Woman who is allergic to grass could get 20 years in prison for not having grass in her yard
Janice Duffner lives in St. Peters, Missouri, where she owns a house. Because she is allergic to grass, she does not have any in her yard. She does have other plants, which she is not allergic to. The Kansas City Star published this photograph of her yard:
Six years after Ms. Duffner bought her house, the city passed a law that requires all houses to have grass in their yard. After Ms. Duffner told the city that she was allergic to grass, the city threatened her with 20 years in prison and fines totaling $180,000 if she does not comply.
U.S. District Judge John A. Ross recently ruled against Ms. Duffner. Ms. Duffner plans to appeal this ruling. I hope she wins.
Democratic fascist Ian Calderon wants to give six months in jail to any California restaurant employee who gives a straw to a customer without being asked
Ian Calderon, the Democratic majority leader in California’s lower house, has introduced a bill that would give six months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000 to any California restaurant employee who gives a straw to a customer without being asked.
After being contacted by the media, a spokesperson for Calderon said they intend to remove the fine (although, apparently, they have not done so as of the time of publication of this article). Also, apparently, the six month jail term will remain.
http://reason.com/blog/2018/01/25/california-bill-would-criminalize-restau
January 25, 2018
Ian Calderon wants restaurateurs to think long and hard before giving you a straw.
Calderon, the Democratic majority leader in California’s lower house, has introduced a bill to stop sit-down restaurants from offering customers straws with their beverages unless they specifically request one. Under Calderon’s law, a waiter who serves a drink with an unrequested straw in it would face up to 6 months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.
Update: Reason spoke with Voleck Taing, a senior assistant to Assemblyman Calderon, who said they intend to amend the bill to remove the fines.
Donald Trump threatens to shut down NBC and other TV news networks that criticise him
https://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-threatens-shut-down-150300346.html
Donald Trump threatens to shut down NBC and other TV news networks that criticise him
October 11, 2017
Donald Trump has threatened to shut down NBC and other American networks, saying that they peddle fake news.
“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!” Mr Trump wrote in a tweet.
(more…)
Sweden prosecutes woman for truthfully saying that immigrants were pooping in the streets
Sweden: 70-Year-Old Woman Prosecuted For Complaining About Migrants Defecating In The Streets
May 2017
A 70-year-old Swedish woman is facing up to four years in prison for complaining on Facebook about migrants defecating in the streets.
From Fria Tider (translated from Swedish with Google):
A 70 year old woman in Dalarna prosecuted for hate speech after writing on Facebook that immigrants are defecating in the streets, writes DT.se.
According to the prosecution, the woman via Facebook wrote disparagingly of people with a foreign background.
In a post from 2015, she has written that immigrants “set cars on fire and urinate and defecate in the streets.”
This violates the law on incitement to racial hatred, according to the prosecutor.
The accused woman in police interrogation admitted that she wrote the post, but denied that she committed a criminal act.
The evidence against the 70-year-old woman is a screenshot from Facebook.
The penalty for incitement to racial hatred is imprisonment not exceeding two years or, for petty offenses, fines. If the offense is considered to be grave sentenced the defendants to prison terms of between six months and four years.
She’s being dragged into court and threatened with jail for a two year old Facebook post which is factually correct.
While the Western media and leftist “human rights” groups will whine about attacks on free speech in places like China and Russia, in Sweden and Germany they’re throwing people in prison for writing “anti-migrant” Facebook posts.
Here’s the “hate speech” video (i.e., speech against Islamic terrorism) that got a U.S. tourist arrested in Canada
Here are two videos by a YouTuber who calls himself “Wild Bill for America.”
The first video is a speech that he gave when he was in the U.S. In the speech, he criticizes Islamic terrorism.
In the second video, he explains how he was arrested for “smuggling hate speech” in Canada because he was planning to give the exact same speech in Canada, and he had the text of the speech on his IPAD that he was carrying with him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZUmYQYDaw8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwaMpTLUmX0
Italian court bans Uber because it’s BETTER than traditional taxis
Well this takes the cake. In Italy, a court has banned Uber.
Not because it’s dangerous.
And not because its customers were complaining about it.
Instead, the court banned Uber because – get this – it is BETTER than traditional taxis.
The legal term for this is “unfair competition.”
The complaint against Uber was filed by taxi driver unions.
I support unions when they do things that actually make sense, such as protecting the safety of coal miners.
I oppose unions when they do ridiculous things, such as trying to ban “unfair competition.”
If “unfair competition” was never allowed to exist, we would all be cavemen.
Oregon fines man $500 because he used math to criticize red light cameras without having an engineering license
Oregon Man Claims State Muzzles Red Light Camera Critique
April 26, 2017
An Oregon man’s public criticism of the mathematical formula used by red light cameras got him in trouble — not with the police but with the state engineering board.
So he’s suing, claiming a violation of free speech.
After his wife got a ticket based on a red light camera in Beaverton, Oregon, Mats Järlström, a Swedish-born electronics engineer, studied the calculations used to determine the length of the yellow light cycle. He concluded it was too short, because it failed to account for the longer time a driver needed to turn a corner, rather than go straight through the intersection.
Convinced the cameras were using an out-of-date formula, he took his message to practically anyone who would listen — local TV stations, a conference of traffic engineers, and even the state board of engineer examiners.
That’s what got him in trouble.
The board fined him $500 and said he was violating a state law by speaking about engineering issues without a license.
“By providing the public with his traffic engineering calculations,” the board said, “Järlström engaged in the practice of engineering.” And since he didn’t have a license issued by the state, he was violating the law, it said.
Now he’s suing in federal court, accusing the state of violating his First Amendment right to speak about a public issue.
“Criticizing the government’s engineering isn’t a crime. It’s a constitutional right,” said Samuel Gedge of the Institute for Justice, a conservative public interest law firm representing Järlström. “You don’t need to be a licensed engineer to talk about traffic lights.”
As many states do, Oregon prohibits a person from practicing engineering without a license. But the state’s board of engineering examiners equates publicly talking about engineering issues with practicing engineering.
“I was fined simply for speaking out and was told that I can’t truthfully call myself an engineer. People should be free to debate any topic, including technical topics like math and traffic lights,” Järlström said.
A spokesman for the state engineering board had no comment on the lawsuit, and the state has not yet responded in court.
Järlström paid the $500 fine. But he isn’t suing to get his money back.
Another Institute for Justice lawyer on his legal team, Wesley Hottot, said the state is essentially requiring a permission slip to debate government policy. “This board and licensing boards across the country think the First Amendment doesn’t apply to them. They couldn’t be more wrong.”
Totalitarian feminist Sarrah Le Marquand: It should be illegal to be a stay-at-home mum
Sarrah Le Marquand: It should be illegal to be a stay-at-home mum
By Sarrah Le Marquand
March 20, 2017
There’s one issue guaranteed to trigger hysteria across the nation every time it comes up in the news, and it has nothing to do with Pauline Hanson, international terrorism or Married at First Sight.
It’s the topic of stay-at-home mums. More specifically, the release of any data or analysis that dares recommend Australian women should get out of the living room/kitchen/nursery and back into the workforce.
So the outcry has been predictable in the wake of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) recent report which had the audacity to suggest stay-at-home mums would be better off putting their skills to use in paid employment.
“One of the areas of greatest untapped potential in the Australian labour force is inactive and/or part-time working women, especially those with children,’’ concluded the landmark study. “There are potentially large losses to the economy when women stay at home or work short part-time hours.’’
Right on cue, hysteria ensued, with commentators from coast to coast howling in indignation at the very idea that the uppity OECD would insinuate Australia might have a tiny bit of a problem with our female workforce participation rates.
For days you couldn’t walk past a television, radio or computer screen without encountering a defensive rant about how the most valuable work a woman can do involves nappies, play-doh, and a strict adherence to only leaving the family home during the hours of 9am to 5pm to attend playgroup or a similar non-work sanctioned activity.
And then we wonder why Australia continues to languish in the bottom third of OECD member states when it comes to female employment. It’s no mystery; our collective support for working women makes Donald Trump’s cabinet look like Women’s March HQ by comparison.
First, a few facts. Anyone who has a child — and this goes for both mothers and fathers — knows that everything else in life becomes a distant second to that child’s welfare, happiness and wellbeing. So this is not a discussion about the importance of parenting — that is beyond dispute.
And yes, the role played by parents in the early months and years following the birth of a child is vital and irreplaceable. It also stands to reason that for many (but certainly not all) families, it is the mother who opts to take time off work during this period to solely focus on caring for her baby.
Once again, there is nothing wrong with this. In fact, that time at home should be a privilege afforded to more new mums, which is why a few years back I was a lone voice in supporting Tony Abbott’s grossly misunderstood and thus ill-fated paid parental leave scheme, which proposed all female employees receive their normal salary for six months.
So it’s not as simple as suggesting that the OECD’s rallying call to utilise the potential of stay-at-home mums is an insult to mothers — on the contrary, it is the desperately needed voice of reason that Australians cannot afford to ignore.
Rather than wail about the supposed liberation in a woman’s right to choose to shun paid employment, we should make it a legal requirement that all parents of children of school-age or older are gainfully employed.
The OECD was right to criticise the double standards applied to Australia’s work-search rules regarding welfare benefits. While young people face strict criteria when seeking to access the dole, those aged over 50 can still receive it despite not looking for a job by citing 15 hours volunteer work a week.
The double standards are even greater for stay-at-home mums, with governments of all persuasions traditionally wary to tackle the unfair tax concessions enjoyed by one-income households for fear of inciting voting fury. (No doubt they refer to Abbott’s aforementioned paid parental leave scheme as a cautionary tale).
But it’s time for a serious rethink of this kid-glove approach to women of child-bearing and child-rearing age. Holding us less accountable when it comes to our employment responsibilities is not doing anyone any favours. Not children, not fathers, not bosses — and certainly not women.
Only when the female half of the population is expected to hold down a job and earn money to pay the bills in the same way that men are routinely expected to do will we see things change for the better for either gender.
Only when it becomes the norm for all families to have both parents in paid employment, and sharing the stress of the work-home juggle, will we finally have a serious conversation about how to achieve a more balanced modern workplace.
Only when the tiresome and completely unfounded claim that “feminism is about choice” is dead and buried (it’s not about choice, it’s about equality) will we consign restrictive gender stereotypes to history.
So long as we as a nation cling to the lie that only a stay-at-home mum is best placed to assume the responsibilities of caregiver then working fathers will continue to feel insecure about stepping off the corporate treadmill to spend more time with their children.
It’s not good enough — and only when we evenly divide the responsibility for workplace participation between the two genders will we truly see a more equitable division between men and women in all parts of Australian life.
The hypocrites at the ACLU called the police because they didn’t like an opinion that someone expressed
Woman Crashes ACLU Stop Trump Meeting and Urges Snowflakes to Think for Themselves – Cops Are Called
March 11, 2017
Activist Ginger McQueen crashed the local ACLU Stop Trump training session today and began to lecture the indoctrinated leftists.
Ginger urged the snowflakes to think for themselves.
So they called the police on her.
When the officer got there he shook her hand and laughed.
“I crashed the ACLU’s Stop Trump meeting. They called the police on me. The cop shook my hand and laughed.”
– Ginger McQueen
“Yes, the police actually showed up because the snowflakes can’t handle having their ideas challenged or their pictures taken in a public.”
– Ginger McQueen
“The ACLU sued for citizens to be able to film police, but citizens can’t film the ACLU.”
Ginger McQueen
Shame on Rand Paul and 22 other Republican U.S. Senators for wanting to let corporations sell people’s private internet history!
Shame on Rand Paul and 22 other Republican U.S. Senators for wanting to let corporations sell people’s private internet history!
These are the 23 Senators that introduced a bill to let telecoms sell your private internet history
March 8, 2017
Protection of your Internet history is up in the air thanks to new, pending legislation. A new bill coming before Senate aims to completely dismantle the FCC’s ability to enact data security or online privacy protections for consumers under the powers of the Congressional Review Act. Senate Joint Resolution (S.J.Res 34) was introduced by Arizona Senator Jeff Flake and cosponsored by 23 other Senators. Its goal is to remove all the hard-earned net neutrality regulations gained to protect your internet history from advertisers and and worse. Specifically, the FCC had been able to prevent internet service providers (ISPs) from spying on your internet history, and selling what they gathered, without express permission. This legal protection on your internet history is currently under attack thanks to these 23 Senators and lots of ISP lobbying spend. While S.J.Res 34 has support from two dozen Republican Senators, Senators willing to champion the privacy of Americans’ internet history have also come out of the woodwork.
These 23 Senators want to let your internet history be sold.
The list of 23 Senators cosponsoring this bill, including Senator Jeff Flake, is:
– John Barrasso (R-Wyo.)
– Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)
– Roy Blunt (R-Mo.)
– John Boozman (R-Ark.)
– Shelly Moore Capito (R-W.Va.)
– Thad Cochran (R-Miss.)
– John Cornyn (R-Texas)
– Tom Cotton (R-Ark.)
– Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
– Deb Fischer (R-Neb.)
– Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)
– Dean Heller (R-Nev.)
– James Inhofe (R-Okla.)
– Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.)
– Mike Lee (R-Utah)
– Rand Paul (R-Ky.)
– Pat Roberts (R-Kan.)
– Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)
– Richard Shelby (R-Ala.)
– Dan Sullivan (R-Ark.)
– John Thune (R-S.D.)
– Roger Wicker (R-Miss.)
– Jerry Moran (R-Kan.)
Buffalo, New York government seizes children and jails mother because she homeschooled them
http://www.wkbw.com/news/was-buffalo-mom-jailed-over-homeschooling-decision
Was Buffalo mom jailed over homeschooling decision?
February 6, 2017
BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) – Single mother Kiarre Harris started researching homeschooling last November. She says her two elementary school aged children weren’t excelling at their failing Buffalo Public Schools.
“I felt that the district was failing my children and that’s when I made the decision to homeschool,” she said.
Harris says she filed documents at Buffalo City Hall, following all the steps, informing the district of her intent to homeschool her children. According to documents she provided to 7 Eyewitness News, they’re dated December 7th and the district says it received her paperwork.
“I spoke directly to the homeschool coordinator and she told me from this point on my children were officially un-enrolled from school.”
Things took a turn when she says a week later, Child Protective Services called, wondering why her kids weren’t in school.
“I told them that my kids were homeschooled now and that I could furnish the documents if they need to see them.”
Thinking everything was fine, Harris says she went on with her homeschooling, but then, less than a month later she says she was confronted by CPS workers and police. According to Harris, they told her they had a court order to take her children and when she told them no, she was arrested for obstruction.
She says she hasn’t seen her kids in three weeks, and they’ve been in a foster institution.
The Buffalo Public School District says it cannot comment on this case due to Federal Laws but says in order for a parent to file for homeschooling, they must have full custody of the children.
Harris says she’s a single parent and has always had full custody until her kids were taken away.
This case is far from finished. The Buffalo Common Council will be addressing it tomorrow.
At UC Davis, social justice warriors can’t handle the fact that a refugee from a totalitarian dictatorship actually had the nerve to defend Milo Yiannopulos’s right to free speech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5FGDFKeg9k
Dutch court convicts man of “insulting” Muslim immigrants
The population of Morocco is 99% Muslim.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/09/europe/geert-wilders-hate-speech-trial-verdict/
Geert Wilders guilty of ‘insulting a group’ after hate speech trial
December 9, 2016
The Dutch far-right opposition leader Geert Wilders was convicted Friday of inciting discrimination and “insulting a group” after a trial over statements he made about Moroccans.
But the court found him not guilty of incitement to hatred and handed down no punishment.
Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), was charged after inciting supporters into a chant calling for fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands in 2014.
According to a court statement, Wilders asked his audience: “Do you want more or less Moroccans in this city and in the Netherlands?”
The audience repeatedly chanted “less.”
The court said that Wilders “singled out an entire group of citizens” and that the message “came through loud and clear.” It convicted him of insulting a group and incitement to discrimination.
But the court found insufficient evidence to find him guilty of incitement to hatred.
The court, which could have fined Wilders, decided that verdicts were sufficient punishment and imposed no further penalty.
The 53-year-old far-right leader has campaigned against “Islamic immigration.”
“Three PVV-hating judges just declared Moroccans a race and convicted me, as well as half of the Dutch population,” Wilders tweeted shortly after the ruling.
Wilders said in a Twitter post ahead of the verdict Friday morning that he will “continue to speak the truth about the Moroccan problem.”
“No judge, politician or terrorist will stop me,” he added.
Wilders has previously called Islamic immigration “an invasion” that will “replace our people” and “erase our culture.”
Among his other policies, Wilders has called for a referendum on the Netherlands’ membership in the European Union, and a full burqa ban.
Wilders, 53, came to international attention in 2008 with the provocative online film “Fitna,” which juxtaposed the aftermath of terrorist attacks with verses from the Quran.
Known as much for his anti-Muslim views as his bleached hair, Wilders has been called “Europe’s Donald Trump” — with his party gaining popularity in recent years.
It’s not the first time Wilders has appeared in court on hate speech charges.
In 2011 he was acquitted of inciting hatred against Muslims, after calling for the Quran to be banned in the Netherlands.
Friday’s verdict comes three months ahead of the country’s parliamentary election in March, when Wilders will be vying for the top job of prime minister.
The opposition party leader will face current prime minister Mark Rutte, whose conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) rules in a coalition with the the Labour Party (PvdA).
Rutte said at a press conference Friday that neither he nor his party would be willing to govern with Wilders unless he retracted his comments about Moroccans.
Wilders has run on a party manifesto focused on a so-called “de-Islamification” of the Netherlands, in which he lays out an 11-point plan pledging, among other things, to shut down all the country’s Islamic schools and close the borders to migrants from Islamic nations.
France banned this TV commercial that shows smiling children with Down Syndrome, so here it is for you to watch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju-q4OnBtNU
The Sensitivity Police Strike Again
The court has ruled that the video is — wait for it — “inappropriate” for French television.
December 3, 2016
The word “inappropriate” is increasingly used inappropriately. It is useful to describe departures from good manners or other social norms, such as wearing white after Labor Day or using the salad fork with the entree. But the adjective has become a splatter of verbal fudge, a weasel word falsely suggesting measured seriousness. Its misty imprecision does not disguise, it advertises, the user’s moral obtuseness.
A French court has demonstrated how “inappropriate” can be an all-purpose device of intellectual evasion and moral cowardice. The court said it is inappropriate to do something that might disturb people who killed their unborn babies for reasons that were, shall we say, inappropriate.
Prenatal genetic testing enables pregnant women to be apprised of a variety of problems with their unborn babies, including Down syndrome. It is a congenital condition resulting from a chromosomal defect that causes varying degrees of mental disability and some physical abnormalities, such as low muscle tone, small stature, flatness of the back of the head and an upward slant to the eyes. Within living memory, Down syndrome people were called Mongoloids.
Now they are included in the category called “special needs” people. What they most need is nothing special. It is for people to understand their aptitudes, and to therefore quit killing them in utero.
Down syndrome, although not common, is among the most common congenital anomalies at 49.7 per 100,000 births. In approximately 90 percent of instances when prenatal genetic testing reveals Down syndrome, the baby is aborted. Cleft lips or palates, which occur in 72.6 per 100,000 births, also can be diagnosed in utero and sometimes are the reason a baby is aborted.
In 2014, in conjunction with World Down Syndrome Day (March 21), the Global Down Syndrome Foundation prepared a two-minute video titled “Dear Future Mom” to assuage the anxieties of pregnant women who have learned that they are carrying a Down syndrome baby. More than 7 million people have seen the video online in which one such woman says, “I’m scared: what kind of life will my child have?” Down syndrome children from many nations tell the woman that her child will hug, speak, go to school, tell you he loves you and “can be happy, just like I am — and you’ll be happy, too.”
The French state is not happy about this. The court has ruled that the video is — wait for it — “inappropriate” for French television. The court upheld a ruling in which the French Broadcasting Council banned the video as a commercial. The court said the video’s depiction of happy Down syndrome children is “likely to disturb the conscience of women who had lawfully made different personal life choices.”
So, what happens on campuses does not stay on campuses. There, in many nations, sensitivity bureaucracies have been enforcing the relatively new entitlement to be shielded from whatever might disturb, even inappropriate jokes. And now this rapidly metastasizing right has come to this: A video that accurately communicates a truthful proposition — that Down syndrome people can be happy and give happiness — should be suppressed because some people might become ambivalent, or morally queasy, about having chosen to extinguish such lives because . . .
This is why the video giving facts about Down syndrome people is so subversive of the flaccid consensus among those who say aborting a baby is of no more moral significance than removing a tumor from a stomach. Pictures persuade. Today’s improved prenatal sonograms make graphic the fact that the moving fingers and beating heart are not mere “fetal material.” They are a baby. Toymaker Fisher-Price, children’s apparel manufacturer OshKosh, McDonald’s, and Target have featured Down syndrome children in ads that the French court would probably ban from television.
The court has said, in effect, that the lives of Down syndrome people — and by inescapable implication, the lives of many other disabled people — matter less than the serenity of people who have acted on one or more of three vicious principles: That the lives of the disabled are not worth living. Or that the lives of the disabled are of negligible value next to the desire of parents to have a child who has no special — meaning inconvenient – needs. Or that government should suppress the voices of Down syndrome children in order to guarantee other people’s right not to be disturbed by reminders that they have made lethal choices on the basis of one or both of the first two inappropriate principles.
Europe tells British press NOT to reveal if terrorists are Muslims
Europe tells British press NOT to reveal if terrorists are Muslims
October 6, 2016
Meddling Brussels has said the British press should not report when terrorists are Muslims in a slew of demands to the Government to crack down on the media.
A report from the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) found there was an increase in hate speech and racist violence in the UK from 2009 to March 2016.
Blaming the press, ECRI Chair Christian Ahlund, said: “It is no coincidence that racist violence is on the rise in the UK at the same time as we see worrying examples of intolerance and hate speech in the newspapers, online and even among politicians.”
The report makes a whopping 23 recommendations to Theresa May’s Government for changes to criminal law, the freedom of the press, crime reporting and equality law.
And despite the report not analysing coverage of the historic Brexit vote, Mr Ahlund saw fit to comment on the UK’s decision to leave the EU.
In a sweeping statement, he said: “The Brexit referendum seems to have led to a further rise in ‘anti-foreigner’ sentiment, making it even more important that the British authorities take the steps outlined in our report as a matter of priority.”
The report lays into the British press and urges the government to “give more rigorous training” to reporters.
In the 83-page report, the Commission said: “ECRI considers that, in light of the fact that Muslims are increasingly under the spotlight as a result of recent ISIS-related terrorist acts around the world, fuelling prejudice against Muslims shows a reckless disregard, not only for the dignity of the great majority of Muslims in the United Kingdom, but also for their safety.
“In this context, it draws attention to a recent study by Teeside University suggesting that where the media stress the Muslim background of perpetrators of terrorist acts, and devote significant coverage to it, the violent backlash against Muslims is likely to be greater than in cases where the perpetrators’ motivation is downplayed or rejected in favour of alternative explanations.”
Despite the creation of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) in 2014 as an independent regulator for newspapers and magazines, the “ECRI strongly recommends that the authorities find a way to establish an independent press regulator according to the recommendations set out in the Leveson Report. It recommends more rigorous training for journalists to ensure better compliance with ethical standards.”
But as Britain prepares to leave the crumbling bloc, the Government waded in to defend freedom of expression.
In a written statement to the ECRI, the Government said: “The Government is committed to a free and open press and does not interfere with what the press does and does not publish, as long as the press abides by the law.”
ECRI is a human rights body of the Council of Europe, composed of independent experts, which monitors problems of racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, intolerance and racial discrimination.
The group writes reports on every member state every five years and says the documents are “analyses based on a great deal of information gathered from a wide variety of sources.
ECRI visited the UK in November 2015 as it gathered evidence for the report.
In a statement, ECRI said: “ECRI welcomed, among other things, the entry into force of the Equality Act 2010 and the generally strong legislation against racism and racial discrimination in the country, as well as the government’s new hate crime action plan and substantial efforts to promote LGBT rights in the UK which have led to a significant change in attitudes.
“At the same time, the commission noted considerable intolerant political discourse in the UK, particularly focusing on immigration. It said that hate speech continues to be a serious problem in tabloid newspapers, and that online hate speech targeting Muslims in particular has soared since 2013.”
Venezuela arrests business owner because he somehow managed to acquire enough toilet paper to properly stock his employees’ bathrooms
According to this article from the Atlantic, in Venezuela, a labor union at a private business has a clause in its contract which says that the bathrooms must always have toilet paper. I agree with the union on this.
Since price controls caused a shortage of toilet paper, the only way the employer could get enough toilet paper was to illegally buy it on the black market for a price that was higher than the government controlled price.
Now the government is accusing the business owner of “hoarding,” and he could end up going to jail for it.
Interestingly, the article also says that the government might have seized his business if he had not properly stocked the employees’ bathrooms with toilet paper. Darned if you do, and darned if you don’t!
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/05/venezuela-is-falling-apart/481755/
Venezuela Is Falling Apart
Scenes from daily life in the failing state
May 12, 2016
When a Venezuelan entrepreneur we know launched a manufacturing company in western Venezuela two decades ago, he never imagined he’d one day find himself facing jail time over the toilet paper in the factory’s restrooms. But Venezuela has a way of turning yesterday’s unimaginable into today’s normal.
The entrepreneur’s ordeal started about a year ago, when the factory union began to insist on enforcing an obscure clause in its collective-bargaining agreement requiring the factory’s restrooms to be stocked with toilet paper at all times. The problem was that, amid deepening shortages of virtually all basic products (from rice and milk to deodorant and condoms) finding even one roll of toilet paper was nearly impossible in Venezuela—let alone finding enough for hundreds of workers. When the entrepreneur did manage to find some TP, his workers, understandably, took it home: It was just as hard for them to find it as it was for him.
Toilet-paper theft may sound like a farce, but it’s a serious matter for the entrepreneur: Failing to stock the restrooms puts him in violation of his agreement with the union, and that puts his factory at risk of a prolonged strike, which in turn could lead to its being seized by the socialist government under the increasingly unpopular President Nicolas Maduro. So the entrepreneur turned to the black market, where he found an apparent solution: a supplier able to deliver, all at once, enough TP to last a few months. (We’re not naming the entrepreneur lest the government retaliate against him.) The price was steep but he had no other option—his company was at risk.
But the problem wasn’t solved.
No sooner had the TP delivery reached the factory than the secret police swept in. Seizing the toilet paper, they claimed they had busted a major hoarding operation, part of a U.S.-backed “economic war” the Maduro government holds responsible for creating Venezuela’s shortages in the first place. The entrepreneur and three of his top managers faced criminal prosecution and possible jail time.
All of this over toilet paper.
Photographs from Venezuela show that price controls on food are being enforced by a military police state
Here are some photographs from a Wall St. Journal article from last year. Hugo Chavez and his hand picked successor Nicolas Maduro have certainly turned the country into a police state. Chavez called this “socialism.” This is what happens when the government owns the means of production and controls the distribution of resources. In the long run, it must result in a police state. By comparison, in the Scandanavian countries, the farms and supermarkets are owned and operated by the private sector.
I’d be curious to see if Bernie Sanders, Dolores Huerta, Barack Obama, Sean Penn, Michael Moore, or Oliver Stone have ever said anything specifically against what Chavez and Maduro have done in regard to the kinds of things that are in these photographs. All six of those people have either praised Chavez, given an award to someone who praised Chavez, or called themselves a “socialist.”
Venezuela’s Food Shortages Trigger Long Lines, Hunger and Looting
Violent clashes flare in pockets of the country as citizens wait for hours for basics, such as milk and rice
August 26, 2015
Shoppers wait in a long line to enter the “Latino supermarket” in the Dr. Portillo area of Maracaibo, Venezuela, on August 12.
Shoppers have their fingerprints scanned while buying government-controlled corn flour at the “Latino Supermarket” in Maracaibo to prevent them from coming back for another ration.
National Guard soldiers stand guard in Maracaibo over bags of food confiscated from people who illegally sought to contraband state-controlled food goods for higher prices.
National Guard soldiers guard food confiscated from people who sought to sell it for more than the government-set prices.
A National Guard soldier leads detainees accused of illegally selling contraband state-controlled food goods in Maracaibo on Aug. 13.
