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Women’s oppression in the modern West

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.

 

Music and the Struggle for the Soul of the West

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.

How to become a war criminal in the modern world

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.

The devil’s not just in the detail

A very interesting post: Night of the Demon. Here’s the premise:

Auxiliary Bishop of Los Angeles Robert Barron has a theory.  He suggests that the Church — and perhaps the world at large — is struggling not just against a few disorganized human beings but something more powerful: an evolving, self-programming, viral “demonic element” that is almost impossible to destroy.  When Barron says the devil he means just that:

When I was going through school, the devil was presented to us as a myth, a literary device, a symbolic manner of signaling the presence of evil in the world. I will admit to internalizing this view and largely losing my sense of the devil as a real spiritual person. What shook my agnosticism in regard to the evil one was the clerical sex abuse scandal of the nineties and the early aughts. I say this because that awful crisis just seemed too thought-through, too well-coordinated, to be simply the result of chance or wicked human choice.

I’ve always thought that the Zoroastrians were onto something about the physical presence of evil in the world. But the truly difficult part is to know just which side one is on oneself.

I encourage you to read the entire article and then to continue with the comments as well.

Freedom of speech in Airstrip One

There was a time before the first of the socialist states came into existence when there might have been some lame excuse not to know how fanatically repressive such regimes are. There are no excuses today. In such regimes, it is as certain as certain can be that you have no freedoms and they impoverish you as well. Here is a story that remains accessible to anyone interested, but which for all too many, have no interest in learning from the past: Soviet censorship: How did the USSR control the public?

Yet it’s not as if they are not learning from history. They are. What they learn is that even the shallowest losers in a free society can get to the top and have untold wealth and power if they can fool just enough of the population for just long enough to get their hands on the levers of state. Meanwhile, there are fools aplenty willing to give them the power to set up their tyrannical regimes, from which there is no force within the regime that can bring deliverance.

My agenda for our new government

This is the agenda for the new government.

1) Balanced Budgets, Easing of Business Regulations and a Sharp Reduction in Public Spending

Modern macro, that teaches that spending, of itself, is the basis for economic growth, higher employment and rising wages is not just wrong, but if you think about it, cannot possibly be true. Spending on non-value-adding projects lowers real incomes and uses up our capital base in producing output with less value than the resources that have been used up. Governments should of course continue to offer welfare, but the fact that not everything can be afforded should be at the very forefront of every policy declaration. The fact of the matter is that governments are very poor at choosing which projects to back and their management of any form of investment is wildly profligate. The greater the level of public sector “investment” the more slowly the economy will grow and the slower the improvement in public welfare and real earnings.

2) Not Just Forget About Paris but there should be an Active Return to Fossil Fuels and Perhaps Even the Introduction of Nuclear Power

Climate change is a theory with very little evidence of its validity. To base our power generation on some madcap idea that we will be saving the planet at some unknown date in the future by savaging our industry, raising the cost of production in Australia and lowering our standard of living is a form of masochistic economic suicide that should be ended right now.

3) Sharp Reduction Migration Numbers

Irrespective of where migrants may originate, we cannot keep bringing in the numbers we are importing, even if every one of them began to work the day they arrived. Our infrastructure is not designed for the massive numbers who are coming to Australia to share in our wealth. It is with certainty that during the short- to medium-term, migrants reduce our per capital standard of living. We have a very tiny number of jobs that cannot be filled domestically by our existing population, and even then the price mechanism will efficiently sort out where our labour should go, and will do this by raising real wages. Migrant numbers keep real wage growth low, partly because of the competition provided by these additional numbers, and partly because migrants use up resources that they have not themselves contributed to the production of themselves.

4) Migration including the Taking of Refugees Must be Based on Cultural Compatibility of Potential Migrants with our Existing Population

Not every person who wishes to come to Australia has either the skill base to join our workforce or the cultural traits that will allow them to fit into out communities, even assuming that is what they wish to do. The international evidence of cultural incompatibilities is overwhelming. So is the domestic evidence.

5) Continue to Stop the Boats

This is The Coalition’s big strength. Not only must this continue, but more pressure must be put on Labor to stake out what they would do. You cannot trust the ALP on this, and this needs to be a big part of what is done to alert the community to the differences between the political philosophies of our major parties. Nor is it even a sign of compassion on their part. They do this to bring in voting numbers. It is political power that is sought and nothing else.

6) Defence of Western Civilisation

We are part of Western Civilisation, whose major traits include a degree of tolerance found in no other civilisation on the planet. We are a community that evolves through innovation and open discussion of which free speech is only one element but an essential one. We should make sure everyone who lives in our community understands and values the heritage from which the West has risen.

There is more to it than this, but this is where they should start.

Some people just can’t take a joke

From The Mail Online:

EXCLUSIVE: Jeremy Corbyn said British ‘Zionists’ have ‘no sense of English irony despite having lived here all their lives’ and ‘need a lesson’, while giving speech alongside Islamic extremists at a conference publicised by Hamas’ military wing

  • The comments were made when Corbyn  spoke at a 2013 conference advertised by the propaganda website of Hamas’ military wing
  • Corbyn said that British ‘Zionists’ didn’t understand ‘English irony’
  • He added: ‘They needed two lessons, which we could perhaps help them with’
  • Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, said: ‘This shows the reality of what Jeremy Corbyn thinks of Jews’

And then from Drudge:

President Tweet on SAfrican Land Seizure Draws Govt’s Ire…
MALEMA: ‘Only death will stop us’…
SAYS ‘JEWS’ TRAINING RIGHT-WING SNIPERS…