Queer judge blames Christians for spreading AIDS!

How offensive and perverse! Article below by Michael Kirby, a retired Australian High Court judge who is openly homosexual. Christians are like Apartheid practitioners according to His Honour.

Instead of blaming Christians, might it not be a more productive strategy in the fight against AIDS to dissuade homosexual penises from entering homosexual anuses?

In 2010 Bishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town, South Africa declared that the time had come, particularly for Africans, to stop the “wave of hate” and to stand up “against wrong”.

He was referring to the wrong to “gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people” who are “part of the African family” and who “are living in fear.”

This news from Africa would be bad enough. But the same fear extends far beyond that continent. And in the struggle against HIV/AIDS, which has afflicted humanity since the 1980s, the vulnerable are not only gays but also sex workers, injecting drug users (IDUs) and women.

This fear exists in many countries where, despite the knowledge that science now affords us about human sexuality, irrational hatred of sexual minorities and sexual activities is encouraged and even sometimes promoted by religious leaders, in supposed reliance upon their understandings of religious texts.

They rely on their imperfect understanding of what was written in ancient books long before Dr. Alfred Kinsey, American biologist and founder of the Institute of Sex Research, demonstrated the realities of human sexual experience, the frequency and variety of its manifestations, and the dangers and injustice of punishing people for adult, private, consensual sexual conduct. [Relying on the perverted Kinsey and his discredited "research" shows the intellectual shallowness of Judge Kirby]

Most religious people are good and kind. Love for one another exists as a basic tenet in all religions and all cultures. I have myself been brought up in religious faith. I honour brothers and sisters in all religions who are struggling to make a charitable, informed and unbiased contribution to the global struggle against HIV/AIDS.

However, officially the Roman Catholic and Greek and Orthodox Christian churches are still in serious denial about the scientific evidence available about human sexuality. As they have often been in denial about science and its teachings in the past.

Just as they originally denied the opinions of Galileo and Copernicus that the earth circled the sun. And as they, and the Anglican Church, originally denied Darwin’s thesis of evolution of the species, expounded 150 years ago.

Clutching onto imperfect understandings of ancient scripture, leaders of most of the spiritual faiths, instead of re-examining their holy texts by reference to science (as they did in other instances in the past), have adopted a new, irrational approach.

In other parts of the world, the hate may not always be so intense. But the stigma over sexual conduct that is often taught by religious people cannot be accepted any longer. It is now a major cause of death in the AIDS epidemic.

It has to stop. Not only because it is immoral, conflicted, irrational and wrong. But also because it is now seriously impeding the global struggle against HIV and AIDS for the saving of lives. The magnitude of the suffering demands blunt speaking at this time.

As Bishop Tutu has said: “All of us, especially Africans, need access to essential HIV services…Show me where Christ said ‘Love thy fellow man, except for the gay ones’. Gay people too are made in my God’s image. I would never worship a homophobic God.

Rightly, Bishop Tutu has drawn a parallel between the earlier, successful, global struggle against racial apartheid and the present global struggle against sexual apartheid. To the moral struggle against sexual apartheid must now be added the urgent needs of the struggle against HIV and AIDS.

More HERE





Britain returning to its old measurements

About time too. You don't make decimal point mistakes with Imperial measurements

Strawberries will be sold by the pound on supermarket shelves again today as the clock is turned back for shoppers who prefer old-style weights. Asda is to sell 1lb punnets of strawberries for the first time in 16 years to gauge shopper demand ahead of a potential roll-out of imperial measurements to other fruit and vegetables. The punnets will display both imperial and metric weight labels.

The move follows consumer research which found that 70 per cent of the supermarket’s shoppers were confused by metric and would prefer products to be labelled in pounds.

Around 20 per cent said they took longer to shop because they spent time translating metric into imperial.

‘No one wants to order a litre of beer in the pub, so why do we have to buy 453.39g of strawberries?’ Asda strawberry buyer Andy Jackson told trade magazine The Grocer.

Consumers had the right to see both types of measurement on their groceries, according to John Gardner, director at the British Weights and Measures Association. All packs have to display metric weights, but imperial can be used as a ‘supplementary indication’, since an EU law change in 2007.

Asda said it may extend pounds and ounces to other fruit and vegetable if the trial was successful.

SOURCE




The Left ignores the truly oppressed

By Barry Cohen (Barry is a former member of an Australian Labor Party government and one of my favourite people)

FREEDOM is not something that occupies the minds of most Australians for they have always had it. It has, however, gained a new lease of life in the Middle East where only one of the 18 countries in the region has ever experienced freedom. This must come as a shock to the motley collection of left-wing academics, students, trade unionists, journalists and the idiot brigade that controls Sydney's Marrickville council.

One institution that was not surprised was a body formed in New York in 1941 to fight Nazism, fascism, communism and totalitarianism in all its forms - Freedom House. From its birth, Freedom House illustrated its independence by having as its co-founders Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband's Republican opponent in the 1940 presidential election, Wendell Willkie.

It has continued to devote its resources to monitoring and measuring political rights and civil liberties on a global basis. Factors taken into account are free and fair elections, freedom of association, freedom from domination by the military, foreign powers, religious hierarchies, freedom of speech, free trade unions, the rule of law and the basic human rights that democracies throughout the world take for granted.

In 1973, Freedom House began its annual survey that rates every country according to a series of freedom indicators. The survey has a seven-point scale for both political rights and civil liberties with one being the best and seven the worst. The average determines the overall status with the free scoring 1 to 2.5, the partly free 3 to 5.0 and those countries who are not free scoring 5.5 to 7.0.

The organisation's most recent report Freedom In The World, 2011 - The Authoritarian Challenge To Democracy, was scathing in its comments on the backward movement in China (the appalling treatment of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo); Egypt (Hosni Mubarak's 95 per cent vote in his last election); Belarus (Alexander Lukashenko's 80 per cent vote in its election); Venezuela (pretty well everything); Russia (corruption, arrest and murder of journalists, activists and those opposing the government and the sentencing of regime critic and former oil magnate Mikhail Khordorovsky).

The regional pattern of freedom makes for interesting reading. In the Americas 24 (69 per cent) are free, 10 (29 per cent) are partly free and one (3 per cent) is not free. In Western Europe 24 (96 per cent) are free, one (4 per cent) is partly free and none is not free.

In the Asia-Pacific 16 (41 per cent) countries are free, 15 (38 per cent) are partly free, and eight (21 per cent) are not free. In Central and East Europe/former Soviet Union 13 (45 per cent) countries are free, nine (31 per cent) partly free and seven (24 per cent) are not free.

In the Middle East and north Africa only one (6 per cent) country is free, three (17 per cent) are partly free and 14 (78 per cent) are not free. In sub-Saharan Africa nine (19 per cent) countries are free, 22 (46 per cent) are partly free and 17 (35 per cent) are not free.

The figures illustrate that freedom is very strong in the Americas and western Europe, where only one country is classified as not free, in contrast with the tyranny that reigns throughout the Middle East where only one country is considered free - Israel. Sub-Saharan Africa with 17 countries out of 48 that are not free is better, but only just.

The terms used to describe the three categories are a little insipid. They don't come close to describing the appalling oppression that rules most Middle Eastern and sub-Saharan countries where elections are rigged, dissidents are persecuted, jailed, tortured and often executed. The executive, without the rule of law, has total control of its citizens resulting in regimes where women are treated as 10th-rate citizens, homosexuals and adulterers are often executed and corruption is rife. Westerners find it impossible to imagine what life is like in such brutal regimes.

What is bizarre is that the United Nations not only ignores the absence of basic human rights in these countries but has devoted more than half of its condemnatory resolutions (more than 400) to one country - Israel.

Forty seven out of 194 rated not free is bad enough but it gets worse. Freedom House now has two "unofficial" sub-categories: the worst of the worst - Belarus, Chad, China, the Ivory Coast, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, South Ossetia, Syria and Western Sahara - and the worst of the worst of the worst - North Korea, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Libya, Sudan, Burma, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Somalia and Tibet (under Chinese jurisdiction). These are vile, thuggish regimes who brutally oppress their own people with but one goal - to stay in power. They don't tolerate genuine elections for if they did they would be out on their ear. Those who have defended or ignored this thuggery are now doing the greatest volte face in history as one country after the other in the Middle East rebels against dictatorships.

Which begs the question. Why did they remain silent all those years? How did the "geniuses" in our universities, the media, trade unions and politics get conned by the propaganda of the Palestinians and their Arab cohorts? Was it stupidity, ideology and bribery or just the latest fad of the cafe latte set who searched to find something to replace their love affair with the Soviet Union and its satraps when they collapsed in 1989? Many gravitated towards the Greens as another means of attacking capitalism.

How could those who claim to be committed to propagating basic human rights close their eyes to the denial of them in 47 countries and concentrate their efforts on the one country where such rights exist? Their hypocrisy is breathtaking. If they were serious about alleviating the plight of the oppressed they would have been equally loud in their condemnation of the 47 countries that are not free.

Those involved in the boycott, divestment and sanctions of Israel will tell you that the dispute is different and complex. It is nothing of the sort. The day the Arab/Muslim countries accept Israel's right to exist and end their oft-repeated goal of destroying Israel will be the day when there is genuine peace in the Middle East.

To pretend the proposals being put forward by the Palestinians and their supporters are a peaceful solution is ignorance, stupidity or blatant anti-semitism. Solve that problem and they can then turn their attention to the 47 countries that have no basic human rights.

SOURCE





Sexist French politicians 'in trouble' over treatment of women

France's male politicians are becoming increasingly anxious about their futures after one female minister warned half of the country's male MPs were potentially "in trouble" due to their treatment of women.

Still reeling from the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former International Monetary Fund chief, on sexual assault charges, France's political class was struck by a fresh sex scandal on Sunday with the resignation of Georges Tron, the public works minister accused of molesting two former female staff members.

The massage enthusiast's "foot fetish", which two ex-town hall employees in their thirties claim morphed into full-blown abuse, has sparked a backlash from France's embattled female politicians. They are calling for an end to the "French exception" of "everyday machismo" among male peers often bordering on harassment.

"I think that there are a lot of (male politicians) who must be a touch stressed right now," warned Rachida Dati, the former justice minister and fallen star of President Nicolas Sarkozy's cabinet whose love of designer clothes received as much coverage as her policies in France.

Miss Dati was herself the butt of countless sexist jokes after using the word "fellatio" instead of "inflation" in a recent interview. She ruffled male reactionaries by refusing to name the father of her child and returning to work just five days after giving birth.

"Many will be looking at their shoes and saying to themselves: 'I hope to goodness we can move on to something else,'" the euro MP and mayor of Paris' 7th arrondissement said.

Sexism in France's National Assembly has got so bad that Chantal Jouanno, the sports minister and a former French Karate champion, said she can no longer turn up to parliament in a skirt without a volley of cat calls.

One female cabinet minister said that male politicians were so incorrigible that "if all those who mix power and sex had to account for their actions, half of our (male) politicians would be in trouble".

A Socialist woman MP said that when she turned up in tight-fitting clothes to a parliamentary commission, a male MP from Mr Sarkozy's UMP party exclaimed: "Dressed like that, don't be surprised if you get raped." "A kind of infantilisation of women reigns in parliament that I had never seen before," said Sandrine Mazetier, Socialist MP for Paris."

The trigger for the backlash was the arrest of Mr Strauss-Kahn, a former French presidential hopeful, who faces charges of sexually assaulting and attempting to rape a New York chambermaid.

"This scandal will do more for feminism than all the articles of law," predicted Chantal Brunel, who leads France's gender parity watchdog.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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