INJUSTICE: Father fights to be reunited with son secretly put up for adoption by mother without his consent. “Given just 15 minutes alone with his son the day he was born, baby Wyatt was handed over to foster parents within hours of the birth.”
From the comments: “No right to father his child but is liable for child support if the mother decides to keep the child. What the hell is wrong with this World. Feminist jurisprudence at its finest yet again.”
CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: Goodbye Charles Martel: French history textbooks rewritten to be more Islam-friendly.
Clovis, for example, whose baptism influenced our history so profoundly has disappeared from the secondary school curricula. “In the offical texts, it is necessary to pass directly from the Roman empire to Charlemagne. The history of the West thus stops between the Edict of Milan, which authorised Christianity in 313, and the crowning of Charlemagne in 800,” notes Vincent Badré, a teacher of history/geography in a Paris banlieue who is the author of L’Histoire fabriquée. . . .
The list of the disappeared is long. Neither Charles Martel, nor Hugues Capet, not Saint Louis, nor Joan of Arc, nor Louis XIII are studied by the pupils.
CULTURAL ENRICHMENT — what to do when the people don’t like it?
As so often is the case today, a poll is carried out on public opinion and when it turns out that the public have the wrong views on whatever is the Dictate of the Day — the question then is asked, ‘What can people in positions of power do to ensure the public are made to think the right way?’
What is striking, is that despite the attempts to re-educate and otherwise alter the attitudes of the majority of the population, the population continue to understand — in ever larger numbers — that the problems lie not with them but with what is happening around them. As Daniel Pipes pointed out recently, for example, across much of Europe, Islam appears not to be growing as fast as negative perceptions of it.
As Pipes also cited, in Germany last year, a poll revealed that only 7% of Germans associate Islam with “openness, tolerance or respect for human rights.” 64% connect it with violence; 68% with intolerance towards other faiths, and 83% with discrimination against women. A poll in France earlier this year revealed that 67% of people believe Islamic values to be “incompatible with those of French society,” 73% view Islam negatively and 74 % consider it intolerant. If the problem of perception of Islam were limited to Dundee, that would be one thing. But the Dundee schoolchildren clearly perceive something which a growing number of people across Western Europe also perceive — as other people do about other problems surrounding them.
OUTRAGE GETS RESULTS: School drops sexual harassment claim against 6-year-old who kissed girl. “On Wednesday night, CNN affiliate KRDO reported that Canon City Schools Superintendent Robin Gooldy met with Hunter’s parents. The superintendent then changed Hunter’s disciplinary offense from ‘sexual harassment’ to ‘misconduct.'”
WARREN MEYER: Yet Another Reason To Keep Government Out of Commerce. “Because the government exempts itself from the most basic rules that apply to private companies.”
CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: German woman harassed by Turk because she rejected his citizenship application. “When I moved in here, the house and the neighbourhood were OK. But now only Turks live around me. All German families moved away. And as Fate would have it, one of my new neighbours is exactly the same Turk who filed a complaint against me years ago and lost. He hasn’t forgotten his rancour. Every day he takes revenge on me. His children harass me all the time, always throw the ball against my door, or kick the door in so I get a fright every time. I hardly dare go out of my house any more, as I am very afraid of him. Once they beat so hard against my door that I had to call the police. When the police came, I discovered to my horror that the policeman was also a Turk, a friend of Hakan Öney’s family. He wouldn’t take my complaint. Quite the opposite. He even threatened me if I stood by my complaint.”
VOX DAY on imposing ideological purity regarding gendered pronouns.
To reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent. On the one hand, it seems ridiculous (absurd, perhaps) to fire someone over a pronoun — but to characterize it that way would be a gross oversimplification: it’s not the use of the gendered pronoun that’s at issue (that’s just sloppy), but rather the insistence that pronouns should in fact be gendered. . . .
I would avoid using any of Joyent’s products, given that it is clear that as a company, they are far more concerned about ideological correctness than with working code or the abilities of their programmers. They are actually insisting upon the use of grammatically incorrect language and threatening to fire those who are unwilling to use the improper form. . . .
This gender-policing of the language is such a stupid, left-wing, and above all, parochial attitude. It should be amusing to see them clumsily attempt to covert all gendered articles to “das” in German and to attempt to impose gender neutrality upon la lingua bella and le français.
WILLIAM LANE CRAIG: “The church is becoming increasingly feminized.”
What I mean by this is that church services and programs are increasingly based on emotional and relational factors that appeal more to women than to men. The problem of the church’s lack of appeal to men has been recognized by men’s movements like Promise Keepers and books like John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart. Nowhere is this feminization more evident than in contemporary worship music. Someone aptly remarked that if you were to replace references to God in many praise songs with “Baby,” they would sound just like romantic songs between a man and a woman! This is not true of classic hymns like “A Mighty Fortress” or “And Can It be?” Talking with young men, I find that many of them are just turned off by these touchy-feely worship services and would rather not go.
We see this same feminization though relational factors in network coverage of sports, traditionally a male bastion. Coverage of Olympic Games has deliberately targeted women in order to increase viewership by the addition of personal stories about athletes’ lives, rather than simply televising the events themselves. In professional sports have you noticed how in recent years television networks have engaged female reporters to go down on the field and interview baseball or football players, usually about how they felt about this or that? Jan and I had to laugh when, following the Broncos’ recent blowout of the Ravens, the female reporter asked Peyton Manning, “Didn’t you feel bad for the other team when you looked up at the scoreboard?” Uh, I don’t think so!
USEFUL: How to Take Care of a Hat.
APOSTGAYTE: Ex-homosexual’s marriage slammed by activists.
A former “gay rights” activist who declared six years ago he left homosexuality through the power of God is now celebrating his marriage to a woman, much to the chagrin of homosexual activists who are ridiculing him and his bride via the Web.
In a letter to his critics published today by WND, Michael Glatze called the month since his Oct. 26 marriage to Rebekah the “greatest” of his life. . . .
Besen – former spokesman for the leading homosexual-rights group Human Rights Campaign – wrote of Glatze’s marriage in a mocking post on his website Dec. 1, taunting that one “can’t be an official ‘ex-gay’ rock star until wedding bells ring.”
“Apparently, this happened for publicity hound Michael Glatze, who married his prop, er bride, Rebekah, on October 26,” writes Besen, author of the book “Anything But Straight: Unmasking the Scandals and Lies Behind the Ex-Gay Myth.” . . .
In his letter to his critics, Glatze says he and he new bride don’t want to become “political pawns.”
“I have never called myself an ‘ex-gay,’ though people have called me that,” he writes. “But, then again, people have called me a lot of things on account of the fact that I left homosexuality a few years back and decided that I felt more comfortable living heterosexually.”
Why the taunts? Perhaps apostgaycy is considered to be the great secular sin of our time.
WHAT JUDGES REALLY THINK ABOUT FATHERS: Responses to court-commissioned judicial bias surveys.
Another survey, this one commissioned by the Minnesota Supreme Court, found that a majority (56%) of the state’s judges, both male and female, agreed with the statement, “I believe young children belong with their mother.” Only a few of the judges indicated that they would need more information about the mother before they could answer. Fathers, one judge explained, “must prove their ability to parent while mothers are assumed to be able.” Another judge commented, “I believe that God has given women a psychological makeup that is better tuned to caring for small children.”
Judges’ self-reporting of their prejudices against fathers was consistent with practicing attorneys’ impressions of them. 69% of male attorneys had come to the conclusion that judges always or often assume from the outset (i.e., before being presented with any evidence) that children belong with their mothers. 40% of the female attorneys agreed with that assessment. Nearly all attorneys (94% of male attorneys and 84% of female attorneys) said that all judges exhibited prejudice against fathers at least some of the time. . . .
Policy-makers, and sometimes judges, are fond of saying that bias against fathers either never has existed or that it has been eliminated, and that mothers and fathers now stand on an equal footing in family court. Obviously that is not the case.
To see the footnotes, read the article.
FEMINISM AS BARBARISM.
As much as anything I’ve recently seen, that video shows me that we’re not just fighting for “white privilege” or some other such nonsense, we’re fighting for the very nature of civilization itself. (For a censored version with background info, click here.)
See the glee in their eyes as they do everything in their power to denigrate, insult, and de-humanize their opponents. Watch them cavort like utter savages as they burn the Pope and ask yourself if it’s really that far-fetched to suspect that these same womyn wouldn’t burn an actual man in their “ceremony” if they thought they could get away with it? Do you see any indication whatsoever that they acknowledge the men protecting their cathedral as fellow human-beings? Have they any moral compass other than a desire to get screwed without consequence?
I know that most of the protesters would go bonkers if you sucked the brains out of a live chicken, but do the same to infants is a “personal choice”. They have no understanding whatsoever of how anybody could possible not agree with them; if you’re not on their side, you’re sub-human. The only reason they don’t kill the men themselves is that they can’t get away with it, yet.
Earlier: Civilization vs. the Barbarians.
Related: This Is What A Feminist Looks Like.
JANET BLOOMFIELD: US National Survey: more men than women victims of intimate partner violence.
The [CDC National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey] distinguishes between physical violence (use of force) and expressive aggression (name calling), yet still finds that men are victims more often than women.
Interestingly enough, the police officers who dealt with IPV [intimate partner violence] appear to understand that women are aggressors more often than not, but were reluctant to do anything about it. Men were only slightly more likely to be arrested than women (33.3% vs. 26.5%) and the police identified the women as aggressors 54.9% of the time, and yet:
In 41.5 percent of the cases where men called the police, the police asked if he wanted his partner arrested; in 21 percent the police refused to arrest the partner, and in 38.7 percent the police said there was nothing they could do and left. . . .
The best source of help for men were friends, neighbors, relatives, lawyers and ministers. The least helpful sources: programs aimed at IPV.
Earlier: Domestic violence statistics: A round-up.
Related: Unprecedented Domestic Violence Study Affirms Need to Recognize Male Victims.
SUNSHINE MARY: Four reasons to take sex research with a grain of salt.
BRING IT ON: A Knockout Attack Goes Terribly RIGHT As Woman Wails On Attacker. Video at the link.
THE IMPORTANCE OF FATHERS: Study Suggests Value of Fathers in Both Neurobiology and Behavior of Offspring.
Many studies have outlined the value of a mother, but few have clearly defined the importance of a father, until now. New findings from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) show that the absence of a father during critical growth periods, leads to impaired social and behavioral abilities in adults. This research, which was conducted using mice, was published today in the journal Cerebral Cortex. It is the first study to link father absenteeism with social attributes and to correlate these with physical changes in the brain.
“Although we used mice, the findings are extremely relevant to humans,” says senior author Dr. Gabriella Gobbi, a researcher of the Mental Illness and Addiction Axis at the RI-MUHC and an associate professor at the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University. “We used California mice which, like in some human populations, are monogamous and raise their offspring together.”
JAMES TARANTO: An Education in College Justice.
So Mr. Strange got his day in court and was treated fairly. But he had already been punished for the unproven crimes. Auburn expelled him after a campus tribunal found him “responsible” for committing the catchall offense of “sexual assault and/or sexual harassment.” A letter from Melvin Owens, head of the campus police, explained that expulsion is a life sentence. If Mr. Strange ever sets foot on Auburn property, he will be “arrested for Criminal Trespass Third,” Mr. Owens warned.
Joshua Strange, now 23, is a civilian casualty in the Obama administration’s war on men. In an April 2011 directive, Russlyn Ali, then assistant education secretary for civil rights, threatened to withhold federal money from any educational institution that failed to take a hard enough line against sexual misconduct to ensure “that all students feel safe in their school.” The result was to leave accused students more vulnerable to false charges and unfair procedures. The prospect of losing federal funds has left university administrators “crippled by panic,” Robert Shibley of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education told me. “The incentives are pointing toward findings of guilt, not accurate findings.”
Earlier: Emily Bazelon should be fired for writing the stupidest sentence ever.
VOX DAY: Short-haired humor. “Men truly aren’t bothered by unattractive women. They don’t even notice them. If a woman’s goal is to be invisible to men, cropping her hair is an excellent way to go about it.” Bonus: Several quotations from women in denial.
USEFUL: 20 DIY Gifts for Men.
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Obama Acts Like He Wandered Into White House on a Tour and Discovered He Was President.
It’s interesting how he discovers everything late. A month ago in that press conference he held where he apologized, sort of semi-apologized, he said he hadn’t quite realized how hard it is to purchase health insurance. And this is, of course, after, three years after he nationalizes the purchase of health insurance.
And this reminds me of the time when after, remember he said that he discovered no-shovel ready jobs? But he discovers that after he passes a trillion dollar spending bill on the argument that there are all these shovel-ready jobs that will stimulate a depressed economy.
BOOK REVIEW: The Global War on Christians by John L. Allen, Jr.
Allen’s extensive research and thoroughgoing analysis provides an excellent objective treatment of a highly emotional and explosive topic. What I appreciated is not only that he told the stories of all Christian victims—no matter what their tradition–but that he also explained how the persecution can come from almost any political or religious persuasion.
Most of us would assume the persecution of Christians these days is mainly a problem of radical Muslims. While extremist Muslims do persecute Christians, it is also the case that extremist Hindus, radical Buddhists and members of bizarre religious sects attack Christians. Both left wing and right wing political groups persecute Christians. Mafia dons, politicians, business owners, gang members and even fellow Christians will attack Christians who, by virtue of their faith, have stood up to some injustice, crime or inequality in society.
CDC: 62% of Men Who Know They’re HIV Positive Have Unprotected Sex With Men.
Related: Who Are the Worst Bullies of Fags? Fags! “Millions of men have died prematurely and suffered all kinds of physical atrocities, including anal cancer, because of violations against this anatomical region. We supposedly live in a medically enlightened age and yet the rudiments of biology are denied every day in The New York Times. The liberal obsesses about secondhand smoke and then applauds the far more unhealthy acts of the sodomite.”
BILL VALLICELLA on being on the “wrong” side of history.
The phrase “on the wrong side of history” is one that no self-aware and self-consistent conservative should use. The phrase suggests that history is moving in a certain direction, toward various outcomes, and that this direction and these outcomes are somehow justified by the actual tendency of events. But how can the mere fact of a certain drift justify that drift? . . .
As I have said more than once, if you are a conservative don’t talk like a [insert favorite expletive] liberal. Don’t validate, by adopting, their question-begging epithets and phrases.
OPTING OUT: Doctors boycotting California’s Obamacare exchange. “An estimated seven out of every 10 physicians in deep-blue California are rebelling against the state’s Obamacare health insurance exchange and won’t participate, the head of the state’s largest medical association said.”
FROM THE ANNALS OF COMMON SENSE: Moving Money From One Place To Another Is Not Economic Stimulus. Instead of arguing over whether something is or is not “economic stimulus,” perhaps we should just do away with the concept entirely. It’s unhelpful and often just an excuse for government theft and redistribution.
PRETTY MUCH: Emily Bazelon should be fired for writing the stupidest sentence ever. “Whether schools should punish athletes who have been accused but not convicted—or in Winston’s case, even charged—is a hard call.” What?
CIVILIZATION VS. THE BARBARIANS.
During our long, sordid decline, we’ll likely be faced with more incidents like the following: Violent mob of topless pro-abort feminists attacks praying men defending cathedral. . . .
The praying men in the video are all practicing Christian non-violence, turning the other cheek, and they indeed display great dignity. But most of the feminists that can be seen are full of hatred, or laughing, but in all cases utterly unmoved by the men’s dignity.
The female humans in the video are totalitarians who will stop at nothing. Where were the police? Probably told by the powers that be to stand down.
And it happened last year, too.
Related: Cologne: Aggressive Muslims disturb Protest against Persecution of Christians – Police watch idly. “When things became more and more tumultuous and threatening, for some hysterical Muslim men and women started hitting, screaming and attacking our protesters, I asked the police a several times, via our speakers, to finally protect us. Though I told them about the attacks, there happened… nothing.”
IT’S NOT “VICTIM BLAMING” WHEN THERE’S NO VICTIM. Roxanne Jones unfairly attacked for daring to caution her son about false rape claims. “We are stranded in an era where anyone who dares to speak up for the rights of the presumptively innocent is demonized with terms like ‘victim blaming,’ even when those terms have no application. Need some examples? Don’t read these on an empty stomach: see here and here and here and here and here and here. And that’s exactly what’s going on here: Roxanne Jones dared to speak up for the presumptively innocent. She assumes her son would never rape a woman, but she knows that false rape claims can destroy lives.”
ART CARDEN: The Economic Illiteracy of School History. He adds in the comments, “The writer asserts that ‘Roosevelt was using an idea called supply and demand.’ I can read between the lines and grasp what I think the author is trying to say, but I don’t think this can be salvaged by even the most charitable reading.”
ED WHELAN: On Embryo-Killing “Contraceptives”. “I don’t see how an effect that operates after conception can fairly be described as contraceptive. As between abortifacient and contraceptive, the former term better captures the fact that this second means of operation destroys the life of an already existing human embryo. (But perhaps we could all just agree on the term embryo-killing?)”
CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: French prisoner told: “If you don’t convert to Islam, you’re a dead man.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Politicization of Everything. “The politicization of almost every aspect of American culture and politics over the last five years could easily be expanded. Traditional employment background checks are now ‘racist’ given that minorities with higher crime records might be unduly affected. The 2009 reordering of the Chrysler creditors leap-frogged junior union creditors over senior bondholders—as enforcement of existing legislation becomes predicated on perceptions of social justice rather than faithfully executing settled laws on the books. Each new tropical storm launches a fresh debate about ‘climate change,’ despite no evidence that recent weather is more prone to hurricanes or the planet has heated up over the last 15 years. Almost every new mass shooting offers occasion for mobilization to enhance existing gun control legislation.”
GREG MANKIW: The Pope’s Rhetoric.
Related: What The Pope Gets Wrong About Capitalism. “But is it really true that ‘absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation’ are the driving reasons for poverty and inequality? People in places like Congo, Burundi, Eritrea, Malawi, or Mozambique live under corrupt authoritarian regimes where crippling poverty has a thousand fathers — none of them named capitalism. The people of Togo do not suffer in destitution because of some derivative scheme on Wall Street or the fallout from a tech IPO.”
CRANMER on the UK’s secret family court system.
A secret court that meets behind closed doors to determine what happens to those who are deemed incapable of making decisions on their own behalf. The court can nullify a marriage without the consent of both parties (yes, really), and determine which parent gets which child with what visitation rights (if any at all), with draconian restrictions on all media reporting. And this court can also apparently force a foreign citizen to have an invasive medical procedure and seize her child against her will – because she is not foreign at all: she is an EU citizen.
This didn’t take place last week: it occurred 15 months ago, and has only recently come to light.
Christopher Booker writes well on this topic. Here are some relatively recent examples of his work:
CULTURAL ENRICHMENT: Dearborn couple receive death threats, vandalism for displaying Israeli flag.
Terresa and Hussein Dakhlallah say it all started two years ago when they put an American flag and an Israeli flag up outside of their Dearborn home. Terresa is American, but she grew up in Canada. Hussein is from Lebanon.
“They left Nazi signs in our front yard, ” said Terresa. “Two people were standing there, one with a lighter and one with a gas tank, telling us that they were going to burn our home down.”
BUT OF COURSE: Boehner Hires Ex-McCain Staffer To Work On Immigration.
STUDY: 44% Increased Breast Cancer Risk for Women Having Abortions.
In this meta-analysis (a study of studies, in which results from many studies are pooled), Dr. Yubei Huang et al. reported that, combining all 36 studies on the ABC link in China that have been published through 2012, the overall risk of developing breast cancer among women who had at least one induced abortion was significantly increased by 44%. . . .
It shows what is called a “dose effect”, i.e., two abortions increase the risk more than one abortion (76% risk increase with two or more abortions), and three abortions increase the risk even more (89% risk increase with three or more abortions). Risk factors that show such a dose effect have more credibility in terms of actually causing the disease.
We probably won’t be hearing about such findings, yet again, during the next “breast cancer awareness” month.
WILLIAM M. BRIGGS: Twenty Tips For Interpreting Scientific Claims.
CULTURAL ENRICHMENT incoming:
Fiscal year 2014 has been underway since October 1st, and in his Presidential Determination, Obama says he wants 70,000 refugees to be admitted to the US in this fiscal year.
Only about 2,000 Syrian slots have been mentioned, however it seems that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and other contractors are lobbying for the President to go above the 70,000 ceiling to accommodate a larger number of Syrians due to the “extraordinary situation.”
RELIGION OF PIECES: Muslim Persecution of Christians: September, 2013.
“GAY RIGHTS” vs. the rights of children:
Alana Newman, who is NOT in any way against homosexuals, is the daughter of a sperm-donor-conception arrangement. She has become an activist working to fight against third-party reproduction arrangements (sperm banking and surrogacy) because she — along with thousands of other donor-conceived people documented in a massive 2010 study — believes quite lucidly that it violates children’s rights to treat them like commodities and sever their bonds to their father and mother. . . .
As we learn from this horrendous article that came out in Yahoo News, reporters will call people anti-gay even if they are critiquing anything tied to sperm banking or surrogacy at all . . .
The movement for same-sex marriage is the movement for same-sex parenting, and the movement for same-sex parenting is a merciless push to turn children into property designed for adult consumer demands. Why else would people call someone anti-gay merely for saying we shouldn’t treat children like property or deny them their father or mother? You can’t keep ligbitist [LGBT-ist] activists happy unless you go all the way and say, “fine, I’m totally okay with you buying and selling children and bringing chattel slavery back to the United States; I’ll call it by some euphemism like ‘new families’ and sing your praises forever!”
WHY SHOULD THE TRUTH MATTER? Shocking discovery in hoax bias incident at Vassar College. “Reports of bias incidents at Vassar College that involved hateful messages left on students’ doors were actually elaborate hoaxes — and the perpetrator is none other than the student member of the Bias Incident Response Team.”
WHAT COULD BE THE HARM IN THAT? Convicted paedophile allowed to adopt. “A Swedish man convicted for molesting a five-year-old girl in his neighbourhood has been given the green light to adopt a child of his own, as Swedish authorities said they did not fear he would relapse into criminal behaviour.”