view from Australia New Religion, old hypocrisiesJANET ALBRECHTSENFollow @jkalbrechtsen Journalist Andy Ngo after being attacked by left-wing antifa protesters in Portland, Oregon. Picture: AFP 12:00AM JULY 13, 2019 755 Facebook Twitter Email This is a parable about a new religion that has deep roots on the secular left side of politics. The starting principle for moderates and extremists alike is that those who challenge their moral code are not just wrong, they are immoral; nonbelievers have no legitimacy in the public square. And hence, why the new moral code is part of a new religion. A fortnight ago, Andy Ngo was bashed by a mob of antifa protesters, who are best understood as extremists from the new religion. Ngo is a young Asian man, a journalist who is not part of the left-leaning media. He carried his new GoPro camera to report on antifa’s march through the streets of Portland, Oregon. Ngo has been reporting on stories that major US media outlets would rather ignore, including the activities of antifa. Their name suggests they are anti-fascists, but bashing a journalist is a common tool of fascists. While Ngo was mobbed by thugs in masks, police stood back. He ended up in hospital, treated for head injuries including a subarachnoid haemorrhage. Film of the violent assault went viral. Yet news outlets went largely silent, eventually shamed into some cynical coverage. Ngo is the gay son of Vietnamese immigrants, which is worth juxtaposing against antifa’s make-up and mission. A group of angry white millennials protesting against white supremacy violently assaulted a young Asian gay man. Make sense of that. The lack of concern from major media outlets speaks to the hypocrisy of the left’s moral code. Imagine their rightful outrage if Trump supporters bashed a young left-leaning journo. The same media organisations that routinely pounce on Donald Trump for his media baiting at campaign rallies — think CNN, The New “Woke” Times and The Washington Post — seemed relaxed with antifa’s excuse that Ngo deserved it because he reported on antifa. When some media outlets finally popped up, Ngo was painted as a troublemaker who deserved no sympathy. “Don’t worry about Ngo. He’s been discharged from hospital, with a big fat GoFundMe of around $160,000 and any number of armed, right-wing groups offering to act as ‘bodyguards’,” wrote one misguided, or malevolent, pundit in The Independent. The same chap suggested that the far right wanted to treat the assault on Ngo as “their own (cut-price) Horst Wessel moment”. Wessel was a 22-year-old Nazi stormtrooper who was fatally shot by communists on January 14, 1930, his death becoming a rallying cause that propelled the Nazis to power. Ngo is not a Nazi stormtrooper. He is a curious journalist who challenges modern cant working in a liberal democracy, like ours, that is increasingly imperilled by a new religion that seeks to punish nonconformists in various ways. Over two thousand years ago, Christianity set down a moral code for people. Biblical stories tell of deadly sins and heavenly virtue, commandments guide us, there are offers of forgiveness and paths to redemption. There were also dark periods when those who questioned rising and rigid religious orthodoxy, and hypocrisy, were shut down. And non-believers were persecuted. Today, there is a new religion, with a new moral code enforced by a new sainted class that includes corporate leaders, government bureaucrats, those at the top of industry groups, university vice-chancellors and sporting bosses too. Like old established religions, the clerics of the new religion presume to hold a monopoly over morality. This new papal class also enforces a rigid orthodoxy similar to old established religions. Those who stray from this new moral code do so at their own risk. There are public condemnations so fierce they aim to rewrite history. Think of those same-sex marriage activists who have not just attacked tennis player Margaret Court for her beliefs but consider her thought crimes so serious that the Margaret Court Arena must be renamed. According to Billie Jean King, Court’s Christian views justify trashing her record of 24 Grand Slam singles titles. Note that Court is not asking King to subscribe to her views. But King demands that Court change hers or lose her standing as a tennis legend. Only in degree is that different from historical cases of established religions persecuting heretics. The new religion makes no room for nonconformists. Its followers want to shut down voices of dissent. Instead of changing the channel or reading a different newspaper, Richard Di Natale was caught during the last election saying that he wanted sections of Sky and News Corp shut down. Proponents of the new religion search and punish people for tiny transgressions, confecting fake outrage. And they make no room for redemption or forgiveness. The orthodoxy is so powerful that conservatives are even sacking their own when faced with the shitstorm unleashed by disciples of the new religion. In Britain, Roger Scruton and Toby Young were both sacked from their quangos when the May government succumbed to social media outrage. Burning witches at the stake in a grassy field is an old variant of new witch-hunts on social media platforms. It did not help that Young, a man with a passion for education, apologised unreservedly for comments he made during an earlier career as what he called a “journalistic provocateur”. When you start from the same point — that dissidents are so morally depraved they must be stopped — only the consequences differ. Some adherents of the new religion chose to bash Ngo, while others demanded that Young be sacked. It used to be the case that we rendered unto Caesar the things that were Caesar’s, and unto God the things that were God’s. The new moral code is so omnipresent it reaches on to sporting fields, into boardrooms, universities and bureaucracies. The sacking of Israel Folau is bigger than a legal biff about a contract and a code of conduct. Folau was sacked for sinning against the new moral code. It is a totemic clash of religions, between old ones such as Christianity (but it could be Islam next) and the new religion promulgated by a new secular class that wants to stop a man from posting different moral judgments drawn from a centuries-old code of conduct called the Bible. Some followers of the new religion have become blind to what is at stake. The ABC, for example, struggles to show much curiosity. Interviewed this week on Radio National about religious freedom, Barnaby Joyce mentioned the Folau saga. Presenter Hamish Macdonald interrupted, saying that Folau had been covered enough. Except it has barely been covered at all on the taxpayer-funded ABC. Later, on Monday evening, a Q&Aaudience member raised the Folau matter. Host Tony Jones directed it to the openly gay panel member Penny Wong. No one else was asked for their views. If the ABC is the media arm that spreads the new religion, Rugby Australia’s Raelene Castle has become its self-appointed priestess. During Folau’s code-of-conduct hearing, Castle seemed to suggest it was fine for Folau to post good bits from the Bible, but not bad bits. Was she presuming to sit in judgment of a book that is thousands of years old, with a few billion followers? Who is Castle to decide what individuals should decide for themselves? People who presume to speak about moral issues for others, rather than just themselves, are found in droves in corporate Australia. A new class of corporate clerics presumes to speak for shareholders on everything from same-sex marriage to changing the Australian Constitution to preference one race of people with a special chamber of their own. Corporate clerics are easily identified. They spend more time virtue-signalling about getting the right gender balance and exposing society’s unconscious bias than they do on issues that go to the core of their business: boring issues such as tax reform and industrial relations reform. Alas, this hard work is handballed away by faux trust-seekers who would rather feel the warm glow that comes from standing in a room of like-minded corporate clerics signing up to social campaigns using other people’s money. And those quick to attack Qantas’s Alan Joyce should remember he is one of the few to advocate for social change and sound economic policy. The reverence paid to diversity by corporate Australia mirrors the hypocrisy of Billie Jean King in sport. They make no room for political diversity. It’s another sign that the new moral code is religious in nature, because few religions, not old ones and not this new one, handle diversity of thought well. A spokesman for the self-appointed corporate virtue-signallers, former KPMG chairman Peter Nash, told this newspaper last week that companies needed to push social causes to rebuild trust with people. Here’s my advice — and it’s free. Companies will rebuild real and lasting trust by treating customers fairly, respecting the diversity of shareholders whose money pays their generous wage, and advocating economic policies that allow companies, workers and our economy to flourish. At universities too, bureaucrats use codes of conduct to enforce new moral codes using vaguely drafted commandments that you must not behave in an uncollegial manner. At James Cook University, vice-chancellor Sandra Harding used the university’s code of conduct to remove physics professor Peter Ridd from his job. Ridd taught at JCU for decades. Students adored him. His sin was to challenge the quality of research by some JCU colleagues about the state of the Great Barrier Reef. A university committed to the liberal education of its students, and finding the truth, would have been curious about Ridd’s work. Instead, JCU sacked him. How is his removal different to heretics being removed by established religions? When it comes to thou shall implement gender equality, the new religion has become irrational and fanatical. As The Australian reported this week, the Queensland Mines Minister could not seek expert advice from the Coal Mining Safety and Health Advisory Committee because the committee, lacking 50-50 gender representation, was forced to cancel meetings. Meanwhile six workers died in Queensland mines and quarries in the past 12 months. It’s early days. But this new religion and sections of its ruling class are already so corrupted with hypocrisy, it needs a reformation, a Martin Luther to post 95 theses exposing the equivalent of those old papal indulgences. Consider this Thesis # 1. JANET ALBRECHTSEN COLUMNIST
Heh. James Cook University. Don't the woke people there in Australia and at the university realize that James Cook was at the forefront of British colonialism and an explorer seeking new peoples and lands to conquer? He was killed in hand-to-hand combat with the natives in the Hawaiian Islands. HOW WOKE IS THAT? The woke-sters there need to get to work re-writing history right off. It's what they do. Most likely it will be renamed the Shiek Mohammed Ibn al Queensland University before long. I could be wrong.
Anntensity@anntensity 4h4 hours ago You haven't won an argument with a Democrat until they call you a racist. -Ann Coulter 117 replies 337 retweets 1,455 likes
The mention of Israel Folau in the article is worth mentioning. He was Australia's top Rugby player, but also a part-time preacher and hard core Christian. His instagram account had dozens of Bible quotes but he refused to remove one saying that atheists, drunkards, fornicators and homosexuals are bound for hell unless they repent .. He was banned from playing Rugby at any level for life ( other players have been convicted of criminal actions and only have a temporary suspension). When he did a gofundme appeal to fubd his courtcase, it got hundreds of thousands of dollars in a few days. Then the wokes at Gofubdme removed the page . So a christian group put up its own page on his behalf and it got over 2 million $ in 2 days- mainly bevause people were bemused that gofundme could decide and who can appeal a decision.
Tucker Carlson: big business is now at war against your family Fox News host Tucker Carlson, March 29, 2019 in Washington, D.C. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Jonathon Van Maren Mon Jul 15, 2019 - 3:19 pm EST July 15, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – The first thing to note about Tucker Carlson is that when he’s on stage and riffing on his irritations, he is hilarious. He began his keynote speech at the National Conservatism conference in Washington, D.C. on Monday by rejecting Rusty Reno’s laudatory introduction of him and noting that as someone—he couldn’t remember who—once said, “in the end, all graves go unvisited.” He then cleared his throat and announced that he’d just come back from Maine, where he’d decided to go off nicotine for the first time in 36 years (his consumption of nicotine gum is legendary) and thus had probably forgotten most of his speech, which was advertised in the program as a lecture titled “Big Business Hates Your Family.” The second thing is that his speeches are a stream-of-consciousness collection of observations that kept those in the press gallery frantically typing to keep track of his train of thought, wondering if perhaps the manic media commentator has ADHD. When Carlson isn’t in front of a camera, his speaking style is relentlessly self-deprecatory, frequently disorganized, and interrupted by explosions of laughter followed by a question posed with a knowing grin: “Know what I mean?” Usually, the audience knew precisely what he meant. He began by noting that he could see quite a few people in the audience—presumably members of the conservative establishment—who didn’t like him, and welcoming them to heckle whenever they saw fit. Tucker Carlson started his speech by stating something he says frequently: That he is not an intellectual, but merely an observer of what is happening in America of late (he makes this quite clear in his 2018 book Ship of Fools: How a Selfish Ruling Class Is Bringing America to the Brink of Revolution.) Carlson had three key observations to present to the audience, all three of them rather unpopular in conservative circles. Over the past couple of years, Tucker has used his FOX News show to attack both the Left and the Right, and admitted to the crowd that he no longer had a defined ideology and could not identify with any label—rather than politics, he said, he now simply has “reactions” to things. Advertisement His first observation was perhaps his most contentious: The main threat to people living their lives the way they see fit is no longer the federal government, but the private sector. “I can’t believe I’m saying that,” he added. Follow Jonathon van Maren on Facebook But to Carlson, this now seems obvious. Even cookie companies like Oreo, he noted, are now pushing advertising that asks kids to “name their pronoun”—aiming transgender propaganda at children. This is a corporation, pushing the idea that biology is obsolete and that the gender binary is no longer operative. The libertarian response to this—and the speakers at this conference are constantly taking aim at libertarianism as a bankrupt ideology utterly unsuited to the challenges of today—would be “Start your own Oreo company!” Everyone laughed. The libertarians are not popular at the National Conservatism conference, in stark contrast to other right-wing gatherings like CPAC (when I went last — years ago — Ron Paul was thronged like a rock star.) Right now, Carlson pointed out, Google controls virtually all human information, forming a chokepoint that nobody but them can control. This constitutes the largest amount of power concentrated in the smallest group of people in all of American history. This, Carlson noted, should terrify us. Google could make “whole ideas disappear, and there’s some evidence that they’re planning to do this.” And of course, there is no pushback from our elected officials “because they’re corrupt.” The anti-trust think tank in DC, Carlson noted to laughter, “literally takes money from Google.” This doesn’t bother the Left because it essentially means that people who primarily hold their politics own the digital public square. Advertisement The Right, said Carlson, is utterly unequipped and unwilling to deal with this situation because they have chained themselves to an antiquated way of viewing the free market and the public square that does not possess the tools to respond to a new era in which old assumptions no longer make sense. Conservatives cannot make their own Google and compete, and that means that they run the risk of seeing their ideas censored or eventually banned by powerful corporatists who can potentially change the course of history. There are many downsides to Trump, Carlson noted, but the upside is that his election was so shocking that we should all sit back and ask ourselves what else could happen. If the Loch Ness monster is real, he said to roars of laughter, what about the Yeti? When Donald J. Trump became president of the United States, Carlson says, he forced himself to cut through the lies and the propaganda and simply observe what is happening around him. One of the things he discovered constitutes his second key observation: That much of progressivism is “a Freudian projection. Whatever they say you’re doing, they’re doing.” One key example? Antifa: “Guys in black masks with steel bars calling others fascists.” This isn’t Orwellian, Carlson insisted, this is a Freudian transfer. That led to Carlson’s third observation: The progressive Left is not interested in peaceful co-existence. Carlson’s example again triggered gales of laughter (I even saw journalists who intensely dislike him doubled over): If you went to Alabama and asked someone what they thought of the sexual practices of people in Brooklyn, Carlson noted, they’d look at you as if you were insane. The reality is that they don’t think about it. If you asked them if they’d support banning such practices, they’d laugh in your face. But if you told an elitist in Brooklyn that a huge percentage of people in Alabama opposed gay "marriage," you’d get an enraged outburst in response. The Brooklyn elitists would say of the Alabamians: “I was just thinking about that this morning! We should kill them!” Progressives, Carlson noted, lay awake seething that “someone, somewhere, is not on board with the program.” Even if someone simply disagrees in their heart of hearts, they must be confronted and they must be re-educated. That is because progressivism is an evangelical faith—because although you can remove religion, you cannot remove the religious impulse. “If you think the Resurrection is implausible, just wait ‘til you hear about woke politics,” he joked. Carlson concluded by again confessing that he had many observations, but no immediately obvious solutions: I sure hope this conference explains what it means to be nationalist and conservative, because I’m not even sure anymore. In closing, Carlson took a few questions. In response to a question asking what he thought the most important thought that we haven’t yet given ourselves permission to think or say out loud, Carlson articulated what many of us have been thinking: The natural state of man is not progress. There’s no reason to believe that our society is impervious to collapse, and our leaders are “bovine stupid” not to lie awake at night struggling to come up with ways to hold America together, to find something we have in common to rally the citizenry around. He mocked the idea that “diversity is our strength.” Is that true in your marriage? Carlson asked. If I married someone who couldn’t speak English and hated all my views, how would that work out? Finally, Carlson warned, we should realize that victory is not assured. We do not know if we can prevail in the progressive war against America. In fact, he noted, we could lose—and “that literally gets me up in the morning.” Much has been destroyed over the past several decades, not the least of which is the American family, that ultimate canary in the coalmine for national health. On this, the audience was in full agreement with him, and it is precisely to chart a new response to these problems that so many scholars, writers, and ordinary men and women have gathered in America’s capital this week. Together, they seek to discover what might be done .
And ya'll thought Orwell was writing fiction. BERKELEY, Calif. — Berkeley, California, has adopted an ordinance to replace some terms with gender-neutral words in the city code. The San Francisco Chronicle reports Wednesday that "she" and "he" will be replaced by "they." The words "manpower" and "manhole" will become "workforce" and "maintenance hole." The City Council on Tuesday unanimously passed the measure to replace more than two dozen commonly used terms. There will be no more "craftsmen" in city code, only "craftspeople" or "artisans." http://www.startribune.com/no-manpower-berkeley-bans-gender-specific-words-in-code/512865052/
I heard that "asshole" was going to be replaced with "pelosihole." And "manhole" is going to become "maintenance hole?" So for example, Kamala will become known as Willie's "maintenance hole." Complicated stuff there in California.