The following video shows the intervention read by John Andrews, representing Americans for America, at OSCE Warsaw today, September 14, 2017, during Session 7, “Tolerance and non-discrimination”.
Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:
An afterthought: The OSCE moderator’s response reminds me of Islamic Law, in which a “consensus of the scholars” settles legal issues permanently. The consensus of the scholars was reached more than a thousand years ago, meaning that nothing in Islam can be changed, nor can possible changes even be discussed.
So it is with the OSCE. At one time the organization was devoted to freedom of speech and other civil liberties, but evidently that is no longer true. A consensus has been reached, and the word “discrimination” now means whatever they want it to mean in service of their political goals.
Call it Sharia for the New World Order.
Below is the prepared text for Mr. Andrews’ intervention:
As other speakers have pointed out, we face a persistent problem in these Human Dimension sessions with terms that are pejorative, yet remain undefined. The issue would not be significant except for the fact that undefined words are sometimes use to make national policy or craft legislation.
One such word is “discrimination”. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary includes this among its definitions of “discrimination”: “The act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually.” The is clearly the process referred to in phrases such as “racial discrimination” and “religious discrimination”.
However, there are other instances of discrimination that are considered acceptable. Take, for example, the sign on a door in a retail business that reads: “Employees Only”. The sign clearly discriminates against non-employees, yet it is entirely unobjectionable. No one would consider filing an anti-discrimination lawsuit on the basis of it.
What, then, are the criteria for “good” discrimination and “bad” discrimination?
Discrimination against gays is considered unacceptable, yet discrimination against members of the Identitaire movement is considered acceptable, or even mandatory.
As long as there is no clear, unambiguous official standard for separating unacceptable discrimination from acceptable discrimination, Americans for America recommends that the word “discrimination” be omitted from official OSCE documents.
For links to previous articles about the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, see the OSCE Archives.
The same can be said of the word racism.
It is a pity these morons cannot discriminate between good and evil.
Ah, but they can. We should not assume that they are simply blind to such distinctions, there’s definitely an element of calculation here.
Make no mistake: these people absolutely believe there is a difference between good and evil. Tbey just want to be the ones ***in charge of defining it.***
In the speech Andrews seems to digress from the script in that he adds the words “or neo nazis” after Identitaire movement. 1:56-1:58 I was not aware that the Identitairians were neo nazis and doubt that such a pejorative term should be used except in the most narrowly defined way. (His whole point?) He did use “or” rather than “and” but to the listener who doesn’t have the benefit of a recording and a script the connotation will likely lump the two groups together in the listeners mind.
Good point! I thought exactly the same. This is what the “left” always tries to do. Lumping criminals and political activists in one category, if one does not like the ideals of those activists. Conservatives can easily distinguish between peaceful demonstrators who uphold ideas that they abhorr, and violent criminals who superficially seem to represent related ideals. But most people on the left seem to have lost all sense of distinguishing. It’s a pity that Andrews unintentionally provides the left with an opportunity to attack us again.
Regardless of what the modern dictionary says, Discrimination refers only to the ability to discern one thing from another. Without discrimination one could not make one’s way from the bedroom to the bathroom.
Good point. There is discrimination “against”and discrimination “between”. The latter is a shere necessity, also to safely protect peoples from different and uncompatible cultural backgrounds against each other.
Political correctness equals the criminalisation of any person with competent threat analysis.
“Political correctness equals the criminalisation of any person with competent threat analysis.”
Really well said! It’s just one more reason (if not the central point of) why schools no longer teach genuine critical analysis and critical thinking. One need only examine how the so-called “Critical Theory” of the Frankfurt School merely advocates criticizing everything that it dislikes without pausing to rationalize or justify its conclusions.
Such a mindset maps seamlessly onto the Antifa thugs and many others within the radical Left. No need for any thoughtful pause to carefully scrutinize the credibility of one’s own claims or assertions. Instead, it’s heigh-ho and full-steam-ahead with cobblestones, bike locks, and any other weapon that comes to hand.
Another example is the DHS’s intelligence assessment that characterizes military veterans as right-wing extremists. Never has America so thoroughly indulged in the time-honored Islamic tradition of devouring its own young. While it is exceptionally difficult to suppress an occasional giggle, the Left (and its Deep State component) seem to have little, if any, anxiety about feeding its own adherents into the meat grinder.
As this article alludes to, there are few better examples than how the word “discriminate” has been stripped of its once-admirable qualities—with respect to keenly discerning all kinds of distinctions or differences—and has instead, larded this work with pejorative overtones of prejudice and racism.
It is just another example of Political Correctness and Groupthink attempting to weed out precise terminology that can articulate ideas which might threaten the narrative—and now-dominant zeitgeist—of Globalist, one-world-government, Transnational narratives.
When one considers how a lot of today’s elections consist of “defensive voting”—as in not casting your ballot “for” someone, so much as seeking to keep a far worse alternative out of office—there emerges the dystopian vision of a plummeting Western Civilization pulling ripcord after ripcord in the vain hope of deploying however small of a reserve parachute against the buffetings of corrupt modern politics.
“An afterthought: The OSCE moderator’s response reminds me of Islamic Law, in which a “consensus of the scholars” settles legal issues permanently.”
Lol.
The moderator seemed more concerned with pearl-clutching and virtue-signalling than sharia law. Also, he was making a wildly-unsuccessful attempt to show he had not been dozing during the actual presentation.
RonaldB, please review, “Aliens Cause Global Warming“.
Crichton’s singular position as the only author who ever had, simultaneously, a NYT “bestseller”, primetime television show (ER), and Oscar-winning film (Jurassic Park) is unrivaled in the modern media world.
While not absolute proof of excellence, rarely have others attained such credentials. By comparison, I give you Pearl S. Buck, the only woman to (deservedly) win both the Nobel and Pulitzer Prize for literature.
Considering the consistent, technological accuracy Crichton provided (with the rare exception of “Prey”), his body of work remains generally beyond reproach. This, coming from someone who is capable of critiquing much of his overall output.
I mention this solely because of Crichton’s outstanding criticism of “consensus science” in his brilliant 2003 Caltech lecture (linked above).