The Real Threats to Science: Sloppiness, Bias and Fraud

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I had dinner with a friend of mine in New York’s Cornelia St. Café. She told me about her Brooklyn neighborhood’s March for Science: “A neighbor child organized a parade around our block. It was adorable: kids made up their own signs and their own chants.”

It sounds adorable. Also vaguely creepy. Like this San Francisco restaurant owner announcing that “food is inherently political.” Her Middle Eastern eatery, she claims is the place where people will have open and honest conversations. Well, maybe some people.

The Brooklyn Children’s March for Science? It reminds me of when Soviet kids used to playact show trials of their peers. All to defend St. Vladimir Lenin’s glorious Revolution. Read The Whisperers if you want to see how creepy the politicization of everything can become. The essence of the totalitarian impulse is: Everything is political. Fortunately for us, that impulse isn’t backed by guns yet. Just tweets, marches and shoving matches in the street.

The Left craves a substitute for religion or morality. They want certain truths to be self-evident and unquestionable. So they yoke science to their ideology. The better to bash political opponents over the head.

What Would You Do to Get Your Paper Published?

Meanwhile there is a real, actual crisis in science taking place today: a massive failure to replicate major medical scientific findings.

Springer publishing last week retracted 107 papers from the journal Tumor Biology. Retraction Watch called it the most retractions from a single journal in history. The studies were pulled because the authors had compromised the peer review process. How? By getting editors to submit their paper to fake peer reviewers. In some cases, the authors submitted real scientists’ names but gave editors fake email addresses. That allowed them to review their own papers.

Think about it: So-called scientists risking the health of cancer patients to ensure that their precious papers get published. Like abusive clergy, they are a tiny minority. But they are bad apples who need to be tossed out fast.

This is the tip of the iceberg. A major review of landmark studies in cancer research found that “scientific findings were confirmed in only 6 (or 11 percent of) cases. Even knowing the limitations of preclinical research, this was a shocking result.”

Last week, Retraction Watch also published a letter from a biostatistician pointing out that many recent studies in ten major biology journals contained a basic and crucial omission: the sample size of the study was either unclear or unknown. In Cell, a major biology journal, 8 out of 10 recent articles published did not provide a clear sample size. Failing to report the sample size means it’s virtually impossible to replicate the finding. This is statistics 101. What better way to avoid scrutiny?

Scientific Progress Requires a Commitment to Truth

A similar problem plagues the psychological sciences. Here the pressures are mostly to produce the results pleasing to the social justice tribe (minus any justice for unborn babies).

Protecting science is enormously important. Marching in the streets just makes things worse.

Scientific progress requires scientists whose first and fearless commitment is to the truth, not to partisan visions of social justice. Scientists are of course also human beings. So they are tempted by the same things other people are tempted by: applause, money, status, fear of social exclusion.

Cleaning up science is a job for scientists with integrity. There is little you and I can do about it.

Well, there is one thing: taxpayers could insist that data from any government funded studies be posted online upon publication. President Trump, are you listening? (For more from the author of “The Real Threats to Science: Sloppiness, Bias and Fraud” please click HERE)

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Migrant Crimes up 52 Percent in Germany

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Migrant crime “increased disproportionately” in Germany in 2016, according to a report released Monday by the Interior Ministry.

The number of migrant criminal suspects increased by 52.7 percent from 2015 to 2016. Migrants account for 8.6 percent of all crime suspects in Germany — up from 5.7 percent in 2015.

Politically or ideologically motivated crimes by foreigners went up by 66.5 percent, with 3,372 cases throughout the year.

“There is nothing there to sugarcoat,” Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maiziere said of the statistics, according to Deutsche Welle. “There is an overall rise in disrespect, violence, and hate.”

Germany suffered a series of jihadi attacks in 2016 — including the truck massacre at a Christmas market in Berlin. Crimes motivated by Islam increased by 13.7 percent last year. (Read more from “Migrant Crimes up 52 Percent in Germany” HERE)

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Mike Lee Warns Trump About Taxpayer Funding of Soros Groups Overseas

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For eight years, U.S. foreign assistance was tied to a leftist political agenda rather than American interests, and it’s now up to President Donald Trump to correct that, Sen. Mike Lee said Tuesday.

Lee took particular aim at U.S. support during the Obama administration for the overseas work of nonprofits bankrolled by liberal billionaire George Soros.

“Whatever one’s views about abortion, energy regulation, alternative family structures, they are neither core international priorities of the American people, nor essential to American national security. They are domestic political controversies, pet causes of a sort of privileged, globalist elite,” Lee said in the speech at The Heritage Foundation.

“Yet for eight years under President Obama’s administration, they were the substance of a global reeducation campaign, funded by … American taxpayers,” the Utah Republican said.

Lee made the remarks, in which he specifically criticized the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, ahead of a panel discussion on U.S. foreign assistance at The Heritage Foundation.

“President Trump and his team must change the culture of American diplomacy towards one that prioritizes American interests and respects the sovereignty and self-determination of other peoples,” Lee said.

Trump’s fiscal year 2018 budget proposal would cut funding for the State Department and USAID by 28 percent.

The senator noted that Eastern European countries are more socially conservative than Western European countries because of the influence of Catholic and Orthodox churches. He said they also are more economically conservative because of their past suffering under communism.

The citizens of countries such as Macedonia, Poland, and Albania see the U.S. government spending money on progressive political causes as a “well-funded external political activism that undermines legitimate governments and long-held cultural norms of their nations with leftist policies and leftist politicians,” Lee said, adding:

And who can question their concerns, when the State Department and USAID have provided millions of American taxpayer dollars to organizations in Eastern Europe associated with well-known progressive advocates like George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, who make no secrets about the kinds of politics they support?

The mission of USAID, which has a $22.7 billion annual budget, is to fight poverty and promote democracy abroad.

A State Department spokesman told The Daily Signal in a written statement that USAID money is properly accounted for.

“USAID is committed to accountability and transparency and to the oversight of U.S. government funds to ensure they are not subject to waste, fraud, or abuse,” the spokesman said in an email. “USAID regularly conducts rigorous reviews and audits of programs implemented by partner organizations. These reviews are conducted to measure the programs’ effectiveness and efficiency and to ensure their compliance with applicable statutes, regulations, and policies.”

Lee’s chief example was Macedonia:

Macedonia today is embroiled in a governing crisis that has been brought about largely by external interference in domestic issues and political processes. The crisis has deepened the political divide in the country and threatens to inflame ethnic tensions.

Such unrest is like an engraved invitation to an opportunist like [Russian President] Vladimir Putin, who can inflame divisions and actively court populations who feel that they have been betrayed by the United States.

From 2012 through 2016, USAID gave $4.8 million to Foundation Open Society-Macedonia, a division of the Soros-funded nonprofit, “in partnership with four local civil society organizations,” according to the agency’s website.

The conservative government watchdog Judicial Watch has sued the State Department and USAID for detailed information about funding for Foundation Open Society-Macedonia.

Open Society Foundations spokesman Maxim Tucker disputed much of Lee’s comments about the Soros-funded groups in a statement to The Daily Signal. Tucker said in an email:

Senator Lee must know that since 1973, U.S. law prohibits USAID from funding groups that support abortion as a method of family planning–it’s simply false to suggest that the Open Society Foundations or its affiliated organizations use USAID funding to promote abortion rights abroad.

Indeed, we administer only a fraction of USAID funding and that money goes on to local organizations working on local issues–such as health care, infrastructure, education, community activism, and journalism. We do spend nearly a billion dollars of our own money each year funding a wide range of groups that promote human rights, democracy, and good governance.

In central and Eastern Europe, these groups are increasingly attacked or smeared by corrupt and authoritarian governments seeking to deflect legitimate criticism of their leadership.

Lee and five other Republican senators last month wrote Secretary of State Rex Tillerson asking for a review of USAID dollars going to fund political causes, including Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

“The department’s initial response was dismissive of our concerns, and refused to promise any such review,” Lee said during his remarks Tuesday, which may be seen in their entirety here:

“The immediate priority for the Trump administration is to get the right appointees into key positions at the State Department and USAID,” Lee said later, adding:

President Trump, Secretary Tillerson, and other administration officials must also clarify the position of the United States on a number of foreign policy issues, especially in areas where the Obama administration left a damaging impact or caused confusion about U.S. priorities.

USAID doesn’t have a presence in Ireland, for example, according to James Walsh, a former member of Ireland’s senate. Walsh spoke at Heritage’s forum about how the State Department has backed progressive causes in Ireland, including abortion and same-sex marriage.

Walsh said “the most prominent support for so-called progressive causes” has come from U.S.-based nonprofits.

However, Walsh said, the U.S. Embassy in Dublin provided financial help to set up the LGBT group Shout Out. He said that group had “a very prominent role” in Ireland’s 2015 referendum that legalized same-sex marriage.

Walsh added:

The known support from the official U.S. government sources may be relatively modest, but it contributes greatly to an impression which the rhetoric of the Obama administration strongly underlined. And that is that the U.S. government is actively and vigorously promoting these euphemistically called progressive causes around the world and is prepared to interfere in what many people would regard as a matter exclusively for the domain of the people of that particular country.

The State Department did not have an immediate answer for The Daily Signal about whether the embassy financially supported the new lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender group in Ireland. (For more from the author of “Mike Lee Warns Trump About Taxpayer Funding of Soros Groups Overseas” please click HERE)

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Here’s How Wrong Past Environmental Predictions Have Been

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Each year, Earth Day is accompanied by predictions of doom.

Let’s take a look at past predictions to determine just how much confidence we can have in today’s environmentalists’ predictions.

In 1970, when Earth Day was conceived, the late George Wald, a Nobel laureate biology professor at Harvard University, predicted, “Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

Also in 1970, Paul Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist and best-selling author of “The Population Bomb,” declared that the world’s population would soon outstrip food supplies.

In an article for The Progressive, he predicted, “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next 10 years.”

He gave this warning in 1969 to Britain’s Institute of Biology: “If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.”

On the first Earth Day, Ehrlich warned, “In 10 years, all important animal life in the sea will be extinct.”

Despite such predictions, Ehrlich has won no fewer than 16 awards, including the 1990 Crafoord Prize, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences’ highest award.

In International Wildlife (July 1975), Nigel Calder warned, “The threat of a new ice age must now stand alongside nuclear war as a likely source of wholesale death and misery for mankind.”

In Science News (1975), C.C. Wallen of the World Meteorological Organization is reported as saying, “The cooling since 1940 has been large enough and consistent enough that it will not soon be reversed.”

In 2000, climate researcher David Viner told The Independent, a British newspaper, that within “a few years,” snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event” in Britain. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past.”

In the following years, the U.K. saw some of its largest snowfalls and lowest temperatures since records started being kept in 1914.

In 1970, ecologist Kenneth Watt told a Swarthmore College audience:

The world has been chilling sharply for about 20 years. If present trends continue, the world will be about 4 degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990 but 11 degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.

Also in 1970, Sen. Gaylord Nelson, D-Wis., wrote in Look magazine: “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian (Institution), believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”

Scientist Harrison Brown published a chart in Scientific American that year estimating that mankind would run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver were to disappear before 1990.

Erroneous predictions didn’t start with Earth Day.

In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior said American oil supplies would last for only another 13 years. In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight.

Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous claims, in 1974 the U.S. Geological Survey said the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas.

The fact of the matter, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, is that as of 2014, we had 2.47 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas, which should last about a century.

Hoodwinking Americans is part of the environmentalist agenda. Environmental activist Stephen Schneider told Discover magazine in 1989:

We have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. … Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.

In 1988, then-Sen. Timothy Wirth, D-Colo., said: “We’ve got to … try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong … we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

Americans have paid a steep price for buying into environmental deception and lies. (For more from the author of “Here’s How Wrong Past Environmental Predictions Have Been” please click HERE)

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First Round of French Presidential Election a Blow to the Establishment

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France held a presidential election Sunday under the looming threat of Islamist terrorism, and winnowed the field to two candidates at opposite ends of what has become the new ideological battle line of our era: nationalism vs. globalism, for lack of better terms.

One candidate, Marine Le Pen, hails from the pitchfork end of European blood-and-soil nationalism. The other candidate, Emmanuel Macron, is a We-Are-The-World internationalist cut in the mold of Barack Obama and Justin Trudeau.

According to initial results, Macron won 23.7 percent of the vote, while Le Pen won 21.7 percent in what was the first round of this election. They will face off in the second runoff round of elections on May 7. None of the other nine candidates running Sunday got above 20 percent support. Le Pen wants to end immigration to France, saying the country is full.

Macron is heavily favored to win in the second round, though. Of course, polls have been wrong in the past.

The two are archetypes of the new global struggle that has replaced the old left-right paradigm. Their reactions to a terrorist attack on Thursday on France’s main boulevard, the Champs Elysees, for which ISIS claimed responsibility, epitomized their outlooks.

Following the attack, Macron wondered on French Radio whether terrorism is a new normal to which the French must become accustomed.

“This threat, this imponderable problem, is part of our daily lives for the years to come,” Macron said.

Le Pen said she would deport everyone on the terror watch list, even those born in France, shut down all Islamist mosques, and close French borders.

Le Pen leads the far-right National Front, founded by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, whom she ousted as leader to “de-demonize” the party after years of anti-Semitic and racist statements by him.

Macron founded his own movement, En Marche!, after serving as economy minister for the current Socialist president, Francois Hollande.

Their victory amounted to a complete collapse of the two parties that have mostly alternated in power since Gen. Charles de Gaulle created France’s Fifth Republic in 1958, the right-of-center Gaullists and the leftist Socialists. The only exception to this two-party system was the election of centrist President Valerie Giscard d’Estaing in the 1970s.

Because Macron and Le Pen come from parties without large political bases, it is unlikely that either will benefit from a legislative majority that will emerge after elections on June 11 and 18. Macron, however, is widely expected to be able to cobble together a supportive coalition should he win the presidential election in May.

There’s no question that Le Pen’s suite of policies and stances fit much better with President Donald Trump’s outlook. Trump predicted two days ago that she would benefit from the terrorist attack.

Le Pen, 48, wants to pull France out of the “Schengen Area” of 26 European countries that have dissolved external borders, and out of the European Union’s common currency, the euro.

But she is also close to Russian President Vladimir Putin, from whom the Trump administration is now trying to put some distance. Le Pen said she would consider lifting economic sanctions on Russia if elected. Her campaign has benefited from Russian bank loans and the support of Putin’s vast propaganda empire.

Macron, 39, is the candidate that best fits the style of Angela Merkel, Germany’s powerful chancellor. Of the 11 candidates who ran on Sunday, Macron most closely echoes Merkel’s staunch support for a strong and expanding European Union, her pro-immigration policies, and her desire to keep in place economic sanctions on Russia. His promises to introduce economic reforms also please Berlin.

Merkel’s aversion to Le Pen is so strong—and so richly reciprocated—that The Economist remarked on Sunday, using the name of the German foreign ministry, that “There is no file sitting in a locked drawer somewhere in the Auswärtiges Amt with contingency plans for a Le Pen win.”

But even a Macron-led France can work with the Trump administration. In Africa, for example, Paris can make the case to the White House that its troops fight terrorism every day in a place that seems to be next front line for ISIS and al-Qaeda. It is likely that the administration would see even a Macron-led France as a partner in this endeavor.

Despite their differences, Le Pen and Macron have distinct similarities. They are both big government types.

Le Pen is a champion of public services, would tax companies that outsource manufacturing, and would not touch France’s economically nefarious 35-hour workweek. She also refuses to cut down France’s bloated civil servant rolls.

Macron says he wants “flexibility” for young Frenchmen when it comes to the workweek. But he can see reducing the workweek for people above 50 to 32 hours or even 30 hours. “Why not?” he asks.

Macron also wants to spend an additional 50 billion euros during the upcoming five-year presidential term. He wants a eurozone budget and finance minister. He would not raise France’s low retirement age of 62, but at least he would not lower it even further to 60, which is what Le Pen promises to do.

And there’s no question that in choosing these two candidates, French voters have snubbed the political establishment. If the election of Trump was American voters throwing a brick through the window of the East Coast establishment, this was the French voters hurling a Molotov Cocktail into the still smoke-filled rooms of France’s political class. (For more from the author of “First Round of French Presidential Election a Blow to the Establishment” please click HERE)

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The Pentagon Has a ‘Ghost Soldiers’ Problem

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Since 2002, billions of U.S. tax dollars have been spent rebuilding Afghanistan after decades of war. A big chunk of that money pays Afghan soldiers and police. But it turns out a lot of those troops may not, in fact, exist. We investigate how your tax money is being wasted on “ghost soldiers.”

Here’s my interview with John Sopko, who is the inspector general watching over the U.S. taxpayer billions spent to rebuild Afghanistan.

Sharyl Attkisson: When you say “ghosts,” what are you referring to?

John Sopko: What we’re talking about are policemen, Afghan policemen, Afghan military, Afghan civil servants who don’t exist or they have multiple identity cards and we’re paying their salaries. By “we” I mean the United States and the international community…

For years, multiple audits have shown there’s no way to prove that the money we send for salaries is going to a real live body. And the payroll numbers just don’t add up. For example, Sopko says, in June 2016 the supposed number of Afghan military and police was 319,595. But an Afghan official told the Associated Press “the best internal estimate” of the real number was “around 120,000.”

Attkisson: This implies fraud, obviously.

Sopko: Absolutely. Major fraud. And what’s happening is the commanders or generals or other higher officials are actually pocketing the salaries of the ghosts. And I remember President [Ashraf] Ghani, again, at that time he wasn’t president, saying, “John, you, the United States government, are paying the salary of an Afghan who’s a teacher, he’s a civil servant, he’s a doctor, he is a policeman, and he’s a soldier. And it’s the same Afghan. And he doesn’t exist.”

Attkisson: What kind of money are we talking about?

Sopko: Hundreds of millions of dollars, we’re talking about, that may be lost.

Attkisson: In multiple letters and audits, Sopko has taken the Pentagon, which manages the money, to task stating, “Persistent reports raise questions regarding whether the U.S. government is taking adequate steps to prevent taxpayer funds from being spent on so-called ‘ghost soldiers.’” And he says the “ghost” phenomenon extends beyond Afghan and security paychecks to other forms of aid.

Sopko: It’s not just the salaries. We’re funding schools based on the number of students, so if you invent or inflate the number of students, you’re going to be paying more money. On the soldiers and police, we’re paying for extra boots, food for everything else and logistics for numbers that don’t exist.

Attkisson: Is there any way to tell who’s taking the money?

Sopko: It’s difficult because of the security situation. It’s really up to the Afghans or designing systems for the Afghans to implement.

The Pentagon is implementing a new system of biometrics in Afghanistan, using fingerprints, photos, and blood type. It recently said up to 95 percent of Afghan police and 70 to 80 percent of soldiers are now enrolled. The idea is to dispense with old ghosts, and ensure proof of life among a faraway force funded by U.S. taxpayers. The Pentagon expects to complete its person-by-person verification of Afghan’s army and police in July. (For more from the author of “The Pentagon Has a ‘Ghost Soldiers’ Problem” please click HERE)

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Shock Poll: 67 Percent of Americans Believe Dems Are out of Touch

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Despite the media’s best efforts to attack conservatives and Republicans, it seems the American people aren’t buying it. After three months of wall-to-wall coverage about Russian interference in the election, and a general hostile attitude by the media, 96 percent of Trump’s voters would vote for him again, according to a new ABC News/ Washington Post poll.

But that’s not even the biggest story to come out of the poll. A staggering number of American voters think the Democratic Party is “out of touch” with “people’s concerns.”

The media have been focused on the horse-race numbers coming out of the poll. Numerous outlets have run stories that show Donald Trump winning by a 43-40 percent margin if the election were held today. In a bit of media bias that would make even the most shameless propagandist blush, The Hill went with this headline, “Poll: 85 percent of Clinton supporters would vote for her again.” While those are nice hypothetical horse-race numbers, they hide what the media really don’t want to talk about.

The real headlines should be about how distasteful voters think the Democratic Party is. When asked the question, “Do you think the Democratic Party is in touch with the concerns of most people in the United States today, or is it out of touch?” a whopping 67 percent said the Democratic Party was “out of touch.”

The “out of touch” percentage was five percent higher than the same question asked of the Republican Party, and a whopping nine percent higher than Trump’s negative number. According to Langer Research, who conducted the poll, it is “a steeply negative turn for the Democrats, 19 percentage points more critical than when last asked three years ago, including especially steep losses in their own base.”

These numbers succinctly show that it wasn’t a massive conspiracy by the Russians that lost the Democratic Party the presidency; it was their ideology. In March of 2014, those polled were evenly split at 48 percent between those who answered the question with “in touch” and “out of touch.”

In that same poll, the GOP number was 68 percent “out of touch,” versus 28 percent “in touch.” The Republican Party, in three years, has marginally been considered more in touch with the problems of Americans, and the Democratic Party has cratered. Yet the media continue to act the same as they did during their failing election cycle.

After 100 days of pussy-hat parties, violence by Antifa thugs, marches for science, and a whole host of other “out of touch” radical left-wing priorities being pushed by Democrats, the American people have spoken. They want nothing to do with the radical agenda of the Democrats. In fact they would re-elect Donald Trump again to stop it.

Media narrative destroyed, full stop.

There are signs that this poll has shaken the Democratic Party to its core. On “Meet the Press,” after this polling came out a midnight, Nancy Pelosi went on “Meet the Press” to say that “of course” you can be pro-life and a Democrat. The question came after the Daily Kos recanted its endorsement of the Democratic mayoral candidate in Omaha, Nebraska after it was revealed the candidate co-sponsored the state’s 20-week abortion ban, according to the Washington Times. Pelosi’s reaction has not been the mainstream position of Democratic leadership over the last decade.

Once again the mainstream media are not reporting on the real story: that the policies they and the Democratic Party have been pushing are turning off the vast majority of Americans. Instead, they are focused on easy hypothetical horse-race headlines.

The numbers also go to show that if the GOP were serious about keeping their campaign promises and accomplishing what the American people have time and time again elected them to do, they could turn their fortunes around. (For more from the author of “Shock Poll: 67 Percent of Americans Believe Dems Are out of Touch” please click HERE)

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UN Elects Largest Oppressor of Women, Saudi Arabia, to Women’s Rights Commission — Seriously

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Saudi Arabia isn’t known for gender equality. In fact, the Saudi government’s idea of fair play among the sexes is ensuring women their husbands can only have three more wives. Saudi women truly have zero rights in society. Ranking Saudi Arabia among the 10 worst countries for women, the Toronto Star wrote,

In oil-rich Saudi Arabia, women are treated as lifelong dependents, under the guardianship of a male relative. Deprived of the right to drive a car or mix with men publicly, they are confined to strictly segregated lives on pain of severe punishment.

So, imagine the surprise and dismay the world is now exhibiting with the knowledge the United Nations has elected Saudi Arabia as a member of its Women’s Rights Commission called the “Commission on the Status of Women.”

Geneva-based UN Watch president Hillel Neuer likened the election to, “making an arsonist into the town Fire Chief!” Neuer went on a Twitter tirade to drive home the significance of his opposition to allowing Saudi Arabia to have a seat anywhere near a women’s rights council.

“The news the @UN never wanted you to see—but we made it go viral. Saudi Arabia elected to women’s rights commission,” he tweeted. Calling on opponents to rise up, he stated, “But why not show moral courage & condemn this UN betrayal of Saudi women’s rights activists? UNESCO’s chief condemned its election of Syria.”

And in another tweet, he said, “How does Saudi Arabia win seats on U.N. human rights bodies? Cash & secret deals—even with adversaries like Russia.” Neuer’s reference to Saudi money, certainly a factor in buying their way onto the commission, is nothing new. The Free Thought Project has been chronicling their monetary influence for years.

Earlier this year we told you the Saudis heavily influence John McCain’s politics, leading some to question his motives for encouraging the U.S. to join the Syrian Civil War. And on the Democratic side of the two-party-paradigm, the Saudis have given millions to the Clintons. So, it should come as no surprise watch dogs like UN Watch are saying the same thing about the Saudis.

What does it mean for the world now that the Saudis have a seat at the women’s rights table? Glad you asked….UN Watch describes the election as very significant.

The fundamentalist monarchy is now one of 45 countries that, according to the U.N., will play an instrumental role in “promoting women’s rights, documenting the reality of women’s lives throughout the world, and shaping global standards on gender equality and the empowerment of women.”

The election, also, was anything but transparent. The kingdom of Saudi Arabia was elected by a “secret ballot” last week at the U.N.’s 54-nation Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). The U.S. reportedly objected to a Saudi nomination and pressed the countries of the world to take a vote, in protest of the ECOSOC’s customary practice of “rubber stamping” nominations. Unfortunately for women, the vote passed and the Saudis were placed on the commission.

Saudi Arabia, who was exposed by the 28-pages for helping to fund the 9/11 terrorist attacks which brought down the World Trade Center’s twin towers, and who is being sued in court by families of the victims, is the same country which kills homosexuals and stones adulterers.

When 9/11 happened, instead of going after the Saudis — who made up the majority of the hijackers — the George W. Bush administration attacked and overthrew Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, and destroyed the country of Afghanistan.

If you need any evidence on just how oppressive the Saudi regime is, look no further than the video below that aired on national television — an instructional video on how to beat your wife.

The video features a Saudi doctor, Khaled Al-Saqaby, who deals with the often ‘thorny’ issue of how and when to beat your wife. Al-Saqaby begins the video by telling husbands not to immediately attack their wives, but to discipline them properly first.

When speaking of how women some women say they would like to be treated with equality, Al-Saqaby called this a “very grave problem.”

He says, “The first step is to remind her of your rights and of her duties according to Allah. Then comes the second step – forsaking her in bed.”

The third step, beating, has to correspond with the “necessary Islamic conditions” before taking action.

“The beating should not be performed with a rod, nor should it be a headband, or a sharp object.”

Instead, husbands should use a ‘tooth-cleaning twig or with a handkerchief’ to beat their wife.

Hopefully, then, the wife will “feel that she was wrong in the way she treated her husband.”

At the end of the video, Al-Saqaby lets the wife-beating husbands of Saudi Arabia know that sometimes, you may have to dole out an extra beating outside of the world of just discipline. Sometimes, according to this sicko ‘doctor,’ they just deserve to be beaten. (For more from the author of “UN Elects Largest Oppressor of Women, Saudi Arabia, to Women’s Rights Commission — Seriously” please click HERE)

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Bill Nye Makes a False Claim About the US Constitution — Again

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Bill Nye the “Science Guy” tried to claim the Constitution supported the concerns of thousands of scientists and environmental activists who took to the streets on Earth Day to protest the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts to federal agencies.

“If you suppress science, if you pretend climate change isn’t a real problem, you will fall behind other countries that do invest in science, that do invest in basic research,” Nye told CNN Saturday as the “March for Science” took place.

The march took place in dozens of cities across the world, and the main march took place in Washington, D.C., Saturday. Nye spoke at the rally where thousands carried signs deriding skeptics of global warming and cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other bureaucracies that fund or conduct scientific research.

“And it is interesting to note, I think, that Article 1 Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution refers to the progress of science and the useful arts,” Nye said.

“Useful arts in 18th Century usage would be what we call engineering or city planning or architecture,” Nye said. (Read more from “Bill Nye Makes a False Claim About the US Constitution — Again” HERE)

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NYT Refuses to Use Term ‘Female Genital Mutilation’ Because It’s ‘Culturally Loaded’

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Worried the term “female genital mutilation” might sharpen the divide between those who oppose brutally cutting away a little girl’s genitalia to deprive her of sexual pleasure and those who practice the “rite,” one New York Times editor instead refers to the ritual as “genital cutting.”

“There’s a gulf between the Western (and some African) advocates who campaign against the practice and the people who follow the rite, and I felt the language used widened that chasm,” NYT science and health editor Celia Dugger explained Friday. She also said the widely used term (FGM) is “culturally loaded” in the explanation, which came as a result of inquiries from The Daily Caller News Foundation regarding a reporter’s decision to use the term “cutting” in a recent story about a doctor in Michigan.

The doctor was allegedly caught mutilating innocent little girls as young as six and charged with a felony. Performed in American culture and subject to American laws, female genital mutilation carries a sentence of up to five years.

Dugger said she made the decision to ditch “mutilation” for “cutting” after traveling to sub-Saharan Africa for an immigration story in 1996. While she says she never “minced words in describing exactly what form of cutting was involved” and the “terrible damage” it inflicted on young girls, Dugger apparently wanted to soften the instinctive horror by many who oppose the brutal practice by using “cutting” instead.

Other human rights organizations have frowned upon using the term “genital cutting,” saying that it does not accurately describe the suffering placed on young girls. (Read more from “NYT Refuses to Use Term ‘Female Genital Mutilation’ Because It’s ‘Culturally Loaded'” HERE)

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