. . .The point is that sexual abuse is a large, society-wide problem. In every segment of society, there are predators taking advantage of others’ trust in order to prey on the weak, young, or dependent. Many organizations are ill-equipped to handle it, because it goes underreported, people don’t want to believe it, and few organizations have structures in place to deal with it. Due to the spotlight on the Catholic Church, they have put in place structural ways to better deal with the problem, although much work remains to be done (the peak years for abuse were the 1970s, although that’s no comfort to the abused).
Given that there are abusers in every organization, how can we best prevent it, protect the victims, and punish the perpetrators?
First, we need to acknowledge that evil exists and that there are people who will prey on the vulnerable, particularly children, those they perceive as weak (physically or socially), and those with developmental disabilities (a further alarming statistic is that 90% of people in this category will be abused in their lifetime).
Second, and related to the first, we need to realize that this can happen to us or our loved ones. Given the percentages, it is very likely that we are friends with someone who has been abused, pressured, or harassed; or, it may even be us who have been abused. Most times, this abuse is unreported. If you have been abused, know that you did nothing to deserve it and that it is not your fault; evil people take advantage of others to force or coerce them into things. If you are struggling with past abuse, please consider counseling; if you are currently being abused, please report it to an authority who can help you get out of the situation.
Third, we need to expect more from those in authority. Leaders – whether they are clergy, teachers, or anyone else in a position of trust – need to be held accountable for their abuses of this trust. There is no excuse for abuse and no justifiable reason to shield the abusers, shuffle them around, or otherwise protect them; concern for the abused must come first. (Read more from “The Underreported Epidemic of Sexual Abuse” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/boy-984313_960_720.jpg635960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2018-08-20 23:52:282018-08-20 23:50:44The Underreported Epidemic of Sexual Abuse
An Illinois professor who focuses on “equity” in mathematics will present her plan to redefine the field of study to oppose “objects, truths, and knowledge” at a 2019 conference.
University of Illinois education professor Rochelle Gutierrez will give her talk, titled “Mathematx: Towards a Way of Being,” at the Mathematics Education and Society 10th International Conference in India in January and February 2019.
“The relationship between humans, mathematics, and the planet has been one steeped too long in domination and destruction,” Gutierrez says in her presentation’s description. “I argue for a movement against objects, truths, and knowledge towards a way of being in the world that is guided by first principles — mathematx.”
“This shift from thinking of mathematics as a noun to mathematx as a verb holds potential for honouring our connections with each other as human and other-than-human persons, for balancing problem solving with joy, and for maintaining critical bifocality at the local and global level.”
Gutierrez focuses on the effects that class, race and language have on learning. Her University of Illinois faculty profile claims that teachers must possess not only “content knowledge,” but also “political knowledge,” according to her research. (Read more from “Professor: Let’s Change Math Classes so They Honor ‘Other-Than-Human Persons’” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/professor.jpg8021200Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2018-08-20 23:46:082018-08-20 23:43:36Professor: Let’s Change Math Classes so They Honor ‘Other-Than-Human Persons’
An argument over a parking space turned deadly Sunday night outside a crowded metro Atlanta Walmart, Channel 2 Action News reported.
Fadil Delkic, 49, was fatally shot about 5:30 p.m. in the parking lot of the Walmart on Scenic Highway in Snellville, according to the news station.
Troy Dennis Hunte, 27, of Grayson, has been charged with voluntary manslaughter in connection with the deadly shooting.
According to Channel 2, witnesses said the shooter and the victim argued about a parking space before the gunfire erupted. A single shot was fired, police said.
The scene was so chaotic, shoppers told the news station that families became separated. Some believed there was an active shooter situation, Channel 2 reported.
Family of Fadil Delkic gave me this picture of the 49 year old . He was shot and killed during an argument in Snellville Walmart parking lot Sunday. Shooter (Troy Hunte) charged with voluntary manslaughter . #gwinnettcounty@wsbtv more at 4. pic.twitter.com/0CkjRyvJjm
“Encourage that kind of conspiracy”… Yesterday over 300 newspapers took part in a coordinated effort started by the Boston Globe to attack President Trump for his antagonistic attitude towards the press. The usual subjects in the blue-check mafia like CNN media critic/cheerleader Brian Stelter, Jim Acosta, et al. loved the coordinated effort. Some in the media – including some surprises – thought the effort would hurt, not help their standing with the public.
Geez, ya think?
Two left-wing California newspapers, the L.A. Times and the San Fransisco Chronicle, both decided against participating in the effort. Not because they support President Trump, but because they cherish a free and independent press.
The Los Angeles Times editorial board does not speak for the New York Times or for the Boston Globe or the Chicago Tribune or the Denver Post. We share certain opinions with those newspapers; we disagree on other things. Even when we do agree with another editorial page — on the death penalty or climate change or war in Afghanistan, say — we reach our own decisions and positions after careful consultation and deliberation among ourselves, and then we write our own editorials. We would not want to leave the impression that we take our lead from others, or that we engage in groupthink.
The president himself already treats the media as a cabal — “enemies of the people,” he has called us, suggesting over and over that we’re in cahoots to do damage to the country. The idea of joining together to protest him seems almost to encourage that kind of conspiracy thinking by the president and his loyalists. Why give them ammunition to scream about “collusion”?
We mean no disrespect to those who have decided to write on this important subject today. But we will continue to write about the issue on our own schedule.
These two newspapers and the others who didn’t join the “groupthink,” as the Times called it, did more for their integrity and to increase the public trust in their outlets than the hundreds of papers who decided to take collective action against the president.
These outlets hit it right on the head. To a large number of Americans, the action taken by these newspapers smelled of collusion, looked like collusion, and was in fact collusion. The way to fight the perception that your industry is one big “cabal” is not to act like one big “cabal.” (For more from the author of “These Papers Wouldn’t Join in on the Anti-Trump Editorial ‘Collusion’” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/6277208708_7e6607d601_b-1-1.jpg6491024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2018-08-20 23:36:322018-08-26 01:29:04These Papers Wouldn’t Join in on the Anti-Trump Editorial ‘Collusion’
The Associated Press is out with a new analysis claiming that “science says” the amount of western U.S. land scorched by wildfires every year increases as temperatures go up.
However, while those things are true, simply correlating two data trends is not “science” as AP writer Seth Borenstein claims. And one expert says the simple correlation is meant to suggest a strong relationship between global warming and western wildfires that may not be there.
“This is not science,” University of Washington climate scientist Cliff Mass told The Daily Caller News Foundation. . .
However, the simple correlation between temperature and wildfires is meant to play into a broader media narrative that global warming is the main driver of fires, but Mass noted that other factors, including land management, play an important role.
State level data does show massive fires before 1950. Oregon state records show a similar trend to the USFS estimates going back to the early 1900s. Reminder: there was less CO2 in the 1930s. GASP! pic.twitter.com/cyg0sVnTll
“Correlation is not causation,” Mass said. “Temperatures are warming, that is true. Wildfire area in increasing in parts of the west, also true. But one does not necessarily cause another.” (Read more from “Scientist Rips Into Story Blaming Wildfires on Global Warming” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/global-warming-1494965_960_720.jpg654960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2018-08-20 23:32:412018-08-20 23:30:56Scientist Rips Into Story Blaming Wildfires on Global Warming
After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2015, Esperanza Franco headed south to the border, where she worked defending immigrants who faced deportation. . .
Franco says her former employer’s mishandling of a work-visa application — she came here from Spain five years ago — has put her in danger of losing her legal status. She fears that in less than a month, she could end up being jailed in the same Arizona detention center where she has gone to visit clients. . .
The paradox of her situation is not lost on Franco, 28, who put her legal knowledge and Spanish-language skills to work in Tucson at the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, a nonprofit advocacy group. . .
“We were all disappointed, but the organization wasn’t at fault,” said executive director Lauren Dasse, who questioned whether Franco was making “false accusations” to hurt the agency.
“It’s really bizarre,” said Domenic Powell, a second-year Penn Law student and friend of Franco’s. “She’s really worried she’s going to be pulled away from the place where she can practice law, and from the mission she’s been on to get people out of detention.” (Read more from “Lawyer Who Defended Illegals Could Face Her Own Deportation” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/illegal-immigration-1.jpg467700Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2018-08-20 23:29:052018-08-20 23:26:15Lawyer Who Defended Illegals Could Face Her Own Deportation
[Larry] Nassar became public enemy no. 1 when it came to light that he had been abusing his position of power as the doctor at both Michigan State and Team USA Gymnastics to sexually assault countless young girls. . .
According to ESPN, Nassar was moved from the Tucson Federal Correctional Complex to Oklahoma City’s Federal Transfer Center. . .
Nassar’s court appointed attorneys filed in July that he had been assaulted almost immediately upon being put into the general population. . .
As superfluous as it may be, Nassar was sentenced to another 175 years in prison for first-degree criminal sexual conduct crimes in January. His child pornography sentencing had come in December.
Countless gymnasts have come forward to accuse Nassar of sexually abusing them. Some of the biggest names in gymnastics, such as Simone Biles and Aly Raisman, have come out in strong condemnation of Nassar. (Read more from “Larry Nassar at Transfer Facility After First Taste of Prison Justice” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/jail-1.jpg515900Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2018-08-20 23:24:592018-08-20 23:22:22Larry Nassar at Transfer Facility After First Taste of Prison Justice
Nearly a year ago, the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission filed suit against a Christian women’s shelter for not allowing a man to sleep there overnight. . .
Drunk, visibly wounded, and wearing a woman’s nightgown, [Timothy] Coyle–a biological male who identifies as a woman and goes by the name Samantha–told the female Hope employee at the door that he’d just been kicked out of the nearby Brother Francis Shelter, for fighting.
Sherrie Laurie, Hope’s director, ultimately told Coyle that he couldn’t stay at the Christian shelter. (Hope houses battered women, in addition to victims of sex-trafficking.) Instead, she gave him money for a cab and sent him to the emergency room for treatment, recommending that he eventually make his way to the Abused Women’s Aid in Crisis (AWAIC.) . . .
Four days later, Timothy Coyle filed a complaint with the Anchorage Equal Rights Commission, claiming he was discriminated against on the basis of his sexual identity. A municipal ordinance in Anchorage includes an anti-discrimination statute that, since 2015, names gender identity as a protected class. . .
The Anchorage Equal Rights Commission has additionally filed a discrimination complaint against Hope’s attorney, claiming he has “been identified as the source of statements and information, published in various printed media sources, which implied or stated that transgender individuals would not be allowed to be “sheltered” at the Downtown Soup Kitchen Hope Center.” (Read more from “Faith-Based Women’s Shelter in Legal Battle Over Turning Away Man Who Identifies as a Woman” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/170512-A-PO640-006.jpg400800Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2018-08-20 23:20:332018-08-20 23:17:52Faith-Based Women’s Shelter in Legal Battle Over Turning Away Man Who Identifies as a Woman
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a rising star in the Democratic Party, but also its far left flank. Some have called her the future. You can take that as a bad thing, given that her agenda will cost us tens of trillions of dollars over the next decade; the three-decade projection soar into hundreds of trillions ($218 trillion to be exact), or view that as a sign of GOP wins for the next decade due to voters suffering from the sticker shock. Her inability to grasp basic economics also doesn’t work in her favor. Still, she gained prominence to clipping incumbent Democratic Congressman Joe Crowley (D-NY). She’s earned her time in the sun. But like Icarus, she may already be flying too close to the sun. She recently shut out the press at recent town hall events. The reason her campaign gave was that they wanted to create a “safe space” (via Queens Chronicle) [emphasis mine]:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Monday that stops on her “listening tour” throughout the district, like the one held a day earlier in Corona, are “intended for lively, compassionate discourse with a diversity of viewpoints.”
According to the Democratic nominee in the 14th Congressional District, she and the dozens of area residents who attended the event “talked about race, immigration, healthcare, disability rights and housing.”
But unless you were in the room on Sunday, you won’t know what specific community problems were mentioned or how Ocasio-Cortez planned to address them once she is sworn in. . .
“We wanted to help create a space where community members felt comfortable and open to express themselves without the distraction of cameras and press. These were the first set of events where the press has been excluded,” Trent said. “This is an outlier and will not be the norm. We’re still adjusting our logistics to fit Alexandria’s national profile.”
(Read more from “Wait–This Is Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Shut Down the Press at a Town Hall Event?” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Julia_Cumming_interviewing_Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez_at_an__Anger_Can_Be_Power__Event-1.jpg16831898Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2018-08-20 23:12:072018-08-20 23:10:24Wait–This Is Why Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Shut Down the Press at a Town Hall Event?
Before his death in 2016, the Vatican’s chief exorcist for over a quarter century, Father Gabriele Amorth, observed, “The Devil resides in the Vatican, and you can see the consequences.” We are seeing the consequences now from Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C. all the way up to the College of Cardinals. Fr. Amorth described “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus and bishops who are linked to the demon.” The Pennsylvania grand jury report relates one instance of ritualized, satanic abuse of a young boy by four priests. There is some ambiguity regarding the precise nature of the incident owing to page-long redactions in the report. Another priest rinsed out the mouth of a nine-year-old boy he had sodomized with holy water. Yet another priest sodomized yet another boy with a seven-inch-long crucifix. . .
[T]he incidents outlined in the Pennsylvania grand jury report seem so particularly wicked: the scheming, the grooming, the perversion, the hypocrisy — above all, the eerily spiritual character of the abuse, the ritualized sexual sacrilege, the “spiritual wickedness in high places.” It isn’t merely the acts themselves that horrify but also the evil that prompted and sustained them.
Last year, an American couple, Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan, quit their jobs to ride their bicycles around Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. During their journey, Austin declared on his blog, “Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own.” Last month, Muslim terrorists murdered the couple as they bicycled through Tajikistan, ramming them with their sedan and stabbing them until they died.
Evil is not a make-believe concept. Neither is it mere metaphor for disordered sexual desires or feckless bureaucratic management. Evil exists, and it has a personality. Secular, self-styled sophisticates often deny the existence of the Devil. But as the late Antonin Scalia reminded a flippant New York Magazine interviewer in 2013, “Most of mankind has believed in the Devil, for all of history. Many more intelligent people than you or me have believed in the Devil.” The particular evil of the present moment is a call to arms against the Devil, not the Church. Of course the Devil resides in the Vatican. Where else should he concentrate his efforts? The Devil exists. He is a murderer and a liar, and he is crouching at your door. Any reform that denies that reality will not only fail but will let evil fester. (Read more from “The Devil Resides in the Vatican: Ritualistic Satanic Sex Abuse Rampant” HERE)
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Theologians, Lay Leaders Call for ‘Collective Resignation’ of U.S. Bishops
By Thomas Williams. More than 700 educators and Catholic lay leaders have written an open letter urging the United States bishops to tender their collective resignation to Pope Francis in the wake of a string of scandals related to clerical sex abuse.
The letter references a recent Pennsylvania grand jury report that alleges not only clerical sexual abuse but also “systematic cover-ups by bishops and others in positions of power.”
The report came hard on the heels of “revelations of decades of sexual predation by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and in the long shadow of the sexual abuse crisis in Boston and beyond,” the letter states.
The centerpiece of the open letter is the following line: “Today, we call on the Catholic Bishops of the United States to prayerfully and genuinely consider submitting to Pope Francis their collective resignation as a public act of repentance and lamentation before God and God’s People.”
In May, the bishops of Chile resigned en masse following a three-day meeting with Pope Francis in the Vatican to discuss the sex abuse crisis that had shaken the church in that country. (Read more from Satanic sex abuse in the church HERE).
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Wisconsin Bishop Decries ‘Homosexual Subculture Within the Hierarchy of the Catholic Church’
By Thomas Williams. “It is time to admit that there is a homosexual subculture within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church that is wreaking great devastation in the vineyard of the Lord,” writes Madison Bishop Robert C. Morlino on Saturday in a sharply worded letter to the faithful.
“For too long we have diminished the reality of sin — we have refused to call a sin a sin — and we have excused sin in the name of a mistaken notion of mercy,” the bishop writes in the Catholic Herald.
To be clear, in the specific situations at hand, “we are talking about deviant sexual — almost exclusively homosexual — acts by clerics,” he states, referring to a recent report from a Pennsylvania grand jury as well as scandals involving a Honduran seminary, Chilean clergy and bishops, and a prominent U.S. cardinal.
We’re also talking about homosexual propositions and abuses against seminarians and young priests by powerful priests, bishops, and cardinals,” Bishop Morlino writes. “We are talking about acts and actions which are not only in violation of the sacred promises made by some, in short, sacrilege, but also are in violation of the natural moral law for all.”
“To call it anything else would be deceitful and would only ignore the problem further,” he writes. (Read more about Satanic sex abuse in the church HERE)
