In UK, Starbucks Ad Celebrates Gender Transition

Starbucks UK has partnered with Mermaids, a nonprofit group that provides support for transgender youth, on an advertising campaign, #WhatsYourName, celebrating gender transition.

Starbucks said in a press release that learning each customer’s name and calling it out with his or her order “creates a moment of connection between our baristas and customers,” and that the #WhatsYourName campaign “celebrates this signature act and the significance it can have for some transgender and gender-diverse people as they use their new name in public.”

“We discovered that they found Starbucks stores to be a safe space, where their new name was accepted, and they could be [recognized] as who they are,” the announcement said. “We were moved to discover that individuals find our stores a safe space to try out their new names when transitioning.”

The campaign includes a TV commercial that will air on the United Kingdom’s Channel 4 throughout February and March, and a special “mermaid tail” cookie, proceeds of the sales of  which will support Mermaids’ transgender help line.

The commercial follows a young person in the midst of transitioning from female to male who wants to be called James, but keeps getting reminders of her given name, Jemma. Only at Starbucks, it seems, is the person able to have the new identity validated, when the barista writes “James” on the cup without question.

It won Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising Award, which the release says, “provides us with an ideal platform to demonstrate how moments of connection can have real impact, while also helping to address the transgender community’s lack of representation in UK advertising.”

The advertisement was created in conjunction with Mermaids, which supports lifting most barriers to gender transition for teenagers over 16. It will receive at least 100,000 British pounds (about $130,000) from the partnership.

“The [advertisement] was inspired by the discovery that many of our transgender service users were [trying out] their chosen names at Starbucks stores across the UK,” according to a Mermaids press release. “For some people, this was the first time they’d heard someone else [recognizing] their true identity.”

Emilie Kao, director of the DeVos Center for Religion & Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation, criticized the campaign.

“Starbucks has chosen to use its massive corporate power to promote an ideology that harms vulnerable children,” Kao said in an email, adding:

The activist group they have chosen to partner with has tried to overturn restrictions on permanent, sterilizing procedures offered to minors with gender dysphoria.

Puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries aren’t the answer for kids who are struggling to accept their bodies, and Starbucks shouldn’t promote the idea that they are.

The campaign is limited to the U.K., and no U.S. Starbucks will participate.

SOURCE 






Prominent black Democrat Admits Trump Is Helping Black People—and Democrats Are Panicking

In a very telling interview, CNN contributor Van Jones tried to warn Democrats that Donald Trump just "sent a warning shot over the bow" letting them know that he's coming "after the black vote." But what he also said is that it will work, terrifying Democrats everywhere who have relied on the black voter block for everything.

Jones has supported the president's criminal justice reform, which affects many in the black community. It's extremely interesting to hear Jones say that Trump's message is "you may not like my rhetoric but look at my results. If he narrowcasts that it's going to be effective." Does it strike you as somewhat unreal that Democrats are worried about the fact that Trump is helping minorities? You would think they'd be thrilled about that, considering they claim to be the party for minorities. But perhaps even their staunchest defenders, like Jones, are discovering that Democrats love to talk about helping people while Trump is creating policies that are actually helping people.

Jones strikes me as a reasonable person. When is he going to realize that his party never actually helps anyone, but is full of empty rhetoric? He needs to get on the Trump Train. Mike Gallagher, radio talker, noticed it too. "There's something interesting about Van Jones. He has acknowledged criminal justice reform, he has acknowledged Trump's outreach to the African American community, he has acknowledged historic unemployment in the black community and last night he did it again."

Jones called out the "bubble" that Democrats live in, where they don't see Trump's positive results within minority communities. Gallagher continued, "Now I understand the rhetoric he has to use is 'going after black voters' [but Trump is] lifting African Americans up out of poverty, out of joblessness, out of low wages and Van Jones is acknowledging it. If Democrats don't hold onto their normal percentage of the black vote, it's over. They can't win." The only question remaining is why is Van Jones still a Democrat? What's more important: talking about helping black people or actually helping them? Donald Trump has shown that his policies are creating higher-paying jobs, ending joblessness, and taking big steps toward equal justice under the law. What's not to love about that if you are a black American? Remind me what the Democrats have done for minorities besides let their neighborhoods be overrun with crime, drugs, and illegal gangsters.

The following report on the criminal justice reforms that Trump signed into law should give you some idea of how popular and needed this reform is. The bill shortened sentences for non-violent offenders who exhibit good behavior, expanded programs to help prisoners readjust to life outside and get jobs, expanded rehab programs and much more.

This is not just an empty bill, but one that is impacting tens of thousands of people in minority communities right now. Democrats have never made criminal justice reform a priority. Trump and Republicans did.

SOURCE 





Muslims Celebrate! Harvard Declares Koran 'Best Book on Justice' -- NOT

Muslims around the world are thrilled at the recent news: “Harvard University ranks the Koran as the best book on justice,” is the January 20, 2020 headline of a report published by Youm7, a popular Egyptian news site visited by millions of Arabic readers.  It writes (in translation):

"The official website of the World Muslim Communities Council  said on social media that, after lengthy, scientific studies that closely examined the rules of justice contained in the Noble Koran, the American university of Harvard has ranked the Noble Koran as the best book on justice….  In its final evaluation, Harvard University’s Classification Committee cited verses from the Noble Koran which confirm that the Noble Koran is a book replete with the rules of human justice … and that Islam has no room for injustice but rather includes tolerance and respect for the other."

Several other leading news websites and newspapers—including Al Ahram, Egypt’s most widely circulated and state owned newspaper founded in 1875—carried the story, followed by all sorts of triumphant celebrations on social media.

But is it true?  Did Harvard make such a pronouncement?  No. The real story is that, back in 2012, a group of law students painted a number of historical quotes dealing with justice on the walls of a Harvard building.

Known as the “Words of Justice,” they consist of 33 quotes from a variety of thinkers and civilizations—including African, Chinese, European, and Hindu—from 600 BC to the present.  Among some of the more recognizable names and documents quoted are Cicero, Augustine, Aquinas, the Magna Carta, Benjamin Franklin, Immanuel Kant, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Among these 33 quotes is one that is Islamic, derived from Koran:

"O you who have believed, be persistently standing firm in justice, witnesses for Allah, even if it be against yourselves or parents and relatives. Whether one is rich or poor, Allah is more worthy of both. So follow not [personal] inclination, lest you not be just (4:135)".

That’s it—the entire story.  There were no “lengthy, scientific studies,” nor “classification committees,” that led Harvard to announce that the Koran is the “best book on justice.”  Rather, one Islamic quote was deemed worthy of inclusion with 32 other non-Islamic quotations.

What to make of this shameful episode?  Why would Muslims fabricate such a story?  More to the point, why would they even care what infidel Harvard thinks in the first place?

For those in the know, the answer is simple: Muslims are ever and always looking for outside validation. Why?  Because a growing number of them have a nagging suspicion that their religion is not just.

Indeed, they need look no further than to the very same Koran chapter/sura (4, al-Nisa’, “the Women”) whence the much celebrated “justice” verse (4:135) was excerpted to encounter any number of decidedly unjust verses, including permission to sexually enslave—buy and sell—women (4:3), permission for husbands to beat their wives—since men are “superior” to women (4:34)—and so on.

Accordingly, what can be more reassuring than Western intellectual praise for Islam?

Consider this Arabic op-ed on Islam’s “inferiority complex” that I translated back in 2011.  Although its author, Khaled Montaser, an Egyptian intellectual, focuses on all the hoopla that erupts whenever a Westerner converts to Islam—whether in reality or not—the essence of his arguments perfectly apply to and shed light on this recent Harvard fiasco:

"We Muslims have an inferiority complex and are terribly sensitive to the world, feeling that our Islamic religion needs constant, practically daily, confirmation by way of Europeans and Americans converting to Islam. What rapturous joy takes us when a European or American announces their [conversion to] Islam—proof that we are in a constant state of fear, alarm, and chronic anticipation for Western validation or American confirmation that our religion is “okay.”.…  And we pound our drums and blow our horns [in triumph] and drag the convert to our backwardness, so that he may stand with us at the back of the world’s line of laziness, [in the Muslim world] wherein no new scientific inventions have appeared in the last 500 years. Sometimes those who convert relocate to our countries—only to get on a small boat and escape on the high seas back to their own countries".

He goes on to discuss how the Arab world—in the guise of “our media and Internet sites … our writers and intellectuals”—exulted when it mistakenly thought that the German writer Henryk Broder had accepted Islam, based on sarcastic remarks he had made: “but we are a people incapable of comprehending sarcasm, since it requires a bit of thinking and intellectualizing. And we read with great speed and a hopeful eye, not an eye for truth or reality.”  Montaser continues:

"How come the Buddhists don’t hold the festivities we do for those who convert to their religion? And some of these converts are much more famous than Broder. Did you know that Richard Gere, Steven Seagal, Harrison Ford—among Hollywood’s most famous actors—converted to Buddhism? What did the Buddhist countries of Asia do regarding these celebrities? What did the Buddhists in China and Japan do?  Did they dance and sing praise and march out in the streets, or did they accept these people’s entrance into Buddhism as a mere matter of free conviction?...  It is sufficient for the Buddhists that these celebrities purchase their nations’ electronic goods—without any beggary or enticements".

A closing thought: Muslim excitement over one small—and often fraudulent—compliment finds a parallel in the Western establishment’s behavior: government, media, and academia are all in the habit of highlighting and fixating over one small (and often fraudulent) compliment to Islam—such as the “Andalusian Paradise” (a myth)—while suppressing Islam’s numerous shortcomings.

And it’s a reminder that, instead of flattering Islam, openly and honestly criticizing it—objectively, without rancor or hyperbole—is potentially one of the Western world’s most powerful, though largely untapped, strategies that could go a long way in neutralizing Islam, and without force.

SOURCE 





Australia: African gang raids a Melbourne Woolworths and menaces shoppers and staff with knives and bats

The frightening moment hooded thugs armed with baseball bats and a kitchen knife stormed a Woolworths has been caught on camera.

The video showed the gang of youths as they terrorised customers and employees at Lyndhurst Woolworths on Thompsons Road, in Melbourne's south east, just before 9pm on Sunday.

Scared workers screamed with their arms in the air as the offenders shouted from across the room and began counting back from five before throwing an object over the counter.

One man then approached an employee and struck her with a baseball bat.

Local man Rob was on his way to buy cigarettes when saw the gang trying to escape via the carpark with a trolley full of groceries. He saw the offenders assault a female employee and acted 'without thinking'. 'I saw them assault a lady that tried to stop theft, I chased them and then defended myself,' he told Daily Mail Australia.

Rob knocked two weaponless offenders to the ground before onlookers helped him against the remaining two.

One thug pulled a large kitchen knife before retreating to their car.

'I felt sick to the stomach because my girlfriend was nearby,' he said.

Another witness posted a screenshot on social media of a series of text messages they sent as the chaos unfolded.

'Five-six guys attacked this guy at the front of the store. I think they had bats and a knife,' the message read. 'The store is locked down.'

Woolworths confirmed no staff members were injured. 'There is no place for this aggression and violence anywhere in our community and our thoughts are with those caught up in the incident,' a spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.

We thank our team for acting quickly to lock down the store in line with our safety procedures. 'We've been supporting Victoria Police with its investigations and will continue to help in any way we can.' 'We've also moved to strengthen the security presence at the store.' 

Victoria Police spokeswoman Belinda Batty said the men escaped with a trolley of goods.

'Police have been told a knife was produced and several customers attempted to intervene,' she said.

'No one required medical treatment. The group left the scene in a vehicle and are yet to be located at this stage.'

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. 

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