Tuesday, October 31, 2017






Prominent Conservative Artists Blacklisted Because of Involvement with Alt*Hero Comics Series

Timothy Lim, a talented freelance professional illustrator and cover artist, has been fired from Mount Olympus Comics because he took a job to create the cover for the subversive right-wing comic series Alt★Hero. After Alt★Hero creator Vox Day announced Lim's contribution publicly, Lim received this message from his current employer.

Lim had begun work for Patriotika, Mount Olympus's answer to SJW comics, because he had heard it would be pro-American and the SJWs who have taken over DC Comics and Marvel would hate it. "I found out about Patriotika from friends who had positive things to say about it," Lim said. "I contacted the owner to volunteer my services for his next issue, free of charge, just to support a good cause. He decided to hire me for cover work on another title in the same universe, Valkyrie Saviors."

But the goodwill took a bad turn when it became public that Lim was working with Vox Day. "When he saw the work that I had done for Alt★Hero, he was not enthused. Three days later he messaged me to tell me he would not print the Valkyrie Saviors cover or the Patriotika one which I was going to finalize the following week," said Lim.

Conservatives are mocked in comics circles for claiming there is a blacklist in the industry, but the evidence points to work being withheld from writers and artists deemed too right-wing. Lim feels he is now on that list of unemployable deplorables. "I understand the decision, but it IS a blacklist. And these are things other writers and artists should know before taking on work," he said. Lim feels that an artist's job is to do the work he is hired for. "Recently I did two covers for a Bernie supporter for his book. Considering how political SJW Marvel is, practically every drawing I did for the company merchandise is a depiction of a narrative I disagree with. But I don't live in an echo chamber and I carve out a living by taking on work I am asked to do and I fulfill it to the best of my ability. Some people cannot separate the work from the worker. The artist acts as a de facto 'endorser' of the work," Lim explained.

Asked if Lim had ever been attacked by conservatives for drawing Bernie-themed covers, he laughed. "In seven years, not once has a conservative contacted me to shame me for my work or blacklist me for the clients that I had." Lim's major work includes Star Wars Adventures, Back to the Future, Street Fighter X G.I. Joe, TMNT and much more. He worked for seven years as a merchandising artist with properties that included Marvel, Lucasfilm, Valve, and Nickelodeon.

PJ Media reached out to Vox Day for his opinion of Lim's blacklisting from Mount Olympus. "The fact that a comics publisher, of any political stripe, would refuse to utilize the work of an accomplished illustrator like Timothy Lim simply because he worked with someone else they don't like is absurd, but more importantly, it is proof that they are less interested in producing quality content than they are in pursuing approval from social justice warriors."

Day released Lim's cover work for Alt★Hero to PJ Media saying, "We love Mr. Lim's work. He absolutely nailed the essence of Dynamique's character with the way he shows her sitting there so calmly despite all the devastation behind her."

Lim hasn't let the setback slow him down and has a new book coming out this month called "Thump:The First Bundred Days," a children's book about the election of Donald Trump shown through a tale of a tough-talking bunny. The artwork is fantastic and the book is a funny romp through modern American politics that would appeal to both adults and children. PJ Media was given an exclusive sneak peak and a sample of Lim's Melania and Thump.

The response to his project has been typical leftist screeching and calls for book burning. From an article entitled "Go Away Nazis, No One Wants to Read Your White Supremacist Children's Books," on the blog The Mary Sue:

"Looking through their catalogue, it’s almost tempting to reverse my feelings on book burning. We’ve got  Go the F**k to Jail: An Adult Coloring Book of the Clinton Scandals, The Social Justice Warrior Handbook with a cover pull-quote from Ann Coulter, and my personal favorite from the garbage heap:  Thump: The First Bundred Days, about the “winningest of bunnies” fighting all those “traitors and crooks and old establishment guard / And rabid media watchdogs unchained from their yard!”

The trouble is, Tim Lim is Asian. His response was epic.

Chuck Dixon, the Batman writer most known for co-creating the popular villain Bane and the man Bleeding Cool called "the most prolific comic book writer of all time," has also been attacked for signing on with Alt★Hero. PJ Media spoke to Dixon about it.

"A couple fellow travelers called me out on Facebook when the news came out that I'd be contributing to the Alt★Hero project. They had the echo chamber on their pages with all the usual assumptions and name calling," he said. A quick search on Twitter showed multiple sources calling Dixon a "Nazi."

Dixon's conservative politics have never been a secret. He wrote the graphic novel "Clinton Cash" during the last election, which hammered the Clintons for their dubious money-grabbing schemes. Dixon says the blacklisting began in the early 2000s. "I've experienced a steep drop in assignments since 2000. Primarily from the two largest comics publishers [Marvel and DC Comics]. The reason for this can only be my politics and a change in editorship at those companies," he said.  "Once upon a time, you could have a difference of opinion with an editor-publisher over political matters but still work together," he continued. "I write escapist fiction and never interject any kind of agenda in my work. I kept my politics strictly personal. But the new crop of editors, at both companies, view everything through the lens of politics, and even though I had written thousands of pages and hundreds of comic scripts for both companies I was quickly made persona non-grata and un-hireable."

Dixon has heard disturbing things from his former employers. "The editor-in-chief at one company proudly tells people that I will never work there again as long as he's in charge," he said. "A friend of people high up in both companies suggested that I apologize for my political beliefs in order to get assignments again. That's never going to happen," he promised. "I'm not playing victim here. I've found other outlets for my work and remain prolific, busy and creative."

Dixon has the advantage of having his career take off in the '90s before much of the political correctness took hold. Young artists like Lim are not so fortunate. "If it was like this when I started I would never have gotten started. Comics were all based out of New York then. ALL of my editors were left of center. But as long as I didn't try to put my political beliefs in my work, it was all cordial and cool," he remembered. "I got some of my biggest breaks from editors who despised my conservative views. None of that mattered when it came to making comics [back then]," he said. But it matters now. "Just being good at your job is no longer a guarantee of steady employment. There are lots of extremely talented comics pros who are either unemployed or way underemployed. They're being replaced by minimally talented hacks producing mediocre (to astonishingly amateurish) work loaded with left-wing and gender politics."

Dixon explained why he decided to work with Vox Day. "My decision to join with Vox on this project is because he offered me an interesting opportunity; a return to the kind of escapist superhero fantasy I used to be allowed to create at DC Comics and Marvel Comics. I've long lamented that the major comics publishers have walked away from their core audience over the past two decades," he explained. "They  ran from them by creating ham-handed preach-athons that scold the readers rather than entertain them. And just within the last year, the diversity movement in comics has ratcheted up to chase away even the last of the die-hard fans who were holding on to the hope that one day superhero comics would return to their core appeal as wish-fulfillment fantasies."

SOURCE






Boston: Organizers of free speech rally planned for next month will go ahead despite denial of permit

The organizers of a controversial free speech rally planned for Boston Common next month say they will move forward with the event despite being denied a permit by city officials over concerns it would interfere with a family-friendly 5K road race scheduled for the same day.

“We have a right to peaceably assemble under the 1st amendment of the Constitution and we will exercise that right,” said the group, called Resist Marxism, in a statement sent out Friday about the event planned for Nov. 18.

The group planned the event after an August free speech rally on the Common was overwhelmed by counterprotesters, who accused the organizers of providing a platform for racists. That rally occurred just a week after a deadly rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where white nationalists clashed with counterprotesters, one of whom was killed.

Organizers of the August event in Boston had adamantly denied they were promoting a bigoted message, and Resist Marxism makes the same argument about its planned November gathering. The Resist Marxism website says the organizers of the August rally are a co-sponsor of the November event.

Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh said Saturday that the only reason the November event was denied a permit was because Camp Harbor View, which serves at-risk youth in Boston every summer, had been issued a permit back in March for the same day, to hold a large fund-raiser with a family walk and run on the Common.

The city offered the Resist Marxism group a permit for Nov. 19, instead.

The Boston Parks and Recreation Department,which is in charge of permitting, sent the group a letter denying the permit on Thursday.

The 5k will involve street closures, large tents, moving vehicles and hundreds of families, officials said, which makes another large event incompatible.

“They claim to have a positive message and not be a hateful group,” said Walsh of Resist Marxism. “Well if they are, let’s see if they can move it one day so Camp Harbor View can have the Common without interference.”

But in their press release, Resist Marxism organizers accused the city of dragging its feet on making a decision regarding the permit, and said that they had been forced to make plans without knowing whether it would be granted. By the time they were told the permit would be issued for the 19th rather than the 18th, the release said, flight and hotel arrangements had already been made and it was too late to cancel.

The group did not respond to a request for additional comment Saturday. The Resist Marxism website says the event, called “Rally for the Republic,” will “defend the republic and reclaim free speech in Boston.”

Speakers listed include Kyle Chapman, who gained notoriety this year after a video went viral of him smashing a wooden post over the head of an antifascist protester at a march for President Trump in Berkeley, Calif. Chapman had been scheduled to speak at the August rally in Boston until he pulled out.

Walsh said the city will not stop the rally from going forward on Nov. 18 despite its lack of permit, but organizers will not be able to bring sound amplification.

The Boston Police Department, which is not involved with permitting, will prepare for the rally as it does for any event, whether permitted or not, officials said.

“Our goal is to maintain safety and security for the public while those who may be in attendance at the rally demonstrate for their cause,” said Commissioner William B. Evans in a statement. “We encourage everyone who is gathering on the Common on that day to behave civilly and respectfully, and we remind the public that acts of vandalism, violence, and other illegal activity will not be tolerated.”

SOURCE






Rash Of ‘Knockout’ Attacks Has Some New Yorkers Worried

CBS below omits the very important fact that all the knock out victims are white and all of the attackers are not!

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — There were warnings Friday about a possible upsurge in knockout attacks in which people are sucker punched for no good reason.

Video of one such incident shows a woman being suddenly kicked and then punched by a man. She was knocked out cold on the ground, but rather than help her several people took out phones to take pictures. Nobody called the police.

It happened in Pittsburgh more than a month ago, and something similar happened in Brooklyn on Thursday night.

“As he went to tie up his dogs to confront these kids, the group distracted him from the front and then one came up behind him and hit him in the head,” a witness said.

The witness who asked not to be identified, said a group of teens leaving a Shake Shack in DUMBO singled out a 43-year-old man walking his dogs. They tossed water and milkshakes at him before delivering a knockout punch to his jaw.

What happened next was even more disturbing. “One boy ran up and crouched down and posed for a photo next to the guy that was passed out and then the rest of the group just kind of ran off and scattered,” the man said.

Witnesses said the victim lay unconscious for some 45 minutes, but in this case bystanders did step in to help.

Another similar incident happened last month in Manhattan.

Police are looking for three men wanted for the knock out style attack that happened on Essex Street on the Lower East Side. It left a 53-year-old woman with a swollen and bleeding face.

With no arrests yet in either case, people are worried.

“The police last night were telling me that this group of kids, it was the second time they had done it last night, and this seems to be this ongoing contest or trend amongst these teens,” one person said.

SOURCE





Why Feminists Must Understand Evolution

A good exposition by Marta Iglesias of evolutionry biology as it applies to male/female differences. If your theories are wrong, you will not get the results you expect. The feminist push to alter male/female behaviour patterns has had very little success so far

I am a feminist but I am not here to offer opinions, nor to enter into an intra-feminist debate. For all their various ideological differences, all feminists basically advocate the same things: for women and men to have the same rights and duties as citizens, and for women and men to enjoy the same freedom to decide what to do or not to do with their lives. I am here to present empirical evidence which ought to interest feminists, and which can help to explain human behaviour.

It is my goal to explain why the causes of male and female difference are not merely cultural or the product of patriarchal indoctrination. Separate athletic competitions and distinct medical disciplines of gynaecology and urology testify to the most obvious biological differences between men and women. But the scientific method − a co-operative, critical, and self-correcting process which has midwifed huge technological and medical advances − can also help us to understand more subtle differences between the sexes in interests and aspirations. And it is understanding what we really are that will make us free.

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The study of other animals has produced significant advances in our understanding of human biology. We have been able to understand how our neurons function from the study of sea slugs and squid; we know how our embryos develop from the study of sea urchins, toads, and quails; we understand how the circulatory system works, and how to repair it when things go wrong, because we have studied the circulatory systems of pigs and dogs. Human physiology textbooks are full of data obtained by studying other animals, and the application of this knowledge has allowed us all to live longer and better lives. But the study of animal models also indicates that male and female differences are not only physical but also behavioural, and that they are a product of our common evolutionary history.

All human beings have something in common: we are offspring. We are the result of individuals being able to reproduce, who in turn were the progeny of other offspring who have managed to do the same. This chain is theoretically traceable along a lineage of individuals who reproduced successfully, all the way back to our origins. Those who did not reproduce did not leave a copy of themselves, and so no longer exist. (A more meticulous explanation of the functioning of evolution through natural selection and genetic drift, or what is known as synthetic theory, can be found on the UC Berkeley website.1)

Accordingly, each living being is potentially reproductively effective, because it is the offspring of reproductively effective parents. But sexual reproduction depends not only on the capacity to produce viable and fertile offspring, but also on finding a suitable reproductive mate. To qualify, this must be an individual of the opposite sex or, more precisely, someone who can provide gametes of the kind usually produced by the other sex. One of the sexes produces big, static gametes (eggs, which are relatively ‘expensive’ to produce) and the other produces small, rapidly moving gametes (sperm, which are somewhat ‘cheaper’). In many species, the sex with the ‘expensive’ gametes (the female) takes care of many other costly facets related to reproduction. For instance, a female turtle will cross an ocean to lay her eggs on the beach, and a female spider will regurgitate her own innards so that her offspring can feed, literally eating her to death. (Compared to examples like these, waking up at 3am to breastfeed the baby does not sound too exacting.)

Of course, the onus of expenditure does not fall on the female in all species, but whichever sex bears the greater cost of, and makes the greater investment in, child-bearing and -rearing will always be more selective when choosing a mate. After all, it is they who will bear the heavier consequences of a mistake (for example, failing to leave descendants or leaving only a few in return for their investment). So the underlying mechanisms guiding mate selection are subject to great pressures to be effective, and these inevitably bear on behavioural differences between the sexes. These pressures have produced powerful discriminatory abilities which make us selective, even petty, and lead us to subject all possible reproductive partners to constant evaluation. Historically, this arrangement has been an effective and successful reproductive strategy, given that the descendants are alive to make copies of themselves today.

The reproductive cost is undeniably greater for the human female, and the morphological differences between the sexes imply differences in what has been selected for in each sex to make us more effective breeders. But it is also important to understand how the physiological and anatomical differences between male and female reproductive strategies impact our behaviour.

Among feminists, there exists a pervasive tendency to believe that animals and humans play different roles in the world, and are subject to different rules. Some ascribe this difference to ‘culture’ or ‘intelligence,’ while others ascribe it to ‘society.’ However, this alleged distinction between humans and other animals does not stand up well under scrutiny.

Certainly, our cultural dimension affects the way we reproduce, but we cannot modify it much. This is because the mechanisms we have evolved to choose a mate and to reproduce are a product of our biology, passed down a long lineage of successful breeders. It is therefore reasonable to expect humans to be a typical species in this respect, just as we are in the examples offered earlier (neuron and heart function, embryonic development, and so on). Evolutionary biology predicts that each individual will try to pursue the best strategy to contribute genetically to future generations, and to produce offspring who will, in turn, produce offspring of their own.

But this strategy will be different for men and women, due to their distinct reproductive functions. The efficacy of the strategies pursued by our ancestors has determined something as simple and fundamental as the very fact that we exist at all. These strategies, then, are a fundamental part of us, even if social and cultural relations modulate them. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that from the moment we awake until the moment we go to bed, most of our actions have the ultimate purpose of leaving a progeny (or keeping that progeny alive, at least until it is old enough to produce descendants of its own).

This process manifests itself differently in males and females, and produces different behaviours. Women, by virtue of our greater reproductive investment, are generally very selective. Men, then, are only truly selective if they consider they will have to make a strong investment of time and resources in a relationship.2 As a consequence, men and women all over the world, across cultures, tend to look consistently for different things in the opposite sex (though, logically, they have common preferences as well). Furthermore, each sex emphasizes very different aspects of their own personality and physique in the attempt to attract a mate.3 4 5 6 7 This, in turn, makes competition among men very different to competition among women; the former is generally more obvious8 and the latter is more subtle (and more pernicious, in my opinion).9 10 11 12 13 14 15

These differences manifest as the differences we observe in our daily lives: from the toys we prefer when we are small to the products we consume when we are adults; from the tendency to be the object of bullying or its perpetrator to the likelihood of causing a traffic accident; from the posture we adopt when we sit in the underground to the importance we attach to career status.

Intrasexual competition among women can manifest as disapproval of clothing or behaviour that signals sexual availability.
These behaviours occur without us being too conscious of why we do what we do (other than the fact we feel like doing one thing or another). But we do not need to know that we are implementing a reproductive strategy in order to carry it out.16 17 We simply feel like behaving in a certain way, without interrogating the true cause of our predispositions. (For example, when we crave a hamburger, it is seldom with the conscious awareness that the consumption of many fats and carbohydrates in a few grams of food is an efficient strategy for obtaining energy.)

The fact that men and women are different in these respects does not preclude feminists from striving for completely equal rights between the sexes. However, it is important to understand how things really are if we are to try to modify them, and history provides us with examples of the hazards associated with pursuing an insufficiently tested theory. Convinced that the differences between male and female brains were social, a medical researcher and his team persuaded the parents of a baby boy who had lost his penis in a botched circumcision to raise him as a girl. 18 In spite of a course of hormone injections and the parents’ best efforts to deceive their child, in the end they had no choice but to concede defeat (with terrible consequences for all involved).

But some feminists would prefer to doubt the applicability of evolutionary biology to the human species. They believe that equality of behaviour in the sexes would exist in nature, but culture generates our inter-sexual differences (for examples see Chapter 1 in A Mind of Her Own).19 20 Apparently, contradicting this line of thought means that one is adopting a ‘biological determinist’ position, undesirable because it is provides a justification for systemic inequality and gendered violence. However, coming to this conclusion requires a significant degree of scientific and historical blindness.

Resistance to acknowledging biological differences in behaviour arises from a fear of the consequences of tying these differences to three clearly erroneous assumptions: 1), that what is natural is good, 2) that what is natural is correct, and 3), that what is biologically-based is impossible to modify.

If all natural things were good, then companies making orthodontic braces would have gone bankrupt long ago, we might die of an intestinal infection at the age of 19, and we would have as many children (or almost as many) as we have orgasms. The same naturalistic fallacy pertains to the justification of behaviours based on a natural tendency to carry them out. It might be natural to have sex with 13-year-olds who are already sexually mature, or to simply take what we find along our way as we see fit, or to use other species cruelly for our personal benefit. And yet, most of us do not do these things, nor do we excuse those who might. That a form of behaviour has its basis in biology does nothing to recommend it. Cultural norms are agreements about conduct and ethics, and they need not be justified with reference to what is and is not natural. Finally, with regard to whether all phenomena with a basis in biology are immutable, we can refute such a statement with reference to the improper and infrequent behaviours itemised above, or by observing that guide dogs refrain from marking their territory at every corner.

If our common goal is to encourage reciprocal respect for other individuals, in spite of average differences in group proclivities, then that goal cannot be well served by ignoring the basis for such differences. The imposition of respect may work in certain cases, but it does not seem to have made much impact on the number of deaths women face at the hands of men, which has remained remarkably stable year-on-year. We can more productively fight gender problems if we acknowledge naturally occurring differences upon which we can work, instead of imposing rules that only increase misunderstanding, allow fallacies to proliferate, and instrumentalise fear as a motor for change.

Some feminist authors insist that it is injurious to consider sex-based differences in the fight against gender inequality.21 But asking people to ignore the existence of biologically grounded sex-based differences only makes the disparities produced by those differences more difficult to understand and address. Other feminists argue that the very fact of being female authorises them to opine on the motivations of women with absolute certainty. But this is simply to generalise on the basis of one’s own particular example without the benefit of systematic evaluation.

It is better to generate our opinions and judgements based on observations that conform as closely as possible to objective reality, because our goals are political and we want them to affect each and every one of us. It is therefore imperative that we understand the nature of the reality we are trying to change, and the reasons why attempts to encourage complete parity of the sexes in all walks of life through social policy have not yet been successful and have, in some cases, led to the widening of disparities. Political action cannot be founded on opinions about how we would like the world to be (of which there is one for every person). It must instead be built on the foundation of our best understanding of natural reality as it is.

The good news is that information has never been more freely available. If we make the effort to learn a little English and master basic statistics, each one of us can draw her own conclusions based on the work others have already completed. What’s more, those who are not persuaded by this work can try to disprove it using the very same tools of investigation and analysis. Others may simply choose to discard measurement and reason, electing instead to behave much like those who reject the efficacy of vaccines, or insist that humans never went to the moon. But such behaviour does not allow us to build anything; it is only good for yelling into the wind and promoting norms which have nothing to do with reality, and which therefore can contribute nothing to the process of effecting meaningful change.

We may prefer to believe that the differences leading us to behave in sexist ways stem from culture, and not from a lack of it. But, by so doing, we will continue to try to impose norms not commonly shared, which will only aggravate the differences between us, making the society we co-inhabit increasingly hostile and founded upon ever more artificial human relations. Ideological ideas accepted a priori by many feminists, such as “language is sexist and changing it will reduce differences”, have not been properly evaluated as instruments for achieving equality. This matters because, in order to change the world, we must first study what we are, and why we behave as we do.

If the goal is not the pursuit of knowledge and understanding, but the promotion of dogma which insists that only socialisation generates sexism, I am afraid the glass ceiling will remain above women, the number of femicides will remain unchanged, and our efforts to improve society will be a perpetual source of disappointment and frustration. We must strive for a synthesis of the scientific knowledge of human behaviour and the political objectives of feminism. It is up to us to keep an open mind so we can better understand one another, the societies we have built, and the world we share. By these means alone, can we create the conditions necessary for real equality.

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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