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"These are considerations that Jolovan and his collaborators could have pondered on before they went ahead with their train protest: Why are there basic, near universal regulations against protesting in trains? Why haven't fiercer, more radical and courageous activists in the West violated these regulations? Can a cause be served by breaking the law unnecessarily? In his eagerness to show solidarity, Wham has done something that the innocent victims of Operation Coldstore never did: willfully and clumsily broken the law. That would be a self-defeating exercise in reminding the public of the unfinished business of 1987 and the need for the state to embark on a course to open its records on this affair."

Building on anti-millennial rhetoric, student protesters have been described as overreacting, hysterical, entitled and coddled. They've been accused of lacking resilience, practicing intolerance andbeing unable to grasp reality. But the critiques and characterizations of the student protesters actually aren't grounded in any sort of reality. Instead, public response to student protests has been largely based on anecdote, intolerance, and a failure to recognize the very real challenges students face today.

Only recently have Singapore's feminists championed domestic workers. Considerable media attention on abusive working conditions has prompted them, as in Canada, to connect racism, disadvantaged international domestic workers, and women's disproportionate responsibility for caregiving. Protest is led by the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) - a nationally recognized women's organization, which since its formation in 1985 has actively rallied for gender equality in education, marriage, employment and reproductive rights. AWARE aligns itself closely with Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2), a non-governmental organization campaigning for the 'Day Off campaign' aimed at encouraging employers to voluntarily give domestic workers a day off a week ("Day Off", 2011). TWC2 has also joined with the National Committee of UNIFEM Singapore and the Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economic (HUMO) to demand government remedy. Their demands have brought occasional redress. On March 6th, 2012, a new law required all employers to give their foreign domestic workers a day off per week starting January 1, 2013 (Tan 2012). Feminists will need to monitor its impact. Fertility and immigration in Singapore as elsewhere have always been connected to nation-building. They simultaneously raise questions about women's rights and the relations among different groups of women. Today the feminist movement in this island-nation has begun to address such concerns and join similar protests across the region and the world.

"The survey found various religious groups support marriage equality, including 84 percent of Buddhist respondents, 77 percent of Jews, and 60 percent of Catholics. Jehovah's Witnesses (12 percent), Mormons (27 percent), and white evangelical Protestants (28 percent) reported the lowest levels of support for same-sex marriage. Other groups, such as Muslims (42 percent) and Hispanic Protestants (35 percent), were more closely split on the issue, but still reported majority opposition."

The novelist Doris Lessing yesterday claimed that men were the new silent victims in the sex war, "continually demeaned and insulted" by women without a whimper of protest. Lessing, who became a feminist icon with the books The Grass is Singing and The Golden Notebook, said a "lazy and insidious" culture had taken hold within feminism that revelled in flailing men.

"I'm not suggesting the ad should be protested or banned - though there would be with enormous kerfuffle if the genders were reversed. But I would suggest that the ad is an indication that sassy misandry, once justified as a 'necessary corrective' to the patriarchy and women's subjugation, is so common these days it has become a corporate cliché. Which in turn would suggest that it's no longer quite so necessary - that instead it's shaded into abuse. And that's not very empowering. Or 'bloomin' awesome'. Whatever that is."

"When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression." And things started making a little more sense to me. All this anger we see from people screaming "All Lives Matter" in response to black protesters at rallies… All this anger we see from people insisting that THEIR "religious freedom" is being infringed because a gay couple wants to get married… All these people angry about immigrants, angry about Muslims, angry about "Happy Holidays," angry about not being able to say bigoted things without being called a bigot… They all basically boil down to people who have grown accustomed to walking straight at other folks, and expecting THEM to move. So when "those people" in their path DON'T move… When those people start wondering, "Why am I always moving out of this guy's way?" When those people start asking themselves, "What if I didn't move? What if I just kept walking too?" When those people start believing that they have every bit as much right to that aisle as anyone else… It can seem like THEIR rights are being taken away.

Anti-bullying backlash doesn't only come from Christian groups. Orthodox Jewish and Christian groups came together in Toronto last year to protest an anti-bullying measure "as a vehicle to indoctrinate children into embracing a new sexual revolution." It focused on the measure's call to establish a gay-straight alliance, and add support for students of all sexual orientations and gender identities. "To force, especially Christian, classrooms or schools to have homosexual clubs would, of course, be an affront to their family values," said Charles McVety, president of Christian Canada College. "And what does this have to do with bullying? Nothing."

"Freedom of speech seems to be a broadly misunderstood concept. When you believe in freedom of speech and fight to protect it you are not just defending yourself, you are fighting for the right of other people to say things you don't agree with. A person who supports censorship can not claim to support freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is one of the human rights granted to citizens in progressive countries. We consider it important. As such, it was shocking to see feminists@law rallying a protest to the London School of Economics (LSE) Department of Law's recent debate called "Is Rape Different?" It should concern academia that feminist lawyers don't support free speech. They seem to hold myths about freedom."

This was the same inversion of victim and victimizer at work last December. In both cases, the threat was deemed not the angry mobs out to crush opposing ideas, but the ideas themselves. The theory animating both attacks turns out to be a durable one, with deep roots in the political left... After political correctness burst onto the academic scene in the late '80s and early '90s, it went into a long remission. Now it has returned. Some of its expressions have a familiar tint, like the protesting of even mildly controversial speakers on college campuses...

"with the exception of white evangelical Protestants, majorities of all major religious groups say abortion should be legal in all or most cases."  This flies in the face of the widely held notion that religious people are pro-life.

More sexism you won't see AWARE protesting: single men cannot adopt girls Text of Adoption of Children Act: Restrictions on making adoption orders. "An adoption order shall not be made in any case where the sole applicant is a male and the infant in respect of whom the application is made is a female unless the court is satisfied that there are special circumstances which justify as an exceptional measure the making of an adoption order."

with so many people in so many countries demanding far-reaching change, the politics of gender is very much in play - in Europe and beyond. The main question is whether the growing number of women in politics will deliver the different perspectives and modes of leadership that many voters (or protesters) now seem to crave.

Christine Lagarde, on the other hand, is very much the Beyoncé of international finance. She is problematic for these reasons: first, she is not above touting about all the ancient stereotypes of femininity, which egregious tropes are what keep women out of high office in the first place. She talks about her "feminine and understated" negotiating style, and how helpful it is, though frankly, her immediate stance on Greece - belt up and get on with it - won't strike protesting Greeks as at all understated, I shouldn't think.

" he was Mark Kennedy, an undercover policeman who had been sent to spy on her circle of activist friends. For seven years, he had adopted a fake persona to infiltrate environmental groups. Their unmasking of him five years ago kickstarted a chain of events that has exposed one of the state's most deeply concealed secrets. Back then, the public knew little about a covert operation that had been running since 1968. Only a limited number of senior police officers knew about it. Kennedy was one of more than 100 undercover officers who, over the previous four decades, had transformed themselves into fake campaigners for years at a time, assimilating themselves into political groups and hoovering up information about protests that they had helped to organise. More than 10 women have discovered that they had relationships with undercover policemen, some lasting years, without being told their true identity. On Friday it was announced that police had agreed to give a full apology and pay compensation to Lisa and six other women for the trauma they suffered after being deceived into forming intimate relationships with police spies."

" A 2018 survey from Equilar, which tracks corporate governance and executive compensation, found that CEOs earned 140 times more than their median workers in general. An AFL-CIO study cited by Bloomberg estimates S&P 500 company executives made about 347 times more than their average employees in 2016, up from 41-to-1 in 1983. In other words, it pays to be in the C-suite - and more every year. It took quite some time to get the pay ratio rule put together, and companies aren't particularly happy about it The pay ratio rule was mandated in the Dodd-Frank Act, signed by President Barack Obama in the wake of the financial crisis in 2010. In September 2017, the SEC finally approved guidance for companies outlining how to implement and comply with the mandate. The rule has drawn criticism from Republicans and business groups such as the US Chamber of Commerce, who argue it is unfairly burdensome to calculate and might not be reflective of reality. The SEC has acknowledged the rule will cost corporate America about $1.3 billion collectively to comply in the first year and about $526 million each year after, including both internal costs and the cost of outside professionals. The pay ratio rule's critics point out that items such as one-time bonuses and awards might create an inflated appearance of CEO compensation, and that including part-time and foreign employees pushes median pay lower, ultimately skewing the final number. They also say the guidelines for defining who the median employee is still isn't clear. The National Retail Federation, a trade association, has argued that the rule is "heavily biased against businesses that rely on seasonal and part-time workers." NRF president and CEO Matthew Shay wrote in a March CNBC op-ed that the it "take[s] an important part of our workforce and uses it to paint an inaccurate picture of retail jobs in the name of investor transparency." Proponents of the rule, however, say that calculating and publiciz

" 23 September 2016 Balled Over by the Empire In our "Rise of the anti-intellectual, illiberal left" category, the question is: Which of the following did not happen this week? A. Social Justice Warriors waging war on pie. Empire Pie. I miss fafblog and its pie jokes. B. Social Justice Warriors waging war on a museum. It put on a fundraising dinner called the Empire Ball to kick of its curated exhibition of the Tate's edgy, critical, anti-colonial take on Empire and Artists (co-branding yay or nay?). They object to the word empire, of course. C. Social Justice Warriors waging war on Fox's Empire. The word empire is imperialist (duh) and triggering. The UK exports Empire Pie all over Europe. Why are Euroleftist then not triggered by Empire Pie?! But let's talk about the National Gallery Singapore's little tiff with the SJWs. Of all three cases, it is the most tragicomic for several reasons. To whit: The National Gallery Singapore (TNGS) has been building its reputation as a Curator's gallery. Nothing that happens, happens without the careful and deliberate choices taken its curators. Unofficially, we can say their operational motto is The Curators Are God. I cannot confirm or deny if they say that too in private, within the gallery itself. As is clear from its publicity material, TNGS is very clear on the critical stand it takes on the issue of Empire (i.e. Mostly A Very Bad Thing). The protesters (including some of the artists participating in the exhibition and okay with its theme and approach) have chosen to ignore that stand to insist that the use of the word EMPIRE in its fundraising Empire Ball is triggering, etc. Of interest to us is this particular denunciation from ArtHop, a soi dissant intellectual rag to explain to its artistic audience, the Southeast Asia artworld. Note the intellectual poverty and posturing, the attempt to use a badly-quilted patchwork of academic jargon to advance what is essentially a classic SJW argument of ideological purity a

"Take the example of the protest of the Dongria Kondh tribal community in the Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa. A large British transnational mining corporation, Vedanta, was coming in to build bauxite mines bauxite distillery outfits. According to the Constitution of India, particularly the Panchayats Act of the Indian Constitution that protects tribal land, consultative participation was a key element that was already built in. But when the company, working with the local government, carried out these participatory forums, it did a few things. For instance, the forums were held at sites quite far away from the actual communities where the Dongria Kondh reside. The announcement for the meetings was not distributed in the communities; rather, the announcement was published in the English-language newspapers that were circulated only in Bhubaneswar. The time between the announcement and the actual meeting was very short. The Dongria Kondh did not have prior knowledge about the meetings. So here you have an example where communication is used precisely to disenfranchise a community. As a result, you didn't really have the Dongria Kondh participating in the consultative meetings that were being held in far away spaces. Moreover, you have instances of community members who would talk about being bribed directly by the company or its CSR (corporate social responsibility) people, or being given various offers, such as being educated in a city, as ways to buy off or purchase participation."

What were the Magdalene laundries? * Originally termed Magdalene Asylums, the first in Ireland was opened in Dublin in 1765, for Protestant girls * First Catholic home was founded in Cork in 1809 * Envisaged as short-term refuges for "fallen women" they became long-term institutions and penitents were required to work, mostly in laundries on the premises * They extended to take in unmarried mothers, women with learning difficulties and girls who had been abused * Between 1922 and 1996 there were 10 such laundries in the Republic of Ireland * The women toiled behind locked doors unable to leave after being admitted and while the laundries were paid, they received no wages * The last Magdalene asylum in Ireland closed in Waterford in 1996 * The congregations that ran them were the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity, the Congregation of the Sisters of Mercy, the Religious Sisters of Charity and the Sisters of the Good Shepherd