Via dicentra, the Z-Man on the ongoing disappearance of mainstream media comment sections: 

The reason news sites are killing off comment sections is two-fold. One, it is usually where you get the bits of the news story our betters edited out in order to maintain the narrative. The “Minnesota man” in the story is identified in the comments as Jorge Gonzalez, an illegal from Guadalajara. It’s where the “suspect wearing a red shirt” is identified as a black guy named T’Q’ull Ferguson with a Facebook page full of pics of him holding a handgun and a bong. The comment sections have become a leak in the system. The other problem, especially for opinion sites like the Spectator, is the comments have become the place that makes the writers cry. Sure, there’s lots of inane chatter, but it is also where some smart people post corrections and point out the many glaring logical errors. [Opinion writers] have fragile psyches, so seeing their mistakes highlighted for everyone to see, right under their posts, is a source of constant distress.

Ed Driscoll has more. See also this. 

Somewhat related, Christopher Snowdon on Oxfam’s dishonesties: 

If you look at the BBC’s inequality report you will find no challenge, no rebuttal and no response from anybody who disagrees with Oxfam’s warped interpretation of the data. Whether it knows it or not, the BBC is complicit in the fabrication.

Thomas Sowell suggests some election year reading: 

If you are concerned about issues involved when some people want to expand the welfare state and others want to contract it, then one of the most relevant and insightful books is Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple. What makes Life at the Bottom especially relevant and valuable is that it is about the actual consequences of the welfare state in England — which are remarkably similar to the consequences in the United States. Many Americans may find it easier to think straight about what happens, when it is in a country where the welfare recipients are overwhelmingly whites, so that their behaviour cannot be explained away by “a legacy of slavery” or “institutional racism,” or other such evasions of facts in the United States. As Dr Dalrymple says: “It will come as a surprise to American readers, perhaps, to learn that the majority of the British underclass is white, and that it demonstrates all the same social pathology as the black underclass in America — for very similar reasons, of course.” That reason is the welfare state, and the attitudes and behaviour it promotes and subsidises.

Katherine Kersten on racial discipline quotas in schools – and their ugly consequences:

On [superintendent Valeria] Silva’s watch, the city’s high schools have become menacing places where gangs of out-of-control teens prowl the halls, and “classroom invasions” by students settling private disputes are commonplace. Today, fights that “might have been between two individuals” can grow into “mêlées involving up to 40 or 50 people,” according to Steve Linders, a St Paul police spokesman. Roving packs often attack individuals, and police have had to use chemical irritants to break up what they call “riots.” […] One high school has issued emergency whistles to teachers and assigned a guard to every floor. A teacher who was crushed into a shelf in a classroom invasion now instructs her students to use a “secret knock” to enter her classroom.

The discipline policies that gave rise to this chaos sprang from Silva’s embrace of “racial equity” ideology. In St Paul, as across the nation, black students as a group are referred for discipline at higher rates than their peers. Silva made eliminating this racial gap a top priority. In Silva’s view, the gap is caused by teachers’ racial bias and cultural insensitivity, not by higher rates of misconduct by black students. She mandated “white privilege” training for all district personnel, eliminated “continual wilful disobedience” as a suspendable offence, and shifted many special education students with behaviour problems — students who are disproportionately black — to mainstream classrooms.

As Silva’s new discipline regime took hold, reading and math scores dropped and headlines about assaults on teachers appeared with disturbing frequency. Yet instead of reconsidering, her administration moved quickly to control public relations damage. For example, district officials attempted to silence critics by accusing them of having “issues with racial equity,” one veteran teacher told City Pages. In December 2015, teachers threatened to strike over mounting safety concerns… Meanwhile, St Paul families of all races began flooding into charter and suburban public schools, taking millions of dollars in state aid with them.

What’s remarkable here isn’t that young thugs and budding sociopaths will quickly exploit immunity from punishment based solely on their race, but the fact that grown adults, supposed professionals, many of whom will be parents, either didn’t see this coming or realised what would happen and went ahead anyway, thereby screwing everyone else. Including, of course, children with browner skin who somehow manage not to indulge in routine fits of thuggery.

Readers may recall this rather startling article by Paul Sperry on how similar policies of racial favouritism in six other cities promptly resulted in six surges in violent classroom assaults. With apologists for the policies in effect claiming that “African-American boys” are more “physical” and “demonstrative,” and just can’t help punching teachers in the face, or groping them, or setting other students’ hair on fire. Because it’s how black Americans “engage in learning.”

Also relevant, the first item here and the links immediately following it.

How dare you want a say in what we, your betters, do to your children?

Previously. Via Damian Counsell. 

Colleges to avoid, #124:

New students at Pomona College, Claremont, California, were welcomed to campus with posters in their dorms… stating that all white people are racist. The signs state white people should “acknowledge your privilege” and “apologise if you’ve offended someone,” adding that offensive language includes words like “sassy” and “riot,” which are “racially coded.” “Understand that you are white, so it is inevitable that you have unconsciously learned racism,” it asserts. “Your unearned advantage must be acknowledged and your racism unlearned.” Further, the poster claims that white people should “just listen!” rather than explaining their own perspective.

Don’t talk back. Dialogue is oppressive. Unilateral racial scolding is where it’s at. Because, for people of pallor, your very existence is something to atone for – and no-one would ever take advantage of free hits. After much “unlearning,” and suitably chastened and humiliated, you will then take your place in the new and glorious progressive pecking order.

Heather Mac Donald on the world’s real unsafe spaces: 

Because Albinos’ body parts are believed to carry magical powers, their limbs are highly marketable — once obtained, of course, through mutilation or murder. Attending school for sisters Bibiana and Tindi Mashamba was a nightmare; not only did other children throw rocks and spit on them and teachers beat them, but the threat of murder was ever-present. So, like many Third World girls, they simply stayed home. But even such a retreat from the public realm couldn’t protect them. The day after their father’s funeral, Bibiana’s leg and two fingers were hacked off in the hope of a lucrative sale.

Good Samaritans brought the girls to the Orthopaedic Institute for Children in Los Angeles so as to provide Bibiana with a new prosthetic leg. And then students from USC’s law school started an asylum appeal for them. Did those law students seek to get them asylum in Nigeria, say, or Haiti, so that they wouldn’t be oppressed by white privilege? No, oddly, they targeted their asylum petition at the U.S. government, the place where victims of the brutality, superstition, and hatred that characterise so many Third World countries flee to (along with equally reviled Western Europe). The petition was successful, and now Bibiana and Tindi are students in Ojai, California, where they are eager to catch up on their lost schooling and go on to college. There are no reports as of yet of the girls being stoned in Ojai.

Seth Barron on the unmentionable costs of illegal immigration: 

New York’s Health + Hospitals Corporation, which runs the city’s massive public health infrastructure, takes it as its mission to provide care to anyone who needs it, without regard for immigration status. This policy is a major reason why HHC is on constant verge of financial collapse. During the last fiscal year, HHC needed an emergency allocation of $337 million from the city [i.e., taxpayers] just to keep its doors open, and the prognosis for the future is even worse. At an April press conference, Dr Ram Raju, president of HHC, said that caring for illegals consumes about one-third of his $7.6 billion annual budget. Rounding down, that means that $2.5 billion — of which the city is picking up an increasingly large chunk every year, as state and federal aid dries up — goes toward providing health care to illegal aliens in New York.

And Cathy Young on the alleged gender politics of headphone use:  

Back in 2013, Dan Bacon posted a piece titled “How to Talk to a Woman Who Is Wearing Headphones.” This three-year-old blogpost was dug up and pilloried by a Twitter activist named Brandon Evers, whose Twitter bio states, “I support intersectional feminism, but only women can decide if I’m a feminist” and helpfully clarifies that his personal pronouns are “he/him,” and whose Twitter feed is mostly one long exercise in ‘look how progressive and pro-feminist I am’ moral posturing. Brandon’s tweet quickly went viral with 18,000 retweets, and the outrage machine kicked in, with Bustle, Slate, and numerous other sites denouncing [Bacon’s] post as a creepy and misogynistic call to sexual harassment and boundary violation. Revelist, a publication for millennial women, compared Dan Bacon to mass murderer Elliott Rodger, who killed six people (four of them men) in 2014 because he was mad about being rejected by women.

Feel free to share your own links and snippets, on any subject, in the comments. It’s what these posts are for.