Let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
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A very interesting article in the New York Times by Thomas Fuller, entitled "San Francisco Asks: Where Have All the Children Gone?" reveals a developing problem for many of the large urban centers in the United States – a shrinking number of children.
The article suggests that the primary reason for the decrease in the number of households with children between birth and age eighteen is the cost of living – particularly the cost of housing. The article finds that most new housing construction in San Francisco is of studios and one bedroom apartments.
While the cost of living may be one factor, I propose that it is not the only factor. I would also argue that it is not the primary factor. The other factors are not as self-congratulatory as saying that San Francisco attracts and caters to more affluent persons.
Abortion. Abortion is one reason that only thirteen percent (112,450) of the total population of San Francisco (865,000) is between birth and age eighteen. Throughout the United States since Roe v. Wade, there have been approximately four million births every year. The average number of abortions during the same period is approximately one million per year. Twenty percent of the population is eliminated by abortion per year.
Assuming that San Francisco’s abortion rate is equivalent to the rate across the United States, without abortion the number of children would increase to fifteen to sixteen percent (15%-16%). That is between 17,300 and 26,000 children.
Worldview. San Francisco is known for and boasts of its liberal worldview. It is considered one of the top ten liberal locations in the United States. Such a liberal worldview, I argue, is not family-friendly. Parents in general find San Francisco a positive location for raising children.
Fertility Gap. Studies have shown that there is a fertility gap between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives tend to have more children. One study that corrected for other variables found that conservative households have twenty percent more children than liberal households.
Since San Francisco tends to attract and retain residents with more liberal views, this fertility gap certainly has an impact on the number of children in the city. If San Francisco would have in some way made an attempt to accommodate conservatives, the number of children would have increased by another twenty percent (20%).
As it is, the City of San Francisco has reaped what it has sown. Instead of having 157,430 children in the city, it now has 112,450 – that is, approximately thirty schools!
If “children are our future,” what is the future of San Francisco?
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by Ben Shapiro Article with Video
In November 1938, Gandhi wrote about what Jews should do to resist Nazi tyranny. He explained, “If I were a Jew born in Germany and earned my livelihood there, I would claim Germany as my home even as the tallest gentile German might, and challenge him to shoot me or cast me in the dungeon…The Jews of Germany can offer Satyagraha under infinitely better auspices than the Indians of South Africa.” Even after the horrors of the Holocaust were widely known, in 1946, Gandhi stated, “Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jew should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife….It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany.”
Today, UN Ambassador Samantha Power, who literally wrote the book on American inaction during foreign genocides, attempted to use Gandhi tactics on Russia, Syria, and Iran. She exclaimed, “Are you truly incapable of shame? Is there literally nothing that can shame you? Is there no act of barbarism against civilians, no execution of a child that gets under your skin?”
So what is Power even talking about?
Here’s the sad truth about shame: it only works on people who have a moral compass. You cannot shame a Hitler; that’s why Gandhi was wrong. You cannot shame a Putin or an Assad or the mullahs. They don’t see anything wrong in murdering innocents to advance their political agenda. Those innocents aren’t innocent, in their view, so long as they’re standing in the way.Evil people aren’t stopped by virtue signaling. They’re stopped with action. But the Obama administration is so used to shaming its domestic political enemies into kowtowing that they think they can apply the same tactics on foreign policy.
Instead, they’ve actually helped breed shamelessness domestically, too. The overuse of political shame has caused opponents to react with brazen shamelessness – we’re not going to be told what to do, and if you think we’re humiliated, you’re dead wrong. Donald Trump’s rise is a symptom of that fact. Shame, overused, becomes useless – it actually breeds lack of shame.
And it breeds new alliances, as shameless people sympathize with one another. Trump can look at Obama and point out that Obama’s a hypocrite, attempting to shame Putin while simultaneously allying with him. Why not just skip the shame altogether? Ironically, Obama’s hashtag diplomacy and tacit apathy has only bred outright alliance with dictators, not the opposition necessary to stop them.
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by Dennis Prager Article
There are many recent developments in the godless West. To name a few:
--The Supreme Court of Italy last week ruled that public masturbation is legal (except in front of minors).
--The New York City Council voted in May that public urination is not a criminal act.
--The San Francisco City Council decided, by one vote, to continue the city's ban on public nudity -- not, of course, on the grounds of "decency" but on the grounds of public health. Since that can easily be resolved by use of a towel on public benches and chairs, it is only a matter of time, probably a couple of years, before people will be permitted to walk around naked in San Francisco.
--A few weeks ago, teachers in Charlotte, North Carolina, were instructed not to refer to their elementary school students as "boys and girls" but as "students" and "scholars." The reasoning is presumably for inclusivity -- there may be a student who has no gender identity -- and that adults should not impose a gender identity on young people.
--In a New York Times op-ed column, a professor of philosophy noted his shock at learning that most young Americans do not believe that moral truths exist. They are incapable of asserting that anything, including killing for fun, is wrong beyond personal opinion.
These are all inevitable consequences of the death of belief in God and Judeo-Christian values, and of the Bible as society's primary moral reference work.
The West has been in moral decline since World War I, the calamity that led to World War II and the death of national identity and Christianity in most of Europe.
There has always been one exception: the United States. But now that is ending. The seeds of America's decline have been sown since the beginning of the 20th century, and they came to fruition with the post-World War II generation, the baby boomers.
Radical and aggressive secularism and atheism have replaced religion in virtually every school and throughout American public life.
We have gone from President Abraham Lincoln reading the Bible every day to Alaska Airlines feeling forced to stop passing out prayer cards with meals. In a hundred years, we've gone from near-total biblical literacy to near-total biblical illiteracy. One wonders whether half of America's college seniors could correctly identify Cain and Abel, or whether more than 1 in 10 Americans could cite the Ten Commandments. We have gone from President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaiming the need to save "Christian civilization" in World War II speeches to a virtual ban on American presidents mentioning the word "Christianity." And, as is widely noted, Americans are no longer supposed to wish strangers "merry Christmas," and they must refer to a Christmas party as a "holiday party."
Similarly, the European Union constitution never mentions Christianity, despite the fact that it was Christianity that formed Europe.
The prices that we Americans and Europeans are paying for creating the first godless societies in recorded history amount to civilizational suicide. Boys and girls are not to be referred to as boys and girls; Western elites dismiss national identity as protofascism; the belief that moral truth exists has been destroyed and replaced by feelings and opinions; fewer people are marrying; and more people live alone than at any time in American history.
Western European countries have become empty, soulless places. They are pretty and appear materially secure (for now), but they stand for almost nothing (except "multiculturalism" and "tolerance"). They have replaced a Jewish population that overwhelmingly wanted to assimilate with a Muslim population that does not want to. And nearly all European countries are headed to Greece-like insolvency as fewer and fewer workers pay enough in taxes to support those who collect welfare, and as tensions with their Muslim inhabitants increase.
But the good news is that now, beginning with Italy and New York, citizens can watch each other masturbate or urinate in public.
There is no way to prove that God exists. But what is provable is what happens when societies stop believing in God: They commit suicide.
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Churches in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts have grave concerns about a new anti-discrimination law that could force congregations to accommodate the transgender community – under the threat of fines and jail time.
The law, which goes into effect in October, does not specifically mention churches or other houses of worship. However, the attorney general, along with the government commission assigned to enforce the law, have a different point of view.
Attorney General Maura Healey wrote that places of public accommodation include: “auditoriums, convention centers, lecture halls, houses of worship, and other places of public gathering.”
The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, the commission responsible for enforcing the anti-discrimination law, reinforced that interpretation in a document titled, “Gender Identity Guidance.”
“Even a church could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public,” the document states. “All persons, regardless of gender identity, shall have the right to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities and privileges of any place of public accommodation.”
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by David Limbaugh Article
Remember when the left passionately insisted that public schools distribute free condoms to students on the bizarre theory that they were going to have sex anyway and we might as well make it safe? Well, the results are in, and the left isn't looking too great.
When this nation was first experiencing the AIDS scare, liberals were adamant that we had to saturate the culture with condoms for teens to prevent the spread of the deadly disease. They ignored warnings that this massive giveaway program would publicly sanction and, thus, encourage teen promiscuity. They rejected reports that condoms are hardly fail-safe in preventing the spread of this disease.
They were not about to be deterred by such arguments because their single-minded focus was to distribute these condoms. They were certainly not moved by the moral argument that making condoms more available and showing students how to use them would increase sex.
The free-sex left has never been too concerned about the proliferation of teenage sex, which is one reason it irrationally opposes abstinence programs, even as part of a broader sex education curriculum. Who are we to judge whether kids have sex? Sex, after all, feels good, and feeling good is the endgame in our pursuit of happiness. Besides, if pregnancy occurs, it's no big deal. The kids can just have an abortion, which, to the left, is a morally neutral act.
But can you imagine how cynical and hardened of heart you would have to be to be indifferent to the distribution of thousands of condoms to students -- from nurses, counselors and vending machines -- in school districts all over the country?
How about the argument that increasing (even "protected") sex would increase pregnancies and also the spread of HIV? Don't be silly. At the time, liberals cited isolated, localized studies concluding that increasing the availability of condoms to students would not increase sex -- and certainly not pregnancy. They pooh-poohed valid concerns that condoms are not wholly reliable in preventing the transmission of the virus. But those truly interested in the science wouldn't have relied on such a ridiculously small sampling of schools.
Though the left boasts about its overarching deference to science and empirical evidence, the reality is that for the left, politics trumps science. Like trial advocates, liberals present only evidence that supports their policy goal.
When their minds are set on a goal, dissenters must be passed over and even attacked. For example, with abortion on demand, evidence that abortion might cause physical and emotional damage to women must be ignored. In a classic case of projection, they charge anyone who cites such evidence with being motivated purely by politics.
The same thing is true with respect to their man-made global warming advocacy. They use fact-starved computer models to "prove" that dangerous warming is occurring. They distort surveys to legitimize their theories -- such as their claim that vast majorities of scientists subscribe to their conclusions, willfully ignoring the thousands of scientists who disagree and all evidence that contradicts their theories.
Indeed, the left usually won't give an inch when confronted with evidence that scientists in their camp have manufactured and doctored evidence and that scientists are pressured by their peers and grant monies to reach the "correct" conclusion. As they subscribe to an ends-justify-the-means philosophy, they'll unapologetically dismiss such evidence and say it doesn't matter anyway -- because there is a scientific consensus on the question, so any distortion of the evidence is irrelevant. Never mind that there is no such consensus, and never mind that the very reason they manipulated their data is that the actual data didn't support their theories.
As is so often the case with liberals, their real motives go beyond their public pronouncements. They refuse to consider information that counters their narrative because they believe that any limitation on their various crusades would produce a slippery slope that would ultimately result in the defeat of their goal. That's why many liberals are so extreme on abortion that they even oppose the outlawing of partial-birth abortion. They substitute propaganda for rational argument and deceive the public about their true intentions, saying, for example, that they want to make abortion "safe, legal and rare" when they devote tireless hours ensuring that abortion is anything but rare.
Every once in a while, however, the left just can't hide from the reality. A recently published study by the National Bureau of Economic Research reveals clear evidence that access to condoms in schools leads to a 10 percent increase in teen pregnancy and a rise in sexually transmitted diseases. Unlike the bogus studies the left relied on, this one involved thousands of schools.
Liberals are already tying themselves in pretzels to discredit this report, but once again, conservatives are vindicated. Liberals arrogantly depict conservatives as reality-challenged, but here again, that is nothing but projection from those who never let reality get in the way of their agenda.
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by Christine Rousselle Article
Father's Day marked a grim milestone for Chicago, as the city recorded its 300th homicide of 2016. A total of 13 people were killed and 43 were injured in shootings over the weekend.
Of Chicago's 300 homicides this year, more than 200 of them have been from firearms. About 1,800 people have been shot this year in Chicago.
The city recorded its 300th homicide this weekend and went on to record six others over a 60-hour period that saw 56 people shot, 13 fatally, from Friday afternoon through early Monday morning.
So far this year, about 1,800 people have been shot across the city and more than 200 of those wounded have died of their wounds, according to records kept by the Chicago Tribune. A total of 306 people have been killed this year by shooting, stabbing or other means, Tribune records show.
In late May, it was revealed that shootings are up by more than 50 percent in Chicago since last year. Six people were killed over Memorial Day Weekend.
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by John Wesley Slider
The tragic events of Orlando are a call to action. We should be outraged by an act of war against any Americans, because an attack against one American is morally an attack against all Americans.
The emotions of the moment spark a need within all of us to do something. These emotions,however, do not validate doing anything or some things. Some reactions may only fill our need to do something. Many reactions simply help us feel good. Some reactions are designed to advance specific political agenda.
We should not do anything in order to do something. We should do something that effectively addresses this particular event and more importantly helps to avoid events such as these in the future.
One of the more shameful, agenda driven, responses that float quickly to the surface is the call for more gun control or greater restrictions on possession of guns. This response certainly makes some feel better – feel as if we are doing something; but does this response really accomplish what we need – increase the safety of all Americans.
Would banning guns have avoided the tragedy at the night club in Orlando? The answer is not only “No;” but the full answer is that banning guns did not work. According to the 2016 Florida Statutes, Title XLVI, Chapter 790, the night club in Orlando was a “gun free zone.” The weapons used in the shootings were illegal to possess (even more to use) in the night club. It should be noted that the gunman was finally stopped by the legal use of a legal weapons by police officers. Should we then ask, “How many lives would have been saved if one person had been in possession of a weapon and used it effectively against the gunman?”
The recent horrific event in Orlando is defined as a mass public shooting. A mass public shooting is understood to be a multiple-homicide incident in which four or more victims, not including the perpetrator, are killed with firearms in one or more proximate locations and not connected to an underlying crime or dispute over sovereignty.
The Los Angeles Times has listed the deadliest U.S. mass shootings between 1984 and 2016 in an article on June 12, 2016. All ten of these events were in gun free buildings or zones.
Gun free zones – no matter how small or large – do not discourage persons from initiating a mass public shooting. One could legitimately conclude that gun free zones actually encourage mass public shootings by presenting soft targets to potential shooters.
Proponents of aggressive gun control legislation point to European countries as examples of how tighter laws can lower the death rates attributed to mass public shootings. The statistics do not support this assertion (see Table 1):
Even if one puts it in terms of the frequency of public mass shootings and not the death rates – as President Obama carefully says – the assertion is still not supported (see Table 2):
Another “feel good” suggestion is to ban assault weapons. There is no current legal definition of an assault weapon. Many persons think that an assault weapon has a particular look (see below). Others confuse the military definition of an assault rifle with an assault weapon. In military terms an assault rifle is a select-fire rifle that uses an intermediate cartridge and a detachable magazine. The shooter the horror in Orlando used an AR-15 which is NOT a select-fire rifle by military definition.
I am not familiar with the interior of the night club in Orlando, but my first thought when I heard about the shooters choice of weapon was that tactically it was an amateur's choice. I am familiar with the military version of the AR-15 (the M-16 which has select-fire). In close quarters the semi-automatic rifle would have been cumbersome and slow at best.
Some will go so far as to suggest that all firearms should be confiscated. The argument goes that if even one life is saved then it is worth violating the constitution.
This argument based on the standard of “if even one life is saved” breaks down very quickly. First, one must ask, “Where else does our society use this standard?” If we were to apply this standard to every part of society we would quickly cease to function.
One could argue that confiscation of all automobiles would easily reach that standard. In fact, not only is the possession of an automobile not a constitutionally protected right, but a person is more likely to be killed by a car than by a rifle or a handgun. It is worth noting that more cars are used illegally at a given moment than are rifles or handguns.
A ban on allowing any immigration of Muslims is morally and constitutionally repugnant, but it too would reach the standard of “if even one life is saved.” Would it be worth such a violation of the constitution if only one life could be saved?
So, what should we do?
We should not do anything. We should do something that will decrease the number of persons who are killed in mass public shootings and the frequency of such shootings.
These suggestions may be a start.
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Too many social problems are conceived of in terms of what "we" can do for "them." After decades of massive expansions of the welfare state, the answer seems to range from "not very much" to "making matters worse."
Undaunted, people in a number of countries are coming up with new proposals that are variations on the theme of government-provided income -- which amounts to relieving people from personal responsibility.
Yet even some conservatives and libertarians are coming up with proposals for more "efficient" versions of the welfare state -- namely direct cash grants for life to virtually all adults, instead of the current hodgepodge of overlapping bureaucratic programs.
Charles Murray recognizes that "some people will idle away their lives" under his proposal. "But that is already a problem," he says, and therefore is no valid objection to replacing the current welfare state with a less costly alternative.
Everyone recognizes that there are some people unable to provide for their own survival -- infants and the severely disabled, among others. But providing for such people is wholly different from a blanket guarantee for everybody that they need not lift a finger to feed, clothe or shelter themselves.
The financial cost of providing such a guarantee, though huge, is not the worst of the problems. The history of what has actually happened in times and places where people were relieved from the challenge of survival by windfall gains is not encouraging.
In both England and the United States, the massive expansion of the welfare state since the 1960s has been accompanied by a vast expansion in the amount of crime, violence, drug addiction, fatherless children and other signs of social degeneration.
Maybe that was just coincidence. But there have been too many coincidences in too many very different times and places where people were relieved from the challenge of survival by windfall gains of one sort or another.
In 16th and 17th century Spain -- its "golden age" -- the windfall gain was gold and silver looted by the ton from Spanish colonies in the Western Hemisphere. This enabled Spain to survive without having to develop the skills, the sciences or the work ethic of other countries in Western Europe.
Spain could buy what it wanted from other nations with all the gold and silver taken from its colonies. As a Spaniard of that era proudly put it, "Everyone serves Spain and Spain serves no one."
What this meant in practical terms was that other countries developed the skills, the knowledge, the self-discipline and other forms of human capital that Spain did not have to develop, since it could receive the tangible products of this human capital from other countries.
But once the windfall gains from its colonies were gone, Spain became, and remained, one of the poorest countries in Western Europe. Worse, the disdainful attitudes toward productive work that developed during the centuries of Spain's "golden age" became a negative legacy to future generations, in both Spain itself and in its overseas offshoot societies in Latin America.
In Saudi Arabia today, the great windfall gain is its vast petroleum reserve. This has spawned both a fabulously wealthy ruling elite and a heavily subsidized general population in which many have become disdainful of work. The net result has been a work force in which foreigners literally outnumber Saudis.
Some welfare states' windfall gains have enabled a large segment of their own citizens to live in subsidized idleness while many jobs stigmatized as "menial" are taken over by foreigners. Often these initially poor foreigners rise up the economic scale, while the subsidized domestic poor fail to rise.
Do we really want more of that?
British historian Arnold Toynbee proposed the "challenge and response" thesis that human beings advance when there are challenges they must meet. The welfare state removes challenges -- and has produced many social retrogressions.
Those with the welfare state vision often want to remove challenges even from games by getting rid of winning and losing. That is consistent with their overall assumptions about life. But it seems very inconsistent for conservatives and libertarians to support plans whose net effect would be to reduce the inherent challenges of life for still more people.
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Among the many disturbing signs of our times are conservatives and libertarians of high intelligence and high principles who are advocating government programs that relieve people of the necessity of working to provide their own livelihoods.
Generations ago, both religious people and socialists were agreed on the proposition that "he who does not work, neither shall he eat." Both would come to the aid of those unable to work. But the idea that people who simply choose not to work should be supported by money taken from those who are working was rejected across the ideological spectrum.
How we got to the present situation is a long story, but the painful fact is that we are here now. Among the leading minds of our times, including Charles Murray today and the late and great Milton Friedman earlier, there have been proposals for ways of subsidizing the poor without the suffocating distortions of the government's welfare state bureaucracy.
Professor Friedman's plan for a negative income tax to help the poor has already been put into practice. But, contrary to his intention to have this replace the welfare state bureaucracy, it has been simply tacked on to all the many other government programs, instead of replacing them.
It is not inevitable that the same thing will happen to Charles Murray's plan, but I would bet the rent money that there would be the same end result.
Just what specific problem is so dire as to cause some conservatives and libertarians to propose that the government come to the rescue by giving every adult money to live on without working?
Poverty? "Poverty" today means whatever government statisticians in Washington say it means -- no more and no less. Most Americans living below the official poverty line today have central air-conditioning, cable television for multiple TV sets, own at least one motor vehicle, and have many other amenities that most of the human race never had for most of its existence.
Most Americans did not have central air-conditioning or cable television as recently as the 1980s. A scholar who spent years studying Latin America has called the poverty line in America the upper middle class in Mexico.
Low-income neighborhoods suffer far more from social degeneration, including high rates of crime and violence, than from material deprivation.
Welfare state guarantees of not having to work, however the particular policies are applied, are not a solution. Relieving people of personal responsibility for their own lives, however it is done, is a major part of the problem.
Before there can be a welfare state in a democratic country, there must first be a welfare state vision that becomes sufficiently pervasive to allow a welfare state to be created. That vision, in which people are "entitled" to what others have produced, is at the heart of the social degeneration that can be traced back to the 1960s.
Teenage pregnancies, venereal diseases, dependency on government and murder rates were all going down during the much disdained 1950s. All reversed and shot up as the welfare state, and the social vision behind the welfare state, took over in the 1960s.
That vision featured non-judgmental rewards and non-judgmental leniency toward counterproductive behavior, whether crime or irresponsible sex and its consequences. But relieving people from the responsibilities and challenges of life is doing them no favor. Nor is it a favor to society at large.
American society has become more polarized under the welfare state vision. Nor is it hard to see why. If we are all "entitled" to benefits, just by being present, why are some entitled to so little while others have so much?
In an entitlement context, all sorts of "gaps" and "disparities" automatically become "inequities," and a reason for lashing out at others, instead of improving yourself. Only in a society in which rewards are based on contributions is there any reasonable reply to the question as to why Bill Gates has so much and others so little.
The track record of divorcing personal rewards from personal contributions hardly justifies more of the same, even when it is in a more sophisticated form. Sophisticated social disaster is still disaster -- and we already have too much of that.
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by Leah Barkoukis Article
After seeing the Left’s reaction to Cecil the Lion’s death, it was only predictable that similar outrage would ensue over Harambe the gorilla's shooting. And now, we have the numbers to prove it.
Via MRC’s Katie Yoder:
Over the long weekend, 69 citizens were shot across Chicago. At the same time, a gorilla named Harambe was shot after a toddler fell into the animal’s enclosure at the Cincinnati Zoo. ABC, CBS and NBC spent 54 times more on the death of one gorilla than they did on the shootings (and, in some cases, death) of human beings in Chicago.
Since the death of Harambe the gorilla on Saturday, the three networks have dedicated a total of 55 minutes and 7 seconds to the story during their morning and evening news shows. […]
In contrast, ABC and CBS offered just 1 minute, 1 second to the Chicago shootings. NBC couldn’t spare even one second.
We saw a similar pattern in September when the big three networks spent more time covering the birth of baby pandas than the Center for Medical Progress’ expose of Planned Parenthood selling aborted baby parts.
To the mainstream media, animal lives matter. People’s lives, however, not so much.
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by Christine Rousselle Article
Five Morons Maroon 5 has canceled their upcoming shows in Charlotte and Raleigh in response to North Carolina's "bathroom bill." In a statement released to their website, the band explained that they feel as though canceling the shows is the "morally right" thing to do.
We have announced that we will be canceling our upcoming shows in Charlotte and Raleigh, North Carolina because of the recent passage of the HB2 legislation. This was a difficult decision for us to make as a band. We don’t want to penalize our fans in North Carolina by not performing for them, but in the end it comes down to what we feel is morally right.
Which is curious, because prior to their American tour, Maroon 5 will be playing in several European countries--Russia, Georgia, Turkey, Poland, and Romania, among others--that have very questionable records on LGBT rights. According to ILGA-Europe, Russia is the second-worst country in Europe for gay rights, and Turkey isn't far behind. The majority of the shows on their European tour are in countries in the bottom half of IGLA-Europe's rankings.
If a band were serious about gay rights and equality, it doesn't make sense that they would play in countries where homosexuals are persecuted and jailed. Even with the "bathroom bill," LGBT persons living in North Carolina have far more rights than they do in Turkey or Russia. Maroon 5 jumping on the boycott bandwagon may be good PR for the group, but it's meaningless if they continue to perform in countries where LGBT rights are severely restricted.
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by Katie Pavlich Article
Over the past few weeks, there's been escalating controversy surrounding North Carolina's "bathroom bill," House Bill 2.
Here's the short version: North Carolina passed a state wide law requiring people to use restrooms in government buildings pertaining to their biological sex at birth. There is an allocation in the law for new, single-occupancy restrooms to be made available. Private businesses are able to make their own restroom policies. Transgender persons choose a restroom based on gender identification, not sex. The Justice Department told North Carolina their law violates civil rights on the basis of sex discrimination. North Carolina sued, saying sex, not gender, is defined in federal law and argued courts and Congress should clarify the Civil Rights Act surrounding the issue of gender identification. DOJ counter sued, asking a judge for an injunction.
So, that brings me to this story. A woman in North Dakota was thrown out of a Garth Brooks concert (do you have any idea how hard Garth Brooks tickets are to get?!) recently for using a men's bathroom before the show. Presumably, she used the bathroom because there was a short line and women's line is always much longer.
A woman who admitted to using the men's room at a Fargo, North Dakota, concert venue where country superstar Garth Brooks was playing over the weekend said she was unfairly booted because of her brazen bathroom etiquette.
Samantha Bergh told NBC affiliate KVLY that she only commandeered a commode in a FargoDome men's restroom because she was desperate.
"The women's line was a good 100-people long," she said Monday. "It was insanely long and there was no wait for the men's, so I just went into the men's.
But her potty behavior didn't sit well with management. A security guard and Fargo police escorted her and her husband out of the arena, Bergh said.
Under DOJ's standard, she should have said she identified as a man that day and everything would have been fine.
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by Matt Vespa Article
The Windy City experienced a bloody Mother’s Day weekend that left eight people dead and 43 wounded. The Chicago Tribune reported that it was the most violent weekend since September, with over 1,000 people being shot so far this year:
Mother’s Day weekend saw eight people killed and 43 wounded by gun violence in Chicago, the most violent weekend in the city since the end of September, according to an analysis of Tribune data.At least 1,225 people have been shot in Chicago this year as violence continues at a pace not seen in the city since the 1990s, according to data kept by Tribune and police.
This past weekend's shootings were spread across the city, from Roseland to the south to West Rogers Park to the north. Two people were shot on Chicago highways, including a 35-year-old man who died after being shot in the back on Lake Shore Drive.
The weekend’s youngest homicide victim was 16-year-old Nathan Hicks, who was shot in the chest as he stood on a sidewalk in East Garfield Park. The oldest was 58-year-old Andres Rivera, killed at his dinner table in Archer Heights when a bullet pierced the front door and hit him in the head, police said.
The city is on track to having a 500-homicide year. To make matters worse, the city’s overall socioeconomic fabric remains immensely segregated. Even neighborhoods that were integrated are beginning to re-segregate (via Chicago Sun-Times):
A century after the start of the Great Migration and 50 years after the Kerner Commission Report declared “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal,” a quarter of Chicago’s 77 communities remain as racially and socioeconomically segregated as ever and undeniably unequal, according to the Chicago Urban League.And that segregation is so deeply entrenched that even those neighborhoods that achieved racial diversity are moving toward re-segregation, say sociologists at American University who analyzed race and housing patterns in 10,000 neighborhoods in Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and New York.
“Residential segregation is a fundamental cause of disparities from education to employment and health. These systemic issues can no longer be ignored. The question before us should no longer be if, but how, the public and private sectors will be engaged in making investments that achieve equitable resources for all,” League President and CEO Shari Runner said.
Given the public relations nightmare that has ensnared the police department and the mayor’s office, don’t expect much change on these issues.
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Donald Trump, when asked, "Do you believe in punishment for abortion?" said, "There has to be some form of punishment." "For the woman?" asked MSNBC's Chris Matthews. "Yeah," said Trump. Hours later, Trump walked it back, and said: "The doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman would be held legally responsible, not the woman. The woman is a victim." But the bell was not to be un-rung.
Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Hillary Clinton pounced, tweeting: "Just when you thought it couldn't get worse. Horrific and telling." Conservatives blasted him just as fiercely for his "extremism." Jeanne Mancini, for example, president of the anti-abortion group March for Life's education and defense fund, said in a statement: "Women who choose abortion often do so in desperation and then deeply regret such a decision. No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion. This is against the very nature of what we are about."
No pro-lifer?
Pollsters, it turns out, rarely ask the question of who, in the event that abortion becomes illegal, should be punished. But in 2000, writes FiveThirtyEight's Leah Libresco, the Los Angeles Times did ask who should be punished for abortion if it becomes illegal.
Thirty-two percent said the doctor who performs an abortion. Although the question wasn't asked, 20 percent of the respondents volunteered the opinion that everybody involved should be punished (presumably this includes a woman). Ten percent said the woman who has the abortion.
And, according to Libresco, she asked 60 random pro-life activists attending the 2016 March for Life in Washington, D.C., what kind of punishments should be meted out for abortion and to whom. Half said doctors should be charged with murder. Fifteen percent said the woman should be charged with murder.
A pro-life blog called StandTrue pondered this moral quandary. In a piece called "What Would The Punishment Be If Abortion Were Illegal?" the author writes:
"When the woman in Texas drowned her five children several years ago, what was your thought on her punishment? Did you believe because she had some rough times at home she should be excused from what she did? The fact is, she killed her five children and had to answer to the law. While we might feel sorry for her emotional state, we must also want justice for the five children who were killed.
"In the same way, we must look at the children in the womb as equal in value as the children who were drowned and demand justice for them also. We can certainly feel empathy for what a woman might be going through, however, that cannot change the fact that she has broken the law and ended the life of her child. We know there is forgiveness is Christ, but justice must also be served. If we make a separate law and separate punishment for someone who has an abortion then we are saying that the child in the womb is somehow not as valuable (as) any other human person killed. If we say that intentionally killing one child is less of a crime (than) intentionally killing another child, then our whole argument for life is destroyed."
Meanwhile the left-wing abortion extremism expressed by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders gets a pass. After seven debates without the question ever coming up, Bret Baier, at the Fox Democratic town hall, asked Sanders and Clinton whether they support any restrictions on abortion. Sanders said, "It is wrong for the government to be telling a woman what to do with her own body." Clinton, though somewhat more nuanced, also offered no restrictions. In short, Clinton and Sanders answered "no" and "no."
This raises a question not asked of Sanders or Clinton. A jury convicted Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell of killing three babies born alive after abortions. In addition, he was convicted of 21 counts of violating Pennsylvania late-term abortion law. Do Clinton and Sanders believe that Gosnell was unfairly charged, that even an abortion committed past 24 weeks should not have been a crime?
In fact, most Americans, while opposing a total ban on abortion, find late-term abortion morally objectionable and want it outlawed. A Gallup poll in December 2012 found that 62 percent of respondents believed "abortion should generally be ... illegal in the second three months of pregnancy," and 80 percent said it should be "illegal in the last three months of pregnancy."
In 2008, Sen. Barack Obama was nonchalant in explaining his pro-choice position: "If (Sasha and Malia) make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby." One woman in the audience later begged him to "stop these abortions." Obama walked it back. He said, "This is a very difficult issue, and I understand sort of the passions on both sides of the issue. I have two precious daughters -- they are miracles." Pro-lifers expressed horror at the notion that Obama equated babies with "punishment." But his callousness was quickly forgotten, and not raised again. Democrats, of course, get to walk back extreme statements on abortion, but the Republicans, like Trump, cannot.
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by Mike Adams Article
I’m old enough to remember a time when civil rights struggles focused on noble causes such as removing the barriers that kept black people from voting. Previous generations of civil rights activists fought so blacks and whites could use the same voting booth. This generation of activists fights so men and women can use the same bathroom stall. One could say that liberal activism has really gone down the toilet.
If you can wade through all of the activist hysteria, it is worth taking a look at the substance of the claims of supporters of the Charlotte, North Carolina transgendered bathroom ordinance. It is disturbing that such an ordinance ever passed through any city government and had to be stopped by the state legislature. Perhaps even more disturbing than the substance of their claims is the set of tactics used by LGBT activists to enforce the views of a small minority against the strong opposition of the majority. There are many, but here is an overview of some of the guilty parties:
An LGBT Activist City Council and Mayor. It is readily apparent that few supporters of the Charlotte bathroom ordinance actually took the time to read it. It did not merely apply to public restrooms. It also applied to so-called public accommodations. This means the city council was trying to control the bathrooms of privately owned restaurants and retailers, not just public buildings. Therefore, if you owned a restaurant/bar and saw a man following a drunken woman into the single-occupancy ladies restroom you could not have the final say on stopping him. He could simply manufacture a claim to identify as a woman and trump your right to control your own business.
By allowing perception rather than objective reality to control legal outcomes we invite fraud. In the process, we also water down the moral authority of the law. An informed public would never support this kind of legal nonsense. But the Charlotte City Council and the Charlotte Mayor do. And that’s all that really matters. So the law was passed.
The NBA. After the fascistic ordinance passed and was struck down by the state legislature the NBA had to weigh in by reconsidering its decision to host the 2017 NBA All-Star game in Charlotte. They claimed that North Carolina had become anti-gay. Why? Because Charlotte government got reeled in and once again had to let business owners rely on biological distinctions rather than “perceptions” when it comes to regulating access to bathrooms. My rebuttal to the NBA takes the form of four simple words: Women’s National Basketball Association.
How could the NBA start an entire league called the WNBA, membership in which is based on biological sex distinctions rather than perceptions, and later wage a war on biological sex distinctions? It’s pretty simple, actually. The LGBT movement tells the NBA to jump and they simply ask “how high?”
Governor Cuomo of New York. Andrew Cuomo scares me so badly I think I’m beginning to suffer from Cuomo-phobia. This man actually had the audacity to visit communist Cuba, which is ruled by the Castro regime. He did this while completely ignoring the fact that Castro had previously authorized internment in concentration camps for people who were merely suspected of being homosexual. But now Cuomo has banned government workers from traveling to North Carolina because of HB2, which overturned the Charlotte bathroom ordinance. What makes things even more peculiar is that his own state of New York does not offer the same so-called anti-discrimination protections he is demanding legislators allow to stand in North Carolina.
In sum, I hope Andrew Cuomo doesn’t decide to boycott his own state. I want him to stay up there in New York. I don’t really care if this makes me sound like a raging Cuomo-phobe.
The Charlotte Observer. The leader of the effort to pass the Charlotte bathroom ordinance is a registered sex offender. Chad Sevearance, now-former president of the Charlotte LGBT Chamber of Commerce, worked as a youth minister in the late 1990s. He was later accused of luring young men to his apartment for stay-overs, showing them pornography, and trying to talk them into sex. As a result of one boy testifying that he woke up to find Sevearance “fondling him,” the LGBT uncivil rights leader was convicted for sexual molestation of a minor.
The Charlotte Observer initially ignored his conviction and status as a registered sex offender. Later, conservative opponents of the ordinance pressured them into doing their jobs and revealing the truth. There is simply no credible journalistic explanation for ignoring such highly relevant evidence on a matter of public concern.
Taking a broader view, the Charlotte bathroom controversy has all of the elements of modern day McCarthyism. We have committees of elected officials who refuse to obey the rule of law. We have people engaged in blacklisting because they unflinchingly accept the authority of the accusers. We have politicians joining the persecution for the purpose of political advancement. We have a press complicit in keeping the people uninformed about the true motives and character of the accusers.
Of course, there is one crucial difference. History has shown that Senator Joe McCarthy was battling an enemy that actually existed. In other words, McCarthyism as we have come to understand it never really happened in the 1950s.
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by Justin Holcomb Article
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant signed the state's religious freedom bill Tuesday, according to a statement from his Twitter account.
I am signing HB 1523 into law to protect sincerely held religious beliefs and moral convictions of individuals, organizations and private associations from discriminatory action by state government or its political subdivisions, which would include counties, cities and institutions of higher learning. This bill merely reinforces the rights which currently exist to the exercise of religious freedom as stated in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
This bill does not limit any constitutionally protected rights or actions of any citizen of this state under federal or state laws. It does not attempt to challenge federal laws, even those which are in conflict with the Mississippi Constitution, as the Legislature recognizes the prominence of federal law in such limited circumstances.
The legislation is designed in the most targeted manner possible to prevent government interference in the lives of the people from which all power to the state is derived.
The ACLU of Mississippi was not happy with with Bryant's decision and posted several heated statements on Twitter.
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by Leah Barkoukis Article
North Carolina’s law that prevents local governments from passing their own anti-discrimination measures has elicited backlash from all angles. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo banned all nonessential travel to the state over the so-called bathroom bill, corporations have denounced the law, the NBA has said it could impact the state’s ability to host the 2017 All-Star game, and now, even the Obama administration is weighing in.
The New York Times reports:
The Obama administration is considering whether North Carolina’s new law on gay and transgender rights makes the state ineligible for billions of dollars in federal aid for schools, highways and housing, officials said Friday.
Cutting off funding, or simply just the threat of doing so, could force the state to repeal the law. But experts say taking such drastic measures is unlikely. Still, a number of federal agencies are currently reviewing the law.
Anthony Foxx, the secretary of transportation, first raised the prospect of a review of federal funding in public remarks on Tuesday in North Carolina. The Department of Transportation provides roughly $1 billion a year to North Carolina. The New York Times then asked other federal agencies whether they were conducting similar reviews.A Department of Education spokeswoman, Dorie Nolt, said on Friday that her agency was also reviewing the North Carolina law “to determine any potential impact on the state’s federal education funding.” She added, “We will not hesitate to act if students’ civil rights are being violated.” […]
The Department of Housing and Urban Development said it was doing a similar evaluation. “We’re reviewing the effects of the law on HUD funding allocated for North Carolina,” said Cameron French, a department spokesman.
“It would be a long process of negotiation,” Jane R. Wettach, an education law specialist at the Duke University School of Law told the Times. “I think the federal government would be loath to do it and would give North Carolina every possibility, every chance to change their position, to change the law, to negotiate, to make some exceptions. I think they’d go back and forth for a while and try to come to a negotiated settlement.”
Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Forest said the state complied with federal laws and the Constitution in writing the law. Thus, he was not convinced federal aid would be pulled.
“It would be wrong — even illegal — to single out North Carolina for unfavorable treatment,” Forest told the Times. “I’m confident that we will continue to receive this federal money despite the threats from a few in Washington, D.C.”
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory, who’s had enough when it comes to the widespread criticism the law has received, addressed critics in a video message last week.
“Some have called our state an embarrassment,” McCrory said. “The real embarrassment is politicians not publicly respecting each others’ position on complex issues. Unfortunately, that has occurred when legislation was passed recently to protect men, women, and children when they use a public restroom, shower, or locker room. That is an expectation of privacy that must be honored and respected. Instead, North Carolina has been the target of a vicious nationwide smear campaign.”
He continued: “Disregarding the facts, other politicians — from the White House to mayors to state capitals and City Council members and even our attorney general — have initiated and promoted conflict to advance their political agenda and tear down our state, even if it means defying the Constitution and their oath of office.”
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by Leah Barkoukis Article
Common sense has prevailed in North Carolina, where legislators on Wednesday put an end to local governments’ anti-discrimination rules that would’ve allowed transgender people to use restrooms depending on their gender identity.
The legislation came after the city of Charlotte approved the broad measure last month. Gov. Pat McCrory, who had been the mayor of the city for 14 years, signed the bill later that day, saying that the legislation was “passed by a bipartisan majority to stop this breach of basic privacy and etiquette.”
The AP reports (emphasis mine):
Although 12 House Democrats joined all Republicans present in voting for the bill in the afternoon, later all Senate Democrats in attendance walked off their chamber floor during the debate in protest. Remaining Senate Republicans gave the legislation unanimous approval."We choose not to participate in this farce," Senate Minority Leader Dan Blue of Raleigh said after he left the chamber.
Senate leader Phil Berger of Eden said the Democrats' decision to leave was a "serious breach of their obligation to the citizens that voted to elect them."
Republicans and their allies have said intervening is necessary to protect the safety of women and children from "radical" action by Charlotte. There have been arguments that any man — perhaps a sex offender — could enter a woman's restroom or locker room simply by calling himself transgender.
"It's common sense — biological men should not be in women's showers, locker rooms and bathrooms," said GOP Rep. Dean Arp of Monroe before the chamber voted 82-26 for the legislation after nearly three hours of debate.
The concerns by Republicans and some Democrats were not unfounded. There have been several instances where basic standards of public decency and safety have been violated across the U.S. where similar anti-discrimination measures have been put in place. Here is but one example from many cases Townhall columnist Michael Brown discussed in a February column about Charlotte’s anti-discrimination bill.
“In 2012, also in Washington, female high-school students sharing a college campus swimming pool were shocked to see a 45-year-old male student who identifies as “Colleen” sitting naked in their sauna. (The police report stated that “she” was exposing “her male genitalia.”)
The girls were traumatized and the parents outraged, but college officials said they could not do a thing because of state policies against gender-identity discrimination.”
Not surprisingly, Charlotte’s Mayor Jennifer Roberts (and many other LGBT activists) were appalled by the legislation.
"The General Assembly is on the wrong side of progress. It is on the wrong side of history," Roberts said in a statement.
Also in a press release, McCrory fired back that “the basic expectation of privacy in the most personal of settings” was violated by “government overreach and intrusion” on the part of Roberts and the city council.
Civil liberties groups have promised to push for repeal and are currently exploring their legal options.
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by Michael Brown Article
The quote was so shocking that I’m shocked it didn’t get more attention.
When you hear it, you want to put your head in your hands and weep.
In biblical days, you would have torn your garments in mourning.
How in the world did this happen to our nation?
A 17-year-old Miami teen named Trevon Johnson, a student at D. A. Dorsey Technical College, was shot and killed by a female homeowner who encountered him after he had broken into her house.
But Johnson’s relatives were very upset, saying he didn’t deserve it. As his cousin Nautika Harris commented, “I don’t care if she have her gun license or any of that. That is way beyond the law - way beyond.”
She also said – and this is the quote that is so shocking – “You have to look at it from every child’s point of view that was raised in the hood. You have to understand… how he going to get his money to have clothes to go to school? You have to look at it from his point-of-view.”
What a tragic indictment on the state of America in 2016.
Can you imagine another time in our history when words like this could have been spoken? And has there been anything quite like “the hood” that this woman describes, a place where the family is so shattered that burglary is considered a natural way for a child to get money for his school clothes?
Of course, there’s no excuse for this young man’s actions and there’s no justification for his cousin’s words.
I state this emphatically, so no one misunderstands me.
At the same time, it would seem that Trevon was born into this world with two strikes against him, while his cousin’s sentiments describe a world that most of us can’t relate to. And it is that world – “the hood” – that I want to focus on.
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by Mike Adams Article
Hypocrisy is one of the most overused words in the English language. Most people think it refers to any failure to act in accordance with one’s expressed beliefs. But that’s simply inaccurate. Failure to live up to one’s beliefs is called being a human. Being a hypocrite is when a person behaves in ways that are inconsistent with his expressed beliefs because he doesn’t actually believe the things he is saying. At the core of true hypocrisy there usually lies one motive: Power.
To put it another way, when people tell you things they don’t actually believe, they are usually trying to manipulate you in an effort to gain power over you. I can think of no better example of manipulative hypocrisy than the concept of micro-aggression, which has been promoted in documents like the “bias free language guide” put out by the University of New Hampshire (UNH) in 2015.
While that particular guide has since been rescinded by UNH, the underlying concept of micro-aggression has not. It is a concept that continues to be taught in courses at so-called liberal universities all across America. Since the concept is also leaking out into the broader culture it needs to be dissected. In order to do that, we need an adequate working definition. Here is one from Dr. Derald Wing Sue (not to be confused with Deranged left Winger looking for someone to Sue). The self-proclaimed micro-aggression expert wrote the following in Psychology Today:
“Microaggressions are the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership.”
I thought it might be fun to explore the concept of micro-aggression by taking a look at some incidents occurring before, during, and after a speech I once gave on a college campus. As you read about these incidents please ask yourself whether they fit into the category of micro-aggression as previously defined:
-A group of student protestors who objected to the speech spray paint swastikas on flyers used to promote the event. The spray painting rendered the information about the time and location of the speech indecipherable.
-After sponsors of the event enclosed the flyers in glass cases to protect them from further spray painting, student protestors shattered the glass cases and again spray painted swastikas on the flyers.
-A student protestor stood up during the Q&A session and asked whether my opposition to campus speech codes also meant that I supported reinstating slavery.
-Another student protestor stood up during the Q&A session and asked whether my opposition to speech codes meant that I also supported making it legal to beat homosexuals with baseball bats.
-A group of about twenty-five students lingered outside the auditorium waiting for me after the speech. Because there were rumors that they were planning to attack me by hurling food, five armed police officers escorted me from the auditorium and offered to take me away in a police Suburban.
It should not surprise anyone that the college where all these incidents occurred was none other than the University of New Hampshire. Nor should it surprise anyone that none of these things were deemed to be micro-aggressions by the UNH speech police. A few years after the speech, UNH published its now infamous “bias free language guide” to protect minorities from “slights” and snubs.”
Of course, none of the UNH students, most of whom were “marginalized” gay activists, were ever held responsible for their vandalism. Nor were they reprimanded for conspiring to physically attack a guest on their campus. It is worth taking the time to explain why.
The key phrase in the definition of micro-aggression is “marginalized group membership.” By including that phrase, campus leftists claim to be licensed to do two things:
1. They can use overtly hostile language against those not in marginalized groups - such as accusing them of supporting slavery and supporting aggravated battery against homosexuals - without actually committing a micro aggression.
2. They can simultaneously police the language of the very people they are attacking for “slights” and “snubs” even if they are “unintentional.”
Herein lies the hypocrisy of those who seek to legitimize the concept of micro aggression. Their goal is not to protect members of marginalized groups. It is to marginalize people with whom they disagree. But what is the real effect of their frequently macro aggressive activism? I believe it is twofold.
The first and most obvious consequence of the war against so-called micro-aggressions is direct (and further) marginalization of campus conservatives. For years, conservatives have been reticent to express overtly conservative ideas on “liberal” college campuses – particularly courses in the more “liberal” social sciences and humanities. Now, they are afraid of expressing even mildly traditional or conservative ideas.
The second and less obvious consequence of the war against so-called micro-aggressions is indirect marginalization of campus leftists. Put simply, the university teaches these petulant children that their emotions trump other people’s ideas. More specifically, the bias language police teach them that they have the right to negate speech by simply pretending to be offended or upset when that speech contains ideas they lack the intellectual fortitude to rebut. This does more than just create intellectual atrophy. It also creates pseudo-intellectual arrogance. And it eventually renders them unemployable.
Like other ideas rooted in the Marxist worldview, micro-aggression does create greater equality. In the end, everyone has less than he, she, or undecided had before.
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by Christine Rousselle Article
With Saturday's sudden passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, many were concerned with what would happen to the remaining cases that have yet to be decided. If the Supreme Court comes down to a 4-4 tie, the decision of the lower court will stand.
Here are three big cases that the Supreme Court has yet to decide:
This case deals with affirmative action, and oral arguments were heard in December. Scalia came under fire for out-of-context comments that suggested that black students perform better at "lesser" schools. Justice Elena Kagan is recused from this case, meaning that the vote is not necessarily tied.
Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt
This case concerns the legality of Texas' law that requires abortion clinics comply with increased regulations and require doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the law, so if this case were to go into a tie, it would still be upheld. Arguments will be heard on March 2.
Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell
This case concerns the HHS Contraception Mandate. The Little Sisters of the Poor are a group of Catholic women who were instructed to provide birth control to the employees of their nursing homes. The Little Sisters are hoping to get an exemption from the mandate. The lower court ruled against the Little Sisters, so a tie would mean that the mandate would stand
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Bolivia is principally a source country for men, women, and children exploited in sex trafficking and forced labor within the country and abroad. To a more limited extent, women from neighboring countries, including Brazil and Paraguay, have been identified in sex trafficking in Bolivia. Rural and poor Bolivians, most of whom are indigenous, are particularly vulnerable to sex and labor trafficking. LGBT youth are also particularly vulnerable to sex trafficking. Bolivian women and girls are found in sex trafficking within Bolivia and in neighboring countries such as Argentina, Peru, and Chile. Within the country, Bolivian men, women, and children are found in forced labor in domestic service, mining, ranching, and agriculture. Press report cases of children forced to commit crimes, such as robbery and drug production, and others exploited in forced begging. A significant number of Bolivians are found in forced labor in Argentina, Brazil, and other countries in sweatshops, agriculture, domestic service, and the informal sector. Authorities and an international organization report some foreign nationals engage in child sex tourism, and some migrants transiting to neighboring countries are vulnerable to human trafficking. Some law enforcement officers reportedly frequent brothels, which may serve as a disincentive for sex trafficking victims to report their exploitation.
The US State Department's 2015 report on human trafficking: Download Human Trafficking A-C 2015
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Belize is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor. The UN Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons reported Belizean women and girls were subjected to sex trafficking by family members, but the government has not arrested family members engaged in this form of trafficking. Child sex tourism, involving primarily U. S. citizens, is an emerging trend, concentrated in areas where tourism is important to the local economy. Sex trafficking and forced labor of Belizean and foreign women, girls, and LGBT persons, primarily from Central America, occurs in bars, nightclubs, brothels, and domestic service. Underage girls are reportedly present in bars that function as brothels. Foreign men, women, and children—particularly from Central America, Mexico, and Asia—migrate voluntarily to Belize in search of work; some may fall victim to forced labor in restaurants, shops, agriculture, and fishing. Traffickers often recruit through false promises of relatively high-paying jobs and subsequently subject victims to forced labor or sex trafficking. Trafficking-related complicity by government officials, including allegations of involvement of high-level officials, remains a problem.
The US State Department's 2015 report on human trafficking: Download Human Trafficking A-C 2015
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Barbados is a source country for children subjected to sex trafficking and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor. Authorities and NGOs report foreign women have been forced into prostitution in Barbados. Foreigners are subjected to forced labor in Barbados, most notably in domestic service, agriculture, and construction. Legal and undocumented immigrants from Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and Guyana are especially vulnerable to trafficking. Child sex trafficking occurs in Barbados. Authorities and NGOs also report parents or caregivers subject local and foreign children of both sexes to commercial sex.
The Government of Barbados does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so. The government acceded to the 2000 UN TIP Protocol in October 2014, drafted amendments to its anti-trafficking law to prohibit all forms of human trafficking, and began developing a government-wide anti-trafficking manual. The government did not identify any new trafficking victims, but assisted previously identified trafficking victims during the reporting period. The government did not convict any traffickers; however, police investigated a government official for alleged complicity in sex trafficking crimes.
The US State Department's 2015 report on human trafficking: Download Human Trafficking A-C 2015
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by Terry Paulson Article
Some politicians love to talk about the “war on women” in America, but women blessed to be born in a Judeo-Christian, Western culture have opportunities few women in history have ever experienced. America has women campaigning to become President of the United States from both parties. There are women who are corporate and community leaders who are leaving their mark on the future of their organizations and our communities.
But there’s a true “war on women” going on in parts of our world. As a result of outrageous attacks in Cologne, Germany on New Year’s Eve, the extent of that “war” has finally received media attention. Police have received nearly 700 complaints of robbery or sexual assault and several rapes on that evening alone. The majority of the suspects identified have been asylum seekers, mostly North African or Arabic, and Cologne police officers are still sifting through 350 hours of civilian cellphone and surveillance video to identify more perpetrators.
Johanna, an 18-year-old victim interviewed for the New York Times, said, “We were just pressed on all sides by people. I was grabbed continually…. That was really the worst night of my life.” Local police were overwhelmed. Another victim complained, “I had never experienced that a policeman said, ‘I would love to help you but I can’t.’ That was really the worst. Who should you turn to as a woman? What should I do?”
What happened in Cologne was not an isolated incident. That evening, there were similar attacks in Hamburg, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, and Nuremberg. A rash of sexual assaults took place in Austria, Sweden, Switzerland and Finland.
Ingrid Carlqvist, with the Grapestone Institute, reports thatrapes in Norway and Sweden have skyrocketed in recent years as their Muslim refugee and migrant populations have soared. Attackers assert that under sharia, it's OK to rape Norwegian and Swedish women because they are considered “infidels." Sweden is fighting their new reputation as "the rape capital of the West." As President Obama works to accept more Islamic refugees, will America be next?
Rukmini Callimachi, writing in the New York Times, documents how ISIS enshrines a “Theology of Rape.” An ISIS fighter who raped a 12-year-old Iraqi girl "took the time to explain that what he was about to do was not a sin. Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her - it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted."
Just last year, several UK cities, including Rotherham and Birmingham, finally reported that predominantly Pakistani “grooming gangs” targeted English school girls, some as young as 11-years-old. These girls were fed with drugs and alcohol, and then were sexually abused and raped. In the city of Rotherham, it is estimated about 1,400 girls were “groomed” and sexually abused over the last sixteen years. Local politically correct officials knew but failed to stop it or issue warnings for fear of being labeled racists. America cannot afford to let political correctness silence our concern about new refugees.
The left complains about global warming deniers. Ben Shapiro, Townhall columnist, calls this deafening silence the “Radical Islam Denial Syndrome.” Rainer Wendt, Head of Germany’s national police union, was quoted in theNew York Times, “Unfortunately, in Germany, political decisions are somehow made only after the house is on fire.”
We hear government officials warning women to keep at "arm's length" from young Muslim men. Are women to cover themselves up to avoid enticement or to stay inside unless accompanied by a man? Townhall columnist Helen Raleigh assertively rejected such inane suggestions, “Cultures which believe a woman shouldn't drive, or treat woman as nothing but a sexual object, or practice ‘honor killing’, should not be tolerated or accepted in a society which promotes individual rights and human freedom…. There is a big difference between appreciating a culture versus unconditional tolerance. I wish more people, especially politicians, would have the backbone to reject multiculturalism, and insist that any culture whose values and practices violate human freedom has no place in America.”
Instead of world leaders trying to outdo one another by seeing who can accept the most refugees, there should be far more emphasis on pushing back ISIS and challenging moderate Muslims to take on the radicals in their faith.
We must ensure that those who seek asylum here truly embrace our freedoms and women’s rights. There’s room for diversity of religion and race, but no “war on women.” Without an Islamic reformation, this is not the time for an influx of more refugees.
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The Bahamas is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children from other Caribbean countries, South and Central America, and Asia subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor, including in domestic servitude and construction. Vulnerable populations include migrant workers who arrive voluntarily to work as domestic employees and laborers, children born in The Bahamas to foreign-born parents who do not automatically receive Bahamian citizenship, girls exploited in prostitution, and foreign nationals in prostitution and exotic dancing. Traffickers lure victims with false promises and fraudulent recruitment practices, and maintain victims in sex trafficking and forced labor by confiscating passports and restricting movements.
The US State Department's 2015 report on human trafficking: Download Human Trafficking A-C 2015.
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Argentina is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to sex trafficking and forced labor. Argentine women and children are subjected to sex trafficking within the country, as are women and children from other Latin American countries. To a more limited extent, Argentine men, women, and children are subjected to sex and labor trafficking in other countries. Transgender Argentines are exploited in sex trafficking within the country and in Western Europe. Men, women, and children from Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, Peru, and other countries are subjected to forced labor in a variety of sectors, including sweatshops, agriculture, street vending, charcoal and brick production, domestic work, and small businesses. Chinese citizens working in supermarkets are vulnerable to debt bondage. Argentine officials report isolated cases of foreign victims recruited in Argentina and subjected to trafficking in third countries. Some officials, mainly at the provincial level, including police officers and mayors, protect brothels where trafficking occurred. NGOs and officials report that judges receive bribes from traffickers or do not adequately investigate signs of official complicity. A government
entity has reported police were complicit in 40 percent of sex trafficking cases either as purchasers of commercial sex or as personal contacts of brothel owners; this serves as a disincentive for victims to report exploitation.
The US State Department's 2015 report on human trafficking: Download Human Trafficking A-C 2015
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by Leah Barkoukis Article
Planned Parenthood is out with its latest annual report showing that the number of patients served and abortions performed were both down in fiscal year 2014. At the same time, however, the amount of federal funding the abortion giant received increased from the year prior.
According to the report, Planned Parenthood performed 323,999 abortions nationwide in 2014, compared to 327,653 abortions in fiscal year 2013. There were 2,024 adoption referrals, meaning that for every referral, Planned Parenthood aborted 160 babies.
As for the number of patients and services provided, those are down too:
The number of patients visiting Planned Parenthood clinics dropped from nearly 3 million in fiscal 2012 to 2.5 million in fiscal 2014, the lowest annual total since 1998. […]
Meanwhile, the number of services provided fell from 10,590,433 to 9,455,582, a one-year decline of 10.7 percent.
Despite the decline in these numbers, the amount of federal funding Planned Parenthood received in the form of grants and reimbursements increased 4.8 percent, from $528 million the year before to $553 million in 2014. This amounts to 43 percent of its total income.
“We are at a critical moment in our history. Over the past several months, we have been tested in every way imaginable—and have emerged stronger than ever,” the report stated. “Planned Parenthood’s resilient staff and clinicians are making a huge difference in the field of reproductive and sexual health care and in the cultural landscape at large.”
It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that these numbers are for fiscal year 2014—long before the Center for Medical Progress released a series of damning videos exposing Planned Parenthood’s seedy business practices, including the sale of fetal body parts. It will be interesting to see what impact the expose had on Planned Parenthood in next year’s report.
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by Cortney O'Brien Article
Richard Davis, a former assistant Watergate special prosecutor who worked in the Carter administration, wrote an op-ed for CNN arguing that the Clinton Foundation’s suspicious business practices should rightfully be placed in the spotlight as Hillary Clinton seeks the Democratic presidential nomination.
The Foundation came under scrutiny earlier this year when it was reported to have received foreign contributionsduring her tenure as Secretary of State. Some of the controversial contributions came from Kuwait, Qatar and Oman. The organization was also found to have accepted millions of dollars in speaking fees. These are issues Clinton cannot hide from on the campaign trail – especially as voters continue to doubt her trustworthiness in the wake of her email scandal.
Clinton cannot avoid having to respond to questions about foundation activities and speaking fees while she was secretary of state. History cannot be rewritten. She can, however, meaningfully address this controversy by announcing now that if she becomes President the foundation will not do business with the United States government, and that neither the foundation nor her husband will accept fees or contributions either from foreign entities or from those doing business or seeking to do business with the government.
Such behavior, Davis argued, should not be tolerated, especially from a family seeking to enter the White House.
If fees or contributions were made to the spouse of the President of Zimbabwe or her foundation we would not tolerate it and, indeed, our government might well investigate such payments under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. We certainly should not tolerate it if such payments involve the family of the President of the United States. Hillary Clinton should act now to address this problem before it becomes a larger threat to her candidacy.
Will the Clinton Foundation be Hillary’s Achilles heel?
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Yemen is a country of origin and, to a lesser extent, transit and destination, for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor, and women and children subjected to sex trafficking. Yemen’s deteriorating security situation, weakened rule of law, and deepening poverty in 2014 increased trafficking activities. As a result of Houthi expansion and eventual seizure of government institutions in late 2014, the number of child soldiers utilized by armed groups greatly increased. Checkpoints operated by Houthi militias and government forces are often manned by armed boys who appear to be as young as 10 years old. Some Yemeni children, mostly boys, migrate to the cities of Aden and Sana’a or to Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, Oman—where they are subjected to forced labor in domestic service, small shops, or as beggars. Some of these children are forced into prostitution by traffickers, security officials, and their employers upon arrival in Saudi Arabia, while others are forced to smuggle drugs into Saudi Arabia.
The US State Department's 2014 report on human trafficking: Download Human Trafficking T-Z
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by Walter E. Williams Article
American immorality and contempt for liberty lie at the root of most of the political economic problems our nation faces. They explain the fiscal problems we face, such as growing national debt and budget deficits at the federal, state and local levels of government. Our immorality and contempt for liberty are reflected most in our widespread belief that government ought to forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another American. Let's examine it.
Suppose there is an elderly widow in your neighborhood. She does not have the strength to mow her lawn, clean her windows and perform other household tasks. Plus she does not have the financial means to hire someone to perform them. Here is my question: Would you support a government mandate that forces one of your neighbors to mow the widow's lawn, clean her windows and perform other household tasks? Moreover, if the person so ordered failed to obey the government mandate, would you approve of some sort of sanction, such as a fine, property confiscation or imprisonment? I believe and hope that most of my fellow Americans would find such a mandate repulsive. They would rightfully condemn it as a form of slavery, which can also be described as the forcible use of one person to serve the purposes of another.
Would there be the same condemnation if, instead of forcing one of your neighbors to actually perform the household tasks, your neighbor were forced to fork over $50 of his weekly earnings to the widow? That way, she could hire someone to perform the tasks that she is unable to do. Would that mandate differ from one under which your neighbor is forced to actually perform the household tasks? I'd answer no. Just the mechanism differs for forcibly using one person to serve the purposes of another.
Most Americans would want to help this widow, but they would find anything that openly smacks of servitude or slavery deeply offensive. They would have a clearer conscience if government would use its taxing authority, say an income tax or property tax. A government agency could then send the widow a $50 check to hire someone to mow her lawn and perform other household tasks. This collective mechanism would make the servitude invisible, but it wouldn't change the fact that people are being forcibly used to serve the purposes of others. Putting the money into a government pot simply conceals an act that would otherwise be deemed morally repulsive.
Some might misleadingly argue that we are a democracy, in which the majority rules. But a majority consensus does not make acts that would otherwise be deemed immoral moral. In other words, if the neighbors got a majority vote to force one of their number, under pain of punishment, to perform household tasks for the elderly widow, it would still be immoral. People like to give immoral acts an aura of moral legitimacy by noble-sounding expressions, such as "spreading the wealth," "income redistribution," "caring for the less fortunate" and "the will of the majority."
If one American can use government to force another to serve his purpose, what is the basis for denying another American the right to do the same thing? For example, if farmers are able to use Congress to give them cash for crop subsidies, why should toymakers be denied the right for Congress to give them cash subsidies when their sales slump?
Congress has completely succumbed to the pressure to use one American to serve the purposes of another. As a result, spending grows. Today's federal budget is about $3.8 trillion. At least two-thirds of it can be described as Congress taking the earnings of one American to give to another.
I personally believe in helping one's fellow man in need. Doing so by reaching into one's own pockets is laudable and praiseworthy. Doing so by reaching into another's pockets is evil and worthy of condemnation.
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The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a destination and transit country for men and women predominantly from South, Southeast, and Central Asia and Eastern Europe who are subjected to labor and sex trafficking. Migrant workers, who comprise over 95 percent of the UAE’s private sector workforce, are recruited primarily from Ethiopia, Eritrea, Iran, and East, South, and Southeast Asia; some of these workers face forced labor in the UAE. Women from some of these countries travel willingly to the UAE to work as domestic workers, secretaries, beauticians, and hotel cleaners, but some are subjected to forced labor through unlawful passport withholding, restrictions on movement, nonpayment of wages, threats, and physical or sexual abuse. Restrictive sponsorship laws for foreign domestic workers give employers power to control domestic workers’ movements, threaten them with abuse of legal processes, and make them vulnerable to exploitation. Men from South Asia are recruited to work in the UAE in the construction sector; some are subjected to forced labor through debt bondage to repay recruitment fees. In some cases, employers declare bankruptcy and flee the country, abandoning their employees in conditions that leave them vulnerable to further exploitation. Some source-country labor recruitment companies hire workers with false employment contracts, where the terms and conditions are never honored or are changed, such that workers are forced into involuntary servitude and debt bondage once in the UAE. Some women from Eastern Europe, Central Asia, East and Southeast Asia, East Africa, Iraq, Iran, and Morocco are subjected to forced prostitution in the UAE. In 2014, media attention focused on reports alleging official complicity with the exploitation of workers on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, including passport withholding, abuse, detention, and deportation of about 500 workers after their attempt to strike.
The US State Department's 2015 report on human trafficking: Download Human Trafficking T-Z
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Tunisia is a source, destination, and possible transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. According to a baseline study conducted in 2012, Tunisian youth are subjected to various forms of trafficking which appear to be consistent with previously reported patterns. According to the study, Tunisian girls, mainly from the northwest, work as domestic servants for wealthy families in Tunis and major coastal cities. Some child domestic workers experience restrictions on movement, physical and psychological violence, and sexual abuse. International organizations have reported an increased presence of street children and rural children working to support their families in Tunisia since the 2011 revolution; according to the baseline study, these children are vulnerable to forced labor or sex trafficking. Tunisian women have reportedly been forced into prostitution under false promises of work both within the country and elsewhere in the region, such as Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Jordan. Women from West and East Africa may be subjected to forced labor as domestic workers. Migrants fleeing unrest in neighboring countries continue to be vulnerable to trafficking. Security officials report organized gangs force street children to serve as thieves and beggars and to transport drugs.
The US State Department's 2015 report on human trafficking: Download Human Trafficking T-Z
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The constitution, passed in January, states that the country’s “religion is Islam” and designates the government as the “guardian of religion.” The constitution establishes the country as a civil state based on citizenship, prohibits the use of mosques and houses of worship to advance political agendas or objectives, and guarantees freedom of belief, conscience, and exercise of religious practice. Civil law is not religious in nature, but family and inheritance laws do, in some circumstances, draw from sharia. The Ministry of Religious Affairs (MRA) stated it had re-established control over mosques that had been operating outside government oversight and closed broadcasting outlets it accused of preaching religious intolerance and having ties to extremist organizations. The government arrested several individuals in connection with violent attacks against security personnel.
The number of attacks against events or groups deemed “un-Islamic” by some fell considerably compared to 2013. Salafists complained of being profiled and disproportionately subjected to arrest by security personnel, who increased their efforts to counter activities by violent groups advocating radical religious doctrines. Judaism and Christianity are more widely practiced and more readily accepted by the Muslim majority than other faiths.
The Ambassador, U.S. embassy officials, and senior U.S. government officials discussed and promoted religious freedom with leaders of the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities. In May the Ambassador attended the Lag B’Omer pilgrimage to the El-Ghriba synagogue on the island of Djerba. Embassy officers met with members of the principal religious communities to discuss religious freedom and engaged officials at the MRA and Ministry of Justice, stressing the role of religious tolerance as a central pillar of democratic societies.
The US State Department's 2014 report on religious freedom in Tunisia.
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Storm trooper tactics by bands of college students making ideological demands across the country, and immediate preemptive surrender by college administrators -- such as at the University of Missouri recently -- bring back memories of the 1960s, for those of us old enough to remember what it was like being there, and seeing first-hand how painful events unfolded.
At Harvard, back in 1969, students seized control of the administration building and began releasing to the media information from confidential personnel files of professors. But, when university president Nathan Pusey called in the police to evict the students, the faculty turned against him, and he resigned.
At least equally disgraceful things happened at Cornell, at Columbia, and on other campuses across the country. But there was one major university that stood up to the campus storm troopers -- the University of Chicago.
After student mobs seized control of a campus building, the University of Chicago expelled 42 students and suspended 81 other students. Seizing buildings was not nearly as much fun there, nor were outrageous demands met.
Clearly it was not inevitable that academic institutions would follow the path of least resistance. Most of the leading academic institutions have multiple applications for every place available in the student body. Students who are expelled for campus disruptions can easily be replaced by others on the waiting lists.
Why then do so many colleges and universities not only tolerate storm trooper tactics on campus but surrender immediately to them? That is just one of a number of questions that are hard to answer.
Why do parents pay big money, often at a considerable sacrifice, to send their children to places where small groups of other students can disrupt their education and poison the whole atmosphere with obligatory conformity to political correctness?
Why do donors continue to contribute millions of dollars to institutions that have become indoctrination centers, tearing down America, stifling dissent and turning group against group?
There is no compelling reason for either parents or donors to keep shelling out money to colleges and universities where intolerant professors and student activists impose their ideology on academic institutions. Too often these are campuses with virtually no diversity of viewpoints, despite however much they may be obsessed with demographic diversity.
It is not hard to tell which campuses are strongholds of ideological intolerance, where individual students dare not express an opinion different from the opinion of their professors or different from the opinions of student activists. There are sources of information about such places, systematically collected and evaluated.
One outstanding source of such information is a college guide which rates colleges and universities on their ideological intolerance, giving a red light rating to institutions where such abuses are rampant, a green light where there is freedom of speech and a yellow light for places in between.
That college guide is "Choosing the Right College," which is by far the best of the college guides for other reasons as well. It gave the University of Missouri a red light rating, and spelled out its problems, two years before Mizzou made headlines this year as a symbol of academic cowardice and moral bankruptcy.
The University of Chicago gets a green light rating as a place where both conservative and liberal students are allowed free rein. Some engineering schools like M.I.T. get green light ratings because their students are too engrossed in their studies to have much time for politics, though Georgia Tech gets a red light rating.
Other red light ratings go to Duke, Vassar, Vanderbilt, Rutgers, Wesleyan and many others. More important, the reasons are spelled out. There is also another source of information and ratings of colleges and universities on their degree of freedom of speech. This is a watchdog organization called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).
If parents and donors start checking out intolerant colleges and universities before deciding where to send their money, the caving in to indoctrinating professors and storm trooper students will no longer be the path of least resistance for academic administrators.
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Two weeks ago, the Columbia University newspaper, the Spectator, published an article titled "Students, faculty address institutionalized racism at University Life event."
As described in the article, one example of the institutionalized racism that black Columbia students must endure is the university's Core Curriculum.
In the words of one of the panelists, fifth-year undergraduate student Nissy Aya, a young black woman, "It's traumatizing to sit in Core classes. We are looking at history through the lens of these powerful, white men. I have no power or agency as a black woman, so where do I fit in?"
Her words are worthy of analysis and response.
First, they provide a fine example of how successfully universities have indoctrinated students with leftist ideas and rhetoric. For example, who, outside of academia, ever uses the word "agency" as she did? Did you ever say to anyone that you have or don't have "agency?"
This is not trivial. When people use words or terms that are used in only one setting, it means that that setting has profoundly influenced them and that the setting is a closed intellectual universe.
Her use of the word "traumatizing" is also a product of indoctrination. Columbia taught this young woman to be traumatized by its own Core Curriculum. Some things -- war, torture and the murder of a loved one, for example -- are objectively traumatizing. No one is taught to be traumatized by such things. But a university curriculum that attempts to convey the finest ideas and art developed in Western culture, and often in the entire world, and which has been taught to tens of thousands of students of all backgrounds for nine decades -- that should not constitute a trauma.
The notion that she is "looking at history through the lens of these powerful, white men" means that race trumps profundity, wisdom, beauty and excellence. Thus, Shakespeare is not the greatest playwright we know of, he is just a white European (and male, to boot). Likewise Beethoven, Bach and other Western composers did not compose what is arguably the greatest music ever composed; they, too, were first and foremost white.
Whereas the Columbia Core Curriculum originally set out to teach the history of the West and the best art and literature that has been produced, the left has succeeded in teaching that no art is better than any other. It has done so by substituting race, gender and class for wisdom, beauty and profundity, and through its doctrine of multiculturalism, which asserts that all cultures are equal.
And how did Columbia respond to Aya?
Director of the Center for the Core Curriculum Roosevelt Montas said: "You cannot grow up in a society without assimilating racist views. Part of what is exciting about this conversation is that it's issuing accountability for us to look within ourselves and try to understand the way that racism shapes how we see the world and our institutions."
And, according to the Spectator, Executive Vice President for University Life Suzanne Goldberg "added that in addition to meeting with students, the Office of University Life is convening a task force of students, administrators and faculty to further explore issues of diversity on campus."
In other words, instead of defending the pursuit of wisdom and human greatness, Columbia sided with Aya and all the other students lamenting the "institutionalized racism" and resultant traumas endured by non-white students at the university.
At an actual learning institution, rather than at the left-wing seminary Columbia and nearly all other American universities have become, administrators would have told Aya that if she has really been traumatized by the Columbia Core Curriculum, she stands little chance of navigating any of the inevitable vicissitudes of real life because she has opted to remain a child, and therefore woefully unprepared for adulthood.
At a real university, administrators would have also told her and all the other "traumatized" students of all colors and backgrounds, that by using the word "traumatized" they have trivialized the suffering of all those individuals the world over who really have been traumatized.
But of course any administrator who said something so honest would be labeled racist by faculty and students at that university, The New York Times, Hillary Clinton, MSNBC and the rest of the American left.
After all, in their view, if you think students should concentrate on studying Bach, Shakespeare and Leonardo da Vinci, you are depriving black students of their agency. Is that not clear?
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The situation in Syria continues to deteriorate as the civil war continues and sub-state armed groups of varying ideologies control wide swathes of the country’s territory. Incidents of human trafficking have increased and trafficking victims remain trapped in Syria, particularly as the designated terrorist organization, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)—also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Islamic State (IS), or Daesh in Arabic—took control of the eastern governorates of Raqqa and Dayr al-Zawr. Approximately half of Syria’s pre-war population has been displaced; nearly four million have fled to neighboring countries and roughly 7.6 million are internally displaced. Syrians, including those that remain in the country and refugees in neighboring countries, remain highly vulnerable
to trafficking.
Syria is a source and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking. Syrian children displaced within the country continue to be subjected to forced labor, particularly by organized begging rings. Multiple sources report ISIL continues to force local Syrian girls and women in ISIL-controlled areas into marriages with its fighters. ISIL has also abducted thousands of Yezidi women and girls from Iraq and forcibly brought them to Syria to sell in human trafficking rings or to provide to fighters where they experience forced marriage, domestic servitude, systematic rape, and sexual violence. Following the February 2015 ISIL incursion into Assyrian villages in the northwestern province of Hasaka, ISIL captured up to 30 Assyrian Christian women and forced them into sexual slavery. In December 2014, ISIL publicly released guidelines on how to capture, forcibly hold, and sexually abuse female slaves, including girls. Pro-government forces, armed opposition groups,
and ISIL continue to forcibly recruit and use Syrian children as soldiers, human shields, and executioners, as well as in support roles. The Syrian army and its pro-regime militias forcibly recruit boys, some as young as 6 years old; in Aleppo, government forces used children as part of coordinated military operations to locate armed groups prior to attacks; children are paid to act as informants, exposing them to retaliation and extreme punishment. ISIL actively deploys children in hostilities, including coercing children to behead Syrian regime soldiers and using them in combat roles during the assault on Kobane in late 2014; it has deliberately targeted children for indoctrination and used schools for military purposes, endangering children and preventing their access to education. ISIL has established training camps where it instructs children, nicknamed “Cubs of the Caliphate,” to operate weapons and be deployed as suicide bombers. Armed groups, including Ahrar Al-Sham and Jabhat Al-Nusra, have targeted women and children to be taken as hostages for use in prisoner exchanges. Kurdish Yekineyen Parastina Gel (YPG) forces are reported to have abducted children and accepted them into its ranks to be used in active hostilities, despite an international commitment to the contrary. Kurdish Democratic Union Party (or PYD, using its popular acronym)-affiliated Kurdish “asayish” security forces reportedly captured unknown numbers of men and women between the ages of 18 and 30 at checkpoints and from residences in Darbasiyah and other Kurdish areas and compelled them to fight for the YPG, and all female YPJ forces, under duress. The media reported instances in which the Iranian government recruited primarily Shia men from the Afghan expatriate community in Iran to fight in Syria, ostensibly to defend Shia shrines, in exchange for $500 a month, Iranian residency, and in some cases, dismissal of criminal sentences in Iran. Migrant workers and undocumented migrants in Iran are often subject to harsh treatment with few or no legal remedies, which can make them vulnerable to trafficking. Some foreigners, including migrants from Central Asia, children, and western women, are reportedly forced, coerced, or fraudulently recruited to join extremist fighters, including ISIL in Syria; some of these foreigners may willingly join militants but are subsequently forced to remain in Syria against their will.
The US State Department's 2015 report on human trafficking: Download Human Trafficking N-S 2015
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by Ann Coulter Article
Americans keep being hectored to take "refugees" from terrorist-producing countries because to do otherwise would be "a betrayal of our values," as President Obama said on Monday.
The rise of Donald Trump reminds us of the popularity of another, long-forgotten American value: protecting Americans.
Contrary to Obama's laughable reference to "the universal values" that "all of humanity" share, most of the world does not share our values, at all. They barely seem to share our DNA. As indignantly explained by the lawyer representing two Iraqis accused of child rape in Nebraska, America's views about women and children "put us in the minority position in the world."
The New York Times boasts about how amazingly painstaking the "vetting" of Syrian refugees will be, but I notice the main point the paper keeps stressing is how long it will take. Twenty-four months!
"Waiting" is not "vetting." What is 24 months to people who can hold a grudge for a thousand years?
As we found out from Michael Steinbach, assistant director of the FBI, in congressional testimony last month, there are no Syrian computer databases for our investigators to use in their famed "vetting" of refugees.
"You're talking about a country that is a failed state, that does not have any infrastructure," he said. "So all of the data sets -- the police, the intel services -- that normally you would go to seek information don't exist."
It seems that another value the rest of the world doesn't share with the West is our painstaking record-keeping. There's no Syrian FBI running the National Crime Information Center. Syria barely has a phonebook.
Our investigators can take fingerprints all day long, but if there's nothing to check those fingerprints against, there's no "vetting."
It's possible that during that agonizing 24 months of waiting, someone will warn our immigration officials about particular refugees. Then, our government will admit them anyway -- as they did with Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Tamerlan's suspected co-conspirator in the murder of three Jews, Ibragim Todashev, was another beneficiary of America's generous humanitarian policies -- humanitarian toward foreign criminals and terrorists, monstrous toward Americans.
Our crack investigators admitted Todashev after concluding he had a credible fear of persecution in Chechnya. Meanwhile, his own father said, "He has nothing to fear ... he would have faced no oppression."
Good job, meticulous vetters! (Luckily, during an interrogation after the Boston Marathon bombing, Todashev attacked an FBI agent and got himself killed, saving the taxpayers 60 years of room and board.)
American officials were also warned about the blind sheik, Omar Abdel-Rahman, not only by U.S. consular officials in Egypt -- but by Hosni Mubarak, the president of Egypt himself.
But the Blind Sheik was allowed to go about his business in America, plotting terrorist attacks with other widows and orphans, such as Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing -- and American asylee.
Under our immigration policies, being a member of a noted terrorist group qualifies you to come to America; being a talented scientist from Switzerland does not.
Our aggressive refugee vetters couldn't even figure out which Iraqis were helping American troops during the war and which were trying to kill them. During the terrorism prosecution of Iraqi "refugees" Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, the FBI produced Alwan's fingerprints from IEDs that had been used against American troops in Iraq.
Talk about a fine-toothed comb!
Obama pulled every last American troop out of Iraq, then brought enemy troops to America, as refugees.
Incidentally, every one of these terrorists was a "legal" immigrant. How many World Trade Centers, Boston Marathons and Fort Hoods do we need before Republicans drop the "Illegals, bad; Legals, good" shibboleth?
Some Republicans have called for admitting only Christian refugees -- the main point of which is to allow Jeb! and Rubio to talk tough on immigration, without alienating their imaginary Hispanic base.
Fazliddin Kurbanov was admitted as a Christian refugee in 2009 from the booming world power of Uzbekistan. He claimed that he and his family were being persecuted in the majority Muslim country.
Soon after arriving, Kurbanov realized: He was a Muslim, after all!
He began communicating with the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, telling them: "We are the closest ones to the infidels .... What would you say if with the help of God we implement a martyrdom act?"
At trial, Kurbanov's defense was that he was just trying to get information on the terrorists in order "to capture them."
The jury was unconvinced, perhaps swayed by the stores of ammonium nitrate, acetone, aluminum powder and Tannerite found in Kurbanov's apartment. Our immigration officials would have found Kurbanov's story as believable as his Christianity.
After the last 50 years of mass immigration from the Third World, we're good on Islamic terrorists, Mexican rapists, Russian arms dealers, Asian human traffickers and Pakistani Medicare scammers. We're not running short on those anytime soon.
If our government were in the nation-destroying business, they'd be doing a fantastic job! But that's not what we're paying our government to do.
America is under no obligation to admit anyone, least of all perpetually aggrieved, welfare-dependent Muslims, some percentage of whom, we know to a certainty, will end up being terrorists.
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Saudi Arabia is a destination country for men and women subjected to forced labor and, to a lesser extent, forced prostitution. Men and women primarily from South and East Asia, the Middle East, and Africa voluntarily migrate to Saudi Arabia as domestic workers or low-skilled laborers; many of these workers subsequently face involuntary servitude. Non-payment of wages is the most common complaint from foreign workers in the Kingdom, while employers’ withholding of workers’ passports remains widespread. The foreign worker population is the most vulnerable to trafficking in Saudi Arabia, particularly female domestic workers due to their isolation inside private residences. The ILO estimated in 2013 that Saudi Arabia is one of the largest employers of domestic workers in the world, a sector with the highest average working hours. Some foreign nationals who have experienced indicators of trafficking have been placed on death row. Although many migrant workers sign contracts, some report work conditions substantially different from those described in the contract, while other workers never see a contract at all. Some migrant workers voluntarily enter into illegal arrangements and pay a Saudi national
to sponsor their residence permit while they seek freelance work, thus becoming vulnerable to possible extortion by their sponsors. Due to Saudi Arabia’s requirement that foreign workers obtain an exit visa from their employers to legally leave the country, some are forced to work for months or years beyond their contract term because their employers will not grant them an exit permit. Some women, primarily from Asia and Africa, are believed to be forced into prostitution in Saudi Arabia. After running away from abusive employers, some female domestic workers are kidnapped and forced into prostitution. Children from South Asia, East Africa, and Yemen are subjected to forced labor as beggars and street vendors, facilitated by criminal gangs. A government study conducted in 2011 reported most beggars in Saudi Arabia are Yemenis between the ages of 16 and 25. Migrants from Yemen and the Horn of Africa enter Saudi Arabia illegally—sometimes with the help of smugglers—via the Yemeni border; some of them may be trafficking victims. Some Saudi nationals engage in sex tourism in various countries worldwide. The Saudi government did
not report efforts to address child sex tourism by Saudi nationals abroad through any law enforcement efforts. Some Saudi men used legally contracted “temporary marriages” to sexually exploit young girls and women—including Syrian refugees—overseas.
The US State Department's 2015 report on human trafficking: Download Human Trafficking N-S 2015
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Qatar is a destination country for men and women subjected to forced labor and, to a much lesser extent, forced prostitution. Approximately 94 percent of the country’s workforce is comprised of men and women from South and Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East who voluntarily come to work as low- and semiskilled workers, primarily in construction, oil and gas, service, transportation, and domestic work, but some subsequently face forced labor. Female domestic workers are particularly vulnerable to trafficking due to their isolation in private residences and lack of protection under Qatari labor laws. Qatar is also a destination country for women who migrate for employment purposes and become involved in prostitution; some of these women may be runaway domestic workers forced into prostitution by traffickers who exploit their illegal status. In 2014, reports by an international organization alleged Nepali and other migrant workers in Qatar died primarily due to poor working conditions.
The US State Department's 2015 report on human trafficking: Download Human Trafficking N-S 2015
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by Katie Pavlich Article
Two weeks ago, White House National Security adviser Susan Rice said during an interview that officials in the Obama administration would "die trying" to close Guantanamo Bay prison, something President Obama promised to do during his 2008 presidential campaign.
Last summer we saw the exchange of Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl (someone Rice said served with "honor and distinction") for five top Taliban commanders. Now, just two days after ISIS carried out the worst terror attack in France since World War II, the Obama administration has transferred five more detainees to the United Arab Emirates.
The Department of Defense announced late Sunday that five Yemeni detainees who had been held at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba have been released and sent to the United Arab Emirates.
The transfer of Ali Ahmad Muhammad al-Razihi, Khalid Abd-al-Jabbar Muhammad Uthman al-Qadasi, Adil Said al-Hajj Ubayd al-Busays, Sulayman Awad Bin Uqayl al-Nahdi, and Fahmi Salem Said al-Asani, came after a “comprehensive review” by the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force, according to the Pentagon.
Four of the five detainees —al-Qadasi, al-Busays, al-Nahdi, and al-Asani — had been recommended for transfer by the task force as of January 2010. The task force recommended continuing detention for al-Razihi, saying that he had been a bodyguard for Usama bin Laden and that he probably fought against the rebel Northern Alliance prior to the U.S. invasion. The task force also described al-Razihi as a "medium [security]risk [who] may pose a threat to the US, its interests, and allies."
Last week Congress passed legislation banning the transfer of GITMO detainees to the United States as President Obama continues to threaten closing the prison through an executive order.
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by Tom Purcell Article
Americans are abandoning the traditional family in big numbers.
According to a 2014 Pew Research Center report, “less than half (46 percent) of U.S. kids younger than 18 years of age are living in a home with two married heterosexual parents in their first marriage.”
Compare that to 1960, a few years before I was born, when 73 percent of children lived in traditional families.
“Rapid changes in American family structure have altered the image of who's gathering for the holidays,” reports Pew. “While the old ‘ideal' involved couples marrying young, then starting a family, and staying married till ‘death do they part,' the family has become more complex, and less ‘traditional.'”
Here's another number that is troubling: 41 percent of children in America are born to unwed mothers — compared to 5 percent in 1960. Pew says that 34 percent of children are raised by an unmarried parent, usually by their mothers. Most have no father in the home.
I feel bad for these kids.
I can't imagine growing up without my dad in the house. And though my traditional family was far from perfect, I wish every kid could have the wonderful experience I had growing up as the only boy with five sisters.
One day when I was 12, the neighborhood bully was roughing me up. I didn't have a brother to teach me to fight; my sisters taught me. I looked the bully dead in the eye and said, “You are soooooo immature!”
My father being the sole breadwinner, he was always looking to stretch a buck. He made me wear hand-me-downs. It wasn't too bad most of the year, but Easter Sunday was humiliating. I had a heck of a time outrunning the neighborhood bully with my pantyhose bunching up on me and my bonnet flopping in the wind.
Until I was 12 in 1974, when my parents added onto our house, all eight of us lived in a modest-sized home with only one full bath. My father never could get in there. As soon as he'd hear the bathroom door open, he'd race down the hall to take a shower — only to hear it slam shut again, another of my sisters locking herself inside for 30 minutes or more.
But just as often as squabbles would break out — because I hogged all of the fresh fruit or failed to change the toilet paper roll — we'd sit around the dinner table, laughing. I was a frequent target of the laughter. My sisters loved to tell stories about their stinky, sweaty, mud-caked brother.
It's amazing to me that I'm 53 already, but I am still the benefactor of the traditional family that I was blessed to grow up in. My mother and father are doing grand in their golden years and I am lucky I can visit them Sundays and holidays and have a grand time gathering with my sisters and their husbands and children.
My parents, believers in “until death do they part,” will celebrate 60 years of marriage next year. We are going to have a big blowout to celebrate that incredible milestone. My parents' marriage is something I am proud of.
Sure, I understand that times change, and I don't begrudge people choosing to raise their children in a non-traditional manner.
I'm just saying that I was incredibly blessed to grow up in a traditional family in a raucous, nutty house filled with characters and drama and two parents, committed to each other for life, who put their children's comfort and well-being far ahead of their own.
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Due to large-scale violence driven by militias, civil unrest, and increased lawlessness in Libya that worsened in 2014, accurate information on human trafficking became increasingly difficult to obtain—in part due to the withdrawal of most diplomatic missions, international organizations, and NGOs from the country. Trafficking victims or those vulnerable to trafficking, such as migrant workers, who remain in the country may be vulnerable to increased violence. In February 2015, the media reported 15,000 Egyptian migrant laborers had fled Libya following the beheadings of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians by militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Libya is a destination and transit country for men and women from sub-Saharan Africa and Asia subjected to forced labor and forced prostitution. Migrants seeking employment in Libya as laborers or domestic workers or who transit Libya en route to Europe are vulnerable to trafficking. In 2014, an international organization reported Syrian nationals temporarily residing in Sudan preferred to travel through Libya en route to Italy with the use of smugglers; these Syrians are at risk of trafficking. In February 2015, the media reported a Russian trafficking network brought hundreds of Bangladeshi nationals via Libya to Italy, where they subsequently endured forced labor. Prostitution rings reportedly subject sub-Saharan women to sex trafficking in brothels, particularly in southern Libya. Nigerian women are at heightened risk of being forced into prostitution, while Eritreans,
Sudanese, and Somalis are at risk of being subjected to forced labor in Libya. Trafficking networks reaching into Libya from Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, and other sub-Saharan states subject migrants to forced labor and forced prostitution following fraudulent recruitment, confiscation of identity and travel documents, withholding or nonpayment of ages, and debt bondage. One 2014 account indicated criminal groups recruited Sudanese migrants to Libya through false job offers and subsequently forced them to work in agriculture with little or no pay. Private employers in Libya mobilize detained migrants—from prisons and detention centers, including some under the control of the previous interim government—for forced labor on farms or construction sites; when the work is completed or the employers no longer require the migrants’ labor, employers return them to detention. In previous years, migrants paid smuggling fees to reach Tripoli, often under false promises of employment or eventual transit to Europe. Once these victims crossed the Libyan border, they were sometimes abandoned in southern cities or even the desert, where they were susceptible to severe forms of abuse and human trafficking. Since 2013, numerous reports indicate militias and irregular armed groups, including some affiliated with the government, conscript Libyan children under the age of 18.
The Government of Libya does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so; therefore Libya is placed on Tier 3. The government’s capacity to address human trafficking was significantly hindered during the reporting period as it struggled to consolidate control over its territory and counter militia and extremist violence. Courts in major cities throughout the country ceased to function
in 2014, preventing efforts to investigate trafficking crimes or bring trafficking offenders to justice. The government did not identify or provide protection services to victims of trafficking, while authorities continued to punish victims for unlawful acts that were committed as a direct result of being subjected to human trafficking. As in previous years, the government did not address reports of detained foreign migrants being sold into forced labor with the complicity of prison and detention center guards. It failed
to prevent and provide protection to children under the age of 18 who were recruited and used by militia groups, some of which are affiliated with the government.
Download the US State Department's 2015 report on human trafficking: Download Human Trafficking J-N
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by Michael Brown Article
One of the strongest arguments against consensual adult incest is that incestuous unions could result in children with genetic defects, but since that concern wouldn’t apply to same-sex couples, an Irish political leader has argued that gay cousins should be allowed to “marry.” And that only begs the next obvious question: Why not gay brothers or gay sisters?
As reported in the Irish Times, Independent Senator David Norris, himself gay, “has said that gay cousins should be allowed to marry each other following the same-sex marriage referendum.”
“It would not take a feather out of me if two cousins married each other,’’ Mr. Norris said. “What is the problem with that?’’
So, no sooner does the Irish Legislature officially announce the legalizing of same-sex “marriage” than an Irish Senator calls for gay cousins to be allowed to marry.
Yes, “Mr. Norris said the regulations covering cousins marrying were introduced to protect the genetic pool, but that this would remain relatively untroubled by same-sex marriage.”
Then wouldn’t the same line of reasoning apply to gay brothers or sisters who wanted to “marry?”
And if the taboos against homosexual “marriage” are now considered outdated and intolerant, why can’t the same thing be said about the taboos against adult incest?
And from a “progressive” Christian perspective, if Leviticus 18 does not apply to believers today (including, of course, the prohibition against homosexual practice in Leviticus 18:22), then why should the prohibitions against incest in that same chapter (found in verses 6-17) still apply? After all, Jesus didn’t say anything about incest, so it couldn’t be that important, right?
Haven’t we heard all these arguments before when it comes to homosexual unions?
For several years, I have been charting the growing call to normalize consensual adult incest, most recently documented in Outlasting the Gay Revolution, where I include a list of TV shows and Hollywood movies in which such relationships are embraced or even celebrated.
Yet when I dared raise the subject on the Piers Morgan show in December 2013, his only response was that I was being “ridiculous” and “silly” to speak of such things, despite the fact that there have been court cases advocating for consensual adult incest and that some European countries already lifted legal sanctions against incestuous relationships.
And let’s not forget that in July 2014, in Australia, “Judge Garry Neilson, from the district court in the state of New South Wales, likened incest to homosexuality, which was once regarded as criminal and ‘unnatural’ but is now widely accepted.
“He said incest was now only a crime because it may lead to abnormalities in offspring but this rationale was increasingly irrelevant because of the availability of contraception and abortion.”
The article reporting this was titled, “Australian judge says incest may no longer be a taboo,” and based on his logic, there should be no objection to gay incestuous “marriages” since gay couples can’t produce children of their own.
Note also that in September 2014, “A government-backed committee in Germany has recommended that the government abolish laws criminalizing incest between siblings, arguing that such bans impinge upon citizens’ rights to sexual self-determination. According to findings from the German Ethics Council [made up of scientists, doctors, and lawyers], that right is a ‘fundamental’ one, and carries more weight than society’s ‘abstract protection of the family.’” (Yes, this was from a panel of so-called ethicists.)
One month later, on October 9, 2014, the Huffington Post ran an article titled, “Should Incest Between Consenting Adult Siblings Be Legalized? Experts Sound Off,” and the article was posted in the Huffpost Gay Voices section, with some opening calling for the removal of taboos against adult incest.
That’s why I wasn’t in the least bit surprised when, in December 2014, I was the only one of five debaters on the DebateOut.com website (which is now defunct) who argued that consensual adult incest should remain prohibited by law.
So, go ahead and mock me and tell me there’s no slippery slope.
As I’ve said before, you can mock my words today but you’ll mark them tomorrow.
This is the inevitable downward slide that results when you separate marriage from procreation and from joining children to their mother and father. You end up with positions like that of Sen. Norris.
The good news is that history is still being written and, just as we are the generation that opened wide the floodgates of radical, negative, change, we are the generation that can put the brakes on this social madness and return to higher ground.
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In recent months there have been a series of cases reported in the media, where some teenage thug -- white, black or Hispanic in different cases -- has been stopped by a policeman for some routine violation of the law and, instead of complying with lawful instructions, such as "show me your driver's license," chooses instead to defy the policeman, resist arrest and finally ends up physically assaulting the cop.
In the most recent case, the teenager happened to be white, but the story doesn't seem to change much, whatever the complexion of the guy who violated the law. Nor does the sad ending change, with the young wise guy shot dead. Nor do the reactions of the media and the parents vary much.
"He was only a kid" is an almost automatic reaction of the parents and the media. "He didn't deserve to be killed" over a traffic violation, or because he didn't drop a toy gun when ordered to, or some other minor infraction.
Are we so addicted to talking points and sound bites that we can't be bothered to use common sense? If you are killed by a teenager, you are just as dead as if you had been killed by the oldest man in the world.
It doesn't matter how minor the law violation was that caused the young guy to be stopped. He wasn't shot for the violation -- which could have been jay-walking, for all the difference it makes. He was shot for attacking the police, after having foolishly escalated a routine encounter into a personal confrontation.
Irrational statements by the young man's parents may be understandable when they discover that their son is dead. But for media people to make such mindless statements to a nationwide audience is just grossly irresponsible.
In an atmosphere where second-guessing policemen has become a popular sport in the media, as well as among politicians, there is always someone to say that there must have been "some other way" for the policeman to handle the situation.
Utter ignorance of what it is like to be in such situations does not seem to make the second-guessers hesitate. On the contrary, ignorance seems to be liberating, so that "excessive force" has become an almost automatic comment from people who have no basis whatever for determining how much force is necessary in such situations. You can't measure out force with a teaspoon.
The truly tragic cases involve some really young kid -- maybe ten years old or so -- who has a very realistic-looking toy gun, and has removed the red plastic attachment that is supposed to show that it is not a real gun. When he turns his realistic-looking toy gun on a policeman, and refuses to drop it, that can turn out to be the last mistake of his young life.
Someone in the media recently complained that a policeman shot a boy who had a toy gun "within seconds" of arriving on the scene. When someone has a gun, and refuses to drop it, a policeman can be killed within seconds. A dialogue under these conditions can be a fatal luxury he cannot afford.
There is something grotesque about people sitting in safety and comfort, blithely second-guessing at their leisure what a policeman did when he had a split second to make a decision that could cost him his life, leaving behind a widow and orphans.
You cannot have law without law enforcement. If cops are supposed to back down whenever they are confronted by some brassy young thug, that may indeed save a few lives among the thugs. But that just means that a lot of other lives will be lost under "kinder, gentler" policing.
After this year's widespread indulgences in anti-police rhetoric by politicians, the media and race hustlers, how surprised should we be by the dramatic upsurge in murders after law enforcement had been undermined?
Laws without law enforcement are just suggestions. Imagine if highway speed signs are replaced by signs that say, "We suggest you not drive faster than 65 m.p.h., please." Do you doubt that many more lives will be lost on the highways?
Maybe the parents who are so bitter over the loss of a son in a wholly unnecessary confrontation with a policeman doing his job might ask themselves if they did their job, when they raised a child without teaching him either common sense or common decency.
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Lebanon is a source and destination country for women and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking and a transit point for Eastern European women and children subjected to sex trafficking in other Middle Eastern countries. Women and girls from South and Southeast Asia and an increasing number from East and West Africa experience domestic servitude in Lebanon with the assistance of recruitment agencies that at times engage in fraudulent recruitment. A highly publicized case of an Ethiopian domestic worker publicly beaten by a Lebanese recruitment agent in March 2012 exemplifies the abuse suffered by domestic workers in Lebanon. Under Lebanon’s sponsorship system, workers who leave their employers’ houses without permission forfeit their legal status, putting them at risk of re-trafficking. Women from Eastern Europe, North Africa, and Dominican Republic enter Lebanon through the artiste visa program to work in the adult entertainment industry. In 2014, approximately 3,400 women entered Lebanon under this program—a substantially lower number than in 2013—which sustains a significant sex trade and enables forced prostitution. Some women from East and West Africa also endure forced prostitution in Lebanon. Lebanese children are reportedly victims of forced labor in street begging and commercial sexual exploitation facilitated by male pimps, husbands, and boyfriends, and, at times, through early marriage. Small numbers of Lebanese girls may be subjected to sex trafficking in other Arab countries. Syrian refugee men, women, and children in Lebanon are at risk of sex trafficking and forced labor. There is a reported increase in Syrian children engaged in forced street begging. Syrian girls are brought to Lebanon for prostitution, sometimes through the guise of early marriage. Some Syrian women may be forced to engage in street prostitution, and Syrian LGBT refugees are forced or coerced into prostitution by Lebanese pimps. In 2014, NGOs reported an increase in Syrian refugees forced to work in agriculture or conduct criminal activity. Syrian gangs force Syrian refugee men, women, and children to work in the agricultural sector in Beqaa Valley.
The US State Department's 2015 report on human trafficking: Download Human Trafficking J-N
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Kentucky’s nonprofit health insurer set up under ObamaCare is shutting down because of financial problems, the latest in a string of closures for the nonprofit plans around the country. Kentucky Health Cooperative, a nonprofit insurer known as a co-op, explained that it could not stay financially afloat after learning of a low payment from an ObamaCare program called “risk corridors.” That program was intended to protect insurers from heavy losses in the early years of the health law by taking money from better-performing insurers and giving it to worse-performing ones. However, the Obama administration announced on Oct. 1 that the program would pay out far less than requested, because the payments coming in were not enough to match what insurers requested to be paid. Therefore, insurers only will receive 12.6 percent of the $2.87 billion they requested...The Obama administration said when making the risk corridor announcement earlier this month that the low payments could cause “isolated solvency and liquidity challenges” for a small number of insurers. The Kentucky co-op is the fifth to close, following New York’s co-op last month.Indeed, the Obama administration's bailout-style program shocked many insurers by announcing fractional loss-defraying pay-outs, compared to amounts requested -- a decision driven by funding shortfalls. The Wall Street Journal's editors include the Kentucky debacle in a house editorial that runs though Obamacare's enduring woes. After calling attention to the program's significant attrition rate and lower-than-projected enrollment stats, the piece cites an academic study demonstrating that Obamacare is in many cases hurting the very people it was allegedly crafted to help:
Don’t count on the attrition problem going away given ObamaCare’s high and rising costs, as well as its low quality that is approaching Medicaid levels of coverage. The plans simply don’t offer good value for the money. In a new working paper, Wharton economists Mark Pauly, Adam Leive and Scott Harrington estimate how much better or worse off the non-poor uninsured are under ObamaCare. They measure the cost of the plans, the benefits of consuming pre-paid medical care and out-of-pocket payments without obtaining coverage. They conclude that, “even under the most optimistic assumptions,” half of the formerly uninsured take on both a higher financial burden and lower welfare, and on net “average welfare for the uninsured population would be estimated to decline after the ACA if all members of that population obtained coverage.” In other words, ObamaCare harms the people it is supposed to help.This is not a prescription for a healthy, durable program.Polling has consistently borne this out, as far more Americans report being directly harmed by the law than helped by it. Supporters of this massively expensive big government experiment can assert success day in and day out. Words and spin cannot alter reality. And as a reminder, the so-called "Affordable" Care Act is nothing of the sort. Obamacare exchange customers are bracing for hefty 2016 premium increases in many states (here's one of the latest updates), on top of already-high deductibles and other out-of-pocket costs. Even within the employer-based market -- among consumers who haven't yet been stripped of their existing plans, and are therefore (supposedly) unaffected by the law -- the price arrow keeps pointing in the wrong direction:
American workers saw their out-of-pocket medical costs jump again this year, as the average deductible for an employer-provided health plan surged nearly 9% in 2015 to more than $1,000, a major new survey of employers shows. The annual increase, though lower than in previous years', far outpaced wage growth and overall inflation and marked the continuation of a trend that in just a few years has dramatically shifted healthcare costs to workers. Over the past decade, the average deductible that workers must pay for medical care before their insurance kicks in has more than tripled from $303 in 2006 to $1,077 today, according to the report from the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust. That is seven times faster than wages have risen in the same period.Obamacare backers justified the unprecedented and costly government intrusion into the healthcare market by pledging that the new law would bend the "cost curve" down on overall healthcare spending while substantially lowering individual families' health expenses. Well, they promised a lot of things, you'll recall:
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The grand illusion of zealots for laws preventing ordinary, law-abiding people from having guns is that "gun control" laws actually control guns. In a country with many millions of guns, not all of them registered, this is a fantasy and a farce.
Guns do not vanish into thin air because there are gun control laws. Guns -- whether legal or illegal -- can last for centuries. Passing laws against guns may enable zealots to feel good about themselves, but at the cost of other people's lives.
Why anyone would think that criminals who disobey other laws, including laws against murder, would obey gun control laws is a mystery. A disarmed population makes crime a safer occupation and street violence a safer sport.
The "knockout game" of suddenly throwing a punch to the head of some unsuspecting passer-by would not be nearly so much fun for street hoodlums, if there was a serious risk that the passer-by was carrying a concealed firearm.
Being knocked out in a boxing ring means landing on the canvas. But being knocked out on a street usually means landing on concrete. Victims of the knockout game have ended up in the hospital or in the morgue.
If, instead, just a few of those who play this sick "game" ended up being shot, that would take a lot of the fun out of it for others who are tempted to play the same "game."
Even in places where law-abiding citizens are allowed to own guns, they are seldom allowed to carry concealed weapons -- even though concealed weapons protect not only those who carry them, but also protect those who do not, for the hoodlums and criminals have no way of knowing in advance who is armed and who is not.
Another feature of gun control zealotry is that sweeping assumptions are made, and enacted into law, on the basis of sheer ignorance. People who know nothing about guns, and have never fired a shot in their lives, much less lived in high-crime areas, blithely say such things as, "Nobody needs a 30-shot magazine."
Really? If three criminals invaded your home, endangering the lives of you and your loved ones, are you such a sharpshooter that you could take them all out with a clip holding ten bullets? Or a clip with just seven bullets, which is the limit you would be allowed under gun laws in some places?
Do you think that someone who is prepared to use a 30-shot magazine for criminal purposes is going to be deterred by a gun control law? All the wonderful-sounding safeguards in such laws restrict the victims of criminals, rather than the criminals themselves. That is why such laws cost lives, instead of saving lives.
Are there dangers in a widespread availability of guns? Yes! And one innocent death is one too many. But what makes anyone think that there are no innocent lives lost by disarming law-abiding people while criminals remain armed?
If we are going to be serious, as distinguished from being political, we need to look at hard evidence, instead of charging ahead on the basis of rhetoric. Sweeping assumptions need to be checked against facts. But that is seldom what gun control zealots do.
Some gun control zealots may cherry-pick statistics comparing nations with and without strong gun control laws, but cherry-picking is very different from using statistics to actually test a belief.
Among the cherry-picked statistics is that England has stronger gun control laws than the United States and much lower murder rates. But Mexico, Brazil and Russia all have stronger gun control laws than the United States -- and much higher murder rates.
A closer look at the history of gun laws in England tells a very different story than what you get from cherry-picked statistics. The murder rate in New York over the past two centuries has been some multiple of the murder rate in London -- and, for most of that time, neither city had strong restrictions on the ownership of guns.
Beginning in 1911, New York had stronger restrictions on gun ownership than London had -- and New York still had murder rates that were a multiple of murder rates in London. It was not the laws that made the difference in murder rates. It was the people. That is also true within the United States.
But are gun control zealots interested in truth or in political victory? Or perhaps just moral preening?
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President Obama's intrusion into the mourning community of Roseburg, Oregon, in order to promote his political crusade for stronger gun control laws, is part of a pattern of his using various other sites of shooting rampages in the past to promote this long-standing crusade of the political left.
The zealotry of gun control advocates might make some sense if they had any serious evidence that more restrictive gun control laws actually reduce gun crimes. But they seldom even discuss the issue in terms of empirical evidence.
Saving lives is serious business. But claiming to be saving lives and refusing to deal with evidence is a farce. Nor is the Second Amendment or the National Rifle Association the real issue, despite how much the media and the intelligentsia focus on them.
If there is hard evidence that stronger gun control laws actually reduce gun crimes in general or reduce murders in particular, the Second Amendment can be repealed, as other Amendments have been repealed. Constitutional Amendments exist to serve the people. People do not exist to be sacrificed to Constitutional Amendments.
But if hard evidence shows that restrictions on gun ownership lead to more gun crimes, rather than less, then the National Rifle Association's opposition to those restrictions makes sense, independently of the Second Amendment.
Since this all boils down to a question of hard evidence about plain facts, it is difficult to understand how gun control laws should have become such a heated and long-lasting controversy.
There is a huge amount of statistical evidence, just within the United States, since gun control laws are different in 50 different states and these laws have been changed over time in many of these states. There are mountains of data on what happens under restrictive laws and what happens when restrictions are lifted.
Statistics on murder are among the most widely available statistics, and among the most accurate, since no one ignores a dead body. With so many facts available from so many places and times, why is gun control still a heated issue? The short answer is that most gun control zealots do not even discuss the issue in terms of hard facts.
The zealots act as if they just know -- somehow -- that bullets will be flying hither and yon if you allow ordinary people to have guns. Among the many facts this ignores is that gun sales were going up by the millions in late 20th century America, and the murder rate was going down at the same time.
Among the other facts that gun control zealots consistently ignore are data on how many lives are saved each year by a defensive use of guns. This seldom requires actually shooting. Just pointing a loaded gun at an assailant is usually enough to get him to back off, often in some haste.
There have been books and articles based on voluminous statistics, including statistics comparing gun laws and gun crime rates in different countries, such as "Guns and Violence" by Professor Joyce Lee Malcolm of George Mason University. Seldom do these factual studies back up what the gun control zealots are saying.
Why would an ultimately factual question about the consequences of gun control laws divide people along ideological lines? Only if at least one set of people were more devoted to their vision than to the facts.
This shows up when gun control zealots are asked whether whatever new law they propose would have prevented the shooting rampage that they are using as a stage from which to propose a new clampdown on gun ownership. Almost always, the new law being proposed would not have made the slightest difference. That too is part of the farce. A deadly farce.
So is the automatic assertion that whoever engaged in a shooting rampage was a madman. Yet these supposedly crazy shooters are usually rational enough to choose some "gun-free zone" for their murderous attacks. They seem more rational than gun control zealots who keep creating more "gun-free zones."
Gun control zealots are almost always people who are lenient toward criminals, while they are determined to crack down on law-abiding citizens who want to be able to defend themselves and their loved ones.
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