Thursday, August 05, 2021



The left only cares about ‘right-wing’ crimes

Appalling offences are ignored when the perpetrators don’t come from a pantheon of villains

The report that has just been published on sexual abuse in children’s homes in the London borough of Lambeth is horrific. From the 1960s into the 1990s more than 700 vulnerable children in the council’s care — a disproportionate number of whom were from ethnic minorities — were raped or sexually abused while council staff and politicians looked the other way or covered up these crimes.

The report, by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, says that these children became “pawns in a toxic power game” both internally and between the council and central government, particularly during the 1980s, when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister.

The council treated the vulnerable children in its care “as if they were worthless” and showed “callous disregard” by putting them in the path of sex offenders who infiltrated those care homes.

Like other inner city councils, hard-left Lambeth was a “rotten borough” where control by the Labour Party was axiomatic, along with this adversarial political mindset against the Tories. Lambeth may have been extreme but this mindset persists today among the vast majority of those who are in the left-wing camp, including many who would be considered moderates. Such leftwingers claim to be on the side of the oppressed against their oppressors, and to champion victims against their victimisers.

That is demonstrably untrue. They define their moral and political worth not by the welfare of the people they so loudly claim to champion but instead by the people they are against.

The interests of victims are routinely ignored if those victimising them don’t belong to the left-wing pantheon of villains: white people, capitalists, conservatives, American Republicans, Israelis.

We see the evidence of this over and over again. It has been on particularly egregious display over race. Black boys are being knifed to death in shocking numbers by other black boys. Yet the killing of black people provokes left-wing outrage only when the perpetrators are white.

So after the death of George Floyd under the knee of an American police officer, the campaign demonising white society as systemically racist was supported to the hilt, while the mounting death toll of black-on-black killings was received in virtual silence.

Back in the 1980s the overwhelmingly left-wing education establishment decided it was racist to teach ethnic minority children British history, classic English texts and Standard English. Many black parents, understanding very well that this was the surest way to keep their children permanently disempowered in British society, were bitterly opposed. They were contemptuously brushed aside.

Meanwhile the white working-class, the left’s historic core constituency of the dispossessed, also became their victims. This was because they taught white working-class children to despise their ethnic identity as worthless and bigoted.

Not surprisingly, culturally dispossessed white working-class boys are now underperforming boys of all other ethnicities in school. But from the left comes not a peep of concern. For them, victims are always from ethnic minorities; victimisers are always white.

This mindset also explains why the appalling child abuse in Rotherham and other towns, in which thousands of very young white girls were abused by rape and pimping gangs mostly composed of Pakistani-heritage Muslim men, was ignored for more than two decades.

It’s the same story with victims abroad. The Palestinian Authority routinely jails and tortures dissidents and journalists. In June there were unprecedented and viciously suppressed Palestinian protests after the anti-corruption activist Nizar Banat was killed in custody, with his family claiming that Palestinian security officers beat him to death with metal clubs and rifle butts.

In Ethiopia’s Tigray region, tens of thousands of people are unaccounted for following a savage campaign of ethnic cleansing and massacres. In Iran, dissidents are jailed, tortured, flogged and murdered while gay people are hanged from cranes. In Nigeria, nearly 3,500 Christians have been murdered by jihadists this year, already topping last year’s toll of atrocities, and hundreds of Christians have also been abducted from schools and villages.

Yet there are no mass demonstrations or acres of impassioned polemic in support of these Palestinian, Ethiopian, Iranian or Nigerian victims of murderous tyranny. Their suffering is ignored by the West’s “progressive” classes because the perpetrators aren’t white westerners. They are people who therefore don’t fit the left-wing definition of repression.

This is part of a circular argument, which goes like this. The left calls anyone opposed to its agenda “right-wing”. The only people capable of bad stuff are people whom the left opposes, who are therefore “right-wing”. “Right-wing” is an incoherent and vacuous term . It’s not a description but a term of abuse that the left uses both to shut down debate and to define itself as virtuous simply by opposing such people.

This Manichaean mindset creates cartoon monsters, such as Thatcher, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage. And the more monstrous the image of them that’s created, the more virtuous the left signals itself to be.

Many leftwingers therefore don’t do compassion at all. What they do instead is sectarian hatred. They actually define their political and moral identity by the people they portray as monsters. They are themselves the quintessence of loathing.

Which is one reason why we now have the politics of Salem, while true victims — both children and adults — go to the wall.

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Gospel Mission attacked

Far too often today, faith-based ministries must defend their fundamental rights in court—and sometimes the very essence of their missions—rather than focusing on serving the vulnerable.

That’s what has happened to Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission.

Yesterday, we told you that ADF attorneys and co-counsel on behalf of the Mission have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up its case.

Why? The Washington Supreme Court tried to punish the Mission when the ministry declined to hire a lawyer for its legal aid clinic who does not share the Mission's religious beliefs.

The Mission’s faith is integral to everything it does. It exists to “bring the love of Jesus and hope for a new life” to Seattle’s homeless population.

But the lawyer refused to follow the code of conduct, was not active in a local church, and said he hoped to change the Mission’s religious beliefs.

This decision by the Washington Supreme Court violates the Mission’s religious liberty guaranteed by the First Amendment.

The Mission shouldn’t have to go all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to ensure that it can serve the vulnerable. The ministry does so much for the city’s homeless.

The Mission’s roots go back to the Great Depression, when it opened as a soup kitchen. Today, the Mission provides food, shelter, addiction-recovery programs, job placement, and legal services. It has roughly 20 ministries under its umbrella!

The Mission changes lives for the better. But that’s apparently not enough for the Washington Supreme Court.

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Bye bye bacon? Pork products could DISAPPEAR in California as new law requiring more space to breed pigs takes effect

A California law taking effect next year could make pork challenging to find and more expensive to purchase.

Beginning January 1, California will enforce the Farm Animal Confinement Proposition (Prop 12) which was approved by voters in 2018 and requires more space for breeding pigs, egg-laying chickens and veal calves.

Unless the courts intervene or the state temporarily allows non-compliant meat to be sold in the state, California will lose almost all of its pork supply, much of which comes from Iowa, and pork producers will face higher costs to regain a key market.

National veal and egg producers are optimistic they can meet the new standards, but only four percent of hog operations now comply with the new rules.

Animal welfare organizations for years have been pushing for more humane treatment of farm animals but the California rules could be a rare case of consumers clearly paying a price for their beliefs.

With little time left to build new facilities, inseminate sows and process the offspring by January, it´s hard to see how the pork industry can adequately supply California, which consumes roughly 15 percent of all pork produced in the country.

Thanks to a reworked menu and long hours, Jeannie Kim managed to keep her San Francisco restaurant alive during the coronavirus pandemic.

That makes it all the more frustrating that she fears her breakfast-focused diner could be ruined within months by new rules that could make one of her top menu items - bacon - hard to get in California.

'Our number one seller is bacon, eggs and hash browns,' said Kim, who for 15 years has run SAMS American Eatery on the city's busy Market Street. 'It could be devastating for us.'

California's restaurants and groceries use about 255 million pounds of pork a month, but its farms produce only 45 million pounds, according to Rabobank, a global food and agriculture financial services company.

'We are very concerned about the potential supply impacts and therefore cost increases,' said Matt Sutton, the public policy director for the California Restaurant Association.

The National Pork Producers Council has asked the US Department of Agriculture for federal aid to help pay for retrofitting hog facilities around the nation to fill the gap.

Hog farmers said they haven't complied because of the cost and because California hasn't yet issued formal regulations on how the new standards will be administered and enforced.

Barry Goodwin, an economist at North Carolina State University, estimated the extra costs at 15 percent more per animal for a farm with 1,000 breeding pigs.

If half the pork supply was suddenly lost in California, bacon prices would jump 60 percent, meaning a $6 package would rise to about $9.60, according to a study by the Hatamiya Group, a consulting firm hired by opponents of the state proposition.

At one typical hog farm in Iowa, sows are kept in open-air crates measuring 14-square-feet when they join a herd and then for a week as part of the insemination process before moving to larger, roughly 20-square foot group pens with other hogs.

Both are less than the 24 square feet required by the California law to give breeding pigs enough room to turn around and to extend their limbs. Other operations keep sows in the crates nearly all of the time so also wouldn't be in compliance.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture said that although the detailed regulations aren't finished, the key rules about space have been known for years.

'It is important to note that the law itself cannot be changed by regulations and the law has been in place since the Farm Animal Confinement Proposition (Prop 12) passed by a wide margin in 2018,' the agency said in response to questions from the AP.

The pork industry has filed lawsuits but so far courts have supported the California law. The National Pork Producers Council and a coalition of California restaurants and business groups have asked Gov. Gavin Newsom to delay the new requirements.

The council also is holding out hope that meat already in the supply chain could be sold, potentially delaying shortages.

Josh Balk, who leads farm animal protection efforts at the Humane Society of the United States, said the pork industry should accept the overwhelming view of Californians who want animals treated more humanely.

'Why are pork producers constantly trying to overturn laws relating to cruelty to animals?' Balk asked. 'It says something about the pork industry when it seems its business operandi is to lose at the ballot when they try to defend the practices and then when animal cruelty laws are passed, to try to overturn them.'

In Iowa, which raises about one-third of the nation's hogs, farmer Dwight Mogler estimates the changes would cost him $3million and allow room for 250 pigs in a space that now holds 300.

To afford the expense, Mogler said, he´d need to earn an extra $20 per pig and so far, processors are offering far less.

'The question to us is, if we do these changes, what is the next change going to be in the rules two years, three years, five years ahead?' Mogler asked.

The California rules also create a challenge for slaughterhouses, which now may send different cuts of a single hog to locations around the nation and to other countries.

Processors will need to design new systems to track California-compliant hogs and separate those premium cuts from standard pork that can serve the rest of the country.

At least initially, analysts predict that even as California pork prices soar, customers elsewhere in the country will see little difference.

Eventually, California´s new rules could become a national standard because processors can't afford to ignore the market in such a large state.

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Missouri Governor Pardons the McCloskeys

Missouri Gov. Mike Parsons has followed through on a pledge he made last July to pardon Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the St. Louis couple who brandished firearms at BLM activists who stormed through their gated community and threatened them.

In June, the attorneys pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges, paid fines, and gave up their weapons, though Mark purchased a new firearm shortly afterwards.

Mark McCloskey proudly embraced the charge after the prosecutor “dropped all the felony charges, all the gun charges, and charged me with a crime that said I purposely placed other people in apprehension of imminent fear of physical injury.”

“And, by God, I did it,” McCloskey said. “That’s what the Second Amendment was there for … and I couldn’t say no to that one.”

Parson issued pardons the following month, on July 30, though they were only announced this week, according to Fox 2 News.

“As many of you know, Patty and I faced political prosecution for having the audacity to defend our lives and property from an angry mob,” Mark said in a statement responding to the pardons. “Today we are incredibly thankful that Governor Mike Parson righted this wrong and granted us pardons. It was actually Governor Parson who, while serving as a State Senator, led the charge to pass the Castle Doctrine—guaranteeing Missourians the right to defend themselves with all necessary force.”

Mark, who is now running for a U.S. Senate seat, said he “appreciated” the governor’s efforts and noted that they wish to work with him and state legislators on strengthening the Castle Doctrine.

“[W]e recognize there is still work to be done. In our case, the Circuit Attorney raided our home a year ago and seized the guns we used to protect ourselves. We are calling on the General Assembly to protect Missourians’ constitutional rights and pass Legislation fixing this broken piece of law.”

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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