The One True Church cannot win by playing by the world's rules.
She can never do enough to satisfy that which opposes her mission of love.
Her enemies do not care about victims of abuse, or the poor, or the oppressed. They only care about destroying Her.
Pope shocks Chile by accusing sex abuse victims of slander - Washington's other other newspaper ...
All that being said, Pope Francis seems ill-equipped for the task of defending the Faith. Pray that God the Holy Ghost will strengthen him so he may successfully wage the never-ending war.
Pope Francis accused victims of Chile’s most notorious pedophile of slander Thursday, an astonishing end to a visit meant to help heal the wounds of a sex abuse scandal that has cost the Catholic Church its credibility in the country.
Francis said that until he sees proof that Bishop Juan Barros was complicit in covering up the sex crimes of the Rev. Fernando Karadima, such accusations against Barros are “all calumny.”
The pope’s remarks drew shock from Chileans and immediate rebuke from victims and their advocates. They noted the accusers were deemed credible enough by the Vatican that it sentenced Karadima to a lifetime of “penance and prayer” for his crimes in 2011. A Chilean judge also found the victims to be credible, saying that while she had to drop criminal charges against Karadima because too much time had passed, proof of his crimes wasn’t lacking.
“As if I could have taken a selfie or a photo while Karadima abused me and others and Juan Barros stood by watching it all,” tweeted Barros’ most vocal accuser, Juan Carlos Cruz. “These people are truly crazy, and the pontiff talks about atonement to the victims. Nothing has changed, and his plea for forgiveness is empty.”
The Karadima scandal dominated Francis’ visit to Chile and the overall issue of sex abuse and church cover-up was likely to factor into his three-day trip to Peru that began late Thursday.
Karadima’s victims reported to church authorities as early as 2002 that he would kiss and fondle them in the swank Santiago parish he ran, but officials refused to believe them. Only when the victims went public with their accusations in 2010 did the Vatican launch an investigation that led to Karadima being removed from ministry.
The emeritus archbishop of Santiago subsequently apologized for having refused to believe the victims from the start.
Francis reopened the wounds of the scandal in 2015 when he named Barros, a protege of Karadima, as bishop of the southern diocese of Osorno. Karadima’s victims say Barros knew of the abuse, having seen it, but did nothing. Barros has denied the allegations.
His appointment outraged Chileans, badly divided the Osorno diocese and further undermined the church’s already shaky credibility in the country.
Francis had sought to heal the wounds by meeting this week with abuse victims and begging forgiveness for the crimes of church pastors. But on Thursday, he struck a defiant tone when asked by a Chilean journalist about Barros.
“The day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I’ll speak,” Francis said. “There is not one shred of proof against him. It’s all calumny. Is that clear?”
Francis had defended the appointment before, calling the Osorno controversy “stupid” and the result of a campaign mounted by leftists. But The Associated Press reported last week that the Vatican was so worried about the fallout from the Karadima affair that it was prepared in 2014 to ask Barros and two other Karadima-trained bishops to resign and go on a yearlong sabbatical.
According to a Jan. 31, 2015, letter obtained by AP from Francis to the executive committee of the Chilean bishops’ conference, the plan fell apart and Barros was sent to Osorno.
Juan Carlos Claret, spokesman for a group of Osorno lay Catholics who have mounted a three-year campaign against Barros, questioned why Francis was now accusing the victims of slandering Barros when the Vatican was so convinced of their claims that it planned to remove him in 2014.
“Isn’t the pastoral problem that we’re living (in Osorno) enough to get rid of him?” Claret asked.
The reference was to the fact that — guilty or not — Barros has been unable to do his job because so many Osorno Catholics and priests don’t recognize him as their bishop. They staged an unprecedented protest during his 2015 installation ceremony and have protested his presence ever since.
Anne Barrett Doyle, of the online database BishopAccountability.org, said it was “sad and wrong” for the pope to discredit the victims since “the burden of proof here rests with the church, not the victims — and especially not with victims whose veracity has already been affirmed.”
“He has just turned back the clock to the darkest days of this crisis,” she said in a statement. “Who knows how many victims now will decide to stay hidden, for fear they will not be believed?”
Indeed, Catholic officials for years accused victims of slandering and attacking the church with their claims. But up until Francis’ words Thursday, many in the church and Vatican had come to reluctantly acknowledge that victims usually told the truth and that the church for decades had wrongly sought to protect its own.
German Silva, a political scientist at Santiago’s Universidad Mayor, said the pope’s comments were a “tremendous error” that will reverberate in Chile and beyond.
Patricio Navia, political science professor at Diego Portales University in Santiago, said Francis had gone much further than Chilean bishops in acknowledging the sexual abuse scandal, which many Chileans appreciated.
“Then right before leaving, Francis turns around and says: ‘By the way, I don’t think Barros is guilty. Show me some proof,’” Navia said, adding that the comment will probably erase any good will the pope had won over the issue.
Navia said the Karadima scandal had radically changed how Chileans view the church.
People are sinners. We are always looking for excuses to justify our sins.
“In the typical Chilean family, parents (now) think twice before sending their kids to Catholic school because you never know what is going to happen,” Navia said.
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.
Friday, January 19, 2018
After 2,000 years, you'd think the Catholic Church would learn that the world HATES her.
The Blind Orange Syphilitic Squirrel in the White (Racist.) House throws decent people a bone.
The Tiny and Terrible Clump also spoke to today's March For Life "live"! (Well, as "live" as It can get.) Ain't it grand having a dictator who pretends to be conservative?
Health Workers Who Oppose Abortion Get New Protections - Ibex ...
The Trump administration announced on Thursday that it was taking new steps to protect doctors, nurses and other health workers who have religious or moral objections to performing abortions or sex-change operations, or providing other medical services.
Friday, January 12, 2018
Girls are pedators too.
Even people with vaginas can be real shits.
Girls' JV basketball coach arrested on sexual assault charges ... - Fox43
DOVER, YORK COUNTY, Pa. -- Police in York County arrest a girls' basketball coach on charges of institutional sexual assault, as well as unlawful contact and communication with a minor for sexual offenses.
Both charges are third degree felonies.
Dover Area High School's girls' junior varsity team is up against Northeastern High School Wednesday night, but they are without their coach.
The Dover Area School District recently suspended 23-year-old girls' JV basketball coach Aignee Freeland.
Now, she's been arrested on charges related to an alleged sexual relationship with one of her players, a 16-year-old girl.
York County Children's Advocacy Center executive director Deb Harrison is familiar with helping families through cases like this.
"These things always occur in a culture of secrecy, and teenagers are already secretive from their parents. So, really encouraging parents to find ways to be parents," Harrison said.
"Often the temptation with teenagers is we want to be their best friend, and encouraging parents to to step forward, and say 'I'm the parent here, and I need to see your phone, I need to know who you're texting, I need to know who you're in communication with,'" Harrison added.
Court documents state that Northern York County Regional Police received reports of a relationship between the coach and the student.
A police investigation found 18 video calls made, received or missed on the victim's phone on two dates in late December.
"The coach should be able to communicate with parents about what's going on. There shouldn't be a need to text a child," Harrison said.
Court documents state the victim told investigators that she and the coach first chatted through social media, then through phone calls or text.
The victim also stated that she would meet with her coach at various locations after practice, sit in her car and talk, and that coach Freeland would touch her sexually, all over her body.
Police said both coach Freeland and the victim knew this could get Freeland in trouble, and that they agreed to keep their relationship a secret.
Whether their alleged relationship was consensual, Freeland now faces third degree felony charges for contact with a minor, and institutional sexual assault.
"It has to do with being in a position where you are in some sense, a position of power over a child. As a coach you may see yourself as their friend, but you are their coach. You are in a position where you can make decisions that impact that child," Harrison said.
"In terms of culpability and responsibility, we would again, point to that adult, that's the difference, it's an adult and a child, so we would really look to that and say this is an inappropriate relationship," Harrison added.
Harrison recommends parents should ask about their child's school's communication policy between students and coaches.
Some coaches may or may not be completely clear on that policy.
"They need to understand the ethics of their role. They need to understand that they're in a leadership position, and the organization that they're connected to should be ensuring that rules and understanding is in place," Harrison said
Meanwhile, Dover Area High School administrators say they are cooperating with police during the investigation, and offering counseling to students.
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.
The Norwegians must be so proud.
President Shit-For-Brains opens his shit-hole and shits out another steaming pile of stable genius.
From The West Australian:
Donald Trump complains about immigrants from 's***hole countries ...
Wednesday, November 15, 2017
#MeToo: The end of the Fuckual (pronounced fuck-u-all) Revolution or just politics as usual?
I know why you don't trust the voters of Alabama to defeat Roy Moore.
George Will has come the closest to respecting the voters, but he seems a bit lukewarm on the subject for me. If Alabama wants to elect a lying pervert to the U.S. Senate, who the fuck are the rest of us to complain. Look at all the lechers, sodomites, and sickos we vote for routinely. And by "we", I mean you.
Yes, you. Don't bother denying it.
And don't forget the billions of dollars you gladly give to those arch-pervs in Hollyweird. That's blood money, kiddies. Every time you go to the movies, an actress gets groped and a teenage boy gets his rectum raped.
All that being said, Moore has been convicted of nothing and any attempt to subvert the electoral process by Repansycans, Democrasses, or the enslaved press is fascism and must be resisted.
BTW, I'd vote for Jones.(11/21/17 Update! Never mind. Jones is a notorious baby-eater. Writing in Zippy The Pinhead would be a better choice.)
Roy Moore is an embarrassment. Doug Jones deserves to win. Washington's other other newspaper -
But for the bomb, the four would be in their 60s, probably grandmothers. Three were 14 and one was 11 in 1963 when the blast killed them in the 16th Street Baptist Church, which is four blocks from the law office of Doug Jones, who then was 9.
He was born in May 1954, 13 days before the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision. He was 16 when he attended, at this city’s Legion Field, the Alabama Crimson Tide vs. the University of Southern California Trojans football game in which USC’s Sam Cunningham, an African American all-American, led a 42-21 thumping of the home team, thereby (so goes the much-embellished but true-enough story) advancing the integration of the region through its cultural pulse, college football. Roll Tide.
Moore campaigns almost entirely on social issues — National Football League protests, the transgender menace — and the wild liberalism of Jones, a law-and-order prosecutor and deer and turkey hunter who says he has “a safe full of guns.” Jones’s grandfathers were members of the mineworkers’ and steelworkers’ unions: Birmingham, surrounded by coal and iron ore, was Pittsburgh — a steel city — almost before Pittsburgh was. Jones hopes economic and health-care issues matter more.
Evangelical Christians who embrace Moore are serving the public good by making ridiculous their pose as uniquely moral Americans, and by revealing their leaders to be especially grotesque specimens of the vanity — vanity about virtue — that is curdling politics. Another public benefit from the Moore spectacle is the embarrassment of national Republicans. Their party having made the star of the “Access Hollywood” tape president, they now are horrified that Moore might become 1 percent of the Senate. Actually, this scofflaw, twice removed from Alabama’s Supreme Court, once for disobeying a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, is a suitable sidekick for the president who pardoned Joe Arpaio, Arizona’s criminal former sheriff. Even after Donald Trump conceded that Barack Obama was born in the United States, Moore continued rejecting such squishiness.
Absentee ballots are already being cast. Assuming that the Republican governor does not shred state law by preventing the election from occurring Dec. 12, Republicans’ Senate majority might soon be gone. It has been 21 years since a Democratic Senate candidate won even 40 percent of Alabama’s vote. It has, however, been even longer — not since the George Wallace era — that the state’s identity has been hostage to a politician who assumes that Alabamians are eager to live down to hostile caricatures of them.
Nothing about Moore’s political, financial or glandular history will shake his base, unless the credible accusations of serial pursuit of underage girls are suddenly overshadowed by something his voters consider serious, such as taking sides in the Alabama-Auburn game. Jones’s hopes rest with traditional white Democrats (scarce), Republicans capable of chagrin (scarcer) and African Americans. They are 27 percent of this state in which “civil rights tourism” (the 16th Street church, Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, Martin Luther King Jr.’s Montgomery church, and more) is economically important.
This month, Virginia’s African Americans turned out for Gov.-elect Ralph Northam, a Democrat who, like Jones, invited voters to take a walk on the mild side. Approximately a quarter of Alabamians live in the metropolitan area of Birmingham, which has had an African American mayor since 1979. National Democrats are helping Jones, but delicately. They rashly treated a Georgia special congressional election as a referendum on the president and want to avoid that mistake in a state Trump carried by 28 points.
Turnout for the August Republican primary and the September runoff was about 18 and 14 percent, respectively. Next month’s election will occur during many distractions, midway between Thanksgiving and Christmas and, more important, 10 days after Armageddon — the SEC championship game. Perhaps an Alabama victory would make the state hanker for a senator worthy of its football team. If so: Roll Tide.
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.
Cal Thomas is so close to the truth, but can't take the final step away from his ancestral heresy.
"Protestantism" isn't a religion, kiddies, and never has been. It is an ideology, albeit a most pernicious and persistent one. It allows every individual to decide what is right and what is wrong, regardless of God's Law which, to "protestants", is as fungible as the U.S. Constitution in the hands of fascists.
From CalThomas.com:
Faith in Politics
or
The final stage of American evangelicalism - Daily News ...
The corruption of faith
By Cal Thomas
Tribune Content Agency
When Jim Zeigler, the state auditor of Alabama, invoked the Bible to defend Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore against allegations that he had inappropriate contact with underage girls while single and in his 30s (which Moore has sort of denied), it signaled perhaps the final stage in the corruption of American evangelicalism.
Zeigler claimed there are many instances in the Bible where older men had sexual relations with young girls. He cites Mary and Joseph as one example. That the religious left has made similar analogies to advance their political agenda is no excuse. It proves my point. Religious liberals long ago stopped preaching a gospel of personal salvation in favor of a social gospel that is more social than gospel.
Behold the dumbass heresy that has caused untold million of souls to condemn themselves to Hell.
Every good Catholic kiddie knows Mary is and always was a virgin. Joseph was her husband but not REPEAT NOT the Father of the Christ.
See how a little bit of True Religion can keep you from grave errors? Not to mention preventing you from voting for a sex pervert.
Conservative evangelicals are repeating this error.
This being the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, politically active Christians would do well to read deeper than the 95 Theses Martin Luther "nailed" to that church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517. Luther was distressed about the corruption that had overtaken the Roman Catholic Church.
In an essay for Modern Age Journal, titled “Beyond the Reformation of Politics,” Alec Ryre, professor of Christianity at England’s Durham University, writes that Luther believed governments were ordained by God to restrain sinners and little else. Real transformation of individuals and thus societies, he reasoned, could be achieved only by a changed heart, which is the work of the church, not government.
“In Luther’s view,” writes Ryre, “God permits these scoundrels to rule because ‘the world is too wicked, and does not deserve to have many wise and upright princes.’ Anticipating (James) Madison, Luther argued that it is only because of human sin that God had instituted government at all, in order to make some limited semblance of peace and order possible.”
That is the antithesis of the theology and political activism of many modern evangelicals, who seem to prefer access to temporal power more than faithfulness to a kingdom and King not of this world.
Ryre continues: “(Luther’s) point, deeply counterintuitive to most modern sensibilities, is that government is not very important. It is necessary in a humdrum way for as long as this passing world endures, but Christians should not pay much attention to it. Their hearts should be set instead on the kingdom of Christ, where there is no law, and no coercion, and which is not passing away.”
There is an unstated conceit among some evangelicals that God is only at work when a Republican is elected, even a Republican who does not share their view of Jesus, or practice what He taught. It is the ultimate compromise, which leads to the corruption and dilution of a message more powerful than what government and politics offer.
German Protestantism made its own Faustian bargain in the 1930s. Theologian Gerhard Kittel joined with other Protestant leaders in a proclamation declaring Adolf Hitler “A call of God.” More like a call of Satan. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was the better example of a serious believer who confronted the Nazis with the power and truth of that other kingdom and was martyred for it.
Henry VIII provides another cautionary tale when it comes to fusing faith with politics. Here’s Ryre’s indictment: “Henry was no Protestant, but most English Protestants were willing to swallow their principles for the sake of an alliance with him…”
Principles are still being swallowed today in exchange for a false sense of influence and power.
In the Book of Revelation, Jesus says about the church at Ephesus, which had been strongly influenced by the Emperor’s cult and worship of the Greek goddess Artemis: “You have left your first love,” meaning Himself. (Rev 2:4)
For too many modern Protestants, politics has become a cult and their “Artemis.” They are forgetting their first love, the consequences of which can be found in history, dating back to Israel’s King David, who warned, “Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save.” (Psalm 146:3)
(Readers may email Cal Thomas at tcaeditors@tribpub.com.)
(c) 2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.
Golly, if Roy Moore was French, he'd be King by now.
France Considers Lowering Age Of Consent To 11 | USA Today 24x7
"You sure do have a pretty mouth, sweetheart."
ABC News reports:
Twice in recent weeks, French courts refused to prosecute grown men for rape after they had sex with 11-year-olds because authorities couldn’t prove coercion.
Feminist groups plan a protest Tuesday to argue the age should be set at 15. Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet says 13 “is worth considering.”
The age is just one piece of an upcoming bill on sexual violence and harassment.
The bill has gained importance amid worldwide concern unleashed by the allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Ekaterina Jezebel Dionne, Jr. is OUT of the Can A Left-Fascist Actually Breathe And Not Be A Hypocrite Contest!
Two can play that game, sweetie.
A "liberal" is any fascist who ignores and therefore excuses left-fascist violence while at the same time constantly whining about how evil everybody to the right of Che Guevara is.
Why we can't think straight about government
Sorry, princess, I'm pretty sure it's only you who can't think straight.
One of the barriers to sensible politics is the opportunism that so often infects our debates about what government is there for, where we want it to be energetic, and how we can keep it from violating the basic rights of citizens.
The muddled nature of our discussions of these matters has been brought home by two unfortunate events: The mass suffering unleashed by Harvey and President Trump's pardon of former sheriff Joe Arpaio.
In the case of the vicious storm, we are reminded that some politicians think government is great when it helps their own constituents and wasteful if it helps anyone else.
We also regularly assert that government is better when it prevents problems than when it focuses primarily on cleaning up after the fact. But when environmentalists suggest that development can be carried out in more sustainable ways or that climate change is worth dealing with, they are mocked as "anti-business" or "crisis-mongers." Then a crisis comes, and we wonder why the politicians were so short-sighted.
As for the Arpaio pardon, it is seen as technically legal because presidential authority in this area is almost unlimited. But it may be the most dangerous act of Trump's presidency. The occupant of the White House has claimed the power to permit government agents to violate the constitutional rights of Americans and to override the courts if he doesn't like what they're doing. This is the largest single step toward autocracy Trump has taken.
What we hear all the time is that conservatives are for "small government" and liberals are for "big government." But this is very misleading shorthand.
Yes, liberals typically favor more social insurance programs, including expanded guarantees of health care, and more government regulation of business in what they insist is the public interest. Conservatives are often critical of some or all of these initiatives.
But liberals (often joined by libertarians) are among the first to stand up against government violations of the civil rights of individuals. Many conservatives -- most certainly including Trump -- use the "law and order" battle cry to accuse liberals concerned about civil liberties of being "soft on crime." (In the case of the Arpaio pardon, Trump seems to be for his version of "order" but indifferent to the "law" part.)
So who is really for big government and who is against it? Which is more threatening to our liberties: higher taxes to pay for new benefits, or an expansive view of police powers and presidential prerogatives?
The conversation about disaster relief helps clarify another issue. The conservative critique of government aid is that it is on some level unjust because it takes money from one group of people and gives it to another. Applying this logic to natural disasters, why should parts of the country that will almost never experience hurricanes help the hurricane-prone areas? After all, people don't have to live in places subject to hurricanes.
Well, it's also true that some places get tornadoes and others don't. Some experience earthquakes and others don't. Some people live near rivers that overflow their banks and others don't.
Disaster relief is premised on an old-fashioned "there but for the grace of God go I" solidarity. We are happy to see government give a hand to our fellow citizens facing sudden catastrophe today and assume that they will help us if we face comparable challenges tomorrow.
This is why it is entirely appropriate to call out the hypocrisy of Texas conservatives who voted against assistance for the victims of Superstorm Sandy in New York and New Jersey but are now asking for federal help on behalf of their folks. They broke this basic rule of solidarity in the name of an ideology that, when the chips are down, they don't really believe in. Of course we should help all the areas devastated by Harvey. I'd just appreciate hearing our Texas conservative friends, beginning with Sen. Ted Cruz, admit they were wrong.
Call me a liberal (I won't mind) but I do believe in using government's taxing powers reasonably to direct help toward people who really need it, and in regulations to protect the environment and prevent catastrophe. But I also believe it is vital to stand firm when government officials violate constitutional rights, which is what Sheriff Arpaio was found to have done with Latinos in Arizona and why pardoning him is so dangerous.
We can certainly debate where government compassion becomes overreach. Unfortunately, we're not anywhere close to such a measured and civilized dialogue.
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Equality über alles!
Please read these two stories carefully, kiddies. This looks like a an excellent place for the fascist right and the fascist left to find common ground and start shooting: EQUALITY. Normal people like us know it better as REVENGE.
From The Old Gray Whore:
Britain Looks to Address Inequality With Executive Pay Measures ...
London - Worried by a long-term rise in inequality, Britain announced on Tuesday a series of measures aimed at increasing transparency over executive compensation, hoping to ramp up pressure on companies that offer lavish salaries for bosses but restrict pay for regular employees.
The proposals include plans to force all publicly listed companies to publish their wage ratio, comparing their chief executive’s salary with that of the average worker, as well as the creation of a register that “names and shames” firms that faced shareholder opposition over executive pay levels.
In much of the Western world, public anger is growing over what critics say are excessive wages for senior business leaders. That has helped contribute to a populist backlash in many countries, as the gap between the salaries of employees and their managers has widened markedly.
In the United States, pay packages for top bosses grew last year, with the highest paid, Thomas M. Rutledge, the chief executive of Charter Communications, making $98 million. That was 2,617 times the average salary for American workers.
But it has become an increasing point of contention here.
In one case, investors in the energy company BP protested against the $19.6 million compensation package awarded to the company’s chief executive, Robert W. Dudley, in 2016 — a majority voted against the deal in a nonbinding vote. And the salary of Martin Sorrell, the head of the advertising giant WPP, regularly attracts pushback from shareholders. Mr. Sorrell made 48 million pounds, or about $62 million, last year.
That expanding gulf has spurred the government’s proposals, which it plans to put into effect by June. In addition to forcing the publication of pay ratios, officials would set up a public register listing companies that faced opposition on pay packages from at least a fifth of shareholders.
Listed businesses would be pushed to improve employee representation on their boards, by assigning a nonexecutive director to represent workers, creating an employee advisory council or nominating a director from the work force. There is no punishment for failing to do so, but companies would have to announce why they had not followed the requirements.
“Today’s reforms will build on our strong reputation and ensure our largest companies are more transparent and accountable to their employees and shareholders,” Greg Clark, Britain’s business secretary, said in a news release.
Over the weekend, Prime Minister Theresa May wrote in The Mail that some firms had “ignored the concerns of their shareholders by awarding pay rises to bosses that far outstrip the company’s performance.”
The changes are not entirely unique. In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2015 required publicly traded corporations to begin providing standard information on pay disparities in 2018 (though the S.E.C. said in February that it might reconsider the measure). And in Germany, employees are often well represented on the supervisory boards of large companies.
Still, unions and analysts criticized the measures, arguing that they lacked teeth.
The Trades Union Congress, an umbrella organization of labor unions, derided the plans as a “box-ticking exercise,” while the opposition Labour Party said that the efforts could be easily ignored.
In particular, companies that are in labor-intensive industries or that employ large numbers of people in lower-paid jobs, like supermarkets, would look worse than investment banks, where average worker pay is higher.
“We’re punishing the companies that employ a lot of people,” Mr. Jenter said. “It in essence says you have a choice between employing low-paid employees in your companies — janitors, cleaners, drivers — or outsourcing the services to other companies or machines.”
Greg Campbell, a partner in the employment department at the law firm Mishcon de Reya, said the efforts to increase worker representation were also relatively mild, because company directors in Britain are already required to consider employee interests.
“A diversity of views is always worth having,” he said, “but I don’t think it is enough to really shift the dial.”
Still, some are hopeful that the measures will raise awareness of worsening inequality.
“This is obviously a more voluntary nudge approach to improve corporate governance, but I think there is no magic bullet,” said Ben Willmott, head of public policy at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. “Regulation can only take you so far because a lot of these issues are around organizational culture and leadership.”
Meanwhile, in another Third World hellhole, Namibia,...
Namibia's Wealth Redistribution Plan May Benefit Elite ... - Bloomberg
A plan by Namibia, among the world’s most economically unequal nations, to better distribute wealth among its citizens may end up the way neighboring South Africa’s has -- benefiting an elite minority.
The nation is working on a law that will require all businesses to be at least a quarter owned by “racially disadvantaged people.” While only about 6 percent of Namibia’s 2.5 million citizens are white, they own most enterprises. That’s a legacy of white-minority rule South Africa imposed when it controlled Namibia from World War I to 1990, with black people being disenfranchised and displaced.
Critics of South Africa’s policy, including the biggest labor-union federation, say it has failed to redress inequalities because it focuses on increasing black ownership of companies rather than raising education standards to match a skills shortage, and has benefited a small number of wealthy individuals. Proposals by Namibia, the world’s biggest marine-diamond producer, are similar, which could hamper investment and growth in an economy that’s contracted every quarter since March last year.
The plan “has caused much unease among white business owners and heightened investment uncertainty,” Gerrit van Rooyen, an analyst at NKC African Economics in Paarl, South Africa, said in an emailed response to questions. Both governments have to “create incentives to boost employment and stimulate investment. Black economic empowerment cannot succeed without job creation and wage growth.”
The New Equitable Economic Empowerment Framework Bill outlines six areas to increase black citizens’ participation in business, including developing people’s skills and providing financing for those disadvantaged by inequality to buy stakes in companies.
The Namibia Chamber of Commerce and Industry wants the focus on economic ownership scrapped, saying it will result in capital flight. It also calls for a rethink on employment equity, because it requires “formal racial classification and promotes racial polarization; blames white racism, brushes over complex causes of interracial inequality,” the NCCI said in its response to the proposed law.
The chamber suggests the bill should target “only the needy and disadvantaged,” and that selection criteria be based on “loyalty, restraint and goodwill and not on greed, tokenism and discrimination.” Namibia ranks alongside South Africa and Lesotho among the world’s most unequal societies in terms of distribution of income, according to Gini coefficients compiled by the CIA World Factbook.
The Law Reform and Development Commission is revising the bill and doesn’t yet know when the new version will be ready, said Yvonne Dausab, the body’s chairwoman.
The current version of the plan has helped see Namibia, the world’s fifth-biggest uranium producer, lose its spot as Africa’s second-most attractive jurisdiction for mining companies to invest in, based on policies, to Botswana, the Fraser Institute’s 2016 survey of 2,700 firms worldwide shows. Zimbabwe, which enacted legislation a decade ago that required all foreign or white-owned businesses to sell or cede 51 percent ownership to black nationals, is ranked last.
On June 19, Fitch Ratings Ltd. kept its assessment of Namibia’s foreign-currency debt at the lowest investment grade, saying the draft empowerment law represents a “modest risk” to the business and investment climate as uncertainties remain about what will ultimately be approved as legislation.
Almost two months later, Moody’s Investors Service cut its rating of the country’s debt to junk, citing a “material” decrease in the country’s fiscal strength, with public debt reaching 42 percent of gross domestic product from 26 percent when the company first assigned a rating in 2011. It has the assessment on a negative outlook, which means the next move could be another cut, saying that a change of investment sentiment is among risks to the rating.
Besides the empowerment law, Namibia is proposing legislation that will limit foreign ownership of land, and it has signed an investment promotion act that will reserve some business activities for black Namibians, Van Rooyen said.
“The government seems to be shifting towards nativist and protectionist policies, which typically discourages foreign investment and impedes economic growth,” he said.
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.
Not only is Evgeni Robinson a commie, master race baiter/traitor,heat nazi, and liar, he's really really stupid.*
* Or, he's sleeping with Al Gore and feels he has to do this kind of crap in order to keep getting some.
Not surprisingly, this execrable cretin didn't use his latest column to condemn the left-fascist violence in Berkeley. (Watch as a Rogue's Gallery of lefty nincompoops fall over their word processing programs ignoring left-fascist violence:
This space is reserved for the flood of columns by left-fascist pundits condemning left-fascist violence in Berkeley, CA. )
Instead, he killed a few hundred trees and a few million of his "readers" brain cells by coming up with the following steaming pile of economic warfare.
From Washington's other other newspaper:
Hurricane Harvey previews our stormy future -
Climate change cannot be definitively blamed for Hurricane Harvey, but it likely did make the storm more powerful. Global warming did not conjure the rains that flooded the nation’s fourth-largest city, but it likely did make them more torrential. The spectacle of rescue boats plying the streets of a major metropolis is something we surely will see again. The question is how often.
The relationship between climate and weather is undeniable but never specific. Tropical cyclones do not batter Siberia’s arctic coast and heavy snowfalls do not blanket the beaches of Barbados because the climates are different. But no one blizzard or hurricane can be attributed to climate change beyond the shadow of a doubt — which opens anyone who raises the subject at a time like this to the accusation of “politicizing” a disaster.
The science explaining climate change is clear, however, no matter what deniers such as President Trump choose to believe. And it will be political decisions that determine how often we witness scenes of devastation like those in Houston.
Ok, smarty-pants, if the science is so clear, you should be able to explain it to everybody.
Look, kiddies! Not a syllable of science is to be found!
Begin with the basic fact of a warming planet, due primarily to greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico are unusually warm this summer — between two and three degrees above normal — which gave Harvey extra energy and moisture.
Unsupported shouts are not evidence, Geno.
Hurricanes usually ("Usually"? You mean your science doesn't know and can't predict? Why should anyone believe anything this moron has to say? This is nothing more than fascist fear-mongering. "Give us control and we will protect you!") weaken when they approach a coastline, but Harvey was able to gain strength, making landfall as a Category 4 storm. According to Pennsylvania State University professor Michael E. Mann, one of the world’s leading experts on climate change, Harvey’s unprecedented rainfall totals were likely boosted by global warming in at least two ways. Higher atmospheric and ocean temperatures mean more evaporation, Mann wrote in the Guardian, which means more precipitation. And the fact that the storm parked itself so stubbornly over Houston is due to a jet-stream pattern predicted in scientists’ climate-change models.
Since 2005, we’ve had Katrina, Sandy and now Harvey. The flood next time could come in Corpus Christi, Mobile, Pensacola, Tampa Bay, Naples, Miami, Jacksonville, Savannah, Charleston — no one knows where. But there is no doubt that it will come.
WOW! Giant hurricanes have caused massive flooding in low-lying flat coastal areas twice in the past twelve years! You've convinced me, Evgeni. I'm ready to sell my soul to totalitarians like you so they can shut down the economy, starve millions to death, and rule what's left of humanity from their air conditioned palaces.
Humankind has boosted the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by a shocking 40 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, when we started burning fossil fuels on a large scale. Even if carbon emissions were magically ended tomorrow, warming would continue for many years. But we can — if we choose — keep climate change from getting catastrophically out of hand.
The rest of the industrialized world has decided to move toward a clean-energy future — and reap the economic benefits such a shift can entail. I’m betting that Trump’s successor, whether a Democrat or a Republican, will reverse his shortsighted, self-defeating decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
But in addition to mitigating climate change, we must adapt to the warming we have made inevitable. Houston officials at least tried to learn one lesson: In 2005, as Hurricane Rita approached, officials ordered an evacuation that turned freeways into parking lots; about 100 people died in the chaos. This time, residents were initially advised to stay put — and, from what we know so far, there appears to have been much less loss of life.
But that infrastructure is evil, isn't it, Gene? It encourages stupid people who disagree with geniuses like you to use more fossil fuels. (This is known outside the Beltway as "work". Which produces tax money that you can spend on really important things, like changing confused boys into "girls".)
Such projects are hugely expensive — but cheaper than repairing the damage from a citywide flood.
Also, the nation needs a sustainable way of providing flood insurance to those living in vulnerable areas. The current National Flood Insurance Program charges rates that do not nearly cover its outlays, and for years it relied on out-of-date maps that did not accurately show flood risks.
Buildings, meanwhile, can be made more flood-proof. President Barack Obama signed an executive order requiring builders who receive federal funds for a project to account for the risk of flooding in their construction plans. Trump rescinded the measure, saying it was “job-killing.” How many people went to work in Houston today?
Also, the nation needs a sustainable way of providing flood insurance to those living in vulnerable areas. The current National Flood Insurance Program charges rates that do not nearly cover its outlays, and for years it relied on out-of-date maps that did not accurately show flood risks.
Buildings, meanwhile, can be made more flood-proof. President Barack Obama signed an executive order requiring builders who receive federal funds for a project to account for the risk of flooding in their construction plans. Trump rescinded the measure, saying it was “job-killing.” How many people went to work in Houston today?
If Robinson and his freedom-hating brethren were honest, they would give glory to Gaia for her persistent attempts to exterminate the little people who refuse to listen to them.
Monday, August 28, 2017
HOLY CRAP! Washington's other other newspaper just lost all of its "anarchist" subscribers!
Take it from a real anti-fascist, kiddies, anyone who uses the word "anarchist" is merely a violent left-fascist. They really do want order, the order they impose on the rest of us.
Black-clad antifa members attack peaceful right-wing demonstrators
Their faces hidden behind black bandannas and hoodies, about 100 anarchists and antifa— “anti-fascist” — members barreled into a protest Sunday afternoon in Berkeley’s Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park.
Jumping over plastic and concrete barriers, the group melted into a larger crowd of around 2,000 that had marched peacefully throughout the sunny afternoon for a “Rally Against Hate” gathering.
Shortly after, violence began to flare. A pepper-spray-wielding Trump supporter was smacked to the ground with homemade shields. Another was attacked by five black-clad antifa members, each windmilling kicks and punches into a man desperately trying to protect himself. A conservative group leader retreated for safety behind a line of riot police as marchers chucked water bottles, shot off pepper spray and screamed, “Fascist go home!”
All told, the Associated Press reported at least five individuals were attacked. An AP reporter witnessed the assaults. Berkeley Police’s Lt. Joe Okies told The Washington Post the rally resulted in “13 arrests on a range of charges including assault with a deadly weapon, obstructing a police officer, and various Berkeley municipal code violations.”
And although the anti-hate and left-wing protesters largely drowned out the smaller clutch of far-right marchers attending a planned “No to Marxism in America” rally, Sunday’s confrontation marked another street brawl between opposing ends of the political spectrum — violence that has become a regular feature of the Trump years and gives signs of spiraling upward, particularly in the wake of the violence in Charlottesville.
“I applaud the more than 7,000 people who came out today to peacefully oppose bigotry, hatred and racism that we saw on display in Charlottesville,” Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín said in a statement. ” … However, the violence that small group of protesters engaged in against residents and the police, including throwing smoke bombs, is unacceptable. Fighting hate with hate does not work and only makes each side more entrenched in their ideological camps.”
In February, 150 similarly black-clad agitators caused $100,000 worth of damage when they smashed through Berkeley protesting a University of California at Berkeley speech by right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Portland, Ore., has been the scene of street battles between antifa members and white nationalists this summer. White nationalist Richard Spencer was sucker-punched by a protester in a January video that went viral. And Inauguration Day 2017 in Washington, D.C., was marked by violence when masked protesters burned vehicles, smashed windows and clashed with police, leading to 231 arrests.
On Sunday, police in Berkeley maintained a strict perimeter around the area in the beginning of the afternoon, including enforcing an emergency city rule outlawing sticks and other potential weapons from the park. Fifty officers were spread out at the area’s four entrances, according to the Daily Californian.
But antifa protesters — armed with sticks and shields and clad in shin pads and gloves — largely routed the security checks and by 1:30 p.m. police reportedly left the security line at the Center Street and Milvaia Street entrance to the park. Berkeley Police Chief Andrew Greenwood told the AP the decision was strategic — a confrontation was sure to spark more violence between the protesters and police.
“No need for a confrontation over a grass patch,” Greenwood said.
Joey Gibson was among the right-wing activists assaulted Sunday. Gibson, the leader of the Oregon-based Patriot Prayer group, had planned to hold a “Freedom Rally” at Crissy Field Beach. Gibson previously told the L.A. Times his group was not “white supremacist” but “feared that extreme or racist figures might try to co-opt his event.”
Yet, as with other planned right-wing events in the wake of Charlottesville, Saturday’s rally drew controversy in the San Francisco area, with one group stockpiling dog feces to lay at the scene on Saturday.
Last Friday, Gibson canceled the event because of the mounting pressure. “It doesn’t seem safe; a lot of people’s lives are going to be in danger tomorrow,” he told Unite America First.
Attention shifted to Sunday’s “No to Marxism in America” event. However, last week, that event’s organizer, Amber Cummings, also signaled the event was off due to the growing tensions. “I stress I DO NOT WANT ANYONE COMING and if they do you will be turned away, I’m sorry for this but I want this event to happen peacefully and I do not want to risk anyone getting harmed by terrorists,” Cummings wrote online, according to NBC Bay Area.
On Sunday, Cummings reportedly did not appear for her event, and anti-hate marchers far outnumbered the right-wing element that did make an appearance, the AP reported.
Although Gibson was reportedly seen being taken into custody, on Sunday the Patriot Prayer Facebook page stated “Joey is NOT in jail, and has NOT been arrested. He was cuffed and released after being shoved through the police line.” Gibson did not reply to a Facebook message seeking comment.
“We’re just puzzled as to why people consider violence a valid tactic,” Berkeley resident Kristin Leiumkuhler, 60, told SFGate.
Let me bring you up to speed, my dear. Fascists know violence creates chaos which fosters fear and more violence. Frightened people are more willing to surrender their freedom in exchange for "order". Who claims to bring you "order"? Why, government, of course. What does government require from you to produce the "order" you desire? More power. What is power? Fascism.
She, like others, had turned out with neighbors for a peaceful rally but left when things got ugly. “We felt disappointed and surprised by how many people were not in any way discreet about being with antifa — in fact being very bold and prepared to be violent.”
QUESTION. LEARN. THINK. This is the only way to survive this madness.
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.
Friday, August 25, 2017
What happens when you give a commie douchebag $582 million of your money to fix your schools?
Just ask the suckers that pay taxes in New York City.
WTF? The Old Gray Whore damns their commie wet dream of a mayor, Spill de Blah-zio, with faint praise:
For $582 Million Spent on Troubled Schools, Some Gains, More Disappointments ...
When it comes to New York’s schools, Mayor Bill de Blasio has placed his biggest bet on the Renewal program, which has pumped extra money and other resources into a group of the city’s most troubled schools, at a cost of $582 million.
On Tuesday, when Mr. de Blasio held a news conference to announce how the city’s third through eighth graders had done on the annual state math and reading tests, he singled out the Renewal schools for praise, saying that they had “outpaced the citywide average” on those exams. At those schools, the percentage of children who passed the reading tests increased by 3.2 points from last year; the percentage passing the math tests increased by 1.5 points. Citywide, reading proficiency increased by 2.6 percentage points and math proficiency grew by 1.4 points.
But a closer look at the performance of the elementary and middle schools in the program last school year — there were 57, five of which have closed or been merged with other schools — shows that those numbers mask a yawning divide among the schools, with some making impressive gains, while others languish. And almost all of them lag behind the city over all: On average, in reading, just 15.9 percent of Renewal students scored as proficient, compared to 40.6 percent citywide; in math, only 9.4 percent of Renewal students passed, compared to the citywide average of 37.8 percent.
To track the effects of the program, which gives schools a longer day and access to special services like vision care for students or mental heath supports, The New York Times analyzed Renewal school performance on the 2016 and 2017 tests, as compared with the 2015 scores.
Over that period, citywide, the percentage of students who passed the reading tests increased by nearly 10.7 points; the percentage who passed the math tests grew by 2.9 points.
Of the 57 schools in the Renewal program, only 16 narrowed the gap between their performance and the city average in English since 2015. The rest fell further behind. In math, 27 schools narrowed the gap, while 30 fell further behind.
The best performer among the Renewal schools was Public School 15, the Roberto Clemente school, an elementary school in the East Village, which has a challenging population. Last year, 45 percent of the students were homeless, according to city records. On the 2015 tests, just 5.4 percent of the school’s children passed the English test. On the most recent round of tests, 35.8 percent did — a huge improvement. On math, Roberto Clemente was the only Renewal school where a higher percentage of children passed the test, 45 percent, than did so citywide.
While Roberto Clemente’s growth is impressive, the school has just 180 students, and only about 70 of them took the tests this year, so the test scores of a small number of children can have a big impact on its passing rates.
Speaking of the greatest ballplayer ever, when is MLB going to get its head out of its ass and retire his number league wide?
Other high-growth schools included J.H.S. 123 James M. Kieran, in the Soundview section of the Bronx, and P.S. 328 Phyllis Wheatley in East New York, in Brooklyn, which made less dramatic gains than Roberto Clemente. Students at James M. Kieran outperformed the city’s growth rate by 6 percentage points in math, but only 13.3 percent of its students passed the test this year.
Under Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, many struggling schools were closed. Alison Coviello, the principal of the Jonathan D. Hyatt school in the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx, said that when she took over five years ago, her school was set to be closed. The Education Department later reversed that decision and this year nearly 31.8 percent of the students passed the reading tests, compared with 17.6 percent in 2015. Last year, she said, there was a big drop in the number of students who scored a Level 1 on the English exam, which is the lowest possible score.
At the bottom of the performance list were schools that, despite the extra resources, have made almost no progress, or even fallen behind where they started.
The Hunts Point School in the Bronx, for example, has improved only marginally in English, and the percentage of its students who pass the math tests fell to just 1.8 percent this year. Other schools at the bottom of the list were J.H.S. 291 Roland Hayes in Brooklyn and Urban Science Academy in the Bronx. The only school that performed worse than those three on the two tests was M.S. 584 in Brooklyn, which closed at the end of the school year.
The Department of Education said that the Hunts Point School has a new principal, assistant principal and guidance counselors, and that Urban Science Academy is revamping its curriculum. Roland Hayes offered Regents algebra, which gives high school credit, to its eighth graders for the first time this past year, the city said, so many of its high-achieving students took that test instead of the state math test their peers sat for. Seventeen of the 18 students who took the algebra test passed, the city said.
At least on paper, it is difficult to tell what separates the schools at the bottom of the list from those at the top, which cuts to the core of what makes school turnaround so difficult: nobody knows precisely what works.
“The problem is that there is no silver bullet to turnaround interventions,” said Priscilla Wohlstetter, a distinguished research professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “It’s a really tough thing to figure out what makes the difference in schools.”
TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.
About Me
- TheChurchMilitant
- First of all, the word is SEX, not GENDER. If you are ever tempted to use the word GENDER, don't. The word is SEX! SEX! SEX! SEX! For example: "My sex is male." is correct. "My gender is male." means nothing. Look it up. What kind of sick neo-Puritan nonsense is this? Idiot left-fascists, get your blood-soaked paws off the English language. Hence I am choosing "male" under protest.