February 22, 2015

Study: Ending affirmative action would devastate most minority college enrollment

Posted June 6, 2005; 01:14 p.m.

by Lauren Robinson-Brown

Princeton University researchers have found that ignoring race in elite college admissions would result in sharp declines in the numbers of African Americans and Hispanics accepted with little gain for white students.

In a study published in the June issue of Social Science Quarterly, authors Thomas Espenshadeand Chang Chung examined the controversial notion that eliminating affirmative action would lead to the admission of more white students to college and found it to be false. The assertion that qualified white students are being displaced by less qualified minority students was a prime plaintiff argument in the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court cases against the University of Michigan (Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger).

"We're trying to put these admission preferences in context so people understand that lots of students, including those with SAT scores above 1500, are getting a boost," said Espenshade, the professor of sociology who co-authored "The Opportunity Cost of Admission Preferences at Elite Universities" with Chung, a senior technical staff member in the Office of Population Research. "The most important conclusion is the negative impact on African American and Hispanic students if affirmative action practices were eliminated."

According to the study, without affirmative action the acceptance rate for African-American candidates likely would fall nearly two-thirds, from 33.7 percent to 12.2 percent, while the acceptance rate for Hispanic applicants likely would be cut in half, from 26.8 percent to 12.9 percent. While these declines are dramatic, the authors note that the long-term impact could be worse.

"If admitting such small numbers of qualified African-American and Hispanic students reduced applications and the yield from minority candidates in subsequent years, the effect of eliminating affirmative action at elite universities on the racial and ethnic composition of enrolled students would be magnified beyond the results presented here," the report says.

The authors also cite other studies and the actual experience of the University of California system where affirmative action has been eliminated: "The impacts are striking. Compared to the fall of 1996, the number of underrepresented minority students admitted to the University of California-Berkeley Boalt Hall Law School for the fall of 1997 dropped 66 percent from 162 to 55.... African-American applicants were particularly affected as their admission numbers declined by 81 percent from 75 to 14, but acceptances of Hispanics also fell by 50 percent. None of the 14 admitted African-American students chose to enroll. Of the 55 minority students admitted, only seven enrolled in the fall of 1997, a falloff that had the effect of reducing the underrepresented minority share in the first year class to 5 percent in 1997 compared with 26 percent in 1994."

Removing consideration of race would have little effect on white students, the report concludes, as their acceptance rate would rise by merely 0.5 percentage points. Espenshade noted that when one group loses ground, another has to gain -- in this case it would be Asian applicants. Asian students would fill nearly four out of every five places in the admitted class not taken by African-American and Hispanic students, with an acceptance rate rising from nearly 18 percent to more than 23 percent. Typically, many more Asian students apply to elite schools than other underrepresented minorities. The study also found that although athletes and legacy applicants are predominantly white, their numbers are so small that their admissions do little to displace minority applicants.

The authors based their work on models previously developed in a 2004 study where they looked at more than 124,000 elite university applicants' SAT scores, race, sex, citizenship, athletic ability and legacy in combination with their admission decision. This more recent study honed in on more than 45,000 applicants. Both studies are part of the multidimensional National Study of College Experience, which is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Espenshade is professor of sociology and faculty associate at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. His research and teaching interests include higher education in the United States, the racial dimension of college admissions and campus life, intergroup relations on college campuses, social demography, and contemporary immigration to the United States. Espenshade joined the faculty in 1988 after receiving his doctorate in economics from Princeton in 1972.

February 14, 2015

By Jeffrey Lord | February 14, 2015 | 9:18 AM EST

It is the Voldemort of media facts. The media version of Sherlock Holmes clue of the dog that didn’t bark.

Here’s a question. What is the difference between Brian Williams and Rush Limbaugh? What is the dog that isn’t barking?

Answer? The audience. There is no sudden groundswell of outraged NBC Nightly News viewers rallying to the support of the suspended anchor, angrily demanding he be restored to his job. On the contrary, when Rush Limbaugh ran into trouble in the Sandra Fluke episode and a handful of sponsors left -- under pressure of manufactured outrage from liberal interest groups -- Rush’s audience rallied on the spot. In the end not only did Rush keep his show but the sponsors who left were punished by Rush’s audience. One of those sponsors was so stunned by the negative backfire to their departure that they begged to be taken back as a sponsor - and were refused by Rush himself. Another -- Carbonite, an online back-up company -- saw their stock plummet. The company’s CEO, outed as a supporter of the leftist MoveOn.org and various other leftist groups later acknowledged that the public slap in the face of Limbaugh’s audience had a negative consequence.

Over at Mediaite there is a story posted last night suddenly proclaiming that some Brian fans are flooding Facebook with demands to “#BringBrianBack”. And…gasp!…”there are over 1000 comments, the vast majority of which are demanding to bring Williams back.” Wow! Over a whole thousand comments! And the vast majority” are “demanding” to bring Brian back.

Pathetic. Suffice to say, it takes more than "the vast majority" of over a thousand people to crash a major company's stock and send an advertiser begging to be restored to advertising status on the Rush Limbaugh Show.

In all the dust-up about NBC’s Brian Williams there has been not a peep other than from this "vast majority" of "over a thousand" Facebook fans from the NBC audience demanding that Williams be restored to his anchor position post haste. Say again, not…a…peep. The occasional defender has popped up -- Dan Rather, the fired CBS anchor being one -- but a surge of support from an audience angry at the Williams suspension and possible banishment from the NBC Nightly News? It isn’t there. And notably, speaking of Dan Rather, it wasn’t there for him either.

Why? What is the difference between Rush Limbaugh and Brian Williams that makes one man the subject of a fierce audience loyalty and the other left dangling with not a peep other than this pathetic Facebook offering from his viewers? To answer that question is to discuss the revolution that is taking place in the American media.

Let’s start with Rush Limbaugh’s genre -- talk radio.

Much has been made of the fact that Brian Williams drew a weekly audience varying between 9-10 million viewers, as this story in Deadline Hollywood illustrates. The story, run on December 23rd of last year, says “Williams snagged an average 9.360 million total viewers for the week…”

The fact is that Rush Limbaugh’s weekly audience in 2013 - a year after the Fluke episode, was sailing along with an audience of 20 million a week, as seen here. In other words, Rush’s audience was more than twice the size of the Brian Williams audience. With the audience fiercely loyal to the host, a not so small issue as seen right this minute with the lack of support for Williams so clearly obvious. Likewise Sean Hannity cruises along right behind Rush in audience size. The other day the announcement was made that Mark Levin had just had his contract extended for another five years.

In other words? Recall a few years back when John Avlon over there at the Daily Beast was trumpeting that talk radio was “dying” and in the middle of a “flameout”? The narrative was as bizarre as it was obviously political. And Avlon wasn’t the only one saying it, either.

"Rush Limbaugh is Finished," assured Salon in 2013. Similar drastic predictions were made for Sean Hannity, one story asking "Are Conservatives Getting Tired of Sean Hannity?" The answer to the latter turned out to be no. laughably no. Just as the idea that Rush Limbaugh was finished has turned out to be utterly laughable. But so it went with these kind of nutty predictions. All of them wrong.

The question, then, is what does all of this say about the American media? Not to mention America itself?

When Rush Limbaugh is outdrawing Brian Williams, and the latter’s audience can’t even be bothered to defend Williams when he’s in trouble, there is something going on here. There is no original thought in saying that the mainstream American media monopoly is in the process of imploding. But it is time to say again that all of the talk radio naysayers of a few years ago have been shown to be not just wrong but spectacularly wrong.

The other day, as the Brian Williams business exploded, a friend told me a story of once flying on a Washington-New York shuttle when who should board but - yes indeed - Brian Williams. What caught my friend’s attention was the curiosity that Mr. Williams was wearing sunglasses - and never removed them for the flight. The thought occurred to my friend at the time that the impression radiating forth from Williams was one of self-congratulatory “cool”, an aggressive sense of pomposity. Now, in the flood of stories gushing from NBC is this one in the New York Post in which it is reported that “One longtime NBC employee who has worked with Williams on several occasions had a few dirty words to describe the celebrated anchor, calling him a “real pompous piece of s–t.” ….He’s an a–hole” he fumed.”

This is not the kind of description of Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity or Mark Levin or Glenn Beck heard from either colleagues or audience fans. Indeed, Fox News chairman Roger Ailes once described Hannity as "probably the nicest guy in the (News Corporation) building.”

The negatives attached to talk radio hosts almost universally come from political adversaries, along with the repeated predictions that this time one of them -- if not the entire talk radio industry itself -- is toast.

Yet the end of talk radio never comes as predicted, in spite of the best efforts of this or that leftist group out there to bring down Rush or somebody else. Which says something about the difference between these talk radio hosts and the liberal elitism which Mr. Williams came to represent. Talk radio has an almost gut-level connection with its audience. Indeed, to listen to the shows it is obvious that callers feel they are talking to a member of their extended family. Callers to Rush’s show regularly praise him as someone they have listened to for years. They voluntarily identify themselves as “Rush babies” or “long time listeners.” The sentiment is equally clear with Hannity and Levin, the latter of whom regularly refers sentimentally to his “beloved audience.”

This audience bond was simply not there with Brian Williams. And when he brought himself down it was quickly all-too-apparent that his audience had not the slightest intention of rallying to his side. This doesn’t mean that at some point, suitably humbled and in search of forgiveness, Williams couldn’t recover and get the all-American second chance. But if so, it isn’t in sight yet from an audience loyalty perspective.

The inescapable fact of the matter here is that the breaking of the liberal media monopoly by Rush and his talk radio colleagues, by Fox News and, no small thing, the Internet has exposed a not-so-dirty little secret. The secret? The audience for liberal media was always tenuous. But the fact of this was never clear because there was nothing but liberal media. The moment it was possible for the audience to escape to other venues, they did. In droves.

Well aside from the peculiarities of Brian Williams that had him effectively and repeatedly shooting himself in the foot, what is really on display here is another marker on the road to oblivion for the liberal media. The NBC Nightly News may have removed Brian Williams’s name from the show’s logo, but the fact of the matter is that the network nightly news that has reigned as king of the media realm since the 1950’s is vanishing. Slowly to be sure, but without doubt unmistakably.

These are dinosaurs. And extinction is on the way.

Meanwhile? Talk radio lives and thrives for a reason. And that reason is called audience loyalty. Rush Limbaugh has it. Talk radio has it. Brian Williams didn’t have it. And the betting here is that as time keeps moving on, it will become all too apparent that this problem isn’t unique to Brian Williams - but rather a fatal flaw for the institution of elitist liberal television nightly news shows as well.

- See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeffrey-lord/2015/02/14/brian-williams-rush-limbaugh-and-audience-loyalty#sthash.1VWZeT3M.dpuf

February 11, 2015

May 31, 2014

The Greatest Murder Machine in History

By Mike Konrad

When one thinks of mass murder, Hitler comes to mind. If not Hitler, then Tojo, Stalin, or Mao. Credit is given to the 20th-century totalitarians as the worst species of tyranny to have ever arisen. However, the alarming truth is that Islam has killed more than any of these, and may surpass all of them combined in numbers and cruelty.
The enormity of the slaughters of the "religion of peace" are so far beyond comprehension that even honest historians overlook the scale. When one looks beyond our myopic focus, Islam is the greatest killing machine in the history of mankind, bar none.

The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. -- Will Durant, as quoted on Daniel Pipes site.

Conservative estimates place the number at 80 million dead Indians.

According to some calculations, the Indian (subcontinent) population decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanate). -- Koenrad Elst as quoted on Daniel Pipes site

80 Million?! The conquistadors' crimes pale into insignificance at that number. No wonder Hitler admired Islam as a fighting religion. He stood in awe of Islam, whose butchery even he did not surpass.
Over 110 Million Blacks were killed by Islam.

... a minumum of 28 Million African were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. Since, at least, 80 percent of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave market, it is believed that the death toll from 1400 years of Arab and Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been as high as 112 Millions. When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the trans-Saharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 Million people. -- John Allembillah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue

Add just those two numbers alone together, and Islam has surpassed the victims of 20th-century totalitarianism. However, it does not end there. Add the millions who died at the hand of Muslims in the Sudan in our lifetime.
Much of Islamic slavery was sexual in nature, with a preference for women. Those men who were captured were castrated. The mulatto children of the women were often killed, which explains why Islam was not demographically shifted towards the black race, unlike slaves in the West, who bore children to breed a mestizo class. Add in those dead children; and we arrive at well over 200 million.
Remember that in the 7th century, North Africa was almost totally Christian. What happened to them?

By the year 750, a hundred years after the conquest of Jerusalem, at least 50 percent of the world's Christians found themselves under Muslim hegemony… Today there is no indigenous Christianity in the region [of Northwest Africa], no communities of Christians whose history can be traced to antiquity.-- "Christianity Face to Face with Islam," CERC

What happened to those Christian millions? Some converted. The rest? Lost to history.
We know that over 1 million Europeans were enslaved by Barbary Pirates. How many died is anybody's guess.

...for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000 - BBC

In the Middle Ages…

…many slaves were passed through Armenia and were castrated there to fill the Muslim demand for eunuchs. -- Slavery in Early Medieval Europe.

The same practice ran through Islamic Spain. North Europeans captured from raids up to Iceland, or purchased, were butchered in the castratoriums of Iberia. Many died from the operations that ran for centuries.
The number of dead from the Muslim conquest of the Balkans and Southern Italy is unknown, but again the numbers add up, surely into the millions over the centuries. Don't forget the 1.5 million Armenian Christians killed by the Turks during WWI. We do know that over five centuries, vast numbers of Christian boys were kidnapped to become Islamic Janissary mercenaries for the Turks. Add those in, too.
Muslims prized blonde women for their harems; and so enslaved Slavic women were purchased in the bazaars of the Crimean Caliphate. In Muslim Spain, an annual tribute of 100 Visigothic [blonde] women was required from Spain's Cantabrian coast.

For decades, 100 virgins per year were required by the Muslim rulers of Spain from the conquered population. The tribute was only stopped when the Spaniards began fighting back -- Jihad: Islam's 1,300 Year War Against Western Civilisation

Add in the death toll from the Reconquista and the numbers climb higher.
Research has shown that the Dark Ages were not caused by the Goths, who eventually assimilated and Christianized:

…the real destroyers of classical civilization were the Muslims. It was the Arab Invasions... which broke the unity of the Mediterranean world and turned the Middle Sea -- previously one of the world’s most important trading highways -- into a battleground. It was only after the appearance of Islam... that the cities of the West, which depended upon the Mediterranean trade for their survival, began to die. -- Islam Caused the Dark Ages

Add in those unknown millions who died as a consequence.
How many know the horrors of the conquest of Malaysia? The Buddhists of Thailand and Malaysia were slaughtered en masse.

When attacked and massacred by the Muslims, the Buddhists initially did not make any attempt to escape from their murderers. They accepted death with an air of fatalism and destiny. And hence they are not around today to tell their story. – History of Jihad.org

We may never know the numbers of dead.

After Muslims came to power in the early 15th century, animist hill peoples eventually disappeared due to their enslavement and ‘incorporation’ into the Muslim population of Malaya, Sumatra, Borneo, and Java via raids, tribute and purchase, especially of children. Java was the largest exporter of slaves around 1500. -- Islam Monitor

In the same manner, Islam arrived in the Philippines. Only the appearance of the Spanish stopped a total collapse, and confined Islam to the southern islands.

The coming of the Spanish saved the Philippines from Islam, except for the Southern tip where the population had been converted to Islam.-- History of Jihad.org

Again, the number of dead is unknown; but add them to the total.
The animist Filipinos were eager to ally with the Spanish against Islam. In fact, much of Southeast Asia welcomed the Spanish and Portuguese as preferable to Islam.

...from the 17th century successive Thai kings allied themselves with the seafaring Western powers – the Portuguese and the Dutch and succeeded in staving off the threat of Islam from the Muslim Malays and their Arab overlords.-- History of Jihad.org

A few galleons and muskets were not enough to conquer Asia. Islam had made the Europeans initially appear as liberators; and to a certain extent they were. Who were the real imperialists?
Even today...

...Malaysian Jihadis are plotting to transform multi-ethnic Malaysia into an Islamic Caliphate, and fomenting trouble in Southern Thailand.-- History of Jihad.org

Add this all up. The African victims. The Indian victims. The European victims. Add in the Armenian genocide. Then add in the lesser known, but no doubt quite large number of victims of Eastern Asia. Add in the jihad committed by Muslims against China, which was invaded in 651 AD. Add in the Crimean Khanate predations on the Slavs, especially their women.
Though the numbers are not clear, what is obvious is that Islam is the greatest murder machine in history bar none, possibly exceeding 250 million dead. Possibly one-third to one-half or more of all those killed by war or slavery in history can be traced to Islam; and this is just a cursory examination.
Now consider the over 125 Million women today who have been genitally mutilated for Islamic honor's sake. In spite of what apologists tell you, the practice is almost totally confined to Islamic areas.

New information from Iraqi Kurdistan raises the possibility that the problem is more prevalent in the Middle East than previously believed and that FGM is far more tied to religion than many Western academics and activists admit. – “Is Female Genital Mutilation an Islamic Problem?” ME Quarterly

Once thought concentrated in Africa, FGM has now been discovered to be common wherever Islam is found.

There are indications that FGM might be a phenomenon of epidemic proportions in the Arab Middle East. Hosken, for instance, notes that traditionally all women in the Persian Gulf region were mutilated. Arab governments refuse to address the problem. -- "Is Female Genital Mutilation an Islamic Problem?" ME Quarterly

Remember that this has gone on for 1400 years; and was imposed on a population that had been formerly Christian or pagan.
FGM is practiced on large scale in Islamic Indonesia; and is increasing.

...far from scaling down, the problem of FGM in Indonesia has escalated sharply. The mass ceremonies in Bandung have grown bigger and more popular every year. -- Guardian

The horrified British author of that Guardian article is still deluded that Islam does not support FGM, when in fact it is now settled that FGM is a core Islamic practice. Islamic women have been brainwashed to support their own abuse.

Abu Sahlieh further cited Muhammad as saying, "Circumcision is a sunna (tradition) for the men and makruma (honorable deed) for the women." -- “Is Female Genital Mutilation an Islamic Problem?” ME Quarterly

What other tyranny does this? Not even the Nazis mutilated their own women!
Unlike the 20th-century totalitarians whose killing fury consumed themselves, reducing their longevity, Islam paces itself. In the end, though slower, Islam has killed and tortured far more than any other creed, religious or secular. Unlike secular tyranny, Islam, by virtue of its polygamy and sexual predations, reproduces itself and increases.
Other tyrannies are furious infections, which burn hot, but are soon overcome. Islam is a slow terminal cancer, which metastasizes, and takes over. It never retreats. Its methods are more insidious, often imperceptible at first, driven by demographics. Like cancer, excision may be the only cure.
So whenever you read about this or that Israeli outrage -- and there may be truth to the complaint -- place the news in context. Look whom the Israelis are fighting against. Islam is like nothing else in history.
Mike Konrad is the pen name of an American who is not Jewish, Latin, or Arab. He runs a website, http://latinarabia.com, where he discusses the subculture of Arabs in Latin America. He wishes his Spanish were better.

The Islamic conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. -- Will Durant, as quoted on Daniel Pipes site.

Conservative estimates place the number at 80 million dead Indians.

According to some calculations, the Indian (subcontinent) population decreased by 80 million between 1000 (conquest of Afghanistan) and 1525 (end of Delhi Sultanate). -- Koenrad Elst as quoted on Daniel Pipes site

... a minumum of 28 Million African were enslaved in the Muslim Middle East. Since, at least, 80 percent of those captured by Muslim slave traders were calculated to have died before reaching the slave market, it is believed that the death toll from 1400 years of Arab and Muslim slave raids into Africa could have been as high as 112 Millions. When added to the number of those sold in the slave markets, the total number of African victims of the trans-Saharan and East African slave trade could be significantly higher than 140 Million people. -- John Allembillah Azumah, author of The Legacy of Arab-Islam in Africa: A Quest for Inter-religious Dialogue

By the year 750, a hundred years after the conquest of Jerusalem, at least 50 percent of the world's Christians found themselves under Muslim hegemony… Today there is no indigenous Christianity in the region [of Northwest Africa], no communities of Christians whose history can be traced to antiquity.-- "Christianity Face to Face with Islam," CERC

What happened to those Christian millions? Some converted. The rest? Lost to history.
We know that over 1 million Europeans were enslaved by Barbary Pirates. How many died is anybody's guess.

...for the 250 years between 1530 and 1780, the figure could easily have been as high as 1,250,000 - BBC

In the Middle Ages…

…many slaves were passed through Armenia and were castrated there to fill the Muslim demand for eunuchs. -- Slavery in Early Medieval Europe.

For decades, 100 virgins per year were required by the Muslim rulers of Spain from the conquered population. The tribute was only stopped when the Spaniards began fighting back -- Jihad: Islam's 1,300 Year War Against Western Civilisation

Add in the death toll from the Reconquista and the numbers climb higher.
Research has shown that the Dark Ages were not caused by the Goths, who eventually assimilated and Christianized:

…the real destroyers of classical civilization were the Muslims. It was the Arab Invasions... which broke the unity of the Mediterranean world and turned the Middle Sea -- previously one of the world’s most important trading highways -- into a battleground. It was only after the appearance of Islam... that the cities of the West, which depended upon the Mediterranean trade for their survival, began to die. -- Islam Caused the Dark Ages

Add in those unknown millions who died as a consequence.
How many know the horrors of the conquest of Malaysia? The Buddhists of Thailand and Malaysia were slaughtered en masse.

When attacked and massacred by the Muslims, the Buddhists initially did not make any attempt to escape from their murderers. They accepted death with an air of fatalism and destiny. And hence they are not around today to tell their story. – History of Jihad.org

We may never know the numbers of dead.

After Muslims came to power in the early 15th century, animist hill peoples eventually disappeared due to their enslavement and ‘incorporation’ into the Muslim population of Malaya, Sumatra, Borneo, and Java via raids, tribute and purchase, especially of children. Java was the largest exporter of slaves around 1500. -- Islam Monitor

In the same manner, Islam arrived in the Philippines. Only the appearance of the Spanish stopped a total collapse, and confined Islam to the southern islands.

The coming of the Spanish saved the Philippines from Islam, except for the Southern tip where the population had been converted to Islam.-- History of Jihad.org

...from the 17th century successive Thai kings allied themselves with the seafaring Western powers – the Portuguese and the Dutch and succeeded in staving off the threat of Islam from the Muslim Malays and their Arab overlords.-- History of Jihad.org

...Malaysian Jihadis are plotting to transform multi-ethnic Malaysia into an Islamic Caliphate, and fomenting trouble in Southern Thailand.-- History of Jihad.org

New information from Iraqi Kurdistan raises the possibility that the problem is more prevalent in the Middle East than previously believed and that FGM is far more tied to religion than many Western academics and activists admit. – “Is Female Genital Mutilation an Islamic Problem?” ME Quarterly

Once thought concentrated in Africa, FGM has now been discovered to be common wherever Islam is found.

There are indications that FGM might be a phenomenon of epidemic proportions in the Arab Middle East. Hosken, for instance, notes that traditionally all women in the Persian Gulf region were mutilated. Arab governments refuse to address the problem. -- "Is Female Genital Mutilation an Islamic Problem?" ME Quarterly

Remember that this has gone on for 1400 years; and was imposed on a population that had been formerly Christian or pagan.
FGM is practiced on large scale in Islamic Indonesia; and is increasing.

...far from scaling down, the problem of FGM in Indonesia has escalated sharply. The mass ceremonies in Bandung have grown bigger and more popular every year. -- Guardian

Abu Sahlieh further cited Muhammad as saying, "Circumcision is a sunna (tradition) for the men and makruma (honorable deed) for the women." -- “Is Female Genital Mutilation an Islamic Problem?” ME Quarterly

February 5, 2015

125,000 persons were investigated by the Spanish Inquisition, of which 1.8% were executed.

There were two major Inquisitions, the Medieval Inquisition and Spanish Inquisition. Although there are no exact numbers, scholars believe they have estimated Inquisition deaths reasonably accurately. There were not as many deaths as the popular press claims. Numbers have often been inflated to as high as 9 million by the popular press, with absolutely no scholarly research. This figure is completely erroneous. A broad range of scholars, many of whom were not Catholic, have carefully studied the Inquisitions. They looked at all the existing records and were able to extrapolate. In the Medieval Inquisition, Bernard Gui was one of the most notorious of the medieval inquisitors. (so much so that the sick modern pornography industry has turned him into a hero). He tried 930 people out of which 42 were executed (4.5%). Another famous Inquisitor was Jacques Fournier who tried 114 cases of which 5 were executed (4.3%). Using numbers that are known, scholars have been able to surmise that approximately 2,000 people died in the Medieval Inquisition. (1231-1400 AD)

According to public news reports the book's editor, Prof. Agostino Borromeo, stated that about 125,000 persons were investigated by the Spanish Inquisition, of which 1.8% were executed (2,250 people). Most of these deaths occurred in the first decade and a half of the Inquisition's 350 year history. In Portugal of the 13,000 tried in the 16th and early 17th century 5.7% were said to have been condemned to death. News articles did not report if Portugal's higher percentage included those sentenced to death in effigy (i.e. an image burnt instead of the actual person). For example, historian Gustav Henningsen reported that statistical tabulations of 50,000 recorded cases tried by nineteen Spanish tribunals between 1540-1700 found 775 people (1.7%) were actually executed while another 700 (1.4%) were sentenced to death in effigy ("El 'banco de datos' del Santo Oficio: Las relaciones de causas de la Inquisición española, 1550-1700", BRAH, 174, 1977). Jewish historian Steven Katz remarked on the Medieval Inquisition that "in its entirety, the thirteenth and fourteenth century Inquisition put very few people to death and sent few people to prison; 90 percent of its sentences were canonical penances" (The Holocaust in Historical Context, 1994).

During the high point of the Spanish Inquisition from 1478-1530 AD, scholars found that approximately 1,500-2,000 people were found guilty. From that point forward, there are exact records available of all "guilty" sentences which amounted to 775 executions. In the full 200 years of the Spanish Inquisition, less than 1% of the population had any contact with it, people outside of the major cities didn't even know about it. The Inquisition was not applied to Jews or Moslems, unless they were baptised as Christians.

If we add the figures, we find that the entire Inquisition of 500 years, caused about 6,000 deaths. These atrocities are completely inexcusable. These numbers are however, a far cry from the those used in the popular press by people who are always looking to destroy the Church. This is about equal to the number of war related deaths that have occurred in Afghanistan and Iraq in the 2 years since the US responded to 9/11.

Another thing to note is that the Spanish Inquisition, in a wrong way, may have saved some lives. In many European countries in the 16th century, religious wars were the cause of tens of thousands of deaths. But in Spain, there was political and religious unity as a result of the Inquisition, and there was no such war.

February 3, 2015

The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment

by Jim Clifton

Here's something that many Americans -- including some of the smartest and most educated among us -- don't know: The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading.

Right now, we're hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is "down" to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.

None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job -- if you are so hopelessly out of work that you've stopped looking over the past four weeks -- the Department of Labor doesn't count you as unemployed. That's right. While you are as unemployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you arenot counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news -- currently 5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren't throwing parties to toast "falling" unemployment.

There's another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you're an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 -- maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn -- you're not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know this.

Yet another figure of importance that doesn't get much press: those working part time but wanting full-time work. If you have a degree in chemistry or math and are working 10 hours part time because it is all you can find -- in other words, you are severely underemployed -- the government doesn't count you in the 5.6%. Few Americans know this.

There's no other way to say this. The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.

And it's a lie that has consequences, because the great American dream is to have a good job, and in recent years, America has failed to deliver that dream more than it has at any time in recent memory. A good job is an individual's primary identity, their very self-worth, their dignity -- it establishes the relationship they have with their friends, community and country. When we fail to deliver a good job that fits a citizen's talents, training and experience, we are failing the great American dream.

Gallup defines a good job as 30+ hours per week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck. Right now, the U.S. is delivering at a staggeringly low rate of 44%, which is the number of full-time jobs as a percent of the adult population, 18 years and older. We need that to be 50% and a bare minimum of 10 million new, good jobs to replenish America's middle class.

I hear all the time that "unemployment is greatly reduced, but the people aren't feeling it." When the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start reporting the truth -- the percent of Americans in good jobs; jobs that are full time and real -- then we will quit wondering why Americans aren't "feeling" something that doesn't remotely reflect the reality in their lives. And we will also quit wondering what hollowed out the middle class.

Jim Clifton is Chairman and CEO at Gallup.

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