Category Archives: Propaganda

UPDATE II: Pseudoscience Bolsters Violence-Against-Women Claims

Feminism, Gender, Propaganda, Pseudoscience

“Sub-Science Bolsters Violence-Against-Women Claims” was penned in the late 1990s. It dealt with a subject few questioned at the time: the pseudoscience that undergirds the violence-against-women claims and attendant policy in Canada. You know: the one-in-four women are assaulted rot, etc.

In particular, the column questioned the reliability and validity of the 1993 StatsCan Violence Against Women survey, together with other equally outrageous surveys like the CanPan, which propped up the inflated numbers nobody questioned; the same numbers advocates bandy about and politicians rely on for drafting policy and plumping for resources.

Wendy McElroy schools us on the “statistical myths” that pervade the rape-is-rampant claims, stateside. There’s a lot that goes into skewing data; starting with “deeply biased researchers,” to proceeding from a “false premise or assumption,” to using biased and small samples whose selection is further biased by paying participants, to the general pitfalls of survey methodology (leading questions have always been a big problem; surveys are dodgy on many counts).

Having done years of statistics at a good school (a non-American, South-African-before-“freedom” university), this is all simple, straightforward research methodology.

In the realm of “never admit there is sound contradicting evidence,” this tidbit is particularly interesting:

“Federal data estimate that about one in five women becomes the victim of sexual assault while in college, most of which is committed by assailants known to the victim” (National Center for Injury Prevention and Control 2012).

The 1-in-5 figure has been exhaustively debunked for many months and should be rendered unresurrectable by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) report (12/14) that found the actual rate of rape to be 0.61 percent per year – or 6.1 per 1,000 students.

MORE.

By the way, like their liberal sisters, conservative teletarts also cite these bogus statistics.

UPDATE I (1/26): A must read: “Gender Studies, an Aberrant Ideology” by Steve Moxon, contributor to the great Quarterly Review.

UPDATE II: Gender Studies is not only an aberrant ideology, but I doubt very much that it qualifies as an intellectual discipline, a thing the ancient Greeks thought up. Gender Studies is an intellectual aberration.

In Paris, A Parade Of Parasites; Charade Of Charlatans

Barack Obama, Europe, Free Speech, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Terrorism

President Barack Obama was a no-show at the showy and meaningless parade of parasites in Paris, where world leaders united against murder, an insight that was already well within the ken of leaders of the ancient world (Ten Commandments?). NYT:

More than a million people joined over 40 presidents and prime ministers on the streets of Paris on Sunday in the most striking show of solidarity in the West against the threat of Islamic extremism since the Sept. 11 attacks.

“A storm in a D.C. tea cup” is how CNN has chosen to depict the absence of their favorite onan from the parade. David Gergen of the Obama Channel commented on how “refreshing” it was for this administration to “admit [he] messed up.

To paraphrase the Paul Simon lyrics about an old lover: Still crazy about him after all these years.

Myself, I don’t give a tinker’s toss about the march of our tormentors in Paris. The only thought that crossed my mind at the charade of charlatans had to do with al Qaeda’s incompetence. Why do they only ever hit on innocents? … But since unfettered speech is no longer a natural right in the West, because of legislation passed throughout the free world—I shall remain mum.

UPDATE II: 2014: The Year Of Living Racially (FREE People Don’t Fear ‘Racial Polarization’)

Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Political Correctness, Private Property, Propaganda, Race, Racism

The current column, “2014: The Year Of Living Racially,” surveys some of the major racial milestones of the year, only to conclude … Well, read it yourself, on WND.

My man Richard Sherman said something that kicked off the 2014, year-round, banal, racial back-and-forth that parades as debate in the U.S.

Other than that the Seattle Seahawks are my team, on account that they’re from my neck of the woods; what I know about American football is dangerous. So naturally, I was rooting for, if not watching, the Hawks, when, following their victory over the San Francisco 49ers, Sherman said That Thing. And from their citadels of stupidity, U.S. mainstream media—conservatives, liberals and libertarians—went into full St. Vitus mode

“I’m the best corner in the game. When you try me with a sorry receiver like [Michael] Crabtree, that’s the result you gonna get. Don’t you ever talk about me!”

Sherman sounded good to me. Still does. The man was pumped, as men ought to be in a testosterone-infused game. The Seahawks’ cornerback was correct to point out that his “outburst,” following the “defensive play that sealed his team’s trip to the Super Bowl,” was an extension of “his game-time competitiveness.”

“Let’s not make thug the new N-word,” pleaded John McWhorter, a scholar of color, whose intellectual and moral authority in the culture stems primarily from the concentration of melanin in his skin cells, not from the force of his argument.

Come again?

As in January of last year, I still don’t get the reason for the fuss over what Sherman said. His boisterous bit of theatre set in motion some racial, national free-association, which no man or woman with a brain cell to rub between them can follow.

Speaking of mindlessness, in February, the president of black America launched his “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative. Barack Obama claimed “this initiative” as his “lifelong goal,” “even after he leaves office.”

If to go by Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010,” “rising inequality and declining mobility,” as well as “widespread decay in moral fiber”—these are as serious and widespread among “white, lower-status, less well-educated Americans,” as they are among the black and Hispanic communities. It was against this backdrop that Obama signaled his intention to deploy his signature initiative to keep at least $200 million belonging to “leading foundations and businesses,” for “programs aimed at minority youth of color.” …

Read the rest. “2014: The Year Of Living Racially” is now on WND.

Happy New Year.
ILANA

UPDATE I: The title of the column is from a movie, but I doubt anyone under 40 (Kerry Crowel excepted), brought up on current Hollywood fare, will remember “The Year of Living Dangerously.”

UPDATE II (1/2): FREE People Don’t Fear “Racial Polarization.” I am not sure why people, in this so-called free society of ours, “worry” so much about what they term “racial polarization.” Leave people to fire, hire, rent, employ or live with whomever they wish. So long as there is no aggression against The Other, who cares about “racial polarization”? Isn’t the right to include and exclude a feature of freedom of association and the right of private property.

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The Dynamics Of Media Moral Inversion

Media, Morality, Propaganda, Race, Racism

On the one hand, there’s Brooke Baldwin. She’s a CNN bimbo, not as bad as a Fox News issue—the spandex swaddled Gretchen Carlson comes to mind—but nevertheless a prototype airhead, on the air for her looks. Brooke’s brief at CNN is the enforcement of progressivism, the deconstruction of conventional news broadcasting and morality.

On the other hand, you have Charles Barkley, “basketball analyst for Turner Sports and former NBA great.” He’s no philosopher king, but high concentrations of cutaneous melanin have qualified him to be a philosopher king in contemporary America.

Barkley called the Ferguson rioters “scumbags,” a perfectly reasonable descriptive for “the rioters who set buildings and police cars on fire in Ferguson,” not to mention murdered a cracker or two.

In the universe Brooke brings to her CNN viewers, berating black looters and murderers is controversial, a position that requires “defending,” or so she framed here interview with Barkley:

“Charles Barkley defends calling Ferguson rioters ‘scumbags.’”

Dr. Ben Carson, a self-made man who has never relied on race to excel, has no problem articulating immutable moral truth: “The Community Has to Recognize That a Thug Is a Thug.”