Thursday, March 29, 2018


False rape cry

A report from India

I am a Law student studying in one of the top NLUs. Once all my cousins gathered at my grandmother's house during holidays. Me and my cousin brother with my go pro camera used to record lot of pranks.

When me and my brother were in the room talking to each other we after listening to some steps coming towards our room, we became ready with my go pro to record and scare anyone who comes in. My cousin sister came inside the room running and tore her top and started shouting please don't rape me please help help!!. Me and my brother thought it was a prank so we didn't react and went back to normal. It was after 10 minutes we realised that something has been fucked up. All the family members gathered and we were fucked up. My mom started slapping me continuosly crying. My sister told everybody in the house that we raped her.

I told everyone to give me five minutes to explain myself and brother mine. After everyone's beating I finally got my chance to prove my innocence. I was fucking bleeding from my face but then I asked my sister to tell everyone what happened in detail. She started describing as if we raped her brutally. Then came my masterplan I showed her the go pro she first thought I was bluffing and added that I tried to film her.

I fucking lost it and asked everyone to watch the clip. As soon as my sister realised I was not bluffing, She started crying loudly and shouted nobody loves me this is fake and all. I after proving my innocence also posted the clip on the family whatsapp group so everybody knows.

She said that as she was not able to clear her CA papers [Institute of Chartered Accountants of India] and everybody was upset from her and she felt unlovable. Whatever!!!!!

If their had been no proof about that incident me my brother’s life would have been destroyed. I felt so thankful that I can't tell.

I lost every feeling for my sister and also learnt that due to all rape cases girls have been given a leverage to take advantage.

I am not saying every girl do it but some do.

SOURCE






Open letter from British Jews to the British Labour Party leader

Today, leaders of British Jewry tell Jeremy Corbyn that enough is enough. We have had enough of hearing that Jeremy Corbyn “opposes antisemitism”, whilst the mainstream majority of British Jews, and their concerns, are ignored by him and those he leads. There is a repeated institutional failure to properly address Jewish concerns and to tackle antisemitism, with the Chakrabarti Report being the most glaring example of this.

Jeremy Corbyn did not invent this form of politics, but he has had a lifetime within it, and now personifies its problems and dangers. He issues empty statements about opposing antisemitism, but does nothing to understand or address it. We conclude that he cannot seriously contemplate antisemitism, because he is so ideologically fixed within a far left worldview that is instinctively hostile to mainstream Jewish communities.

When Jews complain about an obviously antisemitic mural in Tower Hamlets, Corbyn of course supports the artist. Hizbollah commits terrorist atrocities against Jews, but Corbyn calls them his friends and attends pro-Hizbollah rallies in London. Exactly the same goes for Hamas. Raed Salah says Jews kill Christian children to drink their blood. Corbyn opposes his extradition and invites him for tea at the House of Commons. These are not the only cases. He is repeatedly found alongside people with blatantly antisemitic views, but claims never to hear or read them.

Again and again, Jeremy Corbyn has sided with antisemites rather than Jews. At best, this derives from the far left’s obsessive hatred of Zionism, Zionists and Israel. At worst, it suggests a conspiratorial worldview in which mainstream Jewish communities are believed to be a hostile entity, a class enemy. When Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party, Jews expressed sincere and profound fears as to how such politics would impact upon their wellbeing. Our concerns were never taken seriously. Three years on, the Party and British Jews are reaping the consequences.

Routine statements against antisemitism “and all forms of racism” get nowhere near dealing with the problem, because what distinguishes antisemitism from other forms of racism is the power that Jews are alleged to hold, and how they are charged with conspiring together against what is good. This is not only historic, or about what Jeremy Corbyn did before being Party leader. It is also utterly contemporary. There is literally not a single day in which Labour Party spaces, either online or in meetings, do not repeat the same fundamental antisemitic slanders against Jews. We are told that our concerns are faked, and done at the command of Israel and/or Zionism (whatever that means); that antisemitism is merely “criticism of Israel”; that we call any and all criticism of Israel “antisemitic”; that the Rothschilds run the world; that ISIS terrorism is a fake front for Israel; that Zionists are the new Nazis; and that Zionists collaborate with Nazis.

Rightly or wrongly, those who push this offensive material regard Jeremy Corbyn as their figurehead. They display an obsessive hatred of Israel alongside conspiracy theories and fake news. These repeated actions do serous harm to British Jews and to the British Labour Party.

Jeremy Corbyn is the only person with the standing to demand that all of this stops. Enough is enough.

Board of Deputies of British Jews, Jewish Leadership Council

SOURCE





This Week British Jews Bravely Stood Up to Labour's anti-Semitism. It Was a Tragic Failure

Jacob Judah [When will Jacob and his fellow Left-leaning Jews accept that it is conservatives who are their friends? From Nixon to Trump it is conservative Presidents who have always stood by Israel -- JR]

British Jews are U.S. Jews' poor kid brother. But I have never seen my Jewish community so assertive and united against Jeremy Corbyn’s normalization of anti-Semitism; I have also never seen Jews so powerless

I joined the Labour Party under Ed Miliband [a Jew]. I have campaigned in two general elections, in dozens of local elections and leafletting drives and have been active in my university Labour club since I joined the party in 2013. I was confident in my Jewish identity, and my Labour values. But I have handed in my membership card.

I left Labour, not because my values or ideology changed. Rather, my Jewishness is an important part of my identity. It would be intellectually dishonest to encourage strangers to vote in Jeremy Corbyn as Britain’s next prime minister, when I would be deeply uneasy about a Corbyn premiership and its ramifications for the country's Jews.

British Jewry is a modest community, and it has much to be modest about. It has never been as intellectually creative as American Jewry, nor as assertive as French Jewry. As the poorer kid brother of American Jews, Britain’s Jews’ achievements can be embodied, rather tragically, in Ed Miliband and Oliver Letwin. Rabbi Johnathan Wittenberg, the senior rabbi of Masorti Judaism in Britain, notes with regret that, “Labour has traditionally held socialist values, and these are values that Jews empathize with.”

Yet, in the last two years, as Anglo-Saxon Jewry has been hit by a wave of conspiracy theories, British Jewry has been brave. It has undergone a renaissance of sorts. More assertive, British Jews have united and stood up for themselves in a way that our American cousins have not. The fact that roughly one in every 200 British Jews turned out, with less than 24 hours’ notice, on Monday evening to stand against the rise in anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is perhaps a sign of the changing times.

This low-key watershed on an overcast Monday evening was triggered by what seemed to be, yet again, the yet another round in an ever-increasing list of either anti-Semitic developments or blindness to anti-Semitism from the Labour membership and leadership.

The case at issue was a Facebook comment by Jeremy Corbyn in 2012, opposing the removal of a mural depicting "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"-style Jewish financiers playing chess on the backs of naked workers. However, said one protester on Monday, “There could have been other catalysts. It’s an accumulation of events and events.”

In response, Britain’s largest and most respected Jewish institutions, the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council, published an open letter, alleging that “again and again, Jeremy Corbyn has sided with anti-Semites” and called for a demonstration. Never before have Jewish institutions called for demonstrations against a major political party, never in my, or my parents’ lifetimes has anti-Semitism been such a pressing issue for British Jews. Never before have I felt that British Jews have to reassess their place in British society.

There was something tragic about this bravery, tinged with a low-hanging sense of unease. British Jews charged Lancelot-like into the indifference of the British public, accompanied by a pat on the back by some 60 ostensibly virtuous MPs who, having shown their faces crossed the street back to Parliament fully expecting nothing to change.

This collective shrug is what has made me anxious. Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-Semitism has normalized anti-Semitism and discussion of it in British society to the extent that it barely registers. On Sunday, the BBC’s "News at Ten" led with an Australian cricket scandal.

A refrain heard among those on Parliament Square was the degree to which this was perceived as a Jewish-only issue. The perception of the virtue fest by Labour MPs, keen to highlight their moral uprightness, underlines the degree to which the concerns of Labour MPs and the Jewish community have drifted apart. I don’t need more solidarity. Solidarity without gestures is meaningless.

This demonstration was a sublime failure. I have never seen my Jewish community so assertive and united; I have also never seen Jews so powerless. This protest was an admission of failure – an admission that Jews have failed to influence, not been listened to and failed to make a difference on the left. How had we come to this?

At the small pro-Corbyn counter-protest, one woman told me that the #EnoughisEnough protest was “riddled with Tories,” and that, “this is not a conspiracy theory, but it is no coincidence that this protest is happening just before an election” – notwithstanding the fact that it has been less than 10 months since the last election.

From the inside, I have witnessed the tragedy of some parts of the Corbyn movement – which has so many positive facets – as they were taken into a leader cult, built on populist rhetoric and conspiracy theories.

Debate is structured around dangerously vague, conspiratorial ideas of “the establishment,” media control and the banking system. Anti-Semitism is more than just personal, base, a matter of dislike. There is less of a focus on the theory-grounded materialist thinking of previous generations of Labour politicians, which ascribed behaviors and power positions more to the dynamics and dictates of a capitalist system.

It doesn’t have to be like this. In the hour before the protest began, a promising third statement dealing with the mural and its fallout was released. In it, Corbyn addressed and debunked directly some of the old and new anti-Semitic conspiracies that have found a seam in some parts of the Labour Party. There is much to be admired in the Corbyn movement, in the engagement that it has created, its breaking of the intellectual mould of the stultified debates, and the revitalization of British politics that it has bought with it.

Corbyn must speak to the Jewish community, he should refine and give the promising statement that was released just before the protest in the form of a speech. Corbyn is respected, and people on all sides will listen to what he has to say.

The bridge between the Jewish community and Labour is on fire. If Labour cares about British Jewry, it must do its best to put it out. Only then will Britain’s Jews consider returning.

SOURCE






Australia: Brainless do-gooders to make Aboriginal crime problem worse

What is their solution to the high rate of Aboriginal crime?  To reduce the penalties!  They want to abolish jail for fine defaults, for instance.  Do they know nothing about human behaviour? Basic psychology tells us that to reduce the undesired behaviour you need to INCREASE the penalties, not reduce them.  But Leftist "solutions" almost invariably worsen the problem so this ideological claptrap is nothing new.  They are trying to signal their own big heartedness, not help Aborigines

Australia has reached "crisis point" when it comes to the rate of indigenous people being sent to jail - especially women, lawyers say.

Federal and state governments are facing calls for urgent action as the latest statistics show Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders continue to be "alarmingly" over-represented in prison.

In a report tabled in federal parliament on Wednesday, the Australian Law Reform Commission says Indigenous Australians are 12.5 times more likely to be in jail than non-indigenous people.

Indigenous women, who make up more than a third of the country's female prison population, are 21.2 times more likely to be incarcerated than their non-indigenous sisters.

"The cycle of incarceration will continue devastating families and communities if we do not remodel our approach to criminal justice," Aboriginal Legal Service NSW/ACT chief executive Lesley Turner said in a statement.

The Law Council of Australia labelled it a "national crisis" that requires immediate action.

It has called on governments to adopt the ALRC's 35 recommendations and not shelve them - like many from the 1991 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody report were.

"The ALRC's recommendations offer a renewed roadmap to end disproportionate numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in incarceration," president Morry Bailes said.

The commission has suggested establishing a new body to redirect resources from the criminal justice system to community-led initiatives to address the issues driving crime and imprisonment.

It also wants all levels of government to repeal mandatory sentencing that disproportionately affects Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, amend bail laws to ensure they're culturally appropriate, and scrap jail terms for unpaid fines.

On top of that, it has recommended a national inquiry into child protection laws and processes affecting indigenous Australians and specified national targets to reduce the rate of incarceration rates and violence against them.

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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Wednesday, March 28, 2018



A tale of woe but not a whisper about its cause

The figures below about ever-growing traffic congestion in the Boston area are quite distressing.  One wonders where it will end up.  Sadly, such jams are not unique to Boston.  There are similar tales in many parts of urban USA. And the waste of people's time is huge. Instead of sitting for hours in traffic, people could be doing productive or at least congenial things.

So the story below is eloquent in setting out the problem but where is any attempt to find its cause? As the article is from a Leftist paper, the major cause of the problem is just too incorrect to discuss:  If you keep taking in millions of immigrants, most of them are going to end on the road in cars.  That's how America works. 

So what are millions of extra cars going to do with a relatively fixed amounts of road-space?  There will be no room for them and traffic will jam up.  Governments will endeavour to build extra road space where they can but where so much land is already built on, that is going to be a slow and limited process.

How long will commutes have to be before Americans put the blame for delays where it belongs -- on immigration.  With some commutes already taking two hours each way, something has got to give soon



Barbara Mayer, a nurse from the South Shore, has been making the same drive to and from the Longwood Medical Area for five years. Today, the trip takes her a good 15 or 20 minutes longer than it used to, an hour and a half compared with 70 minutes, and that’s if there’s no Cape traffic.

“I used to have time to water the flowers when I got home,” she said.

It’s the same story on the North Shore, where the drive into Boston to meet clients sometimes takes etiquette consultant Jodi Smith two hours, twice as long as it did a decade ago. West of the city, in Waltham, the MBTA’s Route 505 morning rush bus to the Financial District is now allotted 63 minutes to arrive. It was allotted 47 minutes in 2007.

Even in a city that has long known traffic headaches, congestion in recent years has extended commutes to lengths that approach a breaking point, encroaching ever deeper into the lives of workers who say they have less and less time to spare.

With Boston’s commutes ranked among the nation’s most stressful, employers increasingly must woo workers by allowing them to work from home or at off hours, according to the global staffing agency Robert Half. Some workers are simply electing to quit rather than lose more time to the road.

Joel Richman of Boxborough left his job and started working from home when a company move from Newton to Boston stretched his drive to two hours each way.

“You end up planning your entire day around your commute,” he said. “I’d leave at 4:15 and everyone else was still cranking away. By the time I got home it would be almost six. I’d try and spend a few minutes with my daughter and then log back on to the computer.”

Even real estate agents are having to adapt, by changing the way they market their properties. “We used to say ‘20 minutes into Boston,’ ” Waltham broker Gary Rogers said, “but we don’t give the time anymore — it’s too dangerous. You don’t know if there are going to be delays.”

There are a few ways to measure how bad traffic has gotten. You can look at numerous studies showing that commuters are spending more time stuck in traffic than ever. One found the average Boston-area driver spending 60 hours stuck in traffic in 2017 — two more hours than in 2016.

You can think about the fact that Millennium Partners is proposing a $100 million gondola to fly workers over the clogged streets of the Seaport.

Here’s another way to see the change: Compare old bus schedules with today’s schedules, and notice that it takes buses — and cars driving on the same roads — a lot longer to cover the same number of miles than it did a decade ago.

“We had to revise the schedule to reflect reality,” said Colin Johnson, a vice president with DATTCO, which runs a commuter bus from Fairhaven to Copley Square.

Ten years ago, DATTCO’s 6:50 a.m. bus from Fairhaven hit Back Bay around 8:20, a 90-minute ride. Today’s commuters are on that bus for 130 minutes and don’t get to Copley until 9 a.m.

It’s a similar story from Southern New Hampshire. In 2008, the 7:30 a.m. Boston Express bus from North Londonderry, N.H., to South Station arrived at 8:35, a 65-minute trip. Today the express gets in at 9:10, 100 minutes after departing.

The MBTA has also changed its schedules, a reflection of the growing traffic and unpredictability of that traffic, according to the agency. In 2017, the morning express routes from Brighton and Watertown and Waltham took an average of 39 percent longer than they did in 2007.

With rush-hour traffic growing exponentially, every commuter interviewed spoke about the impacts on their lives and jobs, and the dreaded math of Boston traffic, in which a small delay in departure time can cost dearly in extra time on the road.

“If you leave five minutes late, it could take you 20 minutes longer to get to work,” said Mayer, the nurse. “Every once in a while, I’ll forget that I need to stop and get gas, and I’ll think, ‘Oh my God, I’ll never get there on time.’ ”

Just as we’re experiencing more extreme weather events these days, anecdotal evidence shows that the increased volume of cars on the roads is leading to more extreme traffic events.

The smallest thing — rain, construction, a game at Fenway, an accident on a feeder road — can cause a tie-up.

That makes people afraid to go to work in bad weather, for fear they’ll never get home in time to meet family obligations.

In Sudbury, on a day when one of the recent nor’easters was heading our way, new mom Jordan Haywood worked from home rather than head into the financial district. Her infant’s day care was closing early, meaning Haywood would basically go to work and turn right around.

“If you’re a half an hour late [for day-care pickup] it’s $7,” she said, mentioning that she’s still breast-feeding, and that when she runs late, not only does it cost her money, but her milk begins to build up, adding extra urgency.

Some of her fellow working and commuting mothers pump in the car while they’re driving, she said. “They say it’s a timesaver. They are multitasking.”

As the drives get longer, living in or close to Boston is becoming farther out of reach financially for average workers. An analysis of single-family home sales found that prices are rising much faster in or near the city compared with prices in far-flung towns, according to Timothy Warren Jr., chief executive of the Warren Group.

He looked at the prices of single-family homes in 285 Massachusetts communities and found that in only 10 have prices surpassed what they were in 2005 — a peak in the market — by 50 percent or more. Nine of those 10 communities were in or near Boston.

“Some of those communities were previously considered blue-collar and affordable, including South Boston, Jamaica Plain, Somerville, and Charlestown,” Warren said in an e-mail.

“Others in the top ten (Cambridge, Brookline, Newton, and Lexington) have always been high-priced, but have become dramatically more so in recent years,’’ Warren said.

This pricey housing means many people are forced to live far from work, a situation made more painful by the growing commute times.

Michelle Collins and her fiance settled in Saugus after not being able to afford anything closer to their jobs. She works as a lab technician in Newton. He’s a warehouse manager in Natick. That means an hour’s commute each way for her and sometimes a two-hour trip for him.

“No matter what time you leave you can hit these weird pockets of traffic,” she said.

If Collins doesn’t build in a cushion, she might arrive late and, she said, have minutes deducted from her pool of vacation, personal, and sick time.

“I’d rather spend the time on vacation than sitting on Route 128 southbound,” she said.

SOURCE






Student Shames Pro-Gun Americans, Then We Noticed What’s Wrong With Her Jacket

The most visible activists in the latest push to tear up the Second Amendment are getting a lot of attention… and not all of it is positive.

Parkland, Florida, students David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez have become the faces of gun control as they make the rounds in the media and at rallies, but viewers have noticed some troubling “red flags” with both of them over the weekend.

On Saturday, the teenage protester Gonzalez took the stage as part of “March For Our Lives,” and delivered a speech that blamed gun ownership for the tragedy which killed 17 people last month.

That by itself isn’t surprising, but observers quickly pointed out something odd and ironic about her attire.

While standing on the podium, the anti-Second Amendment activist wore an olive green jacket that appeared to be a military uniform, with military-style patches sewn onto the sleeves. There was not a single American flag anywhere on the fatigues.

There was, however, a Cuban flag patch on her right shoulder — exactly where the American flag normally is worn.

“You can’t even make this up,” commented one pro-gun Facebook page. “She is wearing a Cuban flag, a communist country that is well known for disarming its own people and then slaughtering them wholesale; while addressing the U.S. about gun control.”

That commentary isn’t wrong. There’s a deep and sickening irony to replacing the U.S. flag with the symbol of a communist, tyrannical country that has been ruled by dictatorship for 60 years… while essentially telling Americans to give up their gun rights.

“Hitler took several years to disarm the population using gun registration lists, but Castro moved against private gun ownership the second day he was in power,” explained Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America.

“He sent his thugs throughout the island using the gun registry lists — compiled by the preceding Batista regime — to confiscate the people’s firearms. Different tactics, same objective. A defenseless people don’t give the all-wise leader any lip,” Pratt continued.

That use of gun control by the oppressive Castro regime in Cuba is common knowledge among many who fled the island.

“In modern Cuba, firearms are regulated by the National Revolutionary Police, the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. The private sale and transfer of firearms is prohibited. And Cubans continue to flee for the U.S. Surprised?” asked Luis Valdes, a Cuban-American gun rights advocate.

“We should never forget that purchasing a firearm is an important part of the American Dream,” Valdes explained.

“Gun ownership is the one few tangible acts that we can do when exercising our Constitutional Rights. When you hold that firearm in your hand, you’re holding a literal, physical representation of freedom,” he said.

Fidel Castro’s Cuba “murdered thousands upon thousands. The late R.J. Rummel, a University of Hawaii professor who tracked mass-killings by governments around the world, estimated as many as 141,000 people were murdered by the Castro regime,” reported Investor’s Business Daily.

“And that was  just through 1987. Since then, of course, thousands more have been killed,” the report continued.

Between Emma Gonzalez shunning the American flag to instead dress like a Cuban dictator and David Hogg throwing a stiff-armed salute that looked disturbingly like a Nazi gesture, there are many alarms about the not-so-subtle symbolism being used by these “organizers.”

That’s doesn’t automatically mean that they are themselves aspiring tyrants, but it does mean that they are shockingly ignorant about history and the real-life horrors of gun control… and that by itself should disqualify them as serious voices.

SOURCE





Is #MeToo Backlash Hurting Women’s Opportunities in Finance?

When my mother graduated from college in 1972, she interviewed at an investment bank where a manager told her that for certain positions, women were interviewed but never hired. Even in the late 1980s, she went on interviews with headhunters who would explicitly tell her, “They want to interview a woman,” with the emphasis on “interview”— as in, not hire. Through the decades, as she’s climbed the ranks to become a CFO of publicly traded company, I’ve often told these stories to show how much more opportunity exists in the workplace today.

In the aftermath of the MeToo movement around sexual harassment, I wonder how much progress we’ve really made; recently, several men have privately told me that they have no intention of hiring women for open roles, or of managing young women if they can avoid it. I now worry that the movement has already sparked a destructive backlash.

As someone who works in finance and is currently a student in the executive MBA program at the Wharton School, I’ve heard men say that they’re less likely to hire or associate with women as a result of the intensity of MeToo. Whether consciously or not, I am not sure how any man in America isn’t reassessing his hiring practices. I have heard directly from male executives at two prominent Wall Street firms that they are moving their female direct reports to report to female bosses.

Even if we could get past the troubling message this sends, this isn’t practical — women only make up about 25% of the executive team at the top Wall Street firms, and there simply aren’t enough women to sustain this model. I’ve also heard from male fund managers that they didn’t want to take on the “risk” of hiring a woman in their small shops. An employee of a large bank shared that any future women analyst hires should be “unattractive.”

This environment is particularly troubling for my female classmates and me if we want to obtain a job in financial services, which is what Wharton is known for. Even if I were smarter or more qualified than one of my male classmates, why would an employer hire me when the guy next to me is good enough and is less likely to make an accusation of harassment? Females make up just over 25% of my class, there is no short supply of male MBAs to hire. I have already heard from some men at small hedge funds that they won’t hire women because we’re too “risky,” and from men in VC that they won’t have one-on-one meetings with female founders.

But such candor is rare, and off the record, because such discrimination is illegal. And women may never know why they were passed over. In some ways, I think my mother was afforded a better interview experience — at least they were being honest when they flat-out told her they won’t hire women. I fear this spring will see many female MBAs interviewing at firms that wish to appear to be striving for gender parity, but have no real intention of hiring any young women.

To some, including the men I spoke with, it seems like the MeToo movement is not just about stopping harassment, but essentially trying to achieve the impossible: desexualize the workplace, which goes against Darwin. Chemistry between human beings can’t be stopped, so what’s the answer? To many men, that answer is protecting themselves by avoiding socializing with or hiring women. It may be illegal, but that won’t stop it from happening — most cases would never get to court, and even if they did, they’d  be really tough to prove.

My close friend, Vanity Fair contributing editor, Bethany McLean, views this fear as another excuse to exclude women. Before becoming a writer, she spent her days as an analyst at Goldman Sachs and certainly understands Wall Street culture. “That argument betrays a fundamental lack of respect for women,” she told me. “When men say that they’re afraid of being alone with women, what they’re actually saying is that there is a high likelihood that all women are crazy and will read something into a situation that isn’t intended. Women shouldn’t buy into the patriarchal point of view that women can’t be trusted.”

Her point of view is supported by a 2016 study on corporate sexual harassment policies. It found that most corporate sexual harassment policies were ineffective because employees interpreted them as protecting irrational or oversensitive women at the expense of men. “We found that the actual words of the sexual harassment policy bore little resemblance to the employees’ interpretations of the policy,” wrote one of the researchers. “Although the policy clearly focused on behaviors of sexual harassment, the participants almost universally claimed that the policy focused on perceptions of behaviors.”

Although men’s fears may be grounded in an unconsciously biased view of women as untrustworthy or irrational, I do think that the MeToo movement bears some of the blame for the backlash I’m currently seeing. The hashtag and media reports have had a telescoping effect, essentially blurring important distinctions between rape, groping, and clumsy come-ons. As a victim of sexual assault who lived through a U.S. federal landmark case, I want to support the movement, but when the social media waterfall started last fall, I couldn’t bring myself to share my experience — which brought me to the brink of depression for three years — under the same hashtag as women who were briefly fondled at a holiday office party. While neither sexual harassment and assault should be tolerated under any circumstances, they are not the same thing. But the level of condemnation offered to each now seems to be the same. As Sarah Chiche, one of the main authors of a French riposte to MeToo, told the New York Times, “Men whose only fault was sending a slightly salacious text message or email were being treated, on social networks, exactly the same way as sexual criminals, like rapists.” Watching the pendulum-swing of society’s reaction to sexual assault has been whiplash-inducing, and to me, worrisome.

I’ve heard many female peers say that they think the MeToo movement will speed gender parity in the workforce and create access to more executive positions. But we are not at a moment of celebration yet. As a society, we’ve worked so hard to try and take gender off the table, and now more than ever, it seems like it’s very much there.

The response to MeToo shouldn’t be to celebrate with expectations about the promise of this future. I don’t have the answers, but I do believe the start requires addressing the reality of how scared men have become to work with and hire women as a result, and that trust between sexes in the workplace is broken. If the MeToo movement allows us to address this openly and honestly, then society will be much better for it. My concern is this is not happening; rather, women are silently being pushed to the side, making the road to the C-suite and boardroom just as hurdled as it was for my mother 40 years ago.

SOURCE






Australian Police officers to undergo 'Muslim sensitivity training' to better understand Islam and combat the radicalisation of home grown terrorists

Wouldn't it be more appropriate to train Muslims into adapting to Australian culture?

Australian Federal Police officers will undergo three-day 'Muslim sensitivity training' to better understand the culture of Islam.

The AFP is tendering for a new provider to conduct the courses for officers across Australia, as the agency works to manage the threat of Islamic terror.

The agency will work to target Islamic extremism and prevent the radicalisation of young people in Australia.

The program will brief officers about current international conflicts and 'areas of interest', and aims to build relationships with Islamic community leaders.

The workshops will educate officers about all aspects of Islam, as Australian soldiers return from war-torn regions including Iraq and Syria.

The AFP told Daily Mail Australia the agency was tendering for a new provider, after offering the course over many years.

'The program has been delivered over many years by academic and cultural leaders within the community,' the AFP told The Australian.

'[It ensures] that AFP members are culturally aware and sensitive to the issues of the communities to which the AFP provides.'

The Australian police force has introduced a range of groups and commissions to tackle the threat of Islamic extremism since the September 11 terrorist attack on the Twin Towers.

The National Disruption Group (NDG) was formed to combat religious extremism and includes officers from the state police, the Australian Crime Commission, and national intelligence agencies.

The NDG worked with 'vulnerable individuals, particularly young people, to prevent them from committing terrorist-related activity or travelling overseas to fight with a terrorist group'.

The AFP will also focus on targeting encrypted messages sent over the internet to organise terror attacks.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said: 'The use of encrypted messaging by terrorists and criminals is potentially the most significant degradation of intelligence capability in modern times'.

'The use of cyberspace by terrorists and criminals presents an increasing challenge for our agencies,' Mr Dutton said at the ASEAN conference. 

Speaking to Daily Mail Australia on Monday, an AFP spokesman said Islamic Awareness Workshops were 'paramount in educating officers around the Islamic faith'. 

'Like many other cultural initiatives within the AFP and Commonwealth Government, ensures that AFP members are culturally aware and sensitive to the issues of the communities for which the AFP provides a service to,' he said.  

'The program is designed to educate them about Islamic culture and the history of Islam, including the current international conflicts and areas of interest. It also covers engagement with other law enforcement partners and community members and groups.

'The AFP is governed by ‘Commonwealth Procurement Rules’ and as such we are unable to release additional information regarding an RFT while it is in the evaluation period.' 

Meanwhile, Senior commanders report they are concerned about terrorism ahead of the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

Undercover commandos will be at the heart of the massive operation to keep the Commonwealth Games safe, police have revealed.

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

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

Tuesday, March 27, 2018


Women in Men’s Sheds

Bettina Arndt writes from Australia:

Women are everywhere now. We've forced our way into all the workplaces, into the army’s fighting forces, into all men’s organisations, into the pubs. Everywhere you look there are women.

But there was one place that men were safe and that was in men's sheds. Traditionally in Australia many men had sheds up in their backyard where they could retreat to do their own thing. It led to a Men's Shed movement across Australia – over 1000 sheds now, particularly attracting older, retired men who come together and support each other. A vital mental health measure given that these older men are the group most at risk of suicide in the country.

But guess what? Women are pushing our way into the sheds too. There are sheds across the country coming under pressure to allow women members and amazingly some have caved in. I recently spent a few days talking to men in sheds for a YouTube video, finding out what’s going on here.

It turns out women are being allowed in the door due to a bunch of virtue-signalling men who willingly sell out other males in order to win brownie points from the ladies. They don’t believe in what men’s sheds are supposed to be all about – that special male companionship that comes from men doing things together, working on projects and enjoying banter and secret men’s talk. They don’t believe men are more likely to share their problems when with other men who get where they are coming from, who know what it’s like to face a broken marriage or prostate cancer.

There’s a good bloke up at Kur-ring-gai called Kevin Callinan who is chairman of the peak body representing men’s sheds, The Australian Men’s Sheds Association. He worked for seven years to set up his local shed but Kevin comes from a background in equity in the workplace. He believes in “inclusiveness” and hence calls his thriving shed simply “The Shed” and women are welcome.

Kevin is a man who doesn’t believe there's anything special about male culture. “There is to a certain extent but it’s not the be all and end all. I would more prefer a broader mix of society.” When asked whether it changes male culture to include women he said. “It does change male culture - for the good.”

Yet you hear something very different if you talk to most blokes in the Men’s Sheds movement.

“What do you think of women in men’s sheds?” I asked a man from the Kincumber Shed, on the NSW Central Coast. “Ugly!” was his response.  

“If women ever came into this shed I would be out the door,” said another.

Many believe the men allowing women into their sheds for cosy “inclusive” little craft sessions are selling out other men – and they are part of a far bigger problem.

There are many men in leadership positions see it in their interests to brown-nose to the ladies rather than stick up for men. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull lies about women’s role in family violence blaming the whole problem on men. Men running corporations, our bureaucracies are falling over themselves to institute policies favouring women. Our laws are tilted to favour women victims. The men running our universities promote a fake rape crisis and ignore the increasingly failure rates for male students. And so it goes on.

Men involved in the Men’s Shed movement need to take action to protect these male sanctuaries that enrich the spirit and even save the lives of some men. Come on men – grow a pair and stand up for men! 

Via email from Bettina bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au





Navy: No Destroyer of the Chaplaincy

If Jason Heap is one thing, it’s persistent. The DC-based humanist had already lost his bid to join the Navy chaplaincy under the Obama administration. He had to know that his application was an even longer shot under President Trump. Still, Heap filed again, hoping Navy officials would be more lax the second time around. Thanks two of the Hill’s conservatives, they weren’t.

Heap’s push to become the military’s first atheist chaplain started back in 2013. He made a big splash with the idea, even taking the military to court when it refused to change the tradition that George Washington started more than 240 years ago. “The Defense Department won all the cases against Jason Heap,” FRC’s Chris Gacek told reporters, “so you’d think that they would leave well enough alone and, therefore, there wouldn’t be a problem in the future. But there is a board called the Chaplain Appointment and Retention Eligibility Advisory Group that is recommending that the Navy accept him as a chaplain.” So, he went on, “even though he couldn’t get it through the courts or through other processes, there’s another group of faceless bureaucrats that have an agenda and are trying to push it.”

The news stunned Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-CO) and Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), who both serve on their Armed Services Committees. Neither could believe the military was even having this discussion, let alone under a conservative commander in chief. To head off a politically correct disaster, they rallied their troops, firing off letters to the secretary of the Navy and its chief of chaplains with dozens of members’ signatures. Not only would it violate the Defense Department’s own guidelines, but it would open the floodgates to the complete erosion of the unique spiritual tradition of our military.

While neither letter mentioned what the two chambers could do — forcing the Navy’s hand through appropriations riders or other pressure points — branch leaders got the message. This week, Lamborn and Wicker got the news they’d been waiting for: Heap’s request was denied. “The very definition of the chaplaincy was at stake here, so I’m relieved to see the Navy’s response,” Lamborn said. “Appointing an atheist to a historically religious role would’ve gone against everything the chaplaincy was created to do. It would open the door to a host of so-called chaplains who represent philosophical worldviews and NOT the distinctly religious role of the Chaplain Corps. I applaud the Navy for upholding the truth.”

Wicker was just as relieved. “The Navy’s leadership has done the right thing,” he told reporters. “The appointment of an atheist to [a] … religious position is fundamentally incompatible with atheism’s secularism. This decision preserves the distinct religious role that our chaplains carry out.”

If the military wants to create specific programs for atheists or humanists, it can. There’s no need to hijack the Chaplain Corps to serve them — unless, as I suspect, the real goal had nothing to do with service to begin with. Either way, we salute the Navy for protecting the integrity of the chaplaincy, “For God and Country.”

SOURCE






A clown in a wig



How can a learned judge be so ignorant?

British Judge tells Parsons Green jihad bomber to study Koran, says: “The Koran is a book of peace…Islam forbids terror”

If Ahmed Hassan takes Mr Justice Haddon-Cave’s advice and studies the Koran more closely than he already has, he won’t emerge from prison a peaceful, gentle man. On the contrary, he will be a more hardened jihadi than he already is. Has this judge ever tried to read the Koran himself? Obviously not. If he had, he wouldn’t be able to say that it is a “book of peace.” But this is the willful ignorance that prevails not just in Britain, but everywhere in the West.

“Parsons Green terrorist is jailed for at least 34 years after the judge rules he lied about only being 18.

The Parsons Green bomber lied about his age in order to remain in the UK sparking renewed questions over the screening of child migrants.

Iraqi born, Ahmed Hassan, entered Britain illegally three years ago and then applied for asylum, claiming to be a 16-year orphan, who had keen kidnapped by Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isil).

Hassan was jailed for life with a minimum of 34-years, after being convicted of attempting to murder dozens of commuters on a packed rush hour train at Parsons Green in south west London.

But the case raises serious questions over the ability of officials to weed out asylum seekers who try to take advantage of the system by claiming to be children.

Two years ago the Government came in for intense criticism when pictures emerged showing applicants who appeared to be much older than 17, claiming to be unaccompanied child migrants.

Home Office officials later suggested they might look older because of the ordeals they had suffered, But critics have insisted the system is open to exploitation and offers a potential gateway for terrorists to enter the UK.

Mr Justice Haddon-Cave, told Hassan the length of the sentence reflected the fact he did not believe he was only 18 and said he hoped the amount of time he spent in prison would give him the chance to study the Koran properly.

More than 50 people were injured when the bomb partially detonated sending a fireball down the busy carriage of the District Line train last September.

But it is feared scores would have been killed if the device, which was packed with 400g of ‘Mother of Satan’ explosives, had functioned as Hassan had intended.

At his sentencing hearing at the Old Bailey, the judge said: “Your intention that morning was to kill as many members of the British public as possible by planting the IED (improvised explosive device) on a busy commuter Tube train.”

He went on: “You will have plenty of time to study the Koran in Prison… the Koran is a book of peace… Islam forbids breaking the law of the land…..Islam forbids terror.”

Hassan came to Britain hidden in the the back of a lorry in Autumn of 2015, around the time the government relaxed the rules on accepting asylum applications from unaccompanied minors.

He was found a place in a Barnardo’s children’s home and made a formal asylum application to the Home Office in January 2016.

Hassan told officials his parents had been killed and he had been kidnapped by Isil and trained to kill by them….

SOURCE





The Real Reason We Have Mass Shootings

Walter E. Williams

One of the unavoidable tragedies of youth is the temptation to think that what is seen today has always been. Nowhere is this more noticeable than in our responses to the recent Parkland, Florida, massacre.

Part of the responses to those murders are calls to raise the age to purchase a gun and to have more thorough background checks—in a word, to make gun purchases more difficult. That’s a vision that sees easy gun availability as the problem; thus, the solution is to reduce that availability.

The vision that sees “easy” availability as the problem ignores the fact of U.S. history that guns were far more available yesteryear. With truly easy gun availability, there was nowhere near the gun mayhem and murder that we see today.

I’m tempted to ask those who believe that guns are today’s problem whether they think that guns were nicer yesteryear.

Americans need an alternative to the mainstream media. But this can't be done alone. Find out more >>

What about the calls for bans on the AR-15 so-called assault rifle? It turns out that, according to 2016 FBI statistics, rifles accounted for 368 of the 17,250 homicides in the U.S. that year. That means restrictions on the purchase of rifles would do little or nothing for the homicide rate.

Leaders of the gun control movement know this. Their calls for more restrictive gun laws are part of a larger strategy to outlaw gun ownership.

Gun ownership is not our problem. Our problem is a widespread decline in moral values that has nothing to do with guns. That decline includes disrespect for those in authority, disrespect for oneself, little accountability for anti-social behavior, and a scuttling of religious teachings that reinforced moral values.

Let’s examine elements of this decline.

If any of our great-grandparents or even grandparents who passed away before 1960 were to return, they would not believe the kind of personal behavior all too common today. They wouldn’t believe that youngsters could get away with cursing and assaulting teachers. They wouldn’t believe that some school districts, such as Philadelphia’s, employ more than 400 school police officers.

During my primary and secondary schooling, from 1942 to 1954, the only time one saw a policeman in school was during an assembly period where we had to listen to a boring lecture on safety. Our ancestors also wouldn’t believe that we’re now debating whether teachers should be armed.

There are other forms of behavior that would have been deemed grossly immoral yesteryear. There are companies such as National Debt Relief, CuraDebt, and LendingTree, which advertise that they will help you to avoid paying all the money you owe. So after you and a seller agree to terms of a sale, if you fail to live up to your half of the bargain, there are companies that will assist you in ripping off the seller.

There are companies that counsel senior citizens on how to shelter their assets from nursing home care costs. For example, a surviving spouse may own a completely paid-for home that’s worth $500,000. The costs of nursing home care might run $50,000 a year.

By selling her house, she could pay the nursing home costs, but her children wouldn’t inherit the house. There are firms that come in to shelter her assets so that she can bequeath her home to her heirs and leave taxpayers to foot the nursing home bill.

In my book, that’s immoral, but it is so common that most of us give it no thought.

There is one moral failing that is devastating to the future of our nation. That failing, which has wide acceptance by the American people, is the idea that Congress has the authority to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another American. That is nothing less than legalized theft and accounts for roughly three-quarters of federal spending.

For the Christians among us, we should consider that when God gave Moses the commandment “Thou shalt not steal,” he probably didn’t mean thou shalt not steal unless you get a majority vote in the Congress.

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

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

Monday, March 26, 2018



A very Leftist sheriff






Looking back







Anti-gun crusader gives Communist clenched fist salute



On Saturday, an enraged student from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School gave a fiery speech, and at its conclusion threw up a salute that ignited a firestorm on social media.

Far-left activist David Hogg attacked Republicans during his speech, saying, "I’m going to start off by putting this price tag right here as a reminder for you guys to know how much Marco Rubio took for every student's life in Florida."

Hogg continued with his Democratic talking points, stating, "Let's put the USA over the NRA."

Toward the end of his approximately four-minute speech, Hogg said, "Thank you. I love you all. God bless all of you and God bless America. We can and we will change the world!"

At that moment, Hogg threw up a salute that sent Twitter into a frenzy.

SOURCE







Instead of March for Our Lives, maybe it’s time to March for the Truth?

Follow the money.

It’s a strange political fact, but nearly every major anti-gun group has been a front group. The NRA is maligned 24/7 and yet it’s completely obvious whom it represents. Despite the efforts to tie it to everyone from firearms manufacturers to the Russians (if you can’t tie any random Republican thing to the Russians these days, you won’t be working at the Washington Post or CNN for very long), it represents its five million members. Anti-gun groups tend to represent shadowy networks.

Take Everytown, the noisiest and most dishonest anti-gun group on the scene. The one consistent thing about anti-gun groups is that that they are usually the opposite of what their name says they are.

Everytown for Gun Safety was formed out of two other groups: Moms Demand Action and Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Both are actually front groups for Michael Bloomberg, the lefty billionaire and former boss of the Big Apple, who used New York City resources to host at least one of its websites.

So Everytown is really New York City.

March for Our Lives is on every cable channel, but who runs it? The photogenic teen fronts are out front. But it’s obvious to everyone that a bunch of teens don’t have the resources and skills to coordinate a nationwide movement. Instead it’s the experienced activists who are actually running things.

The March for Our Lives Fund is incorporated as a 501(c)(4). Donations to 501(c)(4) groups are not tax- deductible. And they don’t have to disclose donors. That’s why they’re a great dark money conduit.

But the March for Our Lives website suggests that donors who want to make a tax-deductible donation should write a check to the “March For Our Lives—Everytown Support Fund”. How will Bloomberg’s organization provide support for the supposed student group?

Why have two March for Our Lives Fund, one dark and one light? And why is one being routed through the godfather of the gun control lobby?

When it comes to March for Our Lives, the questions never end.

The March for Our Lives permit application was filed by Deena Katz, a co-executive director of the Women's March Los Angeles Foundation. This wasn’t just a little bit of professional activist assistance.

The application lists Katz as the “Person in Charge of Event”.

Katz is a former Dancing With the Stars and current Bill Maher producer.  She’s also the former owner of Talent Central, a Los Angeles talent agency, The leaked application lists her as the president of the March for Our Lives Fund.

Media contacts for March for Our Lives are being handled by 42 West. The agency is a full service PR firm operating out of New York and Los Angeles that represents major celebrities. 42 West was supposedly recommended by George Clooney who was one of a number of major celebrity donors.

Where did all those millions of dollars go? Good question.

“They’re being directed by people with knowledge of how to responsibly spend this money and it’s going to be very transparent. Every penny is going to be accounted for," Jeff Kasky, the father of one of the students, claimed.

Who are those people? A leaked document reveals that the March for Our Lives Action Fund is actually overseen by six directors and is incorporated in Delaware.

So far we have Los Angeles, New York and Delaware, but not Florida.

Donations are being directed to, “March For Our Lives Fund, 16130 Ventura Blvd Ste 320, Encino, CA 91435.” That matches the listed office address on the application for the Wishnow Ross Warsavsky & Company. The tax firm appears to have no website.

The six directors learn toward Los Angeles.

There's Aileen Adams, the head of Do Good LA, who had served as the Deputy Mayor for the Office of Strategic Partnerships for Los Angeles. Adams was also UCLA's Vice Provost for Strategic Alliances.

Nor is she the only UCLA person on the list.

There's also George Kieffer, chair of UCLA's Board of Regents, who was named one of the most influential lawyers in California. He also held a variety of other political positions and headed the California State Protocol Foundation which funds expenses for Governor Jerry Brown.

Then there’s Nina Vinik who serves as the Program Director for the Gun Violence Prevention Program at the Joyce Foundation. The Joyce Foundation has been notable for its gun control efforts and it’s not surprising to find it here. The Joyce Foundation also set up the anti-gun Fund for a Safer Future.

One story claims that, "Several members of the Fund for a Safer Future are organizing internally to explore new ways of engagement in the wake of Parkland.” Another states that the Joyce Foundation, “funds research to help grantees understand how different audiences think about the issue. It's up to grantees to come up with tactics.” After Parkland, Nina wrote a militant editorial using some very familiar talking points, like, “Maybe it’s time to ask the Supreme Court about the rights of the Parkland parents to see their kids grow up.” The Joyce Foundation and Nina are based out of Chicago.

Over in Washington D.C., there's Vernetta Walker of BoardSource acting as the fund’s Secretary and Jeri Rhodes of the Friends Committee on National Legislation acting as its Treasurer.

And then out of Madison, Wisconsin, comes Melissa Scholz.

Florida is notably absent from the roll call. Instead the organization, one of a number of seeming incarnations of the March for Our Lives brand, draws on established activist talent from the usual places, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington D.C. There’s nothing particularly local about it.

March for Our Lives is funded by Hollywood celebs, it’s led by a Hollywood producer and its finances are routed through an obscure tax firm in the Valley. Its treasurer and secretary are Washington D.C. pros. And a top funder of gun control agendas is also one of its directors.

None of this has much to do with Parkland. The mass shooting by a mentally ill man who should have been committed and arrested long before he carried out his massacre was a political opportunity.

Now that opportunity is being exploited to the hilt by a professional class of political activists.

Gun control activists wring their hands over the NRA. They claim that a special interest lobby is illegitimately thwarting the “will of the people”. Yet it’s the anti-gun groups that are invariably false fronts. It’s very clear who runs the NRA. But the latest fake anti-NRA group is a nebulous shadow. Out front are the high school students and out back are the professional activists.

And who is really behind the whole thing? Hollywood celebs, Bloomberg, a network of organizations?

We know who supports the NRA. You can see NRA stickers on car windows even in the bluest cities in the country. But who really supports the anti-gun political network? You’ll need to spend hours sorting through paperwork, following the trail, comparing addresses and researching names, to even get a hint.

That’s what an illegitimate lobby thwarting the will of the people really looks like.

Instead of March for Our Lives, maybe it’s time to March for the Truth?

SOURCE





US Senate passes Taylor Force Act, slashing aid to Palestinians

United States funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA) is set to be slashed after the Senate passed the Taylor Force Act as part of a $1.3 trillion spending package to stave off a US-wide government shut down.

The Act, which has garnered bipartisan support, would withhold a large chunk of Washington's financial aid to the Western-backed Palestinian leadership unless they cease payments to families of terrorists convicted in Israeli courts.

The bill's proponents, along with Israeli officials, say payments by the PA to families of those imprisoned in Israel for carrying out acts of terror serve as incentives for other would-be assailants.

The legislation is named after US citizen Taylor Force, who was killed by a West Bank resident who went on a stabbing spree in Jaffa Port in March 2016.

It protects some aid funding to the PA, including for wastewater projects that have been spearheaded by co-operation between Palestinians, Israel, the US and Jordan.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham succeeded in attaching the bill to the massive omnibus spending package that came up for a vote in the Senate in the early hours of Friday morning.

“Taylor was an American hero who was brutally murdered at the hands of terrorists,” Graham said in a statement before the bill's passing.

“Yet instead of condemning this horrific attack -- and so many others like it -- the Palestinian Authority pays monetary rewards to terrorists and their families.""These rewards for terrorist attacks are inconsistent with American values. They are inconsistent with decency, and they are certainly inconsistent with peace.”

The PA has strenuously opposed the bill, arguing that the payments are legitimate and it would be politically impossible to curtail them.PA President Mahmoud Abbas defended the payments to the families of Palestinian attackers last summer as "a social responsibility"

Israel's UN envoy Danny Danon lauded the move to end what he termed "pay to slay" payments."The passage of the Taylor Force Act is an important step towards finally ending the despicable practice of pay to slay & ensuring accountability in the Palestinian Authority.

A similar bill in Israel that would cut Israeli funding by the same amount that the PA uses to pay terrorists' families is currently before the Knesset.

SOURCE






Military Changing Body Armor to Accommodate Women’s Long Hair

As women enter ground combat fields in larger numbers, the military services are working harder to make gender-specific accommodations for their gear -- even down to tweaking protective equipment to fit around longer hair.

According to presentations prepared by the Army and the Marine Corps for the Pentagon's Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services, both services are making independent changes to ensure gear fits correctly for women with hair buns.

A presentation prepared by Army Lt. Col. Ginger L. Whitehead, product manager for Soldier Protective Equipment, shows a recently introduced version of the Female Improved Outer Tactical Vest, or FIOTV, includes a yoke-and-collar assembly that dips in the back to accommodate a hair bun, along with other fit improvements to offer better ballistic protection for women.

Feedback from soldiers is also leading to helmet improvements, the presentation shows.

Women in uniform complained that the "X-Back" design of the apparatus holding the chin straps interfered with hair buns, making it difficult for the helmet to fit securely on the head, with the straps in the proper places. According to the presentation, the Army is introducing a female-specific "H-Back" apparatus that includes an opening for a bun.

This solution, along with improvements to retention straps to keep them from interfering with peripheral vision and cutting into earlobes, was "widely accepted by [the] female soldier community," the presentation showed.

A number of recent improvements to the Army's body armor design have come through the human factors evaluation process, in which female soldiers provide feedback and critiques on their own personal protective equipment and test out new gear.

"Often, these HFEs compare new equipment and legacy systems side by side in a counter-balanced test design," Whitehead's presentation stated. "Testing personnel measure all Soldiers participating in user assessments and operational tests to determine their individual percentile rankings for various body dimensions and to initially size and fit the tested equipment."

The Army began these research efforts in 2010.

The Marine Corps, which began an effort to expand the size range of its stock of personal protective equipment as infantry fields opened to women in 2016, now aims to fit all Marines from the 2nd percentile of female troops to the 98th percentile of males. Previously, gear only had to fit the 5th to 95th percentile of men. The change means another 8,856 smaller-stature and 5,711 larger Marines will get gear that fits, according to a presentation for DACOWITS from Lt. Col. Chris Madeline, the Marine Corps' program manager for Infantry Combat Equipment.

The Corps' new Enhanced Combat Helmet, which is set to begin fielding this spring, has design features that better accommodate the hair bun, according to the presentation.

The Plate Carrier Generation III system, which is currently in the design and contracting process, is shorter and 25 percent lighter than its predecessors, with a more modular fit, according to the slides.

The Marines are also working on an improved adjustable pack frame designed to fit better around body armor and offer better fit options to cover a range of sizes.

For services in which women have historically had to contend with protective equipment designed for men that often left them contending with gaping armholes and too-long torsos, even small adjustments, like room for hair buns, represent progress.

The Army and Marine Corps are not the only male-dominated services with blind spots in this area. Just last year, the Navy changed a policy governing how to wear ball caps that allowed women with long hair to wear them comfortably for the first time.

So far, the Army and Marine Corps have opted to expand size range and improve fit for the primary body armor vest and protective plates, rather than to design a full range of gender-specific protective gear.

In 2017, Lt. Col. Kathy Brown, then-product manager for soldier protective equipment at PEO Soldier, told Military.com that research had shown that form-fitting protective plates for women created their own fit challenges, and the Army had ultimately determined that it was not the best approach.

That answer, however, does not satisfy everyone.

Last year, Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., told Military.com that he found the solution "100 percent unacceptable."

"Men would be the first to cry out that the military adapt appropriate body armor ... to them if it was first designed for women," said Carbajal, who served in the Marine Corps as a mortarman and left the service as a sergeant. "It's really important that we provide the same appreciation and support for female soldiers and Marines that we do for men ... as a Marine myself, I find it does not correlate to the values of the institution."

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

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

Sunday, March 25, 2018



Germany is hostile to the Jews.  Are we still in the 1930s?

Germany co-operating with Tehran's ballistic missile program, which includes scores of medium-range rockets capable of striking Israel and sparking a regional war

U.S. officials are increasingly alarmed by a congressional block on President Donald Trump's pick to be the next ambassador to Germany, a holdup that comes as Berlin pursues a host of anti-Israel measures and is growing closer to Iran, according to multiple administration insiders who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.

As Democrats in Congress continue to hold the nomination of Richard Grenell, a veteran Republican diplomat who was tapped by Trump to serve as the next U.S. ambassador to Germany, the post remains vacant, sparking concerns the United States is ceding leverage amid sensitive discussions regarding the future of the landmark Iran nuclear deal.

The vacancy also has left the United States with little voice to combat a series of anti-Israel efforts being pursued by the German government. Trump administration insiders are becoming increasingly fed-up with the block on Grenell, telling the Free Beacon that U.S. diplomats currently helming the post have been bungling critical national security priorities, including the Iran portfolio and recent efforts by Germany to sell Tehran sensitive equipment used by the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria to produce chemical weapons.

"The current leader of the embassy is not an ambassador," said one senior U.S. official with direct knowledge of the situation, referring to Kent Logsdon, a former Obama administration official who is serving as the chargé d'affaires ad interim in Berlin.

German officials have declined to go along with a bid to crackdown on Tehran's ballistic missile program, which includes scores of medium-range rockets capable of striking Israel and sparking a regional war.

Recent reports also indicate that Germany is likely selling Iran technology that is being used to help the Syrian regime replenish chemical weapons stocks.

"The Germans have become key facilitators for Iran's dual use material and technology imports," said one Trump administration insider who works closely with the White House on Iran issues. "These are goods that ostensibly look civilian but can be used to help Iran advance its missile and nuclear programs."

"In talks with American negotiators, Germany has made it clear it does not believe Iran's missiles should be subject to a snapback of sanctions waived by the nuclear deal," the source disclosed. "Instead, the Germans say the West should simply keep waiving sanctions and offer to negotiate with Iran on its missile program by offering the regime more economic incentives in exchange for JCPOA-like concessions on missiles."

This has caused a tense diplomatic situation that has been exacerbated by the lack of a U.S. ambassador in Germany, the source said.

"At a time like this, we need a strong-willed, pro-Israel American ambassador in Berlin," said the source. "That man in Rick Grenell.  The sooner he hits the ground, the sooner we start taking it to the Germans for dragging their feet on Iranian missiles."

As the Iran issue takes top billing, Germany has also come under criticism for a series of anti-Israel efforts opposed by the United States.

In the latest kerfuffle, Germany has been blocking efforts by Israel to join the United Nations Security Council. Israel's presence on the council could send a significant international message and help thwart efforts by Arab nations to delegitimize the Jewish state at Turtle Bay.

There, too, Grenell could have an influence, sources say, referring to his vocal support of the Jewish state and efforts to combat deligitimization efforts.

Germany also has refused to take a tough line on the Iranian-tied terror group Hezbollah, according to recent report.

The German government is said to be opposed to efforts by the international community to designate Hezbollah as a terror group and crackdown on its rogue activities across the region.

As the diplomatic battle continues, the United States has had little to no voice in the discussion, sources say, again citing Grenell's holdup.

Richard Goldberg, a former senior Senate aide and current senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, described the block on Grenell as disastrous for U.S. national security and foreign policy.

"The number of bilateral issues facing the United States and Germany are mounting by the day," Goldberg said. "We need a thoughtful, strong-willed, confirmed ambassador in place as soon as possible.  On issues like trade, the Iran nuclear deal and Russia sanctions, the stakes are too high to drag this out any longer.  Leader [Mitch] McConnell should consider filing for cloture at the end of the week if the hold isn't lifted."

SOURCE





FBI Political Correctness Allowed This Islamist Teenager to Carry Out Attack

A sickening act of youth violence in Florida glinted across the news headlines last week, and then disappeared from view.

There will be no CNN town halls or student walkouts over the lost life and preventable tragedy, because there are no guns to blame. Only dropped balls.

As the exploiters of crisis know full well, bureaucratic screw-ups don’t make good fodder for partisan fundraisers and hipster T-shirts.

According to a probable cause affidavit filed by the Palm Beach County police, 17-year-old Corey Johnson bought a knife last Sunday and brought it with him to a sleepover at longtime friend Kyle Bancroft’s house. At 4 a.m., he decided to kill Kyle’s mother, Elaine; his brother, Dane; and Dane’s friend, Jovanni Sierra Brand.

Corey repeatedly stabbed Jovanni in his bed and slit his throat. Then he attempted to murder Elaine as she approached the boys’ bedrooms in response to Jio’s last gasps. Dane rescued his mom and sustained 32 stab wounds. Both were hospitalized and survived. Jio was buried last Friday—less than a week after celebrating his 13th birthday at a pizza party attended by Corey.

The accused killer told police he “stabbed the victims because of his Muslim faith,” watched videos of “Muslim jihadists” on his cellphone, and “was reading the Quran from his phone just prior to the attack to give him courage to carry out his intentions.”

Perhaps he read the sword verses for inspiration? Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Hasan quoted from them in his presentation to classmates and superiors at Walter Reed Medical Center: “I have been commanded to fight the people until they testify that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah.”

Or maybe it was Surah 9:5: “Fight and slay the idolaters wherever ye find them and seize them, confine them, and lie in wait for them in every place of ambush.”

Corey’s brutal attack was no bolt out of the blue, no unexpected incidence of sudden jihad syndrome. Local school officials and police in Palm Beach County, along with federal and international law enforcement authorities, had encountered more red flags in their years of dealing with Corey than at a Communist May Day parade in Havana.

In middle school, Corey had reportedly stalked a student and sexually harassed her. She told school police. Nothing happened. He dabbled in white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and gay-bashing, and then immersed himself in radical Islam—rising at 5 a.m. daily to pray and revere the Syrian flag.

Corey’s online jihad agitation, physical abuse, and addiction to ISIS beheading videos prompted his sister in 2016 to confide in a school therapist, who contacted the local sheriff’s office.

Corey’s mom, the sister told school officials, was in denial. The sister so feared for her life she slept with a knife under her bed.

Law enforcement officers at the Jupiter Police Department and Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office convened at Corey’s high school last January to investigate the self-radicalized teen’s contact with ISIS as he sought to join the terror group.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force became involved after European intelligence counterparts told them Corey had used Instagram to issue security threats to a Catholic high school in England. The threats “were so severe in nature,” local officials discovered, “that up to 100 students were removed from the school fearing some kind of attack.”

One of the messages threatened: “By Allah, we will kill every single Infidel student at this school.” Corey told FBI agents he “was supportive of known terrorist Anwar al Awlaki”—the spiritual patron of lone-wolf jihadists.

The FBI’s plan of action? Inaction. The agency watched and waited and wanly admonished Corey to knock it off because authorities “believed a redirection approach would be the most beneficial regarding his conduct.”

“Redirection” is akin to the alternative social justice strategies school officials and police used in Parkland, Florida, before 17 innocent students and teachers died at the hands of a teen shooter who was a walking neon sign for a mental health catastrophe.

No referrals, no charges, no records, no problems.

Except for the fact that Corey ignored the FBI and continued his Islamic instigation online. After nearly a year of foot-dragging, the FBI gathered enough evidence to bring federal charges against Corey for his social media terror threats.

According to records released by the Jupiter Police Department, local officials were told the charges would be brought in the summer of 2017. But on the early morning of the jihad stabbings at Palm Beach Gardens last week, the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office had yet to take action on a known radicalized threat who had menaced his family, his schoolmates, and innocents abroad.

It’s a familiar narrative for the FBI—from the Boston Marathon bombers to the Orlando nightclub shooter to the Fort Lauderdale airport jihadist to the San Bernardino terrorists. Family members, teachers, neighbors, and co-workers saw something and said something. Investigators investigated. But nobody did nuttin’ till it was too bloody late.

SOURCE






The Police Shooting of Stephon Clark - Beyond the Hysteria and Screaming Headlines

A black man with two small children was shot and killed by Sacramento, California police. His only crime? Holding a cellphone while standing in his own backyard.

That seems to be the Left’s narrative, anyway, regarding the death of 22-year-old Stephon Clark, who was indeed shot by police in his grandmother’s yard on Sunday night. And given today’s political climate along with mainstream media headlines and activist tweets on the topic, it’s no wonder so many people are outraged.

The tweet that perhaps went viral the fastest, with well over 100,000 likes and retweets, came from First Coast News journalist Lana Harris, who wrote, “Stephon Clark. Officers reportedly shot at him 20 times in his backyard because they thought he was holding a tool bar. It was his cellphone. Someone will have to explain this to the two little boys he leaves behind - one and three years old.”

Race baiter Shaun King called Clark’s death a “brutal police execution” of someone who “posed no risk whatsoever.”

BLM activist Qasim Rashid called it a “cold-blooded execution.”

“Clark was in his own backyard when officers shot at him 20 times,” read the Huffington Post byline. The site’s main headline on Wednesday night read, “Cops Kill Unarmed Man *In Own Yard* 20 Shots Fired.”

“Police shot at a man 20 times in his own yard, thinking he had a gun. It was an iPhone,” headlined the Washington Post.

CNN’s read, “Sacramento police shot man holding cell phone in his grandmother's yard.”

To get to the actual facts, or at least some explanation that doesn’t involve Clark sitting in his backyard on a work conference call when two police officers strolled by and simultaneously thought “hey, let’s shoot a black guy today...” - one had to read beyond the screaming headlines, but not very far.

Turns out, the incident involved some serious property destruction, a multi-yard chase involving fences... and a helicopter. Yes, a helicopter and yes, I’m pretty sure they don’t bring those things out to look for jaywalkers.

As it so happens, far from a night of shooting random black people just for the fun of it, these two officers were responding to a 911 call about a man breaking vehicle and home windows with what the helicopter pilot thought was a toolbar. When encountered, the man led them on what the Washington Post called “a frantic foot pursuit through darkened streets.”

Even the Huffington Post couldn’t help but cite the inconvenient details later in their coverage:

“Disturbing helicopter footage of the incident, released Wednesday, shows thermal images of Clark running through his neighborhood and hopping fences as two officers begin to close in on him. He stops at the home he shared with his grandparents and two sons. Seconds later, officers shoot him dead.”

While an investigation is being conducted and the truth will be ascertained about whether or not officers should have pulled the trigger when they did, one fact is incontrovertible - Clark could have surrendered at any point during his multi-yard pursuit, yet chose not to.

It should also be noted that Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, hardly a “law and order” conservative by any conceivable definition, chose not to “second guess the split-second decisions” of the officers.

Even so, Leftists have already turned it into a race thing. In their coverage of the incident, VOX wrote, “Police killings of unarmed black men helped fuel the rise of the Black Lives Matter Movement. Now a new tragedy — the shooting death of an unarmed black man in his own backyard — is raising new questions about how much things have changed, if at all.”

VOX then goes on to cite the Washington Post’s Fatal Force database statistics that show that out of 230 people killed by police in 2018, 38 were identified as black.

That’s 17 percent, out of a population that makes up about 13 percent of America. Slightly more than their representation, but hardly the “significant racial disparities” VOX complained about later in the piece so they could attribute it to “high levels of housing segregation and economic inequality” and stuff.

The Washington Post also feels like there’s an “overrepresentation of African Americans” in the statistics, citing statistics last year showing that of unarmed people killed by police, “30 were white, 20 were black and 13 were Hispanic.”

Given the fact that black offenders actually commit 52 percent of homicides, or well over their 13 percent representation of the population, the fact that the number is significantly less than white suspects shot is a testament to police restraint, not racism.

Granted, pulling that trigger should be the absolute last thing police do when confronting any criminal suspect. On the other hand, bashing in windows and running away from police should also be the last thing anyone who doesn’t want to get even inadvertently shot should engage in.

Even though we see things differently, Left and Right should be able to agree on this: Stephon Clark’s death was a needless tragedy, and yes, it was entirely preventable.

SOURCE






Australia: 'Racist to its core': Outrage as nurses are subject to a new code where they must announce their 'white privilege' before treating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander patients

Australian nurses and midwives are being forced to announce their 'white privilege' before treating Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander patients -  a move which has been slammed as 'racist to its core'.

The term 'white privilege' defines the unearned social and cultural advantages awarded to people with white skin which are not enjoyed by people of colour or non-white backgrounds.

The Nursing and Midwifery Board believes the cultural safety of Indigenous or Torres Strait Islander patients is just as important as their clinical safety.

But Graeme Haycroft, spokesperson for the Nurses Professional Association of Queensland, (NPAQ) told Sky News the addition to the code of conduct could have serious consequences for nurses and is simply 'racist'.

The Board describes the move as 'a decolonising model of ­practice based on dialogue, communication, power sharing and negotiation, and the acknowledgment of white privilege'.

Mr Haycroft said 50 per cent of NPAQ members were opposed to the new rule. 'They have said "this is wrong, do something about it",' Mr Haycroft told host Peta Credlin.

The inclusion of 'white privilege' in the code of conduct was first exposed by Cory Bernardi's Australian Conservatives. Senator Bernardi heavily criticised the move, labelling it as 'another virtue signal' and 'nonsensical'.

'This is just another example of where PC and this identity politics has captured the professional class or the political class,' he told 2GB.

Following backlash, the Board released a statement which said the codes required midwives and nurses to 'acknowledge that Australia has always been a culturally and linguistically diverse nation'.

Medical staff are also asked to consider the impact historic factors such as colonisation have had on indigenous peoples' health.

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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