Monday, April 08, 2019


The origins of child sex offenders

Child sex offenders are abhorrent criminals.  Australia is about to set up an offender register to keep track of them.  But is that the best we can do?  Can their offending not be prevented?  Maybe for some it can be but to have any hope of that, we have to understand where they are coming from, what makes them a sex offender. 

There seems to be very little public comment on that.  A prison psychologist I know, however, has spoken to many of them in prison and has studied their backgrounds.  Unfortunately, he has found that they are often as much sinned against as sinning.  Few people probably want to hear that but it must surely be brought into any debate focused on prevention.  He has sketched out a few of his very "incorrect" observations for me and I present them below:



There are Aborigines with brain damage from mothers putting petrol on their bedding when they were little children to keep them quiet and help them sleep.

Many adult male sex offenders were molested by their single mothers, were given drugs, oral sex to help them sleep, used for sex, or psychologically sexually interfered with by frequently being insulted, ridiculed or teased about their sexuality, or their mother "playfully" chasing them around the house grabbing them sexually, or alternating or mixing up the "playfulness", the insults, and the physical abuse all together, or pitting her boyfriends against her son.

That sort of thing is not known by many. As we know, perverted sexual practices for prepubescent children when they don't yet know what is right or wrong can miss-wire their sexuality.

Having counselled in a protection prison where about 60% were sex offenders, heard their stories and read the sentencing Judge's summaries, it has caused me to realise that many sex offenders are awful criminals but some might not have been if not messed up by others.

I know one offender who was kept home from school by his single mother for most of his childhood, kept drugged on cannabis and LSD, and used as a sex toy. She was never charged. He became a rapist of underage girls.

And there are those who sell drugs to children and youths, who damage their brains and potential for life. The outlaw bikie gangs who make and sell to dealers, who sell to youths, who sell to younger youths, who sell to vulnerable poorly parented children. The bikie gangs know that, but they don't care. Its all money to them.

The brain damage from youthful drug taking frequently causes lifetime mental illness with loss of potential - - so many wasted lives.

And there are the extreme leftist youth workers who use malleable children and youths to turn them into agents of ruin against western society, encouraging drug use, seeding in them antisocial ideas and hatred.

And there are mothers who, believe it or not, actually train their little boys to grow up to hate others and to be criminals and to take what they want.

I do not believe that men have a monopoly on evil, as feminists so often claim. I believe female evil manifests differently, more subtly, by word, by manipulation and by proxy. So male evil is easier to see because it is more gross and female evil more subtle, but their are as many dark hearts among women as there are among men, and what comes from those dark hearts is just as destructive whether it comes from the dark hearts of men or women.

So when I ask myself, Who does more harm to the individual and who most deserves to be executed? the sex offender? the drug dealers? the sick mothers? the corrupt youth workers? the weak fathers?...

I don't know and I don't know what the answer is. Mostly I tend to think there is not an answer; that crime of all sorts is just part of human societies.

Here is an interesting question. Who does the most harm, the dumb sex offender, or the "respectable" smarter female prison psychologist who secretly gets her jollies from listening to offender's descriptions of their crimes and writes favourable reports to the parole board to obtain their release and so to offend again?

Who knowingly and deliberately causes more harm? Who is the more powerful psychopath? And who most, if either, deserves to die? Or put another way, Who deserves most to be swatted, the flies in the house or the person standing at the door letting them in?






The Leftist obsession with group identity is Dominating Lives and Causing Immeasurable Damage

I’m talking about labels—the words we use to think about ourselves and the power they have to shape our lives, especially our sexual identities.

Just ask Jamie Shupe, who recently told his story in The Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal. Shupe was America’s first legally-recognized “non-binary” person. In fact, his case opened up the non-binary status for people in eleven states and counting. His journey didn’t begin with reworking gender labels. Before he won the right to be known as non-binary, he claimed to be a transgender woman, writing about his experience in The New York Times and receiving rock-star treatment from the LGBT movement.

There was just one problem: Shupe wasn’t, in fact, a woman trapped in a man’s body or a genderless being. He was a victim of childhood sexual abuse and a veteran with PTSD. Now, after changing his mind and going back to living as a man, he admits that assuming new gender identities and fighting for their legal recognition was his way of trying to make a fresh start. The scary part is how, at every step, the medical community, state governments, and the news media legitimized his confusion.

As Shupe writes: “When a licensed medical doctor writes you a letter essentially stating that you were born in the wrong body and a government agency or court of law validates that delusion, you become damaged and confused … The truth is that my sex change to non-binary was a medical and scientific fraud.”

I hope you’ll read Jamie Shupe’s sad but revealing story. It’s heartbreaking. And the saddest part of his story is that it exposes the new gender identities embraced by so many as artificial, harmful, and dehumanizing.

Of course, there have always been those who have experienced gender confusion, and who have dealt with their sexual attraction in ways that are at odds with our God-given purpose. What’s new today is the set of scripts that’s currently imposing these confusions on individuals: If you’re a little girl who plays with trucks, one script goes, you must really, deep down, be a boy. If you’re a young man who has trouble relating to others of your sex, you must really, on the inside, be a woman. And if you have a mix of both traits or just can’t decide, well then, there’s a new script for you, too. You’re “non-binary.”

In all of these cases, it is the words—the categories that our culture has made up and imposed on real people—that carry all the power. In the long run, the mismatch between these categories and the people on whom they’re imposed becomes painfully obvious.

Last year on BreakPoint, we highlighted a study that called transgender identification a “social contagion” among teenagers—in other words, it’s something many adopt because it’s what all the cool kids are doing. We also know that between 63 and 94 percent of minors who identify as transgender will later change their minds, or “desist” as it’s medically termed.

This research, and stories like Shupe’s, show how easily the new gender labels can consume a person’s identity while burying real trauma that needs treatment. Young people especially need to know that turning words such as “transgender” and “non-binary,” and even “gay” and “lesbian” into categories of identity is a practice younger than I am. Seriously, this just started yesterday. But now, they’re so often assigned as identity labels to anyone who fits an arbitrary set of stereotypes. As a result, they dominate lives and cause immeasurable damage.

That’s why refusing to accept these labels isn’t an act of hate, as we are told, but rather it’s an act of love. As Christians called to this confused cultural moment, we should be sensitive to people’s experiences, recognizing that trauma often plays a major role in gender confusion. At the same time, we should be clear that trendy labels and identities aren’t the answer, and the best way to honor others’ humanity is to refuse to perpetrate this medical and scientific fraud against them.

SOURCE  






Zuckerberg's Plan for the Internet Would Be a Disaster for Free Expression
    
In a recent op-ed, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg implored the state to get more involved in governing the internet. “Every day, we make decisions about what speech is harmful, what constitutes political advertising, and how to prevent sophisticated cyberattacks,” he said. “These are important for keeping our community safe. But if we were starting from scratch, we wouldn’t ask companies to make these judgments alone.”

For starters, there’s no such a thing as “harmful speech.” There might be speech that offends us. There might be speech we disagree with. There’s also speech that’s inarguably ugly, dishonest, pornographic or despicable. Yet, “we” allow these unpleasant words to go largely unregulated because we value the broader liberty of being able to offer opinions without government censors dictating which thoughts are acceptable.

Then again, if Zuckerberg wants to rid his platform of this “hate speech,” no one is stopping him. Facebook allegedly employs a number of new mechanisms to achieve this very task. Good luck.

But Zuckerberg claims that “we,” as society, have a special responsibility to facilitate his efforts to keep people “safe” from reprehensible rhetoric. We have no such obligation. Facebook already offers users the ability to block or ignore accounts they find distasteful. If they don’t like how Facebook is governing speech and interactions, they can quit.

What Zuckerberg’s plan does, however, is undermine competition. If a company like Facebook sets speech codes that are too stifling for users, another innovator will jump into the gap and create a platform that offers consumers what they seek. While I assume free political expression isn’t the predominate concern of most social media users, it does exist. When government sets a “baseline” for what’s acceptable, there’s no longer any competition for open debate.

Worse, deliberation over free expression would be moved to the political arena, where the influence of scaremongering officials, ideologues and rent-seeking tech corporations like Twitter, Facebook and Google would dominate decisions.

“Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree,” Zuckerberg writes. It’s true that the skewed manner in which social media companies regulate political speech is already hurting them. Many conservatives have rightly grumbled about the double standards employed by social media giants. Yet, do they really believe handing over Facebook’s speech codes to censors is going to yield better results for open debate in the long run? Do they not remember that the Citizens United decision was the result of bureaucrats attempting to ban political speech? Do they not remember what how easy was for IRS officials tasked as arbiters of political speech to abuse their power? Have any of them seen a state’s civil rights commission in action?

Empowering political appointees to codify the meaning of “hate speech” on the internet would surely result in mission creep and a push to make unpopular topics off-limits — things like “transphobia” or “Islamophobia” come to mind, but there are an array of other topics on both sides of the ideological divide.

Moreover, Zuckerberg wants to institute these plans in “common global framework.” Well, Vladimir Putin recently signed a bill that makes it a crime to “disrespect” the state and spread “fake news.” France, who Zuckerberg says is already working with Facebook, has passed hate-speech laws that allow the banning of political content. The same is true for many other nations. And let’s not forget fully authoritarian nations like China. Are those the countries that Zuckerberg trusts to assist the United States in instituting a framework for acceptable internet speech?

Further, Zuckerberg contends that we need speech codes to protect our “elections.” There’s nothing wrong with our elections — other than Donald Trump’s victory rankling Democrats. There are, of course, already laws that make it illegal for Facebook to accept money from foreign nations attempting to inject themselves into U.S. elections.

In a disorderly and widely accessible internet, it is impossible to stop them every time. Any crackdown on alleged “fake news” — one of the evils of the internet, according to Zuckerberg — can easily be manipulated to target inconvenient speech. If the Russian collusion episode should teach us anything, it’s that fake news isn’t always what it seems to be. And liberals might note that Trump’s definition of “fake news” doesn’t mesh with their own, either.

In the end, having an occasional amateurish fake news piece drop into your social media feed is far preferable to having a censor deciding what constitutes appropriate news.

Like every crony capitalist who’s ever tried to get government to do his job for him, Zuckerberg is attempting to both extricate himself from the responsibility of running his site and attempting to hurt the competition. That’s not surprising. In this case, however, the consequences go beyond mere rent-seeking.

SOURCE  






Netanyahu vows to start annexing the West Bank in a bid to rally supporters

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that he would start to extend Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank if given a fourth consecutive term.

Such a move has been ardently sought by the settler movement but resisted until now by Netanyahu, and by more moderate Israelis, as a potentially fatal blow to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In the eyes of most of the world, it would also be a violation of international law that bars the annexation of land seized in war.

But Netanyahu trailed his main challenger, Benny Gantz, a former army chief of staff, in final polls of the campaign published on Friday. And he has been frantically trying to mobilise conservative Israelis to vote for his Likud party rather than for other, more extremist parties whose leaders have joined his government but have often portrayed him as more of a brake on the settler movement than an accelerator.

Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump warned that a Democratic victory in 2020 could "leave Israel out there," as he highlighted his pro-Israel actions in an effort to make the case for Jewish voters to back his re-election.

Speaking at the annual meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Trump touted his precedent-shredding actions to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and recognition last month of Israeli sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights, a strategic plateau that Israel seized from Syria in 1967.

"We got you something that you wanted," Trump said of the embassy move, adding, "Unlike other presidents, I keep my promises."

The group, backed by GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson, supported Trump's 2016 campaign and is preparing to spend millions on his 2020 effort.

"I know that the Republican Jewish Coalition will help lead our party to another historic victory," Trump said. "We need more Republicans. Let's go, so we can win everything."

Jewish voters in the US have traditionally sided heavily with Democrats - and are often ideologically liberal - but Republicans are hoping to narrow the gap next year, in part as Trump cites actions that he says demonstrate support for Israel.

Trump earned standing ovations for recounting both the embassy move and the Golan Heights recognition.

Netanyahu was pressed in a live television interview on Saturday night over why he had not already annexed settlement blocs like Maale Adumim and Gush Etzion, two large Jewish communities built on occupied territory on the outskirts of Jerusalem. He vowed to begin the effective annexation of those and other, more isolated areas under Jewish control.

"The question you're asking is an interesting one: will we move on now to the next stage?" he said. "And the answer is, yes. We will move on to the next stage."

Asked by his interviewer if that meant he would annex the settlement blocs, Netanyahu said yes, but that he would not stop there.

"I'm going to apply sovereignty, but I don't distinguish between settlement blocs and the isolated settlement points, because from my perspective every such point of settlement is Israeli," he said. "We have a responsibility as the Israeli government. I won't uproot anyone, and I won't place them under Palestinian sovereignty. I'll look out for everyone."

The West Bank is home to about 2.8 million Palestinians and more than 400,000 Jewish settlers.

Netanyahu did not say whether he would seek to annex areas now under Palestinian control under the Oslo Accords.

Applying sovereignty to Israeli settlements on West Bank land that the Palestinians demand for a future state, presumably along with the roads and infrastructure tethering those places to the rest of Israel, would leave the Palestinians at best with an archipelago of disconnected territory. The West Bank is under Israeli military jurisdiction, although settlers are subject to civilian law, as Israeli citizens.

The chief negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization, Saeb Erekat, responded to Netanyahu's statements by attacking both him and the Trump administration. The White House has long promised a proposal for a "deal of the century" to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But in the meantime, it has showered Netanyahu with priceless political gifts — from the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital in 2018 to the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights in March — while battering the Palestinians with aid cuts and public scoldings.

"Such a statement by Netanyahu is not surprising," Erekat said on Twitter. "Israel will continue to brazenly violate international law for as long as the international community will continue to reward Israel with impunity, particularly with the Trump administration's support and endorsement of Israel's violation of the national and human rights of the people of Palestine."

He added, "We'll continue to pursue our rights through international forums, including the International Criminal Court, until we achieve our long overdue justice."

Shalom Lipner, a former aide to Netanyahu and several other prime ministers and a current analyst at the Atlantic Council, said Netanyahu might well believe the Trump administration could allow him to proceed with annexation. But he called the promise "the ultimate Hail Mary pass," and one that came with little political risk. "The only reason it's even credible now is because of what he's been able to coordinate with Trump," said Lipner.

"Maybe he can actually get Trump to sign off on that as well. But if it became clear it's not in the cards right now, then he can just say, 'Sorry, I can't swing it. Conditions change.'"

In the television interview, Netanyahu vowed not to divide Jerusalem or "uproot any settlement" and said he would "ensure that we will control the territory west of the Jordan River," meaning the entire West Bank.

When asked if he would push through before Tuesday the much-delayed evacuation of Palestinians living in Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin village near the Maale Adumim settlement bloc, he reiterated his opposition to a Palestinian state on the West Bank.

"I don't know whether it will be before the elections," he said of the Khan al-Ahmar expulsion, which set off intense international criticism after the village was marked for demolition to make way for an expanded Jewish settlement.

But, he added: "We have to control our destiny, and that is going to be impossible if we place there an independent, Arab entity — an Arab state, for all intents and purposes. A Palestinian state. That will endanger our existence."

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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