Friday, March 31, 2017






After letting kids get sex-change surgery at 15, Oregon Democrats try raising smoking age to 21

They have no principles and no guiding theory.  All they have is hatred of the status quo

Growing up can be confusing, especially if you're a kid in Oregon. You can't drive a car until 16. You can't leave home until 18. And if a new bill passes the state legislature, you can't pick up a pack of cigarettes until 21.

But Oregon offers one state perk long before any of those other milestones. With or without parental permission, the state subsidizes gender reassignment surgery starting at age 15. To reiterate, kids can change their sex with help from the taxpayer, but soon many adults won't be able to buy smokes.

The pending legislation perfectly demonstrates the skewed double standard of the Left. There's a sliding scale of responsibility in Oregon and it's calibrated specifically to liberal pieties.

Ostensibly to keep the state healthy, the smoking bill rests on the premise that young adults are too foolish to make good decisions about their bodies. "One of the best things we can do in Oregon to prevent disease," said Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, "is to stop people from using tobacco." Or put another way, limiting choice is necessary to eliminate the danger.

But while Oregon lawmakers won't let adults light up, they'll pay for kids to change gender. Suddenly public health interests go out the window in Salem. The state's Medicaid program bows blindly in front of the personal autonomy of high school freshman still too young to drive.

Never mind the risks of going under the knife and the fact that there's no real chance to go back once the change is complete. Disregard the parental concerns of the families who will care for these children. And completely ignore evidence, like this UCLA study, showing that transgender kids are at a higher risk for suicide after surgery.

No matter the risks and regardless of parental rights, Oregon lets impressionable children identify however they choose. They won't let voting-age adults identify as the Marlboro man. The nanny state has officially run amok.

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Trump Signals Change in Tone for Police From Obama

President Donald Trump told the nation’s largest police union his administration will “always have your back,” a departure from what many police organizations say they felt about the previous administration.

The Fraternal Order of Police visited the White House Tuesday. Many police organizations criticized the Obama administration for being quick to criticize the officers after a police shooting before knowing all the facts.

Trump met with nine police union officials from across the country, and was joined by Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, where he asserted “there is nobody braver” than law enforcement, and thanked them for their endorsement in last year’s election.

“I made a crucial pledge,” Trump told the police officials. “We will always support the incredible men and women of law enforcement. I will always have your back 100 percent.”

Such words from a president mean a lot, noted Scott Erickson, president of Americans in Support of Law Enforcement.

Erickson wasn’t part of the meeting, but asserted this first formal meeting with Trump and the Fraternal Order of Police marks a change in tone.

“Public perception of police is slowly improving for two reasons,” Erickson, who was a police officer in San Jose, California, for 18 years, told The Daily Signal. “People got burnt out on the negativity, hearing the worst about cops. Two years ago, it hit a new low. Last year, approval for cops spiked. But what top government officials were saying filtered down to public discourse about cops. That is changing.”

During his presidency, Barack Obama verbally criticized several police departments, asserting in July 2009 that the Cambridge Police Department “acted stupidly,” when an officer stopped a Harvard professor outside his home. In December 2012, after winning re-election, Obama said some local police departments “are not trying to root out bias.”

In July 2016, after shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana, Obama said while in Warsaw, Poland, “These are not isolated incidents, they are symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.”

That same month, during a memorial service for five slain police officers in Dallas, Obama talked about racial disparities in law enforcement, saying, “When all this takes place more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we can’t just simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid.”

These were the types of comments that framed the description of police officers, Erickson said. That seems to have changed with a new president, according to Erickson.

“Police no longer feel they are going to have an administration casting a skeptical eye on them before all of the facts are in,” Erickson said.

On Feb. 9, Trump signed three executive orders to back law enforcement. The first stated the federal government is on the side of federal, state, tribal, and local law enforcement. The second established a task force for reducing crime, and the third created a separate task force to determine the best way to take on transnational criminal organizations and drug cartels.

During his meeting with police Tuesday, Trump said that police must be empowered to keep the public safe.

“Sadly, our police are often prevented from doing their jobs,” Trump said. “In too many of our communities, violent crime is on the rise. These are painful realities that many in Washington don’t want to talk about. We have seen it all over.”

Trump noted, “I always ask, ‘What’s going on in Chicago?’”

Dean Angelo, president of Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, was among those who met with the president. After the meeting, the Chicago Tribune reported Angelo said, “I just mentioned that the police officers want to work, and that [they] need people to support police officers to go back to work so they can work toward stemming the violence in our city.”

Trump referenced during the meeting that Sessions on Monday talked about withholding Justice Department grants from cities that don’t cooperate with federal law enforcement on immigration, commonly known as sanctuary cities.

Fraternal Order of Police National President Chuck Canterbury said the organization backed the president on cracking down on sanctuary cities.

“We believe in enforcing the laws of the country of the United States,” Canterbury told reporters after the meeting, according to the Tribune. “We believe that sanctuary city status is not a good thing for America. We support the president on his sanctuary city initiative.”

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The Leftist reliance on censorship

JENNIFER ORIEL, writing from Australia

After a long winter of stultifying centrism, Australia has regained its two-party system. The left’s ­political persecution of artist Bill Leak and his untimely death have shocked the Liberal Party into resurrecting its founding principle of freedom. Labor has responded to the Prime Minister’s plea for freedom by revealing its intent to censor the people and the free press.

In the fashion of 21st-century totalitarians, the left is using race and human rights as rhetorical weapons against liberty and civil society. The Liberal Party is ­emerging once more as the party of freedom, fairness and democracy. It begs the question: what’s left of the left?

In the midst of World War II, sociologist Robert Nisbet warned that we would not be able to detect the return of totalitarianism by searching for political absolutism in the form of an autocratic state. Rather, the rise of totalitarianism would become apparent by the gradual encroachment of the state into all areas of life traditionally assigned to society: family, friendships and secular faith.

The object of totalitarian ­contempt is civil society because the ties that bind us in friendship, family and faith also effect our ­independence from the state. The animating principle of civil society is free speech and we learn to master it by exercising public reason. As a result, the most distinctive feature of liberal democratic states is the protection of free speech and public reason from state coercion and control.

The Western left seems capable of discerning the totalitarian threat, but only when it comes dressed like an enemy. Thus, its members might criticise Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for suppressing free speech, or Vladimir Putin for punishing dissidents, but celebrate the silencing of fellow citizens deemed politically incorrect by state censors.

In the modern West, the most popular and effective rhetorical device to erode free speech has been race. Communists used class as a weapon to depict state censorship of dissenters as victory for the proletariat. In the 21st century, the left uses race as a weapon to shame and silence dissenters from the PC party line.

State censorship of dissidents is marketed as victory for state-designated minority groups. In the West, however, these ­minority groups are rarely genuine political minorities. Under ­affirmative action laws, they are given superior rights to other ­citizens. They are usually numerical ­minorities granted a range of ­unearned privileges under law.

As a woman, I am one of the fake minorities singled out for special privileges under discrimination law and I have come to resent it. I believe in formal equality, not inequality and I dislike intensely any attempt to create hostility between people on the basis of biological traits. As history shows, a ruling class often comprises a numerical minority awarded political, legal and economic privileges that are denied other citizens. It is the meaning of systemic inequality and a reliable predictor of social unrest.

The Liberal Party seeks equality for all Australians under law. It wants to restore speech equality by reforming section 18C so that every citizen enjoys an equal right to freedom of thought and speech without fear of persecution by common slanderers, or the state. The Labor Party champions speech inequality by defending 18C. Under Labor, the people and the press are denied the right to speak freely.

Those who insist on free speech are often targeted for abuse by false accusers wielding the rhetorical weapon of race. As we saw in the persecution of Bill Leak by Islamist and PC censors, and the three-year-long case against QUT students, section 18C empowers a type of fraud. In its current form, the Racial Discrimination Act enables what I would call race fraud; the use of race to deceive/defraud Australians by means of false accusation and political persecution. The beneficiaries of race fraud include vexatious claimants, ambulance-chasing lawyers, race-baiting activists and establishment backers of 18C.

Section 18C is big business, as legal affairs editor Chris Merritt has revealed. Since 2010, respondents in race discrimination complaints handled by the AHRC have paid almost $1 million to avoid going to court. The complainant in the QUT case, Cindy Prior, sought $250,000 in damages from students over Facebook posts. Some of the biggest payouts have come from government ­departments, which means that once again, the taxpayer is funding the harmful PC industry.

Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane invited people online to complain about Leak’s cartoon. Soutphommasane was appointed in 2013 by then Labor attorney-general Mark Dreyfus. During a panel hosted by the Jewish Community Council of Victoria last week, Dreyfus outlined plans that could result in the application of 18C to a growing list of protected attributes.

According to Merritt, Dreyfus indicated that: “A Labor government hoped to consolidate all federal anti-discrimination legislation and would consider … a general standard for the type of speech that would attract liability.” Dreyfus plans on “consolidating the five anti-discrimination statutes when we are next in government” and establishing “a standard about speech generally”.

When last in office, Labor launched the most totalitarian ­assault on freedom of speech I have seen in the 21st century West. The Green-Left’s attack on free speech and the independent media was categorically anti-democratic. Combined with a ­proposed meta-regulator of the media, Labor’s human rights and anti-discrimination bill would have ushered in state control of free speech under the guise of social justice. The bill created a raft of new protected attributes including immigrant status, nationality or citizenship, and social origin. They would have been protected from “unfavourable treatment”, defined as “conduct that offends, insults or intimidates”.

Labor’s doomed bill was supported by the AHRC. The Liberal Party warned it would reverse the onus of proof, thereby destroying the presumption of innocence in Australian law. However, AHRC President Gillian Triggs contended that shifting the onus of proof to the accused was needed because complainants were “vulnerable”.

The ethos of Australian equality and mateship is protected by formal equality. We should seek a state where speech equality is guaranteed by ensuring all Australians can speak freely without fear of political persecution under 18C.

SOURCE





Political correctness can't alter history

Recently the specter of "political correctness," which as I have previously stated is strictly political and not particularly correct, reared its ugly head once again. I refer to the removal of the bust/statue that commemorated former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America and Maryland native Roger Brooke Taney from the grounds of the Frederick County courthouse. This was done simply to appease those who wish to cleanse our history of anything that might make them the least bit uncomfortable by today's standards.

To be sure, the majority opinion that Taney wrote in the Dred Scott decision, if written today, would be unanimously declared unconscionable by the current standards, however it was written at a different time with much different social norms. It also must be remembered that this was a majority decision and the chief justice simply wrote the opinion with which at least four other justices agreed.

Having that statue on the grounds of a courthouse, instead of being hidden away in a local cemetery, seems to be the more proper location. It would serve as a reminder that even the best intentions of the finest legal minds of the day sometimes make decisions that could prove to be in error in future generations. Witness the decision that equates unlimited financial contributions to political parties and candidates by wealthy individuals and corporations with freedom of speech.

I wonder if eliminating every person or symbol with any connection to the practice of slavery might include removing the portrait of George Washington from the dollar bill or Thomas Jefferson from the $2 bill. Each of these Founding Fathers — and they were not alone in the practice — had slaves to till their fields and serve in their mansions. At Mount Vernon, the slave quarters are prominent displays that show the hierarchy present within the slave ranks.

In Baltimore City, there is an ongoing discussion about the removal and relocation of several commemorative statues featuring Confederate themes or people. I'm of the opinion that none of them be moved or removed. They represent the history of the United States. Although that period was unpleasant to say the least, in the end it did bring the country back together.

History is the story of what happened and to whom it happened. We cannot change the past. We can only hope to learn from it and strive to do better in the future. We cannot judge the actions and words of our ancestors through the prism of modern mores. They did what they did in their times and under the laws and customs of their day. It is simply wrong for modern man to attempt to hide from future generations the history and many conversions that this great nation has gone through.

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

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Thursday, March 30, 2017



Should This Policeman Be In Prison?

His supporters say that no one deserves a new trial more than Daniel Holtzclaw, the former Oklahoma City police officer convicted of being a serial rapist and sentenced to 263 years in prison. Holtzclaw has maintained his innocence from the start, and unlike the case with his accusers, his recounting of the facts has never changed.

On the other hand, he was found guilty at trial, with 13 accusers, and that makes most people lose interest in the case almost immediately, assuming that where there’s smoke, there’s fire and he must be guilty.

My own interest in this case was spurred by the fact that I work with Michelle Malkin, the firebrand conservative columnist. My company has syndicated Malkin’s column to hundreds of newspapers and websites across the country since 1999, and many times she has gone out on a limb in her reporting — and I don’t ever recall her getting it wrong.

So I was startled to see her two-part documentary on Daniel Holtzclaw, “Daniel in the Den,” which is available on CRTV, a new online television channel that features Mark Levin and other conservatives.

I was startled because I had seen Juju Chang’s report on the Holtzclaw case on “20/20,” “What the Dash Cam Never Saw," and just assumed that Daniel was guilty. Chang followed the story as it existed — meaning Holtzclaw had been found guilty and the reporter assumed he was guilty because of that — and the audience was left with the impression that of course he was guilty.

But Malkin asks, “What if he is innocent?” And then she takes us on a journey. She points out some amazing flaws that occurred during the trial itself, and she says the jurors — who ultimately said it was the DNA that convinced them — based their decision on what she characterizes as false and misleading statements about the DNA evidence by the prosecuting attorney, backed up by her interview with DNA scientist Dan Krane of Wright State University.

I am writing this in hopes that other journalists will look into this case. Of course, if the state got it right — that eight of the 13 women were true victims of Daniel Holtzclaw — then he got all that he deserved in the sentencing. The image of someone using the power of the state — as a policeman with a gun targeting drug addicts and prostitutes, feeling confident that they would never complain precisely because they were drug addicts and prostitutes and no one would believe them — is beyond contemptible.

This explains why there is such a visceral reaction to the case. For example, a writer for SB Nation wrote a long piece shortly after Holtzclaw’s conviction that was perceived to be sympathetic to Holtzclaw, and everyone went nuts. SB Nation fired the writer and an editor who worked on the story and took the piece off the website within hours. Nearly 100 percent of the comments condemned Holtzclaw as a monster who preyed on the most vulnerable. What was interesting about that “sympathetic” portrayal of Holtzclaw was that the story assumed Daniel was guilty and the author was addressing the reason he would have done these vicious deeds that were so out of character. The people he talked to who knew Holtzclaw described someone totally different from the villain who was found guilty in court.

But that only reinforces Malkin’s question. What if the state got it wrong? What if the incidents never happened, or what if they got the wrong policeman? After all, many of the witness statements described someone other than Holtzclaw. (“He was a black man” or “He had blond hair” or “He was short.”)

Daniel Holtzclaw was always big for his age, even in childhood.
The SB Nation reporter spent months talking to one person after another, and each one said what a wonderful human being Daniel Holtzclaw is. The article was trying to understand what had happened to cause him to become a serial rapist. Could it have been too many head traumas from football? Or maybe it was steroids or his rejection by the NFL. None of it made any sense to his friends. In fact, the only explanation that would make sense in light of the seemingly endless stream of character references is that he is innocent. But if he is innocent, why was he found guilty?

The case against Daniel Holtzclaw appears to have been created by two detectives in the Oklahoma City Police Department who said they decided early on that he was guilty. One of those is retired Detective Kim Davis, who said she was convinced from the beginning that the accuser was telling the truth. The other detective, Rocky Gregory, eventually concluded that Holtzclaw is a “psychopath,” and both detectives were determined to prove their suspicions correct.

There are a number of analyses of this case on YouTube. There are two that I found especially intriguing. I’m not sure who the analysts are, and I can’t vouch for their character, but both break down a lot of complicated reporting into easy-to-understand explanations. One is by Diana Davison (https://youtu.be/OIL-fbJL3as), and the other is by someone who calls himself Ferg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfksNwbGl68). They talk the way people might converse in a bar, especially Ferg, so if offensive language bothers you, at least you have been warned.

Then there was the involvement of Artists for Justice, an Oklahoma City group whose thinking parallels the Black Lives Matter movement. Its members’ voices were heard inside the courtroom, even when they were protesting outside the building. They were shouting that the jury must convict. “We want life!” was one of their standard refrains.        

No change of venue? Is it enough for the judge to tell the jurors to ignore all those shouts day after day?

This was all occurring during the “summer of Ferguson,” when riots made the nightly news. There were riots in Baltimore, too, after Freddie Gray’s death. A half-dozen Baltimore police officers were charged, but there was not a single conviction.

Many things struck me when I watched Michelle Malkin’s report, but the image that sticks in my mind is of Daniel Holtzclaw, a 27-year-old police officer at the time, being questioned by Detectives Kim Davis and Rocky Gregory. They told him that a woman he had pulled over claimed that he had forced her to perform oral sex for 10 seconds.

It is painful to watch the two-hour interrogation of Holtzclaw, which is available on YouTube. The investigating detectives, Davis and Gregory, are clearly obsessed by his size. Holtzclaw was a star football player in high school and at Eastern Michigan University, and he was a 6’1” bodybuilder with huge muscles at the time of the interview. This clearly intimidates the investigators, because they keep saying such things as, “You sure are a big guy” and “What a big fellow you are.” They even joke about the size of his private parts and yuk it up.

Holtzclaw, who grew up in a Christian household and has a Bible verse tattooed on his shoulder, puts his head down and is clearly embarrassed.

Holtzclaw’s father is white, and his mother Japanese, and the family — Daniel, his parents and his two sisters — is proud of its biracial heritage. Watching Daniel in the interrogation room, I could totally see a Japanese influence. Kim Davis said she assumed he was guilty because his answers were “robotic.“ He had not acted offended or raised his voice to a scream when she was throwing vicious charges at him; instead, he had simply answered “yes” or “no” to her questions. She told Juju Chang that if an investigator had asked her those same questions, her “voice would probably (have gone) up 10 octaves. ‘What?! I didn't do that!’”

Growing up in a biracial home, the Holtzclaws exposed Daniel and his sisters to the Japanese culture of their mother, Kumiko.
But Daniel’s sister Jenny says the household was quiet and devoid of shouting and screaming. Asked about his replies during the interrogation, she said, “That’s just Daniel. That’s how he talks.” Daniel’s father spent his career with the military and the police, and his mother, who also was a police officer in Japan, taught their children to respect authority and answer questions politely and not raise their voices 10 octaves. I described the interrogation to a Japanese-American friend and asked what she thought. She used the word “respectful” rather than “robotic” to describe his “yes” or “no” answers. “This was Oklahoma meets Japan,” she said.

The interrogation starts off with Davis telling Holtzclaw that he has the right to an attorney, and he says, in essence, “Why would I want an attorney? I didn’t do anything wrong.” She says they may find his DNA on the alleged victim, and he says they should go ahead and test her because they won’t find anything, seeing as nothing happened. His message (in my paraphrasing) was, “Test me all you want. Take my DNA. Give me a lie detector test. And test her as much as you can. You will see that she is making this up. It never happened.” Diana Davison breaks down the details of this interrogation in a way that is very amusing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJFb3KZsa4g.

So after questioning Holtzclaw and his accuser, the police did perform scientific tests, and the resulting data confirmed what he was saying during his interrogation. The SANE exam and all fingerprint and DNA tests corroborated Holtzclaw’s story and not the accuser’s, yet the detectives ignored the forensic evidence and built a case by going through hundreds of reports that he had made in his three years as a cop, and they managed to find a dozen women who agreed to testify against him. And now most of those same women are working with Michael Brown attorney Benjamin Crump to sue the city for a big payday.

Crump put it succinctly. This is not about Daniel Holtzclaw, he said. This is about “social justice” and centuries of oppression. Holtzclaw’s conviction was “a statement for 400 years of racism, oppression and sexual assault on black women.”

As Matthew Philbin of NewsBusters commented, "that certainly is a lot of weight to put on the verdict of a single trial involving a single cop and flies in the face of notions of blind justice. Whatever the actual truth in the case, Holtzclaw was tried and convicted in the court of public opinion."

Much was made in the media about Daniel’s reaction to the verdict, where he broke down in tears. The video went viral on the internet, and many people have been quoted as saying that this was the reaction of a guilty man who thought he was going to get off. He was shocked that the jury believed his accusers and not him. But that strikes me as totally unfair, if you consider the possibility that he is innocent. Imagine if you were 29 years old and you were just told that you were guilty of crimes that you never committed. How would you react? I know I would have had exactly the same reaction as Holtzclaw.

Let’s hope other television, newspaper, magazine and internet reporters go beyond the headlines in this scary story. So far, in addition to Michelle Malkin, it is the internet analysts who have offered the most revealing insights, in my opinion. Most of the mainstream news reports simply quote the officials who, at this point, would have much to lose if Holtzclaw’s conviction were overturned.

Either Daniel Holtzclaw is the Monster of the Midwest — someone who preyed on vulnerable women, especially black women — or, as his sister says, this is the Duke lacrosse case on steroids. Stay tuned. The one thing we know for sure is that we haven’t heard the end of it.

SOURCE






Obama racism defeated

After a lonely six-year battle, retired Air Force officer Arnold Davis, a resident of Guam, has finally won his right to register to vote in the U.S. territory and participate in a plebiscite on its future.

On March 8, Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood ruled that Guam’s law limiting registration and voting to “Native Inhabitants” of the island is a violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. As the judge said, the Constitution does not allow the government “to exclude otherwise qualified voters in participating in an election where public issues are decided simply because those otherwise qualified voters do not have the correct ancestry or bloodline.”

This decision has been a long time coming. The suit, filed by J. Christian Adams and the Center for Individual Rights in 2011, arose when Davis tried to register to vote on the plebiscite. His application was rejected and marked as “void” by the Guam Election Commission because he is white.

Guam, you see, banned residents from registering or voting unless they were Chamorro “natives,” which to the territorial government means people whose ancestors were original inhabitants of Guam. Chamorros constitute only about 36 percent of the island’s present population.

The race-based voting ban clearly violated the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act, yet the Obama Justice Department refused to protect Davis or any of the other disenfranchised residents of the island. It neither filed suit against Guam nor intervened in support of the lawsuit filed by Adams and the Center for Individual Rights. Instead, it gave Guam $300,000 to help finance the plebiscite.

The case itself has a complicated procedural history that included a trip to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed Tydingco-Gatewood’s original decision dismissing the case. The dismissal was based on erroneous arguments that Davis didn’t have standing to sue and that his claim was not ripe. The Ninth Circuit sent the case back to Tydingco-Gatewood, holding that Davis not only had standing to challenge Guam’s race-based voting law, but that the claim was ripe because Davis was alleging that “he was currently subjected to unlawful unequal treatment in the ongoing registration process.”

In her March 8 decision, Tydingco-Gatewood did what she should have done in the first place: applied the precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court in Rice v. Cayetano (2000). In Rice, SCOTUS threw out a similar voting restriction enacted by Hawaii, holding that the Fifteenth Amendment “prohibits all provisions denying or abridging the voting franchise of any citizen or class of citizens on the basis of race,” and making clear that ancestry cannot be used as a proxy for race.

Judge Tydingco-Gatewood also noted the Supreme Court’s decision in another infamous case, Hirabayashi v. U.S. (1943). In that case, which concerned the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the Court noted: “Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.” Judge Tydingco-Gatewood went on to cite specific discussions by territorial legislators that make it very clear that the Guam legislature intended to “manipulate the system to exclude” anyone other than Chamorros from voting — an obvious violation of the Fifteenth Amendment.

The judge also found that Guam had violated the Fourteenth Amendment by denying equal protection to its residents. All “Guam voters have a direct interest and will be substantially affected by any change to the island’s political status.” Guam had asserted that only the “colonized people” of the island should be allowed to vote on its future political status. But, the judge noted, the island failed to cite any legal authority that would allow it to “disregard or circumvent the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the United States.”

The defiant attitude displayed throughout this litigation by Guam officials and plebiscite activists reared its ugly head again after the ruling came out. Joe Garrido, chairman of the “Free Association Task Force” organized by Guam’s Commission on Decolonization, called Tydingco-Gatewood a “colonized federal judge” who is “not working for the Chamorro people. . . . She is working for the government that is colonizing Guam.”

In his “State of the Island” address, delivered just two days before the decision, Guam governor Eddie Calvo said that if the federal court ruled against Guam, he would “petition the other branches of the federal government to secure the right of our people against this continuing subjugation.” He promised that he would not turn his “back on the Chamorro people,” although he is apparently willing to turn his back on the other 64 percent of island residents who don’t fit his definition of a Guam “native.”

After the ruling, Calvo issued a statement vowing to find a “way to work around” it, adding that when the judge “says we can’t — I say we can.” He even proposed changing the plebiscite by having “two separate boxes — one would be marked if you’re a native inhabitant and the other would be marked if you’re a non-native.”

Calvo’s defiance makes it all the more essential for the Justice Department to bring its heft to bear against any efforts to subvert the judge’s ruling. If the governor actually tries to implement a racially segregated ballot as he has suggested he will, the Justice Department must act.

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Forcing 'Gender' Conformity

On Friday, the Associated Press further embraced the transgender revolution via an email released to subscribers in which it listed updates for its style manual. These included an official redefinition to its understanding of the term “gender.” The AP has concluded that “gender” is not “synonymous with sex,” stating, “Gender refers to a person’s social identity while sex refers to biological characteristics.” The AP continued, “Not all people fall under one of two categories for sex or gender, according to leading medical organizations, so avoid references to both, either or opposite sexes or genders as a way to encompass all people.” This has continued a long trend of redefining terms.

But it’s not just style manuals. It’s forced conformity in life.

At a high school in Jasper, Indiana, a creative student produced and displayed copies of a flier entitled “Straight Pride.” The flier humorously and pointedly stated, “Celebrate being straight at JHS by not annoying the heck out of everyone about your sexual orientation! It’s easy! Just come to the JHS, then you go about your day without telling everyone about how ‘different’ and ‘special’ you are!” School officials quickly removed the fliers, and superintendent Tracy Lorey told parents that the fliers did not represent the majority of the students: “It is our intent to provide students opportunities to express themselves in a way that helps them to be understanding of the unique qualities of all individuals.” In other words, they only allow expressions of “diverse” thought which they find acceptable.

And of course, there is no room for freedom of speech or religion when it comes to the Left’s sacred cow of sexual deviancy. They seek to get one fired for holding the wrong opinion, whether it’s Mozilla’s Brendan Eich or the celebrated firing of an old coworker who wouldn’t bow to using the “right” pronoun. They pressure companies and sports leagues to boycott an entire state over a common-sense bathroom law as in North Carolina. They shut down a mom and pop bakery for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. They demand language usage be changed to accommodate the delusions of “non-binary” sexuality. Conformity, not diversity, is what the Rainbow Mafia and the Left demand.

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The homofascists are on a roll in Australia



Having pressured Coopers, IBM and PwC and their senior staff to sever links with Christian associations, gay rights activist Michael Barnett has turned his sights on academia, demanding Macquarie University force one of its lecturers to renounce a Christian educational organisation.

The move led the Christian group to warn the onus was on the university sector, as a national pillar of freedom of thought and ­expression, to back its academics against political pressure from LGBTI campaigners.

Mr Barnett, who tweets as ­“mikeybear”, re-posted the list of directors of the Lachlan Macquarie Institute, a training organisation established by the Australian Christian Lobby, and singled out Macquarie University senior research associate Steve Chavura as a member of the LMI board. “A bad look @Macquarie_Uni having a Lachlan Macquarie Institute board member and director on your payroll, as a @PrideDiversity member,” Mr Barnett tweeted.

Mr Barnett yesterday told The Australian he believed Macquarie University was conflicted while it was a member of the Pride in ­Diversity campaign which supports LGBTI individuals’ rights and safety in the workplace, while Dr Chavura was a director of LMI.

Mr Barnett said he did not know if LMI or Dr Chavura had ever issued any anti-gay material, but said “I don’t think they are going to be running floats down Mardi Gras.” Mr Barnett issued the post as The Australian revealed that ACL and LMI had been granted official permission to keep their board members’ names secret on the grounds of “public safety” after abuse and threats from gay activists forced IBM executive Mark Allaby to quit the LMI board.

Dr Chavura yesterday said he would not resign as a lecturer and director at LMI, and would resist what he described as an attempt by Mr Barnett to “weed out any dissenters from his view” about sexuality, in any public institution.

“I hope the university is strong enough not to capitulate” to this type of pressure, Dr Chavura said.

But Macquarie University yesterday declined to support Dr Chavura. “As a matter of practice, Macquarie University does not comment on individual matters pertaining to employees,” spokeswoman Megan Wright said in a statement to The Australian.

“When commenting publicly, the university asks that employees adhere to the university’s public comment policy.”

Dr Chavura, who lectures in history and political theory at the university and LMI, said while he privately maintained traditional Christian views on sexuality and marriage and would talk about them if asked, he did not canvass them in his teachings which ranged widely from Karl Marx to liberalism to political concepts.

“I think it’s a bad look for the tweeter, seeking to destroy the ­career of someone who has engaged in no abuse, no inflammatory speech whatsoever,” Dr Chavura said of Mr Barnett.

Mr Barnett, who describes himself as a campaigner for human rights and equality, is convener of Jewish LGBTI group Aleph Melbourne. He denied his post against Dr Chavura was an assault on the academic’s rights to freedom of expression, religion and association. “No one is stopping him going to church, being a member of a faith,” he said. “Being a member of a board is not religion.”

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

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Wednesday, March 29, 2017


Blacks, whites, genes and disease

An amusing dance around the point below.  It is the whole of an article just out in JAMA, a leading medical journal.  It says things that the Left do not want to hear.  But it says those things in verbose academic language that hides the point. So let me translate into plain English:

* The poor get more illness and die younger
* Blacks get more illness than whites and die younger
* Part of that difference is traceable to genetic differences between blacks and whites.
* But environmental differences -- such as education -- explain more than genetic differences do
* Researchers often ignore genetics for ideological reasons
* You don't fully understand what is going on in an illness unless you know about any genetic factors that may be at work.
* Genetics research should pay more attention to blacks

Most of those things I have been saying for years -- with one exception:

They find that environmental factor have greater effect than genetics.  But they do that by making one huge and false assumption. They assume that education is an environmetal factor.  It is not.  Educational success is hugely correlated with IQ, which is about two thirds genetic. High IQ people stay in the educational system for longer because they are better at it, whereas low IQ people (many of whom are blacks) just can't do it at all.  So if we treated education as a genetic factor, environmental differences would fade way as causes of disease.  As Hans Eysenck once said to me in a casual comment:  "It's ALL genetic".  That's not wholly true but it comes close

So the recommendation of the study -- that we work on improving environmental factors that affect disease -- is unlikely to achieve much.  They are aiming their gun towards where the rabbit is not. If it were an actual rabbit, it would probably say:  "What's up Doc?"

Some problems are unfixable but knowing which problems they are  can help us to avoid wasting resources on them. The black/white gap probably has no medical solution



Genomics, Health Disparities, and Missed Opportunities for the Nation’s Research Agenda

The completion of the Human Genome Project occurred at a time of increasing public attention to health disparities. In 2004, Sankar and colleagues1 suggested that this coincidental timing resulted in an inappropriate emphasis on the contribution of genomics to health disparities, conflating racial patterns of disease with genetic ancestry, and distracting attention from the large and compelling body of scientific evidence pointing to social determinants of health disparities.2 For example, genomic research has emphasized discovery of genetic contributors to diabetes risk, but the recent increase in the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes, which disproportionately affects minority populations, cannot be attributed to genetic changes and rather reflects social forces affecting diet, food access, and patterns in physical activity. The introduction of new genomic health technologies could also exacerbate disparities in access to high-quality health care, if specific genomic testing improved health and was only available to those who were affluent. Nonetheless, the claim persists that genomic research can reduce health disparities—if only participation by minority populations in genomic research could be increased.3

The source of this claim is an idiosyncratic usage of the term health disparities that may result in missed opportunities for the nation’s health research agenda. Health disparities are generally understood to refer to systematic differences in health effects resulting from social disadvantage, but the term is often used in genomics to refer to differing health outcomes associated with population genetic variation. This usage arguably stems from the US focus on the association of health disparities with race/ethnicity (vs socioeconomic status), together with a growing body of knowledge about population genetic variation. Compounding the problem is a tendency in the United States to conflate health disparities and health care disparities, perhaps based on the erroneous assumption that improved health care will resolve health disparities.4 The misunderstanding about the causes of health disparities leads to confusion about fruitful lines of research and potential remedies.

A causal association between social position and health is well established.5 This association has been documented in both developed and developing countries and dates back to the earliest records, despite substantial change over time in the principal causes of disease. A broad array of health conditions across the lifespan follows a social gradient, wherein better health and longer lifespans track with increases in social advantage. This pattern holds whether measured by proxies of social class, such as education, income, and occupation, or by race/ethnicity.5 In the United States, health disparities are significant and widening and have attracted considerable attention among policy makers and the general public. Yet this large body of knowledge is absent from genomics discourse, which remains largely focused on biological causes and biomedical interventions.4

Health care plays a crucial role in decreasing morbidity and mortality once disease processes are under way, but accounts for only a minor portion of population health status. A study comparing the major determinants of health estimated that only 10% to 15% of premature mortality could be prevented by improved or more medical care.6 The limits of health care were demonstrated in a statistical experiment, comparing deaths potentially averted if people were to have a college education vs those potentially averted by advances in health care technology and an 8-fold difference was found favoring education.7 Moreover, the kind of health care that makes the largest difference to population health is access to universal high-quality primary care, distinct from the specialty or high-technology care to which genomics is most likely to contribute.

Genetic susceptibility influences which individuals within a particular group experience a particular disorder. Genetics can help to explain why some African American, Native American, or Latino individuals develop diabetes, heart disease, or other common conditions whereas others living in similar environments do not, just as genetics contributes to individual variation in populations not experiencing health disparities. Research to clarify the genetic contributors to disease etiology has many potential benefits. It may help to elucidate disease mechanisms and could inform genetic tests and drug development. Inclusion of diverse populations in genetic studies will enable identification of a fuller range of genetic variation contributing to various health outcomes, potentially leading to improved genetic tests that are applicable to all populations. Well-designed gene-environment studies across multiple populations may also help to delineate important environmental modifiers of disease. All of these considerations point to the potential health value of genetic research. However, these efforts will not provide strategies for addressing the more substantial contributors to health that are rooted in social, material, and environmental conditions.

Given population genetic variation, it is to be expected that genetic effects will sometimes augment, and at other times run counter to, the effects of social disadvantage. For example, African Americans with chronic kidney disease on average progress more rapidly to end-stage renal disease than European Americans with chronic kidney disease. Two variants in the APOL1 gene, seen in people of sub-Saharan African descent, contribute to this disease progression.8 Nevertheless, a comparison of African Americans with and without APOL1 risk genotypes with European Americans demonstrated that the APOL1-associated risk, although significant, accounted for only about 10% of excess incidence of albuminuria (a marker of risk for end-stage renal disease) among African Americans; a disparity remains between African Americans with low-risk genotypes and European Americans.8 In this case, the higher risk of albuminuria appears to be due to a combination of social and genetic determinants. Conversely, the incidence of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in African American children is less than half that of European American children, due in part to a difference in the prevalence of 2 risk variants. Yet survival from this malignancy is lower in African American children. This survival disparity is eliminated in a clinical setting characterized by high-quality care, aggressive case management, and financial support that eliminates out-of-pocket costs.9 In this case, the genetic determinants lead to lower disease risk, but social determinants lead to worse outcomes for those African American children who develop the disease. These examples support the value of understanding the health implications of population genetic variation—but also illustrate that social determinants consistently reduce health outcomes in disadvantaged populations, independent of genetic risk.

Characterizing health disparities as a challenge for genomics, rather than as a challenge for health and social sciences more generally, generates several problems. It justifies studies that focus on genetic causes of complex diseases with the goal of developing medical interventions, rather than studies that assess genomics within the context of social and environmental contributors to disease. Genomics research could make a positive contribution to the elucidation of causal mechanisms of health disparities and development of potential remedies, but that dividend is likely only if such contributions are integrated into, rather than emphasized over, broader social models of disease and interdisciplinary research methods. Viewing health disparities as addressable by medical care also focuses translational science on health care innovation rather than on community-based health promotion and intersectoral policy approaches. In so doing, attention and resources are diverted away from approaches that are more likely to reduce health disparities, such as efforts to increase education levels, reduce income inequality, promote community-based dietary and exercise initiatives, and ensure universal access to primary care.

Importantly, an approach primarily based on the development of innovative health care also threatens to sideline genomic research that might offer more substantive benefit for populations experiencing health disparities. An emerging body of preliminary data related to epigenetics, the microbiome, and genetic modifiers of response to the environment points to a range of opportunities for genomic tools to elucidate the causal pathways of health disparities. Promising findings on epigenetic changes related to childhood adversity, for example, point to ways in which genomics could contribute to a better understanding of how social disadvantage is embodied and expressed. Research efforts of this kind might ultimately help policy makers to weigh priorities when allocating resources to address social determinants of health.

Health disparities are complex and multifactorial. Reducing health gaps in the United States will require researchers and clinicians from many disciplines who share a common understanding of key terms and the role of social determinants of health to work in close collaboration with affected communities. Resolving a fundamental misunderstanding about the relationship between genomics and health disparities may create new opportunities for research collaborations, allowing large research investments in genomics to be leveraged for promising population health research. Failure to do so has the potential to deepen mistrust of scientific research and health care among those populations most burdened by health disparities.

SOURCE




London attack: Why no amount of political correctness will save the world from Islamist terrorism

The attack near the British Parliament, we have been told, was carried out by a Birmingham-based Briton called Khalid Masood whose birth name was Adrian Elms before he converted to Islam. The 52-year-old was a history-sheeter who had previously dallied with terrorists, without throwing his hat into the ring, and was briefly a subject of interest for British spy agency MI5.

Reuters quoted London police as saying that Masood "had a range of previous convictions for assaults, including GBH (grievous bodily harm), possession of offensive weapons and public order offences" but there was "no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack."

Till this Wednesday.

The Islamic State connection

A petty criminal without any known linkages with religious fundamentalism, Masood fits right into the profile of individuals targeted or recruited by Islamic State which has since claimed responsibility for the attack. The New York Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi, who covers Islamic State/Al-Qaeda operations and has done extensive research in areas of global terrorism, recently wrote in an article how a "secretive branch" of Islamic State built a global terrorist empire by tapping into the local criminal network. Harry Safro, an Islamic State defector from Germany, told her that "new converts to Islam" with no established ties to radical groups are extensively targeted either online or through sleeper cells.

The bond between Islamic State and so-called 'lone wolf' attackers (who may have never travelled abroad and have either been self-radicalized or via an operative) is a trade-off. Islamic State finds it easier to transfer petty criminal "skills" to jihadism and for the crook, the act of terror offers a path to glory and perhaps even redemption.

A study on the link between petty crime and jihadism by authors Rajan Basra, Peter R. Neumann and Claudia Brunner (referred to by Callimachi in a tweet) finds evidence for this 'redemption narrative'. According to the study, "jihadism offered redemption for crime while satisfying the same personal needs and desires that led them to become involved in it, making the ‘jump’ from criminality to terrorism smaller than is commonly perceived."

At this stage it is not very clear whether Masood had been in any contact with an operative or had pledged allegiance to Islamic State but the telltale signs indicate that he perhaps got self-radicalised, becoming what the media describes him — 'the lone wolf'.

'Lone wolf', a semantic jugglery and study in self-delusion

There is already a mountain of literature, reports, studies and articles on why the term 'lone wolf' is misleading when it comes to Islamist terrorism. In an article for The Guardian Jason Burke has written why "talk of lone wolves misunderstands how Islamic militancy works"; research analyst Bridget Moreng has written in Foreign Affairsjournal on how Islamic State inspires, recruits and trains 'lone wolves' and Callimachi has cited the example of an aborted terrorist attack in Hyderabad to explain this in her article: 'How ISIS Guides World’s Terror Plots From Afar'.

Media has already started calling the London terrorist incident a 'lone-wolf' attack even though London Metropolitan Police have acknowledged its links with "Islamist terrorism" and have since arrested several people after raids in Birmingham and in other parts of Britain.

The term 'lone wolf' is a semantic jugglery and a study in self-delusion. It is an attempt to disconnect any instance of terrorism from larger ideological moorings and transfer the onus of the moral failing from society to the individual, as if he was "acting on his own".

Jason Burke, writing for The Guardian, says that this "implies that the responsibility for an individual’s violent extremism lies solely with the individual themselves or with some other individual or group, all of which could be eliminated. The truth is that terrorism is not something you do by yourself. Like any activism, it is highly social, only its consequences are exceptional… People become interested in ideas, ideologies and activities, even immoral ones, because other people are interested in them."

Reuters, quoting a US government source, has already informed us that though some of Masood's associates were suspected to have keen interest in travelling and joining jihadi groups overseas, he "himself never did so." But the signs are interesting.

The Kent-born Briton became a religious convert and according to Sky News, he was a "very religious, well-spoken man. You couldn't go to his home in Birmingham on Friday because he would be at prayer."

It's Birmingham again

This brings us to the curious case of the West Midlands city of Birmingham and its close links with Islamist terrorism. According to NBC News, cops have arrested two women in their twenties and four men in their mid to late twenties from separate addresses in Birmingham. Another person, a 58-year-old man, was arrested on Thursday morning at another address in Birmingham, according to the report.

This would then point us to the inference that Birmingham had some sort of influence on Masood in his transformation from a petty criminal to a jihadist. The city has a troubled connection with Islamist terrorism and Reuters tells us, quoting a study by Henry Jackson Society (a British think-tank), that 39 of 269 people convicted in Britain of offences related to terrorism between 1998 and 2015 came from the city. British newspaper The Independent further parses the figures, pointing out that one in 10 of all those linked to Islamist terrorism in Britain and abroad came from just five council wards in the city — Springfield, Sparkbrook, Hodge Hill, Washwood Heath and Bordesley Green. A fifth of Birmingham's population are Muslims (2,34,000) and Masood's vehicle was rented from the Birmingham branch of a car rental firm.

In an article titled: 'Why has Birmingham become such a breeding ground for British-born terror?', The Independent's Kim Sengupta writes that most of the terrorists (linked to 7/7 London bombings, 9/11 attacks) "have family links to Kashmir. Many young men went to Pakistan to train to fight against Indian forces in Kashmir… Some joined Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Indoctrination took place in mosques which had been taken over by radical clerics and, it is claimed, a number of schools. Birmingham is in the centre of the so-called 'Trojan Horse' plot in which, it is alleged, an organised group of Islamists seek to infiltrate and take over state education establishments."

Why "inclusiveness" alone can't prevent terrorism

This clearly points to a huge problem of assimilation of culture and belies liberalism's core argument that multiculturism is the only antidote for Islamist terrorism. London's top counter-terrorist officer Mark Rowley recently said that if 13 plots of terrorism have been busted in the UK since 2013, when Lee Rigby was murdered,   then it stands to reason that despite its all-pervasive political correctness and fierce inclusiveness, there exists deeply dissenting areas of defiance against England's multicultural ethos.

From London Mayor Sadiq Khan, France President Francois Hollande to former US president Barack Obama, political leaders have harped on the grievance narrative of Islam whenever there have been Islamist terrorist attacks. Wide range of excuses — from poverty to victim-hood to alienation — have been offered to contextualise terrorism and the world at large has been constantly reminded that the moral failing of a terrorist attack lies with the people who have been victimised, not the poisonous ideology that lies behind it.

A little scratching of the surface exposes the truth. In an erudite article, Praveen Swami ofThe Indian Express explores the reasons behind Britain's brushes with Islamist terrorism and finds that the "idea that the English terrorist is a product of the well-documented economic and educational backwardness of its Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities isn’t true in all cases." He gives examples of a student from King's College, or members of Britain's affluent middle class or even the wealthy among 800 of its nationals who are actively engaged in terror or another 600 who have been reportedly prevented from doing so.

Swami argues that the problem lies with Britain's identity politics: when Britain "outsourced its engagement with ethnic minorities to a new contractor-class" and in time, this strategy backfired as it created pockets of profound resentment against the "secular-democratic order."

Swami writes: "Instead of a rich cultural landscape, official multiculturalism created a homogenised Muslim identity. Thus, Choudhry defended her attempt to kill Timms by pointing to his support of the Iraq war — a land she had never visited. 'We must stand up for each other,' she said. 'We must fight them,' said Adebolajo — 'I apologise that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same'. "

The solution

This then, right here, is the biggest problem with the argument that 'political correctness and more stress on multicultural inclusiveness will be enough to tackle terrorism'. France tried and failed. Britain, too, seems to be failing. The failure lies in the fact that we are barking up the wrong tree. Instead of throwing money or trying to figure newer and newer methods of contextualising and justifying terror and floating a multiplicity of grievance narratives, the world must encourage Muslims to have an honest self-engagement on terrorism.

Hussain Haqqani, member of US-based think tank Hudson Institute and a former Pakistan envoy to US, puts his finger on the pulse in his column for The Telegraph, UK.

"The violence over 'Islam’s honour' is a function of the collective Muslim narrative of grievance. Decline, weakness, impotence, and helplessness are phrases most frequently repeated in the speeches and writings of today’s Muslim leaders. The view is shared by Islamists – who consider Islam a political ideology – and other Muslims who don’t. The terrorists are just the most extreme element among the Islamists."

Let the liberal media and politicians urge Muslims to tackle the problem on their own while, as senior journalist R Jagannathan says, empower the reformist voices from within the community, only then may we rid the world of this scourge.

SOURCE






Stand up for our right to criticise Islam

Since the Enlightenment we’ve been free to poke fun at religion and a blasphemy offence has no place in a modern society

‘It is wrong to describe this as Islamic terrorism. It is Islamist terrorism. It is a perversion of a great faith.” This is what the prime minister said last week in parliament. While I completely accept that the sins of extremists should never be visited on the vast majority of moderate believers, I am increasingly uneasy about how we handle the connection between religion and extremism. The ideology to which Khalid Masood was converted in prison may indeed be a perversion of Islam, but it is a version of it. We should not shy away from saying so.

After Nice, Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation wrote that saying such terrorism has nothing to do with Islam (as some do) is as dangerous as stating that it has everything to do with Islam. The terrorists in London, Paris, Brussels, Nice, Munich, Berlin, Würzburg, Ansbach, Orlando, San Bernardino, Sydney, Bali, New York, Bombay and many other places have been white, black and brown, rich, poor and middle class, male and female, gay and straight, immigrant and native, young and (now) older. The one thing they have in common is that they had been radicalised by religious preachers claiming to interpret the Koran.

Moreover, while a few sick individuals find within Islam justification for murder and terror, a far larger number find justification for misogyny and intolerance. We must be allowed to say this without being thought to criticise Muslims as people.

Islamist terrorism has become more frequent, but criticism of the faith of Islam, and of religion in general, seems to be becoming less acceptable, as if it were equivalent to racism or blasphemy. The charge of Islamophobia is too quickly levelled. Friday’s press release from Malia Bouattia, president of the National Union of Students, is a case in point. It failed to mention by name the murdered policeman Keith Palmer, and highlighted how Muslims “will be especially fearful of racism”. Race and religion are very different things.

I admire many religious people. I am prepared to accept that being religious can make some individuals better people, though, as a humanist, I also think it is possible and actually preferable to be moral without having faith. I am even open to the possibility that the best defence against extremism is a gentler version of religion rather than none at all — though I need to be convinced. But I think that, rather than there being good religion and bad religion, there is a spectrum of religious belief from virtuous, individualist morality at one end to collectivist, politicised violent terror at the other.

At one end are people who are inspired by faith to think only of how to help those in need. At the other are people who kill policemen and tourists, throw homosexuals off buildings, punish apostasy with death, carry out female genital mutilation and throw acid in the face of women who have stood up against the male code (there were 431 acid attacks in Britain last year).

In between, though, are positions that also contain dangers, albeit more subtle ones. There are people who would not commit violence themselves, but think women should be the chattels of men, wearing of veils is mandatory and that Sharia should reign. Then there are people (and here I include those in other Abrahamic faiths) who think homosexuality is sinful, contraception is wrong, evolution could not have happened and slaughtering animals by cutting their throats is more moral than stunning them. I do not condemn such beliefs as evil, but nor do I respect them.

On LBC radio last week the journalist James O’Brien said of those, like Masood, who have made the journey from faith to extremism: “Don’t we have to start mocking the early stages of that journey? People who believe that chopping off a child’s foreskin is going to make it easier for them to get into heaven. People who believe that eating fish on Fridays is somehow going to please their god.”

In 1979, some Christians took offence at Monty Python’s Life of Brian, a witty if mordant satire on the phenomenon of cults (and Romans). The Christians were angry but the Pythons did not go into hiding.Two years ago, in the wake of the murder of his fellow satirists at Charlie Hebdo, the late Australian cartoonist Bill Leak went further than simply saying “Je suis Charlie” and drew cartoons of the Prophet. As a result he was forced to sell his house and move to a secret location. That does not feel like progress to me.

In 2004, after the media was filled with discussion of how the Boxing Day tsunami was an “act of God”, I said to a friend, in all seriousness: the tsunami was not an act of God, but 9/11 was. I was consciously echoing Voltaire’s mockery of the argument that the destruction of Lisbon in an earthquake must be a punishment for the sins of its inhabitants. Would I dare say the same today about the events of last week, or would I pause now to consider how it would get me into trouble?

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali wrote at the weekend of the “creeping Islamisation of communities” and called for an Islamic reformation to respect freedom of religion, abjure legal punishment for blasphemy or apostasy and agree that women should be free and equal in law. Yet, despite two decades of partly religion-inspired violence, those who call for an Islamic reformation, such as Mr Nawaz, or the ex-Muslim campaigners Sarah Haider, Taslima Nasreen and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, are increasingly vilified by many on the left.

Three days before the Westminster attack, the BBC’s Asian Network quite rightly apologised for asking “what is the right punishment for blasphemy?” shortly after an outspoken atheist had been hacked to death in Coimbatore, India, for expressing his views. There have been 48 murders of atheists in Bangladesh in recent years. Yet it is now more acceptable to attack “militant atheists” than militant theists. Blasphemy is back.

We can and must make an offer to the fundamentalist Muslims: abandon your political ambitions and become a religion as this has come to be understood elsewhere in an increasingly diverse and tolerant world — a private moral code, a way of life, a philosophy — and you will find the rest of us to be friends. But threaten the hard-won political, intellectual and physical freedoms now accorded to every man and woman, yes even and especially women, in our essentially secular society and you will be resisted and, pray god, defeated.

SOURCE





Political correctness has become the new truth

Rex Jory

THE Australia I love is disappearing. It’s been hijacked by faceless people who worship at the altar of political correctness and personal offence.

These messengers of the new morality paint themselves as victims. They believe they are entitled to compensation or apology if they are offended. They seek reward or retribution for the slightest inconvenience.

These self-proclaimed victims use social media with such devastating effect they have wrested control of the nation’s political, social and moral agenda. They tear down people who dare express a contrary view. They humiliate and intimidate anyone who challenges their beliefs. Megaphone politics.

They know best. Their view of Australia in 2017 must prevail. My way or the highway. Never mind that it is not the view of the majority of people.

These purveyors of the new morality are reminiscent of the racially-based Ku Klux Klan in the US. They plant a burning cross in the front yard of someone they accuse of breaching their often warped moral code while dressed anonymously in white robes and pointed hats.

They have crushed free speech and free expression by destroying community debate. People are now too frightened to say what they believe.

Political correctness twists and manipulates truth. It has become the new truth, the selective truth. Yet truth is no longer a defence. Just because someone expresses an opinion based on fact, they are not immune from being attacked and discredited on social media.

If someone dares criticise or even raise political, religious or racial issues which are contrary to the beliefs of the anonymous purists, the reaction and retribution can be swift and brutal. Often it resembles hate-speak.

Look at poor old Coopers, the beer makers. They were lampooned for being associated with a private discussion between two Liberal members of Parliament about same-sex marriage. The attack on social media was vicious. Then IBM copped it because one executive is in a Christian group.

Now they’ve turned on proposed changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act which currently threatens freedom of speech.

The Kokoda Track in Papua-New Guinea has become a target, with words like mateship being quietly erased from the lexicon. Mateship has been replaced by friendship. Never mind the Diggers and their families — let alone the wider community — who are offended.

In the new social agenda, mateship has become hateship. It has transferred power from the individual and a structured system of authority to a faceless, intangible force fuelled by moral indignation.

We are no longer allowed to be involved in civilised debate or think for ourselves. If the trend continues, then as a nation we are no longer civilised.

The Australian character has been stripped and reconstructed in the image of political correctness. The Australian larrikin has become an endangered species. Whatever happened to Australia’s “have a go” spirit? What happened to our irreverent sense of humour? What happened to common sense and the brave “she’ll be right” credo which helped build this country?

The Australian community has fragmented. We are no longer a single, coherent society. People are judged on what they are, what they believe and not what they have achieved or contributed.

For too many people, the first reaction is to lay blame and seek compensation through intimidation or litigation. Whatever cloak they wear — race, colour, gender, occupation, age, religion, physical appearance — they claim the moral high ground.

I don’t begrudge people holding strong beliefs. That’s their right in a democracy. I agree with some of them. But I resent being bullied into accepting those views under duress — or remaining silent.

Those promoting victimhood and personal offence as the path forward have used social media to promote their agenda by fear and suppression.

It’s time those who have taken the alternative path of meek silence spoke out and exposed the politics of victimhood as a false god.

If not the face and character of Australia, the Australia I love, will be lost. At the moment the people with the loudest megaphone are winning.

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

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Tuesday, March 28, 2017



‘Political correctness’ in modern America

The phrase “politically correct” is about as combustible as any. Bring up those words and you know you’re treading into ideological war territory.

So, gulp. Here I go.

For many, I think the term “politically correct” represents a type of stifling of honesty. People feel hemmed in by a societal pressure to conform to a belief system that they don’t accept — an “elitist” message, which restricts language and actions. I feel that’s why there’s such a fierce rejection of “political correctness.” It’s received as a type of pat of the head, a sort of “let me tell you how to think, cause you’re an idiot and not intellectually or morally on my level.”

Does anyone ever respond well to that sort of feeling? I’ve always felt bitter when I’ve thought someone is looking down on me. I think our partisan politics have been reduced to this disrespect battle. One side is bitter at the perception of intense disrespect. The other side feels exactly the same thing. And because we all feel so angry and disrespected, we’re ready to lash out with a hostile dismissal of strangers’ humanity, which is a circular problem, a tornado gathering velocity.

I think Donald Trump has so much power because he is the big societal voice of a common individual rage against a perceived collective pat on the head. He is absolutely a finger in the eye of that idea of liberal condescension. Because of this, his questionable behavior and statements seem to pale in comparison — for many, at least — to his aggressive fight against liberal condescension, which he rails against without apology. I think that’s why he gets a pass on things that would surely doom other politicians and why there is such huge passion at his back. Let me add, I don’t claim to know what you think. This is just my perception of bigger political trends. And I may be wrong.

Of course, when we talk of “political correctness,” we inevitably turn to college campuses. And I think colleges have erred in a really big way — acting out of fear, not bravery when it come to ideas. What I mean is, I don’t think colleges should have “safe spaces” or “trigger warnings” regarding ideas. A college should be a place where ideas aren’t muzzled but are expressed with passion, whether they’re left or right, nice or mean. Then, such speech should be opposed with whatever passion and eloquence another speaker can muster. College is not a place to restrict thought but to realize that the world is big and that your own worldview is contradicted, no matter how right you think you are. And how are you going to deal with that? Well, that inner conflict is actually critical to education and critical thinking. Hateful speech calls for forceful rejection, but it doesn’t call for a muzzle. It calls for more speech, delivered, hopefully, without mirrored hate.

But I also think “political correctness” is used in lazy ways these days. Any action, any language that angers someone can be dismissed as “politically correct.” But I think actual “political correctness” can apply to left and right. I see it simply as the pressure of a societal norm on an individual, which can be good or bad, depending on the pressure. For instance, it’s good for someone to feel pressure not to call someone the “N” word in public, right? That form of political correctness was once not there. But, for the good of civilized society, it needs to be. However, shutting down conservative dissent on a college campus would be an example of such political correctness gone too far. So, there’s a sort of balance worth seeking.

We should recognize that there is always societal pressure on you to be a certain way depending on where you are. And what is that pressure anyway? Well, it’s the battle over common decency. We feel there’s a type of common sense that we understand and that others should see too. And we’re horribly frustrated — furious, actually — when they can’t see things the way we do. If they can’t agree with my decency, well, then they’re indecent, right? Who hasn’t felt this? And sometimes, maybe we’re right. But it’s worth being skeptical of our own passionate judgment about strangers, because people are usually more complicated than we understand.

Many people don’t seem to have any hesitation to judge strangers with extreme passion based on very little information. I don’t find this admirable in a Democrat or a Republican or in myself — which I certainly do at times. Who doesn’t? But I can at least recognize that what is admirable is the effort to learn more about others and to resist simple judgments in my head.

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London attack: Why no amount of political correctness will save the world from Islamist terrorism

The attack near the British Parliament, we have been told, was carried out by a Birmingham-based Briton called Khalid Masood whose birth name was Adrian Elms before he converted to Islam. The 52-year-old was a history-sheeter who had previously dallied with terrorists, without throwing his hat into the ring, and was briefly a subject of interest for British spy agency MI5.

Reuters quoted London police as saying that Masood "had a range of previous convictions for assaults, including GBH (grievous bodily harm), possession of offensive weapons and public order offences" but there was "no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack."

Till this Wednesday.

The Islamic State connection

A petty criminal without any known linkages with religious fundamentalism, Masood fits right into the profile of individuals targeted or recruited by Islamic State which has since claimed responsibility for the attack. The New York Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi, who covers Islamic State/Al-Qaeda operations and has done extensive research in areas of global terrorism, recently wrote in an article how a "secretive branch" of Islamic State built a global terrorist empire by tapping into the local criminal network. Harry Safro, an Islamic State defector from Germany, told her that "new converts to Islam" with no established ties to radical groups are extensively targeted either online or through sleeper cells.

The bond between Islamic State and so-called 'lone wolf' attackers (who may have never travelled abroad and have either been self-radicalized or via an operative) is a trade-off. Islamic State finds it easier to transfer petty criminal "skills" to jihadism and for the crook, the act of terror offers a path to glory and perhaps even redemption.

A study on the link between petty crime and jihadism by authors Rajan Basra, Peter R. Neumann and Claudia Brunner (referred to by Callimachi in a tweet) finds evidence for this 'redemption narrative'. According to the study, "jihadism offered redemption for crime while satisfying the same personal needs and desires that led them to become involved in it, making the ‘jump’ from criminality to terrorism smaller than is commonly perceived."

At this stage it is not very clear whether Masood had been in any contact with an operative or had pledged allegiance to Islamic State but the telltale signs indicate that he perhaps got self-radicalised, becoming what the media describes him — 'the lone wolf'.

'Lone wolf', a semantic jugglery and study in self-delusion

There is already a mountain of literature, reports, studies and articles on why the term 'lone wolf' is misleading when it comes to Islamist terrorism. In an article for The Guardian Jason Burke has written why "talk of lone wolves misunderstands how Islamic militancy works"; research analyst Bridget Moreng has written in Foreign Affairsjournal on how Islamic State inspires, recruits and trains 'lone wolves' and Callimachi has cited the example of an aborted terrorist attack in Hyderabad to explain this in her article: 'How ISIS Guides World’s Terror Plots From Afar'.

Media has already started calling the London terrorist incident a 'lone-wolf' attack even though London Metropolitan Police have acknowledged its links with "Islamist terrorism" and have since arrested several people after raids in Birmingham and in other parts of Britain.

The term 'lone wolf' is a semantic jugglery and a study in self-delusion. It is an attempt to disconnect any instance of terrorism from larger ideological moorings and transfer the onus of the moral failing from society to the individual, as if he was "acting on his own".

Jason Burke, writing for The Guardian, says that this "implies that the responsibility for an individual’s violent extremism lies solely with the individual themselves or with some other individual or group, all of which could be eliminated. The truth is that terrorism is not something you do by yourself. Like any activism, it is highly social, only its consequences are exceptional… People become interested in ideas, ideologies and activities, even immoral ones, because other people are interested in them."

Reuters, quoting a US government source, has already informed us that though some of Masood's associates were suspected to have keen interest in travelling and joining jihadi groups overseas, he "himself never did so." But the signs are interesting.

The Kent-born Briton became a religious convert and according to Sky News, he was a "very religious, well-spoken man. You couldn't go to his home in Birmingham on Friday because he would be at prayer."

It's Birmingham again

This brings us to the curious case of the West Midlands city of Birmingham and its close links with Islamist terrorism. According to NBC News, cops have arrested two women in their twenties and four men in their mid to late twenties from separate addresses in Birmingham. Another person, a 58-year-old man, was arrested on Thursday morning at another address in Birmingham, according to the report.

This would then point us to the inference that Birmingham had some sort of influence on Masood in his transformation from a petty criminal to a jihadist. The city has a troubled connection with Islamist terrorism and Reuters tells us, quoting a study by Henry Jackson Society (a British think-tank), that 39 of 269 people convicted in Britain of offences related to terrorism between 1998 and 2015 came from the city. British newspaper The Independent further parses the figures, pointing out that one in 10 of all those linked to Islamist terrorism in Britain and abroad came from just five council wards in the city — Springfield, Sparkbrook, Hodge Hill, Washwood Heath and Bordesley Green. A fifth of Birmingham's population are Muslims (2,34,000) and Masood's vehicle was rented from the Birmingham branch of a car rental firm.

In an article titled: 'Why has Birmingham become such a breeding ground for British-born terror?', The Independent's Kim Sengupta writes that most of the terrorists (linked to 7/7 London bombings, 9/11 attacks) "have family links to Kashmir. Many young men went to Pakistan to train to fight against Indian forces in Kashmir… Some joined Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Indoctrination took place in mosques which had been taken over by radical clerics and, it is claimed, a number of schools. Birmingham is in the centre of the so-called 'Trojan Horse' plot in which, it is alleged, an organised group of Islamists seek to infiltrate and take over state education establishments."

Why "inclusiveness" alone can't prevent terrorism

This clearly points to a huge problem of assimilation of culture and belies liberalism's core argument that multiculturism is the only antidote for Islamist terrorism. London's top counter-terrorist officer Mark Rowley recently said that if 13 plots of terrorism have been busted in the UK since 2013, when Lee Rigby was murdered,   then it stands to reason that despite its all-pervasive political correctness and fierce inclusiveness, there exists deeply dissenting areas of defiance against England's multicultural ethos.

From London Mayor Sadiq Khan, France President Francois Hollande to former US president Barack Obama, political leaders have harped on the grievance narrative of Islam whenever there have been Islamist terrorist attacks. Wide range of excuses — from poverty to victim-hood to alienation — have been offered to contextualise terrorism and the world at large has been constantly reminded that the moral failing of a terrorist attack lies with the people who have been victimised, not the poisonous ideology that lies behind it.

A little scratching of the surface exposes the truth. In an erudite article, Praveen Swami ofThe Indian Express explores the reasons behind Britain's brushes with Islamist terrorism and finds that the "idea that the English terrorist is a product of the well-documented economic and educational backwardness of its Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities isn’t true in all cases." He gives examples of a student from King's College, or members of Britain's affluent middle class or even the wealthy among 800 of its nationals who are actively engaged in terror or another 600 who have been reportedly prevented from doing so.

Swami argues that the problem lies with Britain's identity politics: when Britain "outsourced its engagement with ethnic minorities to a new contractor-class" and in time, this strategy backfired as it created pockets of profound resentment against the "secular-democratic order."

Swami writes: "Instead of a rich cultural landscape, official multiculturalism created a homogenised Muslim identity. Thus, Choudhry defended her attempt to kill Timms by pointing to his support of the Iraq war — a land she had never visited. 'We must stand up for each other,' she said. 'We must fight them,' said Adebolajo — 'I apologise that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same'. "

The solution

This then, right here, is the biggest problem with the argument that 'political correctness and more stress on multicultural inclusiveness will be enough to tackle terrorism'. France tried and failed. Britain, too, seems to be failing. The failure lies in the fact that we are barking up the wrong tree. Instead of throwing money or trying to figure newer and newer methods of contextualising and justifying terror and floating a multiplicity of grievance narratives, the world must encourage Muslims to have an honest self-engagement on terrorism.

Hussain Haqqani, member of US-based think tank Hudson Institute and a former Pakistan envoy to US, puts his finger on the pulse in his column for The Telegraph, UK.

"The violence over 'Islam’s honour' is a function of the collective Muslim narrative of grievance. Decline, weakness, impotence, and helplessness are phrases most frequently repeated in the speeches and writings of today’s Muslim leaders. The view is shared by Islamists – who consider Islam a political ideology – and other Muslims who don’t. The terrorists are just the most extreme element among the Islamists."

Let the liberal media and politicians urge Muslims to tackle the problem on their own while, as senior journalist R Jagannathan says, empower the reformist voices from within the community, only then may we rid the world of this scourge.

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Stand up for our right to criticise Islam

Since the Enlightenment we’ve been free to poke fun at religion and a blasphemy offence has no place in a modern society

‘It is wrong to describe this as Islamic terrorism. It is Islamist terrorism. It is a perversion of a great faith.” This is what the prime minister said last week in parliament. While I completely accept that the sins of extremists should never be visited on the vast majority of moderate believers, I am increasingly uneasy about how we handle the connection between religion and extremism. The ideology to which Khalid Masood was converted in prison may indeed be a perversion of Islam, but it is a version of it. We should not shy away from saying so.

After Nice, Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation wrote that saying such terrorism has nothing to do with Islam (as some do) is as dangerous as stating that it has everything to do with Islam. The terrorists in London, Paris, Brussels, Nice, Munich, Berlin, Würzburg, Ansbach, Orlando, San Bernardino, Sydney, Bali, New York, Bombay and many other places have been white, black and brown, rich, poor and middle class, male and female, gay and straight, immigrant and native, young and (now) older. The one thing they have in common is that they had been radicalised by religious preachers claiming to interpret the Koran.

Moreover, while a few sick individuals find within Islam justification for murder and terror, a far larger number find justification for misogyny and intolerance. We must be allowed to say this without being thought to criticise Muslims as people.

Islamist terrorism has become more frequent, but criticism of the faith of Islam, and of religion in general, seems to be becoming less acceptable, as if it were equivalent to racism or blasphemy. The charge of Islamophobia is too quickly levelled. Friday’s press release from Malia Bouattia, president of the National Union of Students, is a case in point. It failed to mention by name the murdered policeman Keith Palmer, and highlighted how Muslims “will be especially fearful of racism”. Race and religion are very different things.

I admire many religious people. I am prepared to accept that being religious can make some individuals better people, though, as a humanist, I also think it is possible and actually preferable to be moral without having faith. I am even open to the possibility that the best defence against extremism is a gentler version of religion rather than none at all — though I need to be convinced. But I think that, rather than there being good religion and bad religion, there is a spectrum of religious belief from virtuous, individualist morality at one end to collectivist, politicised violent terror at the other.

At one end are people who are inspired by faith to think only of how to help those in need. At the other are people who kill policemen and tourists, throw homosexuals off buildings, punish apostasy with death, carry out female genital mutilation and throw acid in the face of women who have stood up against the male code (there were 431 acid attacks in Britain last year).

In between, though, are positions that also contain dangers, albeit more subtle ones. There are people who would not commit violence themselves, but think women should be the chattels of men, wearing of veils is mandatory and that Sharia should reign. Then there are people (and here I include those in other Abrahamic faiths) who think homosexuality is sinful, contraception is wrong, evolution could not have happened and slaughtering animals by cutting their throats is more moral than stunning them. I do not condemn such beliefs as evil, but nor do I respect them.

On LBC radio last week the journalist James O’Brien said of those, like Masood, who have made the journey from faith to extremism: “Don’t we have to start mocking the early stages of that journey? People who believe that chopping off a child’s foreskin is going to make it easier for them to get into heaven. People who believe that eating fish on Fridays is somehow going to please their god.”

In 1979, some Christians took offence at Monty Python’s Life of Brian, a witty if mordant satire on the phenomenon of cults (and Romans). The Christians were angry but the Pythons did not go into hiding.Two years ago, in the wake of the murder of his fellow satirists at Charlie Hebdo, the late Australian cartoonist Bill Leak went further than simply saying “Je suis Charlie” and drew cartoons of the Prophet. As a result he was forced to sell his house and move to a secret location. That does not feel like progress to me.

In 2004, after the media was filled with discussion of how the Boxing Day tsunami was an “act of God”, I said to a friend, in all seriousness: the tsunami was not an act of God, but 9/11 was. I was consciously echoing Voltaire’s mockery of the argument that the destruction of Lisbon in an earthquake must be a punishment for the sins of its inhabitants. Would I dare say the same today about the events of last week, or would I pause now to consider how it would get me into trouble?

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali wrote at the weekend of the “creeping Islamisation of communities” and called for an Islamic reformation to respect freedom of religion, abjure legal punishment for blasphemy or apostasy and agree that women should be free and equal in law. Yet, despite two decades of partly religion-inspired violence, those who call for an Islamic reformation, such as Mr Nawaz, or the ex-Muslim campaigners Sarah Haider, Taslima Nasreen and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, are increasingly vilified by many on the left.

Three days before the Westminster attack, the BBC’s Asian Network quite rightly apologised for asking “what is the right punishment for blasphemy?” shortly after an outspoken atheist had been hacked to death in Coimbatore, India, for expressing his views. There have been 48 murders of atheists in Bangladesh in recent years. Yet it is now more acceptable to attack “militant atheists” than militant theists. Blasphemy is back.

We can and must make an offer to the fundamentalist Muslims: abandon your political ambitions and become a religion as this has come to be understood elsewhere in an increasingly diverse and tolerant world — a private moral code, a way of life, a philosophy — and you will find the rest of us to be friends. But threaten the hard-won political, intellectual and physical freedoms now accorded to every man and woman, yes even and especially women, in our essentially secular society and you will be resisted and, pray god, defeated.

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Political correctness has become the new truth

Rex Jory

THE Australia I love is disappearing. It’s been hijacked by faceless people who worship at the altar of political correctness and personal offence.

These messengers of the new morality paint themselves as victims. They believe they are entitled to compensation or apology if they are offended. They seek reward or retribution for the slightest inconvenience.

These self-proclaimed victims use social media with such devastating effect they have wrested control of the nation’s political, social and moral agenda. They tear down people who dare express a contrary view. They humiliate and intimidate anyone who challenges their beliefs. Megaphone politics.

They know best. Their view of Australia in 2017 must prevail. My way or the highway. Never mind that it is not the view of the majority of people.

These purveyors of the new morality are reminiscent of the racially-based Ku Klux Klan in the US. They plant a burning cross in the front yard of someone they accuse of breaching their often warped moral code while dressed anonymously in white robes and pointed hats.

They have crushed free speech and free expression by destroying community debate. People are now too frightened to say what they believe.

Political correctness twists and manipulates truth. It has become the new truth, the selective truth. Yet truth is no longer a defence. Just because someone expresses an opinion based on fact, they are not immune from being attacked and discredited on social media.

If someone dares criticise or even raise political, religious or racial issues which are contrary to the beliefs of the anonymous purists, the reaction and retribution can be swift and brutal. Often it resembles hate-speak.

Look at poor old Coopers, the beer makers. They were lampooned for being associated with a private discussion between two Liberal members of Parliament about same-sex marriage. The attack on social media was vicious. Then IBM copped it because one executive is in a Christian group.

Now they’ve turned on proposed changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act which currently threatens freedom of speech.

The Kokoda Track in Papua-New Guinea has become a target, with words like mateship being quietly erased from the lexicon. Mateship has been replaced by friendship. Never mind the Diggers and their families — let alone the wider community — who are offended.

In the new social agenda, mateship has become hateship. It has transferred power from the individual and a structured system of authority to a faceless, intangible force fuelled by moral indignation.

We are no longer allowed to be involved in civilised debate or think for ourselves. If the trend continues, then as a nation we are no longer civilised.

The Australian character has been stripped and reconstructed in the image of political correctness. The Australian larrikin has become an endangered species. Whatever happened to Australia’s “have a go” spirit? What happened to our irreverent sense of humour? What happened to common sense and the brave “she’ll be right” credo which helped build this country?

The Australian community has fragmented. We are no longer a single, coherent society. People are judged on what they are, what they believe and not what they have achieved or contributed.

For too many people, the first reaction is to lay blame and seek compensation through intimidation or litigation. Whatever cloak they wear — race, colour, gender, occupation, age, religion, physical appearance — they claim the moral high ground.

I don’t begrudge people holding strong beliefs. That’s their right in a democracy. I agree with some of them. But I resent being bullied into accepting those views under duress — or remaining silent.

Those promoting victimhood and personal offence as the path forward have used social media to promote their agenda by fear and suppression.

It’s time those who have taken the alternative path of meek silence spoke out and exposed the politics of victimhood as a false god.

If not the face and character of Australia, the Australia I love, will be lost. At the moment the people with the loudest megaphone are winning.

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

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