Brave New China

When will the world wake up to the future a growing China is preparing for everywhere they will hold power?

Where are the protests?

Where are the UN statements?

Where is … well … much of anything?

BZ to Reuters for putting this together – but for now it is the exception, not the rule.

Xinjiang is now one of the most heavily policed areas in the world, according to academics and human rights groups. This follows the launching of a “people’s war on terror” in 2014 after a series of violent attacks in Xinjiang and other parts of China that authorities blamed on religious extremists.

While China says the Uighur camps are vocational training centers, they are heavily guarded. Researchers have resorted to using satellite imagery to view and track the expansion of these facilities.

Reuters worked with Earthrise Media, a non-profit group that analyzes satellite imagery, to plot the construction and expansion of 39 of these camps, which were initially identified using publicly available documents such as construction tenders. The building-by-building review of these facilities revealed that the footprint of the built-up area almost tripled in size in the 17 months between April 2017 and August 2018. Collectively, the built-up parts in these 39 facilities now cover an area roughly the size of 140 soccer fields.
...
Uighurs have bristled at what they say are harsh restrictions on their culture and religion. They have faced periodic crackdowns, which intensified after riots in the regional capital in Urumqi in 2009 killed nearly 200 people.

Bombings in Xinjiang and attacks allegedly carried out by Uighur separatists, including a mass stabbing in the city of Kunming in China’s southwest in 2014 that killed 31 people, led to further restrictions. In recent years, under Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party secretary in Xinjiang and a loyalist of President Xi Jinping, measures against Uighurs have included a ban on “abnormal” beards for men and restrictions on religious pilgrimages to Mecca.

Chen has also overseen the installation of a pervasive, technology-enhanced surveillance apparatus across Xinjiang. Tens of thousands of security personnel have been recruited to staff police stations and checkpoints. Security screening, including scanners equipped with facial recognition cameras, has been installed in public places such as mosques, hotels and transportation hubs.
...
From early morning to night, the detainees said they were subjected to mind-numbing political indoctrination. This included reciting Chinese laws and Communist Party policies, as well as singing the national anthem and other traditional Red songs. Those who failed to correctly memorize the lines of Communist Party dictums were denied food, said one detainee. Detainees were forced to renounce their religion, engage in self-criticism sessions and report on fellow inmates, relatives and neighbors.

Of the eight former detainees interviewed by Reuters, four were Uighurs and four were ethnic Kazakhs. Some requested anonymity, in most cases because they said they feared repercussions for family members who remained in China.
...
... China, which for months denied their existence, now calls them vocational training centers.

“Through vocational training, most trainees have been able to reflect on their mistakes and see clearly the essence and harm of terrorism and religious extremism,” Shohrat Zakir, the Xinjiang governor, said in remarks to the state-run Xinhua news agency in October. “They have also been able to better tell right from wrong and resist the infiltration of extremist thought.”

At this stage of the article it came to mind that everyone needs to re-read their Hopkirk - all of it - but start with Setting the East Ablaze. This conflict is centuries old.

n Kashgar, the ancient Silk Road oasis town in Xinjiang’s southern Uighur heartland, locals say they live in fear. As security forces have blanketed the region and high-tech surveillance has become pervasive, there have been waves of mass detentions of Muslims in places like Kashgar.

The arrests peaked last year as police convoys with sirens blaring took people away, their heads covered in black hoods. In Kashgar, the locals say that many of those detained have not yet returned. On the streets, there are few young men to be seen.

“You can go to a Uighur and slap him in the face and he won’t dare retaliate,” said one Han Chinese local, who grew up with Uighurs in Kashgar and saw many of his friends taken away. “It’s going to be quiet for another one or two years, but then what? The greater the pressure, the fiercer the backlash.”

Of course, we know why the “international left” is not in an uproar over this – China is not Western. They are not for "the people" they are for control of the people.

Though some of the legitimate liberal West are starting to rightfully call out Chinese abuses, so much of the international left they are in a popular front with is obsessed with one thing, tearing down the established Western culture and order. “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go!” is not just a goofy chant; it is what drives so much of the official outrage among the usual suspects.

-Who actually is the source of most of the plastic garbage choking our oceans? China.
-Who is actually the source of most of the pollution and carbon emissions on the globe? China.
-Who is actually a growing colonial power? China.
-Who is actually creating an Orwellian order in plain sight? China.
-Who is actively trying to destroy and convert a Muslim nation? China.

…and yet, who is the subject of protests from the usual suspects in the leftist community? 

I know the answer – and I’ve known it since my early 20s when I saw the same people excuse everything by the Soviet Union and their clients. I just wish the liberals who really care about individual rights and freedom would see that the left is not their friend, but hey - that's just me.

Diversity Thursday

For the regular readers of DivThu, over the years you have heard me use the term, "Cultural Marxism." Though I've provided countless examples and linked to multiple articles explaining it, in comments we see those suffering from severe cases of cognitive dissonance refusing to acknowledge not just the Marxist roots to today's Diversity Industry and its rent-seeking cadres, but that is even exists at all.

Well, perhaps a quote direct from the horses ... mouth might be of help. 

Check out the below quote from the disgusting apologia for Karl Marx in - of course - the NYT by the associate philosophy professor at Kyung Hee University in South Korea, Jason Barker.

The key factor in Marx’s intellectual legacy in our present-day society is not “philosophy” but “critique,” or what he described in 1843 as “the ruthless criticism of all that exists: ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just as little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.” “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it,” he wrote in 1845.

Racial and sexual oppression have been added to the dynamic of class exploitation. Social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, owe something of an unspoken debt to Marx through their unapologetic targeting of the “eternal truths” of our age. Such movements recognize, as did Marx, that the ideas that rule every society are those of its ruling class and that overturning those ideas is fundamental to true revolutionary progress.

We have become used to the go-getting mantra that to effect social change we first have to change ourselves. But enlightened or rational thinking is not enough, since the norms of thinking are already skewed by the structures of male privilege and social hierarchy, even down to the language we use. Changing those norms entails changing the very foundations of society.

To cite Marx, “No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.”

The transition to a new society where relations among people, rather than capital relations, finally determine an individual’s worth is arguably proving to be quite a task. Marx, as I have said, does not offer a one-size-fits-all formula for enacting social change. But he does offer a powerful intellectual acid test for that change. On that basis, we are destined to keep citing him and testing his ideas until the kind of society that he struggled to bring about, and that increasing numbers of us now desire, is finally realized.

Again, those who relish the fruits of Marx - that begat the deaths of over 100 million people in the last century - are no better than those who apologize for Nazis.

Hat tip Ben Shapiro.

The Cluster Around Clusters

If there is a bill sponsored by Senators Feinstein and Leahy, and it involves the military, you pretty much know what direction it is going in;

In April of this year (2017), Feinstein and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., introduced the Cluster Munitions Civilian Protection Act to bind the Defense Department to the 1 percent maximum failure rate for cluster bomb detonation. It is also intended to put the U.S. on the path toward compliance with the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

No, it is designed to remove a capability the US needs to win in future conflicts without funding a replacement capability.

The push against cluster munitions has a long history, and the concerns are valid.

The Convention on Cluster Munitions, an international treaty, prohibits the use or stockpiling of this weapon. Significantly, Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran have not ratified the treaty.

The George W. Bush administration, recognizing the continuing importance of cluster munitions to U.S. defense needs, also refused to sign the treaty, but set a deadline of 2018 for the U.S. to move to cluster munitions with a very high degree of reliability.

This policy sought to eliminate cluster bombs whose sub-munitions detonate less than 99 percent of the time. This reduces the risk that unexploded ordnance poses to noncombatants.

There is another need out there that is of more importance than feeling good among the well-healed at Davos; in time of war, we will need cluster munitions. That capability is essential to how we fight wars agains numerically superior ground forces. Until we have enough war reserve to cover the capability clusters bring - especially in a GPS contested environment - we need to keep them.

The Pentagon has cluster munitions that meet this degree of reliability, the Sensor Fuzed Weapon, for example, but its large stockpiles of legacy cluster munitions would be useless at the 2018 deadline as legacy munitions do not meet that standard.

Though the 2018 deadline was set 10 years ago, the Obama administration showed no urgency in developing adequate replacements.
Today, those replacements are still under development. The military therefore took the only viable course of action by delaying the ban and keeping this weapon, while continuing to work toward developing new munitions that pose no risk of leaving any unexploded ordnance.

If the West is going to lean on the USA to provide the bulk of its combat power in case of significant conflict - which it does - then serious nations abroad, and serious leaders here, need to give our nation the room it needs to be ready.

If Feinstein and Leahy are really that concerned, then they should have sponsored a bill back when their party was in power in both the legislative and executive branches of government to fully fund a replacement. Of course, they didn't because that would not signal their brand of virtue.

Given the resources it has been provided, as Thomas Wilson and James Di Pane outline, the military has done the best as could be expected;

...most critiques of the Pentagon’s compromise policy ignore the fact that it now requires new purchases of cluster munitions to either have a less than 1 percent failure rate, or have self-destruct mechanisms that will be triggered after firing.

The Pentagon’s new policy has not, therefore, departed from the original goal of designing safer and more reliable cluster munitions. The policy rightly allows the U.S. military to maintain the capabilities necessary to counter masses of conventional forces should a future wartime scenario require it.

This is a prudent and defensible approach. The United States has used cluster munitions sparingly in recent decades, but they could be vital in a military situation involving large concentrations of conventional forces.

It would be reckless to destroy a valuable and well-established asset before its replacement is deployed.

Serious people will come up with serious alternatives - but that takes money and an understanding that war is a nasty and destructive business. If you want more scoped nastiness and destructiveness, then provide resources. If all you do is take away capabilities, all you really do is signal your willingness to sacrifice the lives of your countrymen tomorrow for you to be able to feel good about your self-righteousness today.

Standard issue leftist cognitive dissonance

OK, this is getting to be fun.

The left is now officially beclowning itself.

The Salamander nominee in the category for weak cheese useful idiocy goes to ...

This seems to have been interpreted by the BBC’s producers as a signal that North Korea’s Juche scholars had abandoned Marxism in favor of something else entirely. Some might even call this critical analysis a form of “Kremlinology,” but that term is loaded with socialist implications.

“North Korea has a higher share of the population in uniform than Nazi Germany and fascist Italy had until the Second World War,” said Brian Myers, an American professor of international studies at South Korea’s Dongseo University. “So, I think it’s much more accurate to look at North Korea as a far-right state. An ultra-nationalist state.”

Here, watch it yourself. Go to the 4:50 point.



Ummmm, no. Communism in full flower is in North Korea. Own it left - it represents your purest workers' paradise.

Oh, in case you forgot;



Hat tip

Seamanship 202: Shouldering as taught by Armada Española

Yes, I have watched it about four times - and I smile more and more.

Greenpeace - I cannot stand those publicity hound poseurs. I actually applied for a summer job with them in the mid-80s - snort. I guess they didn't like that I was in NROTC ...

Anyway, I lost all respect for them in the early 1990s when I was on the receiving end of one of their little photo-ops. Great to see the Spaniards giving them what for. Greenpeace's arrogance expecting everyone to play with their games is just pathetic ... but funny to watch.



Note to Greenpeace - a RHIB is a weapon. When you approach a ship at 20+ knots, you are armed. The Spanish showed more restraint than you deserve.

Oh, and if you are going to play varsity, you may want to get the right gear.

Although we can’t confirm this at this time, the injuries sustained by the Greenpeace activist, an Italian national, occurred after she was knocked out of the boat and was hit by a propeller.

The Spanish Navy acknowledges the incident and was quick to point out that all the propellers on their RHIBs are shrouded, while the Greenpeace activists’ boats did not have shrouds.

Hope you heal up soon and then accept responsibility for your injuries.




Hat tip gCaptain

Diversity Thursday

Time for another broad-view DivThu where we pull back and see where the foolishness you see from the Diversity Bullies in the Fleet come from and more importantly, where the people who are filling the civilian diversity and inclusion offices are intellectually coming from; what the Cultural Marxists world view is of those who are running the "affinity groups" and their sectarian awards and workshops our Department of the Navy budget money supports. In general, the toxic stew our leadership insists on injecting in to our Sailors.

First we have to tell a tale of warning. Yes, we have to fight these people and their cancerous socio-political agenda, but we also need to make sure we support our mates who are injured in battle. The enemy fights dirty - we have to fight smart. If you have a connection to a university or organization that has or is about to let themselves get mau-mau'd in to canceling a speaking appearance - push back hard.

One of our Shipmates in need of support is Robert Lopez, professor of English and Classics at Cal State-Northridge;

On August 6, 2012, I published an essay in Public Discourse, entitled “Growing Up with Two Moms.” It described my life growing up with a lesbian mother and her partner. Discussion of same-sex parenting until that point generally treated the children of gay parents as extensions of gay adults. Whatever was good for gay adults was presumed to benefit children they raised. No serious consideration was given to divergence between the children’s interests and the interests of gay adults who wanted and loved them. My point was this:

Quite simply, growing up with gay parents was very difficult, and not because of prejudice from neighbors. People in our community didn’t really know what was going on in the house. To most outside observers, I was a well-raised, high-achieving child, finishing high school with straight A’s.

Inside, however, I was confused.

There were loving things about my childhood, but it was hard. That is all I wanted to say. I didn’t argue anything about gay marriage or even gay adoption. Eventually I did come to voice support for traditional marriage laws, but here I only spoke out of my own experience.

You need to read it all ... but this is where it all rolled down to;

Soon I was getting hit by writers all across the web. A piece on August 9, 2012, in Frontiers LA affixed my photograph and began with the line, “Perhaps you know Cal State Northridge bisexual professor Robert Oscar Lopez—and hence might understand why he wants to cozy up to the antigay National Organization for Marriage.”

At that time I had no connection to the National Organization for Marriage, yet as late as September 2014, the Human Rights Campaign would still claim that I spoke at NOM “March for Marriage” rallies. All of this would be jarring news for NOM, since I support gay civil unions and foster care eligibility for gay couples.
...
On August 14, 2012, the campaign reached my workplace in a whole new way when my dean informed me that I would have to turn over all emails from January 2009 onward that had anything to do with Mark Regnerus and his research team, Witherspoon Institute, Bradley Foundation, NOM, U.S. elected officials, the Romney campaign, Republican National Committee, and University of Texas officials.

A team of IT workers and student employees were allowed to access emails and turn them over to my off-campus accusers.

For a year, the provost’s office, dean’s office, and president’s office at Northridge were barraged with angry emails denouncing me and demanding that the university take action.
...
In the American Literature class, friends of the bisexual female student who was working for public affairs filed a complaint against me with the Equity and Diversity Office, claiming I was a homophobe. They even alleged I had erections while teaching. The accusations were thrown out, but not before I had to hire a lawyer for an investigative hearing with the university attorneys.

A colleague who had received emails told me that he believed in the Freedom of Information Act and sided with my accusers; he ended up serving on my tenure review panel and interrogating me about my “personal revelations.”

The grants officer of the College of Humanities tried to block me from accessing grant money that had been given to me by outside donors. The Associate Vice Provost tried to block me from bringing Mickey Rooney to campus. In one phone call the following March, after receiving an email forwarded to her by a secretary who happens to be a lesbian mother, she ranted at me for my alleged unscrupulousness and dishonesty.
...
After I visited the European Union in Brussels with leaders of the French family movement, Manif pour Tous, the organizers of a gender studies conference at Lille University I was to attend told me the university administration did not want me on campus. More disinvitations followed. Three other universities had invited me to speak, but canceled over the concerns of administrators over hate speech.

GLAAD placed me on their “Commentator Accountability Project.” The Human Rights Campaign classified me as an “exporter of hate.”
...
On the morning of October 6, I was greeted with a flurry of angry emails calling me a “bigot” and a “right-wing asshole,” plus voice mail messages calling me a “bag of shit” and telling me to perform a sexual act on myself. These emails were sent to the president, provost, and chair. I spent two days in meetings with the provost, the campus police, and my students to explain what was going on. Finally I had to resort to legal measures and had my lawyer send a letter to Chad Griffin, head of the HRC.

I doubt if anything will come of my efforts to make it stop. My appeal to the American Association of University Professors on grounds of academic freedom was dismissed with a curt note. My letter to the Modern Language Association was never acknowledged.

They are, in a word, fascists. What HRC and their fellow travelers have done to many people who just don't agree with 100% of their agenda should shame everyone associated with them. I know I am a bit sheepish that I shared a trench with them in the repeal of DADT. Doesn't change my position that it was the right thing to do, I just can't control the radicalism of others - and many of those people have gone full fascist.

Going from the threatening and psycho, let's go to the patently absurd but serious. I give you Ray Mark Rinaldi, unsurprisingly the Denver Post's Fine Arts Critic; Did diversity miss the train in Union Station's architecture?

It's dangerous to assign race to people simply by glancing at their faces. Some people don't look at all like their race. Many people are a mix.

But if my recent counts of people in the restaurants, bars and shops in and around Denver's rehabbed, reopened Union Station are even close, it's an overwhelmingly white place. How can the new cultural jewel of our city — where 47 percent of the population is minority — draw a crowd that is 98.2 percent Caucasian on a bustling, buzzed Saturday night?

Well Ray, like the final part of this post below, there are somethings that white people like to do - renovation of old buildings and then hanging out in them are one. So?

I would invite Ray to kick back and enjoy it, but alas ... joy doesn't seem to be Ray's thing.

t doesn't look at all like Denver in 2014. More like Denver in 1950. More like Boise, Idaho, or Billings, Mont. This is a public place, owned by all of us, open to all, but the invitation to visit was declined by many, and it's obvious who isn't showing up.

Yes, Ray's comment seem that bigoted. Let's grab some popcorn and read him some more.

A few years ago, the station was a ghost town. Now it is wildly popular, and in many ways, a smashing success.

If, that is, you are white and not paying attention. Or if you think diversity doesn't matter. If you do, you can't help but feel like something is off amidst all the clinking of martini glasses in the swank Cooper Lounge on the mezzanine, or the low hum of pucks sliding across shuffleboard tables in the Great Hall.
...
It's easy to speculate why things are different at Union Station, though it requires some less elegant thinking about the way people of different ethnicities behave, some stereotyping.
...
Let's start with the building itself, the actual architecture. Union Station is a neo-classical mix of styles — European styles. The symmetry, arched windows, ornate cornice and stacked, stone walls have their roots in the glory days of France, England, Greece and Rome, in empires that were nearly absent of ethnic minorities and who felt fully at ease invading, exploiting and actually enslaving the people of Africa, subcontinent Asia and South America.

OK, I have to stop and bask in that incredible ignorance on display. Where to start?

France and England had little to do with South America at all. 

England was but one part of the polyglot British Empire, and were bit players in the African slave trade (that was mostly the business of others, mostly Spain, Portugal, Arabs and Africans themselves). As a matter of fact, it was the British Empire that was responsible for ending the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Google William Wilberforce for goodness sakes.

The Greek and Roman Empires? I guess he doesn't know where the root of the word "slave" comes from. In any event, the Greeks and Romans preferred European slaves, usually Slavs, Gauls, and whoever else they felt like taking. There was no such thing as race slavery ... heck, if you want to pick on the pre-British but English nation, they were gangbusters on Irish slaves in the 1600s.

I would make a few more observations, but I don't think Ray is that interested. Methinks he is more interested in trying to convince as many people as possible that he cares so much more than everyone else. He is the true anti-racist and most inclusive of all the special snowflakes out there. Yawn.

Anyway, back to the foolishness;

Yes, that's all in the past; things have changed. But the $54 million renovation of Union Station doesn't take that into account. It restores the symbols of an old world with no updates. The gilded chandeliers have been rewired, the marble polished, but there's no nod to the present, no interior walls in the bright colors of Mexico, no Asian simplicity is in the remix. There are no giant sculptures by African-American artists bonused into the lobby, no murals on the basement walls.
...
History has its ups and downs, the thinking goes, and you can't blame buildings for the good or bad that happened. But a preservationist just might end up with a building that draws mostly white people — with a Union Station.

The present restoration harkens back to Union Station at its height, in the first half of a 20th century when many Americans suffered the social indignity and economic disadvantage of a segregated America.
...
There's no traditional Mexican restaurant, no soul-food restaurant, no sushi bar, as if no one noticed that the Mexican-American, African-American and Asian-American families that own and operate those places across the city are also our best food purveyors.
...
It could have let its imagination run wild and installed a basketball court or a rec center, day-care facility, museum, a theater that any group could rent, an indoor playground, or yes, a Subway.

But it chose a different path. RTD, whose buses and trains are the most diverse places in Denver, created a monster of separation. You can't keep private enterprise from doing this sort of deed, but a public entity, a common asset, might have more democratic obligations.

A friendly suggestion for Ray; dude - if you are looking for a retrograde attitude towards race and ethnicity, are concerned about people who judge others simply by the way they look, then you may want to start with yourself.

And now, the third part of our play. 

A good friend reminded me of one of the foundation stones of this generation of Cultural Marxists Diversity Bullies, the "Progressive Stack."

Something only the patronizing, predominately white and privileged uber-left could come up with.

Enjoy another woman who you should be happy you don't wake up with after your second night on the town during Fleet Week.

Maybe Ray can count faces here too.

Twilight of the Summer Moonbat

It has been awhile since we pointed out the bankrupt nature of the moonbat left. 

We have a good excuse thanks to Jim Geraghty's post last week at NRO, Funeral Services for the Anti-War Movement Will Be Held Next Week.

Born in 2002, the anti-war movement suffered ill health since 2009 & collapsed in front of the White House Tuesday.

You need to read the whole thing as he has some great links that flesh out the details ... including one of mine from 2011;

“There never was an anti-war movement. Deep down, I think – most of us knew that anyway. It was an anti-Bush movement. War had nothing to do with it – it was all about the Left finding a way to regain power.”

Diversity Thursday

I really love when Diversity Bullies run in a pack. They get comfortable in a pack. They let is all hang out, let the mask slip, show a little ankle, part the veil ... it is such a sight to see.

They feel free to show their narrow, obsessed, angry, bitter view of themselves and the world they live in.

As you all know, we spend millions of dollars each year feeding the diversity industry. We send out uniformed and civilian employees to conferences, and hire professional grievance mongers with advanced degrees in sectarianism and division to good positions. We then force our Sailors to be subjected to their venom and spite.

They never solve anything, why, that would put them out of a job. No, their job is to find something for people to suspect their Shipmates about ... and if they can't find anything, they'll make it up.

So, next time you are asked to spend some of your money to send someone to a diversity conference, some sectarian award ceremony sponsored by some ethnically discriminatory organization, or hire someone to fill a HR position with a certain academic background, make sure you know what you are getting in to. Make sure you know who they are influenced by, and what kind of stew they are soaking in - and what they will be bringing across your quarterdeck.

This isn't an April Fool's joke - I actually thought it was. It is ligit.


BEHOLD the Diversity and Inclusion Gaggle in all its Glory!

The city of Madison hosted the 15th annual national White Privilege Conference last week at the Monona Terrace to discuss issues of white supremacy, social justice, education and the Tea Party.
...
Our first account comes from the breakout session titled Stories from the front lines of education: Confessions of a white, high school English teacher.

The session was facilitated by Kim Radersma, a former high school English teacher in California and Colorado. Radersma is currently working toward her Ph. D. in critical whiteness studies at Brock University in Ontario, Canada.

No, you can't make this stuff up.

She said anyone who is going into teaching and education must be a political figure.

"Teaching is a political act, and you can't choose to be neutral. You are either a pawn used to perpetuate a system of oppression or you are fighting against it," Radersma said during the session. "And if you think you are neutral, you are a pawn."
...
"Being a white person who does anti-racist work is like being an alcoholic. I will never be recovered by my alcoholism, to use the metaphor," Radersma said. "I have to everyday wake up and acknowledge that I am so deeply imbedded with racist thoughts and notions and actions in my body that I have to choose everyday to do anti-racist work and think in an anti-racist way."

She argued that until white people admit they have a problem, they will not be able to fight against white privilege.

"We've been raised to be good. 'I'm a good white person,' and yet to realize I carry within me these dark, horrible thoughts and perceptions is hard to admit. And yet like the alcoholic, what's the first step? Admitting you have a problem, ... "If you don't want to work for equity, get the fuck out of education," Radersma said. "If you are not serious about being an agent of change that helps stifle the oppressive systems, go find another job. Because you are a political figure."
...
Radersma said she taught a lower-level English class at the high school and her students were exclusively people of color. However, she said the Advanced Placement course in her school was almost all white and Asian students. Her principal observed class one day and commented on the difference in students between the two courses.

That experience, and the fact that her boss did not know how to tackle the problem, led her to leave the classroom and work toward her Ph. D. Radersma told the group she realized the problem was the institutionalized racist structure of education and her white privilege was causing the racial achievement gap.

"I came to higher ed to study. What is this problem that I'm scared of? I don't know what to do. My principal is scared of this. Where do I point? Who's at fault? My white body is at fault," she said. "My racial identity, as a white person who believes that I am somehow better or more deserving, is the problem."

Yea ... put her in your local public school system. Actually, you don't have to - people like her are legion.

Yes, we all should take a moment and pray not just for her ... but for the poor man who wakes up next to her. Maybe he needs to get together with TGMTDWS and go bowling.

"My partner, who is a man, can't tell you about feminism. He knows a lot about it. He considers himself a feminist, but you want to learn feminism from him? No," she commented during the session. "You need to learn feminism from a woman. You need to learn what it is like to be a woman from a woman. He can't teach that. I can't teach students of color nearly as well as a person of color can."

Yep, she's a catch, she is.

Another topic of discussion was how white people's actions, like donating to charity or helping a family in need, are inherently racist. A white attendee of the conference told a story about how her family donated school supplies to one of her classmates when she was in first grade because the family could not afford them.

The receiving family had moved from India, according to the attendee. While she was happy to be helping when it happen years ago, she was now questioning her family's motives.

"It was like 'well why don't you swoop in and save the day and give her all this stuff because we can afford to do that for them' kind of mentality," she said in the session.

Radersma agreed and said the family that was helped likely felt discriminated against.

I hope you're enjoying this opportunity to sniff around the diversity sauna ... you're paying for it.

The conference was paid for in part with taxpayer dollars. According to the Wisconsin Reporter, the conference received at least $38,000 from hotel room tax revenue, University of Wisconsin schools, and the City of Madison.

In addition to taxpayer and private funding, individuals had to pay upwards of $440 to attend the four-day conference.

How many people paying the $440 are getting that funding from government sources (i.e. taxpayers)?

Once last note - admit it Skippy, you're sad you missed it.

Part Two of our coverage of the White Privilege Conference: "The Longer You are in the Tea Party, the More Racist You Become."

In praise of crushing disorder

This is supposed to be a bad thing?

His portrayal of the enormous United States military operation to free Phillips from his captors has the calm technological blankness of a Navy commercial, without the 1970s waka-waka guitar. I can’t decide if there’s meant to be anything sardonic about the presentation of the asymmetrical conflict in “Captain Phillips”: Billions of dollars of cutting-edge military hardware and hundreds of corn-fed, gym-toned Americans on one side, four malnourished men with black-market Kalashnikovs on the other. But I kind of think there isn’t.

Andrew O'Hehir @Salon; what a spoiled, sheltered, pampered little man, and kind of pathetic.

Wait ... it's Thursday, right?

There’s a racial or cultural subtext to this film that’s right on the boundary of consciousness, and cannot entirely be ascribed to verisimilitude. Hanks’ Phillips – the only fully realized character in the entire film – remains a calm and rational actor until he is pushed to the limit of human endurance. The Navy officers, SEAL team members and other military personnel are competent, emotionless automata, seen mostly in shadows or illuminated by their electronic gizmos. But the Somalis behave like unmedicated hyperactive children with guns – they’re wild-eyed and hot-tempered, vacillating from murderous rage to companionable good humor and back again every few seconds. “Captain Phillips” is less an adventure yarn about the daring rescue of a captured American than a celebration of a huge and expensive machine that crushes disorder.

Check in the block complete.

Does he really have any grasp what global disorder is? Does he have any idea what the world would be like if the premier power was not a representative republic?

Think Russia with a little Venezuela thrown in for good measure.

I think we may have found a negative indicator. If Andrew hates a movie; it is a must-see. If he loves it; don't go to see it unless you have knitting needles to stick through your eyes and ears.



Hat tip Jawa.

Well, Maybe Ted Cruz Deserves a 2nd and 3rd Look

Always a good thing to judge a person, especially a Republican, by his enemies. Who he sets off - who can't stand them.

When the Left get deranged, half-cocked, personal and otherwise spastic - then you know you have them by the short-hairs.

They cannot argue the person's ideas - so they attack the person. Reagan & Thatcher were two perfect examples.

Check out this garden variety entitled North Carolina Democrat and NPR listener. Classic resident of probably somewhere in the Triangle between Durham, Raleigh, and the Peoples Republic of Chapel Hill.

Ramesh Ponnuru managed to give her the vapors. Fun to listen to. Ted Cruz derangement syndrome, indeed.



I've been listening to NPR for decades ... I think this lady has a bad case of selective listening.

It is almost as good written as spoken.

Yes, we’re calling from North Carolina having listened to your comments on NPR in the afternoon. And we were just quite stunned to hear you begin your comments with the comment, ‘I am a friend of Ted Cruz.’

Well, I can tell you in all the years that I have been listening to NPR, I’ve never heard any journalist begin commenting about an issue with the — making such a bold statement: They happen to be the friend of a particular politician.

And I just wanted to say that as far as I’m concerned, as a friend of Ted Cruz, this means that you are a friend of a severe narcissist and a vile liar and a terrorist. As far as we are personally concerned. He makes wild statements without any basis in fact such as ‘millions of Americans are being hurt by Obamacare.’ Really? Well, I would like to have specific identification of those millions and specifically how they are being harmed.

As far as I’m concerned, if I heard, if I turned on the television and I heard that he had been set on fire and thrown out of an airplane, I would not shed a tear. Also as far as I’m concerned, it appears that you are from another country and I highly suggest that you go back to that country and stir up trouble there instead of supporting terrorists in our Congress.

Thank you and goodbye.

So much yummy goodness there, from the multiple personality "we" to the wishing of painful death to those who you simply disagree with.

I think Chap used to date her.

Bye, Bye B.I.O.T. ?

Does anyone in power have access to a map, a knowledge of history - or for that matter - a desire for their civilization's global security?

The "footprint of freedom" is one of the most valuable bits of territory on the planet; and yet we are seriously doing this?

The United States, Britain and Mauritius have begun talks that may lead to the loss of ports, airstrips and listening posts on Diego Garcia, the remote tropical atoll that has played an important role in American maritime, air and space operations throughout Asia and the Indian Ocean for much of the last 50 years.

Hardly anyone who was born there is still alive. There is nothing there to support any kind of economy. It is in the middle of nowhere ... and ... give me a break.

This represents the absolute worst kind of hand-wringing, navel picking, self-hating narcissism in the international sphere.

Do we want to make ourselves more vulnerable ... oh, wait ... I forgot - some do. As Patrick Brennen over at NRO reminds us;

The cause of the Chagossians is something of a (minor) pet cause among global leftists, who’ve never met a stateless people they didn’t like (well, besides the Kurds, the Jews, Sudan’s Christians . . .). One hopes that the Obama administration doesn’t sympathize with any of these appeals, since the conversation has obviously begun, and DOD seems to consider it at least a possibility.

One writer in the Guardian suggested that “the US could use the Chagos Islands to bomb Iran is another good reason why the UK must restore them to Mauritius.” Rather, this is a very good reason why the U.K. should never do so.

Well, there you go.

The NE Leftist We Know and Loathe

Hippies. They are also the ones who will not employ the wife of a military member for the same reason.

A National Guardsman who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay has sued a woman he tried to rent from, after she told him his war service and her peace activism presented a “conflict of interests” and suggested he seek housing elsewhere —
...
Roberts told him in an April 9 voicemail that renting to him would be a conflict, saying, “We are very adamant about our beliefs.”

“It just is not going to be comfortable for us without a doubt. It probably would be better for you to look for a place that is a little bit less politically active and controversial,” Roberts told Morgan, according to his complaint. The voicemail was played for the Herald during an interview with Morgan last week at the Boston office of his lawyer, Joseph L. Sulman.
...
Roberts wrote she has belonged to a civil-rights group called Garden of Enlightenment since 2000, adding, “This bodes the question, ‘Why would someone like Joel Morgan, who apparently fought so valiently (sic) in wars in which he believed, want to even choose to subject himself to renting an apartment from people — like myself — who were so vigorously seeking an end to the Iraq War??’

Have fun Mr. Sulman.

Ahhh, yes. The Protesting Youth

I think I am going to have some pics to ponder today.

As you may see on the right, I am listening to 1968: The Year That Rocked the World. How is the communist youth movement doing?

Protesters take part in a rally organized by the PAME Communist-affiliated union as a Greek flag is seen on a department store advertising banner in Athens, Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. Strikes and demonstrations over austerity measures hit the Greek capital of Athens on Tuesday, as international debt inspectors returned to resume their scrutiny of the country's reforms. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Yep - what is that? Three baby boomers and one older-cohort Gen-X type?

Snort. Ha, ha Greek commie b@st@rds; we still won the Cold War you bloodless, mass murdering useful idiots.

Sunday Funnies

Ahhh, the Commie useful idiots are still with us ...

Some people just never quit ... or have any shame.

These are British - but we have them here. They are people who are no better than those blood and gore flecked apologists of Nazis.

Simon Winchester finds time to disgorge this charmer (subscriber only);

... seeing how South Korea has turned out — its Koreanness utterly submerged in neon, hip-hop and every imaginable American influence, a romantic can allow himself a small measure of melancholy: North Korea, for all its faults, is undeniably still Korea, a place uniquely representative of an ancient and rather remarkable Asian culture. And that, in a world otherwise rendered so bland, is perhaps no bad thing.

What a typical Leftist hypocrite. That British tool lives in the USA; MASS and NYC to be exact. Enjoy his writing, you paid for it - one of the teats he sucks off of is public radio.

The next useful idiot is a Brit too; Neil Clark.

Havel's anti-communist critique contained little if any acknowledgement of the positive achievements of the regimes of eastern Europe in the fields of employment, welfare provision, education and women's rights. Or the fact that communism, for all its faults, was still a system which put the economic needs of the majority first.
...
While the years following the liberation of eastern Europe from communism by Havel and his fellow dissidents are routinely portrayed in the west as one big success story, the reality is rather different.
...
Lauding Havel is not only doing a disservice to the millions of ordinary people in eastern Europe who have not been served well by his politics, but to the innocent men, women and children killed by the western military adventures he supported

Let them speak and by their words be d@mned.

Let the big man speak

Him.

The Revolution is Naw!

This is a hoot. If this is the bleeding edge and intellectual future of today's Left .... that is just sad.

Oh, and the girl with the Harvard shirt, I didn't understand anything she said because all I could think of is, wow - she's hot.



Oh, and if Doug wants to bring force in to the game ... feel free to lead from the front Doug. Start on URR's front lawn - or he can drag his little hob-nailed boots down South a few hours. Good luck with that.

Oh, so that's why history education is so screwed up ...

Want to know what passes for the higher-level history education now days?

Read the whole H-Diplo Roundtable Review, Volume XIII, No. 1 (2011), 1 September 2011 on their review of John Dower's book, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor / Hiroshima / 9-11 / Iraq. The Onion couldn't do it better.

These are the quotes from the best minds from Columbia to MIT. As usual, their prose is a bit opaque - but gut it out for the greater good.

Dower argues that whether ruled by monarchs or “imperial presidents,” such states--and the U.S. most notably--cannot qualify as genuine democracies. ... the rhetoric of empire cannot hide the American rulers’ historical hostility to democracy. They manifested their hatred of democracy for others under the guise of “benevolent assimilation” in the era of McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, when U.S. troops killed “at least two hundred thousand Filipino civilians in the Philippines war” (p. 82), and they do the same in our own time--the era of “benevolent global hegemony,” when our armed forces slaughter even greater numbers of civilians.
...
... it is impossible to explain the behavior of Japan’s top leaders in the 1930s and America’s senior leaders today without taking account of their “failures of imagination,” and “absence of transparency, accountability and plain common sense” (p. xxxii). This is as true for George W. Bush and his small, six-person, inner circle as it was for Japan’s collective decision makers grouped around Emperor Hirohito.
...
“American veneration of force,” self-righteousness, and arrogance are a third group of themes running through Dower’s book.
...
... once in Iraq, over-confidence and arrogance led them to discount the many “red flags” (p. 121) that went up, suggesting that they had not thought through the aftermath of their military intervention and had no exit plan. Irrationality, I would add, was inherent not only in their ideological passions but in every action they took in violation of Kant’s categorical imperative maxim.

... a major failure of imagination, on a par with Japan’s failure to grasp what Pearl Harbor would look like from the American viewpoint or how quickly the enormous war potential of the U.S. could be brought to bear against their forces. Racism on both sides led to denigration of the enemy.

Part Two explores terror bombing and the American change of attitude about the aerial killing of civilians before and after Hiroshima. Its six chapters focus on code words such as “Pearl Harbor”, “ground zero,” “Hiroshima,” and “shock and awe,” and how they came to be used to conceal reality and inhibit reflection on the past.
...
Dower’s larger thesis is that the errors imperial Japan committed, and the pathologies to which its leaders succumbed in the 1930s and early ‘40s, are especially instructive in the present era of U.S.-led aggression, when it is U.S. policy that openly flouts international law and engenders massive atrocity-producing situations by attacking and occupying Afghanistan and Iraq.
...
U.S. attitudes toward Japan reflect a deeply rooted racism whereas Japanese attitudes toward China had a racial basis but were attributable more fundamentally to a fear of instability and Communism, et cetera. At worst, Japan’s misdeeds are equated with those of the Allied powers: “In theory, Japan’s defeat liberated hundreds of millions of Asians who had been invaded, occupied, and oppressed by the emperor’s men. In actuality, it paved the way for wars and occupations that involved the Allied victors themselves – and that hold a murky mirror, in their own way, to the invasion of Iraq and aspects of that later tragedy that are less unique than often claimed”

It gets worse.

If you wonder who such smart people can see the world so wrong - a lot of it has to do with their poor eduction at our "best" institutions.

The Left - in full flower .....

Always just a couple of goose-steps away from their bad soulmates of the Left, the Fascists and Communists .... when the going gets tough, the Left goes to their core nature.

“You know, if a ballplayer threw a game and they get caught, they go to jail. Well, what are we going to do to the Republicans who are throwing the country?

“They’re throwing our country, and they all should be put in jail for what they’re doing, because they’re destroying our country, because they said at the beginning our one mission is to get rid of President Obama. That was their mission. They don’t care how much they destroy other people. They don’t care whether you go to work. They don’t care about anything.

“All they want to do is destroy the president. And in destroying the president of the United States, you destroy our country. They should be put in jail, each and every one of them, for throwing the country.”

Via the Palm Beach Post, you can hear it straight from Palm Beach County Democratic Party fundraising dinner, County Commissioner Burt Aaronson. So much for the new tone.

Should we call him "comrade" or just give him the stiff-arm salute?

Twit. Geezzzz ... this is going to be a nasty election

Diversity Thursday

You thought the logic twists and terms Annapolis goes through are a train wreck (as well document here in the past - look it up) - it could be worse; you could be Peter Kirsanow.

Coming to an institution of higher learning near you - if not there already.

Staggering racial preferences are in use at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, according to two studies released this week by the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO).

Black or Hispanic undergraduate applicants are 500 times more likely to be admitted than similarly situated white or Asian applicants. Black law-school applicants are 61 times more likely to be admitted than similarly situated white applicants.

... and how do the Diversity Bullies respond? As it their nature...

CEO president and frequent NRO contributor Roger Clegg was shouted down when he appeared on Wisconsin’s campus for a press conference and debate on CEO’s findings. Scores of students mobbed the press conference, shouting insults and, according to Doubletree Hotel management, knocking hotel staff to the ground. Police had to be summoned.

Of course - they cannot compete with facts ... but they sure can emote like champs!

As we have discussed before - it is all about meeting metrics. Sad thing is - there are secondary effects that have other metrics.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the University of Wisconsin has one of the highest gaps in black-white graduation rates among 293 public universities studied. This shouldn’t be a surprise. Studies presented to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights show that black law students who are the “beneficiaries” of preferences are two and a half times less likely to graduate than their white comparatives. Not unexpected when the median board scores for black and Hispanic admittees are up to 150 points lower than that for white and Asian admittees.

Most of those who dropped out probably would have done just fine if they were .... wait for it .... accepted in to an institution that they were qualified for.

Remember - most of the Diversity Industry is all about making other people feel good, not having other people call you nasty names, justify a paycheck, or generally to roll around in the intellectual Meth that is the grievance industry - or score points with someone who fits those reasons.

Education, justice, and economic advancement (for students) has nothing to do with it.