Today's dose of stupid from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

Since our tax dollars are helping to subsidize the ridiculous paranoia and vapid concepts disseminated by the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), it's only fair all of us paying for it should derive some benefit.

Fort Stupid on Toronto's Bloor Street

The Institution has entire departments devoted to nonsensical ideas, like that of gender being a psychological construct and that racism is OK for some but not for others, as well as an innumerable slew of crackpot theories, so it's unlikely any yield will ever emerge from OISE advancing the field of Education.

However, at least they can give us some laughs.

Today's amusing bit of stupid from OISE is supplied by Professor Shahrzad Mojab of their "Leadership, Higher and Adult Education Department" (Reading what they produce, I figure the emphasis is on working to get higher than Harold and Kumar).  One of Ms Mojab's areas of focus is women's rights in the less developed parts of the planet.

Now, when it comes to the erosion of women's rights in the Middle East, Asia and Africa, you might come to the natural conclusion that has something to so with the latest spread of Islamism and its repressive misogyny in those regions.  

More fool you then, if Ms Mojab is to be believed. She writes the real culprits are western governments, which are "in concert with large charitable foundations and corporations to actively suppress and dismantle social movements, including the women’s movement."

That's right, you got it; repression of women in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian Territories is is not due to Islamism, but is part of an evil western capitalist conspiracy.  

How silly to think it could be anything else! If you are experiencing  any disbelief of Ms Mojab's assertion, it must undoubtedly be due to the globalizing mind control drugs the capitalists are sneaking into Coca-Cola, so get over it!

It's really all so obvious, as she explains:

"International donors working with the political elites, shifted resources away from the highly political women’s movement toward absorbing women leaders into ministries.  Another shift was removing funding away from organizations whose goals were political transformation and the national liberation struggle toward organizations that fit into the framework of state-building. "

Ah, those clever, wicked capitalists! 

They were using women's groups to support women in underdeveloped countries by helping them attain roles in critical decision making mechanisms like government. Oh, those crafty, devious capitalists! They have devised a sinister plot to assist women by directing funds to enable them to gain leadership roles in their societies rather than by financing Communist or Islamist revolutionary groups! The fiends!

Here's some more hilarious gobbledygook from Perfesser Mojab:

“The Marxist-feminist analytic guides us to relate the suffering and resistance of women in imperialist wars and reconstruction projects to the local/global and particular/universal whole instead of fragmenting or isolating them.  It is often the fracture in this continuous whole which lends itself to culturalist analysis, which is interested in notions of the war of civilizations/religions or privileging the Western ethics and morality over the rest.  My argument is that an anti-imperialist feminist critique is necessary for any interrogation of the continuity of the imperialist project as it is infused with post-conflict reconstruction projects, funding schemes for women’s NGOs, and building peace.  It also helps us to expose the war/peace binaries as two opposites of one unity; the masculine-imperialist peace is the continuation and reappearance of the masculine-imperialist war.  Given this, I insist that feminists need to be cautious and critical of the ways in which the women’s rights agenda benefits from imperialist rule. The point is that the gender agenda attached to masculine-imperialist post-war reconstruction, development, or even peace building, often operates with the approbation and collaboration of many forces within neo-liberal, racist, and patriarchal agenda.”

 (If you have the time you might enjoy reading all of her 4 page paper - it'll just seem like 83-  available through this link.)

Leapin' Lizards! Iranian Ninja chicks learn to do the splits to defend their homeland

In what looks like the premise for an action comedy movie, Iran is training female ninjas en mass to defend their homeland from invasion by Chick Norris.

Seriously...




h/t Weasel Zippers

Why psychology is considered less relevant than ever

Within the mental health field, a number of psychiatric hospitals are eliminating the Psychology Departments. The field itself has both some exceptional people and some absolute idiots practicing in it.

Psychology Today printed a recent article by a Monnica Williams (the two n`s in Monnica isn`t a type-o, it`s how she spells her name). She contends that `colorblindness` is a form of racism.

You can decide whether she`s one of the idiots.


ht Weasel Zippers

Three reasons why Canada's radical leftists are so humourless

Those of us familiar with the radical left know they do some things very well, like sanctimony, hypocrisy, and emotional hysteria, but something they haven't mastered is having a sense of humour.

It's not that they aren't funny. They are frequently hilarious, such as instances when an obese leftist claimed that by being ignored in a hardware store, she was a victim of sexual oppression, or proto-activist Judy Rebick's insane claim that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's criticism of NDP House leader Libby Davies, when she effectively denied Israel's legitimacy, stemmed from his being a sexist.  But the problem is that when they say these comically outlandish things, they aren't trying to be funny; they mean them.

So in order to understand this strange phenomenon, this (pseudo) scientific analysis will examine the three main reasons why the Canadian far left is so pathologically incapable of having a sense of humour.


1.  They're afraid of offending anyone (and conversely, are offended by everything)

Of course by anyone, we aren't including Christians and white conservatives. They go to great effort to offend those groups. And they now have expanded to trying to offend Jews (which isn't that hard in some cases), whom they dislike, but being sensitive to charges of anti-Semitism, try to use the code word Zionist for Jew, although sometimes the veil does slip.

But getting back to their fear of offending, let's take this for example:

Q: Why did the Gay chicken cross the basketball court?

A: He heard the ref was blowing fowls on the other side.

The willingness to offend is central to humour, and really nothing should be off limits. Most leftists would be appalled at that joke. That joke isn't anti-Gay, it's pro-blow job. The reason the chicken has to be Gay in it is because all pro basketball referees are male. And the joke is a word play joke based on a homonym. OK,  I've made it totally unfunny by explaining and analyzing the joke, but you get the point. If you're anxious to find offense in everything and at the same time overly sensitive to the potential hurt feelings of everyone, you're lame.



2. They are mainly motivated by jealousy

Contemporary Canadians live in a time and place where we are better off then just about anyone else, anywhere, ever. Sure, there`s always room for more improvement, but we live in times where the average lower middle class person has more luxuries and privileges than an 18th Century European nobleman. We have free education, free health care, home computers and on-demand music and videos, and mobile personal communication devices with instant, global reach..

We live in a society where one of the cause celebres is childhood obesity.

That`s right, we live in a time and place where a lot of people are complaining because they eat too much! If  the average person three hundred years ago were to learn that overeating would be a major complaint in the future, they would think their descendants insane. And perhaps they would be right.

It's hard to be funny, avaricious and and bitter at the same time and jealousy is what is really the motivation behind Canada's radical leftists.They would never admit jealousy is what drives them. In fact, they probably don't even recognize that trait in themselves. 

But the way the radical left looks at things is not what they have, but what others have. They obsess that if someone else has something, then they too should be entitled to it. It doesn`t matter if people better off than them worked harder, are smarter, took risks to achieve their advantages, or just made better decisions. That`s not important. What`s important is that someone else has something that they want. And because they recognize that their own limited talents and the potential of their Equity Studies degrees limits them to a life not much better than the one they have now, rather then trying to improve their lives, they want to tear down the achievements of people more successful than they.

That type of bitterness just isn`t funny.


3. They're stupid

A sense of humour is a sign of intelligence and the radical left is not comprised of particularly intelligent people. If there was ever any question about their utter intellectual incompetence, the Occupy Movement put a stake through the heart of any remaining doubt.. These are people who hate the government and saw the solution to their problems being a bigger government with expanded powers. The imbeciles thought that squatting in public parks was a profound way of addressing income inequity. Their notion of economics consisted of imagery of the tuxedoed Monopoly man or Scrooge McDuck sitting atop a pyramid of gold coins. The money that they are complaining about is for the most part used to create new jobs, finance ventures which improve society, and serve as security for funding that is used to build new businesses. That's aside from the fact that the top 1% of income earners they sought to vilify contribute over 30% of tax revenue. And that figure doesn't include the billions for targetted philanthropic efforts, such as Bill Gates' campaign to eradicate Malaria.

Gates' effort has led to thousands of saved lives, whereas the entire Occupy Movement combined has saved zero lives but is responsible for at least 3 deaths, a dozen rapes and countless physical assaults. Say what you will about the Tea Party, they tend not to rape and murder each other at their demonstrations.

All the Occupy Movement managed to conclusively accomplish is to prove that the radical left is made up of idiots. They have enablers, like Michael Moore, Keith Olbermann, Naomi Klein and others who tried to project their own issues into Occupy Whatever, but the movement was too disorganized to come up with any coherent message despite the prodding.

Aside from their lack of comprehension of basic economics, they are too stupid to recognize their own hypocrisy and racism. These are people who will rush to condemn the slightest perceived insult or offense to the feelings of one of their myriad categories of oppressed peoples, but at the same time will excuse the most depraved barbarity from radical Muslims or if it is perpetrated by a what they call racialized minorities. Why? Becuase the radical left who purport to be anti-racists are really racists of the worst kind. They clearly view their so-called oppressed brothers and sisters as barbarians too primitive to be held up to the standards of the Great White West.

The Can Rad Left's stupidity,sanctimony and hypocrisy requires them to view the world in a bigoted way suggesting such a lack of personal insight as to disqualify the possibility of any sense of humour in them.



Still, the left's absence of humour doesn't mean they aren't good for laughs; but as the old saying goes, it's laughing at and not with them.

First Nations witch puts curse on Vancouver police and firemen

OOOOhhhhhh! The Occupy Vancouver cretins were pretty upset when their sacred fire hazard was put out by the Vancouver Fire Department with help from the police. So upset, the cult echoed the curse that a witch put on them at their assembly.

Scarrry stuff!

Unfortunately, the Vancouver witch is pretty much the sort of hideous creature you'd expect stirring a cauldron in Macbeth, so here's my favorite cute witch:

You know your protest has jumped the shark when Roseanne Barr shows up to address the crowd

The Wall Street Flopupation:

This week's award for dumbest place in America goes to: Oak Park, Michigan

A Michigan homeowner is facing a jury trial and potential jail time for planting a vegetable garden. This act is apparently in violation of city code, which dictates that only "suitable materials" be used in all unpaved portions of front yards.

Julie Bass, an Oak Park, Michigan homeowner and mother-of-six, decided to plant a vegetable garden in her front yard so that she could save money by growing her own organic food. She filled five large planter boxes with cabbages, cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs and other edible vegetation.

While many neighbors enjoyed the fruits of her labour, others complained. Seeing how city code requires homeowners to plant shrubbery, grass, ground cover, and "suitable materials" in all unpaved portions of front yards, city code enforcement officials told Mrs. Bass to squash the project or face a ticket.

According to Oak Park City Planner Kevin Rulkowski, the word "suitable" means "common," and vegetable gardens in front yards in Mrs. Bass's community are not common, so Mrs. Bass is in violation of the code.

Mrs. Bass now faces a trial by jury and up to 93 days of jail time.

More at Sympatico

Lazy parents and obtuse politicians will not cure childhood obesity with taxes

You know that all the good activist causes are gone when in a world where there is still massive hunger and starvation, the current upper-middle class cause celebre is childhood obesity.

Where are all these fat kids exactly? Kids have high metabolism rates. Most can eat junk food and burn it off.

Childhood obesity alarmists point to statistics, but looking around, does it really seem like kids everywhere have ballooned into hordes of Augustus Gloops?

I haven't seen much evidence of it, but even if it were the case, what the issue points to, and the way that anti-fat kid fanatics propose to solve it, is indicative of an abrogation of personal responsibility and reliance on the nanny state that typifies the mushy Left in Canada.

It would seem apparent that if your kid is a little porker, either they're gobbling down too much, which means parents need to provide better meals and help the kids learn personal discipline, or more likely the case, little Jimmy or little Yolanda aren't burning up many calories because they're spending all their time sitting on their butt paying Xbox or facebooking.

Rosario Marchese, the NDP's member of Provincial Parliament for Trinity Spadina, has an involved and expensive proposal to combat the rolls of fat undulating in elementary schools; to impose high taxes on junk food.

That solution won't solve any problems, it'll just make things worse. Kids from more affluent families will still be able to afford junk food and poorer kids will feel left out and pester their parents until they hand over money for popping candy, Reese's Pieces, a Coke and a bag of Lay's ketchup chips. It doesn't matter how cheap or available you make healthy food, because you're still not going to convince a kid that celery sticks taste better than a Joe Louis. The result won't be kids who are any healthier, it'll be be poor people having to spend more money on taxes.

If you want to mess up something simple, the best way to do that is to put the government in charge. The solution to childhood obesity is obvious, but runs contrary to the instincts of leftists who rely on the state to act and think on their behalf. Parents need to act like parents. Make your kid turn off the electronic device for a few hours a day, and take them outside to play soccer, or ride a bike or go for a run. If they had done that in the first place, there would be no problem. But what is certain is that the way to help fat-stomached children is not to rely on new legislation from fat-headed politicians.

Be a born-again virgin...by mail for $29.95!

Ugh!

Women who cannot afford to get their hymens surgically re-attached in Canada prior to marriages in their cultural country of origin have a less expensive option: they can order one in the mail.

Starting at just $29.95, women can order a false hymen online, shipped from China.

Here's the website where you can get yours... it looks like some alien creature...!!!





h/t SassyWire

And the award for bad taste in promotional efforts goes to...

Name brand manufacturers frequently and without solicitation send celebrities free stuff, hoping that if a famous person decides to wear, drive, etc their product, it'll serve as a promotion.

But it seems some people don't know where the boundaries of propriety and good taste end.

In Hollywood, you say!? Who'd have thunk it!?

Celebrity gossip site TMZ reports that a funeral company called The Golden Casket as decided, as a promotion, to send Zsa Zsa Gabor a free gold-plated casket worth $40,000.00

Another rule the Golden Casket people seem to have forgotten is that a gift is generally only appreciated if you can use it when you're alive.

Yipes!

Ontario Human Rights Commission investigating whether to make crackheads and alcoholics* a protected category

* I meant "cocaine-challenged and alcohol-deprived citizens"

No, I'm not making this up:

Toronto - The Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC) launched a survey today to learn more about the human rights issues and barriers people with mental health and addiction disabilities face. The survey kicks off a broader consultation process on human rights and mental health-related issues.  

The questions are aimed at learning how discrimination because of a person’s mental health issue or addiction may affect their ability to find and keep a job, get an apartment or connect with education and health-related services.

Funny, he doesn't look Jewish..

Egyptian swimmers are being attacked by a predatory shark and the Egyptian governor of South Sinai has accused the shark of being a Mossad agent.

No, seriously..I know it sounds too idiotic to be true, but look for yourself here

h/t The National Post





UPDATE:

Eric Margolis: Apologist for Terrorism, Hamas butt-kisser and Moral Relativist

This exchange in the video that you'll see below is instructive. It's between far-left media personality John Jay and Margolis:

JAY:  "One of the reasons the word 'terrorist' is often or almost always associated with Hamas is 'cause certainly they have used terrorist tactics. Hamas has taken credit for blowing up civilians in Israel which is a terrorist tactic, so doesn't it deserve some of that label?"

MARGOLIS:  "Well, uhh.. I ..I..uhh..shudder at the use of the word terrorism because it is so.. it's a propaganda rather than descriptive term.."

See the rest here and have a barf bag handy.

Today's craziness from Heather Mallick

This could turn out to be a regular feature. Thanks Heather.  To someone who writes a blog pointing out hypocrisy and idiocy in the media, you're a gift.

Today's installment:  apparently in Canada, we're not much better than societies that condone "honor killings" since it took police so long to catch serial killer Robert Picton.

Uh, sure..if you say so Heather.