IRAQ: Christians flee after ISIS issue Mosul ultimatum.
The ultimatum cited a historic contract known as “dhimma,” under which non-Muslims in Islamic societies who refuse to convert are offered protection if they pay a fee, called a “jizya”.
“We offer them three choices: Islam; the dhimma contract – involving payment of jizya; if they refuse this they will have nothing but the sword,” the Isis statement said.
STEVE SAILER: It Was Racist to Elect Obama President Because Science. “The great thing about this logic is that racism can never be defeated: the more evidence that racism has been defeated, the more proof of racism.”
The lesson: If you can only ever lose, then stop playing the game.
JUST ANOTHER POLITICIAN: Elizabeth Warren Supports Ex-Im Bank. “That’s right: The woman best known for demonizing big businesses nevertheless wants to maintain an outlandishly generous subsidy package for them.”
INCENTIVES: The more people are exposed to socialism, the worse they behave.
In East Germany, at least, communism appears to have inculcated moral laxity.
Lars Hornuf of the University of Munich and Dan Ariely, Ximena García-Rada and Heather Mann of Duke University ran an experiment last year to test Germans’ willingness to lie for personal gain. . . .
After finishing the game, the players had to fill in a form that asked their age and the part of Germany where they had lived in different decades. The authors found that, on average, those who had East German roots cheated twice as much as those who had grown up in West Germany under capitalism. They also looked at how much time people had spent in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The longer the participants had been exposed to socialism, the greater the likelihood that they would claim improbable numbers of high rolls.
CAN’T TAKE A JOKE: Woman gets 9 months in jail for comparing French minister to a monkey.
MANGAN on IQ shredders. “The factor that overrides others is that high IQ is much more strongly related to low fertility, about twice as strong, in women. Going to university undoubtedly increases the negative relation even further, since with higher income and status there are fewer men for them to mate with.”
RACKET: Religious ‘Charities’ Profit From Open Borders.
The Catholic Bishops alone received $65.9 million in federal grants to care for unaccompanied alien children and refugees, according to its 2012 annual report.
By contrast, the group raised $1.4 million from its own church members while federal loans and private-sector grants made up the remainder of the $71 million spent on the resettlements that year. That means 93 percent of the USCCB’s spending on charity work with UACs and refugees was covered by the American taxpayer. . . .
The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service reported total income of $41.7 million in 2012, and government grants accounted for $40.4 million, or 96.8 percent of that amount, according to the nonprofit’s most recently reported Form 990, a disclosure that nonprofits must file with the Internal Revenue Service. The group raised only $1.3 million from private donors. . . .
These same religious charities can also be found lobbying Congress and the Obama administration for amnesty legislation and other policies that immigration watchdogs see as encouraging more illegal immigrants to cross the border.
On July 2 the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a letter to Obama urging him not to send any of the unaccompanied children who had illegally crossed into the U.S. back to their home countries.
MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Let Me Google That For You, Matt Yglesias. “Matt Yglesias doesn’t like to read books or seek out viewpoints different from his own. So that at least partially explains what the heck is happening with Vox’s embarrassing implosion.”
BECAUSE SCIENCE IS ABOUT AVOIDING CONTROVERSY: Scientific American’s ‘PC Police’ Fires Blogger. “They have dismissed a blogger for tackling controversial topics and ruffling a few overly sensitive feathers.”
GOOD LUCK: Most Voters Want to Send Latest Illegal Immigrants Home ASAP. “The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 59% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the primary focus of any new immigration legislation passed by Congress should be to send the young illegal immigrants back home as quickly as possible. Just 27% say it should focus instead on making it easier for these illegal immigrants to remain in the United States. Fourteen percent (14%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)”
EVEN IN DEATH, SELF-IDENTIFICATION LIVES ON: Slain transgender [sic] woman [sic] was sister [sic] of Clippers’ Reggie Bullock. “Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly identified Henderson as Bullock’s brother, she was his sister.” [sic] As of this posting, a photo caption still reads, “Clippers guard Reggie Bullock lost his brother, a transgender [sic] woman [sic] who was found dead in a Baltimore alley.”
PUSHBACK: Hundreds of cities fight back against invasion. “Citizens in Westminster, Maryland; Oracle, Arizona; Vassar, Michigan; Greece, New York, and many other places have blocked the importation of illegal aliens into their communities through public protests, letters and official resolutions from elected leaders.”
TOO REALISTIC? Twitter Shuts Down Hilarious Salon Parody Account.
AUSTRALIA: Carbon tax abolished by parliament. “Labor and the Australian Greens opposed the legislation as expected but fell far short of the numbers needed to defeat it as they did in March.”
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Another Shock Video Catches Planned Parenthood Teaching Teens S&M Sex: Gagging, Whipping and Asphyxiation.
This time, Live Action staff pose as a 15-year-old at a Denver, Colorado-based Planned Parenthood abortion facility. This is the same abortion clinic facing a lawsuit for doing an abortion on a raped 13-year-old and returning her to her rapist.
The two investigative videos show Planned Parenthood facilities in Denver, Colorado offering disturbing and dangerous advice to what staffers think are underage girls. The counselors approvingly lay out in graphic detail a spectrum of sadistic sexual behaviors to the investigators, including “whipping,” “tying up,” and “asphyxiation.” . . .
In the previous videos, Planned Parenthood counselors encourage undercover investigators posting as 15 and 16-year-old teens, to engage in the sadomasochistic practices, telling the underage teens “if it’s consensual, it’s OK… it’s totally OK.”
“Planned Parenthood wrote off our first SexEd video, shot in Indianapolis, as a one-off. The counselor in that video told our investigator which porn sites and sex shops to visit, and how to hide it all from her parents,” Live Acton said. “But with Colorado in the mix, it’s clear that this is not a one-off. Planned Parenthood has an institutional policy of endangering kids with hazardous sex advice and incitement to risky behavior. What will they say about our latest video evidence, showing unbelievable counseling in two new facilities? That it’s a three-off?”
STEVE SAILER: A Slate Parody Website.
BAGHDAD BOB RETURNS: Harry Reid: Southern Border Is Secure.
MARK REGNERUS: Is Same-Sex Parenting Better for Kids? The New Australian Study Can’t Tell Us.
Until social scientists decide to do the difficult, expensive work of locating same-sex attracted parents (however defined) through random, population-based sampling strategies—preferably ones that do not “give away” the primary research question(s) up front, as ACHESS did—we simply cannot know whether claims like “no differences” or “happier and healthier than” are true, valid, and on target. Why? Because this non-random sample reflects those who actively pursued participating in the study, personal and political motivations included. In such a charged environment, the public—including judges and media—would do well to demand better-quality research designs, not just results they approve of. . . .
Skepticism about the ACHESS sample is all the more reason to do a random study that doesn’t advertise its intentions beforehand. That’s exactly why the survey I oversaw, the New Family Structures Study (NFSS), elected to talk to the children after they had grown up, to skip the parents entirely to ensure a more independent assessment, not to broadcast our key research questions in the title or initial screener questionnaire, and to locate participants randomly in a large population-based sample. If you’ve been paying attention, however, you’ll know that my NFSS studies [PDFs]—which mapped 248 respondents who told us their mother or father had been in a same-sex relationship—came to rather different conclusions than the ACHESS study has.
REALITY ISN’T PC: The Deadly Consequences Of Feminist Propaganda In The US Navy.
The Navy’s JAG was assigned with the investigation of the crash and to arrange a report of their findings. The JAG concluded the accident was caused by a mechanical failure of the left engine. The JAG’s “report” rejected the notion that there were widespread accusations that Lt. Hultgreen was not qualified to be a fighter pilot. . . .
Top brass in the Navy vehemently stated that Lt. Hultgreen’s death was nothing more than a very unfortunate and devastating event. It was not because she was a woman. It wasn’t because of pressure from progressives and feminists. High ranking Navy officials flat-out said it wasn’t her fault. This was their story and they were sticking to it. . . .
The Navy Safety Center was also involved with examining the crash. It was their responsibility to conduct a Mishap Investigation. Their findings were much different than those of the JAG. They cited pilot error as the cause of the accident, and concluded that Lt. Hultgreen was completely at fault. The Mishap investigation concluded that Lt. Hultgreen made four major errors that contributed to the crash. They were the following: . . .
Interestingly enough, this report didn’t make its way to NBC, ABC, or the New York Times. It was, in fact, intended to be kept completely under wraps and never disclosed to the public.
The incident is decades-old now, but it seems that the navy has yet to learn its lesson.
Earlier: Savage Boards Naval Destroyer Guarded by a Woman — and Kills Sailor.
LAWSUIT THREAT GETS RESULTS: Conor Oberst Rape Accuser Issues Public Apology. “The statements I made and repeated online and elsewhere over the past six months accusing Conor Oberst of raping me are 100% false. I made up those lies about him to get attention.”
Earlier: Domestic violence group urges man to drop defamation lawsuit against alleged false rape accuser. “Even if Ms. Faircloth was not truthful, vilifying discussion of sexual assault by filing such a lawsuit only adds to the problem of under-reporting that enables sexual assault to proliferate at alarming rates.”
ACT OF LOVE: Nebraska Governor: Govt Told Me Nothing Before Sending 200 Undocumented Immigrants To My State. Idea: start a fundraiser to buy all of them plane tickets to D.C.
RELIGION OF PIECES: Muslim Persecution of Christians, February 2014.
USEFUL: Are Nitrates and Nitrites in Foods Harmful? “When nitrites and amino acids are present, carcinogenic compounds called nitrosamines can form during high heat cooking.”
USEFUL: A Primer On Muscle-Building Supplements: Which Work and Which Don’t?
Keep in mind, supplements are nowhere near as important as diet, exercise, and sleep. Those three are your foundation. Without supplements, you’ll still build plenty of muscle, assuming your exercise routine is consistent, your diet is healthy and contains enough protein, and you get enough quality sleep. Supplements are just the icing on the cake. They’ll help you push yourself a little harder.
So which supplements actually work?
Related, from the same source: Do Testosterone-Boosting Supplements Work? “When your testosterone levels go up, so does your libido. Unfortunately, the inverse is not true — your libido levels can go up without your testosterone levels also going up. And that’s how most supposed T-boosters ‘work’: they make you feel ornery, leading you to think that your T levels are appreciably higher, when they actually aren’t.”
PATERNITY FRAUD is more common than most people suppose. Glenn Reynolds quotes one of his readers:
I am familiar with a massive ongoing multi-generational genetic study. . . . (Please don’t mention either it or my name.) The participants were predominantly “greatest generation” and their kids’ generation. Middle-class and white a bit more than the general population. It was looking for hereditary cancers (not too common, maybe 10% or so, last time I checked).
But, of course, in the process of all this, they discovered so-called “false paternities”. (Their rules prohibited them from divulging this info to participants.) Anyway, the overall false paternity rate for this bunch from the “Leave it to Beaver demographic” was about 16%.
16%. One in six. In middle America.
Related: Painless Paternity Tests, but the Truth May Hurt. “Caroline Caskey, chief executive officer of Identigene, a DNA testing company in Houston that has advertised its services nationally in magazines and billboards, said that in about 30 percent of the paternity tests the presumed father turns out to be not the biological father, and that is consistent throughout the industry.” This number is not without selection bias, since people are presumably more likely to opt for a paternity test in cases where paternity is in question.
Also: Mommy’s Little Secret. “In the early 1970s, a schoolteacher in southern England assigned a class science project in which his students were to find out the blood types of their parents. The students were then to use this information to deduce their own blood types (because a gene from each parent determines your blood type, in most instances only a certain number of combinations are possible). Instead, 30 per cent of the students discovered their dads were not their biologically fathers.” And since blood type can’t confirm paternity but only deny it, the actual rate of bastardy could only be higher in this sample.
See also this roundup of other informal sources that pertain to this matter.
UK: Custody battle over five-year-old twins with THREE mothers: Fears for children as love-split lesbians fight it out. “The twins now have a birth mother, an adoptive mother, a biological mother and an anonymous father, who they can have no contact with until they are 18. It is hugely confusing for the children.”
STEVE SAILER: A Righteous Invasion.
A commenter of mine, who for the moment calls himself Sky Islander, notes some other opportunistic paradoxes in the conventional wisdom:
We need them because they make us richer, and we need them because we are too rich and must share with the poor immigrants.
They are so hardworking and will stoically work to contribute to American society. They are so helpless and weak that we must work harder to take care of them.
Likewise, we have to let them in because we will no doubt discriminate against them viciously. Therefore we must discriminate in favor of the newcomers by giving them ethnic preferences over ourselves.
Clearly, the people who control the Narrative simply want, for reasons of their own, more immigrants. They’re willing to emit whatever they think will temporarily stymie the public while more foreigners pile in and produce anchor babies.
THE ULTIMATE WHITE WOMAN PROBLEM, worrying that your yoga class is too white, about to be solved. Headline provided by Ace here.
Does it matter that contemporary yoga was shaped in part by white people?
Singleton’s surprising–and surely controversial–thesis is that yoga as it is popularly practiced today owes a greater debt to modern Indian nationalism and, even more surprisingly, to the spiritual aspirations of European bodybuilding and early 20th-century women’s gymnastic movements of Europe and America, than it does to any ancient Indian yoga tradition.
ACT OF LOVE: Scabies Spreads Among Border Detainees.
The agent says the people at FEMA who are responsible for doing the medical screening of the immigrants before they’re transferred to California should be fired. “Management’s more concerned about processing and getting rid of them as quickly as possible than looking at decontamination,” the agent says. “And [the released illegal immigrants] go out in the community, get on the public transportation, go where they need to go, and it could result in another infestation of scabies being spread everywhere.”
But the San Diego Sector was already dealing with a scabies outbreak when the latest batch of illegal immigrants arrived. Two agents at the Brown Field Border Patrol Station developed rashes on July 3 after processing illegal immigrants from Texas, according to a letter obtained by NRO written by Ron Zermeno, health and safety director of National Border Patrol Council Local 1613. Zermeno confirmed the veracity of the letter and the facts contained therein to NRO.
The immigrants that spread the disease to the agents arrived on the buses that were blocked from entering the Murrieta station last week by local residents, he said.
In the photos, former Lawrenceville School Student Body President Maya Peterson is seen wearing L.L. Bean duck boots, a Yale University sweatshirt and is holding a hockey stick, which she says is representative of the typical ‘Lawrenceville boi.’
In addition to the photos, she added hashtags like ‘#romney2016,’ ‘#confederate,’ and ‘#peakedinhighschool.’ . . .
‘Yes, I am making a mockery of the right-wing, confederate-flag hanging, openly misogynistic Lawrentians,’ Peterson responded. ‘If that’s a large portion of the school’s male population, then I think the issue is not with my bringing attention to it in a lighthearted way, but rather why no one has brought attention to it before…’
THE ONION: Few More Items Knocked Off List Of Desirable Traits In Partner As Woman Turns Year Older. “‘Come to think of it, my upper age limit has been 40 for a while,’ Palermo added. ‘Maybe now’s a good time to go ahead and bump that up to 45.'”
BOOK REVIEW: Aaron Clarey’s Worthless: The Young Person’s Indispensable Guide to Choosing the Right Major. “His message is that essentially college is expensive, and you will have higher likelihood of a better life if you major in a program that has usefulness to society. It doesn’t mean you won’t find a good job if you major in a non-STEM field, but it just means the chances are less and the risks higher (and pay notably less as well). Most would be better off going to tech or trade schools.”
It seems like common sense, but common sense is in short supply. More advice from a commenter:
One thing I tell young men going to college is when selecting a major, go to an office or building where that job is employed. If there are no men there, except maybe one or two who look as if they are wearing Victoria’s Secret under their trousers, change majors instantly. No matter how good your college grades, you won’t get a job, period.
RUSSIANS Unfazed by Nudists But Outraged by Transsexuals, Poll Shows. This is reasonable. If Russian nudists are anything like American nudists, they just want little resorts where they can be nude to their heart’s content, whereas transexuals have been increasingly demanding that society bend over backwards to make them feel good about themselves.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Decline of Western Civilization in a Few Paragraphs.
We all could become Mr. Winslows today with the full assurance that the capital and labor of our society will be heavily invested in seeing that the convicted DUI driver who kills us has had plenty of prior opportunity to practice his craft, that driving drunk at 120 mph is not necessarily reason to be charged with a crime, and that when our killers face possible consequences they will claim that their addictions were caused by unloving stepfathers and perverted babysitters, and will more likely have their personnel stories aired than will the deceased and innocent.
We live in a deeply diseased society in which we care little about the victim and a great deal about the perpetrators.
NO KIDDING? Study: Minimizing belief in free will may lessen support for criminal punishment. Thank you, Science.
DEADBEAT: “The View” Host Sheri Shepherd Wants “Nothing to Do With” Surrogate Unborn Baby After Marriage Folds. “Shepherd reportedly used IVF to conceive a child with her husband Lamar Sally but now is not interested in caring for the baby, who is being carried by a surrogate mother.”
JIM HOFT: Black Americans Confront Pro-Illegal Immigrant Supporters in Murrieta. “What are we going to do for the people who are here who are starving already?” There are only so many welfare dollars to go around.
DOG BITES MAN: Unprofessional “reporting” from TIME Magazine’s Jessica K. Roy. “When Time magazine contacted us for interviews and free passes to the First International Conference on Men’s Issues, we expected what we have always known of Time magazine: mature, professional reporting.” What?
UK: “Nine years on from 7/7, the much-anticipated anti-Muslim backlash is yet to appear.”
‘Children as young as 10 are among those racially abusing Muslims in Britain’, shouted the Daily Mail last week; ‘Women targeted in rising tide of attacks on Muslims’, asserted the Observer; ‘Action needed to tackle “rampant” Islamophobia on social media’, urged the Metro. It is apt, perhaps, that on the ninth anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings, the spectre of Islamophobia has once again been looming large in the UK media. After all, the assumption that in Britain, and in the West in general, anti-Muslim sentiment is on the Mosque-burning, veil-ripping march has been one of the most persistent political and cultural narratives over the past decade or so.
Here’s Massoud Sahdjareh of the Islamic Human Rights Commission speaking in 2000: ‘Muslims in Britain face the same fate this century as Jews in Europe in the last.’ Here’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a commentator for the Independent, writing a few days after 9/11: ‘We brace ourselves again for a period of bile and beatings and hate mail… Islamophobia will once more erupt worldwide and be legitimised by some political leaders. It is okay to hate a Muslim again.’ Here’s former Birmingham City councillor Salma Yaqoob writing in the Guardian in 2006: ‘[Muslims in Britain] are subject to attacks reminiscent of the gathering storm of anti-Semitism in the first decades of the last century.’
Again and again, the idea of a seething, popular mass of anti-Muslim sentiment is invoked by politicos and pundits (some Muslim, some not). And again and again, this seething, popular mass of anti-Muslim sentiment never actually shows its face.
GOOD QUESTION: Why Are Police Shooting So Many Family Dogs?
CURIOUS: Nearly 4 percent of US babies born before full-term without medical reason.
Researchers reviewed data linking birth certificates with hospital records for all births in California, Missouri and Pennsylvania between 1995 and 2009. The three states represent approximately 20 percent of all U.S. births and encompass a wide range of sociodemographic characteristics and geographic locations.
“Our study showed that early elective deliveries made up more than 3 percent of U.S. births each year over the past 20 years. This may seem to be a small number, but with 4 million births a year in the U.S., each percentage point represents 40,000 babies,” said Kozhimannil. “In addition, we showed that there are important sociodemographic differences in the chances a pregnant woman has an early elective cesarean or an early elective induction of labor.”
THE CRIMINALIZATION OF COMMON SENSE: U.S. Sues American Co. For Requiring Workers to Speak English.
Under President Obama the EEOC has taken a number of unprecedented actions to protect foreigners in the workplace, including illegal immigrants. In 2009 the agency issued a controversial order making a workplace English rule illegal. The directive came after the EEOC bullied a national healthcare firm to pay nearly half a million dollars to settle a discrimination lawsuit in which the government alleged that Hispanic workers were punished for speaking Spanish.
The agency has been on a roll ever since, taking legal action against businesses across the country accusing them of everything from discriminating against minorities for running criminal background and credit checks to discriminating against Muslims for not allowing hijabs on the job. The criminal background and credit checks disproportionately exclude blacks from hire, according to EEOC lawsuits against several companies. Businesses that forbid Muslim women from wearing a hijab at work violate religious rights guaranteed under the nation’s civil rights laws even when all head coverings are banned for all employees, the EEOC asserts.