Displaying posts published in

July 2017

The Merit of the Meritocracy by Linda Goudsmit

In a stunning display of reverse discrimination Columbia University’s Teachers College organized a conference exploring the “problem of whiteness” and how to combat whiteness.

300 participants mostly K-12 teachers and principals were “reeducated” in ways to frame being white as the primary social problem to be addressed in elementary schools. Workshops and presentations titled “Whiteness in Schools,” “Three Ways to Face White Privilege in the Classroom,” “Teaching for Social Justice” are representative of the blatant prejudice and reverse discrimination intrinsic in the conference designed to “Reimagine Education.”

Black history exposes how black children were made to feel ashamed of being black. How does making white children feel ashamed of being white remedy the situation? It can’t.

Similarly, at a diversity conference for employees at Jesuit colleges Dr. Kris Sealey, associate professor of philosophy at Fairfield University, spoke about race in the university classroom. She has taught race based courses such as “Black Lives Matter” and “Critical Race Theory.”

“So more and more, the courses that I teach on race have become courses in which I expect my students to engage in the hegemonic power of whiteness.” Really?

Let’s discuss hegemonic theory. Early 19th century Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci was made famous by his theory of cultural hegemony which posits that the state and ruling class (the bourgeoisie in Italy) use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies. Hegemony is just another word for dominance. The ruling class uses ideology rather than military force to achieve compliance to its cultural norms. The idea is that the lessons of accepted normative behavior are repeated and reinforced at home, at school, and at worship. The cultural norms become codified into laws which further enforce the cultural norms and thus cultural hegemony rather than force is used to maintain power.

Dr. Sealey and the presenters at Teachers College are criticizing cultural hegemony as the evil method used for maintaining white power while they are hypocritically attempting to reformat American cultural institutions with reverse discrimination to establish cultural hegemony and establish black power. Reverse discrimination is still discrimination and cannot remedy the problem of discrimination it can only exacerbate it.

Reverse racism taken to its extreme will necessarily end in a race war – the white population will not submit without a fight. The social chaos of a race war will not end well for America. The police force will be nationalized and the federal government will declare martial law and all individual freedoms will be suspended.

There is an alternative.

America’s judicial system was created with the dream of blind justice. This meant that the judicial system would focus exclusively on the WHAT of behavior and ignore the WHO. To realize the dream of fairness requires a commitment to the ideal of the meritocracy not a campaign to institutionalize reverse racism. Racism and reverse racism are the opposite of fairness because they focus on the WHO of behavior not on the WHAT of behavior.

Consider the blind auditions for orchestras. They are the fairest system and yield the most talented artists for positions in the orchestra. Musicians sitting behind a screen play for judges – there is only the music – it does not matter if the musician is white, black, hispanic, Asian, old, young, Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. Only the music matters. The competence and achievement of the musician is measured – not the color of his/her skin.

The meritocracy is the structure of fairness that supports the American dream of upward mobility. The meritocracy focuses exclusively on the WHAT of behavior and ignores the WHO.

Climate Change Isn’t the End of the World Even if world temperatures rise, the appropriate policy response is still an open question. By David R. Henderson and John H. Cochrane

Climate change is often misunderstood as a package deal: If global warming is “real,” both sides of the debate seem to assume, the climate lobby’s policy agenda follows inexorably.

It does not. Climate policy advocates need to do a much better job of quantitatively analyzing economic costs and the actual, rather than symbolic, benefits of their policies. Skeptics would also do well to focus more attention on economic and policy analysis.

To arrive at a wise policy response, we first need to consider how much economic damage climate change will do. Current models struggle to come up with economic costs consummate with apocalyptic political rhetoric. Typical costs are well below 10% of gross domestic product in the year 2100 and beyond.

That’s a lot of money—but it’s a lot of years, too. Even 10% less GDP in 100 years corresponds to 0.1 percentage point less annual GDP growth. Climate change therefore does not justify policies that cost more than 0.1 percentage point of growth. If the goal is 10% more GDP in 100 years, pro-growth tax, regulatory and entitlement reforms would be far more effective.

Yes, the costs are not evenly spread. Some places will do better and some will do worse. The American South might be a worse place to grow wheat; Southern Canada might be a better one. In a century, Miami might find itself in approximately the same situation as the Dutch city of Rotterdam today.

But spread over a century, the costs of moving and adapting are not as imposing as they seem. Rotterdam’s dikes are expensive, but not prohibitively so. Most buildings are rebuilt about every 50 years. If we simply stopped building in flood-prone areas and started building on higher ground, even the costs of moving cities would be bearable. Migration is costly. But much of the world’s population moved from farms to cities in the 20th century. Allowing people to move to better climates in the 21st will be equally possible. Such investments in climate adaptation are small compared with the investments we will regularly make in houses, businesses, infrastructure and education.

And economics is the central question—unlike with other environmental problems such as chemical pollution. Carbon dioxide hurts nobody’s health. It’s good for plants. Climate change need not endanger anyone. If it did—and you do hear such claims—then living in hot Arizona rather than cool Maine, or living with Louisiana’s frequent floods, would be considered a health catastrophe today.

Global warming is not the only risk our society faces. Even if science tells us that climate change is real and man-made, it does not tell us, as President Obama asserted, that climate change is the greatest threat to humanity. Really? Greater than nuclear explosions, a world war, global pandemics, crop failures and civil chaos?

No. Healthy societies do not fall apart over slow, widely predicted, relatively small economic adjustments of the sort painted by climate analysis. Societies do fall apart from war, disease or chaos. Climate policy must compete with other long-term threats for always-scarce resources. CONTINUE AT SITE

Glazov Moment: “Annihilate” Jews! A Cali Imam’s Call to Muslims. Where are the police and the media? VIDEO

In this new Glazov Moment, Jamie focuses on “Annihilate” Jews! A Cali Imam’s Call to Muslims, and he asks: Where are the police and the media?

Don’t miss it!

And make sure to watch Anni Cyrus discuss Unveiling Linda Sarsour’s Jihad, where she exposes what Sarsour is really saying to America — and to her comrades:

At Troubled City College, President’s Job Remains Unfilled By David W. Chen……see note please

City College was among the finest in the nation. It was called the “Harvard” of Convent Avenue and listed as one of the regional leaders in quality education. The list of alums includes seven Nobel laureates, prominent jurors, scientists, artists and intellectuals….tuition was free and admission based on meritocracy.In 1970, response to the spring 1969 building takeovers and riot threats by Puerto-Rican and black City College students, they instituted a policy of open admissions, guaranteeing every New York City high-school graduate acceptance to a CUNY campus and remedial courses anyone requiring them. …..the rest is history….rsk

When the president of the City College of New York resigned unexpectedly in October during a financial scandal, the school quickly named an interim leader and said it planned to pick a replacement by the end of the academic year.

But with the new school year less than a month away, no candidate has been chosen to replace Lisa S. Coico, who remains under federal investigation for using money from a college foundation to pay personal expenses.

Last month, in an unusual letter to the City College community, James B. Milliken, chancellor of the City University of New York, the college’s parent entity, cautioned that the search could take longer than anticipated.

“The search committee and our consultant continue their good work on this critically important responsibility, and I have assured them they should take the time required to see this process to a successful conclusion,” Mr. Milliken wrote.

Whether a successor is named in weeks — or months, as some officials are now speculating — the continued vacancy in the president’s office comes at a pivotal moment for City College, the flagship of CUNY, the country’s largest public urban university.

The CUNY system is playing a central role in Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s newplan to help make public colleges in New York tuition-free for middle-class students, and has been attracting more national attention as an affordableengine of upward mobility. With 16,000 students, most of whom are undergraduates, City College has been called “the poor man’s Harvard” for educating thousands of poor, minority and immigrant students.

But its more recent history has been troubled. In May 2016, The New York Times reported that the 21st Century Foundation, a nonprofit group affiliated with the college, had paid for some of Ms. Coico’s personal expenses when she took office in 2010. The foundation was then reimbursed for more than $150,000 by the Research Foundation of CUNY, which manages research funds for the entire system. As questions swirled over the handling of Ms. Coico’s expenses, the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York began issuing subpoenas seeking records.

Ms. Coico resigned one day after The Times informed the college that a memo from 2011 concerning her reimbursements appeared to be fabricated, possibly to mislead prosecutors.

Fusion GPS – in bed with the mainstream media all along By Monica Showalter

Fusion GPS, the political opposition research group at the center of the media’s Trump-colluded-with-the-Russians “narrative” has been abnormally cozy with the mainstream media organs it’s used in its disinformation and smear operations. Now, they’re protecting them.

Daily Caller reports that these very same press creatures who worked with Fusion GPS to spread the false stories about Trump, have gotten curiously silent about the firm’s role in the widening web of scandal about the firm’s actual role in colluding with the Russians. They include CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times, none of which have reported a word about the new revelations showing that Fusion GPS took money from the Russians to undercut President Trump.

Fusion GPS apparently took money from anyone. They not only cooked up the infamous phony “golden showers” dossier about President Trump, not a word of which was true, though some media outlets reported it that way, they also engineered the Russian meetings with President Trump’s son, Donald Trump, Jr., and two other associates inside the Trump Tower, as a means of making it appear that Trump was in bed with the Russians all along. In testimony last Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Committe, hedge fund manager William Browder said they were up to their eyeballs working with the most nefarious elements of the Russian government/oligarchy. Daily Caller writes:

At the same time that Fusion GPS was crafting the dossier allegedly exposing the Trump campaign’s collusion with the Russian government, they were also working to advance Russian interests, according to Browder’s testimony.

Browder told the committee that Natalia Veselnitskaya, the same Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort at Trump Tower during the campaign, “hired Glenn Simpson of the firm Fusion GPS to conduct a smear campaign against me and Sergei Magnitsky in advance of congressional hearings on the Global Magnitsky Act.” The law is named for Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer who represented Browder before Russian authorities jailed and killed him after he exposed a massive fraud scheme.

Who among the mainstream media organs has been more persistently, consistently, insistently anti-Trump than the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN? they are praising themselves like crazy as hard-hitting reporters who are finally doing ‘real journalism’ with the advent of the Trump administration, given their sorry past as media lapdogs during the previous one.

But it doesn’t hold water with these revelations. Apparently, they were just string puppets for Fusion GPS and its media manipulators. They got their fake scoops, they ran with them, they did what Fusion GPS wanted, and Fusion GPS took its payments from its clients.

Is this media corruption or what?

What’s the deal with all the silence from the mainstream press, these colluding outfits in particular, now that the truth is coming out?

Who criminalized politics? By Jack Hellner

Dr. Krauthammer needs a history lesson.

Charles Krauthammer has been going after President Trump consistently of late, almost as if it were back in the days of the primary contests of 2016 when “Trump can’t win.”

The following excerpt is from his “Sessions Lessons” op-ed in the Washington Post, and seems to indicate that the good doctor must be living in a cave:

“Moreover, in America we don’t lock up political adversaries. They do that in Turkey. They do that (and worse) in Russia. Part of American greatness is that we don’t criminalize our politics.”

The Obama Administration and FBI started an investigation and started spying on Trump in July 2016 either based on nothing or a fake dossier.

The Obama administration illegally unmasked a large number of people, none of whom seemed to be Democrats.

The Obama administration illegally spied for years.

Democrats and a special counsel are threatening to impeach Trump for no actual crime.

The Justice Department and Democrat Attorneys General throughout the U.S have threatened to jail adversaries on climate change for no actual crimes.

Obama clearly had IRS target political opponents to shut them up

And now Dr. Krauthammer acts like Obama never criminalized politics and Trump did, because he said negative things about Sessions. Where has Trump threatened criminal action for someone who just disagrees with him? I would ask Dr. K: Where did Trump threaten to criminalize anything Sessions did?

Toni Airaksinen Two University of South Carolina professors argue in a recent paper that “color-blind racial attitudes” are “unethical” and “can also perpetuate White norms.”

Surprisingly, their survey of psychology students revealed that white students at “predominantly white institutions” had “greater awareness of racial oppression” than those who attended “racially balanced” schools.

Mary Ann Priester and Ronald Pitner, both of whom teach in the College of Social Work at USC, advanced that claim in a July 19 research article examining the prevalence of color-blind attitudes among psychology students.

“Deficits in awareness are not only unethical, but can also perpetuate White norms within the professions.” Tweet This

Defining color-blindness as “denial or lack of awareness of race-based privilege, institutional racism, and/or racial discrimination,” they argue that “this lack of awareness has been identified as a barrier to developing therapeutic rapport with racially diverse populations.”

“Color-blind racial attitudes may prevent White individuals from developing a deeper level of awareness of racial oppression,” the professors assert, later adding that “deficits in awareness are not only unethical, but can also perpetuate White norms within the professions.”

Because of the harm allegedly caused when white people subscribe to color-blind racial attitudes, the professors surveyed 409 college students to determine the prevalence of “color-blind racial attitudes” among students with varying levels of “diversity exposure.”

Students were considered to be color-blind if they agreed with meritocratic statements such as “Everyone who works hard, no matter what race they are, has an equal chance to become rich” and “Race plays a major role in the type of social services that people receive in the United States.”

The professors determined that “being White was associated with higher scores on the color-blindness measure, indicating a greater lack of awareness of White privilege and racial discrimination among White students,” and speculate that this might be due to the fact that “race is often not as central” to the identity of white individuals.

Curiously, they also found that “students who attended predominantly White undergraduate institutions had greater awareness of racial oppression than students who attended institutions that were racially balanced,” a result that runs contrary to conventional wisdom.

Citing “greater levels of exclusion and racial microaggressions at predominantly White institutions,” they suggest that “White students may become more sensitized to racism when they witness differential treatment of racial/ethnic minority students on campus.”

Reiterating their assertion that color-blindness presents a barrier to establishing “therapeutic rapport with clients,” the professors conclude that “understanding how diversity exposure influences color-blind racial attitudes…can better inform multicultural training curriculum and strategies.”

Neither Priester nor Pitner responded to requests for comment from Campus Reform.https://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9502

UMich hiring admin for ‘cultural appropriation prevention’ Adam Sabes Mississippi Campus Correspondent

The University of Michigan is looking to hire a new “Bias Incident Prevention and Response Coordinator” to clamp down on “students of concern” and “enact cultural appropriation prevention initiatives.”
The full-time job, which pays between $46,000 and $57,000, oversees handling of “bias incidents” reported on campus, as well as various “social justice initiatives.”
The role also has crisis-management components, such as providing “a safe listening space in which to offer compassion, support, and guidance to students” after especially severe “bias incidents.”

The University of Michigan is looking for someone to clamp down on “students of concern” and “enact cultural appropriation prevention initiatives.”

A job posting on the school’s website seeks candidates to fill the role of “Bias Incident Prevention and Response Coordinator,” a full-time position within the Dean of Students Office that comes with a starting salary range of $46,000 – $57,000.

“Provides a safe listening space in which to offer compassion, support, and guidance to students.” Tweet This

UMich estimates that about 40 percent of the job will involve coordinating “bias incident response efforts,” which entails coordinating “appropriate and effective intervention and communication between multiple campus offices…and the provision of support to individuals and groups targeted by bias behaviors.”

North Korea Missile Test Could Put Denver in Range Test ramps up the stakes for U.S. President Donald Trump, who has vowed to rein in North Korea’s arms program By Jonathan Cheng and Dion Nissenbaum

SEOUL—North Korea test-fired a ballistic missile Friday that experts said put the continental U.S. firmly in range of a strike, underscoring Pyongyang’s rapid advance in technology and intensifying a standoff with Washington.

The launch emanated from North Korea’s mountainous interior, flying for more than 45 minutes before landing in the waters between Japan and the Korean Peninsula, U.S., South Korean and Japanese officials said.

Hours after the North Korea missile launch, the U.S. and South Korea carried out a live fire exercise by launching missiles into the territorial waters off South Korea’s East Coast, according to the U.S. military.

Lt. Gen. Thomas Vandal, commander of the U.S. Eighth Army in South Korea, said that the U.S. military is “ready to fight tonight, will deter North Korean provocation and if necessary defend the Republic of Korea,” using the formal name for South Korea.

North Korea’s action comes just three weeks after it surprised the world with its first ever intercontinental ballistic missile test.

But Friday’s missile was a more advanced ICBM than the one fired earlier this month, flying 620 miles and reaching a maximum altitude of 2,300 miles—far more than the July 4 missile’s 1,740 miles, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. North Korea, in a separate media report hours later, released numbers in line with those estimates.

The significantly higher altitude of Friday’s missile suggests that it could have flown much farther than the last one.

The new missile would be able to fly more than 6,400 miles if fired at a standard trajectory, David Wright, a physicist and co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union Concerned Scientists, wrote in an analysis on Friday. That would put Los Angeles, Denver and Chicago within range.

In a report published Saturday morning by the official state mouthpiece, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said the ICBM test showed Pyongyang could make a “surprise launch of ICBM in any region and place any time, and clearly proved that the whole U.S. mainland is in the firing range of the DPRK missiles.” He used the acronym for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. CONTINUE AT SITE

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

A molecule that restores heart function. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have uncovered a molecule called Agrin, that appears to control the cardiac repair process. It was discovered in the surrounding supportive tissue of the heart known as the extracellular matrix, or ECM. In lab tests, Agrin healed scar tissue in a month.
https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/life-sciences/young-heart-restoring-cardiac-function-matrix-molecule
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v547/n7662/full/nature22978.html
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-scientists-successfully-regenerate-damaged-hearts/

Good results in acne dual-treatment trials. Israeli biotech Sol-Gel has announced positive interim results in its Phase II clinical trial for its “Twin” treatment for acne. “Twin” combines two known acne treatments with a unique method of molecular wrapping that makes it easier to penetrate the skin.
http://www.globes.co.il/en/article-sol-gel-reports-positive-phase-ii-acne-trial-1001198353

Alzheimer’s disease can be seen in the eyes. Researchers at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center have discovered a connection between mild cognitive impairment and the response of that person’s eye pupil to red and blue light. More tests will check if loss of retina function is an early warning of Alzheimer’s disease.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-researchers-look-into-eyes-for-early-signs-of-alzheimers/

Eye-Control: life-changing technology. Latest video about Israel’s Eye-Control, a compact and affordable invention that gives a voice to locked-in patients who were unable to communicate, due to diseases such as ALS. With Eye-Control individuals use their eyes to spell out words and statements, proving that the eyes really are the window into the soul. https://www.youtube.com/embed/_VaPBIViS7o?rel=0

£7 million for UK-Israel joint research. (TY Hazel) The Britain Israel Research Academic Exchange (BIRAX) has funded over £7 million in 15 bilateral research programs including stem cell treatments for multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease and therapies for Type 1 diabetes.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-israel-science-program-has-invested-7m-in-5-years/

Surgery for Fijian children. (TY Hazel) More than 50 children will undergo free surgery and health screening in Suva, capital of Fiji, by an Israeli team of three doctors and a nurse. The team is part of Mashav, an arm of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, which assists more than 60 countries to alleviate hunger, disease and poverty.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2017-07/24/c_136467199.htm

Nordic walking and pain. I reported previously (15 Jan) on the unique study led by Israel’s Dr. Donald Silverberg that showed Nordic Pole Walking (NPW) can alleviate chronic low back, hip and/or knee pain. In this video, Dr. Silverberg describes his study and its eye-opening (and back-straightening) results.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZEN_lKsrSEc?rel=0

Israeli surgeons save girl on Birthright tour. Kimberly Winkler, from the Dominican Republic, suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm whilst on a Taglit-Birthright tour of Israel. She was rushed to Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem where surgeons performed three delicate operations to save her life.
http://www.israpundit.org/taglit-participant-saved-at-last-minute-after-brain-aneurysm/