Objects in the mirror are more heavily armed and prone to ruin your life than they appear
When men and women are added to the every-growing list of “protected characteristics” that can make you the victim of a hate crime, we wondered if every group was now deemed special? Like the cosseted child of helicopter parents, our governments see us as victims-in-waiting, vulnerable and in constant need of their supervision, direction and protection. (How they fear us.)
And now you can add police to the list. The State’s enforcers are sensitive types who can be triggered by you thinking and saying mean things. Compliance is all. Officer Snowflake demands it.
To Texas, then, where the “Civilian Interaction Training Program”, a project of the Texas Commission On Law Enforcement, is teaching children how to be nice to police. As Boing Boing says, “Reviewing these training materials is mandatory for anyone hoping to receive a diploma from a Texas high school.” Compliance is all in the era of total control:
If you think it’s a hate crime, then it is a hate crime. The Mail has news on hate crimes in Manchester, where many of the people injured in last week’s slaughter are being treated for life-threatening injuries.
To understand the current situation in Europe, we have to look back to the middle of the last century. After the Second World War, the international community gathered together and launched the United Nations. The member states of this newly formed body then proceeded to draft and adopt the non-binding yet foundational Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and a series of binding human rights treaties, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1966) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
During the drafting of these three documents, the issue of free speech was furiously debated. Two opposing views emerged. On the one hand, there were the Western liberal democracies—the United States, Canada, and Western Europe—all of which argued for strong free speech protections.
At the debates, US delegate Eleanor Roosevelt said it was “extremely dangerous” to ban hate speech because “any criticism of public or religious authorities might all too easily be described as incitement to hatred”.
And so to the news that hate speech is something the police are onto. It’s your moral duty to report it.
Greater Manchester Police bosses said the number of reports had risen from 28 to 56 since Salman Abedi set off a nail bomb at Manchester Arena.
Chief Inspector Ian Hopkins called for the city to stand up against hate and ensure any incidents are quickly reported to the police.
He said: ‘Manchester has come together this week but it is important we continue to stand together here in Greater Manchester against the hate-filled views we have seen from small minorities of the community. We had 28 reports of hate crime on Monday, which is the average, but it rose to 56 reports on Wednesday, although we cannot directly link that to the attack.
Salman Abedi murdered 22 people. He maimed 120 more. Hate crime has not yet reach that level of barbarity.
After the terror, the platitudes. And the hashtags. And the candlelit vigils. And they always have the same message: ‘Be unified. Feel love. Don’t give in to hate.’ The banalities roll off the national tongue. Vapidity abounds. A shallow fetishisation of ‘togetherness’ takes the place of any articulation of what we should be together for – and against. And so it has been after the barbarism in Manchester. In response to the deaths of more than 20 people at an Ariana Grande gig, in response to the massacre of children enjoying pop music, people effectively say: ‘All you need is love.’ The disparity between these horrors and our response to them, between what happened and what we say, is vast. This has to change.
Do we want freedom? Then we must want the freedom to offending saying what we think and having tho opinions held up to scrutiny.
Intelligence officers have identified 23,000 jihadist extremists living in Britain as potential terrorist attackers, it emerged yesterday.
The scale of the challenge facing the police and security services was disclosed by Whitehall sources after criticism that multiple opportunities to stop the Manchester bomber had been missed.
About 3,000 people from the total group are judged to pose a threat and are under investigation or active monitoring in 500 operations being run by police and intelligence services. The 20,000 others have featured in previous inquiries and are categorised as posing a “residual risk”.
A photographer shouted at Caitlyn Jenner ‘Oi Bruce, get your dick out’ as she left the British LGBT Awards in London.
Police have launched a hate crime investigation after the incident on Friday night.
Don’t be a dick
This is a police matter.
Jenner was a guest at the ceremony, where she received a Loud And Proud trophy following her transition from Bruce Jenner in 2015, which she has spoken about publicly.
As she left the event at the Grand Connaught Rooms in central London an onlooker hurled transphobic abuse at her until she got into a car
The Press are keen to ramp up the horror: which was “terrifying” and a “vile attack”.
Bit nuts, no? No pun intended. Oh, go on, then, yes it was.
Unless we all support Caitlyn Jenner the police will nick us. You are a social pariah, someone unfit to live in a law-abiding polite society if you don’t agree that Caitlyn is an inspirational figure. And history is being rewritten. Bruce never existed. The Guardian told us that Caitlyn has “always been a woman”, including when she was “fathering” children. Those sperm, were Caitlyn’s and they came out of a… Well, it wasn’t a vagina. But it might be a crime to to say was it was.
How thin is your skin? The Telegraph reports on “the Charity race for children’s hospice where runners dress in drag is ‘a hate crime’.
If dressing up a woman is hate crime will Dame Edna be summoned before the Beak?
A charity fun run that invited men to dress up as women is being investigated by police after a transgender charity claimed the dress code constituted a hate crime.
We’re offended that transgender is being confused with transvestite.
Officers were asked to look into the ‘Dames on the Run’ race – where men run dressed as women to raise funds for a children’s hospice – by a transsexual support group.
Chrysalis Transsexual Support Groups say the five kilometre run, organised by Derian House Children’s Hospice, in Chorley, Lancashire, is “dehumanising”.
It is.
Anorak has long wondered why some men seize the chance to dress as women – always tarty ones, too. If asked to dress as awoman to save a child’s life, I’d pull on Comfi-Slax and a smart tank top over a crisp white shirt in tribute to the BBC’s ubiquitous Clare Balding.
They are now attempting to stop the run, due to take place in October, which raises money to support the hospice that looks after sick and terminally ill children. Steph Holmes, of Chrysalis, said: “We get enough confusion with the word transgender, which mixes us up with transvestites.”
Yeah. That was our point, too.
“Transvestites certainly don’t dress for comic purposes and I don’t get up in the morning and think ‘what can I put on today to give people a laugh?'”
What about if it’s for charity? What then, Steph?
“This race pokes fun at cross-dressing and, by association, us, reducing us to objects to be laughed at.”
We’re laughing now, Steph. You’re a witty one, alright. Your parody is a bit to knowing to rival the aforesaid Dame for belly laughs, but the intelligensia and the student Unionists should get it.
“Dehumanising us this way gives carte blanche to those that would do us physical harm, much like the gay bashers of old.”
Raising money for sick children is dehumanising. Steph’s a bit edgy for mainstream tastes, but we’ll go with it.
“It’s a small step from ridicule to persecution. The current stats suggest a 34 per cent chance of beaten up, raped or killed for being trans. We do not need to give the bigots any more ammunition.”
If you want to rape the charity runners, you’ll have to catch them first.
“I am sure that Derian House didn’t intend to give offence. The very fact that its a children’s hospice should make them sensitive to potential bad publicity and the effect that this has on young trans people.”
At which point we’d take this as a cue for young trans person who also happens to be desperately ill to say how offended they are. If Jerry Sadowitz is looking for a new gag, this might be it. The desperately ill transgender person could go into a long riff on how they’d like to murder everyone on the Derien House money raising committee but lack the strength to do so. Sadowitz would rattle a tin and invite anyone who cares to give money and thereby hire an assassin to help out the poorly young transgender victim.
That for later. For now a spokesman for Derian House says: “Oh, just F*** off.”
No. They don’t. They say:
“As a children’s hospice, we deal with highly sensitive and emotive issues all the time and would never have considered organising a fundraising event that might cause upset or offence. Dames on the Run was conceived as a fun event, drawing on the much-loved Pantomime Dame character that is part of our theatrical heritage and supported by hundreds of thousands of people in every year.
“It was intended appeal to the fathers of desperately sick children, who do so much to hold their family together in the face of their child’s devastating illness and who ask for very little support in return.
“We wanted to provide an opportunity for them to participate in a fun-packed event and encourage other men to show their support and raise vitally needed funds for the hospice.
“We were shocked to receive a complaint, and our chief executive wrote immediately to apologise for any offence caused and assure her that none was intended. “She has accepted an invitation to visit the hospice on Monday.”
We then her from Lancashire Police, who say:
“We are aware of and investigating an incident that was reported to us as a hate crime on Thursday.”
Nine people have been murdered in an attack on the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, North Carolina. The talk is of a hate crime. The alleged killer is white. The victims are black.
“The only reason someone would walk into a church and shoot people that were praying is out of hate,” says Charleston Mayor Joe Riley.
Greg Mullen, the Charleston police chief sticks to the facts:
“It is unfathomable that somebody in today’s society would walk into a church when people are having a prayer meeting and take their lives. There were eight deceased individuals inside of the church. Two individuals were transported to (the hospital). One of them has died. At this point, we have nine victims in this hideous crime that has been committed.”
Charleston police tweeted:
“Suspect in shooting on Calhoun St is a w/m approx 21 slender small build wearing a grey sweat shirt blue jeans timberland boots clean shaven.”
Thomas Dixon tells Fox News:
“Apparently the person just entered the church and opened fire. That part has not been fully articulated on what happened yet … they are still looking for the suspect.”
Nikki Haley, the South Carolina Governor, adds:
“While we do not yet know all of the details, we do know that we’ll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another.”
