Current Affairs The Far Right

[Toffee in Jandals]

....... Not sure if this made the news on the other side of the world, but Canadian Alt-Right speaking duo Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux had to cancel their "speaking engagements" in New Zealand after the venue they were due to speak at cancelled their booking. This set off a series of Free Speech vs. Hate Speech protests in Auckland. Ultimately they (thankfully) left the country without finding an alternative venue to speak at. And now they have the gall to ask for donations due to their supposed financial difficulties. Of course, they are also blaming the mainstream media for the "hysteria" around their trip here. Makes me proud as a New Zealander that we didn't give them a platform in this country to voice their agenda.



Far-right Canadian activists who had their speaking event in New Zealand cancelled last minute are now asking ticket buyers to consider donating the price of attendance to them.

Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux were due to speak at the start of the month at The Powerstation, but the venue owner cancelled the booking following public outcry.
They were also previously slated to perform at the Bruce Mason Centre in Auckland, but were banned from speaking at Auckland Council venues.
The pair are known for their extreme and polarising views on topics such as feminism, gender, immigration and Islam.
In a message to ticket holders, Mr Molyneux said they tried to look for alternative places to speak.
"We had contacted a number of other venues as backups, but I imagine largely due to the hysteria about us spewed out by the mainstream media - well let us just say the welcome mat was not exactly rolled out for our event," he said.
Mr Molyneux said it was tragic and heartbreaking that the pair were not able to meet everyone in Auckland.
"Both Lauren and I were devastated - we thoroughly enjoyed the Australian leg of our tour - and we were greatly looking forward to meeting and engaging with everyone in Auckland," he said.
Mr Molyneux said it was a financial blow to them for the event to be cancelled after flight costs, a specialised security team and paying immigration lawyers.
He said if anyone was happy to donate the cost of their ticket to the pair, that would be appreciated.

 

[Number_25]

We don't have a Civil Rights movement in this country as far as I know, and if we have they are pretty anonymous!

We certainly do, it's the thing people in the media refer to as "SJWs".

Anyhow, in the US it brought forward the Civil Rights act of 1968 which made discrimination illegal. Do you support that?

 

[Ruairi77]

Very good, but it's very easy to say "that's wrong" without explaining why it's wrong. Educate me, don't just shut me down!

That's fair enough.
For the most part, the objection to abortion is not on fiscal grounds. It's religious.
For women who don't have private insurance and are poor, there's medicare (really crap government care). For women who don't have medicare and cant afford private insurance, there are non profit groups such as Planned Parenthood. They receive govt funding but cant use any of it to provide abortions. Now I'm not sure of the numbers but a small fraction of abortions are covered by medicare. So, although a small amount of taxes provide abortion, it's misleading to claim that taxpayers enable wholesale abortion.
Your post suggested that taxes funding abortion is the main grievance of anti abortion activists in the US, this is not the case. Anti abortion campaigners protest regularly outside Planned Parenthood clinics and fully private clinics.
The objection to abortion is a fundamental religious belief and the issue of who pays for it is minor.

 

[Sarnia Kevin]

We certainly do, it's the thing people in the media refer to as "SJWs".

Anyhow, in the US it brought forward the Civil Rights act of 1968 which made discrimination illegal. Do you support that?

I can't support laws in other countries in any meaningful way, but I do think that discrimination is wrong and I can't really say that I see any in my daily life. I certainly didn't see any when I was working, but the MN is full of people from all different nations and cultures who have to get along for practical reasons. Do you have any examples of discrimination in the UK today? Ethnic English who can't walk through Muslim areas of towns for fear of violence has been suggested in some media reports.

 

[Sarnia Kevin]

That's fair enough.
For the most part, the objection to abortion is not on fiscal grounds. It's religious.
For women who don't have private insurance and are poor, there's medicare (really crap government care). For women who don't have medicare and cant afford private insurance, there are non profit groups such as Planned Parenthood. They receive govt funding but cant use any of it to provide abortions. Now I'm not sure of the numbers but a small fraction of abortions are covered by medicare. So, although a small amount of taxes provide abortion, it's misleading to claim that taxpayers enable wholesale abortion.
Your post suggested that taxes funding abortion is the main grievance of anti abortion activists in the US, this is not the case. Anti abortion campaigners protest regularly outside Planned Parenthood clinics and fully private clinics.
The objection to abortion is a fundamental religious belief and the issue of who pays for it is minor.

I can see that I need to do a bit of research into this, but from what I have read it is actually illegal for the Federal Government to fund abortions. However Planned Parenthood, who perform thousands of abortions every year, receive over $500M from the government every year to help it make over $1B profit. It doesn't take much dodgy accounting when dealing with numbers that big.
I really don't have a dog in this fight, but it seems to me that encouraging people to use abortion as a means of birth control because they are too poor to afford other forms of birth control is crazy. I don't want to get into the whole "keep it in your pants" argument but I suspect that what you call religious grounds for objecting are really moral grounds. Anyway thanks for your contribution to my education and will certainly look at both sides of the argument.

 

[BostonToffee]

I can see that I need to do a bit of research into this, but from what I have read it is actually illegal for the Federal Government to fund abortions. However Planned Parenthood, who perform thousands of abortions every year, receive over $500M from the government every year to help it make over $1B profit. It doesn't take much dodgy accounting when dealing with numbers that big.
I really don't have a dog in this fight, but it seems to me that encouraging people to use abortion as a means of birth control because they are too poor to afford other forms of birth control is crazy. I don't want to get into the whole "keep it in your pants" argument but I suspect that what you call religious grounds for objecting are really moral grounds. Anyway thanks for your contribution to my education and will certainly look at both sides of the argument.

Please be careful with titles. That's $1 Billion in Revenue...not profits.

Also according to an NPR report only 3% of funds go to abortions so they have no need to use the $500M for that. The federal funds go to STD treatment, contraception cancer screening and other women's services.

 

[Ruairi77]

I can see that I need to do a bit of research into this, but from what I have read it is actually illegal for the Federal Government to fund abortions. However Planned Parenthood, who perform thousands of abortions every year, receive over $500M from the government every year to help it make over $1B profit. It doesn't take much dodgy accounting when dealing with numbers that big.
I really don't have a dog in this fight, but it seems to me that encouraging people to use abortion as a means of birth control because they are too poor to afford other forms of birth control is crazy. I don't want to get into the whole "keep it in your pants" argument but I suspect that what you call religious grounds for objecting are really moral grounds. Anyway thanks for your contribution to my education and will certainly look at both sides of the argument.

I would agree on the distinction between religious and moral grounds.

Slight correction to my previous post, I meant to say Medicaid, not Medicare.

With regard to Planned Parenthood, you can't really base an argument on the hypothetical notion that they may be cooking their books.
Planned Parenthood is a non profit. It doesn't make any profit (never mind $1bn p/a), they are also tax exempt as they don't make a profit. They rely on donations from the likes of Gates/Buffet/Ford as well as millions of small donations.

They do receive government funding but, as I mentioned, this funding goes to other services and not abortion. Many people make donations with that in mind.

Planned Parenthood don't advocate for abortion as a means of birth control despite what the name my imply.

These are all facts. Be careful of sites that may imply that they are a money making book fiddlers.
I have friends who work for them and do great work in cancer screening, STI care, and general womens health. They work for far less than they could in a for profit system to provide much needed services that our taxes actually don't adequately provide.

 

[Sarnia Kevin]

Please be careful with titles. That's $1 Billion in Revenue...not profits.

Also according to an NPR report only 3% of funds go to abortions so they have no need to use the $500M for that. The federal funds go to STD treatment, contraception cancer screening and other women's services.

Sorry my mistake, but over $50M profit per year isn't bad for a non-profit organisation...........................

 

[Sarnia Kevin]

I would agree on the distinction between religious and moral grounds.

Slight correction to my previous post, I meant to say Medicaid, not Medicare.

With regard to Planned Parenthood, you can't really base an argument on the hypothetical notion that they may be cooking their books.
Planned Parenthood is a non profit. It doesn't make any profit (never mind $1bn p/a), they are also tax exempt as they don't make a profit. They rely on donations from the likes of Gates/Buffet/Ford as well as millions of small donations.

They do receive government funding but, as I mentioned, this funding goes to other services and not abortion. Many people make donations with that in mind.

Planned Parenthood don't advocate for abortion as a means of birth control despite what the name my imply.

These are all facts. Be careful of sites that may imply that they are a money making book fiddlers.
I have friends who work for them and do great work in cancer screening, STI care, and general womens health. They work for far less than they could in a for profit system to provide much needed services that our taxes actually don't adequately provide.

This is their accounts for 2016-2017:
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/u...-711067db5ff7/20171229_ar16-17_p01_lowres.pdf

I'm no accountant but doesn't "Excess of Revenue over Expenses" ($98.5M) equate to a profit? And tax-free at that? Anyway I'm not going to argue with you about what is, after all, your business and I don't really want to go quibbling about something which is none of my concern. And thanks again for the education

 

[Ruairi77]

This is their accounts for 2016-2017:
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/u...-711067db5ff7/20171229_ar16-17_p01_lowres.pdf

I'm no accountant but doesn't "Excess of Revenue over Expenses" ($98.5M) equate to a profit? And tax-free at that? Anyway I'm not going to argue with you about what is, after all, your business and I don't really want to go quibbling about something which is none of my concern. And thanks again for the education

Ok, semantics. You were implying that people were profiting off abortion. The money made by planned parenthood is reinvested into planned parenthood. It may be a profit to the company but it's not profit to it's owners. People aren't profiting off planned parenthood.

 

[Sarnia Kevin]

Ok, semantics. You were implying that people were profiting off abortion. The money made by planned parenthood is reinvested into planned parenthood. It may be a profit to the company but it's not profit to it's owners. People aren't profiting off planned parenthood.

Ok, like I said I'm not going to quibble with you. If you want to believe PP are whiter than white I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise because I'm not that interested in them.

 

[Ruairi77]

Ok, like I said I'm not going to quibble with you. If you want to believe PP are whiter than white I'm not going to try to convince you otherwise because I'm not that interested in them.

man, I assume you live in England. With all due respect, everything you know about PP, you've read on line. You're being selective about what websites you read and padding out an opinion you've already formed. I'm not sure you could convince me given that you are just relying on online opinions.
You asked me to explain why I disagreed with you and then you cast aspersions over a decent and needed organization with no first hand knowledge of them. Saying thanks for the education with a winky face doesn't help, you asked.

 

[BostonToffee]

This is their accounts for 2016-2017:
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/u...-711067db5ff7/20171229_ar16-17_p01_lowres.pdf

I'm no accountant but doesn't "Excess of Revenue over Expenses" ($98.5M) equate to a profit? And tax-free at that? Anyway I'm not going to argue with you about what is, after all, your business and I don't really want to go quibbling about something which is none of my concern. And thanks again for the education

Excess Revenue is not Profit. In a private company that money gets put in the pockets of the company and becomes income. That's what Profit is. This is illegal in a non-profit. This money will be returned to the cash holdings or assets of the company. This is how they have a cash holdings of $800 million. They need to hold that volume spread across the local divisions to ensure they can stay open and keep running.

As someone who has worked on the board of a non profit anything you gain financially goes toward the non-profit or you get in big trouble.

 

[Sarnia Kevin]

Excess Revenue is not Profit. In a private company that money gets put in the pockets of the company and becomes income. That's what Profit is. This is illegal in a non-profit. This money will be returned to the cash holdings or assets of the company. This is how they have a cash holdings of $800 million. They need to hold that volume spread across the local divisions to ensure they can stay open and keep running.

As someone who has worked on the board of a non profit anything you gain financially goes toward the non-profit or you get in big trouble.

Right! You learn something new every day! Cheers for that, I think I'll stick to a subject I know something about then.

 

[dublinbluenose]

Don't usually agree with Ice T but......




Spot on