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With particular attention to religious, ethnic and sexual matters. By John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)
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30 April, 2024
'Progressivism': The Modern Zeitgeist
As noted below, it is true that Leftists now rule the "Zeitgeist". They have comprehensively completed their long march though the institutions. But there is cause for hope. This has happened before. "Progressive" ideas and assumptions totally dominated public thinkig in the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. But that did become unwound after WWII when the rise to prominence of the ghastly Soviets forced a new fear and a new realism on people. And starting from Ike and his narrow view of the role of government a new era of American prosperity began. But once the Soviets fell, fear of Leftism evaporated.
The results of that were perverse. Once Leftism was no longer something to fear, it became more readily accepted and its old hatreds once again gradually became fashionable. Leftist whining was taken increasingly seriously. And the constant Leftist discoveries of new "humanitarian" causes -- from "affirmative action" to transgendererism -- has given them a continuing voice and respectability in public affairs.
It is a disturbing thought but maybe we need another war to divert attention from the foolish to more serious matters. With the containment of Russia in Ukraine, however, that possibility has thankfully retreated to an extent. Russia has now been revealed as a paper tiger. So while China remains restrained we can at the moment continue to be frivolous about what matters. On past precedent, however, that frivolity may not be permanent. Taiwan may uproot our calm
To fully understand current events, it is critical to comprehend that every human is a product of their times, their present culture, their “zeitgeist”—the term I will use in this column. The word “zeitgeist” means “the spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the generally accepted ideas and beliefs of the time.” In every period of history, a certain model of thinking dominates the age, and everyone, to a greater or lesser degree, is influenced by it. It's impossible to totally separate ourselves from our “zeitgeist” because we are surrounded by it every day, we grow up learning it and absorbing it, it is the inescapable environment universally acknowledged and rarely questioned—even if it’s wrong. Here are a couple of examples of historical “zeitgeist” to illustrate what I mean.
Christopher Columbus and his “age” was certainly different from ours. We don’t approve of many things they did (they wouldn’t approve of much of what we do, either), and the Left is especially vociferous in their condemnation of Columbus and the early European explorers. But their “zeitgeist” was completely different from ours. They saw no dichotomy between converting the heathen and looting them of their gold. Such a dichotomy is abhorrent to us, but we didn’t grow up in their “zeitgeist.” Reading modern viewpoints and opinions back into history is not an acceptable way to judge and interpret previous generations.
Certainly, the people of Columbus’s age “sinned” and knew they were doing so, just as we do (or should). But to understand them, we must understand their “zeitgeist.” The Aztecs whom the Spaniards conquered were hardly exemplary. We should learn from, but not blanketly condemn them when their culture, education, and surroundings were totally unlike ours. Failing to even attempt to comprehend previous people’s thoughts is most unjust. The Left are masters at it.
Another example. I quote: "I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races...I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races from living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."
Those words were spoken by Abraham Lincoln in 1858. While obviously repulsive to Americans today, it was the “zeitgeist” of Lincoln’s time. Indeed, Harvard University had done a study of human skull sizes and discovered that the average skull size of a black person was smaller than that of a white person’s. And, in Lincoln’s day (and even into the early 20th century), it was accepted that the bigger your brain, the smarter you were. Whites are superior to blacks because they have larger brains! “Science” proves it! Now today, we know that brain size has nothing to do with intelligence, but that was the “science” of Lincoln’s day, and he would have been “unscientific” to reject it. How can we condemn him if we truly understand the “zeitgeist” of his age? We can’t, and we shouldn’t. What we should do is try to understand and learn from it.
Rising above our “zeitgeist” is a most challenging accomplishment, and not even historians can do it perfectly. If we had lived in Columbus’s Spain (or Italy) in 1492, or Lincoln’s Illinois (a Northern state, mind you) in 1858, we would surely have believed the exact same things they did. Some people are occasionally able to “think outside the box” and see truth from an eternal, fixed perspective, but that is a very rare commodity among humans. By and large, we accept the “zeitgeist” of our age.
“Zeitgeist” arises out of history, of course. It’s a process, not an event, and usually takes time to develop. Columbus and Cortez did not invent the dichotomy they lived in regarding converting the heathen and stealing their gold. If you think Lincoln’s words were bad, read his debate opponent, Stephen Douglas’s (a Democrat), sometime.
We haven’t arrived at our present “zeitgeist” in America overnight, either. Currently, most Americans’ thinking has become dominated by “progressive” ideology, and interestingly, a hypocrisy inherent in that thinking is to condemn anyone who lived before who might foil their political agenda—Columbus, America’s Founding Fathers, though rarely Lincoln, for rather obvious reasons.
Naturally, different cultures had/have different “zeitgeists”. Human or child sacrifice was an acceptable “zeitgeist” among the Aztecs and many other ancient “civilizations,” as was slavery, polygamy, war, and a few other currently frowned-upon customs. Our Leftist-driven “zeitgeist” has “progressed” from those practices to abortion on demand (no sense in waiting for the child to be born to sacrifice it), transgenderism, child mutilation, and, in China—the Left’s great model—mass murder, forced organ harvesting, and re-education camps.
Human inequality and racism are “zeitgeists” of nearly every culture in history and are evident today in the Left’s DEI program. Columbus’s (and Lincoln’s) “zeitgeist” accepted Jesus as God and Savior, and a world created by God, something our modern Leftist “zeitgeist” rejects in favor of Darwinian-based atheistic naturalism. Modern communication has shrunk the world, thus, much of Leftism is virtually universal now. Middle Eastern Muslims reject most of it, but they are barbarians, right?
Rising above our “zeitgeist” to see eternal truths is extremely challenging. Nobody does it perfectly. After all, doesn’t everybody have their own “truth” nowadays, as a recent modern “progressive” DEI-hire informed us?
https://townhall.com/columnists/marklewis/2024/04/29/progressivism-the-modern-zeitgeist-n2638406
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Meet the Lawyers Taking Big Government to the Supreme Court—And Winning
As the administrative state implements more regulations on Americans, a team of legal veterans has come together to fight the expansion of unelected government agency power.
Sometimes, they even win.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), which consists of a team of 27 lawyers and support staff, including former judges, had four of the cases they litigated go before the Supreme Court in 2023. One case was decided in their favor, the remaining three are pending.
Founded by Columbia Law professor Philip Hamburger six years ago, the NCLA targets cases where they believe federal agencies have blatantly overstepped their authority or violated civil liberties..
“Normally, administrative power is understood as a separation of powers question, but it’s also a civil liberties problem because it dilutes our voting rights,” Mr. Hamburger told The Epoch Times. “We all get to vote, but the ability to make legislation is no longer in the hands of the people we elect.”
The U.S. Constitution vests Congress with law-making authority. However, government agencies are not only making laws today, he said, they also enforce those laws, then act as judge and jury over alleged violations. Taking a historical view on this issue, Mr. Hamburger argues that such administrative “absolutism” is not a new phenomenon, but merely a modern expression of absolute power once wielded by medieval kings.
The group’s clients include Drs. Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff, and Aaron Kheriaty, and Ms. Jill Hines, plaintiffs in the case of Murthy v. Missouri, which is currently before the Supreme Court. This case involves alleged violations of the doctors’ First Amendment rights by the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the FBI, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the Surgeon General.
“It deprives us of the right to a jury; it deprives us of ordinary burdens of proof; it deprives us of having an unbiased judge,” he said. “We have ALJs and commissioners instead.”
ALJ’s are “executive judges for official and unofficial hearings of administrative disputes in the federal government,” according to a Cornell Law School definition.
“Administrative law judges are considered part of the executive branch, not the judicial branch, and ALJs are appointed by the heads of the executive agencies.”
In this way, Mr. Hamburger said, the administrative state has not only accumulated powers explicitly vested in other branches of government; it has consolidated within itself the power of all three branches.
Supreme Court Taking Notice
“In 2018, we started filing briefs at the Supreme Court and almost immediately we were having an effect on the discussions of administrative power,” Peggy Little, senior counsel at the NCLA, told The Epoch Times.
In one case, SEC v. Cochran, which Ms. Little led, appellate courts took the side of the SEC. This case challenged the lifetime tenure of ALJs, who act as judges for federal agencies.
“”We battled that for five years, and we had six circuit courts of appeals against us,” she said. “We got to the Supreme Court and we won unanimously.”
Ms. Little said she is optimistic that the tide of expanding agency power can be turned back.
“I think we are in a very important time for rethinking how our government should operate,” Ms. Little said, “and restoring the separation of powers and guardrails on agency power, that limit it to what Congress has actually empowered the agency to do, not what the agency itself thinks would be a good idea.”
Mr. Hamburger said the NCLA has several advantages when arguing their cases.
“We have the truth on our side, and I think the justices understand that,” he said. “Second, we take the Constitution seriously, while many agencies view it as a minor impediment to what they want to do in regulation.”
In addition, “the administrative state has changed,” he said..
“It isn’t like the 1930s where it was just an addition to the law; it is now the primary mode of controlling us,” he said. “It may eventually unravel our republic.”
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Judge Rules That the Transgender Care Policies in These States Are 'Discriminatory'
In recent years, many states have passed laws surrounding the transgender agenda. This includes laws restricting transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports, laws regarding which restrooms transgender students can use in public schools, and transgender health care coverage.
Predictably, left-wing activists push back on policies like these.
On Monday, a federal appeals court ruled that West Virginia and North Carolina’s refusal to cover certain health care for transgender people with government-sponsored health insurance is discriminatory.
According to the Associated Press, the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 8-6 in the case. The case involved the coverage of so-called “gender-affirming care” by North Carolina’s state employee health plan and the coverage of irreversible sex reassignment surgery by West Virginia Medicaid.
“The coverage exclusions facially discriminate on the basis of sex and gender identity, and are not substantially related to an important government interest,” Judge Roger Gregory wrote in the majority opinion. Reportedly, Gregory was first appointed by former President Bill Clinton and re-appointed by former President George W. Bush.
The case is likely headed to the Supreme Court, as West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey told the outlet that his office plans to appeal the decision (via AP):
During oral arguments in September, at least two judges said it’s likely the case will eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court. Both states appealed separate lower court rulings that found the denial of gender-affirming care to be discriminatory and unconstitutional. Two panels of three Fourth Circuit judges heard arguments in both cases last year before deciding to intertwine the two cases and see them presented before the full court.
Earlier this month, a federal appeals court struck down a West Virginia law that protected female athletes from male athletes who think they are women, which Townhall covered. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 to halt the law, which prevents so-called “transgender” athletes from competing on teams that align with their “gender identity” in the state’s public schools and colleges.
Shortly after, several middle school girls were forced to compete against the biological male who thinks he’s a woman who was at the center of the case. In response, the girls boycotted the competition, which Townhall also covered.
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Rules for Republicans
For Republicans to win in November, there are certain rules that will broaden the party appeal and hopefully bring victory at all levels of government.
Nothing can compete with Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, the effective playbook for the Democratic Party and its supporters for decades. Only recently did pro-Hamas protesters prevent travelers from getting to O’Hare Airport. Alinsky himself led similar activity, including having his people take up all of the bathroom stalls in the airport, so that travelers could not use the bathroom and thus make their lives miserable—until he got what he wanted.
With a majority saying that the US is going in the wrong direction and that America’s best days are behind her, the Republicans have an opportunity for a Reagan or Nixon level blowout against a president who regularly fights and loses to his teleprompter. Certain positions appeal well beyond traditional or even new Republican voters.
The Inviolability of Property Rights.
Freedom, pursuit of happiness, wealth—they are all meaningless if one is not certain in his or her ironclad right to property. In both personal and business spheres, property rights are being abused. Think of shoplifting—places like California have legalized stealing. How can I run a business if I cannot prevent people from stealing my merchandise? How can I make a profit if the police and the local government do not support my right to protect my store and its contents?
The same is true for the individual. Stories of squatters are horrific. That people cannot easily throw out such thieves and in some cases are required to continue paying electricity and water is ridiculous. Laws are needed that give property owners the upper hand in any case of squatting. In a normal world, the owner of a home would bring some brutes with him and throw the squatters out and sue the latter for whatever damage they did.
We do not live in a normal world. With that said, Republicans need to push the idea that property is an extension of an individual and is subject to protection from theft or illegal seizure. When shoplifting brings with it jail time, the problem will become much smaller.
A Controlled Southern Border.
There is no greater issue of internal concern than the completely open border. From drugs to criminals to potential terrorists, the open southern US border is a disaster. Communities far and wide have been negatively impacted by illegal aliens taking up space (airports in Chicago, Boston and elsewhere), resources (New York is spending billions on them), and causing social disruptions. The vast majority of Americans want the border controlled. Period. Republicans need to make a controlled border the centerpiece of their platform. It’s a winning issue and it stands in stark juxtaposition to the Biden administration’s open border and lack of enforcement of existing US immigration laws (and even fighting Arizona and Texas in their attempts to close the border in their states).
On some issues, the US has become a “2% Society”—where the interests of some small percentage of the population outweigh the concerns of the majority of Americans. Trans and crime are two such subjects. A woman might work years to win the big race, only to have a guy with a beard zip by her to take the gold. Criminals are being released, even in cases of serious crime, and the population has to fear being carjacked, stabbed, punched, or pushed in front of a train. These are winning issues for Republicans.
Trans. Ban all trans procedures and puberty blockers for children under 18.
While we allow adults to smoke themselves to death or drink their livers away, we do not allow children the same privileges. Children must be protected from charlatans in the schools and hospitals who are willing to perform Mengle-like surgeries on them. At the adult end, pass laws requiring at least one division of sports for biological women only. Americans have a very strong sense of fairness, and the women and girls need to compete without guys who have personal issues.
Crime.
There is no perfect position on crime but if you have to err, then do so on the side of the police. After Ferguson and George Floyd, the police are in retreat. They do not have the support of their superiors or the political echelon to do their jobs. The government must throw its weight behind policing, so that the 98% of Americans who are not involved in crime can enjoy their lives. The FBI needs to be restructured so that we do not have political investigations like the fake “Russian collusion” Crossfire Hurricane investigation.
Taxes.
Lower corporate and personal taxes lead to greater economic activity and increased personal wealth. Lowering taxes will spur job growth and further economic activity. Let Republicans be the party of the workers and small business. Let Republicans be the antithesis of the tax-and-spend liberals favored by the Silicon Valley billionaires.
Tame the Universities.
Post 10/7, universities have shown themselves to be hotbeds not only to antisemitism but also to rampant anti-Americanism. Universities survive on the billions that federal agencies dole out for R & D. These funds must be conditioned on the universities being useful for America’s future. When reading General Leslie Groves' Now It Can Be Told, I was amazed at the extraordinary contribution of American universities to the successful Manhattan Project. They readily provided top professors, research facilities, key materials, manpower, and even their presidents as James Conant (Harvard) and Vannevar Bush (MIT) were key drivers to success. Federal funding has to be conditioned on universities being pro-American institutions. If they want to be funded and directed by China and Gulf Arab states and push anti-America agendas, then the federal government should drop funding such institutions.
Abortion.
It can also be a winning issue. While many conservatives were angered by Donald Trump suggesting that each state pass its own law, the former president realizes that California is not Tennessee. Win elections and enact laws; first, you have to win.
The American Project needs work. Republicans can put forth platforms that appeal to Americans of all backgrounds and political identification. Liberal New Yorkers also want to be able to walk in Central Park without preparing a last will and testament before leaving home. Republicans can win in the Fall. They need a winning message and they need to follow through on their promises.
https://townhall.com/columnists/alanjosephbauer/2024/04/29/rules-for-republicans-n2638329
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29 April, 2024
The surprising sexual kink that is most likely to result in orgasm, new study suggests
Well, what do you know? I had forgotten this. For a couple of years I had a relationship with C.W., an exceptionally good-looking woman with whom I also had an exceptionally good sexual relationship. I am not normally a great sexpot so that is surprising.
I was around 50 at the time but thanks to Viagra, we normally had sex at least twice a night. She once went around at her office job the day afterwards boasting that she had it seven times the night before I may have gone into her seven times but I certainly did not come seven times. She regularly used to go around with the top button of her blouse undone so people would get a glimpse of her big black bra so she would have been believed
And I did tickle her a lot while we were in bed. Her shrieks of laughter would stun other occupants of the house. And, yes, the tickling was a form of foreplay. It led up to intercourse. It was a custom we just hit upon that I attributed to her general good humour so have never done it with anyone else. From what I read below I failed to learn a lesson from my own experience. My present girlfriend is however very ticklish .. ....
Being tickled could be enough to bring on an orgasm, a study suggests.
First-of-its-kind research from Germany involving about 700 adults looked at the relationship between being tickled and experiencing sexual pleasure.
The researchers found that nearly 90 percent said they felt some degree of sexual stimulation from being tickled alone without other stimuli.
And one in four women and men reached orgasm exclusively through tickling.
The team found most participants who found tickling sexually gratifying enjoyed being tickled as children, suggesting that childhood experiences could 'shape their fetishism development.'
Sarah Dagher, study author and a PhD candidate at the University Medical Center of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, told PsyPost that the study shows that 'the spectrum of what can lead to sexual pleasure is broader than what we previously thought and extends beyond conventional concepts.'
The researchers recruited participants through a 43-question survey posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. Five 'tickle fetish influencers' also agreed to participate by reposting the survey link and pinning it to their profiles.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13354539/sexual-fetish-orgasm-time-study.html
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‘The Undoing of Civilisation’: What’s Driving the West’s Decline, according to prominent British writer
The key problems the West faces today is not military disarmament—the diminishing of a country’s military strength—but moral disarmament, argued a British pundit.
According to Brendan O’Neill, the chief political writer for London-based Spiked magazine, Western societies are going through a process of “decivilisation,” in which people, particularly the younger generations, are “disconnected from the past and live in utter dread of the future.”
“When your military won’t even say words like ‘strength,’ when your museums are hiding away artifacts, when Shakespeare has been added with loads of trigger warnings in case you get upset at his racist ideas, when the universities are overrun by academics who teach kids to hate the history of the West,” he said in Sydney on April 23.
“You can really see that this is … the institutions of the West destroying themselves in order to appease what they view as the original sins of Western civilisation.”
Speaking at the Centre for Independent Studies, a Sydney-based think tank, Mr. O’Neill said modern societies are facing an “incredibly serious threat” of moral disarmament, the process in which people are “stripping away the values and virtues that once defined who we are as a society.”
“I think the key problem we’re facing today is not necessarily military disarmament or physical disarmament, or not having the right equipment to fight back should they come our way, but moral disarmament,” he noted.
“The pushing aside of the core values and core ideas that [once bring society] together and the embrace of the woke ideology that is incredibly damaging to the confidence of our institutions, the confidence of the people in our society.”
The British author identified decolonisation—which he called “the cleansing of history”—and climate alarmism as the two “most popular” radical trends among the youth.
‘Wokeness’ Prominent Among Australian Youth
Australia is not immune to progressive social trends, and has become increasingly “woke.”
The statues of Captain James Cook—a renowned explorer who charted and claimed the eastern coast of Australia for Britain—have repeatedly become a target of anti-colonial activists.
On the day before Australia Day this year, the British explorer’s statue in St Kilda’s Jaca Boulevard in Melbourne was cut at the ankles and sprayed with the words “the colony will fall” in red paint. On the same day, a statue of Queen Victoria was also defaced and graffitied with a similar message.
[Illiterates! The colony fell in 1901,when Australia ceased to be a colony and became independent
The repeated attacks on the statue have prompted a council officer to suggest its permanent removal due to the serious damage incurred.
Anti-colonial sentiments were also prevalent during the Australian government’s campaign for the Voice proposal, which would establish a permanent Indigenous advisory body to parliament, and amend the constitution to recognise Indigenous people.
Australians emphatically voted against the proposal, with No proponents arguing it would sow further division in the community.
At the same time, governments and corporations have thrown support behind legislations that promote transgender ideology, such as the self-sex ID and conversion ban.
The Western Australian government, for example, became the latest state to introduce a gender recognition bill, which would allow people to legally change their gender without medical surgery. It praised the bill as a “significant legislative agenda” for people who identify as transgender or gender-diverse.
‘The Undoing Of Civilisation’
Mr. O’Neill said it’s tempting to view the rise of woke ideology as the “ideological exuberance” of young people who will “grow out of it eventually.”
However, under the surface, “something very serious” was happening, he said.
“We’re living through what can only be described as the process of decivilisation. The unraveling of the great gains of our society and the great culture of our society and the problematisation of these things as too male, too white, too old fashioned and not really appropriate or fitting to the modern era,” Mr. O’Neill said.
“It’s a vast project of the undoing of civilisation.”
He described civilisation as “a sense of permanence”—connecting with society’s history, being optimistic about the present, and having aspirations for the future.
However, that has been “completely robbed from the young in particular, who are now living in this permanent limbo of dread for what came before them and dread of what might come later,” Mr. O'Neill added.
Younger generations are feeling extraordinarily alienated from their own history, the result of being taught to “hate your own history, hate the old orders, the old museums, the old judges.”
“They live in a kind of limbo now,” the British author said.
“Everything about your past, you are encouraged and in some cases educated to hate, and at the same time, you fear for the future, you dread what is coming down the road.”
“And that is fundamentally the end of civilisation.”
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There Are No Adult Leftists
Allen West
Last week I traveled out to Santa Barbara, California, a damn beautiful area, for the purpose of speaking for the Young America's Foundation Rawhide Circle Retreat. The actual event was held at the Alisal Ranch in Solvang, which is a picturesque Danish-themed town in the Santa Ynez Valley.
My flight from Dallas took me to Las Vegas, where I caught my connection, SWA flight 274. I travel mostly on Southwest Airlines and had boarding position A2, meaning I got my prized seat, starboard side exit row aisle! Two gentlemen came along and asked to take the window and middle seat. The one fella in the middle seat was reading a book called “You Dreamed of Empires” by Alvaro Enrigue. Before he began with his book he was checking his news feed on his phone...and then it came.
This fella blurted out to his male partner, “Why don't they just leave the students alone in the tents?” He continued by saying that they were just peacefully protesting against war; he called them anti-war. He further asked when being anti-war became anti-Semitic. He took the position that the school term would be over soon anyway, so just leave them alone.
I suppose my fellow traveler did not understand that Jewish students are not being allowed to attend class at a school like Columbia University, which has $80K/year tuition. They are being told to stay sequestered somewhere and take their classes virtually. Hmm, does anyone smell a lawsuit coming?
Yeah, da ol' Colonel had to bite his lip, but then I realized what the real issue is...there are no adult leftists. Much the same as Peter Pan, they are stuck in a permanent childish, immature, irrational, and imbecile state of mental existence. Obviously, this fella who was sitting next to me did not realize, or perhaps he did and did not care, that if you were truly anti-war, you should not be taking up the position of a designated Islamic terrorist organization, Hamas, that attacked a sovereign Nation, Israel.
This cheeky fella certainly must not have been aware of the chants being proliferated in these “Hamas Youth Camps” that call for the genocide of Jews and the eradication of the Jewish State. That is the essence of anti-Semitism, not free speech. Or maybe this guy was unaware that a Jewish student had his eye nearly gouged out by a “peaceful Hamas youth protester” who stabbed him in the eye with the flagstaff carrying the terrorist banner.
As of Thursday evening at Alisal Ranch, I have not heard a peep from Columbia University alum Barack Hussein Obama on this matter. That silence is deafening, to say the least.
Where are the presidents of these respective universities? Oops, I forgot; everything is examined in context. But the prevailing thing we must understand and accept is that there are no adult leftists. The Department of Homeland Security has made an empty threat to revoke the student visas of foreign students who are expelled. Well, it would require adults in the campus administrations to take the action of expelling these miscreants. Recently, Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson went to Columbia University. Where was Senate Majority Leader, Jewish Senator Chuck Schumer? Again, no adult leftists.
Oh, by the way, we now know how dumb Biden's idea about a floating humanitarian pier into Gaza is; Hamas has fired mortars at the US-led engineering effort, and equipment was damaged. Yep, we do not have an adult in the White House. Heck, we do not have a functional person as president, but he can lick a mean ice cream cone...like a kid. Refer back to the Peter Pan assertion. I remember back when Nancy Pelosi first took the Speaker's gavel, and she quipped that the gavel was in the hands of the children of America...yep, literally.
The progressive socialist leftists, aka Democrat party, are more concerned about appeasement, negotiating, acquiescing, and compromising with delusional, deranged brats because that is the nature of the progressive socialist left, Marxists. For them, having the electoral patronage of children supporting a terrorist organization is more important than our Nation and our best ally in the Middle East.
See, adults make decisions, especially when it comes to disciplining children. Leftists believe that if your kid thinks they are a different gender, let them be, regardless of the harm and danger. And if you are an American adult and take a different position, then leftists believe you should not have children. Leftists who unfortunately have children allow their biological male kids to jump into swimming pools with the daughters of American adults, and you best accept that. This is why leftists have sought to overturn Title IX because they are not adult enough to tell their kids that this is foolishness. Heck, just like kids, they celebrate this whole delusion. So, what is next? Kids who want to affirm being an alcoholic?
I recall the saying, “Come let us reason together.” But how can you reason with people who have the intellectual capacity of the Scarecrow character from the Wizard of Oz? I could have easily interjected myself into the conversation with the fella on the plane sitting next to me, but his head would have exploded. I could have presented facts and articulated how supporting an Islamic terrorist organization that killed and held Americans hostage is not something we just brush off and appease. I presume he would have had to require the oxygen mask to be deployed for his personal safety.
While I was awaiting my flight at Dallas Love Field, Gate 4, MSNBC was playing “Morning Joe.” There was not a single iota of discussion about what was happening on these college and university campuses and expanding to other areas. The topic de jour was the Donald Trump trials. See, the mindless lemmings and useful idiots that frequent such outlets cannot bear to discuss anything weighty that goes against their dogma. If so, they throw fits and tantrums like a kid in the cereal aisle in the grocery store. Those are the kids whose leftist parents beg and attempt to reason with little John and Jane, throwing themselves on the floor.
I tried that one time with my mom. Elizabeth Thomas “Snooks” West was an adult, and she beat my tail. Guess what, I never did that again. My Dad, the ole World War II Army Corporal, beat me down because I did not speak to the adults sitting on their porches in his hometown of Cuthbert, GA, one day. To this day, I regard people as "Sir" and "Ma'am."
Always remember, the little radicals throwing fits on college and university campuses today will continue the leftist tradition of being stuck in Never Never Land. They believe that a little pixie dust can solve all the problems, and don't want to be bothered with anything tough. That is why the gentleman on Southwest Airlines flight 274 from Las Vegas to Santa Barbara said, “Just leave the kids alone in the tents; they aren't bothering anyone.” Yeah, they just shout out chants of genocide and death to America.
Or until something goes boom in America because the leftists’ kids masquerading as grown-ups have surrendered our national sovereignty, allowing our enemies to enter our Republic. If you think the summer of 2020 was bad, just wait for this summer. Those who remember the DNC convention of 1968, get ready. The radical children from then and the radical children of today. As the wise Jewish King Solomon said in Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing new under the sun.” And no truer words could have been spoken when it comes to Marxists, Islamists, and the lack of adult leftists.
Steadfast and Loyal.
https://townhall.com/columnists/allenwest/2024/04/29/there-are-no-adult-leftists-n2638385
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Ideology, education will not protect women from violent men
Only a Leftist with his childish belief in government as a cure-all would think that governments could reliably predict and stop men who kill their women
CLAIRE LEHMANN
A 28-year-old NSW woman, Molly Ticehurst, was found dead in her home last Monday. Two weeks prior, a man who had been charged with stalking and raping her appeared before court.
The police prosecutor charged him with a series of serious crimes and told the court his behaviour was “indicative of features in domestic violence offenders that we see often come to light after the most disturbing conclusions to their conduct”.
Despite this warning, he was released on bail.
Ticehurst is among 26 women who have been killed in the first 114 days of 2024. If the rate of violence continues, 2024 will be one of the worst years in recent memory for major crimes against women – with one woman murdered every four days. Despite the cries from the community to do more, and despite Anthony Albanese joining weekend rallies, there is a lack of leadership on what must be done. The current strategy isn’t working, and we need to understand why.
For the past decade or so, the focus of Australian governments has been on “primary prevention” – that is, preventing violence before it occurs. Ad campaigns that encourage boys and men not to slam doors or tell sexist jokes, as well as educational efforts in schools on “toxic masculinity”, are meant to have made a difference. But have they? It doesn’t look like it.
A recent essay co-authored by Walkley Award-winning journalist Jess Hill and UNSW criminology professor Michael Salter offers a sustained criticism of the primary prevention approach, arguing that our national strategy “outsources its results to future generations, and thus gives politicians the cover to adopt platitudes and evade accountability”.
Their central argument is a brave one: reducing inequality between men and women does nothing to reduce violence against women. The axiomatic claim that violence will disappear once inequality disappears is not supported by the evidence. They show that governments’ decades-long focus on gender equality has not moved the needle in terms of reducing violence against women. In fact, the opposite may be true.
The Nordic countries provide a warning. Those nations are all ranked higher in gender equality than Australia and other EU countries, yet also record higher rates of domestic violence and physical or sexual violence against women.
Through its National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032, the Albanese government has made the bold claim that it will work to end gendered violence in just one generation through attitude change, which is measured via surveys. But there are several problems with this plan. One of them, according to Hill and Salter, is its blanket focus on all boys and men – instead of identifying those most likely to offend.
Assigning guilt to the entire male sex may be a waste of time: “Situating all little boys as potential perpetrators not only risks diluting much-needed resources and effort, but it also invites confusion and potentially backlash from boys and young men who were never at risk of hurting their partners in the first place,” the authors write.
One reason it may be a waste of time is because the link between attitudes and behaviour is not clear-cut. We all know examples of high-profile figures (think Harvey Weinstein) whose public behaviour does not match how they act behind closed doors. Similarly, there is no good reason to think responses to a pencil-and-paper survey on attitudes will capture the future likelihood of violence.
To explain why this approach is inadequate, Hill and Salter draw attention to an alarming, yet under-reported trend. Young people aged between 16 and 24, are the most likely cohort to reject problematic attitudes regarding violence against women. Yet within this very age group there has been an alarming increase in sexual offending.
In the past, a child who had experienced sexual assault was most likely to have been targeted by an adult. Today, when a child is sexually assaulted, the perpetrator is most likely to be another child (or adolescent). If attitudes correlated directly with behaviour, we would not be seeing this trend.
Another failure of the strategy is to imagine everyone is equally capable of changing their behaviour as a result of changing their beliefs. “In our current prevention model, there does seem to be a default middle-class subject sitting at the centre of our interventions; a tabula rasa upon which we can imprint the right beliefs and attitudes,” write Hill and Salter.
Such an outlook disregards the harsh realities faced by many boys who later resort to violence. Boys who grow up to use violence are often raised in environments where violence, drug and alcohol abuse are commonplace, and where a general lack of impulse control means beliefs and attitudes are of secondary importance.
Much like teaching table manners to a person with no food, teaching proper attitudes to a person who has failed to develop self-control will be an exercise in futility. If we want to get serious about reducing violence against women, ideological attempts to assign collective guilt need to be discarded. Efforts should instead be redirected into identifying high-risk groups, and providing supports for drug, alcohol and trauma recovery. Perpetrators who have already offended, and who are at risk of reoffending, need to be locked up. They shouldn’t be let out on bail.
Believing educational materials alone can stop violence before it happens is naive. It’s unfair to victims who need governments to take real action to prevent future violence against women by perpetrators who have already been violent.
Commenting on the fact that Daniel Billings was released on bail after being charged with sexual intercourse without consent, stalking and intimidation, NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said: “I’ll say from the outset that police share the sentiment of the community. This shouldn’t have happened. And sadly, it’s not an isolated case.”
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28 April, 2024
Ukraine is forced to haul its fleet of $10million US Abrams tanks back from the frontline after losing five of its stock of 31 with Russia ramping up hunter-killer drone attacks in latest battlefield blow to Kyiv
This would appear to be further evidence that the day of the tank is over amid the availability of modern weapons systems, particularly drones. But drones are slow so are a danger only when fired from a short distance away, before they can be acquired as a target by an air-defence system. As Iran showed recently in their attack on Israel, over a long range, drones are a piece of cake. Any modern fighter can acquire them on its radar and have plenty of time to shoot them down. Britain was shooting down jet-powered long-distance drones (the V1s) in WWII. So anti-drone capability in tanks might make them important again.
It should be noted however that in the Iraq war, Saddam's T72s were wiped out en masse by U.S. Bradley Fighting Vehicles using missiles. So it may be that nothing will save the tank as a war machine. Drones will be the key in future wars
It might be noted however that Abrams tanks have previously been shown as vulnerable when used by non-US forces. That was at the time attributed to two things: That the USA does not export fully-featured Abrams tanks and that the tanks are designed to be used as only one part of combined operations
Ukraine has been forced to sideline US-provide Abrams tanks for now in its fight against Russia, in part because Russian drone warfare has made it too difficult for them to operate without detection or coming under attack.
The US agreed to send 31 Abrams to Ukraine in January 2023 after an aggressive months-long campaign by Kyiv arguing that the tanks, which cost about $10 million apiece, were vital to its ability to breach Russian lines.
But the battlefield has changed substantially since then, notably by the ubiquitous use of Russian surveillance drones and hunter-killer drones - tactics also used to great effect by Ukraine's armed forces.
Those weapons have made it more difficult for Ukraine to protect their American made tanks, which are considered high priority targets by Russian units.
Russian troops claimed to have destroyed the first Abrams tank in Ukraine in February, with several Russian military bloggers sharing a clip of the armour on fire following a drone strike.
Since then, Moscow's forces have honed their approach to tackling Western armour.
Five of the 31 Abrams tanks in Ukraine have been destroyed in the past three months.
The proliferation of drones on the Ukrainian battlefield means 'there isn't open ground that you can just drive across without fear of detection,' a senior US defence official told reporters Thursday.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide an update on US weapons support for Ukraine before Friday's Ukraine Defence Contact Group meeting.
For now, the tanks have been moved from the front lines, and the US will work with the Ukrainians to reset tactics, said Joint Chiefs of Staff Vice Chairman Adm. Christopher Grady and a third defence official who confirmed the move on the condition of anonymity.
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Study found gender-diverse adults were 3 to 6 times more likely to be autistic
I don't question these findings but note that the link is far from universal or automatic. I am pretty disrespectful of social norms but with 4 thoroughly heterosexual marriages under my belt I am certainly not gender dysphoric!
The disorder of gender dysphoria has puzzled scientists for decades: why is it that some people feel they are born in the wrong body, while others don't?
Now, experts speaking to DailyMail.com believe one common characteristic among this group, estimated to be in the region of 1.4million Americans, may offer some explanation.
Research has shown those who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth are up to six times more likely to be autistic than people without gender dysphoria.
The developmental disorder, which affects how people communicate, socialize and behave, is thought to overlap with gender dysphoria for a variety of reasons.
Several studies have suggested exposure to certain hormones in the womb could increase the likelihood of both problems, while some experts say the link could lie in a shared refrain from conforming to societal norms.
One of the largest studies ever to examine a potential link between ASD and GD involved data from more than 641,000 people.
The study, published in Nature Communications in 2020, found people who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth are three to six times more likely to be autistic than people without gender divergence.
Dr Amethysta Herrick, a chemist and trans-education activist, who is a transwoman, told DailyMail.com believes this could be because people on the autism spectrum 'have the freedom to explore their identities and express themselves the way they would choose because social norms matter less.'
The 2020 study showed transgender and gender-diverse people scored higher on self-reporting measures of autistic traits, including sensory sensitivity, which is often a characteristic of autism.
Following the study and based on his own observations, Dr Michael Craig, a professor of psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience at Kings College London in the UK, concluded there is an inherent link between gender dysphoria and autism.
Dr Craig, who was also the lead for the NHS National Autism Unit, told The Times: 'There were certainly some days where I was fairly convinced 40 to 50 percent of the patients I was seeing were autistic.
'I was trying to find out what it is that might explain this overlap, but it’s a difficult area to research for all sorts of reasons.'
Overall, he estimated about 20 percent of patients he observed at the Tavistock gender clinic in London might have qualified for an autism diagnosis.
While no definitive connection has been discovered, the authors of the 2020 study proposed several possible links between autism and gender-diversity.
They wrote that autistic individuals may conform less to societal norms compared to people not diagnosed with the condition, 'which may partly explain why a greater number of autistic individuals identify outside the stereotypical gender binary.'
Second, prenatal hormones involved in shaping brain development have been shown to contribute to both autism and gender role behaviors.
Previous studies have examined the link between prenatal hormones and autism. A 2019 study found a link between elevated levels of the female sex hormone estrogen in pregnant women and autism in their children.
Separate studies in both 2015 and 2018 found pregnant women with high levels of certain sex hormones, including testosterone and progesterone, had an increased risk of having a child with autism.
Previous research has also examined whether prenatal hormones play a role in gender dysphoria, with one study suggesting high levels of prenatal testosterone in females and low levels in males may contribute to gender dysphoria.
As the study found that gender-diverse individuals have higher rates of neurodevelopmental conditions, Dr Aaron Reuben, a neuropsychologist, told DailyMail.com: 'It is plausible that these conditions could be linked, or that there could be overlap among autism and gender dysphoria.
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Iran’s Nightmares
Details of Israel’s recent limited retaliatory strike against Iran‘s antiaircraft missile batteries at Isfahan are still sketchy. But nonetheless, we can draw some conclusions.
Israel’s small volley of missiles hit their intended targets, to the point of zeroing in on the very launchers designed to stop such incoming ordnance. The target was near the Natanz enrichment facility. That proximity was by design.
Israel showed Iran it could take out the very antimissile battery designed to thwart an attack on its nearby nuclear facility.
The larger message sent to the world was that Israel could send a retaliatory barrage at Iranian nuclear sites with reasonable assurances that the incoming attacks could not be stopped.
By comparison, Iran’s earlier attack on Israel was much greater and more indiscriminate. It was also a huge flop, with an estimated 99% of the more than 320 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles failing to hit their planned targets.
Moreover, it was reported that more than 50% of Iran’s roughly 115 to 120 ballistic missiles failed at launch or malfunctioned in flight.
Collate these facts, and it presents a disturbing corrective to Iran’s nonstop boasts of soon possessing a nuclear arsenal that will obliterate the Jewish state.
Consider further the following nightmarish scenarios: Were Iranian nuclear-tipped missiles ever launched at Israel, they could pass over, in addition to Syria and Iraq, either Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, or all four. In the cases of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, such trajectories would constitute an act of war, especially considering that some of Iran’s recent aerial barrages were intercepted and destroyed over Arab territory well before they reached Israel.
Iran’s strike prompted Arab nations, the U.S., the U.K., and France to work in concert to destroy almost all of Iran’s drones. For Iran, that is a premonition of the sort of sophisticated aerial opposition it might face if it ever decided to stage a nuclear version.
Even if half of Iran’s ballistic missiles did launch successfully, only a handful apparently neared their intended targets—in sharp contrast to Israel’s successful attack on Iranian missile batteries. Is it thus conceivable that any Iranian nuclear-tipped missile launched toward Israel might pose as great a threat to Iran itself or its neighbors as to Israel?
And even if such missiles made it into the air and even if they successfully traversed Arab airspace, there is still an overwhelming chance they would be neutralized before detonating above Israel.
Any such launch would warrant an immediate Israeli response. And the incoming bombs and missiles would likely have a 100% certainty of evading Iran’s countermeasures and hitting their targets.
Now that the soil of both Iran and Israel is no longer sacred and immune from attack, the mystique of the Iranian nuclear threat has dissipated.
It should be harder for the theocracy in Tehran to shake down Western governments for hostage bribes, sanctions relief, and Iran-deal giveaways on the implied threat of Iran’s successfully nuking the Jewish state.
The new reality is that Iran has goaded an Israel that has numerous nuclear weapons and dozens of nuclear-tipped missiles in hardened silos and on submarines. Tehran has zero ability to stop any of these missiles or sophisticated fifth-generation Israeli aircraft armed with nuclear bombs and missiles.
Iran must now fear that if it launched two or three nuclear missiles, there would be overwhelming odds that they would either fail at launch, go awry in the air, implode inside Iran, be taken down over Arab territory by Israel’s allies, or be knocked down by Israel’s tripartite antimissile defense system.
Add it all up and Iran’s attack on Israel seems a historic blunder. It showed the world the impotence of an Iranian aerial assault at the very time Iran threatens to go nuclear. It revealed that an incompetent Iran may be as much a threat to itself as to its enemies. It opened up a new chapter in which Iran’s own soil, thanks to its attack on Israel, is no longer off limits to any Western power.
Its failure to stop a much smaller Israel response, coupled with the overwhelming success of Israel and its allies in stopping a much larger Iranian attack, reminds the Iranian autocracy that its shrill rhetoric is designed to mask its impotence and to hide its own vulnerabilities from its enemies.
And the long-suffering Iranian people?
The truth will come out that Iran’s own theocracy hit the Israeli homeland with negligible results and earned a successful, though merely demonstrative, Israeli response in return.
So Iranians will learn their homeland is now vulnerable and, for the future, no longer off-limits.
And Iranians will conclude that Israel has more effective allies than Iran and that their own ballistic missiles may be more suicidal than homicidal.
As a result, they may conclude that the real enemies of the Iranian nation are not the Jewish people of Israel after all, but their own unhinged Islamist theocrats.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/26/irans-nightmares/
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Australia: Do Fact-checkers Check The Facts?
Government should never have the power to determine what is or is not the truth, let alone silence dissenting views. However, what would be even worse is if unelected, unaccountable activists had this power instead.
But that is what the federal government is contemplating under its proposed internet censorship laws.
In private correspondence, released under a Freedom of Information request last year, Federal Communications Minister Michelle Rowland let slip to the Prime Minister how the government’s proposed ‘misinformation’ Bill would operate. The proposed law would empower the Australian Communications and Media Authority to impose huge fines on social media companies that do not censor ‘misinformation’ to the federal government’s satisfaction.
Minister Rowland confirmed that ‘fact-checking’ organisations are expected to play a central role in this new regime, so much so that Acma will be given the power to request information from ‘other persons such as fact-checkers and third-party platform contractors to monitor compliance with misinformation codes, standards and digital platform rules’. Rowland informed the Prime Minister that ‘the draft bill would give effect to this suggested change’.
The Minister has given the game away. It won’t be the social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube or X charged with the censoring. It won’t even be the faceless public servants at Acma. No, it will be these so-called ‘fact-checkers’.
Today, there are three main, self-appointed organisations in Australia claiming ‘fact-checker’ status; RMIT FactLab, AAP FactCheck, and RMIT ABC Fact Check. These organisations already have arrangements with social media companies in which they investigate ‘misinformation’ and if they render a ‘false’ verdict, the social media platforms will censor that content.
But based on Minister Rowland’s comments, ‘fact-checkers’ will in the future play an even more prominent role, as the enforcers of the government’s internet censorship laws. They, in effect, will be given the power of law to be the official arbiters of truth.
These ‘fact-checkers’ are signatories to a code of principles requiring them to be fair and neutral. This includes that they ‘not concentrate their fact-checking unduly on any one side’ of a debate. Last year, the Institute of Public Affairs investigated how well they complied with this requirement during the Voice referendum campaign. Not surprisingly, they failed miserably.
The IPA reviewed 187 fact-checking investigations which related to the Voice referendum, an enormous 91 per cent (i.e. 170) of which concerned the No campaign. 99 per cent of these were deemed ‘false’. Barely half of the other 17 investigations (concerning the Yes campaign) were deemed ‘false’. RMIT FactLab was the standout, worst offender with every one of its 41 investigations concerning the No campaign.
The IPA expanded its research to other policy areas, which revealed the Voice was not some aberration but, rather, confirmed the left-wing bias of these organisations is systemic and entrenched.
In respect to fact-checks about Australian politicians, there have been 249 investigations conducted over the past five years. 65 per cent of these investigations could be seen as favourable to the political left. Only 35 per cent could be seen as favourable to the political right. A 30 per cent margin of difference, in political terms, is enormous.
The research also looked at ‘fact checks’ into Covid-19, and climate change and energy policy. Of the 534 investigations into claims about Covid-19, a staggering 94 per cent targeted critics of official government responses, with just 6 per cent targeting advocates of the official line. So much for holding government to account!
Climate change and energy were no better. Of 153 investigations, 81 per cent were targeted against critics of the official climate change and energy agenda (that is, man-made carbon emissions are harming the planet, and we need to abolish fossil fuels and mandate alternatives in response). Every single one of these were deemed ‘false’, misleading, or missing context. Yet, remarkably, of the 20 investigations conducted by AAP FactCheck into advocates of the climate change agenda, 76 per cent were deemed ‘true’.
Again, RMIT FactLab was the worst. All of its Covid-19 and climate change investigations – 100 per cent – were targeted at critics. A level of consensus any North Korean dictator could be proud of!
It is clear Australia’s so-called, and self-appointed, fact-checkers have no interest in shining a spotlight on official government policies. Rather, they aim to attack critics and amplify official narratives.
This is not journalism. These are some of the most hotly debated and controversial areas of public policy, yet apparently to ‘fact-checkers’ only one side is worthy of investigation.
Predictably, the left-wing media have leapt to the defence of the ‘fact checkers’. An article that appeared in Crikey on 9 April claims that debunking a conspiracy theory doesn’t favour the political left or right but benefits the whole community. Miraculously, the enrichment of society so graciously offered by the ‘fact-checkers’ just so happens to involve targeting politicians on the political right, compared to the left, to the tune of two to one.
It is no surprise that left-wing journalists will attack any criticisms of ‘fact-checkers’. The utopia of the elite class – one that celebrates the modern media, academia and politics – is a world run by experts. Whether dictating where you can move during the Covid-19 pandemic, or deciding what can be said on the internet, the experts know best. With zero self-awareness, the same Crikey article claims, ‘Everything is a team sport to the outlets and politicians waging a war on fact-checkers in which “truth” becomes a trophy to be awarded rather than a fact to be established’.
But hang on, isn’t it the political left which is advocating for a system in which a select group decides on what is, or is not, ‘misinformation’ for the purpose of censoring alternative viewpoints?
Of course, the defenders of ‘fact checking’ would feel differently if these organisations were populated by conservatives. But, proving yet again the modern left is beyond parody, the author of the Crikey article once worked for AAP Fact Check!
These will be the people who determine what is true or false, and what you can or cannot say on social media.
It will, of course, be mainstream Australians who are silenced online if the federal government gets its way.
https://ipa.org.au/research/rights-and-freedoms/do-fact-checkers-check-the-facts
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25 April, 2024
The IRS Lied
Your government lied to you; who has seen this movie before? Despite assurances to the contrary to justify their $80 Billion influx in cash in order to hire some 87,000 new agents, the Internal Revenue Service has been caught red handed using the vast majority of the funds to target Americans earning under $200,000 per year.
In August 2022, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig told senators who were skeptical of the new spending “These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans. As we’ve been planning, our investment of these enforcement resources is designed around the Department of the Treasury’s directive that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for households making under $400,000.” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also vehemently denied the intentions of the IRS in no uncertain terms: “Contrary to the misinformation from opponents of this legislation, small business or households earning $400,000 per year or less will not see an increase in the chances that they are audited.”
Despite these promises by those tasked with managing the American economy, and breathless propagandizing on behalf of the state by corporate media outlets, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that, once again, we have been sold a bill of goods. “President Biden’s plan to hire a new army of tax collectors is falling flat, and the agents already at work are targeting the middle class. As of last summer, 63% of new audits targeted taxpayers with income of less than $200,000,” says the Journal. “Only a small overall share reached the very highest earners, while 80% of audits covered filers earning less than $1 million.”
It turns out the IRS has been unable to hire many new agents. Despite the goal of immediately hiring 3,700 new employees, the agency had only hired 34 in a year. According to a watchdog report, the IRS has lost 8% of its workforce between 2019-2023. Instead, the agency has decided to justify its bloated budget by preying upon working class Americans; a tale as old as time.
The claim by supporters of increased IRS funding that only the extraordinary wealthy would be targeted for audit may have resonated with some naïve voters, but it was always absurd on its face. Tesla/SpaceX founder, and X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk, an opponent of increased IRS funding, said at the time that his taxes are audited every year “by default,” a sentiment echoed by many of the nation’s most successful entrepreneurs. Syracuse University reports that in 2022, Americans in the lowest income bracket were audited at a clip of 12.7 per 1,000, as opposed to a rate of just 2.3 per 1,000 for all other filers. Millionaires, albeit a far smaller sample size, were the only demographic audited at a higher rate than America’s poor, a whopping 23.8 per 1,000.
Janet Yellen, Charles Rettig, and the Biden administration’s lies about IRS funding have predictably gone the way of the Bush 43 administration’s infamous “Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction” and the Obama administration’s “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” We were told that The Patriot Act would never be used to spy on American citizens, until, of course, it was. American voters would be wise to learn that if a potential government program or spending increase sounds predatory, and looks predatory, it is probably predatory despite claims to the contrary by government officials and their enablers in the media. British theorist Stafford Beer coined the term “the purpose of a system is what it does” (POSIWID.) If the state consistently fails to deliver on its promises, consider the possibility that it is rarely honest about its intentions.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2024/04/16/irs-lied/?omhide=true&trk=rm
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The Latest Plan to Exacerbate California’s Housing Crisis
Against the backdrop of a national shortage of affordable housing, due in large part to government policies, California lawmakers want to restrict corporate investment in single-family rental properties. This would make the Golden State’s housing affordability crisis worse. Since California is often a bellwether for both federal and other states’ policies, renters should hope the flawed idea dies before it spreads.
One California proposal, Assembly Bill 2584, recently introduced by San Jose Democrat Alex Lee, would establish a quota system, banning “institutional investors that own more than 1,000 single-family homes from purchasing additional properties and converting them into rentals.” A second proposal, Senate Bill 1212, introduced by Berkeley Democrat Nancy Skinner, would prevent hedge funds and “other corporate investment entities” from buying single-family homes in California, starting next year.
Both lawmakers claim that deep-pocketed institutional investors, such as private-equity firms, hedge funds and real-estate investment trusts, buy so many single-family homes that first-time and low-income home buyers are priced out of the market. This claim shows how little these California lawmakers understand about the role most institutional investors play in the housing market.
The anticorporate housing crusaders overestimate the influence of institutional investors. According to the nonpartisan California Research Bureau, large institutional landlords own less than 2% of all single-family homes in the Golden State: 60,500 units statewide. Nationally, institutional investors owned only 5% of America’s 14 million single-family rentals in 2022, or approximately 700,000 units, according to MetLife Investment Management. Corporate investors don’t control a large enough share of the housing in any market either to dictate rental prices or to squeeze out desperate home buyers.
Despite their relatively small scale, however, corporate landlords are valuable niche participants in housing markets because they often purchase neglected properties and make them livable again. As Urban Institute researchers have noted, institutional investors can buy distressed homes in bulk, upgrade them and rent them out. Their lower investment costs and specialized expertise allow corporate landlords to make necessary repairs efficiently and economically—realizing economies of scale—expanding the supply of urgently needed move-in-ready rental homes.
The restrictions championed by Mr. Lee and Ms. Skinner would exclude these investors, exacerbating the shortage of affordable, single-family rental houses. Redfin reports that investors spend more than $100 billion nationally each year to buy and rehabilitate single-family homes. The solution to the housing shortage is more investment, not less.
California lawmakers have passed more than 100 laws to spur the construction of additional housing since 2017, yet they have failed to produce the promised construction boom that would drive down home prices. Many of the new laws have done the opposite, undermining the professed goals of affordable-housing champions.
Through their decisions and actions, institutional investors have been telling lawmakers that the way to ameliorate the affordable-housing crisis is to eliminate burdensome restrictions on home building and rehabilitation of existing properties, and to strengthen private-property rights.
Progressive California politicians say they want to restrict corporate investment in single-family rental markets because they think doing so would help everyday renters and home buyers. Instead, their proposals would force financial capital out, reduce the future stock of rental housing and increase rental prices. That isn’t an idea California should export.
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Anti-Hunting Laws Have Deadly Consequences
On March 23rd, California brothers, and avid Columbian blacktail deer hunters Taylen and Wyatt Brooks, 21, and 18, respectively, were shed hunting (bucks shed their antlers, typically in February) near Georgetown when they were attacked by a 90 pound male mountain lion. Since no game animals were in season at the time, both brothers were unarmed. The cat charged Wyatt first, knocking him to the ground and biting his face, at that point Taylen began to fight the lion in order to free his brother. Despite saving Wyatt from certain death, Taylen was bitten in the throat and killed by the predator.
“We would like to express our sincere thanks for the outpouring of support and prayers from family, friends and the community,” the Brooks/Welsh Family said in a press release obtained by outdoors/conservation based outlet MeatEater. “We are all devastated by the tragic loss of Taylen yet thankful Wyatt is still with us and are well-aware the outcome could have been even worse.” You can read a detailed report of the events from MeatEater here.
Mountain lion hunting was banned via ballot initiative of the California Wildlife Protection Act in 1990, and while the tragic death of Taylen Brooks was the first deadly lion attack in the state since 2004, there have been numerous attacks by lions including a 2022 instance of a lion breaking into a family’s home and attacking their dog, and a mother’s heroic 2021 fight with a lion in order to save her 5 year old son. Over 100 lions are legally killed annually in the state due to reports of attacks on pets and/or livestock depredation.
New Jersey was recently forced to re-open their black bear hunting season after skyrocketing numbers of bear encounters. Governor Phil Murphy signed an executive order banning bear hunting on state land in 2018, eventually rescinding the order in 2022. “I feel awful,” said the governor, “but I can’t violate what are obvious facts that are potentially undermining public safety, particularly among kids. I just can’t in good conscience go on in this direction.” Four bear attacks have occurred in the state since 2013, one fatal, including a young woman mauled in 2021 while checking her mail, along with hundreds of encounters by bears with pets and property.
Other elected officials seem determined to learn this lesson for themselves. Colorado Governor Jared Polis’s administration, spearheaded by the governor’s husband, vegan anti-hunting activist Marlon Reis, is currently waging a war on the state’s hunting community. If the administration is successful via ballot initiative, it will ban the hunting of mountain lions and bobcats. “The onslaught has now escalated with the Proposed Initiative 91, which aims to strip away the very foundation of Science-Based Wildlife Management. By doing so, it seeks to deprive Colorado’s Wildlife Managers and the sporting community of their rights to manage, pursue, and harvest these well-regulated species” says Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management. There have been numerous recent encounters with mountain lions in the Centennial State, including an attack on a man’s front porch in 2022. Colorado has, by far, the largest elk herd in the nation, along with healthy populations of mule deer, white-tailed deer, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, mountain goat, moose, and black bear, all of which would be negatively affected by the banning of big cat hunting.
The North American Model of Wildlife Conservation has been extraordinarily successful compared to conservation efforts anywhere else on Earth, but the work of men like Aldo Leopold and President Theodore Roosevelt is now under attack by adversarial politicians and their strategy of employing direct democracy via uninformed urban voters. Not only do hunting bans undermine the heritage of outdoorsmanship fundamental to the history of the nation, they also put people in danger. Whether it is a symptom of the fact that most Americans now live in major cities and are blissfully unaware of where their sustenance comes from, or the decades of anthropomorphism by Hollywood, anti-hunting legislation must be fought tooth and nail in order to preserve our customs and protect the vulnerable.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2024/04/23/anti-hunting-laws/?omhide=true
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Sidney Powell Handed Win After Judges Dismiss Disciplinary Effort by Texas State Bar
Sidney Powell, a lawyer who filed lawsuits after the 2020 election, got a win in Texas after an appeals court ruled that the Texas bar did not prove that she engaged in misconduct or fraud.
A panel of judges on the Fifth District of Texas Court of Appeals in Dallas ruled Wednesday that the state bar’s arguments lacked merit and evidence. They found that state bar prosecutors “employed a ’scattershot' approach to the case” that had alleged Ms. Powell did not have a reasonable basis to file lawsuits that challenged the 2020 election’s outcome in battleground states.
“The Bar employed a ‘scattershot’ approach to the case, which left this court and the trial court ‘with the task of sorting through the argument to determine what issue ha[d] actually been raised,'” Justice Dennise Garcia wrote in the court’s ruling. “Having done so, the absence of competent summary judgment compels our conclusion that the Bar failed to meet its summary judgment burden.”
A separate court had sided with Ms. Powell in the case last year, finding “numerous defects” in the evidence presented by the State Bar of Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline. The court also found that the bar couldn’t provide evidence that she filed frivolous lawsuits.
“Under these circumstances and on this record, we conclude the trial court did not err in granting Powell’s no-evidence motion for summary judgment,” the appeals court wrote.
The State Bar of Texas Commission for Lawyer Discipline has not yet issued a statement on the matter. A representative for the Texas State Bar told Reuters that the commission would meet to determine its next steps but declined to comment further.
“The Dallas Court of Appeals has affirmed the Texas state court’s dismissal of the Texas Bar’s case against Powell. After three years of litigation, the Court of Appeals held the Bar had no evidence Powell violated any disciplinary rule in filing four federal lawsuits in the aftermath of the 2020 election,” she said in a statement this week after the court’s decision.
In court papers filed with the appeals court, Ms. Powell disputed the bar’s allegations that she provided altered evidence in her legal filings. She said the documents were provided by other attorneys involved in the case.
The court appeared to agree with her arguments. “Regardless of whether the challenged conduct must be knowing, intentional, or otherwise, a question we need not resolve here, it is axiomatic that dishonesty involves some conscious perversion of truth,” the judge wrote Wednesday.
Following the 2020 contest, Ms. Powell was among the most prominent attorneys to file lawsuits, alleging there was enough fraud in battleground states that swung it in favor of President Joe Biden. A federal judge in Detroit sanctioned Ms. Powell and other lawyers in 2021 over the lawsuits.
The 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals largely upheld those sanctions, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to hear Ms. Powell’s appeal.
Ms. Powell in October 2023 pleaded guilty in Georgia and took a plea deal with Fulton County prosecutors after she was charged with illegally attempting to overturn the 2020 election results. President Trump, the Republican Party’s presumptive 2024 presidential nominee, has also been charged in the case.
He and more than a dozen other co-defendants in the case have pleaded not guilty. President Trump has said the Fulton County case is an attempt to interfere with the 2024 election, describing the charges as baseless.
Under the terms of her plea deal, Ms. Powell had to write an apology. “I apologize for my actions in connection with the events in Coffee County,” she wrote in the letter, made public in December.
Fani Willis, the embattled Democrat district attorney of Fulton County who presented the charges to a grand jury, said that the apology letters needed to include “real contrition” but that they did not need to be long.
Jenna Ellis, another lawyer who was charged and took a plea deal in Fulton County, also wrote an apology letter. However, she read hers aloud in court while pleading guilty.
In response to Ms. Powell’s apology letter, President Trump wrote on social media last year that Ms. Powell never worked for him in an official capacity.
“Sidney Powell was one of millions and millions of people who thought, and in ever increasing numbers still think, correctly, that the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged & stolen,” he wrote on Truth Social. He added that Ms. Powell “was not my attorney and never was.” If she was, “she would have been conflicted,” the former president wrote at the time.
“Ms. Powell did a valiant job of representing a very unfairly treated and governmentally abused General Mike Flynn, but to no avail. His prosecution, despite the facts, was ruthless. He was an innocent man, much like many other innocent people who are being persecuted by this now Fascist government of ours, and I was honored to give him a Full Pardon,” he added.
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Diverse Faith Groups Rally in Support of Bearded Atlantic City Fire Department Staffer
For more than 20 years, Alex Smith has worked for the Atlantic City, New Jersey, Fire Department, dedicating his life to serving his hometown.
In his current position as air mask technician, he fits masks and refills air tanks for firefighters engaged in fire suppression—an important role to ensure their safety while fires are raging.
For more than 20 years, Smith has also served as an ordained minister. He leads Community Harvesters Church, a vibrant local ministry dedicated to showing the love of Christ to the community. He and his church host a food pantry and tend a community garden to offer food and fresh produce for the elderly and financially struggling families.
The church also maintains a beautiful “tiny house” on church property for those in need of shelter.
His compassion also carries over to his fellow employees in the fire department. Smith serves as a chaplain in a program he started to provide a listening ear and spiritual support to those who regularly risk their lives to save others.
Smith’s religious beliefs and conscience require him to wear a beard to set a godly example for his congregation and follow the examples of the prophets and Jesus in Scripture.
Fire department policy, however, prohibits beards of any length.
Because Smith is an air mask technician and does not fight fires himself, he asked the city for a religious accommodation regarding his beard. After the city denied his request, he sued.
In 2023, a district court in New Jersey ruled for the city, concluding that accommodating Smith would be an “undue hardship” for the fire department because Smith could—hypothetically—be needed to fight a fire in the future. The district court ignored evidence that Smith had successfully passed a mask-fit test with his beard multiple times and that the masks used by the fire department are positive pressure masks, meaning that even if there were a slight leak, the firefighter still would not inhale any air contaminants.
But what constitutes an “undue hardship”?
The Supreme Court’s unanimous landmark ruling last year in Groff v. DeJoy determined “undue hardship” means a “substantial increased cost” to an operation or business, far more than the old de minimis standard courts often relied on.
Here, the city cannot show any increased costs because Smith’s beard would have no impact on his co-workers or his ability to safely do his job filling air tanks.
Other fire departments and the military have found ways to safely provide religious or medical accommodations to otherwise clean-shaven requirements. So, why does the city still deny Smith’s request for a religious accommodation, refusing to even engage him in discussions about how he could faithfully live out his beliefs on the job?
Smith has appealed the district court decision to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
He’s not alone in his conviction that he should not have to choose between his faith and his job. Recently, individuals and organizations representing a broad array of minority faiths filed six friend of the court briefs at the 3rd Circuit in Smith’s support, presenting the views of three Jewish organizations, the American Hindu Coalition, and two Sikh groups, as well as Muslim and Christian law professors and advocacy groups.
These briefs not only pointed out how the district court misapplied the law; they also highlighted a trend in other military, police, and fire department contexts toward safely accommodating religious beards, rather than excluding Sikhs, Muslims, and others from entire career paths.
Also voicing their support for Smith were four firefighters and paramedics—Jewish and Muslim—who in 2007 won a permanent injunction prohibiting Washington, D.C., from enforcing a requirement that they be clean-shaven. Now recently retired or nearing retirement, each worked for the District of Columbia’s fire department for more 30 years.
Some of these D.C. first responders regularly donned protective face masks and entered hazardous situations—something that Smith’s role does not even require. Their brief recounted their experience that first responders need not compromise their religious convictions to serve in the fire department.
Even though Smith doesn’t need to wear a mask to perform his job, Atlantic City still requires that he shave every day to keep his job. All the city’s concerns are hypothetical, but the harm to Smith from the city’s refusal to respect his faith is very real.
Given the robust protections of federal law and the Free Exercise Clause, as well as the experience of other fire departments safely offering religious accommodations to bearded employees, Smith should be allowed to continue to serve his community as an air mask technician while enjoying the religious freedom the law guarantees.
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24 April, 2024
Israel wants Hamas out of Gaza but even rooting it from the north hasn’t worked
Fighting between Israel and Hamas intensified in northern Gaza, the first battleground in the war, where 200 days into the conflict territory is still heavily contested and Israel says thousands of militants remain.
The renewed violence, in areas Israeli forces had previously largely cleared of Hamas, serves as a sobering example of the difficulty of consolidating gains as they prepare an offensive in the southern city of Rafah, the militant group’s last major bastion.
Stabilising northern Gaza will take time, said Amir Avivi, a former deputy commander in the Israeli military who oversaw operations in Gaza. “A huge challenge is not the first part, when you go full-scale and control an area: It’s maintaining and deepening that control,” said Avivi. “It’s a different kind of warfare.” Intense clashes have occurred in recent days in the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia, close to the fence with Israel, and in Gaza City, which before the war was the enclave’s most populous locale. Residents of the city reported multiple strikes in the Zeitoun neighbourhood.
The Israeli military’s Arabic-language spokesman in a message on X on Tuesday instructed people in the Beit Lahia area to immediately evacuate for their own safety, saying: “You are in a dangerous combat zone.”
Earlier Tuesday, the military said four rockets were launched from northern Gaza toward the Israeli city of Sderot on Tuesday morning, a reminder of the enduring ability of militants to target Israeli territory. All four rockets were intercepted, but a falling piece of shrapnel set fire to a warehouse, according to the local municipality.
Northern Gaza was the site of Israel’s first major operations against Hamas in the wake of attacks by the militants on Oct. 7 that killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities. The Israeli military launched a widespread aerial-bombing campaign there in the immediate aftermath of the attacks on southern Israel before beginning its ground invasion of the enclave in the area a few weeks later. More than 34,000 people have been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials. The numbers don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.
Israel considered northern Gaza the heart of the militant group’s intelligence and operational activities. Most Palestinians at the time fled south for safety at the direction of the Israeli military.
But even as the focus of the fighting gradually shifted south in Israel’s hunt for Hamas militants, northern Gaza remained a stubborn flashpoint in the war. Israeli forces largely dismantled Hamas’s combat battalions operating in northern Gaza, but Hamas fighters regrouped in smaller units, shifting to urban guerrilla-warfare tactics. There are still several thousand militants in northern Gaza, according to an Israeli defence official. Around 300,000 people still live there.
Ghassan Hisham, 43, a resident of Zeitoun, said artillery shelling in the area started on Monday evening and continued into Tuesday. Many of his neighbours fled. “I choose not to because we have a lot of children and adults, and we have nowhere else to go,” Hisham said. The violence was some of the worst he has witnessed since the early months of the war, he said.
Khalil Kahlout, a resident of the Jabalia neighbourhood in northern Gaza City, said that there have been frequent air strikes and shelling in nearby Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun since Monday morning and that the intensity of the violence has picked up.
“Some residents of Beit Lahia have fled to shelters in Jabalia because of the shelling,” he said. “The bombardment continues.”
The Israeli military on Tuesday morning said it had struck 25 targets across the strip over the past day, including rocket-launch posts.
The clashes in the north come as Israeli forces have temporarily scaled back the number of troops and the intensity of their operations in the Gaza Strip. Earlier this month, Israel’s military said it called up two reserve brigades to the enclave as Israel prepares a ground incursion in Rafah, where they believe Hamas has its four last battalions. That is also where Israeli officials believe some hostages kidnapped from Israel on Oct. 7 are being held.
More than one million Palestinians who have fled the fighting elsewhere in the strip are currently sheltering in Rafah. The city is also the hub for the humanitarian response for the whole of Gaza, where the majority of the population of 2.2 million is suffering from acute levels of hunger and can’t access adequate medical care.
Israel says it will ensure civilians can be evacuated from battle zones before a ground incursion in Rafah, something on which the Biden administration has repeatedly pressed the Israelis.
Israeli forces want to prevent civilians and militants reaching the north when they leave Rafah and are working to bolster their control of the strip of land that cuts the enclave in two.
“That’s important because there is a vast infrastructure of terror in Gaza. Dealing with the remaining tunnels, weapons, and [improvised explosive devices] spread all around will take a long time. It cannot be done if you have hundreds of thousands of citizens moving around,” said Avivi, who is also founder of the Israel Defense and Security Forum think tank.
Talks for a ceasefire have stalled in part over whether Israel will concede to Hamas’s demand to allow the unrestricted return of Gazans to the northern part of the enclave, in addition to the withdrawal of Israeli troops from populated areas – moves that if done in tandem could allow Hamas to regain power in the strip and survive the war.
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Even as Americans grow increasingly pessimistic and agitated about their personal finances, Congress is about to ask struggling families to cover the cost of more funding for Ukraine.
Ukraine aid just prolongs the war. Very foolish
The $95 billion foreign aid package adopted Saturday by the House and facing near-certain passage in the Senate includes an additional $61 billion for Ukraine. Once added to the money already appropriated for Ukraine since 2022, the United States will have spent approximately $173 billion.
That translates to more than $1,300 per American household, according to Heritage Foundation economist Richard Stern, director of the Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget.
“This will continue to drive higher inflation and interest rates and increase the cost of living for Americans,” Stern told The Daily Signal. “No matter where you live, every American family will pay the price.”
Stern explained that the funding isn’t offset with spending cuts and will instead be added to “the national credit card and by printing cash out of thin air at the Fed.” He warned that it will devalue the U.S. dollar as well as the paychecks and life savings of all Americans.
After three years of Bidenomics, Americans are feeling exasperated about the economy, pollster Scott Rasmussen discovered in an RMG Research survey conducted earlier this month.
Only 19% of Americans surveyed say their personal finances are improving. That number has dropped five percentage points since January and is at its lowest point in 18 months.
Nearly half, 44%, say their personal finances are getting worse.
By comparison, just 20% believe their incomes are keeping pace. That number is at its lowest level since September 2022.
Heritage Action for America Executive Vice President Ryan Walker lamented that Washington politicians appear disconnected from the economic struggles of many Americans. Speaking to “The Daily Signal Podcast,” Walker said Congress’ latest spending spree will negatively affect Americans’ personal finances.
“The American people see it at the grocery store, they see it on their credit card bills, they see it in their mortgage rates, they see it in their credit card rates. They experience this on a daily basis,” Walker said. “Many people in Washington, D.C., may be so disconnected from the struggles of the average person in their community that they don’t take those factors into consideration. And they should.”
While frustration mounts among everyday Americans, lawmakers in Washington will soon have spent more on foreign aid to Ukraine than the annual wages paid to every American manufacturing worker who produces motor vehicles, vehicle parts, and other transportation equipment. It’s also more than the annual wages paid to every American worker in all agriculture, mining, and oil and gas extraction industries, Stern calculated.
With the Senate set to approve $61 billion more for Ukraine—along with $34 billion for Israel and the Indo-Pacific—lawmakers have made no attempt to offset the additional spending. On its own, the $95 billion package would cost $730 per household.
“Every time the federal government spends money, it forcefully takes that money from hard-working Americans,” Stern explained. “Even if you don’t pay federal income taxes, you still pay through inflation taxes and slower overall economic growth.”
The consequences of profligate spending aren’t just reflected in the national debt, already at $34.6 trillion and growing at a record pace. Stern noted that high interest rates for mortgages, for example, force some Americans out of the housing market or make it more costly for others to buy a home.
When the government borrows money this way, driving interest rates higher, it does so by promising to tax someone else or print more money in the future, Stern said.
As the government is now planning to lift yet another $95 billion out of the economy, the storm clouds are gathering. Mortgage rates jumped 0.2 percentage points in just a week. Chase Bank CEO Jamie Dimon and other leading bankers see mortgage rates climbing to about 8% with credit card debt already at record levels.
“Never forget,” Stern said, “the government has a monopoly on legal violence and doesn’t have any reason to care about your quality of life.”
Rasmussen’s poll was conducted by RMG Research from April 3-4. It surveyed 1,000 registered voters and has a plus or minus 3.1 percentage point margin of error.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/23/how-much-are-paying-ukraine-aid-economist-crunches-numbers/
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Former British PM Liz Truss Warns About Global Threat of the Left
Liz Truss served as prime minister of the United Kingdom and leader of the Conservative Party from September to October 2022. She is the author of “Ten Years to Save the West.”
Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss spoke Monday at The Heritage Foundation about how the United States and the United Kingdom are facing very challenging forces in the global Left, not just in terms of their extremist activists, but also in the power they hold in our institutions. (Heritage founded The Daily Signal in 2014.)
She warned that conservatives must create a stronger infrastructure to take on the Left—which is well-funded, activist, and has many friends in high places—by recruiting more conservative activists and candidates who can fight in the trenches in the ideological war that we now face.
Excerpts from her remarks are below.
Why am I launching “Ten Years to Save the West” in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom? Well, I like to think of the United States of America as Britain’s greatest invention, albeit a slightly inadvertent invention. And if you look at our history, from Magna Carta to the Bill of Rights to the American Constitution, we have developed and perfected representative democracy.
And if you look at what is going on in our societies, first of all, the Brexit vote back in 2016 and then the election of President Donald Trump later that year, you can see the same desires of our people for change and the same desires for those conservative values and that sovereignty.
And if you look at the battle for conservatism now and the frequency with which we get new prime ministers in the United Kingdom and the frequency with which you get new speakers of the House here in the United States, we can see again that there is a battle for the heart and soul of conservatism on both sides of the Atlantic. And I think that battle is very important. Because, let’s be honest, we have not been winning against the global Left.
If you look at the history since the turn of the millennium, the Left have had the upper hand. And it’s not the old-fashioned Left who used to argue about the means of production and economic inequality. It’s the new Left who have insidious ideas that challenge our very way of life.
Whether it’s about climate extremism that doesn’t believe in economic growth, whether it’s about challenging the very idea of a man and a woman and biological sex, whether it’s about the human rights culture that’s been bedded into so much of our society that makes us unable to deal with illegal immigration—those new ideas have been promulgated by the global Left and they have been successful in infiltrating quite a large proportion of society and a large part of our institutions.
Let’s just look at the state of economics. I am a supply-sider. I know that it works. We saw it work under [U.S. President Ronald] Reagan and [U.K. Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher, and yet we’ve seen the domination of Keynesian economics in recent years, bloated size of government, huge debts in both of our countries.
On the immigration and human rights culture, look at what is going on now on American university campuses where it is not safe anymore to be Jewish, or the streets of London where a Jewish man could not cross the road during yet another appalling protest, or the fact that we can’t seem to deport illegal immigrants either from your southern border or the small boats that are crossing the channel.
Or take wokery, another bad neo-Marxist idea developed from [Michel] Foucault and all those crazy post-modernists in the 1960s, the idea that biological sex is not a reality.
We now have President [Joe] Biden introducing regulations around Title IX, which means that girls could see biological boys in their changing rooms, in their locker rooms, in their school restrooms and not be able to do anything about it. And if they complain about it, they could be the ones guilty of harassment. How on earth can that be happening in our society?
Or the climate extremists who aren’t satisfied with just stopping coal-fired power stations here in America, [liquefied natural gas] terminals being built, fracking in the United Kingdom, but want to go further. Whether it’s imposing electric vehicles or air-source heat pumps or extra taxes on the public. Meanwhile, our adversaries in China are busy building coal-fired power stations every week.
I see that as unilateral economic disarmament in the middle of what is a various, serious threat to the West.
So how has it ended up that after the turn of the millennium, despite the fact that we have many conservative intellectuals and politicians, why have our institutions, why has so much of our public discourse shifted to the Left?
Well, first of all, too many conservatives have not been making the argument. Now, I call them conservatives in name only, CINOs. I know in America you call them RINOs. But these conservatives in name only, rather than taking on those ludicrous ideas, instead have tried to appease and meet them halfway.
Why have they done this? Well, first of all, they don’t want to look mean. They don’t want to look like they’re against human rights. They don’t want to look like they’re against the environment. They don’t want to be mean to transgender people. They’ve allowed those arguments to affect their views on what is right and wrong. But it’s also more cynical than that.
If you want to get a good job after politics, if you want to get into the corporate boardroom, there are a group of acceptable views and opinions that you should hold. And most of them are on that list. If you want to be popular and get invited to a lot of dinner parties in Washington, D.C., or London, there are reviews on that list that you should hold. And people have chosen dinner parties over principle.
But the other thing I think we’ve missed on the conservative side of the argument, and I put my hands up to this, is the rising power of the administrative state. The fact that power—which previously lay in the hands of democratically elected politicians, like them or not they can be voted out of office—is now in the hands of so-called independent bodies, whether it’s central banks, whether it’s government agencies, or whether it’s the civil service themselves.
And what we’re seeing in bureaucracy in the United Kingdom, and I think here in the United States as well, is a growing activist class of civil servants who have views on transgender ideology or climate or human rights, which they are keen to promote in their roles.
I saw this firsthand and one of the key points the book is about is my battles that I had with that institutional mindset. And there’s a phrase that we use in Britain called “consent and evade.” Quite often the officials will be very polite on the request, but it will take a very long time to do if it’s something like helping deport illegal immigrants or sort out the Rwanda scheme. If it’s something that they like, like dealing with climate change, that will be expedited.
And I think it’s very difficult for people who haven’t worked in government to understand just how cumbersome and how treacle-like it has become. And I don’t know if that’s a product of the modern era, if it’s a product of the online society, but it is very, very difficult now to deliver conservative policies.
Now, I did many jobs in many different government departments. I was in the justice department, the environment department, the education department, the treasury, I was in trade, I was in the foreign office, and I faced battles against activist lawyers, against environmentalists, against left-wing educationalists.
But what I thought when I ran to be prime minister in 2022 is I thought I had the opportunity to change things because that was surely the apex of power. I hadn’t been able to change it as environment secretary or trade secretary, but as prime minister, surely that was the opportunity for me to be able to really change things.
Now, there’s a bit of a spoiler alert about the book. It didn’t quite work out. I ended up being the shortest-serving British prime minister as a result of trying to take on these forces. And the particular thing that I tried to take them on was the whole issue of our economy.
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I come today with a warning to the United States of America. I fear the same forces will be coming for President Donald Trump if he wins the election this November. There is a huge resistance to pro-growth supply-side policies that will deliver economic dynamism and help reduce debt.
What the international institutions and the economic establishment want to see is they want to see higher taxes, higher spending, and more big government, and more regulation. They do not want to see that challenged. And we’ve already heard noises from the Congressional Budget Office and elements of the United States market about the financial stability situation.
So, what have I learned from my experience? What have I learned from my time in office? I have learned that we are facing really quite challenging forces of the global Left, not just in terms of their virulent activists making extremist documents, but also the power they hold in our institutions. And that leads me to believe that what conservatives need is what I describe as a bigger bazooka.
Now, what do I mean by a bigger bazooka? Well, first of all, I mean that we need really strong conservative political infrastructure to be able to take on the Left. They are well-funded, they are activists, they have many friends in high places. And we need strength and depth in our political operation.
That’s why I’m working on a new political movement in the U.K. called Popular Conservatism, which is about bringing in more activists, more candidates, more potential legislators, more operators who can actually fight in the trenches against the Left in the ideological warfare that we now face.
The second thing we need to do is we need to dismantle the administrative state. And there are lots of people I speak to who say, “It’s just because you ministers aren’t tough enough. If only you were a bit bolder in taking on things, if only you had a bit more political will, you would be able to deliver.”
Those people are not right. Until we actually change the system, we are not going to be able to deliver conservative policy such as the depths of resistance in our institutions and our bureaucracy that we do have to change things first.
And what does that mean? Well, you’re ahead of us in the United States in that the president gets to appoint 3,000 people into the government positions. In Britain it’s only 100 people. And those 100 people are relatively junior. They’re not in charge of departments. So, I believe we need to change that in Britain. We need to properly appoint senior figures in our bureaucracy.
We also need to deal with the proliferation of unaccountable bureaucratic bodies. They have to go. There has to be a real bonfire of the quangos.
But even here in the United States, policies like Schedule F are going to be very, very important in order to be able to deliver a conservative agenda. And the project that Heritage is sponsoring, Project 2025, is another vital part of building that institutional infrastructure that can actually deliver conservative policies. Having seen what I’ve seen on both sides of the Atlantic, I think both of those things are vital in order for conservative policies to deliver.
But we can’t just deal with the administrative state at a national level because what we’ve also got is the global administrative state. We have the United Nations, the World Health Organization, we have the [Conference of the Parties] process.
And one of the things I tried to do was stop Britain hosting COP in Glasgow. I failed. But I want to see us in the future abandon that process. The best people to make decisions are people that are democratically elected in sovereign nations. It is not people sitting on international bodies who are divorced from the concerns of the public.
The final thing conservatives need to do is end appeasement. And by ending appeasement, I’m talking about the appeasement of woke Orwellianism at home as well as the appeasement of totalitarianism abroad. We have to do both of those things because both of those things are threatening our way of life.
Totalitarian regimes like China, Russia, and Iran have to be stood up to, the only thing they understand is strength. And now the military aid budget has been passed through Congress. There needs to be more clarity about how Russia can be defeated and how China and Iran will also be taken on. And in order to achieve that, we are going to need a change in personnel at the White House.
Now, I worked in Cabinet whilst Donald Trump was president and while President Biden was president. And I can assure you, the world felt safer when Donald Trump was in office. 2024 is going to be a vital year, and it’s the reason that I wanted to bring my book out now. Because getting a conservative back in the White House is critical to taking on the global Left. And I hate to think what life would be like with another four years of appeasement of the woke Left in the United States, as well as continued weakness on the international stage.
But my final message is that winning in 2025 or winning in 2024 and going into government in 2025 is not enough. It’s not enough just to win. It’s not enough just to have those conservative policies. That there will be huge resistance from the administrative state and from a Left in politics that has never been more extremist or more virulent.
And that is why it will need all the resources of the American conservative movement, think tanks like Heritage, and hopefully your allies in the United Kingdom to succeed. But you must succeed because the free world needs you.
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Australian unions’ vile anti-Israel diatribe
As Jewish families leave an empty place at their Passover tables in memory of the hostages still missing at the hands of Hamas, comments by ACTU president Michele O’Neil and secretary Sally McManus about Israel are ignorant. The pair have ignited a battle with Australia’s Jewish community, calling for the Albanese government to end military trade with Israel, enforce sanctions against Israeli government officials and inject a further $100m of humanitarian aid to Gaza and the West Bank. Bob Hawke, a former ACTU president who warned “If the bell tolls for Israel, it won’t just toll for Israel, it will toll for all mankind”, would be horrified.
In demanding immediate recognition of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, the union bosses do not appear to understand why a two-state solution is out of the question until Hamas, a proscribed terrorist organisation that controls Gaza, is defeated. Or does it not bother Ms O’Neil and Ms McManus that Iran is running a war to annihilate Israel through proxies, including Hamas, and is an implacable opponent of the US and its allies? The ACTU is living in “an alternative reality”, Zionist Federation of Australia president Jeremy Leibler said.
The union bosses’ views are immoral in view of the brutality and values of Hamas, seen in the unprovoked attack that killed 1200 people in Israel on October 7 and in the terrorist group’s kidnappings of 250 Israelis. The comments are contrary to Australia’s strategic and economic interests, and could help fuel anti-Semitism that has reared its ugly head in the past six months.
Israel, the Middle East’s only democracy, has superior military technology and outstanding intelligence capabilities. It has been a staunch Australian ally for more than 75 years and has “shared intelligence with us and thwarted terrorist attacks against our own interests, including against members of the Australian Defence Force”, as Peter Dutton said in his Tom Hughes Oration in Sydney a fortnight ago. In July 2017, a tip from Israeli intelligence helped authorities stop a plot to blow up an Etihad Airways flight from Sydney to Abu Dhabi with a bomb smuggled in a meat grinder. Two brothers behind the plot were sentenced to 40 and 36 years’ jail.
Nor is the ACTU’s opposition to Australian companies supplying parts used in supply chains for F-35 fighter jets legitimate. Doling out bad advice on foreign and strategic policy is not the ACTU’s role, which is promoting the pay and conditions of its members. Rank-and-file workers deserve better from highly paid leaders who are remote from the interests of the nation and its allies. The Albanese government should ignore these officials’ rantings.
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23 April, 2024
Looking for Flynn effects in a recent online U.S. adult sample: Examining shifts within the SAPA Project
This is an heroic study. It tackles a very difficult question: Are average IQ levels rising or falling?
IQ is under heavy genetic influence so, given the slow rate of human evolution, we should not expect to see much change over the last 100 years or so. And for a long time that was assumed. WHEN scores were collected was not much attended to. Jim Flynn, however upset the applecart by noting that average IQ levels seemed to be rising. So: Are we really getting smarter on average?
There has now been a lot of research and discussion on that question, ably summarized in the article below. It is a strongly held view among many researchers that the gains are artifactual -- i.e. not real. In particular it is well accepted that performance on paper and pencil tests is influenced to some extent by non-genetic influences -- education in particulr.
IQ scores increase markedly in line with better educational performance so improved education might be what is showing up in improved IQ scores. Levels of education have increased markedly over the years. Jobs that once needed an apprenticeship only now need an university degree -- e.g. primary school teaching.
I must say that I have noted that in my own family. My grandfather never went to school; my father got only as far as 6th grade while I have a doctorate. So generational differences in education are certainly available as an explanation of education-linked effects.
So the rises in average IQ scores observed by Flynn need no complex explanation. And their recent levelling off could well indicate that the maximum effect of education on IQ scores has now been reached
The article below does however put the cat amomng the pigeons. It says that average levels of IQ are now FALLING
I don't find that surprising. The Leftist influence on education is now strong. And it is in many cases a very negative influence. So we now have the politics of mathematics for example, which is as nutty as you get. And university graduates who can barely read and write are now a thing. And there is even suggestion that learning or not learning cursive handwriting has an effect on IQ
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13273363/handwriting-extinction-IQs-begin-fall.html
So the Leftist destruction of traditional education could well be reflectd in recent IQ scores. Education giveth and education taketh away.
We have to restrain our enthusiasm about the study below, however. It is a study of responses from internet volunteers. And it is perfectly clear that the sample is not a representative one. Just the gender imbalance noted shows that.
Such samples are now widely used in survey reseach and the imbalances in them can theoretically be corrected for statistically -- but how do you correct for enthuiasm/boredom and the many other influences that motivate the answering of internet questionnaires? It cannot be done. There is no substitute for actual random sampling of a specified population.
There is in fact no completely randown sample of any human population. I have tried many methods so the failings are well-known to me. Even compelled responding -- as with army recruits -- is imperfect. Some respondents will resent the task and not give useful answers. I have looked with sorrow at patterns of zig-ag and all-agree responses to my questionnaires from military recruits.
So the best we can hope for is COMPARABLE sampling and it is clear that internet sampling is not comparable to the pencil and paper responses in school-rooms that is most of the data on IQ scores from the past
Elizabeth M. Dworak et al.
Abstract
Compared to European countries, research is limited regarding if the Flynn effect, or its reversal, is a current phenomenon in the United States. Though recent research on the United States suggests that a Flynn effect could still be present, or partially present, among child and adolescent samples, few studies have explored differences of cognitive ability scores among US adults. Thirteen years of cross-sectional data from a subsample of adults (n = 394,378) were obtained from the Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment Project (SAPA Project) to examine if cognitive ability scores changed within the United States from 2006 to 2018. Responses to an overlapping set of 35 (collected 2006–2018) and 60 (collected 2011–2018) items from the open-source multiple choice intelligence assessment International Cognitive Ability Resource (ICAR) were used to examine the trends in standardized average composite cognitive ability scores and domain scores of matrix reasoning, letter and number series, verbal reasoning, and three-dimensional rotation. Composite ability scores from 35 items and domain scores (matrix reasoning; letter and number series) showed a pattern consistent with a reversed Flynn effect from 2006 to 2018 when stratified across age, education, or gender. Slopes for verbal reasoning scores, however, failed to meet or exceed an annual threshold of |0.02| SD. A reversed Flynn effect was also present from 2011 to 2018 for composite ability scores from 60 items across age, education, and gender. Despite declining scores across age and demographics in other domains of cognitive ability, three-dimensional rotation scores showed evidence of a Flynn effect with the largest slopes occurring across age stratified regressions.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160289623000156?via%3Dihub
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Middle School Girls Refused to Compete Against a 'Trans' Athlete
Several middle school girls who were forced to compete against a biological male who thinks he’s a woman boycotted the competition, according to footage obtained by Outkick.
The incident came after a federal appeals court struck down a West Virginia law that protects female athletes from male athletes who think they are women, which Townhall covered. The child at the center of the lawsuit, Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 13-year-old “transgender” child, argued that the law prevented “her” from competing in girls’ competitions.
On Thursday, several females “stepped out” during the shot put and discus competitions at a track and field event that included Pepper-Jackson, who reportedly competes for the Bridgeport Middle School girls’ track and field team (via Outkick):
Bridgeport participated in the 2024 Harrison County Middle School Championships on Thursday afternoon at Liberty High School in Clarksburg, West Virginia.
Seven schools comprised the meet: Bridgeport, Heritage Christian, Notre Dame, South Harrison, Lincoln, Mountaineer (Clarksburg) and Washington Irving.
Several members of one of the girls' shot put teams "stepped in" then "stepped out" to protest the inclusion of a transgender athlete in the meet. The transgender athlete competes in both shot put and discus throwing.
When each of the Lincoln girls had her name called to compete, she stepped into the ring but instead of throwing the shot, she stepped down and refused to participate. They did the same for the discus event.
Riley Gaines, a former NCAA athlete who competed against Will “Lia” Thomas, a so-called “transgender” athlete, applauded the girls for stepping out of the competition.
“Middle school girls leading the way for all of us. Beyond brave!,” Gaines wrote on X. “Say no to cheating males.”
“It's a sad day when 13-14yr old girls have to be the adults in the room, but I couldn't be more inspired by and proud of these girls,” Gaines wrote in a follow-up post. “Enough is enough.”
Last week, Biden administration released new rules to protect LGBTQ+ individuals under the federal civil rights legislation Title IX. Going forward, the basis of “sex” now encompasses the concept of “gender identity.”
“With its new Title IX rewrite, the Biden administration is unilaterally erasing fifty years of equal opportunity law for women. The president and his administration can't act like they care about women or our opportunities and then go and wipe out women’s protections under the country’s landmark sex equality law,” Gaines said in response.
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NYC Man Convicted Over Gunsmithing Hobby After Judge Says 2nd Amendment 'Doesn't Exist in This Courtroom'
Extra-ordinary judicial misbehavior
A Brooklyn man has been convicted of 13 weapons charges after having been arrested and charged in 2022 for building his own firearms. Dexter Taylor’s ordeal could become a landmark Second Amendment case in light of the Bruen ruling handed down in the same year.
The jury found Taylor guilty of second-degree criminal possession of a loaded weapon, four counts of third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, five counts of criminal possession of a firearm, second-degree criminal possession of five or more firearms, unlawful possession of pistol ammunition, violation of certificate of registration, prohibition on unfinished frames or receivers. Two lesser charges, including third-degree criminal possession of three or more firearms and third-degree possession of a weapon, were not voted on.
Taylor, a 52-year-old New York native and a software engineer, discovered the world of gunsmithing years ago. He decided to take it up as a hobby and possibly turn it into a business later. However, when a joint ATF/NYPD task force discovered he was legally buying parts from various companies, they opened up an investigation that led to a SWAT raid and arrest.
He is currently being jailed on Rikers Island as he awaits sentencing. Taylor’s conviction highlights the ongoing battle for gun rights. During an interview with Vinoo Varghese, Taylor’s defense lawyer, he detailed how Taylor’s trial proceeded and highlighted a distinct bias in favor of the prosecution.
Varghese described how Taylor became fascinated by weapon science during the COVID-19 lockdowns, which inspired him to take up his gunsmithing hobby. “He ended up building, I believe it was eight pistols and five rifles or six rifles, AR-style rifles, and then eight or nine Glock pistols that he built,” Varghese said.
In an interview prior to his conviction, Taylor told RedState:
I found out that you can actually legally buy a receiver and you can machine that receiver to completion, and you buy your parts and you put them together and you’ve got a pistol or a rifle. And once I saw that I was hooked. I was like, ‘This is the coolest thing ever. This is the most cool thing you could possibly do in your machine shop.’
From the beginning of Taylor’s trial, it was evident that the court would be biased against the defendant, according to Varghese, who explained that two judges presided over his case before the current official, Judge Abena Darkeh, took over.
The judge disrupted Varghese’s opening statement multiple times as he tried to set the stage for Taylor’s defense. Even further, she admonished the defense to refrain from mentioning the Second Amendment during the trial. Varghese told RedState:
She told us, ‘Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.'
Varghese said he had filed the appropriate paperwork to “preserve these arguments for appeal” but that the judge "rejected these arguments, and she went out of her way to limit me.”
During the trial, the prosecution attempted to paint Taylor as a dangerous individual who was building dangerous firearms in his basement. In this vein, the prosecution objected to allowing Taylor’s family in the courtroom to show support, nor did they allow his upstairs neighbor, who knew about Tayor’s hobby, to testify on his behalf. Varghese described the prosecutor’s opening statement:
He opens up, and he says that Mr. Taylor had a parade of horror. He was building this horrible place. When they saw this horror that he was making under the noses of his neighbors because all of those guns intended to hit their targets, basically implying that he was going to do some harm with these things.
When Varghese countered this narrative during his opening statement, the judge interrupted him again. “There’s no crime here, there’s no allegation of violence,” Varghese recounted, saying, “I got up and said, ‘You’re going to learn what Dexter is, who he is. You’re going to learn that he never fired these guns.’”
The judge interrupted again and asked the lawyers to come to her chambers for the second time.
Varghese explained that he believed the only chance of having the case go in his client’s favor was through jury nullification, which occurs when members of a jury believe a defendant violated a law, but decide against prosecuting them because they disagree with the law itself, or other reasons.
Judge Darkeh attempted to shut this argument down and led the jury to believe they would face consequences if they did not vote to convict Taylor. In reality, this is not the case. Jury nullification is not illegal, according to Varghese
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West Australian Liberal Party to ban transgender drugs for kids
A pledge by Western Australia’s Liberal leader to ban the use of puberty blockers in children could be the start of a nationwide political battle on the issue, with party leaders in other states confirming they were scrutinising practices in the wake of a landmark United Kingdom review.
Libby Mettam on Monday declared that the Liberal Party, if elected, would ban the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormone treatments and surgical intervention for children under 16 for the purpose of gender transition.
She said her decision was based on the recent findings of the UK Cass Review – handed down this month – which recommended the National Health Service exercise “extreme caution” in prescribing masculinising or feminising hormones to under-18s.
The NHS England had already stopped the routine prescription of puberty blockers in the weeks leading up to the release of the Cass report, while two Scottish health boards have since said they were pausing the prescription of puberty blockers for children. The likes of Sweden and Finland had earlier introduced restrictions on the use of the drugs.
Ms Mettam said the Cass Review was the largest of its kind and had identified the long-term and permanent harm caused by interventions being used in WA.
“When experts are saying that the permanent side-effects can be liver disease, heart disease, obesity, infertility and other conditions, we must act,” she said.
“We owe it to the next generation of Western Australia to utilise and listen to the best evidence.”
Around 100 children a year are treated by WA’s Gender Diversity Service, according to data tabled in state parliament, and the youngest child to receive treatment last year was 10. There were 63 young people on puberty blockers in WA at the end of March, representing just 0.03 per cent of 12-17-year-olds in the state.
WA Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson accused Ms Mettam of politicising young people “to appease extremists in the Liberal Party”, and noted that a 2021 review of the state’s Gender Diversity Service found it to be sound and appropriate.
“The decision to use puberty blockers is rare and not made lightly. The decision is made between clinicians and families, after a comprehensive mental health and multidisciplinary team assessment,” Ms Sanderson said.
“It is not appropriate for politicians to interfere in clinical decisions.”
Ms Mettam denied the policy position was driven by ideology, instead arguing a precautionary approach was needed at a time when restrictions were being put in place in countries around the world.
Other opposition leaders on Monday echoed Ms Mettam’s concerns about the latest findings on gender treatments.
A spokesman for Queensland’s Liberal National Party said the party was very cognisant of the concerns around the “questionable practices” around gender services in the state.
The Queensland government earlier this year launched a review into the state’s Children’s Gender Service, which treats around 1000 patients a year, after several pediatricians called for a moratorium on gender treatments on children.
“We are awaiting the findings of the inquiry that the government promised would be completed by April,” the LNP spokesman said.
“We are calling on the government to release the terms of reference for the inquiry, and the inquiry report in full once it is completed.”
Victorian Liberal opposition health spokeswoman Georgie Crozier confirmed she too had been examining the findings out of the UK.
“The Cass Review is an important review that should not be dismissed,” Ms Crozier said.
“There are a range of medical views into this matter that need to be taken into consideration, and we will be guided by those medical and health professionals.” Dr Hilary Cass’s review this month found “remarkably weak” evidence around treatments such as puberty blockers, with results of studies either exaggerated or misrepresented by people on all sides of the debate to support their views.
The reality, Dr Cass wrote, is that there was “no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress”.
The findings of the Cass Review and the election commitment by Ms Mettam have been criticised by advocacy groups.
Equality Australia chief executive Anna Brown said matters of gender transition were deeply personal decisions that should be left to young people and the doctors and parents who support them.
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22 April, 2024
The 20 questions every woman MUST ask to see if she's compatible with a man - by a woman who says she's found the perfect formula for love
There are a lot of articles online of this kind and this list is pretty idosyncratic. I would meet a lot of her criteria but my liking for hamburgers would rule me out. It would rule a lot of men out. So she is good at reducing her options, which is rarely wise. She actually seems rather nutty to me. No wonder she is single
But the whole assumption underlying her ideas is false. You can find many tales of people who have large incompatibilities but who nonetheless get on well. "Shopping-lists" for a partner are simply foolish. I am a psychologist and I know well the broad outlines of successfil matches but broad outlines are all that you can reliably find. I am sorry to be corny but Cupid's arrow strikes where it will. "Good" matches will often not work and "bad" matches sometimes will.
In my last 60 years I have had many relationships, including 4 marriages, and there have been many differences between the ladies concerned.
And my current relationship is an extreme example of that. She has many autistic characteristics and our incompatilities are huge. For instance, I am an orthodox scientist but she thinks the earth is flat! And yet the arrow has struck. We have a laughter-filled relationship that gives every signs of being "until death do us part". It is in some ways the worst relationship I have ever had but in other ways the best. But I am very glad of it. We are in our third year together and have certainly had storms between us but there is a glue that keeps us together despite that.
I have always worked on a very simple assumption. If the lady is very intelligent and likes classical music that is enough. My present lady scores on those two things. Beyond that, I think all differences can be negotiated. But that is just me. It is no guide to anyone else.
I am not alone in being skeptical of "red flags" There is an article below by Hannah Vanderheide, a much wiser woman, who is MARRIED and loves her husband despite his imperfections
But on to a lady of the lists:
By Julie Silver
You may imagine the perfect first date should include flowers, candles and perhaps some sultry background music to set the mood.
My first date must-have, however, is something rather different: a list of 20 questions for any potential suitor, enabling me efficiently to weed out any dating duds, and easily identify those precious ‘keepers’.
Among other things, my dating questionnaire allows me to discover whether my potential Mr Right likes quinoa or chips, is in bed by 9.30pm, like myself, and, vitally, whether he speaks kindly of his mother.
On a deeper level, it helps me quickly establish a picture of the heart and soul of the man, whether he is trustworthy and if we might be compatible. Time is of the essence when you get to 54 and are still single, after all!
Clearly, I am very fussy when it comes to dating. But why shouldn’t we women of a certain age be fussy? After all, I’ve been dating for nearly half my life, now, and simply haven’t the time or patience to leave much to chance any more. That’s why I wholly agree with TV presenter Trisha Goddard who — with two divorces, and 64 years on the clock — said last month that she gave a questionnaire to the man who is now her fiance in order to ‘cut the c***’. She said her questionnaire meant she didn’t waste time dating someone who would ultimately not be the right fit for her.
Some might think this approach is unromantic, or impatient — but to me, it just sounds like good sense.
Because there are some definite romantic red lines for me that instantly rule out potential Romeos. For example, as a nutrition and wellness consultant, it’s important any partner of mine doesn’t mistreat their body or drink too much. I also prefer to sleep with my head on an incline — raised higher than my feet — as studies have shown it can be good for your health. So if a man couldn’t get comfy in my specially adapted bed, that would be something of a deal-breaker for me.
Aside from this, I’d love someone with whom I can enjoy day trips and holidays. Someone to laugh with. Looks? I admit I prefer dark features, but they must have a friendly, smiley disposition. And if a man remembered my favourite flowers are freesias, then that would mean the world to me.
In my 20s, I told my father about the kind of qualities I wanted in a man and he replied, ‘Julie, enjoy spinsterhood!’ But the reality is, like so many middle-aged women, I’m at the stage of life when looks just aren’t enough of a pull any more
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Attacking Leftist racism
Two books: Andre Archie (The Virtue of Color-Blindness) and Coleman Hughes (The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America)"
Their object is the racialism that has poisoned America. It goes by different names: critical race theory, antiracism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Whatever it’s called, it holds that color, not character, is the locus of moral merit; that differences in material outcomes among color groups are the prime evil; that these differences come from oppression; and that to cure this oppression, society must discriminate against oppressors. In short, it holds that individuals of certain colors ought to be sacrificed to benefit groups of another color.
Hughes calls this ideology “neoracism,” and Archie, “corrosive barbarism.”
Each frames his book as a defense of color-blindness—the principle, in Hughes’s words, that “we should treat people without regard to race, both in our public policy and in our private lives.” Yet both authors are frustrated that their books are even necessary. How on earth, Archie seems to wonder, could the “noble racial tradition of color-blindness” retreat in the face of race hucksters peddling “intellectual nonsense” to “useful idiots” who go along with it to get along? How on earth, Hughes seems to wonder, could the ideas of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., find themselves labeled “white supremacist”?
Hughes and Archie have shaken off the shellshock, and now stand ready to fight back. Their books are therefore better characterized as counterattacks than as defenses.
The authors pour fire and scorn on the “sophistry,” “absurdity,” “bigotry,” “defeatism,” and “nihilism,” of the “depressing and debilitating belief” that every American is defined by his race label. Both books explore the origins of this evil idea, paying special attention to the prominent race hucksters who popularized it. After that, however, the authors’ avenues of attack diverge.
Hughes attacks on logical and empirical grounds. He argues that the defining features of the racialist worldview are arbitrariness and fact-blindness. The hucksters are wrong, he reasons , because they cannot produce the quantitative outcomes that they say they want. Worse, they will harm the very people they claim to want to help, to say nothing of everyone else.
Consider the racial categories with which we’re all so familiar. They may work in casual conversation, but try to use them as the basis of policy, and you will immediately realize that they are spectacularly arbitrary. To give slavery reparations to black people, for example, you run into a host of unfixable problems. One-in-five black Americans are recent immigrants, only one-in-four black Americans say their ancestors were enslaved in the United States, and many, like former president Barack Obama, are descendants of both slaves and slaveholders. Most vexing yet is the problem of deciding who is black. One-half? One-eighth? One drop?
And then there are the neoracists’ empirical claims about the causes and cures of racial disparities. Here, Hughes channels Thomas Sowell and launches a fusillade of data at his opponents’ myths and absurdities. If we discriminate on the basis of race, as the neoracists do, the results will be arbitrary, and arbitrary policies can’t help anyone. Instead, Hughes argues, they will “create an enormous amount of justified resentment,” and breed the “racial tribalism” that has “marred and disfigured human societies throughout history.”
The core of the problem, says Hughes, is that the race hucksters are trapped in cognitive dissonance. They say race is a social construct but enforce “the rules of race” with a zeal matched only by “old-school racists.” They decry stereotypes but use stereotypes. They demand justice but mete out injustice to punish “racial-historical bloodguilt.”
Hughes’s argument is thorough, his logic relentless, and his use of data rigorous. These strengths, however, are also weaknesses. His opponents’ arguments are neither logical nor empirical. They speak in the language of morality warped by emotion, and Hughes has responded to them in a different language.
Still, there are many people who are not in thrall to the misbegotten morality of the neoracists. They speak Hughes’s language, and his message is powerful.
This brings us to Andre Archie.
Unlike Hughes, Archie attacks the racialist worldview on ethical grounds. It is no coincidence that a professor of Greek philosophy called his book the Virtue of Color-blindness. The hucksters are wrong, he argues, because they promote ascriptive qualities over character. They assign moral worth to the body, not to the soul. In so doing, they tear at the creed and culture that sustain America and, if left to it, will “destroy completely the ordered liberty that has defined our way of life for nearly three hundred years.”
Archie’s book is aimed at conservatives. In his telling, the race hucksters successfully beat back and bottled up the color-blind principle mainly because conservatives failed to fight. Conservatives didn’t want to fight when the race hucksters falsely claimed the moral high ground. Conservatives didn’t want to be called racist.
Left unsaid by Archie, but true, is that many conservatives failed to defend color-blindness not only out of fear of being called racist, but also because they forgot how to make any arguments but utilitarian ones. And those are hard arguments to make; who has the time to read everything by Thomas Sowell?
But Archie’s point—and this is his profound contribution to a genre over-saturated with data analysis—is that data don’t matter. Even if the hucksters were right that “antiracist discrimination” would usher in a utopia of material equality, Archie would still oppose them because material ends cannot justify immoral means. There are souls within these arbitrary racial groups, and when souls are at stake, “quantitative judgments don’t apply.”
At this point, we find a potential weakness in Archie’s book: its highest authority is the ancient Greeks. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle were three of the greatest minds in history. Their philosophical tradition served as a cornerstone of America. But what those great Greek minds said about human nature, character, and choice—about the soul—is not worth believing simply because those great minds said it, but because it was first written on their hearts by a higher authority that Archie only hints at, leaving his reader wondering whether the Greeks’ greatness alone is enough to rally wavering conservatives.
In Archie’s defense, however, because the truths that the Greeks found are written on our hearts, people will respond to them no matter what they believe about their source. Truth moves us. We can’t help it.
At any rate, it is very good luck, if luck it is, that these books came out at the same time. Like hammer and anvil, both are needed to smash what lies between them. Hughes’s book is needed because Americans have forgotten how to make moral arguments. We are utilitarians now, so empirical books remain essential. If, however, empirical books were enough to defeat racialism, then Semple, Sowell, Steele, Loury and countless other data wizards would have dispelled it ages ago. Unfortunately, empirical analysis is not enough: “The race problem is a moral one,” wrote Alexander Crummel in 1889, “its solution will come especially from the domain of principles.” Thus, a rebirth of moral reasoning is needed. Thank heaven for Archie.
Maybe, if we storm racialism from both sides, then color-blindness can retake the offensive and beat back and bottle up its foe. We might not kill racialism outright on this side of eternity, but we might just manage to make color-blindness our “North Star,” as Hughes said in a recent interview. If we do, we will have done ourselves and our country a lot of good.
But only, as Archie reminds us, if we are willing to stand up and fight. So up, and over your barricades. There is joy to be found in this fight.
https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/commentary/the-colorblind-counterattack
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Hollywood’s One-Sided Narrative on "Conversion Therapy
Hollywood is presenting only one side of the debate over counseling for those who experience unwanted same-sex attraction, and it is seeking to silence those who can offer help to the struggling.
Recent films like “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” and “Boy Erased”—both based on true stories—tell the stories of individuals who had negative or even abusive experiences in these kinds of therapies. Activist groups like the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD are pushing these films to argue for so-called “conversion therapy bans” for minors and for adults.
However, these kinds of laws fail to take into account important concerns about individual freedom—particularly the freedom of patients to have access to all available information that can help them.
Absent from Hollywood’s portrayal of these therapies are the stories of people who actively sought out counseling and had positive experiences.
Take Ken Williams. He bravely shared his story with the California state Legislature earlier this year when the state considered an expansive bill that banned “sexual orientation change efforts,” with expansive and often unclear implications for freedom of speech.
Williams was attracted to men for most of his life, but wanted to change. So he found a therapist and a support group who helped him to pursue that.
“Some of us experienced the change we were looking for in that group, but not everyone did,” he shared. “Despite years of homosexual identity and behavior, my sexual desires did change. I am no longer sexually attracted to men,” he said.
Williams soon met a girl he was attracted to, and they married in 2006.
“Not everyone who finds themselves with same-sex desires [wants] to pursue that,” he said. “So I am trying to understand why people would want to take away the rights of my [group], which is people finding themselves with desires they would like to see changed.”
The California bill would have defined sexual orientation change efforts as “any practices that seek to change an individual’s sexual orientation. This includes efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”
Such broad terminology that includes not only attractions, but actions, has drastic implications for individual freedom.
Such counseling bans completely dismiss the needs of individuals who genuinely desire to pursue counseling, sometimes because of inner conflicts. It also limits the speech of counselors or ministries that support individuals in their personal choice not to act on these desires.
This bill, and others like it, would have granted state government the power to punish counselors or religious leaders acting as licensed counselors who counsel patients who do not wish to act upon their same-sex attraction for legitimate personal reasons—for example, someone who wants to live by their religion’s teachings on sexuality or to remain faithful to their spouse and children.
Ultimately, the representative who introduced this bill into the California Legislature pulled it due to its overly broad language and sweeping implications.
But this will unlikely be the last time state lawmakers consider an outright ban on counseling that they do not consider sufficiently LGBT-affirming.
Fifteen states plus D.C. already have such counseling bans for youth in place, and activists are using these latest films to call for even more bans.
No one is in favor of allowing any kind of abuse to masquerade as “therapy.” But counseling bans are the wrong tool for addressing actual cases of abuse. Silencing speech only limits the options of people who wish to live consistent with what they believe about sexuality.
Banning one side’s speech is not the solution. Unfortunately, the incomplete narrative offered by Hollywood only buttresses these efforts.
We should take into account the legitimate needs of those who wish to pursue therapy that supports their lifestyle choices, even if they don’t conform to the latest cultural trends.
Only then will our public policy simultaneously protect and respect the freedom of everyone.
https://www.heritage.org/gender/commentary/hollywoods-one-sided-narrative-conversion-therapy
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The pay gap between men and women is a choice gap
What’s behind the wage gap between men and women?
It has narrowed recently. In 2023, women’s median weekly wages of $1,005 equaled 84% of men’s $1,202 in weekly wages. That’s an all-time high, and a distinct uptick from a fairly steady 80% to 82% between 2004 and 2020.
Yet 84% is still not 100%, even though equal pay for equal work has been the law of the land since the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
So what gives? Are women really being paid only 84 cents on the dollar to do the exact same jobs as men?
Of course not. In this day and age, that simply wouldn’t fly. For starters, there are currently 2.3 million more job openings than there are unemployed workers. So any woman who is being paid less than a male co-worker for the exact same job has a good shot at finding a new job where she will be paid equally.
And even if workers didn’t have the upper hand in the labor market, it never profits employers to underpay women or overpay men. Employers who discriminate based on sex—or age, or eye color, or shoe size, or any other biological factor—will disproportionately attract the types of workers whom they overpay. Excessive employee costs translate to lower profits, less investment and higher prices for customers, who will flock to businesses with lower prices.
Then what is behind the significant difference in pay between men and women?
The short answer is that the pay gap is a choice gap.
The data cited in the gender pay gap looks only at the median earnings of full-time wage and salaried workers. It doesn’t account for important factors such as education, occupation, experience and hours, which account for nearly all the difference in earnings between men and women.
Accounting for all these measurable factors all but eliminates the pay gap to a mere one-cent differential.
Even that “controlled pay gap” doesn’t account for difficult-to-measure factors such as workplace flexibility, which women, and particularly mothers, tend to prioritize. An analysis of Uber drivers estimated that they value the flexibility the platform provides at $150 per week.
Although the true pay gap is miniscule, some policymakers still want to see women earning the same amounts as men. The problem with trying to force equal earnings is that it could only be done by forcing women to make the same choices as men, or vice versa.
Take the Massachusetts Transportation Bay Association, for example. Despite rigid pay scales that precluded pay discrimination, the association had an 11% pay gap because women took more unpaid leave and worked fewer overtime hours. When the company restricted flexibility in hours worked, the pay gap fell to 6%, but the lost flexibility was “especially costly” for women.
Both Sweden and Norway tried to help women by passing “daddy quotas” intended to push men to take on more of the responsibilities of parenthood. Norway’s daddy quota had “strong and statistically significant negative effects on women’s labor market outcomes.” Sweden’s daddy quota didn’t increase men’s household roles or improve women’s labor market outcomes, but it did increase the probability of divorce and reduce household incomes because women took more unpaid time off.
Google, in an attempt to remedy pay gaps, began conducting a pay audit every year and established a fund to compensate employees who it found had been unfairly compensated. Google’s analysis had a surprising result; the company was underpaying men. Consequently, the majority of Google’s $9.7 million in gender-compensation awards in 2019 went to men.
While it can be tempting for policymakers to try to “help” women or minorities by imposing top-down government controls that attempt to equalize pay across gender or race, those policies could end up hurting the people they intend to help.
At the end of the day, most workers—men and women alike—want to be paid based on what they produce, and they want job opportunities that align with their personal and career priorities.
Instead of telling companies how much to pay their workers, and limiting the types of jobs available, lawmakers should work to reduce barriers to work and burdens on job creators so that more women and men can attain the type of work that’s best for them.
https://www.heritage.org/jobs-and-labor/commentary/making-sense-the-wage-gap
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21 April, 2024
A study found that chemicals produced when eating junk food raised cancer risk
See below for a less sensationalist report of the research
Bah! Humbug! The researchers have NO data on junk food consumption. Their apparent link to food seems to be that levels of harm are linked to high glucose intake in some people. But glucose is not specific to junk food. Common table sugar is a compound of glucose and fructose. So if the results mean anything they mean that eating a lot of sweet things of any kind is bad for you if you have certain rare genetic predispositons. That is the sum total of what they apparently show. It tells you NOTHING about junk foods, whatever they may be. If you take it all seriously, people with certain rare genetics should avoid putting sugar in their coffee! Big problem!
Scientists believe they have uncovered a missing link between how eating junk food increases the risk of cancer.
A study in Singapore looked at the effect of methylglyoxal, a compound released when the body breaks down sugary and fatty foods, on a gene that helps fight off tumors.
In a first, the academics found that methylglyoxal was able to temporarily shut off the BRCA2 gene's ability to protect against cancer forming and growing.
Doctors have known for decades that eating junk food is linked to a much higher risk of cancer, even if the person is not obese, but the exact mechanism is still being understood.
It could, at least in part, explain why cancers among young, ostensibly healthy Americans are becoming so prevalent, particularly tumors in the colon.
The team also noted that the study contradicts a longstanding theory called the knudson's 'two-hit' paradigm, which said that genes like BRCA2 must be completely inactive in the body to raise cancer risk.
These genes are meant to help protect the body against cancer, though patients who inherit faulty copies from their parents have been shown to have an increased risk of certain cancers, such as breast and pancreatic.
Dr Ashok Venkitaraman, study author and director of the National University of Singapore's Centre for Cancer Research, told Medical News Today: '[M]ethylglyoxal triggers the destruction of BRCA2 protein, reducing its levels in cells.'
'This effect is temporary, but can last long enough to inhibit the tumor-preventing function of BRCA2.'
Is THIS what's causing mystery rise in colon cancers among young people? Study points to bacteria in the gut linked to processed food and lack of fiber
Scientists say they may be one step closer to understanding what's driving a mystery rise in colon cancer in young people.
He noted that repeated exposure, such as through eating processed foods and red meat, among others, would increase the amount of damage to genes like BRCA2.'
The team looked at the effect of methylglyoxal on cells from people who had inherited a faulty copy of BRCA2 and were therefore more likely to develop cancer.
They found that methylglyoxal exposure disabled tumor suppression.
'It is well documented that some individuals are at a high risk of developing breast, ovarian, pancreatic or other cancers because they inherit a faulty copy of the cancer-preventing gene — BRCA2 — from their parents,' Dr Venkitaraman said.
'Our recent findings show that cells from such individuals are particularly sensitive to the effects of methylglyoxal, which is a chemical produced when our cells break down glucose to create energy.
'We find that methylglyoxal inhibits the tumor-preventing function of BRCA2, eventually causing faults in our DNA that are early warning signs of cancer development.'
Additionally, Dr Venkitaraman noted that high levels of methylglyoxal are common in people with diabetes and prediabetes.
'Our latest findings show that methylglyoxal can temporarily inactivate such cancer-preventing genes, suggesting that repeated episodes of poor diet or uncontrolled diabetes can "add up" over time to increase cancer risk,' he said.
However, the team cautioned that since the study was carried out in cells rather than people, more research is needed on the topic.
The research adds to a long list of studies suggesting that diet could have an impact on cancer risk, particularly colorectal cancer.
Research from the Cleveland Clinic, for example, found that people under 50 who ate diets rich in red meat and sugar had lower levels of the compound citrate, which is created when the body converts food into energy and has been shown to inhibit tumor growth.
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Only one man can stop the world plunging into full-scale war
The article below from just two days ago by Geraldine Brooks is an amusing example of journalistic "wisdom". She forgot that there were two sides to the conflict so was proved wrong when the "other" side backed down.
It was actually a very common fear that an Israeli attack on Iran would ignite WWIII but Bibi's judgment was proven correct when nothing in fact happened when he retaliated against the Iranians. It is in fact very reassuring that the Prime Minister of Israel was the one with the best judgment.
I was talking to my son about this matter this morning and he made the good point that Trump would have handled the matter better. He suggested that, like Biden, Trump would have supported Israel but that he would have done so in a clearer, more decisive and simpler way. I think that is true. Fortunately only one wise man was needed - Netanyhu. Alarmists are still hollering but the game seems to be basically over for now
With all the blood and terror since last October, it is easy to forget that it took five back-to-back elections to put Bibi Netanyahu in the position he now occupies: the leader whose next decision might plunge his region, and maybe the world, into full-scale war.
This power rests in the hands of a man who, at home, has become widely despised, with only 15 per cent of Israelis now saying they support him.
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Scotland Presses ‘Pause’ on Puberty Blockers, Hormone Drugs for Children
Following publication of a damning report on the dangers of gender transition procedures for children, Scotland officially is halting the prescription of puberty blockers and hormone drugs to minors.
Scotland’s sole gender clinic for minors, Glasgow-based Sandyford Sexual Health Service, announced Thursday that it no longer would refer children under 18 to pediatric endocrinology to be prescribed puberty blockers or hormone drugs.
Earlier this month, the U.K. government published The Cass Review, a much-anticipated report of nearly 400 pages compiled by an esteemed pediatrician, Dr. Hilary Cass, on gender transition procedures for children. Cass worked on the report for four years.
“The reality is that we have no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress,” the report declares. “This is an area of remarkably weak evidence.”
Sandyford Sexual Health Service announced:.
This service update follows research from NHS [National Health Service] England and the publication of The Cass Review while we work with the Scottish government to engage in research with NHS England that will generate evidence of safety and long-term impact for therapies. While this pause is in place, we will continue to give anyone who is referred into the Young People Gender Service the psychological support that they require while we review the pathways in line with the findings.
The decision by Sandyford Sexual Health Service to “pause” prescriptions of puberty blockers and hormone drugs to children is in line with new guidance from National Health Service Greater Glasgow and Clyde.
“On clinical advice, both NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and NHS Lothian deferred starting new patients on these treatments in mid-March 2024 in response to the position taken by NHS England and while the publication of The Cass Review was awaited,” National Health Service Greater Glasgow and Clyde said in a written statement. “Following the publication of The Cass Review and having also received the support of the chief medical officer for Scotland, Sir Gregor Smith, the health boards formally paused treatment.”
Last month, NHS England formally halted prescribing puberty blockers and hormone drugs to children, explaining: “Puberty blockers … are not available to children and young people for gender incongruence or gender dysphoria because there is not enough evidence of safety and clinical effectiveness.”
NHS England warned that hormone drugs “cause some irreversible changes” and “may cause temporary or even permanent infertility.” The agency further noted: “There is some uncertainty about the risks of long-term cross-sex hormone treatment.”
Instead of such prescriptions, NHS England explained that children diagnosed with gender dysphoria will have a range of psychological therapies available to them, including family therapy, individual child psychotherapy, parental support, or counseling, and “regular reviews to monitor gender identity development.”
NHS England explained its new guidance by saying: “Most treatments offered at this stage are psychological rather than medical. This is because in many cases gender variant behaviour or feelings disappear as children reach puberty.”
The groundbreaking report from Bass found that gender transition procedures for children are largely based on biased and even low-quality research.
Additionally, the report found that there is “no evidence” that gender transition procedures prevent or reduce the risk of suicide, despite the common claims of many gender transition advocates; the prescription of puberty blockers and hormone drugs to minors may be dangerous; the majority of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria suffer from a host of often-neglected psychological co-morbidities; and the practice of gender transition procedures has been largely guided by “toxic” debate and discourse.
As evidenced by Scotland’s change of course on puberty blockers and hormone drugs, The Cass Review is already bringing about what U.K. officials are calling a “fundamental change” in the gender transition industry.
In the course of compiling her report, Cass investigated the Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock clinic in London. Her findings led the pediatrician to recommend that the government shut down the clinic immediately, almost two years before her final report was due.
In particular, Cass was disturbed by Tavistock staff’s trend of placing children as young as 10 on regimens of puberty blockers or hormone drugs with little or no psychological oversight, sometimes after as few as three counseling sessions. Cass noted with alarm that about 96% of children referred to Tavistock were prescribed puberty blockers.
“We echo the views of Dr. Hilary Cass that toxicity around public debate is impacting the lives of young people seeking the care of our service and does not serve the teams working hard to care and support them,” Dr. Emelia Creighton, public health director for National Health Service Greater Glasgow and Clyde, said in a written statement.
“The findings informing the Cass Review are important, and we have reviewed the impact on our clinical pathways,” Creighton said. “The next step from here is to work with the Scottish government and academic partners to generate evidence that enables us to deliver safe care for our patients.”
NHS Lothian’s executive medical director, Tracey Gillies, said: “The Cass Review is a significant piece of work into how the NHS can better support children and young people who present with gender dysphoria. Patient safety must always be our priority, and it is right that we pause this treatment to allow more research to be carried out.”
Meanwhile, U.S. health officials have continued promoting gender transition procedures—including puberty blockers and hormone drugs—for children. Last year, a report named the U.S. an “outlier” in the field of protecting children from harmful gender transition procedures after France, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and the U.K. issued warnings against prescribing children puberty blockers and hormone drugs.
A request filed under the Freedom of Information Act earlier this year resulted in an admission from Rachel Levine, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, that his claims that gender transition procedures for children are “lifesaving” and “necessary” were based entirely on a two-page document citing a single study conducted by an LGBT activist organization.
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Australia: Suicide of 10-year-old Aboriginal boy in the care of Aboriginal relatives described as 'unimaginable'
The "stolen generation" myth put about by Leftist historians means that social workers trying to help a neglected Aboriginal child are obliged to rehouse the child with other Aborigines, who are often as feckless as the neglectful families.
If the old custom of fostering the endangered child into a white family had been followed, the boy would almost certainly still be alive. Attention-seeking Leftist lies can kill
A suicide prevention advocate says a 10-year-old Indigenous boy who took his own life in Western Australia is the youngest child to have died by suicide in child protection on record.
The boy, who cannot be named, died on Saturday night while living with a relative while under the care of WA's Department of Communities.
Veteran advocate Gerry Georgatos said there were "high categorical risks" of suicide in child protection.
"One so young it should be unimaginable, particularly in care under the state," Mr Georgatos said. "He's the youngest recorded suicide in child protection custody in any form of out-of-home care."
The boy was found by his carer in the back room of the home.
The 10-year-old's parents had not seen him for eight months and had been working towards being reunited with him.
Mr Georgatos has been offering support to the boy's family in the wake of the tragedy. He said the family was "distressed" and "devastated". "The father described to me that he just collapsed in front of the police, the mother was distraught. They couldn't believe it," he said.
The boy has been in child protection custody for several years, according to Mr Georgatos.
"There are laws that prohibit a family from speaking out. And that is actually a tragedy in itself. Because the families want to speak, they want to say his name," Ms Krakouer said.
"He's this beautiful little boy, 10 years old." She said the "angelic-faced boy" was taken into state care in 2020.
"The father and the mother, they couldn't pay their rent. It is a poverty narrative across the country," Ms Krakouer said.
Ms Krakouer urged the Department of Child Protection to give custody of the parents' remaining children back to them.
"In terms of the mum and dad, they're beautiful, strong, solid people. They're kind," she said. "There is no reason for them not to have their children returned."
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18 April, 2024
Keith McNally strikes again! Razor-tongued restaurant owner goes after Lauren Sanchez
Artificial boobs often deliver a good return on investment. Most Hollywood ladies seem to have them. But this pair must set some sort of record for that. She is also very deferenial to Bezos so I can see what her critic sees. She "crawls" to him, which is a bit sickening. But he seems happy with his artificial lady so who are we to criticize? She obviously likes the deal too. She obviously thinks a billionaire is worth a bit of deference
In my past adventures I have myself been to bed with artificial DD boobs but did not find them very satisfying. My present girlfriend's natural 12Cs suit me just fine
NOTE: I have some recollection that bra sizes are described differently in Australia and America. The "12" above describes a slender body
Celebrity restaurateur Keith McNally has taken aim at Lauren Sanchez in a late-night Instagram rant, branding Jeff Bezos' fiancée 'revolting.'
McNally, who famously feuded with James Corden over an omelet dispute, shared a carousel of recent pictures of Sanchez and Bezos, and proceeded to skewer the pair in a post that went up late Monday night.
'Does anybody else find Jeff Bezos' New wife - Lauren Sanchez - ABSOLUTELY REVOLTING?' he wrote.
'What an ugly and F***ing SMUG - LOOKING couple they make. Is this what having 1000 Billion dollars does to people?'
McNally's seemingly unprovoked roast comes a week after Sanchez and Bezos made several public appearances together in Washington, DC at the White House's state dinner for the Prime Minister of Japan and to present the Courage and Civility Award - an annual grant of $100million that Bezos distributes.
Keith McNally shared a carousel of pictures of Lauren Sanchez and her fiancé, Jeff Bezos, and proceeded to skewer the pair on Monday night
It is not clear why McNally targeted Sanchez and Bezos specifically.
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Sydney Sweeney 'is not pretty and she can't act' declares top Hollywood producer Carol Baum
I think this can reasonably be dismissed as bitchiness by an older lady towards a young one. Sydney Sweeney will probably be crying all the way to the bank, as Liberace put it. It so happens that the first time I saw a picture of Sydney Sweeney I immediately liked what I saw. I really liked her wide-set eyes, a most unusual feature. I didn't notice the boobs until excitement about their being real arose. I guess that shows how old I am.
Bonus picture:
She is one of Hollywood's hottest young rising stars - recently been hailed as evidence for woke culture being in the decline. But now Sydney Sweeney has been fiercely blasted by one of Hollywood's top female producers.
'She's not pretty, she can't act,' claims Carol Baum, whose films include Father of the Bride and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Baum, speaking with New York Times film critic Janet Maslin before an audience of fans following a screening of her 1988 film Dead Ringers starring Jeremy Irons, held nothing back as she began her critique of the 26-year-old actress.
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Tilting at Antitrust Windmills: Department of Justice Sues Apple
On March 21, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a “sweeping” lawsuit accusing Apple, one of the Big Tech companies the Biden administration loves to hate, of engaging in business practices that violate the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act.
Joined by the attorneys general of 16 states, the DOJ’s complaint alleges that Apple’s exclusionary tactics have allowed it to “monopoliz[e]” the U.S. market for smartphones or, keeping its legal options open, perhaps a submarket for “performance” (high-end) smartphones. According to the DOJ, Apple’s iPhone accounts for about 65 percent of the former market and 70 percent of the latter. Those market shares, however, may be larger among younger smartphone customers (Americans born after 1996).
Put another way, 30 to 35 percent of the U.S. smartphone market, as the DOJ defines it, is served by Apple’s competitors, the two most “meaningful” being Google (parent Alphabet) and South Korea’s Samsung Group. Meaningful indeed.
Apple is not a monopolist as economists understand that concept because it does not control anything close to 100 percent of the antitrust-relevant smartphone market. Apple may be big, and the iPhone may now dominate U.S. smartphone shipments, but large market shares today do not guarantee future market supremacy.
Rewind the tape to May 18, 1998. On that date, the DOJ filed a complaint against Microsoft alleging that the company “possesses (and for several years has possessed) monopoly power in the market for personal computer operating systems.” At the time, Microsoft shipped roughly 90 percent of “Intel-compatible” computer operating systems. Sales of desktops running Apple’s MacOS were then so small that it was excluded from the DOJ’s market definition.
United States v. Microsoft Corp., one of the few legal precedents cited in the DOJ’s just-issued Apple filing, ultimately was decided in the government’s favor. One of the key issues raised at trial was that Microsoft’s monopoly was built in part on its inclusion of a web browser (Internet Explorer, or IE) in its Windows 95 operating system (OS) at no additional charge.
Although supporters of the Microsoft case argued that competition would be restored only if the company was forced to separate IE from Windows 95, the presiding federal judge did not impose that remedy. Never mind! Internet Explorer has given way to Edge, released in 2010, and it too is bundled with Windows 11 OS. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s share of the U.S. desktop OS market has declined to about 60 percent; the market share of Apple’s OS X (formerly Mac OS) has climbed to just under 28 percent; nerdy open-source Linux, ignored by the DOJ in 1998, nowadays represents about 2 percent of desktop computer operating systems.
Microsoft’s “anticompetitive” bundling strategy evidently has not seriously undermined its rivals’ ability to enter the market for desktop operating systems and to expand their sales.
That’s to be expected in marketplaces characterized by so-called network effects in which the value to consumers of joining a network goes up as the number of others connecting to the same network rises. In network industry after network industry (from telephones to video-recording and video-playback technologies to computer hardware and software), we observe what might be called not monopoly but “serial market dominance.”
Because of product quality or functionality that was unknown previously or that consumers deem superior to available alternatives, one or a few sellers rise to a market’s commanding heights. But continuous innovation (Schumpeter’s “gale of creative destruction”) threatens such market dominance.
The threats can arise beyond a market’s current boundaries or from the players on its “competitive fringe.” That fringe was tiny in 1998, composing just 10 percent of “Intel-compatible” computer operating systems. In 2024, Apple’s rivals account for 35 to 40 percent of the smartphone market, as the DOJ defines it.
And those rivals, Google and Samsung, are no shrinking violets needing protection by the Justice Department’s antitrust lawyers, who apparently think they know better than smartphone buyers and sellers what the market should look like today and tomorrow. Antitrust law enforcement processes have morphed over the past few years into an ersatz industrial policy that pays lip service to consumers’ welfare but ignores consumers’ choices in favor of indulging the preferences of bureaucrats.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14902&omhide=true&trk=rm
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Australia's Olympic uniforms were unveiled on Wednesday, with big changes
The green and gold used previously made sense as a reference to Australia's founding on gold mining and farming but all I see here is blue jackets and white skirts with yellow splotches on them that make it look like the ladies have wee'd themselves. They will be a laughing stock. Some people just don't know when to leave well enough alone. It's supposed to be "creative" but you need talent for that. Just being different is not enough
A number of hopefuls took to Clovelly Beach in Sydney to pose in their new outfits - which a global audience of over one billion people will see - while morning swimmers took to the waves.
The biggest twist of them all is the colouring of the uniform.
The classic green has made way for a trendy teal for the games in France
'We're on the fashion stage and we wanted to make our athletes proud, as well as putting a contemporary feel into the uniforms,' said Elisha Hopkinson, chief executive of APG & Co, owner of official uniform supplier Sportscraft.
'We have to use the green and gold. For us, the priority is making sure that the colours sing and feel contemporary.'
'Over the years, the shades of green have changed, and in Sydney 2000 we had the ochre blazers, but I think the green is beautiful,' added Olympic gold medallist and former senator Nova Peris. 'Just as important is having Indigenous identity and culture embedded in the uniforms.'
'It helps athletes understand that when you represent this country you don't just represent 250 years, you represent 65,000 years.'
The blazers will be worn over tank tops or white T-shirts, while stone chino shorts also feature teal and gold details.
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17 April, 2024
How Left-Wing Organizations Betray the Groups They Claim to Represent
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union—like most communist parties—came to power as the great defender of workers.
In reality, the Soviet Communist Party didn’t give a hoot about Russian workers. The party was nothing more than a totalitarian organization that used workers to gain power—and then suppressed the proletariat, just as it suppressed every other group.
One of the first things the Soviet Communist Party did after attaining power was disband independent labor unions and prohibit workers’ strikes. Yes, the “workers’ party” banned strikes.
The one major exception was the Chinese Communist Party, which came to power as the great defender of peasants. And the CCP slaughtered about 60 million of them.
This has been the modus operandi of every left-wing group everywhere: Claim concern for some group, and use that group to fool people—specifically, naive liberals, who share few values with the Left, but have frequently served as useful idiots for the Left. Liberals do so to this day.
Teachers Unions
Teachers unions are nothing more than left-wing groups that use alleged concern for students to attain and retain power. The reality, however, is while they care about teachers, they harm students far more than they help them.
One example is teachers unions’ opposition to school choice. Those who actually care about students support the right of parents to choose their children’s schools—just as many teachers do when they send their own children to schools of their choice.
A second example is teachers unions’ making it nearly impossible to fire incompetent teachers.
A third example was teachers unions’ demands that schools lock down for nearly two years during the COVID-19 era. The unions did so despite there being no scientific evidence in support of school lockdowns and despite ample warnings that many children would suffer intellectually, scholastically, emotionally, and psychologically.
Moreover, wrote John H. Cochrane of the Hoover Institution in The Wall Street Journal, “When schools went remote, parents found out what was actually going on inside the classrooms. Teachers were coaching students to hate themselves, their country and their religious traditions, and sexualizing young children.”
The last point brings us to a fourth example: Teachers rob young students of their sexual innocence with premature talk of, and books that deal with, overt sexual activity, and the infamous use of drag queens to perform in front of children as young as 6 years old.
Just how left-wing teachers organizations are was made clear by the sympathetic left-wing magazine The Nation in January:
A rank-and-file campaign inside the National Education Association is demanding the president stop ‘sending military funding, equipment, and intelligence to Israel.’ … But the rank-and-file campaign goes beyond [that]. … Members want the [National Education Association] to revoke its endorsement of Joe Biden for the 2024 presidential race until the president … stops ‘sending military funding, equipment, and intelligence to Israel.’
That was only two months after Oct. 7.
Civil Rights Organizations
Most civil rights organizations are also essentially left-wing groups. They use alleged concern for blacks to attain and retain power, but they harm blacks considerably more than they help them.
A glaring example is the near-universal opposition of civil rights groups to school choice, despite the fact that black Americans overwhelmingly support it. According to a 2023 RealClear Opinion Research poll, 73% of blacks support school choice—2 percentage points more than whites. They do so because large majorities of black students in public schools perform far below grade-level standards.
The reason the largest civil rights organization, the NAACP, opposes school choice has nothing to do with concern for blacks. It is that the left-wing position—again, the NAACP is a left-wing organization—on school choice is dictated by teachers unions.
Other civil rights organizations’ positions that harm blacks include labeling as “racist” the most effective solution to racism, widespread colorblindness; supporting separate dorms and graduations for black college students; and support for lowering academic and professional standards to facilitate black advancement.
Feminist Groups
Feminist organizations are additional examples of essentially left-wing organizations. The group they use to attain and retain power is women. Just as other left-wing interest groups, they harm the group on whose behalf they allegedly fight—in this case, women—far more than they help them.
The most obvious example is the support of major feminist organizations for men who say they are women participating in women’s sports.
From the website of the National Women’s Law Center:
The National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) unequivocally supports the inclusion of trans women in women’s sports. And if you call yourself a feminist, you should, too.
From the website of the Women’s Sports Foundation:
The Women’s Sports Foundation supports the right of all athletes, including transgender athletes, to participate in athletic competition.
In 2022, the Women’s Sports Foundation wrote a letter to the NCAA protesting any diminution of the right of biological males who say they are females to participate in women’s athletics. The letter was co-signed, as expected, by LGBTQIA+ organizations, but also by two major feminist organizations in addition to the Women’s Sports Federation: the National Organization for Women and the National Women’s Political Caucus.
Damaging women has been the primary legacy of organized feminism for the past half-century. That there are more depressed women, especially young women, today than at any other time in modern American history is directly attributable to left-wing influence generally (no religion, no country, no future) and to feminist doctrines specifically: Career is more important than marriage and family, and women can do just fine without a man to love and be loved by.
LGBTQIA+ Organizations
Perhaps the ultimate example of left-wing contempt for the groups they claim to represent is “Queers for Palestine.” Palestinian queers have no rights. They face persecution and even death if they expose themselves to their society. Israeli queers are by far the safest, happiest, and freest in the Middle East. But hating Israel is the left-wing position. At any cost.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/16/how-left-wing-organizations-betray-groups-claim-to-represent/
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‘We got a sleep divorce and our marriage has never been better’
Elizabeth Pearson and her husband, Ryan Pearson, have been married for 16 years, and for half of that time, they have slept in separate bedrooms.
“We both travel for work quite a bit, and we noticed that we slept great in hotels,” said Elizabeth, 42, an author and executive coach. “Where we slept poorly was when we were at home in the bed together.”
Ryan, 47, is 6-feet-6-inches tall, snores “like a chainsaw,” has restless leg syndrome and on one occasion punched Elizabeth in the face while sleeping, she said. “Waking up angry at him every morning was driving a rift in the relationship.”
The couple now share a six-bedroom, four-bath Mediterranean home in Laguna Niguel, California, that they purchased in 2017 for US$1.5 million. They completed a 500-square-foot renovation earlier this year that cost $95,000, adding a loft and bedroom. Now, Ryan sleeps on the first floor, and Elizabeth sleeps on the second, each in a bedroom with an ensuite bath. And their marriage is thriving.
“Well-rested people are more patient, more engaged and more present with their partners,” Elizabeth said. “When you have time to yourself, you can be a better partner.”
And what happens to your sex life if you sleep separately? Elizabeth said that is a non-issue. “We have a great sex life because we’re not pissed off at each other throughout the day for something that is uncontrollable like sleep and snoring,” she said.
Like the Pearsons, many couples today are opting for a “sleep divorce,” choosing to use so-called “snore rooms,” or dual primary bedrooms, instead of following the typical marital path of sharing a bed. According to a survey conducted in March 2023 by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 35 per cent of Americans sleep in separate rooms occasionally or consistently.
Millennials are most likely to sleep apart, at 43 per cent, according to the survey, compared with just 22 per cent of baby boomers snoozing separately. The trend of sleeping apart is nothing new.
Sleep expert Wendy Troxel, Ph.D., a senior behavioural and social scientist at Rand and the author of “Sharing the Covers: Every Couple’s Guide to Better Sleep,” said that couples have been sleeping separately for centuries. It was only after the sexual revolution in the 1960s that people began to assume that sleeping apart implied a loveless, sexless union and that a stigma evolved around separate bedrooms, she said.
Tiffiny Alexander, a broker associate with Artisan/Healdsburg Sotheby’s International Realty in Santa Rosa, California, said she faces that stigma occasionally when working with home buyers. “It can be taboo to talk about the fact that they don’t sleep together,” she said. “So, buyers aren’t always transparent about the features they’re looking for.” Alexander currently holds the listing on a 5,000-square-foot gated estate in the heart of Santa Rosa’s wine country, listed for $3.395 million, that has dual primary bedrooms on separate floors. One of the owners is an early riser, while the other is a night owl, so sleeping separately makes sense for them, she said.
Troxel said that sleeping separately doesn’t necessarily mean a couple has relationship problems. “It’s more about how couples arrive at the decision to sleep apart,” she said. “The negative situation is when one partner stomps out of the bedroom in frustration and goes to the couch, leaving the other feeling rejected and abandoned, because the idea of sleeping apart can feel very threatening. But good sleep is critical for good relationship health, so if couples are considering this, they should have an open and honest dialogue. Sleeping apart isn’t the death knell of a relationship — it is more about how couples arrive at that decision that can impact a relationship.”
Marc Friedman, senior vice president of sales for home builder Kolter Homes, said the company has been responding to buyer interest by offering dual primary bedrooms as optional upgrades in models launched over the past two years at an additional cost ranging from $3,000 to over $12,000. Buyers can choose from three options: a snore room, converted out of a flex space next to the primary bedroom, which has a door leading into the primary; a second owner’s suite, which converts a flex space and secondary bedroom to a full second owner’s suite with bath, but doesn’t connect to the primary bedroom; or an in-law suite, which includes a bedroom, en suite bath and private living room.
According to Realtor.com, during the first two months of 2024, active listings for homes that mention multiple primary bedrooms were priced 13.3 per cent higher on average per square foot than those with just one primary.
Amy Boland, 51, and her wife, Beth Berila, 53, have also opted to sleep separately on most nights in the classic American Foursquare home they share in Minneapolis, which Boland purchased in March 2000 for $159,000. The couple married in 2015 when they were both in their 40s and had lived alone for most of their lives.
“We had spent nights together when we were dating, so it wasn’t a big deal for me until Beth started having hot flashes at night,” said Boland, a product manager for a major insurance company. “She would wake up and flop the covers off and then have trouble falling back asleep. I also snore, and that bothers her.” Berila, a college professor, used to go downstairs to sleep on the sofa, so Boland offered to finish the attic to create a separate studio space for her. The attic renovation was completed in 2017 for $31,500. Now, Berila can enjoy the cooler temperatures she prefers and white noise that helps her sleep, while Boland sleeps in silence. “Sometimes she goes up there if one of us has an early morning, or she’ll start out sleeping in our bedroom and something will wake her up, and she’ll go up there to finish the night,” Boland said. “Either way, it’s fine. If she goes upstairs, I get to hog the bed. If she doesn’t, then I get to sleep next to her.”
As for their relationship, Boland said it is better than ever. “Who doesn’t function better when they’ve had a solid evening of sleep,” she said. “If you could do something to get along better with the person you’re roommates with for the rest of your lives, wouldn’t you do it?”
For those considering a sleep divorce, sleep expert Troxel suggests that couples maintain a night-time ritual with their partner, to try to reconnect and unwind from the stresses of the day. One way to do that is to create a small common living room called a pajama room between the separate bedrooms, said Ralph Choeff, an architect and founder of Choeff Levy Fischman in Miami. He also advises couples to locate the bedrooms on separate sides of the house, but each with similar views so that one bedroom isn’t given priority over the other. When designing dual primary bedrooms, Choeff avoids a shared, Jack-and-Jill-style bathroom. “Remember that it’s more than just having separate bedrooms. You need to consider resale value as well. You can’t sell that second bedroom as a full bedroom if it’s sharing the bathroom,” he said.
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By destroying Gaza, Netanyahu is rebuilding a lost strategic art
Joe Biden’s admission that the US hasn’t been able to stop a Yemeni sub-state actor from affecting an important element of global maritime trade would have been ludicrous not so long ago. But the Middle East has changed, and Israel knows it.
The utility of extended deterrence as a key component of US security policy is under pressure on several fronts, but none more tellingly than in the Middle East.
In the Red Sea, for example, even as Washington and its allies attack Houthi missile and drone launching sites in Yemen, and interdict most of the ordnance launched by them, attacks against shipping continue.
US President Joe Biden has admitted that military action against Houthi targets has not stopped the attacks but that the military response from Washington will continue.
In years gone by the idea that Washington would be unable to stop a Yemeni sub-state actor from affecting an important element of global maritime trade would have been ludicrous.
But the world is not as it once was. With the relative certainties of the Cold War, deterrence presented a binary choice between the two nuclear superpowers – avoid direct conflict or risk a nuclear conflagration.
Proxy wars were still fought and won in Africa, while more conventional wars of unilateral intervention were fought and lost by both sides in Vietnam and Afghanistan respectively.
But the end of the Cold War has led to the atomisation of threats – many of these threat groups possess weapons and backing from powerful regional states that in some cases make them as capable as state-based actors.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Middle East, where improved military capabilities are combined with an ideological zealotry that makes normal cost-benefit calculations underpinning deterrence redundant. This makes it very difficult for Washington to achieve the type of deterrence on which long-term regional stability is often based.
The power differential in years past meant US intervention often (but not always) produced favourable outcomes with limited effort.
American intervention in 1958, for example, stabilised Lebanon in a short time at little cost, yet a quarter of a century later its intervention there amid a civil war and an Israeli invasion led to the death of 240 US marines in an attack on their barracks by an Iranian-backed suicide bomber. Washington withdrew its troops, having achieved nothing.
The rise of more capable ideologically motivated individuals and groups isn’t the only reason Washington’s ability to deter threat actors is not what it used to be.
If American intervention in the 1990 Gulf War that expelled Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait showed the benefits of US conventional military power, its ill-fated decision to invade Iraq in 2003 showed its limitations against a determined local force whose capacity to absorb losses surpassed that of Washington.
But more recent concerns over Washington’s political commitment to the judicious use of force in the region also has proved damaging to America’s ability to deter.
A key political component of deterrence is credibility – your opponents must believe that promises will be kept.
In a tough environment such as the Middle East where political leaders rarely change, outsiders are judged largely on their firmness and their commitment in the first instance, and their capabilities in the second.
The failure by Donald Trump as US president to respond to the 2019 drone and missile attack on the Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities in Saudi Arabia was damaging to the view of Washington’s ability to deter attacks against its closest regional partners.
Riyadh expected a robust intervention against Iran, which it held responsible for the attacks, yet none was forthcoming. Saudi concerns over Washington’s reliability as a security partner increased as a result.
The US is not alone in facing this deterrence dilemma. Deterrence in the Middle East is a bit like one’s reputation – hard-won but easily lost, as Israel found out on October 7 last year.
Israel’s undeclared nuclear capability had been established to put an end to fears about its survival as a nation.
After the 1973 Yom Kippur War, attacks against Israel were limited and confined largely to Palestinian groups or from groups such as Hezbollah operating from Lebanon.
Reprisals normally were calibrated to reflect the nature of the attack and, with the exception of the 20-year occupation of southern Lebanon and the 2006 war in Lebanon, Israel’s technical superiority and relationship with the US were sufficient to ensure victory and hence deter its enemies.
Hamas’s attack on October 7 was dangerous for Israel because it punctured its sense of security and gave hope to its enemies that continued resistance was not futile. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza are designed as a demonstration to others in the region about the cost that will be extracted on those who plan similar actions in the future, rebuilding deterrence by destroying Gaza.
Of the regional players, though, it is Iran that has best learnt the art of deterrence. From its own history and from Israel it has learnt the value of nuclear ambiguity as a way to protect the integrity of the nation-state from its enemies. And it is an advantage-seeker of the first order, establishing strategic reach by building proxy relationships with coreligionists or groups that share common foes or lack friends.
The Israeli invasion of Lebanon prompted the creation of Hezbollah, the US invasion of Iraq opened the door for Iranian influence on an unprecedented scale in its Arab neighbour, while the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen forced the Houthi Movement into Iranian arms.
Tehran invested in Syrian authoritarian leader Bashar al-Assad’s regime when all seemed lost for Damascus and it has long supported Hamas. Iranian support for the Alawi-led Assad regime, the Zaydi-dominated Houthi Movement, Sunni Hamas or the Shia Hezbollah and various Iraqi proxies shows that strategic utility counts for much more than ideological affinity in Tehran’s eyes.
Weak in conventional arms apart from its rocket forces, Iranian deterrence is predicated on having its proxies bear the lion’s share of the cost while Tehran accrues the benefit.
But Iran is facing its own deterrence challenge as Israel increasingly is targeting senior Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers outside Iran. Its strike on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus on April 1 demonstrated Israel’s belief that in this deadly escalatory game, Iran will not seek to raise the stakes for fear of inviting more devastating attacks. Even Tehran’s deterrence effect has its limits.
Despite past missteps, however, it isn’t true that the US lacks the ability to achieve deterrence in the Middle East; just that it is a far more difficult proposition than it ever has been in the past.
A US carrier battle group, for instance, still has a regional deterrent effect in the way that Russia cannot, and China will not, exercise. And the way in which the US facilitated Iraqi forces against Islamic State in their country, and supported Syrian Kurdish forces in battling Islamic State in eastern Syria, was a remarkable demonstration of how to run a well-conducted, complex counterinsurgency campaign in a foreign country.
But the days of the US, or anybody else for that matter, deterring significant threat actors in the region simply as a result of their military presence and public political statements are gone. Nowadays it takes a much greater effort to achieve a lesser degree of deterrence than in the past. Degrading capabilities through military action is taking precedence over deterrence in the rather optimistic hope that the former will lead to the latter.
Some regional states are well aware of this and are already making plans for a less omnipotent, but still present, US. That is as it should be, but none has a deterrent capability to match that of Washington’s.
As maligned as it may be, Washington’s ability to degrade enemy capabilities, and to deter threat actors, is still significant – even if it is not the same as it was in the past.
Then again, the Middle East is a region where the perfect is often the enemy of the good, and this applies to deterrence as much as it does to many other security issues.
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Australian conservative gets it right on Muslim Immigrants
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has accused the Albanese government of importing people who do not adopt the laws and values of the countries they settle in.
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was allegedly attacked by a knife-wielding terrorist on Monday evening while the clergyman was delivering a sermon at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in the western Sydney suburb of Wakeley.
The teenager who allegedly stabbed the bishop justified his actions by telling police the Christian leader had 'sworn' at 'my prophet', and reportedly screamed the Islamic phrase 'Allahu Akbar'.
The Australian National Imams Council and other individual Muslims have condemned the attack on Bishop Emmanuel.
'These attacks are horrifying and have no place in Australia, particularly at places of worship and toward religious leaders,' the Imams Council said in a statement.
Senator Hanson claims the viscous stabbing, which police are treating as a terror attack, was the result of importing people with an 'Islamist ideology' who 'do not adopt the laws and values of the countries they settle in'.
'Instead they demand their fundamentalism is simply accepted and adopted in their new countries, and they employ violence or radicalise young people into violence in perverse attempts to achieve this end or attack those who oppose them,' she said.
'Islamist ideology, which seeks to impose fundamentalist Islam across the world, is completely incompatible with Australian values of freedom, democracy and religious tolerance.'
Senator Hanson argued Australia was seeing a rise in radical Islam with 'extremist Islamic preachers in Australia calling for jihad and death – and getting away with it' and 'the intimidation and violence we’ve seen directed at Jewish Australians'.
She contended the 'most effective solution' to this problem is 'people with such ideology are never permitted to come here' but the opposite was happening under the Albanese government.
'Labor doesn’t care about the threat they represent and continues to import this ideology to Australia to shore up support for its western Sydney MPs,' she said.
'The Albanese government has fallen over itself to hand out visas so people who overwhelmingly support the terror group Hamas can escape the consequences of Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel.
'When will the major parties wake up and stop importing people and ideologies that are completely incompatible with Australia and its way of life?'
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16 April, 2024
The Lord's Prayer and the Holy Name
In Matthews 6:9 we read:
????????? ????? ???
Hagiasth?t? onoma sou
hallowed be name of You
They are simple Greek words but how should we translate them? How to translate "Hagiasth?t?"? It is a form of the normal Greek word for "holy". "Hallowed" is not a bad translation but it is an old-fashioned form of English. "Reverenced" or "revered" would be better. Perhaps "treated as Holy" would be best.
And what is the name being referred to? God the father is normally referred to in the Greek NT as "theos". But pagan gods are referred to in Greek as "theos" too. So the prayer is not referring to that. It is clearly referring to the distinctive name for the Hebrew god, as used thousands of times in the OT: "Yahveh", or "Jehovah" in English.
So Jesus was explicitly telling his disciples to not to follow the priestly practice of substituting other words for "Yahveh". It seems a pity that Christians have chanted those words so often while not heeding them. Most Christians follow the practice of the Pharisees despite Christ telling his followers not to. Rather amazing.
I am not here arguing for the rightness of the Jehovah's Witness denomination but they have clearly got one thing right. They are one of the very few who obey the instructions in the Lord's Prayer
JR
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Taxpayers Shouldn’t Have to Fund State Department’s DEI Pseudoscience
The federal government increasingly looks like an Ivy League classroom, combining therapy for fragile souls with indoctrination into specious ideology.
Nowhere is this more apparent than at the State Department, where employees are encouraged to take courses in the name of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, or DEIA, that stress their differences, trauma, and status on the victim-oppressor continuum.
As reported by The Daily Wire, the State Department spent a whopping $77 million on DEIA programs last year for its staffing shop, the Bureau of Global Talent Management.
Just this past month, the State Department offered a training session called “Unveiling the Hidden Wounds: Exploring Racial Trauma and Minority Stress.” It promised a “space for empathy” where “voices are heard, wounds are acknowledged, and action is taken towards justice and equity.”
Then there was “A Conversation on Racial Equity and Social Justice” with Bryan Stevenson, who pulled in $55,000 in donations per minute for a single TED Talk.
Employees could also take the half-day course “Intersectional Gender Analysis Training,” which “explores how gender and systems of power shape an individual’s lived experience.” Alternatively, they could attend a seminar called “Embrace Equity and Inspire Change” or a series of female empowerment sessions such as “Elevating Women in Technology and Beyond.”
Anticipating resistance, the State Department offered the course “Understanding Backlash to DEIA and How to Address It,” in which psychologist Kimberly Rios claimed to “highlight evidence demonstrating that DEIA initiatives can challenge the power, values, status, belonging, and cultural identity of dominant group members, particularly White Americans whose racial identity is important to their sense of self.” Rios will do this, the announcement said with unwitting irony, “to promote intergroup harmony.”
Government employees are required to take a variety of training courses to advance in their careers. Even five years ago, most of these were about doing your job better—courses on leadership, management, and other skills. But in the “woke” era, employees are also subjected to ideological sessions such as those mentioned above.
Given what all these courses and speakers cost taxpayers to provide, is there any evidence that they are based on sound information or that they improve the workforce?
Let’s examine one offering more closely.
The State Department runs a “DEIA Distinguished Scholar Speaker Series” that “highlights cutting-edge scientific research,” under which the agency recently brought in Yale professor John Dovidio to give a talk titled “Racism Among the Well-Intentioned—Challenges and Solutions.”
In a 2013 speech, Dovidio said: “About 80% of white Americans will say they are not sexist or they’re not racist … but work with the IAT will show that 60% to 75% of the population are both racist and sexist at an implicit level.”
So, what is this “IAT” that Dovidio cites?
Harvard’s Implicit Association Test is a favorite tool of social scientists who want to prove that people are inherently racist and sexist. This is a necessary premise for critical race theory, which posits that nebulous concepts such as “structural bias” and “systems of oppression” can explain all variances in performance between racial groups rather than individual factors such as education, industry, and behavior. The Implicit Association Test offers the evidence the Left needs to support this theory.
But the Implicit Association Test isn’t an accepted measure of bias. One of its own inventors said, “I and my colleagues and collaborators do not call the IAT results a measure of implicit prejudice [or] implicit racism.”
And in a 2015 review, Hart Blanton of Texas A&M wrote that “all of the meta-analyses converge on the conclusion that … IAT scores are not good predictors of ethnic or racial discrimination and explain, at most, small fractions of the variance in discriminatory behavior in controlled laboratory setting.”
In a 2021 academic paper, Ulrich Schimmack came to the same conclusion, writing that “IATs are widely used without psychometric evidence of construct or predictive validity.”
As far back as 2008, in an article for the American Psychological Association, Beth Azar wrote that a person’s scores on the Implicit Association Test “often change from one test to another.” German Lopez, writing for Vox, took the test two days apart and found that in the first, he “had a slight automatic preference for white people,” and in the second, “a slight automatic preference … in favor of black people.”
Summing up, Greg Mitchell of the University of Virginia said, “The IAT is not yet ready for prime time.”
That’s hardly a firm foundation for using taxpayers’ money to train federal staff in a worldview that will affect their careers and lives. And of course, all of the hours employees spend auto-flagellating with critical race theory is paid time they are not working on matters of national interest.
One can’t put too much blame on race merchants such as Dovidio, Ibram X. Kendi, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Nikole Hannah-Jones for simply trying to sell their product. But the question is: Why is the government buying it with our money?
Taxpayer-funded institutions shouldn’t pay for courses and speakers whose premises are contentious and whose efforts won’t measurably improve the workforce.
Federal employees are free to explore social theory on their own time. On our dime, they should get on with their real job.
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Antiwar Activists Chant ‘Death to America’ at Event Featuring Chicago Alderman
If they don't like America, they should be given a ticket to somewhere else
Chicago Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez, a member of the mayor’s leadership team, headlined an event Saturday at which some participants chanted “Death to America” and plotted ways to disrupt this summer’s Democratic National Convention in the city.
Sigcho-Lopez made headlines last month for appearing at another anti-convention protest, where he spoke next to a burned American flag. His appearance at the March 22 event prompted a nearly two-hour discussion before the City Council and an effort to remove him as chairman of its housing committee. The measure failed in a 29-16 vote.
After his most recent appearance at Saturday’s event, Sigcho-Lopez is facing a fresh wave of attention, given his role on Mayor Brandon Johnson’s leadership team.
The event, which drew about 300 antiwar activists to the Teamsters union headquarters in Chicago, took place as Iran was launching an attack on Israel. Olivia Reingold, a reporter for The Free Press, embedded with the activists and documented what transpired:
Earlier that day, before news of the attack broke, at a “breakout session” on “the antiwar movement,” Shabbir Rizvi, an organizer with Anti-War Committee Chicago, taught participants how to chant “death to Israel” and “death to America” in Farsi.
“Marg bar Israel,” he chanted, leading a group of about 80 attendees along with him. A man draped in a Soviet flag bearing a gold hammer and sickle clapped his hands.
A man in a full black denim outfit shouted out from behind his N95—“Can we get a ‘marg bar America’?”
“We can get a ‘marg bar America,’” Rizvi replied.
Then Rizvi raised his hand in the air, leading the crowd like a conductor. “Marg bar America,” they cheered.
The Free Press reported that attendees donned black N95 face masks while plotting ways to disrupt the Democratic National Convention in August.
“It’s really inspiring to see that people are just as enthusiastic, and maybe even more enthusiastic, to march on the DNC as they are to march on the RNC,” said Omar Flores, a Milwaukee-based activist, according to The Free Press. “We can thank Genocide Joe [Biden] and our movement for that.”
Sigcho-Lopez’s appearance at the pro-Palestinian event on March 22 sparked a raucous debate at the City Council’s April 1 meeting. The alderman said he was unaware that a military veteran burned an American flag near where he spoke.
“I make no apologies for standing for First Amendment rights. I think some of my colleagues need to have, maybe, a lesson of what First Amendment rights mean,” Sigcho-Lopez said at the meeting. “If any way, shape, or form, my actions have offended anyone—especially the veterans—I take full accountability, but not once, by no means, I’m going to condemn a veteran for using his First Amendment right.”
Sigcho-Lopez is a member of the Democratic Socialist Caucus of the Chicago City Council. He was first elected in 2019 to represent the 25th Ward.
A fellow member of the Democratic Socialist Caucus, Alderwoman Jeanette Taylor, made headlines of her own last week. Taylor accused the Chicago Fire Department of making race-based decisions when administering tests to firefighters and distributing equipment.
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So-called security guards
Most security personnel in Australia aren't armed and industry experts say current rules mean they "don't stand a chance" against attackers with dangerous weapons.
What's next? Security guards say they should be allowed to be armed, but some worry that would mean "going down a pretty dangerous road".
The horrific stabbing deaths of six people at a busy shopping centre in Sydney on the weekend has sent shockwaves across the nation.
Two victims — including one of the deceased, Faraz Tahir — were security guards.
It comes two months after the fatal stabbing of a 70-year-old grandmother at a shopping centre in Ipswich, Queensland.
In February, a 30-year-old security guard died after allegedly being punched in the head outside a pub in Sydney's south.
Now, there's debate about whether security guards have enough protection and powers to keep themselves, and the public, safe across the country.
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns and Scentre Group, the company that operates Westfield shopping centres, have both flagged reviewing the measures in place around security personnel.
But for some security guards, it's too little too late — and they say lives could have been saved on the weekend if policy settings were different.
They're the people we expect to keep us safe in public spaces, but most security personnel in Australia aren't armed.
The award rate for security officers in Australia is about $25 an hour, according to the Fair Work Ombudsman.
And while they may look like law enforcement in some ways, security consultant Scott Taylor said they were not given the same tools to protect themselves and others in the face of danger.
"We have the same powers of arrest and use of force guidelines as any general citizen," the founder of Praesidium Risk and Resilience said.
Essentially, unarmed security guards can prevent you from entering certain places, remove you from a premises, make a citizen's arrest and use force if reasonable and necessary.
"[The general public] don't think of them as ... first responders to incidents, offering first aid, jumping in and going towards situations while others go the opposite way," Mr Taylor said.
Mr Taylor said he had long been advocating for security guards to be armed with capsicum sprays, stab-proof vests, batons and handcuffs.
"They're often going around with a small first aid kit, a torch and a radio," he said.
"For unarmed security personnel to be dealing with someone with an edged weapon like that ... sadly they had nothing else at their disposal — they don't stand a chance."
Samuel*, a security manager with more than 17 years experience in the industry, said people didn't understand the limitations placed on security guards.
He said Mr Tahir's death could have been prevented if he had proper protective gear.
"[He] did not have to lose his life ... no-one should have had to lose their lives over that."
Another security guard, Felix*, said greater access to stab-proof vests would better protect security guards against stabbings.
He said some employers didn't like security guards wearing extra protective equipment because it made them look unfriendly.
"A lot of clients want security to appear more as a friendly concierge. They get their panties in a twist that we look too intimidating or tactical. They believe it leaves their patrons with an uneasy feeling."
'A dangerous road'
Though it would require additional regulation, training, and likely, pay, Mr Taylor said it was time to give security guards better access to things like batons, protective equipment and capsicum sprays.
He said going so far as to arm security guards with guns, like they do in the United States, was not the solution.
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15 April, 2024
The brutal new class division appearing in Australia
This is not a new division at all. There have always been those who inherited significantly and those who did not. And being a "not" is far from a life sentence. Those who pass down wealth often started off poor themselves. I did. Nobody ever gave me a penny -- or even a cent for that matter. I earned it all.
And I remember that. I now provide heavily discounted rental accommodation to five people and give half my disposable income to a charitable education cause. So the rigid class lines described below are a myth. There are such lines but they are not all due to inheritance and are not fixed or permanent. And inherited wealth is often squandered anyway, which makes it very impermanent. It is squandering that I find contemptible
Inheritocracy – a term recently heard. Our lucky country is careering towards a great generational divide; a landed gentry of property owners on one side and renters on the other. A brutal new class division, flippant about educational attainment as the great equaliser. Rules are upended in the new order; degree holders may well be losing out. Indeed, among certain writers it’s now de rigueur to put “renter” in your social media bio. Blazing contempt and coolness, the brazen political stance of the othered. But as a nation we’re heading into uncharted waters, as resentments grow and younger voters cleave to whatever political party can do something about this vexed housing situation. If it can. The challenges are immense, the population restive.
That silky game of inheritocracy is playing out all around me. In one corner, a succession of friends and acquaintances stepping into enormous wealth as their parents pass away and family dwellings are inherited. The talk is of clearing parents’ houses for sale, upsizing into better places, holiday homes on the coast, paying off mortgages, extensive travel. They’re living their best lives, free of the corrosiveness of money worries. That’s a heady liberation. And during a cost-of-living crisis, no less.
In another corner, the dumping of building waste in a local car park. A council man clearing it up tells me people can’t afford the tipping fees anymore, so they drive all over the city to find car parks and secluded roads without CCTV to deposit their waste, which sometimes contains asbestos. A tiny snapshot of the other side. Of despairing Australians forgoing three solid meals a day because they can’t afford it. Of putting off the doctor visit because it’s too expensive. Of holidays as a distant memory. And many younger Australians work within a new order of employment – they’re immersed in all the stresses and indignities of the gig economy; the sheer, craven callousness of a system not on their side.
The stark reality: vast numbers cannot afford to live the life their parents had. For a 34-year-old in 1990, the average mortage in Australia was roughly three times their yearly wage – now it’s eight times. Many have given up on that great Australian dream of home ownership, a situation likely to reverberate through the generations. It’ll never happen for them now, nor, quite possibly, their children. Thus disadvantage rolls down through the years. What is bequeathed is all the uncertainties of the rental market – and a fundamental stress in life is instability. When it comes to property, we want to feel safe, in our own place, in a dwelling no one is going to take away from us. In the lucky country, the Great Australian Dream is now denied to a vast tranche of the unlucky.
NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey has warned that if we don’t act sharpish on housing affordability then Sydney may well be heading down the path of San Francisco, where you can see middle-class workers in suits and ties lining up for food banks and living in homeless shelters. The natural order of things, upended. The consequence of an obscene property market. Mookhey believes there’s only a five- to 10-year window to act.
“How one grudges the life and energy and spirit that money steals from one,” writer Katherine Mansfield wrote during a stretch of poverty. “I long to spend and have a horror of spending: money has corrupted me these last years.” The dream, for all of us, is to not be held hostage by a lack of money. To be free of the endless scrabble to obtain it, because how exhausting, stressful, consuming that is. What an extraordinary moment in time in Australia. We’re heading towards a new class order. It’s called a “propertocracy”, and it’s a tragedy for our nation.
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Biden Education Secretary Refuses to Answer Whether ‘Women Are Physically Different Than Men’
There is no limit to Leftist reality denial
Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona repeatedly refused to answer questions on whether physical differences exist between men and women at a Wednesday hearing.
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics announced Monday that only biological females can play in women’s sports at the roughly 240 universities it represents, which lawmakers referenced at the House Appropriations Committee budget hearing. Cardona has rejected discussing the NAIA policy as he says his department is currently engaged in a related rulemaking process on Title IX, but Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris pressed him on the issue.
“Would you agree that Title IX was necessary to help establish women’s sports, because women can’t fairly be expected to compete on biological male teams?” Harris asked.
Cardona began to speak about another topic but Harris cut him off, saying, “Please. No filibustering.” The representative then repeated his question, to which Cardona agreed that Title IX was necessary for this reason.
Female athletes have sued the National Collegiate Athletics Association over its policy allowing biologically male athletes to compete against women.
“Would you agree that women are physically different from men?” Harris followed up.
“I see where you’re going with this,” Cardona responded before the congressman cut him off. Harris then repeated the question, to which Cardona gave the same answer, adding, “I would love to talk about how we can work together to support the students,” before Harris cut him off again.
The Education Department sent Title IX regulation to the White House for its evaluation in February, which is anticipated to increase protections for transgender people in sports, according to Politico.
“Mr. Secretary, do you agree that biological women are different from biological men physically?” he asked. “This is a simple question for an educator. You’re not going to answer. OK.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/10/miguel-cardona-wont-answer-question-about-womens-sports/
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U.S. Helps Pro-Ukraine Media Run a Fog Machine of War
Wikimedia
Ukraine’s American-backed fight against Russia is being waged not only in the blood-soaked trenches of the Donbas region but also on what military planners call the cognitive battlefield – to win hearts and minds.
A sprawling constellation of media outlets organized with substantial funding and direction from the U.S. government has not just worked to counter Russian propaganda but has supported strong censorship laws and shutdowns of dissident outlets, disseminated disinformation of its own, and sought to silence critics of the war, including many American citizens.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs, commentator Tucker Carlson, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer are among the critics on both the left and the right who have been cast as part of a “network of Russian propaganda.”
But the figures targeted by the Ukrainian watchdog groups are hardly Kremlin agents. They simply have forcefully criticized dominant narratives about the war.
Sachs is a highly respected international development expert who has angered Ukrainian officials over his repeated calls for a diplomatic solution to the current military conflict. Last November, he gave a speech at the United Nations calling for a negotiated peace.
Mearsheimer has written extensively on international relations and is a skeptic of NATO expansion. He predicted that Western efforts to militarize Ukraine would lead to a Russian invasion.
Greenwald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning independent journalist who has criticized not just war coverage but media dynamics that suppress voices that run counter to U.S. narratives.
“What they mean when they demand censorship of ‘pro-Russia propaganda’ is anything that questions the US/EU role in the Ukraine war or who dissents from their narratives,” Greenwald has observed.
There’s no evidence of Kremlin influence over their viewpoints, but their comments alone are enough for a network of U.S.-backed Ukrainian media groups to tarnish these experts as Russian propagandists.
As Congress debates major new funding to support the Ukrainian war effort, U.S. taxpayer dollars are already flowing to outlets such as the New Voice of Ukraine, VoxUkraine, Detector Media, the Institute of Mass Information, the Public Broadcasting Company of Ukraine and many others.
Some of this money has come from the $44.1 billion in civilian-needs foreign aid committed to Ukraine. While the funding is officially billed as an ambitious program to develop high-quality independent news programs; counter malign Russian influence; and modernize Ukraine’s archaic media laws, the new sites in many cases have promoted aggressive messages that stray from traditional journalistic practices to promote the Ukrainian government’s official positions and delegitimize its critics.
It’s not only dissident voices targeted by the media groups, which are funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Detector Media went after the New York Times in February over a news report about hundreds of Ukrainians in the battle for Avdiivka who were captured or missing. The Ukrainian fact-check site offered little in terms of a rebuttal. Detector Media only cited a spokesperson for the Ukrainian Defense Forces disputing the Times' story, which it labeled as "disinformation." The New Voice of Ukraine quoted a Ukrainian official describing the Times story as a “Russian Psyop,” a term for psychological warfare.
Unlike similar media development programs that USAID has led throughout the Middle East, Ukrainian outlets tend to produce a great deal of English content that trickles back into the domestic American audience and explicitly targets American foreign policy discourse.
The New Voice of Ukraine syndicates with Yahoo News. VoxUkraine is a fact-checking partner with Meta, which assists in removing content deemed “Russian disinformation” from Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Detector Media has similarly led a consortium of nonprofit groups pressuring social media platforms to aggressively remove content critical of Ukraine.
"It makes more sense to have it in English because one of the things that happens is that the narrative that one encounters in the mainstream media in the West is referenced as the official Ukrainian voices," said Nicolai N. Petro, a professor specializing in Russian and Ukrainian affairs at the University of Rhode Island.
"These then become the known Ukrainian voices, although they're actually only an echo of the voice that we are projecting into Ukraine,” Petro added.
In the new aid earmarked for the war in Ukraine that Congress is now debating, a small portion of the $60 billion emergency spending package is devoted to continued USAID programs in the country. President Volodymyr Zelensky, in an interview this week with Politico and Bild, argued that legislators skeptical of the aid package were under the influence of Russian propaganda.
“They have their lobbies everywhere: in the United States, in the EU countries, in Britain, in Latin America, in Africa,” Zelenskyy said of Russian influence, without naming names. The pro-Russian pressure groups, the Ukrainian president added, relied on "certain media groups, citizens of the United States."
Information control is a central dynamic playing out in the Ukraine-Russia war. U.S. media have provided wide coverage of President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to clamp down on critical news outlets, enacting new criminal penalties for those publishing "false information" about the conflict. Many independent outlets in Russia have been forced to close, including the left-leaning radio station Ekho Moskvy. The Russian government has also blocked Russian-language news sites based in the West and arrested at least 22 journalists, including the Wall Street Journal's Evan Gershkovich.
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Discrimination against men can be toxic too
On one reading, Jason Lau, the man who successfully challenged the discriminatory sexism of the “Ladies Only” lounge at the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, is a massive sook. But on another reading, Lau is a paladin for modern men.
He is the victor in a small but significant fight against an increasingly aggressive feminist agenda that portrays all masculinity as “toxic” but doesn’t bother to define for boys what “non-toxic” masculinity might look like.
Lau paid full entry price for MONA but, like all male visitors, was refused entry to the lounge, which is a women-only space full of plush sofas and exquisite artworks cordoned off from the male gaze. The curator of the lounge, Kirsha Kaechele, says the discrimination is the point of the artwork – it is a comment on the historical exclusion of women from male spaces for centuries.
So piqued was Lau at being bounced from the lounge that he instigated a legal challenge against the museum. He made a complaint with Tasmania’s anti-discrimination commissioner, who escalated it to the Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
This week the tribunal found in his favour, with deputy president Richard Grueber stating that the relevant legislation “does not permit discrimination for good faith artistic purpose per se”. The museum is considering its options regarding an appeal.
The case was a literal example of what some men’s rights activists say is the new discrimination against men that post #MeToo feminism has enabled. It’s a hard contention for many women to stomach, to put it mildly.
We still face discrimination in the form of violence from men, pay inequity, and in the household labour we disproportionately take on. That’s not to mention the fact that in the United States – supposed a beacon of freedom – women’s rights over their own bodies are being stripped away at a pace that would please the Taliban.
This week the state of Arizona was the latest to outlaw abortion care. Control over female reproduction and sexuality is a well-recognised marker of ultra-right, nationalist and fascist governments. So long as they’re not facing all of that, what have men got to complain about?
Plenty, according to a growing number of sensible voices in the United States. They caution that if the left demonises men, particularly young men, in the process of pushing a gender-equality agenda, it leaves a vacuum for boys to be scooped up by misogynistic influencer-jerks like the notorious Andrew Tate.
Richard Reeves is one such voice. He is a British-American author and commentator who used to work for the former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, he of the “radical-centrist” Liberal Democrats. Reeves now works at the Brookings Institution, a non-partisan social sciences think-tank in Washington DC, where he is president of the American Institute for Boys and Men.
In 2022, he published a book called Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male is Struggling, Why It Matters and What To Do About It. In it, Reeves argued that young men feel displaced by advancing women’s rights and a changing jobs market, where traditional, working-class “men’s work” is shrinking and less valued than it used to be.
Overall, boys now perform less well in school than girls (a trend replicated in Australia), and more young women go to university than young men (again, this is the same in Australia). Men are less likely to have close friends than women, and they take their own lives at a much higher rate.
In the United States, these problems are amplified for black men, who are overall poorer, more susceptible to family disruption, and incarcerated at a much higher rate than non-black men. Reeves argues that it’s wrong for progressives to dismiss the hostility of some young men to feminism as a sexist backlash against ideals of equal opportunity.
He says that “young men see feminism as having metastasized [sic] from a movement for equality for women into a movement against men, or at least against masculinity”. This is especially galling for young men when they are struggling on a number of fronts (not least in terms of their mental health), but these struggles are ignored or even mocked in mainstream discourse.
This, in turn, leaves them susceptible to the overtures of nasty misogynists like Tate, and the masculinist “philosopher” Jordan Peterson. The latter, in particular, affects understanding and empathy with struggling young men, and helps them turn their energies outward rather than retreating inwards.
Jonathan Haidt is a New York University academic and author who has recently published a book on the ills of smartphones combined with childhood – The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. He told the New York Times recently that there is plenty of evidence that social media is very bad for girls.
But for boys, the internet presents different dangers. While girls might be too invested online, for boys, the internet is a pathway to opting out. They do this through pornography and video games, which facilitate “the gradual withdrawal of boys from effort in the real world”. “We’re not seeing boys really applying themselves in the real world — we’re seeing them apply themselves in the virtual world,” Haidt says.
“They’re investing their time, their efforts into things that don’t pay off in the long run.” The appeal is obvious – porn and gaming are virtual opiates where your mastery is complete. In both, you are in control, or your male avatar is, and you can construct a fantasy-reality without having to consult, or please, the people around you – the women around you.
This male disaffection is mirrored in the growing political divide between young men and young women, a phenomenon across the OECD, including in Australia, on which I have written before. Sometimes the news can read like a litany of power abuses by men, from the geo-political to the interpersonal. But as we advance towards gender equality, we also need to consider how those stories are perceived by boys.
They need role models who can show them how to keep their innate sweetness, and pick a path towards being the sort of decent, kind men we all know in our families and communities.
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14 April, 2024
EU Proposals Could Make Swedish Jam Illegal After More Than a Century on the Market
I am not a big jam-eater but I do like Lingon Sylt and always have some around. It is full of vitamins and minerals so would be a real loss if discontinued. Lingonberries are one of the few sources of vitamin C in the Arctic, where they are grown. They keep people in the very far North healthy almost single-handedly
A new proposal from the European Commission aims to make breakfast foods healthier for Europeans by raising the minimum berry content requirements in jam. The proposed regulations, discussed on April 10 and 11, seek to increase the minimum berry content in jams from 35 to 45 grams per hundred grams of product.
The proposal, which is likely to pass, poses significant implications for the Swedish jam industry, potentially altering over a century of culinary tradition.
Björnekulla, a renowned producer with popular offerings like raspberry jam, queen jam, and strawberry jam, finds itself at a crossroads due to these changes, as all the products would fall below the new permitted limit if the law is enacted.
Björnekulla would then face two options: either change their classic recipes or stop labeling their products as jam.
Pär Berglund, CEO of Björnekulla, expressed concerns about potential impacts on taste and pricing.
"More berries and less sugar tend to make the jam more sour. It's not just about compliance; it's about consumer preference," Berglund explained to Sydsvenskan.
Peter Kullgren, Minister of Rural Affairs, clarified that the intention behind the regulation is not to ban existing products but to standardize what qualifies as jam across Europe.
"This ensures that when you buy jam, whether in Sweden or Spain, you're getting the same quality and content," Kullgren stated.
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Left is still defending OJ because race is more important to them than justice
“O. J. Simpson clearly killed people . . . he murdered his wife,” admitted CUNY professor and frequent media commentator Marc Lamont Hill on his “official” YouTube channel hours after Simpson’s family announced the athlete, entertainer and killer’s death from cancer at the age of 76.
Nevertheless, Hill maintained that Simpson’s 1995 acquittal was the “correct and necessary result of a racist criminal legal system.”
“He should have been found not guilty,” Hill continued. “It’s a referendum on the system.”
That’s who is teaching your children, America. A college professor saying that it’s OK to let a murderer go free — as long as it sticks it to “the system.”
The evidence against Simpson was overwhelming.
His hair, blood, shoe prints, glove and DNA were found at the crime scene. The victims’ blood and DNA were found there, in Simpson’s car, on his clothing and along a path leading from his car to his front door.
Multiple witnesses observed him leaving his home in dark clothes just before the murders were committed and returning shortly thereafter, with no alibi.
Prosecutors identified 62 incidents of harassment, assault and death threats against his ex-wife during and after his troubled marriage, including an assault conviction following a no-contest plea.
Instead of submitting to arrest for the double homicide, Simpson attempted to flee in a nationally televised car chase.
The sole mitigating factor, which Hill and those like him believe more important than all other evidence combined, is that one police officer involved in the case had previously used the “N-word.”
A predominantly black jury felt that was enough for reasonable doubt, and racial politics alone were enough to gain freedom for Simpson, a criminally accused black man, and deny justice to his victims, who were white.
The Simpson decision was bad enough, but the tragedy is how that 1995 verdict became the left’s de facto stance.
If you thought Hill was saying the quiet part out loud, tune into CNN, where commentator Ashley Allison claimed on air that Simpson “represented something for the black community . . . because there were two white people who had been killed.”
She followed this appalling justification of murdering whites by cautioning that “we will always have moments like O. J. Simpson.”
Allison is no outlier.
She was a senior staffer of President Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, worked on his transition team, served as an Obama administration senior policy adviser and was a fellow of Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.
Try asking her if “all lives matter” and see if you get a more encouraging response than White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre’s insulting statement that the administration’s “thoughts are with [Simpson’s] family during this difficult time,” with no mention of the victims or their families.
While you’re at it, pose the same question to any George Soros-funded district attorney, starting with Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, whose campaign website declared it is “morally indefensible” to prosecute crimes that lead to disproportionate incarceration of blacks.
Since Bragg’s election, his office has radically reduced prosecutions for felony offenses and instead criminally charged heroes like Marine veteran Daniel Penny for daring to defend themselves and others.
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Another academic fraud
I knew before I looked it up what skin color the lady would be. Guess! Good scholarship among Left-leaning blacks seems to be virtually non-existent. It's pretty rare among Left-leaning whites too
Lisa D. Cook is one of the world’s most powerful economists. She taught economics at Harvard University and Michigan State University and served on the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers before being appointed, in 2022, to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, which controls the interest rates and money supply of the United States.
Despite her pedigree, questions have long persisted about her academic record. Her publication history is remarkably thin for a tenured professor, and her published work largely focuses on race activism rather than on rigorous, quantitative economics. Her nomination to the Fed required Vice President Kamala Harris to cast a tie-breaking vote; by contrast, her predecessor in the seat, Janet Yellen, now Treasury secretary, was confirmed unanimously.
The quality of her scholarship has also received criticism. Her most heralded work, 2014’s “Violence and Economic Activity: Evidence from African American Patents, 1870 to 1940,” examined the number of patents by black inventors in the past, concluding that the number plummeted in 1900 because of lynchings and discrimination. Other researchers soon discovered that the reason for the sudden drop in 1900 was that one of the databases Cook relied on stopped collecting data in that year. The true number of black patents, one subsequent study found, might be as much as 70 times greater than Cook’s figure, effectively debunking the study’s premise.
Cook also seems to have consistently inflated her own credentials. In 2022, investigative journalist Christopher Brunet pointed out that, despite billing herself as a macroeconomist, Cook had never published a peer-reviewed macroeconomics article and had misrepresented her publication history in her CV, claiming that she had published an article in the journal American Economic Review. In truth, the article was published in American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings, a less prestigious, non-peer-reviewed magazine.
An exclusive City Journal and Daily Wire investigation reveals additional facts that cast new doubt on Cook’s seriousness as a scholar.
In a series of academic papers spanning more than a decade, Cook appears to have copied language from other scholars without proper quotation and duplicated her own work and that of coauthors in multiple academic journals without proper attribution. Both practices appear to violate Michigan State University’s own written academic standards.
We will review several examples which, taken together, establish a pattern of careless scholarship at best or, at worst, academic misconduct.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/lisa-d-cooks-careless-scholarship
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Seattle dance squad says they were told American flag shirts made audience members feel ‘triggered and unsafe’
What an absurdity! Old Glory makes someone feel "unsafe"! They are mental cases if so. It's most probably just a lie. But the anti-patriotism of the Left is very sad and destructive
Members of a regional women’s country line dance team were reportedly kicked out of a Seattle dance convention after organizers claimed their American flag-themed shirts made some attendees feel “triggered and unsafe.”
Over the weekend at the Emerald City Hoedown in Seattle, the Borderline Dance team was set to perform, but were essentially told they weren’t welcome by organizer Rain Country Dance Association, an LGBTQ+ dance community, over their matching American flag themed shirts, Jason Rantz reported for 770 KTTH.
“Unfortunately, what our team was met with upon arrival was that our flag tops were offensive to some of the convention goers,” the dance group posted to Facebook.
“There was a small group that felt ‘triggered and unsafe.'”
Co-captain Lindsay Stamp spoke with Rantz for The Jason Rantz Show, explaining that their costumes sparked a “small percentage” of complainants who brought up Israel’s war against Hamas and transgender issues.
“At first we were told we would just be boo’d, yelled at and likely many of them would walk out,” the group’s Facebook post explained. “This did not deter us. But then we were given an ultimatum. Remove the flag tops and perform in either street clothes (which most didn’t bring as they traveled there in their uniforms) or they would supply us with ECH shirts from years past… Or, don’t perform at all, which effectively was asking us to leave.”
“We don’t speak for our team, we speak on behalf of them so the choice was theirs,” the post said. “As we knew would happen because there really was no choice in our minds, it was a unanimous NO.”
Stamp told Rantz that members of the team were shocked after they spent only 30 minutes at the venue before they started receiving complaints, adding that the team is patriotic, but doesn’t make statements about politics.
“My team doesn’t take a political stance. We came to dance,” she said. “We’re a patriotic group. We support our military, our veterans, our first responders. We’re a group of patriots.”
In the Facebook post, the group said they were not the only one that received this treatment.
“Our friends, West Coast Country Heat, who were also scheduled to dance for the convention that evening also did not perform as they too proudly don the colors of our country in the same spirit of patriotism that we do,” the post said. “Both of our teams stood in solidarity and put actions to words.”
But, the group said watching the two teams band together was “the greatest performance.”
“These people are strong, resolute and unwavering in their patriotism,” the Borderline Dance Team said. “They are the families and friends of people who have suffered the unimaginable so that we may all have our own opinions and sleep soundly in our beds at night. THAT is why we wear the colors. Because although we may not always agree with the current state of things, we recognize that being an American means true FREEDOM.”
“We all understood and accepted this and walked out with class and dignity despite the discrimination we had experienced,” the post added.
The Rain Country Dance Association did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment but indirectly addressed the incident on Facebook.
“Hi y’all! After the close of another amazing Hoedown weekend, we know there are some questions about the Saturday night performance line-up,” the post read.
“We appreciate y’all giving us the time to clear up misunderstandings and address the situation with people directly involved. We will be posting a follow-up statement later this week once we are able to have those conversations.”
In a Facebook comment, board president Ziadee Cambier said members of the Borderline Dance Team weren’t asked to leave.
“We will be in continued communication with the captains of the dance teams that were slated to perform Saturday,” she wrote.
“To clarify, as this was not a competition, no one was disqualified and no one was asked to leave. While we are mending our relationships directly with the dance teams we will be disabling comments on this post. We will be sharing more information later this week, to hopefully clear up any misunderstandings.”
Stamp disagreed and told Rantz she didn’t think there was miscommunication.
“It’s pretty clear to me, there’s always room for error in any situation, but I don’t believe so,” she said.
“I would just love to see more conversations opened about people accepting one another,” she added. “About being wholly inclusive. You know, every group of person talks about being inclusive and accepting. And I think that we need to work on being inclusive and accepting of people outside of our immediate comfort zones. I would love to see that.”
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11 April, 2024
"Married at First Sight" TV show is a cry for help about the state of gender relations
Rubbish! The participants are picked for drama potential, not representativeness
Each relationship was not so much the beginning of two people’s happily ever after as it was project management for the brides of their of grooms.
Take Cass – an admin officer from Queensland – who was bubbly, outgoing and optimistic while also mourning the death of her first boyfriend and mother. She was matched with Tristan – a 30-year-old events officer from NSW – who at one stage told the experts and his co-stars that he “hates himself” as he has always struggled with his weight and finding connections with women.
Sneaky editing and the splicing and dicing of footage amplified everything, but it was difficult to watch how both individuals grappled with these issues, and each other, while trying to build a romantic connection. Tristan then threw a tantrum when Cass asked to leave.
Another star, Lucinda – a compassionate wedding celebrant from Byron Bay – was matched with Tim, a convicted drug smuggler, who wouldn’t touch or open up to her until midway through the season. He proudly proclaimed he was “like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz” and didn’t like to talk about feelings (or his criminal past) until the final credits rolled.
Lucinda cracked.
“Am I signing up for minimum affection? Am I signing up for someone who can’t share their emotions?”
The silver lining was witnessing both Tristan and Tim acknowledge their troubles. But the excessive emotional labour required by their partners should be something the Fair Work Commission should look into.
The highlights of the season was not the salacious scenes and sound bites, it was the way it held up a mirror to how far we have to go when it comes to breaking down the barriers men face.
There are still oceans of difference between how men and women interact and seek help.
Women are talkers. Men – if this MAFS sample size is anything to go by – are unable to shake off conditioning to not seek external help from friends and professionals when it comes to “hidden” issues like emotional pain and mental turmoil.
MAFS cops a lot of criticism. Rightly so. It’s got about as much depth as a paddling pool. Yet if it continues to help shine a light on how we can help bridge the gender divide to stop women being the carers and men being closed off, sign me up for another serving of this televisual junk food.
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Marriage and babies really DO make women happier, says top researcher who's spent 20 years studying relationships
The US is battling an epidemic of sad, anxious young women. Despite the surge in our opportunities and freedoms over the past 50 years, it appears we are more depressed than ever.
Studies suggest that around a third of all adult women suffer some sort of mental health problem, compared to a fifth of men.
This is particularly apparent in the 18 to 25 age group, 41 percent of which are said to suffer anxiety, according to Harvard University research.
Over the last six years, the amount of women reporting depression increased 10 percent, from 26.2 percent in 2017 to 36.7 percent in 2023, according to a Gallup poll of over 5000 US adults.
With 20 years under my belt as a sociologist, studying the lifestyle patterns of Americans as well as their fulfillment over time, I believe I have stumbled on one possible explanation for this sea of sadness.
It might appear a controversial take: too few women are getting married.
Only 47 percent of women ages 18 to 55 were married in the US in 2022, compared to 72 percent in 1970, according to my analysis of the U.S. census data. Research from Bowling Green State University shows marriage rates reached an all time low in 2021 in the United States, with only 28 out of every 1000 married women getting married each year in the country, down from 76 in the 1970s.
There are a myriad of reasons for this - more career focus, less disposable income and a change in societal norms are just a few.
But the uncomfortable truth is women who aren't married are worse off, health-wise, compared to their married counterparts.
Studies have shown that married women have a lower risk of developing heart disease, are less likely to die from heart disease and have longer lifespans in general than non-married women.
One study tracking a sample of over 11,000 nurses found that married women are 35 percent less likely to die early than those who did not marry.
The mental health benefits of marriage and having a family of your own have also been well proven in scientific studies.
Some 40 percent of married mothers - both heterosexual and lesbian women - aged under 55 reported that they were 'very happy' with their lives, compared with 22 percent of single, childfree women and 25 percent of married childfree women, according to 2022 General Social Survey. Only 13 percent of divorced women say they've reached this level of happiness.
It is true, however, that more than one in three couples will get divorced. However, it's worth saying that many divorced couples remarry - up to 64 percent - and studies show this improves self-reported happiness.
Those who often find themselves irritated by their partner's infuriating habits may find this surprising.
But it's true: Studies have consistently shown that strong social relationships are key to happiness. And research has also shown that, although it may sound stereotypical, spouses provide a stronger bond than any other relationship.
Admittedly, taking care of children is an exhausting job. But extensive research has shown that the rewards outweigh the negatives. Married women also have the advantage of working alongside a devoted partner to share the tough job.
Despite the scientific data, social media is doing its part to malign marriage.
On TikTok, videos that jokingly depict marriage as a fast route to domestic chores like washing dishes, caring for a newborn baby, and cleaning the house, go viral.
Then there's the glamorization of childfree life, much of which is a result of the social media trend of DINKS (which stands for 'dual income no kids').
DINK couples consistently go viral online, showcasing their luxurious and fun-filled lives spent travelling the world and spending surplus cash that would, presumably, otherwise go on diapers.
These sentiments are being absorbed nationally. Only 24 percent of women under 30 believe that women who get married and have kids live fuller and happier lives than those who don’t, according to a 2023 poll.
Yes, it's true that men benefit more from marriage than women do when it comes to the division of household labor. And it has been shown that women, on average, do more emotional labor and spend more time on chores and childcare than their male partners.
But the gap in those measurements has been flattening somewhat, as my research from the Institute for Family studies (IFS) has shown.
My studies prove that dads are more involved in their children’s lives than ever before. Dads' child are time has increased while mothers’ child care time has remained stable over the past two decades.
American fathers now spend an average of nearly eight hours per week taking care of their children at home, while mothers’ childcare time is around 13.
As far as I am concerned, household work is work - and if you add up the number of hours mothers and fathers spend working overall, it's pretty much the same, on average.
In 2021-2022, work averaged 57 hours per week for both married fathers and mothers with children under age 18.
Also, studies that show married men benefit more from marriage are usually comparing married men to single men, not married men to married women.
When the comparison group is changed, the happiness level for married men and women is quite similar. Around 37 percent of married women under 55 and younger say they are 'very happy' as do 34 percent of married men, according to the IFS 2022 General Social Survey.
Likewise, 40 percent of married mothers report being very happy with their lives, as are 35 percent of married fathers.
In 2017, comments made by Hollywood star Anne Hathaway about her marriage to actor and producer Adam Shulman were heavily criticized on social media.
She told ELLE: 'I think the accepted narrative now is that we, as women, don’t need anybody. But I need my husband. His unique and specific love has changed me.'
The idea that a woman could need a man did not sit well with the Gen Z feminists on Instagram, who passionately argued that Hathaway was 'letting the side down' by insinuating that women cannot be truly happy without a male partner.
But the truth is, sharing your life with another person does have unique benefits for your emotional health.
Perhaps this is because married people are known to be markedly less lonely than their peers.
The CDC have identified loneliness as a contributor to a host of diseases- from dementia to stroke- as well as earlier death.
You might say it is possible to beat loneliness with a long-term partner, or even a good friend. But there is a sense of anxiety-busting stability you get with marriage that is not the case for other long-term relationships. It's a controversial point, but much of this lies in the financial benefits.
Padding your income with a partner's contribution allows you to lead a much more comfortable life.
In 2022, the median family income for married women ages 18-55 was $114,000, but only $54,000 for single, never-married women according to my analysis of American Community data.
Married women also have more than 10 times the assets than single, never-married women by the time they are in their 50s, which can help them close in on retirement.
Marriage is not a cure-it-all magic wand, but the data tell us that the average American woman who is married with children is markedly less lonely and living a more meaningful and joyful life.
So, to millions of young women who are at the start of adulthood: Do not let your fears of failing in love and family, or a slavish devotion to career, hold you back.
Do not allow popular misconceptions to keep you from enjoying the benefits of marriage and motherhood.
Prioritize relationships in your twenties, cultivate friendships with other marriage-minded young adults, be open to a relationship that could lead to marriage, and embrace marriage and parenthood when the time comes.
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Landmark review rejects puberty blockers for children wanting to change gender
An entire field of medicine aimed at enabling children to change gender has been “built on shaky foundations”, the chairwoman of an NHS review has concluded.
Dr Hilary Cass found that there was no good evidence to support the global clinical practice of prescribing hormones to under-18s to halt puberty or transition to the opposite sex.
This method of medical intervention for young people who identify as transgender has become embedded in clinical guidelines around the world over the past two decades. Thousands of children have received puberty blockers on the NHS since 2011, and referrals to its youth gender identity service have increased 100-fold in little over a decade.
Cass, a former president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, was commissioned by NHS England in 2020 to review services for children with gender dysphoria. Her final report has endorsed a fundamental shift in approach away from medical intervention towards a holistic model that addresses other mental health problems the children may have.
Rishi Sunak welcomed her findings and said that the lack of knowledge about the long-term impact of medical interventions meant people should proceed with “extreme caution”. He said: “We’ve seen a sharp rise in recent years of children, particularly adolescent girls, questioning their gender. I welcome Dr Cass’s expert review which urges treating these children, who often have complex needs, with great care and compassion.
“We simply do not know the long-term impact of medical treatment or social transitioning on them, and we should therefore exercise extreme caution.
“We acted swiftly on Dr Cass’s interim report to make changes in schools and our NHS, providing comprehensive guidance for schools and stopping the routine use of puberty blockers, and we will continue to ensure that we take the right steps to protect young people. The wellbeing and health of children must come first.”
The report contains 32 recommendations for overhauling services. “For most young people, a medical pathway will not be the best way to manage their gender-related distress,” Cass said, adding that children must be seen “as a whole person and not just through the lens of their gender identity”.
She said it was vital that services take into account high rates of autism and mental health problems in children identifying as transgender.
The report is the world’s biggest review into the contested field of trans healthcare, and involved patients, families, academics and doctors.
Researchers at the University of York examined all available evidence on how to treat children questioning their gender identity. They concluded there was “wholly inadequate” evidence to support medical intervention, making it impossible to know whether it improves mental or physical health.
The treatment, or pathway, involves giving children puberty blockers, and then cross-sex hormones from the age of 16, and has been adopted globally.
In an opinion piece for the BMJ, Cass said evidence-based medicine was built around three pillars of integrating the best available research with clinical expertise, and patient preferences. She said: “When conducting the review, I found that in gender medicine those pillars are built on shaky foundations.”
The review found that the use of puberty blockers had “spread at pace” around the world, based on a single Dutch study that began in 1998. It said there was no good evidence that puberty blockers helped, and they may damage bone health and height.
The NHS has committed itself to overhauling its gender identity services for children, including banning the use of puberty blockers for under-16s. The youth gender identity clinic run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust has been closed, with care moved to two new NHS services.
The review also found that debates on trans issues had led to fear among doctors and parents, with some worrying about being accused of transphobia. Since the Gender Identity Development Service opened in 1989, it has seen more than 9,000 young people.
An NHS spokesman said: “NHS England is grateful to Dr Cass for comprehensive work on this important review. The NHS has made significant progress towards establishing a fundamentally different gender service for children and young people.”
A 2019 investigation by The Times first exposed concerns about children being put on experimental treatments at NHS gender clinics.
Helen Joyce, from Sex Matters, a charity that campaigns for clarity on sex in law, said: “Hilary Cass’s report is the nail in the coffin for the so-called ‘gender-affirming’ treatment model. The total lack of evidence base is laid bare for everyone to see.”
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Australia: No transition from gender reality, app boss Sall Grover tells court
The founder of a women's-only social media app says she does not accept that a person who transitions from male to female surgically, socially and legally is a woman, and removed her from the app as she does with “all males”.
The view, held by Giggle for Girls app founder and CEO Sall Grover was described in court on Wednesday by Roxanne Tickle’s legal team as being at the “heart” of the discrimination case.
Ms Tickle, who underwent gender-affirming surgery in 2019 and is now designated as female on her birth certificate, argues she was discriminated against on the grounds of gender identity by Giggle for Girls and Ms Grover when she was denied access to the app. Ms Tickle claims she was initially accepted into the app in February 2021 when she submitted a “selfie” through Giggle’s third-party artificial intelligence tool but was later blocked by Ms Grover.
Barrister Bridie Nolan, for Ms Grover, says the app was designed “for the purpose of achieving equality between men and women in public life by providing an online refuge”, and so does not amount to discrimination as it is a “special measure”.
But Georgina Costello KC, acting for Ms Tickle, said: “The critical issue in this case, your honour, is that the first and second respondents, Ms Grover and the company Giggle for Girls, have persisted in misgendering the applicant for years. That’s the heart of this case – that there’s been a discrimination on the basis of gender in excluding her from the app and persisting in misgendering her subsequently.”
It is the first time a case alleging gender identity discrimination has been heard by the Federal Court following changes to the Sex Discrimination Act in 2013, which made it unlawful to discriminate against a person on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status.
Ms Costello asked Ms Grover in cross-examination whether “even where a person who was assigned male gender at birth has transitioned to being a woman” by having gender-affirming surgery, taking hormones to make them grow breasts, removing their facial hair, wearing female clothing and using female changing rooms, “you don’t accept that that person is a woman, do you?”
“No,” Ms Grover replied.
Ms Costello continued: “I suggest to you that in Australian society, the natural meaning of, the ordinary, contemporary meaning of woman, includes women whose gender is dated to be a woman on their birth certificate, having transitioned from man to woman?”
“I don’t agree,” Ms Grover replied.
Ms Costello also questioned Ms Grover about the alleged hurt caused to Ms Tickle through interviews and tweets referring to her as a man.
The court heard Ms Tickle said in an affidavit Ms Grover’s public statements about the case had been “distressing, demoralising, draining and hurtful” and claimed the “scale of online hate” towards her, as a result, was “enormous”.
Ms Grover agreed she would have done about 20 to 50 interviews about the case, most recently travelling to the UK for press, and that she frequently described Ms Tickle as a man, and as a “man wanting access to female spaces”.
Ms Grover also said she had told interviewers she was “harassed by the applicant” and “afraid of the applicant”.
Ms Costello put to her that it was “not kind” to refer to Ms Tickle as a man. “I don’t think it’s kind to expect a woman to see a man as a woman,” Ms Grover responded.
In her opening address on Tuesday, Ms Nolan argued “sex” is a biological and binary concept, while Ms Tickle’s legal team argued it is partly psychological and social.
On Wednesday afternoon, barrister Zelie Heger, on behalf of the Sex Discrimination Commissioner submitted that “sex” for the purpose of the Sexual Discrimination Act is “changeable” and “non-binary” and as a result not “only” biological.
The Commissioner is assisting the Court by providing submissions about the meaning, scope and validity of relevant provisions of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth).
Ms Heger also said a person can be of the “female sex” as per the Act “if they are registered as such” and “had gender affirming surgery”.
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10 April, 2024
Do autism and psychopathy overlap?
Answering that question runs into a lot of difficulties over definition. For reference, I give the Mayo definition of both conditions below
* Autism spectrum disorder is a condition related to brain development that impacts how a person perceives and socializes with others, causing problems in social interaction and communication. The disorder also includes limited and repetitive patterns of behavior.
* Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental health condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to purposely make others angry or upset and manipulate or treat others harshly or with cruel indifference. They lack remorse or do not regret their behavior.
As you will see, psychopathy is no longer called that any more. For a while it was renamed "sociopathy" but now it is usually called "antisocial personality disorder'
There would appear to be one clear area of overlap: concern over other people and their feelings. But the causality would appear to be different. The psychopath is aware of other people's feelings but doesn't care while the austistic person is not aware. Both ignore other peoples feeling but for different reasons. Still, that indifference is a central feature of both syndromes so their apparent identity is an important question.
In my case, I am a person with a pretty full set of autistic characteristics, and I am aware of how little other people's sufferings and feelings impact me. I am not a sympathetic person. I do for instance greatly deplore the vicious October 7 attacks on innocent Israelis by a deranged Palestinian minority but I cannot FEEL anything about that event.
But on the other hand I have always been generous to others in some ways. At present I give roughly half of my disposable income to a charitable cause while living a generally frugal personal life. I have long given away a large slice of my income
So there is clearly a possibility of mistaking the two traits and unwinding any confusion depends on looking at other characteristics of the person
Another potential confusion is the way I drive. I am a "demon" driver and that could be mistaken for psychopathic carelessness. But it is an item of pride to me that in 60 years of driving I have never hurt myself or anyone else. I just work with fine margins, that's all. I have been known to give my passengers the shakes however
So again, things that may look the same may in fact be fundamentally different
This very post is an instance of autistic behaviour. It is common for autistics to be unusually self-revealing. Psychopaths, on the other hand, tend to be devious and to "fake good"
Professor Simon Baron-Cohen is an acknowledged authority on autism and he argues that calling it a "disorder" is wrong.
https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.12703
Like some of the people mentioned in the article linked below I am inclined to think it can be a gift, or even a "superpower"
I commented on that article a few days ago
https://pcwatch.blogspot.com/2024/04/beautiful-minds-inside-identity.html
JR
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How Can People Keep Claiming That Penalties Don't Deter Criminals?
Gordon Tulloch long ago did the numbers on this and found that the threat of punishment DOES deter crime. See below:
https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/does-punishment-deter-crime
Last week, New York’s progressive Assembly speaker, Carl Heastie, claimed he doesn't believe increasing penalties deters crime. He said:
"I was simply asked a question of, ‘Do I believe that increasing penalties deters crime,’ and I gave a simple answer, ‘No,’ ” Heastie told reporters Tuesday. “I don’t believe, in the history of increasing penalties, has that ever been the reason that crime has gone down.
"I'd love somebody to give me an example as to when that happened."
Unfortunately, Heastie is hardly alone. Soros backed District Attorneys across the country don’t believe that their unwillingness to prosecute criminals has anything to do with increasing crime. In academia, most criminologists (which is dominated by sociologists) don’t even include things like arrest and convictions rates in their empirical work on questions such as gun control because they don’t think that it matters in determining crime rates.
It is hard to believe that anyone takes such a claim seriously, but it is a popular idea among progressives. If Heastie really believes that, then he should be open to abolishing police and prisons. If penalties don’t reduce crime, then why waste money on police, courts, and prisons? By the same token, perhaps we should also eliminate the penalties for violating the gun control laws that Heastie so strongly supports.
We can see what happens on our southern border when we don’t enforce laws or impose penalties. People simply continue breaking the law and entering by the millions.
California’s murder rate peaked in 1993 at 13.1 per 100,000 people, an increase from 10.9 per 100,000 in 1989. But by 2000, the murder rate had fallen by 53% compared to its 1993 peak. One obvious explanation is the enactment of California’s tough, three-strikes criminal punishment law on March 7, 1994.
New York City increased the number of police officers from 31,000 to 40,000 during the 1990s, and major felonies meanwhile plunged from 430,460 in 1993 to 162,064 in 2001. Over those same years, the number of murders plummeted from 1,927 to 649.
Amidst longer prison sentences and higher arrest and conviction rates, criminals will commit fewer crimes. The vast majority of empirical research by economists shows that. It’s also simply logical that in addition to keeping criminals off the street, the threat of arrest and conviction will deter criminals. The higher price for crime, the less crime you get, Most criminals do not want to go to prison.
Criminals also don’t want to get hurt, and an armed citizenry can make criminals think twice. The defensive value of guns is evidenced by international comparisons of so-called “hot burglaries,” whereby a resident is at home when a criminal strikes. In the United Kingdom, which has tough gun-control laws, almost 60% of all burglaries are “hot burglaries.” In the United States, where gun ownership is commonplace, the “hot burglary” rate stands at only 13 percent. The overall burglary rate in the UK is about two-thirds higher than the rate in the US (2.7 per 1,000 in US and 4.5 per 1,000 in England & Wales).
Convicted American felons reveal in surveys that they are much more worried about armed victims than about encountering the police. The fear of armed victims causes American burglars to spend more time than their foreign counterparts in “casing” a house to ensure that nobody is home. American burglars break into homes during the middle of the day, when homeowners are less likely to be at home, but British burglars often break in during the evening so that they can get the homeowners to open up any safes. Felons frequently comment in interviews that they avoid late-night burglaries because “that’s the way to get shot.”
It isn’t rocket science. Criminals are deterred with higher arrest and conviction rates, longer prison sentences, and the fact that victims might be able to defend themselves. One wonders if people like Carl Heastie have ever had children.
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Arizona Supreme Court revives 160-year-old abortion ban
Arizona’s highest court on Tuesday revived a 160-year-old ban on abortion, a decision that ratchets up the political stakes in a state that could decide the 2024 presidential race.
Abortion in the state has been allowed through 15 weeks of pregnancy under a law that the GOP-controlled Arizona Legislature passed in 2022, shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Abortion opponents and some Republican politicians argued that the recent law didn’t override one dating to 1864 – before Arizona was a state – that banned abortion throughout pregnancy except in lifesaving situations.
The Arizona Supreme Court, in a 4-to-2 decision, agreed that the 19th-century law takes precedence. The court delayed implementation of the ban for at least two weeks to allow for additional legal arguments, but abortion-rights advocates appear to have few options to prevent it from taking effect.
The state high court said legislators had made clear at the time of the 2022 law that they wished to restrict abortion as much as federal law allowed.
“To date, our legislature has never affirmatively created a right to, or independently authorised, elective abortion,” Justice John R. Lopez IV wrote for the court.
Most abortions take place before 15 weeks of pregnancy, and Arizona thus far has seen little change in the number of abortions since the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to the procedure. Now a state with a libertarian streak will have one of the nation’s strictest abortion bans, similar to laws in deep-red states such as Oklahoma and Texas.
It is unclear when or whether the ban will ultimately be enforced. Arizona Attorney-General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said Tuesday that women and doctors won’t be prosecuted while she holds office.
Nonetheless, the ruling is likely to supercharge the fight over a ballot measure to protect abortion rights that is expected to be on the state ballot in November – and could spill over into other races in a top battleground state. The measure would allow abortion access through foetal viability, or more than halfway through a typical pregnancy. Abortion-rights groups already have collected more than 500,000 signatures, putting the measure on track to clear the threshold required to appear on the ballot.
Arizona is a longtime GOP bastion that has been electing Democrats in recent years. Abortion was a potent issue in the 2022 midterm elections, when Democrats won all major statewide offices and performed better than expected across the country.
November’s election will see many competitive races in the state, meaning Arizona voters could decide which party controls the White House and both chambers of Congress. Republicans have worried that an outright ban would push winnable voters into the Democratic column.
President Biden narrowly won Arizona in 2020 but is trailing former President Donald Trump in most surveys this year, including in a Wall Street Journal poll from March. The poll found that abortion was a rare issue in which voters in seven battleground states favoured Biden over Trump.
“This ruling is a result of the extreme agenda of Republican elected officials who are committed to ripping away women’s freedom,” Biden said Tuesday.
The Trump campaign didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Arizona was one of a handful of states that never formally repealed abortion bans that had been on their books before the 1973 Roe decision that recognised abortion rights nationwide for nearly 50 years. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June 2022, the old bans once again became potentially enforceable.
In September 2022, a state trial court briefly allowed enforcement of the old ban, but an appeals court stepped in and blocked it. That court said the 19th-century measure needed to be harmonised with the more recent law, effectively allowing abortions up to 15 weeks.
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The Tailspin of American Boys and Men
Many boys and men are struggling to flourish in their roles as sons, students, employees, and fathers, and to achieve the sense of purpose that comes from being rooted within marriages, communities, churches, and country.
Much of the literature on the boy crisis contains impressive, even essential social science work that clearly demonstrates that boys and men are falling behind. My recent essay, “Men Without Meaning: The Harmful Effects of Expressive Individualism,” is an attempt to distill this literature and explore how expressive individualism—the notion that the inner self is the true self and is radically autonomous—plays a central role in the boy crisis.
The ascendance of expressive individualism, which can be traced to the Sexual Revolution, is partially responsible for the breakdown of marriage and has gained a foothold in religious institutions. Among others, it combines the thinking of Simone de Beauvoir, who divorced sex from gender; psychologist Sigmund Freud, who elevated human sexuality as central to identity; and philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued that man is innocent and corrupted by society.
Political scientist Warren Farrell and counselor John Gray’s The Boy Crisis: Why Our Boys are Struggling and What We Can Do About It is the go-to text for understanding the dad deprivation that is the primary cause of the boy crisis. It lays out how a dad’s presence can positively impact a child’s scholastic achievement, verbal intelligence and quantitative abilities, and development of trust and empathy. Likewise, it shows that the absence of a father’s presence increases the likelihood that a child will drop out of school, commit suicide, use drugs, become homeless, end up in poverty, develop hypertension, and be exposed to or commit bullying and violent crime, including rape.
Fathers, like mothers, contribute in unique and indispensable ways to the raising of children. One example is through play, which helps children develop, learn the limits of their bodies, and properly channel aggression. According to, “Theorizing the Father-Child Relationship: Mechanisms and Developmental Outcomes”: “Children seem to need to be stimulated and motivated as much as they need to be calmed and secured, and they receive such stimulation primarily from men, primarily through physical play.”
Dad deprivation is especially disastrous for boys. As mimetic creatures, theoretical arguments about masculinity and virtue fall short of a father’s lived witness of their mastery. Boys learn how to become good men by imitating a good man, and the mentors of their lives are their fathers.
Thanks to expressive individualism’s effect on our moral imagination, however, today many people dismiss the benefits of embodied play and assume that fathers and mothers are interchangeable. We have accepted the premises that the mind and body are disconnected and the body is unimportant.
Expressive individualism has also changed the way we think about marriage, making it more fragile. Marriage is no longer geared towards the character formation of each spouse and to providing a loving environment for the raising of children, but rather is now primarily viewed as a means to achieving emotional satisfaction and personal improvement. Rather than both husband and wife sacrificing for the good of the marriage, each spouse aims separately to achieve his and her personal subjective idea of “self-actualization.”
As Andrew Cherlin, a sociology and public policy professor at Johns Hopkins University, articulates in The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today, marriages based on expressive individualism involve:
Growing and changing as a person, paying attention to your feelings, and expressing your needs…[M]arriages are harder to keep together, because what matters is not merely the things they jointly produce—well-adjusted children, nice homes—but also each person’s own happiness.
Over twenty years ago, in The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men, philosopher Christina Hoff Sommers drew attention to the fact that boys were falling behind in school. Some of the precipitating causes were newer, such as zero tolerance policies, the decline of free play and recess, and the rise of a self-esteem centered safety culture. Others reach back much further. Our education system, in many ways, is not designed for boys. Simultaneous shifts in our economy have lengthened the time spent in school and raised the stakes of getting an education.
On average, the energy level of boys makes it difficult for them to sit still for long periods. They can be unorganized and frustrate their teachers, who factor behavior into grading. Perhaps some teachers, mired in expressive individualism, expect girls and boys to behave the same, as “boys on average receive harsher exclusionary discipline than girls for the same behaviors.” In truth, as senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institute Richard Reeves writes: “The parts of the brain associated with impulse control, planning, future orientation, sometimes labeled the ‘CEO of the brain,’ are mostly in the prefrontal cortex, which matures about 2 years later in boys than in girls.”
The progressive style of education, relying on Rousseau’s romantic vision and promulgated by reformers like John Dewey and others, contends that theoretically children should direct their own educational trajectory. This has been particularly harmful to boys. Approximately since the 1970s, as Sommers writes, children have been treated as their “own best guides in life. This turn to the autonomous subject as the ultimate moral authority is a notable consequence of the triumph of the progressive style over traditional directive methods of education.”
Changes in education were greeted with changes in the economy itself. Precipitated by free trade and automation, America is now a global knowledge economy. Overall, those most negatively impacted have been men without much education. According to “The Declining Labor Market Prospects of Less-Educated Men”: “Between 1973 and 2015, real hourly earnings for the typical 25-54 year-old man with only a high school degree declined by 18.2 percent, while real hourly earnings for college-educated men increased substantially.” American Enterprise Institute scholar Nicholas Eberstadt’s Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis details how over seven million men ages 25-55 have checked out of the workforce. Such men often receive disability payments or are living with a relative who serves as a source of income.
These disengaged men are spending a great deal of time in front of screens that promote disembodied expressive individualism. This includes an average of 5.5 hours of movies and TV per day, not to mention the rise of exceedingly popular online pornography. Some estimate that Gen Z boys are being exposed to porn at the average age of nine. Studies indicate that pornography rewires the brain, causing boys and men to desire more and more novel content rather than a relationship with a real woman. Male employment is often tied to family structure, and marriage rates for low-income men have declined, demonstrating the unique causes and reinforcing mechanisms of the boy crisis.
The devastating impact of the opioid epidemic is another factor. Some estimate that it could account for 43 percent of the decline in male labor force participation from 1999 to 2015. During that time, the number of overdoses quadrupled, and men made up almost 70 percent of such deaths. The incarceration rate has also risen, and years behind bars reduce the likelihood of finding employment.
These phenomena are not equally distributed across the country, and some have hypothesized that increased deaths of despair (deaths from suicide, overdose, etc.) “among less-educated middle-age Americans might be rooted in ‘a long-term process of decline, or of cumulative deprivation, rooted in the steady deterioration in job opportunities for people with low education.’” The second leading cause of death for American men under 45 is suicide.
All this has left many men without purpose and hope. The boy crisis both reflects and contributes to the broader crisis of America and the West, in no small measure driven by the expressive individualism that has left men and women disconnected from relationships, human nature, and objective truth. America and the West are running on the fumes of our heritage, no longer able to articulate our principles or the gratitude we owe the past.
For much of history, human beings have been most willing to give the last measure of their devotion for what truly provides identity: God, family, and country. Each of these encompasses the individual, pulling him out of himself and toward a life of sacrifice, responsibility, and devotion. Expressive individualism is a stark deviation from the traditional understanding that freedom and virtue are intertwined. As articulated in the classic work Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life:
influenced by modern psychological ideals, to be free is not simply to be left alone by others; it is also somehow to be your own person in the sense that you have defined who you are, decided for yourself what you want out of life, free as much as possible from the demands of conformity to family, friends, or community.
Solutions to the boy crisis must counteract such messaging and ideas, putting forth a substantive view of marriage, revitalizing religious institutions, and honoring fatherhood and male mentorship as fundamental sources of meaning. They will reestablish a proper understanding of the human person and the ties between happiness and virtue. Sadly, there are no silver bullet solutions to these issues. The devastation is far-reaching and multitudinous, and the work we have to do matches the price we have paid.
https://www.heritage.org/civil-society/commentary/the-tailspin-american-boys-and-men
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9 April, 2024
Yes, Donald Trump & Co. SHOULD fight unfair anti-white racism
The inequality between blacks and whites in the USA drives Leftists mad. Equality is a major part of their religion. But it is plain that whites prosper more than blacks do and that East Asians do best of all. And nothing seems to be able to change that. Leftists cannot accept that there are inherent differences between the three groups that will always make them better fitted to prosper in a modern Western economy. So they resort to all sorts of nonsense in order to deny what lies plainly in front of them. They say they are enemies of racism but go on immediately to practice it against whites: Equality at all costs. They are obsessed: Very unpleasant people
Is there anything more poisonous or ridiculous than insisting that corporations and the government treat people fairly regardless of race?
Apparently not.
An Axios report on the Trump team’s intention to use civil-rights laws to target DEI policies discriminating against whites has occasioned sneering and denunciations.
Philip Bump at The Washington Post snarked, as his headline puts it, “Trump aims to be a fearless warrior for White advantage.”
The New Republic commented, sarcastically, “If Donald Trump is elected to a second term in November, his allies plan to end this country’s long-standing oppression of a major marginalized group in America: white people.”
MSNBC warned, “Trumpism is increasingly organized around the reactionary principle that white Americans are not just overlooked, but are victims because of their race. This is a path to unraveling multicultural democracy.”
Much of the commentary reflects the contradictory argument that anti-white racism isn’t really a thing, yet, simultaneously, is absolutely essential to racial progress.
The same twisted reasoning was often used when the CRT controversy was at its height; critical race theory was either a right-wing myth or foundational to the truthful teaching of America’s past, or somehow both.
There should be a long German word for this rhetorical phenomenon.
Regardless, it is axiomatic that in the context of zero-sum hiring, admissions and contracting decisions, favoring one group will disadvantage another.
This has been well established regarding affirmative-action policies at colleges — it’s much harder for white (or Asian) applicants to get into competitive schools than it is for members of favored minority groups with similar credentials.
Progressives might believe that this is cosmic justice, that whites deserve whatever they get. But individuals aren’t racial symbols and shouldn’t be treated as such. A conscientious white college applicant, who has never harmed anyone, shouldn’t be punished for his or her race.
Why are the iniquities of the old Jim Crow regime being taken out on white applicants — who never voted for Lester Maddox and probably never heard of him — for assistant-vice-president jobs at banks and other corporations?
This is unfair, and, more to the point, against the law.
The US Constitution is race neutral, and so are the civil-rights laws enacted after the Civil War and in the 1960s.
As such, they are potentially a powerful weapon against the system of racial preferences that has become a pervasive feature of American life.
We saw that in the Supreme Court’s affirmative-action decision last year, and in the ruling last month against the Minority Business Development Agency by US District Court Judge Mark Pittman in Texas.
Corporations that are setting hiring targets by race and gender face massive exposure.
They haven’t had to worry about it much to this point. The plaintiffs’ bar, out of political cowardice, won’t touch this issue.
On top of that, it’s hard even to find plaintiffs; becoming known as the white person who was chiseled out of a job and sued over it is not the best career move in corporate America.
This is why an ideologically driven group like former Trump aide Stephen Miller’s America First Legal has had to pick up the baton, with some success.
But if a Trump Justice Department decides to make an example of a couple of high-profile corporations engaged in these discriminatory practices, the regime of preferences may well crumble quickly.
Until recently, the incentives have been all the other way — to adopt the fashionable attitudes, spout the familiar DEI lines, empower the apparatchiks of HR and not risk the ire of elite opinion by taking a different path.
Now, there are signs that DEI in corporate America is cresting, or at least becoming less blatant, under political and legal pressure.
If a Trump Justice Department (and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) pushes these types of policies in business and government into the dustbin, the Left will firmly plant both feet on one side of its current straddle — and say it’s a travesty that anti-white discrimination no longer exists.
https://nypost.com/2024/04/05/opinion/yes-donald-trump-amp-co-should-fight-unfair-anti-white-racism/
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John Eastman and the Left’s War on the Legal Profession
Bewildering
By Josh Hammer
John Eastman is a lawyer, legal scholar, and a friend. A former clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, candidate for California attorney general, and dean of Chapman University School of Law, I got to know John during my weeklong 2018 legal fellowship with the Claremont Institute, which he oversaw. We have stayed in touch and done at least one event together for Claremont since that time.
Unfortunately, since the 2020 presidential election, John has been put through the wringer more than just about anyone in American public life.
He was forced to retire from the law school where he was a longtime constitutional law professor and even dean. He was let go by the University of Colorado’s Benson Center for Western Civilization, where he was a visiting scholar. Armed Stasi—sorry, FBI—agents accosted him in a parking lot and seized his phone without a warrant. He has been suspended from academic conferences and lost board seats. He and his wife have endured death threats, spikes in their driveway, and threatening graffiti in their neighborhood. He has been debanked by Bank of America and the USAA. He is being criminally prosecuted by scandal-ridden Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis. And last week, State Bar Court of California Judge Yvette Roland devoted 128 pages to explaining why he should lose his law license.
All this because John had the chutzpah to do what every law school student is taught to do in legal ethics class: defend and zealously advocate for one’s client, no matter how unpopular or even disreputable that client may be. In this case, John’s unpopular client was a high-profile one: former President Donald Trump.
There has been an astronomical amount of misinformation about John’s activities in the weeks leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol jamboree, as well as the legal advice that he offered his high-profile client during that time. The corporate media and the Democrat-lawfare complex typically speak of John’s legal advice as encouraging the “overturning of an election” or “fomenting an insurrection,” but such hyperbolic talk is irresponsible and wildly off base.
John acquitted himself well in a compelling essay he penned for Claremont’s American Mind online journal on Jan. 18, 2021, titled “Setting the Record Straight on the POTUS ‘Ask.’” His 12th Amendment argument about the vice president’s more active role in certifying the states’ slates of electors and his accompanying argument regarding the constitutional dubiousness of the Electoral Count of 1887 might not be correct (although it could be), but it is well within the bound of plausible, nonfrivolous legal argumentation an attorney can (indeed, should) press upon an embattled client. That is doubly so here, because the U.S. Supreme Court has never authoritatively interpreted the relevant 12th Amendment provision. Countless legal arguments more frivolous than this are advanced every day in courtrooms across America.
Nor is John Eastman the only man being prosecuted, and possibly disbarred, for his legal activity after the 2020 election. Former U.S. Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark is also being prosecuted in Georgia, and he was just found by the District of Columbia Bar to have violated an ethics rule, which might lead to his own disbarment there—all stemming from an internal Department of Justice memo that Clark never even sent.
Once upon a time, the American left understood the moral imperative of ensuring that all Americans have adequate access to legal representation, no matter one’s popularity in the eyes of the government or societal elites. Indeed, the definitive American example of such unpopular legal representation actually dates back to before the United States was even independent: In 1770, a young lawyer named John Adams, the man who would become the young republic’s second president, took it upon himself to defend the British soldiers accused of killing five colonists at the Boston Massacre. Years later, in his dotage, Adams reflected that this was “one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country.”
Presumably, Fani Willis and Judge Roland would have preferred to see John Adams tarred and feathered for his treachery. One also cannot help but wonder how they might have viewed the NAACP’s legal representation in the Deep South during the days of Jim Crow.
The ultimate aim of those Jacobins prosecuting and disbarring lawyers for having the temerity to practice the legal profession is clear: the subordination of the rule of law to the Jacobins’ own friend/enemy-level politics, and the cowing into submission of those lawyers who would so much as consider representing a high-profile Republican client or work in a Republican Department of Justice. Ironically, and without any hint of self-awareness, they do all this in the name of “our democracy.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/john-eastman-and-the-lefts-war-on-the-legal-profession-5622724
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New York Grand Jury Releases Scathing Report Against Child Protection Services Agency
Child protection agencies seem to oscillate between exessive zeal and gross negligence
The result of a six-month special grand jury investigation into the murder of 8-year-old Tommy Valva by his father has revealed another disturbing instance of abuse of power by child protection agencies and the family court system.
The New York boy died in 2019 from hypothermia after his father, an NYPD cop, inflicted a series of cruel punishments on him. He made the child strip naked, lay on a cold cement garage floor, and hosed him down with cold water. Michael Valva was convicted of his son’s murder in 2022.
The grand jury report, released on April 3, is wrought with similar findings in the recent review of the murder of 5-year-old Harmony Montgomery. Details of the girl’s murder and the state of New Hampshire’s inability to account for her whereabouts for two years gripped the nation.
It was a tragedy set in motion when Massachusetts Family Court Judge Mark Newman awarded custody of the little girl to her father Adam Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery was convicted in February of murdering his daughter.
Judge Newman granted custody to Mr. Montgomery instead of the girl’s mother despite his lengthy violent criminal history and transient status.
Before Tommy Valva’s murder, Suffolk County Family Court Judge Jeff Zimmerman also awarded full custody of the little boy along with his two brothers to his father Michael Valva over the boy’s mother Justyna Zubko-Valva.
In both Harmony and Tommy’s cases, court records, which were widely publicized in both murder trials, show that neither of their mothers had any history of abuse or violence.
In both of the children’s cases, child protection service workers went along with the court’s custody awards despite knowing that there were serious child abuse allegations and child welfare concerns pending against both men.
In her office’s findings from an investigation into Harmony’s murder, Maria Mossaides, director of the Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate, slammed the state child protection agency for what she called system-wide failures and also for “recklessly” favoring parental rights over Harmony’s safety.
Throughout its 75-page investigative report, the New York grand jury charges New York’s child protection services system with the same kind of failures.
It faulted CPS employees for deeming child abuse allegations by another parent as unfounded with little evidence. It also cited the system as flawed for not having any independent checks and balances with the agency over such decisions.
According to the grand jury, the agency even refused to return its records for the investigation.
“The failure of CPS to do so can only be interpreted as a transparent attempt to shield their own inaction from public scrutiny. Thus, the laws and rules must be changed to prevent such future injustices,” the investigative jury charged.
In its report, it also focuses on another familiar issue raised in other states regarding the operations of child protection agencies and the family court system: the immunity that child protection workers and judges enjoy from dereliction of duty.
“Even though immunity does not preclude a finding of criminal liability for CPS caseworkers who have engaged in willful misconduct or gross negligence, such caseworkers are still effectively impervious to any such liability in cases where reports are deemed unfounded,” the panel wrote.
The panel discovered that caseworkers, due to not being required to substantiate their findings to the court or even a supervisor, created a shield against accusations of “willful misconduct or gross negligence.”
“In this regard, employees of CPS have the unilateral ability to thwart criminal investigations prior to the matter of immunity even becoming relevant, by determining that a case is unfounded, or by deciding not to migrate prior unfounded reports and related materials in a new indicated investigation,” the panel found.
At a press conference during the murder trial, Ms. Zubko-Valva talked about her many pleas for help to child protection workers and other state officials that went ignored.
“I kept thinking about all the institutions who failed to help him, who completely did absolutely nothing ... now everybody’s trying to do the right thing ... but where were you when I begged you for help when you could have saved my child’s life,” said Ms. Zubka-Valva who said she also filed a complaint with the FBI after Judge Hope Schwartz Zimmerman gave custody to Mr. Valva.
The judge awarded custody to the father after a divorce attorney complained to the court Ms. Zubko-Valva was “interfering with her access to the children,” according to a pending wrongful death lawsuit Ms. Zubko-Valva filed against the county CPS.
Details of CPS' alleged complicity in the court’s custody ruling are scattered throughout the lawsuit. These include accounts of the agency’s quick dismissal of a flash drive. The lawsuit stated the mother provided this drive to the agency, and it contained 320 documents and other evidence supporting the claim that Tommy and his brothers were enduring severe abuse by their father and stepmother, Angela Pollina, who was convicted last March of the second-degree murder of her stepson.
According to the lawsuit, the evidence included several letters from Tommy’s pediatrician and therapists corroborating the abuse. It was already revealed in the lawsuit and during Mr. Valva and Ms. Pollina’s trial that the agency ignored visible signs Tommy and his brothers were being starved.
Two years ago, the Institute for Justice (IJ) launched “Project Immunity and Accountability,” a national campaign to end immunity for government officials.
“If we the people must follow the law, our government must follow the Constitution,” the group states as the headline to its campaign’s mission.
CPS agencies have long been accused of using immunity to justify their troubling decisions rather than reform them.
In a 2007 case, a child advocate brought a federal suit against the Standing Rock Child Protection Services and Bureau of Indian Affairs in North Dakota after the agencies claimed immunity for knowingly placing a juvenile sex offender into a foster home with three young children.
“Such immunity, it maintains, is based on the agency’s policy decision to protect the privacy interests of its former ward,” the lawsuit charged. “By this argument, CPS creates a smokescreen within which to hide from liability, despite its flagrant abuse of a system that it is duty-bound to protect.”
As part of its campaign, IJ is asking state legislators to adopt amendments to their state constitution to abolish government immunity, but so far no lawmakers have taken up the cause.
In New Hampshire, where Harmony Montgomery was murdered in 2019, Republican lawmakers like Rep. Leah Cushman have been pushing for reform of the child protection agency and family courts.
The state did not accept any blame for the girl’s murder even though evidence was introduced during her father’s trial that the agency failed to conduct mandatory checks on her and appeared to be unaware that she had been missing for two years.
Recently, Ms. Cushman successfully convinced House leaders to form a special committee to investigate the New Hampshire Division of Children, Youth, and Family (DCYF).
As reported previously by The Epoch Times, the committee had only started when she was removed as chairman of the committee by the House Speaker when she initiated a voluntary oath for both victims and officials as part of the special committee’s investigation.
She has since told The Epoch Times she believes the “real fix” is to take child protection service agencies out of the “investigation business,” abolish family courts, and return allegations of child abuse to the criminal courts where there is real due process.
“Keeping these cases civil is being soft on crime and letting people shown to be abusive to never face justice in a real court of law,” she said.
The NH DCYF, Massachusetts Department of Children Services, and Suffolk County Child Protective Services did not respond to requests for comment from The Epoch Times.
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Vatican declares sex-change surgery and surrogate births grave violations of human dignity, putting them on a par with abortion and euthanasia
The Pope's rejection of transgenderism is reasonable and welcome but it will dent his hitherto stellar reputation among "progressives"
The Vatican on Monday declared gender-affirming surgery and surrogacy as grave violations of human dignity, putting them on par with abortion and euthanasia as practices that reject God's plan for human life.
Titled 'Infinite Dignity,' the 20-page declaration - that has been in the works for five years - focuses on what it describes as threats to human dignity, including poverty, the death penalty, war, sexual abuse and the abuse of women.
After substantial revision in recent months, the text was approved March 25 by Pope Francis, who ordered its publication.
In its most eagerly anticipated section, the Vatican repeated its rejection of 'gender theory,' or the idea that one's gender can be changed.
It said God created man and woman as biologically different, separate beings, and said people must not tinker with that plan or try to 'make oneself God.'
'It follows that any sex-change intervention, as a rule, risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception,' the document said.
The document distinguished between gender-affirming surgeries, which it rejected, and 'genital abnormalities' that are present at birth or that develop later.
Those abnormalities can be 'resolved' with the help of health care professionals, it said.
The document largely reaffirms and expands on the Catholic Church's teaching regarding gender theory - asserting that attempts to change an individuals gender are ultimately attempts to play God.
He denounced 'gender theory' as the 'worst danger' facing humanity today, an 'ugly ideology' that threatens to cancel out God-given differences between man and woman.
He has blasted in particular what he calls the 'ideological colonization' of the West in the developing world, where development aid is sometimes conditioned on adopting Western ideas about gender and reproductive health.
The condemnation of abortion is strong and reiterates what the pontiff has previously said - that the 'defense of unborn life is closely linked to the defense of each and every other human right.'
'Among all the crimes which can be committed against life, procured abortion has characteristics making it particularly serious and deplorable', it continues.
The document also mentions surrogacy, which it says 'violates' both the dignity of the child and the woman, who 'becomes a mere means subservient to the arbitrary gain or desire of others.'
While much attention about surrogacy has focused on possible exploitation of poor women as surrogates, the Vatican document asserts that the child 'has the right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin and to receive the gift of a life that manifests both the dignity of the giver and that of the receiver.'
'Considering this, the legitimate desire to have a child cannot be transformed into a `right to a child' that fails to respect the dignity of that child as the recipient of the gift of life.'
Pope Francis has recently called for the practice of surrogacy to be banned.
The declaration then goes on to mention euthanasia and assisted suicide, defined by some laws as ' death with dignity'.
The document stresses that 'suffering does not cause the sick to lose their dignity, which is intrinsically and inalienably their own'.
Advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics immediately criticised the document as outdated, harmful and contrary to the stated goal of recognizing the 'infinite dignity' of all of God's children.
They warned it could have real-world effects on trans people, fuelling anti-trans violence and discrimination.
'While it lays out a wonderful rationale for why each human being, regardless of condition in life, must be respected, honoured, and loved, it does not apply this principle to gender-diverse people,' said Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for LGBTQ+ Catholics.
The document's existence, rumoured since 2019, was confirmed in recent weeks by the new prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, a close Francis confidant.
He had cast it as something of a nod to conservatives after he authored a more explosive document approving blessings for same-sex couples that sparked criticism from conservative bishops around the world, especially in Africa.
And yet, the document takes pointed aim at countries - including many in Africa - that criminalise homosexuality.
The new document denounces 'as contrary to human dignity the fact that, in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation.'
The document is something of a repackaging of previously articulated Vatican positions, read now through the prism of human dignity.
The Vatican had previously published its most articulated position on gender in 2019, when the Congregation for Catholic Education rejected the idea that people can choose or change their genders and insisted on the complementarity of biologically male and female sex organs to create new life.
The new document from the more authoritative Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith quotes from that 2019 education document, but tempers the tone.
The Rev. James Martin, who has called for the Catholic Church to extend greater outreach to LGBTQ+ Catholics, said the gender terminology was similar to past declarations.
But he welcomed the condemnation of legislation and violence against LGBTQ+ people.
Francis has made reaching out to LGBTQ+ people a hallmark of his papacy, ministering to trans Catholics and insisting that the Catholic Church must welcome all children of God.
Transgender activists immediately called the document 'hurtful' and devoid of the voices and experiences of real trans people, especially in its distinction between transgender people and intersex people.
'The suggestion that gender-affirming health care - which has saved the lives of so many wonderful trans people and enabled them to live in harmony with their bodies, their communities and (God) - might risk or diminish trans people's dignity is not only hurtful but dangerously ignorant,' said Mara Klein, a nonbinary, transgender activist who has participated in Germany's church reform project.
'Seeing that, in contrast, surgical interventions on intersex people - which if performed without consent especially on minors often cause immense physical and psychological harm for many intersex people to date - are assessed positively just seems to expose the underlying hypocrisy further,' Klein said.
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8 April, 2024
The Cut Flowers Civilization
Ben Shapiro is probably correct below. But there may be a middle way. I follow Carnap in thinking that metaphysical statements are not even meaningful, let alone right or wrong. Yet I sometimes call myself a Christian. Why? Because I try to live a Christian life. I think that is not incoherent and could be adopted by others. I do get rewards when I do the Christian thing in a situation. It's rather wonderful how often and sometimes how promptly kind, forgiving and generous behavior is rewarded
I will mention just one small and rather amusing example of such an occasion.
I was working in a Real Estate office when one of the salesmen began abusing me for something I had said. In reply I said: "Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa". I accepted blame in accordance with Matthew chapter 5 but I did it in Latin.
He was however an older Catholic who remembered the Latin mass so understood what I said and was amused by it. So he instantly went from condemning to laughing. Others nearby said frantically, "What did he say? , What did he say?" They thought I had used some sort of magic spell to get such an abrupt change in him, which, in a way, I had
This week, famed British atheist Richard Dawkins explained that he was a “cultural Christian.”
Praising civilization in the United Kingdom, Dawkins stated:
I do think that we are culturally a Christian country. I call myself a cultural Christian. I’m not a believer. But there is a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian. And so, you know, I love hymns and Christmas carols, and I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos. I feel that we are a Christian country in that sense.
Dawkins went on to praise Christianity as a “fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not.”
Dawkins’ case for Christianity—a case made on the basis of utility—is nothing new. It was made long ago by Voltaire, an acidic critic of the church who famously averred, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”
But the problem with the utilitarian case for religious belief is that it doesn’t animate religious believers. It is simply impossible to build a civilization on the basis of Judeo-Christian foundations while making the active case as to why those foundations ought to be dissolved.
In fact, Western civilization has doomed itself so long as it fails to reconnect to its religious roots. Philosopher Will Herberg wrote:
The moral principles of Western civilization are, in fact, all derived from the tradition rooted in Scripture and have vital meaning only in the context of that tradition. … Cut flowers retain their original beauty and fragrance, but only so long as they retain the vitality that they have drawn from their now severed roots; after that is exhausted, they wither and die. So with freedom, brotherhood, justice and personal dignity—the values that form the moral foundation of our civilization. Without the life-giving power of the faith out of which they have sprung, they possess neither meaning nor vitality.
We are a cut flowers civilization.
And eventually, cut flowers die.
That has never been more obvious than this week, when the Biden administration decided to honor the newly invented Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter Sunday. Gender ideology is a symptom of our society’s reversion to gnostic paganism, in which unseen, chaotic forces buffet us about, and in which nature is directly opposed to the freedom of our disembodied essences.
It is no wonder that gender ideology is opposed by every mainstream traditional religion.
Yet claiming that this magical holiday could not be moved, the White House issued a variety of statements in celebration of radical gender ideology, including a deeply insulting statement from the president of the United States citing the book of Genesis to the effect that transgender people are “made in the image of God”—ignoring the last half of the biblical verse, which reads, “male and female he made them.”
What better time than Easter, the holiest day in the Christian calendar, to pay homage to an entirely new religion?
Richard Dawkins is obviously correct that a civilization rooted in church is better than a civilization rooted in an alternative set of values. But in reality, the churches cannot be empty; they must be full. The cathedrals that mean Britain to Dawkins must ring with the sounds of hymns in order to maintain their holiness and their importance; otherwise, they are merely beautiful examples of old architecture, remnants of a dead civilization preserved in stone.
But our civilization must live. And that means more than cultural Christianity. It means reengaging with the source of our values—the Scriptures that educated our fathers and grandfathers.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/03/cut-flowers-civilization/
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UK: Transgender children could face 'psychological' repercussions if they are allowed to change their gender
Transgender children could face 'psychological' repercussions if they are allowed to change their gender, a landmark review is set to rule.
The number of children identifying as transgender has seen a significant increase, with growing concerns that schools are allowing pupils to switch gender without informing their parents, despite government guidance stating otherwise.
The Cass review into gender identity services for children has vowed to look at the 'important role of schools' and the difficulties facing them in relation to 'gender-questioning' students.
The review, led by Dame Hilary Cass, will be published on Wednesday and is expected to say children might experience 'psychological' repercussions if they are allowed to change their name and pronoun.
The final review is set to say that prepubescent children should not be put on the same 'pathway' as older adolescents who wish to switch to the opposite gender.
The Department for Education (DfE) is likely to reflect the review's findings in its guidance for teachers on how to deal with transgender children, The Telegraph reported. The final version of the guidance is set to be published later in 2024.
After the publication of the interim Cass review in 2022, the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at the Tavistock transgender clinic announced it would close down after it was considered unsafe for children.
A number of five-year-olds were referred between 2021-2022 to the highly-controversial GIDS at the Tavistock clinic.
Some patients at the clinic were taken on for actual treatment, which could include puberty blockers and hormones that help change their bodies to align more with their gender identity.
NHS England said it would alternatively move young people who believed they were transgender to regional centres that take a more 'holistic' approach and look into other mental health of medical issues the child might have.
Maya Forstater, the chief executive of Sex Matters, said: 'Doctors are having to deal with gender-confused children who have already been socially transitioned at school for years, and are, as a result, very disturbed by the idea of going through puberty, which will develop their secondary sex characteristics.'
Ms Foster, who has spoken to Dame Hilary and her team, added: 'If social transitioning in schools is stopped, it will take the pressure off clinics.'
A Government source said: 'We are absolutely clear about the importance of biological sex, particularly in the context of safeguarding, and the role parents must play in decisions about their children.'
The NHS last month announced an immediate ban on prescribing puberty blockers to under 18-s unless they are part of a clinical trial - with ministers saying the 'landmark decision' was in children's 'best interests'.
It comes as primary school teachers are being told to allow children to change gender behind their parents' backs, it has been claimed.
A survey of equality and trans policies at more than 600 schools in Devon and Cornwall showed a large majority (73 and 62 per cent respectively) reportedly misrepresented equality laws.
It claimed one school trust advised teachers to help girls use breast binders on school trips, while also allowing pupils to sleep in bedrooms according to their 'gender identity'.
The details, compiled by Protect and Teach and reported in the Telegraph, concerned state schools.
Some of the school policies reportedly claimed children 'as young as five' could show signs of gender dysphoria.
They also said biological sex 'is assigned at birth, depending on the appearance of the infant'.
One grammar school reportedly stated sex was 'a person's understanding and experience of their own gender identity'.
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History will frown upon Hamas’s useful fools in the West
While keyboard warriors across the West pump out Hamas and Iranian propaganda, it has been clear to all who understand Israel that the terror group signed its own death warrant on October 7.
This is not about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Nor about radical Zionism. The main Israeli opposition parties support the war.
Israelis will settle for nothing less than the destruction of Hamas after it crossed into Israel on October 7 to murder innocent civilian women, children and old people on the Sabbath.
On October 14 last year, a week after Hamas’s brutal murders of 1200 people, this column said Israel – a country that swapped 1027 terror prisoners for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in 2011 – would struggle with the idea of losing 250 of its people to Islamist hostage takers.
A country shaped by the Holocaust sees Israel as the only place on earth where Jews can live in their own homes in safety.
Hamas was counting on just such an Israeli reaction and has been successful in shaping world opinion against Israel by using Gazan civilians as human shields.
Israel’s critics, who imagine this is a war against Palestinian civilians, should know Israel could have flattened Gaza in a week. Hamas’s leaders have promised repeats of October 7. Nor is it just Hamas.
Check the November 5 interview on Memri TV with Khaled Barakat, a Canada-based Palestinian activist and former People’s Front for the Liberation of Palestine official. He says the only solution to the Palestinian problem is the end of Israel.
“Who supports the two-state solution? Arab reactionary regimes, liberal Zionists, fascists and some delusionists,” Barakat says.
Israel’s greatest historian and regular critic, Benny Morris, had similar thoughts about a two-state solution in an interview with The Wall Street Journal on March 29.
A one-time supporter himself, he now thinks Israelis will never agree to the plan the Palestinian leadership has rejected so many times.
History will be kinder to the IDF and to Israel than to the many useful fools in the West who knowingly repeat the propaganda of an Islamist group with direct historical links to the Nazis through its antecedents in Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.
David Kilcullen, this paper’s pre-eminent military analyst, on March 26 argued – as many others have – that Israel has in fact done its best to limit civilian casualties given Hamas fighters are embedded with civilians.
Yet UN Rapporteur and ABC favourite Francesca Albanese after last week’s killing of aid workers, including Australian Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom, argued on social media platform X that Israel is deliberately murdering aid workers.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari immediately promised an independent investigation, apologised to the world and spoke directly with Spanish chef Jose Andres, founder of the aid group World Central Kitchen. Hagari expressed the IDF’s condolences to the families of the victims and to WCK.
Albanese, a UN employee, wrote: “Knowing how Israel operates, my assessment is that Israeli forces intentionally killed WCK workers so that donors would pull out & civilians in Gaza could continue to be starved quietly.” There is a word for that kind of thinking, but here Antoinette Lattouf was quick off the blocks, retweeting the Rapporteur’s libel.
By Wednesday, IDF chief of staff Herzi Halevi was profoundly sorry about the attack, which happened in darkness. He praised the courage of WCK workers.
An overwrought interview by ABC RN Breakfast fill-in host Sally Sara on Thursday showed just how hostile some journalists are to Israel. Questioning Israeli government spokesman Avi Hyman, Sara insisted Gazans were racked by famine. She would not accept that the IDF, on the ground, disputes this, nor Mr Hyman’s correct view that arguments about famine are in fact future projections.
Her next interviewee, Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International, at the end of the 17-minute segment actually confirmed the famine numbers were in fact future projections.
Israel critics who claim the aid workers were deliberately targeted seem to have missed the many references by Israel last Wednesday and Thursday to the “millions of meals” that WCK has supplied in Gaza and Israel throughout the war. These meals were delivered without aid workers being targeted.
Sara should have known Israel prefers WCK precisely because it is not staffed by UN aid workers, some of whom Hyman pointed out were involved in the killings on October 7 and 1000 of whom are known to be Hamas members.
Last October, US President Joe Biden urged the media to be careful using figures provided from within Gaza, where all ministries are controlled by Hamas.
The Gaza Health Ministry claims 33,000 people have keen killed in this war. The IDF says it has killed more than 15,000 fighters. The UN says more than 13,000 children have been killed. Can this really mean the total of all other casualties – non-combatant men, women and the elderly is 5000?
Tablet magazine on March 7 published an analysis by Professor Abraham Wyner of the University of Pennsylvania. He believes the numbers are not real.
He argues the death toll has been growing “with almost metronomical linearity”.
In the first month of the war, “the daily reported casualty count … averages 270, plus or minus 15 per cent. This is strikingly little variation. There should be days with twice the average or more and others with half or less,” Wyner wrote.
“Similarly, we should see variation in the number of child casualties that track the variation in the number of women.”
Because high casualties should follow days when residential buildings have been hit, there should be a correlation between high and low numbers of casualties of women and children, Professor Abraham argues. There is no such correlation in the Gaza Health Ministry numbers.
“Most likely, the Hamas ministry settled on a daily total arbitrarily. We know this because the daily totals increase too consistently to be real.”
The Western media’s aid picture is also misleading.
Israel attributes aid distribution problems inside Gaza to the inability of UN aid workers to move food trucked in, and to Hamas’s theft of supplies that do arrive.
Israel says 50 per cent more food trucks are arriving today than before the war. It says 184,500 tonnes of food have arrived since the start of the war. It is sending more than 1000 food trucks a week into the territory.
As Avi Hyman told RN: “No one from Hamas is starving.”
If Hamas stopped stealing aid, Gazan civilians would not be facing shortages. UNRWA’s own daily aid numbers confirm what Israel says.
The great tragedy of Palestinian displacement will only accelerate after this war, just as Palestinians lost territory and power over their own lives each time they attacked Israel in 1948, 1967 and 1973.
Israel will not stop its war before cleaning out the tunnels of Rafah, whatever our Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Foreign Minister Penny Wong say.
The Biden administration is right to demand more care of civilians by Israel’s troops on the ground. But it is also right to state that the US will continue to support Israel’s campaign against Hamas.
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A penalty for being good-looking
An element of jealousy involved, I suspect
More on the interesting Ms Hatherall below:
https://brainstatesinc.com/
A senior employee at leading property developer TOGA claims she was fired “as retaliation” for complaints over “ongoing bullying and harassment” by the company’s chief financial officer, who allegedly told her it was “hard for people to take (her) seriously” being young, female and “looking like that”.
Jodie Hatherall, TOGA’s former general manager of risk and compliance, is suing her employer in the Federal Circuit and Family Court over her termination.
She claims she endured several instances of “derogatory verbal comments questioning (her) qualifications and suitability for her role”, “sabotage” and “unwanted advances of an inappropriate, intimatory and/or tacitly sexualised nature” under boss and TOGA CFO Alex Collinson.
Ms Hatherall, who was on a $382,000 renumeration package, says Mr Collinson questioned in a performance review why she wanted a pay increase when she was on good money and “doesn’t have a mortgage or kids to look after”, and said “most people have a problem” with a “young, female in a senior position”, according to court documents.
Ms Hatherall, who joined the company in September 2017, claims the sudden and aggressive termination means she now faces considerable emotional and financial hardship, “especially given the current economic climate”.
But in its letter of termination to Ms Hatherall in November last year, TOGA said she was acting improperly by working for several start-up companies and claimed she was “spending substantial amounts of time” on university studies and “personal care” activities such as laser, nails, “cobbler consignment”, cosmetic medicine, facials, lashes and hair appointments. This, an HR executive said, amounted to “serious and wilful misconduct” and “gross neglect” of her duties.
She denied this, and said the start-up was not a conflict of interest and her numerous “praise-filled performance reviews” and “financial bonuses” were inconsistent with her termination.
Ms Hatherall claims she was doing well at TOGA until the appointment of Mr Collison as her boss, and alleges a number of “harassment” and “discrimination” events. In a statement, legal firm Hamilton Locke said: “The respondents (TOGA and Mr Collinson) reject the claims and will be filing a defence in due course.”
As early as his handover meeting in April last year, Mr Collison questioned her qualifications and suitability for the role, which she found “humiliating”.
In another one-on-one meeting, he made comments like “You need to understand that construction is a different operation than what you are used to in hospitality”, which she took to be “dismissive and belittling” because she had not worked in hospitality and had 15 years’ experience in construction and project management.
In a performance review with Mr Collison, she claims he made several remarks like “On top of being young and female, you also look like that, so it is hard for people to take you seriously”, “I want to help you but this isn’t a conversation for the office, it needs to be at the pub over a wine”, and “We need to get you a mentor or put you on a training course to manage the gender problem”.
He later told her she ought to address all communication through him, due to alleged “gender” issues with the other directors, and that the new executive manager would also “likely have a problem with your age and being a woman too”, she wrote in her statement of claim.
In another meeting, she said Mr Collinson “berated” her team’s performance and then “made a point of standing uncomfortably close” to her, calling it “an apparent show of intimidation”.
Ms Hatherall also says Mr Collinson invited her a couple of times to meet at a bar after work, claiming the “ongoing advances” were “inappropriate and threatening”.
He also “frequently visited” her LinkedIn page, and Ms Hatherall told her colleague in a text message “Seriously … He’s on it EVERY day”. She eventually blocked him, saying she felt “threatened and harassed”. In her termination letter, TOGA claimed she blocked him because her LinkedIn page contained reference to a start-up she founded.
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7 April, 2024
JK Rowling is 'spreading disinformation' about Scotland's new hate crime laws says Scottish First Minister after Harry Potter author slammed his 'bumbling incompetence and illiberal authoritarianism'
As ever, the Devil is in the detail. What constitutes "stirring up hatred"? Does any criticism count? Leftists are prone to claim that it does. So critics of the law have good reason to be suspicious of it.
And the Scottish First Minister is therefore in full damage-control mode, pushing a very narrow definition of "stirring up hatred". It does seem that his very narrow definition is being adopted by Police Scotland so the actual effect of the law may be small
Harry Potter author JK Rowling and other critics of Scotland's new hate crime laws must stop 'peddling misinformation', Scotland's First Minister has said.
Humza Yousaf strongly defended the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act against claims it would hamper freedom of speech after it was introduced earlier this week.
JK Rowling criticised the Scottish Government's hate laws while posting pictures of 10 high-profile trans people and ridiculed their claims to be women.
Speaking at Glasgow's Prestwick Airport on Saturday, Mr Yousaf said: 'There's deliberate misinformation being peddled by some bad actors across Scotland - it's hardly surprising the Opposition seek to do that.
'What we've got is a piece of legislation that in the actual Act itself, explicitly in black and white, protects freedom of expression, freedom of speech.'
The SNP leader went on: 'At the same time, it makes sure that it protects people from hatred being stirred up against them, and that is really important when we have far too many incidents of hatred that can be because of their age, disability, sexuality or religion.'
'There's no place for that in Scotland, and you have to send a really strong signal that the law will protect you.'
Rowling's comments were reported to Police Scotland as alleged hate crimes.
The force found she had committed no crime and also said it would not record a 'non-crime hate incident' against her.
She also said that most Scots were 'upset and offended by Yousaf 's bumbling incompetence and illiberal authoritarianism', following the introduction of the legislation on Monday.
Rowling wrote on X/Twitter: 'Most of Scotland is upset and offended by Yousaf's bumbling incompetence and illiberal authoritarianism, but we aren't lobbying to have him locked up for it.'
Asked what his message to critics such as JK Rowling would be, the Nationalist MSP said: 'I would tell them to stop spreading disinformation. It isn't going to help anybody.
'This is a piece of legislation that was passed by every single political party in Scotland, minus the Conservatives.'
He said: 'It's a ludicrous suggestion. Actually JK Rowling's tweets are a perfect example of how the law actually works.
'JK Rowling produced some tweets that were offensive, that were insulting - but of course the law does not deal with offensive.
'The law is dealing with new offences, criminal behaviour that has to be threatening or abusive, intent to stir up hatred. Hence why she was not arrested.
'That's not a surprise. Anybody who actually read the Bill will not be surprised that she did not get arrested. The threshold for criminality is extremely high.
'So anybody suggesting that the Bill deals with simply people having their feelings hurt, being offended, being insulted, I'm afraid that is not what the new offences are concerned with.
'There are very explicit in black and white protections for people's freedom of expression and indeed of freedom of speech.
'The Bill has got the balance right between protecting people from hatred and protecting people's fundamental freedoms.'
Mr Yousaf also shared his views in an opinion article in The Courier newspaper, urging politicians and public figures to create a debate rooted in 'reality'.
He said false claims the law makes it a criminal offence to make 'derogatory comments' based on the characteristics covered in the Act was 'simply untrue'.
The First Minister wrote: 'As a father of two girls, and blessed with a baby on the way, I feel an even greater obligation to work as First Minister to help make Scotland even better for the next generation.
'Critics of this law shouldn't exaggerate its impact with false fears. Equally, its proponents shouldn't pretend that it can of itself eradicate hatred and prejudice from our society.'
Yousaf was also reported to police about an alleged hate crime over a speech he made at the Scottish Parliament four years ago.
Like Rowling, police confirmed it was not a hate crime and said no 'non-crime hate incident' would be recorded against his name.
Adam Tomkins, a law professor and a former Scottish Tory MSP who voted against the Hate Crime Act, previously told STV News that 'misgendering' someone was not a crime under the law.
The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act consolidates existing hate crime legislation and creating a new offence of stirring up hatred against protected characteristics.
Those characteristics are disability, religion, sexual orientation, age, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics.
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America's 'capital of woke' decriminalised drugs and became a hellscape of open-air fentanyl markets which even addicts admit was a mistake... leading to a humiliating U-turn
This is Leftist destructiveness coming and going. "Decriminalization" gives the worst of all worlds. What is needed to save lives is complete legalization. Drugs could then be bought over the counter in pharmaceutically pure form. It is mostly drugs "cut" with all sorts of other things that kill
After three years in which its streets became a hellscape of open drug use, rocketing fatal overdoses and rampant crime, Oregon has learnt a painful lesson. And hopefully so has everyone else who believes that the best way to deal with the menace of deadly drugs such as fentanyl and heroin is to decriminalise them.
Oregon governor Tina Kotek this week reversed large parts of a controversial 2021 law known as Measure 110 and restored criminal penalties for possession of hard drugs and court-ordered treatment for offenders. From September 1, drug possession in the West Coast state will be punishable by up to six months in prison.
The U-turn brings an ignominious end to America's most radical experiment in Left-wing drug policy — a supposedly humane and enlightened policy of de-fanging the oppressive criminal justice system, allowing drug abusers to indulge their addiction in peace.
Suffice to say, it has been nothing short of a complete disaster. The real puzzle for many Oregonians — particularly inhabitants of its drug-battered city of Portland — is why it took their leaders so long to accept defeat.
Portland is a bastion of progressive values in the Democrat state where voters decided, by a comfortable majority, in November 2020 to become the first U.S. state to decriminalise the possession of personal amounts of all hard drugs. These include the likes of heroin, methamphetamine and fentanyl. (It remained a criminal offence to sell the substances, although police would complain that decriminalisation made it much harder to distinguish dealer from buyer).
As anyone who visited Portland, as I did last October, will know, the situation was both desperate and farcical. So much so that even the hopeless addicts I spoke to — men and women who were cooking up fentanyl on city-centre pavements as commuters and children passed by — admitted that they couldn't understand what had ever possessed their politicians to think decriminalisation might work.
'The truth is that addiction rates and overdose rates skyrocketed,' said Portland mayor Ted Wheeler, a Measure 110 enthusiast who is now attempting to save face by insisting that it would have worked if proper treatment services had been put in place.
Such an attitude, say experts, flies in the face of an essential truth about drug addiction that the decriminalisers fail to appreciate — that very few addicts will try to break their habit if they aren't pressured to do so. Getting high feels good (at least in the short term) while drug withdrawal is fiercely difficult — so of course they need an incentive, which is often the threat of punishment.
Instead, supporters of ideas like Measure 110 — including those in the UK, where the Scottish government is pushing to decriminalise all drugs for personal use in order to tackle Europe's worst overdose rates — argue that criminalising possession unfairly stigmatises addicts.
Measure 110 was hailed as a compassionate solution to America's addiction nightmare.
It all proved hopelessly naive. Accidental fatal overdoses from synthetic opioids such as fentanyl — a drug that is tearing through America — increased by 500 per cent in four years in the Portland area. No other state saw anything like the same upsurge.
In the week I visited, eight young people died on a single night in a local park. Police said the victims had snorted cocaine which they were unaware was laced with fentanyl.
As drug users flooded into a state where they could do largely what they liked unmolested, and where charities plied them with free drug paraphernalia such as clean needles and smoking pipes to make taking the narcotics 'safer', open-air drug markets flourished and crime soared as addicts did whatever it took to feed their addiction.
Street addict after street addict confided to me that there was next to no chance of them seeking to get off drugs now that the one big obstacle to using them — being locked up in prison and forced to enrol in a treatment programme — had been removed.
Under Measure 110, instead of arresting hard-drug users and pushing them through a court system that often makes them get treatment, police hand addicts a ticket imposing a $100 fine that is cancelled if they phone a treatment referral hotline and agree to participate in a health assessment. The system proved useless — more than 95 per cent of tickets went ignored. Of 4,000 drug-use citations issued during the first two years of Measure 110, only 40 people phoned the hotline asking about treatment. As a result, it was calculated that each call cost taxpayers $7,000.
Even the New York Times, a habitual cheerleader for relaxing anti-drug laws, conceded that Portland had been turned into a 'drug-user's "paradise" ' since Measure 110 came into effect in February 2021.
Out on the streets on a weekday morning, it was painfully easy to find addicts who agreed.
I encountered Donna Pinaula and her husband 'Utah' at one of Portland's busiest street intersections, pushing around a shopping trolley stuffed with drugs and drug-taking handouts. Only two hours earlier, the pair had been booked by police for taking fentanyl openly. They grinned at my foolishness when I asked if they intended to seek treatment or pay the fine — they never did either, they said — and proceeded to prepare another fentanyl hit for themselves in full view of passers-by.
The couple showed off their drugs to me: blue pills or 'blues' for her, which are a mix of fentanyl and some other ingredients they couldn't remember, and a white 'rock' of pure fentanyl for him.
The pieces of silver foil they heat the drugs on and the glass pipes they smoke it with had both been provided, free of charge, by a local charity committed to the principle of 'harm reduction' — a controversial strategy that seeks to prevent accidental overdoses and infectious disease transmission. Critics say that it simply fuels drug-taking — which, in the case of Oregon, appears to be true.
Donna and Utah made no effort to hide their drug abuse. They said police rarely bother to hand out tickets to open drug-users and only intervened that morning because they were smoking fentanyl next to a road crossing that children were using to get to school.
As local police officers later confirmed to me, their hands were tied by Measure 110 — they could only confiscate drugs they actually saw and couldn't search users.
As for the starry-eyed claims of Measure 110's backers that, free from the threat of arrest and imprisonment, addicts would all rush off to seek help — if only they'd spoken to Utah first.
'It has made it worse,' said the 33-year-old ex-forklift truck driver, when asked about drug abuse in Portland since Measure 110.
'Don't get me wrong, it makes it better for me as I don't have to worry, but getting the police off our backs and giving us free pipes and foil to do our drugs is not going to get us off the streets.'
Down the street, another addict named Eric 'Irish' James agreed. Did he and his fellow fentanyl addicts really want to get off the drug? 'No,' he said bluntly.
Measure 110 rose from the ashes of the ferocious anti-police protests and riots that followed the killing of George Floyd by officers in 2020.
The attempt to take police out of the equation when it came to drug addiction backfired spectacularly badly as crime — particularly violent crime — soared as the dealers moved in.
Parts of Portland's once attractive and vibrant downtown area became a tent-covered no-go zone where addicts who were clearly deeply mentally troubled would walk around screaming their heads off — and locals wouldn't bat an eye.
Police chiefs complained that Measure 110 severely hampered their ability to keep order on the streets. Shootings rose from 413 in 2019 to 1,309 in 2022, leading to shops closing and residents leaving. The city was especially ill-equipped to cope, as it had already suffered a steep decline in police numbers when many officers responded to the wave of 'defund the police' hostility — which, in right-on Portland, involved nightly violent clashes with 'anti-fascist' militants that went on for months — and left the department. Recruits have hardly been rushing to replace them.
Instead, businesses have had to pay armed private security guards to patrol after dark, but they have next to no training and virtually no power to enforce the law. They can certainly do little about the drug dealers who circulate unmolested, carrying their supplies in backpacks.
The drug crisis also crippled the other emergency services. Fire crews were having to spend much of their time dealing with overdose cases, and there was a shortage of ambulances available to respond to non-drug-related medical emergencies.
For all the Left-wing complaints about heavy-handed policing, the officers I met couldn't have been less aggressive towards the addicts as they rode around on bicycles and gently checked that the drug users were still alive and in reasonable condition.
'People round here want addicts to go to rehab but they didn't think they'd be smoking fentanyl in front of pre-schoolers,' said officer Eli Arnold. He said he and his colleagues now spend much of their time reviving the same addicts after overdoses again and again.
Portlanders pride themselves on their liberal instincts but locals had clearly had enough of Measure 110 long ago.
Businessman Andy Munson described it as a 'disaster', telling me: 'People had the best of intentions but this law has fallen flat on its face. And two years of protesting and tearing the cops apart hasn't helped.'
Synthetic opioids are so powerful that it was 'absurd' to think addicts would volunteer to get off them, he said.
Alice Heller, a recovering addict and clothing designer, said the proponents of Measure 110 had twisted what it means to be a liberal. 'It's not liberal to help people take drugs,' she said. 'They don't know what to do so they feed the monster — it's inexcusable.'
Liberal-minded Oregonians have long boasted of the fact that theirs was the first U.S. state to decriminalise cannabis back in 1973. Being first to do the same with fentanyl and heroin is unlikely to be remembered with anything like pride.
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Protect kids: Break the grip of transgender extremism
The United States persists in being an outlier nation when it comes to OKing drugs and surgery on tweens and teens despite the growing evidence that for most kids gender-confusion is simply a phase.
Much of Europe has moved away from the junk science surrounding gender transition, especially pediatric gender transition.
Yet transgender extremism has a tight grip on the US medical establishment, cultural elites, progressive politicians — and school boards.
As Karol Markowitz notes, a major, 15-year Dutch study just confirmed that transgenderism among children is largely a fad.
Researchers in the Netherlands found that most teens experiencing gender dysphoria eventually “outgrew” it (with many resolving larger mental-health issues) and felt adjusted by early adulthood.
Federal rules issued under President Barack Obama told doctors they couldn’t decline to perform gender reassignment surgery on kids if it’s recommended by a “mental health professional.”
The nationwide order went out despite Health and Human Services medical experts noting that gender-transition procedures can themselves be harmful to minors.
These drastic procedures include puberty-suppression drugs, cross-hormone therapy and radical plastic surgery that increase lifelong risks of heart diseases, type 2 diabetes, cancer, loss of bone density and other serious side effects — not to mention sterility and the irreversibility of most surgeries.
Adding to the madness are leaked documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health revealing that some doctors oppose disclosing potential risks despite privately acknowledging the devastating and permanent side effects.
Locally, the Equal Rights Amendment on the New York ballot in November would write this dangerous madness into the state Constitution: Though painted as protecting abortion rights, it could permanently eliminate parental rights to veto their kids undergoing transgender surgery or going on puberty blockers.
The hard truth is that activists rushed to false conclusions about what’s best for these kids, the global medical establishment initially caved and is only now realizing the truth is far more complicated.
Cries of “bigotry” may still have US institutions (and much of the media) cowed, but it’s beyond insane to lock terrible junk science into law.
https://nypost.com/2024/04/05/opinion/protect-kids-break-the-grip-of-transgender-extremism/
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Is this the silliest hat a woman has ever worn?
Women seem to specialie in silly hats but to me that one takes the cake
It's from the current film "Mary & George"
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Believe data, not activists: Transgenderism among kids is mostly a fad
Is transgenderism among kids largely a fad? It certainly looks that way.
Researchers at the Netherlands’ University of Groningen recently released the results of a landmark 15-year study of 2,700 children starting at age 11.
They tracked the gender non-contentedness of these children over the years and found: “In early adolescence, 11% of participants reported gender non-contentedness. The prevalence decreased with age and was 4% at the last follow-up (around age 26).”
The researchers concluded, “Gender non-contentedness, while being relatively common during early adolescence, in general decreases with age and appears to be associated with a poorer self-concept and mental health throughout development.”
In other words, most of the children in the study who were feeling gender dysphoric in their awkward teenage years had shaken that off and adjusted by early adulthood, and their dysphoria was associated with bad self-esteem and mental-health problems.
This is fully at odds with the policy pushing its way through American schools and medical institutions: Kids who declare themselves transgender, no matter the age, need to be “affirmed,” an idea that sometimes leads to children taking hormone blockers or getting surgery to attempt gender transition.
These interventions can have lifelong consequences, but some doctors aren’t even sure if the child should be informed before they take action.
Leaked documents last month from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health found some doctors don’t think disclosing potential risks is necessary.
As The Post reported, practitioners believe telling a 14-year-old about possible fertility consequences is like talking to a “blank wall.”
A child psychologist said it’s “out of their developmental range to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them.”
If children can’t understand the medical consequences of an entirely elective procedure that isn’t necessary to benefit their health or save their life, perhaps it’s best not to do it?
This shouldn’t be controversial.
Yet we’ve gotten to a place where anyone who doesn’t jump at the chance to “affirm” a child in his or her quest to change genders is a transphobe or worse.
When Gov. Ron DeSantis banned such medical interventions for Florida kids, headlines like Rolling Stone’s “Ron DeSantis Just Took Two Big Steps to Make Trans Lives Illegal” were common.
Reuters noted the law “escalates a Republican political strategy to pursue bills restricting transgender rights.”
Many news stories called it a ban on “transgender treatment” because it banned puberty blockers and hormone therapy for children.
Laws like this are necessary to stem the hysteria that has developed around the topic and to protect mostly girls.
The University of Groningen study found that girls were being hardest hit by this gender dysphoria.
The report notes, “Individuals with an increasing gender non-contentedness more often were female and both an increasing and decreasing trajectory were associated with a lower global self-worth, more behavioral and emotional problems, and a non-heterosexual sexual orientation.”
Abigail Shrier was among the first to identify the social contagion of transgenderism, specifically among teenage girls, in her 2020 book “Irreversible Damage.”
Her latest book, “Bad Therapy,” looks at therapy culture that indulges teenagers in any bad idea they may have.
Perhaps the answer is to not simply accept the words of children.
The “gentle parenting” being pushed right now that makes good parents consider putting their kids on drugs to help them achieve an unattainable sex change needs to run up against tough love and fast.
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4 April, 2024
Polls Continue to Mark Rise of Germany’s Political Right
As a two-month campaign to vilify the conservative and nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) as little better than neo-Nazis begins to run out of steam, recent political polls conducted by Politpro.eu, Statista, and INSA show its popularity stabilizing as voters’ broader rightward turn solidifies.
Founded in April 2013, the AfD quickly gained a significant place in Germany’s multiparty system.
Within four years it placed third out of six parties in elections to the Bundestag (a legislative chamber roughly equivalent to the United States House of Representatives) with 94 seats and 12.6 percent of the vote.
Numbers for the leading Christian Democratic Union (CDU) were 246 seats and 32.9 percent of voter support, while those for the second place Social Democratic Party (SPD) were 153 and 20.5 percent.
The years 2022 and 2023 saw the AfD shoot almost to the top as part of the most dramatic shift in German politics since the country’s post-Cold War reunification.
Polls showed support rose from 10 percent in July 2022, to 15 percent in October, to 19 percent. By June 2023 the AfD’s 19 percent support made it the second most popular party in Germany—a position strengthened when support rose to 22 percent before the year ended.
At the same time, the three parties in a coalition government since the 2021 Bundestag elections had just 33 percent support between them—14 percent each for the leftist SPD and leftist Greens, 5 percent for the socially liberal/economically capitalist Free Democratic Party (FDP).
The only party to surpass the AfD—the CDU—almost equaled that combined total with 32 percent support and owed that to a move back towards its historical conservatism.
The dramatic rise was due to the same factors driving voters throughout Europe to new (or newly popular) conservative and nationalist parties.
Under former CDU leader and chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel, socially liberal globalists became increasingly powerful within the historically conservative party.
The AfD maintained stauncher conservative positions—including strong support for traditional marriage and family life, for the preservation of national independence (in the face of the European Union’s increasing power), and German culture (in the face of “European integration” and Islamization), as well as for border security (including expulsion of illegal immigrants).
According to the AfD’s “Manifesto for Germany,” there is nothing unusual in what the party calls for.
It states that no distinction is to be made between immigrant citizens and those German-born.
Immigration will be both favored in moderation and kept at moderate levels.
Cultural assimilation, not race, is a central concern and will be required of immigrants.
Existing laws require the deportation or imprisonment of illegal immigrants—but legal processes for enforcement will be revised to make them more effective and deportation will be a priority.
Beginning with an article published by the fact-checking organization Correctiv on Jan. 10, 2024, AfD’s opponents have used a small non-partisan meeting, which included a handful of AfD members, to suggest the party supports a more radical agenda.
Held on Nov. 25 at Potsdam, it involved 22 people—including six from the AfD and five from the CDU. Others were more independent or had a history of working with both parties. One participant was former neo-Nazi Martin Sellner.
Immigration was among the topics discussed, but not the main theme as many reports suggested.
Most discussions of the topic concerned the deportation of illegal immigrants and assimilation.
At one point, Mr. Sellner is alleged to have suggested devising laws to bully immigrant citizens who refuse to assimilate out of the country alongside giving them positive incentives to leave.
Correctiv alleged Ulrich Siegmund, leader of the AfD in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament, also favored harassing methods of enforcing cultural conformity.
However, Correctiv is accused of being biased as it is partly government-funded (or even working on behalf of the government) and there are whispers of maybe even intelligence services help.
Three state elections where the party is leading in the polls are coming up this year, which can explain the campaign against the AfD.
Correctiv did not reveal how it got information from the meeting, however it has been accused of wiretapping the event.
The AfD’s national leadership condemned the meeting as soon as the details of these discussions became known.
It reiterated the party made no distinction between German-born and immigrant citizens and that its foreknowledge of plans for the meeting had not included knowledge that Mr. Sellner would even be present.
For his participation in the meeting, AfD member Roland Hartwig was fired from his job as a strategic adviser to AfD chairwoman Alice Weidel.
Half a dozen of those reported to be in attendance issued public statements saying they had not been present when the objectionable suggestions were made.
Despite that, Correctiv has not altered the claims that the Potsdam meeting was a de facto AfD gathering whose proposals were equivalent to the AfD’s party line, aimed at broad expulsion of immigrant citizens and favored expulsion on racial grounds.
Many reports from numerous other media outlets have repeated Correctiv’s accusations as fact.
Commentator and activist Deal Hudson—who has served as an adviser to George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns, worked for the Republican National Committee, and edited Crisis Magazine—explains this as a way of “controlling public thinking to advance an agenda.”
Polls conducted by Politpro.eu, Statista, and INSA demonstrate that hostile reports have had limited impact on the popularity of the AfD and virtually none on that of socially conservative and nationalist politics.
All three showed the AfD firmly maintaining greater support than it had before June 2023, with a 3 percent to 5 percent lead over the SPD and at least that much over the Greens.
Just one INSA poll (dated March 11) has the AfD down to 18.5 percent.
Four subsequent INSA polls (March 16, March 18, March 24, and March 25) show the AfD going back and forth between 19 percent and 19.5 percent.
Politpro.eu had its support at 19.5 percent on March 18th and 18.1 percent on March 22. Statista’s most recent poll (March 8) had the AfD at 18 percent.
Support for the other seven parties with representatives in the Bundestag has remained at about pre-Jan. 10 levels.
The one party to see a substantial increase in support since Jan. 10 was legally established just two days earlier—the Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW).
Combining “hard right” social conservatism and nationalism with “hard left” socialist economics, it has consistently polled between 5 percent and 8 percent since Feb. 1.
[Sounds rather like the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei. Old thinking lingers. Another Nationalist party emanating from the Left ]
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/polls-continue-to-mark-rise-of-germanys-political-right-5617109
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Most gender-confused children grow out of it, landmark 15-year study concludes
The majority of gender-confused children grow out of that feeling by the time they are fully grown adults, according to a long-term study.
Researchers in the Netherlands tracked more than 2,700 children from age 11 to their mid-twenties, asking them every three years of feelings about their gender.
Results showed at the start of the research, around one-in-10 children (11 percent) expressed 'gender non-contentedness' to varying degrees.
But by age 25, just one-in-25 (4 percent) said they 'often' or 'sometimes' were discontent with their gender.
The researchers concluded: 'The results of the current study might help adolescents to realize that it is normal to have some doubts about one’s identity and one’s gender identity during this age period and that this is also relatively common.'
It comes amid a massive boom in transgender children receiving drugs to change their gender in the US - as critics say doctors and parents are not challenging young people enough.
Patrick Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center who was not involved in the research, told DailyMail.com: 'This study provides even more reason to be skeptical towards aggressive steps to facilitate gender transition in childhood and adolescence.
'The fact that rates of satisfaction are lower even just a few years later suggests that for the vast majority of people, prudence and caution, rather than a rush towards permanent surgeries or hormone therapies, will be the best approach for teenagers struggling to make sense of the world and their place in it.
'As such, policies that prohibit gender transition for minors make a great deal of sense.'
The study is one of the longest into the issue of gender in children - but the researchers point out it has some limitations.
For one, it looked at a mixture of children from the general population and kids who were receiving mental health care - though not specifically for anything related to their gender.
Therefore it does not necessarily reflect the attitudes of children clinically diagnosed with gender dysphoria.
The researchers, from the University of Groningen, analyzed the data of 2,770 people who were part of the Tracking Adolescent's Individual Lives Survey.
Participants were asked to respond to the statement 'I wish to be of the opposite sex' at six different points over 15 years.
They were given a multiple choice: 0-Not True, 1-Somewhat or Sometimes True, and 2-Very True or Often True.
The same prompt was given every two or three years from the start of the study in March 2001 until the end.
Researchers looked for those expressing 'gender non-contentedness,' or unhappiness with being the gender aligned with their biological sex.
The study, published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior, found that overall 78 percent of people had the same feelings about their gender over the 15 years.
Around 19 percent became more content with their gender and just about 2 percent became less comfortable.
Participants were also asked to evaluate their self-worth by rating how they felt about their physical appearance and self esteem.
According to the findings, females were more likely to report being unhappy with their gender and both increasing and decreasing 'non-contentedness' were associated with lower self-reported self worth, more behavioral problems and an increase in emotional struggles.
The authors said: 'Gender non-contentedness, while being relatively common during early adolescence, in general decreases with age and appears to be associated with a poorer self-concept and mental health throughout development.'
Brown told DailyMail.com: 'As anyone who has ever been a teenager knows, puberty and its aftereffects can be a confusing time of hormonal surges, physical changes, and social insecurity.
'It isn't surprising that the highest rates of being dissatisfied in one's body would peak during this time.'
Rates of gender dysphoria, a clinical diagnosis by a healthcare professional that differs from gender non contentedness, have soared in every US state except one since 2018 - with the average age of diagnosis trending younger.
An analysis of insurance claims conducted by Komodo Health Inc found between 2017 and 2021, approximately 121,880 children aged six to 17 years old were diagnosed with the condition.
In 2021, 42,000 were given the diagnosis, a 70 percent increase from 2020.
And children under 18 years old now make up one-fifth of new diagnoses each year.
In the United States, 1.6million people ages 13 and older identify as transgender.
A report by the health data analytics firm Definitive Healthcare shows the rate of gender dysphoria increased in every state except South Dakota from 2018 to 2022 across all ages.
The sharpest rises over those five years were seen in three Republican-led states: Virginia (274 percent) Indiana (247 percent) and Utah (193 percent).
South Dakota saw a decline of 23 percent between 2018 and 2022.
Meanwhile, the report also found the number of sex change surgeries being carried out each year is rising rapidly - climbing by up to 40 percent in some years.
Greater social acceptance and increased awareness about the condition on the part of doctors can partly explain the increase in cases.
Unlike other countries, such as the UK, there is no federal lower age limit for when children can get 'top' or 'bottom' operations in the US, which leaves it up to the states.
Maine pushes to become 'transgender sanctuary' for out of state minors
The 'Act to Safeguard Gender Affirming Health Care' would enable certain out of state teens to access treatments without their parents' consent regardless of their own state's laws.
In The Netherlands, debate over the issue has ramped up as more Dutch experts have voiced their concerns over the potential adverse effects of puberty blockers and hormonal therapies for minors who wish to transition.
And in the US most recently, trans rights were thrust into the spotlight after critics slammed President Joe Biden for declaring Easter 'Trans Visibility Day.'
However, the president said he did not make this declaration, but that the awareness day is celebrated every year on March 31 and only coincided with Easter this year by chance.
Dr Jay Richards, director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family, told DailyMail.com: 'We’ve known for over a decade that most kids who experience distress with their sexed bodies resolve those feelings after they pass through natural puberty.
'Indeed, we can infer from the DSM 5 [2013] and other sources that as many as 88 percent of gender-dysphoric girls and as many as 98 percent of gender-dysphoric boys in previous generations desisted if allowed to go through natural puberty.
'These two facts make it clear why “gender-affirming care” on minors is such an outrage. It leads, in the end, to sterilization and in many cases to a complete loss of natural sexual function.
'There is no good evidence that this helps minors long term. Moreover, it medicalizes what could very well be temporary psychological symptoms.
'History will judge this medicalized “gender-affirming care” on minors as we now judge eugenics and lobotomies.'
The research was published in the journal Archives of Sexual Behavior.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13263725/trans-kids-change-sex-adults-study.html
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John Stossel: Trade Is Evil?
Leaders of both parties agree: We must reduce globalization.
“China is ripping us on trade,” says Donald Trump.
Our trade deficit is “an immorality,” says Nancy Pelosi.
But it’s not.
In my new video, Scott Lincicome of the Cato Institute points out, “Selling us stuff is hardly ripping us off.”
He’s right.
Our video debunks common misunderstandings about trade.
* Myth No. 1: America is “losing.”
People often say that because America runs a trade deficit.
But trade doesn’t need to balance. I have a trade deficit with my supermarket. They get more of my money every year. So, what? I don’t “lose.” I get food without having to grow it myself.
That’s a win for me and the food producer regardless of whether the food was grown locally or came from Mexico.
“Imports are great,” says Lincicome. “It means I can focus on what I want to do for a living and not go make my own food or make my own clothes. I can use those savings and buy other things that makes me better off.”
As long as trade is voluntary, trade is a win for both parties. It has to be; neither side would agree to it unless they think they get something out of the deal.
* Myth No. 2: Imports take jobs from Americans.
Globalization “moved so many jobs and so much wealth out of our country,” says Trump, “Workers have seen the jobs they love shipped thousands and thousands of miles away.”
I say to Lincicome, “Some people do lose jobs.”
“True,” he replies, “We lose about 5 million jobs every month.”
But trade isn’t the main reason. “Jobs are lost due to … changing consumer tastes and from innovation. We make more stuff with fewer workers. That’s productivity.”
Productivity increases are good.
Trade and productivity improvements are reasons why the number of Americans who do have jobs has risen.
“We’re at historically high manufacturing job openings,” says Lincicome, “Manufacturers in the United States say they can’t find enough workers.”
Trade lets Americans focus on what we do best. Sixty percent of America’s new jobs come from companies engaged in international trade.
But Trump says, “We don’t make anything anymore!”
President Joe Biden agrees, “American manufacturing, the backbone of our economy, got hollowed out!”
* That’s Myth No. 3.
Manufacturing output in the U.S. is near its all-time high. We make more than Japan, Germany, India and South Korea combined.
Fortunately, real life ignores politicians’ ignorance.
* Myth No. 4: Trade and open markets create “a race to the bottom.”
That’s how Jon Stewart decries globalization on his show, saying, “Globalization allowed corporations to scour the planet for the cheapest labor and loosest regulations!”
That is true; companies do that. But Lincicome replies, “This ‘race to the bottom’ is a myth. We Americans are spoiled. We look upon jobs in the developing world, factory jobs, and say, ‘Oh, how terrible this is that these people work for such low wages.’ But the reality is that their alternatives are far, far worse … subsistence farming … sex work.”
Trade is what lets people in poor countries escape subsistence farming and sex work.
And child labor, too.
“No parent wants his kid to go into the factory or farm,” Lincicome points out. “They do it because they have no choice. As we get wealthier, child labor disappears. … Factory owners in Vietnam now complain that kids these days … don’t want to work in the textile factory. That’s not great for that factory owner, but it’s great for those workers!”
* Myth No. 5: Globalization destroys the environment.
“It’s undeniably true that as a nation starts along its development path, that it’s going to pollute more,” concedes Lincicome. “But as countries get wealthy, they become better environmentally.”
Only when people get wealthy enough to think beyond their next meal do we start to care about the environment. It’s why pollution is dropping in America and other capitalist countries.
“The best thing that we can do for the developing world is to help countries get rich,” says Lincicome. “Globalization is part of that recipe.”
Trade is a win-win. It brings us more stuff at lower prices.
The more we trade, the better off we are
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/04/john-stossel-trade-evil-globalization/
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Truth Telling, circular arguments, and the wrongful conviction of colonialism
The breast-beating about Australia's colonial past is just a pathetic Leftist attempt to make their fellow citizens feel guilty. It is a basic precept of natural justice that we are not responsible for what others do. And that includes our ancestors. So individuals today should feel no guilt about what some people did in the past.
If the past is to be judged by modern standards, I would have a good claim to have been affected by injustice. Two of my ancestors came out to Australia chained up in the holds of little wooden ships. They were convicts whose offences would be treated as trivial today.
So do I feel aggrieved and complain about how they were treated? To the contrary, Australians with convict ancestry usually feel proud about it these days: Proud to be descended from tough survivors.
Just when you thought Australians had voted firmly against the Voice to Parliament and its entire grievance baggage, Indigenous Australians Minister Linda Burney says she is in active discussions with Cabinet to develop a model for a ‘Truth Telling’ process, flagging that it could be included in the school curriculum.
The phrase ‘Truth Telling’ is, I believe, code for weaponising the past. The Burney-preferred meaning of the phrase matches the Oxford Dictionary (Woke edition):
‘Recognition or acknowledgement of historical injustices affecting Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people following the colonisation of Australia, and re-evaluation of the impact of the discrimination and often violent treatment they have faced since that time.’
As a guide, look to the purpose of the Yoorrook Justice Commission which former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews green-lit in 2020. It exists to ‘investigate historical and ongoing injustices committed against Aboriginal Victorians since colonisation, across all areas of social, political, and economic life’. This is a circular argument that starts with the conclusion it is trying to prove.
That rings a bell. The original mandate from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for the IPCC did not seek to explore possible reasons for any warming; it was to address ‘dangerous human-caused climate change’. That set the agenda, which became the ruling orthodoxy – a circular argument that starts with the conclusion it is trying to prove.
A circular argument is a useful device when evidence is absent or too weak to prove an allegation.
A good (bad) example of this is the prosecution’s case against Robert Xie, tried for the murder of five members of his wife’s family.
‘The Crown does not know exactly what time it was that the murders occurred,’ said prosecutor Tanya Smith, in her opening address in trial 4 (the final one). ‘But our case is that it must have occurred after 2 o’clock in the morning, because you will hear that it is accepted that the accused had been at home with his wife using the internet until around this time. So it is at some point after 2 o’clock and before 5.30 am.’
In other words, the murders must have been committed after 2 am because ‘we accept he was busy on his computer until then’.
The prosecutor didn’t say ‘we will show you evidence that the murders occurred after 2 o’clock in the morning’. That was not possible, as there was no such evidence. In my opinion, there was no direct evidence against Xie. The Crown’s case had been built around Robert Xie’s computer-proven alibi but challenging his after-2 am alibi of being in bed asleep beside his wife.
Indeed, the forensic pathologist agreed with defence counsel that it was possible that at least one of the victims (Min) could have been killed well before 2 am. With the jury absent, the judge recognised evidence to that effect. And the jury bought the Crown’s circular argument. (Xie was sentenced to life imprisonment.)
Like the IPCC taking as proven the ‘dangerous human-caused climate change’, and the Yoorook Commission taking as proven ‘historical and ongoing injustices committed against Aboriginal Victorians’, Linda Burney’s Truth Telling will likely consist not so much of ‘truth telling’ but of grievance gathering, a regurgitation of how evil the white settlers were – and are. Apologies and atonement not accepted.
The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth should be the mantra, as in court. For if Truth Telling is merely another example of evidence-free, biased ‘Blak’ history, it will be as catastrophic as a wrongful conviction. In this case, perhaps the wrongful conviction of colonialism.
As Ramesh Thakur observes, ‘The colonial legacy is mixed rather than uniformly evil or virtuous. Every culture and civilisation has stains in its history.’
The controversial Canadian-American author, Bruce Gilley, professor of political science at Portland State University, argues extensively in his recent book, The Case for Colonialism, that colonialism was not always harmful and had significant benefits, such as the enabling of human flowering through ‘expanded education, improved public health, the abolition of slavery, widened employment opportunities, improved administration, the creation of basic infrastructure, female rights, the enfranchisement of untouchable or historically excluded communities, fair taxation, access to capital, and the generation of historical and cultural knowledge…’ Some of these apply to the Australian experience.
He says:
‘The origins of anti-colonial thought were political and ideological. The purpose was not historical accuracy but contemporaneous advocacy. Today, activists associate “decolonisation” (or “postcolonialism”) with all manner of radical social transformation, which unintentionally ties historic conclusions to present-day endeavours. One failure of anti-colonial critique is perhaps most damaging. It is not just an obstacle to historical truth, which itself is a grave disservice. Even as a means of contemporary advocacy, it is self-wounding. For it essentially weaponises the colonial past…’
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3 April, 2024
Trump’s Tariff Talk Proves Bad Economics Can Be Good Politics
Hmm ... This is orthodox economics below but there is a bit of sleight of hand involved and insufficent notice is taken of social effects from economic policy.
They say that the REGIONS affected by the tariffs did not benefit. But Trump aimed at INDUSTRIES. And he got results there. The steel industry did benefit.
And economists have always recognized that social benefits can prioritize over economic benefits, as in the case of the infant industry case.
A little known case that illustrates benefits from Trump-like policies comes from Australia in the '50s, during the long rule of Prime Minister Menzies.
Australia was very autarkic at that time. It made its own cars and kitchen appliances plus much else. Some goods were imported, chiefly from Britain, but Australian manufacturers were encouraged and were readily given tariff protection. If you made toasters in Australia you did not have to worry about overseas competition. A nice little tariff would protect you.
So businesses and their employees could relax. Their factory would just keep running year after year. The workers could plan their savings and their holidays with no fear that their job would suddenly vanish due to a new competitor entering the market and selling the product at a cheaper price.
And under that system there was very little unemployment. Anyone who wanted one could get a job. Unemployment was always under 2%. It was a crisis if it seemed likely to rise to 2%. There is nowhere like that in the world today.
So Australia at that time was a capitalistic economy with autarkic characteristics. Despite its tariffs, Australia was in the '50s one of the most prosperous places in the world.
Trump has probably never heard of Menzies but he is treading a similar path and can expect similar beneficial influences from it.
His threat of a big tariff on Chinese cars is in fact timely. The American automotive industry is under great pressure to switch to electric cars and Chinese cars are particularly good at that -- so the American industry could conceivably be wiped out without intervention. But that industry is so central to American manufacturing that its demise would be a widespread disaster. Trump's tariffs plus his skepticism about global warming is probably just what America needs at the moment
Former President Donald Trump made increasing tariffs a major focus of his campaign in 2016, and he’s escalating his anti-trade rhetoric again in 2024. Unfortunately, while his trade policies were bad for our economy, they are good for his political prospects.
During a recent rally in Ohio, when referring to otherwise duty-free Chinese cars made in Mexico, Mr. Trump declared,“We’re going to put a 100-percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those guys if I get elected.” Similarly, in February he confirmed that he planned to re-ignite a trade war by imposing a 60-percent tariff across the board on all Chinese imports.
When he campaigned with anti-trade rhetoric in 2016, economists could point to more than 200 years of economic theory, dating back to Adam Smith, that indicated his trade policies would shrink incomes in both the United States and China. They also could point to evidence that lower tariffs and increased trade had improved lives in the United States over previous decades.
But economists didn’t have recent examples of the impact of major tariff increases in the United States because we had been lowering tariffs, not raising them, for decades. Now, in 2024, we can examine the results of Trump’s first-term trade policies to better evaluate the validity of his trade rhetoric today.
During his first term President Trump imposed tariffs on European goods and made some relatively minor changes in our trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. But his declaration of a trade war with China was his signature change in trade policy. Throughout 2018 and 2019 he imposed thousands of tariffs targeting roughly $350 billion in Chinese imports. China retaliated by imposing tariffs on roughly $100 billion in U.S. exports.
A recent National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) paper by economists Pablo Fajgelbaum and Amit Khandelwal surveyed scores of economic studies that have estimated the consequences of the trade war with China. Their two main takeaways were that “U.S. consumers of imported goods have borne the brunt of the tariffs through higher prices” and that the trade war decreased average incomes in both countries, though this was not large relative to our overall economy.
Supporters of Trump’s trade policies may be willing to bear the burden of higher prices and lower incomes if U.S. manufacturing jobs are protected. However, his trade policies apparently did not deliver on that either. Another new NBER study, by economists David Autor, Anne Beck, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson, found that Trump’s tariffs did not increase employment in the regions of the newly protected industries. They also found that China’s retaliatory tariffs decreased agricultural employment in the United States.
Their study also pointed to why Trump continues to try to sway midwestern voters with his anti-trade rhetoric. Voters in districts with firms targeted for protection by his tariffs became “less likely to identify as Democrats, more likely to vote to reelect Donald Trump in 2020, and more likely to elect Republicans to Congress” despite the lack of economic benefits in the targeted industries and districts.
The political appeal of Trump’s rhetoric can be partially explained by voters’ difficulty in disentangling the effects of many individual economic policies. The bulk of President Trump’s domestic economic policies on taxation, regulation, drilling, and a host of other important issues were pro-growth and led to an economy that raised living standards for the middle class before the pandemic despite the drag caused by the trade war. Without a solid understanding of economics, voters hearing Trump’s rhetoric could easily confuse correlation and causation.
In 2018 President Trump declared, “I am a tariff man.” Until economists do a better job of educating voters about the harmful effects of tariffs, Trump is likely to continue to be a tariff man. Unfortunately, good politics often runs counter to good economics.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14890&omhide=true&trk=rm
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JK Rowling's defiant trans tweets are NOT criminal: Police refuse to arrest author amid furious backlash at new SNP 'hate crime' laws
Police wimp out at enforcing oppressive law, setting a useful precedent
Police Scotland have confirmed no action is to be taken against JK Rowling after she challenged new hate legislation north of the border with a flurry of gender critical posts on X, formerly Twitter.
Reports were made against the Harry Potter author but police have assessed her tweets against Scotland's new hate crime laws - already slammed by footballer Ally McCoist - and found they did not breach the legislation.
Ms Rowling, a prominent gender-identity critic, had been reported to police after referring to a number of transgender women including campaigners, convicted prisoners and celebrities as 'men' in a range of tweets reported to the force.
As the 58-year-old's comments whipped up a social media storm, she won support from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak who said: 'People should not be criminalised for stating simple facts on biology.'
A Police Scotland spokesperson said of the tweets: 'We have received complaints in relation to the social media post. The comments are not assessed to be criminal and no further action will be taken.'
Rowling said of the police response: 'I hope every woman in Scotland who wishes to speak up for the reality and importance of biological sex will be reassured by this announcement, and I trust that all women - irrespective of profile or financial means - will be treated equally under the law.'
In her social media post, the author listed ten high-profile trans people and denied their claims to be women. They included double rapist Isla Bryson, 31, who was initially jailed for eight years at a women's prison before later being moved to a male prison following a widespread backlash.
Bryson, who was known as Adam Graham at the time of the offences, began transitioning only in 2020 after being charged.
Initially referring to them as 'women', Rowling ended the thread by saying: 'April Fools! Only kidding. Obviously, the people mentioned in the above tweets aren't women at all, but men, every last one of them.'
Ms Rowling added: 'In passing the Scottish Hate Crime Act, Scottish lawmakers seem to have placed higher value on the feelings of men performing their idea of femaleness, however misogynistically or opportunistically, than on the rights and freedoms of actual women and girls.
'The new legislation is wide open to abuse by activists who wish to silence those of us speaking out about the dangers of eliminating women's and girls' single-sex spaces, the nonsense made of crime data if violent and sexual assaults committed by men are recorded as female crimes, the grotesque unfairness of allowing males to compete in female sports, the injustice of women's jobs, honours and opportunities being taken by trans-identified men, and the reality and immutability of biological sex.
'For several years now, Scottish women have been pressured by their government and members of the police force to deny the evidence of their eyes and ears, repudiate biological facts and embrace a neo-religious concept of gender that is unprovable and untestable.
'The re-definition of 'woman' to include every man who declares himself one has already had serious consequences for women's and girls' rights and safety in Scotland, with the strongest impact felt, as ever, by the most vulnerable, including female prisoners and rape survivors.
'It is impossible to accurately describe or tackle the reality of violence and sexual violence committed against women and girls, or address the current assault on women's and girls' rights, unless we are allowed to call a man a man.'
The author, who lives in Edinburgh, challenged those who opposed her views to report her under the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act, which came into effect on Monday.
It aims to protect a number of characteristics from abuse under the law, including age, disability, sexual orientation, transgender identity and those with variations in sex characteristics, such as intersex people.
Rowling continued: 'Freedom of speech and belief are at an end in Scotland if the accurate description of biological sex is deemed criminal.
'I'm currently out of the country, but if what I've written here qualifies as an offence under the terms of the new act, I look forward to being arrested when I return to the birthplace of the Scottish Enlightenment.'
She signed it off with the hashtag #arrestme.
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An Indian despairs of the loss of self-confidence in the West
Ramesh Thakur writes below. He is a bit misled by surface appearances. What he points to is just Leftist destructiveness. Underneath it all there is still widespread patriotism in the West, particuilarly in the USA. You can see that at any Trump rally
Browsing a bookshop online recently, I came across the familiar acknowledgement of the traditional First Nations owners and custodians of the land and the assertion that, ‘Sovereignty was never ceded’. I left the site, never to return, thinking, Mate, the problem is your white guilt, not my white privilege, for I have none.
Over nine million illegal migrants have swarmed across the US southern border during Biden’s presidency. The biggest millstone around the doomed Sunak government is the hundreds of thousands of legal and illegal migrants. Some 550,000 migrants came into Australia last year. And yet still the cry is raised that all three are irredeemably structurally racist countries.
India is touted as the world’s fastest growing major economy yet the outflux of large numbers into the West continues. Many explore how to bring over more family members; few are planning to return to the supposedly booming country.
I left in 1971 to pursue graduate studies in Canada, returned for a year in 1975 to do some archival and interview research, but aborted the visit when Indira Gandhi declared a national emergency to assume and exercise dictatorial power. Born and having grown up in independent, free India, taking democratic freedoms for granted, I was shocked by the overnight suffocation of the notoriously argumentative Indians.
My first academic publication explored that topic and, at a time when the fashion among young graduate students in North America was to sneer at democracy, I wrote a lament for its demise in India. That is what decided the issue of switching to Canadian citizenship. I experienced a déjà vu moment with the military coup in Fiji, having taught at the University of the South Pacific for a few years before moving to New Zealand and then Australia.
My commitment to democratic governance, civil liberties and citizens’ rights is thus grounded in ‘lived experience’. Hence the despair at Westerners’ growing loss of self-confidence to defend their values, heritage, institutions and contributions to net human welfare. The fossil fuel-driven industrial revolution and the Enlightenment freed peasants from the land, women from the home and workers from the village to destroy feudalism, emancipate workers, democratise citizenship and liberate creativity. Europeans’ military superiority enabled them to colonise many peoples. The colonial legacy is mixed rather than uniformly evil or virtuous.
Every culture and civilisation has stains in its history. Most borders today are the result of the use of force in the past. That said, is there a country that contributed more to the end of slavery than Britain? How many people from developing countries owe gains in life expectancy, education, income, political rights and life opportunities to intellectual and scientific revolutions in Europe?
Yet Westerners seem intent on feeding the bonfires that are consuming them. There’s almost a palpable end-of-Roman-Empire, fin-de-siècle feel in the air. In the latest global self-reported happiness rankings, the Nordics took the top four positions again. Australians are the tenth-happiest people. The US has dropped out of the top twenty, due primarily to the self-focussed and social media-obsessed under-30s who ranked 62nd globally.
Reasons for this include the relentless climate catastrophising and attacks on their ‘privileged oppressor’ identity. Holly Valance describes Greta Thunberg as a ‘demonic little gremlin high priestess of climatism’ who is treated ‘as a goddess in the classrooms’ despite contributing to the epidemic of ‘depression and anxiety’ in children.
At an appearance in parliament on 20 March, Rebecca Knox, Chair of Dorset & Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Authority, said she agrees with a report that her force is ‘institutionally racist’. Asked if white people had any unfair advantages in her force, she said ‘No’. ‘Then how can you be institutionally racist?’ ‘Um, sorry, I might have to get back to you’, she stammered.
In New Zealand, the progressive embrace of all things Maori is so deeply internalised that in cross-national group discussions, Kiwi colleagues unthinkingly resort to Maori greetings to start and end messages (kia kaha katoa, kia ora koutou, arohanui). They forget this is gross bad manners because it’s rude and discourteous to speak in a foreign language that excludes some in the group from the conversation. Maybe I should respond in Hindi, including the foreign script?
Trans-activists are erasing the word woman even from motherhood and sexual assaults. Nurses are advised to use words like ‘birthing parents’ and ‘chestfeeding’ as substitutes for mothers and breastfeeding.
J.K. Rowling has promised to keep calling transwomen ‘men’ and risk criminal conviction after a new Scottish law that threatens to severely punish factually correct speech that violates legally correct definitions.
Recording trans-identifying males as women in rape and murder statistics will distort and mock sex-specific statistics on violent crime.
The linguistic gender madness of the crowds is spreading to esteemed medical journals that are banishing the ‘w’ word and associated language.
In Canada, a Supreme Court justice gratuitously reprimanded a lower court judge for using the word woman, in a sexual assault case no less, instead of a ‘person with vagina’. That too with the explanation that the single word was confusing in comparison to the clarity of her own preferred phrase. Neither the complainant nor the accused in the case claimed to be transgender and gender identity and language was not an issue before the court. To cap it all, the decision came on International Women’s Day (8 March).
I hope someone has forwarded Rowling’s wicked tweet to the judge: ‘Happy Birthing Parent Day to all whose large gametes were fertilised resulting in small humans whose sex was assigned by doctors making mostly lucky guesses’.
Cleanse your memory of the aggressive big trans bullies you see in action on the streets intimidating gender-realist critics. The ultimate emotional blackmail card of trans-terrorists is the threat of self-harm and suicide by vulnerable trans snowflakes.
Watch any old Bollywood movie and you will quickly discover that the master of emotional blackmail as the tool of choice for ensuring compliance with parents’ wishes is the Indian family.
New-age feminists attack alleged male privileges but support men who claim to be women under the banal slogan ‘transwomen are women and trans rights are human rights’. The push for more women in boardrooms, meant to redress gender imbalance, is subverted when transwomen are included in the female category in gender-specific lists of CEOs.
In the recent gender gap report on Australian businesses, measured by the median earnings of men and women, gender equity – that is, equality of outcomes – is in practice anti-choice. For most pay differentials today, when paying differently for the same work to men and women with similar qualifications and experience is illegal, are better explained by lifestyle and life balance choices that women make, and very sensibly too.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/03/its-your-white-guilt-not-my-white-privilege/
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Famed economist blames Walmart, not inflation, for high prices
Robert Reich is primarily a historian rather than an economist but is in any case highly political. He is making too much of a familiar phenomenon -- that prices are "sticky downward". When prices fall for any reason, they tend to be slower to fall than they could until competitions cuts in and forces them down. The stickiness is mainly a case of firms compensating for previous losses so is not necessarily unfair in any way
The Covid pandemic caused higher prices due to supply chain problems and inflation. Demand for certain goods increased while labor prices were pushed higher due to the challenges of operating factories, farms, and shipping operations under Covid protocols.
Retailers in 2020 and 2021 faced real challenges in getting goods into their stores. Inflation was real and even as the impact of the pandemic faded, some problems remained.
Wages have generally been pushed higher in the service industry. The $15 minimum wage, while not a law in most places, has become significantly more common.
Related: Popular closed retailer brought back from the dead
But, with covid mostly an unpleasant memory, supply chain issues have become less of a concern, and inflation has receded. Retailers, however, have not been all that willing to talk about that, and, in many cases, in-store prices remain inflated even though costs to the company have gone down.
Former Costco CFO Richard Galanti has been very open about inflation and during his company's second-quarter earnings call, he essentially said that it had gone away.
"A couple of comments about inflation. In the last quarter, in the first quarter, we estimated that year-over-year inflation was approximately 0 to 1%. We'll now say that in Q2, it was essentially flat. And notwithstanding essentially flat, we're taking price reductions where we can," he shared.
While that may not be true for smaller chains that lack Costco's (COST) buying power, it's almost certainly true of Walmart. That chain, however, has not followed the warehouse club's pricing lead and has continued to charge higher prices, according to Bill Clinton's former Labor Secretary.
Is Walmart price gouging?
Consumers have an imperfect view of inflation.
"Americans believe that grocery retailers are earning a 35.2% net profit margin, 14 times higher than grocers’ actual net profit margin average of 2.5%, and that food-at-home inflation is 24.3%, double the annual rate reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics," Dunnhumby's Consumer Trends Tracker reported in February 2023.
It's a problem of perception especially now that the actual impact of inflation on what the retailers are paying has mostly gone away. The perception that inflation remains high — an idea that has become highly politicized — has helped some retailers maintain higher profit margins than they traditionally do.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich believes that Walmart has been taking advantage of the situation and public perception of inflation.
“When I say price gouging is driving inflation, this is what I mean,” he said on X (the former Twitter).
Walmart hiked prices on its Great Value food brands.
The result? Its net income spiked 93% to $10.5 billion towards the end of 2023.
Walmart rewarded shareholders with $5.9 billion in buybacks and dividends.
When I say price gouging is driving inflation, this is what I mean.
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) March 23, 2024
Reich's comments touched off a wave of social media posts where people showed how prices have increased on certain Walmart items.
President Joe Biden spoke about inflation during a recent campaign event.
“Inflation is coming down. It’s now lower in America than any other major economy in the world. The cost of eggs, milk, chicken, gas, and so many other essential items have come down. But for all we’ve done to bring prices down, there are still too many corporations in America ripping people off: price gouging, junk fees, greedflation, shrinkflation,” he said.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also released a report on March 22 "accusing big grocery players of using pandemic-era supply chain disruptions 'as an opportunity to further raise prices and increase their profits, which remain elevated today,'" Supermarket News reported.
Walmart was not the only target of the FTC investigation. Walmart, Amazon, and Kroger were also named on the retailer side while manufacturers including Procter & Gamble, Tyson Foods, and Kraft Heinz were also cited.
Walmart CFO John David Rainey refuted claims of price gouging (although he was not addressing them directly) during his comments in the company's fourth-quarter earnings call.
"Overall, we expect some level of improvement in gross profit, but I want to decompose that further because there's two elements to that. One is our product margin, which we are not relying on raising prices to achieve our long-range plan," he shared.
https://www.thestreet.com/retail/famed-economist-blames-walmart-not-inflation-for-high-prices
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2 April, 202
Women win the mother of all battles on the home front
I long ago put my money where my mouth is on this issue. When I met Jenny she was a working single mother with 3 young kids. After we started a relationship, I soon told her she could stop working and become a full-time wife and mother. She was very pleased to accept. 40 years later she is now my carer in my feeble old age. Traditional ways have much to recommend them
The clear message Ireland recently sent to the feminist elite the world over is that the masses will not tolerate the erasure of womanhood or mothers. Women want to be acknowledged and supported in their role of caring for babies and young children. The steady march of feminists arm in arm with so-called progressives can no longer get away with leaving everyday women behind.
A referendum this month to erase a woman’s work in the home from the Irish constitution was rejected by 74 per cent of voters. The overwhelming No vote is a frightening insight into just how out of touch people in positions of leadership can be with the general population. It cost Ireland €23m ($38.1m) to indulge the ideological aspirations of a small minority who wish to erase mothers and erode a woman’s right to care for her children.
The referendum proposed to remove part of Article 41, which reads: “The state recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the state a support without which the common good cannot be achieved. The state shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home.”
This section was to be replaced with gender-neutral phrasing that erased “woman” and “mother” but also appeared to reduce the state’s obligation to support women in the foundational work of care. The amended section read: “The state recognises that the provision of care, by members of a family to one another by reason of the bonds that exist among them, gives to society a support without which the common good cannot be achieved, and shall strive to support such provision.”
It’s not just a matter of constitutional semantics that the Irish public voted on – they voted on how women should be valued in society, their visibility and how their unpaid work should be supported. The public wish to retain the constitution in its current form because it protects a woman’s right to work both outside and inside the home, as long as the decision is made freely. Under the current economic conditions, it’s the woman’s right to work inside the home that is most at risk.
The people of Ireland wish to safeguard and support a mother’s right to care for her family. Whether or not the Irish government, or any nation, is capable of upholding such an obligation is another question entirely. The message from mothers across the world has been loud and clear for decades – we can’t afford not to return to paid work. In the face of this gross incursion upon a woman’s freedom of choice, most nations simply promoted this as the new norm and “economic growth”. A woman’s work in the home was framed as an unnecessary luxury. Not in Ireland.
Ireland’s care referendum could be considered valuable as a rare case study that demonstrates the disconnect between elite career women who influence policy and the masses of women with jobs who have to live out the reality of the policy.
The imbalance of power among women and the vastly different goals of career women compared with the general population make for a dysfunctional women’s movement that ultimately benefits a select few. Most women want to be valued and supported in all the work they already do, whether inside or outside the home, paid or unpaid. On the other hand, career feminists believe women should simply achieve equality by doing different work. A certain kind of work. Women can be equal if they do “better” work.
The referendum is a refreshing departure from the usual echo chambers where wealthy professional women discuss the virtues of their choice to prioritise their careers and set about developing ways to impose their “better choices” on the rest of the population. For most of human history, it’s been the views of a minority group of women informing policy and dominating public discourse. The majority of women have been typically unable to afford the time and expense, and didn’t have the social standing or education historically required to engage in public and policy discussion. The majority of women have lacked the cultural and political influence required to develop policy that actually helps them, while women in leadership positions have failed to represent the interests of women from diverse backgrounds.
It’s astonishing what happens when the views of everyday people are actually publicly aired and taken into consideration. The chasm between what the top end of town thought was good for women and what grassroots women actually want was wider than anyone could have predicted.
The orchestrators of the referendum have been caught red-handed infantilising women, assuming they know what is best for them and imposing their own value systems on a diverse group. The only way to recover from this embarrassment, to redeem themselves, is a period of deep reflection and soul-searching. A 74 per cent No vote cannot be explained away by excuses of people being degenerates or not understanding the proposal. People in power cannot continue casting themselves as the enlightened and anyone who opposes them as backward.
The results in Ireland alone might not have necessarily reflected global trends except for the democratisation of the women’s rights movement now playing out across the internet. Mothers working inside the home now carry a tiny handheld portal to government hearings, parenting forums, social media platforms, national discussions and political debate.
Women engaging in care work inside the home are no longer locked out of public debate and cultural influence. Platforms and discussions that were once the sole domain of professionals and leaders are slowly being colonised by grassroots people. The smartphone, and the occasional referendum, are making their views impossible to ignore or overlook.
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Sometimes biology triumphs
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Betrayal of women in Scotland
On Monday, Scotland's new 'hate crime' law went into effect. It criminalizes 'threatening or abusive behavior' relating to age, religion, sexual orientation, disability, and transgender identity.
Women, alas, do not rate.
Know what does? Misgendering a trans person, which could now send an offender to jail.
And it looks like JK Rowling would like to be the first one prosecuted.
'Arrest me!' she tweeted, furious that a convicted double rapist — who Rowling joked was a 'lovely Scottish lass' — and a convicted pedophile would be protected under this new law.
That violent rapist, né Adam Graham, switched gender while awaiting trial for assaulting two women, one in 2016 and one in 2019.
Graham's estranged wife Shonna said her husband had never expressed gender identity issues nor the wish to be a woman, and further claimed Graham raped and stabbed her while they were married.
'The way I see it,' Shonna said, 'he is a man, he done [sic] the crime as a man… he should do the time in a man's jail'.
Initially Graham, who now goes by Isla Bryson, was housed in a women's facility. That decision was rightly met with outrage.
'It cannot be right for a rapist to be in a woman's prison,' said Sandy Brindley, the chief executive of Rape Crisis Scotland. Bryson was eventually moved to a men's prison.
Katie Dolatowski is the transgender pedophile in question.
Standing at 6'5" and born a boy named Lennon, Dolatowski was 18 years old when arrested for assaulting a 10-year-old girl in a supermarket restroom, ordering the child to remove her pants.
Dolatowski then threatened to stab the child and kill her mother — and this was just one month after Dolatowski was caught filming another 12-year-old girl in a bathroom.
'He needs to be locked up,' Dolatowski's father Simon told the Sun. 'These are horrible offenses… I washed my hands of him long ago'.
But in Scotland's new upside-down system, Simon Dolatowski could be arrested for the 'crime' of misgendering his own child.
JK Rowling — same.
The author also took a much-needed swipe at Beth Douglas, a trans activist who has threatened to attack biological women with 'throat punches' and axes if they push back against trans orthodoxy.
Douglas is protected under this new law. The women she loathes and targets — well, we are not.
And Western culture wonders why female rage persists.
We now live in an era where nomenclature supersedes criminality, where the thoughts and feelings of the offender are prioritized above female victims.
When President Biden mispronounced Laken Riley's name during his State of the Union address, he corrected himself swiftly — not for mangling, however unintentionally, the name of the 22-year-old nursing student so savagely beaten and sexually assaulted by a migrant that her skull was disfigured, but for calling the offender an illegal immigrant.
'I shouldn't have used "illegal",' Biden told MSNBC. 'It's "undocumented".'
That's our president, ever supplicant to the hard left. Forget the promising life of a young woman taken violently, at random, by someone who has no business being here — let's be careful to call this criminal, this waste of space, by politer terms.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: It's this kind of stuff that repels the average American. It's this kind of stuff that is going to get Trump elected.
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Lawyers may invoke Titanic in decade-long legal fight over bridge collapse
The ship is huge. No bridge pylon could have withstood it. So the ship is clearly responsible. Whether the owners can be held liable for an acident does however seem very dubious to me -- unless contributory negligence by someone in the company can be shown. True accidents are sometimes called "An act of God" and I think that is the case here
The first shot in the legal fight over who will pay for the damage and loss from the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge will likely occur in the next few days in a Baltimore courtroom, insurance academics said.
The Singaporean owner of the cargo ship that took down the bridge is expected to invoke a law dating back to the 19th century that limits the liability of ships’ owners, according to Lawrence Brennan, a law professor at Fordham University in New York. The law is similar to one used by the Titanic’s owners after that “unsinkable” liner hit an iceberg.
This Limitation of Liability Act law caps the liability of the cargo ship’s owners — and their multiple insurers — at the value of the goods the ship was carrying and the value of the ship itself.
A representative of the ship’s owner, Grace Ocean, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The fight, maritime lawyers say, could run as long as a decade. “It will be one of the most contentious marine insurance cases in recent decades, ” said Brennan, the law professor and a retired captain in the U.S. Navy.
While the lawyers fight, most claims will likely get paid by the insurers, including money for the bridge’s reconstruction. Then they will duke it out among themselves. Other claims might take longer, including those by the families of the people killed in the crash.
Other big sources of claims include the loss of revenue for the port, for the vessels now stuck inside it, and for businesses affected by the resulting supply-chain snarl-ups.
The bridge part of this web of claims may be the simplest to resolve. The structure cost some $60 million to build in 1977, which is around $300 million today when adjusted for inflation.
The bridge is covered by the state of Maryland’s insurance. The policy, covering property damage and business interruption for bridges and tunnels, pays up to $350 million, documents show.
The state, with its insurers in support, will likely be among many claimants that sue the Singaporean owners of the giant cargo ship that struck the bridge, seeking to recover their losses.
That ship, the Dali, has coverage through a specialised property and indemnity insurer, the Britannia P & I club. It said that it is “working closely with the ship manager and relevant authorities to establish the facts and to help ensure that this situation is dealt with quickly and professionally.” Britannia is one of a dozen protection and indemnity, or P & I, clubs, which between them insure around 90% of the world’s ocean-going tonnage. Each club, owned by shipowners, operates independently. But the clubs pool resources to buy reinsurance, allowing them to pass on much of the risk they underwrite. That reinsurance covers up to $3.1 billion per ship, according to ratings firm AM Best.
This generous reinsurance safety net is led by French insurer Axa, according to people familiar with the matter, but involves in total around 80 insurers from across the globe. That means, despite a likely eye-popping overall claim, the payout is “unlikely to be significant for individual reinsurers since it will be spread across so many,” said Brandan Holmes, an official at ratings firm Moody’s.
Not all claims springing from the incident will be covered by the ship’s insurance agreements.
The bridge collapse will likely affect the operations of scores of importers, exporters and other companies that use the port. Many will likely find the event isn’t covered by their business-interruption insurance, according to Robert Merkin, a law professor at the University of Reading.
“Only some policies will cover this — it depends on the wording,” Merkin said. Business-interruption insurance is designed primarily to cover damage to the company’s own premises, although some policies have extensions that might cover external events, such as the bridge collapse, he added.
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Australia: String of failed sex assault cases sparks claims of #MeToo overkill
Drumgold's folly in the ACT has many similar examples in NSW
There was once a story of boy meets girl or, in this case, man meets woman. He had been out drinking with friends, and met the young woman at a bar near the border of NSW and Queensland. They went back to his apartment in Tweed Heads, and they had sex.
When she tried to re-enter Queensland without a border pass, the woman appeared distressed and told officers she had been raped.
The matter went to court, with the man, in his late 20s, maintaining the sex was consensual. After just 25 minutes of deliberation, the jury agreed.
At the time, Judge Penelope Wass criticised state prosecutors for shepherding “incredible and dishonest allegations of sexual assault” through the courtroom.
A second, similar story unfolded with a different couple in inner-west Sydney. The man and woman had been out for drinks at a neighbouring pub. They went back to his house and engaged in oral sex before she woke up angrily, stormed out of the apartment and later reported the matter to police.
At trial, the prosecution formed a circumstantial case, relying predominantly on a DNA match from the man found in the woman’s vagina and the evidence of a blood alcohol expert.
That case, too, was thrown out by a jury that deliberated for less than an hour. This time, Judge Peter Whitford blasted the prosecution for bringing a “meritless” matter before the court.
A third story unfolded in a regional town. The pair met at a gym in Wagga Wagga. The man, a trainer, offered to help the woman improve her form. She accepted. They had sex.
What followed, though, was a classic case of he said, she said after the woman claimed their numerous sexual encounters were non-consensual.
The matter was brought before a judge, with the man’s lawyers insisting that due to a lengthy paper trail of text messages between the pair, the sex must have been lawful. Judge Gordon Lerve agreed, and deemed the case “doomed to failure” from the outset.
Such is the tension some believe is gripping the criminal justice system, resulting in a bitter war between prosecutors and judges.
The judges say the office of NSW chief prosecutor Sally Dowling consistently puts accused rapists on trial for crimes that will never secure a conviction. Some in the legal fraternity put this down to a deep fear on the part of prosecutors that they won’t be seen to be taking rape cases seriously enough.
NSW District Court judge Robert Newlinds, who presided over another case featuring a woman who alleged she was sexually assaulted because she was so drunk she had a blackout and could not remember the events, summed up the judges’ gripes when he said cases were repeatedly being prosecuted “based on obviously flawed evidence”.
“I do wish to record that I am left with a deep level of concern that there is some sort of unwritten policy or expectation in place in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions of this state to the effect that if any person alleges that they have been the subject of some sort of sexual assault then that case is prosecuted without a sensible and rational interrogation of that complainant so as to at least be satisfied that they have a reasonable basis for making that allegation, which would include to at least being satisfied that the complainant has a correct understanding of the legal definition of sexual assault or sexual intercourse without consent,” Judge Newlinds said.
His comments are echoed by judges Wass, Lerve, Whitford and acting judge Paul Conlon, all of whom have criticised various prosecutors for bringing unviable cases before the court.
However, Dowling and senior staff in her office “unequivocally” refute the accusations, labelling some of the comments as “unfounded and inflammatory”.
This week, in a last-minute staff meeting, Dowling encouraged solicitors in her office for applying published guidelines “in a diligent fashion”, and told them that other judges had expressed faith in her office.
She has lodged a judicial complaint against Judge Newlinds for his comments, rejecting “any suggestion that (her office) makes prosecution decisions lazily or on the basis of political expedience, or that it operates according to ‘some sort of unwritten policy’ ”.
The feud has sent Australian legal corners into a spin.
Members of Dowling’s own staff have started speaking out, with some telling Inquirer the judges are completely correct in their criticism of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. They have said it is incredibly difficult to have a case discontinued, and they are often shut down by senior members of staff when they try to do so.
So, how did we get here?
We have come a long way from a horrifying time in the 1970s, when rapists could only be men, and victims could only be women. When rape within marriage was legal, and sexual assault was considered a crime only if penile vaginal intercourse occurred.
Age immunities were embedded in the law, and boys under the age of 14 were deemed “unable” to rape somebody. So-called “rape shields” had not yet been introduced, which meant complainants could be grilled in the witness box about the full extent of their past sexual experiences, and have this weaponised against them.
That all changed in 1981 with huge amendments to the NSW Crimes Act. Feminist advocacy argued the law addressed sexual assault in discriminatory ways, and perpetuated well-debunked myths, such as that rapes are most likely committed by strangers.
Nationally, we’ve had affirmative consent laws introduced in five jurisdictions, broadly requiring someone who wants to engage in a sexual act with another person to actively gain consent. Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory are the final jurisdictions to adopt new laws, with reviews under way and many believing the reforms are now imminent.
Snuggled in between the legal reforms have been social movements encouraging the uptake of accusations on face value, and the integration of a “believe the victim” mentality.
The Hollywood-born #MeToo movement spurred on thousands of women to come forward with allegations of harassment and assault. Rape advocacy came front and centre in Australia in 2021 when Grace Tame was appointed Australian of the Year and the interview with Brittany Higgins was aired on The Project.
The #March4Justice and Scott Morrison’s beyond-mediocre response to the pleas of Australian women forced a colossal shift in the dialogue around sexual assault, ultimately manifesting in the demise of his prime ministership. Or at least contributing to it.
The aborted rape trial of Bruce Lehrmann in 2022 sparked further discussion about trial by media, an individual’s right to a presumption of innocence, and the great responsibility held by a prosecutor when deciding whether or not to proceed to trial.
During the subsequent Sofronoff inquiry into former ACT chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold’s handling of Lehrmann’s rape case, counsel assisting the inquiry and senior police officers submitted the #MeToo movement and “intense public discussions” about low conviction rates affected the decisions made to prosecute Lehrmann.
And now, it seems, similar accusations are arising in the neighbouring jurisdiction of NSW.
University of Wollongong criminal law professor Julia Quilter says society has long progressed past the concept of the “ideal victim” and now many “different types of complainants are coming forward”.
“I think that’s a really good thing because in the past there was very much a perception that you had to have an ideal victim. The ideal victim who was attacked by a stranger in a dark place, she was quote unquote chaste,” she says. “We no longer ascribe simply to that concept of the ‘real rape’ but that has produced the capacity for matters to be charged and investigated and trials to be run that don’t have those central features of the complainant.
“For example, in the past it would be uncommon for a complainant to have been heavily intoxicated.”
Professor Quilter takes issue with a causation being drawn between an increase in women reporting complaints and the criticism being dished out by judges. She says it is a small number of judges criticising the ODPP and that there is a “gap in reasoning” between an uptick in reporting and baseless prosecutions being brought to court.
However, if you ask criminal defence lawyer David Barron, he would disagree. Barron was the solicitor acting for the Wagga Wagga gym trainer who was accused of sexually assaulting a client. The case was eventually thrown out – with costs awarded to Barron’s client – after Judge Lerve found the ODPP failed properly to consider dozens of messages sent between the pair after they had sex.
“It’s something that has become an issue ever since the #MeToo movement took effect,” Barron, who has been practising for about 30 years, tells Inquirer.
“It seems as if the authorities are more inclined to believe every complaint that comes across their desk.
“In relation to the gym instructor case, the authorities had the complaint and really looked no further. It was incumbent on us to properly investigate. We obtained a long chat history through messenger … and as the trial judge said, once you read that material, there was no prosecution case.”
Barron made two separate “no bill” applications to try to have the case thrown out, claiming there were unreasonable prospects of a conviction. Both were dismissed by Dowling’s chambers, and the matter proceeded through trial.
“We are not optimistic when filing no bill applications, but we still do so in the interest of our clients,” he says. “In fact, sometimes the no bill has been lodged at the suggestion of local prosecutors, but Sydney still knocks them back.”
Barron says the issue is indicative of a distrust between senior staff in Dowling’s office and prosecutors on the ground.
“Prosecutors used to be trusted to make judgment calls and decisions on whether to proceed with cases or how to proceed with cases to a much greater extent than they are now,” he says.
“These days it seems like the powers-that-be don’t trust the people in the courtrooms to make decisions on the evidence they have got in front of them.
“The solicitors who actually run the cases should have more say in whether or not they proceed,” he says. “They are the person who acknowledges the case. So, really, there should be more autonomy for prosecutors.”
Criminal barrister Megan Cusack, who acted for the accused in the Tweed Heads matter, agrees.
At the time, Judge Wass ripped into the prosecution, saying they must do more than “shepherd incredible and dishonest allegations of sexual assault through the criminal justice system, leaving it to the jury to carry the burden of decision making that ought to have been made by the prosecutor”.
Cusack says the attitude towards sexual assault “has been shifting for a while”, citing a case in which a wife accused her husband of rape because he did not explicitly ask her whether she wished to have sex or not.
“I said to the jury: ‘How many times, while you’ve been married, have you asked if they want to have sex?’” she said, adding that the jury took about five minutes to return a not guilty verdict.
Not only does it have a colossal impact on the accused, it can also devastate a complainant, Cusack says.
“This whole thing about having your day in court is ridiculous,” she tells Inquirer. “They should be told realistically what is going to happen. If you’ve got a weak case because there’s all this evidence against them, they should be told what they are in for; that their credit is going to be run through the mud.”
This saga is far from over.
The Australian Law Reform Commission has undertaken an inquiry into justice responses to sexual violence and is due to deliver a report early next year.
Meanwhile, The Australian this week revealed up to 400 rape cases in NSW will be reviewed by crown prosecutors in an audit announced by Dowling following judges’ criticism.
The results of the audit are expected to be made public once it is completed.
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1 April, 202
Beautiful minds: Inside the identity politics of autism
Yes. I am clearly a high functioning autistic, almost to the point of being an alien. I have no interest in sport, no interest in dancing, no interest in the great outdoors and I really don't understand what scenery is all about. I have watched very few movies in my life and almost never watch TV. I find popular music unpleasant. I greatly dislike crowds and meetings and have mostly managed to avoid both. So it is clear that I am so far outside the norm that I might as well be an alien from outer space.
But I am outside the norm in positive ways too. Being a high-functioning autistic brings a high IQ with it and high IQ solves almost all problems. I have been rather successful in both academe and in business. I wrote my Ph.D. dissertation in 6 weeks (average is 3 years) and I made enough money to retire when I was 39.
It was late in life that I realized that I was autistic. I had already done pretty well by then but the realization of my status did help me with relationships
For most of her life, Sarah Langston didn’t know why she had so much trouble interacting with the world around her. She chalked it down to being a dysfunctional person. But it took its toll: intense difficulty regulating her emotions led to self-harm and repeat hospitalisations. She found it hard to hold down a job.
“For my whole life I had thought: I am broken, I am a mess, there’s something wrong with me, I’m too much, how could anyone love me. I had terrible self-esteem.”
That all changed when she was diagnosed with autism aged 38. All of a sudden, she had an explanation for behaviours that other people found puzzling, and decades of feeling on the outer. “I can talk a lot, use long words – I’ve always been a Scrabble champ – but I didn’t realise my bolshiness and wordiness were autistic. We’re difficult women. A lot of people don’t like us and we experience social discrimination,” she says.
The diagnosis has connected Langston with support services that have helped her function day to day. But that hasn’t been its most important legacy.
“What my autism diagnosis did was give me knowledge about myself. Knowing there’s a reason why I present the way I do, and there’s a whole community there for me to connect with, has been life-changing. My self-esteem went from being in the toilet to being pretty good,” she says.
Autism is no longer just a diagnosis. For many, it’s an identity: one that has transformed their understanding of themselves and the world, opened up a new community of like-minded people, and changed their lives for the better.
Well-known faces on Australian screens and airwaves – comedians Hannah Gadsby and Josh Thomas, activist Grace Tame and actor Chloe Hayden – are proudly autistic.
Hayden, who played an autistic character in the local Netflix production of Heartbreak High, has been at the front of this movement locally. “I see autism as a superpower. If you look at people at the top of their fields, so many of them are on the spectrum,” she’s said.
This new wave of voices has championed an autistic identity that rejects the old labels.
Many have come to their autistic identity later in life, after the criteria for a diagnosis significantly expanded a decade ago and prompted a new reckoning. One big driver of this has been parents whose children are autistic coming to learn they fit the diagnosis as well. Adults with autism are now one of the fastest-growing groups on the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Young adults often wear their autism as a badge of pride; an antidote to the discrimination they may have faced when they were younger. Today, identifying as autistic doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve been formally diagnosed. The growing influence of TikTok also encourages people to self-diagnose, with signs of autism explained in short user-made clips.
That poses difficulties for policymakers, splits the autism community, and can puzzle others. When a clinical diagnosis takes on a meaning of its own, what do you do? And when an umbrella term like autism – which captures so many different experiences – hits the mainstream, who is left out?
“Autism came into existence as a clinical diagnosis. And what has happened over time – similar to other communities like the deaf community – is that that diagnosis has come to mean a lot more sociologically, particularly in terms of an identity,” says Professor Andrew Whitehouse, head of the autism research team at Telethon Kids Institute.
“People have found enormous purpose and belonging through the diagnosis, and that is a wonderful thing. What it also has done is [that] it’s clouded the differences. It’s made it challenging to differentiate between the clinical diagnosis of autism and the identity label of autism. It’s to be celebrated, but also to be examined.”
For Sharon Fraser, another late-diagnosed autistic mother, there’s a lot to celebrate. “It’s so much better for your wellbeing to know that your brain is just wired differently. It’s a huge relief and so helpful, when you get your autism diagnosis or realise you’re autistic. You can almost replay your life and go: oh, that’s why that happened,” she says.
”People will use all manner of unpleasant words to describe you, and they tend to be character flaws: you’re lazy, you’re ignorant, you’re rude. Taking on an autistic identity label is something that we can reclaim for ourselves. Identity is so important because it means we get to define who we are. Otherwise other people will give us labels that they think fit us better.“
The advent of the autistic identity is an even newer phenomenon than the diagnosis, which only came into existence in the 1980s.
“When I came into the autistic world, no one talked about autistic identity,” says La Trobe University Professor Cheryl Dissanayake, who’s been researching the condition since then.
“Temple Grandin was the first autistic voice. Now we have many autistic voices. People get a diagnosis because it really helps with their autistic identity. That just wasn’t a thing [before], when people only got a diagnosis because they needed support. It’s a different world, and we need to figure out how we navigate it.”
This has been propelled by the neurodiversity movement, which sees autism and other conditions as natural variations that occur in the human brain, rather than problems to be fixed. It sits alongside the social model of disability, which holds that disabilities arise from the barriers society puts up, rather than inherent personal deficits.
While neurodiversity was coined in the late 90s, it has taken off in the last decade, coinciding with a change to the psychiatrists’ manual – known as the DSM – which created a broad diagnosis of “autism spectrum disorder” in 2013, and collapsed a range of conditions such as Asperger’s into the one umbrella term.
“I think we started to reassess what it was to be autistic in that moment, when the convenient shorthand [terms such as Asperger’s] that we’d used previously no longer worked,” says Dr Melanie Heyworth, an autistic researcher who founded the organisation Reframing Autism.
“And so for us, it’s probably in the last 10 years that we’ve been intensively re-examining what it means to be autistic.”
A flurry of new research has advanced thinking about autism, increasingly co-produced with autistic authors. That swing to more inclusive research is still gaining momentum, Heyworth says. “Once you get research, things trickle down, and the way people talk about it, and universities teach it, changes,” she says. This extends to social media, where the TikTok hashtag #ActuallyAutistic – used to highlight autistic-made content – has more than 7 billion views.
One outcome of this awareness has been a trend towards self-diagnosis. Fraser says it’s most common in women, who were probably missed in childhood, when the diagnostic criteria was limited and it was mainly boys who were identified. (Autism is still diagnosed more in boys, but diagnoses in girls are on the rise).
Many come to the realisation after having autistic children; others arrive through reading, Fraser says. “They get that lightbulb moment of thinking: it’s not that I’m broken, I’m just an autistic person surviving in a predominantly neurotypical world.”
“For most people, that’s enough. They don’t need to go and spend thousands of dollars and time to get the piece of paper,” Fraser says. A clinical diagnosis can provide access to services, and is required to enter the NDIS. “But especially for adults, it may not be necessary that you access those services. You may have worked out other ways to exist.“
“They get that lightbulb moment: it’s not that I’m broken, I’m just an autistic person surviving in a predominantly neurotypical world.”
“That’s also one end of the spectrum; 20 to 30 per cent of autistic people will have an intellectual disability and very limited means of communications. For people with more severe needs, there are parents in their 70s and 80s who have never had a holiday. It’s like another whole job, helping high-needs adults navigate their lives, and I don’t think [these voices] are representing them. What their life is like, I don’t know, because we’re not hearing from them,” she says.
That’s where parents like Nicole Rogerson, whose son Jack is autistic but who is not autistic herself, enter the conversation. Rogerson thinks the neurodiversity movement comes from a good place: the idea that the world should be kinder and more supportive of autistic kids, that we need autism acceptance, not just awareness.
“But that social movement glosses over the reality of people with more severe types of autism, and does them a disservice,” she says.
“Have we achieved more awareness of autism? Yes, definitely. In our regular culture we have television, podcasts, books. There are well-known people who identify as autistic. The only downside to all that wonderful awareness and celebration is that it can confuse people.
“For some, autism is something they’re proud of and they wear as a badge of honour. But for 30 per cent of people with autism, it will be a severe disability that affects every aspect of their lives. In the focus on more mild forms of autism, which of course are to be celebrated, people with moderate to profound autism have been overlooked.”
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How pricey D.C. neighborhood less than a mile from the Capitol has turned into a crime-ridden 'war zone'
American law enforcement has died at the hands of Leftist permissiveness
At just a 10-minute walk from Capitol Hill, Navy Yard was once considered a convenient and even desirable place for members of Congress and their staff to live.
The Washington D.C. neighborhood is dotted with shiny new apartment buildings boasting some of the swankiest amenities and highest rent prices in the country – with a one bedroom apartment averaging approximately $2,500 per month.
But the area is also in the news nearly every day with a new shooting, stabbing, carjacking or other violent crime.
The dangers have become so prevalent that some congressional aides will take an Uber to work rather than risk the half-mile journey to their office.
Residents say it has become a 'war zone' over the last four years, many are fearful, and some are so fed up that they have packed their bags and moved to Maryland or Virginia.
'I left Navy Yard and left D.C. because of the rapid and drastic increase in crime,' Senior Legislative Assistant Rafaello Carone told DailyMail.com. 'I had to [leave] for safety and just affordability.'
Carone noted that the location is popular for lawmakers and Hill staffers because it is within walking distance to the Capitol complex. But he says many are forced to drive or use rideshare apps to get to work due to crime.
'The whole point of living in D.C. and close to the Capitol buildings is to get to work easy,' the staffer said. 'And now you're being forced to Uber and take other forms of transportation in order to just go to your job.'
Among those lawmakers DailyMail.com can confirm took up residence in Navy Yard over the last few years are Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and Mark Takano (D-Calif.).
Notably, Cuellar was the victim of an armed carjacking in October outside his home at the Capitol Hill Tower condos in Navy Yard.
The Texas Democrat was not harmed by the three armed attackers, but they did take his white Honda CHR and sushi dinner.
'I left Navy Yard, lived there since February 2021, and I moved to Arlington,' Carone detailed, adding: 'Honestly, I think I left the same week that Congressman Cuellar was carjacked. And I just said you know, that's the last straw.'
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) expressed to DailyMail.com her growing concern with crime in her D.C. neighborhood and recently moved from the city to Virginia.
D.C.'s liberal City Council passed a law enforcement overhaul that was meant to hold officers more accountable, but instead appeared to embolden criminals and was deemed by critics 'soft-on-crime' policies.
Now, following public outcry that not enough is being done to combat crime, the council is already reversing some of these laws.
Ward 6 Council member Charles Allen, whose district encompasses Navy Yard, did not respond to a request for comment on the rising crime in the area he represents.
On Tuesday, an armed man connected to a shooting last year ran into the courtyard of an apartment building just a half-mile from the Capitol as police chased him through the Navy Yard area.
The building, called Illume Apartments, was sent into lockdown and residents were told to stay inside their units while SWAT teams cleared the area. U.S. Capitol Police also responded to the scene. The suspect was not found and remains at large.
At least a few members of Congress reside in Illume, according to The Spectator.
The incident followed a similar apartment manhunt last month in Navy Yard and just a block-and-a-half from the Department of Transportation.
A resident impacted by crime in the area and who lives near Arris apartments told DailyMail.com: 'I first noticed crime upticking in Navy Yard only a few years ago. I broke my lease when I was living near Half Street after three men approached my car and tried to steal it.'
The individual said they moved to an area further away from the highway into Navy Yard, but it continued to 'inch closer.'
'It seems like no one is doing anything to stop the rise in crime,' the source said and declined to share their name. 'It's making it impossible to live in Navy Yard without fearing that you're going to get mugged on your way home from dinner one night, or walking with your friends during the daytime because some of these incidents are happening in broad daylight.'
Carone blamed the rise in violence on the D.C. City Council for passing laws recently that allow criminals to get away with breaking the law more easily and face less repercussions if caught.
'Simultaneously with the crime drastically increasing, you have the DC City Council overturning normative crime laws penalizing those who are committing these crimes and now making it easier for them and giving them a pass, which has made the city largely a war zone,' he told DailyMail.com.
Mayor Bowser attempted to address the carjacking issue by handing out free Apple AirTags for residents to put in their vehicles so they would be more easily trackable if the vehicles were stolen.
'These tags and tiles will help MPD recover stolen vehicles and hold people accountable,' Bowser said at a press conference in November. 'The word will also get out this is not a community to come in and steal cars.'
Other Hill staffers and lawmakers have experienced violence in other D.C. neighborhoods, as well.
Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.), for example, was assaulted inside the elevator of her apartment building in February 2023. The congresswoman was punched and grabbed by the neck by a man believed to be homeless. She suffered bruising but was able to throw her hot coffee on the attacker and ward him off.
A staffer for Sen. Rand Paul's office was stabbed on H St. NE in Washington, D.C. last year in what was allegedly a random attack.
Another Navy Yard resident and her husband live in Illume and are moving to Virginia next month to get away from the 'crime and chaos.'
She told DailyMail.com that they are sick and tired of paying thousands of dollars in high rent while Navy Yard crumbles around them.
There have been multiple incidents of homeless men sleeping on the roof of their building, cars being broken into in the garage and armed carjackings, stabbings and robberies just steps away from their front door.
'We don't feel safe in our own home despite being less than a 10 minute walk to the U.S. Capitol,' she explained. 'It's shocking that these senseless acts of violent crime are happening down the street from where elected officials are meeting. This area should set the beacon of safety and freedom for the country, but instead it has unfortunately devolved into rampant crime and chaos.'
And although they've lived in D.C. for nearly 10 years, the crime has never been so widespread and rampant.
'We agreed that it's time to move across the river for our own safety.'
Carone also listed some of the recent occurrences and high-profile crimes, which he said made him rethink his living situation.
'You had a sitting congressman carjacked at gunpoint across the street from my apartment building. You have dogs being thrown from balconies. You have dogs being shot, you have people being shot.'
He added: 'They say you can't use the metro, they said you can't walk by the water anymore, they say that you have to walk in pairs going to and from work.'
It is known that several lawmakers live in the glamorous and very expensive Navy Yard apartment buildings that have sprouted up in the last decade amid a massive gentrification push.
Phase II of the Navy Yard expansion project is underway and seems to be undeterred by rising crime while multiple new buildings go up every few months.
Many times, crime in Navy Yard involves groups of minors targeting individuals walking around the neighborhood. Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) implemented a curfew for minors beginning at 11:00 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 12:01 a.m. on weekends.
Carjackings across all of D.C. have risen exponentially in recent years.
There were 959 carjacking incident reports in 2023 – with many occurring in Navy Yard. This compared to the year prior when the instances of carjackings were about half with 485 reported.
But just five years ago in 2018, there were only 148 carjackings reported in all of D.C.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13249257/pricey-dc-neighborhood-crime-ridden-war-zone.html
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Why Men Should Dress Well
This guy probably has a point but it is a long way from my inclinations. I always dress super-casually
Many men are under the the impression that putting thought into their appearance isn’t manly. But basic thoughtfulness about what you put on is actually quite masculine. It helps you fulfill your role as a man in society through its effect on your projection of maturity, leadership, and the ability to provide. Sure, it’s easier to throw on a faded T-shirt and some jeans than a button-down and a blazer. Yet the latter usually garners more positive results in how others perceive you, and how you perceive yourself. It better reflects your responsibilities and opportunities as a man.
Dressing well looks different in different situations, of course—you don’t need to get all gussied-up every time you go to the store. But even in the most casual of scenarios, there are ways to dress sloppily and slovenly, and there are ways to dress well. It makes a difference for you and for others. Let’s look at some aspects of masculinity and how good style can support it.
Maturity
We live in a culture that relentlessly pushes men to behave like perpetual adolescents. Culture tells young men:
“Don’t take on responsibility, let someone else do it.”
“Don’t try to advance in your career or be a strong leader because that’s toxic masculinity.”
“Don’t sacrifice yourself for a greater cause, just focus on yourself and your own needs.”
“Have a good time and enjoy yourself—there’s plenty of time for building a family and career later.” “Nothing is really worth getting out of your comfort zone for.”
All of these statements embody the mentality of a child because the fundamental difference between an adult and a child is that, in assuming responsibility, an adult contributes to society, while a child, because of their complete dependence, only takes from society. Men who are encouraged to keep taking from society, family, their girlfriends or wives, and the like, rather than giving and building up, are therefore behaving like children.
Psychologist Jordan Peterson points out that the trend of adults dressing like children stems from a mindset that rejects traditional standards of behavior, including adult responsibility, in favor of unlimited “individuality.” Poor style can reinforce an attitude of perpetual immaturity and ongoing self-indulgence, even on the subconscious level. The way we present ourselves reflects and reinforces our sense of self. So if you dress like a child, you’re more likely to act like one.
Leadership
Traditionally, men are leaders, at least within their own families, if not more broadly in society. A leader is someone whom others respect and trust. He has the self-confidence to make decisions and act on them (in the best interest of those under his authority). Dressing well can help in both these areas because it enhances our own and others’ perception of us. Research demonstrates that, when we encounter someone, we will assume based on one good trait, such as attractive dress and appearance, that the individual has other good traits as well, such as intelligence or reliability. This phenomenon is known as the “halo effect,” and it can be a powerful tool for persuading others and gaining their trust. Men’s fashion expert Antonio Centeno writes,
“There’s a very simple reason for this: you’re trying to influence, and therefore your clothes should be the clothes of an influential man. The halo effect will kick in for you once again, making people much more receptive to your words and ideas ... a well-dressed man speaking calmly about reasonable-sounding ideas is much more likely to be believed than the same man giving the same speech in a sloppy outfit.”
In addition to helping engender trust and openness in your followers, a sharp appearance makes you feel more confident in yourself. Studies have shown that dressing well not only affects how others perceive you but also makes you more self-assured and even aids your ability to think abstractly. Just as dressing in an immature style subtly and subconsciously reinforces an identity of childishness, dressing in a mature and respectable manner reinforces an identity of strength, capability, and confidence. The clothing we wear and the environment we inhabit is a constant message about who we are and who we want to become.
Providing
Throughout history, men have had the responsibility and privilege of providing for others. Today, this generally means earning a salary and using that to purchase food and other necessities for the family. Good style and grooming may help you perform that duty more effectively. All of the points about first impressions and the impact of our appearance on what others think of us apply equally here. Moreover—and at least in part for reasons related to the halo effect—a good body of research shows that more attractive and better-dressed individuals are more likely to advance in their careers and make more money. In one study, for example, men dressed with varying degrees of stylishness engaged in mock sales negotiations. The sweatpants-clad group earned a theoretical profit of $680,000, while the group decked out in suits earned $2.1 million. Dressing like a successful professional in your field might help you become that, which will allow you to better provide for your family.
Generosity and Gentlemanliness
Perhaps the most important and persuasive reason to dress well as a man has nothing to do with the practical benefits. In the end, dressing well is a matter of respect: respect for your own dignity as a human being, and respect for the dignity and importance of the people around you. “Don’t be afraid to look a little more dressed up than the people around you,” says Centeno. “That’s your way of showing them respect.” Similarly, Dr. Peterson relates that his father, a teacher, always wore a suit to class as a sign of respect to his students. Dressing up shows that you care enough about your interaction with others to put in some effort. It signals that you take others seriously, that you won’t waste their time, and that you want to look nice for them. It’s simply good, gentlemanly manners, that correspond to the importance of human beings and human interactions.
We ought to dress well because we ought to have a healthy regard for ourselves and for those we encounter. Brett McKay of The Art of Manliness website suggests that we think about dressing for others more than ourselves—they’re the ones who have to look at us, after all. “How you dress contributes to the ambiance, to the weight of an event—to how significant the occasion feels,” writes McKay, and this can be a gift to everyone involved. Important situations should be set apart, characterized by a more dignified ambiance, which is partly created by our appearance. As McKay argues, we don’t want our lives to run “together into an indistinct blur” by dressing the same in all situations, which “contributes to the horror” of mundanity and stultifying routine. McKay continues that “we’ve lost this idea that the creation of atmosphere is a cooperative endeavor; trained to be passive consumers, we expect to show up and have the atmosphere served to us. ... But ambiance is like orchestral music; when each of the players harmonize their sound, something magical is created. ... When you show up dressed well for something, it contributes to everyone feeling like they’ve momentarily escaped their everyday lives.”
When we eat an important meal together—say Christmas or Easter dinner—and we use the sterling silver forks, the ivory porcelain, and the finest china we own; when we light the candles, put out the tablecloth, and serve turkey and potatoes with wisps of steam dancing in the air; when we put on beautiful music to set the mood; and when we wear our very best and wash our faces and smile so that we can bring pleasure to those who look at us—then, we are designating time together as a mutual gift, worth some effort, worth making distinct, almost sacred, set apart from the ordinary, because it means something important.
In the end, we must remember that we’re not animals. We are rational beings, capable of and called to virtuous and civilized behavior, and our appearance ought to reflect that.
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Hindu/Sikh case breaks ground in Australian hate-speech law review
This is not really a complex case. It is clearly a religious matter but does have political implications. Sikhism and Hinduism are very different religions. Sikhs actually believe in one true God, which seems absurd to polytheistic Hindus. So many Sikhs want a State of their own so they can run their affairs in their own way. The divide is clearly religious.
About 76 percent of all Indian Sikhs live in the northern Indian state of Punjab, forming a majority of about 58 per cent of the state's population. So they want Punjab in whole or in part for their independent homeland
Modern India is however the result of coalescing many different ethnicities and language groups into a unitary State so making an exception for just one particulsr goup would be politically poisonous. Absent that context the Sikh request would be a reasonable one in line with modern customs of ethnic separatism but context is sadly very important here.
On the Hindu side, Indins are very much aware of examples such the former Yugoslavia, where a unitary State split into a number of smaller ethic state amid much bloodshed. They know that the impulse to ethnic separatism is strong and are understandably wary of it
A 24-year-old western Sydney man has unwittingly become the litmus test for NSW’s “inoperable” hate-speech laws, with a judge saying that eyes would be watching the matter given its breaking of judicial ground.
Avon Kanwal, who is of the Hindu community and Indian descent, is attempting to overturn a 2023 conviction of publicly threatening violence on the grounds of race for his alleged involvement in a Hindu-on-Sikh violent 2020 brawl in western Sydney.
“This will involve the first determination under this section (93z),” judge Jane Culver told Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court on Thursday.
Mr Kanwal’s appeal comes amid a rise in hate speech across NSW since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war, an apparent inability by police to lay charges on Sydney clerics giving anti-Semitic sermons, and the provision that he’s charged under – section 93z – being currently subject to a Law Reform Commission review given “inoperability” concerns.
The matter could have broader implications given criticism of the state’s 93z provisions, which are narrow in scope, and there has been no successful prosecution under the act since its 2018 amendment to include race and religion.
Judge Culver said she had to ensure she was “deliberately” examining the two solicitors, and their arguments, to “flesh out the provision’s ambit”.
READ MORE: Radical cleric a Saturday school principal | Clerics trigger hate-speech probe | Faith leaders back hate law probe |
“There’s been no judicial determination in this … (I’ve) put you through the hoops to assist this section’s ambit,” she said.
“I’m really trying to finely draw attention to the different aspects of the provision and the definitions.”
The Australian revealed how, since October 7, police were unable to pursue a raft of anti-Semitic sermons by southwest Sydney clerics – including reciting parables about killing Jews and praying for their death – saying that each had not breached criminal legislation.
If Mr Kanwal’s appeal is successful it could amplify calls to strengthen or broaden 93z. If the court convicts him, questions could be asked why police were unable to do anything about anti-Semitic sermons, and whether the legislation is missing “incitement of hatred” in its drafting.
The defence argued that the brawl – instigated by a feud that played out on TikTok between Mr Kanwal and the co-accused – was of a “personal nature” that had nothing to do with race.
The prosecution, however, alleged that Mr Kanwal was reckless in his incitement to violence, which they said was based on his opposition to the Khalistan movement in India, spearheaded by a section of Sikhs for an independent homeland, which they say is ethno-religious and falls under the confines of 93z.
Mr Kanwal’s co-accused, Baljinder Thukral, appealed the same conviction in February, which was upheld by consent given “procedural issues”.
During their sentencing in the local court, magistrate Margaret Quinn found that, with a Khalistan expert giving evidence, Mr Kanwal’s alleged incitement that led to the brawl was on the grounds of race and that Khalistan itself would also meet its definition.
Defence solicitor Avinash Singh argued that Ms Quinn’s “broad” definition of race was “wrong”, and her application of it to his client’s case.
“On the grounds of race, this element (Mr Kanwal’s alleged violent threats) can’t be proved,” he said, arguing that defining Khalistan as a race-based movement was a “legal and factual error”.
“Our submission is that the specific definition of race in the act (is what) the magistrate should have relied on.”
The definition of race enclosed in 93z includes “ethno-religion” and “ethnicity” – the defence argues Khalistan falls within neither of these, but the prosecution contests that.
In the TikTok videos, Mr Kanwal said that he had “no issue” with Sikhism or Khalistan.
Prosecutor Caroline Ervin, however, noted that he ended each with “hail Hariana”, a state in northern India.
“It wasn’t accepted by the expert that Khalistan was just a political movement,” she said, noting Mr Kanwal allegedly encouraged the co-accused to bring followers, and set a time and place for what turned into the brawl.
“There is a religious divide as part of Khalistan … each video is spewing derision for Khalistan.”
The matter will resume in June. Mr Kanwal is charged with publicly threatening violence on race-grounds, but also inciting the commission of a crime.
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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