“Guardian picture editor Fiona Shields explains why we are going to be using fewer polar bears and more people to illustrate our coverage of the climate emergency.”
That is because there are too many polar bears. An estimated 25,000 to 40,000 polar bears live in the Arctic — up from just 5,000 a half-century ago.
The Guardian was too dishonest to admit it.
But the Canadian Press reported last year, “There are too many polar bears in parts of Nunavut and climate change hasn’t yet affected any of them, says a draft management plan from the territorial government that contradicts much of conventional scientific thinking.
This begs a question that I keep wondering that nobody sees to want to ask.
How many Polar Bears are the right amount?
Throughout history species have risen and fallen and I don’t understand why so called “environmentalists” seem to believe that they can decide which species can live and die, and in what quantities? What is the baseline of when you have the “right” amount of polar bears, or spotted owls or any other creature and why is a baseline based on say 1900 any more correct than one based on 1980, or 1880 or 1637, or 91BC?
How is any such decision on what to do with a species not playing god?
And more interestingly if man is not made in the image of God and just another creature, why is it any less the natural course of nature for mankind to serve it’s own purpose than any other creature? Furthermore why is whatever effect Man has on the natural world around him the “wrong” effect even if it doesn’t work out for a different animal. Is this not natural selection at work?
These are questions that nobody asks because the answers don’t serve the purposes of those advancing these agendas and because in the religion of liberalism, it is the liberal elite who are in fact god.
George Orwell wrote 1984 as warning to his generation and to
future generation, a warning against the totalitarianism that spread throughout
many nations during the 1930s and 1940s.
Rather than heeding the warnings, leftists in this country seem to have
embraced 1984 as an instruction manual or a playbook. It may not be the case that they are
literally using 1984 as their playbook, it is more likely that they are simply
using the tried and true steps to implement their leftist policies which
eventually will bring about the totalitarian society Orwell warned us
about.
The progressivism here in the United
States is very similar to the other
totalitarian leftist political philosophies, socialism and fascism. The main difference is that progressivism has
a soft veneer of compassion and
politeness, along with much better press agents.
All leftist political philosophies target children in an effort to implement social change, very often turning children against the older generations. Look at how progressivism here infected colleges and universities first then grade and high schools. Compare that to this quote from Chapter 2.
It was almost normal for people over thirty to be frightened of their own children. And with good reason, for hardly a week passed in which The Times did not carry a paragraph describing how some eavesdropping little sneak — ‘child hero’ was the phrase generally used — had overheard some compromising remark and denounced its parents to the Thought Police.
Progressives here have constructed a set of beliefs which are built on many contradictions and absurdities. If you don’t embrace these beliefs you are labeled an enemy and silenced. AntiFa now physically attacks those who do not follow leftist beliefs and there have been many calls to imprison individuals who do not follow along. Check out this quote from chapter 2
Like an answer, the three slogans on the white face of the Ministry of Truth came back to him: WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrappings of a cigarette Packet — everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed — no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.
There has been a concerted effort in this country to erase
our actual history and replace it with politically correct revisionist history.
Doesn’t this quote from Chapter 3 remind you of that?
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.
This quote from chapter 3 reminds me of the progressive orthodoxy
that is crammed down our throats by the media and other adherents to Political
Correctness.
To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself.
Political Correctness is Newspeak. That is abundantly clear from these two
quotes from Chapter 5
Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.
By 2050 — earlier, probably — all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron — they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like “freedom is slavery” when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking — not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.’
Collectivism rather than individualism is at the heart of
all leftist philosophies, including progressivism. This is captured in this quote from Chapter 7
The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering — a world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons — a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting — three hundred million people all with the same face.
Progressives here have received a tremendous amount of help
redefining reality through the liberal news media, infected educational system,
and Hollywood, similar to this
quote from Part 2 Chapter 5
In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird.
This quote from Part 3 Chapter 2 reminds me so forcefully of
the progressive attempt to force their world view down our throats. Individualism is a major impediment to their
world view, Turning us into a mindless
mob which embraces the twisted PC reality will be the end result of their
efforts.
You are here because you have failed in humility, in self-discipline. You would not make the act of submission which is the price of sanity. You preferred to be a lunatic, a minority of one. Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right. You also believe that the nature of reality is self-evident. When you delude yourself into thinking that you see something, you assume that everyone else sees the same thing as you. But I tell you, Winston, that reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be the truth, is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party.
Like all leftist philosophies, progressivism is all about a
small body of elite gaining power over the masses. This quote by Obrien from Section 3 Chapter 3
captures that so well.
We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
Update: Well I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is apparently the school in question and the district in particular has not in fact lost their minds and that the initial information concerning this story was misrepresented to the author in question.
We do a lot of writing and when one of the Groksters gets it wrong, an apology is required. Tonite, it is my turn and I apologize to Superintended Steve Tucker, Principal Eric Johnson, and Teacher Lindsey Packer. I publicized bad information – information for which I fell for.
Skip, being an honorable man is, unlike ABC is not running away from the difficult task of correcting the record nor the embarrassment of admiting the source of the misinformation which will leave a much larger personal mark than any reporting error.
Subsequent to my asking my question in her FB post, her post was deleted. She won’t return my calls. I am left to apologize to all concerned and all of the GraniteGrok readers – I got the story wrong. I also apologize to the other Groksters as the credibility of GraniteGrok as been besmirched which does affect them. It’s all on me – this whole thing has turned out to be a fraud when I truly believed it was true.
The bad news is of course since I picked up the story I am left to apologize as well, I’ve deleted all of the quotes from the base post and put “strikethrough” on any information that is incorrect. I know I could have simply re-written the post but that would distort the record and if I’m admitting to a mistake it’s important to know the mistake I’m admitting to.
So I must join Skip in his apology while remaining pleased that for once the story of a school being a bad actor is wrong.
Closing thought: There have been a large spat of “hate crime hoaxes” over the years, have you ever noticed that those who sounded the trumpet of outrage on them the loudest never rejoice that the crimes did not take place?
Update: Got a heads up that suggests there might be less to this than meets the eye, While that might be embarrassing for me it would be delightful as it would indicate that insanity does not reign at the school in question and that’s more important that a post getting hits. I don’t believe in pulling posts as it changes the record so for now I’m going to put the base post under a “more” tag until I get more data. For now we’ll wait and see and if a correction is warranted I’ll update the post with it.
Blogger on the left, as broadcast on WGN-TV Chicago during a Blackhawks game in Nashville in 2018
By John Ruberry
Oh, the things the left gets away with…
Unless you are consumer of conservative media, or news sources from Detroit–I’m both of those things—you probably missed a piece of awful offal from US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), a member of “the Squad.”
If you live in the Chicago area, as I do, you probably heard about the “racially insensitive” comments made by longtime Chicago Blackhawks announcer Pat Foley during a preseason game against a German team.
Tlaib, the first Palestinian-American woman elected to Congress, was touring Detroit’s Real Time Crime center, which utilizes facial recognition technology to identify criminal suspects. Tlaib has her issues with facial recognition forensics, She Tweeted in August, “@detroitpolice You should probably rethink this whole facial recognition bulls**t.”
In a tour last Tuesday of the center with Detroit’s police chief, James Craig, one that the Detroit News described as “tense,” the freshman congresswoman told Craig that only blacks should be employed as facial recognition analysists at the center. Yep. She said that. Her actual comments were, “Analysts need to be African Americans, not people that are not. I think non-African Americans think African Americans all look the same.”
Wow.
Craig, who is black, took the high ground by replying, “I trust people who are trained, regardless of race; regardless of gender. It’s about the training.”
Of course it is.
Craig later condemned Tlaib’s remarks. “If I had made a similar comment people would be outraged,” he told Detroit’s ABC affiliate, “they would be calling for my resignation.”
In short, Tlaib got a pass because she is woke. She’s also a Democratic Socialist.
Not so Pat Foley, the television voice of the Chicago Blackhawks. I don’t know Foley’s politics. Perhaps he’s apolitical. But Foley, who is white, is not woke. He has not spoken of the glories of Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren. He does not make large contributions to left-wing organizations. He has not apologized for his “white privilege.”
Oh, what did Foley say that got the left so upset? During that ‘Hawks preseason game against Eisbären Berlin, while opposing forward Austin Ortega handled the puck, Foley said, “Ortega, who sounds like he ought to be a shortstop.”
Yep, that’s it. A Chicago Tribune writer deemed Foley’s quip “racially insensitive.” The Blackhawks, in their apology stopped short of that, calling what he said only “insensitive.” Sports Illustrated covered the kerfuffle.
The Blackhawks in that statement noted that Foley, a recipient of the Foster Hewitt Memorial Award by the Hockey Hall of Fame, apologized to the Berlin team.
What appears to have ignited the controversy was a Tweet from an Hispanic hockey fan, Ghostchant, who distorted Foley’s words. “‘Ortega, sounds like he should be a shortstop’ instead of hockey.” Yep, “instead of hockey.”
But there is something else. Foley didn’t say “instead of hockey.” The Tweeter, who, if he has a sense of honor would place himself into his personal penalty box for a spell, added those words.
Here’s the entire Tweet along that “insensitive” comment from Foley.
“Ortega, sounds like he should be a shortstop” instead of hockey
In this split-second-glance-at-my-smartphone world, it’s easy to see why Ghostchant’s dishonest Tweet went viral. Many people look, get outraged, then re-Tweet or post on Facebook, without digging into the veracity of information on that puny screen, or, as I suspect in this instance, bothering to play the accompanying video clip.
Foley’s reputation has taken an undeserved dirty hit.
Tlaib, on the other hand, just keeps going.
What happened to Foley reminds me of a comment made by Nixon White House thug, Charles Colson, who later redeemed himself post-prison. “Anyone who opposes us, we’ll destroy,” he said, “as a matter of fact, anyone who doesn’t support us, we’ll destroy.”
That’s today’s left. Destroy first. Ask questions later. If at all.
There’s a lesson here. If you are a prominent person, unless you are deemed woke, you cannot comment on race or ethnicity, according to the rules of the high priests of the left.
