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News and Views from Around the World

New PM Boris Johnson is no pro-life or conservative hero
Britain's new PM Boris Johnson's record on social issues is decidedly awful. He has been a staunch advocate of the LGBT movement for years, writing in 2012 that he was in favour of same-sex "marriage" and noting that he simply "can't see what the fuss is about". In his recent role as foreign secretary, he went so far as to lift a ban on British embassies flying the rainbow flag, the banner of a sexually revolutionary movement.

In 2004, he was fired by Tory leader Michael Howard from his dual roles as Conservative Party vice chairman and shadow arts minister for consistently deceiving pretty much everybody about an affair (one in a string of affairs).

His first marriage, to socialite Allegra Mostyn-Owen, lasted only a year, and his affair with Petronella Wyatt came while he was married to his second wife, with whom he has four children.

It turns out that Johnson allegedly paid for Wyatt to get an abortion after she became pregnant. The child was unplanned and was aborted in October of 2004.

Johnson's compulsive deceit in the face of these allegations effectively killed his political career at the time. Fifteen years later, he's made quite the comeback.
Extract from Jonathon Van Maren, LifeSiteNews (Canada), July 29, 2019.

Moderate Muslim disqualified from seeking Canadian party nomination
Professor, author and columnist Salim Mansur, a devout Muslim, has been a stalwart opponent of radical Islamism and the groups advancing it within Canada. However, he has been disqualified from seeking the Conservative nomination.

Despite being told by the Conservative Party of Canada's regional organiser last November that he was allowed to launch his campaign and begin campaigning, Mansur received notice from the party's executive director in June that his nomination candidacy was "disallowed".

No reason was provided in the email, but Mansur told me in a brief interview that Conservative leader Andrew Scheer's campaign manager, Hamish Marshall, advised him last week of the party's concerns with Mansur's past writing and public speaking on Islamism and the politics of radical Muslims, which Marshall said will likely be portrayed by Liberals and others as Islamophobic, and become disruptive to the party's national campaign.
Extract from Andrew Lawton, True North (Canada), June 10, 2019.

21,460 attend library conference featuring workshops on drag queens and queering primary schools
At the American Library Association's annual conference, the nation's librarians learned how to circumvent community objections to events like Drag Queen Story Hour and other outrageous, taxpayer-purchased materials.
Extract from Joy Pullmann, The Federalist (USA), July 10, 2019.
Logic 101 vs transgender ideology
It is difficult to disprove someone's claim that they "feel like a man inside". The claim is nonsensical and absurd, but I cannot technically disprove it. I also cannot technically disprove a man's claim that he "feels like an ostrich inside". But I can disprove the claim that he's nine feet tall with feathers and a top running speed of 43 miles per hour.
Extract from Matt Walsh, Daily Wire (USA), July 18, 2019.
Minds destroyed by the Internet
My students are unable to analyse, follow and understand written text. To be more specific, they are unable to decipher compound sentences, understand relationship between subordinate and main clauses. They can't grasp the logical relationship between sentences, let alone paragraphs, which are totally opaque to them.

When I started to teach (only two years ago), I prepared material written in normal, rational, technical prose – for adults, or as I understood they would be. Immediately, it became apparent that there was zero comprehension.

This is what I attribute this phenomenon to: I don't think that they are able to concentrate for more than a few seconds. Hence compound sentences become an enigma. Their brains are "trained" to hold information for the minimum time possible and to move on the next soundbite or tweet.

They are unable to hold a thought in their minds long enough to abstract it, analyze it, and form required relationships. As a result, they lack the fundamental building blocks for inductive and deductive reasoning.

They want to be spoon-fed without ever having to resort to a single abstract thought.
An American university professor, quoted in Rod Dreher, The American Conservative, July 24, 2019.
Hungary offers married couples $33,000 if they have three children
Hungary's pro-family government is offering married couples $US33,000 loan that won't have to be paid back if the couple has three children.

The measure is part of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's plan to encourage population growth in a country with one of the lowest birth rates in Europe.

There are specific criteria that couples must meet in order to qualify for the loan. These include that the couple must be married, that the marriage must be the first one for at least one of the spouses, that the woman be between the ages of 18 and 40, and that one of the spouses must have paid at least 180 days' worth of tax contributions in Hungary.

Married couples taking advantage of the loan who do not produce their first child or no child at all within the first five years would be compelled to repay the full amount of the loan within a four-month period unless they can produce a medical certificate.
Extract from Martin Barillas, LifeSiteNews, August 2, 2019.

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