Friday, June 02, 2017




Surprise: Portland Killings Blamed on Trump Rhetoric Actually Perpetrated by Bernie Supporter

Before we get to the grim punchline mentioned in the headline, here's the backstory: A deranged person murdered two men and critically injured another in Portland, Oregon on Friday night after they intervened to stop his ugly harassment of two young Muslim women on a train.

The heinous killings were immediately condemned, and the Good Samaritans' courage rightly hailed as an example of American greatness.  Elements of the Left then quickly got to work linking the bloodshed to Donald Trump and political rhetoric they oppose, a classic and insidious End of Discussion tactic designed to toxify and stifle speech.

The city's mayor made this intention explicit, invoking the deadly incident while urging the federal government to shut down a pro-Trump free speech event scheduled for next week:

(1) It's the hard Left that has been entirely responsible for derailing appearances by controversial speakers, not "violent protests between" the groups. The far-right has on occasion fought back against the Left's intimidation army of thugs and goons, but this is a fight that the Left has picked, over and over again. Culpability is not equally shared here.

(2) Even if the Portland killer had been wearing a 'Make America Great Again' hat as he railed against Muslims and stabbed two men to death, his despicable crimes would not be a legitimate reason to infringe on other people's rights. This man alone is responsible for his violence, not the words of others -- even if those words could reasonably be categorized as "hate speech" (direct incitement, a much higher bar, is where speech can cross into unprotected territory).

How would liberals respond if a Republican politician tried to shut down a Black Lives Matter rally because someone tangentially tied to that movement had recently murdered a police officer?  "Shut up for safety" is rarely a compelling argument.

(3) Despite many on the Left rushing to implicitly and explicitly attribute the stabbings to Trump and the "atmosphere" he's created, it turned out that the arrested suspect supported Bernie Sanders for president, having praised the even farther-left Jill Stein in social media posts that point to his environmentalism.  He stated publicly that he could not bring himself to vote for Trump, and has also gone on wild rants against Christians and Jews.

In short, he's one of "theirs," if we're playing by these demagogic score-keeping rules. Should some upcoming Bernie Sanders speeches be censored or postponed in order to keep his backers from killing people? After all, promoting the Vermont Senator's opinions might be "inappropriate or dangerous," under Mayor Wheeler's standards. Right?

(4) Time and again, instances of "right-wing violence" cited as a pretext for partisan bullying end up not being right-wing at all.  Click through for a partial list of this phenomenon.  One memorable lowlight was liberals trying to pin the 2011 shooting of Arizona Rep. Giffords on conservative rhetoric and Sarah Palin, when in fact that massacre was carried out by an apolitical (or arguably left-wing) schizophrenic.

Another example featured a cretin who shot three young Muslims to death in North Carolina in 2015, brutal killings that were quickly hung around the necks of conservatives -- until, that is, the gunman turned out to be an avowed atheist and devotee of Rachel Maddow and the Southern Poverty Law Center.  That capital-N Narrative dried up very quickly.

And now we have this Portland misfire.  Is the plan to just spray these slanders in hopes that one or two will eventually fit the pre-determined storyline?

It's horrible and cheap to draw tendentious ties between your political opponents' words, and the actions of unstable criminals.  The point of this "climate of hate" guilt-by-association is to delegitimize the other 'team's' views and players without bothering with actual arguments.

It's much easier and lazier to say, see? These people are dangerous!  This sort of reflexive demonization is repugnant, especially when it's overly employed to justify curbing fundamental rights.  It looks even worse when you prematurely tar the other side for an atrocity actually committed by one of your own.

SOURCE




Paris mayor calls for black feminist festival which 'prohibits white men from participating' to be banned

The Mayor of Paris has called for a black feminist festival to be banned because she claims it is prohibited to white people.

Anne Hidalgo on Sunday called for the Nyansapo Festival in the French capital to be postponed, which is due to run from July 28 to 30 at a cultural centre.

It bills itself as 'an event rooted in black feminism, activism, and on a European scale', and 80 per cent of the festival area will be set aside as a 'non-mixed' space 'for black women,' according to its website in French.

Another space will be a 'non-mixed' area 'for black people' regardless of gender and another space would be 'open to all'.

The English version of the site does not use the word 'non-mixed,' but 'reserved.'

Hidalgo, a socialist, said on Twitter that she firmly condemned the organisation 'of this event, 'prohibited to white people'.'

'I am asking for this festival to be banned,' Hidalgo said, adding she also reserved the right 'to prosecute the organisers for discrimination'.

Police prefect Michel Delpuech said in a statement that police had not been advised about the event by Sunday evening.

But, Delpuech added, the police 'would ensure the rigorous compliance of the laws, values, and principles of the republic'.

French antiracist and antisemitism organisations strongly condemned the festival. SOS Racisme described the event as 'a mistake, even an abomination, because it wallows in ethnic separation, whereas anti-racism is a movement which seeks to go beyond race.'

LICRA - the International League against Racism and Antisemitism - said 'Rosa Parks would be turning in her grave,' a reference to the American civil rights icon.

Wallerand de Saint-Just, the regional head of Marine Le Pen's National Front party, had challenged Hidalgo on Friday to explain how the city was putting on an event 'promoting a concept that is blatantly racist and anti-republican.'

The cultural centre La Generale, where the event was to be hosted, and the collective Mwasi, which organised the event, said Sunday they were the 'target of a disinformation campaign and of 'fake news' orchestrated by the foulest far right.'

'We are saddened to see certain antiracist associations letting themselves be manipulaed like this,' according to a statement posted on the Generale website.

A 'decolonisation summer camp' in the northeastern French city of Reims elicited similar outrage last year, as it billed itself as a 'training seminar on antiracism' reserved for victims of 'institutional racism' or 'racialised' minorities - excluding by default white people.

SOURCE




Female CEOs Earn More Than Male Chiefs

Americans are used to headline after headline about the gender pay gap when it shows men earn more, on average, than women. Feminists have even created a holiday for it—Equal Pay Day—to supposedly mark how far women must work into the next year to make up for the difference in what men earned in the previous year.

But what happens when it is reversed?

Comparing median compensation packages of S&P 500 leaders who held the job for a year, 21 female CEOs received a median of $13.8 million compared to the $11.6 million median earned by the 382 male CEOs last year. This isn’t new—women CEOs have made more than men in six of the past seven years. And three of the 10 highest paid executives are women.

The Wall Street Journal headline is, “Female CEOs Earn More Than Male Chief Executives.”

But just like the wage gap statistic, there is more to the story than the headline suggests. When it comes to female CEO salaries, it is a small pool so doesn’t tell us much more than that some women have been able to earn a lot. Similarly, it is a median comparison and there are many factors that go into CEO pay—for example, performance and whether the CEOs are trying to transform their companies.

The data behind Equal Pay Day’s wage gap statistic is equally important.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics just measures median earnings of women and men in full-time wage and salary jobs to calculate the statistic used for the wage gap narrative, not two people in the same job. It does not take into account many of the choices that women and men make—including education, years of experience and hours worked—that influence earnings.

And, in fact, the prominence of the wage gap narrative might be benefiting women CEOs. The Wall Street Journal quotes Robin Ferracone, the head of a company that advises board compensation committees, “Boards don’t want to shortchange their female CEO in today’s environment, when pay equality is such an issue.” They “err on the side of being generous.”

It’s great to see women CEOs doing well and they deserve to be compensated for their contributions. Women should applaud the success of working women at all levels of our economy. Yet we shouldn’t fixate too much on statistics like this one that make good headlines, but don’t tell us much of the story.

SOURCE




Black Crows TV stars receive death threats from Islamic State members

STARS of a new Middle Eastern TV drama depicting the lives of women forced to live under the Islamic State have received death threats from the terror group.

Kuwaiti actress Mona Shaddad said her and other stars of Black Crows have been targeted for portraying women who have joined the extremist organisation.

The 30-part TV show made by Middle East Broadcasting Corp is playing across the Arab world during Ramadan — a month of fasting between dawn and dusk when families typically gather at home late into the night.

It focuses on telling the stories of women forced to live under the Islamic State from all perspectives with hard-hitting scenes depicting sexual assault, suicide bombers and Yazidi slavery.

Shaddad plays a woman who joins IS as a jihadi bride after failing to find a husband and said her main aim was to “change the narrative” regarding Islamic State. “The role I play is very important because it touches upon the topic of how easily brainwashed some people can be and led to believe that they are joining an extremist group for good reasons when in reality, they are not,” she told Al Arabiya.

Saudi Arabian actress Aseel Omran said she had also been threatened for her role but said she was not worried about it — yet. “If you asked me a few years ago whether threats from ISIS scared me, I’d say yes. But let’s be honest, we live in Dubai, one of the safest cities in the world. For now, I’m not feeling it but let’s wait for the halfway mark of Ramadan and see how the threats look like, God forbid they do though,” she told the company.

The hard-hitting drama, which has been likened to The Sopranos in the US, comes as Islamic State still holds the city of Mosul and large chunks of land in Syria, forcing millions of refugees to flee their homes or suffer enslavement under their rule.

Middle East Broadcasting Corp Director Ali Jaber said the company has been forced to upgrade security across the region but was undeterred from their goal of showcasing the reality across the region.

“We’ve heard a lot from ISIS about this series in terms of threats that we are receiving every day. I am personally receiving a lot of threats,” he told NPR.

“We need to be relevant, and this is the prevailing conversation in the Arab world. This is a series — a drama series about the women under ISIS, whether a woman participating with ISIS or a woman suffering from ISIS. And it’s set Raqqa in Syria, and it basically exposes the life there, what they preach and what they practice in reality.”

One episode of the show features a girl and her grandmother selling plates decorated with animals to survive under IS, before the grandmother is shot in the head by a female police unit. Another shows children being trained with machine guns and told “bullets are faster than people” as they try to run away.

The $10 million series was filmed in Lebanon and presented filming challenges as it sought to depict suicide bombings and IS headquarters.

Executive producer Amer Sabbah told AFP security was the “most difficult challenge” during filming. “When you transform an area in Lebanon into what resembles an IS headquarters, you have to consider security and safety of your crew,” he said.

SOURCE

*************************

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.

***************************

No comments: