Sydney police launch clampdown on ... party boats

Police launch clampdown on Pyrmont party boats

Police will consider stricter regulation of "party boats" after a series of drunken brawls, including one at the weekend that involved 60 men – and left one with facial fractures.

... police were "fed up" dealing with "highly intoxicated, and highly emotional" people who get off these boats at Pyrmont...

On the agenda, is forcing "floating pubs" to declare their arrival and departure time so that police can check how intoxicated people are when they board and disembark.

Face smashed during 60-man Pyrmont brawl

A man found lying in a gutter with severe facial injuries had been on a harbour cruise visiting Sydney when he was assaulted in a brawl involving 60 men.

The 37-year-old man belonged to a group of 40 men from Wollongong, who had fought with a rival group outside The Star casino in Pyrmont...

The brawl started shortly after 1am yesterday, when the Wollongong-based group had alighted from a party boat at the casino wharf and were waiting for a bus...

"We are advised that as a result of a verbal altercation involving both groups, a large-scale brawl followed," he told reporters.

Behold the logic of political correctness. Groups party all night long with loads of alcohol, yet they don't fight within the group. But as soon as they meet a rival group, it's mayhem.

So do we state the obvious and question the wisdom of diversity? Nope, we just crack down on alcohol because that unlocks the reservoir of politically incorrect thoughts, and we work overtime to keep groups apart.


The group from Wollongong are probably whites who don't come to Sydney often.

File under: to protect and serve the brain-dead and emotion-neutered ideology of diversity.

Stephen Goeman: President of Tufts Militant Inclusionist Society

If this kid is the future of white America, we are in deep doo doo.

Tufts Freethought Society's president Stephen Goeman reflects on how nonreligious individuals respond to terrorism & Islamaphobia. Transcript below.


Stephen Goeman, A Humanist Reflection on 9/11

I'm Stephen Goeman, President of the Tufts Freethought Society, and I am a secular Humanist. The Humanist Manifesto describes Humanism as a lifestance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our responsibility to lead ethical lives of fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity. Humanism has no shared text, and few discernable public faces. As such, we are left to find solace and resolution in times of tragedy through introspection. This afternoon, I will reflect on how the nonreligious find inspiration in the religious pluralism which has developed in the wake of the September 11th devastation.

Like most people I know in the class of 2013, I was only 10 when the attacks of September 11th took place. What I remember most is asking my teachers and family members how and why this could happen, and the resulting silence. The authority figures in my life could barely rationalize the loss for themselves, let alone to someone in grade school. My father, now the Commander of the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, was absent for months on end aiding the fight against a vague enemy, the rationale for which I didn't understand. It took years to comprehend the loss and our nation's reaction to it.

At the ten year mark, we seem to have accomplished closure. Osama bin Laden has been brought to justice and America has established itself as a force which liberates countries savaged by dictatorship. There is still much work to be done. There is a disturbing double standard present in American religiosity which reveals a dark side to our coping mechanism. According to a study released last month by Brookings and the Public Religion Research Institute titled "What It Means to Be An American; Attitudes in an increasingly diverse America 10 years after 9/11," 48% of Americans believe that Muslim extremists who commit violent acts represent their religion, while 83% believe that Christian extremists do not exemplify their faith. We are all familiar with the struggles "the ground zero mosque" has faced (despite being neither located at ground zero nor a mosque). Yesterday outside Tisch library, I witnessed one student react in disbelief upon viewing a flyer for the Muslim Students Association's meeting tonight—Is this a joke? She asked, flabbergasted that Muslims would dare commune and exist on this day. The grasp of Islamaphobia is great.

There is hope. Felix Adler, a hero of early Humanism, compelled all individuals to speak out against injustice against groups we ourselves do not belong to. Adler asserted, 'Every outcry against the oppression of some people by other people, or against what is morally hideous is the affirmation of the principle that a human being is not to be violated. A human being is to be respected and revered.' I have observed this to be a principle shared by my friends of faith, and a principle set in action by interfaith coalitions such as the Interfaith Youth Core and the Pluralism Project. Slowly, we are coming together as a nation of diverse religious backgrounds.

We are at war with an exclusionist ideology which seeks to divide our country, and the assaults against liberty aren't always hijacked planes and improvised explosives. Intolerance directed at any group of individuals must be vehemently opposed lest the principles of freedom and tolerance we uphold cease to carry meaning. Victory in the war on bigotry is a long way off, and will require the united spirit of every American. I have hope for the future, and faith in the ability of American citizens to do and be better together. As President Barack Obama put it, "We are the people we've been waiting for."

Meanwhile back on planet Earth, let's take a reality check on contemporary humanism, and Islam ...

Michael Lind, Secular humanists on the real planet of the apes

For all the variations, the common theory of human nature underlying contemporary secular humanism seems to be cosmopolitan utilitarianism, the conviction that human beings, if liberated from superstition by science, would behave less like selfish, scheming social apes and more like self-sacrificing social insects, giving their all for the good of the 7 billion members of the global human hive. "Life’s fulfillment emerges from individual participation in the service of human ideals…" says Humanist Manifesto III. "Working to benefit society maximizes individual happiness."

The secular humanist movement avoids the difficult question of the coexistence of in-group altruism and inter-group rivalries by imagining, with John Lennon, that conflicts would vanish if only people stopped being religious and patriotic...

Unfortunately for Humanist Lennonism, evolutionary biology does not provide much hope for the sort of altruistic personal commitment to planetary solidarity that secular humanists want to encourage. Humanist Manifesto III claims that the joy in Stakhanovite that enlightened human beings liberated from religion are expected to feel -- an "ought" -- can be derived from an "is" -- biological fact. "Humans are social by nature and find meaning in relationships."

But social animals are not altruists. Nor are they strict individualists. They are nepotists. As a rule social animals, like wolves, deer, humans and chimps, show favoritism to their relatives and friends and allies, with little or no concern for members of their own species with whom they have no close connection. Abrahamic monotheism insists on the brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God. Darwinism insists at best on the distant cousinhood of humanity.

Among humans, nepotistic solidarity can be transferred, with difficulty, to political units larger than the extended family. But national patriotism is much harder to promote than city-state patriotism, and global patriotism may be a bridge too far.

The illogical leap from the acceptance of evolutionary science to the call for world government and world taxation is typical of the intellectual legerdemain practiced by secular humanists. They assert scientific naturalism leads to the currently fashionable attitudes of North Atlantic left-liberals, but they never provide any convincing arguments for the thesis that if you believe in Darwin, you must follow Dewey...

Note, this is only a problem with contemporary left-liberal humanism, a more conservative humanism would avoid these delusions of grandeur.

Sam Harris, The Problem with Islamic Fundamentalism are the Fundamentals of Islam

There is ... a religion of peace in this world, but it's not Islam. To call Islam a religion of peace ... is completely delusional ...

The problem is not religious extremism, because extremism is not a problem if your core beliefs are truly non-violent. The problem isn't fundamentalism ... the only problem with Islamic fundamentalism are the fundamentals of Islam ...

Osama bin Laden ... is ... giving a very plausible version of the faith ...

Osama bin Laden ... is giving a truly straightforward version of Islam, and you really have to be an acrobat to figure out how he is distorting the faith.

Sam Harris, The End of Faith - Chapter 4: The Problem With Islam

While there are undoubtedly some “moderate” Muslims who have decided to overlook the irrescindable militancy of their religion, Islam is undeniably a religion of conquest. The only future devout Muslims can envisage—as Muslims—is one in which all infidels have been converted to Islam, subjugated, or killed.

File under: "And when we are tolerant, we must know whether it is because of convenience or conviction" -- Denmark's Queen Margrethe; and What Stephen Goeman Needs To Know.

R U OK with diversity?

I watched the 7pm Project on TV last night which promoted R U OK? Day aimed at reducing depression and suicide. They mentioned some scary statistics about suicide rates. But what spoke most was the vision of Sydney streets they used. Here's some screen grabs:



Could such pictures have been used a few decades ago when Sydney was still largely an Anglo population? Not likely, because the association between a city street and depression would not make much sense. But in today's world, misery is a normal and understood reaction to a diverse city.

Professor Jonathan Haidt, What Can Liberals Learn From Conservatives?

... liberals desperately need to read some conservative theory to understand that a world of freedom, mobility and diversity is a recipe for a world of chaos, anomie and social disillusion.

File under: the ideology of diversity is blind to reality.

Swiss MP Oskar Freysinger: Have We Gone MAD?!

Oskar Freysinger, a member of the Swiss People's Party, recently spoke in Germany to support the new Freedom Party along with Geert Wilders.


TRANSCRIPT:

Europe is an idea, a cultural landscape, an intellectual space shaped by history. Europe is the cradle of the modern constitutional democracy, the treasure-house of human rights, of freedom of opinion and expression. Or at least it used to be that, until recently.

This has increasingly been put into danger as our political elite bend their necks before a certain religious dogma which is completely alien to our intellectual history, our values and rule of law. This dogma is gnawing away at the pillars of our system of laws, wherever it is granted the space to do so. This dogma demands total obedience from its followers. "They should never integrate into our system of values". That would be "treason" to them and is even be punishable by death.

They are supposed to conquer and subdue our western world. Not with tanks, rockets or riflemen. Something they could never accomplish, anyway. Not through brutal revolt. No, Islam is in no hurry. It has an eternity. A long process of demoralization and slowmotion occupation of our weakened child-poor society is foreseen.

The Islamic doctrine is intended to creep into our everyday life bit by bit and make Fortress Europe crumble from within. Just think of how the Serbs lost Kosovo. Through demographic development and the help of NATO, which aided the founding of the first Islamic state on European soil. What a suicidal undertaking. What an ominous sign. The Islamic dogma is now imposing itself everywhere.

In Turkey, the Islamists are gradually occupying all judicial and army posts, in order to obliterate the heritage of Kemal Atatürk. Lebanon will become an Islamic state in the next decades. The Arab Spring is on the point of being taken over by the Islamists. In Iraq, Egypt and Pakistan, the last Christian communities are facing extinction.

And what are we doing? We are allowing this violent doctrine in to subvert our rule of law, wholly unhindered in our cultural ghettos. Have we gone mad?! Now is the time to stand up! Come on!

We just shrug our shoulders when girls are forced into marriage and integrated Muslims are pressured and threatened. And we look the other way, as the women are beaten and whole city districts taken over.

We think we can soften the power-lusting "holy warriors" with social benefits. We think we can buy our way to peace of mind! What lunacy! The prophet´s beard is not for fondling! Fanatics cannot be bought. Germany should know this, more so than any other country in the world.

My dear friends in the audience, we are not fighting against people, we are fighting FOR people! We are fighting against a dogma that despises all humanity and wants to push us back into barbarity. We will not easily give up the freedom, for which we have fought so hard over the centuries.

Dear Berliners, here I stand. I cannot do otherwise! Because no one in Europe will stand up even for the very pillar of our civilization, our rule of law, our humanity, the transcendental, unconditional "Love thy neighbor", THAT is the pillar!

Come on Cory Bernardi, now is the time to stand up! We know you're dying to quit the Liberal Party and start an Australian Freedom Party. Let's go.

H/T: SarahMaidofAlbion.

GetUp! - Don't risk Coal Seam Gas

It's a sad day when I have to post something from GetUp! (the left-liberal loon activist organisation). But they make quality videos, and everyone should be outraged by the invasion of coal seam gas exploration into sensitive areas like farmland.



Bob Irwin: "this is the greatest threat to our country that I've seen."
Petition
Donate to get the ad on TV.

Apparently donations are campaign specific: "If you donate towards a particular campaign, we'll only put that money towards the issue you're passionate about."

File under: let's stop this insanity now.

John Cleese: London is no longer an English city

File under: the suicidal paralysis of blind adherence to non-discriminatory immigration.

Ruka talks about race

This video by atheist HeyRuka is a bit rambling, but it's not every day that a voice breaks through the mindless pro-diversity groupthink, and speaks of race realism and the value of ethno-nationalism, that matches pretty closely my own views.


Ruka:

I support homogeneous states, racially homogeneous, and voluntary separatism with a multicultural option for those who want to opt out, I don't want to force anybody. And, as impractical and idealistic as this sounds, that is my ideal. Segregation is naturally occuring, it happens without force. I'm not intolerant of other races, but I would like to see different racial groups existing as their own people independently.

File under: homogenius.