‘Blue Lives Matter bill’ goes into effect today in LouisianaAnd in New York:
"LOUISIANA — A new law goes into effect Monday that expands Louisiana’s hate crime statute to include the targeting of police officers, firefighters and EMS personnel, CNN reports."
‘Blue Lives Matter’ Bill Would Grant Cops Hate Crime Protection From Protesters in New York
Feminist Declares The Invention Of The Alphabet The Root Of Sexism, Misogyny And Patriarchy…From the book blurb:
From the book The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image:
Of all the sacred cows allowed to roam unimpeded in our culture, few are as revered as literacy. Its benefits have been so incontestable that in the five millennia since the advent of the written word numerous poets and writers have extolled its virtues. Few paused to consider its costs. . . . One pernicious effect of literacy has gone largely unnoticed: writing subliminally fosters a patriarchal outlook. Writing of any kind, but especially its alphabetic form, diminishes feminine values and with them, women’s power in the culture. […]
Literacy has promoted the subjugation of women by men throughout all but the very recent history of the West. Misogyny and patriarchy rise and fall with the fortunes of the alphabetic written word."
"This groundbreaking book proposes that the rise of alphabetic literacy reconfigured the human brain and brought about profound changes in history, religion, and gender relations. Making remarkable connections across brain function, myth, and anthropology, Dr. Shlain shows why pre-literate cultures were principally informed by holistic, right-brain modes that venerated the Goddess, images, and feminine values. Writing drove cultures toward linear left-brain thinking and this shift upset the balance between men and women, initiating the decline of the feminine and ushering in patriarchal rule. Examining the cultures of the Israelites, Greeks, Christians, and Muslims, Shlain reinterprets ancient myths and parables in light of his theory. Provocative and inspiring, this book is a paradigm-shattering work that will transform your view of history and the mind."All feminists must stop being literate, NOW. Literacy is obviously an insidious male plot to educate the world; females must resist! IGNORANCE POWER!
Brave man who stood up to Munich shooter now facing prosecution for 'INSULTING killer'
A MAN who famously stood up to the Munich shooter after he killed nine people is facing being charged by a prosecutor for insulting the killer.
"MAILBAG: From longtime Instapundit/VodkaPundit reader Max Kohnke:Yep. Socialism is about Free Stuff.
This is not a joke nor even an exaggeration. I just found out that my sister in law’s other brother-in-law was arrested in Venezuela at the airport while trying to leave the country. His crime, he was an employee for a company that went out of business. Waiting for more? There isn’t any. Maduro has decreed that any business that goes out of business has committed economic treason and its employees are subject to arrest. They had already arrested numerous owners and managers but this is the first time they went after rank and file worker bees."
"Like any other cult that's faced with dealing with false prophecies, the response of the hard core is to double down even as everyone else falls away."His reference was to a political issue, but it applies across the board to all claims that cannot be tested, proven right or proven wrong. Cults and their followers occur when some principle becomes absolutely necessary in the worldviews of those who are susceptible. Whether the principle passes tests of logic or succumbs to dialectic is of no matter. The construction of a story, a narrative which supports the mental neediness of the susceptible is all that is required. And no amount of rational discourse will prevent them from ignoring contrary facts which demolish their position. Rationalization, the inverse of rationality, becomes the entire thought process because that is what is necessary to the narrative.
A Pro-Immigrant Party Rises in the NetherlandsRead it all THERE.
"AMSTERDAM — Europe has more than its share of angry anti-immigrant political parties these days. But one party has turned the politics of immigration on its head, positioning itself as perhaps the first in Europe with a pro-immigrant stance, run by people from immigrant backgrounds.
That party, called Denk, or Think, is led by a multicultural group of candidates seeking to combat xenophobia and racism in the Netherlands.
Denk has promoted itself as a kind of answer to the nativist and isolationist positions of the flamboyant far-right populist candidate Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party, which has been surging in the polls.
“What is unique about Denk is that it’s a party of people with a migration background who completely control the party,” said Cas Mudde, a specialist in European political and radical parties who was born in the Netherlands.
“Nonwhites have been in Parliament for a long time, but all the parties are still dominated by white Dutch people,” added Mr. Mudde, who is an associate professor at the School for Public and International Affairs at the University of Georgia. “We haven’t had a party dominated by nonwhite Dutch that has a potential chance of getting elected into Parliament.”
The Denk party has proved contentious. It has been greeted with skepticism by its political opponents and criticism in the Dutch media.
Denk was accused in the local Amsterdam centrist newspaper, Het Parool, of “fanning flames of immigrant discontent.” On social media, the party has been called “Netherlands haters.”
Among the Denk party’s stated policy goals are banning from legislative forums a pejorative term often used for Dutch nonwhites, “allochtoon,” and to replace the term “integration” with “acceptance.”
It wants to establish a “racism register” to track the use of hate speech by elected officials and to bar those who promote racism from holding public office.
It also promotes the building of a Dutch slavery museum and it hopes to abolish the black minstrel character called Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete, who appears in Dutch winter holiday celebrations with Sinterklaas, or a kind of Dutch Santa Claus."
945-million-yen lawsuit filed over cervical cancer vaccinesFor social engineers, humans are merely statistics. The SJWs total up certain stats, valid or not, moral or not, beneficial or not, and then pass laws requiring that their resulting opinions be codified. Or at least engage in massive shaming campaigns blaming skeptics for immorality in their noncompliance with SJW theory. All in the pursuit of anti-liberty run amok, along with anti-free-speech - in fact anti-everything except for full control of the stupid bitter-clingers, fly-overs and red state, red neck, trailer trash that is everyone not bicoastal. In the case of vaccines, risking a few lives here and there is acceptable, just as in the case of importing Muslims, accepting a few explosions, rapes and mass killings can "be absorbed" (as Obama estimated).
Sixty-three young women are seeking a combined 945 million yen ($9 million) in compensation in the first mass lawsuit concerning side effects from cervical cancer vaccines.
The women are suing the central government and pharmaceutical companies GlaxoSmithKline Plc and MSD KK.
The lawsuits were filed July 27 in the district courts at Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka. The plaintiffs are aged between 15 and 22.
The women argue they have suffered health problems, such as pain in various parts of their bodies, difficulty in walking and also impaired eyesight, as a result of taking the vaccines that were meant to prevent cervical cancer.
They were mostly in junior or senior high school when they took the vaccines between July 2010 and July 2013.
The vaccines under question are GSK's Cervarix, which was approved for domestic use in 2009, and MSD's Gardasil, which was approved in 2011.
The plaintiffs argue that reports had been filed overseas where the two vaccines were in use before Japan about various side effects, including cases of death and serious illness.
The women claim the central government bears responsibility for approving the vaccines and recommending their use without adequately looking into safety concerns despite knowing about the possible dangers.
The lawsuit argues that a legal causal relationship exists because common symptoms appeared among the plaintiffs after taking the vaccines.
According to officials at the health ministry, about 3.4 million women have taken the vaccines. As of the end of April, some 2,900 reports had been submitted by medical facilities and the pharmaceutical companies that indicated possible side effects. Of those cases, 1,600 were considered serious.
"We would like to refrain from commenting," said a health ministry official with regard to the lawsuit. "We believe it is important to provide support while being there for those who are suffering."
"Brazil opens probe as cases of Zika babies defy predicted patterns "But rogue abortion providers are interfering:
"Brazil’s Ministry of Health has launched an investigation into the cluster of babies born with brain defects linked to the Zika virus, after an expected “explosion” of cases across the country did not occur.
The bulk of the cases of congenital Zika syndrome – fetal brain defects that sometimes cause microcephaly, or abnormally small skulls – remain clustered in the northeast region of the country where the phenomenon was first identified last October, the ministry says.
And that has epidemiologists and infectious disease experts asking what is going on: Is it Zika and another virus working together that damages the fetal brains? Is it Zika and an environmental factor? Or something about the women themselves whose fetuses are affected?
The research in Brazil won’t have conclusions for months, but will have implications across the Americas, where the Brazilian experience and the rapid spread of Zika has caused governments to take protective measures and even warn women to delay getting pregnant.
“We can see there is a kind of cluster in [part of] the northeast region with high prevalence and high severity, of miscarriage and congenital malformation that is really severe,” said Fatima Marinho, co-ordinator of epidemiological analysis and information at the ministry.
“But we didn’t find this in other states – even the [adjacent] states didn’t see the same situation as in the epicentre.… We were preparing for an explosion and it didn’t come.
“So we started to think that in this central area maybe more than Zika is causing this intensity and severity.”
A central theory the ministry is now exploring is whether co-infection with other viruses, such as dengue or chikungunya, is the factor. For example, does a mother’s previous (or simultaneous) infection with dengue, which is also ubiquitous in Brazil, mean that the Zika virus affects a fetus differently? Or is it other viruses?"
[...]
After Brazil, the next country that was expected to see the wave of congenital Zika was Colombia, which has the second-largest number of reported Zika cases. But of more than 12,000 pregnant Colombian women with Zika, only 21 have had fetuses or babies with the brain defects.
Dr. Marinho, with the ministry, said this reinforces her suspicions about the role of co-infection or other factors in Brazil. Dr. Marques said Colombia is only seeing the babies of women who were infected late in their pregnancies so far (because the virus season is about six months behind, further to the north) and the evidence is that the likelihood of damage by Zika is higher earlier in gestation – so those babies may yet come.
But Dr. Rodrigues had another explanation. “Now we know that in places where Zika comes the rate of abortion shoots up,” she said. “The feminist groups that will send pills by post to women … as a way of making up for the unfairness of the restrictive abortion laws, report an enormous increase in requests from Brazil and Latin America. I wouldn’t be surprised if when we look at cohorts in other counties, pregnancies disappear, and we can’t say if it was spontaneous or medical abortion.”Panic abortions have likely killed numerous normal humans. The impact on the actual science will remain unknowable.
Researchers reported in the New England Journal of Medicine on July 28 that in Latin American countries where the new strain of Zika is spreading and abortion is illegal, there has been a huge spike in the number of requests to Women on Web, a Dutch-based organization which proves women with online consultations and then mails the drugs to induce a medical abortion. The increase over the rate of requests last year ranges from 38 per cent to 108 per cent in Brazil. (Brazilian authorities are now intercepting all deliveries to Brazilian women, the group said.)
Academic Absurdity of the Week: Sexist Ski Slopes?
"Did you know that skiing is a sexist sport? It turns out that even the ski slopes themselves are sexist! Or something. As usual, it’s hard to make out exactly what’s being said. but you’ll never be able to ski down a steep mogul run again, never mind use fast wax on your totally-phallically skis (and don’t even ask about ski poles I think), without Freud in your head, according to this article in the International Review for the Sociology of Sport:
Constructing masculinized sportscapes: Skiing, gender and nature in British Columbia, CanadaAs always, you can own a complete copy of this gem for a mere $36."
Mark CJ Stoddart, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.
Abstract
Sport sociology has provided a significant body of critical research on gender and social inequality within outdoor sport. Less attention is given to how the social construction of sport landscapes shapes gendered power relations. This article examines how skiing landscapes are constructed as masculinized spaces. The mountainous sublime is a site for performing athletic, risk-seeking masculinity.The backcountry and advanced terrain at ski resorts also appear as masculinized places. By contrast, less risky areas of the skiing landscape may be interpreted as ‘gender-neutral’ or feminized space. Through skiing, participants construct the meaning of gender and place, privileging masculinized versions of the sport.
