Israel Linked To Suspension Of Palestine Course At UC Berkeley

Nora Barrows-Friedman and Ali Abunimah: The University of California, Berkeley – an institution synonymous with free speech protests in the 1960s – has shut down a student-led course on Palestine.

The censorship is one of Nicholas Dirks’ last acts as chancellor of the college. His administration decided to suspend the course after Israel-aligned organizations demanded that he do so.
There are indications of pressure from the Israeli government as well.
Dirks, who is stepping down as chancellor in the wake of persistent scandals over finances and personal conduct, leaves as he arrived: amid controversy over his role in stigmatizing and suppressing speech and scholarship related to Palestine.
But the course suspension is also a worrying sign of the growing threat to free speech as Israel and its lobby groups move to suppress discussion of Palestine on campuses, inside and outside the classroom.
The one-unit course, which was set to run this semester and titled “Palestine: A Settler-Colonial Analysis,” was proposed by Palestinian American student Paul Hadweh as part of the university’s Democratic Education at Cal initiative.
Known as DeCal, the program is taught by students under supervision from university staff.

‘The Intellectual Yet Idiot’ By Nassim Nicholas Taleb

In particular, they all (totalitarian systems) seem to have in common an intense dislike of the more abstract forms of thought –a dislike characteristically also shown by many of the collectivists among our scientists.
– From my 2010 review of F.A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom
By Michael Krieger: The following is an excellent takedown of the so-called “elite,” the status quo, whatever you want to call them. We all know the type. It’s the self-assured people who constantly get things wrong, constantly screw up on issues of national significance and yet somehow never face any consequences or accountability for their actions.
Here’s the meat of the piece, originally published at Medium:

What we have been seeing worldwide, from India to the UK to the US, is the rebellion against the inner circle of no-skin-in-the-game policymaking “clerks” and journalists-insiders, that class of paternalistic semi-intellectual experts with some Ivy league, Oxford-Cambridge, or similar label-driven education who are telling the rest of us 1) what to do, 2) what to eat, 3) how to speak, 4) how to think… and 5) who to vote for.

But the problem is the one-eyed following the blind: these self-described members of the “intelligenzia” can’t find a coconut in Coconut Island, meaning they aren’t intelligent enough to define intelligence and fall into circularities — but their main skills is capacity to pass exams written by people like them.

UN Official Lapses Into The 19th Century, Says Condoms “Not The Answer,” Advocates Cutting Men And Boys Genitals

By Gary Costanza: Tell that to all the circumcised American men – and their partners – who suffer from HIV despite the world’s highest circumcision rate. Tell that to all the women and girls you just spoke about having “unwanted pregnancies” that prevent them from the education you say they need to raise them from poverty. The United Nations should be embarrassed by the latest lecture by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka of UN Women advocating gender equality for women and girls by ignoring science, common sense, and the rights of men and boys. See the video below.
Yes, you read that right. Here’s a prominent 21st century feminist who advocates genital mutilation to prevent STDs; not everyone, just males done by doctors.  When Ms. Ngcuka endorsed surgery over condoms to prevent STDs, I felt I was transported to the 19th century where circumcision was thought to cure everything from epilepsy to masturbation.
I attended the lecture as part of Stony Brook’s Presidential Lecture series where Ms. Ngcuka was invited to speak about gender equality and the UN’s HeForShe initiative.

Shrill Equality Warriors Ignore Half The Human Race

By Karl McCartney MP: Last week was another lesson in how the minds work of a minority of people who believe equality issues can be only be an equality issue when they refer to women and girls - not men and boys. As my colleague in the House of Commons, Philip Davies MP, noted in a speech on differences in the length of criminal convictions between men and women for the same crime: "We have an equality-only-when-it-suits agenda". It is the same, it seems, for this minority of people when it comes to inequality in the education sector.
On Tuesday, I hosted a well-attended parliamentary debate on the underperformance of boys throughout the education system and the gender education gap, which was accompanied by a number of media articles including in the Guardian and the Telegraph, which were mainly met with a positive response. In the debate, I raised facts about its impact – such as nowadays 30,000 fewer men are apprentices, 60,000 fewer go to university every year, and, between the ages of 22 and 29, young men on average earn less than young women in full time and part time roles. I also raised, as did others, a number of possible solutions,  such as the need to recruit and retain more male teachers, long-term apprenticeships and to ensure schools were more "boy-friendly". There is still much more research that needs to be done and this was why it was so disappointing that the need to tackle this clear issue was not adequately addressed by the Government in the debate.

False Allegations Of Rape In The Kingdom Of Norway [Pt.1]

Miguel Arcángel Fraticelli: This is the statement of my case. It was shot the 20th of October of 2015 in view of a follow-up video with Karen Straughan (girlwriteswhat), which as of today is not entirely ruled out.

Being A Woman On The Internet Is Dangerous

"Keep using the words you think fit, keep thinking there's nothing wrong with it, keep running when you're hit, but don't you be a hypocrite."

Men Have Made Things A Lot Easier For Women

By Laura Perrins: There are a lot of things that annoy me about the whinging feminists, but the two biggies are the incessant complaining about how a) men don’t do enough childcare and b) ‘the workplace is designed by men for men.’ In fact, men now do more childcare than ever but, of course, it is never enough. The feminists have figured out that there are only two ways of upping the numbers and that is by nagging the men into submission, or essentially bribing them to do it – with the State’s money.
Anyway, the nagging does not seem to be going so well, leading to more women freezing their eggs. “A shortage of men prepared to commit to hands-on fatherhood is driving more highly educated women to freeze their eggs, a study has found.”
So I wish the feminists luck with the nagging campaign.
They other issue is this hogwash about the workplace being designed by men. The workplace is designed by the market – which includes women, who no doubt love making demanding claims on workers, such as the delivery man who brings the shop at 8 pm.
I guess the feminists only want their own workplace to be family friendly, but everything else must be convenient for them. The truth is the workplace has thus far promoted specialisation and excellence, resulting in huge improvements to everyone’s living conditions.