A proposed Bill to ban hunting with dogs in Northern Ireland was defeated on Monday in the Stormont Assembly
A proposed Bill to ban hunting with dogs in Northern Ireland was defeated on Monday in the Stormont Assembly.
The region remains the only part of the UK where hunting wild mammals with dogs is still permitted.
Thirty-eight MLAs voted for the bill on Monday, while 45 voted against.
Sinn Féin opposition to the bill came under scrutiny on Tuesday. In a statement, Sinn Féin agriculture spokesperson Declan McAleer said that his party “opposes the unnecessary infliction of cruelty to animals”.
“Our party position – north and south – is that regulation, not a ban, is the best approach.
“However Sinn Féin believes the Private Members Bill was unworkable, flawed and rushed and in the time we have left in this mandate amending it sufficiently was not possible.
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Actor Jussie Smollett found guilty of staging fake hate crime
Actor Jussie Smollett, the one-time star of the TV drama Empire, was found guilty on Friday (AEDT) of staging a hate crime against himself in what prosecutors said was a bid to gain sympathy and bolster his career.
Prosecutors said Smollett, who is black and openly gay, lied to police when he told them that he was accosted on a dark Chicago street by two masked strangers in January 2019.
Smollett said the men threw a noose around his neck and poured chemicals on him while yelling racist and homophobic slurs and expressions of support for former President Donald Trump.
Police arrested Smollett a month after the alleged assault, saying that he paid two brothers $3500 to stage the attack in an effort to raise his show-business profile. He eventually pleaded not guilty to six counts of felony disorderly conduct.
The two brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, testified that Smollett paid them to participate in a phony attack and instructed them how to attack him. During the trial, the actor took the stand and disputed their accounts.
Prosecutor defends dropping charges against Jussie Smollett
An emergency room doctor who treated Smollett on the night of the attack told the jury that the actor suffered real injuries.
Smollett’s acting career declined after the incident. He lost his role as a singer-songwriter in the final season of Empire, a Fox television hip-hop drama that ended a five-year run in 2020.
His case took an unexpected turn in spring 2019 when the Cook County state’s attorney’s office dropped a 16-count indictment against him in exchange for Smollett forfeiting his $US10,000 bond without admitting wrongdoing.
The dismissal drew criticism from then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the city’s police superintendent, who called the reversal a miscarriage of justice.
In June 2019, a special prosecutor was assigned to examine the case.
After a five-month investigation, the special prosecutor recommended charging Smollett, again and a grand jury returned a six-count felony disorderly conduct indictment.
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Reps. Greene and Gohmert Finally Met the January 6 Political Prisoners: What They Saw Isn't Pretty
Reps. Greene, Gohmert, Gaetz, and Gosar tried, unsuccessfully, to visit the January 6 political prisoners twice earlier this year. They were turned back for no stated reasons. They sent a congressional letter and forced a confrontation with the D.C. mayor’s office and the Washington D.C. Department of Corrections (DOC) staff just so they could inspect a jail that “they have the right, prerogative, and duty as of Members of Congress to inquire and inspect.”
Greene and Gohmert (and their respective staffs) finally got to tour the D.C. jail where the J6 inmates are held, though the jail staff DID try to end the tour of the jail before the reps got to meet the political prisoners.
“What is there to hide?” Gohmert pressed. “The complaint has been that they’ve been treated differently than the other detainees. I thought tonight we were going to find out.”
At that point, the tour had already lasted two hours and Greene and Gohmert hadn’t yet met a single J6 inmate. After an 11-minute discussion, the tour went forward.
Greene and Gohmert met with roughly 40 J6 inmates, in what Greene described as a noticeably older part of the prison, which appeared to have not been updated recently, unlike the rest of the prison.
The political prisoners cheered as they met Gohmert and Greene. Some cried and all were visibly shaken (they were the only inmates on the tour to cry). They lined up to shake hands with Greene and Gohmert and began chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!”
Takeaways from Greene’s report include:
Inmates claim they aren’t allowed to see their lawyers or family members
They aren’t allowed to get a haircut unless they are vaccinated. Some use Nair hair remover on their heads. Some keep their hair long.
Some of the J6 political prisoners claimed their cells were infested with rats and bedbugs when they first arrived.
They claimed the U.S. Marshals Service came through several days before the Green-Gohmert visit to paint and scrub dirt and mold from the showers. There were still visible signs of dirt and mold in the shower section.
One inmate told Greene his toilet doesn’t work. He has to wait until he is let out of his cell to use a restroom.
The inmates aren’t allowed to attend religious services so they hold their own.
Several inmates need medical attention. One has a broken finger. A seventy-one-year-old inmate, Lonnie Leroy Coffman, who hasn’t seen a doctor, watched as his lower forearm has turned purple and his thumb turned black. The other inmates suggested that if anyone can be released, it should be Lonnie.
As the meeting was wrapping up, Greene said the following to the detainees,
I was upset about the riot on January 6. I don’t call it an insurrection—it wasn’t—but I was upset. But I’m here because I really, truly am worried that you all are being treated
poorly and it’s a human rights abuse and it’s an abuse of your civil rights and you should be presumed innocent before proven guilty. And I believe in a good justice system and that you should be treated fairly, just like the rest of the people here that I saw tonight who are really being treated very well.
I think that should be extended to every single person regardless of politics or skin color or what you’re being charged with. We’ve heard terrible things and I want you to know that Congressman Gohmert and I have basically refused to back down on this issue.
The America we know is not a racist country. We want people to be receiving fairness in the justice system.
Greene’s report is disturbing and damning. It highlights the brutal and unconstitutional treatment of J6 prisoners at the hands of Biden’s legal system. J6 inmates have been beaten. The prisoners complain of chemicals and pubic hair in their food.
The conclusion to her report starts with the following,
The congressional visit to the D.C. jail on November 4 unquestionably proved that there is a twotrack justice system in the United States. This two-tiered system is not based on race, violence, or conviction of crime, but politics.
Other inmates have access to flat-screen TVs, (largely anti-American) reading materials, and medical care.
The report goes on to skewer the D.C. jail, those who allow the unfair treatment of the J6 political prisoners, and everyone who has tried to keep the reps out. It goes on to mention how other inmates are given access to the Koran and CRT literature.
Greene and Gohmert promised to keep fighting for the J6 inmates. As Green and Gohmert were leaving, the prisoners chanted “U-S-A!” and “Let’s Go, Brandon!”
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How ‘Science’ Went Woke
“Believe in science.” You’ve probably seen that common—and silly—trope on left-wing political lawn signs. But what does it mean?
Science is a method, a tool, but those lawn signs seem to be calling for something else. The statement instead most likely signifies that one believes in the politically compromised science of institutions promoting ideological outcomes.
It means believing in the American Medical Association, which now wants to drop the notation of sex from birth certificates without any medical justification.
It means trusting in health officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when they call “racism” a public health threat, worthy of suspending COVID-19 precautions for the sake of pro-social justice and Black Lives Matter protests, but for nothing else.
What we are seeing in America and throughout the West is a corruption of institutions in the name of ideology, in which merit is coming under assault in pursuit of political conformity.
A series of studies demonstrate how our institutions have become warped and made to serve this narrow interest at the expense of any pretense of meritocracy.
This transformation is fully underway.
The so-called STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—certainly aren’t immune from politics. Scientists, like everyone else, have views of their own that can influence their work.
However, what’s becoming clear is that as America’s most powerful institutions seek to reinforce their woke dogmas, they are insisting that ideology itself come before expertise in any field. Science and scientists must bend to the demands of ideology, much as they do under revolutionary, totalitarian regimes.
If you want to work or operate in most elite institutions, you increasingly need to declare a woke statement of faith. And of course, the most prestigious positions will be awarded to the most faithful.
1 in 5 Academic Jobs Require ‘DEI’
A recent study by the American Enterprise Institute found that nearly one-fifth of academic jobs now require so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements. It found this by looking for words like “diversity” and “diverse” in schools’ public job postings. That didn’t just appear in humanities departments, where one would perhaps expect more political bias. No, they occurred just as commonly in STEM job listings.
Here are some examples of what the job listings asked for:
How do you think about diversity, equity, and inclusion [DEI], including factors that influence underrepresentation of particular groups in academia, and the experiences of individuals from particular groups within academia?
Have you been involved in activities to advance or promote a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment or institution? We note that activities could be large and organized or they could be specific and very personal. Please tell us the role that you played, what you did, what happened, and what you learned from the experience.
Coming into a new institution will involve changes and being busy! Please let us know how you plan to integrate DEI into your role as a faculty member, including new or existing initiatives you would like to be involved with.
Don’t think you can escape the revolution in nonpolitical pursuits, and don’t think you can remain nonpolitical. You must shout your conversion and demonstrate your commitment to the revolution—or else.
The study used an example to show just how intense this strict ideological screening has become at some elite schools. It used the example of applications for a life sciences post at Berkeley:
The scale of the resulting purge would make Stalin blush. Of 893 nominally qualified candidates, 679 were eliminated solely due to insufficiently woke diversity, equity, and inclusion statements. In other words, Berkeley used a political litmus test to eliminate over three-quarters of the applicant pool.
So much for inclusion.
On top of that, the diversity statements were even more commonly demanded at elite universities than at non-elite schools. One of the study’s authors, the Educational Freedom Institute’s James D. Paul, commented in an interview with The Washington Free Beacon that it shows how ideology is now taking “precedence over merit.”
To be a member of the new ruling elite, one doesn’t really have to be elite. This isn’t Thomas Jefferson’s “natural” aristocracy of the most able and educated, who rise to the top in a free society.
No, under the new rules, it’s more important to be in good ideological standing, to have the same beliefs, tastes, interests, and attitudes as everyone else in that upper class.
What’s notable is that the AEI study’s authors admitted they might have even underestimated the extent of ideological screening as they narrowed their search terminology to the words “diverse” and “diversity.” That’s because the wide swath of various other initiatives that fall under the same ideological umbrella weren’t necessarily caught up in the search.
It’s like the issue involving how much critical race theory is being taught in K-12 schools. It’s not actually labeled “critical race theory 101 for kindergartners.” Instead, it relies on the terminology and ideas associated with the ideology, with concepts such as “anti-racism” and “white privilege” being among the many tip-offs.
In addition, the study only covered public postings. It’s quite possible that many more jobs require statements of diversity, equity, and inclusion as part of the application process.
One might ask, why are institutions all becoming like this? Why are they in such lockstep in demanding rigid ideological enforcement?
Government Speeds Up Revolution
There are many answers to that question. One of those is brought to light by another study, this one by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, which showed that at least some of this transformation is being openly encouraged by the federal government.
The study found that one-third of National Science Foundation grants use the language of diversity, equity, and inclusion in their abstracts. It represents a sharp uptick from just three decades ago, when higher education was already quite left-wing, compared with the rest of the country.
Interestingly, Jeremiah Poff at the Washington Examiner noted that the largest increase in ideologically loaded grants occurred in human resources and in math and physical sciences.
The human resources officers and administrators are, of course, the enforcers. They are the most effective way to get institutions to conform to and promote an ideology.
This affects public and private institutions alike. Yale, for instance, now has more administrators than undergraduate students. And those administrators are often focused on promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. They are the most responsible for stamping out diversity of opinion.
Ironically, in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion, they are eradicating diversity, equity, and inclusion.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/12/05/how-science-went-woke/
**************************************************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)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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