Rowan Atkinson on free speech
>https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/09/11/exclusive-ag-barr-rips-national-media-as-a-collection-of-liars-over-riot-coverage-n2576070
"They're basically a collection of liars. Most of the mainstream media. They're a collection of liars and they know exactly what they're doing. A perfect example of that were the riots. Right on the street it was clear as day what was going on, anyone observing it, reporters observing it, it could not have escaped their attention that this was orchestrated violence by a hardened group of street fighting radicals and they kept on excluding from their coverage all the video of this and reporting otherwise and they were doing that for partisan reasons, and they were lying to the American people. It wasn't until they were caught red-handed after essentially weeks of this lie that they even started feeling less timid," Barr said on the flight back to Washington Friday afternoon.
"The press has dropped, in my view - and I'm talking about the national mainstream media - has dropped any pretense of professional objectivity and are political actors, highly partisan who try to shape what they're reporting to achieve a political purpose and support a political narrative that has nothing to do with the truth. They're very mendacious about it," he continued. "It's very destructive to our Republic; it's very destructive to the Democratic system to have that, especially being so monolithic. It's contributing to a lot of the intensity and partisanship."
For months major news networks have portrayed riots across the country as "peaceful protests." CNN ran a chyron of a reporter standing in front of a burning Kenosha business that read, "Fiery but mostly peaceful protest."
"It's funny that you had record numbers of police being injured during 'peaceful' protests," he said. "You know usually in protests, you have large numbers of injured rioters and a modest number of injured law enforcement. I'm talking about back in the 90s and 60s, 60s to the 90s, nowadays very few rioters get injured, very few and hundreds, even thousands of officers have been injured."
But while most of what Barr classifies as "national media" has failed to report the facts on the ground about recent unrest, he credits a small number of journalists who have worked to find and publish the real story.
"I think there are a handful of reporters in the mainstream media that still have journalistic integrity, and there are some, but the overwhelming majority don't have it anymore," Barr said. "The people who do cover the Department do understand some of the issues. But, on the other hand, some of them have essentially adopted the same methods and ploys as what I refer to more generally as the national media and that is they're not because, probably somewhat because, of their own orientation and but also what their editors say, they're not really interested so much in what really happened but in pursuing a preformed narrative that suits some kind of ideological agenda. That's what it's all become."
One of those people is Associated Press reporter Mike Balsamo, who embedded with the U.S. Marshals protecting the federal courthouse in Portland during endless nights of rioting and unrest. Townhall's Julio Rosas has been on the scene of riots in Seattle, Portland and Kenosha.
According to Barr, the organizing behind the rioting in cities across the country is under investigation and federal law enforcement agencies are working to identify the individuals behind the chaos.
"People are pouring through all of the video trying to identify people to hold people accountable," Barr said, adding that the funding of the riots is also under investigation. "I think Antifa and Antifa like groups are at the center of it."
https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2020/08/fbi-raids-offices-at-downtown-one-cleveland-center-building-tied-to-ukrainian-oligarch.html
FBI raids offices at downtown One Cleveland Center building tied to Ukrainian oligarch
Fderal Bureau of Investigation's evidence response team removes boxes of evidence and computer hard drives from the Cleveland offices of Optima Management Group, August 4, 2020, at the One Cleveland Center building.
>https://currently.att.yahoo.com/huffpost/pope-francis-sex-food-divine-pleasure-215207201.html
Pope Francis wants you to eat well and enjoy sex.
The pope spoke on cuisine and intercourse during a series of interviews with Carlo Petrini, an Italian culinary writer and activist behind the “slow food” movement, which positions itself as the opposite of fast food and advocates a slower, more meaningful pace of life.
“Pleasure arrives directly from God,” Francis told Petrini. “It is neither Catholic, nor Christian, nor anything else. It is simply divine.”
Francis critiqued the “overzealous morality” of a Roman Catholic Church that denounced pleasure in the past, calling it a “wrong interpretation of the Christian message.”
“The church has condemned inhuman, brutish, vulgar pleasure, but has on the other hand always accepted human, simple, moral pleasure,” Francis said. “The pleasure of eating is there to keep you healthy by eating, just like sexual pleasure is there to make love more beautiful and guarantee the perpetuation of the species. … The pleasure of eating and sexual pleasure [comes] from God.”
Francis pointed to the 1987 film “Babette’s Feast,” saying it represented his ideas on pleasure. The pope has lauded the film in the past, particularly praising the actions of its protagonist, a chef who prepares an elaborate feast for members of a Protestant village.
“The most intense joys in life arise when we are able to elicit joy in others, as a foretaste of heaven,” Francis wrote in “Amoris Laetitia,” his 2016 apostolic exhortation. “We can think of the lovely scene in the film ‘Babette’s Feast,’ when the generous cook receives a grateful hug and praise: ‘Ah, how you will delight the angels!’ It is a joy and a great consolation to bring delight to others, to see them enjoying themselves. This joy, the fruit of fraternal love, is not that of the vain and self-centered, but of lovers who delight in the good of those whom they love, who give freely to them and thus bear good fruit.”
Francis’ conversations with Petrini were published in the Italian book “Terra Futura: Conversations With Pope Francis on Integral Ecology,” which was released on Wednesday and focuses on the pope’s views on culture, community and environmentalism.
Francis was “simply repeating the perennial Christian message on virtue and vice,” Catholic commentator Peter Williams told Newsweek in reference to the pope’s remarks on sex and food.
“By avoiding the twin evil extremes of repressive puritanism on the one hand and immoral libertinism on the other, both of which prevent or destroy happy enjoyment of good things like food or sex, the church rightly espouses the ‘golden mean,’” Williams told Newsweek.
>Margo Kaplan
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2014/10/06/pedophilia-not-a-crime-rutgers-margo-kaplan/
How much of the population has pedophilia?
We’re not entirely sure, but the estimates are around one-percent of the male population, and those in the female population are assumed to be much smaller. As far as the number of people with pedophilia who do sex offend and who do not, there are a lot of assumptions but very little data, because we have very little treatment, very little information.
Why is that?
There is so much stigma. There is very little reason to come forth and identify as a pedophile. There are no large scale studies, no large treatment programs, no big research studies on this. I contacted the National Institutes of Health, and they don’t spend any money on pedophilia.
But you are basically saying, hey, let’s take it easy on pedophiles.
Well, but I am not saying that about sex offenders. I say that they remain responsible for their conduct. We need to treat pedophiles before they offend. People see the word “pedophile” and think “sex offender.” People choose to sex offend children. They do not choose to be pedophiles.
Since you say there are so many misconceptions, why don’t you tell us what a pedophile really is.
A person with an intense and recurrent sexual attraction to prepubescent children, children who have not yet entered any form of puberty. And according to the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders], it constitutes a mental disorder when you act on it, but not just that. It also constitutes a mental disorder if it causes “marked distress or interpersonal difficulty,” and, as you can imagine, pedophilia will cause this.
In your article, you open by saying that as a pedophile’s numerical age increases into teenage years and then adulthood, the numerical age of those he is attracted to does not. Are most pedophiles really starting that young?
For many individuals, it is really an onset in adolescence, similar to how many sexual attractions happen. Individuals who are heterosexual, you realize you are attracted to the opposite sex when you are a kid. For a pedophile, you get older, but you keep being attracted to little kids, and many people start to realize this during adolescence. So imagine trying to deal with that during adolescence in addition to the other confusing feelings that you’re having.
If America is totally off course on this issue, is there any country that is getting it right?
We’re not that unique. But Germany is ahead of the curve. They have a large scale treatment program called Prevention Project Dunkenfeld, which is probably the first large scale treatment project that also includes non-offenders. They have billboards everywhere: “Do you have attraction to children in ways that you shouldn’t? You are not responsible for your attraction, but you are responsible for your behavior.”
OK, so as a guy with two young kids, how do I protect them?
There’s no easy answer to that, but you want to protect them from sex offenders. Most people who offend are not actually pedophiles. It’s interesting: When you talk about pedophiles, people think about the children. And they’re right. But what about the children who are struggling with this disorder? We need to help them, too.
But you can understand if maybe I’ll just try to keep them away from pedophiles anyway.
I can understand that. We need to prevent pedophiles from sexually offending and to do that, we need to refocus on early intervention, treatment and prevention. It’s not always going to work. No treatment of any mental disorder will always work. Depression treatment, schizophrenia treatment — they don’t always work. But we don’t throw our hands into the air and wait until the consequences of those conditions become bad before we do something. With pedophiles, we’ve already thrown our hands into the air. We should not be taking this tactic. The dire consequences only make it more important that we reach out and treat early.