SelwynDuke.com

Houston’s Got No Problem: City Voters Reject Unequal-rights Ordinance

By Selwyn Duke

It was not an idea too big to fail. And it failed big. Voters in Houston, Texas, rejected the controversial and misnamed “Houston Equal Rights Ordinance” (HERO) by a wide margin yesterday. The measure would have extended “special protections” to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and so-called transgender people, along with those in other “protected categories,” while leaving Americans outside those groups without such protections.

Yet what really drove opposition to the ordinance was that it would have allowed “transgender” people to use the bathroom of their choice based on actual or perceived “gender identity.” In other words, men claiming to be women could use women’s bathrooms.

So while the vote was expected to be close, HERO turned out to be a zero, failing by a whopping margin of 61 percent to 39 percent.

Read the rest here.

Purging Christianity to Please Muslims: German Schools Nix Christian Festival

By Selwyn Duke

One critic calls it the “Islamic conquest of the West.” Others say it’s a sign of a collapsing West. But on the heels of a story about European churches removing crosses to accommodate Muslim migrants comes another in the same vein: Some German primary schools and daycare centers are renaming a traditional Christian festival to avoid “offending” Islamic newcomers.

This latest victim of political correctness is St. Martin’s Day, also known as the Feast of St. Martin. Held on November 11 after the harvest, it’s a traditional autumn event on the Christian calendar. But just as how American school calendars long ago renamed the Christmas and Easter breaks, respectively, “winter” and “spring” breaks, secular forces in Germany see fit to further de-Christianize their nation. And the new committee-worthy name they’ve chosen for the feast day is the “Festival of Lights.”

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Students Protest: Bring Back Officer Who Got Physical With S.C. Girl

Selwyn Duke

Deputy Ben Fields has been condemned in the media and called names. He has been fired from the Richland County Sheriff's Department. And the federal government has launched a civil-rights investigation into his apprehension of a defiant student who was disrupting her class last Monday. Yet some of the people who know him best are rallying on his behalf: students at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina, where Fields was the school resource officer.

On Friday, approximately 100 students walked out of class at around 10:00 a.m. to protest the termination of Fields. They were back in their classrooms after about 10 minutes in response to a diplomatic request from their principal, but not before their voices were heard.

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Should Churches Remove Crosses to Make Muslim Migrants Feel at Home?

Selwyn Duke

While Islamic terrorists in various parts of the world are burning churches and executing Christians, crosses are being removed from some European churches — by church officials themselves.

And it’s being done in deference to Muslim sensibilities.

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S.C. Cop Who Got Physical With Girl Was Right, Says Expert

By Selwyn Duke

Officials have used terms such as "outrageous,” "reprehensible," and "shamefully shocking" to describe what they see in a video about a police officer who enforced rules on a girl. But do such reactions best characterize the cop’s behavior — or the girl’s?

By now millions of people have seen the viral video of Senior Deputy Ben Fields using physical force Monday on an unnamed Spring Valley High School student in Columbia, South Carolina. As the initial footage shows, the officer tells the 16-year-old girl to come with him, she refuses, and after a couple more requests he drags her out of her chair to enforce compliance. And the public reaction was swift. There was condemnation across the Internet for using such actions on a “child” and a “girl”; Fields’ boss, Sheriff Leon Lott, said that the initial “snapshot” of the incident made him want to “throw up”; the DOJ and FBI are conducting investigations into the event; and Fields has been accused of racial bias (he’s white, the girl is black). Moreover, it has just been reported that Fields has been terminated by the Richland County Sheriff’s Department. But has common sense also been terminated?

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President’s Lies Matter: Obama Defends Black Lives Matter Movement

By Selwyn Duke

It’s a phenomenon that has led to riots and the killing of police officers. But that didn’t stop Barack Obama from defending the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement last Thursday at a White House criminal-justice forum. It was an action that, critics say, reinforced divisive misconceptions — ones that have contributed the murder and mayhem.

While Obama paired his defense of BLM with praise for the “overwhelming majority” of police who want “to do the right thing,” he also spoke of “a specific problem that's happening in the African-American community that's not happening in other communities.” Yet he wasn’t referring to the black community’s 72 percent out-of-wedlock birthrate or that blacks are approximately 50 percent of the United States’ homicide victims (while only 13 percent of the population) — or that 90 to 93 percent of these victims are killed by other blacks. Rather, referencing the notion that an inordinate number of black suspects are shot by police officers, the president said, "We as a society, particularly given our history, have to take this seriously. And one of the ways of avoiding the politics of this and losing the moment is everybody just stepping back for a second and understanding that the African-American community is not just making this up. It's not just something being politicized.”

The truth, however, is that made up and politicized describe BLM’s claims perfectly.

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The Muslim Migrants and the Death of the West

By Selwyn Duke

Death can happen suddenly, as when being shot or hit by a truck. But it’s more often a process involving steady and observable decline. It’s also true that symptoms can be confused with causes. Such is the case with listing Western civilization and the Muslim migrant crisis, opines the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens. In a rather insightful piece entitled “In Defense of Christendom,” he writes:

The death of Europe is in sight. Still hazy and not yet inevitable, but nevertheless visible and drawing nearer—like a distant planet in the lens of an approaching satellite. Europe is reaching its end not because of its sclerotic economy, or stagnant demography, or the dysfunctions of the superstate. Nor is the real cause the massive influx of Middle Eastern and African migrants. Those desperate people are just the latest stiff breeze against the timber of a desiccated civilization.

Of course, critics point out that most of the migrants aren’t “desperate” at all. Estimates inform that 75 percent are males, mostly young and strong. Contrary to the narrative, only 25 percent are Syrian; moreover, as Muslim refugee and Jordanian opposition leader Dr. Mudar Zahran pointed out, “Seventy-five percent of those arriving from Syria come from safe area[s]; actually, the ones in disaster areas cannot … leave.” They are economic migrants, he tells us, seizing the opportunity of the current crisis to emigrate to a “rich nation with a generous welfare system,” such as Germany or Sweden. A good example is the tragic early September story of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, who washed up on a Turkish beach. The unfortunate child’s death was used to beat the drum for open European borders, but here’s the truth: He, along with his parents and brother, had been living safely in Turkey for three years. And why did his father take the family on a journey, destination Greece, on a 15-foot dinghy?

Read the rest here.

Crock Boy: When the Media Get Owned by a 14-year-old

By Selwyn Duke

Take the money and run. With the huge windfall enjoyed by the Mohamed family — of clock-bomb-arrest fame — in “Islamophobic” America, one might think that little clock-maker extraordinaire Ahmed Mohamed would head to Switzerland for an internship with Rolex. Instead, news is his whole family is moving to Qatar after the boy accepted a scholarship from the Qatar Foundation for Education. Because, you know, if you’re interested in pushing back scientific frontiers, the Islamic world is where you go.

Now, Qatar is an interesting choice. Its official state religion is Wahhabi Islam — this is also the dominant faith in Saudi Arabia. And like Saudi Arabia, the nation’s main source of legislation is Sharia law (I’m sure Ahmed’s sisters will love it {and maybe they will}). It’s quite telling, however, that the Mohamed clan would choose such a place, although not surprising, really. With Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed (talk about wearing out a name), being a Muslim activist who twice ran for the Sudan’s presidency, it wouldn’t be surprising if these people were “true believers.”

But what I really want to discuss are those other destructive true believers, in all things politically correct, who averred Crock Boy was Clock Boy and dubbed him an inventor. This brings us to the main point, something never quite articulated sufficiently.

Hillary Clinton Unchained: Gun Ban “Worth Looking at”

By Selwyn Duke

Would Hillary Clinton ban guns in the United States? She apparently supported the idea last Friday, but then supposedly dismissed it three days later. It’s the difference between an on- and off-Teleprompter candidate.

During an October 16 town hall meeting at Keene State College, a questioner asked Clinton if we could follow Australia’s lead and ban handguns. She replied that the nation’s confiscation of firearms was a “good example” and was “worth looking at” when formulating U.S. gun policy. Here's more of her unguarded-moment answer....

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Ahmed the “Clock Boy” Meets with Obama and War Criminal

By Selwyn Duke

The media has dubbed him “Clock Boy,” but critics have pointed out that he’s really just Crock Boy. This hasn’t prevented Ahmed Mohamed (shown), the 14-year-old Texas student arrested for bringing to school a device that could be taken for a bomb, from making the rounds as a celebrity and meeting world leaders. This included an encounter Barack Obama at the White House’s Astronomy Night last evening, even though the meeting was left in doubt after Mohamed met last Wednesday with an African president wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

The boy’s dubious meeting with Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir — accused of orchestrating genocide and crimes against humanity in Darfur — put the White House in an uncomfortable position. Obama had already committed to the now-discredited narrative that Mohamed was a fertile-minded inventor victimized by “Islamophobia,” and revoking his Astronomy Night invitation would have been a blow against that victim narrative. Ultimately, the administration decided to walk a fine line. Press Secretary Josh Earnest played down Mohamed’s visit at a press briefing yesterday, saying he didn’t believe Obama would “have an opportunity to meet one-on-one with Ahmed” as “several hundred people” would participate in the event. And so it transpired: Obama met with the high-school student while mingling with the attendees, but didn’t showcase his visit.

Unfortunately, Mohamed’s tale is an example of how, as Jonathan Swift wrote in 1710, “Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect…” And a tall tale Mohamed’s is.

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