The Men Who Walked Away

Mark Steyn reminds us that anti-feminist Marc Lepine was in fact a Middle-East Muslim. It does explain why no Westerners have done anything like his deeds.  His deeds are much in keeping with  Muslim contempt for women but at great variance with traditionally protective Western attitudes to women.  Western feminists don't realize how lucky they are

Friday December 6th marks the thirtieth anniversary of the "Montreal Massacre" - a grim day in 1989 when fourteen female students at the École Polytechnique were murdered by a man known to posterity as "Marc Lépine". Much followed from that terrible slaughter, including various useless "gun control" measures - and the formal annual commemorations that, three decades on, are attended by as many eminences as Remembrance Day or Dominion Day. The men present in that classroom are now in their mid-fifties; the women are not. I was far from home that December and was not back in Quebec until Christmas. And so I accepted the official narrative of events - until, that is, a few years later, when I looked into it myself.

At which point I marveled at how the Canadian state had succeeded in so thoroughly imposing a meaning on the slaughter that is more or less the precise opposite of what actually happened. I've written about it over the years, although my comrades in the Canadian media complain every time I do so, as if any questioning of the official fairy tale cannot be permitted. Here's what I said on the thirteenth anniversary, in The National Post of Canada on December 12th 2002:

I loathe the annual commemorations of the Montreal Massacre. I especially dislike the way it's become a state occasion, with lowered flags, like Remembrance Day. But, in this case, whatever honour we do the dead, we spend as much time dishonouring the living -- or at least the roughly 50 per cent of Canadians who happen to be male: For women's groups, the Montreal Massacre is an atrocity that taints all men, and for which all men must acknowledge their guilt. Marc Lépine symbolizes the murderous misogyny that lurks within us all.

M Lépine was born Gamil Gharbi, the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, whose brutalized spouse told the court at their divorce hearing that her husband "had a total disdain for women and believed they were intended only to serve men." At eighteen, young Gamil took his mother's maiden name. The Gazette in Montreal mentioned this in its immediate reports of the massacre. The name "Gamil Gharbi" has not sullied its pages in the thirteen years since.

Ah, well, I would bring that up, wouldn't I? Just for the record, I'm not saying that M Lépine is representative of Algerian manhood or Muslim manhood. I'm saying he shouldn't be representative of anything -- least of all, the best efforts of women's groups and the convenient gloss of that pure laine name notwithstanding, Canadian manhood.

This spring, there was an attempted gun massacre at the Appalachian School of Law in West Virginia. But, alas for the Appalachians' M Lépine, there were two gun-totin' students present who were able to pin down the would-be mass murderer until the cops arrived. Allan Rock stepping forward to recite the relevant portions of the gun registry requirements would have been far less effective. Generally speaking, when the psycho shows up and opens fire, your best hope is that there's someone else around with a gun to hand -- a situation Canadian law has now rendered all but impossible.

Extreme cases make bad law, and just because it's a cliché doesn't mean the Liberal Party of Canada can't take it to hitherto undreamt of heights. Our disarmed Dominion will be the first jurisdiction on the planet with a one-billion dollar gun-registry. It was supposed to cost two million, but, as Dr. Evil learned in Austin Powers, these days that's just chump change, they'll laugh at you. No self-respecting government plan should cost less than ONE BILLION DOLLARS!!!!!

According to police, the gun registry is officially 25 per cent inaccurate. I'd figure that makes it unofficially 40 per cent inaccurate. But last week, while cynical Liberal bigwigs were openly boasting that this record-breaking government fraud would just be another one of those things you hear about for a couple of days that then mysteriously vaporizes somewhere over Shawinigan, the radio call-in shows were full of concerned, earnest, reasonable, moderate Canadians saying that, even if it did cost a billion, it still "sends the right message" on gun control. Which is just as well, as it'll still be sending the right message when it's up to two billion...The gun registry is symbolic not of Canada's predisposition to mass murder, but Canada's predisposition to mass suicide.

But the gun-registry boondoggle is just big-government business as usual. In a certain sense, the men present that day in Montreal were more profoundly disarmed. From my book After America:

To return to Gloria Steinem, when might a fish need a bicycle? The women of Montreal's École Polytechnique could have used one when Marc Lépine walked in with a gun and told all the men to leave the room. They meekly did as ordered. He then shot all the women.

Which is the more disturbing glimpse of Canadian manhood? The guy who shoots the women? Or his fellow men who abandon them to be shot? For me, the latter has always been the darkest element of the story. From my column in Maclean's, January 9th 2006:

Every December 6th, our own unmanned Dominion lowers its flags to half-mast and tries to saddle Canadian manhood in general with the blame for the Montreal massacre -- the fourteen women murdered by Marc Lépine, born Gamil Gharbi, the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, though you wouldn't know that from the press coverage.

Yet the defining image of contemporary Canadian maleness is not M Lépine/Gharbi but the professors and the men in that classroom, who, ordered to leave by the lone gunman, obediently did so, and abandoned their female classmates to their fate -- an act of abdication that would have been unthinkable in almost any other culture throughout human history.

The "men" stood outside in the corridor and, even as they heard the first shots, they did nothing. And, when it was over and Gharbi walked out of the room and past them, they still did nothing. Whatever its other defects, Canadian manhood does not suffer from an excess of testosterone.

Your average Western feminist lobby group doesn't see it that way, naturally. "The feminism I think of is the one that embodies inclusivity, multiculturalism and the ability to change the world through the humanity that women do bring," says Stephanie Davis, executive director of Atlanta's Women's Foundation. "If there were women in power in representative numbers -- 52 per cent -- I think that the World Trade Center would still be standing."

That's a familiar line. If only your average Security Council meeting looked like a college graduating class, or that room at the École Polytechnique after the men had departed, there would be peace on earth.

I don't think so. Look at the current rape statistics under one of the most thoroughly feminized regimes on earth - the Government of Sweden. More from After America:

To those who succeeded in imposing the official narrative, Marc Lépine embodies the murderous misogynist rage that is inherent in all men, and which all must acknowledge.

For a smaller number of us, the story has quite the opposite meaning: whatever M Lépine embodies, it's certainly not (if you'll forgive the expression) Canadian manhood.

In 2009, the director Denis Villeneuve made a film of the story - Polytechnique. "I wanted to absolve the men," he said. "People were really tough on them. But they were 20 years old... It was as if an alien had landed."

But it's always as if an alien had landed. When another Canadian director, James Cameron, filmed Titanic, what most titillated him were the alleged betrayals of convention. It's supposed to be "women and children first", but he was obsessed with toffs cutting in line, cowardly men elbowing the womenfolk out of the way and scrambling for the lifeboats, etc.

In fact, all the historical evidence is that the evacuation was very orderly. In real life, First Officer William Murdoch threw deckchairs to passengers drowning in the water to give them something to cling to, and then he went down with the ship – the dull, decent thing, all very British, with no fuss.

In Cameron's movie, Murdoch takes a bribe and murders a third-class passenger. (The director subsequently apologized to the First Officer's home town in Scotland and offered £5,000 toward a memorial. Gee, thanks.) Mr Cameron notwithstanding, the male passengers gave their lives for the women, and would never have considered doing otherwise. "An alien landed" on the deck of a luxury liner – and men had barely an hour to kiss their wives goodbye, and watch them clamber into the lifeboats to sail off without them. The social norm of "women and children first" held up under pressure.

Today, in what Harvey Mansfield calls our "gender-neutral society", there are no social norms. Eight decades after the Titanic, a German-built ferry en route from Estonia to Sweden sank in the Baltic Sea. Of the 1,051 passengers, only 139 lived to tell the tale. But the distribution of the survivors was very different from that of the Titanic. Women and children first? No female under 15 or over 65 made it. Only five per cent of all women passengers lived. The bulk of the survivors were young men. Forty-three per cent of men aged 20-24 made it.

"There is no law that says women and children first," Roger Kohen of the International Maritime Organization told Time magazine. "That is something from the age of chivalry."

If, by "the age of chivalry", you mean the early 20th century.

As I said, no two maritime disasters are the same. But it's not unfair to conclude that, had the men of the Titanic been on the Estonia, the age and sex distribution of the survivors would have been very different. Nor was there a social norm at the École Polytechnique. So the men walked away, and the women died.

Whenever I've written about these issues, I get a lot of e-mails from guys scoffing, "Oh, right, Steyn. Like you'd be taking a bullet. You'd be pissing your little girlie panties," etc. Well, maybe I would. But as the Toronto blogger Kathy Shaidle put it:

When we say 'we don't know what we'd do under the same circumstances', we make cowardice the default position.

I prefer the word passivity – a terrible, corrosive passivity. Even if I'm wetting my panties, it's better to have the social norm of the Titanic and fail to live up to it than to have the social norm of the Polytechnique and sink with it.

SOURCE 





UK: Fury as primary school tells pupils to say 'Baby Boy Jesus' instead of 'Lord Jesus' while singing Away In A Manger so that pupils of all faiths can join in

Children at a primary school have been told not to sing the word 'Lord' in the Christmas carol Away In A Manger – so that pupils of all beliefs can join in.

The move has left Christian parents appalled, after the head teacher ruled that children should sing 'baby boy Jesus' rather than 'little Lord Jesus'.

The word 'Lord' features five times in the most common version of Away In A Manger and expresses the belief that Jesus is divine.

Youngsters at Whitehall Primary School in Chingford, Essex, have also been told to sing edited versions of two modern hymns when they attend a carol service and nativity play at a nearby church on Tuesday.

The words 'Jesus the saviour' in the carol Love Shone Down have been replaced with 'Jesus the baby', while the words 'new King born today' in the carol Come And Join The Celebration have been replaced with 'a baby born today'.

One furious mother, a former Metropolitan Police officer, said the changes were utterly unacceptable and likened it to taking 'Christ' out of Christmas.

The mother, 36, said: 'If he was just a baby boy named Jesus, there wouldn't be a celebration in the first place. He is our Lord and Saviour and King of all Kings – that's the whole point.

'It is also a tradition – it is taking away the traditions of the country.'

The mother said her two sons, aged nine and 11 and who go to church and Sunday school, were very upset when Whitehall head teacher Zakia Khatun announced that the words of the carols would be changed.

She said: 'My kids are being stopped from having the freedom to express their beliefs. They are shocked.'

The mother claimed that at a meeting on Friday, Ms Khatun defended her decision, insisting the school is inclusive of all children, and maintained that last year 60 children did not attend the carol service and nativity at St Peter and St Paul Church in Chingford because of their religious beliefs.

But the mother believes the school is now discriminating against Christian pupils and has been told other parents are unhappy too.

She said: 'We live in a multicultural society, so we should respect other beliefs but unfortunately Christianity is not getting respect.

'Ms Khatun doesn't want the people who don't have the same beliefs to feel excluded, yet it's OK to exclude Christians.'

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, a former Bishop of Rochester, said: 'This is a carol known throughout the world. The words 'Lord Jesus' are about the central message of Christmas, which is that God is with us in Jesus. 'To put it very simply that's what Christmas is about.'

Andrea Williams, chief executive of campaign group Christian Concern, added: 'Removing the Lordship of Christ at Christmas guts the Christian message of its truth, around which the whole of Western civilisation once based its culture.'

Whitehall is a multicultural state school with 485 pupils and is rated good by Ofsted inspectors. The school says it promotes British values, including 'tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs'.

A spokesman for the school said: 'We are a community school serving children from a range of faith backgrounds.

'In the past, not all were able to come together to celebrate Christmas, so we have worked hard with our local church to ensure the celebrations this year are accessible to all our children to participate in, together, as one.'

A spokesman for the Diocese of Chelmsford, which includes St Peter and St Paul Church, said: 'The service maintains the traditional Christian message of the joy of Christmas in a way that can be celebrated by everyone, including those of other faiths and none.'

SOURCE 







Trump Protects Jews. Therefore, He Must Be Hitler

On Tuesday night, The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump would sign an executive order directing federal agencies to apply the anti-discrimination provisions of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to Jews. Federal agencies would protect Jews the same way they protect racial minorities from discrimination. Yet angry liberals read that Trump would make "Judaism" a nationality and jumped to the conclusion that this was the beginning of an American Holocaust.

The Times tweeted the story with a rather confusing message. "President Trump will sign an executive order defining Judaism as a nationality, not just a religion, thus bolstering the Education Department's efforts to stamp out 'Boycott Israel' movements on college campuses." The order would indeed combat some Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) activists, but less for their views and more for the horrific harassment and violence they direct at Jews on college campuses.

Anti-Trump partisans saw the "defining Judaism as a nationality, not just a religion," and ran with it.

Freelance climate-change journalist Erin Biba called the move "antisemitic as f**k and absolutely horrifying in every possible way. Sounds like a good way to start deporting Jews!" She went on to warn that Adolf Hitler did exactly the same thing...

"Anyway, Hitler kicked off the Holocaust with the Nuremberg Laws that, among other things, declared German Jews weren't of German nationality. So Trump signing an executive order declaring Judaism it's [sic] own nationality is....well not great for us descendants of Holocaust survivors," Biba tweeted.

Former New York Times journalist Kurt Eichenwald compared Trump's executive order protecting Jews to notorious anti-Semite and former KKK leader David Duke. "Here is David Duke, whose arguments Trump has just affirmed by executive order claiming that Judaism is, as Duke consistently claims, a nationality," he tweeted.

All the Trump-Is-Hitler outrage showed just how little of the actual article these partisans read.

Among those welcoming the order on Tuesday was Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, who said the group recorded its third-highest level of anti-Semitic episodes in the United States last year.
"Of course we hope it will be enforced in a fair manner," he said. "But the fact of the matter is we see Jewish students on college campuses and Jewish people all over being marginalized. The rise of anti-Semitic incidents is not theoretical; it's empirical."

Huh. So, if Trump is Hitler, then is the ADL also Hitler?

The Times article also noted that Trump's executive order will be "essentially replicating bipartisan legislation that has stalled on Capitol Hill for years. Prominent Democrats have joined Republicans in promoting such a policy change at a time of rising tension on campuses over anti-Semitism as well as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions or B.D.S. movement against Israel."

Oh, and the executive order "stemmed from an effort spearheaded by Jared Kushner, [Trump's] son-in-law and senior adviser, who is the Jewish grandson of Holocaust survivors." Wait, so Holocaust survivors are also Hitler?

Buried in the Times report is the acknowledgment that if Trump wanted to protect Jews facing anti-Semitic harassment on college campuses, he would have to do something like this.

The order to be signed by Mr. Trump would empower the Education Department to go further. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the department can withhold funding from any college or educational program that discriminates “on the ground of race, color, or national origin.” Religion was not included among the protected categories, so Mr. Trump’s order will declare that Judaism may be considered a national origin.
In other words, this is a move to be celebrated, not condemned. Some have criticized the executive order because it may adopt too broad a definition of anti-Semitism, including statements attacking Israel as a racist state. Many liberal American Jews actually harshly criticize the State of Israel on those grounds, and they have the free speech to do so. Yet these very talking points arguably inspire anti-Semitic harassment at the hands of the BDS movement.

Americans can and should have policy debates about the best way to protect Jews on college campuses without stifling free speech. It is utterly absurd, however, to draw any connection to Trump's effort to protect Jews and the efforts of Adolf Hitler to exterminate them. Such statements are beyond the pale.

SOURCE 





Australian Press Council all in a twist over how to refer to sexual deviants and their bodily parts

Jennifer Oriel

Australia is sleepwalking into a state of political censorship. While major media organisations have united to defend the free press against government interference, the chilling effect of political correctness does not prompt such unified action.

Yet state-designated minority groups frequently target journalists who dissent from PC ideology. The Australian Press Council should make the unfettered pursuit of truth its core business. But it has handed down guidelines ­advising journalists how to write on sexual politics, including queer and transgender issues.

The APC guideline for reporting on people “with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics” is derived from the particular school of thought known as queer theory.

Queer politics is not the same as gay liberation or lesbian feminism. The notion that queer activists speak for a “community” of people who are homosexual, ­bisexual, transgender or intersex is a myth. Rather, lesbian feminists and high-profile gay liberals have opposed the radical queer fringe since it emerged.

Former professor of political science Sheila Jeffreys explained the basic difference between the schools of thought: “Sexual liberals are those who subscribe to the 1960s agenda of sexual tolerance, to the idea that sex is necessarily good and positive, and that censorship is a bad thing. Sexual libertarians … advocate the ‘outer fringes’ of sexuality, such as sadomasochism, with the belief that ‘sexual minorities’ are at the ­forefront of creating the sexual revolution.”

Queer activism arose from sexual libertarians who believed sexual minorities were the true revolutionaries. The more that a practice or behaviour deviated from the mainstream, the more queers celebrated it.

Under the banner of queer even pedophilia was regarded as defensible because it was considered ­immoral by the society. Yet ­heterosexuality and standard ­expressions of gender were rejected because they formed the basis of the traditional family — an ­object of radical queer contempt.

The new morality celebrated whatever was restrained by law and/or shunned by the majority. Queer was — and remains — the most reactionary movement in left-wing sexual politics.

The revolutionary aspect of queer politics attracts people ­inclined to fundamentalist thought. Many are deeply intolerant of tolerance and treat dissent as a grave offence rather than the cornerstone of democratic society.

The onus is placed on dissenters not to offend, rather than queer activists learning how to handle different opinions.

The APC has fallen afoul of reason by promoting queer ideology as good journalistic practice. Its stated aim is “to assist journalists and publications to improve standards of reporting so as not to ­exacerbate … particular concerns faced by (LGBTQI) persons”.

The APC does not explain how the pursuit and revelation of truth is assisted by its advice. Perhaps because truth has relatively little to do with it. It is more about politics and the suppression of unfashionable truths. The published advice extends from a list of language rules to advising journalists how to avoid giving offence while interacting with interview subjects. In the recommended literature, there is even advice on what might be called PC grammar.

My favourite is the guide where journalists are instructed to ask “what is your pronoun” and discouraged from assuming it ­because, “misgendering can have negative consequences for a person’s mental health”. Compelling journalists to lie about biological fact to appease PC activists makes them a party to deception.

It is hardly conducive to a journalist’s psychological wellbeing. Yet the APC’s list of recommended guidelines includes gender ­diversity literature that suggests physical organs should not be ­labelled male or female because it can lead to discrimination.

Questioned by The Australian, the APC was at pains to stress the guidelines were not mandatory. It is cold comfort. Those of us too old to be naive know that radical activists are content with conventional debate until they begin to lose. Then they compel dissenters to comply. In the final act, they ­enforce.

The APC guidelines on sexual diversity are an invitation to lie where the lie is considered noble and the truth cruel. But a journalist cannot change the biological fact of birth sex and should not feel compelled to do so.

Artists who endure life in totalitarian regimes have spoken of how parallel institutions and realities are created to suppress unfashionable truths. Ran Yufei, a Chinese public intellectual who was imprisoned for exercising freedom of speech, described the need to ­refuse becoming complicit with such lies.

In The New York Review of Books, he said: “You have to learn how to argue. Too few public intellectuals in China have learned how to argue logically … the (Chinese Communist Party) created a parallel language system (of ­untruth) that is on an equal basis with the language of truth.”

Political censorship is the refuge of cowards. The censor is unable to mount a compelling ­argument and unwilling to compete fairly in the contest of ideas. Freedom of thought leads naturally to the free expression of speech in the spoken and written word. Their suppression is ­obtained in reverse motion; the censor introduces a penalty for words he dislikes because they ­embody ideas that challenge him.

By attacking the words or ­images, he attacks dissenting thought. If the assault is suffici­ently punitive, the message is clear: use that word and you will suffer. As the words change, so too do the ideas that precede them. They lose clarity, sharpness and direction. If a certain word is not permitted, the idea has nowhere to go. The frustration of knowing truth that cannot be expressed makes the pursuit and revelation of knowledge unappealing.

When faced with the risks of telling the truth in a state of political censorship, writers and artists often retreat. They adapt to the new order where truth is partial or, in radical times, completely ­reversed. In a state of political censorship, liars control the truth and make truth a lie.

The APC guideline should be rejected for what it is; an exercise in PC sophistry that renders truth subordinate to fallacy. I will not submit.

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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