Displaying posts published in

December 2018

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

MARK STEYN ON THINGS YOU CAN NO LONGER SAY OR SING

By on December 12th, 2018

https://www.steynonline.com/9074/baby-it-cold-in-the-far-east-without-a-sheep

Things you can no longer say:

I was in the big city earlier this week, and so saw for the first time in ages a physical copy of The New York Times. It contained an interview with James Dyson, the brilliant re-inventor of vacuum cleaners and much else. The Times felt obliged to preface Sir James’ words with a health warning for the easily triggered:

In this interview, Mr. Dyson expressed antiquated and at times offensive views on “racial differences” and Japanese culture. He also referred to growth markets in Asia as the “Far East.”

He used the term “Far East”!!! What the hell was he thinking?????? Good thing he has no plans to run for public office or host a cable show. The old British Foreign Office joke about the “Near East” (which is more generally referred to as the Middle East) is that they call it the Near East because it’s always nearer than you think. But start referring to the Far East and the instant vaporization of your entire career is a lot nearer than you think.

“Far East” is, I suppose, literally Eurocentric. But then so is “Midwest”. Perhaps the Times now finds any point of view or perspective “offensive”. Perhaps it is time to ban such “antiquated” concepts as north, south, east and west – and indeed the very compass. The abolition of instruments of navigation would seem a necessary condition for the future we’re sailing to.

~In American schools, they take the “separation of church and state” so seriously they ban candy canes, reindeer and red-and-green color combinations. By contrast, in Scotland the state schools still perform nativity plays before Christmas, and little Alfie Cox found himself cast as a shepherd. So his mum ordered the excited five-year-old a costume from Amazon, and was delighted upon its arrival to find that Jeff Bezos had been generous enough to throw in a free blow-up sheep:

But the mom of two was puzzled when a teacher told Alfie to take the sheep home — until she blew it up and found it had a huge hole in its bottom as well as red lips and eyelashes.

Cox, 46, found the exact same sheep was on sale as a “stag night bonkin’ sheep” and is now devising a way to steal it away from unaware Alfie.

Is Jeff Bezos sending free blow-up sheep to all Amazon’s customers this Christmas? Or only five-year-old Scottish boys?

On the other hand, perhaps Jennifer Sinclair, the principal at Elkhorn Elementary School in Nebraska so worried about “cultural sensitivity” that she bans reindeer, might find it more inclusive simply to mandate the reindeer has to have red lips and “a huge hole in its bottom”.

Continue reading →
BOOKS Comments turned off

“Not All Dead White Men”—A Review written by Jaspreet Singh Boparai

By on December 12th, 2018

https://quillette.com/2018/12/11/not-all-dead

A review of Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age, by Donna Zuckerberg. Harvard University Press, October 8, 2018 (288 pages).

Donna Zuckerberg holds a PhD in Classics from Princeton University. Her older brother, Mark Zuckerberg, is the co-founder of Facebook. Dr Zuckerberg has arguably become the most influential scholar of Greek and Latin literature in America, thanks to Eidolon, the online journal which she founded in 2015.

Outside university departments of Classics, Eidolon remains obscure. It emphasises Greek and Roman culture in the modern world, frequently in relation to some aspect of popular culture. Articles tend to be written in an informal, ‘accessible’ style; though few obviously appeal to readers who are not aspiring academics or junior scholars. Eidolon accurately reflects the orthodoxy prevailing in contemporary universities: this is what you have to say, and how you should sound, if you want an academic job.

The best-known Eidolon article remains Dr Zuckerberg’s “How to Be A Good Classicist Under A Bad Emperor,” which has been discussed before in Quillette . Dr Zuckerberg insists that the political movement known as the “Alt-Right” poses a credible threat to classical studies (not to mention the rest of America), and thus ought to be strategically resisted by all principled scholars, teachers and students.

In the concluding chapter to her new book Not All Dead White Men: Classics and Misogyny in the Digital Age, Dr Zuckerberg details how she has been nastily attacked by online trolls for her explicitly ‘activist’ approach to classical studies in Eidolon, receiving “hundreds of anti-Semitic tweets and e-mails”, some of which are described in gruesome detail. Her nemesis Daryush Valizadeh, better known as the blogger and “Pick-Up Artist” “Roosh V”,

bragged to his followers that he knew where I and my family lived, but argued that no physical violence was necessary because he had already raped my mind.

It is curious to note just how far Dr Zuckerberg’s work has been shaped by her reactions to avowed personal enemies: Valizadeh turns out to be the most frequently-discussed author in Not All Dead White Men, with twenty-four works cited in the bibliography, and far more entries in the index than any classical writer.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Islam’s Useful Idiots, Cowards and Quislings

By on December 12th, 2018

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/12/islams-useful-idiots-cowards-and-quislings/

An Islamist ‘known to police’ rampaged through Bourke Street and left a good man dead. Yesterday in Strasbourg one of his co-religionists did likewise and took many more lives. These outrages are now so common they flicker for a moment in the headlines then vanish and are gone. What do our leaders do? Frisk old ladies at airports and say nary a word against Islam.

It used to be called the Silly Season, now it has turned more into the season of foreboding with the inevitable bloody uptick. The threat of terror attacks across the Western world is the gift from fundamentalist Islam, feckless politicians and a Left intent on diversity at any cost. Today’s atrocity is the terror attack in Strasbourg, France, where three people are confirmed shot dead and numerous injured at a Christmas market. The city is in lockdown and the police are hunting the gunman who was, predictably and unsurprisingly, known to them and on a terrorist watch list. Yet nothing was done until he acted.

All too many people have become so blasé (to use a French word) about these events that Islamist atrocities are the expected, if not fully accepted, normal. The media don’t even report many of the more “minor incidents” such as the stabbing of three women at a train station in the French city of Mulhouse only two days ago. The attacker in that case was captured and, fortunately, none of the victims died. The official story, as is so often the situation now, is that the attacker was suffering from a “mental disorder”. Is anyone even surprised by that explanation anymore?

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Christmas Market Gunman Yelled ‘Allahu Akbar’ Before Opening Fire By Jack Crowe

By on December 12th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/christmas-market-gunman-yelled-allahu-akbar-before-opening-fire/

The gunman who killed two and critically wounded seven Tuesday evening at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, France was motivated by Islamic extremism, officials announced Wednesday.

Rémy Heitz, the Paris prosecutor who specializes in terrorism cases, said Wednesday that multiple witnesses heard the man shout “Allahu Akbar” — an Arabic phrase meaning “God is Great” — before opening fire. The attacker, who remains at large, has a criminal record and has served time in prison, according to officials.

“He had been incarcerated multiple times and was known to the prison administration for his radicalization and his proselytizing attitude,” Heitz said of the gunman, a Strasbourg native who has been identified only as Chérif C., 29.

Chérif is one of more than 20,000 individuals identified by French authorities as a potential terror threat, Heitz said. The 29-year-old was flagged with a so-called “S-file,” which stands for La Sûreté de l’État, or security of the state — a designation that doesn’t indicate someone is an imminent threat, but rather that the individual should be monitored.

“The S File can target individuals who aren’t very dangerous, and it is used only to watch their movements and trips around the country,” Mr. Nuñez said. “It isn’t a criterion of dangerousness.”

Police raided Cherif’s home Tuesday morning, just hours before the attack, in an unrelated murder investigation and found a rifle, ammunition, several knives and a grenade. While he had never been convicted on terrorism-related charges, Cerif has an extensive criminal record comprised of 27 convictions for a number of crimes, including several assaults and robberies.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Socialist, the Jihadi, and the Tooth Fairy by Linda Goudsmit

By on December 12th, 2018

http://goudsmit.pundicity.com/21862/the-socialist-the-jihadi-and-the-tooth-fairy

What do socialists and jihadis have in common? They both still believe in the tooth fairy. This is not funny.

Like most groups, socialists and jihadis are divided into leaders and followers. First, we will discuss the leaders.

Socialist leaders promise social justice and income equality to their followers in this life. Jihadi leaders promise 72 virgins to their suicide bombers in the next life. Leadership promises specifically address the particular desires of their adherents – the leaders aren’t stupid – they are manipulative and extremely successful at luring their believers with false promises.

The leadership disingenuously focuses on the promised benefits to their followers while the actual benefits to themselves are ignored. Any cursory study of history exposes the deceitfulness of the leadership’s promises and shows how reality benefits the ruling elite at the expense of the people. So, why do socialists and jihadis still believe their leaders? Because like children they still believe in the tooth fairy. I will explain.

The people of Cuba, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Honduras believed the promises of social justice and income equality made by their scheming socialist leaders. The people were lied to and are now living the equality of suffering and scarcity that socialism actually provides. Socialism necessarily fails because there is no incentive to be productive and eventually you run out of other people’s money.

The ruling elite in socialist countries suffer no such deprivation and the jihadi leadership worldwide remains alive and well – only their duped sycophants end up dead.

The population invasion at our southern border threatens the economic security and homeland security of the United States. Unregulated unvetted mass immigration will bankrupt our welfare system and simultaneously allow criminals and jihadis to enter the country – both create massive chaos.

The border wall is a defense against illegal entry into the United States. So, why would any politician reject it?

Leftist politicians who support socialism reject the border wall because they want a flood of illegal immigrants in the country to vote Democrat and keep them in power. Leftist politicians reject voter ID and any investigation into voter fraud that could expose illegal voting and/or deny voting rights to their followers – they sacrifice national security for their own job security. Their latest scheme is ballot harvesting.

Ballot harvesting is when organized workers or volunteers pick up absentee ballots and drop them off at a polling place or election office. There is absolutely nothing to safeguard the integrity of the ballots or to insure that all votes are delivered. Ballot harvesting is a powerful election-stealing tool that should be eliminated in favor of mailing in sealed signed ballots. If a voter cannot manage the mailing then that voter’s ballot will not count – period.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Check Out The Incompetent PR Response To The Expose On The Women’s March’s Anti-Semitism A Women’s March PR flack tried to spin Tablet Magazine’s expose detailing anti-Semitism and shady financial practices within the organization. She failed. Badly. By Bre Payton

By on December 12th, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/12/12/check-incompetent-pr-response-expose-womens-marchs-anti-semitism/

Tablet Magazine published a massive expose Monday detailing the anti-Semitic origins of the Women’s March and its shady financial practices. Two days later, many of the reporters who shared the Tablet article on Twitter received an e-mail from Inarú Meléndez of Megaphone Strategies, a nonprofit social justice media firm that lists the Women’s March as a client on its website.

According to sources whose accounts were published in the aforementioned article, Women’s March co-chairs Carmen Perez and Tamika Mallory made anti-Semitic remarks at one of the organization’s initial meetings back in 2016. The story also reported that the organization had never picked a Jewish woman to sit on its board and that it excluded anti-Semitism from its unity principles. Tablet also detailed problems with the organization’s financial practices, which have also been reported by The Daily Beast.

In an e-mail sent to The Federalist’s Sean Davis and numerous others, Meléndez claims that “Tablet is in the process or making several corrections to the story,” and offered to share a list of these supposed “fact checks” — but only if Davis would agree to meet a set of demands.

“Before we share the fact-check: Can you confirm that what I am sending you is off the record, and will not be published?” Meléndez writes. “If you are interested in publishing any parts of the fact-checks below that you will contact us first to secure our agreement? You will let us know if you intend to delete your tweet pushing an article that includes sources/allegations, which were not vetted properly and in line with journalistic ethics? Once I receive your reply, I’ll send over the corrections. Please note that we are sending this to a number of reporters who shared this article.”

An identical e-mail was sent to a number of other reporters who also shared the story.

Asking a reporter from a different news outlet to agree to a list of demands before sharing a supposed fact check is bizarre. If Tablet Magazine actually got some facts wrong in its story, Megaphone should take that up with the magazine itself and ask that a correction be issued at the top of the original story. Asking that these fact checks be kept off-the-record also makes no sense. If there truly are factual errors in the story, wouldn’t Megaphone Strategies want this to be made known far and wide? Why the secrecy?

Continue reading →
ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Green Madness The doctrine of deep ecology declares that we must keep our hands off the divine order of nature—even if it kills us. Jerry Weinberger

By on December 12th, 2018

https://www.city-journal.org/climate-change-madness

During his time in the White House, Barack Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry, and other administration officials, asserted that man-made climate change was the greatest threat to humanity’s future—not just one threat among others, or a pretty big one, but the greatest. As recent Pew research makes clear, far more Americans on the political left think that climate change is a big deal than do those on the right, and since the Left is typically more secular and the Right more religious, we see a spiritual paradox: on the environment, those on the left are the true (if pagan) believers, while those on the right are the dogmatic “atheists” (the whole climate thing is just an exaggerated crisis cooked up by liberal elites and the fake media).

Conservative skepticism notwithstanding, though, climate-change ideologues have more or less shaped public debate on the issue—successfully branding their opposition as “climate deniers.” And by now, nearly 50 years after the first Earth Day, a broad-ranging and increasingly draconian ecological consciousness has become pervasive in American life, extending far beyond climate issues. Go to the supermarket, for example, or look inside your pantry. You’ll find that hundreds of items in bags and cans have certifications of “Non-GMO.” That means that they contain no genetically modified organisms. In recent years, more than 27,000 products have been so certified (by the Non-GMO Project), with the purpose of putting our minds at ease that what we’re about to eat is not genetically modified and will not sicken or kill us or make us sprout a third arm. Non-GMO fanatics and millions of consumers call these forbidden fruits “Frankenfood.” Never mind that nobody has been proved to have been harmed or killed by GMOs. (That can’t be said for organic spinach or bean sprouts.) And never mind that for 25 years, almost all corn, cotton, and soybeans grown in the United States have been genetically modified, with nobody sickened or dead or sporting an extra limb. So why the intransigence of the activists and the gullibility of so many consumers?

The issue here is not the inevitable one of managing risk and rewards in modern life. It’s perfectly reasonable to wonder whether plants genetically modified to withstand the herbicide Roundup, say, might cause more of the poison to be used and thus entail some cost or harm. The giveaway term is the reference to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The real issue, that is, is not primarily technical or scientific; it’s moral and spiritual. With genetic engineering, in this view, we’re trying to play God and invariably upsetting the natural order of things. Put differently, and in the terms of the radical ecologist David Graber, we’re the fallen human parasite going after holy Mother Nature.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Google Visits the Resistance Factory A rough day at the office for the Democrats’ impeachment expert. By James Freeman

By on December 12th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-visits-the-resistance-factory-11544645372?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=7&cx_tag=collabctx&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

Some conservative readers may quarrel with today’s headline on the grounds that Google is the resistance factory, given its left-leaning workforce and concerns about potential bias in the Alphabet unit’s search results. But this column is referring to the House Judiciary Committee in the 116th Congress, which is expected to be chaired by Rep. Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.)

Mr. Nadler is now the lead Democrat on Judiciary after mounting a successful campaign to persuade his liberal colleagues that he’s the most qualified pol to manage an impeachment. Immediately after November’s elections, Mollie Hemingway of the Federalist reported overhearing Mr. Nadler on a train discussing potential impeachments of both President Trump and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Voters might hope that a reasonable and responsible elected official would not proceed to impeachment discussions without first laying out specific allegations of high crimes and misdemeanors and supporting evidence. Americans are still waiting for such evidence when it comes to Democratic claims of Trump collusion with Russians, but Mr. Nadler claims to see a broad conspiracy.

The strategy for politicians like Mr. Nadler is to try to persuade the public that the Russian government’s attempts to meddle in our democratic process—which unfortunately the Kremlin has been doing for most of our lives—were so powerful in 2016 and so focused on helping Mr. Trump that they actually swayed the election. Part of the strategy involves convincing people that the Russians ran a significant disinformation campaign via American digital media companies.

But a Tuesday meeting of the House Judiciary committee may not have gone exactly as Mr. Nadler had planned. The witness was Google CEO Sundar Pichai. Here’s a partial transcript:

NADLER: Does Google now know the full extent to which its online platforms were exploited by Russian actors in the election two years ago?

PICHAI: We have — you know we undertook a very thorough investigation, and in 2016, we — we now know that there were two main ad accounts linked to Russia, which — which you know, advertised on Google for about $4,700 in advertising.

We also found other limited…

NADLER: Total of $4,700?

PICHAI: That’s right, which was, you know — no amount is OK here, but we found limited activity, improper activity. We learned a lot from that and we have, you know, dramatically increased the protections we have around our election offerings.

Leading up to the current elections, we did — we again found limited activity, both from the Internet Research Agency in Russia, as well as accounts linked to Iran. CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Trump Defends the International Order His administration is reasserting the nation-state’s role in a free and open multilateral system. By Kiron Skinner

By on December 12th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-defends-the-international-order-11544573701

Does the European Union place the interests of its people above those of its bureaucrats? One audience member reflexively shouted “Yes!” when Secretary of State Mike Pompeo asked the question during his speech to the German Marshall Fund in Brussels last week. That knee-jerk reaction to an honest question illustrates the uphill battle the Trump administration faces as it tries to restore a corroded international order. The administration’s efforts won’t be popular with defenders of the status quo, but systems don’t reform themselves.

Consistent with the postwar tradition of American global leadership, President Trump is now reasserting the role of the nation-state in a free and open order, with the goal of making institutions more effective and accountable. Mr. Pompeo’s remarks came on the sidelines of last week’s meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, one of the many international bodies the U.S. helped create after World War II to promote security, economic growth and cooperation among like-minded states. Organizations like the United Nations and the World Bank are in the same category.

This web of institutions and agreements historically has served the U.S. and its allies well. It was a bulwark against communism and terrorism. It limited interstate conflict and decreased the likelihood of war between great powers. It also helped lift millions out of poverty while impeding the rise of totalitarianism and promoting democracy, prosperity, human rights and freedom.

But this free and open order has gradually begun to fail the world in several ways. Flawed doctrines have taken hold: Multilateralism is an end in itself; the more treaties we sign, the safer we are; the more bureaucracy we have, the better the job gets done. International institutions have steadily encroached on the rights of sovereign nations. Witness how the International Criminal Court is considering investigating American military personnel when the U.S. is not even subject to the court’s jurisdiction.

At the same time, authoritarian regimes have regularly exploited the order for their own ends. Some of the world’s most egregious human-rights abusers, such as Cuba and Venezuela, sit on the U.N. Human Rights Council. China enjoys the benefits of membership in the World Trade Organization while systematically deploying unfair trade practices to protect its domestic market. Iran has used its windfall from the 2015 nuclear deal to support terrorism and other malign activities. Russia has flagrantly violated the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty by testing and deploying prohibited missiles that target Europe. Should responsible nations abide these abuses?

With the international order under siege from actors that would remake it in their own illiberal image, the Trump administration is acting to preserve a just, transparent and free world of sovereign states. This project will require the cooperation of democracies around the world.

President Trump knows nothing can replace the nation-state as the guarantor of democratic freedoms and national interests. When institutions fail to support the sovereign interests of their members, those members must reform them, lawfully cease to participate in them, or eliminate them entirely. CONTINUE AT SITE

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

With Friends Like Angela Merkel, Does Israel Need Enemies? By P. David Hornik

By on December 12th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/with-friends-like-angela-merkel-does-israel-need-enemies/

Last Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union Party voted down a motion to freeze funding for the Palestinian Authority until it stops its “pay to slay” imbursements to terrorists and their families. The motion stated that “with the payments, the PA knowingly and willingly supports terror against Israel and makes this a worthy financial business.” But Merkel’s party wasn’t moved.

One day later, a Palestinian terror attack seriously wounded a pregnant woman. The baby, who was delivered in an emergency procedure, held out for a few days and died on Wednesday.

In October during a visit to Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum, Merkel referred to “the everlasting responsibility of Germany to remember this crime and to oppose anti-Semitism, xenophobia, hatred, and violence.”

Opposing anti-Semitism and those other ills, however, means little to Merkel when they bear a “Made in Iran” stamp. Last month, during one of Iran’s hundreds of direct or implicit calls for Israel’s destruction, Iran’s allegedly “moderate” President Hassan Rouhani called Israel a “cancerous tumor in the region” and a “fake regime.” The European Union, of which Germany stands at the helm, called Rouhani’s words “totally unacceptable.”

But this was just lip service. As Iran threatens Israel with destruction, funds and trains terror organizations along Israel’s borders, denies the Holocaust, builds ballistic missiles, sows mayhem throughout the Middle East, and commits severe human rights abuses at home, Germany “remains Iran’s most important trade partner.” Last month, flouting U.S. sanctions on Iran, the German government extended 911 million euros in export credits to 58 German companies. The credits are aimed at “protecting [these companies’] business dealings with Iran from the high risks of its markets.” Indeed, German firms’ exports to Iran had already soared in October.

Continue reading →