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Topics - Peter

21
Main / HEP: the bias favors women
Jan 31, 2013, 07:14 AM
HEP: the bias favors women by Luboš Motl

In the Time Magazine, when Jeffrey Kluger wrote about Ms Fabiola Gianotti, the spokesman of ATLAS at the LHC, as the runner-up for their "Person of the Year", he wrote, among other things:

   Physics is a male-dominated field, and the assumption is that a woman has to overcome hurdles and face down biases that men don't.

   But that just isn't so. Women in physics are familiar with this misconception and acknowledge it mostly with jokes.

This is absolutely accurate in most cases. Pretty much all competent women in high-energy physics whom I met acknowledge that this "myth about extra hurdles" for women is just nonsense. You won't hear about these women because their politics is inconvenient for the PC Nazis who have hijacked most of the media. However, the women with this opinion on the situation produce well over 90% of the actual scientific output that women contribute to science, an enterprise of all the humans.

(Some feminist activists who are good enough physicists, e.g. Melissa Franklin at Harvard, would love to deny the fact that there is no bias against women left and the bias that remains real has the opposite sign. However, their room to spread this fairy-tale about their "oppression" usually shrinks substantially once they're elected the department chair, for no really good reason.)

I could tell you dozens and dozens of examples of highly productive women - really the bulk of women in the proper science - who agree with me but I can't even afford to do this thing because they would face trouble with the PC Nazis just for the fact that their name has appeared on my blog in this context. So even though they're the majority among the productive female scientists, you won't hear about them or their opinions. They know something that certain people just don't want to be heard. Instead, you will always be offered stories by obnoxious, constantly whining, largely unproductive "also scientists" who want the vagina to become a universal excuse for incompetence so they will always be dissatisfied with something.

Sabine Hossenfelder and Tommaso Dorigo disagree with Kluger (and with your humble correspondent) and they try various incomprehensible sleights of hand to justify their claims. However, ironically enough, the fact that women are much more likely to have advantages rather than disadvantages is well documented by pretty much all the female names that appear in these texts. What do I mean?




Well, I also mean Sabine Hossenfelder herself. But if I followed this example and listed some details, this article could be excessively controversial.

So let's pick Fabiola Gianotti. An article about her - a discoverer of the Higgs boson - started this whole story. Is she an example of the discrimination against women?

I think she is a very good physicist, articles about her on this blog are universally positive (including comments about her wise choice of fonts, Comic Sans), but we should still notice that ATLAS is not the only major detector at the LHC.

There is also CMS - a detector surrounded by a collaboration that Tommaso Dorigo belongs to - and the CMS has discovered the Higgs boson, too. It was done in the same channels, at the same time, pretty much at the same confidence level (up to differences that were clearly due to chance). The spokesman for CMS is male and American, Joe Incandela of Santa Barbara.

In many situations in real life, one may compare "analogous situations" to see that women are surely not discriminated against, quite on the contrary. But non-experts may fail to understand which situations are really analogous to each other and which situations are not. Outsiders just can't determine whether two physicists are equally good or not.

However, almost by construction, we have a situation in which it may be done almost rigorously. Sociologically speaking, there is an almost perfect \(\ZZ_2\) symmetry between ATLAS and CMS - and their discoveries of the Higgs boson. Fine, who was in advantage in the wake of the discovery of the Higgs boson? Joe Incandela's description of the situation was arguably more clearly organized and more comprehensible - which is partly due to his being a native speaker.

When you look at the "Person of the Year" contest itself, you will find Ms Fabiola Gianotti but you will not find Mr Joe Incandela. The symmetry has been broken and it has been broken in the opposite direction than one you would hear from the dishonest promoters of the PC propaganda, right?

Just to be sure that we're not talking just about some perception of editors of non-scientific magazines, there's a difference in the funding, too. A recent Milner bonus prize gave some money to the experimenters in particle physics, too. How did the current spokespeople do?

Well, Ms Gianotti received $500,000 while Mr Incandela only received $250,000. Which number is larger? What is the ratio? Is it substantial? Is it meritocratically justifiable? Of course, by looking at the structure of the winners, one may find an "excuse" why Incandela got less money than Gianotti: three more spokespeople shared a million with him while Gianotti has only shared a million with one additional person.

But this would be a truly lame excuse because the current spokespersons have nothing to do with the number and composition of the past spokespersons. There is a symmetry between their work. A more natural distribution would give 1/6 of those $2 million to the six people. But it didn't happen. Why? Easy. I think that Yuri Milner is a meritocrat but he - or his advisers - just had to give a factor-of-two advantage to a visible enough woman in order to improve their image in the broader scientific/leftist community where the dishonest PC Nazis have accumulated a huge power.

I could give you tons of similar examples but the symmetry or asymmetry between the men and women in the story would be far less obvious to the outsiders so they wouldn't be as convincing and indisputable as this particular example.

Now, Ms Hossenfelder argues that some people working in the Academia (not necessarily scientists) heard her last name and talked as if they thought she was male. Well, it was their guess because it's far more likely that a random theoretical physicist is male and ordinary people simply use sentences with "he" or "she" and they have to decide.

In the U.S., I have met almost no one among these people who would pronounce my name correctly at all and I have never complained. In fact, I would have wanted too much if I expected the Americans to correctly guess whether Luboš is a male or female name. ;-)

Ms Hossenfelder would do better in the Czech Republic because almost all surnames are nontrivially feminized. Her name would be Sabine (or Sabina, if truly Czech) Hossenfelderová. This is not a joke: this is how a book or article about her would really write down her name as long as it would respect the rules of grammar. The ending -ová produces a feminine adjective related to the original male name, Hossenfelder. When her name would be pronounced by Czechs in the proper form, Ms/pí Hossenfelderová, everyone would know it's "she". But I am afraid that in Czechia, she would also complain - namely about her name's having a different, derived form! ;-)

(Incidentally, -ová is one of the numerous possible feminine suffixes. We use the flexibility of the language and the diversity at many places, for example in chemistry where they distinguish the oxidation number. So -ová also appears in "kyselina sírová" which is "sulfuric acid" and denotes the oxidation number six; "síra" is "sulfur". Kids learn the suffixes for oxidation numbers between one and eight as -ný, -natý, -itý, -ičitý, -ičný/-ečný, -ový, -istý, -ičelý. The masculine letter "-ý" may be replaced by the feminine "-á". It's kind of clever and poetic.)

But at any rate, janitors' guess that Hossenfelder is a man isn't a discrimination. On the other hand, keeping someone whose latest 10 papers are absolutely and entirely wrong, nonsensical, and absurd in the system for many and many years is an example of reverse discrimination.

Incidentally, their comments about the need to take care of children are inappropriate, too. A woman may play the more important and less avoidable role in the care about children and it's important and the society may appreciate it. But if that's the key activity that a woman is doing well, she should be getting some special money for her being a mother - and not for her being a physicist. In the same way, a day care center is something else than a physics department. Be sure that some people confuse these two things deliberately because a physicist's salary is still significantly larger than some social aid that mothers may be receiving. But one simply shouldn't confuse these two activities.

Please, feminist demagogues, be ashamed, be very ashamed. You must know very well that the claims about the discrimination against women are just malicious lies but you use them nevertheless to elevate your status and the status of your political ideas/delusions/lies.

22
Oral sex 'assassination plot': Woman accused of putting poison in her privates in bid to kill husband

28 Jan 2013 14:25

Brazilian wife accused of planting toxic substance on her genitals before luring her husband to bed.



A woman is being sued by her husband for allegedly trying to kill him by putting poison in her genitals and then asking him to perform oral sex.

The Brazilian wife is accused of planting a toxic substance on her genitals before luring her husband to bed.

Reports in the South American country suggest he was ready and willing, and only escaped death because he noticed a strange smell.

The curious husband then took his wife to hospital in Sao Jose do Rito Preto to find out the cause of the unusual odour.

The alleged attempt on his life was exposed when tests on his wife discovered traces of a poisonous substance down below.

23
Main / SYG RSS Feed
Jan 27, 2013, 08:04 AM
I accidentally discovered that SYG board has an RSS feed.

For those who do not know what it is:

It adds to your browser an icon or bookmark where you can find the latest additions to the board. I find it very useful.

24
Main / Someone special on your mind?
Jan 21, 2013, 11:29 AM

Someone who deserves special attention?
Someone you cannot get out of your mind?
Needs a nudge in the right direction?

Difficulties finding the perfect gift?
You have no time on inclination to handle serious stuff?


Here is the perfect gift service!

Who could be the lucky one?
25
What Really Happens When Women Earn More
16 Jan

by Megan Basham


"Men Still Don't Like It When Their Wives Out-Earn Them," "When Women Dare to Out-Earn Men," "Successful Wives Still Make Men Uncomfortable," "Our Gender Roles Still Stuck in the 50s."

These headlines, blaring from Slate, The Economist, The Huffington Post, and The Miami Herald, respectively, all refer to a recent study that analyzes marriage trends and women's earnings. And true to the long-established media meme, they all suggest (or flat out state) that men bitterly resent successful women and are always on the lookout for ways to punish the ladies who've climbed past them on the career ladder.

Here are the study's actual findings:

    Regions where women have higher earnings relative to men see lower marriage rates.
    Marriages in which the wife is the higher-earning spouse tend to be less happy and are 50 percent more likely to end in divorce.
    In a significant number of marriages where husbands are the primary breadwinners the wives would be the higher earning spouse if they were living up to their full income potential based on their education, field, and work history. Instead these women are underemployed or have left the workforce.
    Higher-earning wives spend more time doing house work than their lower-earning counterparts.

That's it.  At no point do the economists provide any evidence that male prejudice or chauvinism is the cause of any of it. They speculate that it could be the cause, but offer no factual support for the speculation. In fact they baldly state they made no attempt to discover whether its women or men who are unhappy with women earning more. And curiously, they don't even acknowledge that women's preferences could be the driving factor of their results.

Yet the angle of every major outlet to cover the study is that men are retrograde cavemen who must be to blame if their wives earn less than they do.

"In the absence of any male insecurities about their spouse's pay, there should be about the same number of families in which the wife earns a little more than her husband as those in which she earns a little less," writes Slate's Ray Fismin.

Really? Male insecurities are the only plausible reason there aren't an equal number of families where the wife earns more? Likewise, The Economist says the study shows that the "the wage of the husband" is an overlooked glass ceiling "constraining women's careers." And Forbes contributor Emily Jasper wonders whether her "dating pool might be significantly diminished," because of men feeling threatened by her salary.

I would ask readers what personal experience tells them is more common--men who are unwilling to date women who earn a good living (women who are often attractive thanks to the gym memberships, pricey hairstyles, expensive makeup, and flattering clothes they can afford), or women who are averse to dating and/or marrying below their pay grade?

When he was still single and in residency, a cardiologist friend of mine was as likely to ask out the girl behind the McDonald's counter as he was a fellow doctor. He wasn't unusual in this.  Yet while my highly successful women friends might admire the view of an attractive cashier, I've never known any of them to pursue a relationship with one. If the male office assistant isn't asking out the female vice president, chances are it's because he knows he's likely to get shot down, not because he's a sexist.

I'll be blunt. Most women I know would still prefer to pair up with a man who is their professional and financial equal if not superior. And most would still choose to delay marriage in hopes of landing the illusive Mr. Big rather than settle for the cute (and increasingly common) slacker next door.  Conversely, most single men I know couldn't care less how much a woman makes provided she's good-looking and fun to be around.

As for the housework thing, maybe (and it's a big maybe), as the study's authors suggest, breadwinning wives do more housework as a silent apology for defying gender norms. Or maybe they do more housework for the same reason they earn more--because they're willing to put in longer hours if gets them better results.

But none of this begins to touch the most glaring gender reality the researchers and reporters ignore: Babies!  Nowhere in the study or in any of the stories about it does anyone mention the immense power a child has to reorganize a woman's priorities. Nowhere do they consider that new mothers might discover that they're suddenly as ambitious to raise happy, healthy, successful children as they once were to be professionally successful themselves. As Barnard President Deborah Spar wrote last year, "having babies imposes consequences that cannot, and should not, be denied."

Maybe these wives who cut back their working hours or step out of the workforce entirely aren't bowing to the egos of their Neanderthal husbands, maybe their responding to some other, more all-consuming impulse.

Whatever career ambitions I had before my daughter was born faded immeasurably in the light of her drooling, burbling little face. They didn't disappear, but they began to feel like something that could wait. And they are. I am now one of those women who isn't living up to her full income potential, who works in the nooks and crannies of life at home with kids.  In the meantime, the gap between husband's income and mine continues to grow as he strives to pick up the slack and provide financially for us. What a creep.
26
Main / What Childbirth Is Really Like
Jan 18, 2013, 01:52 PM
What Childbirth Is Really Like

by Gavin McInnes

January 18, 2013


I watched the birth of my third child this week and it's amazing how quickly you forget the bad parts. I understand why. We probably wouldn't be here if we didn't immediately forget how difficult childbirth is. I'm still at the part before your mind wipes everything clean and I'm writing this down so the rest of us can retain these memories forever. I hope I'm not inadvertently ending the human race.

It all started nine months ago when my wife was interested in intercourse. I can remember which session made this baby. It was April 16th. I had already given up on getting laid that night and had pleasured myself at the computer. A couple of hours later, out of nowhere, I was presented with the option. Refusing sex during marriage is like a government program saying they need less funding--if you refuse funding, you'll never get it again. So I lay back and thought of England as she ravaged my body as if I was a common street whore.
"It ain't as easy as you remember."

A couple of months later came the news. We were having another baby. Things were OK at first but before long, my spouse became increasingly moody and overweight. About six months in, she started to show signs of obesity and things got more uncomfortable until the very end when she became downright huge.

The final stretch of a pregnancy is beyond difficult. First of all, you can't go out. Labor can happen any moment during the last month so if your friends are going on a ski trip, bid them adieu. You can't even go to a bar because being drunk when your wife is in labor has this huge stigma around it. The same goes for drinking at home. This means the final days are devoted to being completely sober and dealing with someone who is not acting like herself and not looking like herself. Sex is out, too. I'd never call what started this whole thing "rape," but I had no choice in the matter and the way things have been going these past few months, you'd think my government program asked to be cut off completely.

When she FINALLY began labor on Saturday night I had been to a bar with some friends and was tired as hell. Her contractions began at 2 in the morning and she only let me sleep until 5, when I was awakened by these extremely disturbing guttural sounds. Not only was I tired and a little hungover, but I had to stare at a spouse who looked like she was doing the dip on a roller coaster every five minutes. Thanks, God!

The trip to the hospital had me flustered. I was in such a rush I left my wallet in my other pants. This meant no money for the car service, which led to a snippy "GET IT OUT OF MY FUCKING WALLET, THEN" from my wife that nearly made me cry.

The labor was what it has been every time for me: horrible. In the movies when Lex Luthor wants to torture Superman, he doesn't punch the Man of Steel or take it up with him personally. He gets Lois Lane into some kind of contraption that's going to kill her. That's the only time you see the hero break down. The same thing happens in the delivery room. You're watching your loved one get tortured and there's nothing you can do about it. The contractions keep coming and the more she suffers, the less you can do to help. It's painful.

At the very end of the birthing process, your wife will start screaming so hard, it hurts. I would have plugged my ears to protect them but she was squeezing my hand so ferociously, I could not pull it away. On the very last push, as my baby came out of her, she screamed and tightened her grip on my hand so hard, her nail punctured the skin on my index finger. It wasn't a dent. It was an actual puncture wound that drew blood. As I write this it's been three days since the incident and you can still see the mark. Come to think of it, there are other marks around it that look similar. Apparently this has happened before. Too bad I didn't write it down or tell anyone.

I was ecstatic about seeing my new baby boy and even happier to see he was in good health, but I didn't let my instincts erase all the hard work that had brought him here. That night in the hospital as my wife was lying back on a custom-made bed that reclined at her every whim, I was forced to sleep in a chair, still weak from the previous night's partying. I had been coasting on six hours' sleep but every time I started to crash, the nurse would come barging in to do some kind of test on my wife. If hospital workers weren't pestering me, I was sent on errands to get ibuprofen or "something to drink" or a dozen other cravings. For the second night in a row I was subsisting on six hours of sleep. This probably happened with my previous kids and I'd blocked it out.

We're back home now but things are far from normal. I am expected to be a nurse to my recovering wife, a nanny to our newborn, and a fun dad for the other kids. Sex is still totally out of the question, as is meeting my friends who are constantly calling and asking about beer. At night, I'm constantly awakened by a baby screaming and then a wife gasping in pain as it suckles on her aching nipples.

Evolution wants me to forget all this and look with only fond memories at my boy when he's two. This is why I feel compelled to create this time capsule and document what really happens. This is the truth--bold and new with absolutely nothing stretched. It ain't as easy as you remember.
27
... and some crackpots in the discussion section.

http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2012/09/25/why-im-worried-about-raising-a-son-in-our-upcoming-brave-new-world-of-android-prostitution/?singlepage=true

Ah, the evil in sexuality - especially male.

One may ask where these people think they came from. Maybe one can follow a hint by Gustave Courbet in his L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World).

29
Main / Firearms
Dec 24, 2012, 12:20 AM

High-powered, militarily useful weapons are the point of the Second Amendment.


by
Bob Owens




The brutal murders of 20 schoolchildren and six adults in Newtown, CT, stunned the world last week. A mentally ill young man apparently discovered that his long-suffering mother was going to attempt to have him committed to a psychiatric facility; he took out his rage upon her and then his former elementary school's faculty, staff, and students.

It was senseless. It was barbaric. As parents, it is difficult for us to cope with the thought of having our youngest beloved ripped from us by any method, much less something as abhorrent as intentional, callous murder. No decent person could feel anything but anguish for their loss.

As Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel warned us, however, there is a mentality among the opportunistic political class that demands they "never let a serious crisis go to waste."

While America recoiled, media vultures first pounced upon the survivors while they were still in shock. Since then, they have attacked America's lawful gun owners, of which there are roughly 100 million.

We've heard calls for "gun control" in recent days, including specific demands for a ban on so-called "assault weapons." Detractors question the need for weapons "designed for war" whose "only purpose is to kill"; they insist that you "don't need an assault rifle" for hunting deer.

This is ignorance, and further, completely misses the point. To cite something I wrote earlier in the week:

    The Second Amendment was not written to protect firearms designed for the taking of game, nor firearms designed for sport or individual personal defense, except that such a purpose proves to be militarily useful.

    The explicit purpose that the Second Amendment was written was so that civilians that comprised the militia and alarm list would be armed with military-capable arms to depose would-be tyrants.

I'd amend that slightly to more accurately reflect that the intention was to arm citizens with contemporary arms of military utility. To assert that the right applied merely to flintlock muskets suggests that human rights are superseded by advances in technology, which is on its face a preposterous statement. Could anyone rationally argue that freedom of speech does not apply to modern forms of communication?

The Second Amendment was written to ensure citizens had contemporary rifles of military utility, and no single rifle more accurately fits that description today than AR-15 rifles patterned after the M-16 rifle and M-4 carbine that have been the U.S. military standard for half a century.

If Americans are interested in adhering to the Founders' intentions for a "well-regulated militia" as envisioned, it is our duty not to just own firearms (with exceptions made for religious, mental, and physical limitations), but to own AR-15 rifles and accessories and to train with them to an agreed upon standard of competency. This competency (and proficiency) is what the Founders meant by the term "well-regulated," which in the English of the day meant "smoothly functioning."

An unorganized militia's military efficiency can be measured a number of ways, but the most easy and logical to measure is to require a certain minimal level of equipment and to judge proficiency with military-capable firearms.

As previous militias were required to maintain a minimal level of stores, a modern contemporary militia would want to be equipped with the following:

    an AR-15 rifle or carbine, with iron sights or optics
    at least four but preferably seven or more 30-round magazines
    a chest rig or bandolier for carrying loaded magazines
    a constantly maintained reserve of 1,000 rounds of full-metal jacket (FMJ) ammunition for training and service use if called upon
    appropriate seasonal clothing
    a first aid kit (preferably an individual first aid kid, or IFAK)
    food, water, and temporary shelter for three days

The traditional way to measure weapons proficiency is a marksmanship test such as the Army Rifle Qualification Test or the Marine Rifle Qualification Test. A variant of this test commonly used today is the 25-meter Army Qualification Test (AQT) as administered during Project Appleseed events, which itself is based upon World War I riflemanship standards (disclosure -- the author is an Appleseed instructor) but adapted and scaled to fit a 25-meter range.

Ideally, citizens should be able to use AR-15s or comparable arms to demonstrate proficiency at 100 yards, 200 yards, 300 yards, and 400 yards either on the scaled 25-meter range or, where available, an actual known distance (KD) range. Such training does not constitute violations of the law in regards to the establishment of private militias, yet still ensures a level of firearms proficiency among the general population that serves the deterrent effect the Founders intended: to dissuade the undermining of the republic by enemies "foreign and domestic." The thought of engaging a nation with tens of millions of self-equipped riflemen capable of decimating government forces from nearly a quarter-mile away is chilling to any would-be tyrant.

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is the last line of defense against tyranny and, far from being a colonial relic, was most recently used in 1946 in several areas as returning GIs took on tyrannical local government machines. The most significant of these, the "McMinn County War," saw young veterans home from World War II depose a corrupt and tyrannical government using military arms.

Eleanor Roosevelt wrote at the time of this morally required insurrection:

    We in the U.S.A., who have long boasted that, in our political life, freedom in the use of the secret ballot made it possible for us to register the will of the people without the use of force, have had a rude awakening as we read of conditions in McMinn County, Tennessee, which brought about the use of force in the recent primary. If a political machine does not allow the people free expression, then freedom-loving people lose their faith in the machinery under which their government functions.

    In this particular case, a group of young veterans organized to oust the local machine and elect their own slate in the primary. We may deplore the use of force but we must also recognize the lesson which this incident points for us all. When the majority of the people know what they want, they will obtain it.

    Any local, state or national government, or any political machine, in order to live, must give the people assurance that they can express their will freely and that their votes will be counted. The most powerful machine cannot exist without the support of the people. Political bosses and political machinery can be good, but the minute they cease to express the will of the people, their days are numbered.

    This is a lesson which wise political leaders learn young, and you can be pretty sure that, when a boss stays in power, he gives the majority of the people what they think they want. If he is bad and indulges in practices which are dishonest, or if he acts for his own interests alone, the people are unwilling to condone these practices.

    When the people decide that conditions in their town, county, state or country must change, they will change them. If the leadership has been wise, they will be able to do it peacefully through a secret ballot which is honestly counted, but if the leader has become inflated and too sure of his own importance, he may bring about the kind of action which was taken in Tennessee.

A former first lady of the United States condoned insurrection to restore constitutional law, and against corrupt local representatives of her own Democratic Party. She knew a history uncorrupted by modern-day revisionism.

In the days after April 19, 1775, Founding Father Samuel Adams trod the road between Lexington and Concord at the carnage wrought when British General Thomas Gage triggered the American Revolutionary War while attempting to impose gun control on the Colonials. Surveying the burned-out buildings, bloody lanes, shot-pocked walls, and bodies awaiting burial, he remarked:

    If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

Now is not a time for those whom Thomas Paine labeled "sunshine patriots." The republic will stand or fall based upon whether its citizens choose to defend the Constitution. Let us pray that all Americans realize the stakes in play, and act with calm restraint.

30
Spot the oppression: International Mathematical Olympiad.

Where is the International Special Mathematics Olympiad?
31
Main / Ion Mihai Pacepa
Dec 20, 2012, 04:51 PM
Communist Defector Speaks Out on America's Marxist Future

Cliff Kincaid  --   June 12, 2012


A top communist defector is warning of an unprecedented "alliance" between the Democratic Party and the Communist Party, reflected in the CPUSA's endorsement of Barack Obama for president in 2008 and the party's continued support for Democratic Party policies. But is this warning going to be too hot to handle for the media? And the Republicans?

Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest-ranking official ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc, says in an article for PJMedia that any doubt that the Democratic and the Communist parties had secretly joined forces was erased in 2009, "when Van Jones, part of a left fringe of declared communists, became the White House's green jobs czar."

Obama aide Valerie Jarrett had disclosed at a left-wing bloggers convention that "we," apparently referring to herself and President Obama, had hired Jones for the job. However, Jones was fired when an outcry developed over his communist background, and the media quickly dropped any probes into Jones' White House contacts.

Pacepa, who served as a top aide in the Romanian communist regime, tells Accuracy in Media, "The Democratic Party has become dangerously infected with the Marxism virus. I recognize the symptoms because I once lived through them, and I believe it is my obligation as an American citizen to help the conservative movement to prevent any further spread of Marxism in my adopted country."

He adds that he is personally convinced that Obama is a Marxist.

His 1987 book, Red Horizons, exposed the nature of the Romanian Nicolae Ceausescu regime as well as "communist influence operations" directed against the U.S. and other Western nations. The contents of his book were broadcast into Romania on Radio Free Europe and credited with inspiring the counterrevolution that brought down the regime and the execution of Ceausescu.

Although he has written over the years for such publications as The Wall Street Journal, the American Spectator and National Review, his column in PJMedia represents the first time he has warned publicly that international Marxism has assumed a major influence over the Democratic Party. His second column for PJMedia examines appeasement policies by various Democratic administrations.

The issue of communist influence in the Democratic Party has already been on display this year, as blogger Jeremy Segal filmed Democratic Rep. Danny K. Davis, an old ally of Barack Obama in the socialist New Party, accepting an award in Chicago from the CPUSA. I brought this to the attention of Steve Chapman, a "conservative" columnist for the Chicago Tribune, who had attacked Rep. Allen West as crazy for discussing communist infiltration of the Democratic Party. I provided Segal's video of the awards ceremony to him directly and yet Chapman remains silent.

Columnist Wes Vernon commented, "Since Chicago is the neighborhood of Chapman's newspaper, one would think he could easily access (right under his nose) the goings-on of a local congressman's award possibly just a stroll down the street from the Tribune Building."

Instead, Chapman has now written a column for the conservative website Townhall mocking conservatives who resist the encroachment of Islamic law, also known as Sharia, in the U.S. legal system.  Chapman's column ran under the headline, "The Bogus Threat from Shariah Law."

When alleged "conservatives" like Chapman refuse to take the problems of communism and radical Islam seriously, you know the liberal media will resist covering these matters. And that is why Ion Mihai Pacepa's warning, based on decades of experience in analyzing communist influence operations and infiltration of the West, will be deliberately ignored.

Some conservatives are so desperate for any coverage critical of Obama that they jumped on his gaffe that the private sector is "doing fine," as if this will enlighten the American people about the real agenda of the President. Mitt Romney's campaign was quick to produce a TV ad based on the gaffe, generating some media attention, but don't count on the Republicans to exploit the comments of Ion Mihai Pacepa. The cries of "McCarthyism" would fill the air. All of this means that the GOP presidential campaign will avoid addressing his key charge that the U.S. has a Marxist president and that he is pursuing a socialist agenda.

The Republicans, some of whom were also behind John McCain's lackluster 2008 campaign, recoil even when they are handed a campaign issue on a silver platter--such as Obama's lying about his past association with and membership in the Marxist-led New Party in Chicago. They want to stay above the fray, even as the Obama campaign demonizes the word "capitalist" and insists nonsensically that creating government jobs is the proper way to help the private economy.

But Pacepa speaks out, saying that, in addition to the White House hiring Van Jones, he saw the Marxist agenda at work in the agenda of the White House and the Democrat-controlled Congress during Obama's first two years, when they "began dutifully following in Marx's footsteps by redistributing our country's wealth and putting under government control a part of its health care, banking system, and automobile industry." His observation is this regard is not unique, but Pacepa goes further, citing evidence of how planks in the Communist Manifesto parallel the Obama legislative agenda. Yet, Romney doesn't want to call Obama a socialist because of what the liberal media will say about the charge.

"Marxism is a malignant tumor on the body of any country," Pacepa writes, highlighting the stakes involved in the presidential campaign. "This is another thing I learned during my years at the top of Marxist Romania. Marxism, like any cancer, works silently--you can feel it only after it has spread throughout the whole body, and then it is usually too late."

Internationally, the warning signs also get ignored. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which includes Russia and China, just completed a major conference in Beijing and issued a statement denouncing plans for a U.S. missile defense and proposed military action against the regimes in Damascus and Tehran. Obama seems prepared to accommodate our adversaries on all fronts, although he has told the Russians that he can't go all-out on their behalf until after he is re-elected.

The final statement from the SCO conference honors the United Nations Charter "as well as the basic norms governing international relations"--remarks that could have come from Obama's State Department or Obama himself.

The SCO campaign to block Western attempts to undermine the Iranian and Syrian regimes represents what the Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin calls a "world geopolitical swing," as the United States fades in influence under Obama. Yet, the media talk about an Obama "gaffe" and conservatives wonder if Romney can reduce the gender gap.

The issues are big and stark, and Pacepa knows it. He cites evidence for his charges about an alliance between the Democratic Party and the Communist Party USA in the statements of Joelle Fishman, a political operative in the CPUSA based in Connecticut. This writer interviewed Fishman, who runs the CPUSA Political Action Commission, at last year's Take Back the American Dream Conference in Washington D.C., featuring Van Jones. She is a strong supporter of Barack Obama and personally campaigned for him.

On Monday, June 18, in Washington, D.C., Van Jones will be speaking at the next Campaign for America's Future conference on a panel that includes MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry. The topic: "Winning in November--So We Can Win in December and Beyond." No surprise here. MSNBC is at the service of the Obama Administration and doesn't hold back at all, even making its TV stars available for partisan conferences.

What is interesting about Fishman, the communist daughter-in-law of Soviet spy Victor Perlo, is that she works with "progressive" Democrats and has a very close personal relationship with high ranking Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus who serves in the Democratic leadership as co-chair of the Steering and Policy Committee. A photo dubbed "The Kiss" shows DeLauro embracing Fishman.

Fishman and DeLauro appeared together on the host committee letterhead for a birthday celebration in honor of long-time CPUSA official Alfred L. Marder. DeLauro used the Congressional Record on March 20, 2012, to praise Marder, whose "New Haven Peoples Center" recently tried to obtain $300,000 in state money. Zachary Janowski, an investigative reporter for the Yankee Institute, covered this controversy in detail on his "Raising Hale" blog and was instrumental in creating public pressure against the grant.

DeLauro described Marder as "an institution in our community" and "perhaps best known for his work to promote peace, social justice, worker's rights and equality." DeLauro added, "His commitment to these issues is unwavering--regardless of controversy, he always stands firm in his fight to protect human rights."

"During the McCarthy era," DeLauro went on to say, "Al was one of those singled out for proudly sharing his thoughts and ideas. Standing firm in his support of civil liberties and the right of every American to freely express themselves, Al discovered his passion for civil and workers rights--two issues to which he has dedicated a lifetime of advocacy."

In addition to being active for decades in the CPUSA, Marder was president of the U.S. Peace Council and a member and official of the World Peace Council, both of them international communist front organizations. DeLauro, of course, didn't mention that.

The good news is that citizens of Connecticut are waking up. Veterans and local political leaders protested against the proposed state grant money for the communist headquarters. They got the money withdrawn. But the communists will be back. They never give up.

But while the state money has been withdrawn, at least temporarily, Zachary Janowski reports that the Board of Aldermen of New Haven, Connecticut, voted to allocate $25,000 in federal funds to the facility. The $25,000 in federal funds is from a Community Development Block Grant, a program of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It is apparently part of the Obama "jobs" program.
32
Saturday, 15 December 2012
Training courses to fill-in forms... the end stage of civilization


The end stage of our civilization is upon us: it has arrived.

I realized this when I had failed to write enough on a complex and apparently-meaningless form, and was told that the organization has helpfully laid-on a seminar about how to fill-in this particular form.

It is little things that tell us most about the big picture.

*

The micro-incident provoked a slow-burn double-take on the state of things - how did we get to this situation?

An illuminating comparison comes from the process for applying for research grants - there have been not just seminars but whole courses on how to complete research grant forms for a long time, twenty five years or more.

And why were research grant the first place for training in form-filling?

Simple. Because the process of science had became dishonest; in fact, in the UK, science was dishonest before dishonesty had permeated the large bureaucracies.

*

Think about it: when a form is honestly trying to get some necessary information, and when the person completing the form is honestly trying to communicate - then it is trivially easy to complete a form.

But when people began to be evaluated on their research funding, when salaries depended on it, when winning the research grant became more more important than any discovery which might be enabled by it... then began an arms race of dishonest complexification of forms.

So dishonest form-fillers operating in a system which rewards successful dishonesty - this is one source of the problem of complex forms.

Long, complex, forms in which the same question is asked in multiple different ways, are de facto mini-audits - designed to elicit contradictions and reveal wrong-doing on the part of the form filler. 

*

It became usual for forms in large bureaucracies to ask for what could not honestly be supplied, for organizational propaganda purposes and to provide a dishonest and on-paper response to external control and regulation.

The form-fillers had to be induced to provide propaganda fuel as if it was information - thus the need for courses to induce people to fill in forms such that they could support organizational claims.

For instance, if government requires that the organization engage in affirmative action or recycling, then the forms will include questions which require each individual employee to state how they are building affirmative action and recycling into all aspects of their work.

*

There are innumerable and fluidly-changing examples of such initiatives and imperatives, changing according to fashion and - sometimes being about Leftist ideals, sometimes trying to impress big business - and the rank and file are required to respond to these initiatives by generating the necessary lies to be deployed by management.

Management are thus freed from the necessity to generate lies, and escape from having to originate and assert specific lies - they simply create a structure which requires lies; then when dishonesty has been thoroughly permeated throughout the organization, and everybody is complicit (having literally signed-up to lies) then responsibility cannot be pinned on any specific person.

*

And management don't just shirk responsibility for lying, but benefit materially; because each initiative leaves behind an extra layer of administrative processes - of forms to be filled, processes to be processed.

This drives the familiar accretion of bureaucratic manpower and structures - each new 'initiative' 'requires' further coordination, and novel systems of inter-communication.

The possibilities for administrative expansion are, apparently, endless...

*

But what about a seminar to fill-in a form?

Since this whole process is a matter of lies built upon lies, the employees often need guidance and training in how to generate the necessary lies at ground-level; so that senior administration can collect, collate and process these lies for presentation to government and other external regulators.

So these ridiculous and ever expanding forms, full of vast numbers of questions that are apparently meaningless - are in fact the core business of bureaucratic modernity and its project of building society on the basis of Leftist lies.

*

That is why seminars are laid-on to fill in a form: because while wickedly dishonest in terms of real-reality - the truth about how things are; almost the whole of bureaucratic-reality is created by the data elicited by such forms.

And the dominant ideology of secular Leftism, is only real at the bureaucratic level: bureaucracy is the bottom line, bureaucracy is what upholds the whole edifice.

Rank-and-file lies, collected in these absurd forms, are the data upon which the whole thing depends.

*

Leftism cannot 'solve' the problem of society being killed by ever-expanding bureaucracy, because for Leftism bureaucracy is not the problem but reality itself.

The more bureaucracy, the stronger is Leftism.

A seminar to fill in a form - any form - is simply a training camp for Leftism. 

*

And that is why the tail is wagging the dog.

*
Posted by bgc at Saturday, December 15, 2012
3 comments:

Sylvie D. Rousseau said...

    This corresponds exactly to the description of the Kafkaesque mad-driving house from the movie "Les douze travaux d'Astérix" (The Twelve Tasks of Asterix).
    15 December 2012 20:09
JP said...

    At work I often have to go through an incomprehensible, laborious, and time consuming "process" in order to get the simplest thing done. What I want can be explained in three words... the people I want this from understand those words and could fulfill my need in a couple of minutes... but weeks later it is still not done because the process gnomes are not yet satisfied.
    15 December 2012 20:53
George Goerlich said...

    Public education itself is this expanded to various forms. Once a slightly intelligent youth figures out the key to "A" grades is simply parroting the teacher, and not trying to actually learn or think, it is no longer put any effort into the work. It is even rather pragmatic, as putting too much effort and thought into things could actually result in controversy and bad grades.

    Math and chemistry were different for me, but liberal arts were always a breeze.

    I'm not sure what those work entrance exams are supposed to do either. It seems to favor those who would lie and simply provide whatever the obvious "right" choice is.
    15 December 2012 21:03
33
Main / Media bias
Dec 16, 2012, 10:40 AM




34
Married Detroit judge allegedly slept with child-support plaintiff, let her help choose ex-husband's sentence [VIDEO]
11:24 PM 12/08/2012

A Wayne County, Michigan Circuit Court judge is on administrative leave following a report that he impregnated a woman who was a plaintiff in a child-support case before him, and allowed her to help choose the sentence he would impose on her ex-husband.

WJBK Fox-TV2 in Detroit reported that Judge Wade McCree Jr. carried on a lengthy affair with Geniene La'Shay Mott, who sued her ex-husband for child support, after the case was concluded.

"It went from being a summer fling and just something to do to falling in love, promises of marriage, me getting pregnant, us buying a house together, name it," Mott told WJBK-TV.

McCree, who specialized in sex misconduct cases, made headlines in April for "sexting" a shirtless photo of himself to a female co-worker. When WJBK-TV confronted him with the picture then, he replied, "Hot dog! Yup, that's me." (RELATED: Detroit judge sexts nearly nude picture to court bailiff, says "I've got no shame in my game")

Mott said Thursday that she is pregnant and McCree is the father. She also claimed she and the judge "have sex in his chambers very often. ... On his desk, in the chair, the couch, you name it."

She showed WJBK-TV hundreds of text messages the two exchanged, including one in which the judge seemed to acknowledge the ethical line he was crossing.

"My Judicial Tenure Commission has me nervous, as you might expect," McCree wrote in one. "I have to be real careful until this matter is put to rest...  you are the complaining witness on a case that is before me."

"Naturally if it got out that we were seeing each other before your B.D.'s [baby daddy] case closed, everybody could be in deep (expletive).  Why you want to spend time with a man like me remains a mystery, but if you'll have me... then as Bill Withers said, 'use me up!' SMOOCHES."

According to the Detroit TV news report, Mott had a check McCree wrote from his dead mother's estate to help her pay for a house for the two to share. She also had text messages in which McCree plotted with her on the sentence he would later impose on her ex-husband for failing to pay child support.

"OK, SO LET'S GO WITH WHAT YOU PROPOSED... GO 2 JAIL (150 DAYS), RELEASE UPON PAYMENT OF $1,500," the text message read.

"OR, GET A TETHER & BRING BACK W/N 30 DAYS $2500 OR SERVE 9 MONTHS!  BONUS: PAY W/N 30 DAYS, REMOVE TETHER.  NOW BACK 2 US... WHAT ARE WE DOIN AFTER COURT THURSDAY???"

Mott said that after the sentencing, she went back to McCree's judicial chambers and had sex with him.

The relationship reportedly came to light after Mott told McCree she was pregnant.

The judge had filed for divorce from his wife on Oct. 11, but she found out about the baby -- and reportedly wouldn't grant the divorce unless Mott aborted her pregnancy.

When Mott refused, WJBK-TV reports, McCree got cold feet. His divorce case was dismissed Nov. 28. Then he reported to the Wayne County, Mich. prosecutor that Mott was stalking and extorting him.

WJBK-TV reporter Charlie Duff showed the text messages to Mott's ex-husband, Robert King.

"He's basically listening to her to set me up, I mean a set up," King said. "I can't believe this, man.  This is my life right here.  They're playing with my life."

"And she's pregnant?  Wow.  What, he's going to be put on child support?  Wow."

Watch:
35
Main / 7 Mistakes Women Make with Men
Dec 13, 2012, 02:05 PM
7 Mistakes Women Make with Men

...

There is also an unhappier possibility. If you can't find a "good guy," maybe you're making the same mistake that men do when they want a woman who "likes me for ME!" Translation: He wants a supermodel who likes him despite the fact he's boring and unattractive. If all else fails, it's always worth asking if the man of your dreams came along tomorrow and wanted to date, would you be the kind of woman he'd want to date?

...



Why can't I find a good man? Wait, it couldn't be something I'm doing wrong, could it?
37
New Labor Candidate Opposes Double Beds
Journalist Merav Michaeli, known for exposing herself indecently on television, wants to be an MK.
By Gil Ronen
First Publish: 10/30/2012, 1:01 PM



The latest in a long line of journalists to join politics in Israel is Merav Michaeli, a well known television and radio personality, who is famous for her radical neo-Marxist views on gender issues. Among other things, Michaeli opposes double beds, and not out of Halakhic considerations of purity. She announced Tuesday that she will vie for a spot on Labor's Knesset list.

Michaeli writes opinion pieces in radical left wing newspaper Haaretz. Her latest column, "Forced Couplehood," begins with a cite from French magazine Le Monde, according to which more and more people are buying 160-cm. wide double mattresses instead of 140-mm. wide ones. French doctors explained, she said, that people move around and snore in their sleep, and that sleeping in the same bed with another person is a completely unnatural habit.

Michaeli goes on to say that the marital double bed is an invention of the Church, which uses it to control procreation, and that this control is perpetuated by modern secular society. She goes on to explain that the heterosexuality, which encourages men and women to sleep together in the same bed, is a political institution through which men control and exploit women.

Michaeli has, in the past, exposed herself indecently while presenting a news show, in protest of some perceived injustice against women. She is also notorious for her habit of eating with her hands instead of using knives and forks.

Michaeli is the granddaughter of Rudolf Kastner, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant and Israeli government official who was accused of striking a deal with the senior Nazi official Adolf Eichmann to allow 1,685 affluent Jews to escape persecution, while failing to warn others that their resettlement was in fact deportation to the gas chambers. He also gave positive character references after the war for SS officer Kurt Becher, thus allowing Becher to escape prosecution for war crimes.

After an official defamation lawsuit was filed against a writer who accused Kastner of being a traitor, a court ruled in 1955 that Kastner had indeed, in the words of Judge Benjamin Halevi, "sold his soul to the devil."

The Supreme Court of Israel overturned most of the judgment in January 1958, stating that the lower court had "erred seriously," but not before Kastner had been assassinated.

Michaeli has come out strongly in defense of her grandfather.

According to Israeli media, she was, in the past, the romantic partner of Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy, who has been dubbed "the baron of the industry of lies" by Maariv.

38
Main / Electoral Fraud
Dec 01, 2012, 08:29 AM
What do you make of this?

Why the GOP won't challenge vote fraud
39
Swedish toymaker publishes 'gender-neutral' children's Christmas catalogue


Published: 25 November, 2012, 14:41

TAGS: EU, Human rights, Education



One of the largest toy chains in Sweden published a gender-neutral Christmas catalogue, which pictured boys playing with dolls and girls holding toy machine guns. The move has reignited a debate in Sweden over the proper place of gender roles.

Top Toy has produced children's Christmas catalogues in Denmark and Sweden for both Toys R Us and BR. Though the catalogues' page layouts are the same in both countries, the gender of the pictured kids is reversed in the Swedish edition.

"With the new gender thinking, there is nothing that is right or wrong. It's not a boy or a girl thing, it's a toy for children," Top Toy director of sales Jan Nyberg told TT news agency.

The Danish catalogue showed a boy wielding a toy machine gun, which was replaced by a girl in the Swedish version. The "Hello Kitty" page of the Swedish catalogue also replaced a girl with a boy, and a one girl's pink t-shirt was turned into light blue.



The move is a profound shift in strategy for Top Toy. In 2008, the company was criticized by Swedish advertising watchdog Reklamombudsmannen (RO) for encouraging outdated gender roles with catalogues that featured boys dressed as superheroes and girls as princesses.

Since then, Top Toy has modified its strategy based on RO's advice.

"We have produced the catalogues in a completely different way this year," Nyberg said. "For several years, we have found that the gender debate has grown so strong in the Swedish market that we... have had to adjust."



Sweden is the frontline for the gender debate.

Since 2008, the government has spent 110 million Swedish crowns ($16.3 million) on promoting gender equality in schools, including the introduction of laws requiring teachers to actively work to reverse gender stereotypes.

The country also proposed a new single gender-neutral pronoun - 'hen' - to replace 'he' and 'she' in order to minimize gender stereotyping.

In January 2012, children's author Jesper Lundqvist's release 'Kivi and Monster Dog,' a book that uses 'hen.' The move sparked debate in Sweden and worldwide about the proper place of gender roles.

Elise Claeson, a columnist and a former equality expert at the Swedish Confederation of Professions, claimed that the use of the word hen is an example of notions of gender equality going too far.

Claeson argues that mixed messages about their gender can be harmful for kids: "It is important to have your gender confirmed to you as a child. This does not limit children; it makes them confident about their identity," she told the Christian Science Monitor.

Reader comments: (Russkie pitying and worried)

Awaken (unregistered) November 26, 2012, 02:16

Not to sound "bronco", but I simply can't accept boys playing with dolls as natural. I am too old school for this. Sorry...


Brasivnika November 26, 2012, 02:15

This is awful. This despicable act of cultural destruction is leading to the weakening of Sweden. You know what happens when a nation loses its culture and identity, when it tries to undo the laws of nature? It falls!

Sweden is on route to national suicide...whoever produces such filth should be tried and convicted for being a national enemy.




See also:
  http://standyourground.com/forums/index.php?topic=21428.msg231057#msg231057
  http://standyourground.com/forums/index.php?topic=21428.msg231068#msg231068
40
Main / A woman rapes
Nov 25, 2012, 02:33 AM

Can womanit commit rape?



See also:
  http://standyourground.com/forums/index.php?topic=16178.0