Huge growth in Australian aborigines. Is it fashionable to identify? By Andrew Bolt.

I was sued by activists insisting no one could choose their “race”. Yet the latest Census suggests 40,000 just did. There are now 649,171 Aborigines counted, compared to 548,368 just five years earlier. …

I must assume it’s fashionable to identify as Aboriginal among people who have a choice. Or there are more financial benefits in doing so. …

Interestingly, the biggest growth is in Victoria – 25.8 per cent. That’s presumably where intermarriage rates are higher. It’s also our most Left-wing state.

That suggests a real public policy issue. With such huge growth in people identifying as Aboriginal – and in richer states – the demographic profile is being changed.

When we now measure progress in education, for instance, we must be careful to adjust for the fact that there are now many more children being included who would have not been included before. They are more likely to have fewer Aboriginal ancestors and to come from more mainstream families in urban areas.

That means the statistics may exaggerate progress for Aborigines in more traditionally Aboriginal areas.

Sarah Palin Sues New York Times for Defamation, by Tony Lee.

On Tuesday evening, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin hired Hulk Hogan’s lawyers and sued the New York Times for defamation for falsely accusing her in a June 14 editorial of inciting Jared Lee Loughner to shoot Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-AZ). The Times’ editorial was published on the day that James Hodgkinson shot House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) while he was practicing for the Congressional Baseball Game with his GOP teammates.

Gifford’s shooter was a leftie, if anything, and Palin’s messaging was standard political fare that used the word “target” like many others, both left and right. Just more fake news. Interesting to see that she’s going to try and sue however.

“Today, Sarah Palin took a stand against The New York Times Company by filing a lawsuit which seeks to hold The Times accountable for stating that Governor Palin is part of a ‘sickeningly familiar pattern’ of politically motivated violence and that she incited the horrific 2011 shooting of Representative Gabby Giffords, a tragedy where the gunman seriously wounded numerous people and killed 6, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl,” Palin’s lawyers—Ken Turkel, Shane Vogt, and S. Preston Ricardo—said in a statement.

The complaint, filed in Manhattan federal court in the Southern District of New York, states that “at the time of publication, The Times knew and had published pieces acknowledging that there was no connection between Mrs. Palin and Loughner’s 2011 shooting.”

John Hinderaker:

The Times alleged that Mrs. Palin’s “incitement” of Loughner’s crime was “clear” and “direct.”

This was, of course, a lie. Loughner was crazy, and if anything, he was a leftist. (He listed The Communist Manifesto among his favorite books, and friends described him as a liberal.) There is no evidence that he ever saw the online map with “targeted” Democratic districts that was the supposed incitement.

hat-tip Scott of the Pacific

Paying workers to protest: The controversial trend of social justice benefits, by Claudia Cowan.

Since the election, scores of activists have taken to the streets, town halls and rallies to blast President Trump. That’s all with the blessing of their boss thanks to social justice benefits and paid time off work policies that are growing in popularity.

At San Francisco marketing firm Traction, social justice benefits take the form of two so-called “Days of Action” a year.

“They can take part in a protest, they can volunteer for a cause that is meaningful to them,” says CEO Adam Kleinberg. “Civic engagement is a foundation of our democracy, and companies should encourage it.” …

But in the famously left-leaning Bay Area, conservative activists don’t buy it.

It is a risk: Consumers opposed to an official endorsement of protest culture might spend their money elsewhere. …

Most companies give their workers time off to vote, but “this is different – this is going to a new level,” said Scott Dobroski, community expert with employment firm Glassdoor.

A recent Glassdoor survey found more than half of employees believe they should have time off to advocate for social change, regardless of their politics.

“Many employers,” Dobroski said, “are taking note that social change and positive action matters to employees – both in and out of the workplace.”

The new trend in virtue-signalling leftism.

hat-tip Scott of the Pacific

One Year Ago Loretta Lynch Met Bill Clinton on Plane in Arizona, Today She Faces Criminal Investigation, by Jim Hoft.

Reporter Christopher Sign of ABC 15 in Phoenix, AZ broke the story on the secret meeting between Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton on the tarmac in Arizona on June 27, 2016.

Hillary Clinton told “Meet the Press” later that week that the controversial meeting between her husband and Attorney General Loretta Lynch was “purely social.” Hillary insisted they talked about their grandkids and golf during their meeting on the tarmac.

That was a lie.

The NSA now says it will not release details of the meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch due to the “national security” risk.

Former Attorney General Loretta Lynch faces jail time for obstruction of justice if information showing she furthered DNC interests surface.

Drain the swamp.

hat-tip Scott of the Pacific

Chinese Foreign Minister: ‘Refugees Should Return to Their Homeland’.

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi declared on Tuesday that “refugees should return to their homeland” and made it clear China does not want any more of them.

“Nations in the Middle East are carrying an immense burden in accepting refugees from Syria and other places,” Wang said, speaking from Beirut. “Refugees are not immigrants and are roaming the world, after losing their homeland. I look forward to the time when all refugees return to their homeland to rebuild their hometowns.” …

“If refugees enter China, the Chinese people will suffer tremendously. Social anxiety will escalate,”

Taking in refugees is hardly in China’s interest, is it? Political correctness is only a western affliction.

hat-tip Stephen Neil

Erdogan Seizes 50 Churches and Monasteries, Declares Them Turkish State Property. Cultural warfare that the West fails to notice except for a few human rights groups. No protest from submissive western governments.

Meanwhile, look what Ergodan is doing in Washington:

Erdogan seems intent on completing the religious cleansing of Turkey’s historic Christian populations, which began more than a century ago with the Armenian genocide, and later with the genocide and exodus of the Pontic Greek population.

hat-tip Stephen Neil

Politics violence in the USA, 2017, all coming from the left

hat-tip Pierce

California bans travel to states that protect Christians who oppose gay ‘marriage’, by Mark Hodges.

The state of California has ordered a travel ban for its government employees to states that have adopted laws to protect religious freedom.

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a pro-abortion Democrat, has unilaterally prohibited all state-sanctioned trips to Alabama, Kentucky, South Dakota, and Texas because those states have passed legislation allowing those who uphold natural marriage and biological gender to live by their sincerely-held beliefs. …

Texas responds:

For its part, Texas is shrugging off the California economic threat. “California might be able to stop their state employees, but they can’t stop all the businesses that are fleeing over-taxation and over-regulation and relocating to Texas,” Gov. Greg Abbott’s press secretary, John Wittman, said.

Marc Rylander, communications director for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, commented, “It’s funny how the very state that is so adamantly against keeping terrorists out of our country — they oppose the president’s travel ban — now wants to keep Californians out of Texas.”

Texas lawmakers argued that if that California really was concerned about human rights, Gov. Jerry Brown wouldn’t have traveled to China recently. They further pointed out that Hispanic California politicians disregarded the travel ban to come to Dallas last week for a convention.

“While California prides itself on being ‘open-minded,’ it is only open-minded if you kneel at the altar of a certain political agenda,” State Rep. Wayne Frank, R-Wichita Falls, the author of the law Becerra objects to, pointed out.

Amazing. A decade ago every mainstream politician opposed gay marriage. Times are changing ever faster! What’s next?

hat-tip Stephen Neil

Jeremy Corbyn: the nation’s therapist, by Joanna Williams.

Corbyn is not messiah-like – indeed his very lack of magnetism is part of his appeal. And neither does Corbynism fill some Christianity-shaped hole in British life. The old religion demanded confession, sacrifice and a commitment that extends beyond both the present and the self. Instead, Corbynism offers followers something more immediate than salvation: self-care. His appeal is not to lapsed church-goers so much as to those who practice yoga, meditation and mindfulness. …

A therapeutic ethos underpinned Labour’s manifesto, proclaimed as radical for promises to scrap university tuition fees, bring mail, rail and power services back into public ownership and provide more free childcare. These proposals were not driven by aspiration and ambition so much as an impulse to protect, nurture and take care of our collective wellbeing. Under Corbyn’s Labour party, a National Education Service would provide ‘cradle to grave’ learning. We would all have a teacher helping guide us in the right direction, while looking out for our mental health.

Corbynism is not so much style over substance, but feelings over practicalities. Labour is for all things nice: ‘equality’, ‘fairness’, ‘bridges not walls’. Corbyn talks of justice, peace and most especially of ‘giving people hope’. T-shirts, posters and memes show his face emblazoned with the single word: ‘HOPE’. But there’s little sense of what exactly we are hoping for.

At Glastonbury last weekend, Corbyn again talked about hope: ‘Hope that it does not have to be like this. That inequities can be tackled. That austerity can be ended. That you can stand up to the elites and the cynics.’ The crowd, on cue, joined in the chorus with ‘Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!’ People I’ve spoken to who were there talk about this as as one of the most politically charged moments of their lives. Everyone mentions the crying, the joyous faces, the feeling of unity, the sense that anything might be possible.

Corbyn is, for now at least, providing meaning for people in search of a sense of purpose. It is what Christopher Lasch, writing in The Culture of Narcissism, describes as a ‘momentary illusion of personal wellbeing’. Politics as therapy makes those who already have nice lives feel psychically better about themselves. But it has little to say to people who want material not spiritual change: for those who want to own their own house, not just to squat in someone else’s; or those who aspire to set the course of their own life, not remain a perpetual student.

Madrid: “Diversity police” to protect mosques during World LGBT Pride 2017, by Christine Douglass-Williams.

World LGBT Pride 2017 is happening in Madrid, and “diversity police” are out in full swing, 24-7. One would think this police force might be to focused upon protecting participants from anti-LGBT hate crimes, particularly given the hatred jihadis display toward this group; they are directed by Islamic religious tenets to murder them as a divine punishment. The diversity police, however, will be allocating “resources to protect Madrid’s mosques from hate crimes”. …

Spanish gay pride parade, 2014

In Madrid, the number of hate crimes has been reported to be rising against gays, anti-Semitism is reportedly demonstrated openly, and there has been “a recent spate of attacks on Christian places of worship, including an assault with Molotov cocktails just days ago.” Nonetheless, the “diversity police” are prioritizing mosques.

hat-tip Stephen Neil