Wednesday, January 18, 2017




March on Trump-haters, but remember girls mutilated at home

CAROLINE OVERINGTON below has some restrained comments about the butchered genitals of *Australian* Muslim girls.  I would add:  "What about Clemmie?" Alleged feminist Clementine Ford wrote recently and angrily about the rude way some young Australian men at a car rally spoke to some of the women present. 

Where is her sense of values?  There is no record of any women being hurt by men at the Summernats but there is ample record of what some Australian Muslim families do to their daughters.  If rude car-freaks burn up Clemmie, female genital mutilation should set her on fire.  But there is no record of that.  No rage at all.

It is quite clear that Clemmie, like most so-called feminists,    doesn't care about women at all.  All that drives her is her hate of her fellow Australians -- in the best Leftist tradition.  She is a towering hypocrite and a nasty piece of goods.   She should be proud that even while in a drunken mob, young Australian men did women no harm. Her misdirected anger defiles Australian society.  Does someone have to perform a clitoridectomy on her to get her attention to it?  I think it would take that much.



Now, I’m a feminist, obviously. I believe in equal rights for women: to work, to vote, to drive, to travel. But the Women’s Marches around the nation this weekend has me worried.

The Women’s Marches have been organised so Australian women can “show solidarity” with American women as Donald Trump becomes president.

The organisers hate him, obviously. He’s the pussy-grabber. The misogynist-in-chief. The group behind the Women’s March has a Facebook page that promotes Meryl Streep’s speech at the Oscars,; and the hashtag Love­TrumpsHate. And that’s fine. Trump was democratically elected but nobody has to like him, and protests against government are an important part of democracy too. So, march away.

But where, I wonder, is the thousand-strong march, the loud protests, the hashtags and the Twitter campaign for women and girls suffering the vilest forms of misogyny right here at home?

Last week the Australian pediatric surveillance unit at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead in western Sydney released a report on female genital mutilation in this country. It found 59 brutalised girls. But here’s the line you don’t want to miss: the study’s author, Elizabeth Elliott, said “most of the procedures on the girls were performed overseas”.

The key word in that sentence is “most”. Most of girls had been cut overseas. But some were Australian-born. Meaning they had definitely been cut here. It’s very likely that some of the others had been cut here, too, after they arrived. Of the 59 — according to the report, that’s a gross underestimation of the actual numbers — only 13 were referred to child protection services. Why only 13?

These were girls whose parents — usually their mothers — had taken them to have them cut. What will happen to them next? Will they be shoved into an arranged marriage with a much older man to whom they already may be related? Because that, too, is happening.

Last October, a young Iraqi girl, Bee al-Darraj, told The Australian that she knew several girls from her former Islamic school who had been sent to Iraq to be married, while still underage. Nothing was done. She knew one girl who gave birth while underage in a public hospital in Sydney with her 28-year-old husband standing by. Nothing was done. She knew girls in Year 9 who were married and had 30-year-old husbands picking them up from school. Nothing was done. (To be clear, there’s no suggestion the school knew, for to know and not report would be a gross breach of mandatory reporting obligations. What we’re talking about here is child rape.)

Last week, we had a prominent cleric, imam Ibrahim Omerdic, 61, charged with conducting a child marriage between a girl under the age of 16, and a man aged 30.

This is real, and it is happening here, and it is right now. Dozens, maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of girls are suffering vile abuse, but it’s like screaming in an abyss. Where is the march? Where is the hashtag?

Genital cutting is not as fancy a topic as Hollywood pay for women, obviously, but it’s a creeping tragedy that threatens the freedom of all Australian women. A freedom our grandfathers and great-uncles died for. A freedom the feisty Australian suffragettes of yesteryear, with their dry wit and their long skirts and their button-up boots, once marched for.

I get that there’s cultural sensitivity. People don’t want to be accused of racism or bigotry. They don’t want to discriminate. But what about the discrimination against girls going on right now in Australian schools? Don’t believe it? Cast your eye over this, the official uniform list for the al-Faisal College in Sydney’s west (see below).

What jumps out? Only the girls, from age five, have to wear long sleeves, even in summer.

Only the girls have to wear skirts to the floor (ankle-length) summer and winter. The hijab, or head covering, also is compulsory for girls, from age five. It is compulsory even for sport. The boys scamper about in short sleeves.

A friend of a friend who is a teacher at the school recently sent out some pictures of children at the school receiving certificates at an assembly.

The boys are relaxed and grinning. The girls are swathed in so much fabric you can see only their faces. You support this, with your taxes.

It’s blatant discrimination. It tells girls that there is something sinful about them, something that will drive men to distraction, something they need to keep covered while out in the world.

The sight of your wrists, or ankle, or forearm is offensive and wrong.

Now, Australian women are smart, and most of them are very used to carrying more than one bucket at a time. Meaning: they know that you can adore pretty clothes and still want equal pay.

Likewise, you can be outraged by female genital mutilation, and forced marriage, and lousy school uniform codes, and Donald Trump. But which is more important? Macho bragging about pussy-grabbing in a trailer on the set of The Apprentice? Or acts of extreme violence against girls — and the rights of girls — here and now?

Yes, it’s possible to carry more than one bucket, so, if you’re marching this weekend, good on you, that’s your right — but maybe also carry a placard for your Australian sisters, suffering vile misogyny as we speak.

They’re hidden from view but they deserve attention, too.

SOURCE






California Bureaucrats Learn It’s Not Okay to Lie in Court

This week, a three-judge panel of U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals laid down the law on whether government bureaucrats, in this case ones employed by Orange County, can have a free pass from having to comply with any sort of ethical standards of conduct while appearing in court as part of their official capacity as government employees. As R. Scott Moxley reports on the court’s decision in OCWeekly, it turns out that federal judges really do frown on anybody committing perjury or presenting false evidence in court, including government officials:

Using taxpayer funds, government officials in Orange County have spent the last 16 years arguing the most absurd legal proposition in the entire nation: How could social workers have known it was wrong to lie, falsify records and hide exculpatory evidence in 2000 so that a judge would forcibly take two young daughters from their mother for six-and-a-half years?

From the you-can’t-make-up-this-crap file, county officials are paying Lynberg & Watkins, a private Southern California law firm specializing in defending cops in excessive force lawsuits, untold sums to claim the social workers couldn’t have “clearly” known that dishonesty wasn’t acceptable in court and, as a back up, even if they did know, they should enjoy immunity for their misdeeds because they were government employees.

A panel at the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit this week ruled on Orange County’s appeal of federal judge Josephine L. Staton’s refusal last year to grant immunity to the bureaucrats in Preslie Hardwick v. County of Orange, a lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in damages. In short, judges Stephen S. Trott, John B. Owens and Michelle T. Friedland were not amused. They affirmed Staton’s decision.

Moxley goes on to present the verbal exchanges that took place between the attorneys hired by Orange County and the Ninth Circuit’s judges, which you have to see to believe really happened with state-licensed attorneys.

Following the Ninth Circuit panel’s decision that government bureaucrats, despite what they might believe, are not entitled to commit perjury without penalty, the civil case against the government of Orange County will continue forward, where the county is at risk of a multi-million dollar judgment against it for the so-far-unanswered misconduct of its employees.

Twenty-two years earlier, Orange County went bankrupt in large part because of the unethical conduct of its government officials. While its potential liability in the new case is far below the level that would sent it back into bankruptcy proceedings, it would be nice if the county’s officials would finally learn their lesson about the proper conduct of public employees so it can avoid imposing such unnecessary liabilities on Orange County residents for their abuses of power in the future.

SOURCE







Political Correctness: A Tool of Liberal Coercion – A Most Un-American Development

By Rabbi Aryeh Spero

It is naïve to think that political correctness is simply a matter of being scolded for saying something unacceptable to liberals. It has become much more than that. Political correctness is a deliberate tool used by the Left to intimidate conservatives and people of faith into silence, with the goal of making our classic and time-tested opinions illegitimate.

Political Correctness is a strategy, a weapon of social warfare, a bullying, against those unwilling to reshape and renounce their traditional belief system and bow to the dictates of the leftaucracy dead-set on total domination of our lives and culture. It enforces censorship and activates demonization, threatening those unwilling to submit and apologize with loss of job, livelihood, social acceptability, company sales, friends, reputation and status. It is the liberal version of Islamic blasphemy laws, ruthlessly excising anyone who questions or strays from the leftwing cultural and social dogmas. It is the most un-American development in our lifetime.

In many ways it is worse than the McCarthyism practiced in the early 50s. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who sat on the Senate Committee of Government Operations, targeted relatively few, mostly from Hollywood and Theatre, whereas liberal political correctness is targeting over 60 percent, tens of millions, of Americans. And whereas McCarthy was generally correct regarding the communist leanings and activities of his targets, liberal political-correctness czars are off-the-wall incorrect when accusing regular and patriotic Americans of racism, misogyny, xenophobia or whatever other “ism” they choose to develop. Joe McCarthy’s hearings lasted a mere couple of years, while the scourge and punishment of political correctness is into its 20th year.

Today’s  New McCarthyites exist and labor on the Left and are engaged in the thoroughly un-American activity of censoring speech, curtailing and ostracizing religious freedom, and doing whatever they can to deconstruct traditional family life and taint the values of our parents, our Founders, and our grandparents as evil. By deriding everything we hold dear as unacceptable, and making us pay the price of holding onto our cherished beliefs, they hope to transform America, and American family and religious life, into a Sweden/Brussels fantasy or a completely secular and unwholesome political entity.  They wish to replace America, while we stand by and watch it happen.

But, the good news is that we are not helpless.

Even enunciating, as we do, that marriage is defined by the union of man and woman only, as has been understood throughout history and until recently the law of our country, brings an indictment of being a “bigot” and “extremist” by those using political correctness to forever stigmatize and outcast those who disagree with their ever-expanding parameter of disallowable opinion. What is normal belief today will become tomorrow’s politically incorrect and forbidden opinion and be used by future inquisitors to defame and destroy those they want out of the way. And, what is radical and detestable today will be sanctified and normalized tomorrow, and you better subscribe if you want society’s opportunities or an ability to make a living.

When thinking of the modus operandi of political correctness, one is reminded of the Spanish Inquisition against non-believers. Today’s liberals have replaced the clerics of old with their own Inquisitors of right and wrong and have substituted the concept of sin with their own set of rigid “sinful” dictates. Anything that does not sanctify every form of public sexual (mis)conduct, or strives for wholesomeness, or even patriotism, is punishable. As with the Inquisitors 500 years ago, the politically-correct police assume you are guilty until you prove otherwise … even demanding that you denounce friends and family who hold views different than the Church of Political Correctness.

By virtue of being a conservative, a person of faith, a Southerner, a heartland American, or a white Evangelical Christian you are automatically assumed to be a racist, etc., and the politically-correct vultures are ready to pick your bones before you say anything, so that once you do, they can twist your words negatively to mean something you never intended or even envisioned.

We hear from liberals that when President Trump and his followers speak of making America Great Again we mean Make America White Again. This is a malicious falsehood. It is specious and malevolent. What we mean, as does Mr. Trump, is that America should once again be prosperous; that the middle class be revived and that good, manufacturing jobs be available so families can live with dignity; that family life and wholesomeness be once again exalted; that America be crime-free; that Americans be protected from terrorism and inhere a sense of confidence; and that our elected leaders, a President, love America instead of constantly castigating her.

No one I know wants an America where our African-American brothers and sisters are denied an iota of civil rights. We look back on the 50s fondly not because of segregation ,God forbid, but because it represented a time of American prosperity and confidence, American ingenuity, patriotism, safety, and religious freedom, a robust, working middle class that could dream and achieve, and a country that placed God above all else.

When liberals make these accusations it exposes the bigotry they carry, and have long carried, inside their bosom. Too many of the coastal elites have been taught to believe the worst about regular white Americans. They see racism in us because they have been raised and schooled on a diet of bigotry against fellow Americans as somehow un-educated, or religious and intolerant “rednecks.” They persist in these misguided beliefs regarding their countrymen because they don’t know their countrymen; they don’t live around them; they attend different schools and colleges; and because there’s no draft, they do not serve with them in the military. They assume the worst, but that’s their sin, their prejudice.

We need not prove ourselves to them; they need to get off their pedestal and strip their hearts of the false narratives around which they chatter. Only people harboring bigotry against fellow Americans, and a distrust and detachment from America itself, could take the common-sense phrase of America First and somehow turn that into a xenophobic, Nazi-like assertion. Precisely because they’ve been on their perch these last 50 years indicting heartland Americans and Evangelical Christians they’ve not undergone the introspection they should regarding their attitude towards the people they continue to criticize. They are unaware and do not give credit to the millions of across-the-board acts of charity and kindness routinely performed by religious and conservative heartland Americans. We’ve undergone 50 years of introspection; now it’s their turn.

There is no doubt that the enforcers of political correctness continue to do so as a way of constantly bragging about their moral superiority, that they are better than the rest of us, and get a thrill out of making others bend to their will. It gives them a sense of power and self-righteousness.  And, frankly, so long as we jump to their demands, we reinforce their power. Let’s stop caving in to them.

SOURCE





Why comedians must be free to say ‘faggot’

The calls to slap trigger warnings on Eddie Murphy's old stand-up special are insulting to gay people

Whenever news breaks of a controversial film or TV show ‘resurfacing’ online, it usually means a work, known to its target audience for years, has suddenly been discovered by easily offended malcontents looking to start a twitch-hunt.

Eddie Murphy’s 1983 stand-up special Delirious is the latest target. It recently became available on Netflix, and Pink News has taken umbrage with the ‘anti-gay comedy special’ and its repeated use of the word ‘faggot’. At the start of his act, Murphy speaks of his wish to ‘fuck with everybody’, including the ‘fag section’ of the audience. He then talks about AIDS – ‘AIDS is scary ‘cause it kills motherfuckers’ – and proceeds to make jokes about it. Pink News is shocked that Netflix ‘does not include a content warning’, and a spate of low-starred reviews have demanded Delirious be removed from the site.

This all raises the question: does the LGBT community really need content warnings? The Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) film-rating system assists parents in gauging what films are suitable for their children to watch. What Pink News and these enraged Netflix viewers are suggesting is that gay people are like children who need to be protected from subject matter that may upset them. Just imagine ‘may offend gay people’ appearing onscreen before a show.

And what would be the point? Even if content warnings were added, do the easily offended expect to avoid such humour for the rest of their lives? And would those who are likely to be offended by it be less offended if they were warned beforehand? Besides, comedy would be a lot less funny if the audience was told in advance about the contents of each joke. This is how censorship kills an art form.

Moreover, comedians have a long history of using offensive language to provoke and push boundaries. When Lenny Bruce used the word ‘faggot’ in his ‘Dykes and Faggots’ routine, he didn’t intend to get at homosexuals any more than his famed ‘Are there any niggers here tonight?’ bit was aimed at taking African-Americans down a peg. Bruce believed that suppressing slurs gave them power, and his routines were not just rallying cries for freedom of speech, but also impassioned pleas to destroy social division.

One of the greatest things about comedy is its power to challenge our most sensitive sensibilities. Unfortunately, many today believe that comedians only want to use words like ‘faggot’ to maintain their privilege. Freedom of expression must be demolished, they argue, because privileged comedians could never have any good, humanistic intentions. According to a recent Huffington Post article entitled ‘Why Straight Comics Still Cling to the Word “Faggot” and Why They Shouldn’t’, ‘the only way to earn the right to use the word “faggot” is by having sex with another guy and liking it’.

In 2009, South Park caused a stir with an episode called ‘The F-Word’. In it, the boys attempt to change ‘fag’ into a slur against obnoxious bikers. Though the episode sets out to convey the ever-changing nature of language, and how we can collectively remove the stigma from offensive words, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) demanded an apology for its repeated use of ‘the f-word’ (GLAAD couldn’t bring itself to say ‘fag’ in its statement). ‘While many South Park viewers will understand the sophisticated satire and critique in last night’s episode, others won’t’, it said.

This response highlights the innate snobbishness of identity politics types. Apparently, the people at GLAAD are ‘sophisticated’ enough to understand the joke, but the general public is not. But it also misses the crucial point: if you truly believe that slurs should not become the weapons of bigots, then censoring them is the worst thing you can do. Banning words gives them a false glamour they wouldn’t otherwise have. If anything, as South Park and Lenny Bruce tell us, you remove the stigma by saying the word more, not less.

Delirious should not be defended merely as an of-its-time special that is no longer acceptable in this PC age. Comedians should have the same right to artistic freedom in 2017 – to find humour in whatever they please – as they did in 1983. What’s more, how can you break the taboo of something like AIDS if you don’t talk about it? How can you alleviate the pain of something so tragic if you don’t laugh at it? The only protection the LGBT community needs is from those trying to remove their right to be laughed at like everyone else.

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, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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