Feminist Bookstore Closes From Lack of Sales, Blames White Men

An “iconic feminist bookstore and community space” is closing in Portland, Oregon.

What could be the cause of this retailer’s failure? People don’t want to buy their books? Perhaps the rise of e-commerce?

Not in the slightest, obviously. The problem lies in white power, patriarchy and white cisgendered feminism.

That’s the takeaway from a statement posted last Monday announcing the closing of In Other Words, a volunteer-run bookstore made famous by the television show “Portlandia.” According to Oregon Public Broadcasting, the store will be closing at the end of this month — and it’s all the fault of you blue-eyed devils.

“The current volunteers and board members stepped into and took over a space that was founded on white, cis feminism (read: white supremacy). It’s really difficult, actually, impossible, for us to disentangle from that foundational ideology,” the statement said.

“Patriarchy, White Supremacy, Capitalism cannot be reformed and ever serve the people. Abolition is the goal.”

Apparently, all of us white people are responsible for making In Other Words an unsafe space.

“This isn’t sustainable, especially emotionally, for the people who come here and work to provide this space as a resource to Portland Feminist communities,” the statement said.

Of course, this has nothing to do with people not wanting In Other Words’ wares. Nor does it have anything to do with the fact the store’s management decided to shirk the fame they garnered through “Portlandia,” severing ties with the show in 2016 because they “struggled with the spotlight of the hit show,” according to OPB.

Nor was it the fact that as the store’s “focus has shifted from indie bookstore to community space, it has welcomed groups as diverse as AA meetings to Rock Camp for Girls to anti-racist activists.” While this is a nice thing to do, it can’t actually be the focus of a business. A bookstore can indeed be an important community space, but its first goal is to sell books.

No, it’s all the perfidy of white folks. Their supremacy is the sole reason this bookstore is closing down.

There seems to be another non-profit which is interested in running the space, however — although its attitude seems to indicate it will run into the same problems the previous group did.

“We’re definitely keeping things open-ended, in the spirit of In Other Words,” said Anna Swanson, a representative of social justice group Critical Resistance.

OPB says she’s “keeping the space free or low cost and open to all-ages, with an eye to anti-capitalist, anti-racist, intersectional work.”

“It’s really important to us,” Swanson said, “if we can to keep the space alive in that sense, but also to take the opportunity to transition it out of the sort of intractable problems the volunteers and board are talking about.”

Given that the store seems to be definitely anti-capitalist (inasmuch as it can’t actually sell enough to stay in business), I think there’s one very intractable problem that Critical Resistance will still run into.

Good luck solving that one.

SOURCE






Sweden's Islamization of itself barrels on

Rinkeby subway station was recently categorized as too dangerous for subway personnel to work there, unless escorted by the police, due to the security risk created by stone-throwing and hostile gangs

Some Muslims in Sweden want to be able to broadcast public calls to prayer throughout the country. They have already succeeded in obtaining permission for this in three cities -- Botkyrka, Karlskrona and Växjö. "We want to have calls to prayer in more places. There are many Muslims who are Swedish citizens, who have the same rights as everyone else" said Avdi Islami, Press Officer of the Växjö Muslim Foundation, after the police recently gave permission for the Växjö mosque to make a roughly 4-minute-long prayer call every Friday around noon.

A March poll of 1,000 Swedes showed that a majority of Swedes -- 60 percent -- are against public Muslim calls to prayer.

"We do not consider the contents of the loudspeaker broadcast, but [only] the potential noise that it makes," said Magnus Rothoff, unit commander of the southern Swedish police region, in explaining the decision-making process of the police.

"Therefore, we chose to refer it to the municipality's environmental management, where there is expertise on the [noise] level that should apply. Then we came to the conclusion that we are not disturbed to the extent that one can make a different decision than to approve."

The municipality also did not consider the content of the call to prayer.

The desire of Swedish authorities that the content of the Muslim call to prayer, also known as the Adhan, can be ignored and that the issue is only of noise levels is symptomatic of the way Swedish authorities in general approach the increasing Islamization of Sweden: that is continually to deny or ignore the scope of the problem.

The content of the Adhan prayer, from a Western point of view, is deeply problematic. Its purpose is not only a neutral call to prayer -- such as church bells, which consist only of musical notes. Here is the translation of the prayer:

"Allah is the greatest (Allahu akbar). I testify that there is no God but Allah (Ashhadu anna la ila ill Allah). I testify that Mohammed is Allah's Prophet (Ashhadu anna Muhammadan rasul Allah). Come to prayer (Hayya alas salah). Come to security/salvation. Allah is the greatest (Allahu akbar). There is no God but Allah (La ilah ill Allah)".

"Allahu akbar" means "Allah is greatest" or "Allah is greater " -- presumably meaning than other deities.

In 1993, when the Catholic Church wanted to build a tower for ringing church bells in Växjö, the municipality advised the church to refrain, as the neighbors had complained that they would be bothered by church bells.

As recent decisions by Swedish authorities in Växjö and Karlskrona have undoubtedly created a legal precedent, however, Avdi Islami's wish to have calls to prayer from mosques all over Sweden is likely to succeed. The Swedish authorities, therefore, are themselves creating the conditions for further Islamization.

Apart from wanting to spread the call to prayer to mosques all over Sweden, new mosques continue to be planned and built. In Rinkeby, a suburb of Stockholm, the construction of the Rinkeby Mosque is about to begin. With 18 domes and at an estimated 5,000 square meters --1500 of which are dedicated to the mosque, and the rest to a restaurant, classrooms and a library -- the mosque will be among Scandinavia's largest, comparable to the Malmö mega mosque, which opened in April 2017. The Rinkeby mosque, designed by the Swedish architect Johan Celsing, will be constructed by NCC, a major construction company in Sweden. The firm estimates that the complex should be ready in 2020 at a cost of around 100 million Swedish kroner ($11.4 million). "It's going to be fun to build a mosque, from a construction point of view," said Fredrik Anheim, Head of Division at NCC Building.

"For eight years, we have been trying to get funding, but now we are as close as you can get," said Ibrahim Bouraleh, Vice President of the Rinkeby Mosque Collection Foundation, who refutes claims that the mosque is being funded by foreign donors. The foundation, however, has only collected 3 million out of the 100 million Swedish kroner needed, so the question arises, who indeed is funding the project?

The organization behind the mosque is the Islamic Association of Järva (Islamiska förbundet i Järva), part of the Islamic Association in Sweden (Islamiska Förbundet i Sverige, IFSI), considered an organizational front for the Muslim Brotherhood. As IFSI clearly states (at the bottom of the linked page and in its statutes), it is a member of the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE), which is generally acknowledged as an umbrella organization for local Muslim Brotherhood groups from all over Europe.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2005, then-president of FIOE, Ahmet al-Rawi, said, when asked about ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, "We are interlinked with them with a common point of view. We have a good close relationship."

The area of the future mega mosque, Rinkeby, is considered an "especially vulnerable area" -- known as a no-go zone -- defined by the police as an area "characterized by a social problem and criminal presence that leads to a widespread unwillingness to participate in the judicial process and difficulties for the police to fulfill its mission. The situation is considered acute".

Rinkeby subway station was recently categorized as too dangerous for subway personnel to work there, unless escorted by the police, due to the security risk created by stone-throwing and hostile gangs.

In December 2017, Lise Tamm, Head of the National Unit against International and Organized Crime, said, "Rinkeby is almost like a war zone. When the police work there, they work as the military defense would".

Sweden's Islamization of itself barrels on.

SOURCE







Google's New Slogan
   
The original slogan of Google was “Don’t Be Evil.” When Google changed its corporate name to Alphabet in 2015, it changed the slogan to “Do the right thing.”

If it were to be true to its values, Google should have changed its slogan from “Don’t Be Evil” to “Don’t Fight Evil.”

Here is The New York Times report from this past Friday: “Google, hoping to head off a rebellion by employees upset that the technology they were working on could be used for lethal purposes, will not renew a contract with the Pentagon for artificial intelligence work …

"Google’s work with the Defense Department on the Maven program, which uses artificial intelligence to interpret video images and could be used to improve the targeting of drone strikes, roiled the internet giant’s work force. Many of the company’s top A.I. researchers, in particular, worried that the contract was the first step toward using the nascent technology in advanced weapons. …

"About 4,000 Google employees signed a petition demanding ‘a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology.’”

CBS News reported that the petition also said, “We believe that Google should not be in the business of war.”

In other words, to the heads of Google and thousands of its elite employees, it is immoral to aid in the defense of their country, and all war is immoral.

Google and these 4,000 employees embody two terrible traits: moral idiocy and ingratitude.

Moral idiocy is the ability to be brilliant in any area of life except the single most important area of life, morality. With regard to morality, such people are fools.

The United States has been the greatest force for liberty and goodness in world history. It has been so by modeling a free society and through the power of the idea of freedom, and even more so by force — brute physical force.

Through force of arms, America and its allies defeated Germany in World War I and World War II.

Through force of arms, America imposed democracy and liberty on West Germany and led to the dissolution of East Germany.

Through force of arms, the Holocaust — the genocide of Europe’s Jews and millions of others in Nazi concentration and death camps — ended. If Google existed then, would its employees have demanded Google “not be in the business of war”?

Through force of arms, America was able to impose democracy and liberty on Japan.

Through force of arms, America liberated Asian countries from the Nazi-like Japanese imperialists.

Through force of arms, America enabled the majority of Koreans to live free rather than under the most totalitarian regime in modern history, North Korea.

Through force of arms, Israel has survived 70 years of Arab, and now Iranian, attempts to annihilate it. Arms ended the Holocaust in Europe, and arms prevent a second Holocaust of Jews in the Middle East.

Only a moral idiot does not understand the moral necessity of weapons of war being in the hands of decent countries.

Which brings us to the second trait of Google and its employees: ingratitude.

Google and its employees live better than almost any human beings in the world. They do so because they live in the freest and most opportunity-giving country in the world, the United States of America.

That Google and its employees refuse to work on the military defense of their country is an expression of ingratitude (not to mention absence of patriotism) that is simply breathtaking.

How did we produce such foolish and ungrateful people?

They are the products of left-wing education and the left-wing media and of living in the left-wing cocoon of northern California and its tech industry.

Google should be true to its convictions and change just one word of its original slogan from “Don’t Be Evil” to “Don’t Fight Evil.”

SOURCE






Australia: Woman begs Christian picketers to leave her alone as they urge her not to enter an abortion clinic

It should be noted that when picketers do succeed in dissuading an abortion, the mothers are usually grateful afterwards that their child was saved

Footage has been posted to Facebook of a woman harassing patients as they enter an abortion clinic. Two videos were posted to advocacy group Young Queenslanders for the Right To Choose last Saturday.

In the first video the protester is seen approaching the doors of Options Clinic in Spring Hill waving a foetus sized doll and exclaiming 'Medical facts say they have a heartbeat from 18 days, please don't terminate your baby.'

The second video shows the religious picketer preaching to a patient. 'God hates the hands that shed his blood,' she tells the woman before she is interrupted.

'Just shut up that is so traumatic. That is so f*cking traumatic.'

The woman tries assuring the patient that she wants to help her, before the patient interjects and tells her she doesn't want her help.

'That baby's got a heartbeat love, please turn away, we can help you,' she says, raising her voice.

The patient goes inside and the woman returns to her place on the sidewalk.

Before the video ends, she turns to the pro-choice volunteers and addresses them. 'That baby's got a heartbeat and what that is is murder, and you guys are standing, you will stand before God as murderers by supporting this horrific act.' 

This incident comes just days after New South Wales passed a legislation to enact safe-access zones around abortion clinics.  This legislation, introduced by Labor MP Penny Sharpe, was passed a week ago and protects patients from harassment and intimidation by protesters with 150 metre zones around the clinics.

The pro-choice young advocacy group Young Queenslanders for the Right To Choose posted the video to Facebook in hopes to spread how traumatic the experience can be

Following New South Wales, Queensland is set to become the next state to legislate safe access zones. Queenland's Law Reform Commission is set to hand down a report into legislation within the next month.

Kate Marchesi, the volunteer who posted the video told Buzzfeed News that she wanted to show how traumatic the protesters could be.

'The protesters outside the clinics regularly say that they are sidewalk counsellors who offer support, help and another option to women accessing abortion clinics, and in my experience attending these clinics as an escort this couldn't be further from the truth.'

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.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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