DOJ Tells Four Police, Fire Departments That It’s Racist To Expect Employees To Know Basic Math
The Biden-Harris Department of Justice has undertaken a slew of lawsuits against local police and fire departments alleging that it is racist to require hires entrusted with public safety to know basic math.
The lawsuits undermine Kamala Harris’s attempts to brand herself as a moderate in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, with the suits both suggesting a dim view of blacks by the administration, and employing the theory of “disparate impact,” the radical theory that holds that anytime there are statistical racial disparities, racism must be the cause — even if no one can explain how.
On Friday, the DOJ’s civil rights unit filed a lawsuit against South Bend, Indiana, saying “South Bend uses a written examination that discriminates against Black applicants and a physical fitness test that discriminates against female applicants,” The Daily Wire previously reported.
But that was just one of the lawsuits, which claim that tests are racist because blacks fail them at a higher percentage than whites, and require cash awards to be paid to those blacks who failed them. Most blacks generally pass the tests, and the lawsuits do not explain how the tests can be racist against only some blacks. Blacks who passed the tests are excluded from the financial payouts.
Last week, Durham, North Carolina settled with the DOJ, saying blacks failed the tests required to become a firefighter more often, and “Employers should identify and eliminate practices that have a disparate impact based on race.” It said the Durham Fire Department must pay nearly a million dollars to people who failed the test, and hire up to 16 of them.
While the DOJ said the tests were not relevant to actually being a good firefighter, an online practice test suggests that it is directly relevant, that people could die if such firefighters were hired. One question asks if a building is 350 feet away, how many 60-foot hoses would be needed.
In May, the DOJ entered into a similar settlement with Cobb County, Georgia. “The County’s use of these employment practices disproportionately removed qualified African Americans from consideration for a firefighter position. The complaint further alleges that the credit check and the use of the written exam to rank applicants do not lawfully identify the best qualified candidates for the firefighter position,” the DOJ said.
Also this month, the DOJ forced Maryland State Police to pay $2.75 million to women who were barred from being officers because they couldn’t pass physical fitness exams testing, for example the ability to run quickly, and blacks who couldn’t pass a written test.
The test that the DOJ says is racist is designed to ensure that cops are at least as smart as an elementary school student and can serve residents by, for example, adding up the total value of stolen property when items were stolen valued at $400, $40, $1,500, and $100.
When police officers who don’t meet basic standards are hired, they sometimes abuse members of the public, sometimes resulting in still more accusations of racism if those members of the public are black. Last year, the media pointed to Memphis police allegedly repeatedly beating people as an example of police brutality — but it turned out that the police were all black and were hired despite not meeting the usual standards required for the position.
After D.C. Mayor Marion Barry made firehouses in the nation’s capital a racial spoils program, firefighters repeatedly turned out to be gun-toting, violent criminals. Public outrage over the hiring program culminated in 2014 after a 77-year old man had a heart attack directly in front of a fire station and begged for help, but none of the firefighters ran to his aid. His family sued for $7 million.
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What Are We Doing to Children? The U.K. finally puts the brakes on gender medicine
A few years before the Covid pandemic, the Irish state television network (RTÉ) asked me to appear in a documentary about the sudden increase of transsexualism in the Western world. Why me, I asked? I had written nothing on the subject and was neither an expert on, nor particularly interested in, the whole question. I soon learned that I was not their first choice. In fact, they were desperate for someone to voice an opinion different from what had become an orthodoxy, at least in public: that transsexualism (I prefer this more accurate, older term to “transgenderism”) was both a medical condition and a perfectly good way to be in the world and that, having experienced oppression through the ages, transsexuals should now be added to the growing list of certified victims.
Once, in what might be called the pre-ideology days of transsexualism, a young male-to-female transsexual was admitted to my hospital ward after taking an overdose following a quarrel with a boyfriend. The boyfriend turned up for a reconciliation; he was a female-to-male transsexual. Not even Joseph Stalin, no slouch in altering historical records, would have thought of changing a person’s sex on his birth certificate years later, as is now possible in Britain.
Fashions run through psychopathology: we rarely see hysterical paralyses these days, for example, though they once were common, not least during and after World War I. In the 1980s and 1990s, multiple personality disorder (as in The Three Faces of Eve) was suddenly prominent, with the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders of the American Psychiatric Association quoting a community survey concluding that one in 60 adults suffered from it. That diagnosis is now deeply unfashionable.
The suddenness with which an infrequent diagnosis became first common, and then the object of an entire ideology and social cause, is astonishing and surely requires an explanation. When I think of the rapid increase in gender dysphoria and trans identification, a line from Rudyard Kipling’s “The Road to Mandalay” comes to mind: “An’ the dawn comes up like thunder outer China ’crost the Bay!”
Who would have foreseen the dawn of such a worldview coming up like thunder—such that people are denounced and attacked for suggesting in public that a person’s sex is immutable, and that neither surgery nor hormonal treatment and neither voice and deportment training nor makeup and other externals, will turn a man into a woman? Who would have foreseen that a political party in Western Europe, the Scottish Greens, would expel 13 of its prominent members for stating publicly that “sex is a biological reality,” because to do so supposedly threatens the safety of transsexuals? Who would have thought that the world’s most financially successful author, J. K. Rowling, could now “paper her walls,” as she put it, with the death threats she has received (the anonymous death threat having become, alas, the highest form of argument) after she said something that only a few years ago would not have been thought worth saying—namely, that a female is born, not made?
Who would have thought that a democratically elected Scottish government would pass a law (since struck down) stipulating that anyone over 16 could change legal “gender” (a stand-in for sex) more or less at will? And who would have believed that, according to one poll, a third of Britons would agree with the proposition that transgender women are women (that is to say, women in all senses of the word)—the same proportion as those disagreeing (the other third not knowing)?
The utter confusion that gender ideology has sown is reflected by the fact that more than 60 percent of people, when polled about whether “transgender” women should be allowed to participate in women’s competitive sports, say that they should not. Why not, though, if they were truly women? But a sign of the rapid success of the ideology is that 22 percent say that transgender women should be allowed to play, answering in the affirmative a question that a few years ago would have led people to doubt the sanity of the person asking it.
Further illustrating the confusion: no one asks whether transgender men—women who have changed into the simulacra of men—should be allowed to compete in men’s sports. The question doesn’t arise for obvious reasons, but that the reasons are obvious is itself a powerful indictment of the strange state of mind of those who excoriate and threaten the likes of Rowling, a state of mind in which they furiously defend something that they know is false.
Future historians, if we have any and if they enjoy sufficient freedom to do so, will wonder at this extraordinary efflorescence of intellectual absurdity and seek the reasons for it. This sexual tulipomania would be worthy of a new chapter of Charles Mackay’s book of 1843, Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. “Whatever got into them?” the historians will ask. No definitive answer will be forthcoming.
Faint signs of resistance have emerged, however, to the advance of the transgender ideology—in Britain, of all somnolent, pusillanimous countries. In the wake of revelations about the careless, almost cavalier way in which the Tavistock Clinic, the country’s premier clinic for transgenderism, treated children and adolescents, often under the bullying of transgender pressure groups, the country’s centralized National Health Service commissioned a report from independent pediatrician Hilary Cass about the treatment of gender-dysphoric children and adolescents, which, though it strained to be open-minded and evenhanded, sounded a tocsin. Thousands of children and adolescents were being treated in life-changing ways in the absence of evidence about the long-term effects of that treatment.
The Cass Review, no literary masterpiece, tackled the vital question of why the number of children and adolescents suffering from uncertainty about their gender has increased so dramatically. The figures are startling. A Gender Identity Development Service for the country was founded in 1989, initially seeing fewer than ten young patients yearly. From 2009, the numbers exploded. In that year, 15 adolescent females and two female children were referred to the service, along with 24 adolescent males and ten male children. In 2016, the figures were, respectively, 1,071 and 426, and 138 and 131. Between 2014 and 2015 alone, the numbers more than doubled, from 314 to 689 for female adolescents and from 125 to 293 for female children. Incidentally, these rises were paralleled in other Western countries. By 2023, 3,115 or more children and adolescents were being referred annually to the gender identity clinics in Britain.
What accounted for this vertiginous rise? Cass’s report tries to answer it with scrupulous care. One possible explanation is that no real rise in incidence occurred, only in recognition and ascertainment. This, however, is unlikely, for we can chart a similar rise in all other manifestations of child and adolescent distress. I was startled to read in the report, for example, that between 2017 and 2021, the incidence of eating disorders among young women aged 17 to 19 rose from 1.6 percent to 20.8 percent and among men from 0 percent to 5.1 percent. Figures for other conditions are similar.
Transsexualism is not new, but it has been rare; where it occurred, it was overwhelmingly of the male-to-female variety, whereas the reverse is now the case. Cass considers the possible biological contribution to the condition, finding no evidence of genetic predisposition, though in a few cases, hormonal influences in the womb may have played a part. It is extremely unlikely, though, that any biological change took place in the population between 2000 and 2023 that accounts for the rise in prevalence.
Other figures given in the report paint a horrific picture of childhood and adolescence in modern Britain, and no doubt in other countries, too. For example, 27 percent of 11-year-olds have been exposed to pornography on the Internet; for the 16–21 age group, 42 percent of females and 58 percent of males actively seek it out. Forty-seven percent of adolescents (both sexes) believe that women expect to be slapped or strangled during sexual intercourse. This might, I suppose, help to explain why transsexualism has changed from being predominantly male-to-female to being predominantly female-to-male. It is more blessed to strangle than to be strangled.
Cass avoids attributing the increase in gender dysphoria to social contagion, but this, it seems to me, must be the greater part of the explanation. She mentions a survey in the United States of Generation Z, those born after 1997, showing that the proportion of members who believe that more than two genders exist rose from 39 percent in late 2019 to 51 percent by late 2021 or early 2022. This suggests considerable effort at indoctrination of young people, be it formal or informal and spontaneous, whether by what is found on the Internet and social media or by conversations held among themselves.
Cass illustrates the power of social media. She takes the case of “Functional Tic-Like Behaviours,” that is, tics with no organic basis. These “are found to occur in young females with complex, disabling and tic-lookalike patterns, usually triggered by videos portraying tic-like behaviour on social media.” According to one survey, 41 percent of people with these tics have gender dysphoria. A conference of specialists on Tourette syndrome who had noticed a great increase in such tics during the Covid pandemic reported:
Over the past few years, tics and tic-like symptoms have gained visibility, especially on social media. Young people who watch others with tic-like symptoms on social media may develop symptoms similar to those in the video. Social distancing during Covid-19 has increased time spent on social media, which has greatly exposed people to this content on a global scale.
If, in addition, an active, vocal, and ideologically motivated pressure group was advocating for tic-dom, one could well imagine the result.
One unidentified person interviewed for the report said, “A lot of trans people make YouTube videos which I think is a major informational source for a lot of people, and that’s mainly where I get my information from.” One anonymous informant does not make an encyclopedia, but it is hard to believe that he was the only one of his ilk. And what he, and others, see on YouTube is probably an encouragement of, and propagandistic for, transsexualism.
Cass explains the more than doubling of referrals to the Tavistock Clinic for gender dysphoria between 2014 and 2015 by the fact that, in 2014, the clinic uncritically adopted the so-called Dutch Protocol. This was based on a single experiment conducted by Dutch pediatricians on 70 youngsters, of an initial sample of 111, who had suffered long-term gender dysphoria and were free of confounding serious mental conditions and had family support. They were given puberty-blocking drugs and supposedly felt better as a result, though the study was of very poor quality: only participants who had “positive” experiences with the drug were selected to participate; there were no controls (not even by the 41 excluded from the sample); psychologists carefully attended the patients while they were taking the drugs; and the follow-up was far from complete.
In fact, with an almost criminal frivolity, the Tavistock Clinic had begun handing out puberty blockers as routine care before the results of its own experimental study, begun in 2011, were in. Word soon got around. Even if Cass is mistaken in thinking that this accounts for the sudden surge in dysphoria referrals (the increase over the years actually fits an exponential curve), it reminds me of the start of the epidemic of deaths from opioids in the United States, which began with the willful misinterpretation of research published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The research had found that those given strong analgesics in the hospital did not become addicts; from this correct observation, doctors, heavily influenced by drug-company propaganda, thoughtlessly concluded that it was safe to give strong analgesics to anybody with any kind of pain at any time. A million deaths later, we now know differently.
Cass’s attempt, which cannot be definitive, to explain the rise of transsexualism has the merit of making it impossible to view the condition in a purely medical, or even psychopathological, light. But she also examines (with the help of a team) the evidence that the use of puberty blockers is justified in the treatment of gender dysphoria of pubertal children, as well as the justifications for use of masculinizing or feminizing hormones in adolescents with gender dysphoria.
The evidence favoring puberty blockers is lacking, and therefore the use of them is unethical. Moreover, the so-called Dutch Protocol was admittedly experimental, and the ethical propriety of experimenting on pubertal children with potentially life-changing drugs thus should be questioned. Indeed, it recalls, admittedly on a much smaller scale and with much less malign intentions, the experiments conducted on children by Josef Mengele. Not only is the evidence lacking; it should remain lacking and should not be gathered or gatherable in the first place. The condition is variable, changeable, and nonfatal; it is by no means simply a medical one. In fact, Cass asks the ethical question as to how far doctors should go in treating with medication and later with surgery a condition that is only marginally medical:
The nature and causes of gender dysphoria/incongruence are complex and poorly understood, and there is very limited understanding of the currently presenting population of predominantly birth-registered adolescent females. Each individual will have a different mix of biopsychosocial factors, but if potentially dynamic psychosocial or sociocultural factors predominate in a significant proportion of people, one of the most challenging ethical questions is whether and/or when medical intervention is the correct response.
Furthermore:
The University of York’s systematic reviews [of the evidence concerning treatment, the University of York being one of the world’s centers for examining the quality of medical evidence] demonstrated poor study design, inadequate follow-up periods and a lack of objectivity in reporting of results. As a result, the evidence for the indicated uses of puberty blockers and masculinising/feminising hormones in adolescents [is] unproven and benefits/harms are unknown.
The problems are legion:
Once on puberty blockers, they [young patients] will enter a period when peers are developing physically and sexually whilst they will not be, and they may be experiencing the side effects of the blocker. There are no good studies on the psychological, psychosexual and developmental impact of this period of divergence from peers.
No informed consent to treatment can be given, either—first, because the children involved are not capable of giving it; and second, because the information necessary for informed consent is lacking anyway, and probably will remain so.
The Cass Review, which doubtless has its defects, has nonetheless played a role in effecting significant change, at least in the U.K. Parliament has banned puberty blockers from private clinics, the National Health Service has decommissioned them, and Scotland has paused their prescription. In the United States, however, such treatments are going ahead unchecked, at least for the time being. The entire phenomenon over the last decade or so should lead us to two large questions: Have we gone mad? And what, as a society, are we doing to children?
https://www.city-journal.org/article/what-are-we-doing-to-children
**************************************************The Culture of Moral Relativism Is Destroying Our Kids’ Education
What issue could be more important to a nation’s future than education? A country is about people. How Americans act, work, think, choose—and live—reflects their values.
K-12 education, of course, is about learning to read and do math. This is what we measure in test scores.
But education is a lot more than acquisition of technical skills. It is about transmission of values and our sense of meaning of what life is about.
It’s these values that determine how we act, behave, work, and deal with life’s many challenges.
Polling tells us that Americans are generally unhappy about education in our country.
In a recent Gallup poll, 53% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, and 33% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, said they are “completely/somewhat satisfied with the quality of K-12 education.”
Dissatisfaction with education in our country is not limited to those on the receiving end. A recent Pew Research survey shows there is also considerable dissatisfaction with those providing it—the teachers themselves.
Per the Pew survey, among all U.S. workers, 51% say they are “extremely/very satisfied with their job.” But among K-12 public schoolteachers, only 33% say they are “extremely/vary satisfied” with their job.
When the teachers were asked to rate academic performance of students at their school, 48% rated it “fair/poor” and only 17% rated it “excellent/very good.”
When teachers rated behavior of the students at their school, 49% rated it “fair/poor” and 13% rated it “excellent/very good.”
When teachers were asked about the problems they see in the students they are trying to teach, these are overwhelmingly behavioral problems. Forty-seven percent say students show “little or no interest” in learning. In high schools, the percentage increases to 58%.
The bottom line, as I see it, is students learn when they are motivated to learn. Students don’t learn when they are not.
Motivation comes from meaning, that life matters. This takes us back to the issue of values.
The culture of meaninglessness and moral relativism, and the absence of absolutes in right and wrong, are destroying our kids and their education as it is our whole country.
We have to change. But the great obstacle to change in K-12 education is the control of government in education and the control of teachers unions.
It is crazy that in a country that is allegedly about freedom, we have so little of it in something so vitally important as education.
The good news is school choice programs are growing around the country. But it is far too slow.
According to EdChoice, in the 2023-2024 school year, more than 1 million children are learning in school choice programs. That’s up from almost zero 25 years ago.
But this is 1 million out of more than 50 million youths in K-12 learning across the nation.
According to the Freedom Foundation, the National Education Association—the nation’s largest teachers union—allocated 34% of its total 2022-2023 budget—$176,505,592 of a budget total $520,208,114—to “political activism and contributions.”
Our nation’s largest teachers union is basically about politics, not education. And the political agenda is left-wing moral relativism.
According to opensecrets.org, the NEA’s super PAC, NEA Advocacy Fund, in the 2023-2024 cycle, contributed $18,833,477 to liberal groups and not one cent to conservative groups.
In their political contributions, $2,525,652 went to Democrats and $47,144 to Republicans.
The NEA defines its mission, on its website, as “ending racism, sexism, homophobia, and other systemic injustices in schools.”
How about the systemic injustice that parents, who go to church every Sunday, can’t free their child from the failing public school that is forced on them and cannot send their child to a Christian school to learn values that they see as truth?
School choice is on the ballot this November in Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska.
Parents must be free to educate their child as they choose.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/10/17/why-our-free-country-do-we-lack-education-freedom/
**************************************************Pay No Attention to the Gender Activist Behind the Public School Curtain
As if Nevada parents didn’t already have their hands full, including helping their children navigate the waters of adolescent sexuality. Now gender activists increasingly are using the public schools to lead students down a path their parents may know nothing about.
And the Biden-Harris administration is making it worse.
Nevada is hardly alone. Nearly 20,000 public schools across the country, attended by 11.5 million students, now have policies that cater to kids’ current sense of “gender identity” but that deliberately keep parents in the dark about that same thing.
The Elko County School District’s gender policy, like many others, defines “gender identity” as “a student’s inner sense of being male or female.” That sense might be nothing more than a fleeting feeling, prompted by a suggestion on social media, or a clinically significant diagnosis of gender dysphoria requiring medical intervention.
These policies not only don’t distinguish between these radically different situations, they actually prohibit anything beyond taking a student’s self-perception at face value. And by shutting out parents, the schools exclude the very people who are the best source of information about that student’s health and well-being.
There’s little dispute that, in general, schools should take the lead on matters such as curriculum or school administration. Sex and gender identity, however, fall in a different category. A federal judge in Pennsylvania put it this way: “[T]eaching a child how to determine one’s gender identity” strikes “at the heart of parental decision making in a matter of greatest importance in their relationship with their children.”
But Nevada public schools don’t seem to have gotten the memo. Instead, they are imposing their own opinions, theories, and ideology about this volatile and controversial subject and establishing a significant range of policies based on nothing more than a youngster’s current feelings.
The Washoe County School District policy, for example, defines gender identity as “an individual’s understanding, outlook, feelings, and sense of being masculine, feminine, both or neither.” While such things can change at any time, for any reason, school policies dictate that a child’s latest “outlook” will dictate how a school responds.
That school’s policy also states that students “have the right to be addressed by the names and pronouns that correspond to their gender identity.” They may use any restrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities, as well as participate in physical education classes and intramural sports for the same reason.
Needless to say, implementing school policies that cater to a student’s current “sense” of his or her sexuality tells the student to expect that others will conform to his or her feelings. Parents may have a very different idea about how to develop their child’s character, but these policies deliberately shut parents out.
The Washoe County policy, for example, prohibits school personnel from disclosing any information related to a student’s gender identity “to others, including parents/guardians … [unless] the student has authorized such disclosure.”
These same schools, however, handle far less significant matters very differently. Washoe County School District has a 51-page manual dictating procedures for field and activity trips, requiring both parental permission and a liability waiver. The district requires both parental consent and health-care provider authorization for any medication, including over-the-counter medication such as Tylenol.
The upshot is that Johnny needs his parents’ permission to go to the zoo, but his parents need his permission to know that he’s undressing in the girls’ locker room.
The Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Education just issued a sweeping rule that will push more public school districts in this direction. It reworks Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972, the federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in educational programs that receive federal funds.
The administration’s rule redefines “sex” to include “gender identity”—something Congress certainly didn’t intend when it passed the law in 1972—and redefines “harassment” so that staff and teachers could face disciplinary action if they “misgender” a student.
This massive federal mandate carries the implied threat that billions of dollars in federal funds could be revoked if schools don’t knuckle under and enforce it.
Parents might not agree that their child’s latest feelings always deserve indulgence. They might have a well-considered idea of how to guide their children through the challenges of adolescence and establish their own identity. The bottom line is that this is the parents’ decision to make.
But by pushing parents aside and imposing the government’s preferred gender ideology, these policies violate the parents’ constitutional right to direct the upbringing of their children. The Supreme Court has called this “perhaps the oldest of the fundamental liberty interests” it has ever recognized.
It’s time for parents to fight back against policies in local schools, state laws that allow those policies, and federal rules that promote this agenda at their expense.
Related posts:
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17 October, 2024
This girl lives in Bonkle
I kid you not. It is a place in Scotland
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Welsh Council Rewrites History To Turn King Arthur Into An LGBT Icon
First, they came for Abraham Lincoln. Now, the Alphabet Mafia is trying to make King Arthur into a gay icon. Slay, King?
Thankfully, at least this one isn’t in America.
A Welsh Council recently included the 5th Century Welsh ruler in their “LGBTQ+ timeline,” British media reported. The move is part of an “Action Plan” to raise “awareness and understanding” of the alphabet community that also teaches LGBT history in local libraries, museums and archives.
But the basis of King Arthur’s inclusion is even more ridiculous than Lincoln’s. The nasty documentary that came out about Lincoln in September at least had a well-documented history of the former president’s close male friendships to point to. Yet King Arthur is said to be gay now because he once “wore women’s clothing,” maybe.
Obviously, this is insane. King Arthur wasn’t a drag queen — a concept and identity that didn’t exist until the very recent past. By this standard, you could call countless generations of men in Europe and America gay. “Drag” was the norm among men historically because women couldn’t entertain outside of brothels. Watch the 90s hit “Shakespeare in Love” if you need a refresher on who played the female roles in medieval England.
Like the Lincoln documentary, the goal is always to rewrite history. King Arthur united his people to fight off foreign invaders, searched for the Holy Grail, established his court at Camelot and, as the legend goes, vanquished the monsters and magic that would destroy his kingdom. King Arthur is as close a figure the Welsh people have to Lincoln in their history, a man whose heroic deeds crystallized into legend and shaped the Welsh identity.
The point of this exercise is to mainline “gay identity” even further into the mainstream psyche, “proving” that the spectrum of LGBT insanity isn’t just some new fad, social contagion or life choice, but the permanent way of the world. With this, the left aims to form a new generation in the mold of LGBT ideology. Perhaps more importantly, they want you to subordinate all the pride you have in your country’s history to the new religion of queerness.
These gender monsters today are even scarier than they were in Arthur’s day. Will the Welsh people once again rise to vanquish them?
https://dailycaller.com/2024/10/15/welsh-council-rewrite-history-king-arthur-lgbt/
********************************************************Red State Universities Purge Gen Ed Courses Following Order To Step Away From ‘Woke Ideologies’
Florida’s public universities are purging general education courses that include “woke ideologies,” following a state law enacted by Gov. Ron DeSantis, Politico reported Monday.
Hundreds of courses previously required for graduation will now either be offered as electives or removed, following a GOP-led 2023 law that forced universities to review required courses to avoid “identity politics,” Politico reported. The once-required courses that are being changed to electives or cut include sociology classes and “gender studies,” following the state law targeting “woke ideologies.”
“Under the leadership of Governor DeSantis, Florida refocused its higher education system on the classical mission of universities: pursuing truth and preparing students to be citizens of this republic,” Julia Friedman, deputy press secretary for DeSantis, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Courses on ‘Humanities Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality[sic]’ and ‘Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion’ do not fulfill the mission of higher education.”
Republicans in Florida passed the higher education law in 2023, which specified that general education college courses were to not warp major historical events or teach a curriculum proposing “identity politics,” according to Politico. However, Democrats fought against the bill, claiming that the Florida Board of Governors was making the state’s higher education political and that the Board has too much power.
“This sort of state overreach could spell disaster for student and faculty retention, and the academic standing of Florida institutions,” Katie Blankenship, leader of a state office for free speech advocacy group PEN America, told Politico.
“If their subject matter is prohibited by statute but is compelling, then students are going to elect to take it,” university system Chancellor Ray Rodrigues said in an interview, according to Politico. “But what is not going to happen in Florida — the students are not going to be forced to take courses that have these prohibited concepts in order to fulfill their general education requirements.”
Florida’s Board of Governors along with the different schools looked at removing any courses that were “too narrowly focused,” making it difficult to be considered a “general” education class, Rodrigues told Politico.
The Board of Governors removed sociology, which was replaced with a history class, Politico reported. The University of Florida is one university changing core courses in compliance to the law, Politico reported. The University of Florida proposed removing some gender studies-related courses like “Humanities Perspectives on Gender and Sexuality” and “Social Geography.” (RELATED: Gov. DeSantis Signs Law Requiring Schools To Teach ‘Evils Of Communism’)
Higher education institutions that defy the Board of Governor’s requests, keeping certain core courses against recommendations, can potentially risk losing serious funding from the state, according to Politico. However, some universities like Florida Gulf Coast University have welcomed the new changes.
“An infringement on academic freedom would be to say this course can’t be offered at the university,” Rodrigues told Politico. “No one has said that in any of these scenarios. What we are saying is, we define what is general education. We define that based upon what the state statutes have laid out and we’re being compliant with that. And I think the courts have held that what gets designated as general education curriculum is up to the legislature who funds it.”
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Former UK schools minister: Reforms needed to change ‘hearts and minds’ of teachers
One of Britain’s longest-serving education ministers, who introduced phonics nationally into the English school system, said the extensive decade-long reforms that rejected “progressivist” ideologies required not just a change to the curriculum but also changes to “the hearts and minds of a whole profession”.
Ex-Tory minister Nick Gibb said the “movement of teachers” since the reforms began in 2010 had come a long way but was still a “work in progress”. Teaching phonics – helping children learn to read by sounding out the letters of words – was only the baseline.
“The evidence is so overwhelming that phonics in the teaching of reading is the most effective way. And this debate has gone to Australia, it’s gone to America, it’s gone to New Zealand, they’re all now moving step by step towards phonics,” the minister of state for schools and education from 2014 to 2023 said ahead of the Australian School Improvement Summit in Melbourne on Thursday.
“Although we have introduced phonics, and every school is teaching phonics to children, that’s the starting point for reading. It’s a necessary condition for reading; you have to be able to decode words but you also need to develop a love of reading for pleasure as well … so there’s more work to do there.”
England was ranked fourth in the 2022 international literacy rankings. In the latest Programme for International Student Assessment, Australia scored higher than the UK in reading but on par in maths.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare has made an extra $16bn in funding for public schools in each state and territory over the next decade conditional upon the introduction of evidence-based teaching reforms, such as phonics-based reading methods, and explicit instruction techniques. Western Australia, Tasmania and the NT have signed on. Public schools in South Australia, NSW and WA have already adopted phonics and explicit instruction.
Progressive ideology, inquiry-based learning that sets tasks for students to discover facts and skills using their own initiative, failed the most vulnerable in society, Mr Gibb said, warning that it still persisted today.
“What we had to do wasn’t just put more money here, or close this, or open that. We had to change the whole Zeitgeist, the whole philosophy of education that had dominated our education system in England for decades,” he said.
“And that was the challenge. We set out to change the whole way the education sector – 450,000 teachers – thought about education, and the teacher training that goes into that as well.
“But we had evidence on our side … the evidence was so compelling that progressivist education was damaging the life chances of the most disadvantaged … (they) really did suffer from this ideological approach.”
Mr Gibb said while it was “not finished”, the conservative government reforms had started a movement. “There is a big movement of teachers in England who strongly believe in what we believe in … We’ve unleashed the profession to take control of their own thinking, their own pedagogy and curriculum.”
Mr Gibb said his government also changed the curriculum to be much more “knowledge based”.
“There are people whose whole careers are based on the idea that you don’t need to teach knowledge because they can look it up … and this view still prevails particularly with Google and AI.”
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Colonial history and the past’s new moral reckoning
A relentless feature of public debate is the demonisation of the past – from denigration of the British Empire to the discrediting of Australia’s past as a project in colonialism, racism and violence – a lens used to argue for the nation’s guilt and the case for restitution.
History is now seminal to the cultural and strategic challenges facing the West. The goal of Marxist, anti-colonial and progressive analysts is to achieve historical justice for victimised minorities by demonstrating the moral failure, past and present, of Western nations.
It is because much historiography is motivated by the politics of the present that it is filled with factual misrepresentation and ideological bias. One of the most prominent authors of the salutary corrective is Nigel Biggar, Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology at the University of Oxford, whose 2023 book, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, is an exercise in audacity – a moral judgment on the British Empire and on colonialism generally.
Biggar, an ethicist with a vast grasp of history, is about to visit Australia for a series of speaking engagements. His book covering four centuries of the British Empire from 1550 constitutes a direct challenge to the anti-colonialists and their gospel that colonialism is solely a story of profits, killing and invasion.
Sound familiar?
His scholarship is based not on a defence of empire as such but on a balanced, accurate and fairer reading of history. His targets are unscrupulous history and distorted morality.
“On the colonial front, the politically driven, unhistorical, wholesale denigration of the British Empire not only trashes the record of the West but corrodes faith in it,” Biggar says. Indeed, that is its entire point.
He provides a long list of the “evils” of British colonialism but then provides a long list of its beneficial legacies. He says advocates claiming the evil outweighs the good cannot mount a persuasive case because the bad and the good are so different that they are “incommensurable”. Biggar asks: How many unjustly killed people are worth the blessings of imperially imposed peace?
He knows the stakes are high – nothing less than the moral foundations of our current society. Do we have a civilisation worth supporting or are we doomed to perpetual self-loathing because of irremediable moral flaws? Biggar said the judgment of history goes to “the very integrity of the United Kingdom and the security of the West”, and “that is why I have written this book”.
The issue of slavery is central to the debate. Campaigners from Black Lives Matter to Rhodes Must Fall say white Britons in the third decade of the 21st century are possessed by an anti-black racism derived from the early 18th-century racist slavery.
How valid is this widely accepted proposition?
Biggar says slavery was varied, ancient and universal. It existed in every ancient Mesopotamian civilisation starting with Egypt in the third millennium BC followed by the Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Chinese, the Incas and Aztecs, and was practised after Muhammad throughout the Islamic world until around 1920, with the Muslim slave trade out of Africa far exceeding that of European powers across the Atlantic. It was rife in Africa long before European colonisation.
The British were estimated to have shipped 3.3 million slaves from Africa between 1660 and 1807, second behind the Portuguese. After a campaign run by Christian leaders, the efforts of William Wilberforce and agitation inside and outside parliament, the slave trade was abolished in 1807, and in 1834 slaves across the British Empire were formally emancipated.
These events were merely the start of one of the most intense international humanitarian campaigns in history. Partly driven by abolitionist demands in Britain post-1807, Biggar said the imperial government adopted “a permanent policy of trying to suppress both the trade and the institution worldwide”. This involved the creation of a new slave trade department in the Foreign Office to pursue the abolition, Britain’s unsuccessful diplomacy at the Congress of Vienna to secure an abolition treaty with all major European powers, and deployment of Royal Navy ships off the west coast of Africa to disrupt the export of slaves, with the number of ships seldom below 20 during the 1844-65 period and at its height this represented 13 per cent of the navy’s resources
The fleet engaged in confrontation with Brazil, authorised by the parliament, trespassing into Brazilian territorial waters to accost slave ships after which the British attacked Lagos to destroy its slave facilities. Lord Palmerston, twice PM, said the achievement that gave him the greatest pleasure was “forcing the Brazilians to give up their slave trade”.
Biggar said the “humanitarian motive” to suppress slavery was a “common reason” for British imperialism in Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. Meanwhile in Asia, Sir Stamford Raffles abolished the import of slaves on the island of Penang and then in Java.
Biggar quotes estimates made of the cost of the British suppression campaign on land and sea worldwide over a century and a half, one conclusion being that “the 19th-century costs of suppression were certainly bigger than the 18th-century benefits”. He references the work of Chaim Kaufmann and Robert Pape, who evaluate the total economic cost and conclude that Britain’s effort to suppress the Atlantic slave trade alone was “the most expensive example” of international moral action “recorded in modern history”.
Biggar said the British could not undo the evil of the slave trade but they did the next best thing: they repented of it and liberated the living. But only one side of the history is told today and, to a large extent, that is because the motive is to drive contemporary politics by a misleading historical narrative. The lesson: the only justification for truth-telling is being truthful.
“For the second half of its life, anti-slavery, not slavery, was at the heart of imperial policy,” Biggar wrote. “The vicious racism of slavers and planters was not essential to the British Empire and whatever racism exists in Britain today is not its fruit.”
Yet this is a contentious view because the near exclusively hostile story of Western history holds sway in the media, academia and schools.
Biggar confronts the moral arguments for compensation and reparations for past racism and slavery. Claims to compensation must show continuing loss or harm from past injury, not an easy task over hundreds of years. The 21st-century descendants of these cruelties find their lives owing much to events in the 200 years since their emancipation.
He asks: Can we be sure people would have been better off had their ancestors remained in West Africa? A similar question could be posed in Australia: Can we be sure Indigenous people would have been better off if the British colonisation of Australia had never occurred?
Biggar recounts a conversation between a British diplomat and one of Nigeria’s rulers. The Nigerian was pressing the cause for compensation after Britain’s colonial rule. The diplomat replied: “I entirely agree. And you shall have your compensation – just as soon as we get ours from the Romans.”
As Biggar said, colonisation and empire was the standard form of political organisation for the last 4000 years to 1945. It extended through the Assyrians, Egyptians, Babylonians, Persians, Romans, Ottomans and the Dutch, French and English, among others. Most empires had a positive as well as a negative dimension, though many current histories discount this.
Australia is lucky – its colonialisation by the British meant a generation of British liberals believing in the rights of man and repudiating slavery laid the political foundations for what became one of the world’s early and entrenched democracies. Australia’s colonial experience, reflecting Biggar’s thesis, is a mixture of the good and the bad. We need to hold both truths in our mind and not succumb to polemical narratives of either the all-good or all-bad history.
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16 October, 2024
SpaceX has put Europe to shame
One American company can do what the vast EU bureaucracy cannot
The flawless launch of SpaceX’s 5,000-ton Starship and its Super Heavy Booster, and the precision recovery of the booster on its launch pad, has opened the way to a manned mission to the moon next year and perhaps to Mars as soon as 2030. One giant leap for Elon Musk’s company on Sunday was one more reminder that Europe’s space programme is a colossal failure.
Europe is currently unable to launch even its own weather satellites, and India, which managed a soft landing on the Moon last year, now has a more credible space program. Twenty years ago, before SpaceX had launched a single rocket, Richard Bowles, a sales director of the European Arianespace launch consortium, said SpaceX’s ambition to launch, recover and reuse rockets, cutting the price of launches in half, was a dream.
‘SpaceX primarily sems to be selling a dream. Which is good, we should all dream,’ he said. ‘I think reusability is a dream… How am I going to respond to a dream?… First of all you don’t wake people up. They have to wake up on their own… They’re not supermen. Whatever they can do, we can do.’
Elon’s Musk’s dream has become Europe’s nightmare. France’s Arianespace has this year managed to launch just one of the new Ariane 6 rockets made by its ArianeGroup umbrella company. It came four years late and hundreds of millions of euros over budget. SpaceX has already completed 96 launches this year, recovered and reused almost all of them, and expects to reach 148 launches by the end of December. Even if Arianespace can get the new rocket to work properly, it has planned to launch no more than nine missions a year, of which four will be institutional missions, such as reconnaissance satellites, and only five commercial missions.
European failure to embrace reusable rockets has made it completely uncompetitive. The estimated cost of a launch using the already obsolete Ariane 6, when it becomes operational, perhaps next year, is more than £83 million. The cost of a comparable launch on SpaceX is around £54 million. And Europe has nothing in the pipeline to match the SpaceX Starship, which will be able to launch payloads of 100 tons or more.
Access to space is the sine qua non of a credible space program. Without it, the scientific and commercial applications of space technology are impossible.
The Galileo global satellite system created by the European Union through the European Space Agency to compete with the Americans has so far launched 32 satellites and has failed to deliver a robust system. Many the satellites were launched using Russian rockets, no longer available due to the war in Ukraine. Further launches are on hold, pending the availability of Ariane 6.
OneWeb, the private European communications satellite project designed to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink, has launched its own limited constellation using SpaceX and Indian rockets. Even the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) is now buying launches from SpaceX.
‘This decision was driven by exceptional circumstances’ said EUMETSAT’s Director General Phil Evans. The exceptional circumstance being that Arianespace had no capability. SpaceX has meanwhile launched 7,000 Starlink communications satellites offering high-speed internet access and text messaging to mobile phones.
Europe’s space agency (the UK remains a member) is an example of European hubris at its absolute worst, its failures a masterclass in how not to be globally competitive, while spending billions on institutional grandiosity. The European Space Agency, which presides over Europe’s failed efforts, has a budget of €7.8 billion and a staff of around 2,500. ArianeGroup, which is subsidised by ESA, employs 8,300 people. Between them, they are unlikely to produce a reusable rocket before 2030.
It’s been a while since I was at the European launch base in Kourou, French Guiana, but I’m not missing much because nothing is happening there. The last launch of the small European Vega rocket was last month. Perhaps four launches of the new Vega C rocket might be attempted next year. Fewer missions in a year than SpaceX completes in a fortnight. Europe’s space programme is all show and no-go.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/spacex-has-put-europe-to-shame/
*********************************************Buying the News: How Leftwing Donors Are Taking Over Local Journalism
American journalism has experienced a spectacular collapse in the last 25 years – daily newspaper circulation has declined from over 60 million subscribers to just over 20 million. And the trend is accelerating: According to the Pew Research Organization, the average monthly number of unique visitors to the websites of the country’s top 50 newspapers plummeted 20% in one year from 2021 to 2022.
At the same time, the remaining readership expresses a historically low level of faith that the news they are getting is accurate. Just 32% of Americans say they have a “great deal or a fair amount of trust” in the media, according to polling from Gallup.
If there is a bright spot here, polling has long shown that American consumers trust local media more than the national press. “In 2021, Americans were 17 points more likely to say they trust reporting by local news organizations ‘a great deal’ or ‘quite a lot’ than to trust reporting by national news organizations,” notes a survey done by Gallup and the Knight Foundation. But the rapid consolidation of the news industry has adversely affected the level of trust in the news Americans are consuming.
Local news organizations, however, have been hit especially hard by the decline in readers. Many have folded, cut staff, been purchased by private equity firms, or absorbed by national news organizations, which has diminished their editorial independence.
In recent years, hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment poured into local media in what appears to be a salutary injection of faith in the power of the community or regional press. However, the lion’s share of these investments is coming from sources some worry will further undermine trust in the media – progressive foundations and left-leaning activists who have overtly ideological and partisan agendas. While conservative donors also support news outlets (including RealClearInvestigations), their contributions are far smaller than those coming from the left – contributions large enough to radically remake the local news landscape. Significant examples of that largesse include:
The MacArthur Foundation’s launch of its “Press Forward” initiative last fall, which committed to spending $500 million over the next five years to “enhance local journalism at an unprecedented level to re-center local news as a force for community cohesion; support new models and solutions that are ready to scale; and close longstanding inequities in journalism coverage and practice.”
The National Trust for Local News’ 2021 announcement of its goal of amassing $300 million for a “non-profit newspaper company dedicated to protecting and sustaining community news … [to] publish sustainable community newspapers that safeguard the public trust, elevate the facts, empower communities with solutions, and foster a strong sense of place.” Last year, the National Trust for Local News quietly acquired Maine’s largest paper, The Portland Press-Herald, along with 22 other newspapers in the state.
The creation of States Newsroom, which was founded just six years ago with the goal of “nonpartisan coverage of state policy,” and has already formed partnerships with local outlets in all 50 states. Its stated mission is “hard-hitting reporting and commentary to change the political debate.”
The creation of The American Journalism Project, which describes its mission as “venture philanthropy,” has committed $55 million to “rebuilding local news.”
RealClearInvestigations reached out to States Newsroom, National Trust For Local News, American Journalism Project, and Courier Newsroom. None of them responded to a request for comment.
Meet the Funders
While not all the funding sources for these projects are expressly partisan, to the extent the funding of these new local journalism initiatives is publicly known, some of the biggest donors and foundations on the progressive left are closely associated with them. These donors had little previous interest in local journalism and have a track record of supporting initiatives that are ideological or partisan – or both.
The MacArthur Foundation, for instance, in addition to its $500 million Press Forward initiative, also provided funding for the National Trust for Local News and The American Journalism Project. Long known for funding left-wing causes, MacArthur endorsed one of the most politically controversial works of advocacy journalism in the last decade. The foundation awarded one of its generous $800,000 “Genius Grants” to Nikole Hannah-Jones, the architect of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which claimed that the year enslaved people were first brought to Virginia was the “true founding [date] of America,” not 1776. The 1619 Project received scathing criticism from some of America’s most eminent historians and one of the 1619 Project’s own fact-checkers, and entire essays in the project were so factually incorrect that there were calls for them to be retracted entirely.
The MacArthur Foundation also supports the National Trust for Local News, which has also received financial support from two of the largest sources of left-wing political funding – the Tides Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.
The Tides Foundation, a “donor-advised” fund, allows contributors to direct where the money goes. By acting as an intermediary, Tides obscures the original source of the funds, making it what transparency advocates call a “dark money” group. Tides is one of the largest dark money operations and spent $854 million in 2022 alone. It donates millions in grants to pro-Democrat get-out-the-vote operations, abolishing pre-trial bail even for defendants charged with violent crimes, and pro-Hamas demonstrations following the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attack in Israel.
The Open Society Foundations network was created by leftist billionaire megadonor George Soros. According to NBC News, between 2020 and 2023, “Soros’ contributions to political campaigns and causes since January 2020 [amount] to roughly half a billion dollars – at the least – most of it steered through dark money nonprofit groups and going largely toward political causes aligned with the Democratic Party.” In addition to funding the National Trust for Local News, Soros also has the power to influence local news consumption after his family office recently purchased a large stake in 227 radio stations across the U.S.
Both the National Trust for Local News and States Newsroom have received funding from controversial Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, who has spent nearly half a billion dollars on American left-wing causes. Between 1990 and 2006, Wyss gave almost $120,000 to candidates and political committees despite it being illegal for foreign nationals to spend money on U.S. elections. Wyss was never punished because the statute of limitations had passed by the time the Federal Elections Commission investigated his illegal donations.
In 2021, Wyss partnered with another influential Democratic donor, hotel magnate Stewart W. Bainum Jr., in an unsuccessful attempt to purchase Tribune Publishing, which then owned the Chicago Tribune, Orlando Sentinel, and the Baltimore Sun among other newspapers and media properties.
In addition, some of the largest donations to The American Journalism Project are from the foundations of high-profile Democratic megadonors. The Emerson Collective, funded by Laurene Powell Jobs, owner of The Atlantic and one of the largest shareholders in Disney/ABC, has given in excess of $5 million. Also, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar’s The Democracy Fund and the Craig Newmark Philanthropic Fund of the eponymous Craigslist founder have given The American Journalism project donations somewhere between $1 million and $5 million.
For her part, Powell Jobs has built out a well-funded network designed to explicitly advance the policy goals of the Democratic Party.
In addition to numerous political causes, Omidyar has long funded journalism efforts – he provided the seed money for the left-wing news site The Intercept, and Democracy Fund has given sizable grants to the Defending Democracy Together Institute, which is closely associated with the online anti-Trump outlet The Bulwark.
In 2020, Newmark publicly committed to a $200 million media campaign aimed at swaying the presidential election while alleging that “foreign adversaries” were controlling the Trump White House. Relatedly, Google and Facebook are also major donors to The American Journalism Project, and both companies have received heavy criticism for election meddling and censoring information on COVID and various political topics that later turned out to be accurate.
Ironically, perhaps no single man is more responsible for the death of local media than Newmark, as it was Craigslist that destroyed classified advertising, a major source of revenue for newspapers. “I’m very concerned about jobs for journalists, and the future of local journalism, and had always guessed that Craigslist might have an effect,” Newmark told the Press-Gazette in 2021.
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School did not discriminate against student by forcing her to wear a skirt, Queensland tribunal finds
A Queensland school did not discriminate against a female student by forcing her to wear a skirt on formal occasions, a tribunal has found.
The student, who cannot be named for legal reasons, made the complaint to the state’s Human Rights Commissioner, arguing she suffered discrimination by the new uniform policy which requires female students between years 7 and 12 to wear a skirt on formal occasions including outings, ceremonies, events and photographs.
Females are allowed to wear shorts and pants on other days, while male students wear them every day.
The father of the student argued in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal that his daughter suffered a greater financial burden because she had to buy two school uniforms and that greater care was needed to maintain her modesty in a skirt compared with male students.
The initial complaint also said she had suffered negative psychological effects from “negative gender stereotypes and gendered power relations” but this was not raised at the hearing.
“If the complainant failed to comply with the formal occasion skirt requirement she could face negative consequences of exclusion or suspension or other lesser consequences not faced by a male student,” the decision read.
In a statement the student said when wearing a skirt, “there is an extra level of thinking required about the way I move and sit, as to not expose myself”.
Her father said she had experienced “stress and anxiety” about having to wear a skirt with a large number of people around.
After the complaint was first raised with the school, the student was told she could apply for a formal exemption, but the student argued this was also discriminatory because male students did not need to.
Lawyers for the school argued that there had been no concerns expressed by other parents about any extra expense and they had skirts available on loan. They said the skirts are long enough to touch the ground when kneeling, so there is a low risk of exposure and female students were allowed to wear bike shorts, which would remove the modesty issue.
QCAT member Jeremy Gordon said the school had shown that other schoolgirls were happy to wear skirts.
“If, for one reason or another, the complainant did not want to wear a skirt on formal occasions, this view was not shared by other female students,” he wrote.
He found that the policy did not discriminate against the student.
“The evidence is insufficient to show that the formal occasion uniform policy resulted in, or would have resulted in, less favourable treatment of the complainant as a female student over male students,” he wrote.
“To put this another way, there was different treatment between the sexes, but the evidence does not show that the different treatment was unfavourable to the complainant.”
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Australia is a monarchy -- and it's popular
Australia, where King Charles will return to on Friday, is where the monarch became a man. In 1966, Charles had a memorable half-year at the Timbertop bush campus of Victoria’s Geelong grammar school, where, he once said, he ‘had the Pommy (metaphorically) bits bashed off me’. The following year, his first major adult engagement was representing his mother Queen Elizabeth at the memorial service for the drowned Australian prime minister Harold Holt. Since then, the now King has returned to Australia another 14 times, most recently in 2018. It’s clear that Charles has great affection for the country of which he once almost became governor-general.
This week, the bags are being packed in Clarence House for the King and Queen’s first tour of Australia as head of state, en route to the Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Samoa. It’s not really a tour: it’s more a two-stop visit to Sydney and Canberra, a scaled-down itinerary reflecting concern for the King’s health and stamina as he battles cancer. While his doctors agreed to pause his cancer treatment for the trip, the Times reported that two members of his medical team and a supply of the King’s own blood will be on hand, just in case.
Republicans aren’t being subtle in snubbing the royal couple
The King and Queen arrive in Australia on Friday. But if you think there will be enthusiasm for the royal visit on a scale of the late Queen’s first tour in 1954 – when it’s been estimated three-quarters of the then Australian population turned out to see her – think again.
Consistent with the low-key visit, and limited ‘opportunities to meet the public’ – known as ‘walkabouts’ until Australian political correctness kicked in for this tour – there simply won’t be that sort of mass enthusiasm. Indeed, the Australian Republican Movement (ARM) pressure group, known for PR savvy rather than achieving results, has been talking up the visit as ‘reigniting the republic debate’. The group even caught the attention of the British media when it released a private secretary’s standard reply to their letter to the King on the issue, saying that becoming a republic is solely a matter for the Australian public. The ARM is reinforced by a British republican nobody in Australia has heard of, Graham Smith of Republic UK, who plans to photobomb the King’s public events with his group’s yellow placards.
Republicans aren’t being subtle in snubbing the royal couple. ARM’s co-president, former Crystal Palace footballer turned left-wing activist Craig Foster, was invited to the official New South Wales government’s royal reception, but ostentatiously and crassly declined, tweeting: ‘Thanks…but no thanks. I look forward to being “in the presence of” our first Aussie Head of State. When we put our big pants on, as a country.’
Such puerile behaviour is typical of activists, but similar refusals by our state premiers is simply appalling manners. Heads of government of each state and territory were invited to the Australian government’s official reception for the King and Queen in Canberra. Not one accepted. Each of had some ‘I’m washing my hair that night’ excuse of other commitments.
The worst offender was Victoria’s premier Jacinta Allan. It was she who this year appointed a minister for men’s behaviour, and she who last year was the minister responsible for cancelling the hosting of the 2026 Commonwealth Games. Not only has she said she is too busy to meet the King, but she has added insult to injury by sending a junior parliamentary secretary in her stead. She should look to her own behaviour.
Yes, all but one are Labor party premiers, and instinctively republican. But given the equally Labor prime minister Anthony Albanese has the grace and courtesy to welcome Australia’s constitutional head of state, the provincial leaders, whose constitutions also include the Crown as the fount of government, should have done the same.
It appears, however, that left-wing politicians’ indifference to the King and Queen runs against the tide of public opinion. A pre-visit opinion poll, published in Australia’s News Corporation newspapers last weekend, found that support for the Australian monarchy actually has increased since the late Queen’s death two years ago. Almost half of respondents supported the monarchy, with just one third wanting a republic. Even fewer thought Australia ever would become a republic. It also showed approval for Charles and Camilla increasing since the King’s coronation, perhaps reflecting goodwill as the King confronts his cancer.
The survey indicates great interest in, and regard for, the Prince and Princess of Wales too, suggesting the monarchy is safe in Australia for at least another generation. But Australian love doesn’t extend to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, to the point most respondents thought the King need not strive to reconcile with his wayward second son.
The results of this poll are not contradicted by the low-key reception of the King and Queen’s visit. Rather than apparent apathy, it suggests how most Australians accept and are comfortable with the monarchy’s ongoing presence in Australia, and see no need to change anything. Like a successful long marriage, the Elizabeth-mania of 1954 has, over the last 70 years, mellowed into a relationship of easy familiarity between the Crown and the Australian people, making this a quiet family visit rather than a state visit full of Ruritanian pomp and circumstance. No wonder Albanese has quietly dropped his government’s junior minister for the republic.
In fact, the biggest local controversy of the tour is that they won’t be going anywhere other than Sydney and Canberra: the sort of interstate jealousy that gainsays the posturing of state political leaders. Most Australians will make the King and Queen very welcome here, and hope sincerely that their short visit will be happy and, in its own quiet way, glorious.
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15 October, 2024
Nottingham University Puts Trigger Warning on Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales – Because They Contain “Expressions of Christian Faith”
The greatest narrative poem in the English language. On a par with Homer or Virgil. It's actually a very irreverent poem
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the 14th Century masterpiece which tell the stories of a host of characters on a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral, has been given a trigger warning by Nottingham University because they contained “expressions of Christian faith”. The Mail has more.
Nottingham University has now been accused of “demeaning education” for warning students about the religious elements of Chaucer’s stories – saying that anyone studying one of the most famous works in English literature would hardly have to have the Christian references pointed out.
The Mail on Sunday has obtained details of the notice issued to students studying a module called ‘Chaucer and His Contemporaries’ under Freedom of Information laws. It alerts them to incidences of violence, mental illness and expressions of Christian faith in the works of Chaucer and fellow medieval writers William Langland, John Gower, and Thomas Hoccleve.
The Canterbury Tales, written between 1387 and 1400, is a collection of stories about characters on a pilgrimage from London to the tomb of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral.
They include the promiscuous Wife of Bath, the drunken miller and the thieving reeve, who delight and shock each other with stories containing explicit references to rape, lust and even anti-Semitism.
However, the university’s warning makes no reference to the anti-Semitism or sexually explicit themes.
Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Kent, said: “Warning students of Chaucer about Christian expressions of faith is weird. Since all characters in the stories are immersed in a Christian experience there is bound to be a lot of expressions of faith. The problem is not would-be student readers of Chaucer but virtue-signalling, ignorant academics.”
Historian Jeremy Black added: “Presumably, this Nottingham nonsense is a product of the need to validate courses in accordance with tick-box criteria. It is simultaneously sad, funny and a demeaning of education.”
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Billionaires back a new ‘anti-woke’ university
Billionaires frustrated with elite colleges are banding behind a fledgling school in Texas that boasts 92 students.
Trader Jeff Yass, real-estate developer Harlan Crow and investor Len Blavatnik are among the high-profile people donating to the University of Austin, or UATX. The new school has raised roughly (AU$297 million) $200 million so far -- including (AU$52 million) $35 million from Yass -- a huge sum for a tiny school without any alumni to tap.
Crow, a major GOP donor, was an early backer. “Much of higher ed today seems to want to reject Western accomplishments and the accomplishments of Western civilizations in their entirety,” he said. “Many people think that’s a bad idea.” Crow said he expects UATX to encourage ideological diversity.
Crow and his wife, Kathy, have hosted several events for the school at their Dallas home and let the school use space in an office park he owns for its summer program, provocatively called Forbidden Courses. Crow has been a controversial benefactor to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He has said he has never discussed pending cases with Thomas.
Frustration with the state of debate and levels of unrest at prestigious universities has spurred some of the richest Americans to flex their financial muscle.
Billionaires like Marc Rowan and Bill Ackman led campaigns to oust Ivy League presidents they viewed as being too soft on antisemitism on campus following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza. Many wealthy donors believe elite colleges are overwhelmingly progressive -- and are attracted to the idea of an alternative school that says it encourages meritocratic achievement and myriad viewpoints.
Enter UATX, which welcomed its initial class of first-years last month in a former department store near the Texas Capitol. The school says it is nonpartisan and refers to its mission as the “fearless pursuit of truth.” Its foundational curriculum marries classical texts -- students were given a copy of Homer’s Odyssey upon enrollment -- with an emphasis on entrepreneurship.
A video posted to the school’s YouTube page contrasts scenes of pro-Palestinian protests and encampments at other schools with a civil UATX seminar. The video ends with the message, “They burn, we build.” Officials talk about UATX in lofty terms. Some cite the University of Chicago as an aspirational role model.
President Pano Kanelos called students and faculty “pioneers” and “heroes” in his convocation address. “What is truly historic is that which sends the trajectory of history, and lives lived within the stream of history, shooting in a direction other than that towards which they were tending,” Kanelos said.
The effort to launch the school was announced in fall 2021. Founders include venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, a conservative who is donating to Donald Trump, and journalist Bari Weiss, who has described her news startup, the Free Press, as a check to mainstream media’s liberal orthodoxy.
Yass, who has long pushed for school choice and is UATX’s biggest donor, said in a statement, “Higher education needs competition. It is time for philanthropists to start new colleges in keeping with the way American learning institutions were founded.” PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who has long known Lonsdale and has separately been paying students to skip college, made a small gift. Former energy trader John Arnold and his wife, Laura, who are advocates of criminal-justice reform and open debate on campus, are major donors. Alex Magaro, co-president of investment firm Meritage Group, gave $10 million last month.
The campus turmoil over the war in Gaza accelerated fundraising, school administrators said, including from those who felt universities selectively applied free-speech principles. Blavatnik, who is Jewish, gave $1 million through his family foundation in the days after Hamas attacked Israel. He later paused his giving to Harvard University, his alma mater.
Daniel Lubetzky, founder of snack-bar maker Kind Snacks and a son of a Holocaust survivor, donated early on and continued to give after the attacks. He became increasingly alarmed at the rise of ” us vs. them” thinking on campuses. Active discussions are ongoing with others, including Ackman, who was harshly critical of elite colleges’ diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and their handling of antisemitism on campus.
“It took what happened in the wake of Oct. 7 on the major campuses to convince Wall Street, to convince people in Silicon Valley, that there really was a problem” with higher education, said historian Niall Ferguson, another school founder.
A larger fundraising campaign is expected to start in January. Whether prospective students find UATX as attractive as donors remains to be seen. UATX currently lacks accreditation and can receive it only after its first class graduates. As a way to offset the risk students are taking, the first class of students is receiving full-tuition scholarships worth about $130,000. More than 40% of the students in the class hail from Texas and a third are female.
Executives from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boring Company are helping to develop the school’s engineering curriculum. Lonsdale, the school’s board chair, is gifting a few acres of land outside Austin, adjacent to SpaceX and Boring, for a science and technology center. UATX is also searching for a main campus.
While UATX says it isn’t an explicitly political school, some of its most prominent backers are big donors to Republican candidates and causes, including Yass and Crow. Yass co-founded trading giant Susquehanna International Group, which has a big stake in TikTok.
Kanelos, the University of Austin’s president, said the school’s top 10 donors vary in political ideology but that, “Everyone who gives to us is a critic of higher education.”
*************************************************
The British Left drifts Right
In the once vibrant landscape of British politics, the Labour Party stood as a defiant force of opposition – loud, principled, and occasionally even radical. Enter Keir Starmer, the man who promised to rescue Labour from the clutches of ‘Corbynceps’ (the ideological fungus that some believed had infected the party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership). With impeccable suits and measured tones, Starmer vowed to restore order and respectability. A harmless reformer, right?
But like any good parasite, the danger lay in his quiet persistence.
First, Starmer neutralised the ideological immune system by purging the most vocal members of Labour’s left wing. It wasn’t long before the party started behaving differently. The infection took root when he announced that Labour was backing away from nationalising public utilities – policies once central to its DNA. Electricity, railways, water? Nah, too ‘1990s’. Like an infected insect abandoning its instincts, Labour now began parroting lines that wouldn’t be out of place at a Conservative Party conference: ‘We have to make tough decisions…’ (Because, apparently, billionaires are on the verge of poverty if we tax them fairly.)
Next came the retreat on welfare spending. Universal Credit? Reforms to benefit the poorest? Starmer’s Labour would ‘look at’ these things but won’t make any promises. The host, still clutching onto the hope that this is all for the greater good, began climbing higher and higher under the influence of its new master, ready to eject policies that are more palatable to the center-right media than the voters who once believed in radical change.
Starmer’s crowning infection is a U-turn on climate pledges. The party that once promised to spearhead a Green New Deal is now backing away from Net Zero targets and clean energy investment. Labour is scaling back plans for a greener economy, all while the planet burns. In true Cordyceps fashion, Starmer’s party is marching toward its doom, happily parroting platitudes about ‘balancing priorities’ while the environment takes a back seat. We wouldn’t want to upset the fossil fuel lobby, now would we?
And in perhaps the boldest betrayal, Starmer announced tougher immigration controls, further infecting the very soul of Labour with rhetoric once reserved for the likes of Nigel Farage. ‘Tough on crime, tough on immigration, and tougher on anyone who thought socialism was still in the room!’ Labour, by this point, is no longer recognisable, now fully under the control of the Starmer Fungus, nodding along as if austerity cuts and limited housing plans were exactly what the people had asked for.
Then there’s Brexit, or rather, the absence of any meaningful stance on it. You’d think the party that once championed Europe might say something about reversing the damage. But no, Starmer has convinced the host to forget its pro-European roots entirely. Like an insect zombified by Cordyceps, Labour now stumbles along, muttering, ‘We need to move on…’ while blindly avoiding any discussion of rejoining the EU or repairing our international standing.
Just when you thought Starmer’s parasitic takeover was complete, another curious incident emerged: the Chagos Islands controversy. In a move that even some of his own supporters might find bewildering, Starmer quietly backed the decision to hand over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, a questionable choice amid uncertain geopolitical times. The islands, once a strategic military base for the UK and the US, are being surrendered like a trinket in a pawn shop, with little regard for their significance in the Indian Ocean as a key point of influence between East and West. Starmer’s Labour, keen to avoid any friction, accepted this development with a shrug, sacrificing national security for the sake of international optics.
As if to distract from this grand misstep, Starmer dangled his ambitious vision for the nation: The Five Missions. Labour, now thoroughly hollowed out by its fungal overlord, eagerly embraced these as if they were bold new ideas. Starmer announced missions to grow the economy, fix the NHS, improve education, tackle crime, and address climate change. But in true parasitic style, these are empty promises – vague enough to sound inspiring but lacking any commitment to the radical reforms needed. ‘Grow the economy,’ Labour mumbles as it stumbles forward, protecting the wealthy instead of taxing them. ‘Fix the NHS,’ it chants, even as Starmer avoids discussing how it will be funded.
Public polling reflects this internal turmoil. Voters, once loyal to Labour’s cause, are increasingly disillusioned, with many expressing that they feel betrayed by Starmer’s shifts away from core party values. Some polls suggest that a growing number of traditional Labour supporters are contemplating alternatives, revealing just how far the party has drifted from its roots.
Tensions within Labour only add to the chaos. Discontent is brewing among the party’s left faction, who see Starmer as the embodiment of a hollowed-out, centrist machine. The voices of grassroots activists and former Corbyn supporters are growing louder, questioning whether the party can ever regain its revolutionary spirit or if it’s simply become a pale imitation of its former self.
And while the public stirs with frustration, the spectre of history looms large. Once, Labour was synonymous with the fight against injustice and colonialism, yet now, under Starmer’s rule, it seems more concerned with political survival than moral integrity. The ghosts of Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’ and Margaret Thatcher’s reshaping of the Conservative Party haunt the current leadership, hinting at the perils of sacrificing principles for power.
But just when you thought the infection was complete, the final punchline arrives. In this madcap world of Labour under Starmer, one can only wonder: what’s next? Perhaps a radical pivot toward embracing the monarchy or a manifesto to build a luxury housing estate on the remnants of the NHS?
Labour, once the champion of public ownership, social justice, and geopolitical awareness, has now climbed to a platform indistinguishable from that of its once sworn enemies. The spores of center-right policy drift out into the world, infecting the broader political discourse, with Starmer as the grim puppet master smiling quietly in the background, promising a new dawn.
But when the dust settles, one must ask – what happens to the host when it has served its purpose? Does Starmer move on to infect the broader electorate next, convincing them that voting for Labour is a vote for change when, in fact, they’re simply climbing higher to a precipice of political sameness? The answer, like any parasitic infection, remains to be seen.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/keir-starmer-labours-cordyceps-fungus/
****************************************Try a Little Honesty About Israel
Victor Davis Hanson
Both the Harris-Walz presidential ticket and now lame-duck President Joe Biden keep insisting that they are Israel’s best friend.
A snarly Biden recently bragged at a contentious press conference, “No administration has helped Israel more than I have. None, none, none. And I think [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] should remember that.”
Yet the thin-skinned and triggered Biden’s prickliness poorly hid—or perhaps revealed—the truth: This current administration knows that it is responsible for the current explosion of the Middle East and the particular dilemmas of Israel.
Biden further revealed his blame-gaming of the Israeli government when asked another loaded question about purported Netanyahu election interference, saying, “Whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know.”
Election interference?
Biden apparently forgot who just flew Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy into swing-state Pennsylvania, just as early and mail-in voting there began, to lobby for more aid even as he trashed candidates Donald Trump and JD Vance to a left-wing magazine.
Recently, Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris refused to say whether the Netanyahu administration is even an ally of the United States.
Her Democratic running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, could not state whether the Democratic ticket would approve of an Israeli response—by either targeting the Iranian nuclear bomb program or its oil fields and exporting facilities—to some 500 Iranian missiles and rockets that hit the Jewish state.
Another Bob Woodward racy and gossipy tell-all book just appeared. It alleges that Biden despised Netanyahu and has reportedly smeared him to aides: “That son of a b—-, Bibi Netanyahu, he’s a bad guy. He’s a bad f–king guy!”
What are we to make of this Biden-Harris-Walz mess?
It is an election year and one of the closest races in modern memory. Biden and his would-be successors, Harris-Walz, know that support for Israel is a bipartisan cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy and critical for Democratic unity.
Yet they feel they must also pander to anti-Israel, Muslim-American voters who may determine the Electoral College votes of critical swing-state Michigan.
Democratic politicos square that circle by claiming they support Israel—despite damning the conservative Netanyahu. That way they seek to blame Netanyahu for alienating Arab and Muslim-American voters, while they do not alienate left-wing Jewish and pro-Israeli Democrats.
For all the invective, a demonized Netanyahu is now regaining public support in Israel. The Israeli public approves of his near-destruction of Hamas, the ongoing brilliant Israeli emasculation of Hezbollah, and Israel’s revelations that the once widely feared terrorist regime in Iran may in fact well prove to be a paper tiger.
Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan admitted just eight days before the Oct. 7 massacres that “the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.”
His boast was an admission that Biden and Harris had inherited from the prior Trump administration a stable Middle East.
So, what blew up Sullivan’s quietude?
Certainly not Netanyahu or Israel in general.
It was the terrorists of Hamas who surprise-attacked and killed 1,200 Israeli civilians during peace and a Jewish holiday.
Their slaughtering, torturing, raping, and hostage-taking revealed a level of precivilization barbarism rarely seen in the modern era.
Israel was simultaneously targeted by rockets from Hamas and Hezbollah that would eventually number more than 20,000.
It did not respond to the bloodbath with a full-scale invasion of Gaza until Oct. 27, some three weeks after the slaughtering.
During that interim, for most of the Muslim world and both U.S. Muslim communities and on American campuses, there was rejoicing at the news of slaughtered Jews.
For over three years, the Biden administration had signaled Israel’s enemies that it no longer acted like a close ally of the past.
After it all, Biden-Harris lifted sanctions on a hostile Iran, giving it $100 billion in oil windfalls. It begged Iran to reenter the disastrous Iran deal. It abandoned the Abraham Accords. It lifted the terrorist designation from the terrorist Houthis. It restored fungible aid to the Hamas tunnel builders. It gave new aid to Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon.
Israel’s enemies got the Biden message: Attack the Jewish state, and perhaps Americans for the first time in a half-century may not really mind that much.
And so they did, in unison.
Rather than admitting their own role in igniting the Middle East, Biden and Harris now blame the victims of their own incendiary foreign policy.
The final irony?
Israel has concluded that Biden-Harris foolhardiness can be toxic and endanger its very survival—and so, will not agree to its own suicide.
Instead, Israel seeks to finish a multifaceted war it did not seek. And one of whose beneficiaries from Israeli blood and treasure will be the U.S. itself, given Israel is now systematically weakening America’s own existential enemies.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/10/11/try-little-honesty-about-israel-2/
**************************************************14 October, 2024
Has Britain really entered its ‘first atheist age’?
Some sociology academics have, after a three-year research project called ‘Exploring Atheism’, unveiled a startling discovery: there are a lot of people in Britain who don’t believe in God. I know, it’s quite a gut-punch.
They do not quite claim to have found that most Britons are atheists. But they do claim that there are now more atheists than religious believers. By collating various social attitudes surveys from 2008 to 2018 they found a strong upward trend in those saying that they did not believe in God, from 35 per cent to 43 per cent. During this time, believers in God dropped from 42 per cent to 37 per cent. This has led the academics to claim that Britain has now entered its ‘first atheist age’.
Many of us are complacent, assuming that religion will always be there in our culture as an option
It’s an inflated claim. For one thing, the Census of England and Wales of 2021 found that 37 per cent said that they have no religion, which suggests that the majority have some sort of religious allegiance. Presenting their findings on 2 October, the authors of the report said this includes allegiance that is more cultural than sincere.
It is doubtless true-ish that believers in God are now a minority. I say ‘true-ish’ because these things are so vague. My hunch is that there is a large sector, maybe even about half of the population, who are hard to pin down. If pressed, they probably say that they don’t believe in God, and are not religious, but they have respect for religion, and sometimes participate, and are wary of the sort of atheism that is hostile to it.
As these academics are doubtless privately aware, it’s pretty meaningless to say that Britain has embarked upon an ‘atheist age’, for the meaning of ‘atheism’ is unclear. The strong atheism of Richard Dawkins and co. is a particular modern ideology, a belief that rational humanism can save us. And, rather paradoxically, its hostility to religion is shaped by Protestant reformist zeal: it is a secular version of it. This creed is obviously a minority thing: it had a sort of comeback twenty years ago, in response to 9/11, but it lacks mass appeal.
As well as totting up the numbers, the Exploring Atheism research project attempts to tackle the question of why some of us believe, and others don’t. With impressive honesty, it admits that it is largely impossible to say. It discounts certain received ideas, for example that believers are less intelligent, less well off, less emotionally stable, more fearful of death. What it does say is that the only sure factor is parental influence. Seeing your parents participating in religion makes it more likely that you will go in that direction. And hearing your parents mock or disparage religion makes it likely that you’ll follow suit. Obvious enough, but still worth reflecting on.
It’s a healthy reminder to those of us who are religious, or semi-religious. If one doesn’t bother exposing one’s children to religion, they are unlikely ever to know of its dark depths and difficult delights. Letting them decide for themselves means trusting them to the shallow drift of the culture. Too many of us are complacent, assuming that religion will always be there in our culture as an option. We should take responsibility for its continued existence, which takes real cultural effort. In the words of Jonathan Safran Foer, in his novel Here I Am: ‘You only get to keep what you refuse to let go of.’
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/has-britain-really-entered-its-first-atheist-age/
********************************************************Canada’s DEI doctors
Canada, like other countries, has had a long-standing problem with doctor shortages. Rural and northern communities struggle to find doctors who want to stay in remote regions after their mandatory medical placements have ended. Finding a family doctor or paediatrician has become a massive struggle, too. ‘Fewer medical students [are] choosing to specialise in family medicine,’ the Canadian Medical Association noted in March, with ‘younger physicians not wanting to take over traditional clinical practices.’
‘It is expected that 25 per cent of students will be admitted through the General Admissions Stream and 75 per cent collectively through the Indigenous, Black, and Equity-Deserving admissions pathways’
That’s why there was a great deal of excitement when Toronto Metropolitan University was recently granted preliminary accreditation for a four-year MD programme. With this important approval from the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools, TMU’s September announcement stated, ‘the School of Medicine can now begin recruiting prospective students for its first cohort in September 2025.’ It will become Canada’s 18th accredited medical school.
The premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, of the Progressive Conservative party, posted on Twitter on 27 September: ‘I’m thrilled to see that TMU’s medical school has officially been accredited.’ ‘This final hurdle paves the way for the first new medical school in the Greater Toronto Area in over 175 years, with new doctors set to graduate by spring 2026 to help connect more people to care in Ontario.’
Ford’s initial reaction was understandable. But I wonder if his enthusiasm became more tempered when it was revealed that Canada’s newest medical school will be a sanctuary for left-wing, backward-thinking diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.
Looking more closely at TMU’s announcement, some red flags appear immediately.
‘The four-year MD curriculum is rooted in community-driven care and cultural respect and safety, with equity, diversity and inclusion, decolonisation and Reconciliation woven throughout,’ one paragraph outlined. ‘Through active, inquiry-based learning, the school will help train innovative, well-rounded physicians who are responsive to societal and community needs.’
What do things like ‘decolonisation and Reconciliation’ have to do with becoming a doctor, you might reasonably ask?
Things get worse though when it comes to the admissions criteria for the new school. According to TMU, ‘the admissions process will also purposefully admit equity-deserving students and identify applicants interested in primary care practice, particularly in medically underserved areas.’
Hold on. A medical school is actually acknowledging that it is putting in place a discriminatory acceptance policy – and not even being coy about it? Yes, indeed. The announcement notes there will be ‘three dedicated admissions pathways in addition to the General Admissions Stream.’ The pathways will be for ‘Indigenous Admissions,’ ‘Black Admissions’ and ‘Equity-Deserving Admissions.’
If this wasn’t bad enough, here comes the clincher.
TMU’s School of Medicine has revealed its selection process for the MD programme on its website. ‘For the 2025 admissions cycle, a total of 94 seats are available,’ the university notes. ‘It is expected that 25 per cent of students will be admitted through the General Admissions Stream and 75 per cent collectively through the Indigenous, Black, and Equity-Deserving admissions pathways.’
That’s right. Three-quarters of the places in Canada’s newest medical school will be determined by TMU’s strict DEI standards. Grades, extracurricular activities, volunteering, work experience, and other assessments won’t be the main criteria for deciding who becomes a practising doctor. TMU even make clear that they are willing to relax academic standards for DEI candidates, saying that:
‘In exceptional circumstances, applicants in the three admissions pathways (Indigenous, Black, and Equity-Deserving) with a GPA below the minimum requirement of 3.3 may have their application considered for admission by the relevant pathway subcommittee.’
This is a perfect example of reverse discrimination – the kind which was struck down in the US by the Supreme Court last year. TMU’s administration have clearly chosen against accepting the best and brightest medical school applicants from all walks of life. They probably didn’t even think about the discriminatory nature of their selection process and DEI policies.
They should have, however. While it’s not illegal in Canada to do something like this, it’s definitely unwise. TMU’s decision reeks of the racism we’ve seen in the past – and is the kind of policy that repels most ordinary people.
What can be done? For starters, Canadians and political leaders like Ford should speak out against TMU’s intolerant selection policy. It would also be wise for the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools to pull back its preliminary accreditation for TMU’s School of Medicine until it ensures that all student applicants will be treated in a fair, equal and merit-based fashion. If it doesn’t, it’s inevitable that confidence in the medical profession will be shaken.
There’s an old joke which highlights society’s concerns about academic standards and medicine: ‘What do you call someone who finishes last in medical school? Doctor.’ I fear that joke will become very relevant again if TMU moves ahead with this irresponsible strategy for its new medical school.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/canadas-dei-doctors/
**************************************************Navigating disastrous DEI
So impressed with the Samoans’ numerous canoes and their great skills in handling them, French Admiral Louis de Bougainville named their homeland in 1768 the Navigator Islands.
256 years later, on a Saturday afternoon earlier this month, my Samoan friends were on the south coast beach having a dress rehearsal barbecue for the imminent visit by King Charles, Queen Camilla, and all the heads of the Commonwealth for the CHOGM meeting.
Like most Samoans, my friends have more than a passing knowledge of things maritime and they observed this high-sided ship, very close to the ‘lee’ shore with a strong breeze, slowly moving as is required for hydrographic duties. A ‘lee’ shore is where the wind is blowing the ship towards the shore. Experienced sailors, from small yachts to big ships, know that you stay well clear of a lee shore. Boating 1.0.1!
In my four years training at sea, navigation and seamanship were two key elements of ship safety and the particular ship that I was on, a passenger-cargo ship trading between Australia and the South Pacific, we had to keep two miles off the land, rocks, or small outcrops. If it was a ‘lee shore’, the captain would make it three miles. In case there was a power failure, this would give the engineers time to restart the engine as we had backup fuel pumps, air starts, cooling systems etc.
Avalanched with calls from friends and media to give commentary on this New Zealand ship grounding, I kept my opinion to myself until I found out the facts. Brace yourselves readers.
Did it run aground because of a female skipper? My answer is no, and being from a merchant navy background I can tell you that as far back as the 60s, the Russians had the first female officers and female captains on many of their cargo and passenger ships. Mind you, they were more Georgian than gorgeous, but they were highly competent and were, appointed on merit, as are all merchant navy captains, male or female. My friend Inger Thorhauge, who is Captain of Cunard’s latest liner Queen Anne, started her seagoing career at 16, as I did, and she achieved this prestigious position purely on merit, experience, and current Certificates of Competence.
In just over seven years at sea, off watch, I could sleep well knowing that other watchkeepers were experienced and capable of navigating in busy waterways, reduced visibility or close quarters. The Master would mostly be on the bridge during these times.
My experience with Naval ships was winning the National Service lottery where I could get shot at in Vietnam or go on board Royal Australian Navy (RAN) ships as I was already a qualified navigator with five years of sea experience. I chose the RAN because it would get me the sea time necessary to sit my Masters foreign going certificate. The RAN was an eye opener and due to budget constraints and crew shortages, subsequently the ships actually seldom went to sea and crew experience and competence at that time was, in my opinion, very limited. Junior officers were not allowed any decision-making even on watch and I didn’t sleep well in the broom cupboard cabin I was sharing with three other guys down in the bowels of the HMAS Melbourne and the HMAS Supply when we were at sea. I recorded my experiences in Baird Maritime columns at the time, mostly to the disbelief of my merchant navy colleagues.
All of this leads me to ask, why was the New Zealand vessel skirting so close to an island with a lee shore under the watch of Captain Yvonne Grey? Boating 1.0.1, remember?
Was the ship suitable for the task? Having been involved in the design of hydrographic ships, to choose a second-hand ship with a 26m air draft (height of windage above the waterline) for slow steaming operations in windy conditions was not an optimal choice for the task, but typical of the defence procurement bungling bureaucratic process as highlighted frequently by Greg Sheridan of The Australian.
Would the combination of, in my opinion, an inexperienced Captain and a sub-optimal vessel be a recipe for a disaster? Yes! Now you have a clearer picture.
Another New Zealand commander crashed another Navy vessel earlier this year in Auckland to the tune of $220,000 in repairs.
Setting aside the cause of these accidents, which remain under investigation, the discussion of DEI within the Navy is a proud feature of their website which is why it is being discussed. It is a legacy possibly left over from former Prime Minister Jacinta Ardern who not only stuffed the New Zealand economy but was foisting such DEI policies into unsuspecting government bureaucracies such as the Navy. DEI policies for onshore establishments may be unpleasant but are workable, however, bosses there won’t put your life at risk. At sea, it is an entirely different matter, and such policies should be unacceptable and certainly not boasted about.
DEI policies, proudly printed on recruitment sites, would be a deterrent to any potential navy applicant, even female ones, who know full well this imbalanced system could see an individual treated differently due to their gender, sexuality, or race.
Was the evacuation and sinking of a very expensive ship a ‘triumph’ as described by New Zealand’s Defence Minister and Navy Chief Judith Collins? What puerile nonsense from Collins in her weak response to a shameful incident!
On a happier note, a previous CEO of a South Pacific Island Ferry informed me several years ago he had been instructed by his government to take at least 50 per cent female trainees, in-line with DEI suggestions from matriarchal New Zealand.
‘Was it a success?’ I asked him.
‘It was a 100 per cent success,’ he responded.
‘How do you mean?’
‘All of them were pregnant within six months,’ he happily replied, ‘so we are back to normal, taking applicants on merit, male or female.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/navigating-disastrous-dei/
*****************************************Australia: The Christian vote swings against Labor
When planning for the next federal election, due by September 2025 with some pundits suggesting as early as March, Prime Minister Albanese (aka one-term Albo) cannot ignore the Christian vote, the majority of which is Catholic.
Approximately 44 per cent of Australians identify as Christian and, proven by the 2019 election when Scott Morrison was unexpectedly re-elected as Prime Minister, a significant number of such voters appear to be swayed by their religious beliefs.
Such was the impact of the Christian vote that the review commissioned by the ALP after its electoral defeat recommends the party do more to ensure its polices gain the support of faith-based voters, instead of alienating what is a key constituency.
The report concludes that in outer urban and regional electorates, especially in Queensland, ‘When all other variables are controlled for, it is estimated that identifying as Christian was associated with a swing against Labor.’
While inner-city electorates, now dominated by the Teals and Greens, champion Woke causes including Indigenous reconciliation, multiculturalism, gender diversity, and climate change – there are millions of voters who are more conservatively minded.
One only needs to look at the 60/40 vote against the Voice to Parliament to realise, as argued by the cultural critic Roger Scruton, that most people, unlike the cosmopolitan, inner-city elites, centre their lives on family, local community, and the need for social cohesion and stability.
It’s obvious that if Albanese and the Labor government are keen to attract the millions of Christian voters who will decide the electoral outcome in marginal seats across Australia, they are going about it the wrong way.
Based on existing policies, and what the government plans to do if re-elected, it’s clear the ALP government has turned its back on Christian and Catholic voters when it comes to issues like religious freedom and freedom of conscience as well as school funding.
The Albanese government’s failure to introduce its Religious Discrimination Bill to Parliament, even though the draft bill was made public in 2021, represents a serious threat to the millions of voters identifying as Christian.
Whereas current anti-discrimination legislation makes it illegal to unfairly discriminate against someone on the basis of age, sex, gender identity, race, and disability the same protection is not afforded to people of religious beliefs and faith.
While those of Jewish faith are facing a rising flood of antisemitism in Australia where they are vilified and attacked on a daily basis by those seeking Israel’s destruction, it’s also true, though less violent and less extreme, that Christians face hostility and prejudice in Australia.
Examples include Victoria’s legislation to fine and imprison priests and Christian parents for daring to counsel children about the dangers of gender transitioning. Tasmania’s Archbishop Porteous has also been punished for advocating church teachings. To this we add the ACT government’s compulsory acquisition of the Catholic-owned Calvary Hospital, public figures like Israel Folau and Margaret Court being attacked for their religious beliefs, and the head of Brisbane’s Citipointe Christian College being pressured to resign over the school’s enrolment policies.
In an increasingly extreme secular world where human rights activists and elected representatives of various left-wing political parties argue Christians must be banished from the public square, it’s obvious more must be done to protect religious freedom.
Currently, faith-based schools are exempt from anti-discrimination legislation regarding who they employ and who they enrol. Religious schools, given their primary purpose is to remain true to their faith, must have control over staffing and enrolments.
The Albanese government’s failure to ensure such rights are protected represents another reason why parents who send their children to religious schools have every reason to fear what happens next year if the ALP government is re-elected. Especially if the Greens hold the balance of power.
Education Minister Jason Clare has stated a number of times that government schools deserve greater funding while one of the ALP’s long-term supporters, the Australian Education Union, opposes funding Catholic and Independent schools.
To financially penalise parents by reducing Commonwealth funding to non-government schools threatens parental choice as well as being financially counter-productive. Catholic schools enrol 19.7 per cent of students while Independent schools, the majority of which have a religious affiliation, enrol 16.3 per cent.
The cost to government, and taxpayers, of educating students in religious schools is significantly less than the cost of educating students in government schools as non-government school parents contribute billions of dollars annually to educate their children.
Catholic school parents contribute approximately 23.6 per cent of their children’s school income while Independent school parents contribute 46.9 per cent. If such students were enrolled in government schools the cost to government and taxpayers would increase dramatically.
There’s no doubt cost of living will be the main issue at the next election but, at the same time and proven by Scott Morrison’s win in 2019, the Christian vote will also be a deciding factor.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/the-christian-vote-swings-against-labor/
**************************************************13 October, 2024
IT HAPPENED: Norway just REJECTED cashless agenda: Shops are now required by law to accept cash as a form of payment
They have now rejected the cashless agenda. From the 1st of October, all shops are required by law to accept real physical cash as a form of payment.
As long as payments are under NOK 20.000 ($1871), shops cannot refuse cash payments. Those that do so will risk being fined.
The Norwegian Directorate for Civil Protection even recommends people to have some amounts of cash at all times in case digital forms of payment stop working.
Just recently that was the case, after a software update caused computers all over the world to crash, affecting banks, airports, supermarkets and more.
As many as 600.000 Norwegians are not digital, especially many elderly people.
With the World Economic Forum having pushed a cashless agenda, Norway is going the opposite way.
It is important to have cash. Because in a cashless society, it would be very easy for a tyrannical government to control who can buy and sell, monitoring every transaction.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-149888588
*******************************************Spare us the cringeworthy back story
Judith Sloan
I’m in charge of streaming in our household – someone must be. Luckily, there is a joint preference for contemporary crime dramas, even if they involve solving cold cases. It’s one thing the BBC still does well, by and large. We also love a bit of Nordic noir.
Almost without exception, however, the makers of these series can’t resist the temptation to include some cringeworthy back story about one or more of the detectives solving the case. Do we really care that they are having marital difficulties? Do we really care that one of the kids has gone off the rails? Get on with solving the crime, I say. It just looks like unnecessary padding.
Sadly, far too many politicians have entered the field of recounting their tragic/uplifting/moving back story. Mind you, Kamala Harris, current US presidential candidate, moves her back story around depending on her audience. Some days she is just a middle-class kid; the next, she is a working-class kid. (Her mother was a medical research scientist, her father an economics professor – sounds solidly middle-class.)
She also has some bizarre story about the woman who looked after her and her sister while her mother went to work. Evidently, this woman also ran a small business – I’m not sure when she had the time – which means that Kamala understands small business. Sure.
The back story has become a part of the kitbag of too many politicians here. How many times have we heard about Albo living in public housing as his single mother struggled to make ends meet?
The messages are twofold: with grit, determination, a loving mother and a supportive state, even a boy like Albo can make good. Secondly, public housing is a plus rather than a minus, notwithstanding the evidence that public housing estates are far too often hubs for crime and drug-dealing and the employment rate among tenants is very low.
Of course, everyone has a right to bang on about their background if they want to. But the real problem for politicians is that they too often use their very narrow, individual circumstances to inform themselves about policy, ignoring wide consultation, research and the consideration of all options.
One of the most egregious examples of the tedious and irksome back story is from federal Education Minister, Jason Clare, who comes from western Sydney. He is very proud of the fact that he is the first member of his family to attend university. He undertook a double degree at the University of New South Wales in arts and law before he became an advisor to Bob Carr, Labor premier of NSW. So, well done, Jase. But what he doesn’t seem to appreciate is that university is not for everyone. Many young people, including those who live in his electorate in western Sydney, would be much better served by pursuing a trade, particularly one in the construction industry. Jase is also very big on equity of access, irrespective of the record of the applicants or their capacity to pass the required subjects.
Jase commissioned the Australian Universities Accord which unsurprisingly recommended, in view of the minister’s circumstances, that the participation of those aged 25 to 34 years of age in university education be lifted from the current rate of 45 per cent – which seems extremely high – to 55 per cent by the middle of the century. In addition, those groups currently most under-represented in higher education should increase ‘to achieve parity across the Australian population’. So much for universities being centres of excellence.
It doesn’t seem to occur to our hero from western Sydney that the country will not be well served by having more graduates in Sociology, Cultural Studies or Chinese Medicine. Give us more plumbers, electricians, carpenters and brickies any day.
It’s worth observing here that many jobs that now require a university degree were once done by school-leavers. This is the case, for example, in accounting and bookkeeping. There was generally a lot of training given on the job and the holders of these positions often progressed quickly. Interestingly, the accounting profession is currently considering reverting to this model, at least partially, much to the chagrin of university accounting departments.
The real message that Jase should be giving young people is that university is not for everyone and that there are great futures in a range of occupations, particularly in the trades. But this just doesn’t fit with his back story.
If that anecdote doesn’t make you recoil, let me recount another aspect of Jason Clare’s back story. Evidently, his son Jack was thrilled to learn that his parents were presenting him with a new brother named Atticus. Now, Jack is a childcare centre attendee and his response to the news was that he must tell his favourite childcare worker, Kellie, about the new arrival.
The reaction of Jase was quite heart-warming. This incident had made him appreciate the sense of community that childcare imparts as well as clearly demonstrating the benefits of childcare on children. (Sample size = 1).
Now I don’t know about you, but this is not my experience of childcare. In many inner-city childcare centres, most of the staff don’t really speak English. No doubt they would have nodded politely when hearing Jack’s news, but that’s about it. There is also a rapid turnover of staff such that, half the time, the children never get to know any of the carers.
But this is not in keeping with Jase’s (or Labor’s) political position on the topic. Parents must be highly subsidised to dump their children in childcare centres, the more hours each week the better. This is so the women can work and help the economy. But it’s also good for the children – or so the ‘experts’ tell us who refuse to accept the fact correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
The fact that the best studies around tell a completely different story is ignored. There has been close to free universal childcare in Quebec, Canada for many years. The quality of the care does vary, and all the best options are snaffled by high-income earners. (You probably get the drift of the key problem with many studies: the children of high-income earners do better in life, the children go to high-quality childcare centres. It’s just a pity about the others.)
It’s clear that long day care is statistically associated with a range of social problems for many of the children attending and that these problems persist into the teenage years. They include anxiety, hyperactivity and aggression. Jase might want to talk to Kellie about these findings.
Politicians really shouldn’t use their (mostly uninteresting) back stories as a prime determinant of policy positions, particularly as these positions generally include spending great dollops of taxpayer dollars. File the stories in the bottom drawer and get on with using best practice means of settling on policies, including the option of leaving well enough alone.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/10/spare-us-the-cringeworthy-back-story/
***********************************************Gavin Newsom Does Something Conservatives May Like
The California governor signs a bill banning legacy preferences at private colleges and universities.
The Supreme Court began a new term this week, but its landmark 2023 decision on racial preferences in college admissions continues to reverberate.
Last week Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that bans private universities in California from favoring “legacy” applicants, those whose parents are alumni or whose families have donated to the school. It was California’s response to Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the ruling that outlawed preferences based on race and ethnicity. Conservatives often want progressive policies that emanate from the Golden State to stay there. This may be an exception.
The left’s rebuttal to the Harvard decision has been to push against legacy preferences at selective schools on the grounds that they amount to affirmative action for affluent white people. That’s not an unreasonable argument on its face. Granting favorable treatment to the offspring of Stanford and University of Southern California graduates would tend to benefit white applicants more than their nonwhite counterparts. And if these schools are aiming to admit the most deserving students, as they claim, why should lineage but not race give certain applicants who otherwise wouldn’t qualify for admission a bump in the selection process?
Legacy admissions to the public University of California system were banned in the 1990s, and some elite private schools, including Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Amherst College in Massachusetts and Wesleyan University in Connecticut, voluntarily ended the practice. Virginia, Illinois and Colorado have proscribed it at public colleges and universities. But California now becomes only the second state after Maryland to pass a law that forbids consideration of legacy and donor status at private institutions.
Such bans at public schools are an easier call. It’s hard to justify why state taxpayers should subsidize a university that chooses its students based on factors that have nothing to do with merit. Still, some might argue that legacy prohibitions at private schools are another matter, and court challenges are a possibility. Even critics acknowledge that however unfair legacy considerations may be, they don’t violate the Constitution. Just as sororities, country clubs and other private groups can legally select some members and reject others—so long as they don’t discriminate on unlawful grounds—the right of association protected by the First Amendment arguably allows private-school administrators to give relatives of alumni and donors a leg up.
In an opinion that accompanied an earlier Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), Justice Clarence Thomas, who is no fan of legacy preferences, nevertheless warned about comparing them to racial preferences. “The Equal Protection Clause does not . . . prohibit the use of unseemly legacy preferences or many other kinds of arbitrary admissions procedures,” Justice Thomas wrote. “What the Equal Protection Clause does prohibit are classifications made on the basis of race. So while legacy preferences can stand under the Constitution, racial discrimination cannot.”
The economist Richard Vedder, who also frowns on special treatment for the offspring of alumni and donors, has written that so much federal funding now flows to private institutions—either directly through research grants or indirectly through student loans and in other ways—that the public-private distinction no longer makes sense.
“The Ivy League, for example, gets more government support per student than most so-called state universities,” according to Mr. Vedder. “The notion that public monies should be used to subsidize preferential treatment to less qualified [legacy] students, most of whom come from wealthy white families, is abhorrent to the American belief that anyone, regardless of wealth, race, gender or other group attribute, can with hard work rise to the top in our society.”
Supporters of legacy admissions insist that schools depend on them for fundraising and recruitment, and that may be true at institutions that don’t have large endowments, including historically black colleges. But most donations from alumni are for smaller amounts and out of loyalty and appreciation, not because the donor wants or expects a relative to receive special consideration. An empirical analysis of alumni philanthropy at the nation’s top 100 colleges over a nine-year stretch found “no evidence that legacy-preference policies themselves exert an influence on giving behavior.”
Many of the nation’s most selective schools, including all eight Ivy League institutions, still consider the legacy status of applicants. But since 2015, more than 100 colleges and universities have adopted legacy-blind policies, according to the Institute for Higher Education Policy. And in a nationwide Washington Post-Schar School survey from 2022, 75% of respondents said it was wrong for children of alumni to receive preferential treatment. Americans want public and private institutions to retire legacy admissions, and rightly so. Ideally, schools would act on their own, as some already have. Hopefully, it’s just a matter of time before others fall in line.
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/gavin-newsom-does-something-conservatives-may-like-f3ac60dd
************************************************Soviet-style justice in the USA
Once the cops get a bee in their bonnets about you, you are in real strife
In 2019, several Hollywood notables and dozens of others were swept up in so-called Operation Varsity Blues. The FBI accused parents, college employees and their go-betweens in a bribery scheme to get nominally unqualified students admitted to top colleges.
What you might not have heard is John Wilson’s story. He’s the parent who drew the most charges, but fought them. And – after a grueling and expensive court battle – he finally came out on top.
Wilson: What the government did to me is something that's never happened to anyone in America. And what the prosecutors did to me once they put me in their crosshairs was so outrageous that if I hadn't experienced it firsthand, I wouldn't believe it in a million years.
If Wilson was known for anything, it was as a self-made rags-to-riches success story and president of Staples, International. But his story changed drastically in March of 2019 when he returned to the U.S. from a business trip.
Wilson: I got off the plane. I'm going through the normal customs and immigration security checks. They pulled me aside, say there's something wrong with my passport. I go into a back room. And then, two FBI agents pushed me against the wall, handcuffed me, shackled me and told me I'm under arrest. I was shocked. I had no warning. This came out of the blue like a lightning bolt.
Sharyl: You ever been arrested before?
Wilson: No, I'd never been arrested in my life. I'd never even been accused of a crime in my life. I've never been in a courthouse in my entire life.
Sharyl: What'd they tell you was wrong?
Wilson: They told me I was under arrest. I said, “You must have the wrong John Wilson.” I said, “There's 15,000 John Wilsons. I didn't do anything wrong.”
Sharyl: And you had no idea this was related to college or anything at the time?
Wilson: I had no idea what it was at all. Neither did they. They couldn't tell me what it was related to. They said “It's an unusual fraud charge we've never heard of. And that's all we know.”
The FBI took him to a federal prison in Houston.
Sharyl: And what'd they do with you from there?
Wilson: They stripped me down, put me in this big, I dunno, common area shower room. And the guards took a couple big hoses and started hosing me down like an animal in this large public shower. And still thinking to myself, "What did I do? How could this be happening? This can't be real." And the guard says to me, "You better watch your back in here. You know, you're the only old white guy,” he says, “and they're gonna assume you're a pedophile and they hate pedophiles here and one of 'em is likely to try to shiv you and stab you.” I was in shock. I said, “What? How can that be?” I asked, “Can you lock me in my cell so I don't get stabbed?” He says, “No, no. If they lock you in your cell, they're gonna think you're a p**** and they're really gonna f*** you up.” That's what he said, pardon my French, that’s what he said to me. I said, “Oh my god.”
The next morning he learned from his brother, an attorney, why he’d been locked up.
Wilson: I remember being handcuffed and shackled my feet and my hands shuffling down the hallway to this interview room where my brother was behind a plexiglass wall with another lawyer. I said, “What, what is this? What’s, what's going on?” And “They said something to do with Singer.” “I said, Singer?” He said, “Yeah, you bribed coaches and you did some fraud.” I said, “What? I didn't do that!” Again. I said, “They must have the wrong John Wilson.”
“Singer” was Rick Singer, considered the “mastermind” in the Varsity Blues college admissions scandal, nicknamed after the 1999 film about small town high schoolers looking for a way out – some through football scholarships.
Among the parents arrested were actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman. They were accused of paying people to get their kids into top universities by bribing coaches, creating fake athletic photos, and cheating on tests. Both pleaded guilty in the case, in which 33 wealthy parents were charged.
Prosecutors claimed Wilson paid $220,000 to have his son, Johnny Wilson, recruited as a water polo athlete at the University of Southern California. And they said he spent $1 million to unfairly get his twin daughters into Harvard and Stanford.
Wilson admits he hired Singer and donated to colleges – like millions of parents have done – to increase odds their kids will get accepted in a fiercely competitive landscape.
But he says they were well qualified in their own right and there was no cheating, lying, or bribery. It was Wilson’s financial adviser at Goldman Sachs who introduced him to Singer as a consultant who could maximize a student’s chances.
Sharyl: I didn't even know that industry existed. So there are people you can hire to help your kid get in a good college?
Wilson: Yes. I didn't know it existed either until the Goldman Sachs person called me up. So whenever you asked Singer a question, he knew everything about every school, every high school, every college. So he was very knowledgeable. He was doing real charity work and he was doing real tutoring work. So I trusted him.
Sharyl: And your goal was ultimately what?
Wilson: To find the right fit for my son for school. To get him as prepared as he could for his tests, to help build his profile, to be as strong as it could and to get a school that'd be a good fit for him.
Wilson says Johnny legitimately won a spot on USC’s water polo team. He had impressive swim times, and a world record at age 9 as the youngest person to swim the frigid, choppy waters from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco.
The younger Wilson said on the "Oprah Winfrey Show" in 2006: "See that island over there, that is Alcatraz and I am going to swim from there all the way to shore there. It is 1.4 miles and I’m a little nervous."
Wilson broke the world record, the youngest ever to make this swim.
His dad was convinced he could prove, at trial, that his children’s admissions to prestigious colleges weren’t due to bribery.
Prosecutors wanted him to plead guilty.
Wilson: And then they proceeded to literally every three months add on more charges. And each time they did, they said, “We want you to plead guilty. If you don't, we're gonna add on more charges.” And they did that again and again, four additional times. They ended up charging me with nine felonies and 180 years of prison time, all for the same act. And they said, “We'll go for more.” And I said, “I'm not gonna plead guilty no matter how many charges you put on me. I didn't do anything wrong.”
Sharyl: But the jury convicted you?
Wilson: Yeah, absolutely. They ran an unfair trial that was just outrageous.
He argues he faced a prosecutor-friendly judge who stacked the deck.
Wilson: I’ll give you a couple of examples of things they blocked. My daughters’ perfect ACT score, and near perfect scores were inadmissible.
Sharyl: In other words, that would've shown that they deserved to get in college. Not that they were given a favor?
Wilson: Right. They earned their admissions. They were qualified on their own merits for admission, even at Harvard and Stanford. My son's certified swim times and his world record, the certified swim times proved he's one of the fastest on USC’s team. They wouldn't allow his own high school coach, who's his water polo coach, who testified, to bring in his swim time.
Sharyl: When you heard what the jury found, did you think to yourself, “Well, I can't blame 'em with what they heard?”
Wilson: Absolutely.
Sharyl: Or were you surprised?
Wilson: No, no. We were sunk. We knew we were sunk when they blocked our evidence. I remember my lawyers even talking about this is something they've never seen before. It was so extreme. They said, “The good news is you'll have a great appeals record,” but now I have to spend another two years fighting for the appeal.
Sharyl: What happened on appeal?
Wilson: On appeal, we got everything overturned except for this minor tax issue. So all the court convictions were overturned and the judges said, you know, “This is totally unfair.”
Wilson paid a fine for the tax charge: improperly deducting USC donations. All the charges related to getting his kids into college were thrown out. The official Justice Department statement is that in May 2023, an appellate court affirmed the tax conviction and vacated and remanded the remaining counts of conviction.
But the fight isn’t completely over. Today, Wilson is suing Netflix over a documentary that he says smeared him and poisoned the jury pool.
He says he sent Netflix a real photo of his son playing water polo. Yet the documentary depicted him pasting the head of his son, shown in the film as a scrawny boy, onto the body of an athlete, for a college application.
Wilson: And so he was really a water polo player at the national level. He was being recruited by other division one schools. And so we sent them pictures of that at a practice. And what Netflix used, was a kid standing in a pool in LA in the shallow end up to his waist with a water polo ball in his hand. And then they show a photographer taking a picture and then photoshopping that onto a body of a kid in the pool. They knew that was totally false and yet they used it anyway.
Wilson successfully fought back criminal charges that he’d bribed to get his kids into college. But in the end, he says he lost five years of his peak career earnings potential, and spent his life’s savings – more than $10 million – on legal bills.
Wilson: I think for me the scariest part of this, if the government puts you in his crosshairs for whatever reason, the power and the resource they have can be devastating. They've been able to weaponize the justice system against innocent people. And they can do that with impunity. And it's frightening. And I think of all those people who have less resources than I had and how they're forced to plead guilty and how they're railroaded through an unfair process. And it's outrageous and it should never happen again. And I'm gonna do what I can to make sure that it doesn't happen again.
Netflix says its documentary never implied Wilson photoshopped his son’s photo … it depicted a different parent and son – and was wholly accurate. A Massachusetts judge recently denied Netflix' motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Sharyl Attkisson is an investigative journalist and managing editor of "Full Measure." Her most recent book is "Follow the Science: How Big Pharma Misleads, Obscures, and Prevails."
*****************************************************
Australia: Landlords giving up in the face of government hostility: Victoria sees record fall in rental stock as investors leave the state
Victoria is experiencing the sharpest fall in rental stock since record keeping began in 1999, suggesting an investor sell-off is gaining pace.
The number of active rental bonds (a proxy for the number of rental properties in a market) fell from a little over 676,400 in June last year to 654,700 this year – suggesting there were 21,700 fewer rentals in the market.
The state has only ever recorded two quarters of rental bond falls, and both occurred in 2024.
The speed of rental stock loss also appeared to be increasing, with the total number of rental bonds dropping 1.3 per cent in the three months to May, and 3.2 per cent in the three months to June.
The new data, released by the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, supports a trend identified in the recently-released Property Investment Professionals of Australia (PIPA) 2024 Annual Investor Sentiment Survey.
The survey described a "sell-off of investment properties around the nation" that was "continuing unabated" and "fuelling fears of an even tighter rental market".
The outlook may be grim for investors, but home owners appeared to be benefiting, snapping up 65 per cent of the properties investors sold, according to PIPA.
First homebuyers in Melbourne have also enjoyed months of falling prices, while most of the rest of the country has experienced continued increases.
However, the survey's 1288 respondents declared Victoria to be the "least accommodating state or territory for property investors", and Victoria and Melbourne were found to have some of the highest proportions of investors selling up.
In Melbourne, roughly 22 per cent of investors surveyed had sold at least one rental in the past year, the second highest after Brisbane.
When it came to investors selling in regional areas, Victoria also had the second highest rate, with just over 9 per cent of investors selling, just below NSW, where the figure sat at just over 10 per cent.
PIPA Victoria board director Cate Bakos said legislative changes around minimum rental standards and increased land taxes were driving investors from the state.
She said real estate agents were also reporting a higher percentage of sellers being investors.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-12/victoria-sharp-fall-in-rental-stock/104464504
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