FBI Investigating Molotov Cocktail Attack on Seattle Church as Possible Hate Crime

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating a Molotov cocktail attack on a Christian church in Seattle on Thursday, Oct. 18, as a potential hate crime, according to King 5 News.

“The FBI is now involved in the investigation and is working to determine if this was a hate crime,” said Michael Crowe with the news outlet.

On Thursday night, a suspect threw several Molotov cocktails at the Iglesia ni Cristo church in Rainier Valley, Seattle, starting a small fire outside the church. District Minister of the Pacific Northwest Barrington Thompson said “about 250 people” were inside the church during the attack, but no one was injured.

“It seemed like he was doing sloppy work, and thank God he was doing sloppy work,” Thompson said about the perpetrator.

According to a report by the Seattle Police Department, witnesses to the attack “stated a person had thrown lit bottles of an unknown liquid at the building” shortly after 8 p.m., causing “minor damage to the exterior of the church.”

A video from King 5 News shows scorch marks on the church doors and walls, as well as security camera footage of the explosions and ensuing fire.

SOURCE






Disintegrating Families, Disintegrating Culture

Arnold Ahlert

In recent columns, this writer has sought to address the root causes of the nation's increasing polarization. One of the foremost of those is an education system that turns out generations of weak-thinking Americans whose command of the nation's founding documents, civic structures, and historical foundations is virtually nonexistent — even as those same Americans are well-schooled in the nation's shortcomings.

If this effort is allowed to continue, our status as a constitutional republic and what is often referred to as the world's "last best hope for mankind" is seriously threatened. Nationally televised congressional hearings would be a great way to begin shedding light on a contemptible dynamic that can no longer be blamed on incompetence.

It is nothing less than a concerted and coordinated effort to "fundamentally transform" the nation, and it must be exposed.

Yet there can be no mistaking the reality that the devolution of our education system has root causes as well. The failure factories otherwise known as public schools created — and nurtured — by the Democrat Education Complex are far easier to maintain in a disintegrating culture. There is a level of legitimacy in the all-too-familiar teachers' lament that some children are "unteachable," and that assertion is almost invariably accompanied by the reason for it: Most of these children live in circumstances that could be charitably described as "chaotic" at best — and wholly removed from anything resembling civilized norms at worst.

How did we get to that place? Before the emergence of LBJ's Great Society, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) was reserved for widows, as a means of funding once-married women who had lost the primary male supporter of the family. In the 1960s, Johnson and Congress changed the qualifications: Any household where there was no male family head present became eligible for taxpayer subsidies.

The late Patrick Moynihan predicted the calamity that would follow, especially among blacks, where the out-of-wedlock birth rate has now reached 77%, and single-parent families are mostly headed by women. Moynihan was criticized for being racist, and for assuming middle class values "are the correct values for everyone in America," as civil rights leader Floyd McKissick asserted at the time.

Middle class values? In 1963, more than 90% of all American babies had married parents. A UN report released last week reveals the overall number of American births occurring out of wedlock has now reached 40%. The numbers for the Millennial generation are even worse: A whopping 57% of parents ages 26 to 31 are having children without getting married. Bloomberg News characterized the UN report as a "cultural shift."

A cultural calamity is more like it.

Nonetheless, Americans are supposed to be encouraged by the fact that these births are occurring predominantly among unmarried couples living together, as opposed to single mothers. Moreover, the nation's fertility rate, which reached a 30-year low last year, "would be much steeper if women weren't having children outside marriage," states John Santelli, a professor in population, family health, and pediatrics at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health. "The trend will continue, there's no doubt about it," he adds. "We can't go back to [the] '50s."

"The '50s" is a term currently used by progressives to belittle the nation's cultural values, and no one demonstrated that better than students responding to two law professors who took Americans to task for abandoning them, including the idea that one should get "married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake." The students asserted those values "stem from the very same malignant logic of hetero-patriarchal, class-based, white supremacy that plagues our country today," and are "steeped in anti-blackness and white hetero-patriarchal respectability, i.e. two-hetero-parent homes."

In other words, getting married and staying married is racist, homophobic, and elitist.

Columnist Joseph Misulonas is also on board with the current trend. "So don't feel bad if you get pregnant out of wedlock," he writes. "You simply are representing our modern times."

How are our modern times working out? According to a Brookings Institution report, two-thirds of unmarried parents split up before their child reaches the age of 12. And according to the latest study in a series of them conducted by agencies within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services approximately once each decade, children living with their biological but unmarried parents are four times as likely to be physically, sexually, or emotionally abused than children living with married parents.

It doesn't get more "modern" than that. And while it's easy to paper over this worrisome trend with the angry jargon of social justice warriors, or simply embrace it as the latest fad, there is no avoiding what's really going on: More and more Americans reject the idea of being wholly committed to a marriage and their children.

It's not surprising. While marriage is a legal commitment, it is also a spiritual one, and religion has been in decline for decades. We also live in an age where technology abets increasing levels of social dysfunction in a nation where millions of Americans now prefer social-media connections to physical interaction. Add identity politics to the mix, and it gets pretty tough for "toxic," "privileged," or "unnecessary" males to interact with women who are alternately "survivors" or "empowered" — all while the specter of violating the ever-expanding demands of political correctness hang heavy in the air.

Furthermore, if one can remain noncommittal with regard to two of life's most important decisions, that casual indifference will not be quarantined from other aspects of one's life. Perhaps that's why it's been so easy to convince millions of Americans that nonjudgmentalism, which posits that believing one value is superior to another is the equivalent of bigotry, is a superior way of thinking. Perhaps it's why record numbers of Millennials remain living at home, or why 60 million abortions have been performed since 1973.

In short, the "easy way out" has never been easier.

Even more troubling (and indicative), when the important is trivialized, the trivial becomes important. Thus, we have a nation where Hollywood celebrities wax indignant about Disney cartoon princesses, college students demand "safe spaces" and courses free from "micro aggressions," white milk is called a symbol of white supremacy, and a semipermanent state of hate and hysteria becomes a lifestyle choice.

A choice that allows one to completely dismiss millions of one's fellow Americans as "deplorables" who "cling" to guns, God, and religion.

What millions of Americans are clinging to are the values that made this nation exceptional, and nothing forms the bedrock of that exceptionalism better than an intact nuclear family. A nation that dismisses it as just another "lifestyle choice" does so at its peril. There is nothing remotely "modern" about abandoning marriage, or "allowing a village" to raise one's children. That such a proposition can be even be considered indicates we are a society besieged by toxic levels of self-centeredness and irresponsibility.

When children and marriage are essentially disposable, so is everything else.

SOURCE






Study: Online attacks on Jews ramp up before Election Day

Far-right extremists have ramped up an intimidating wave of anti-Semitic harassment against Jewish journalists, political candidates, and others ahead of next month’s US midterm elections, according to a report released Friday by a Jewish civil rights group.

The Anti-Defamation League’s report says its researchers analyzed more than 7.5 million Twitter messages from Aug. 31 to Sept. 17 and found nearly 30 percent of the accounts repeatedly tweeting derogatory terms about Jews appeared to be automated "bots."

But accounts controlled by real-life humans often mount the most "worrisome and harmful" anti-Semitic attacks, sometimes orchestrated by leaders of neo-Nazi or white nationalist groups, the researchers said.

"Both anonymity and automation have been used in online propaganda offensives against the Jewish community during the 2018 midterms," they wrote.

Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL’s national director and CEO, said the midterm elections have been a "rallying point" for far-right extremists to organize efforts to spread hate online.

"It’s a place where extremists really have felt emboldened," Greenblatt said of social media platforms.

Billionaire philanthropist George Soros was a leading subject of harassing tweets. Soros, a Hungarian-born Jew demonized by right-wing conspiracy theorists, is one of the prominent Democrats who had pipe bombs sent to them this week.

The ADL’s study concludes that online disinformation and abuse is disproportionately targeting Jews in the United States "during this crucial political moment."

"Prior to the election of President Donald Trump, anti-Semitic harassment and attacks were rare and unexpected, even for Jewish Americans who were prominently situated in the public eye. Following his election, anti-Semitism has become normalized and harassment is a daily occurrence," the report says.

The New York City-based ADL has commissioned other studies of online hate, including a report in May that estimated about 3 million Twitter users posted or reposted at least 4.2 million anti-Semitic tweets in English over a 12-month period ending Jan. 28. An earlier report said anti-Semitic incidents in the United States the previous year had reached the highest tally it has counted in more than two decades.

For the latest report, researchers interviewed five Jewish people, including two recent political candidates, who had faced "human-based attacks" against them on social media this year. Their experiences demonstrated that anti-Semitic harassment "has a chilling effect on Jewish Americans’ involvement in the public sphere," their report says.

"While each interview subject spoke of not wanting to let threats of the trolls affect their online activity, political campaigns, academic research or news reporting, they all admitted the threats of violence and deluges of anti-Semitism had become part of their internal equations," researchers wrote.

The most popular term used in tweets containing the #TrumpTrain hashtag was "Soros." The study also found a "surprising" abundance of tweets referencing "QAnon," a right-wing conspiracy theory that started on an online message board and has been spread by Trump supporters.

"There are strong anti-Semitic undertones, as followers decry George Soros and the Rothschild family as puppeteers," researchers wrote.

SOURCE






From a safe distance we’ll watch Tasmania’s gender folly fail

When it comes to Tasmania’s plan to become the first state to erase a baby’s gender from a birth certificate, please doff your cap to our federalist forefathers. They deserve more credit than we often give them. The federal system set down in our Constitution means one state can conduct a social experiment while the rest of the country looks on and learns.

The federal structure has the other added bonus of offering a shorter distance between the rulers and the ruled, at least on matters reserved to the states. That won’t save a state from foolish politicians, but as a matter of democratic will we cannot fault the gender-bender politics of Tasmania’s parliament. If most voters cannot agree on who should govern their state, instead opting for a motley crew of politicians more interested in social experiments than economic policy, well then, that’s democracy.

People get the politicians they deserve. And in Tasmania, the Liberal Hodgman government relies on the casting vote of a Speaker elected to the position with Greens and Labor support. The original bill is sensibly aimed at ending the need for transgender people to divorce before they can change their gender on official documents. The Greens and Labor then went further, pushing for amendments to remove gender from birth certificates, with Speaker Sue Hickey’s support.

If the bill passes, watch that other magnificent part of democracy: blowback from voters when politicians overstep the mark. And people in mainland states have the luxury of watching this social experiment unfold and the chance to harness sensible arguments so we do not follow Tasmania’s folly.

Where do you start when it comes to talking about sex and gender? I tried delving into the academic world for some clues. That was a mistake. I discovered a morass of ivory tower posturing, confusion and weird new words meant to uncover some old and apparently persistent evil. Calls to erase sex and gender as a way to topple the white/cis/hetero/patriarchal supremacy and normativity sound better suited to a horror movie than reasoned argument.

I bumped into feminists who think that transgender people who alter their gender reinforce sexist gender roles. And others who say that transgender people challenge oppressive gender norms. I found some academics who think that if you were a man, you experienced male privilege, so it is impossible for you to be a real woman. I found mind-numbing academic references to phallocractic technology and “the transsexually constructed lesbian-feminist”.

I discovered intra-feminist conflicts between women, including lesbians who feel threatened by trans activism. And I was struck by the many, many accusations of transphobia by those who brook no disagreement with their activism and their agenda.

After that entanglement with feminist theories and trans activism, I was still interested in trying to work through Tasmania’s dalliance with sex and gender politics. So, I headed closer to the ground. I read hundreds of comments from readers of this newspaper that followed the report that Tasmania may expunge gender from birth certificates. Most of the readers expressed tolerance, respect for human dignity, thoughtful ideas, a real distaste for discrimination and a great deal of common sense.

Their sentiments exposed a glaring chasm with the unintelligible tosh and intolerance common to many academics. So allow me to mention what Edmund Burke night call the gritty wisdom of unlettered men and women.

One reader, Pamela, said this is another step to take away identity — and notice it is by those people who routinely sup at the table of identity politics. She said she struggled to understand people who wish to dominate others. “If some wish to omit gender of their child (from a birth certificate), OK, but others should be allowed to do what they wish.” Many many readers echoed Pamela’s belief in freedom of choice for parents of newborns.

Many recognised the difference between sex as a biological reality and gender as a social identity that for some will differ from their chromosomal mix. One writer suggested that we keep sex on birth certificates but discard gender. That was echoed by Sandra, who suggested we “send ‘gender’ back to the grammarians and the ‘gender studies’ departments in the ivory towers”.

Gizelle saw the bright side to expunging gender from birth certificates: “this could be the end of the virtue-signalling for female quotas”. Dream on. More likely the same people who want gender banned are likely “the same people, in a different forum, calling for gender-related targets for business and politicians as well”, said another reader.

Here we go again, said Howard. “A vocal minority not satisfied with their win on same-sex marriage.” Barbara agreed, asking: why must we strip the majority of people of an important part of their identity to accommodate the agenda of a tiny minority? They both have a point.

The plan by the Greens and Labor to erase gender from birth certificate is part of a broader plan to erase gender identity altogether, or at least make it mighty difficult to include mention of gender if you are just a woman or a man.

The proposed amendments will prohibit the registrar of births, deaths and marriages from including information about the gender of a child, unless required by a court or an applicable federal law. A person over 16 may record their gender by statutory declaration. A child under 16 years of age would need a declaration by at least one parent and the child’s own express wish, with a magistrate deciding any disputes.

The public reasons from LGBTI activists for these changes do not match their private agenda. What LGBTI advocate Rodney Croome fails to explain is how it is discriminatory to offer parents a choice to record the sex of their newborn on a birth certificate.

Banning gender on a birth certificate does not encourage tolerance and inclusion, but stripping people of their gender at birth cements a social experiment aimed at encouraging gender fluidity.

Tasmanian Greens leader Cassy O’Connor said the current laws require that transgender people undergo invasive reproductive surgery if they want to change their birth certificate to reflect their identity.

If that is the case, have a debate about that rather than using a legal sledgehammer to remove gender from all birth certificates.

Transgender activist Martine Delaney says removing gender from birth certificates won’t harm anyone.

How can she know that? If a man is able to pass himself off as woman using a genderless birth certificate to gain entry to women’s spaces, or ends up in a women’s prison, how can Delaney know there are no risks to women’s safety?

In the debate over sex, gender and the law, women’s groups are increasingly arguing for caution and consideration of all groups, not just a transgender minority.

Delaney’s intervention is a neat reminder of her illiberal approach to open debate about same-sex marriage when she raced off to Tasmania’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner because she was offended by a pamphlet from the Catholic Church that set out its teaching on marriage.

Expect the same intolerance with more confected claims of hurt feelings, hate speech and transphobia. That is the experience from Britain where far-reaching changes allow for self-identification, possibly with no time periods or medical advice needed. If John wakes up one morning and decides he is Jane, he can self-identify as a woman for legal purposes before the sun sets. None of this is to mock the vast majority of transgender people who endure excruciating mental and physical anguish about their sex and their gender. But to suggest there are no dangers in a radical social shift is like believing in pixies.

To shut down those who wish to raise questions, now a routine tactic among some trans activists in Britain, is worse than ignorance. It is intolerance. Writing in The Spectator earlier this year, Judith Green from Woman’s Place UK outlined physical threats, social media harassment and hate-based vilification aimed at her group and any venue where they meet to discuss the consequences of new gender laws on women, children and society as a whole.

Last week, the Speaker of Tasmania’s lower house, who will decide whether gender is erased from birth certificates in that state, said the world is changing. Hickey said we need to be open to considering things that might discriminate or harm someone. It works both ways. As one reader of this newspaper wrote last week in response, “in the not too distant future I can imagine a world where it will be almost impossible to get through a day without offending someone, or some group”.

Note again the contrast between the live-and-let-live sentiments of many readers of this newspaper and the freedom-loathing agendas of academics, bureaucracies and politicians.

Language police in Victoria ­expect public servants to use gender-neutral pronouns. Language police in the ACT Labor caucus want to remove all references to Mr, Miss, Mrs or Ms in parliament. In some Australian primary and secondary schools, social media activists funded by Facebook are instructing students that gender identity exists on a ­spectrum.

And now social engineers in Tasmania want to erase gender altogether from birth certificates: no choice, no freedom to differ, just one-size-fits-all genderless babies.

These days, the political divide is less about Right and Left and more about those who believe in greater freedom and those who don’t. History reminds us that human dignity rests on people having more, not less, freedom.

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. 

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