17 Dec 2016

Woman’s Hour Ties Itself In Knots To Acknowledge The Great Mrs T

By Kathy Gyngell: Another year  – there have been 70 of them now heaven help us - and another Woman’s Hour Power List.
I should just let it drop I know. The very idea is so irritatingly schoolgirlish. Only women who have never grown up would want to spend time rating other women.
Only women obsessed with importance, status and recognition themselves would busy themselves with it. Only, in fact, women who need to be noticed. It’s a great feminist cover for unremarkability.
Just as is the  feminist argument that the lack of women engineers proves  women are discriminated against - even though those complaining have never shown the slightest inclination to be one. Playing the victimhood/power axis has become a feminist career in itself. When pontificating is so much easier than engineering, why not?
You wouldn't catch men bothering with this all this power talk tosh, or taking themselves so seriously, except, I concede, honorary fems like Nick Clegg.
But don’t let me minimise the weightiness of the Woman’s Power List panel’s task. Mr Clegg would have been in his element. Their job was to ‘recognise women’s achievements across the history of the programme’, and, for the first time, to include women no longer living. Wow.

Theresa May's Personal Message to the Jews

Introduction by Gilad Atzmon: Every British citizen  should read the following letter from Prime Minister Theresa May  to British Jews and wonder why is our PM so concerned with, and committed to the interests and security of the people who are probably the most privileged ethnic group in the country.   
My advice to Mrs May would be that it is not she who can really fight Anti-Semitism. The only people who can defeat anti-Semitism are the Jews themselves. All they have to do is to drop their choseness and become ordinary people – in effect, stop being so special and join the human race.
But then, when the Jew is no longer chosen, there is very little left for the Jew to celebrate or is it that when the Jew is no longer ‘chosen’ he/she is no longer a Jew?  
Theresa May writes for the JC: 'Ill keep you safe'
The fact that antisemitism is on the rise again in mainland Europe should sicken us all; the fact it is on the rise here in Britain should shame us all.

Comedy In Age Of Trump


"Financialised to death!" Max and Stacy discuss how both the Italian bank, Monte dei Paschi, and the American retailer, Sears, survived war, Great Depressions and famine, only to be destroyed by the modern paper derivative. In the second half, Max does some stand up and then interviews comedian Lee Camp about the business of comedy in the age of Trump.

O-Blowhard Retaliates + Remain Calm - William Banzai7

China Seizes Unmanned, Underwater US Navy Idiots Spy Vehicle Off South China Sea

Update: according to US officials cited by Reuters, the unmanned vehicles was seized unlawfully by China.  A Reuters official also adds that "the UUV was lawfully conducting a military survey in the waters of the South China Sea," the official said. "It's a sovereign immune vessel, clearly marked in English not to be removed from the water - that it was U.S. property."
The incident, the first of its kind in recent memory, took place on Dec. 15 northwest of Subic Bay off the Philippines just as the USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic survey ship, was about to retrieve the unmanned, underwater vehicle (UUV), the official told Reuters.
The Pentagon later confirmed the incident at a news briefing. It said the drone used commercially available technology and sold for about $150,000.
The Pentagon views China's seizure seriously since it had effectively taken U.S. military property.
"It is ours, and it is clearly marked as ours and we would like it back. And we would like this not to happen again," Pentagon spokesman Jeff Davis said.

The Red Pill - Take Two And Call Me In The Morning

By This November I was lucky enough to attend the screening of The Red Pill at the swanky Soho Hotel in London, England. The film is a documentary focusing on the world of Men’s Rights Activists directed by Cassie Jaye – a young feminist who had initially set out to make a film about Rape Culture. Cassie’s personal journey and creative integrity instead led her to produce an entirely different movie than she had originally intended, but the results were fortuitous, and the final product is a cultural game-changer, in my opinion.
The film gained some notoriety across the web when a screening in Australia was pulled from the cinema, thanks to a petition created by feminist Susan Smith. Smith was concerned that it could be ‘potentially damaging to our credibility’ before labeling it as ‘misogynistic propaganda’ – that’s before having watched it herself, by the way. The petition gained over 2,300 signatures and resulted in the Kino Cinema in Melbourne canceling the screening.
This event is how the film first came to my attention. A YouTuber I watch regularly named ‘Computing Forever’ posted a video concerning the petition, and I was outraged to think that it had been removed not because of what it was, but because of what people thought it might be.

John Perkins Interview

Jason Liosatos Outside The Box: My talk with John Perkins founder of Dream Change, and author of The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. We talk about the consciousness revolution taking place, his recent stay with the Kogi people, and the exciting changes people are feeling as we all realize it is we, each person, who are the bringers forth, with the power to change the course of our current reality and future into something much more wonderful..

The Male Room - The Angry Edition

Mike Buchanan: A few seconds into the programme, when Olly Mann is reviewing feedback for the first edition (5 December - also on this channel) he says this:
"Even worse than I was expecting," wrote Mike Buchanan on his blog. "A mangina presenter, two mangina studio guests, and a feminist 'comedian'. BBC ideological balance at its finest."
Is this the first use of the word "mangina" on the BBC? I'd like to think so.
This episode too had a pointless feminist - Abi Wilkinson, Guardian 'journalist' - but Martin Daubney made some reasonable points.

Philip Davies Rare MP With Working Brain Attempted Today To Stop The Istanbul Convention Bill Ratification

By Mike Buchanan: We applaud Philip Davies’s efforts today to stop the bill ratifying the ideologically-motivated Istanbul Convention. A short BBC piece is here. The first paragraph alone justifies Davies’s efforts:

Conservative MP Philip Davies says he disagrees with the “fundamental premise” of a bill urging the government to ratify an international agreement on combating violence against women, because it does not mention violence against men at all.