Society's ChildS


Light Sabers

How adversity propelled Jordan Peterson into the spotlight

Rex Murphy
National Post
Sat, 27 Jan 2018 14:45 UTC
Sweet are the uses of adversity, as Shakespeare says. Which is why a previously little-known psychologist is Canada's newest intellectual star
Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman
© Channel 4Jordan Peterson and Cathy Newman
Why it seems like ages ago, when the University of Toronto leaped into the now infamous Pronoun Wars with a couple of minatory letters to Prof. Jordan Peterson that were as ham-fisted and bullying as they were badly written. Peterson had made it very clear that he would not, under any asserted compulsion from legislation or human rights code, use any newly coined pronouns (they had reached a count of 31 at one point) when addressing transgender students. Succinctly stated, he would not be compelled to speak words others insisted he speak.

The University of Toronto, which many insist is a world-class institution, responded that as a result of this (then) little-known clinical psychologist, that some of its students had been the subject of "specific and violent threats, including threats of assault, injury and death." Then in sly malice it went on to hope that these death and other threats "were not his intention" in making the arguments he was making.
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Map

Syrian Democratic Forces reportedly down Turkish chopper in Afrin while Kurdish militia has downed two UAVs


Sputnik
Sat, 27 Jan 2018 14:21 UTC
SDF army
© AFP 2018/ DELIL SOULEIMAN
The Syrian Democratic Forces have downed a Turkish helicopter in the Syrian city of Afrin, an SDF representative told Sputnik Saturday.

Earlier this day, the SDF reported that the group's militia had downed two Turkish reconnaissance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in the village of Adama, northern Syria.

The group also engaged in skirmishes with a Turkish convoy in the Chia district of Afrin and with Turkish forces, supported by the Free Syrian Army, in Qastal Ma'af.
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Russian Flag

Russian economy under Putin: Quality of life tripled, foreign debt fell 75%


RT.com
Sat, 27 Jan 2018 14:04 UTC
Putin Russian economy
Vladimir Putin was first elected as Russian President in 2000. Here's how the Russian economy has transformed in the intervening years by numbers.
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Arrow Down

Why Men in the US Have Become Less Marriageable

Drake Baer
Business Insider
Sat, 27 Jan 2018 11:41 UTC
marriage bride groom
© Unsplash/Priscilla Du Preez
If it seems like the number of complaints from your female friends about not being able to find a man is growing, we may finally know why. Somewhere between 1979 and 2008, Americans decided it was much less worth it to get hitched: the share of 25- to 39-year-old women who were currently married fell 10 percent among those with college degrees, 15 percent for those with some college, and a full 20 percent for women with a high-school education or less.

This great American marriage decline -- a drop from 72 percent of U.S. adults being wed in 1960 to half in 2014 -- is usually chalked up to gains in women's rights, the normalization of divorce, and the like. But it also a lot to do with men. Namely, economic forces are making them less appealing partners, and it ties into everything from China to opioids.


Comment: Wait, so you're saying they're gold-diggers?


The most revealing data comes from University of Zurich economist David Dorn. In a 2017 paper with an ominous title ("When Work Disappears: Manufacturing Decline and the Falling Marriage-Market Value of Men"), Dorn and his colleagues crunched the numbers from 1990 to 2014. They found that employability and marriageability are deeply intertwined.

Comment: Further reading: The Feminist Seduction of Western Society

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No Entry

Judge denies transgender student's request to change in girls' locker room

Alex Swoyer
The Washington Times
Sat, 27 Jan 2018 11:41 UTC
transgender gender neutral restroom
© AP Photo/Toby Talbot
An Illinois judge denied a transgender student's request Thursday to change clothes with female students in the girls' locker room at a public high school.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which represents Nova Maday, a biologically male student at Palatine's Township High School District 211, had petitioned a trial court last year, arguing the student should be treated like other females and not be forced to change clothes behind a curtain.

But on Thursday, Judge Thomas Allen rejected the request, leaving the ACLU to consult with its client on how to move forward with the case.
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Ice Cube

Closed till spring: Ukrainian universities and 60% of citizens cannot pay for utilities

Translated by Tom Winter
Fort Russ
Thu, 25 Jan 2018 11:47 UTC
odessa university ukraine close spring no heat
Several Odessa universities have canceled all classes until March 26 due to the inability to pay to heat the classrooms. This is reported by the local portal 048.ua.

Update January 17: Kiev's major university has done the same, and for the same reason: Kiev University.

Classes are canceled, in particular, in Odessa National University (ONU) named for Mechnikov, Odessa Law Academy, and Academy of Food Technologies.

Teachers at ONU also reported that since January 1, 2018, new standards for lighting in the auditoriums have come into force, which the universities are also unable to fulfill due to lack of funds.

Comment: The usual 'benefits' of American 'intervention':

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Георгиевская ленточка

Anniversary of the Siege of Leningrad: Putin visits his older brother's grave

Inessa Sinchougova
Fort Russ News
Sat, 27 Jan 2018 10:01 UTC
Vladimir Putin
Putin visits his brother's grave
January 18th, 2018 marked the 75th anniversary of the breaking of the Siege of Leningrad in World War II. The Nazi German forces held the city captive for 872 days, without letting through food supplies and bombardment overhead. More than one million residents either starved to death or died while defending the city.

President Vladimir Putin's father was wounded at Nevsky Piatochok, where in face of Nazi aggression, the average survival time of Soviet soldiers was from 3 seconds to 58 seconds - leading to the world's largest mass grave burial sites at Peskaryevskoe Cemetery.
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Light Sabers

SOTT Focus: The Feminist Seduction of Western Society

Corey Schink
Sott.net
Fri, 26 Jan 2018 21:02 UTC
jordan peterson cathy newman
On January 16th the UK's Channel 4 News uploaded its now-infamous interview between psychologist Jordan Peterson and newscaster Cathy Newman, treating viewers to a morbid yet fascinating display of feminist ideology careening face-first into the brick wall of reality. Scott Adams reckons Newman effectively hallucinated about 12 times as her ideology-warped mind became incapable of processing a word Jordan Peterson was saying.

Public response came fast and furious, with people overwhelmingly mortified by Newman's inquisitorial display, shocked by witnessing the 'pleasant' face of feminism transform into Medusa-like destruction, yet glad to see feminism taken apart on a mainstream platform by Peterson's rational and eloquent debating style.

Unable to 'win' the debate with Peterson, Newman and her allies in the liberal spectrum nevertheless eked out a 'victory' by casting themselves as victims and Peterson's supporters as "vicious misogynists". To protect their ideological beliefs, the situation was spun into its exact opposite, when clearly it was Newman and her ilk who are misandrists bent on victimizing men. 'Security experts' were brought in to add a veneer of truth to their spin. No verification of any actual threat has emerged - not against Newman or Channel 4 anyway, though some were leveled at Peterson and his followers.
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Mr. Potato

SOTT Focus: Radical Leftist Ideologues: Finding Racism Where There is None

Joe Quinn
Sott.net
Fri, 26 Jan 2018 19:32 UTC
Black lives matter
A couple of weeks ago the latest in the sequence of apparently interminable 'social justice furors' erupted on social media, this time over the design on an item of clothing sold by South African branches of Swedish multi-national clothing-retail company H&M.

Given that these days the 'real' media gets most of its material from social media - turning many reporters into FB and Twitter addicts and FB and Twitter users into attention-seeking drama queens - it wasn't long before the story had reached far more people than it ever should have.

In the process of making this non-story into something akin to an international scandal however, something very disturbing was revealed. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The offending clothing item was a child's hoodie, one of a small collection, all of which were 'jungle themed'. Here's an example:

H&M hoodie racist
Horrible, isn't it. I mean, what kind of deviant mind could come up with this? Oh, wait, that's not the problem hoodie, this is it:

Monkey-hoodie-HM1
NOW can you see how horrific this is? Oh, wait, I think I forgot something.
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Calendar

SOTT Focus: Australia Day: Change the Date? Absolutely

Ryan Jones
Sott.net
Fri, 26 Jan 2018 23:55 UTC
australia day
"Throw another shrimp on the barbie!"
An issue swirling around Australia's national holiday over the last few years has been the movement to 'Change The Date'. To summarise the issue, it's that Australia's indigenous population considers celebrating today, January 26th - the anniversary of the British First Fleet officially beginning the British Empire's colonisation of New Holland/Gondwana, called 'Invasion Day' or 'Survival Day' by many Aussie Aboriginals - to be offensive.

This issue is really about two things: Aboriginals' valid historical grievance over the mass-murder and expropriation that accompanied British colonisation. Like Native Americans reluctant to celebrate Columbus Day, it's understandable that Aboriginals don't feel like throwing a party on January 26th. And the rest of the population isn't too attached to the date either: Australia has had many 'national holidays' and only settled on today's date in 1994.

Aboriginal protests against that date began shortly thereafter, but it's only recently that secondary issues have been grafted onto what is really just a request for a change of date, with the usual suspects from campuses and leftist organizations vigorously rubbing salt into the historical wound in an attempt to convince the indigenous population to weaponise their victimisation and strike at the heart of White GuiltTM, in the hopes of accruing power and wealth to themselves. They really couldn't care less about the Aboriginals, but they'll appropriate their cause, thank you very much.
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