LA to Tiberge, the author of of Galliawatch:
So, what did the French think of Hollande getting his suit and himself drenched at his own inauguration?Tiberge replies:Also, what do the French call the inauguration of a new president of the Republique?
First, there’s the “passation des pouvoirs,” which simply means that power is being passed from one to the other. It is not exactly a synonym for “inauguration.” In the courtyard of the Palace, there is the solemn “cérémonie d’investiture,” followed by a series of events similar to inaugural festivities, with speeches, a military revue, etc. However, I do not see an oath, certainly no Bible, no prayer. Here is an official description (in French) of the day. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 07:19 PM
A writer at the race42012 website has some thoughts about the exceedingly odd and revealing circumstance of the Obama campaign accusing the New York Times of biased and incorrect polling techniques concerning one mildly unfavorable poll. He argues that the Obama camp, like its leader, has such a distorted relationship with reality—focused on avoiding blame rather than solving problems, an approach that precludes internal criticism—that they may be unable to mount an effective campaign.
Last week I came upon this entry at an Australian blog called Unfashionable Conservative:
White Majoritarianism?The blogger, Citizen Sane, has accurately represented my thought. The article of mine he quotes is a July 2003 entry, “What is European America?”, in which I argue that defending the white race as the white race is an indispensable part of any meaningful and effective conservatism. Though the entry is permanently posted in the sidebar under “Key VFR Articles,” and I have re-linked it from time to time, prior to last week I had not read it in its entirety in many years. I highly recommend it. It is central to what traditionalism, as I understand it, is about.There is an interesting piece at the Commonwealth Contrarian blog about the lack of any explicit white majoritarian movements in the English-speaking parts of the West.
Given the huge immigration-driven demographic changes that threaten to transform whites into a minority in all of the ‘Anglo’ countries, why haven’t we seen the emergence of white majoritarianism as a political force?
The main discernible reason is that the historic white majority populations of the English-speaking West fail to see themselves as a people. They fail to recognise themselves as distinct population groups whose interests are threatened by the never-ending influx of non-Western immigrants into their countries. Rather, whites in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand generally shun a collective group identity and instead tend to view themselves in more individualistic terms (an Anglo-Saxon trait?).
Thus, although they constitute the actual demographic majority populations in their respective countries, they have, to quote U.S. commentator Lawrence Auster, “no political or cultural existence as the majority.”
As Auster notes:
Not only do whites fail to represent themselves as a group, but many of them think it is immoral … for a white person even to think of himself as being white. Whites thus have no identity as whites, nor or they allowed to have any. Within the terms of our current order, whites as whites are nothing, even as non-white groups aggressively assert their own group identities and are endowed—by that same passive white majority!—with official and favored status.
Unless these white majorities begin to develop a sense of collective peoplehood and begin to assert their own group interests, it is difficult to see white majoritarianism amounting to anything more than a pipe dream.
In the long comments discussion that follows the entry, I repeatedly defend my position from intelligent critics, including some on the paleo right, who do not believe, and do not want to believe, that race is important.
Here is Thomas Sowell’s syndicated column “A censored race war,” which many readers have sent.
While the piece is welcome for its frank characterizations of the black-on-white violence going on around the country, I find it on balance disappointing, for reasons I will explain later.
NB: it is not an NRO article, but a syndicated column which has been posted at many places besides NRO. So please let no one give the boys of NR credit for publishing it.
Another article on the censoring of black violence that I need to write about, much more significant than Sowell’s in my opinion, is Kyle Rogers’s piece in the May 9 Charleston Conservative Examiner in which he interviews the Newark Star Ledger reporter who wrote about a mob attack at a concert in Newark. The reporter admits that he remained silent about the race of the attackers and the victims and gives his reasons. I found it illuminating.
John McNeil writes:
The main part of the article that I disagreed with was the notion that this black-on-white violence is going to lead to a white backlash. I do not believe that the majority of whites are a capable of participating in a “backlash,” and the fact that whites hardly fight back in these incidents shows how weak the white race has become. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 12:03 PM
ABC News reports that George Zimmerman had a broken nose, two black eyes, and lacerations to the back of the head the morning after his confrontation with Trayvon Martin.
What difference does it make? Zimmerman is guilty. Black-liberal America says he is.
Consider the fact that the FBI is considering bringing hate-crime charges against Zimmerman, for which, in combination with the underlying second degree murder charge, he could receive capital punishment. Absurd, you say? But consider this. As told in Reuters’s important article, “George Zimmerman: Prelude to a Shooting,” The Retreat at Twin Lakes had experienced a series of burglaries and other crimes, all of them done by blacks in the instances where the race of the perpetrator was identified. In a recent case two blacks had broken into a home while the woman of the house hid from them in terror. And in another case a suspected burglar had gotten away because the police were so slow to respond. So the community was on edge. Zimmerman was on edge. He didn’t want another intruder to escape. Now what race were all the intruders? Black. So Zimmerman had it in for blacks. He was targeting blacks. So when he reported Martin’s presence to 911, and then (as the prosecutor stated in her affidavit) followed him, confronted him, and killed him, he was racially motivated. So this was a hate crime. If you try to stop criminals from coming into your community, and the criminals are all black, you are acting out of hatred of blacks, and any violence that results is a hate crime.
Don’t be quick to dismiss what I’m saying. I am simply presenting the underlying reasoning of the liberals who run our society and all its institutions, including the State Attorney’s Office of Florida, the FBI, and the major media.
It’s time to stop using Auster’s First Law of Majority-Minority Relations under Liberalism (e.g., the worse blacks behave, the more racist whites are for noticing it) as a criticism of liberal society and instead accept it as the TRUTH. If all the recent burglars in the Twin Lakes community were black, and if Zimmerman wanted to stop the burglaries, then he was targeting blacks, and he is a racist. If black mobs are assaulting whites throughout this country with no other intent than to cause them disfiguring injuries, and if you want the media to print the truth about this, then you want bad things to be said about blacks, and therefore you are a racist. It’s time to get with the program and stop resisting the truth.
MORE…
A reader sent an article with this note:
Pat Buchanan on America’s and the West’s problemLA replies:Too many dependants for the welfare state.
This is a typical piece of Buchanan writing, and as such I don’t like it. He just puts a bunch of negatives together. He has no point of view, except apparently the pleasure he gets from predicting the ruin of America.MORE…He’s the opposite (or maybe the converse?) of the partisan Republicans I always criticize. They don’t seem to care about anything, except for the rush they experience from anticipating the fall of Obama and the next Republican victory. Buchanan doesn’t seem to care about anything, except the rush he experiences from predicting doom.
The paleocons, Buchananites, and Rockwellites are not patriots and lovers of the good who experience tragic pain at the loss of America and of the good it has represented; they are dead-enders who get a twisted pleasure from the fall of an America they despise.
If you’re wondering why VFR has been relatively inactive over the last few days, the reason is that I had a much stronger than usual negative response to my treatment last Thursday. Since last Saturday I basically have had no energy for anything beyond lying down and sleeping, which after four days is not much fun. There seems to be no pattern to the degree of the side effects I experience from my treatment. For example, after the previous treatment, four weeks ago, I had almost no negative effects at all.
However, since I’ve brought the subject up, this might be a good time for an update on my medical situation, as the previous update was posted last fall.
MORE…
A reader suggests that since it is not possible to destroy or reform liberalism, other measures may be necessary.
François Hollande got soaking wet riding to his presidential inauguration (not to be America-centric, but I don’t know what the French call it) in an open roofed Citroen in the rain. And Carla Bruni, in a stunning “dis” to her husband’s successor, wore casual pants at the ceremony. Those are the two most striking impressions from the Daily Mail’s photo spread.
Like Inspector Clouseau without the sang froid and
the savoir faire: France’s soaking wet new president
shakes hands with a veteran at the Arc de Triomphe.
I’m sorry, my idiot driver parked too close to the fountain.Then there’s this:
Right, that’s what you wear to the inauguration of your husband’s
successor as the President of France. But when the new
president is Jacques Clouseau, who’s going to mind?
Headline in the Daily Mail:
Bristol Palin sells Arizona home for $175,000 and heads back to Alaska for ‘trial marriage with boyfriend filmed for reality TV’I’m trying to process that phrase:
“trial marriage with boyfriend filmed for reality TV”Meanwhile, NYT op-ed columnist Frank Bruni is bitterly attacking Bristol for opposing homosexual marriage. Evidently he sees her as a significant conservative figure.
Rebekah Brooks as Hester Prynne,
with scarlet hair instead of scarlet letter
The Crown Prosecution Service says Rebekah Brooks will be charged with perverting the course of justice.Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International, is to be charged over allegations that she tried to conceal evidence from detectives investigating phone hacking and alleged bribes to public officials.
Brooks, one of the most high-profile figures in the newspaper industry, will be charged later on Tuesday with three counts of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice in July last year at the height of the police investigation, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced.
She is accused of conspiring with others, including her husband, Charlie Brooks, the racehorse trainer and friend of the prime minister, and her personal assistant, to conceal material from detectives. [cont.]
Meanwhile Elizabeth Warren is doubling down, telling a half-naked hostess on CNN, “I’m proud of my Native American heritage,” and accusing Scott Brown of trying to change the subject from Wall Street. See? Brown is racializing the campaign!
Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson, after underscoring that the basis for Warren’s great great great ancestor’s Indian identity is non-existent (as I reported Saturday), writes:
I reached out to Christopher Child, the well-known genealogist who was the source of the claim, and his employer, the prestigious New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), but they have gone silent, refusing to comment on, defend or correct their claim that Warren was 1/32 Cherokee. The e-mail exchange appears at the bottom of this post.Here is the e-mail exchange:
Jacobson wrote:
Can you provide me with a copy of the 1894 marriage record for the son of O.C. Sarah Smith which you referenced in various media interviews as forming the basis for your conclusion that Elizabeth Warren is 1/32 Cherokee?Thomas Champoux of the New England Historic Genealogical Society replied:Do you still stand by that conclusion? Does NEHGS stand behind it?
Consider this a request for comment. Please respond today.
Mr. Jacobson, NEHGS is not conducting research on Elizabeth Warren nor are we commenting beyond what has already been covered by the media. Thank you.Jacobson replied:
Mr. Child stated publicly on or about May 1 that Ms. Warren was 1/32 Cherokee and that he had a document to prove it. That statement has been reported far and wide.Jacobson received no further response.Does Mr. Child and NEHGS stand by that statement anymore? Is there such a document? I would think you would want to comment on that, since NEHGS is perhaps the most prestigious genealogical society and its reputation has been put on the line by a categorical statement as to Ms. Warren’s ancestry. If NEHGS and/or Mr. Child no longer stand by the statement, I would think you would want to correct the record.
Will there still be no comment by NEHGS or Mr. Child either standing by or correcting/clarifying prior commentary?
Jacobson concludes:
There is nothing left of the claim that Elizabeth Warren is 1/32 Cherokee. The documentary sources have been debunked, and the genealogist and genealogical society which originated the story and upon whom the Warren campaign relies are not talking.Of course none of this will will be reported in the mainstream media, at least in any factual and definitive way. For liberals, the fraudulence of Warren’s Indian ancestry claim has no more reality than … than … black-on-white mob violence.
In fact, based on what a liberal acquaintance said to me a few weeks ago about the Martin-Zimmerman case (see entry “How I lost it”), I wouldn’t be surprised if liberals now claim that “the Right has racialized Elizabeth Warren.”
Hard to believe, but the Elizabeth (“This is not class warfare, but just a commonsense expression of the social contract”) Warren camp is now claiming that because a first cousin of Warren’s once gave money to an American Indian museum, that proves that Warren is descended from Indians.
Meanwhile, from a webpage devoted to the purpose, more injun names for the liberal heroine from Harvard:
- Sacajawhiner
- She Will Sioux
- Sackatheeconomy
- Wounded Economy
One time in junior high, a kid gave me the most painful Indian burn. Which gives me as much claim to their heritage as Elizabeth Warren has.John Edwards set the left’s pulse racing with his talk about the “Two Americas,” and he was the biggest phony anyone’s ever seen. Then Elizabeth Warren set Democratic hearts aflutter with her “social contract” aimed at creating resentment of all productive enterprises, and she turns out to be a gargantuan phony. Is there a proportional relationship between conspicuous leftism, and fakery?
UPDATE: And here’s another, from a commenter at Legal Insurrection:
Everyone seems to have settled on calling her Fauxcahontas, but I still contend that Taxajawea is a far superior in every sense.
Jonathan S. writes:
Then by this “logic” of the Elizabeth Warren camp, if their candidate has a distant relative who donated to the local aquarium, that could make her a 1/32 Catfish-American.
The opening of Paul Mirengoff’s post today on John Edwards:
I have tried to avert my eyes from the John Edwards trial…Isn’t that just too precious?
(By the way, it should be pointed out that there are subjects that Mirengoff and his associates at Powerline have managed successfully to avert their eyes from over the years, such as their hero G.W. Bush’s betrayal of his solemn 2002 pledge to have nothing to do with the Palestinians unless they renounced terror, such as black-on-white crime in Minneapolis. Indeed, when it comes to black racial violence against whites, the Powerline guys are just like the editor of the Virginian-Pilot: it doesn’t exist, and only a disgusting person, the sort of person from whom one must avert one eyes, would notice that it does exist.)
However, after Mirengoff gets over his case of the vapors about the Edwards trial, he makes a valid point:
[T]he key takeaway from Edwards’ national political career is this: he rose to prominence among the Democrats for no good reason — he was a one-term Senator of no real accomplishment — based on his pretty face and an ability to package left-wing red meat in an appealing, “two Americas” speech. That’s how easily the “reality-based community” was snookered into believing in a transparent phony — a guy central casting would send over to play a huckster — who also turned out to be a despicable person.And, Mirengoff adds, the Democratic left will never be made accountable for its romance with this transparent phony and huckster.
LA to Tiberge of Galliawatch:
Have you ever addressed the media’s constant description of Sarkozy as “conservative”?Tiberge replies:Also, how do you think he’s taking his defeat? He’s such a ruthless political animal, for him to be turned out as president of France after one term must be terribly traumatic for him.
I have almost never spoken of Sarkozy as a conservative. I have called him a “false-conservative” a “faux-conservative,” a Socialist disguised as a conservative, a “so-called conservative,” and many other terms. I had trouble five years ago convincing some readers that he was no better than Ségolène Royal, but then as now, they were so terrified of the left they preferred to take a chance on Sarkozy.Marine Le Pen’s entire campaign was based on exposing the similar goals of the PS (Socialist Party) and the UMP. Bloggers long ago began using the acronym “UMPS” to refer to the one party system. Nicolas Sarkozy did not keep one campaign promise, and yet in the days preceding the May 6 run-off writers, bloggers, analysts, politicians, Catholics and atheists alike, were literally begging the French who had voted for Marine Le Pen to vote for Sarkozy because a Hollande victory would be catastrophic. [LA replies: So Sarkozy’s party was hoping that the National Front voters would now believe the anti-immigration positions adopted out of sheer naked desperation by a man who previously had never kept any campaign promises.] MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 08:35 AM
Aditya B. writes:
The comedy unfolding in France just got livelier.According to this article, “France’s new Socialist president owns three holiday homes in the Riviera resort of Cannes, it emerged today.” The Daily Mail confirms this story and gleefully adds, “To the undoubted embarrassment to the most left-wing leader in Europe and a man who styles himself as “Mr Normal,” they are valued at almost £1million.”
This is so typical of leftists worldwide. Reviewing this pansy-boy’s biography, I couldn’t find one item of private sector employment. Just like the Saintly Barack of Honolulu, this man has no idea about how money is actually made. All he knows is how to grab it, and spend it.
These people are vampires. Their raison d’être is to punish people who can make things, who can actually do things. Their whole life is devoted to sucking the life blood out of such people. Perhaps this is how they to make up for their pathetic lack of achievement. In a mass democracy, they are able to find the support of many, many like themselves, equally blood-thirsty and greedy, to destroy the producers and the creative types who make civilization possible. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 08:13 AM
Mark Richardson writes at Oz Conservative:
I’m seeing more things I’ve written about at this site hit the mainstream media. For example, at the quite lefty American website Slate there is an article on Sweden’s efforts to make gender not matter (the subheading of the article is “A country tries to banish gender”).The Swedish project is an earnest attempt to fulfil the logic of liberal politics. If you believe that autonomy is the highest good, then you will believe that individuals should be self-determining, which then leads to the belief that predetermined qualities should be made not to matter. And our sex is a predetermined quality….
What follows is a list of examples of the Swedes showing intolerance toward sex distinctions. I’ve catalogued many of them myself, but here are some of the ones I missed:
- A Swedish children’s clothes company has removed the boys and girls sections in its stores
- One Swedish preschool abolished free play because of concerns that when children play freely “stereotypical gender patterns are born and cemented.”
- The Swedish Green Party wants to place “gender pedagogues” in every preschool to act as watchdogs on gender
- In some Swedish preschools it is forbidden to use the terms boys and girls.
- In one Swedish children’s book the words for mum and dad were replaced as being too gendered
Several cars were targeted, the perps escaped.
Because of society’s total silence about and total lack of response to systematic acts of savagery by members of a certain racial group (and the odds are 99 out of a hundred that this latest crime was committed by members of that group), the savages feel empowered, and will keep looking for new ways to hurt people.
MORE…
CNS News reports:
The Green River Formation, a largely vacant area of mostly federal land that covers the territory where Colorado, Utah and Wyoming come together, contains about as much recoverable oil as all the rest the world’s proven reserves combined, an auditor from the Government Accountability Office told Congress on Thursday.MORE…The GAO testimony said that the federal government was in “a unique position to influence the development of oil shale” because the Green River deposits were mostly beneath federal land.
“The Green River Formation—an assemblage of over 1,000 feet of sedimentary rocks that lie beneath parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming—contains the world’s largest deposits of oil shale,”Anu K. Mittal, the GAO’s director of natural resources and environment said in written testimony submitted to the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.
“USGS estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and economic conditions,” Mittal testified.
“The Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, estimates that 30 to 60 percent of the oil shale in the Green River Formation can be recovered,” Mittal told the subcommittee. “At the midpoint of this estimate, almost half of the 3 trillion barrels of oil would be recoverable. This is an amount about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.”
It’s not just that Elizabeth Warren’s claim to American Indian ancestry is based on her being 1/32 Cherokee; it’s that, as Tony Lee reports at Breitbart, there is no evidence for the claim that she is even 1/32 Cherokee.
An Indian living in the West writes:
There is something comically stupid about socialists. The phrase cutting off the nose to spite the face comes to mind.The UK Telegraph article sent by ILW includes this line:
… France’s high earners feel increasingly unwelcome in a country now led by a man who has admitted: “I don’t like the rich.”Last week I called Hollande a “socialist idiot.” I did not know he had gone this far. It’s sort of the equivalent of Obama referring to his grandmother as a “typical white person.” No, it’s worse.
Here is the article:
The annual mass exodus from the French capital sees the city’s inhabitants while away the August heat in the countryside.But this week many of the biggest earners across the Channel have been mulling a départ which could be rather more permanent.
The toppling of Nicolas Sarkozy by François Hollande, the first socialist president to lead the country in 17 years, has sent ripples of fear through the wealthier arrondissements of Paris.
Their new president may block the eurozone austerity advocated by Germany’s Angela Merkel, but he is not opposed to his richer citizens feeling the squeeze.
Mr Hollande plans to implement a 75pc tax rate on earnings over €1m (£800m), on top of a 45pc rate for people making €150,000 or more. He is also expected to raise “wealth taxes” on property assets and end his predecessor’s tax incentives to lure bankers back home. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 06:02 PM
At his blog The Big Lie on Parade, Cicero reports:
Like something out of the brain of Mel Brooks and the “You can’t make this stuff up” files. A black man “carriage-jacked” a horse and carriage, assaulted the carriage driver and finally wound up punching and kicking the horse! I can only suspect the horse muttered something racist or disrespectful. Or maybe he whinnied Dixie or came from a line of Confederate war horses? I guess we will never know?
John “GOP Hack” Hinderaker writes at We Want a Line to Power:
It is, of course, way too early to get cocky. But Republicans have to be happy with the way current polling is going. In this morning’s tracking poll at Rasmussen Reports, Mitt Romney leads Barack Obama by a stunning 50%-42%.All this excitement over an eight-point lead, in one poll, THREE AND A HALF MONTHS before the nominating conventions, and SIX MONTHS before the election. At best, it’s ostensible adults spending their lives in cheerleading; at worst, it’s a form of mental illness. Polls change constantly and just don’t mean that much this far before an election: let us remember that in early summer 1988 Michael Dukakis had a 17 point lead over George Bush the elder, which proceeded to evaporate. And be assured, when other polls come out showing Obama narrowing Romney’s lead or leading Romney, John Hackeraker and the rest of the “The GOP is my entire life” pundits will fall silent, until some other polls show Romney ahead again, and then they will get all excited again. They don’t seem to care about anything substantive in the universe; they just live for that rush.
UPDATE, May 13: Here’s a typical example of a Republican living for that rush—Hugh Hewett. His giddily triumphant column even includes the line, “The president’s in a political free fall.” For three years Republicans have been saying that Obama is in a free fall, yet somehow he still hasn’t crashed into the earth, which, if he was in a political free fall, he would have done three years ago.
MORE…
Be sure to see British Freedom Party leader Paul Weston’s magnificent seven minute statement about the complicity of British police and media in covering up the systematic Muslim gang rape of English girls over a period of many years (and he shows how the same has been happening in numerous other Western countries where the followers of Muhammad reside in large numbers). It is posted at Gates of Vienna, and is followed by a full transcript. There is so much in this statement that I would have to write something almost as long in order to praise it justly.
Weston ia a rare individual, a man with the insight, eloquence, and—most lacking in today’s Dead Britain—moral passion that are needed to oppose the monstrous things being done to the West by its constituted authorities. He says something that is absolutely shocking to hear from the mouth of a contemporary British political figure: that there is such a thing as good and evil, and that Britain’s ruling “liberal/left is evil.”
I’ve copied the transcript of Weston’s statement below. Some may bridle at his opening remark that he doesn’t blame the Muslims particularly for the gang-rapes, but the liberal/left. But I agree with him. As I have often said, the problem with Muslims is not that they are bad people, but that they are good Muslims. In waging war against non-Muslims, including the gang-rape of underaged non-Muslim girls, they are simply following the traditions of their religion. Therefore the solution is not to condemn individual Muslims for their immorality or punish them for their criminal acts; the solution—the only solution—is to remove Muslims from the West.
Muslim Rape, Liberal/Left Complicity by Paul WestonThe liberal/left need to take a long hard look themselves in the wake of the appalling Muslim gang rape revelations. I don’t blame the Muslims particularly, they are simply living by the 7th century rules of a desert warrior, but I do blame the liberal/left for quite literally enabling the brutal rape and violation of our children.
All you liberal/leftists are complicit in these crimes against humanity. You could have stopped it years ago, but you deliberately chose not to.
The BBC, The Guardian, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Child Protection Agency, the Politically Correct Police Service: I accuse you and the entire liberal establishment of deliberately covering up the multiple rapes and ruined lives of countless vulnerable young girls because of your utterly immoral and obscene attitude toward your own people, and your cowardly appeasement of a religious and political ideology that sanctions the violation of non-Muslim females. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 09:42 AM
Patrick Howley writing in the Washington Free Beacon lays out the facts of the role played by Elizabeth Warren’s virtually non-existent American Indian heritage in boosting her career as a law professor. In addition to showing how she has been listed as a “minority” faculty member at various law schools where she has taught, Howley makes a strong circumstantial case that given her relatively unimpressive academic and writing background, her claim to being an American Indian was what got her hired as a professor at Harvard Law School in 1995. She is a graduate of Rutgers Law School, the lowest ranked law school alma mater of any current Harvard Law professor, and she has published little, while Harvard is known for placing great emphasis on the writing achievements of its law professors. But she did have one thing going for her:
Harvard was experiencing racial controversy on campus at the time of her hiring. Professor Derrick Bell denounced Harvard Law School for not having a minority female professor on staff, according to reports. Harvard officials also were facing legal consequences from the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination for the university’s perceived lack of faculty diversity.Will any of this matter to the overwhelmingly Democratic voters of Massachusetts? Why should it? She’s one of them. That’s all that matters. Remember how Harvard re-admitted the younger brother of U.S. Senator John F. Kennedy after a two year suspension for his having a friend take a Spanish exam for him? Anyone else would surely have been expelled from the school for such a grave misdeed. Being a liberal—especially in Massachusetts—means never having to say you’re sorry.
MORE…
From NPR, here are the basic facts about the foiled al Qaeda underwear bomb plot. The man given the bomb was actually a double agent. But why they’re telling us these things I don’t know. Shouldn’t this remain secret? The probable answer is that leftist governments like those of the U.S. and the UK like to reveal their own secrets.
John P. writes:
I have nothing very intelligent to add to this story (“90 year old Bob Strait, veteran of D-Day, dies two months after wife’s murder at hands of savage home invader”), but I had to express how deeply sad it made me. To make it through so much and then die in such a manner at the hands of a punk is just too depressing. For some reason, the death of an old person in this way bothers me more than the death of a younger person even though the latter is in some way a greater loss, in terms of life expectations.LA replies:
Yes, because an older person has largely completed the journey of life, is vulnerable and venerable and to be treated with special consideration, so in a way the murder of an old person is more horrifying than the murder of a young person.
The murder of 63-year-old Alan Smith in a London restaurant last year suggests yet another item—previously I’ve offered item 10(j)—to be added to John Derbyshire’s important list of things that white people should do or refrain from doing in order to avoid being murdered by blacks:
10(i) If you see a black man with his baby daughter who is crying incessantly, do not walk up to him and ask him if the child is all right. Mind your own business.Would Rich Lowry say that such advice was “nasty and indefensible” and conclude that anyone who had written such a thing must be separated from National Review? Would Andrew McCarthy, supporting Lowry’s decision, describe the advice as “noxious … racialism” and say that that it was a denial of the belief in the “equal dignity and presumption of equal decency toward every person—no matter what race…”? Would he say that it was “an argument for a priori conclusions about how individual persons ought to be treated in various situations—or for calculating fear or friendship based on race alone” and thus prescribing “the disintegration of a pluralistic society”?
By the way, we know that the accused killer, Matthew Quesada, is black, not, of course, because the story says he’s black, but because his mother, who is shown in a photograph, is black and he’s coyly described as having “distinct Afro style hair.”
The Daily Mail reports:
A father out celebrating his daughter’s birthday was brutally knifed to death in front of his horrified family just because he asked if a crying child was alright, a court was told yesterday. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 01:08 PM
Paul K. presents the short, intimidating speech that arch traditionalist “Dirty Larry” Callahan would give to a liberal opponent to get him to surrender.
In response to the entry last week on Sarkozy’s desperation, Paul K. wrote:
So, desperate to hold onto his presidency, Sarkozy adopts immigration restrictionist and anti-Muslim positions. Doesn’t that indicate that he knows those positions are what most of the people want? Perhaps, but they are so repugnant to the ruling elite that Sarkozy adopts them only in the face of a threat much more unbearable to him than the extinction of Western civilization: the loss of his own political position and power.
Bruce Bawer at FrontPage Magazine remembers the brilliant and charismatic (and flamboyantly perverted) anti-Islam politician who might have been elected prime minister of the Netherlands ten years ago this month had he not been assassinated, following a demented but typical public campaign of villification that portrayed this extreme moral liberterian as an extreme right-winger and fascist. As I said at the time, the Dutch and European media as much as called for Fortuyn’s murder, and then someone murdered him.
VFR has often commented on Fortuyn, particularly in an entry on the fifth anniversary of his death, “How should traditionalists treat Pim Fortuyn?”
See also this 2010 discussion, “Pim Fortuyn speaks,” about the unique quality of determination and passion that Fortuyn brought to the anti-Islamization cause, and how that is what Europe needs to save itself from Islamization and death.
MORE…
Roland D. writes:
Isn’t it remarkable how all the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin news coverage has suddenly and silently faded away?My guess is that the liberal media finally realized that their latest cause celebre doesn’t look like a winner, once the actual facts of the matter are taken into account, and they’ve therefore moved on to other things. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 07:15 AM
James P. writes:
The UK Telegraph reports that British historian David Starkey believes that the actions of the Asian sex gang in abusing young white English girls were just an expression of their unique, vibrant culture: “Those men were acting within their own cultural norms. Nobody ever explained to them that the history of women in Britain was once rather similar to that in Pakistan and it had changed.”LA replies:
Starkey’s ignorant equation of Muslim treatment of women with pre-feminist Western treatment of women is of a piece with the common Western view (constantly repeated by “conservatives” such as Daniel Pipes and Condoleezza Rice as well as liberals) that the West prior to the rise of modern liberalism was at least as tyrannical and cruel and bigoted as Islam. The Western liberal and conservative intelligentsia tell hateful lies about the traditional West, constantly describing Islamic extremism as “medieval,” i.e., as the equivalent of the medieval Western period which was the matrix and parent of the modern Western period, and then they expect that the West, having been taught to despise its own spiritual and historic roots, will somehow survive the challenge of an antithetical civilization that has been imported en masse within its borders.MORE…
In an insightful and very well written response to Paul C. and Roland D.’s debate on Thai attitudes and their compatibility with America, a second reader married to a Thai woman (though living in the U.S., not Thailand) both agrees and disagrees with Roland D.’s criticisms of Thai culture. Here is his key passage:
Ultimately, I cannot share Paul’s judgment of Thailand as a place freer and more pleasant than America. Elements of what he says are true. I particularly like the fact that people can be very generous and kind; they possess a gentle sense of humor that is uncynical. They are ready to have good conversations and seem to be open to, and forgiving of, Westerners….Another commenter, B.B., criticizes both Paul and Roland for drawing caricatures of Thai culture on the basis of insufficient evidence. I reply that while caricatures are not desirable, how, in today’s liberal world, can we ever speak critically of a non-Western culture in a way that will not be considered a caricature?…. And yet one also comes to see that this constant Thai smoothing-over goes hand-in-hand with a kind of mental, familial, and social slavery. Thai society is held together by many strands, but a significant one is the constant, subtle fear of being perceived as ungrateful when one is prevailed upon. The prevailing-upon, the proactive favor-trading, the counting of social debt, and the calculated, pre-emptive avoidance of favors from others: this is a very tricky business, and one that would give most Westerners headaches to navigate. I honestly do love Thailand, but upon returning to the U.S., I often say how pleasant it is to “breathe Ohio again.” A significant portion of this comes from feeling the pressure lift from us. If only most Americans could feel this comparison; how forthright we can be with one another, and what a glorious condition it is!
On the last day of the prosecution’s case in the John Edwards case, the prosecutors played his 20 minute interview on ABC’s Nightline on August 8, 2008 in which he repeatedly and absolutely denied that Rielle Hunter’s baby was his—a lie that everyone who had followed the story knew was a lie as he was saying it, and knew would be instantly exposed as one. Unfortunately for the prosecutors, telling pathological lies on national television is not a federal crime.
See the August 10 VFR entry, a full-length consideration of the facts of the case posted two days after the Nightline interview, in which I demonstrate how we knew that Rielle Hunter’s child was Edward’s. In a comment toward the end of the thread, I summed things up thus:
… Edwards is not merely a presidential candidate/adulterer who got caught, which is not out of the realm of normality. He’s nuts. He gave a half-hour interview on Nightline declaring that now he was telling the full truth about the affair when in reality he was repeatedly lying about things, including the financial support for Rielle, including probably his paternity, that he had to know would very soon be revealed as lies.But, again, being nuts, or even having the most objectionable character in the universe, is not a federal crime.
It is incredible that Obama made a big deal of saying he’s in favor of homosexual “marriage,” but then made clear that this is only his private opinion, and that he will not support the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act nor push the DNC to adopt homosexual “marriage” in the Democratic platform. Since the whole point of the president’s pro-homosexual “marriage” TV interview was to placate homosexualists who have been increasingly angry with him over his failure to take the pro-homosexual “marriage” plunge that almost all liberals and all Democrats, including his secretary of state and his vice president, have now taken, why do it and then reverse it, thus angering the homosexualists further?
Roger Stone, veteran Republican oddball strategist and advocate of heterosexual and homosexual freedom, tears Obama apart over this, and his arguments, from a liberal perspective, are cogent and devastating.
UPDATE: But evidently Obama’s step is not incredible, contrary to what I said above. Liberal media have touted the great influx of campaign cash he has received as a result of his pro-homosexual “marriage” statement and are still reporting the statement as nothing but a positive development for him. While I have not searched for such stories, I have not seen any indicating that the homosexual rights people have been turning against Obama for failing to take any political steps to advance their cause.
The situation remains bizarre. Offhand, I cannot remember ever seeing a U.S. president state that he has a “personal” support for Policy X that was ONLY personal support and that would not be reflected in any actual steps by him to advance Policy X. Can you?
Another question is: why does Obama still balk at all-out, official support for homosexual “marriage”? Since his entire re-election campaign, as we’ve been told over and over again, is aimed at his liberal base and not at Independents, what would he have to lose?
I just came upon an exchange between Roland D. and me from December 2010 that was never posted.
He sent a New York Times article with this note:
Homosexual soccer lobby 1, Islam 0.I replied:
Homosexual soccer? Do we live in such a world?Here is the article Roland sent: MORE…Did He who made the Lamb make … Homosexual Soccer?
On May 5, Tulsa World reported:
A 90-year-old man who was attacked in his home in March along with his 85-year-old wife died Friday morning, according to his family and Tulsa police.Bob and Nancy Strait were attacked in the 3300 block of East Virgin Street late March 13 or early the next day, police said.
Bob and Nancy Strait. They were in the
wrong place at the wrong time—their home.
The Medical Examiner’s Office will determine whether his death is a result of the injuries he sustained in the attack, Officer Jason Willingham said.If so, Tyrone Dale David Woodfork, 20, who was arrested March 15 in the attack, will be charged with an additional count of first-degree murder, Willingham said.
Woodfork is already charged with killing Nancy Strait, who died March 15. MORE…
Tyrone Woodfork, rapist and murderer of 85-year-old
Nancy Strait, showing his remarkable resemblance
to the son President Obama never had
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 02:23 PM
Apparently Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook has been criticized for showing up at an important business meeting wearing a hoodie. The L-dotters comment. As a person who is Facebook-challenged (I simply do not “get” Facebook, though I hear that a major part of the world’s population now use it), I enjoy reading the L-dotters’ humorous put-downs of it and of Zuckerberg.
By the way, the 2010 movie The Social Network, about Zuckerberg and how Facebook got started, is well worth seeing. It has a highly original screenplay, written, astonishingly, by Aaron Sorkin, most of whose work has been characterized by plodding liberal pieties. In particular, there is a scene early in the movie, in which the Zuckerberg character speaks in a long rapid monologue to other characters, that brilliantly captures a distinct contemporary type: someone who is very bright but has no moral center.
Daniel S. writes:
Authorities in Macedonia have arrested 20 “radical Islamists” for the murder of five Christian fishermen. Most of the Albanian Muslims arrested had allegedly previously fought against American and NATO troops in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, across the border in Kosovo, the American-backed narco-terrorist KLA is planning to train the Syrian rebels.
Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll of the English Defence League have joined the British Freedom Party as joint vice-chairmen. Gates of Vienna posts a video of a press conference last Saturday held by Tommy Robinson, Kevin Carroll, and Paul Weston, chairman of the British Freedom Party.
Buck writes:
Here is a worthwhile eight minute video report by Bill O’Reilly on the Norfolk racial beating, as of two days ago. It seems that both the Virginian-Pilot and the state are primarily concerned about protecting the beach season. The Virginian-Pilot’s editor is interviewed.Thanks to Buck for sending this segment. It’s a must see—all of it. The most remarkable part is where Fox correspondent Jesse Watters buttonholes Dennis Finley, editor of the Virginian-Pilot, who had refused an interview with O’Reilly. Watters interviews him while he sits in his car. Here is my transcript of the key parts of the exchange: MORE…He reminds me of the mayor in Jaws; “acting in the best interests of the town” (at 5:10 in the Jaws tape).
The exchange between Roland D., who has lived in and done business in Asia for many years, and Paul C., who is married into a Thai family and resides in Thailand, continues.
The question between them seems to come down to this: Does Asian culture have an ethical basis, or is it about raw family/tribal/national/racial power?
Kristor writes:
Whatever else we might say about Romney as a politician, he is admirable as a man. The facts adduced below make it seem highly unlikely to me that Romney is seeking the Presidency in order to compensate for some deficit he feels in himself, or to stroke his ego, or to sate some selfish urge. This bodes well.Quoting from an email sent to me by a correspondent:
On Romney’s character….
In July 1996, the 14-year-old daughter of Robert Gay, a partner at Bain Capital, disappeared in New York City. She had attended a “rave” party and gotten high on ecstasy. Three days later, her distraught father had not been able to find her.
When he learned of this, as CEO of Bain Capital, Romney took immediate action. He closed down the entire firm and asked all 30 partners and employees to fly to New York on a chartered airplane to help find Gay’s daughter. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 08:19 AM
I returned Tuesday afternoon from a week at a very beautiful resort near Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic. As a gift from a friend who is a member of the resort, we had our own, incredibly beautiful villa with its own swimming pool on a hill overlooking the Caribbean. The layout was such that no other villas or buildings were visible from our patio and pool. It was a though our villa was suspended in the air, open to the sky and the sea.
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“This is an absolute scandal. [The police] were petrified of being called racist and so reverted to the default of political correctness,” [Labour MP Ann Cryer] said.Cryer’s statement blaming “political correctness” seriously misrepresents the reality, so as to cover up the left’s responsibility for this state of affairs. It’s not that the British police are otherwise good and responsible people who are afraid of being called racist and so fail to arrest nonwhites who are victimizing whites. It’s that the British police are actively committed to an ideology which says that nonwhite-on-white crime is the result of social inequality, and therefore as little as possible can or should be done to prevent or punish such crime as long as Britain remains unequal.
As I wrote a year ago:
[The British police and British court system] are left-wing institutions organized around the idea that criminals are victims of a racist and unequal society. That is why they are so slow in providing protection to people threatened by criminals, and why they barely punish criminals who have committed devastating physical assaults.Here is the article in the May 8 Telegraph, which many readers have sent:
Rochdale grooming trial: Police accused of failing to investigate paedophile gang for fear of appearing racist
Police and social workers were last night accused of failing to investigate an Asian paedophile gang for fear of being perceived as racist, allowing them to prey on up to 50 young white girls.The nine men from Rochdale were yesterday convicted of abusing five vulnerable teenagers after plying them with alcohol, food and small sums of money in return for sex.
However, the true number of victims, who were “passed around” by the gang, is likely to be nearer to 50, police have admitted.
Greater Manchester Police and the Crown Prosecution Service have now apologised after they failed to bring the case of the first victim—Girl A—to trial following her cry for help in August 2008. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 07:12 PM
The man has been in the U.S. Senate for 36 years, he is eighty years old, and he thought he should serve until he was 86, which would seem to be an index of how hard the work of a senator really is. Evidently he didn’t even have an Indiana residence, though I don’t see how that is legally possible. And he is something of a RINO. The L-dotters gloat over Lugar’s political demise.
MORE…
Buck writes:
I am suffering from growing Asian Confusionism. These Asian pedophiles—Kabeer Hassan, Abdul Aziz, Abdul Rauf, Mohammed Sajid, Adil Khan, Abdul Qayyum, Mohammed Amin, and Hamid Safi—were found guilty of sexually exploiting white female children. They repeatedly gang-raped them.Is “Asian” any longer useful? Is it sometimes used as a political ploy like “youth” gangs? It seems that we make distinctions, then un-make them almost in the same breath. We discuss the West in the same way; broad terms that have historical significance, but don’t seem to be holding up well in the modern world. Is it the Middle East, or, is it “Asia”? MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 12:32 PM
Vincent Chiarello writes:
In this film, we see the celebration being carried out in a robust but restrained way. No rioting, no overturning vehicles, no shootouts. This was only a part of America’s armed forces, but the men appear mature for their ages, while the few women, who were there to do their duty, only further reflect that quietness in their happiness. Note the beachwear, and recall this was Honolulu in August.There would be another decade or so of this domestic peaceful, tranquil, and safe existence, but the U.S. has never recovered from the societal disruption of the late ’60s and ’70s.
For someone who vividly recalls that period, it does evoke very pleasant memories.
Below are comments that were sent a week ago for the thread on Asians’ incompatibilites with the West, but were inadvertently not posted until now. The original thread has reached its maximum size so I am posting these in a new entry.
Also in this thread the exchange between Roland D. and Paul C. about Thailand continues, with Paul strongly disputing Roland’s highly negative portrayal of Thai culture.
MORE…
In the May 1 Telegraph, Peter Mullen writes:
This Conservative Party is more socialist than any government I have seen in my lifetime The Tories will not recover from the catastrophic election defeat which faces them this week. They don’t deserve to — because they have spent the last two years alienating their core supporters. These supporters, of whom I used to be one, are very largely old-fashioned, traditional middle class voters. I suppose we can be described as “respectable” — before, as GK Chesterton said, that word became very unrespectable.The Tories have alienated their core supporters only in the last two years?
What Mullen now sees, I, on the other side of the pond, saw seven years ago, at the moment Cameron became party leader, and I kept repeating the same in the years since then. How it that I, who know next to nothing about British politics, saw something that someone who inhabits British politics did not see until now?
I ask the question, not to boast of some great faculty of insight, but to point to a way of seeing that is available only to those who have stepped outside the liberal paradigm (including the liberal paradigm that is called conservatism). If you are outside liberalism, you can understand the essence of liberalism, and this enables you to see liberalism the moment it appears. You don’t have to have enormous evidence hitting you in the teeth.
MORE…
A reader in England writes:
Justice within the UK legal system is a farce and a joke.MORE…I’m waiting for the Dylan song condemning a justice system that gives a six month sentence to a black who raped an 11 year old white girl. Could be a long wait.
Roy Beck of NumbersUSA writes in an e-mail:
Defeated Sen. Lugar nearly always preferred more immigrant workers over helping unemployed Americans
Voters in Indiana today provided another one of those historic shifts in the immigration battles that I have to share with all of you.
Sen. Lugar is one of the last hold-overs of the Republican Senators who not only tried to push through all the Bush amnesties at the beginning of this century but also back in the 1990s helped kill the immigration enforcement and green card reductions recommended by the bi-partisan Barbara Jordan Commission.
MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 09:15 AM
Continuing from his comment in the “ineluctable racial incompatibilies” thread, Roland D. sends this essay which is a modified version of a comment he made in another forum about Asian culture and society. Following Roland’s comment, other readers express strong disagreement with his view.
Roland writes:
Despite the various historical antipathies among various Asian nations, all Asian groups feel more kinship with one another than with Westerners or other outsiders. Yes, Koreans may hate the Japanese, and Chinese may hate the Japanese (this perception is deliberately exaggerated by the Korean, Chinese, and Japanese governments and business conglomerates in order to confuse the West in trade negotiations and so forth), and the Chinese may think they’re superior to all, but Asians will work together to take advantage of and frustrate the designs of Westerners and other outsiders.Another thing to keep in mind is that all Asian countries, with the exception of India, form the “Confucian sphere,” and that whatever their theoretical political systems (“democracy” in Asia is a sham, of course), Asians’ underlying cultural value systems are based on Confucianism. MORE…
Posted by Lawrence Auster at 07:10 AM
The larger story: endless accommodation to violent and dysfunctional blacks causes whites to cancel civilization.
Matthew H. writes:
Don’t know if you read the site Moonbattery. It has recently been showing greater freedom in featuring stories of the ongoing wave of white victimization by blacks.LA replies:
About the cancellation of the Coventry Streets Arts Fairs in suburban Cleveland this coming summer (as reported at cleveland.com) because of black violence at the fairs last summer (discussed at VFR then), Moonbattery writes:
As liberalism causes savagery to encroach on civilization, we find ourselves living in an ever smaller space, like campers huddling closer to a dwindling fire while hungry wolves close in…. So now no one gets a fair. Instead, law-abiding citizens can hunch behind locked doors and listen to their TV sets tell them how shamefully racist they are.Moonbattery’s meditation on people huddling behind locked doors in an ever-narrowing world reminds me of a verse from Bob Dylan’s 1964 song “Chimes of Freedom”:
In the city’s melted furnace
Unexpectedly we watched
With face hidden
As the walls were tightening.Posted by Lawrence Auster at 11:53 PM
Paul C., an American expatriate living in Thailand, agrees with the assertion, made at the beginning of the thread, that Asians care about little but shopping, but says that they nevertheless have productive and vital societies, which America, increasingly under the influence of dysfunctional racial groups and the obsession with raising them up, no longer has. He says Asians represent the future and that America needs more of them to offset the deleterious effects of blacks and Hispanics.
UPDATE: Roland D., who also lives in Asia, strongly disagrees. He writes:
The USA absolutely does not need any more Asians of any stripe. Their worldview is a Hobbesian war of all against all, shaped by Confucian hyper-nepotism. They are uninterested in any sort of equitable civil polity—indeed, they are hostile to it, as they each wish their family/tribe/clan/region/racial sub-group/national/racial macro-group to dominate, in descending order of priority.
(Correction: the “P” in Michael Novak’s “PIGS” stands for Poles, not Portuguese. Also, here is the passage in Novak’s The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics where he introduces the term PIGS.)
(Another correction: My below description of Novak’s thesis is too broad; he did not say that the “PIGS” had not assimilated in the sense of not becoming Americans, but that they had not assimilated into the elite, university-based, and corporate culture of abstract universalism and technocracy. He said that Anglo-Saxon Protestants and Jews were fully a part of that culture and were its leaders. In short, what the “unmeltable ethnics” had not melted into was liberalism. Whether Novak would say that his thesis has held true in the ’80s, ’90s, ’00s and ’10s is another question.)
I have a complaint with the use of the term PIIGS, which is short for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain. Namely, does anyone believe we would use such an acronym for a group of dysfunctional, non-European nations? Yet people routinely use this acronym to describe these European nations which, despite their financial issues, are still destinations sought by millions of non-Europeans wishing to escape their own nations, which we are now only allowed to describe as “developing” nations.LA replies:Even the term we used to use, Third World, has increasingly become politically incorrect, despite the fact that it originally did not mean anything other than a nation which was not aligned with the USA or USSR during the Cold War.
I know my complaint will fall upon deaf ears, but I rank the use of PIIGS right up there with every other liberal double standard such as the failure to report on black dysfunction and the negative portrayal of whites in the media. If they are going to come up with a term like PIIGS, there is a whole alphabet soup of African and Latin American nations just waiting for a similar term.
PIIGS is not entirely a new term. Way back in the 1970s, Michael Novak in his noteworthy book The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics used the term PIGS (I don’t remember if he coined it) for Americans of Polish, Italian, Greek, and Slavic background. These were the white ethnics who, he argued, were not assimilating into the Anglo-form mainstream culture to the same degree or at the same rate as other white immigrant groups had done. I don’t think Novak intended PIGS as a put-down exactly, but more humorously, since as a Slav he was of PIGS background himself. But perhaps your criticism of PIIGS could be applied to PIGS as well.MORE…
In the Must Reads today at Lucianne.com:
WHOOPS: Joe Biden Seems To Endorse GayHas Lucianne Goldberg forgotten that George W. Bush’s vice president Dick Cheney, both during the 2000 campaign and during his vice presidency, repeatedly endorsed homosexual “marriage,” a position that departed from that of Bush himself? Did Lucianne—or any mainstream conservatives and Republicans—call that an “exploding cigar” or speak of Cheney’s senility?
Marriage, And The Obama Campaign Is
Already Spinning Wildly
This week’s exploding cigar. Indian puns to be replaced
by jibes about sequins and senility.
Mainstream conservatives and Republicans have no principles. They just want Republicans to be in office instead of Democrats.
Aditya B. writes:
ILW was very prescient. France, like most other Western European nations, is determined to do away with herself.I think its safe to say that French economic collapse is imminent. All this talk of PIIGS will now have to include France as well. A nation that has elected to work less, redistribute more, and hasten demographic suicide by reproducing less and inviting hostile inassimilable aliens en masse has just signed its death warrant.
Interesting times, indeed.
It used to be a joke that the way PC was going, any term that used the word “black” in a negative sense, no matter how long the term had been a part of our language and no matter that it had nothing to do with black people, would be banned. Well, it’s happening:
POLICE chiefs have banned IT staff from using the word blacklist over fears it is RACIST.The computer term whitelist—used to denote a list of acceptable contacts—has also been outlawed.
In an email, Scotland Yard warned staff the words were no longer “appropriate”.
Security services chief Brian Douglas wrote: “IB (Information Board) are uncomfortable with the use of the term Whitelist (and I presume Blacklist).
“I am sure we can appreciate the sensitivity around the use of such terminology today so please ensure it is no longer used.” He suggested using green and red list instead.
Sources at the Met—where 20 officers are under investigation over alleged racism—branded the decision “bizarre”.
One said: “Do we really think these words are discriminatory? The truth is they’re nothing to do with race whatsoever and are very common IT terms. Banning them won’t solve any genuine problems the Met has with racism.”
Scotland Yard said: “This is not a change in policy.
“It is a change in internal Information Communications Technology terminology which reflects a more appropriate use of language.”
Sixty-seven years after the fact, the Associated Press has apologized for firing its World War II correspondent Edward Kennedy over his reporting Germany’s surrender on May 7, 1945, in violation of a pledge made by him and 16 other reporters to keep a lid on the news for another day. The reason for the pledge was that the Allied authorities wanted to give the Russians a chance to hold their own surrender ceremony in Berlin prior to the announcement of Germany’s surrender to the U.S. and Britain.
It’s a fascinating tale, raising questions of journalistic ethics that are well worth pondering. As I see it, there are are two distinct issues here: First, was the AP ethically required to keep the lid on the monumental news, notwithstanding the fact that the reporters had only pledged to remain silent for a few hours but the military authorities then unilaterally extended the period to 36 hours, while they also allowed the Germans to announce the surrender? Second, was Kennedy wrong in going rogue and telephoning the news to the AP’s London office without telling them about the pledge to secrecy? AP’s current president, Tom Curley, says that Kennedy “did everything just right.” Based on the facts as presented in the article, I do not agree. By passing the story on to his editors but keeping them in the dark about the secrecy pledge, Kennedy fooled his employer, the AP, into taking a step that they would most likely not have taken had they known all the facts. As punishment for the AP’s breaking the secrecy pledge, the military authorities excluded the AP from the European theater. Indeed, the other news organizations were so angry at the AP for publishing the news a day ahead of them that when the military moved to lift the ban on the AP, some months later, they insisted that it be maintained.
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