Tuesday, December 10, 2019


Father fed-up with Snow White's traditional  message rewrites the fairytale with a VERY woke twist - including women dwarfs and NO happily ever after

One can see his point to a degree but the traditional tale reflects basic realities which remain important:  Beauty is influential; step-parents CAN be hurtful; simple people can be kind and girls DO seek a strong protector to bind to themselves.  The only shame these days is that strong protectors are a bit hard to find.

A father has re-written Snow White after being concerned that the original taught his daughter her 'self-worth revolves around beauty'.

Author Stephan Kalinski, 38, of Berlin, took it upon himself to rework the classic tale after revisiting them at bedtime with his daughter Lena, now five.

With some clever tweaks to the plot, Mr Kalinski transformed Snow White from helpless princess to empowered heroine.

And there is no 'happily ever after' with a handsome prince, instead the pair end the book as friends with plans to travel the world. 

He said: 'While reading Snow White to my daughter, she was about three-and-a-half, at the time and loved this story.

'Something really struck me. Snow White is about good vs. evil but essentially, I am teaching her that it is important for you (as a girl) to be pretty and that your self-worth revolves around beauty, doing housework and that she should wait to be saved.

'That felt really wrong and I do not want her to grow up believing that what is important in her life is how she looks. I therefore started changing the word "fairest" to "brave" while reading.'

Mr Kalinski then started to change the print so that his daughter could follow the story with him.

He continued: 'Fairy tales are such a powerful messenger for the little ones.  'I see my kids sitting and staring at books and the images inside of them and you can feel them soaking up the information and believing every word written in them. That is so incredibly powerful, especially at such a young age.'

In Mr Kalinski's version, published this week, brave Snow White conquers her fear of heights to become the 'bravest of them all'.

The wicked Queen becomes jealous when Snow White outdoes her in bravery, and asks a hunter to kill her and to bring back her heart.

The hunter, a friend of Snow White, ties her to a tree, but the young girl escapes. When Snow White bites the apple and 'dies,' a Prince comes, and stumbles upon her see-through coffin in the forest.

He does not kiss the princess but instead trips against the coffin, disturbing Snow White and dislodging the piece of apple that had been stuck in her throat.

The heroine still meets the Seven Dwarfs - renamed Sabrina, Akashi, Shakti, Leila, Egbo, Li and Thiago - but each represent a different ethnicity and both men are women are represented.

It was a conscious choice from Kalinski to introduce diverse characters to the tale. 'Fairy tales give you the chance to teach kids about important values and I think diversity is simply not addressed nearly enough,' he said. 'It is such an important concept and I really want my children to grow up valuing it.

'These stories have become so well known around the world that it was time to make them more representative of the children reading them.'

At the end, the prince and Snow are not romantically involved, nor do they life 'happily ever after,' instead, they go travel the world, one of Snow White's dearest wishes.

The book comes with beautiful illustrations from Claudioa Piras. Kalinki added that all the images were vetted by his own daughter. 'She loves painting and all illustrations in the book have been officially approved by her and her brother,' he said.

SOURCE 





‘Powerful Interests on the Left Want to Shrink Freedom of Religion,’

Sen. Mitch McConnell  (Mitch McConnell is the Senate majority leader and the senior Republican senator from Kentucky)

I want to take a moment to help clarify why I and millions of other Americans care so much about having federal judges who believe in the radical notion that words matter and that a judge’s job is to follow the law and the Constitution.

Take, for one example, the subject of religious freedom.

The liberty of conscience and the freedom to live out our faiths has been a foundational principle from the Republic’s earliest days. Many of the first Europeans who arrived in the New World came here fleeing religious persecution.

James Madison wrote that religion “must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man, and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.”

Samuel Adams said in the summer of 1776 that America would be “the last asylum” for “freedom of thought and the right of private judgment.”

Let me contrast the understanding of the Founders, with a couple of current events. Last month, New York State convinced a district judge to throw out the Trump administration’s conscience protection rule for health care providers.

This straightforward rule ensured health care workers could not be forced to perform or assist with medical procedures that profoundly violate their religious beliefs.

But the radical Democrats in New York could not abide this basic protection for people of faith. Instead, they want to force Christians and other people of faith who work in health care to either assist in procedures like abortion, or lose their jobs. So much for freedom of conscience.

New York’s behavior is part of a disturbing trend. Powerful interests on the left want to shrink freedom of religion until it means “freedom to go to church for an hour on Sundays as long as it doesn’t impact the rest of your life.”

That shrunken interpretation is nothing like what our Founders intended. And, candidly, I’m not sure how much longer the modern Democratic Party will even believe in that.

A few months ago, a Democrat running for president told CNN that government should take away the tax-exempt status of churches and religious institutions that disagree with left-wing positions. This was not some fringe candidate; it was a guy whom Democrats and the mainstream media had likened to John F. Kennedy. Openly suggesting the federal government should punish churches if liberals don’t like their social views.

That’s appalling. These disturbing signs have not been limited to the courts or the Democratic campaign trail. Absurd anti-religious arguments have appeared right here in the Senate.

In the last several years, some of our Democratic colleagues have tried literally to impose religious tests on nominees for federal office. Just take the No Religious Test Clause and the First Amendment and throw them right out the window.

Judge Brian Buescher, now a district judge in Nebraska, was attacked by two Democrats on the Judiciary Committee for being a faithful Catholic and a member of the mainstream, worldwide Catholic group the Knights of Columbus.

In written questions, one senator called standard Catholic teachings “extreme positions” and asked if he’d dial down his personal faith practice if confirmed.

As our colleague Sen. [Ben] Sasse observed at the time, Democrats were transparently implying that “Brian’s religious beliefs, and his affiliation with this Catholic, religious, fraternal organization, might make him unfit for service … [it’s] plainly unconstitutional.”

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, now a circuit judge on the 7th Circuit, was likewise subjected to a religious test during a confirmation hearing.

One Democrat senator literally asked: “Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?” Another offered this bizarre and ominous remark: “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s a concern.”

So, look—these warning signs on religious freedom are popping up everywhere the modern political left rears its head.

Religious freedom in America has never meant, and will never mean, solely the freedom to worship privately. It has never meant, and will never mean, the ability to practice only a subset of faiths acceptable to some subset of politicians.

It means the right to live your life according to the dictates of your faith and conscience—free from government coercion.  

If those statements strike anybody in this chamber as remotely controversial, that is exactly why President Trump, Senate Republicans, and millions of Americans are focused on confirming federal judges who will apply our Constitution as it was originally understood.

SOURCE 






French parliament decides anti-Zionism is antisemitism

Anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism, France’s National Assembly determined on Tuesday, voting on a resolution calling on the government to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.The motion proposed by lawmaker Sylvain Maillard of LREM, President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party passed 154-72 in the parliament’s lower house.

“For some years now, France, the whole of Europe, but also almost all Western democracies are facing a rise in antisemitism,” the resolution states. “Anti-Zionist acts can at times hide antisemitic realities. Hate toward Israel due to its perception as a Jewish collective is akin to hatred toward the entire Jewish community.”In France today, “dirty Zionist… means dirty Jew,” Maillard told La Croix.The IHRAdefinition says some forms of hatred against Israel are antisemitic, such as comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, claiming Israel’s existence is a racist endeavor, and using classic antisemitic claims and symbols to characterize Israel and Israelis.Maillard’s resolution was highly controversial and debated in the French media in recent weeks. A letter from 39 organizations penned in October said that antisemitism should not be defined separately from other forms of racism, and that the motion stifles freedom of expression for supporters of Palestinians and critics of Israel.Meyer Habib, a lawmaker from the Union of Democrats Party representing French expats in several countries, including Israel, spoke in support of the resolution in the National Assembly on Tuesday.

“The French policy to fight antisemitism is a failure,” Habib said. “There is an outbreak of antisemitic assaults. Twelve French citizens were murdered since 2003 because they were Jewish. Half of the racist incidents in France are against Jews, even though [Jews] are less than 1% of the population.“Israel is the Jewish people’s only assurance of safety,” he added.Anti-Zionists are not just critics of Israel, Habib explained, they are obsessed. They use anti-racist and anti-colonialist rhetoric to try to erase Jewish identity.“The new antisemitism is flourishing on the background of hatred of Israel, Islamism and conspiracy theories,” said Habib. “I am concerned for Jews but I am mainly worried about France… Do I need to remind you of the slogans of the yellow vest [protesters]? ‘Macron equals Rothschild equals Zion,’ ‘Macron is a whore of the Jews.’ Wake up!”

Earlier this year, Macron called anti-Zionism “one of the current forms of antisemitism,” following an attack on French Jewish philosopher Alain Finkelkraut by participants in the yellow vest anti-government protests. The demonstrators called him a “dirty Zionist” and told him to “go back to Tel Aviv.”

SOURCE 





Australia: Cuddle-a-koala charity event to raise money for farmers is cancelled after Animal Justice Party said animals shouldn't be used to raise money for industry that kills livestock

A charity event organised to raise funds for struggling farmers has been cancelled after outrage from animal rights activists. 

The Cuddle-a-koala event was organised by members of Shoalhaven Zoo, on the south coast of NSW, at Warrawong Plaza for Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday.

The fundraiser would allow people to cuddle koalas and pat them while donating a gold coin for farmers suffering in drought conditions.

The money would go to the 'buy a bale' campaign to assist farmers in purchasing food for their animals.

Animal Justice Party Illawarra regional group leader Julie Power said the event would 'traumatise' the animals. 'Koalas are wild animals,' she told The Illawarra Mercury.  'They should not be wheeled out in front of large crowds to be touched, poked and prodded for profit, no matter the cause.

'It must also be recognised that this event promotes traumatising animals to raise money for the cruel animal agriculture industry, who we know abuse and slaughter animals on a daily basis.

'Events such as this don't provide meaningful or natural interaction.' 

On Friday, the zoo announced the event was cancelled due to 'unforeseen circumstances'. 'Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances we have had to cancel our Koala experience,' they wrote on Facebook.

'We are still holding our Buy a Bale fundraiser to raise money for our drought stricken farmers. 'So if you would like to donate and put your hay bale sticker on the wall visit Concierge this weekend.'

A spokeswoman would not confirm to the publication that the cancellation was due to the criticism from the animal rights activists.

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: