain, France and the European Union all held talks with officials from the “political wing” of Hezbollah in a bid to get the terrorist group to moderate its behavior. Hezbollah is undoubtedly grateful for the legitimacy that these meetings have conferred, but it is not laying down its arms. Indeed, according to a recent report from the Times of London, the group has now stockpiled 40,000 rockets close to the Israeli border.
To be sure, we must have hope. Peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan are useful models. Nonetheless, the recent rebuffs by Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia of efforts by the Obama administration to promote a more conciliatory attitude to Israel offer a salient reminder that those who started this conflict may not yet be in a mood to end it, whatever their rhetoric to the contrary.
And then there are the settlements. Undoubtedly, this is a complex matter. Yet the administration must beware of overemphasizing it. Compromises between people of goodwill can be made on the settlements, as Israel has demonstrated in the recent past. But no compromise can be made on Israel’s right to exist inside secure borders unmolested by terrorist groups or threatened by belligerent states.
That’s why an unambiguous strategy explaining precisely how Hamas and Hezbollah can be disarmed and how Iran can be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons is of central importance to any peace plan.
The administration must also be wary of letting Israel’s opponents use the settlement issue as a convenient excuse for failing to make moves of their own. The settlements matter, but they do not go to the core of this decades-old conflict.
Making peace in the Middle East is an unenviable task. It is also a noble calling. To be successful, it will require patience and fortitude. It will also require an ability to stand above the fray, to see the problems for what they are, and the courage to confront them at their source.
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 readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.
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LABOUR slammed the brakes on its war against violent extremism yesterday - amid fears it had upset Muslim voters. Millions spent preventing Asian kids becoming terrorists will now be used to tackle right-wing racists in WHITE areas.
Community cohesion minister Shahid Malik admitted he was softening his stance because Muslims felt stigmatised. But a former Labour aide called the move a "dangerous dilution" of the Government's counter-terrorism strategy. Tories branded it a shameless bid to win back Muslim voters who deserted Labour over Iraq and Afghanistan.
More than £45 million a year has been spent on measures to prevent Al-Qaeda recruiting young Muslims in the UK. It included action to break up Islamic ghettos and stop university hate preachers. But Mr Malik, the first British-born Muslim MP, yesterday unveiled plans to broaden the scope of the campaign.
He announced: "We shall be putting a renewed focus on resisting right-wing racist extremism. We cannot dismiss or underestimate the threat." Mr Malik told Sky News: "You speak to any Muslim in this country and they are as opposed as you and I are to extremism and terrorism. "The frustration is they are constantly linked with terrorism as a community as a whole."
His action contrasts with the tough stance of ex-minister Hazel Blears. She broke links with Muslim groups that failed to denounce extremists. Her adviser Paul Richards said: "The good work by Hazel is being undone in the name of political correctness."
Former shadow home secretary David Davis said: "This has been watered down for purely political reasons. Labour has always seen Muslim voters as its own property."
SOURCE
In Britain today you approach others’ children at your peril
There’s just one element of the stories of my childhood that fascinates my own children. It’s not the absence of mobile phones, or the idea of a world before the internet. It’s the fact that so many of my small crises ended in the same way: with my being rescued by the kind intervention of an unknown man. Whether I was a nine-year-old being kicked to the ground by a gang of girls in the park, a 14-year-old lost in the Welsh hills on a walking holiday or a 12-year-old who had taken a bad fall from a horse and couldn’t ride home, it was adult men who stepped in without hesitation to stop the fighting or give me a lift or bandage my grazed arms.
I might as well be telling my children about life with the Cherokee Indians. This isn’t a world they know, where children expect to explore by themselves and where passing men and women are the people you turn to when things go wrong. Their generation have been taught from the time they start school that all strangers may be dangerous and all men are threats. So children have become frightened of adults, and adults – terrified that any interaction of theirs might be misinterpreted – have become equally frightened of them.
When my offspring and their friends have been mugged on buses, or attacked on the street by teenagers, no one has helped. Every passing adult has looked the other way. The idea that it’s the responsibility of grown-ups to look out for one another’s young is disappearing fast. That isn’t making our children safer. It’s making their lives more fearful, more dangerous and more constrained.
Last week the charity Living Streets reported that half of all five to 10-year-olds have never played in their own streets. Almost nine in 10 of their grandparents had played out and so had many of their parents, but now children were kept inside, imprisoned by the twin fears of traffic and paedophiles. As the Play England organisation has found, parents keep them in because they believe that if they aren’t watching over their child, no other adult will do it for them. Older children, too, are affected. Two years ago research by the Children’s Society showed that 43% of parents thought children shouldn’t be allowed out on their own until they were 14.
What began 25 years or so ago as an understandable desire to raise awareness of child abuse is turning into something extremely destructive – an instinctive suspicion of any encounter between grown-ups and unrelated children. It has happened without any political debate or rational discussion. It’s starting to poison our society. And with every passing month it’s getting worse.
Last month in Bedfordshire, 270 children from four primary schools had their annual sports day without the normal audience of proud parents watching them compete. All adults except teachers were banned. The reason? The organisers could not guarantee that an unsupervised adult might not molest a child. They preferred the certainty of ruining the pleasure of hundreds, and the instilling of general paranoia, to the phenomenally slight possibility of a sexual attack.
This is part of an insidious new orthodoxy that’s taking hold: that only authorised adults have any business engaging with children. It is no longer just about sexual abuse. In Twickenham last month the mother of a five– year-old who was being bullied decided to talk to the offender. She knelt by his chair and asked him politely to stop. The next day she was banned from the classroom for doing something that would have been regarded as rational and responsible behaviour at any other time in the past century.
Much worse was to happen a few days later to Anisa Borsberry, from Tyne and Wear, whose 11-year-old was being bullied by agroup of girls. She, too, asked the bullies to stop. In retaliation, and knowing what a powerful weapon this was to use against an adult, the girls claimed Borsberry had assaulted them. Within hours they admitted lying. Nevertheless, the accusation of assault against a child is regarded as so serious that Borsberry was handcuffed in her home and held in police cells for five hours before hearing that no further action was being taken.
Or there is the case of Carol Hill, the Essex dinner lady threatened with dismissal for telling a mother she was sorry her daughter had been tied up and whipped in the playground. Normal, empathetic human behaviour, you might think. That wasn’t the school’s reaction. Hill was suspended for breaching “pupil confidentiality”.
In every one of these cases a woman has been punished for daring to do what adults have always done in every society: uphold norms of behaviour by talking about them. But it has blown up in their faces because new unwritten rules about engaging with children are apparently being invented every day. The extent of society’s neurosis means the consequences of approaching children are becoming alarmingly unpredictable.
That’s as true for professionals as for anyone else. Traditionally, teachers have been thought of as potential mentors for children or confidants for those in distress. Increasingly they are being warned away from that role and told to keep their distance by schools. Nowhere is that made clearer than in a draft advice guide for teachers issued this spring by the Purcell school for young musicians.
The guide begins by telling staff: “Some adolescents experience periods of profound emotional disturbance and turmoil when they may be unable to differentiate between fantasy and reality. They may even be temporarily insane. They can thus present a danger to even the most careful of teachers.” This is child as wild animal; one that may bite at any moment. Teachers are told not to talk to pupils after coaching sessions, but to “usher them out of the room in a brisk no-nonsense manner”. They are told never to text pupils from their private mobiles, but to buy a second one for school use. This “should only be used for arranging appointments; chit chat should be avoided”. Nor can a teacher ever be alone with a pupil in a car, except in case of medical emergency, when the child must be seated in the back, a written record made of time, date and place and a telephone call made to the pupil’s parents to justify it.
The guide concludes that these procedures must become second nature, as any child may accuse a teacher and “your accuser could be of unsound mind”. It finishes with this chilling sentence: “It is helpful to think of current pupils as clients, rather than friends, as a doctor does.”
That these norms are taking hold is a sign of a sick society. What we are creating here is mass mutual distrust. First, children were warned about adults; now adults are being warned about children. It is bad for all of us; bad for our humanity, our happiness and our sense of belonging to anything but a narrow, trusted group. It is also disastrous for any hope of improving social mobility or social cohesion. The effects of this coldness and detachment will be worst for those who need adult guidance and contact most: those children who are growing up without strong social networks around them.
The Labour government appears to understand none of these dangers. Obsessed with physical safety, it is bringing in a screening authority this autumn, one that will cover perhaps one in four adults. It won’t acknowledge the psychological and social disaster that’s unfolding now, nor the pointlessness of much of the exercise. Most abuse is, after all, carried out in the home, and determined abusers will always evade the rules. David Cameron has made some of the right noises by saying children’s behaviour should be a matter for all adults. It will take extraordinary determination to dismantle the walls of suspicion that we have begun to build.
SOURCE
Some Hispanics don't count
"For the first time in a long time," said one "Hispanic" man in the street interviewed on cable TV, "I feel really proud." Others in the "Hispanic community" rejoiced as Sonia Sotomayor became the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., in her statement at the beginning of Sotomayor's confirmation hearings, said: "Your nomination I view with a great sense of personal pride. You are indeed a very special woman. You have overcome adversity and disadvantages (emphasis added)."
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said, "Judge Sotomayor, you have overcome many obstacles (emphasis added) in your life that have given you an understanding of the daily realities and struggles faced by everyday people."
Let's talk about the obstacles, adversity and disadvantages of another Hispanic nominee, one who many thought — pre-Sotomayor — worthy of consideration as the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.
Born in Honduras — the child of a broken home — this nominee immigrated to America at 17 years of age, arriving with a limited command of the English language. The nominee's mother spoke no English. Four years later, the nominee graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a bachelor's degree from Columbia University. The nominee went on to Harvard Law School, served as editor of the Harvard Law Review and received a Juris Doctor degree magna cum laude.
The nominee served as a clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, practiced law in New York and served as an assistant U.S. attorney, later joining the Justice Department as an assistant to the solicitor general for the Clinton administration.
Overcoming personal adversity? The nominee's spouse died from an accidental overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills after the couple suffered through a miscarriage.
The American Bar Association — once hailed by Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., current chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as "the gold standard by which judicial candidates are judged" — unanimously gave the nominee its top "well qualified" rating. Yet the nominee — despite an admirable record of overcoming personal and professional "obstacles" and "adversity" — met with a hailstorm of opposition, including a filibuster to prevent an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor.
The Senate had only 55 votes to end the filibuster; it required 60. If the Democrats had allowed a full vote, the nominee would have had enough Senate votes to reach confirmation. After all, Clarence Thomas got only 52 votes for his confirmation.
Finally, because of fierce opposition by Democratic senators — including a seven-month filibuster staged as a procedure-delaying tactic to deny a full Senate confirmation vote — the nominee withdrew in 2003. "This should serve as a wake-up call to the White House that it cannot simply expect the Senate to rubber-stamp judicial nominees," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
The nominee was Miguel Estrada. The year was 2001, and President Bush had nominated Estrada to the prestigious U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Had Estrada won the job — and had Republicans retained the White House in 2008 — many would have placed him on the list of possible Supreme Court justices. He, not Sotomayor, could have become that court's first Hispanic justice.
Instead, the "minority sensitive" Democrats treated him like a child molester. One staff strategy memo sent to Durbin in 2001 — when the Democrats ran the Senate Judiciary Committee — called Estrada "especially dangerous, because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino (emphasis added) and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment."
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., days before chairing a Senate Judiciary Committee's confirmation hearing on Estrada, told the liberal Nation magazine: "(Estrada) is like a Stealth missile — with a nose cone — coming out of the right wing's deepest silo (emphasis added)." When, however, President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor, Schumer regained his "compassion" for minorities: "(Republicans) oppose her at their peril."
Opposition to someone's nomination on ideological grounds or "judicial philosophy" is fair game — irrespective of the nominee's race, ethnicity or gender. But Democrats consider sob stories of Democratic nominees relevant to show "obstacles" overcome and "adversity" conquered. As to the sympathetic back story of a Republican nominee — who cares? It means little or nothing — even in the case of a racial or ethnic first — if nominated by the wrong party.
Democrats market themselves as the party of compassion and sensitivity to racial and ethnic minorities. But they do so only selectively. A Republican nominee like Miguel Estrada becomes a "sellout" or a "Tio Taco."
Similarly, Justice Clarence Thomas, following his nomination by President George Herbert Walker Bush, found himself caricatured on the cover of a national black magazine as a mammy-style, handkerchief-capped "Uncle Thomas."
"Hispanic pride" and "overcoming obstacles" count only when the "good guys" say so.
SOURCE
Mideast Peace Starts With Respect
Note to Obama: The Palestinians still haven’t recognized the Jewish state
More than one American president has tried to bring peace to the Middle East, and more than one has failed. So as the Obama administration outlines its own prospectus for a comprehensive settlement to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians and the wider Arab world, it would do well to take note of some potential pitfalls.
Rule No. 1: Respect the sovereignty of democratic allies. When free people in a democracy express their preferences, the United States should respect their opinions. The current administration should not try to impose ideas on allies like Israel.
The administration would also do well to take heed of the Palestinian Authority’s continued refusal to recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. This is not a trivial matter. A long-term settlement can only be forged on the basis of mutual recognition and respect. To deny the essence of the Zionist project—to rebuild the Jewish people’s ancient homeland—is to call into question the seriousness of one’s commitment to peace.
It is a sad statement of the Palestinians’ approach to peace-making that denial of the Jewish homeland is not simply contained in the openly anti-Semitic leadership of Hamas. It is a widespread belief across the spectrum of Palestinian opinion. This reality must be confronted.
Today’s leadership must never forget that the core historic reason for the conflict is the Arab world’s longstanding rejection of Israel’s existence. The two-state solution was accepted by Israel’s pre-state leadership led by David Ben-Gurion in 1947 when it agreed to the partition plan contained in United Nation’s General Assembly Resolution 181. The Arabs flatly rejected it. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knows all too well, President Bill Clinton’s peace plans in 2000 foundered due to Palestinian rejection of the Jewish state, even as Israel, once again, accepted their right to statehood.
More recent experience in Europe also offers lessons about the dangers of negotiating with terrorists. Over the past year, officials from Britain, France and the European Union all held talks with officials from the “political wing” of Hezbollah in a bid to get the terrorist group to moderate its behavior. Hezbollah is undoubtedly grateful for the legitimacy that these meetings have conferred, but it is not laying down its arms. Indeed, according to a recent report from the Times of London, the group has now stockpiled 40,000 rockets close to the Israeli border.
To be sure, we must have hope. Peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan are useful models. Nonetheless, the recent rebuffs by Jordan, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia of efforts by the Obama administration to promote a more conciliatory attitude to Israel offer a salient reminder that those who started this conflict may not yet be in a mood to end it, whatever their rhetoric to the contrary.
And then there are the settlements. Undoubtedly, this is a complex matter. Yet the administration must beware of overemphasizing it. Compromises between people of goodwill can be made on the settlements, as Israel has demonstrated in the recent past. But no compromise can be made on Israel’s right to exist inside secure borders unmolested by terrorist groups or threatened by belligerent states.
That’s why an unambiguous strategy explaining precisely how Hamas and Hezbollah can be disarmed and how Iran can be prevented from acquiring nuclear weapons is of central importance to any peace plan.
The administration must also be wary of letting Israel’s opponents use the settlement issue as a convenient excuse for failing to make moves of their own. The settlements matter, but they do not go to the core of this decades-old conflict.
Making peace in the Middle East is an unenviable task. It is also a noble calling. To be successful, it will require patience and fortitude. It will also require an ability to stand above the fray, to see the problems for what they are, and the courage to confront them at their source.
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 readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.
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Monday, August 17, 2009
West Bank Success Story
The Palestinians are flourishing economically. Unless they live in Gaza
Imagine an annual economic growth rate of 7%, declining unemployment, a thriving tourism industry, and a 24% hike in the average daily wage. Where in today's gloomy global market could one find such gleaming forecasts? Singapore? Brazil? Guess again. The West Bank.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the West Bank economy is flourishing. Devastated by the violence and corruption fomented by its former leadership, the West Bank has rebounded and today represents a most promising success story. Among the improvements of the last year cited by the IMF and other financial observers are an 18% increase in the local stock exchange, a 94% growth of tourism to Bethlehem—generating 6,000 new jobs—and an 82% rise in trade with Israel.
Since 2008, more than 2,000 new companies have been registered with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Where heavy fighting once raged, there are now state-of-the-art shopping malls.
Much of this revival is due to Palestinian initiative and to the responsible fiscal policies of West Bank leaders—such as Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad—many of whom are American-educated. But few of these improvements could have happened without a vastly improved security environment.
More than 2,100 members of the Palestinian security forces, graduates of an innovative program led by U.S. Gen. Keith Dayton, are patrolling seven major West Bank cities. Another 500-man battalion will soon be deployed. Encouraged by the restoration of law and order, the local population is streaming to the new malls and movie theaters. Shipments of designer furniture are arriving from China and Indonesia, and car imports are up more than 40% since 2008.
Israel, too, has contributed to the West Bank's financial boom. Tony Blair recently stated that Israel had not been given sufficient credit for efforts such as removing dozens of checkpoints and road blocks, withdrawing Israeli troops from population centers, and facilitating transportation into both Israel and Jordan. Long prohibited by terrorist threats from entering the West Bank, Israeli Arabs are now allowed to shop in most Palestinian cities.
Further, several Israeli-Palestinian committees have achieved fruitful cooperation in the areas of construction and agriculture. Such measures have stimulated the Palestinian economy since 2008 resulting, for example, in a 200% increase in agricultural exports and a nearly 1,000% increase in the number of trucks importing produce into the West Bank from Israel.
The West Bank's economic improvements contrast with the lack of diplomatic progress on the creation of a Palestinian state. Negotiators focus on the "top down" issues, grappling with legal and territorial problems. But the West Bank's population is building sovereignty from the bottom-up, forging the law-enforcement, civil, and financial institutions that form the underpinnings of any modern polity. The seeds of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called "economic peace" are, in fact, already blossoming in the commercial skyline of Ramallah.
The vitality of the West Bank also accentuates the backwardness and despair prevailing in Gaza. In place of economic initiatives that might relieve the nearly 40% unemployment in the Gaza Strip, the radical Hamas government has imposed draconian controls subject to Shariah law. Instead of investing in new shopping centers and restaurants, Hamas has spent millions of dollars restocking its supply of rockets and mortar shells. Rather than forge a framework for peace, Hamas has wrought war and brought economic hardship to civilians on both sides of the borders.
The people of Gaza will have to take notice of their West Bank counterparts and wonder why they, too, cannot enjoy the same economic benefits and opportunities. At the same time, Arab states that have pledged to assist the Palestinian economy in the past, but which have yet to fulfill those promises, may be persuaded of the prudence of investing in the West Bank. Israel, for its part, will continue to remove obstacles to Palestinian development. If the West Bank can serve as a model of prosperity, it may also become a prototype of peace.
SOURCE
Color-Coding the Suburbs
The social engineers come to Scarsdale but why? Whom does it benefit to have poor people living among rich people? I cannot see it as anything other than an effort at destruction
The bad news is that Westchester County, the sprawling suburb just north of New York City, has been pressured to settle a federal lawsuit brought by liberal activists over "affordable" housing. The worse news is that the Obama Administration wants the settlement to be a template for the rest of the nation.
The three-year-old lawsuit alleged that Westchester had accepted federal housing funds but failed to provide enough affordable housing and reduce segregation in some of its wealthier communities, such as Scarsdale and Chappaqua, home to Bill and Hillary Clinton. In February a U.S. District Court judge in Manhattan ruled that Westchester's integration efforts were insufficient, and rather than risk losing out on more federal money, county officials struck a deal with the Department of Housing and Urban Development this week. Within seven years, the county will construct or acquire 750 homes or apartments, 630 of which must be located in communities that are less than 3% black and 7% Hispanic.
"We're clearly messaging other jurisdictions across the country that there has been a significant change in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and we're going to ask them to pursue similar goals as well," said HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims. Westchester County, he added, "can serve as a model for building strong, inclusive sustainable communities in suburban areas across the entire United States."
Westchester officials admit no wrongdoing, which isn't surprising given that prior to the lawsuit HUD not only had never denied the county funds but had praised its housing practices. The bigger concern, however, is the Obama Administration's intention to promote housing polices that have a history of dividing communities and creating racial tension. Integrated neighborhoods are an admirable goal, but how you get there matters.
In the 1960s, Chicago's Gautreaux Program moved several thousand inner-city residents to the suburbs over the objections of whites and black community leaders alike, which stoked racial unrest and resulted in unprecedented "white flight." In the 1970s, the Philadelphia suburb of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, was ordered to build subsidized housing. Local opposition was so strong that municipalities ultimately were permitted to pay into a fund and have much of the housing built in places like Newark and Camden instead.
Blacks have long populated Westchester towns such as White Plains, New Rochelle and Mount Vernon, and the Administration is assuming that low percentages of racial and ethnic minorities in places like Scarsdale are a result of discrimination. Yet there's no pattern of fair housing complaints or other evidence showing that black families with incomes similar to whites in more upscale neighborhoods were barred from those jurisdictions. History also demonstrates that racial and ethnic minorities have incurred far less resistance when they move into neighborhoods where they can afford to live.
The black and Latino suburban population is increasing steadily as the household incomes of those groups rise. But social engineers who want to force the issue risk creating more problems than they solve. Most people believe in integrated neighborhoods provided they're a consequence of genuine choice, not the government deciding where it wants people to live.
SOURCE
Working class backlash against Muslim extremism in Britain
They see themselves as the vanguard in a battle for the soul of Britain against extremist Islamist forces — the “enemy within” bent on imposing Sharia. Casuals United announced their arrival on Saturday when a small army of shirt-sleeved, middle-aged men with beer bellies clashed in a flurry of punches and kicks with young Asians in Birmingham city centre.
The group, which is closely affiliated with the far-right English Defence League, insists that it is a peaceful movement representing ordinary working people angered by the sight of Muslims hurling insults at British soldiers on homecoming parades. But if the chants of “England, England” and the aggressive posturing appear familiar, it is because they are.
The members of Casuals United are largely former football hooligans drawn from the terraces and, according to their critics, are essentially the BNP and National Front repackaged. The groupings have attracted the support of BNP activists including Chris Renton, who created the English Defence League website.
Jeff Marsh, the leader of Casuals United, told The Times that the organisation was a “mixed-race group of English people, from businessmen and women, to football hooligans”.
He said: “I came up with the idea to unite football fans to forget their petty rivalries and come together in a national movement. There are a lot of people in their forties and fifties who used to be hooligans but went on to settle down. A lot of young football fans want to get involved.”
Mr Marsh, who holds a degree in criminal justice, claims to have support among serving soldiers and points to the activities of army wives on the website Armchair Warriors. “Their men can’t be seen to be supporting us directly,” he said.
The new beast on the far Right came to prominence when its members clashed with anti-fascist protesters in Birmingham on Saturday. Police made 30 arrests and are still studying closed-circuit television footage.
According to the anti-fascist group Searchlight, Casuals United was created after the trouble in March when Islamists demonstrated against troops returning from Afghanistan to Luton. Two months later, members of Casuals United marched through the town and last month they picketed an Islamic roadshow in North London.
Mr Marsh, 44, whose book The Trouble with Taffies is an account of football violence in South Wales, confirmed that the Luton parade had been the catalyst. He said that a generation of former football hooligans were stirred to action by the sight of Muslim extremists abusing the men of the Royal Anglian Regiment.
After the group was outnumbered by United Against Fascism in Birmingham on Saturday, Mr Marsh pledged that it would return to the city on August 30. The group is also planning a protest in Manchester in October.
The Casuals make full use of modern communications, using social networking websites, notably Facebook, where there are about 40 branches, many of which declare allegiance to various football clubs. The Arsenal branch sums up the group’s manifesto, saying that it was formed to “protest peacefully against the Government allowing Islamic Hatemongers to live in our country while raising money for terror abroad, cursing our soldiers and trying to force Sharia law on us”.
Gerry Gable, of Searchlight, said: “We predicted real trouble in Birmingham. They are not a non-violent group. They have been involved in trouble in Luton. There are connections between people who run far-right websites and we know the BNP were actively offering to find them people for both Birmingham and for [a demonstration] in Luton on August Bank Holiday”.
Weyman Bennett, joint secretary of the United Against Fascism group, said: “Nobody should be taken in by the pretence that these marches and rallies are not aimed at whipping up race hatred against Muslims and Asians. They are racist demos and we should not allow them to take place.”
SOURCE
Australia: ‘Progressive’ patriotism is a big ask
Australians should all rejoice that the Left isn’t interested in patriotism, writes Jeremy Sammut
By all accounts, the message of Tim Soutphommasane’s forthcoming book (Seizing the Sauce Bottle, ‘Australian Literary Review’, 5 August 2009) is commendably clear. The book lays out the reasons why so-called ‘progressives’ should take patriotism seriously, as a political concept at least.
It is surprising that anyone with an interest in politics needs to be convinced about the importance of patriotism, given that the nation (as in the national welfare or national good) lies at the centre of our political democracy. Because appeals to patriotic sentiment can unite otherwise diverse individuals into cohesive constituencies, patriotism remains one of the more vibrant colours in the political spectrum.
The problem is that much of what Soutphommasane says about the Left needing to reclaim patriotism for itself has been said before. Miriam Dixson’s 1999 book, The Imaginary Australian, also told the Left that if its political projects were to win mainstream support the core culture of the nation and ‘ordinary Australians’ genuine pride in and commitment to the nation’s traditions must be respected.
Here lies the rub. The more interesting question is why the Left is ideologically deaf to Dixson and now Soutphommasane’s message? This is a question only culture warriors can answer.
The short version is that the political project of the modern-day progressives is radically regenerative. The Left’s go isn’t patriotism – it’s the scorched-earth politics of moral embarrassment.
So irredeemable is the nation’s history, so the progressive’s political narrative goes, that the past must be junked entirely and the nation’s future reconstructed in the politically-correct image of the Left. This is the reason why comrades across a spectrum of disciplines have spent the last forty years telling their fellow Australians how racist, sexist, and unjust their country is.
Yet despite the attempt to deconstruct the nation’s history, Australia’s national traditions are one of few areas where the ‘long march of the Left’ through our cultural institutions has not succeeded. Anzac Day has re-emerged as our quasi national day, and our national heroes stubbornly remain (as John Hirst has put it) a cricketer, a bushranger, and a horse. [Don Bradman, Ned Kelly and Phar Lap]
The point is that those who call for the Left to annex patriotism to promote their ‘positive cultural vision’ are making a category error. Most of the Left would hear this as a call to continue to try to hollow out the nation’s traditions of their traditional meanings.
Thankfully, the Left is unlikely to want to have a bar of patriotism. Those who say it should aren’t seizing the sauce bottle - they're barking up the wrong tree.
The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated August 14th. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590. Telephone ph: +61 2 9438 4377 or fax: +61 2 9439 7310
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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 readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.
***************************
The Palestinians are flourishing economically. Unless they live in Gaza
Imagine an annual economic growth rate of 7%, declining unemployment, a thriving tourism industry, and a 24% hike in the average daily wage. Where in today's gloomy global market could one find such gleaming forecasts? Singapore? Brazil? Guess again. The West Bank.
According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the West Bank economy is flourishing. Devastated by the violence and corruption fomented by its former leadership, the West Bank has rebounded and today represents a most promising success story. Among the improvements of the last year cited by the IMF and other financial observers are an 18% increase in the local stock exchange, a 94% growth of tourism to Bethlehem—generating 6,000 new jobs—and an 82% rise in trade with Israel.
Since 2008, more than 2,000 new companies have been registered with the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Where heavy fighting once raged, there are now state-of-the-art shopping malls.
Much of this revival is due to Palestinian initiative and to the responsible fiscal policies of West Bank leaders—such as Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad—many of whom are American-educated. But few of these improvements could have happened without a vastly improved security environment.
More than 2,100 members of the Palestinian security forces, graduates of an innovative program led by U.S. Gen. Keith Dayton, are patrolling seven major West Bank cities. Another 500-man battalion will soon be deployed. Encouraged by the restoration of law and order, the local population is streaming to the new malls and movie theaters. Shipments of designer furniture are arriving from China and Indonesia, and car imports are up more than 40% since 2008.
Israel, too, has contributed to the West Bank's financial boom. Tony Blair recently stated that Israel had not been given sufficient credit for efforts such as removing dozens of checkpoints and road blocks, withdrawing Israeli troops from population centers, and facilitating transportation into both Israel and Jordan. Long prohibited by terrorist threats from entering the West Bank, Israeli Arabs are now allowed to shop in most Palestinian cities.
Further, several Israeli-Palestinian committees have achieved fruitful cooperation in the areas of construction and agriculture. Such measures have stimulated the Palestinian economy since 2008 resulting, for example, in a 200% increase in agricultural exports and a nearly 1,000% increase in the number of trucks importing produce into the West Bank from Israel.
The West Bank's economic improvements contrast with the lack of diplomatic progress on the creation of a Palestinian state. Negotiators focus on the "top down" issues, grappling with legal and territorial problems. But the West Bank's population is building sovereignty from the bottom-up, forging the law-enforcement, civil, and financial institutions that form the underpinnings of any modern polity. The seeds of what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called "economic peace" are, in fact, already blossoming in the commercial skyline of Ramallah.
The vitality of the West Bank also accentuates the backwardness and despair prevailing in Gaza. In place of economic initiatives that might relieve the nearly 40% unemployment in the Gaza Strip, the radical Hamas government has imposed draconian controls subject to Shariah law. Instead of investing in new shopping centers and restaurants, Hamas has spent millions of dollars restocking its supply of rockets and mortar shells. Rather than forge a framework for peace, Hamas has wrought war and brought economic hardship to civilians on both sides of the borders.
The people of Gaza will have to take notice of their West Bank counterparts and wonder why they, too, cannot enjoy the same economic benefits and opportunities. At the same time, Arab states that have pledged to assist the Palestinian economy in the past, but which have yet to fulfill those promises, may be persuaded of the prudence of investing in the West Bank. Israel, for its part, will continue to remove obstacles to Palestinian development. If the West Bank can serve as a model of prosperity, it may also become a prototype of peace.
SOURCE
Color-Coding the Suburbs
The social engineers come to Scarsdale but why? Whom does it benefit to have poor people living among rich people? I cannot see it as anything other than an effort at destruction
The bad news is that Westchester County, the sprawling suburb just north of New York City, has been pressured to settle a federal lawsuit brought by liberal activists over "affordable" housing. The worse news is that the Obama Administration wants the settlement to be a template for the rest of the nation.
The three-year-old lawsuit alleged that Westchester had accepted federal housing funds but failed to provide enough affordable housing and reduce segregation in some of its wealthier communities, such as Scarsdale and Chappaqua, home to Bill and Hillary Clinton. In February a U.S. District Court judge in Manhattan ruled that Westchester's integration efforts were insufficient, and rather than risk losing out on more federal money, county officials struck a deal with the Department of Housing and Urban Development this week. Within seven years, the county will construct or acquire 750 homes or apartments, 630 of which must be located in communities that are less than 3% black and 7% Hispanic.
"We're clearly messaging other jurisdictions across the country that there has been a significant change in the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and we're going to ask them to pursue similar goals as well," said HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims. Westchester County, he added, "can serve as a model for building strong, inclusive sustainable communities in suburban areas across the entire United States."
Westchester officials admit no wrongdoing, which isn't surprising given that prior to the lawsuit HUD not only had never denied the county funds but had praised its housing practices. The bigger concern, however, is the Obama Administration's intention to promote housing polices that have a history of dividing communities and creating racial tension. Integrated neighborhoods are an admirable goal, but how you get there matters.
In the 1960s, Chicago's Gautreaux Program moved several thousand inner-city residents to the suburbs over the objections of whites and black community leaders alike, which stoked racial unrest and resulted in unprecedented "white flight." In the 1970s, the Philadelphia suburb of Mount Laurel, New Jersey, was ordered to build subsidized housing. Local opposition was so strong that municipalities ultimately were permitted to pay into a fund and have much of the housing built in places like Newark and Camden instead.
Blacks have long populated Westchester towns such as White Plains, New Rochelle and Mount Vernon, and the Administration is assuming that low percentages of racial and ethnic minorities in places like Scarsdale are a result of discrimination. Yet there's no pattern of fair housing complaints or other evidence showing that black families with incomes similar to whites in more upscale neighborhoods were barred from those jurisdictions. History also demonstrates that racial and ethnic minorities have incurred far less resistance when they move into neighborhoods where they can afford to live.
The black and Latino suburban population is increasing steadily as the household incomes of those groups rise. But social engineers who want to force the issue risk creating more problems than they solve. Most people believe in integrated neighborhoods provided they're a consequence of genuine choice, not the government deciding where it wants people to live.
SOURCE
Working class backlash against Muslim extremism in Britain
They see themselves as the vanguard in a battle for the soul of Britain against extremist Islamist forces — the “enemy within” bent on imposing Sharia. Casuals United announced their arrival on Saturday when a small army of shirt-sleeved, middle-aged men with beer bellies clashed in a flurry of punches and kicks with young Asians in Birmingham city centre.
The group, which is closely affiliated with the far-right English Defence League, insists that it is a peaceful movement representing ordinary working people angered by the sight of Muslims hurling insults at British soldiers on homecoming parades. But if the chants of “England, England” and the aggressive posturing appear familiar, it is because they are.
The members of Casuals United are largely former football hooligans drawn from the terraces and, according to their critics, are essentially the BNP and National Front repackaged. The groupings have attracted the support of BNP activists including Chris Renton, who created the English Defence League website.
Jeff Marsh, the leader of Casuals United, told The Times that the organisation was a “mixed-race group of English people, from businessmen and women, to football hooligans”.
He said: “I came up with the idea to unite football fans to forget their petty rivalries and come together in a national movement. There are a lot of people in their forties and fifties who used to be hooligans but went on to settle down. A lot of young football fans want to get involved.”
Mr Marsh, who holds a degree in criminal justice, claims to have support among serving soldiers and points to the activities of army wives on the website Armchair Warriors. “Their men can’t be seen to be supporting us directly,” he said.
The new beast on the far Right came to prominence when its members clashed with anti-fascist protesters in Birmingham on Saturday. Police made 30 arrests and are still studying closed-circuit television footage.
According to the anti-fascist group Searchlight, Casuals United was created after the trouble in March when Islamists demonstrated against troops returning from Afghanistan to Luton. Two months later, members of Casuals United marched through the town and last month they picketed an Islamic roadshow in North London.
Mr Marsh, 44, whose book The Trouble with Taffies is an account of football violence in South Wales, confirmed that the Luton parade had been the catalyst. He said that a generation of former football hooligans were stirred to action by the sight of Muslim extremists abusing the men of the Royal Anglian Regiment.
After the group was outnumbered by United Against Fascism in Birmingham on Saturday, Mr Marsh pledged that it would return to the city on August 30. The group is also planning a protest in Manchester in October.
The Casuals make full use of modern communications, using social networking websites, notably Facebook, where there are about 40 branches, many of which declare allegiance to various football clubs. The Arsenal branch sums up the group’s manifesto, saying that it was formed to “protest peacefully against the Government allowing Islamic Hatemongers to live in our country while raising money for terror abroad, cursing our soldiers and trying to force Sharia law on us”.
Gerry Gable, of Searchlight, said: “We predicted real trouble in Birmingham. They are not a non-violent group. They have been involved in trouble in Luton. There are connections between people who run far-right websites and we know the BNP were actively offering to find them people for both Birmingham and for [a demonstration] in Luton on August Bank Holiday”.
Weyman Bennett, joint secretary of the United Against Fascism group, said: “Nobody should be taken in by the pretence that these marches and rallies are not aimed at whipping up race hatred against Muslims and Asians. They are racist demos and we should not allow them to take place.”
SOURCE
Australia: ‘Progressive’ patriotism is a big ask
Australians should all rejoice that the Left isn’t interested in patriotism, writes Jeremy Sammut
By all accounts, the message of Tim Soutphommasane’s forthcoming book (Seizing the Sauce Bottle, ‘Australian Literary Review’, 5 August 2009) is commendably clear. The book lays out the reasons why so-called ‘progressives’ should take patriotism seriously, as a political concept at least.
It is surprising that anyone with an interest in politics needs to be convinced about the importance of patriotism, given that the nation (as in the national welfare or national good) lies at the centre of our political democracy. Because appeals to patriotic sentiment can unite otherwise diverse individuals into cohesive constituencies, patriotism remains one of the more vibrant colours in the political spectrum.
The problem is that much of what Soutphommasane says about the Left needing to reclaim patriotism for itself has been said before. Miriam Dixson’s 1999 book, The Imaginary Australian, also told the Left that if its political projects were to win mainstream support the core culture of the nation and ‘ordinary Australians’ genuine pride in and commitment to the nation’s traditions must be respected.
Here lies the rub. The more interesting question is why the Left is ideologically deaf to Dixson and now Soutphommasane’s message? This is a question only culture warriors can answer.
The short version is that the political project of the modern-day progressives is radically regenerative. The Left’s go isn’t patriotism – it’s the scorched-earth politics of moral embarrassment.
So irredeemable is the nation’s history, so the progressive’s political narrative goes, that the past must be junked entirely and the nation’s future reconstructed in the politically-correct image of the Left. This is the reason why comrades across a spectrum of disciplines have spent the last forty years telling their fellow Australians how racist, sexist, and unjust their country is.
Yet despite the attempt to deconstruct the nation’s history, Australia’s national traditions are one of few areas where the ‘long march of the Left’ through our cultural institutions has not succeeded. Anzac Day has re-emerged as our quasi national day, and our national heroes stubbornly remain (as John Hirst has put it) a cricketer, a bushranger, and a horse. [Don Bradman, Ned Kelly and Phar Lap]
The point is that those who call for the Left to annex patriotism to promote their ‘positive cultural vision’ are making a category error. Most of the Left would hear this as a call to continue to try to hollow out the nation’s traditions of their traditional meanings.
Thankfully, the Left is unlikely to want to have a bar of patriotism. Those who say it should aren’t seizing the sauce bottle - they're barking up the wrong tree.
The above is a press release from the Centre for Independent Studies, dated August 14th. Enquiries to cis@cis.org.au. Snail mail: PO Box 92, St Leonards, NSW, Australia 1590. Telephone ph: +61 2 9438 4377 or fax: +61 2 9439 7310
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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 readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.
***************************
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Woodstock's Symbolic Irony: Peace, Love, and Cash
The current 40th anniversary of Woodstock finds it still being glamorized. Mike Tremoglie tells you the parts that you don't usually hear
Who could forget the sitar-like harmonies of Crosby, Stills and Nash, the "better living through chemistry" pulsations of Sly and the Family Stone, the chanting of Country Joe and the Fish, and the wonderfully wacky, Wavy Gravy? Woodstock--a place where half a million people gathered for peace, love, and music.
The event represented a generation of youth. Well not quite. The boys (and girls) of Woodstock were not such an inclusive group. One of the myths about Woodstock is that it was some altruistic event. Woodstock was all about money. John Roberts, the Ivy League heir to the Polident fortune, financed it. He and his partners were in it for profit. They never stated otherwise.
Max Yasgur, whose farm was the site of the event and whose name was immortalized in song, was anything but a simple dairy farmer. He was an NYU graduate and one of the wealthiest farmers in the area. He also walked away with $75,000 or about $300,000 in current dollars. Not bad for the three-day rental of 600 idle acres.
The Who was paid the then-unheard-of sum of $12,000. Three groups refused to go on until they got cash first. The promoters had to get an advance from a local banker on a Saturday night in order to prevent a riot.
Woodstock was not for the poor. A ticket was approximately 18 bucks. In an era when the minimum wage was a $1.60, a ticket was two days pay. That does not count lost wages for taking off from work, travel expenses, and of course, the drugs. Total it all up and it was at least a week's pay.
"I remember building a fire one morning for breakfast. All we had was hot dogs and spaghetti," a Woodstock alumnus waxed nostalgically in a magazine article. A few hundred miles away from the concert lived people who would have loved to have had hot dogs and spaghetti for breakfast. They would have loved to have had breakfast. Over $2 million was spent staging Woodstock ($10 million in current dollars.) $10 million buys many a breakfast in Appalachia.
If there is any significance about Woodstock it is the symbolic irony of it. The Woodstock audience was composed of enlightened and compassionate liberals-- at least that is what they thought of themselves. These were people who wanted to feed the poor and help the helpless. These people are now part of the governmental social-welfare complex and are now college professors who preach social justice to their students.
Yet the Woodstock audience could not feed themselves let alone the poor. The Woodstock crowd needed to rely on the very people they spurned--the establishment-- to feed them. Specifically they needed those warmongering, baby-killing, murdering monsters of the military establishment who dropped food from helicopters to feed them. They depended on the National Guard for food! The same National Guard that is now derided by liberal Democrats as being 'Chickenhawks.' It is absolutely hilarious that some critics of President George W. Bush's National Guard service were probably those who were saved from starvation by his fellow servicemen in the Guards.
Not only were the audience of Woodstock incapable of feeding themselves, the leaders of this event were just as incompetent. The very same people who are now liberal Democrats, Naderites, and Communists, the very same people who want to plan every aspect of the economy and society could not even plan a rock concert.
The myth is that Woodstock became a free concert by the beneficent act of the producers of the concert. Although it was good PR, it was not true. No, the promoters had to make it a free concert. The Woodstock generation wants what they want--and they want it free. They wanted to go to the concert so they crashed the gate.
It was the promoters' own fault. In order to get local approval the promoters purposely furnished low attendance figures. However, they did not realize how effective their marketing would be. Twice as many people came as they expected--10 times the number they had told the locals. Good intentions did not make Woodstock a free concert, poor business planning did.
Woodstock exposed the hypocrisy of the left. A half million people either spent money that could have been donated to charity or took food. They usurped resources from the government that could have gone to the poor. Why? So they could have a good time.
Moreover, the performers weren't a collection of Mother Theresas either. They earned substantial sums for their appearances. The only money donated was to Abbie Hoffman's fanatics and only because he extorted it by stating he would disrupt the concert. They did all of this while inveighing against the capitalist system.
The boys (and girls) from the Wood' proclaim themselves "veterans." In their characteristic hubris, they want to erect a monument to Woodstock. In Washington, D.C., there is a wall there with some 50,000 names on it. The Vietnam Memorial lists the names of real veterans--of kids who did their duty. They were the real altruists. Their concerts were in places like Bien Hoa and Ia Drang. They were the ones who should define the generation.
Country Joe's lyrical lamentation asked why we were in Vietnam. His answer was found during the '70s-- in the re-education programs of Communist Vietnam; in the "boat people" who fled Vietnam on anything that could float; in the killing fields of Cambodia. The kids whose names are on the wall tried to prevent that from occurring. In 1999, some people wanted to erect a monument to Woodstock. What is there to venerate? Woodstock was nothing more than kids with no responsibilities acting irresponsibly.
SOURCE
School prayer charges stir protests
Educators face jail in Florida
Students, teachers and local pastors are protesting over a court case involving a northern Florida school principal and an athletic director who are facing criminal charges and up to six months in jail over their offer of a mealtime prayer. There have been yard signs, T-shirts and a mass student protest during graduation ceremonies this spring on behalf of Pace High School Principal Frank Lay and school athletic director Robert Freeman, who will go on trial Sept. 17 at a federal district court in Pensacola for breaching the conditions of a lawsuit settlement reached last year with the American Civil Liberties Union.
"I have been defending religious freedom issues for 22 years, and I've never had to defend somebody who has been charged criminally for praying," said Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, the Orlando-based legal group that is defending the two school officials.
An ACLU official said the school district has allowed "flagrant" violations of the First Amendment for years. "The defendants all admitted wrongdoing," said Daniel Mach, director of litigation for its freedom of religion program. "For example, the Pace High School teachers handbook asks teachers to 'embrace every opportunity to inculcate, by precept and example, the practice of every Christian virtue.' "
The fight involving the ACLU, the school district and several devout Christian employees began last August when the ACLU sued Santa Rosa County Schools on behalf of two students who had complained privately to the group's Florida affiliate, claiming some teachers and administrators were allowing prayers at school events such as graduations, orchestrating separate religiously themed graduation services, and "proselytizing" students during class and after school.
In January, the Santa Rosa County School District settled out of court with the ACLU, agreeing to several things, including a provision to bar all school employees from promoting or sponsoring prayers during school-sponsored events; holding school events at church venues when a secular alternative was available; or promoting their religious beliefs or attempting to convert students in class or during school-sponsored events.
Mr. Staver said the district also agreed to forbid senior class President Mary Allen from speaking at the school's May 30 graduation ceremony on the chance that the young woman, a known Christian, might say something religious. "She was the first student body president in 33 years not allowed to speak," he said. In response, many members of the 300-plus-member student body taped crosses to their mortarboards and stood for an impromptu recitation of the Lord's Prayer during the ceremony.
Mr. Mach responded, "We believe students have the constitutional right to pray voluntarily in public or private. Constitutional problems arise only when public school officials promote or endorse prayer or specific religious views."
The criminal charges, which carry up to a $5,000 fine and a six-month jail term, originated with a Jan. 28 incident in which Mr. Lay, a deacon at a local Baptist church, asked Mr. Freeman to offer mealtime prayers at a lunch for school employees and booster-club members who had helped with a school field-house project. Mr. Staver said no students were present at the event, which was held on school property but after school hours. "He wasn't thinking he was violating an order," he said. "Neither did the athletic director. He was asked to pray and so he did."
Mr. Mach said the event was during the school day and that Mr. Lay, the school's principal, has said in writing that students were present. "Decisions about the religious upbringing of children should be left in the hands of parents, not school officials," he said. As to whether prayer constitutes "religious upbringing," he said, "If school officials were promoting non-majority faiths and religious viewpoints, I suspect there'd be an uproar." The ACLU brought the matter to the attention of U.S. District Court Judge M. Casey Rodgers, who issued a contempt order for the two men.
Meanwhile, members of the small community of Milton, Fla., where Pace High School is located, have contributed more than $10,000 toward a legal defense fund for the defendants. Anti-ACLU T-shirts are also being sold and the proceeds donated.
Judge Rodgers' order also included Michelle Winkler, a clerical assistant who was attending a school district event in February with other school employees at a local naval base. There, she asked her husband to offer a blessing for a meal, says the ACLU, adding that students were present and led the Pledge of Allegiance.
"She didn't do the blessing; she asked somebody to do it," Mr. Staver said. "The ACLU is sending people to school to monitor things happening on campus and see if there is anything encouraging religious activity, then running to the court if they see anything."
Her trial, which could result in a fine, is scheduled for Aug. 21.
SOURCE
Three big stories the media's 'homers' missed
By: Mark Tapscott
Sports writers who never have a harsh word for the local team are called "homers," but one doesn't have to look far in the news sections or broadcasts of the mainstream media to realize that this problem starts on the front page. Take, for example, these three significant stories that got little or no play in The Washington Post, The New York Times or the network news outlets.
First, remember that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) "report" warning of the danger of domestic terrorist attacks by right-wing extremists? With only a few exceptions, major mainstream media outlets uncritically repeated the report's assertions, which were allegedly based on credible intelligence from official sources.
It was left to a conservative non-profit, Americans for Limited Government (ALG), to file a Freedom of Information Act request for the documentation used by DHS to prepare the report. And guess what ALG found? Instead of intelligence reports, DHS used unverified allegations and speculations it found on the internet.
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano's researchers liked one particularly apocalyptic web site so much that they cited it 11 times in their report. This site - called "What It Means" - often warns that the world is about to end, as with this recent headline: "Deaith Star Pandemic of 2009-2012: End of Age Begins."
Sleep tight tonight, folks, because your government knows what it all means.
Then there is the rebellion exploding within the ranks of AARP, the 40-million member Goliath of Washington lobbying on behalf of more government programs and spending. You might never know it from reading the Post or Times, but the liberal Democrats who run AARP's Washington office have gotten themselves into one heck of a mess.
They've spent millions of dollars collected from their members in an online, print and broadcast propaganda campaign for a government-run health care system - even as they hypocritically deny having endorsed any specific legislation in Congress.
But judging by the latest Gallup poll, most AARP members want no part of Obamacare or any other health care "reform" that takes billions of dollars away from Medicare and denies seniors the right to keep their doctors and their private health insurance.
Seniors aren't stupid and they recognize the crock they're getting from AARP's Washington leaders. That's why legions of them have cancelled their AARP memberships in recent months. When I asked AARP's Drew Nannis last week how many cancellations have been received, he promised to get right back to me. I'm not holding my breath.
Finally, did you know a government commission on civil rights is threatening to investigate the U.S. Department of Justice for its failure to prosecute what must be the most blatant violation of voting rights since Sheriff Bull Connor last unleashed his water hoses and dogs?
Remember the YouTube video of two New Black Panther Party members blocking people from entering a Philadelphia polling place last November? Both of the Panthers were dressed in paramilitary outfits and one of them carried a night stick. Both flung repeated racial slurs at people they were clearly intimidating.
Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department declined to prosecute the Panthers, in part because the defendants failed to respond to the charges brought against them and out of concern for their freedom of speech!
As The Washington Times reported last week, members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights were dumb-founded by the Justice decision not to prosecute. A search of the Post and New York Times archives turned up no coverage or commentary on this controversy in the past month.
Each of these three stories provided valuable information and insight that contradict ed the conventional wisdom being continually spouted in Congress and the White House, on college campuses, throughout the non-profit activism community, and across the mainstream media.
In Washington, government is the home team and media's homers aren't going to report stories that make the home team look bad.
SOURCE
Australia: A big attack on free speech and freedom of the press in the name of "privacy"
It's a great pity that Australia has no equivalent of America's First Amendment to block this sort of thing. People harmed by unfair or incorrect publicity should obviously have some recourse but one would think that existing libel and defamation laws provided that. Will it now be impossible for the media to expose crooks in case the crook's "privacy" might be violated??
The NSW Law Reform Commission reckons the trouble with freedom of speech is that it comes up trumps too often. But the commissioners yesterday released plans to do something about it: give those whose privacy has been violated by the press wider and less-constrained rights than any in the world to sue for damages.
I need to confess I was one of a bunch of advisers to the commissioners as they pursued their terms of reference, "To inquire into and report on whether existing legislation in NSW provides an effective framework for the protection of the privacy of an individual." In particular they were asked to consider "the desirability of introducing a statutory tort of privacy in NSW". Their answer was a mighty yes, and nothing I said otherwise had any noticeable effect.
In the face of outrageous violations of privacy by the media, journalists are hard put to argue that those whose lives have been trashed can't turn around and sue. The hunt for some basis in law to do this has been on for some time in the courts of the English-speaking world. A very bad result for the press was the Naomi Campbell case in 2004.
The Daily Mirror in London illustrated a story about the grumpy mannequin's drug addiction with a photograph of her leaving a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous in Chelsea. Though the picture was taken of a public figure in a public place, the House of Lords ordered the paper to pay Campbell damages of £3500 and costs of £350,000, essentially for violating her privacy.
Impossible to define, ceaselessly abused by governments and thrown away by kids on Facebook, privacy is being offered fresh protection in the courts. The drift appears irresistible. All that's really been at issue round the world in the past decade or so is how to ground this new action in law while protecting free speech.
The great protection offered in countries going down this track are solid guarantees of free speech in bills and charters of rights. We have nothing like that in NSW, which frankly pleases the NSW commissioners: a former judge, James Wood, a current judge, Kevin O'Connor, and Professor Michael Tilbury. It lets them lower the bar. They write: "We can think of no reason why in Australian law freedom of expression or any other interest should be privileged above privacy."
Courts elsewhere have developed a second great protection: only those "highly offended" can sue. That formula was developed in the US and refined in Britain, New Zealand and even here in the musings of the former chief justice Murray Gleeson, who thought being "highly offended" set "a useful practical test of what is private".
But that's too tough for the NSW commissioners. They want mere offence to be enough. What's more, their report Invasion of Privacy makes it clear this wider test would include people who suffer no more than "annoyance and anxiety" at the hands of the media.
I'm not here to defend The Sunday Telegraph for publishing photographs thought to reveal Pauline Hanson in her underwear. Nor am I going in to bat for those vaudeville characters Kyle and Jackie O interrogating children on air about their sex lives. Awful stuff. But a responsible, free media annoys people all the time. Happens day in, day out. We publish things about people they'd prefer didn't see the light of day and they get annoyed. But the commissioners are suggesting the courts - after balancing all the circumstances and rejecting the merely trivial - should allow people who are annoyed with the press to sue us even when we get it right. It's quite a prospect.
They also want to do away with two ground rules: what happens in public can be photographed and what's already on the public record can be republished. Neither are absolute rules any more, but the exceptions have, hitherto, been very carefully defined. No longer. Pity the poor investigative journalist - or biographer - working under threat of a Hong Kong principle approved by the commissioners, "That the law should take account of the 'practical obscurity' of personal information that is held in public registries or that has already been disclosed." What is buried must remain buried.
The commissioners are polite, intelligent men who have lived their lives around the courts. They're happy to leave to judges the case-by-case task of working out what is "private" and who has "a reasonable expectation of privacy" and whether claims for privacy are outweighed by "competing public interest".
None of those issues are now clear. Defining them would take many years. Meanwhile, newspapers would be published and news bulletins broadcast in a strange new world where the courts could punish the media for annoying people by honestly reporting accurate material contained in public documents.
Footnotes to their report reveal opposition to the proposals from the Law Council of Australia, the media Right to Know Coalition, the Law Society of NSW and the Press Council. And, for what it's worth: me. We were all ignored.
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 readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.
***************************
The current 40th anniversary of Woodstock finds it still being glamorized. Mike Tremoglie tells you the parts that you don't usually hear
Who could forget the sitar-like harmonies of Crosby, Stills and Nash, the "better living through chemistry" pulsations of Sly and the Family Stone, the chanting of Country Joe and the Fish, and the wonderfully wacky, Wavy Gravy? Woodstock--a place where half a million people gathered for peace, love, and music.
The event represented a generation of youth. Well not quite. The boys (and girls) of Woodstock were not such an inclusive group. One of the myths about Woodstock is that it was some altruistic event. Woodstock was all about money. John Roberts, the Ivy League heir to the Polident fortune, financed it. He and his partners were in it for profit. They never stated otherwise.
Max Yasgur, whose farm was the site of the event and whose name was immortalized in song, was anything but a simple dairy farmer. He was an NYU graduate and one of the wealthiest farmers in the area. He also walked away with $75,000 or about $300,000 in current dollars. Not bad for the three-day rental of 600 idle acres.
The Who was paid the then-unheard-of sum of $12,000. Three groups refused to go on until they got cash first. The promoters had to get an advance from a local banker on a Saturday night in order to prevent a riot.
Woodstock was not for the poor. A ticket was approximately 18 bucks. In an era when the minimum wage was a $1.60, a ticket was two days pay. That does not count lost wages for taking off from work, travel expenses, and of course, the drugs. Total it all up and it was at least a week's pay.
"I remember building a fire one morning for breakfast. All we had was hot dogs and spaghetti," a Woodstock alumnus waxed nostalgically in a magazine article. A few hundred miles away from the concert lived people who would have loved to have had hot dogs and spaghetti for breakfast. They would have loved to have had breakfast. Over $2 million was spent staging Woodstock ($10 million in current dollars.) $10 million buys many a breakfast in Appalachia.
If there is any significance about Woodstock it is the symbolic irony of it. The Woodstock audience was composed of enlightened and compassionate liberals-- at least that is what they thought of themselves. These were people who wanted to feed the poor and help the helpless. These people are now part of the governmental social-welfare complex and are now college professors who preach social justice to their students.
Yet the Woodstock audience could not feed themselves let alone the poor. The Woodstock crowd needed to rely on the very people they spurned--the establishment-- to feed them. Specifically they needed those warmongering, baby-killing, murdering monsters of the military establishment who dropped food from helicopters to feed them. They depended on the National Guard for food! The same National Guard that is now derided by liberal Democrats as being 'Chickenhawks.' It is absolutely hilarious that some critics of President George W. Bush's National Guard service were probably those who were saved from starvation by his fellow servicemen in the Guards.
Not only were the audience of Woodstock incapable of feeding themselves, the leaders of this event were just as incompetent. The very same people who are now liberal Democrats, Naderites, and Communists, the very same people who want to plan every aspect of the economy and society could not even plan a rock concert.
The myth is that Woodstock became a free concert by the beneficent act of the producers of the concert. Although it was good PR, it was not true. No, the promoters had to make it a free concert. The Woodstock generation wants what they want--and they want it free. They wanted to go to the concert so they crashed the gate.
It was the promoters' own fault. In order to get local approval the promoters purposely furnished low attendance figures. However, they did not realize how effective their marketing would be. Twice as many people came as they expected--10 times the number they had told the locals. Good intentions did not make Woodstock a free concert, poor business planning did.
Woodstock exposed the hypocrisy of the left. A half million people either spent money that could have been donated to charity or took food. They usurped resources from the government that could have gone to the poor. Why? So they could have a good time.
Moreover, the performers weren't a collection of Mother Theresas either. They earned substantial sums for their appearances. The only money donated was to Abbie Hoffman's fanatics and only because he extorted it by stating he would disrupt the concert. They did all of this while inveighing against the capitalist system.
The boys (and girls) from the Wood' proclaim themselves "veterans." In their characteristic hubris, they want to erect a monument to Woodstock. In Washington, D.C., there is a wall there with some 50,000 names on it. The Vietnam Memorial lists the names of real veterans--of kids who did their duty. They were the real altruists. Their concerts were in places like Bien Hoa and Ia Drang. They were the ones who should define the generation.
Country Joe's lyrical lamentation asked why we were in Vietnam. His answer was found during the '70s-- in the re-education programs of Communist Vietnam; in the "boat people" who fled Vietnam on anything that could float; in the killing fields of Cambodia. The kids whose names are on the wall tried to prevent that from occurring. In 1999, some people wanted to erect a monument to Woodstock. What is there to venerate? Woodstock was nothing more than kids with no responsibilities acting irresponsibly.
SOURCE
School prayer charges stir protests
Educators face jail in Florida
Students, teachers and local pastors are protesting over a court case involving a northern Florida school principal and an athletic director who are facing criminal charges and up to six months in jail over their offer of a mealtime prayer. There have been yard signs, T-shirts and a mass student protest during graduation ceremonies this spring on behalf of Pace High School Principal Frank Lay and school athletic director Robert Freeman, who will go on trial Sept. 17 at a federal district court in Pensacola for breaching the conditions of a lawsuit settlement reached last year with the American Civil Liberties Union.
"I have been defending religious freedom issues for 22 years, and I've never had to defend somebody who has been charged criminally for praying," said Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, the Orlando-based legal group that is defending the two school officials.
An ACLU official said the school district has allowed "flagrant" violations of the First Amendment for years. "The defendants all admitted wrongdoing," said Daniel Mach, director of litigation for its freedom of religion program. "For example, the Pace High School teachers handbook asks teachers to 'embrace every opportunity to inculcate, by precept and example, the practice of every Christian virtue.' "
The fight involving the ACLU, the school district and several devout Christian employees began last August when the ACLU sued Santa Rosa County Schools on behalf of two students who had complained privately to the group's Florida affiliate, claiming some teachers and administrators were allowing prayers at school events such as graduations, orchestrating separate religiously themed graduation services, and "proselytizing" students during class and after school.
In January, the Santa Rosa County School District settled out of court with the ACLU, agreeing to several things, including a provision to bar all school employees from promoting or sponsoring prayers during school-sponsored events; holding school events at church venues when a secular alternative was available; or promoting their religious beliefs or attempting to convert students in class or during school-sponsored events.
Mr. Staver said the district also agreed to forbid senior class President Mary Allen from speaking at the school's May 30 graduation ceremony on the chance that the young woman, a known Christian, might say something religious. "She was the first student body president in 33 years not allowed to speak," he said. In response, many members of the 300-plus-member student body taped crosses to their mortarboards and stood for an impromptu recitation of the Lord's Prayer during the ceremony.
Mr. Mach responded, "We believe students have the constitutional right to pray voluntarily in public or private. Constitutional problems arise only when public school officials promote or endorse prayer or specific religious views."
The criminal charges, which carry up to a $5,000 fine and a six-month jail term, originated with a Jan. 28 incident in which Mr. Lay, a deacon at a local Baptist church, asked Mr. Freeman to offer mealtime prayers at a lunch for school employees and booster-club members who had helped with a school field-house project. Mr. Staver said no students were present at the event, which was held on school property but after school hours. "He wasn't thinking he was violating an order," he said. "Neither did the athletic director. He was asked to pray and so he did."
Mr. Mach said the event was during the school day and that Mr. Lay, the school's principal, has said in writing that students were present. "Decisions about the religious upbringing of children should be left in the hands of parents, not school officials," he said. As to whether prayer constitutes "religious upbringing," he said, "If school officials were promoting non-majority faiths and religious viewpoints, I suspect there'd be an uproar." The ACLU brought the matter to the attention of U.S. District Court Judge M. Casey Rodgers, who issued a contempt order for the two men.
Meanwhile, members of the small community of Milton, Fla., where Pace High School is located, have contributed more than $10,000 toward a legal defense fund for the defendants. Anti-ACLU T-shirts are also being sold and the proceeds donated.
Judge Rodgers' order also included Michelle Winkler, a clerical assistant who was attending a school district event in February with other school employees at a local naval base. There, she asked her husband to offer a blessing for a meal, says the ACLU, adding that students were present and led the Pledge of Allegiance.
"She didn't do the blessing; she asked somebody to do it," Mr. Staver said. "The ACLU is sending people to school to monitor things happening on campus and see if there is anything encouraging religious activity, then running to the court if they see anything."
Her trial, which could result in a fine, is scheduled for Aug. 21.
SOURCE
Three big stories the media's 'homers' missed
By: Mark Tapscott
Sports writers who never have a harsh word for the local team are called "homers," but one doesn't have to look far in the news sections or broadcasts of the mainstream media to realize that this problem starts on the front page. Take, for example, these three significant stories that got little or no play in The Washington Post, The New York Times or the network news outlets.
First, remember that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) "report" warning of the danger of domestic terrorist attacks by right-wing extremists? With only a few exceptions, major mainstream media outlets uncritically repeated the report's assertions, which were allegedly based on credible intelligence from official sources.
It was left to a conservative non-profit, Americans for Limited Government (ALG), to file a Freedom of Information Act request for the documentation used by DHS to prepare the report. And guess what ALG found? Instead of intelligence reports, DHS used unverified allegations and speculations it found on the internet.
DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano's researchers liked one particularly apocalyptic web site so much that they cited it 11 times in their report. This site - called "What It Means" - often warns that the world is about to end, as with this recent headline: "Deaith Star Pandemic of 2009-2012: End of Age Begins."
Sleep tight tonight, folks, because your government knows what it all means.
Then there is the rebellion exploding within the ranks of AARP, the 40-million member Goliath of Washington lobbying on behalf of more government programs and spending. You might never know it from reading the Post or Times, but the liberal Democrats who run AARP's Washington office have gotten themselves into one heck of a mess.
They've spent millions of dollars collected from their members in an online, print and broadcast propaganda campaign for a government-run health care system - even as they hypocritically deny having endorsed any specific legislation in Congress.
But judging by the latest Gallup poll, most AARP members want no part of Obamacare or any other health care "reform" that takes billions of dollars away from Medicare and denies seniors the right to keep their doctors and their private health insurance.
Seniors aren't stupid and they recognize the crock they're getting from AARP's Washington leaders. That's why legions of them have cancelled their AARP memberships in recent months. When I asked AARP's Drew Nannis last week how many cancellations have been received, he promised to get right back to me. I'm not holding my breath.
Finally, did you know a government commission on civil rights is threatening to investigate the U.S. Department of Justice for its failure to prosecute what must be the most blatant violation of voting rights since Sheriff Bull Connor last unleashed his water hoses and dogs?
Remember the YouTube video of two New Black Panther Party members blocking people from entering a Philadelphia polling place last November? Both of the Panthers were dressed in paramilitary outfits and one of them carried a night stick. Both flung repeated racial slurs at people they were clearly intimidating.
Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department declined to prosecute the Panthers, in part because the defendants failed to respond to the charges brought against them and out of concern for their freedom of speech!
As The Washington Times reported last week, members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights were dumb-founded by the Justice decision not to prosecute. A search of the Post and New York Times archives turned up no coverage or commentary on this controversy in the past month.
Each of these three stories provided valuable information and insight that contradict ed the conventional wisdom being continually spouted in Congress and the White House, on college campuses, throughout the non-profit activism community, and across the mainstream media.
In Washington, government is the home team and media's homers aren't going to report stories that make the home team look bad.
SOURCE
Australia: A big attack on free speech and freedom of the press in the name of "privacy"
It's a great pity that Australia has no equivalent of America's First Amendment to block this sort of thing. People harmed by unfair or incorrect publicity should obviously have some recourse but one would think that existing libel and defamation laws provided that. Will it now be impossible for the media to expose crooks in case the crook's "privacy" might be violated??
The NSW Law Reform Commission reckons the trouble with freedom of speech is that it comes up trumps too often. But the commissioners yesterday released plans to do something about it: give those whose privacy has been violated by the press wider and less-constrained rights than any in the world to sue for damages.
I need to confess I was one of a bunch of advisers to the commissioners as they pursued their terms of reference, "To inquire into and report on whether existing legislation in NSW provides an effective framework for the protection of the privacy of an individual." In particular they were asked to consider "the desirability of introducing a statutory tort of privacy in NSW". Their answer was a mighty yes, and nothing I said otherwise had any noticeable effect.
In the face of outrageous violations of privacy by the media, journalists are hard put to argue that those whose lives have been trashed can't turn around and sue. The hunt for some basis in law to do this has been on for some time in the courts of the English-speaking world. A very bad result for the press was the Naomi Campbell case in 2004.
The Daily Mirror in London illustrated a story about the grumpy mannequin's drug addiction with a photograph of her leaving a meeting of Narcotics Anonymous in Chelsea. Though the picture was taken of a public figure in a public place, the House of Lords ordered the paper to pay Campbell damages of £3500 and costs of £350,000, essentially for violating her privacy.
Impossible to define, ceaselessly abused by governments and thrown away by kids on Facebook, privacy is being offered fresh protection in the courts. The drift appears irresistible. All that's really been at issue round the world in the past decade or so is how to ground this new action in law while protecting free speech.
The great protection offered in countries going down this track are solid guarantees of free speech in bills and charters of rights. We have nothing like that in NSW, which frankly pleases the NSW commissioners: a former judge, James Wood, a current judge, Kevin O'Connor, and Professor Michael Tilbury. It lets them lower the bar. They write: "We can think of no reason why in Australian law freedom of expression or any other interest should be privileged above privacy."
Courts elsewhere have developed a second great protection: only those "highly offended" can sue. That formula was developed in the US and refined in Britain, New Zealand and even here in the musings of the former chief justice Murray Gleeson, who thought being "highly offended" set "a useful practical test of what is private".
But that's too tough for the NSW commissioners. They want mere offence to be enough. What's more, their report Invasion of Privacy makes it clear this wider test would include people who suffer no more than "annoyance and anxiety" at the hands of the media.
I'm not here to defend The Sunday Telegraph for publishing photographs thought to reveal Pauline Hanson in her underwear. Nor am I going in to bat for those vaudeville characters Kyle and Jackie O interrogating children on air about their sex lives. Awful stuff. But a responsible, free media annoys people all the time. Happens day in, day out. We publish things about people they'd prefer didn't see the light of day and they get annoyed. But the commissioners are suggesting the courts - after balancing all the circumstances and rejecting the merely trivial - should allow people who are annoyed with the press to sue us even when we get it right. It's quite a prospect.
They also want to do away with two ground rules: what happens in public can be photographed and what's already on the public record can be republished. Neither are absolute rules any more, but the exceptions have, hitherto, been very carefully defined. No longer. Pity the poor investigative journalist - or biographer - working under threat of a Hong Kong principle approved by the commissioners, "That the law should take account of the 'practical obscurity' of personal information that is held in public registries or that has already been disclosed." What is buried must remain buried.
The commissioners are polite, intelligent men who have lived their lives around the courts. They're happy to leave to judges the case-by-case task of working out what is "private" and who has "a reasonable expectation of privacy" and whether claims for privacy are outweighed by "competing public interest".
None of those issues are now clear. Defining them would take many years. Meanwhile, newspapers would be published and news bulletins broadcast in a strange new world where the courts could punish the media for annoying people by honestly reporting accurate material contained in public documents.
Footnotes to their report reveal opposition to the proposals from the Law Council of Australia, the media Right to Know Coalition, the Law Society of NSW and the Press Council. And, for what it's worth: me. We were all ignored.
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 readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.
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