Beauty contests go politically correct

The worldwide beauty ideal is Nordic. Even some Japanese ladies blond their hair. And a black man sees a blonde wife as a trophy.  So I am predicting that this year's all-black winners will attract much less attention than usual.  We will see

Winners of the Miss USA, Miss America and Miss Teen USA pageants are all black women for the first time in history

'The three young women who have focused their energy on demonstrating how standards of black beauty speak for American standards of beauty are to be commended,' said Thomas DeFrantz, a professor in the Department of African and African American Studies at Duke University.

'These three standard-bearers prove that black beauty is at the heart of a 21st century American ideal,' he added.

Franklin, from New York, won her title in September in Atlantic City, New Jersey, becoming the first woman also to win the Miss America crown without having to don a swimsuit. Garris, from New Haven, Connecticut, won her crown in April, and hopes to become a trauma nurse.

Kryst, a former Division I athlete and attorney at Poyner Spruill LLP in Charlotte, North Carolina, won her crown in Reno, Nevada. She holds an MBA from Wake Forest University.

'Mine is the first generation to have that forward-looking mindset that has inclusivity, diversity, strength and empowered women. I'm looking forward to continued progress in my generation,' said Kryst, after accepting her crown. She now advances to the Miss Universe competition.

The oldest of the three is the Miss America pageant, which began in 1921 but women of color were barred from participating until the 1940s by a rule that said contestants must be of 'the white race.' Frustration led to the creation of Miss Black America contest.

In 1970, Cheryl Browne became the first black woman to participate in the Miss America pageant.

Since then, more than a dozen black women have been named either Miss America or Miss USA, including actress Vanessa Williams, the first-ever black Miss America in 1983.

The Miss USA contest was created in 1952 and crowned the first African American contestant - Carole Anne-Marie Gist - in 1990.

A year later, Janel Bishop won the Miss Teen USA title, becoming the first African American winner. 

SOURCE  






The FCC may be the last hope of defeating Leftist censorship

Why FCC Chairman Ajit Pai should look at how deplatforming and social media bias toward the left could lead to one-party rule

Thanks to social media and big tech companies, finding content on the Internet that you want has never been easier. Want to find your friends and family online? Log onto Facebook. Want to see what opinion leaders or celebrities are up to? Check out Twitter. Want to find your favorite podcast? There’s Youtube or Apple. Want to go shopping or sell something? Amazon. Want to research something? Google it.

It’s all there at your fingertips, and new and old media platforms have largely been net beneficiaries in the information age. Ideally, this has created a true marketplace of ideas and is most certainly the main attraction of the Internet — that is, so long as it remains a venue open to alternative perspectives.

That is the upside. The downside comes once these companies have achieved dominant market positions and can decide to offer competitive advantages to one side of the debate over others, even on the margins. Silo viewpoints deemed undesirable to keep them inside of echo chambers. Shadowban users without them knowing it. Or, deplatform users with millions of followers with no avenue of appeal.

It’s called censorship. And more and more, conservatives are complaining that their content cannot be seen outside of their spheres of influence. Social media companies have vociferously denied that this is occurring, and with good reason. They purport that anybody can use their services to grow their influence in media on the Internet. If users realize that their experiences are being censored, then these websites and apps will cease to be useful, and usage could drop off, and with it ad dollars.

The danger is how this could be used to consolidate political power in any country, including the U.S., to create conditions conducive to one-party rule, and the marketplace might not be able to respond fast enough with an alternative to salvage a two-party system that fosters robust political competition and at least disincentivizes rampant corruption. Politics works that way. If one party goes too far and fast in moving its agenda, there can be a pushback. Where it can get out of control is when those voices promoting an alternative viewpoint are suppressed.

What is scary is there is some evidence this is already occurring. U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) is suing Twitter for $250 million alleging defamation was allowed to occur against him on the platform and shadowbanning him and other conservative users.

Famously, Alex Jones’ Infowars has been kicked off social media platforms, along with Laura Loomer and Milo Yiannopoulos under the guise that they were promoting supposed hate speech or violence.

The Poynter Institute has published a list of more than 500 websites in its deplatforming crosshairs — including many conservative sites like Washingtonexaminer.com, Cnsnews.com, Breitbart.com, Zerohedge.com, Dailysignal.com, Dailywire.com and so forth.

Dr. Robert Epstein, Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California, has published studies showing how Google filtering search results has a significant impact on persuading undecided voters in elections even at the Congressional level.

Whether this is because the algorithm is being manipulated by third parties to affect search results or because of a conscious decision by Google, the results are still the same.

So, right off the bat, you can readily find examples of individuals and organizations with prominent numbers of followers being banned, shadowbanned and siloed.

On one hand, a tremendous part of the problem and challenge conservatives face is they do not have nearly enough media. They need to create more of their own. But to the extent that they do have access to media channels, there is ample evidence they are being marginalized.

Of course, the First Amendment protects these websites and apps like Facebook, Twitter and Google even if they show preferences favoring one side over another, and so the danger of government censorship is far less pervasive than the reality of corporate censorship we face today. It’s still censorship.

This was one of the major reasons why the Federal Commission (FCC) led by Chairman Ajit Pai should look carefully at this issue. The FCC was founded by Congress for precisely this reason, under 47 U.S. Code § 151, “For the purpose of regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible, to all the people of the United States…”

The FCC is supposed to prevent a consolidation of media ownership in this country. That’s what it’s there for.

In the past, Americans for Limited Government has opposed FCC regulation of net neutrality, and that remains true today. With 5G and Internet speeds poised to become 100 times faster than they already are, we were always confident technology would catch up to the limits of 3G and 4G infrastructure and that the fear of throttling Internet speeds would quickly become a footnote in history. In other words, that technology would rapidly overtake the stated rationale for the Obama era net neutrality regulations.

We’re not talking about throttling based on data usage. We’re talking about censorship. Again, not government censorship, but corporate censorship. We opposed ending the Department of Commerce’s contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a global monopoly that handles the entire world’s domain name system, resolving easy to remember domain names with IP addresses, for precisely this reason. Because those systems could absolutely be used to block websites in the root zone file and at least under government stewardship, the guise of the First Amendment or the possibility of rescinding the contract could serve as a counterweight in order to keep the Internet open.

Now, we must rely on antitrust laws that have been so watered down over the years they have almost no bearing on the media reality we face today. If so, and if antitrust has been too defanged to be effective in this environment, then the FCC may be the last game in town. What that means remains to be seen, but in the least we need to have this discussion.

Free speech is messy. It means that ideas that may not be popular to the vast majority of people can still get a platform and a large following. In a country of millions and millions of people that is inevitable. We are far better off as a society with an open and free marketplace of ideas, even if it includes some unpopular ideas, than one that is policed by a few extremely powerful corporate overlords.

Today, there is such a consolidation of power on the Internet that were these companies ever turned toward the aim of consolidating one-party rule in the U.S., it is debatable whether markets and alternatives would be able to effectively counter it before it was too late. It is a challenge but not one conservatives who believe in limited government should shy away from, because limited government will not long survive if its advocates in the virtual marketplace of ideas we now rely on are silenced. For our representative form of government to thrive, we need competition in the marketplace of ideas, not censorship.

SOURCE  





Deadly Rocket Barrage: Tlaib Says ‘Our Palestinian People Who Just Want to be Free’ Are Being Dehumanized

Leftist projection again.  It is Jews who are constantly being  dehumanized by Muslims

Responding to news coverage of the firing of hundreds of rockets into Israel from the Gaza Strip over the weekend, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) tweeted Sunday, “When will the world stop dehumanizing our Palestinian people who just want to be free?”

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have been retaliating to the attacks – which as of Sunday night are reported to have killed four Israeli civilians – by launching airstrikes on terrorist targets in the Hamas-controlled territory.

Tlaib, a Palestinian American, was criticizing media “framing” of the developing story, specifically in regard to who was to blame for the escalation.

“When will the world stop dehumanizing our Palestinian people who just want to be free?” she asked. “Headlines like this & framing it in this way just feeds into the continued lack of responsibility on Israel who unjustly oppress & target Palestinian children and families.”

She pointed to a New York Times headline reading, “Gaza Militants Fire 250 Rockets, and Israel Responds With Airstrikes.”

Tlaib retweeted a post from a pro-Palestinian activist who called the headline “stunningly irresponsible and misleading,” and called into question the implication that the rocket fire triggered the escalation.

The original poster, U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights executive director Yousef Munayyer, claimed that the actual spark for the upsurge was the killing of four Palestinians in Gaza on Friday.

(What Munayyer didn’t say was that two of those killed were Hamas terrorists targeted after Palestinian gunfire from southern Gaza wounded two Israeli soldiers. The other two were protestors among an estimated 5,000 Palestinians who amassed along the border.)

By the end of Sunday the number of rockets fired into Israel by Iranian-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists in Gaza had reached around 600, according to the IDF, which said it launched retaliatory airstrikes on 320 targets in Gaza.

Egyptian officials were engaged overnight in efforts to secure a ceasefire, although air raid sirens in southern Israel were still wailing early Monday, signaling incoming fire.

A Gaza-based “joint command” of Palestinian terror groups said early Monday they would continue firing rockets “until the occupation responds affirmatively to our people’s demands,” the Times of Israel reported.

The Iron Dome missile defense system has intercepted more than 150 of the projectiles, the IDF said earlier.

According to medical services cited by Israeli news media, four Israeli civilians were reported to have been killed and dozens injured. One of those killed, a man in Ashdod described as a dual U.S. citizen, died of shrapnel injuries sustained while running to a bomb shelter.

Two men were killed in Ashkelon, one in a factory and one in his home, and another civilian was reported to have been killed when a projectile fired from Gaza struck a car inside Israel.

The IDF said targets it had hit in Gaza included terrorist weapons storage facilities, rocket launch sites, “terror tunnels” and observation control rooms. Also targeted were the offices of Hamas security services head, Twafiq Abu Naim, and a man named Hamed Ahmed Khudari, whom the IDF accused of transferring Iranian funds to Hamas and PIJ in Gaza.

The Palestinian Authority’s WAFA news agency, citing the Hamas’ “health ministry” in Gaza, was reporting late Sunday that 25 Palestinians had been killed over two days.

The same source claimed that a woman and her toddler were killed in an Israeli airstrike south of Gaza City; the IDF disputed that, saying the two were killed when an outgoing rocket fell short and landed inside the strip.

The PIJ in a statement named eight of its members “martyred” in Israeli strikes. The PIJ, which like Hamas is a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization, has been posting videos of its fighters preparing and firing rockets into Israel.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, speaking on Fox News Sunday, said the U.S. as of that stage could “validate” that more than 400 rockets had been fired into Israel.

“These rockets were fired with civilians around them in order to protect from return fire,” he said. “This is terrible. The Israelis have every right to protect the sovereignty of their nation, and I hope that we can return to the ceasefire that had been in place for weeks and had been holding significantly before this.”

A delegation of U.S. ambassadors visiting Israel issued a statement saying the rocket barrage demonstrated “a cynical readiness to risk the lives and futures of the people of Gaza as well as those of the Israeli people.”

“The sole aim of these terrorists is to kill, maim and terrorize citizens of Israel,” they said. “These actions by Hamas and Islamic Jihad are simply unconscionable. No other nation on Earth would tolerate this.”

The ambassadors – accredited to Israel, Germany, Portugal, France, Switzerland and the European Union, joined by special envoy for combating anti-Semitism Elan Carr – urged “all nations to call these actions out for what they are – terrorism pure and simple.”

PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi accused Israel of “targeting defenseless civilians” and charged that the Trump administration’s “blind and amoral support” for Israel was emboldening its “extreme and ruthless military assaults.”

SOURCE  






Teaching girls to cry rape

Bettina Arndt

Why are we teaching young women to cry rape? In many countries, including Australia, feminists are pushing for sexual consent courses to be introduced into schools which teach girls that ‘regret sex’ is rape, that they have a right to withdraw consent after the event, and that if they have anything to drink before sexual activity they are incapable of giving consent and their partners are committing sexual assault. This dangerous rubbish is playing with the heads of young women and setting young men up for real trouble.

This is all part of the campaign to promote enthusiastic consent, or ‘yes means yes’ laws, which require men to seek consent for every stage in sexual activity. I made a video last year, talking to Murdoch University law lecturer Lorraine Finlay, about the absurdity of promoting laws which would make most normal sexual activity illegal, given that most of us have no desire to constantly verbalize enthusiastic consent throughout lovemaking. Yet in NSW, the Law Reform Commission is currently investigating this possibility and is being bombarded with submissions from women’s groups arguing that not only should enthusiastic consent become law but the same principles should be taught in sex education courses in schools.  

This week I spoke to sex educator Tracy Sedman who is one of the people responsible for educating NSW teachers and health workers about the new sexual consent courses. Tracy is very concerned about the push in this direction, and keen to encourage people to speak out about the risks for young men from teaching girls to reframe their sexual experiences in this way. I’m sure you will be intrigued by a video we are showing you, which is an extraordinary example of how easily young women can be encouraged to redefine an unsatisfactory sexual interaction as ‘rape’, urged on by their friends. What’s really scary is this video, The Morning After, has already been seen by over 6 million people. That’s an awful lot of young women now primed to judge their male partners as sexually aggressive. It will make you very worried for upcoming generations of young men facing an increasingly hostile dating world.

Here's the video. I hope you will promote it so that more people are aware of this worrying development.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj8qHXvg-jk



Via email from Bettina: bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au

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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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