equality – praag.org

Liberal South Africans are ‘good-hearted racists’

White liberal South Africans may have expressed a desire to see justice done, but as “good-hearted racists” they did not want to give up any of their wealth and privileges, says Micheal Hiltzik, columnist for the LA Times.

Hiltzik admitted earlier to posting under false names on multiple sites, using pseudonyms to smear people, but he is nevertheless still writing for the newspaper.

During the waning days of apartheid, I had dinner with a group of liberal South Africans.

And they were liberals in relative terms: Cape Town residents of Anglo descent, they had lived and done business in the closest thing to a multicultural community South Africa offered, geographically and socially remote from the Afrikaner traditions prevailing in Johannesburg and Pretoria, some 900 miles to the north.

They were optimistic about the future of their country and about building a multiracial nation, and free of evident resentment about the political ambitions of their black fellow citizens. They agreed that the blacks deserved equal opportunity and a representative voice in government.

And yet, listening to them talk, I couldn’t avoid reflecting that the tenor of their discussion would have been treated as profoundly objectionable in any but the most reactionary, racist precincts of the United States.

It’s not that they sounded like Bull Connor or members of the Klan. It was more their well-meaning and unapologetic condescension. They wholeheartedly endorsed black majority rule — in principle. But they were also convinced that it would take years, even generations, for black South Africans to gain the education and experience necessary to lead their country in the modern world — to grow up, in other words. In the interim, of course, the blacks would continue to be dependent on the knowledge and support of my dining companions’ own tribe of white Africans.

My hosts were hopeful and uneasy, confident in the rationality of a black community they didn’t really know but which, they were certain, shared their desire for a peaceful transition of power.

The root of their uneasiness was economic. South Africa, which for so long had considered itself a rich, economically thriving country, was just then coming to grips with the fact that it was a small economy that only seemed big because its wealth had been concentrated in a very few white hands. There was simply not enough money in the country to bring black educational standards up to the level of white schools after decades of systematic impoverishment; the only path to equivalence involved diminishing the resources provided to white pupils while improving those for black kids, meeting somewhere in the middle. Would either race be happy with the consequences?

Case that sparked 3 weeks of rioting heard in France

A French court delivers its verdict in the case of two police officers accused of not helping two youths electrocuted in 2005, whose deaths sparked three weeks of rioting.

The deaths of Bouna Traore, 15, and Zyed Benna, 17, following a chase by police ignited three weeks of arson and running clashes with security forces in downtrodden French city suburbs.

The two officers, Sebastien Gaillemin and Stephanie Klein, stand accused of “non-assistance to individuals in danger” by failing to raise the alarm after the two youths scarpered into an electricity substation.

They risk a five-year prison sentence and a fine of up to 75,000 euros ($86,000) if found guilty, but both prosecution and defence have called for them to be let off.

Gaillemin told the court during the trial that he had checked twice to see whether the youngsters were still in the substation and, satisfied that they were clear, left the scene.

“As he was not aware of the danger, he cannot be blamed for not acting to deal with it,” said prosecutor Delphine Dewailly.

“You don’t ease the pain of one drama by adding another injustice,” she told the court at the emotional trial, during which both officers broke down in tears.

Daniel Merchant, a lawyer for the officers, said: “There will only be closure if they are let off. The case will then be closed… Ten years, that’s enough now.”

Merchant added that in the case of a conviction, he would appeal on behalf of his client.

However, relatives of the two dead youths — as well as a third youth who escaped with burns — have launched a civil case, seeking a total of 1.6 million euros in compensation and damages.

A lawyer for the families said he was certain the officers were guilty of not coming to the boys’ aid. “Lets call the crime what it is,” said Jean-Pierre Mignard.

Much of the trial turned on one phrase uttered by Gaillemin during the chase.

According to transcripts from the police radio, he was heard to say: “They are climbing over to get to the EDF (electric company) site. If they enter the EDF site, I don’t give them much of a chance.”

During the trial, Gaillemin said he was only aware the boys were running “towards the site” and was not sure they had actually entered it.

Nevertheless, the trial has again brought to the fore the alienation felt by many in France’s ghetto-like suburbs, which Prime Minister Manuel Valls said earlier this year still represent a form of “territorial, social and ethnic apartheid”.

Source: AFP

Obama calls for soul searching over Baltimore

United States President Barack Obama has called on the nation to do some soul searching if the underlying tensions between African American communities and the police are to be fundamentally addressed.

Speaking at the White House a day after hundreds rioted on the streets of Baltimore on the East Coast, the President also slammed the ‘thugs’ and ‘criminals’ who infiltrated legitimate protests after the death of a black man while in police custody.

Scenes of chaos, looting and wanton destruction erupted soon after the funeral of a black man who died while in police custody nine days ago. A day later, the National Guard was made to bring order to the streets.

But this is a cycle that the President believes will take more than just sending in the cavalry.

The US has expanded the size of their criminal justice system over four decades to contain ethnic strife.

The American criminal justice system is dominated by racial disparities. Since 2002, the United States has had the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Although prison populations are increasing in some parts of the world, the natural rate of incarceration for countries comparable to the United States tends to stay around 100 prisoners per 100,000 population.

The US incarcerates 716 people for every 100,000 residents, more than any other country. In fact, the rate of incarceration is more than five times higher than most of the countries in the world.

The state of Louisiana is often called out for having the single highest incarceration rate in the world.

African Americans now constitute nearly 1 million of the total 2.3 million incarcerated population, at nearly six times the rate of whites.

Together, African American and Hispanics comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, even though African Americans and Hispanics make up approximately one quarter of the US population

One in six black men had been incarcerated as of 2001. If current trends continue, one in three black males born today can expect to spend time in prison during his lifetime.

Nationwide, African-Americans represent 26% of juvenile arrests, 44% of youth who are detained, 46% of the youth who are judicially waived to criminal court, and 58% of the youth admitted to state prisons (Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice).

Obama says, “In those environments, if we just think we’re going to send the police to do the dirty work of containing the problems that arise there, without as a nation and as a society saying what can we do to change those communities, to help lift up those communities and give those kids opportunity, then we’re not going to solve this problem and we’ll go through the same cycles of periodic conflicts between the police and communities and the occasional riots in the streets and everybody will feign concern until it goes away and then we go about our business as usual.”

These are Obama’s first remarks after the death of Freddie Gray 10 days ago and he called for a rethink on education, criminal justice and economic development, particularly in poor communities.

The home of the rich, New York, is tied with Rwanda, which has the third highest national incarceration rate. Rwanda incarcerates so many people (492 per 100,000) because thousands are sentenced or awaiting trial in connection with the 1994 genocide.

Next comes the state of Washington, which claims the same incarceration rate as the Russian Federation.

The decline of Sweden

In a recent article it was predicted that Sweden, one of the world’s most progressive nations, will end up impoverished and third world by the year 2030. That is only fifteen years from now. The United Nations Human Development Index has corroborated this decline, stating that the land of Volvo, Knäckebröd and Selma Lagerlöf will end up lower on the list than Bulgaria and Cuba in due time. On the contrary, its Nordic neighbours, Norway and Finland are still going strong.

Because of Sweden’s unique position in the world, with its praised lavish welfare system, envied by many European nations (until recently though), this decline merits concern as to where the rest of the world will be, perhaps not in say fifteen years from now, but a bit further down the line. By being too progressive, it appears that retrogression becomes the necessary consequence.

Many conservative opinion makers have been quick to point out the devastating effect of multiculturalism that has racked this part of the world, and without a doubt, that is the most succinct contributor to the stalemate this nation has now reached. However, a greater danger lies in a more hidden corner of Swedish society.

Regardless of the fact that this nation boasts a luxury automobile industry, builds exclusive cameras and has ownership of mega-stores selling cupboards and beds, the Swedish people in a real sense lack individualism, freedom of speech and a true democratic spirit. The average Swede is rude and narrow-minded, their development stunted by their impossible yearning for equality. This makes them the perfect candidates for the various social experiments that the country is known for. Individualism has never truly set in and the Swedes therefore lack a well-developed sense of right and wrong. Such could be seen how the Nobel Committee unabashedly showered South African terrorists with Nobel Peace Prizes while the same organisation funded eugenics at home. The Karolinska Institute sterilised as many as 63 000 of its own citizens for fear of contaminating the purity of the Swedish race, while in the same period they aimed to destroy the white South African. Thus, in a strict sense, Sweden is amoral.

This hypocrisy has to do with the fact that the Swedes have — historically speaking — always been subjected to elitism and did not have the necessary checks in place to stave off acts of despotism. Whereas other European nations looked westward and had a history of feudalism and clashing aristocracies that protected them from staunch totalitarianism, the western European nations gradually started granting rights to the peasantry, the Magna Charta being a case in point. On the other hand, Sweden looked eastward towards Russia, lacked feudalism, shunned rights for the common people and could easily be coaxed into a centralised state. Few, if any rights were granted to the lower classes and the entire religious and political life in Sweden today have arisen from one leitmotif, ie. total centralised power. Even the Lutheran church — that one last beacon of spiritual freedom — was used as an instrument of political control by the authorities in much the same way the Roman church had done before the Reformation.

Modern Sweden may have all the external trappings of a democracy, but this is only at face value. This modernisation drive happened only fairly recently compared to other European nations, and the Social Democrats had the expediency of calling these modern developments “ours”. Because of this, they have held onto their position all throughout, having only been defeated once or twice by an “opposition” party for a short while. The modernisation drive was not a result of looking inward, but rather a reaction to outward circumstances, an astute way of keeping up with the Germans.

Given the Swedish penchant for equality, the strict Lutheran teaching and the secularisation that took place in the latter half of the twentieth century, Marxist and socialist teachings were facilitated with tremendous ease. Ideals of universal freedom in equality became the norm and was held in high esteem by the intellectual and political classes. Especially after the sexual revolution swept across the West in the 1960s and 1970s, the broad concept of “freedom” became redefined in terms of sexual emancipation. In fact even Swedish journalists stationed in foreign nations were quick to call on Sweden’s “enlightened and free” society by referring to the lack of sexual liberation elsewhere, apparently oblivious to the fact that their home country had only managed to exchange one form of political control for another. Where sexual abstinence was used as a means of controlling society before, the secularisation drive took to the other extreme of sexualising society for the sake of social control. By doing so, the elite attempted to lull the populace into a state of docility by drawing attention to their lower freedoms and away from cultivating good morals, spirituality, and wisdom, their higher freedoms.

Needless to say, such diversions only served to create a nation of infants and helped further to advance the state’s authority over them. In this sense, Sweden has become a quintessential Huxleyan Brave New World, a warning first uttered by author Roland Huntford in his work The New Totalitarians, a critique of the Swedish welfare state.

However, even the Swedish elite has now much to answer for. The current situation has reached a turning point and the ideals that were indoctrinated over the years have either come to naught or turned against them. Such could be seen how their ideological love child – black South Africans – over there are stirring the national pot. Quite recently, a South African born Muslim rapper, currently residing in Sweden produced a rap video blatantly uttering how “We wogs will exterminate you all” and “Come here Swedish girls, I will stick a knife in your pussy; All Swedes you will DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE”. This was uploaded on youtube under the name Ikasaify2. As far as I know, the Swedish authorities haven’t dealt with this person yet.

In another incident an immigrant from South Africa and Somalia who raped a Swedish woman to death successfully fought against deportation. Even though he is a notorious rapist, he would still be able to live off the Swedish state. The prosecutor in this regard justified his decision that he would endanger the lives of Somali women should he be deported back. Creating a menace in his own back yard thus seems preferable to stemming this tide elsewhere. The inability of changing the ways of a tribe of hunter-gatherers into a sedentary and productive people are realities that equality and universalism could not answer for, and the Swedes are now experiencing this head on.

However, the same collectivist thought-pattern that swayed them into multiculturalism could also now be their salvation. The Swedish government by all means has lost its credibility and in order to regain this, should make concessions to its people. Ranking at number two of nations with the highest incidence of rape in the world, a fact well expounded by local and international media, government would be hard-pressed to ignore this demoralising form of crime which is nothing short of pandemic.

It would be in everyone’s best interest if the Swedish people regain their inner strength to fend off this tide. Norway has recently deported a large number of foreign born convicted criminals and the crime rate has dropped dramatically.

Perhaps its time that Sweden follows suit.

Thousands of white Americans protest racial inequality

Thousand have taken to the streets to protest racial inequality in the US, while thousands more whites have joined a Twitter campaign to publicly confess their sins before the law, in an effort to shatter the criminal stereotyping of African-Americans.

In an attempt to expose police racial prejudice across the United States, Caucasian Twitter users spilled their wrongdoings to the world in a series of confession they have got away with that they believe African-Americans probably would not.

Using the #CrimingWhileWhite, some people recalled them getting away with a number of offences, including grand theft auto, driving violations, and drugs abuse.

Meanwhile, for the second night in a row, thousands of protesters overran the streets of New York, shutting down several major arteries of the city as they expressed outrage over a grand jury decision not to indict an officer for the death of an unarmed black man.

In the aftermath of racial violence that erupted in Ferguson, the latest social media campaign follows other recent high-profile incidents of police’s lethal brutality against black men and the perceived lack of punishment for the white officers responsible.

Michael Brown was shot six times by a white policemen in Ferguson, Missouri in August.

The cases involve Eric Garner who was killed by a chokehold by an NYPD officer in July and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, who was killed in Cleveland in November.

School cancels honors night for being ‘too exclusive’

Citing concerns about the “exclusive nature” of the annual honors night at Archie R. Cole Middle School, school officials have decided to scrap the tradition.

Instead, students who would normally be recognized at the annual spring tradition will be honored during team-based recognition ceremonies and graduation.

The notice was sent to parents over the weekend in an e-mail signed by School Principal Alexis Meyer and Assistant Principal Dan Seger.

“Members of the school community have long expressed concerns related to the exclusive nature of Honors Night,” the email stated.

By having the recognition ceremonies during team-based ceremonies, it will “afford us the opportunity to celebrate the individual and collective success of all students and their effort, progress and excellence.”

At the same time, Cole varsity athletes will get medals and trophies at an after school ceremony.

One parent told ABC6 that he’s not happy with the change.

“How else are they suppose to learn coping skills, not just based on success, but relative failure, it might not be failure, but understand what it takes to achieve high levels,” said parent Joe Kosloski.

Source: eastgreenwich.patch.com

The week of whining womin

by Ilana Mercer

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The logic is as simple as it is foolproof. An “air-tight free-market argument,” according to WND:

“If women with the same skills as men were getting only 78 cents for every dollar a man earns, men as a group would have long-since priced themselves out of the market. That entrepreneurs don’t ditch men en masse for women suggests that different abilities and experience are at work, rather than a conspiracy to suppress women.”

The logic is not, however, female proof.

It’s been the week of the weaker sex: filled with baseless whining. The Week of the Womin culminated with Facebook billionaire Sheryl Sandberg grumbling to Fox News millionaire Megyn Kelly: “I think it’s good that the president took some steps on equal pay, but it’s not enough.”

About women’s work Sandberg holds humdrum feminist views. She learned the hard way, having dared, at first, to share the aggregate reality she had encountered in the workplace: Men were wont to be as driven as demons. Women needed to be driven. For that observation, the Pussy Riot Sisterhood threatened to sandbag Sandberg. Facebook’s chief operating officer quickly corrected course. Ms. Sandberg started mouthing the only acceptable meme: Saddle “society” and the “patriarchy” for any and all female failures and preferences.

As her politically pleasing, mainstream opinion currently has it, society and the patriarchy have conditioned women to be nurturing and to apologize for any male-like, go-getter ambitions they harbor. While men will attribute their success to their own core skills; women “attribute their success to luck and help from other people,” carps Sandberg. The girls are too nice. They don’t take credit for their greatness. They don’t raise their hand enough. They don’t “Lean In”—the trite title of Sandberg’s serialized book. Yes, there’s a follow up for advanced nudniks.

While she should seldom be taken seriously, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was perfectly serious when she too, in 2012, inveighed against the same debunked myth of “income disparity between men and women” that Democrat Sandberg is perpetuating.

For their part, Republicans will seldom deploy economic logic to dispel distaff America’s claims of disadvantage. To counter Pelosi, Republicans called on a teletart who is front-and-center on GOP TV because in possession of what TV takes: Big hair, big boobs and Chiclets for teeth—a pretty package that more than compensates for a lack of cerebral agility or originality. (Yes, why is it that nobody dares to comment on the overwhelming, overweening dominance the fair sex has in the anchor’s chair? Does anyone imagine that this advantage is bestowed at Fox Business, because “Kennedy” is more brilliant than Judge Andrew Napolitano? The reader doesn’t need me to spell out the profit-generating advantages women hold in visual media.)

Although this column did not name her at the time, one Michelle Fields, I believe, “pioneered” the tit-for-tat, rudderless case the Republicans excel at making on wage parity. Incapable of argument, Fields thus condemned Pelosi—not for her bogus theory of payinequality, but for her hypocrisy. Pelosi, it was revealed, had been silent about Democratic senators who were paying women staffers less than male staffers.

The lesson is equally applicable to the revelation, this week, that women working in the “executive mansion” are also getting paid less, on average, than their male counterparts. As this column advised in 2012 (well before Chuckie Krauthammer cottoned on), the T & A Republican TV contingent ought to have responded as follows:

“We’re glad that Barack Obama has finally understood that the length of time a woman has been in the workplace, her age, experience, education; whether she has put her career on hold to marry and mother—all factor into the wage equation. Good for you, Mr. President, for showing in practice that you comprehend that women are more likely than men to have had an interrupted career trajectory and to opt for part-time and lower-paying professions—education instead of engineering, for example.”

Now, Mr. President, please put down your pay-parity executive order and step away from that pen, slowly.

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DA wants failed US policy on education to help SA

Economic exclusion of blacks must first be addressed in the classroom and thereafter in the boardroom.

This is the view of the DA, which yesterday released a discussion document on black economic empowerment and equality in education.

Central to the party’s green paper on economic inclusion is the country’s poor state of education. The proposals seem to have been lifted from the US policy called “No Child Left Behind”, which has been termed a failure in America.

“At the heart of the DA’s position on redress lies the recognition that exclusion from economic opportunities must primarily be addressed by broadening access to quality education, improving educational outcomes and the alignment of education and skills development initiatives with the needs of the economy,” the party says.

Its document is also likely to draw the ire of teacher unions, especially the SA Democratic Teachers Union, as it suggests that teachers are poorly qualified and that school management leaves much to be desired.

Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga also came in for some heavy criticism.

Although not mentioned by name, the documentcalls on her to finalise “clear norms and standards” to create an environment “that is conducive to learning”. – timeslive.co.za/praag

The prismon of equality

by Albert Brenner

To truly understand a (or any) Zeitgeist, you simply need to imagine a dispersive prism with an inverse movement of (the) Light.

For our Zeitgeist, simply change the colour red with the word race, yellow with sexual orientation, blue with gender, purple with culture, et cetera. Now write the word equality on the front of the prism, and the word love on the (white) beam of light emanating from said prism.

This, in essence, is our Zeitgeist… the (secular-humanist) Zeitgeist of Equality. For practically everything is conflated by/through the anthropological-reductionism termed equality… to teleologically engender that which is commonly referred to as Love (in the West).

This means that if you, for example, believe that race and gender are social constructs, gay and heterosexual marriage are commensurate, and that all cultures are equal in all aspects… then you love. If you don`t, you hate – ergo, the notion (and legal lexeme) called hate-speech.

By the very nature of things – if you reduce, you must exclude. And if you exclude, you must, by necessity, forfend. And if you forfend, you invariably imprison Reason – hence, my portmanteau “prismon” (i.e. prism plus prison).

The history of the West is a veritable procession of prismona… starting from Plato`s “philosopher-state” and continuing all the way to the (still budding) “Gene-fication” of, inter alia, Richard Dawkins. Abandoned prismona like, for example, Communism and the Make Love not War 60s (still) literally litter our path from the past to the future. It is, basically, the ever-hopeful disconsolate discourse of Utopia… at the tragic expense of Reason.

Our (current) prismon, the Prismon of Equality, is no exception.

Very much like Galileo`s near-deadly heliocentric versus geocentric spat with the Roman Catholic Prismon, modern Men of Reason like, for example, the Dr James Watson and Dr Thilo Sarrazin were literally burned at the stake of prismon-predicated public opinion… and all but ostracized from the human social sphere.

The former, a Nobel Prize scientist, simply questioned – from a very defensible evolutionary point of view – whether all races are indeed equal. He simply stated that,`”There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically. Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so.”

The latter, the left-wing Thilo Sarrazin, wrote an acerbic book called Deutschland Schafft Sich Ab, in which he rigorously (and very reasonedly) questioned whether all cultures are indeed equal. As a consequence he was fired from his position at the German Reserve Bank… for simply having exercised his right to free speech in the 21st century.

The Inquisition is merciless indeed. For in its defense of (eternal) “equality”, Reason is (like always) its most formidable foe.

For example; how on earth can one maintain that his/her views are rational when believing that gender is a “social construct” while, simultaneously, believing that homosexuality is genetic? Or that race is a social construct when any pathologist can simply do a few measurements on a bone-dry skeleton to determine whether the deceased was black or white? Or just look at the finalists at any Olympic 100-meter sprint event, for Pete`s sake!?

But then, Dawkins has found God in a gene, Freud (his disciples Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, actually) claimed that sex is the Alpha and Omega, and Karl Marx reduced everything to the monopoly of the means to production.

Be that as it may; the fons et origo of the Prismon of Equality can, albeit it rather intricate, be traced back to one very context-bound and, ultimately, non-scientific assumption. It is the first part of the second sentence of the American Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…

This sentence (and, ultimately, non-scientific assumption) was solely aimed at showing the middle-finger to the British Empire`s colonial rule over the American territories at the time. It was not a carte blanche affirmation of gay-marriage or cultural relativism, or black suffrage… for that matter!

Yet alas, it, this anthropological reductionism, has escaped its original context… to infuse virtually all aspects of the moral, socio-cultural and politico-economic sphere of the West. Not unlike Freud`s treatment of a few sexually frustrated Victorian women that then developed into a “science”… whose practitioners can physically send you to a nut-house for the rest of your natural life if you do not conform to the norm – the inherent reductionism – of their prismon!

One Flew Over The Cuckoo`s Nest, indeed.

Be that as it may; every prismon contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. At the most basic level it is Jacques Derrida`s différance… then Thomas Kuhn`s paradigm-shifts and, ultimately, Hegel`s dialectic.

For all these inevitable internal contradictions eventually become untenable… and then (all) these prismona simply flip over to reveal (and engender) their dialectic/al opposites.

For example, the Prismon of Equality is basically (in layman`s lingo) just a very virulent criminalization of the (heterosexual) Pale Male. And if you turn it around, you`ll see a six-letter word. HITLER

Q.E.D