Friday, June 19, 2020



Boris Johnson scraps plan to make gender change easier

Plans to allow people to change their legal gender and “self-identify” as a different sex have been scrapped in a move that will fuel the culture war gripping Britain.

Ministers have scrapped plans developed under Theresa May’s government to allow transgender people to change their birth certificates without a medical diagnosis.

Instead they plan to announce a ban on “gay-cure” therapies in an attempt to placate LGBT people. New protections will be offered to safeguard female-only spaces, including refuges and public lavatories, to stop them being used by those with male anatomy.

A paper on the government’s plans is “basically ready” and is pencilled in for publication at the end of July before MPs go on their summer break.

Equalities Minister Liz Truss will publish the details in an official response to a public consultation on the Gender Rec­og­nition Act. That has been in the long grass since October 2018 amid controversy about the measures.

Under the leaked plans, proposals for people to self-identify their gender will be abandoned and those wanting to change their birth certificate will still need medical approval. At present, that means two doctors have to sign off a gender change.

And there will be a crackdown on “quack” doctors to ensure that only reputable medics can give approvals

New national guidelines on lavatory provision are likely to be introduced, replacing the “free-for-all” in which councils set their own rules, which has seen a rise in gender-neutral lavatories

A ban on “gay-cure” therapies that are run by some church groups and therapists will be announced on the same day.

Ms Truss has joined forces with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s team to ensure the document is more in line with public opinion. Polls suggest voters are sympathetic to trans rights but do not support transgender women with male anatomy accessing female-only facilities such as prisons and changing rooms. Sources say Mr Johnson’s aides came close to announcing the change during the December election campaign and again before the coronavirus struck.

More than 100,000 responses were received to the consultation. Insiders say about 70 per cent of those backed the idea that anyone should be able to declare that they are a woman or a man. However, officials believe the results were skewed by an avalanche of responses generated by trans rights groups.

The move will be a challenge for Labour leader Keir Starmer, whose party is deeply divided on the issue. In the leadership contest, Sir Keir was the only candidate not to sign a pledge that branded feminists “transphobic” and said the party should “fight against” them. He signed a less contentious list of pledges that included a commitment to “introduce a self-declaration process”.

Under current rules, those wanting to change their gender pay £140 and apply to a panel for a gender recognition certificate. They have to produce two medical reports that they have suffered from gender dysphoria — usually from their GP and one other registered medical practitioner or psychologist.

Applicants are also required to show they have lived in their chosen gender identity for two years and intend to do so for the rest of their lives. The procedure is condemned by trans rights campaigners as dehumanising, bureaucratic and expensive. But the new proposals are likely to be supported by feminist groups, who argue that trans rights infringe women’s rights.

Ms Truss has already strengthened advice on medical procedures for under-18s which have irreversible effects on their fertility. “She’s made it more difficult for people to get that treatment easily,” a source said. “It has to go through much greater sign-off.”

No 10 declined to comment but a government source did not dispute the leak: “The report is not yet finalised and the Prime Minister will have the final say on the recommendations.”

SOURCE 






Despite praise, ‘community policing’ in Boston does not work for everyone, experts say

The approach has long been praised by police in Boston and elsewhere as evidence of a commitment to excellence

For years, city leaders and police commissioners have described it as the guiding principle of Boston’s approach to law enforcement — a seemingly simple two-word catch phrase that describes a progressive new approach: community policing.

As he announced an independent review of the Boston Police Department’s use-of-force guidelines last week, Mayor Martin J. Walsh once again touted the city’s community policing model, rattling off programs with names like “Coffee with a Cop” and “Shop with a Cop.”

But as calls for police reform have reverberated across the nation in recent weeks, the once-innovative buzzword has come under growing criticism.

Some deride it as a gimmick, or little more than a bumper-sticker slogan. Experts say that evidence of its effectiveness remains ambiguous. And as dozens of recent protests throughout the city have shown, the current system — despite the praise of city officials — is not working for everyone.

“On the surface, it sounds really good," said Fatema Ahmad, head of the Muslim Justice League, one of the groups seeking a 10 percent cut to the Boston Police Department’s budget. "If your assumption is policing is helpful, it seems like a good idea to have officers interacting with the community.

"But understand that at the core of policing, you expect people need to be punished, be incarcerated.”

In neighborhoods where the relationship with police has been historically fraught, for instance, some argue that strategies aimed at building community-police partnerships can have the opposite effect.

Some argue, too, that the very premise of the strategy — that an additional police presence is a good thing — is false.

“I think a lot of community policing efforts have led to more surveillance, this broken-window philosophy of small behaviors, and really just controlling people’s behavior — and Black and brown people, in particular,” said Dara Bayer, an organizer in Boston who works with young people on transformative justice, a nonpunitive framework that seeks to respond to and prevent harm through community relationships and practices.

“There are countless other ways to address harm that don’t include people with guns patrolling a neighborhood.”

In an interview last week, police Commissioner William Gross defended the concept of community policing, calling it the fabric of police work in Boston going back decades, to when he was a teenager on Dorchester’s streets and encountered mentoring police officers himself.

In Boston, he said, community policing is a philosophy and can range from officers partnering with mental health workers to help at-risk youth, to assisting those with substance abuse problems along Melnea Cass Boulevard, to having officers hand out masks during a pandemic.

The underlying goals, he said, are to prevent crime and assist residents.

“Community policing isn’t about ice cream trucks and basketball games," said Gross, who acknowledges that the term itself has become a sort of cliche. “These are hard-hitting civic programs and responsibilities. It’s about being responsible to the people you serve.”

The concept of community policing can be traced back to the 1960s and ’70s, said Stephen Mastrofski, a professor emeritus in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University. Then, like now, there existed issues with government legitimacy, and those concerns extended to the police.

In Boston, perhaps the most high-profile example was the so-called “Boston Miracle,” when police teamed with local clergy to address soaring youth violence in the early 1990s. Homicides, which had skyrocketed during the height of the violence, dipped sharply, and in the aftermath, Boston was held up as an example to other departments across the country of the good that could come when police worked in concert with the residents they served.

The effects of that effort, said the Rev. Jeffrey Brown of the Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, can still be felt today.

“I know that the original players have all gone on to do other things, but I would say the legacy of what we started in Boston still persists,” said Brown, formerly of the Ten Point Coalition, the collection of ministers and community groups that worked with police officers in the ’90s to quell violence. "And the reason why I say this is because we’ve got community policing as an intention. It’s not a branch of the Police Department — it’s what the police department does.”

But without a concrete definition, police departments elsewhere have been left to enact their own brand of community policing, leading to versions that can vary significantly from department to department — even within different jurisdictions of the same department.

While some departments fully embraced the philosophy, experts say there are plenty more that went half-in — and more still that used it as a kind of bumper-sticker slogan while making no real effort to carry out the necessary work.

“It’s not a checklist,” says Wesley G. Skogan, professor at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. “It’s not a one-pager with some boxes, and if you [check] nine out of the 15 you’re doing community policing. Lots of police chiefs would like it much more if that was the case.”

Some of this has been the result of external factors: Police being increasingly relied upon to deal with issues, including mental health disturbances, not historically in their purview; a focus on antiterror policing after 9/11; and more recently, a federal anti-immigration push has often pulled local departments into the effort, taking time and resources away from other initiatives.

But there have been more insidious issues, too.

Though officer support for community policing appears to have grown in recent years — a 2014-15 national survey found that 73 percent of officers surveyed indicated some or strong support for community policing — convincing rank-and-file officers to adopt and support this type of policing has historically been a challenge, says Tammy Rinehart Kochel, professor of criminology and criminal justice at Southern Illinois University.

“One of the biggest — if not the biggest — hindrances to fully adopting aspects of community policing, is the police subculture,” said Kochel. “'We’re the heroes, we’re the white knights, we’re going to protect you and save you, and . . . being macho and in control of the situation’ — all of that goes counter to a lot of the ideas behind community policing.”

Quantifying the effectiveness of the strategy, meanwhile, has been difficult.

While a 2012 study from the Journal of Experimental Criminology found that community-oriented policing strategies had positive effects on citizen satisfaction and perceptions of police legitimacy, researchers also wrote that "our findings overall are ambiguous. The challenges we faced in conducting this review highlight a need for further research and theory development around community policing.”

And though there’s more evidence today than there was then, says Mastrofski, "there’s still a lot of gaps in our knowledge.”

But even when carried out optimally, some argue, there are limits to what the approach can accomplish.

“A lot of people have called for more community policing, which can include anything from putting in more community liaisons to handing out free ice cream during the summer,” said Boston city Councilor Julia Mejia, one of the first to call for the redirection of police resources and who recently suggested the city should transfer control of $1.7 million in state grants for gang prevention from police to the Boston Public Health Commission.

“But let’s be honest: While these initiatives might help build relationships, they don’t tackle systemic inequities and they don’t hold our government accountable.”

What’s no longer in question, however, is that trust between police and the communities they serve — one of the benchmarks of community policing — has eroded significantly across the country.

Even as it touts the successes of its efforts, Boston police announced changes recently to its use-of-force policy. Last week, Walsh joined other cities in declaring racism a public health crisis, announcing that $12 million from the police overtime budget would be transferred to social service programming, including $3 million going directly to the Department of Public Health.

SOURCE 






Facebook has removed almost 900 accounts associated with far-right groups promoting hate and violence during anti-racist protests across the US.

What they call "hate" is the issue


Facebook has removed almost 900 accounts associated with the far-right Proud Boys and American Guard, including those of supporters who marched into a protest zone in Seattle and confronted anti-racist demonstrators.

Facebook told Reuters the takedowns of more than 500 Facebook accounts and more than 300 Instagram accounts followed a smaller round of suspensions two weeks ago.

"We initially removed a set of accounts for both organisations on May 30 when we saw that both organisations started posting content tied to the ongoing protests," said a Facebook spokeswoman who asked not to be identified. "We were continuing the work to map out the full network."

Facebook had previously banned the groups for promoting hate, but individual members continued to post images with weapons and urging others to attend protests that followed the Minneapolis killing of George Floyd in police custody.

Facebook is under heightened scrutiny as provocateurs use it to coordinate and recruit. It has also acted to make it harder to find groups in the so-called Boogaloo movement.

Boogaloo adherents believe a new civil war is looming and are often heavily armed. Some ally with right-wing militias and have sought to capitalise on the protests by instigating violence they hope will escalate into a broader conflict.

On Tuesday, two adherents were charged in connection with the murder of a security guard on duty at a federal building during a protest in Oakland.

According to an affidavit supporting the criminal complaint, suspects Steven Carrillo and Robert Alvin Justus Junior belonged to the same unidentified Facebook group and discussed attacking federal authorities on May 28.

SOURCE 

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

Leftmedia Creates Dubious Victim Narratives While Smearing Cops

The "social justice" narrative of "systemic racism" has no room for genuine justice.

Much of the mainstream media and the political class no longer care for nor believe in truth these days, at least not when the truth doesn’t confirm the “social justice” narrative. This reality has been typified by the MSM reporting surrounding the death of Rayshard Brooks, the black man who died while fighting and resisting arrest for a DUI.

For leftist politicians and their Leftmedia cohorts, the only two relevant facts are that he was a black man and he was killed by police. Both facts serve only to confirm their predetermined narrative of the U.S. being a country rife with “systemic racism.”

Yesterday, we concluded that Brooks’s death did not bare almost any resemblance to the unjust death of George Floyd. The two are not the same. But, as predictable as rain in a thunderstorm, the narrative being spun by the Left is that they are essentially the same.

As former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams ridiculously asserted, “Sleeping in a drive-thru must not end in death.” No, but resisting arrest, fighting with cops, taking one of their tasers, attempting to flee, turning and shooting at one of the cops — now that can get you killed.

CBS News ran a story entitled, “Who is Rayshard Brooks, 27-year-old black man killed by Atlanta police?” The article paints a sympathetic picture of Brooks as a doting father whose life was taken by a police officer who has been fired and is under investigation. Brooks may have indeed been a doting father, but he also had a rap sheet that included, among others, charges of cruelty to children. In any case, those details are essentially beside the point when investigating the events that led to his death. So why does the Leftmedia highlight only some of them?

The answer is simple: “social justice.” The neo-Marxist roots from which the social-justice ideology springs intentionally divides the world into two basic groups — the oppressors (the bad guys) and the oppressed or the victims (the good guys). Using this overly simplistic dynamic, everything is categorized into one of these two groups. “White privilege” (oppressor class), “persons of color” (victim class), law enforcement (oppressor class), blacks killed by law enforcement (victim class), and on and on and on.

For the social-justice activists like Black Lives Matter to make headway with their ultimate objective of fundamentally transforming the U.S. into a socialist society, any details or nuances that fail to support the narrative of “systemic racism” are either ignored or excused as “victim blaming.” Even the details of the incident itself fade into the greater milieu of the “cause.”

The truth — that Brooks is the one primarily responsible for the events leading to his own death — is at best denied or at worst used as “evidence” that someone is enjoying “white privilege.” The two officers who responded to the 911 call that day were not out on the war path looking for a black man to gun down; just the opposite, in fact. They put on that uniform to serve their fellow man by enforcing the law. Where is that narrative in the MSM? Where are the stories of police officers risking their lives day in and day out as they work to make our world a better place? Where are the stories of the grueling impact this very difficult job has on them and their families? Instead, these good guys are repeatedly smeared by leftist politicians and the MSM as oppressors and “part of the problem.”

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
`
************************************


No comments: