Misandry — the hatred of men — has been a staple of my polemical writing for more than fifteen years. I felt a special obligation to hammer away at gender myths such as intimate partner violence (women are about as likely as men to initiate violence against their partners as men), false sexual allegations (a disturbing percentage of such allegations) and demonstrable bias against fathers in family court, because male journalists who dared to write sympathetically about men and/or critically about women put their careers in jeopardy (no exaggeration), and most had learned to keep shtumm in this domain.

That situation has been changing slowly but steadily. Some men have decided they aren't going to spend their lives in rhetorical purdah on the subject of their own cultural dhimmitude, and have been stepping up to the plate, whatever the personal cost. The university campus is home to the feminist commissariat — and it's a brave man who dares to stick his head above that formidable parapet. Because the cost of doing so can be high.

This is the story of one such activist who paid a price, which only fueled his resistance efforts, and which in turn inspired others, in reversing a decades-long erosion of men's rights on campus.

A survivor of the Columbine mass shooting said that "biased" reporters weren't interested in hearing why he opposes Beto O'Rourke's proposed gun ban.

O'Rourke, a former Texas U.S. representative, is a Democratic presidential contender.

Evan Todd, who was shot during the Columbine massacre in 1999, asked O'Rourke at an event in Colorado last week how far the gun ban would go and was not pleased with the answer.

"I understand that you want to get a mandatory buyback for ARs and AK-47s. None of my classmates were murdered with those weapons. Fifty percent of mass murders don't happen with those weapons. Don't you think it's time we get rid of all semi-auto firearms?"


O'Rourke responded in part: "I would love to have your help. If you want to sit down and talk to about the kind of weapons that are going to be important to be regulated, I'm here with you and want to listen to you."

Arriving at the UN General Assembly, US President Donald Trump paid no attention to Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg. Caught on camera, her stare sparked a thousand tweets and divided the public.

While Thunberg was giving a fiery speech at the UNGA Climate Action Summit, Trump was speaking at an event about religious freedom. Video from the UN headquarters on East River shows Thunberg scowling as Trump enters the building to speak to reporters, not even registering her presence.

Trump's critics were quick to make Thunberg their "shero," describing her stare their new "life goals" and declaring that the 16-year-old climate "became president today."

Video shows what appear to be Uighur or other minority prisoners led away by police

Drone footage has emerged showing police leading hundreds of blindfolded and shackled men from a train in what is believed to be a transfer of inmates in Xinjiang.

The video, posted anonymously on YouTube last week, shows what appear to be Uighur or other minorities wearing blue and yellow uniforms, with cleanly shaven heads, their eyes covered, sitting in rows on the ground and later being led away by police. Prisoners in China are often transferred with handcuffs and masks covering their faces.

Nathan Ruser, a researcher with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's international cyber policy centre, used clues in the footage, including landmarks and the position of the sun, to verify the video, which he believes was shot at a train station west of Korla in south-east Xinjiang in August last year.

An Orlando school resource officer lost his job after he arrested two six-year-old children at a Florida elementary school over trivial misbehavior. All charges against the children were dropped following public backlash.

Orlando Police Chief Orlando Rolon said on Monday that the officer behind the arrests had been fired, apologizing to the two children and their families and adding that the case made him "sick to [his] stomach."

"It was clear today when I came into work that there was no other remedy than to terminate this officer," Rolon said in a statement. "As a grandfather, I can understand how traumatic this was for everyone involved."


The police chief added that he issued a "special notice" to the police force to "ensure this does not occur in the future."

I recently completed a book defending free speech. Emerald Press scheduled it for publication but then decided not to proceed. Here's what it said about the book in Emerald's September 2019 catalogue:

In Defense of Free Speech: The University as Censor
Author James R. Flynn, University of Otago, New Zealand

Synopsis: The good university is one that teaches students the intellectual skills they need to be intelligently critical — of their own beliefs and of the narratives presented by politicians and the media. Freedom to debate is essential to the development of critical thought, but on university campuses today free speech is restricted for fear of causing offence. In Defense of Free Speech surveys the underlying factors that circumscribe the ideas tolerated in our institutions of learning. James Flynn critically examines the way universities censor their teaching, how student activism tends to censor the opposing side and how academics censor themselves, and suggests that few, if any, universities can truly be seen as 'good.' In an age marred by fake news and social and political polarization, In Defense of Free Speech makes an impassioned argument for a return to critical thought.

The government wants to tax, ban or reformulate our vices.

Slipped out in the dying days of Theresa May's administration, the government's consultation paper on the future of health deserves more attention than it received at the time. One of the main messages from the paper is that the methods employed to attack smokers will be applied with increasing enthusiasm to every aspect of our lifestyles.

Most widely publicised was the government's plan to eliminate smoking by 2030. As Christopher Snowdon pointed out on spiked, the aim is much bolder than before: prohibition, rather than reduced use. The argument is as follows: if tobacco products are available for sale, a proportion of the population will want to use them. The only way to 'eliminate' smoking is to ban it altogether. Of course, as the experience of prohibiting various other products tells us, from alcohol in Prohibition-era America to cannabis, heroin and cocaine today, a ban on tobacco products would not actually eliminate the supply and use of these products. It would simply change the supplier from legally run shops to criminals. Indeed, the high level of taxation applied to cigarettes is, in itself, a form of prohibition. And - surprise, surprise - there is a thriving black market in cut-price baccy.

The UK's Labour Party is considering extending voting rights to all foreign citizens with residency rights in the country, a move guaranteed to upset the balance of power - especially in the case of a future Brexit referendum.

Labour will "extend equal rights to vote to all UK residents" if it wins the next general election, according to a motion set to be voted on during the party's annual conference in Brighton on Tuesday. It is "fundamentally wrong" that millions of UK residents cannot vote in general elections, the motion states. It is very likely to pass, according to the Independent newspaper.

The measure was inserted by Labour for Free Movement, a coalition of party members working to extend citizens' rights to migrants. It also seeks to "close all detention centres" and "scrap all Hostile Environment measures," referring to laws designed to make life as difficult as possible for people who are in the UK illegally, hoping to convince them to leave the country.

This day, 18 years ago, the world watched aghast as arguably the worst terrorist attack in history supposedly unfolded before out eyes. The shock and anger generated by 9/11 was understandable. Nearly three thousand innocent people, citizens from across the world, lost their lives that day. Many thousands more have perished, and will perish prematurely, due to the toxins in the dust they inhaled on 9/11. It is truly a day we should never forget.

Many people believe that the official account of 9/11 is totally unbelievable. We are going to look at some of the reasons why. For considerably more people, even suggesting this is a gross act of disrespect. At least that is what the mainstream media would have us believe. If so, it is a disrespect shared by many of the families of 9/11 victims who have been fighting for answers to numerous unresolved questions for nearly two decades.

In truth, the allegation of 'disrespect' is preposterous. If you believe you witness a murder and the wrong person is then convicted, is it an act of disrespect to the victim to point this out? It doesn't matter if you are wrong, what matters is that you believe the evidence of your own eyes and act upon it in good faith. In such circumstances, saying nothing is the true act of disrespect for the victim. Those who question 9/11 aren't disrespecting anyone's memory. They are fighting for the truth they believe the victims deserve.

9/11 - The War On Terror In Perspective

9/11 Propelled the world into the global "War on Terror." Research shows that, to 2018, more than one million people have been killed in the resultant U.S led wars in Iraq & Afghanistan, with the number of lives subsequently lost in Pakistan also notable in the study. Further wars and conflicts, linked to the war on terror, in Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Sudan, Kenya, Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger, Chad, Palestine and elsewhere have killed at least one million more since 9/11. There is also considerable evidence that this horrific post 9/11 death toll has been grossly underestimated.

The folks at Union Theological Seminary are taking the concept of "talking to your plants" to a frightening new level. Each year, students at the seminary pay a ridiculous amount of money to go to the school, and they are there to be trained to be the Christian leaders of tomorrow. But instead, they are being taught to confess their "climate sins" to potted plants, and eventually these impressionable young minds will be leading churches and Christian institutions all over America. I realize that this story is so bizarre that it sounds like somebody made it up, but it is actually true. The following was posted by the official Twitter account of Union Theological Seminary last week...

Today in chapel, we confessed to plants. Together, we held our grief, joy, regret, hope, guilt and sorrow in prayer; offering them to the beings who sustain us but whose gift we too often fail to honor.

What do you confess to the plants in your life?