Monday, August 06, 2018



Australia: Taxpayer-funded public service jobs will favour new recruits who are from racial and 'gender identity' minorities as part of politically correct overhaul

This is objectionable.  Why should people be penalized for being normal? "Human rights" have gone berserk.  As far as employing Aborigines is concerned, I have no difficulty with that as long as they are held to the same standards of diligence and promptness that apply to others.  And public service standards of diligence and promptness are not exactly onerous.  The evident difficulty government departments already have in meeting their existing quotas for Aborigines may however indicate that even that low standard is hard to meet.  Anybody knowing Aboriginal culture will not be surprised

Public service employers are being pushed to favour new recruits who are from racial and gender identity minorities in what is seen as a politically correct overhaul.

The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has called on the Federal Government to set new targets to hire staff from 'disadvantaged racial groups', the Courier Mail reported.

AHRC believes consideration should be given to employ staff with diverse qualities and there should be 'measurable targets with clear time frames that hold agencies accountable

'The commission acknowledges the challenges employers face when it comes to hiring people from a range of diverse and and difference issues such as, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, disability, ageing, cultural diversity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status,' AHRC has told the Government review.

Since August 1 2013, it has been unlawful to discriminate against a person on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and intersex status under federal law.  

The Australian Public Service Commission - which is committed to employing people with disabilities - has a target of 3 per cent indigenous employment by the end of this year.

However, there are still many government agencies with less than 2 per cent of indigenous employees, while other agencies don't have any.

Union national secretary Nadine Flood backed the push and told the publication that the Government should be setting targets to create a more diverse workplace.

'The APS needs to have the right people to provide the best services to the community, and that means a workforce that reflects the diversity,' she said.

SOURCE 






Racist Britain Welcomes Muslim Radicals - Again and Again

While barring white conservatives

It is more than a year since the UK suffered three Islamist terrorist attacks in quick succession. It is also more than a year since the Prime Minister, Theresa May, stood on the steps of Downing Street and announced that 'enough is enough'.

Yet the striking aspect of the last year has been how little has changed.

Consider, for instance, the lax controls on extremist preachers that the UK had in place in 2016. As reported here at the time, in the summer of that year, two Pakistani clerics performed a tour of the UK. Their seven-week roadshow took in numerous UK hotspots including Rochdale, Rotherham, Oldham and the Prime Minister's own constituency of Maidenhead. The two clerics -- Muhammad Naqib ur Rehman and Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman -- began their tour by visiting the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, at Lambeth Palace for a meeting on 'interfaith relations'.

How expert are these two clerics at 'interfaith relations'? Well, they are so good that their main credential is their enthusiastic support for the murderer of somebody accused of 'blasphemy'. Yes -- these two preachers are famed in Pakistan for having supported Mumtaz Qadri, the murderer of the progressive Punjab Governor Salman Taseer. Because Taseer believed in a relaxation of Pakistan's barbaric blasphemy codes (specifically he opposed the execution of a Christian woman -- Asia Bibi -- who was falsely accused of blaspheming the Muslim god), Qadri -- who was meant to be guarding the governor -- instead murdered Taseer in 2011.

Qadri himself was subsequently tried, sentenced to death and executed by the state. After Qadri's funeral in Rawalpindi, Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman whipped up the crowds of the murderer's mourners. Rehman acclaimed the murderer Qadri as a 'shaeed' (martyr). The crowd subsequently chanted slogans such as 'Qadri, your blood will bring revolution' and 'the punishment for a blasphemer is beheading'.

Despite criticism from Shahbaz Taseer (the son of the man whom Qadri had murdered), the UK government had no problem allowing into the UK these two men who, as Shahbaz Taseer said, 'teach murder and hate'. On their tour of the UK in 2016, these two preachers were reported to have spoken to mosques packed with worshipers.

A forgiving person might point out that the Archbishop of Canterbury does not know what he is talking about when he claims that Rehman and Rehman are interfaith experts, and that until 2016 the UK border agencies and other authorities could not have known that the two men are preachers of incitement in their home country. A forgiving person might even have thought all these authorities were naïve but would not be so naïve again.

In 2017, however, it did happen again. In July of last year the clerics were back, ostensibly speaking at a conference on 'counter-terrorism'. The idea that either man would know how to counter terrorism when the only expertise that either man has is in encouraging terrorism makes their presence at such an event insulting to anyone involved in countering terrorism. Even more so given that their main facilitator in the UK would appear to be the head of the one-man organisation calling itself the 'Ramadan Foundation', run by Mohammed Shafiq, a man with his own dark history of extremism and incitement.

A cynical person might assume that the UK authorities had let these radical preachers in the first time because they were ignorant, and the second time perhaps because they were slow. But how to account for events just last month? In July of this year, Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman was in the UK yet again -- and again in Oldham. Also again, his visit appears to have been facilitated by the one-man-band, Mohammed Shafiq. The latest bogus 'counter-terrorism conference' at which he was speaking also involved not only local MP (and Shadow Home Office Minister) Afzal Khan, but also the father and grandmother of one of the victims of last year's Islamist suicide bomb attack at the Manchester Arena.

Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman, in his address at the conference, reportedly said: "I stand before you to say we as Muslims stand against terrorism, these vile people are enemies of Islam and the whole of humanity. "My mission in life is to promote tolerance and peace, you can see from the thousands who attend my events in Pakistan there is a yearning for the true message of Islam which is Peace and tolerance. "I am honoured to visit Manchester to remember the victims and their families of the Manchester Arena attack and say we stand with you always".

Of course the thousands who attended his events in Pakistan did not always hear this message of 'peace and tolerance'. As the evidence of the aftermath of Qadri's funeral showed, they heard a message of vengeance, blasphemy, medievalism and violence.

But that is Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman.

The bigger question is for the UK -- and specifically for the Prime Minister, Theresa May.

In the past year, the UK has banned a fair number of people from entering the country. It has, for example, barred the Canadian activist and blogger Lauren Southern. It has also banned the Austrian activist and 'identitarian' Martin Sellner. Whatever anyone's thoughts on either of these individuals, it is not possible to claim that either has ever addressed a rally of thousands of people which they have used to extol a murderer. If either of them had done so, a ban from the UK might be explicable. Yet Hassan Haseeb ur Rehman has done these things -- and yet has been allowed into the UK three years in a row. Even in the year after Theresa May pretended that 'enough is enough.'

Perhaps the British government thinks that people do not notice such things. Perhaps the organisers of the 'counter-terrorism conference' in Manchester think that people are taken in by such pretences. Perhaps they think that the people of Britain do not mind. But the people of Britain do notice and I rather suspect that they do mind. Very much, in fact.

SOURCE





The ACLU is turning its back on free speech

America’s premier civil-rights group gets cold feet about hate speech.

The American Civil Liberties Union has explicitly endorsed the view that free speech can harm ‘marginalised’ groups by undermining their civil rights. ‘Speech that denigrates such groups can inflict serious harms and is intended to and often will impede progress toward equality’, the ACLU declares in new guidelines governing case selection and ‘Conflicts Between Competing Values or Priorities’. This is presented as an explanation rather than a change of policy, and free-speech advocates know the ACLU has already lost its zeal for vigorously defending the speech it hates. ACLU leaders previously avoided acknowledging that retreat, however, in the apparent hope of preserving its reputation as the nation’s premier champion of the First Amendment.

But traditional free-speech values do not appeal to the ACLU’s increasingly partisan progressive constituency – especially after the 2017 white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville. The Virginia ACLU affiliate rightly represented the rally’s organisers when the city attempted to deny them a permit to assemble. But progressives responded angrily to this defence of speech, and, in response, the national ACLU reconsidered its obligation to represent white-supremacist protesters.

The 2018 guidelines elaborate on the organisation’s retreat from defending everyone’s speech. They claim that ‘the ACLU is committed to defending speech rights without regard to whether the views expressed are consistent with or opposed to the ACLU’s core values, priorities and goals’. But directly contradicting that assertion, they also cite as a reason to decline taking a free-speech case ‘the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values’.

In selecting speech cases to defend, the ACLU will now balance the ‘impact of the proposed speech and the impact of its suppression’. Factors like the potential effect of the speech on ‘marginalised communities’ and even on ‘the ACLU’s credibility’ could militate against taking a case. Fundraising and communications officials helped formulate the new guidelines.

One half of this balancing test is familiar. The ‘impact of suppressing speech’ – the precedents that suppression might establish, the constitutional principles at stake – is a traditional factor in case selection. But, traditionally, the ACLU has not formally weighed the content of speech and its consistency with ACLU values in deciding whether to defend it.

Tension between competing values isn’t new to the ACLU. Given its decades-old commitment to defending civil rights and liberties, the organisation has long navigated conflicts between equality rights and freedoms of religion, speech and association. The guidelines assert that ‘no civil liberty or civil-rights value should automatically be privileged over any other’. But it’s clear that free speech has become second among equals. Where is the comparable set of guidelines explaining when the ACLU should decline to defend gay-rights claims that infringe on religious liberty or women’s-rights cases that infringe on due process?

The speech-case guidelines reflect a demotion of free speech in the ACLU’s hierarchy of values. Their vague references to the ‘serious harm’ to ‘marginalised’ people occasioned by speech can easily include the presumed psychological effects of racist or otherwise hateful speech, which is constitutionally protected but contrary to ACLU values. Faced with perceived conflicts between freedom of speech and ‘progress toward equality’, the ACLU is likely to choose equality. If the Supreme Court adopted the ACLU’s balancing test, it would greatly expand government power to restrict speech.

In Brandenburg v Ohio (1969), for example, the ACLU defended the First Amendment rights of a Ku Klux Klan leader prosecuted for addressing a small rally and calling for ‘revengence’ against blacks and Jews. The US Supreme Court reversed Clarence Brandenburg’s conviction, narrowly defining incitement to violence as speech both intended and likely to cause imminent illegal action. Brandenburg made an essential distinction between advocacy and action, which progressives who equate hate speech with actual discrimination or violence seek to erase.

The ACLU would be hard pressed to take Brandenburg’s case today, given its new guidelines. The organisation hasn’t yet endorsed a ban on hate speech, or a broader definition of incitement. The guidelines affirm that ‘speakers have a right to advocate violence’. But even if Brandenburg managed to pass the new balancing test for speech cases, some participants at his rally were armed, and, according to the guidelines, ‘the ACLU generally will not represent protesters who seek to march while armed’.

All this is the ACLU’s prerogative. Organisations are entitled to revise their values and missions. But they ought to do so openly. The ACLU leadership had apparently hoped to keep its new guidelines secret, even from ACLU members. They’re contained in an internal document deceptively marked, in all caps, ‘confidential attorney client work product’. I’m told it was distributed to select ACLU officials and board members, who were instructed not to share it. According to my source, the leadership is now investigating the ‘leak’ of its new case-selection guidelines. President Trump might sympathise.

SOURCE







Will Tribalism Trump Democracy?

Patrick J. Buchanan says that "tribal" identity is asserting itself throughout the world, including among Americans, and that resistance to it is dangerous

On July 19, the Knesset voted to change the nation's Basic Law.   Israel was declared to be, now and forever, the nation-state and national home of the Jewish people. Hebrew is to be the state language.

Angry reactions, not only among Israeli Arabs and Jews, came swiftly.

Allan Brownfeld of the American Council for Judaism calls the law a "retreat from democracy" as it restricts the right of self-determination, once envisioned to include all within Israel's borders, to the Jewish people. Inequality is enshrined.

And Israel, says Brownfeld, is not the nation-state of American Jews.

What makes this clash of significance is that it is another battle in the clash that might fairly be called the issue of our age.

The struggle is between the claims of tribe, ethnicity, peoples and nations, against the commands of liberal democracy.

In Europe, the Polish people seek to preserve the historic and ethnic character of their country with reforms that the EU claims violate Poland's commitment to democracy. If Warsaw persists, warns the EU, the Poles will be punished. But which comes first: Poland, or its political system, if the two are in conflict?

Other nations are ignoring the open-borders requirements of the EU's Schengen Agreement, as they attempt to block migrants from Africa and the Middle East. They want to remain who they are, open borders be damned.

Britain is negotiating an exit from the EU because the English voted for independence from that transitional institution whose orders they saw as imperiling their sovereignty and altering their identity.

When Ukraine, in the early 1990s, was considering secession from Russia, Bush I warned Kiev against such "suicidal nationalism."

Ukraine ignored President Bush. Today, new questions have arisen.  If Ukrainians had a right to secede from Russia and create a nation-state to preserve their national identity, do not the Russians in Crimea and the Donbass have the same right — to secede from Ukraine and rejoin their kinsmen in Russia?

As Georgia seceded from Russia at the same time, why do not the people of South Ossetia have the same right to secede from Georgia?

Who are we Americans, 5,000 miles away, to tell tribes, peoples and embryonic nations of Europe whether they may form new states to reflect and preserve their national identity?

Nor are these minor matters.  At Paris in 1919, Sudeten Germans and Danzig Germans were, against their will, put under Czech and Polish rule. British and French resistance to permitting these peoples to secede and rejoin their kinfolk in 1938 and 1939 set the stage for the greatest war in history.

Here in America, we, too, appear to be in an endless quarrel about who we are.

Is America a different kind of nation, a propositional nation, an ideological nation, defined by a common consent to the ideas and ideals of our iconic documents like the Declaration of Independence and Gettysburg Address?

Or are we like other nations, a unique people with our own history, heroes, holidays, religion, language, literature, art, music, customs and culture, recognizable all over the world as "the Americans"?

Since 2001, those who have argued that we Americans were given, at the birth of the republic, a providential mission to democratize mankind, have suffered an unbroken series of setbacks.

Nations we invaded, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, to bestow upon them the blessings of democracy, rose up in resistance. What our compulsive interventionists saw as our mission to mankind, the beneficiaries saw as American imperialism.

And the culture wars on history and memory continue unabated.

According to The New York Times, the African-American candidate for governor of Georgia, Stacey Abrams, has promised to sandblast the sculptures of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis off Stone Mountain.

The Republican candidate, Brian Kemp, has a pickup truck, which he promises to use to transfer illegal migrants out of Georgia and back to the border.

In Texas, a move is afoot to remove the name of Stephen Austin from the capital city, as Austin, in the early 1830s, resisted Mexico's demands to end slavery in Texas when it was still part of Mexico.

One wonders when they will get around to Sam Houston, hero of Texas' War of Independence and first governor of the Republic of Texas, which became the second slave republic in North America.  Houston, after whom the nation's fourth-largest city is named, was himself, though a Unionist, a slave owner and an opponent of abolition.

Today, a large share of the American people loathe who we were from the time of the explorers and settlers, up until the end of segregation in the 1960s. They want to apologize for our past, rewrite our history, erase our memories and eradicate the monuments of those centuries.

The attacks upon the country we were and the people whence we came are near constant.

And if we cannot live together amicably, secession from one another, personally, politically, and even territorially, seems the ultimate alternative.

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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