The Church In Same-Sex America

"The gentile family is disintegrating. Yet as much as Gessen wants to destroy marriage, Jewish families thrive. ...Jews see themselves as a race and it's perpetuity, solidarity and influence is dependent on the Jewish family. That will never go away. It's stronger than ever. Where does that leave the Orthodox church? ...The distinction of sex remains intact regardless of the Jewish redefinitions of gender roles for gentile consumption." Brother Nathanael

Why Do Women Leave Tech?

The obvious reason that shouldn't be questioned is of course SEXISM! SkepTorr

Interview With Willie Meggs, US State Attorney For Leon County, On DeAndre Johnson Case

By Ty Henry: Friday Morning, July 10, I secured a short interview with Willie Meggs, the long tenured State Attorney for Leon County. His jurisdiction includes the City of Tallahassee and as such, he makes the decision on whether to charge residents  of the city, which includes athletes from Florida State University. As some may recall, it was his decision not to prosecute Jameis Winston, a decision for which he was widely reviled by many corners of sports and national media who chose to hide behind their interpretation of his “Lack of seriousness” at the press conference announcing the decision. Left out of that analysis, however, was his contemporaneous and aggressive sexual assault prosecution of starting wide receiver Greg Dent, as well as previous prosecutions of FSU football players.
I wrote an analysis of the case here.
In the wake of the De’Andre Johnson case, Meggs’ office again finds itself at the center of media discourse on gender violence. Johnson was involved in an altercation at a local bar on June 24 which ended with him striking a female patron to her face. In the interest of providing clarity for readers and the issues which concern our board, I wanted to get some answers from his office on key aspects of the case and, more importantly, the decision-making process in deciding who to charge, and with what.

Love Theft And Other Entanglements Lights Up The Parts Other Films Don’t Reach

 

Film review. By Razanne Carmey. Love Theft and other entanglements 2015. London Premier at Barbican Cinema for East End Film Festival 8th July 2015. Written and directed: Muayad Alayan, Rami Alayan. For Palcine Productions.

It is a brave filmmaker who opens with an extended close up of a small pile of cement, grey, rough, ungiving, but this is how Muayad Alayan sets the tone for his unusual comedy, Love Theft and Other Entanglements.  Shot in black and white, it makes no concession for the lovely Palestinian landscape; there are no lush olive groves here, no haunting call to prayer only the muted grey wasteland of a slow quiet despair.  This is filmmaker Alayan’s visual expression of what people feel in Palestine today.

Japan’s Economic Disaster - Real Wages Lowest Since 1990, Record Numbers Describe “Hard” Living Conditions

By Michael Krieger: With so much attention rightly focused on China at the moment (see: Chinese Authorities Arrest Over 100 Human Rights Activists and Lawyers in Desperate Crackdown on Dissent), people aren’t paying enough attention to the budding economic calamity unfolding in Japan.
While “Abenomics” has succeeded in boosting the stock market and food prices, it has utterly failed to raise wages. In fact, wages adjusted for inflation have plunged to the lowest since 1990. As such, a record number of households now describe their living conditions as “somewhat hard” or “very hard.”
From Bloomberg:

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to power vowing to drag Japan out of deflation and stagnation. His logic was that rising prices would drive higher salaries and increased consumption. More than two years on, prices are rising, but wages adjusted for inflation have sunk to the lowest since at least 1990.

Chinese Authorities Arrest Over 100 Human Rights Activists And Lawyers In Desperate Crackdown On Dissent

More than 100 people were swept up in an unprecedented police crackdown on mainland human rights advocates on the weekend, with six – including four lawyers – criminally detained in what state media said was a nationwide operation to smash a “criminal gang”.
It said “the criminal gang” comprised Zhou, Wang Yu, Wang Quanzhang, Huang as well as Liu, Bao and high-profile activist Wu Gan, who masterminded many plots in the name of “rights defence, justice and public interest”. It accused them of “colluding with petitioners to disturb social order and to reach their goals with ulterior motives”.
Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said the action showed the Ministry of Public Security’s interpretation of “disturbing public order” was ever-expanding. “That these lawyers are a ‘major criminal gang’ is a new and serious allegation, one that demonstrates the authorities’ willingness to warp the law beyond all recognition,” she said.

The UK Government Will Force Businesses Into Inflating Women’s Earnings And Deflating Men’s Earnings

By Mike Buchanan: We recommend to anyone foolish enough to believe the feminist gender pay gap narrative, that they read a blog piece by William Collins – Gender Income Propaganda.
We have some key advisers who were of the view that the feminist-friendly agendas of the 2010-15 coalition were attributable (in part, at least) to the influence of the Lib Dems. I never believed that analysis. David Cameron made his pro-feminist / anti-male leanings perfectly clear before coming to power, most notably by announcing his intention in the autumn of 2009 to introduce all-women shortlists for prospective parliamentary candidates. Along with many other members I cancelled my party membership that day, and the proposal was dropped following uproar among Conservative MPs and other party supporters.
Following the government’s ‘success’ in bullying FTSE100 companies (through the threat of legislated gender quotas) into ‘voluntarily’ achieving 25% female representation on their boards – the figure is an average over all the companies – the government is going to extend its anti-male and anti-business agenda, by bullying companies with 250 employees or more into calculating and then publishing the gap between male average earnings and female average earnings. Today’s Daily Mail report on the matter is here. You would search in vain for criticisms of the initiative from the paper itself, even in the four-page-long business section. The rules are expected to come into force by the end of 2015.

Everything You Need To Know About The Greek Crisis And ECB Fascism In Two Paragraphs

Yanis Varoufakis just sat down for his first interview since resigning as Finance Minister of Greece. He talked frankly with Harry Lambert of the New Statesman. Here are the two most important paragraphs from the transcript.
There is no democracy in Europe. None.

Varoufakis said that Schäuble, Germany’s finance minister and the architect of the deals Greece signed in 2010 and 2012, was “consistent throughout”. “His view was ‘I’m not discussing the programme – this was accepted by the previous [Greek] government and we can’t possibly allow an election to change anything.
 “So at that point I said ‘Well perhaps we should simply not hold elections anymore for indebted countries’, and there was no answer. The only interpretation I can give [of their view] is, ‘Yes, that would be a good idea, but it would be difficult. So you either sign on the dotted line or you are out.’”

Any questions?

Stocks Get Second Thoughts About Greek Deal: Turn Red From China To Europe

Submitted by Tyler Durden: One day after the Greek "pre-deal" was announced and the world breathed a sigh of relief, sending US stocks soaring and Greek halted stocks, well, tumbling (via ETFs and ADRs), things are oddly quiet and in fact quite red in Europe, with futures in the US modestly lower, following both China's first red close in several days (SHCOMP -1.2%), and a Europe which is hardly looking very euphoric at this moment: 

it is almost as if the algos finally got to read the fine print of the Greek deal after trading all day on just the headlines.

As Bloomberg's Richard Breslow summarizes, with so much economically important news coming tomorrow, equity markets opened today trading yesterday’s events. Stock markets from Japan to Australia gapped higher on their open getting in on the rallies in Europe and North America that followed the Greece news. Interestingly, China and India, open late enough to benefit from yesterday’s events, showed a lack of conviction today, mirroring E-Mini, down a bit in a tight range, and Euro Stoxx 50 futures that failed to keep an opening bid and have sagged since
Breslow notes, and we agree, that the most notable market so far today has been Italy, underperforming the rest of Europe with a .7% decline right from the get go. Peripheral bond yields are also underperforming core on the open and EURCHF flirted with 1.0400 after spiking above 1.0500 on the early Greek headlines.

The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves - Spain Officially Becomes A Police State

By Michael Krieger: On July 1st, 2015, Spain officially became a police state. There’s simply no other way to put it. The “gag law” passed late last year went into effect on that date, and if you still have any doubt about how extreme and oppressive these laws are, let’s take a quick look at a summary published by The Local:

1) Fines for protesting
Under the new law, anyone who organizes or takes part in an “unauthorized protest” could be fined between €30,000 and €600,000 if the protest takes part near institutions such as the Spanish parliament.
2) Distrupting public events
Disrupting events such as public speeches, sports events or religious ceremonies could face fines of between €600 and €300,000.
3) Botellón
The Spanish tradition of getting together with mates for outdoor drinking sessions looks to be officially over – drinking in public will be hit with fines of €600 under the new law. And teenagers won’t escape – Parents will be held responsible for the payment of their offsprings’ fines.

The Troika And The Five FamiliesGermany Just Killed Its Golden Goose

'Germany Just Killed Its Golden Goose'

By Raúl Ilargi Meijer: Personally, like most of you, I always thought Germany, besides all its other talents, good or bad, was a nation of solid calculus and accounting. Gründlichkeit. And that they knew a thing or two about psychology. But I stand corrected.
The Germans just made their biggest mistake in a long time (how about some 75 years) over the weekend. Now, when all you have to bring to a conversation slash negotiation is bullying and strong arming and brute force, that should perhaps not be overly surprising. But it’s a behemoth failure all by itself regardless.
First though, I want to switch to what Yanis Varoufakis told the New Statesman in an interview published today, because it’s crucial to what happened this weekend. Varoufakis talks about how he was pushing for a plan to introduce an alternative currency in Greece rather than giving in to the Troika. But Tsipras refused. And Yanis understands why:

“Varoufakis could not guarantee that a Grexit would work …
…[he] knows Tsipras has an obligation to “not let this country become a failed state”.

What this means is that Tsipras was told by the Troika behind closed doors, to put it crudely: “we’re going to kill your people”. He was made an offer he couldn’t refuse. And Tsipras could never take that upon himself, even though the deals now proposed will perhaps be worse in the medium to long term, even though it may cost him his career.