Friday, August 24, 2018



We’ll send migrants back to Libya unless EU steps in, vows Salvini

Some sanity in Italy

Italy’s far-right interior minister has threatened to deport 177 migrants back to Libya if Brussels refuses to redistribute them across Europe in a move that would violate international law.

The refugees have been stuck on an Italian coastguard ship off the island of Lampedusa for five days after being rescued in Maltese waters on Thursday.

Matteo Salvini said in a statement: “Either Europe decides seriously to offer Italy some concrete help, beginning with, for example, the 180 immigrants on board the Diciotti ship, or we will be forced to do what will definitively stop the smugglers’ business: that means taking the people saved in the sea back to Libya.”

SOURCE





California Introduces Bill Banning Soda & Juice from Kids' Meals

The California legislature recently passed a bill banning restaurants from selling soda and juice with kids' meals and instead requires them to offer a cup of milk or water in an effort to fight childhood obesity. But, the purchaser of the meal may still buy an extra soda or juice and hand the drink to the child, thus negating whatever intended effects the bill hopes to accomplish.

The California Senate bill, 1192, passed assembly on Thursday after dieticians and various health advocates supported the new law. "Some of these kids are drinking up to three sodas a day. This is setting them up for tremendous cancer risks down the road. Because now we know that 20 percent of all cancers are tied to being overweight," Stephanie Winn of the American Cancer Society told media.

But, some parents argue that it simply is too much government interference. "I think the government shouldn't determine what's available when I as a mother know what's best with my child," Inez Deocio said.

Since the bill does not outright ban the sugar beverages from eateries, many parents will still buy their children soda or juice and end up spending more at a restaurant.

As noted by CBS, "A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study found that almost two-thirds of boys and girls ages 2 to 19 drink at least one sugar-sweetened beverage per day. According to the CDC, frequent consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is associated with weight gain and obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney diseases, non-alcoholic liver disease, tooth decay and cavities." At that rate all the kids must be dying in childhood!

SOURCE






"Crazy Rich Asians" race row can’t stop film’s success



The creators of the new romantic comedy Crazy Rich Asians were so determined to get their mould-breaking film into cinemas that they turned down a guaranteed fortune upfront from Netflix to work with a Hollywood studio instead.

“The biggest stage with the biggest stakes, that’s what we asked for,” Jon Chu, the director, said this month of the huge financial risk that he and the film’s producers took in pursuit of maximum cultural impact.

Yesterday, with the comedy dominating the US box office and braced for a global rollout, it was emphatically clear that their gamble had paid off, despite a controversy over alleged “yellow washing” in the film’s casting and its depiction of the ethnic diversity of Singapore, where the action takes place.

Based on the bestselling novel by Kevin Kwan about a Chinese-American woman who learns that her boyfriend is the scion of one of Singapore’s wealthiest families, Crazy Rich Asians has been hailed as a watershed moment for the US film industry.

The first mainstream studio film with an all-Asian cast for 25 years, it took $35 million in its first five days in American cinemas, enough to claim the No 1 spot at the box office. It has already made back its budget and notched the most successful opening weekend for a PG-13 romantic comedy in six years, while demonstrating the untapped potential of the US Asian cinema audience.

However, in both the United States and Singapore, the film has encountered opposition from academics and activists who are disappointed that it did not do more to reflect the diversity of the small, but racially complex city state. “Touting Crazy Rich Asians as some sort of progressive win is false, especially in a context when there are already so few nuanced representations of Singapore and Asia in western media,” the Singaporean activist Kirsten Han wrote on the website The Establishment.

The Singaporean actress Tan Kheng Hua, who plays the mother of one of the lead characters, countered that the film was a reflection of Kwan’s “specific perspective”. She told The Washington Post: “It’s called Crazy Rich Asians, it’s not called Every Singaporean.”

Only 5 per cent of last year’s top 100 grossing Hollywood films had a character of Asian descent with a speaking role, according to a study from the University of Southern California. Asian cinemagoers typically make up less than a tenth of the overall opening weekend audience for a film.

However, just as African-Americans turned out in droves this year to ensure that Black Panther became a box-office behemoth, so Asian-Americans mobilised to support Crazy Rich Asians. Wealthy business leaders in major cities spent thousands of dollars renting cinemas for special screenings while a grassroots social media campaign fanned interest in the film in the hope that it could forge a path towards greater Asian-American representation in films. As a result Asian-Americans have accounted for about 38 per cent of ticket buyers for Crazy Rich Asians so far, according to Jeff Goldstein, of Warner Bros.

At a time when studios have struggled to attract audiences large enough to justify anything that is not either a low-budget horror film or a lavish, special effects-heavy superhero adventure, those figures are telling. “This is how doors get opened,” Paul Dergarabedian, a box-office analyst with ComScore, told Variety magazine. “By showing the financial viability of movies that were thought not to be for studios or filmmakers.”

SOURCE






Australian tax officers are forced to take 'racist' test that asks them to label pictures of Aboriginal and white Australians as either 'bad' or 'good'

This old BS has no validity at all.  It sounds  like a version of the IAT, which serious researchers abandoned long ago as telling you nothing certain

Tax officers have been told to take a 'straight-up racist' test asking them to label pictures of Aboriginal and white Australians as either 'bad' or 'good'.

With the test, the Australian Tax Office is gauging employees' unconscious bias, levels of prejudice and even what political party they vote for.

When asked how important they believed the Aboriginal heritage was to Australia, employees were told to choose between 'strongly agree, neither agree nor disagree' and 'strongly disagree'.

The test also asks employees to reveal how 'bothered' they would feel if 'many Aboriginal Australians moved to my neighbourhood in a short period of time' and altered the 'ethnic composition'.

Incorporating photos of white and Aboriginal Australians, the test forces participants to make a split-second decision about whether the person is 'good' or 'bad'.

When introduced in July, ATO officers slammed the test as 'straight-up racist', The Daily Telegraph reported.

While the ATO warned employees the test could trigger 'unexpected emotional reactions' it defended the test and said it was important to build an inclusive workforce.

Based on their results, employees were told whether or not they held 'unconscious bias' and were offered training accordingly.

A spokesman for the ATO said staff could opt out of the training, but were urged not to. He denied it was racist and denied it inappropriately probed employees' political leanings.

The spokesman said the course was a step in the right direction to 'maintain a workplace free from unrecognised biases'.

SOURCE 

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

Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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


No comments: