Tuesday, January 23, 2018


Nicola loses it on immigration

A very strange Nationalist leader -- advocating the opposite of what most Scots want

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has announced the government is working to change the narrative around migration to persuade Scots that the nation needs huge numbers of people from abroad.

Speaking at the launch of a Scottish government paper which argues for continuing open borders with Europe after Britain’s exit from the European Union (EU), the SNP leader claimed a population that is ever-expanding as a result of mass migration is “essential to our economic prosperity”.

The “stark reality” of an “ageing society”, Sturgeon argued, means she has “a duty to make the case for free movement no matter how difficult that is sometimes perceived to be”.

The First Minister’s plea for Scotland to remain in the Single Market and to have more liberal immigration controls than its southern neighbour, England, comes only a short time after research showed the majority of Scots would reject bespoke border controls after Brexit.

A detailed study published by the National Centre for Social Research last week found the majority of Scots surveyed are keen to leave the Single Market and have tighter restrictions on migrants post-Brexit, with two-thirds asserting the desire for Scotland to have the same immigration controls as the wider UK.

“Growing our population, and particularly our working age population, is perhaps the greatest national challenge that we face,” she announced.

“Over the past 15 years, EU migration has helped to turn around the long term decline in Scotland’s population and mitigate the impact of an ageing society. Over the next 25 years, our own projected birth rate will not be sufficient to grow our population.”

But analysis of previous suggestions that Scotland’s population must increase its economy to prosper has shown such claims to be false, with Migration Watch UK last year noting that “immigration as a solution to a pensions problem has been dismissed by all serious studies”, pointing out among other factors that “immigrants too will grow old and draw pensions”.

The migration policy watchdog said: “An ageing population is inevitable in Western societies where birth rates are low and health care is extending lives. However, this also means that it is possible to work for longer. Raising the retirement age is one of the most effective means of decreasing the dependency ratio.”

While Sturgeon warned Scots that their public services are at stake should the population not rise, migration-driven GDP growth has been described as a “Ponzi scheme” which lines bosses’ pockets at the expense of the environment and taxpayers’ quality of life.

The “underlying strategy” behind the pursuance of such policies is “to privatise the profits and socialise the costs incurred from increased population growth,” wrote Dr. Joseph Chamie, director of research at the Centre for Migration Studies.

Pointing out that while mass immigration results in increasing demand, consumption, borrowing, and profits, the former UN Population Division director said it leaves the general public left to pick up the tab for mounting costs for education, healthcare, housing, and crime.

SOURCE





German city BANS any more refugees as violence by asylum seekers and right-wing extremists escalates

New refugees are being turned away from a city in Germany, amid fears over rising violence between migrants and right-wing extremists.

Officials in Cottbus, which lies 120km southeast of Berlin, issued the temporary ban after two male Syrian teenagers were arrested on suspicion of injuring a German teenager in the face with a knife.

Just days earlier, a 15-year-old Syrian asylum seeker and his father were ordered to leave the city, after he was allegedly involved in an assault, alongside two other Syrian youths aged 14 and 17.

A 51-year-old man and his wife were said to have been attacked outside a shopping centre.

Meanwhile, Cottbus, which has hosted around 3,000 migrants since 2015, is home to 145 right-wing extremists.

Last weekend, around 100 masked neo-Nazis took part in an illegal demonstration through the city centre. 

According to Brandenburg’s state interior minister Karl-Heinz Schroeter, the ban on new refugees would be in effect 'for the next few months'.

Other measures in effect include increased CCTV surveillance and increased numbers of police officers.

The ban comes just weeks after a study in Germany revealed the recent influx of mostly young, male migrants had led to an increase in violent crime.

The study, by criminologist Christian Pfeiffer and funded by the German government, uses figures from the northern state of Lower Saxony to examine the impact of refugee arrivals on crime in 2015 and 2016.

It attributes a 10.4 percent rise in violent crimes in the state during those two years almost exclusively to refugees.

But it also found that migrants are most likely to be the victims of crime committed by migrants. In 90 per cent of homicide cases where a migrant was the suspect, the victim was also a foreigner.

His team found that living conditions in detention centres, where dozens of young men of different ethnicities and religions are held together in cramped conditions, contributed to the problem.

Cottbus is not however the first city to impose a migrant ban.  It follows Salzgitter, Delmenhorst and Wilhelmshaven in the northern state of Lower Saxony, which last year cited a lack of resources to properly handle the numbers arriving.

SOURCE






Alt-Left Insanity: U.S. Soldiers Are ‘Storm-Troopers Of An Evil Empire’

America is an evil empire. It’s troops are “fascists in uniform,” with every one of them a “war criminal.” That bit of anti-American propaganda comes via the Antifa site ItsGoingDown – the alt-left folks who can’t afford an apostrophe.

I had thought the Antifa scum had calmed down after news reports that government was treating them like domestic terrorists. Or, if nothing else, I figured they had gone to ground or under it. This is the first truly demented piece I’ve seen on IGD in some time.

Headlined: “On Yellow Ribbons and Counter-Insurgency: From a Veteran,” it purports to tell a veteran’s view of why America is evil. Certainly, we’ve seen anti-American veterans before. Remember when John Kerry claimed to have tossed his medals?

But this is different, and far-more disturbing. It paints a dark and hateful picture of our military “as we enter the 242nd year of American empire.” (Yeah, I’m sure those colonists were really empire building.) “Other than the constant turmoil, destruction, and evil that has accompanied American conquest, another constant has remained. That constant is the American soldier,” the article continues. (The image here is from American heroes in Afghanistan and a popular video called: “US Marines Real Combat in Afghanistan.”)

The author slams our military. “You are simply the tools of capitalism. The destroyers of lives. The storm-troopers of an evil empire.” Yes, “storm-troopers” drawn from either Nazi Germany or the Star Wars’ empire.

He then continued to attack not just the military but the rest of us. “We wave flags, host BBQs, and come just shy of licking the combat boots used to snuff the life out of poor brown folks around the world. I am a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. A former noncommissioned officer of the US military, and I am as much a war criminal as any imperialist foot soldier in history.”

Up to this, it’s his opinion and he is entitled to it under our system, though he thinks our military, “the embodiment of capitalist greed.”

Then he gets to the last, and it’s a call for “open rebellion.” “To combat this in any form we must resist. Go AWOL. Don’t show up to formation. Quit going to drill. Spit in Trump’s eye. Throw your medals back, burn your flags, and you bury your commendations. We must resist, and in this resistance, we must recognize our role. It’s not to save. It’s not to lead. It should be to lift up. It should be to impart knowledge, to whistle-blow and teach skills to those targeted by counter-insurgency. Join those fighting in the streets in open rebellion. Lend your knowledge to those confronting fascists in uniform or fascists in khakis. We have million dollar skills, and we must give them up. Not to Tiger Swan, not to Blackwater, or the local PD, but to those struggling for liberation across the board.”

You probably noticed this was a call to “resist” Trump. This is the alt-left, not just a bunch of dirt-bag college students interrupting a speaker. They want violence and are pretty open about it.

SOURCE






Morality Based on Consent Isn't Morality at All

The #MeToo story about Aziz Ansari sheds light on the real roots of America's sexual crisis.

What defines morality? Are there objective standards, or is it merely subjective whim and the passion of the moment? The answers to these basic questions form the root of modern thinking about sex, and they also reveal why morality based solely on consent isn’t morality at all.

The #MeToo movement of women (and a few men) telling stories of how they’ve been sexually mistreated — in all its various iterations — has gripped the nation over the last several months. Perhaps something good will come of it. Yet there are two major problems with the movement, too. First, innocent men can be ruined by false accusations. This has happened in colleges around the country, as we’ve documented before, and now it’s happening to other men in all sorts of stations. Second, and far more important, #MeToo is revealing the pathetic limitations of our culture’s low bar for morality.

Americans of a certain age fell in love with a sitcom called “Friends,” in which a bunch of foolish but affable 20-somethings made 10 seasons of episodes derived almost entirely from jokes about sex. It’s but one example of countless shows and movies produced by the very same Hollywood that is now dealing with the proverbial sexual skeletons in its own closet. Hollywood endeavored to validate the idea of “free love” first born in the 1960s but instead revealed how bankrupt American morality had become.

Fast forward 25 years and #MeToo is, at least in part, the direct result of a culture that taught young men that sexual trysts were normal and their due.

That brings us to Aziz Ansari, an actor/comedian who just won a Golden Globe earlier this month for best actor in his Netflix series, “Master Of None.” At those Golden Globes, he happily participated in the self-righteous ritual of Hollywood celebrities announcing “Time’s Up” on sexual assault. And yet his time was up just days later.

A woman going by the pseudonym “Grace” recounted her story of alleged assault at Ansari’s hands last fall. We’ll avoid the lurid details, which you can read at your own risk. Aside from the obvious fact that his behavior (and that of any man who behaves likewise) is absolutely wrong, one can also see why a morality based on consent would leave him thinking he did nothing wrong, and why Grace’s tale is in some ways merely one of an unpleasant date. At a minimum, the woman sent mixed signals — participating in some sexual activity with him before withdrawing and then participating again — only to later claim she wrestled with her own emotions the entire time. He did eventually stop when it became clear she wanted him to. So part of Ansari’s crime was his inability to read minds.

“It was fun meeting you last night,” he texted the next day. Not for her it wasn’t, which she then let him know in no uncertain terms in a reply text.

The result of her publicly telling her story? Lectures to men to tune in to women’s signals, and a rehearsal of the meaning of consent. And admonishment to women to more fully take charge of such situations and emphatically say no instead of giving what Grace said were partially “non-verbal cues” of her discomfort.

Such lessons are woefully inadequate. Much like being drunk — and this and many of these sorts of encounters already involve ample amounts of alcohol — the euphoria experienced by the human body during sexual encounters is really tough to rein in, especially for men.

That’s why objective morality is critical, so we can avoid lamentable encounters altogether. One is hardly equipped to give consent that won’t later be regretted or revoked when one is passionately caught up in inebriated physical intimacy with no moral compass for guidance.

Moreover, sex isn’t only physical. As David French correctly argues, “As much as some sexual revolutionaries try to drain the spiritual and emotional meaning from sex, it is still the most intimate form of human contact, and it leaves marks on a person’s very soul.” That’s why the “casual sex” Hollywood portrays is a horrible lie, and why Aziz and Grace failed so miserably to communicate.

Erick Erickson adds a simple truth, writing, “The Christian sexual ethic is much ridiculed and maligned in this day and age, but it perhaps speaks more loudly and clearly than ever before. Date, get to know each other, learn to read each other’s emotions and thinking, get married, then have sex. At the very least, stop with the hookups and the one night stands.”

French observes, “But to ask some people to refrain from seeking sex whenever they want it is like asking ancient pagans to melt their golden idols. The pursuit of sex is a central focus of their lives, and the liberation from sexual morality is for them a central achievement of modern ethics. Even as the collateral damage mounts, they insist that just this or that tiny tweak to their fundamentally libertine hedonism will protect people from shame, guilt, and rage while still preserving absolute sexual freedom. It won’t work. It can’t work. Human beings were not created to live like that. Morality based on consent alone has always been doomed to fail.”

As long as consent is the only rule for acceptable behavior, and as long as people cling to their idol of sex liberated from traditional Judeo-Christian morality, #MeToo isn’t going to change a single thing. And millions more broken people will continue to suffer.

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.  Email me (John Ray) here

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