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Women’s oppression in the modern West

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At the start of the day I came across this: Junk Science and the Feminist Manipulation Agenda: Part 1. This was how the article began:

In his tearjerker Aug. 19 article in The New York Times, “How Sexism Follows Women From the Cradle to the Workplace,” Jim Tankersley provides a rich example of how fake news functions in tandem with junk science to vilify traditional gender norms, which, if only the cultural elite can have their way, shall be unthinkable for all “respectable people.” Both Tankersley himself and the scholars he cites display profound irresponsibility where epistemic rigor and contextual understanding are in order. This, of course, is only to be expected, for the primary goal here is Power—Power culminating in the road to serfdom—not excellent work.

There was then this: Today’s men are paying for the sins of their sexist fathers taken from The Financial Times of all places! The core point, which is the final para:

I suspect the more that is done to make life easier for working women, the better it will be for everyone. Until then, I like to think the only people who should really worry about the push for gender equality are dopey men. They have long been the big winners from discrimination. If a few miss out in future, that is something I will find easy to justify.

Finally I came across this at the end of the day: Doctor Tells Truth About Gender Pay Gap In Medicine. Then He Was Forced To Apologize. And what was this awful truth?

“Female physicians do not work as hard and do not see as many patients as male physicians. This is because they choose to, or they simply don’t want to be rushed, or they don’t want to work the long hours. Most of the time, their priority is something else … family, social, whatever,” Tigges told the Journal. “Nothing needs to be ‘done’ about this unless female physicians actually want to work harder and put in the hours. If not, they should be paid less. That is fair.”

To say that “female doctors work fewer hours because they prioritize their children” is a modern wrong-thought for which recantation and repentance are mandatory, even if it’s true.

AND THIS JUST IN: From The Campus Review:

Julia Gillard with Curtin University vice-chancellor Professor Deborah Terry, who recently awarded the ex-PM an Honorary Doctorate of Letters. Photo: Curtin

Gillard talks ‘glass labyrinth’ at uni lecture

The move towards gender equality in leadership positions is occurring at a “glacial” pace, former prime minister Julia Gillard says.

Gillard says problems remain across politics, business and in the media with women still having to contend with stereotypes that they are less interested or adapted to leadership roles.

She says across the globe women currently account for 23 per of national parliamentarians, 26 per cent of news media leaders, 27 per cent of judges, 15 per cent of corporate board members and 24 per cent of senior managers.

“Now, if we were seeing a fast rate of change in the statistics I cited then there would be nothing wrong with sitting back and waiting to wake up in a more equal world,” Gillard said in a lecture at the University of Adelaide on Tuesday. “But the rate of change is glacial.

“For example, the number of women in senior management globally has risen just one percentage point in 10 years.

“In politics, at the current rate of progress, it will take another half-century to reach parity with men.”

The former PM said it was equally troubling that any gains made could also be reversed, citing the slump in the representation of women in the current US cabinet under President Donald Trump.

And continues thereafter, found at the link.

 

IT JUST KEEPS ON COMING:

Men Pay $895 at ‘Male Feminism Camp’ to Cope With Their Own Toxicity

“If manhood was a texture…”

Are you a man? Are you confused by rapidly changing social norms on matters of sexuality and gender? Are you scared you might find yourself on the wrong side of the #MeToo revolution?

Fear not.

For $895 you could have secured yourself a place in this summer’s “Women Teach Men” wellness retreat in the scenically mountainous town of Ojai, California.

“If manhood was a texture,” quizzes an Instagram post by the official event account. “What would it be? How does it feel? Can it change?”

Are 900 bucks (not including travel) more than you can afford to spend on a single weekend  at at the 5-star Ojai Valley Inn, but you are still perturbed by the toxicity of your own masculinity?

Fear not.

 

Just in case the evidence mattered

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Global Temperatures Drop Back To 2002 Levels
Arctic Sea Ice Back To 2007 Levels

From here

Global temperatures fell back to 0.19C in August. This means the year to date (YTD) average is 0.23C, putting them back to roughly where they were in 2002. —Paul Homewood, Not A Lot Of People Know That, 2 September 2018 

Summer is over, and Greenland’s surface has gained 510 billion tons of ice over the past year – about 40% above normal. Last year Greenland gained a little more ice, about 50% above normal. Last year, the Danish Meteorological Institute reported on the gain in ice, and blamed it on Hurricane Nicole. I wonder what their excuse will be this year? —The Deplorable Climate Science Blog, 31 August 2018 

Arctic sea ice is on pace to be close to last year and above those minima observed in 2015 and 2016. —Ron Clutz, Science Matters, 31 August 201 

To which may be added this.

How Climate Policies Slam the World’s Poor


A new study has found that strong global climate action would cause far more hunger and food insecurity than climate change itself. Models suggest that climate change could put an extra 24 million people at risk of hunger. But a global carbon tax would increase food prices and push 78 million more people into risk of hunger, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and India.

Lomborg argues in New York Post that if we want to eradicate hunger, there are more effective ways, such as a global trade deal. And we need to get smarter about climate change, too, focussing on more investment into green energy R&D

The first fair and deliberate exchange in world history

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From The Wealth of Nations:

“Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. Nobody ever saw one animal by its gestures and natural cries signify to another, this is mine, that yours; I am willing to give this for that….But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of.”

On the other hand, it could be the resurrection of an economy recovering from the grip of a socialist experiment, Venezuela say, in about a year or two from now.

Cartoon via Powerline – The Week in Pictures

Music and the Struggle for the Soul of the West

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One of the most interesting and insightful articles I have ever come across. Odd title perhaps – O Magnum Mysterium – but this tells you what you need to know.

From the time of the troubadours and the trouveres of the Crusades, the advances in Western thought have not only been mirrored in our music, but occasioned by it, from Guillaume de Machaut, Josquin des Prez and Pierre de la Rue, to Obrecht and Ockegham, to Palestrina to Johann Sebastian Bach. A popular song such as “L’homme armé” could become the subject of numerous medieval masses, not because of its secular origin (although that certainly helped, as the worshippers would respond to its familiarity), but because its implicit polyphonic structure could be successfully and inventively exploited by composers across Europe, leading to ever more complex and inventive ways of using the material.

Yes, masses. Because the development of European polyphony was, like religious dogma itself, inspired by Aristotelian ideas of free inquiry and the teleological impulses of both Judaism and Christianity. Music, like faith, has to be headed somewhere. Our lives may be temporally constricted, but freedom of inquiry is not.

And the writer is someone to contend with, a true scholar:

Michael Walsh was for sixteen years the music critic and foreign correspondent for Time, for which he covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. His works include the non-fiction best-seller The Devil’s Pleasure Palace (2017); this article is an extract from its sequel, The Fiery Angel: Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West, which was published by Encounter Books in May.

Geoff Sessions and the Deep State

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Paul Mirengoff, a deep state #NeverTrumper, discusses the American Attorney General in a post with a quite revealing title: In Praise of Geoff Sessions. Here are the two sides from the comments to the post, with my own view expressed by the first.

I think Trump was expecting Sessions to clear out the swamp at the DOJ. Instead he seem unwilling to do and is letting leftist/D-oriented careerist carry on. I think Trump is surprised that Sessions, an early supporter of his, has turned out to be so timid/meek in dealing with he swamp. I think those of us who are not lawyers are also less willing to give those who are the benefit of the doubt when they are in positions of public trust. Since Sessions won’t deal with the swamp in any meaningful way, Trump should fire his ass and all the top officials in the DOJ and any swamp-inclined US Attorneys. Of course, the GOP senator types (mostly more lawyers) are hinting at temper tantrums if he does so. F*ck them too. Trump only has two (maybe 6 years) left to get things done. He needs to get moving. If this means he loses more votes. So be it, Let the GOPe self-identify and deal with the electoral fallout. The US is running out of time.

This is the benefit of the doubt perspective:

I’m in the camp that thinks Sessions is doing the President’s most important work: draining the swamp.

The media gets so excited when Trump tweets something that appears to indicate displeasure with the Attorney General.

But I think there are basically two kinds of Trump-haters that matter here.

The first is the rank-and-file believer who maintains a position of influence in the democratic party or the so-called mainstream media. These persons are thoroughly convinced that Trump is just dumb. These people have bought in, completely, to the idea that Trump doesn’t even factor into his own success. They have embraced the totally irrational narrative that the bigotry of tens of millions of hateful morons elevated this incompetent boob to the single most powerful post on the planet.

The second type of Trump-hater runs the first like assets in a foreign theater. These are people who fear the President. Not because he is seen as an idiot undeserving of the awesome powers of the presidency, but because they recognize that he doesn’t have anything invested in the status quo which keeps them in business. They know that his promises to drain the swamp are manifestly different than those made by Nancy Pelosi, circa 2005, because Pelosi’s rhetoric merely disguised her own role in leveraging accumulated institutional power against the interests of the People, at the expense of the People.

The “establishment” ruling class has no effective means of controlling Trump because he played no part in the willful sacrifice of American citizens’ interests for his own gain over the course of the last 40 -50 years, which means he has no compelling reason to keep their secrets or allow them to continue their exploitation of We The People.

Donald Trump represents a very real threat to their methodically conceived permanent power structures.

The first type of Trump-hater is too blinded by their conviction that Trump is stupid to realize what kind of danger he poses to the second group’s near-hegemonic grip on power.

So, it is literally inconceivable to these witless ideological foot-soldiers that Trump could be trying to accomplish something specific through his tweets that seemingly put him in conflict with his Attorney General. To them, it makes sense that Trump is just lashing out at this honorable man for being an honorable man — which to them means staying on the sidelines and refusing to protect the President.

However, that second type of Trump-hater are certainly well aware that Sessions is actively building cases against their top tier operatives — and they are using the media’s naive perception of and intense focus on Trump’s tweets to buy time by feeding into the false notion that these tweets are a sign of desperation. Meanwhile, Sessions is quietly securing testimony and evidence of widespread corruption throughout the federal government.

I think Sessions will end up being a hero in all this. I think the star witnesses will be Bill Priestap, Lisa Page, Sally Yates, Bruce Ohr, and Lanny Davis.

I also think Rosenstein, Stzrok, McCabe, and Simpson will be paraded around in very public perp-walks.

Maybe I’m wrong though. Maybe Sessions really is so afraid and/or incompetent that he’s just sitting around waiting to see how this all shakes out, hoping to remain unsullied by Mueller’s illegal probe…

What i see, however, leaves me reasonably sure that Sessions and Trump are working closely together. The Twitter rantings targeting the AG look suspiciously like theater to me. Bait for CNN and WaPo to sink their teeth into and keep them preoccupied while the real strategy plays out beyond the medias myopic obsession with their hallucinations of “collusion.”

The first breed of Trump-hater is being played by both sides. The second is in full blown panic, losing sleep over what Sessions knows and when he’s coming for them…

Personally no one on the DS side seems to be losing sleep to me, and this is all ridiculously distracting. And it is this of itself that could turn the House and even the Senate in November. I trust the President’s judgement on what he can and cannot do, but if he had a free hand, there is little doubt that Sessions would be out the door within minutes.

Workers need a pay rise and are therefore determined never to get one

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Two kinds of contrary stories, but only contrary if you are not part of the cargo cult mentality of the left. Then we can have higher real incomes and at the very same time throw over the cheapest energy sources available to us. First we have this: ‘Australia needs a pay rise’: Change the Rules volunteers reach out to thousands in door knock campaign.

Union members are volunteering to conduct thousands of conversations with Australians about the desperate need for pay rises during a national door knock in September.

Over two weekends, door knocks and market stalls will be held in more than 40 locations, covering Queensland, NSW, the ACT, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia.

Volunteers will be hearing people’s concerns about the lack of fair pay rises under the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison Government, and talking about the union movement’s plan to change the rules so people can get fair pay rises that keep pace with the cost of living.

And then there’s this: $15b European trade deal doomed if Australia dodges Paris pledge.

The Coalition’s internal climate war risks damaging the economy after Europe declared it would reject a $15 billion trade deal with Australia unless the Morrison government keeps its pledge to cut pollution under the Paris accord….

Labor’s climate change and energy spokesman Mark Butler said the government had no emissions reduction plan and would fail to meet its Paris goal.

“The Prime Minister might think he can get away with [failing to cut emissions] domestically, but it is clear it will not be accepted by our international trading partners, who rightly have an expectation the Australian government will act to deliver on our international obligations,” he said.

I used to think they said all those things just because there are people stupid enough to take all this on board without seeing the problem. Now I think they are just this stupid themselves. But at least The Coalition are redeeming themselves. Now they have to get the rest of the country to see the point, or at least 51%. Not really such a big ask and there’s still plenty of time to do it.

How to become a war criminal in the modern world

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Learn how and more from this: The sparkling waters of the West Bank.

SodaStream, as you probably know, is a device for making sparkling water at home — no plastic bottles to schlep and then throw away or send for recycling.

Its CEO, Daniel Birnbaum, an Israeli entrepreneur, a visionary who came up with a wild idea: Open a factory on the West Bank and hire Palestinians. Give them “Israeli wages” which are about four times higher than the average in the territories. Provide them and their extended families with medical insurance, a benefit few employers in the West Bank provide.

Also hire Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews and let them all work together, learn about each other, maybe develop mutual respect and even friendships. What an achievement it would be if the experiment succeeded!

And succeed it did. By 2014, with more than 500 workers, SodaStream was among the largest private employers on the West Bank.

Unsurprisingly, champions of the Palestinian cause denounced Mr. Birnbaum as anti-Palestinian. In particular, advocates for BDS (the campaign to de-legitimize and demonize Israel through boycotts, divestments and sanctions) accused him of stealing Palestinian land, profiting from the “occupation” and exploiting Palestinian workers.

“Suddenly,” Mr. Birnbaum recounted to me over dinner in Tel Aviv three years ago, “I’m a walking war criminal!”

And now read it all. It should be filled with lessons about possibilities that are now afoot, but no chance of that in the world as it is.

Australia in the climate change news

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This would certainly be a change. This is how our change of government is being seen from the UK.

GWPF Newsletter 30/08/18
Australian Govt Promises To Abandon Green Subsidies & Ignore Climate Targets
Climate Change Action Off The Agenda Under Morrison Government
Australian’s new Energy Minister Angus Taylor has unveiled a new energy policy focused exclusively on reducing electricity prices, in a strong signal the Morrison government will abandon all efforts to lower carbon emissions. The move comes a week after the issue of climate change precipitated the ousting of former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.  —The New Daily, 30 August 2018

 

Renewable energy subsidies and emission-reduction targets will be replaced with a focus on lowering electricity prices under the Morrison government. New Energy Minister Angus Taylor said the federal energy policy has been “a mess” and says the fact prices have soared while blackouts persist means something has “gone terribly wrong”. The Daily Telegraph understands emission-reduction will also play no future role in ­energy policy. —The Daily Telegraph, 30 August 2018

The new Prime Minister — who took a lump of coal into parliament and accused Labor of “coalaphobia” — is under pressure from colleagues to support clean-coal technology. Whether it’s marginal seats in Queensland, western Sydney or Victoria, the message is clear: voters want action on energy prices, not emissions targets. –Geoff Chambers,The Australian, 28 August 2018