How Left-Wing Organizations Betray the Groups They Claim to Represent
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union—like most communist parties—came to power as the great defender of workers.
In reality, the Soviet Communist Party didn’t give a hoot about Russian workers. The party was nothing more than a totalitarian organization that used workers to gain power—and then suppressed the proletariat, just as it suppressed every other group.
One of the first things the Soviet Communist Party did after attaining power was disband independent labor unions and prohibit workers’ strikes. Yes, the “workers’ party” banned strikes.
The one major exception was the Chinese Communist Party, which came to power as the great defender of peasants. And the CCP slaughtered about 60 million of them.
This has been the modus operandi of every left-wing group everywhere: Claim concern for some group, and use that group to fool people—specifically, naive liberals, who share few values with the Left, but have frequently served as useful idiots for the Left. Liberals do so to this day.
Teachers Unions
Teachers unions are nothing more than left-wing groups that use alleged concern for students to attain and retain power. The reality, however, is while they care about teachers, they harm students far more than they help them.
One example is teachers unions’ opposition to school choice. Those who actually care about students support the right of parents to choose their children’s schools—just as many teachers do when they send their own children to schools of their choice.
A second example is teachers unions’ making it nearly impossible to fire incompetent teachers.
A third example was teachers unions’ demands that schools lock down for nearly two years during the COVID-19 era. The unions did so despite there being no scientific evidence in support of school lockdowns and despite ample warnings that many children would suffer intellectually, scholastically, emotionally, and psychologically.
Moreover, wrote John H. Cochrane of the Hoover Institution in The Wall Street Journal, “When schools went remote, parents found out what was actually going on inside the classrooms. Teachers were coaching students to hate themselves, their country and their religious traditions, and sexualizing young children.”
The last point brings us to a fourth example: Teachers rob young students of their sexual innocence with premature talk of, and books that deal with, overt sexual activity, and the infamous use of drag queens to perform in front of children as young as 6 years old.
Just how left-wing teachers organizations are was made clear by the sympathetic left-wing magazine The Nation in January:
A rank-and-file campaign inside the National Education Association is demanding the president stop ‘sending military funding, equipment, and intelligence to Israel.’ … But the rank-and-file campaign goes beyond [that]. … Members want the [National Education Association] to revoke its endorsement of Joe Biden for the 2024 presidential race until the president … stops ‘sending military funding, equipment, and intelligence to Israel.’
That was only two months after Oct. 7.
Civil Rights Organizations
Most civil rights organizations are also essentially left-wing groups. They use alleged concern for blacks to attain and retain power, but they harm blacks considerably more than they help them.
A glaring example is the near-universal opposition of civil rights groups to school choice, despite the fact that black Americans overwhelmingly support it. According to a 2023 RealClear Opinion Research poll, 73% of blacks support school choice—2 percentage points more than whites. They do so because large majorities of black students in public schools perform far below grade-level standards.
The reason the largest civil rights organization, the NAACP, opposes school choice has nothing to do with concern for blacks. It is that the left-wing position—again, the NAACP is a left-wing organization—on school choice is dictated by teachers unions.
Other civil rights organizations’ positions that harm blacks include labeling as “racist” the most effective solution to racism, widespread colorblindness; supporting separate dorms and graduations for black college students; and support for lowering academic and professional standards to facilitate black advancement.
Feminist Groups
Feminist organizations are additional examples of essentially left-wing organizations. The group they use to attain and retain power is women. Just as other left-wing interest groups, they harm the group on whose behalf they allegedly fight—in this case, women—far more than they help them.
The most obvious example is the support of major feminist organizations for men who say they are women participating in women’s sports.
From the website of the National Women’s Law Center:
The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) unequivocally supports the inclusion of trans women in women’s sports. And if you call yourself a feminist, you should, too.
From the website of the Women’s Sports Foundation:
The Women’s Sports Foundation supports the right of all athletes, including transgender athletes, to participate in athletic competition.
In 2022, the Women’s Sports Foundation wrote a letter to the NCAA protesting any diminution of the right of biological males who say they are females to participate in women’s athletics. The letter was co-signed, as expected, by LGBTQIA+ organizations, but also by two major feminist organizations in addition to the Women’s Sports Federation: the National Organization for Women and the National Women’s Political Caucus.
Damaging women has been the primary legacy of organized feminism for the past half-century. That there are more depressed women, especially young women, today than at any other time in modern American history is directly attributable to left-wing influence generally (no religion, no country, no future) and to feminist doctrines specifically: Career is more important than marriage and family, and women can do just fine without a man to love and be loved by.
LGBTQIA+ Organizations
Perhaps the ultimate example of left-wing contempt for the groups they claim to represent is “Queers for Palestine.” Palestinian queers have no rights. They face persecution and even death if they expose themselves to their society. Israeli queers are by far the safest, happiest, and freest in the Middle East. But hating Israel is the left-wing position. At any cost.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/16/how-left-wing-organizations-betray-groups-claim-to-represent/
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‘We got a sleep divorce and our marriage has never been better’
Elizabeth Pearson and her husband, Ryan Pearson, have been married for 16 years, and for half of that time, they have slept in separate bedrooms.
“We both travel for work quite a bit, and we noticed that we slept great in hotels,” said Elizabeth, 42, an author and executive coach. “Where we slept poorly was when we were at home in the bed together.”
Ryan, 47, is 6-feet-6-inches tall, snores “like a chainsaw,” has restless leg syndrome and on one occasion punched Elizabeth in the face while sleeping, she said. “Waking up angry at him every morning was driving a rift in the relationship.”
The couple now share a six-bedroom, four-bath Mediterranean home in Laguna Niguel, California, that they purchased in 2017 for US$1.5 million. They completed a 500-square-foot renovation earlier this year that cost $95,000, adding a loft and bedroom. Now, Ryan sleeps on the first floor, and Elizabeth sleeps on the second, each in a bedroom with an ensuite bath. And their marriage is thriving.
“Well-rested people are more patient, more engaged and more present with their partners,” Elizabeth said. “When you have time to yourself, you can be a better partner.”
And what happens to your sex life if you sleep separately? Elizabeth said that is a non-issue. “We have a great sex life because we’re not pissed off at each other throughout the day for something that is uncontrollable like sleep and snoring,” she said.
Like the Pearsons, many couples today are opting for a “sleep divorce,” choosing to use so-called “snore rooms,” or dual primary bedrooms, instead of following the typical marital path of sharing a bed. According to a survey conducted in March 2023 by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 35 per cent of Americans sleep in separate rooms occasionally or consistently.
Millennials are most likely to sleep apart, at 43 per cent, according to the survey, compared with just 22 per cent of baby boomers snoozing separately. The trend of sleeping apart is nothing new.
Sleep expert Wendy Troxel, Ph.D., a senior behavioural and social scientist at Rand and the author of “Sharing the Covers: Every Couple’s Guide to Better Sleep,” said that couples have been sleeping separately for centuries. It was only after the sexual revolution in the 1960s that people began to assume that sleeping apart implied a loveless, sexless union and that a stigma evolved around separate bedrooms, she said.
Tiffiny Alexander, a broker associate with Artisan/Healdsburg Sotheby’s International Realty in Santa Rosa, California, said she faces that stigma occasionally when working with home buyers. “It can be taboo to talk about the fact that they don’t sleep together,” she said. “So, buyers aren’t always transparent about the features they’re looking for.” Alexander currently holds the listing on a 5,000-square-foot gated estate in the heart of Santa Rosa’s wine country, listed for $3.395 million, that has dual primary bedrooms on separate floors. One of the owners is an early riser, while the other is a night owl, so sleeping separately makes sense for them, she said.
Troxel said that sleeping separately doesn’t necessarily mean a couple has relationship problems. “It’s more about how couples arrive at the decision to sleep apart,” she said. “The negative situation is when one partner stomps out of the bedroom in frustration and goes to the couch, leaving the other feeling rejected and abandoned, because the idea of sleeping apart can feel very threatening. But good sleep is critical for good relationship health, so if couples are considering this, they should have an open and honest dialogue. Sleeping apart isn’t the death knell of a relationship — it is more about how couples arrive at that decision that can impact a relationship.”
Marc Friedman, senior vice president of sales for home builder Kolter Homes, said the company has been responding to buyer interest by offering dual primary bedrooms as optional upgrades in models launched over the past two years at an additional cost ranging from $3,000 to over $12,000. Buyers can choose from three options: a snore room, converted out of a flex space next to the primary bedroom, which has a door leading into the primary; a second owner’s suite, which converts a flex space and secondary bedroom to a full second owner’s suite with bath, but doesn’t connect to the primary bedroom; or an in-law suite, which includes a bedroom, en suite bath and private living room.
According to Realtor.com, during the first two months of 2024, active listings for homes that mention multiple primary bedrooms were priced 13.3 per cent higher on average per square foot than those with just one primary.
Amy Boland, 51, and her wife, Beth Berila, 53, have also opted to sleep separately on most nights in the classic American Foursquare home they share in Minneapolis, which Boland purchased in March 2000 for $159,000. The couple married in 2015 when they were both in their 40s and had lived alone for most of their lives.
“We had spent nights together when we were dating, so it wasn’t a big deal for me until Beth started having hot flashes at night,” said Boland, a product manager for a major insurance company. “She would wake up and flop the covers off and then have trouble falling back asleep. I also snore, and that bothers her.” Berila, a college professor, used to go downstairs to sleep on the sofa, so Boland offered to finish the attic to create a separate studio space for her. The attic renovation was completed in 2017 for $31,500. Now, Berila can enjoy the cooler temperatures she prefers and white noise that helps her sleep, while Boland sleeps in silence. “Sometimes she goes up there if one of us has an early morning, or she’ll start out sleeping in our bedroom and something will wake her up, and she’ll go up there to finish the night,” Boland said. “Either way, it’s fine. If she goes upstairs, I get to hog the bed. If she doesn’t, then I get to sleep next to her.”
As for their relationship, Boland said it is better than ever. “Who doesn’t function better when they’ve had a solid evening of sleep,” she said. “If you could do something to get along better with the person you’re roommates with for the rest of your lives, wouldn’t you do it?”
For those considering a sleep divorce, sleep expert Troxel suggests that couples maintain a night-time ritual with their partner, to try to reconnect and unwind from the stresses of the day. One way to do that is to create a small common living room called a pajama room between the separate bedrooms, said Ralph Choeff, an architect and founder of Choeff Levy Fischman in Miami. He also advises couples to locate the bedrooms on separate sides of the house, but each with similar views so that one bedroom isn’t given priority over the other. When designing dual primary bedrooms, Choeff avoids a shared, Jack-and-Jill-style bathroom. “Remember that it’s more than just having separate bedrooms. You need to consider resale value as well. You can’t sell that second bedroom as a full bedroom if it’s sharing the bathroom,” he said.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/they-got-a-sleep-divorce-and-their-marriage-has-never-been-better/news-story/34a9c8c08c96f4b901506e3827779c8a
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By destroying Gaza, Netanyahu is rebuilding a lost strategic art
Joe Biden’s admission that the US hasn’t been able to stop a Yemeni sub-state actor from affecting an important element of global maritime trade would have been ludicrous not so long ago. But the Middle East has changed, and Israel knows it.
The utility of extended deterrence as a key component of US security policy is under pressure on several fronts, but none more tellingly than in the Middle East.
In the Red Sea, for example, even as Washington and its allies attack Houthi missile and drone launching sites in Yemen, and interdict most of the ordnance launched by them, attacks against shipping continue.
US President Joe Biden has admitted that military action against Houthi targets has not stopped the attacks but that the military response from Washington will continue.
In years gone by the idea that Washington would be unable to stop a Yemeni sub-state actor from affecting an important element of global maritime trade would have been ludicrous.
But the world is not as it once was. With the relative certainties of the Cold War, deterrence presented a binary choice between the two nuclear superpowers – avoid direct conflict or risk a nuclear conflagration.
Proxy wars were still fought and won in Africa, while more conventional wars of unilateral intervention were fought and lost by both sides in Vietnam and Afghanistan respectively.
But the end of the Cold War has led to the atomisation of threats – many of these threat groups possess weapons and backing from powerful regional states that in some cases make them as capable as state-based actors.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Middle East, where improved military capabilities are combined with an ideological zealotry that makes normal cost-benefit calculations underpinning deterrence redundant. This makes it very difficult for Washington to achieve the type of deterrence on which long-term regional stability is often based.
The power differential in years past meant US intervention often (but not always) produced favourable outcomes with limited effort.
American intervention in 1958, for example, stabilised Lebanon in a short time at little cost, yet a quarter of a century later its intervention there amid a civil war and an Israeli invasion led to the death of 240 US marines in an attack on their barracks by an Iranian-backed suicide bomber. Washington withdrew its troops, having achieved nothing.
The rise of more capable ideologically motivated individuals and groups isn’t the only reason Washington’s ability to deter threat actors is not what it used to be.
If American intervention in the 1990 Gulf War that expelled Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait showed the benefits of US conventional military power, its ill-fated decision to invade Iraq in 2003 showed its limitations against a determined local force whose capacity to absorb losses surpassed that of Washington.
But more recent concerns over Washington’s political commitment to the judicious use of force in the region also has proved damaging to America’s ability to deter.
A key political component of deterrence is credibility – your opponents must believe that promises will be kept.
In a tough environment such as the Middle East where political leaders rarely change, outsiders are judged largely on their firmness and their commitment in the first instance, and their capabilities in the second.
The failure by Donald Trump as US president to respond to the 2019 drone and missile attack on the Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities in Saudi Arabia was damaging to the view of Washington’s ability to deter attacks against its closest regional partners.
Riyadh expected a robust intervention against Iran, which it held responsible for the attacks, yet none was forthcoming. Saudi concerns over Washington’s reliability as a security partner increased as a result.
The US is not alone in facing this deterrence dilemma. Deterrence in the Middle East is a bit like one’s reputation – hard-won but easily lost, as Israel found out on October 7 last year.
Israel’s undeclared nuclear capability had been established to put an end to fears about its survival as a nation.
After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, attacks against Israel were limited and confined largely to Palestinian groups or from groups such as Hezbollah operating from Lebanon.
Reprisals normally were calibrated to reflect the nature of the attack and, with the exception of the 20-year occupation of southern Lebanon and the 2006 war in Lebanon, Israel’s technical superiority and relationship with the US were sufficient to ensure victory and hence deter its enemies.
Hamas’s attack on October 7 was dangerous for Israel because it punctured its sense of security and gave hope to its enemies that continued resistance was not futile. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza are designed as a demonstration to others in the region about the cost that will be extracted on those who plan similar actions in the future, rebuilding deterrence by destroying Gaza.
Of the regional players, though, it is Iran that has best learnt the art of deterrence. From its own history and from Israel it has learnt the value of nuclear ambiguity as a way to protect the integrity of the nation-state from its enemies. And it is an advantage-seeker of the first order, establishing strategic reach by building proxy relationships with coreligionists or groups that share common foes or lack friends.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon prompted the creation of Hezbollah, the US invasion of Iraq opened the door for Iranian influence on an unprecedented scale in its Arab neighbour, while the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen forced the Houthi Movement into Iranian arms.
Tehran invested in Syrian authoritarian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime when all seemed lost for Damascus and it has long supported Hamas. Iranian support for the Alawi-led Assad regime, the Zaydi-dominated Houthi Movement, Sunni Hamas or the Shia Hezbollah and various Iraqi proxies shows that strategic utility counts for much more than ideological affinity in Tehran’s eyes.
Weak in conventional arms apart from its rocket forces, Iranian deterrence is predicated on having its proxies bear the lion’s share of the cost while Tehran accrues the benefit.
But Iran is facing its own deterrence challenge as Israel increasingly is targeting senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers outside Iran. Its strike on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus on April 1 demonstrated Israel’s belief that in this deadly escalatory game, Iran will not seek to raise the stakes for fear of inviting more devastating attacks. Even Tehran’s deterrence effect has its limits.
Despite past missteps, however, it isn’t true that the US lacks the ability to achieve deterrence in the Middle East; just that it is a far more difficult proposition than it ever has been in the past.
A US carrier battle group, for instance, still has a regional deterrent effect in the way that Russia cannot, and China will not, exercise. And the way in which the US facilitated Iraqi forces against Islamic State in their country, and supported Syrian Kurdish forces in battling Islamic State in eastern Syria, was a remarkable demonstration of how to run a well-conducted, complex counterinsurgency campaign in a foreign country.
But the days of the US, or anybody else for that matter, deterring significant threat actors in the region simply as a result of their military presence and public political statements are gone. Nowadays it takes a much greater effort to achieve a lesser degree of deterrence than in the past. Degrading capabilities through military action is taking precedence over deterrence in the rather optimistic hope that the former will lead to the latter.
Some regional states are well aware of this and are already making plans for a less omnipotent, but still present, US. That is as it should be, but none has a deterrent capability to match that of Washington’s.
As maligned as it may be, Washington’s ability to degrade enemy capabilities, and to deter threat actors, is still significant – even if it is not the same as it was in the past.
Then again, the Middle East is a region where the perfect is often the enemy of the good, and this applies to deterrence as much as it does to many other security issues.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/players-scramble-to-regain-upper-hand-on-deterrence/news-story/dc4e9e5d44dcd732c9b9978f12f0844f
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Australian conservative gets it right on Muslim Immigrants
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has accused the Albanese government of importing people who do not adopt the laws and values of the countries they settle in.
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was allegedly attacked by a knife-wielding terrorist on Monday evening while the clergyman was delivering a sermon at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in the western Sydney suburb of Wakeley.
The teenager who allegedly stabbed the bishop justified his actions by telling police the Christian leader had 'sworn' at 'my prophet', and reportedly screamed the Islamic phrase 'Allahu Akbar'.
The Australian National Imams Council and other individual Muslims have condemned the attack on Bishop Emmanuel.
'These attacks are horrifying and have no place in Australia, particularly at places of worship and toward religious leaders,' the Imams Council said in a statement.
Senator Hanson claims the viscous stabbing, which police are treating as a terror attack, was the result of importing people with an 'Islamist ideology' who 'do not adopt the laws and values of the countries they settle in'.
'Instead they demand their fundamentalism is simply accepted and adopted in their new countries, and they employ violence or radicalise young people into violence in perverse attempts to achieve this end or attack those who oppose them,' she said.
'Islamist ideology, which seeks to impose fundamentalist Islam across the world, is completely incompatible with Australian values of freedom, democracy and religious tolerance.'
Senator Hanson argued Australia was seeing a rise in radical Islam with 'extremist Islamic preachers in Australia calling for jihad and death – and getting away with it' and 'the intimidation and violence we’ve seen directed at Jewish Australians'.
She contended the 'most effective solution' to this problem is 'people with such ideology are never permitted to come here' but the opposite was happening under the Albanese government.
'Labor doesn’t care about the threat they represent and continues to import this ideology to Australia to shore up support for its western Sydney MPs,' she said.
'The Albanese government has fallen over itself to hand out visas so people who overwhelmingly support the terror group Hamas can escape the consequences of Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel.
'When will the major parties wake up and stop importing people and ideologies that are completely incompatible with Australia and its way of life?'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13316817/Pauline-Hanson-makes-explosive-claims-reasons-Monday-nights-terror-attack-calls-Albanese-government.html
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See