Wednesday, March 09, 2011


When political correctness gets really dangerous

Black applicants must be hired as firemen regardless of their fitness for the job

This should be a huge scandal. Even a decade past 9/11, few groups in the country enjoy the respect that the Fire Department of New York does. See what the Obama DoJ is doing to the FDNY, even AFTER Ricci v. DeStefano should have put this sort of thing off-limits. Heavily edited, this still gives the flavor of it:
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s obsession with racial grievance-mongering could get Americans burnt to a crisp in their own homes. That's because his Justice Department is trying to force the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) to hire flunkies who got 70 percent wrong on a basic, fire-related multiple-choice, open-book test.

The exam was used to screen applicants to the fire academy. More than 90 percent of black and Hispanic test-takers passed, which isn't enough for liberals addicted to affirmative action....

On Feb. 28, Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, submitted a proposed order for damages for rejected applicants who scored 25 or higher on the 85-question exams. New York's taxpayers would be forced to pay compensation to the flunkies to make up for years of seniority supposedly lost when the city chose not to hire them. Minority rejects also would receive seniority over firemen who had been working all the while.

Here's a good quote that sums it up nicely: "[This order] would serve well as comic relief if the stakes weren't so high, and is a good example to support the contention that the Plaintiffs are apparently not concerned with the safety of NYC residents, visitors or firefighters," wrote deputy fire chief Paul Mannix, president of Merit Matters, an advocacy group opposed to weakening entrance exams.

The earlier news on this was almost as disturbing:
The lead Justice Department attorney in the FDNY case is Loretta King, who ordered the dismissal of most voter-intimidation charges against Black Panthers in Philadelphia and who is hip-deep in other race-based legal controversies.

On Sept. 30, she wrote a memo to Judge Garaufis pitching four proposals to require "representative" or "proportional" quotas. Ms. King glosses over the professional challenges of firefighting to focus on whether minorities feel "stigmatized" or if black firefighters could further their "sense of fairness in their place of employment" if surrounded by more workers of their own race.

Firemen should be hired for ability, not racial bean-counting. The judge's fiat, wrote Manhattan Institute Fellow Heather MacDonald in the City Journal, "was not just groundless, it was recklessly inflammatory." The heroic FDNY doesn't deserve to have its operations so inflamed.

Fire departments are there for our safety. A job at a fire department is a responsibility for brave and noble people, not a right for slackers. This abomination by the DoJ and Judge Garaufis must be stopped.

SOURCE





The muzzling of Mrs. Fred

Must not give out the facts about Muslims

For most of the last decade, my husband, Fred Grandy, has earned his living as a news/talk morning radio host in Washington, D.C. For most of the last year, he has hosted The Grandy Group, a morning drive-time show covering politics, foreign policy, and pop culture, along with the usual regional and local stories that make up any given day’s news. And like most morning shows either on radio or TV, The Grandy Group has most often been a comfortable blend of stories that were frequently serious but never too solemn, occasionally light-hearted but hopefully never light-headed — just the right mix of authority and affability.

Then I joined the show. Under the pseudonym of Mrs. Fred, I began harmlessly enough. I would show up every Friday at 8 a.m. and talk family and domestic stuff: raising a daughter in college, road rage in the Giant Foods parking lot. But about the time we as a nation began to learn and then wonder about the motives behind the proposed Islamic Center next to Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, I started wanting more information. So I examined the actions and intentions of clerics such as Imam Feisal Rauf, the principal pitchman for Cordoba House. I studied organizations such as the Islamic Society of North America, the North American Islamic Trust, and CAIR. I looked into the 2008 Holy Land Foundation trial that provided indisputable documentation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s long-term strategy to infiltrate and subvert our educational, legal, and political systems in the United States. I studied the FBI reports that linked CAIR to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization, and found video footage of fundraising activities that began at a mosque in Florida and concluded with bags of cash being handed over to jihadists in Gaza. And I questioned why individuals like Abdulrahman Alamoudi, currently doing a twenty-year prison hitch for terrorist activities, had managed to become a special advisor to President Bill Clinton and a regular guest on Capitol Hill.

So Mrs. Fred Friday began to change. Now, instead of railing against cyclists on Old Georgetown Road, Fred and I were slowly connecting the dots between the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, that body of 57 Islamic states (Palestinian Authority included) that has since 1993 openly claimed in the UN that human rights policy must be subservient to Sharia law.

For our efforts, Fred and I were sometimes called racists and Islamophobes, but our audience loved our shows. Calls and emails would pour in during and after these reports wanting to learn more about the slow but steady progress of civilization jihad. Why wasn’t Nidal Hassan stopped before he murdered fourteen people at Fort Hood? Why is he still not referred to as an Islamic extremist in the official DOD report on the shootings?

The demand for more information eventually culminated two weeks ago in a large public forum on Capitol Hill co-hosted by the radio station, the Heritage Foundation, The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and the Westminster Institute. Fred fielded a panel of experts on domestic terrorism who packed the house and left the audience wanting more.

Nevertheless, just a few days after the event, Fred was told to tone down the jihadist talk and make sure I did the same. I didn’t. In my February 25th report on how Christians had been arrested in Dearborn, Michigan, for simply talking about their religion to Muslims, I said something that outraged our management and was dismissed.

I’m not sure exactly what I said that they objected to, but if I had to guess, I’d guess it was how I concluded the show: “If I don’t return next Friday to continue this discussion, you’ll know that CAIR has successfully put pressure on WMAL — and the radical Muslims have won.”

Needless to say, my dismissal bothered me a tad. For a long time Fred and I have both believed the struggle against Islamic extremism is a secret war most Americans don’t even know we are fighting — and losing. We need more intelligence, not less.

When management disagreed, Fred felt his microphone had also been muzzled and he resigned. That bothered me too. Now he’ll be around the house all day.

But you know what really bothered me? It was waking up not 24 hours after our broadcast careers abruptly ended to learn two American soldiers on their way to Afghanistan had been shot dead at the airport in Frankfurt, Germany, by some 21-year-old kid from Kosovo shouting “Allahu Akhbar” — the same thing Major Hassan shouted.

The president has called for a full investigation of the shooting, but in our multicultural universe that most likely means NOT going into the mosques, madrassas, and Islamic centers where jihad is openly preached and where this kid surely received his motivation if not his training. To do that would be politically incorrect.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

SOURCE




Sexism is dead, say most British WOMEN

It may come as a surprise to those who feel they’ve hit the glass ceiling or heard one too many blonde jokes. Most women do not believe that Britain is a sexist place, a poll has revealed.

Fewer than four in ten say they have experienced derogatory remarks or behaviour because of their gender.

And the majority of men and women think both sexes are equally capable of handling challenging and traditionally male tasks, such as making a safe emergency landing in an aeroplane.

The results of the survey, carried out for a group of charities and pressure groups, suggest that most women are far more concerned with solving day-to-day practical problems in their lives than fighting a battle for equality.

Nearly two-thirds of women say their biggest concern is balancing work and family life. Only one in 20 feels the greatest problem facing them is sexism at work – though three times as many men believe this is women’s major challenge.

Only one in five women describes herself as a feminist – and three out of four say they definitely would not use the label.

The poll was carried out to mark today’s International Women’s Day by a group including poverty campaign organisation ActionAid, domestic violence campaigners Women’s Aid, feminist pressure group the Fawcett Society, and political freedom campaigners Amnesty International.

It followed figures published to mark the same occasion by the Government’s Office for National Statistics, which showed that men and women now have an equal chance of making it to the top ranks of managers and officials in business and the public sector.

But Amnesty International’s UK director Kate Allen said the findings still showed a ‘worrying’ gap between men and women. She added: ‘Unless attempts are made to change such attitudes in every section of society, some women will always be treated as second-class citizens. ‘Amnesty International has found from its work that it is these negative views which in the most extreme instances can lead to abusive behaviour towards women and a basic denial of women’s rights.’ [What's this got to do with Amnesty? More proof that Amnesty now is just a far-Left outfit]

The poll of 1,028 participants, carried out by Ipsos Mori, found that 47 per cent of women did not believe men and women are treated equally in Britain. However, 34 per cent said treatment is equal.

Some 38 per cent of women said they had personally experienced ‘sexist remarks or sexist behaviour’, including physical contact. The figure rose to 60 per cent among women under 30. However, 15 per cent of men said they had also been on the receiving end of sexist behaviour.

Only 6 per cent of women said the greatest challenge facing women in Britain was sexism at work.

SOURCE





The Uses of Antisemitism

Paul Greenberg

It was the always observant Mary McCarthy who observed that antisemitism is the one form of intellectuality that appealed to stupid people. But she may have overlooked its appeal to ambitious politicians, too. They're always on the lookout for some mania they can use for their own purposes. Whether to seize power at the beginning of their rise or to hold onto it at the end. Or anytime in between.

Think of the way Southern demagogues back in the bad old days knew that, whenever they needed a way to stir folks up, they could always rely on the Race Issue.

How far and wide today's tide revolutionary tide may sweep in the Islamic world isn't yet clear, but the most predictable development is that the Jews will be blamed for it.

In a pinch, America will serve nicely as a whipping boy, too. The best strategy is to blame both. Just listen to some of the statements out of Yemen, where an autocrat struggling to hold on against his subjects' growing discontent is much in need of a scapegoat, or two, to distract his people. Addressing gullible students in Sana'a, that country's embattled ruler -- one Ali Abdullah Saleh -- shared a great discovery he'd made:

"I am going to reveal a secret. There is an operations room in Tel Aviv with the aim of destabilizing the Arab world. The operations room is in Tel Aviv and run by the White House."

Call it a twofer. It turns out that both the Americans and the Jews are responsible for all his troubles. In that little room in Tel Aviv, insidious plotters are orchestrating all the unrest in the Arab world. That's where those rising up against their betters from Tunisia to Saudi Arabia "are sitting day and night with the American ambassador...." They "hand him reports and he gives them instructions." Now we know.

It sounds like an Arab version of that old forgery, the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a staple of European antisemitism that Hosni Mubarak's propaganda machine serialized on Egyptian television back in the day, when his hold on power seemed permanent.

Antisemitism remains the last resort of Arab dictators desperate to survive, as it was their first resort on their way up. It's a trajectory as old as Herr Hitler's rise -- and fall -- in Germany. Once the most advanced of nations. It soon enough became the most depraved. East or West, the fatal virus is the same.

But antisemitism is no longer the rage it once was in France, where the Nazis set up a puppet regime in Vichy. And in occupied France, the French obliged their occupiers by rounding up their Jews for what was politely called Resettlement in the East.

But the times (and fashions) have a-changed. Last week the colorful, not to say bizarre, fashion designer John Galliano was dropped by Dior just three days before his fall-winter collection for 2011-12 was due to be unveiled at the Paris fashion show. It seems he'd made some unseemly remarks about Jews during a late-night blow-up at a trendy Paris bar. Naturally, his performance was captured on video. Isn't everything nowadays? The more things change, the more they're videotaped.

Who knows, M. Galliano may be able to find a new career in Iran designing the latest in burqas. But even in Teheran, cries for democracy are heard again. And again the leaders of the opposition are jailed and demonstrators beaten. It's a hard thing to extinguish, the hope of freedom. Anywhere.

The crumbling old pillars of tyranny are shaking throughout the Middle East. Which is when scapegoats are most in demand, and the Jews are the traditional choice. But there may come a time when even Jew-baiting won't work any more.

What country will be the next to be roiled by revolution? It's a question that must keep various Middle Eastern potentates awake at night. Now it's they who wait for the knock on the door. Or for it to be kicked in.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN (Note that EYE ON BRITAIN has regular posts on the reality of socialized medicine). My Home Pages are here or here or here or Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site here.

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