News and Views from around the World
How China is taking over Hollywood
In 2020, Chinese ticket sales exceeded ticket sales in the United States, making China the number one box-office market in the world. This huge market share means that Hollywood has begun tailoring its casting, story lines and dialogue to fit Chinese — not American — audiences.
In his 2022 book Red Carpet: Hollywood, China, and the Global Battle for Cultural Supremacy, Erich Schwartzel exposes China's current system of censoring American films. Chinese censors routinely ask studios in Hollywood to scrub scripts and finished movies of scenes that might somehow damage China's Communist system. China's de facto veto power over Hollywood's films means that most portrayals of China are, in effect, state-sanctioned propaganda.
By the turn of the century, Hollywood directors and producers had learned not to broach subjects (Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tiananmen) that offend the Communist Chinese. They had also standardised a lobbying process to get China's approval for its films.
Early in the movie's life cycle, international distributors meet
with Chinese film bureau officials. American studios have to
satisfy layers of Chinese bureaucrats before a movie hits the
market.
Excerpt from Robert Carle, Public Discourse (USA), April
3, 2022.
We are sacrificing our children on
the altar of trans ideology
For someone purporting to be a physician to perform mastectomies, orchiectomy (i.e., castration) and uterus removal on children, to me at least, seems like something worthy of a prison sentence.
Whatever happened to the doctrine expressed by the ancient language as primum non nocere — first, do no harm?
The Hippocratic Oath has been replaced by a delusion: a belief that can be summarised as "by blocking the puberty of children, and then surgically altering them, we are only restoring what is theirs by right. A child's feelings are the final arbiters of their reproductive destiny, and any attempt to contest their gender identity risks increasing their proclivity for suicide".
Lies. Lies. Lies. Then butchery.
Excerpt from Jordan Peterson, The Telegraph (UK), June
16, 2022.
Architects of the sexual revolution
were 'groomers'
Many of the architects of the sexual revolution were not
only groomers; they were also child-abusers or supporters of
paedophilia. They made their case for the abuse of children
openly, and they were embraced by the elites, lionised by the
press, and heralded as heroic and courageous thinkers. As
the sexualisation of children creeps towards the mainstream
once again, we must remember that it was progressives who
encouraged this last time around, and conservatives who resisted
it — and we must not be afraid to call this what it is.
Excerpt from Jonathon Van Maren, The European
Conservative, June 17, 2022.
Family life financially penalised
"Gender equality", is based on the firm belief that women ought to go out and earn wages to be fulfilled and that the raising of the next generation is a second-rate task, best farmed out to paid strangers. It suits the state, because it creates millions of new taxpayers. And it suits big business, because it provides a willing new workforce.
And, of course, it suits the minority of women who pursue exciting high-flying careers, and who can afford good nannies. It is not so great for those who must work in call centres and such places, leaving their young all day in dreary childcare. And it is pretty terrible for the children themselves, in my humble opinion.
If a woman (or a man for that matter) prefers to stay at home to bring up and educate the young, conservatives respect them for it and, at the very least, don't get in their way. But look at how the tax breaks and the social attitudes go, if you want to choose this way of life.
The tax and benefits system, and the attitudes of all parts of
the state, will help almost any form of childcare — except the
one where a parent stays at home to do it and the family has to
cope on a single income.
Excerpt from Peter Hitchens, The Mail on Sunday (UK),
July 24, 2022.
More dystopian than The Handmaid's Tale
The idea that employers will pay female employees expenses
to go kill a baby, so she can remain at work as a productive
employee, is so much more dystopian than any of The
Handmaid's Tale fan-fiction.
Excerpt from Aimee Terese, Twitter, June 24, 2022 [Her Twitter account was subsequently suspended].
The corruption of U.S. medicine
The post-George Floyd racial reckoning has hit the field of medicine like an earthquake. Medical education, medical research, and standards of competence have been upended by two related hypotheses: that systemic racism is responsible both for racial disparities in the demographics of the medical profession and for racial disparities in health outcomes.
Questioning those hypotheses is professionally suicidal. Vast
sums of public and private research funding are being redirected
from basic science to political projects aimed at dismantling
white supremacy. The result will be declining quality of medical
care and a curtailment of scientific progress.
Excerpt from Heather Mac Donald, City Journal (New
York), Summer 2022.
Arizona introduces universal
school-choice funding
"Republicans in particular have called themselves the 'Parents Party' all across the nation, but in Arizona, the Republicans just proved it," said Corey DeAngelis, of School Choice Now, following the passage of a bill in Arizona that expands school choice funding to all 1.1 million K–12 students in the state.
"The only way to truly secure parental rights in education is
to fund students directly and empower families to choose. If you
really want to be the party of parents, here's the way to do it."
Excerpt from Fox Business (USA), June 27, 2022.