Monday, July 01, 2019



An emasculated civilization








'Attacked by Antifa, bleeding, they stole my camera'

This is the moment militant anti-fascist protesters attacked and 'milkshaked' a Conservative writer during a rally in Oregon.

The footage shows Andy Ngo, an editor at the online publication Quillette, being punched, kicked and covered in milkshake by members of the 'Antifa' movement.

Ngo, who describes himself in his Twitter bio as 'hated by Antifa', is seen attempting to get away from the crowd, some of whom follow him and throw milkshakes and other objects at his head.

At least three demonstraters from Antifa, the collective term for a militant progressive protest movement, who oppose the far-right, were arrested.

The writer tweeted afterwards that he was bleeding and had been robbed of his camera equipment and was heading to the hospital for treatment.

He said: 'Attacked by antifa. Bleeding. They stole my camera equipment. No police until after. waiting for ambulance . If you have evidence Of attack please help.'

Adding: 'On way to hospital. Was beat on face and head multiple times in downtown in middle of street with fists and weapons. Suspects at large.'

At least three groups had planned rallies or demonstrations at different sites in the city, including members of the so-called Proud Boys and anti-fascist groups that include 'antifa,' and the fights occurred when participants of the opposing groups met, according to The Oregonian/OregonLive .

Sporting several welts and cults, Ngo was speaking into the camera when police arrived. Ngo asked the officers where they had been when he was being attacked

Ngo shared a video to social media after the attack where he said his GoPro camera had been stolen and that he had been punched several times in his face.

Sporting several welts and cults, Ngo was speaking into the camera when police arrived. He said: 'Where the hell were you? I was assaulted twice.' 

In a statement Saturday night, the Portland Police Bureau said: 'During today's events, there were multiple assaults reported, as well as projectiles thrown at demonstrators and officers.

'There were also reports of pepper spray and bear spray being used by people in the crowd. Officers deployed pepper spray during the incident.

'There were reports of individuals throwing 'milkshakes' with a substance mixed in that was similar to a quick drying cement. One subject was arrested for throwing a substance during the incident.'

SOURCE  






Buttigieg attributes police shooting to ‘Systemic Racism’

Mayor of South Bend Indiana explained how his city’s police department is falling short of his expectations when it comes to policing and racial bias, during the second part of the 2020 Democratic debate, Thursday.

He said that the case of Eric Logan, a black man who was allegedly shot by a police officer without a body cam, demonstrates a larger problem of systemic racism in policing.

“Until we move policing out of the shadow of systemic racism, whatever this particular incident teaches us we will be left with the bigger problem of the fact that there is a wall of mistrust put up, one racist act at a time.”

SOURCE  






Heroic Boston police let a black shoot at them twice before shooting back

The dumb black could have saved his life just by obeying the police command to put down his gun

Leonard Lee, a lifelong Dorchester resident and antiviolence crusader, had just sat down for dinner Monday after a long day at work when he heard someone shouting outside his window: "Put the gun down!"

Lee rushed to the window - on the second floor of the home he has lived in for 20 years - and looked outside toward the street, he said, where a deadly confrontation between a 19-year-old Boston man and two city police officers was unfolding.

The front of the home faces Penhallow Street, where the officers had arrived on bikes after a chase shortly before 5:30 p.m. Lee said there were no trees obstructing his view, so he could see the teenager clearly - down to the horror in his eyes.

"Put the gun down, put the gun down,'' the officers screamed several times, Lee said.

As someone who has devoted decades to working with at-risk youth, Lee has seen the effects of violence on the front and back ends of urban confrontations. He's never watched the whole thing play out before his eyes.

Lee said he saw the teenager, later identified by police as Jaymil Ellerbe, holding a handgun and backing away from the officers. The police had arrived on Penhallow Street after responding to reports of shots fired in Town Field in Fields Corner. They had seen the teenager and a second suspect running from the park onto Melville Avenue and were now in a face-off.

Lee, who did not know Ellerbe, said he saw the officers get off their bikes and implore the teenager to put the gun down.

Lee said he also began screaming: "They are going to kill you. Put the gun down. Put the [expletive] gun down."

The teenager looked up at him, Lee said. "He could have easily shot me because I was in clear view,'' said Lee, who kept looking out his window.

Lee said he saw the teen fire two shots in the direction of the officers, who ducked for cover behind Lee's brown Volvo, which was parked on the street.

Lee said Ellerbe continued to walk backward down the street while facing the officers.

Everything went in slow motion, and Lee felt frozen in the window, fearing the worst.

"I wasn't thinking of moving,'' Lee said. "I responded. It wasn't until later that I said, `What the hell am I doing?'?"

Ellerbe stopped at a small tree and took two more shots at the police, and that was when, Lee said, the officers returned fire.

One of the shots appeared to hit Ellerbe in the left leg. He fell, Lee said, but kept holding the gun, which was pointed to the sky. The officers, along with Lee, repeated their plea: Drop the gun.

"I was screaming . . . as loud as I can because I [thought] that if he didn't put the gun down they were going to continue to fire at him," Lee said.

But, Lee said, he saw the teenager point the weapon at the officers. Then there were gunshots.

Lee said he saw the teenager jerk as though he had been hit in the stomach and then in the left shoulder. Then he was still.

Lee said he saw one of the officers run toward Ellerbe. The other officer shouted, "He's still alive. Don't go over there," Lee said.

The first officer continued to approach Ellerbe and then knocked away the gun, and immediately performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Lee said.

"Come on. Hang in there,'' the officer said, according to Lee. Then Lee heard him say, "He's deceased."

At that time, Lee said, he bolted downstairs and outside.  "And I just started bawling. I lost it. This kid . . .'' he said, choking up and pausing. "I could see the white in his eyes and he was distraught. He just looked like my son. He looked like my nephew. He looked like the kids I worked with over the years."

Lee said the teenager did not look like he was "trying to shoot his way out of this." And, he said, the officers showed a lot of restraint in trying to end the confrontation peacefully.

Lee has headed nonprofits and was part of the "Boston Miracle" in the 1980s that helped curb gang crime. He also ran the Division of Violence and Injury Prevention for the Department of Public Health. In short, he's seen a lot of the effects of violence through the years. But this was something else, something more profound. "I don't know why God put this experience in front of me,'' he said.

He wished he could have done more to save Ellerbe. It haunts him. "I took responsibility I should have been able to save this kid's life,'' he said. "I know the cops . . . based on their temperament and how this went down, I know they didn't want to kill this kid."

SOURCE  






Australia: No forgiveness for Folau’s sins against the PC church

The take-home message of the Israel Folau scandal is as clear as it is terrifying: Christians are no longer welcome in public life.

If you adhere to core Christian beliefs about sin, hell and damnation, you will be purged from polite society.

If you think St Paul was right to argue in his Epistle to the Romans that it is sinful for men to neglect “the natural use of the female” and instead to become “inflamed by their lust for one another”, you will be cast out of the community. If you agree with the word of God — that man “shall not lie with mankind as with womankind”, as Leviticus puts it — you will be branded a moral transgressor.

The irony is almost too much to bear: critics of Christianity now use the tactics Christianity itself once used in its darker moments in history. They demonise certain ideas as heretical, rage against those who holds these ideas and subject these sinful creatures to a PC inquisition.

“Are you now or have you ever been an adherent to the Bible’s beliefs on homosexuality…?”

Answer yes and you’re out, packed off to the moral wilderness, with a metaphorical placard saying “homophobe” — a modern word for evil — hanging around your neck.

Folau’s crime, his sin against political correctness, is to believe that people who have gay sex are destined for hell.

He expressed this belief in a meme he shared on his Instagram page, which said “hell awaits” certain wicked people, including drunks, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists, idolaters and homosexuals.

As an atheist who has engaged in boozing, fornication and idolatry at various times in his life, I guess I’d better prep for an eternity of fire and torture. I don’t share Folau’s beliefs. I was brought up a Catholic, so I know there are many people who genuinely believe homosexuality is a sin. But I’m a lapsed Catholic now, and godless too, and it bothers me not one iota who people choose to have sexual intercourse with. Knock yourselves out. Wear a condom!

Yet I find the persecution of Folau repulsive and an alarming sign of the times.

It demonstrates how far PC intolerance has gone and how thoroughly anyone who doesn’t slavishly subscribe to contemporary orthodoxy can expect to be punished.

It doesn’t matter if you are a Christian or an atheist, straight or gay, uptight about sex or a cheerleader for sexual debauchery — you should still be deeply concerned that a man can be persecuted simply for what he believes, for the convictions that reside in his head and his heart.

Persecution is not too strong a word for it. The dictionary definition of persecution is “hostility or ill-treatment” especially because of one’s “race or political or religious beliefs”.

This aptly describes what Folau has faced. He has had hostility heaped upon him because of his religious beliefs. He has been ill-treated because of his faith.

First, in April, he was dumped by the rugby world. Rugby Australia and NSW Rugby — which oversees the team Folau played for, the Waratahs — issued a joint statement announcing the termination of his contract.

The statement was perverse. It will surely be studied by future generations who want to understand the moral contortionism of the early years of the 21st century.

It claimed Rugby Australia is keen to create an environment in which everyone can feel “safe and welcome” and in which there is “no vilification based on race, gender, religion or sexuality”. And so, because of his Instagram post, Folau had to be cast out.

It is testament to the blinkered arrogance of political correctness, and of those who do its bidding, that these people could not see the profound moral contradiction at the heart of their chilling statement. In the name of preventing “vilification based on race, gender, religion or sexuality”, they vilified Folau on the basis of his religion. In the name of creating a safe environment where everyone can feel “welcome”, they made it clear that Folau — because of his religion — is not welcome.

This Orwellian statement translates as follows: “We will not tolerate vilification on the basis of religion — unless your religion is traditional Christianity, in which case we will vilify you. And we are welcoming of everyone — except people who believe the words of the Bible, whom we will sack and shame.”

This repugnant statement summed up what is the first and last commandment of the ideology of political correctness: “We love and accept everyone. Except anyone we disagree with. We hate those people and we will destroy them.”

Authoritarianism dressed up as acceptance. Intolerance under the guise of tolerance. This is the Newspeak of the PC era, and it is horrifying.

Even worse, Folau’s opponents then sought to make it more difficult for him to defend himself. The sports world effectively made him a moral reprobate; then the capitalist class decided he should not be allowed to raise money for his own defence in his case of unlawful termination against Rugby Australia.

GoFundMe Australia shut down his fundraising page. It did so because we do not “tolerate the promotion of discrimination or exclusion”, it said.

Again with the Orwellianism. We do not tolerate discrimination or exclusion, so we will discriminate against a biblical Christian and exclude him from our services — that is essentially what GoFundMe is saying. Shameless self-contradiction.

Thankfully, the Australian Christian Lobby stepped in, keeping open the possibility of charity for Folau after others almost closed that possibility down. It is testament to the strength of feeling around this issue that the ACL raised $2 million in the first day. Huge numbers of ordinary Aussies clearly want to take a stand for religious freedom and freedom of speech — good on ’em.

This terrible spectacle, this hounding of one man over his beliefs, reveals so much about the culture wars of the early 21st century.

First, it confirms that PC is the new religion. Political correctness now does what pointy-hatted priests used to do: seeks out thought criminals and moral transgressors and punishes them for their wicked beliefs.

No, nobody has been burned at the stake. Folau’s life is not at risk. But there is nonetheless an inquisitorial feeling to the witch-hunting of this rugby player whose only offence is that he thinks differently from the PC crowd.

The second thing revealed by this hounding is that the left will turn a blind eye to the use and abuse of capitalist power if it serves their purposes. So, just as leftists have cheered Silicon Valley oligarchs as they have expelled from social media anyone who has an anti-PC point of view, so they have applauded GoFundMe’s shunning of Folau. It’s a private company, they say, and private companies can decide for themselves who to host and who to ban.

Let’s break this down: what they’re really saying is that the speech rights of a “horrible” Christian come a poor second to the property rights of corporations. So, all their anti-capitalist bluster is stuff and nonsense. When push comes to shove, they will back the internet elites and online Big Business over those who they deem to be morally wicked.

This is a celebration of corporate power over individual speech rights. That’s the kind of thing you would expect from the libertarian right, but not from the supposedly socially conscious left.

And the third thing confirmed by this dispiriting affair is that Christianity is one religion it is acceptable to mock and persecute these days.

If you were to criticise Islam, you would be branded an “Islamophobe”. You would be accused of stirring up racist sentiment. You would be denounced and harassed and censured.

Yet the Koran also attacks homosexuality. It says any man who “practises your lusts on men” deserves to be driven “out of your city”. They should be visited by a “shower of brimstone” — that is, kill them.

I find these views of homosexuals as dreadful as the Leviticus view. But I support the right of Muslims and Christians alike to hold these views and to think that men who lie with men will be punished in the afterlife.

When did we forget this key principle of civilised, enlightened, democratic society — that people should be free to hold even difficult and disagreeable views, and should never be punished for what they think?

Folau should be free to think and say whatever he likes, and he should face no sanction whatsoever.

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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