USMC Lowers Standards for Race and Gender ‘Equity’

Reducing training requirements for Marines is an egregious and dangerous error

In an era of an unprecedented susceptibility of Department of Defense (DOD) leadership to the whims of socialism’s drive for race and gender-based “equity,” the United States Marine Corps’ senior leaders have proven themselves no less susceptible than the rest.

Driven by a self-mandated “Diversity Accession” mission to contract a specific quantity of black, Hispanic, and “Other” officers per annum, the Marine Corps generated 231%, 213%, and 205% increases in the rate of new ethnically diverse second lieutenants (2ndLts) in 2020 than it did 10 years prior for those three ethnic subsets, respectively. Driven by a late Obama-era push for an increase in female officers in combat arms, the Marine Corps has also generated a 161% increase in the annual rate of new female 2ndLts since the Obama administration issued that mandate in 2015.

As one might expect, the rate of white male new 2ndLts has dropped from approximately 60.5% of all new 2ndLts in 2016 to approximately 55.8% in 2021. If one assumes no change in the relative total quality of each new 2ndLt from 2016 to 2021, then that assumes 4.7% of the new 2ndLts in 2016 would not have had a chance to become 2ndLts in 2021 in the name of “diversity.”

Clearly, the Marine Corps’ “Diversity Accession” mission comes at the expense of and discrimination against qualified white males seeking an opportunity to lead Marines and serve their country.

There are obviously outlying factors that contribute to these figures, such as propensity to join among each “diverse” community, selection rates on the Corps’ officer selection boards, and attrition rates at entry-level training. But if standards remain the same at entry-level training, then one would assume the Marine Corps’ newest leaders are still of the same high caliber as they have been in years past, regardless of race or gender.

Shockingly, however, leaders at the Marine Corps’ entry-level officer training institutions want even more diversity, and they are lowering training standards across the board in order to achieve it.

Marine Corps Officer Candidate School (OCS), the first point at which the Corps can weed out the bad apples from among its officer candidates, has dramatically reduced physical fitness standards for graduation. The course used to include three mandatory forced marches under load, and any candidate who failed to complete those hikes would not be permitted to graduate.

The commanding officer recently eliminated the longest hike from the course and removed hike completion from the list of graduation requirements. The Obstacle Course, a hallmark of every Marine Officer’s training and once a right of passage for all Marine officers, is no longer a graduation requirement. Neither is the grueling Endurance Course, which begins with the Obstacle Course followed by a three-mile run. OCS leaders indicated that they made the change in 2020 in order to cater to shorter candidates (i.e., female candidates) who may have a harder time getting over tall obstacles. (Ask any female Marine Officer, who undoubtedly beat the Obstacle Course just like any other Marine Officer, what she thinks about the Marine Corps telling her she needs extra help. I doubt she’ll be grateful.)

That means an officer candidate could fail both hikes, fail the Obstacle Course, fail the Endurance Course, and still become a Marine Officer.

New 2ndLts then attend the Basic Officer Course (BOC) at The Basic School (TBS), whose mission is to “Train and educate newly commissioned officers in the high standards of professional knowledge, espirit-de-corps, and leadership to prepare them for duty … with particular emphasis on the duties, responsibilities, and warfighting skills required of a rifle platoon commander.” The school is unique among the other branches of service in that it is a requirement for all officers, regardless of their Military Occupational Specialty (MOS). Evidently, however, the “high standards” spoken of in the school’s mission are too high for some. TBS removed the requirement for students to complete the Obstacle Course (the same one that OCS no longer requires to graduate) unassisted in order to graduate, as students under 5'6" (read: females) can now receive assistance to complete the course.

Apparently, having the will to get over a wall, fence, or obstacle in combat without allowing your height to limit you from succeeding is no longer a skill required of a rifle platoon commander. Ask any rifle platoon commander what he or she thinks of that — don’t be surprised when you get hit in the face.

Army Major General John Evans recently said, “We’re trying to encourage our female officers and our officers that are ethnically diverse to choose combat arms branches to provide greater opportunities for them in the long term.” His words, no doubt, demonstrate the Army’s attempt to create more female and ethnically diverse general officers later on down the line. The Marine Corps evidently intends to accomplish the same, only not by “encouraging” its females and ethnically diverse officers to join combat arms, but instead by forcing them to do so. The commanding officer of TBS was recently proscribed diversity quotas for combat arms when assigning an MOS to graduates of the BOC. In other words, females or ethnically diverse officers who have zero desire to become a Combat Arms Officer can now be forced into those career fields based solely upon their gender or the color of their skin.

Pause for effect.

Depressing and utterly unacceptable as these changes are, they pale in comparison to the coup de gras of the Marine Corps’ mediocrity: In an effort to achieve more diversity in the Infantry Officer MOS, which eventually yields more generals in the Corps than any other MOS, TBS has dramatically relaxed graduation standards for the Corps’ infamous Infantry Officer Course (IOC). IOC is designed to forge stoic, hardened, tactically proficient infantry officers with an indomitable will through the rigors of some of the most mentally and physically demanding training in the DOD. That training includes numerous timed hikes under upwards of 150+ pounds of load over distances up to 10 miles in order to emulate the environment in which an Infantry Unit must operate in combat.

Apparently, that training is too hard for the DOD to achieve its diversity quota.

The commanding officer has removed the requirement for students at IOC to pass all of the hikes in order to graduate. Additionally, whereas the course director (a Marine Corps major) used to retain the right to dismiss a student from training for failure, the commanding officer of TBS (a Marine Corps colonel in line for promotion to brigadier general) now retains that right solely. That means a student could fail every single hike at IOC, receive a recommendation to be dismissed from the course by every instructor at the course, and still be forced to graduate by the TBS CO (who you’ll recall has been instructed to reach female and diversity quotas in Combat Arms MOS).

Though none of these figures or information are classified, the Marine Corps has kept them under wraps. Many Marine officers who are reading this are likely hearing it for the first time, and any enlisted Marines reading it should wonder why the Corps is deliberately lowering the standards of physical and mental toughness (once the Marine Corps’ hallmarks) for its leaders.

As taxpayers, all Americans should ask these questions: Are these decisions making the Marine Corps better? Is the Corps more lethal now? Are its junior officers in its most critical occupational specialties better leaders because of these lower standards? And can we trust the commanding officers of these schools, who deliberately lowered standards for the sake of race and gender, to make ethical, righteous, hard decisions in the future?

Those answers are all clearly “no.” Reducing training requirements for Marines is an egregious and dangerous error.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/81747-usmc-lowers-standards-for-race-and-gender-equity-2021-08-06

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China’s Ban on Taiwan Pineapples Backfires as New Buyers Step In

China’s surprise ban on pineapple imports from Taiwan five months ago was widely viewed as an attempt to undermine President Tsai Ing-wen’s standing with a political constituency. Trade data show the move has produced anything but the desired effect.

First-half numbers collected by Taiwan’s Council of Agriculture show growers of the fruit on the island have fared better since China blocked imports starting March 1, as sympathetic Japanese shoppers stepped in to provide support. Shipments to Japan surged more than eightfold to 16,556 tons in the four months through June from a year ago. A domestic campaign to drum up demand also helped.

The helping hand from Japanese importers has come as a pleasant surprise for Taiwan’s rattled farmers who were bracing for a plunge in prices following the move by China, which termed it as a normal precaution to protect biosecurity. The spiky fruit is among a long list of products from Australian wine to coal and lobster China has targeted for sanctions to help gain leverage in trade disputes.

“The bleeding was stopped before it even began,” said Chen Li-i, an official at the Council of Agriculture in Taipei.

Japan has now replaced China as the major overseas destination for Taiwan’s pineapples. While it’s unclear how long the ban will last -- the shift may well reverse once the restrictions are lifted -- the humble tropical fruit has become an unlikely symbol of defiance in the region’s geopolitical intrigues. Amid all the sabre-rattling by Beijing, Japan and the island democracy have expressed a broad desire to forge closer ties. Leaders in Tokyo see their own security directly linked to that of Taiwan, which China asserts is its territory.

Pineapples are an important source of income for farmers in central and southern Taiwan. Around 11% of the tropical fruit harvested in Taiwan are sold overseas. Until the ban, they were almost entirely shipped to China.

“Export orders are looking unexpectedly good,” said Chiao Chun, chief executive officer of Harvest Consultancy Co. in Taipei. “This really was a crisis turned into an opportunity.”

Besides the help from Japan, an increase in domestic demand fueled by a “save the farmers” campaign on social media rallied local shoppers in support of growers. Even President Tsai pitched in a day after China’s ban took effect.

Farmers also received passionate backing from local businesses. Restaurants across the island rushed in to add a pineapple-infused sweet twist to all sorts of dishes ranging from shrimp balls, fried rice and even the classic beef noodle soup. Taiwan Railways Administration introduced special edition lunch boxes with pineapples as one of the side dishes.

As a result, domestic prices of the fruit jumped 28% to an average NT$22.1 (80 cents) per kilogram in the March-June period, a three-year high. The total value of the pineapples sold locally rose 17%, according to data provided by the farm council’s Chen.

“Higher prices driven by strong domestic demand led to more profit for the farmers,” Chen said.

One key question is whether the uptick in overseas demand is sustainable. Exporters cite concerns over Japan’s stringent quality requirements and consumer preferences for smaller, less-sweet varieties than the pineapples typically grown in Taiwan.

But the Chinese ban leaves Taiwan with little choice but to review its export markets for the fruit, according to Young Fu-fan, a grower in the southern county of Tainan.

“Farmers can’t expect to make ‘easy money’ from China anymore,” he said.

https://au.yahoo.com/finance/news/china-ban-taiwan-pineapples-backfires-210000757.html

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Now the word CURRY is racist: Food blogger says it’s time to cancel the ‘British colonial’ term for south-Asian food

South Asian American food bloggers have called on people to cancel the word curry because of its ties to British colonialism.

In the latest fallout since the increased scrutiny over the country's imperial history, critics say the word curry is too often used to lump very distinct foods from different regions together.

Chaheti Bansal, 27, who lives in California and shares her home-cooking online, shared a video recipe where she called on people to 'cancel the word curry'.

In the video, which has since been viewed more than 3.6million times after it was shared by Buzzfeed Tasty, Bansal added: 'Not in all cultures but specifically in Indian cuisine because I don't understand what that word means.

'There's a saying that the food in India changes every 100km and yet we're still using this umbrella term popularised by white people who couldn't be bothered to learn the actual names of our dishes. But we can still unlearn.'

The 27-year-old has since told NBC Asian America it's not about 'fully cancelling the word' and said it's just about 'ending its use by people who don't know what it means'.

The outlet reports that South Asian American cooks say they've spent their lives confronting 'misconceptions' about their foods, and now, they just want to celebrate it.

Ms Bansal told NBC: 'Curry shouldn’t be all that you think about when you think about South Asian food.

'You can travel like 100km, and you can get a completely different type of cuisine.

'And it's a completely different language and a different culture. And it just goes to show that there's so much diversity in our food that doesn't get recognized.'

But she also said that the word is used regularly in South Asian countries.

She added: 'My partner is Sri Lankan, I have friends that are Malayali, friends that are Tamil, and yes they use the word curry.

'I enjoy their curry. Even their curry names have very specific traditional names paired with it, or it's referring to something very specific. But you shouldn't just lump all of our foods together under this term.'

While there are many different explanations for where the word curry came from, the most popular is that it was invented by the British who misheard the Tamil word 'kari' which means 'sauce'.

It's first use dates back to the mid-eighteenth century when members of the British East India Trading Company were trading with Tamil merchants in south east India.

Historically, food offered in British curry houses is Indian food cooked to British taste however, there has been an increasing demand for authentic Indian food.

Some of the most popular dishes in the UK, including chicken tikka masala, were inspired by Indian cuisine but adapted for western tastes, and as a result rarely reflect the traditional dishes made in India.

Instagram food blogger Nisha Vedi Pawar, 36, echoed Bansal's sentiment and told NBC: 'It's just like for American food. You wouldn't want everything dipped in like Old Bay right?

'You wouldn't want to put everything with good old American French's mustard. The same way, we don’t put everything in tikka sauce.'

Earlier this year, food delivery giant Just Eat revealed Indian was the third takeaway of choice for Brits during 2020, beaten only by Chinese and Pizza.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9874633/Now-word-CURRY-racist-Food-blogger-says-time-cancel-British-colonial-term.html

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Don’t Anyone Dare Lecture Me About Race

by Rabbi DOV FISCHER

Black Lives Matter is a despicable, anti-freedom, anti-Semitic organization that hates our country’s core values of equal opportunity, law and justice, and free enterprise. Don’t anyone dare lecture me about race.

My father died from leukemia when I was barely a boy of fourteen. He imbued many warm and rich values in me. Likewise, my mother profoundly influenced me on several issues. No surprise. One thing I carry from her is that a Black doctor and his family moved into our all-White Brooklyn neighborhood. Soon, the real-estate blockbuster vultures were leaving flyers, and all the Caucasians ran to Long Island — the Italians, the Irish, the Jews, the Poles. It is similar to how Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield of “Ben & Jerry’s” and Brooklyn’s Bernie Sanders all fled racially diverse New York for Vermont, which assured them the opportunity to become multi-millionaires in a state that is 94 percent White.

A beautiful neighborhood in Brooklyn — the area in the East 50’s, just before Ralph Avenue, at avenues like Glenwood Boulevard, Farragut Road, and Foster Avenue — changed overnight. My mother was the only one who would not leave. She loved her house, decorated and renovated it exactly as she liked, and she saw no reason to run from a Black doctor. We soon were the only Whites on the block. I grew up with that, living as the sole Caucasian on a street that was racially diverse and populated virtually entirely by Black households.

In the end, all the others sold their homes at good prices, converted their home equity to Long Island, where their home values shot up even more. When my Mom sold her home decades later, as we four kids not only had left the nest, but now had kids of our own, two of us in southern California and two in Queens, Mom sold to move to Queens to be near her grandchildren and two of the four of us. Mom found that with her house mortgage completely paid off, her house sold for $35,000 instead of the multi-hundreds-of-thousands her former neighbors’ Long Island homes were worth. So the White Flight meant:

1. It was financially smart to flee to Long Island if everyone else is.

2. It is financially foolish to stay.

3. A Black family that tries to move into an upscale upper-middle-class neighborhood could not get a break because their presence — at least in those days — turned it into the same neighborhood from which they were trying to move up. The Bernie Sanderses and Bens and Jerrys always flee Whiter.

Years later, my dear precious Ellen of blessed memory and I flew back to Brooklyn for a wedding. We arrived early in the day, and the wedding was at night, so I asked Ellen whether she would mind seeing where I grew up. We rented a car and drove to both homes of my boyhood. Those neighborhoods, once a blend of Jews, Italians, Irish, and Poles, were now 100 percent Black. And, y’know what? They both still were lovely, tree-lined communities. We had just driven through Flatbush (Avenue J or so, around East 16th Street or so). Without going into detail, hands down, the Black neighborhood was far more lovely and elegant than the Jewish one. I have no data on which real estate was pricier; I can infer.

All the shuls of my childhood now were Black churches — Rabbi Ashkenazi’s shtibl, Rav Drillman’s Glenwood Jewish Center. So many Torah institutions now were Black churches — because a Black doctor had moved in back in the 1970s. For all my pain and outrage at the implied racism, I also knew that everyone but my Mom had made the right financial decision. In contrast, my Mom took a bath financially, although she always had enough, ultimately experienced the joy of living among her grandchildren, and had kids who saw to it that she always had more than enough.

Years later, I went to UCLA Law School. I was seated in many classes alongside a Black woman who had graduated from Harvard. We soon found we had nothing in common — and everything in common. She was “New York sharp,” had the best sense of Catskills-type humor, did a mind-blowing great imitation of a Lawng Eyeland suburban Jewish housewife. She was Harvard-brilliant. We both were a decade older and life-wiser than everyone else in the class. Like me, she had decided after a career of 10 years to go back to school to get a law degree. I had three kids then with a fourth en route. She had a daughter. She and I became study partners for two years. We studied together for all our classes. She often studied with me at my home, where I still was married to my first wife. She and her daughter ate over frequently. During the Rodney King riots, we offered her to move in with us with her daughter for a month because she lived in a place near the disturbances, and it was final exams season. Politically, she and I were poles apart. She had Black radical sympathies at the time. I was a JDL supporter, in favor of Rabbi Meir Kahane’s activities to liberate Soviet Jews from Communism. She believed America should cut off support for Israel. I agreed — but for a very different reason: so that Israel would stop feeling pressure from our State Department to refrain from building more Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. It was a time in America where a pro-Black Panther woman and a pro-JDL rabbi could be best friends and study partners. We ended up both being accepted onto law review. I actually was not going to apply, but she persuaded me to go for it. I ended up chief articles editor, and she ended up chief comments editor. (The former deals with articles submitted by professors; the latter with articles submitted by law students). We were inseparable through law school until the last year when she met the wonderful fellow she would marry, also on law review. As her relationship with that gentleman and mutual classmate blossomed, it was appropriate that he and she became study partners and otherwise exclusive.

Moot court season arrived. You need a teammate if you want to do moot court. You don’t have to do moot court, but it is a good resumé builder. The president of Black Law Students of UCLA approached me and asked me to be his teammate. I asked him: “Why me?” He told me that several of his best friends regard me as the only Jew in the law school they really respect. All the others walk around with baggy shorts and t-shirts like they are in the “boyz in the ’hood,” insert the word “man” at the start of every sentence with an occasional “dude,” and hang around like they are Black Wannabes. “But, Dov, you are the only Jew in this place who is at home in his own skin. You wear that thing on your head. You dress and talk like a White guy dresses, none of this ‘Look how cool I am.’ So I would like to be your teammate.” So we were. We became friends. Years later, he became a district attorney in Seattle.

After law school, I clerked for a year in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit for the Hon. Danny Boggs. Having lived all my life on the two coasts — in New York City and in Los Angeles — I now was in Middle America, based in Louisville, Kentucky. During vacations, I took my wife and kids to experience the fullness of America. We explored 28 states in depth: Lewis and Clark Meet the Fischers! Among the places I brought my kids: (i) the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis; (ii) the Lorraine Motel, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered; (iii) the basement museum of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, the church where Dr. King had served as he led the Civil Rights battle. We saw that his church was two blocks from the state capitol, where there is emblazoned a gold star on the spot where Jefferson Davis delivered his first inaugural speech launching the Confederacy. I brought our family to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), in years before they lost their way and became what they now are, and showed them the fountain outside where the words of Dr. King are inscribed, derived from Amos 5:24: “We will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

When Ellen of blessed memory and I married, we had decided on the two men who would witness and sign our Ketubah, the traditional marriage contract. As I looked around, I saw a gentleman whose wife was one of Ellen’s closest friends. The man, Alan, is Black and had converted to Judaism. He worshipped regularly at the same synagogue we attended. I always liked him. He was middle-aged then, like us. He was a seriously-positioned educator in the public school system. I walked over to him quietly and asked, “Alan, have you ever signed a Ketubah?” He said no. “Ever been asked?” He said no. I said to him “Ellen and I would be honored if you would sign our Ketubah. We would like you to sign the top line. Is that OK?” He was shocked. We framed the picture of Alan signing. There was whispering in the room: “Such a prominent rabbi as Dov Fischer, and he is having Alan sign his Ketubah? What’s that about?”

I don’t know what my future holds. In today’s Cancel Culture, every time I publish an article in The American Spectator or show up on talk radio or walk into a law school classroom, I never know when this is the day that someone will try to cancel me and call me one of the names that Hillary used to fill her basketful of deplorables. Among the 2,000-plus students I have taught these past 16 years, I have had scores of Arab Muslims, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Armenians, Jews, LGBTQs, Whatevers. I treat them all the same. When their lives are falling apart, some of them ask me for private pastoral time, beyond the call of a law school professor, since most of their other law professors do not care about the individual human being the way I do. Word gets around.

I never know when Cancel Culture will next knock on my door. I do not know how I will defend because all the experiences and moments I have described above are sacred and holy to me, not to be leveraged to cover myself. But let no one dare lecture me about racial issues, “White privilege,” systemic racism, or about paying reparations to Obama and LeBron James.

And as for Black Lives Matter: they are a despicable, anti-freedom, anti-Semitic organization that hates our country’s core values of equal opportunity, law and justice, and free enterprise.

As I read about weekend shootings in Chicago, I see the cynicism and mendacity behind it all. Pick your week.

I am a taxpayer. None of my children attended UCLA, where admissions quotas for preferred demographic groups including the children of illegal aliens remove many seats from the pool available to taxpayers’ children, but they all got into other schools better than UCLA. And they did not have to join the crew team to get in. Meanwhile, when I was studying at UCLA Law School, the career-placement office coldly scheduled all my job interviews during “On Campus Interview Month” to take place during the weeks between Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot, so I had to miss my opportunities because I am proscribed from engaging in business-related matters on holy days. I asked the placement office to reschedule my interviews. They easily could have, but they refused because Orthodox Jews are a population group that does not qualify for sensitivity or diversity, equity, and inclusiveness. My first-year mid-term exam in criminal law was scheduled for a Jewish holy day; the oh-so-liberal professor refused to accommodate me. UCLA Law School graduation the year before mine was held on the holy Biblical festival of Shavuot. Leviticus 23:21; Numbers 28:26; Deuteronomy 16:10. As a result, Orthodox Jews — students and their families — were excluded from their UCLA law school graduation. Privilege? White Privilege?

From the day my father’s leukemia left me an orphan at age 14, with my mother left challenged to feed, house, and educate a family of four children, I have had to scrap and scrape for everything I ever have had. If I still am a bit rough at the edges, even now, it is because I have had no privilege ever in my life other than the parents and faith community with whom G-d blessed me, the gift and honor of being born an American, and the wife who said “yes” to my marriage proposal a half year after my divorce. Life is not about privilege, and it offers little for those who wallow in jealousy and whining. It is about taking the cards dealt and learning to play them wisely. I was a boy orphaned from his father at age 14. I encountered my share of challenges — instances of physical anti-Semitism on the street and genteel, elegant anti-Semitism at other venues, a tough first marriage, moments of unfairness at the workplace, financial setbacks caused by others who took advantage of an idealistic young man believing in the inherent good of all people while lacking a father’s guidance to realize when he was being cheated and defrauded. That is life. You pick yourself up, learn, and do better next time.

This wonderful, amazing country’s Constitution does not guarantee equal results, only equal opportunities to mess up or to succeed. That is what propelled our nation to greatness. Not diversity, equity, and inclusiveness. Rather: Equal Opportunity. So stuff critical race theory in the trash where it belongs. And don’t anyone dare lecture me about race.

https://spectator.org/dov-fischer-life-testament-on-race/?utm_source=mainline

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

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