Vilifying Husbands In Advertising No Longer OK

...Says the Australian Advertising Standards Bureau

By Lindsay Bennett: Husbands can no longer be “degraded” or “vilified” in advertising, according to the latest ruling by the advertising watchdog.
In a case against a radio spot from Allpest, the Advertising Standards Bureau (ASB) said the ad discriminated against husbands on the basis of gender and therefore the complaint was upheld, setting a precedent for future advertisers.
The ad featured a customer calling Allpest and asking several questions regarding the type of pests they get rid of, including asking “what about my husband?” A voiceover states that Allpest don’t ‘do husbands’ but they do get rid of almost any other type of pest.

The complaint made about the spot says: “Gender stereotyping where the caller asks this company (presumably) if they 'do husbands'. Would it be any more or less acceptable if the caller asked this company it ‘they did wives’ as opposed to husbands. I suspect it most certainly would not be.”

For The Sake Of Boys We Must Value Fathers

By Belinda Brown: It is by now well known that children growing up in single parent families do worse across a whole range of indicators (see here and here and here). What is less well known is that the outcomes are even worse for boys. Boys coming from single parent families are less likely to read, have lower cognitive skills, lower educational attainment, lower rates of college completion and worse labour market outcomes.
Some of this appears to be because single mothers give slightly less attention to their sons. Other evidence suggests that boys appear to be more responsive to their social environment, where circumstances are unfavourable this will have a more negative impact on boys than it does on girls.
 
However, as I argued recently in a paper in New Male Studies, the absence of a male role model is the strongest contributing factor. But the importance of what the father is modelling is not his ability to do a particular job or be successful. Rather it is his crucial contribution to family life and his role within the home.
For a child it is the family that is at the heart of his or her universe. The knowledge that one day you can have a role to play within this central institution is the bedrock to feeling secure.

Building The Institutions For Revolt

By Chris Hedges: Politics is a game of fear. Those who do not have the ability to make power elites afraid do not succeed. All of the movements that opened up the democratic space in America—the abolitionists, the suffragists, the labor movement, the communists, the socialists, the anarchists and the civil rights movement—developed a critical mass and militancy that forced the centers of power to respond. The platitudes about justice, equality and democracy are just that. Only when power becomes worried about its survival does it react. Appealing to its better nature is useless. It doesn’t have one.
We once had within our capitalist democracy liberal institutions—the press, labor unions, third political parties, civic and church groups, public broadcasting, well-funded public universities and a liberal wing of the Democratic Party—that were capable of responding to outside pressure from movements. They did so imperfectly. They provided only enough reforms to save the capitalist system from widespread unrest or, with the breakdown of capitalism in the 1930s, from revolution. They never addressed white supremacy and institutional racism or the cruelty that is endemic to capitalism. But they had the ability to address and ameliorate the suffering of working men and women.

Andray Domise, All Lives Matter

Feminism LOL: Who's the bigot? If you care about all lives, support the Lighthouse Project.

In Defense Of Populism

DAVOS MAN/WOMAN: “A soulless person, technocratic, nationless and cultureless, severed from reality. The modern economics that undergirded Davos capitalism is equally soulless, a managerial capitalism that reduces economics to mathematics and separates it from human action and human creativity.” 

– From the post: “For the Sake of Capitalism, Pepper Spray Davos”

'Oligarchs must be reined in, rule of law must be restored, unnecessary military adventures overseas must be stopped, and lobbyist written phony “free trade” deals must be scrapped and reversed.'

By Michael Krieger: Despite my refusal to self-identify, I am comfortable stating that I’m a firm supporter of populist movements and appreciate the instrumental role they’ve played historically in free societies. The reason I like this term is because it carries very little baggage. It doesn’t mean you adhere to a specific set of policies or solutions, but that you believe above all else that the concerns of average citizens matter and must be reflected in government policy.

There Is No Anti Semitism In Britain

By Gilad Atzmon: In the end of October (2016) we learned from the British Jewish media that Police were called to University College London (UCL)  amid claims of common assault and verbal intimidation by "pro-Palestinian protestors" at an event with an Israeli speaker. 
We had to wait another three month for a single honest Jew (Jerry Lewis of Hampstead Synagogue) to admit in front of the notorious ultra Zionist BOD, that the event at UCL were actually provoked by Jewish groups that have nothing to do with the Jewish students community. At least one of those Jewish groups is funded by Israel according to Lewis. These groups invoke hatred against Jews because this is how they justify their existence and sustain their funding.

Today’s Feminists Are So Out Of Touch With How Most Women Live, They Might As Well Be On Another Planet

I'm not saying there isn't further to go for women's equality, but a lot of the key feminist cause celebres are issues for everyone 

By Julia Hartley-Brewer: I had to break some terrible news to my young daughter this morning.

At the tender age of nine, I knew that what I was going to tell her would shake her world to the core and affect her life forever.

We live, I gently explained, in a patriarchal society that limits women's choices and that she will never be truly free to be all that she can be simply because she was born a girl.

My daughter shook her head in bemused disbelief and, with a disdainful roll of her eyes, went off to clean her teeth as she pondered whether to be a doctor, a stable girl or Prime Minister when she grows up. - I guess she must have missed the memo.

So what had prompted this grand revelation from mother to daughter? Well, last night I attended a Guardian newspaper-sponsored event at the National Theatre to discuss whether feminism is “the new F-word”. Everyone else there had definitely got the memo. The whole place positively oozed with patriarchal oppression.

Former Newspaper Editor Who Exposed CIA Found Dead

Former editor of largest newspaper in Germany revealed the CIA pays journalists in Germany, France, Britain, Australia and New Zealand to plant fake stories - and the CIA is trying to bring war to Russia

By Baxter Dmitry: Dr Udo Ulfkotte, the former German newspaper editor whose bestselling book exposed how the CIA controls German media, has been found dead. He was 56.

Germany Slams Trump Criticism: Urges US To "Build Better Cars", Points Out That Zio-US Caused EU Refugee Crisis

By Tyler Durden: An angry Berlin has responded with a staunch defense of its policies after President-elect Donald Trump criticized German Chancellor Angela Merkel in two separate Sunday interviews, one with Germany's Bild and one with the Sunday Times, for her stance during the refugee crisis while threatening a 35% tariff on BMW cars imported into the US.
Germany’s deputy chancellor and minister for the economy, Sigmar Gabriel, said on Monday morning that a tax on German imports would lead to a “bad awakening” among US carmakers since they were reliant on transatlantic supply chains. “I believe BMW’s biggest factory is already in the US, in Spartanburg [South Carolina],” Gabriel, leader of the centre-left Social Democratic party, told the Bild newspaper in a video interview.
“The US car industry would have a bad awakening if all the supply parts that aren’t being built in the US were to suddenly come with a 35% tariff. I believe it would make the US car industry weaker, worse and above all more expensive." Playing Trump's threat off Congress, Gabriel added that he "would wait and see what the Congress has to say about that, which is mostly full of people who want the opposite of Trump" as quoted by The Guardian.

We’ve Been Hacking Elections For More Than A Century

By Stephen Kinzer: Outrage is shaking Washington as members of Congress compete to demonize Russia for its alleged interference in America’s recent presidential election. “Any foreign intervention in our elections is entirely unacceptable,” Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has asserted. Russian actions, according to other legislators, are “attacks on our very fundamentals of democracy” that “should alarm every American” because they “cut to the heart of our free society.” This burst of righteous indignation would be easier to swallow if the United States had not itself made a chronic habit of interfering in foreign elections.
Right: Chilean President Salvador Allende waved to supporters in Santiago a few days after his election in 1970. The car was escorted by General Augusto Pinochet.
One of our first operations to shape the outcome of a foreign election came in Cuba. After the United States helped Cuban rebels overthrow Spanish rule in 1898, we organized a presidential election, recruited a pro-American candidate, and forbade others to run against him. Two years later, after the United States annexed Hawaii, we established an electoral system that denied suffrage to most native Hawaiians, assuring that only pro-American candidates would be elected to public office.