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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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29 July, 2024
An inconvenient reality
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What Elon Musk gets right about the plight of trans kids
Debbie Hayton
Elon Musk is the richest person in the world but it’s clear that money can’t always buy happiness. The X/ Twitter owner spoke movingly of his family, in particular his eldest surviving child, during an emotional interview with Jordan Peterson. ‘My son Xavier is dead, killed by the woke mind virus’, the father-of-12 lamented.
‘The people who have been promoting this should go to prison,’ said Musk
Musk claimed that he had been ‘tricked’ into allowing one of his children who transitioned from male to female to take puberty blockers after hearing that the child might otherwise be at risk from suicide.
The billionaire now appears to regret that decision bitterly and has vowed to ‘destroy the woke mind virus’. Whatever it’s called, the fantasy that human beings can be detached from the harsh reality of biological sex has taken root, especially among the liberal elites of California and elsewhere. Gender identity might be an unprovable and unfalsifiable idea, but it has been lapped up by politicians and policy makers who should have asked more questions and been far more sceptical.
After California became the first US state to bar schools from having to tell parents when children change their gender, Musk pledged to move the headquarters of both SpaceX and X from California to Texas. This is a man on a mission. But for Musk, and countless other families, the transgender phenomenon has been so much more than a curiosity on social media.
Gender identity ideology has the potential to tear countries apart; the impact on families, though, perhaps matters even more in some ways. Xavier is now know as ‘Vivian Jenna Wilson (the maternal surname) and, according to reports, no longer wishes to be related to Musk ‘in any way’.
“I was tricked into doing this… the people promoting this should go to prison.” @ElonMusk opens up to @JordanBPeterson about gender ideology’s impact on his son, Xavier. pic.twitter.com/1bdILGNdJE
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) July 22, 2024
Other parents might have taken a different approach to children who expressed a wish to change gender. Some will have said ‘no’ from the outset; some will have gone along with it somewhere on a spectrum between reluctance and enthusiasm. Most worryingly of all, a few might have made the decision for their child, perhaps to deal with their own distaste of gender non-conforming behaviour.
But whatever path parents and children go down. evidence is mounting that some young people have been the victims of a medical and social scandal facilitated by doctors and promoted by politicians.
In her review of paediatric gender identity services, Dr Hilary Cass was scathing of the approach taken by the Tavistock clinic, which was also known as the Gender and Identity Development Service (Gids):
‘The rationale for early puberty suppression remains unclear, with weak evidence regarding the impact on gender dysphoria, mental or psychosocial health. The effect on cognitive and psychosexual development remains unknown. … Clinicians are unable to determine with any certainty which children and young people will go on to have an enduring trans identity.’
Last week, Professor Louis Appleby – chair of the National Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisory Group – rejected the suicide myth, the idea that there had been a rise in suicide rates since puberty-blocking drugs were restricted at the Tavistock in 2020. Appleby concluded that the data does not support such claims and found that ‘the way this issue has been discussed on social media has been insensitive, distressing and dangerous, and goes against guidance on safe reporting of suicide’.
My own experience as a transsexual who decided to make the change as an adult, has shown me that transition might be an answer to some issues – at least for those with the maturity to consent to the consequences. However, it is certainly not an elixir for every problem, and it leads to new challenges and difficulties in life. Unfortunately this has not always been made clear to children, and their parents, who were sold a dream that can never be realised, however much it was packaged up with rainbows and sparkles.
But for the parents who signed up to gender identity ideology, unfulfilled fantasy worlds will not end with a change of mind. The consequences of those decisions – halted development puberty, changed bodes and poor mental health – will be ongoing. For some it might be easier to maintain the fantasy than live with the knowledge of just what they did to their children. Like those Japanese soldiers who held out in the jungle long after 1945, their battle with the truth will not finish any time soon.
Ultimately, however, these parents were mere customers – and perhaps shouldn’t be blamed. For those who peddled the product, Musk was in no doubt, ‘the people who have been promoting this should go to prison’. When the lives of children are involved, that is what it might take to finally bring this scandal to an end.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/what-elon-musk-gets-right-about-the-plight-of-trans-kids/
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There’s nothing ‘offensive’ about Prince Albert’s Memorial
The Prince Albert Memorial is the latest target of activists seeking to denigrate our past. The Memorial has stood in London’s Kensington Gardens for over 150 years as a moving tribute to Queen Victoria’s love for her husband. But now it has been branded ‘offensive’. Apparently, the sculptures at its base draw on ‘racial stereotypes’. Visitors were warned in a post – which has since been taken down – on the Royal Parks’ website that the memorial represents a ‘Victorian view of European supremacy’ which many today consider ‘problematic’. Really?
Royal Parks have chosen to hunt for remnants of Empire in order to condemn them
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy announced on her first days in office that the ‘era of culture wars is over’. Yet the divisive and politicised critique of our national history continues, led by a minority of activists with little regard for the views of the public. If Nandy really wishes to end the era of polarisation, she should step in to stop the long march of ideology through the institutions.
The Albert Memorial, like many of London’s historic monuments, is managed by the Royal Parks charity. They are tasked with conserving London’s eight Royal Parks, which remain the inheritance of the Crown, a job for which they are given around £10 million by the government. Royal Parks, which was formerly an agency of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), was reconstituted as a charity in 2017. In a curious arrangement, they act as a public corporation of DCMS with oversight and management of their appointments from the Culture Secretary. The Royal Parks Charity is expected to manage, protect and improve the parks in an exemplary and sustainable manner so that everyone, now and in the future, has the opportunity to enjoy their natural and historic environments. Yet it seems that, in this case, they have used the freedom their charitable status affords them to pursue a radical and contested approach to history.
In describing the Albert Memorial as an example of ‘British supremacy’, Royal Parks have chosen to hunt for remnants of Empire in order to condemn them, rather than focusing on their role as protectors of the parks of which they are stewards.
Since the summer protests of 2020, the custodians of British heritage have been repeatedly pressured to bend to the will of a small group of campaigners with no regard for the views of the public.
Responding to this corrosive pressure, last year the government published their ‘retain and explain’ guidance, informed by Policy Exchange’s paper, History Matters: Principles for Change, for custodians facing calls to remove, or otherwise denigrate, heritage assets.
The carefully developed ‘Retain and Explain’ government guidance sets clear standards for custodians who feel the need to remove or otherwise ‘explain’ the presence of a statue. Those wishing to make public comment on a statue are expected to present ‘a full and rigorous review of the historical evidence available’, including ‘peer assessment of the evidence and conclusions’. Did Royal Parks undertake any historical analysis before damning Albert? There certainly appears to be no reference to ‘peer assessment’ on the offending article about the memorial. Indeed, the comments on their website are given no specific attribution.
Rather than consider the Memorial as a product of the time which created it, they are condemning it precisely because it reflects a ‘Victorian view of the world that differs from mainstream views held today’. But why won’t Royal Parks laud the depiction of broken chains on the Memorial, an allusion to Albert’s role in abolishing slavery across the world?
What this story shows is that it is not enough for ministers to simply publish non-legally binding advice. Nandy should take direct action to hold Royal Parks accountable for their refusal to adhere to the government’s published instructions for managing contested artefacts.
If Royal Parks continue to disparage the historical assets in their care, then action must be taken. A new chair of the charity, Dame Mary Archer, takes office today. Nandy should make clear to Archer that the divisive and politicised curation of monuments will not be tolerated.
Even Royal Parks seem to recognise their mistake. The page on the website discussing ‘Albert in the Age of Empire’ has been removed, replaced by a link which states ‘you are not authorised to access this page’. A Royal Parks’ spokesperson told the BBC: ‘In light of recent feedback, we will review the online information we have provided to tell the story of the Albert Memorial.’
Nandy is not powerless. She can hold Royal Parks accountable. If the trustees of the charity refuse to preserve that which they’re tasked with protecting, then they can no longer be allowed to maintain such a precious piece of our national inheritance.
When activists seize control of history, the Culture Secretary represents our last line of defence. It is government inaction that has allowed our nation’s heritage assets to become so vulnerable to repeated denigration.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/theres-nothing-offensive-about-prince-alberts-memorial/
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Aussie Olympics star says Paris Games are so woke they're ruining athletes' chances of setting world records
Retired Olympic swimmer James Magnussen has taken a swipe at the Paris Olympics, saying they are so eco-friendly that they're ruining athletes’ chances of setting world records.
Magnussen won gold, silver, and bronze medals at the Olympic Games in 2012 and 2016. He also secured the title of 100m freestyle world champion in 2011 and 2013. Magnussen retired from competitive swimming in 2019.
He believes that the pinnacle sporting event in the world has an eco-friendly, vegan-first mentality that is damaging performance.
'There’s multiple factors that make village life far from ideal,' the dual Olympian wrote in his News Corp column.
'It’s the cardboard beds, which can’t give you optimal sleep.
'It’s the no airconditioning, which is going to play a bigger factor as the week goes. It was 20 degrees and raining yesterday. It’s going to be mid 30s in the coming days.
'That’s going to play a factor and the Australian team having their own portable air conditioners will be a welcome relief.
'It’s the crowded buses with no air flow. It’s all of the walking everywhere. The one thing we noticed in London was I was getting up to 6000-7000 steps a day, going from my room, to the food hall, to the bus stop, to the pool.'
Organisers of the Paris Games have been aggressive with their green approach, billing the event as the most sustainable ever.
Magnussen however believes they've gone overboard and that the environment that has been created for the athletes might be the toughest ever to produce world record swims.
'The lack of world records boils down to this whole eco-friendly, carbon footprint, vegan-first mentality rather than high performance,' he said.
'They had a charter that said 60 per cent of food in the village had to be vegan friendly and the day before the opening ceremony they ran out of meat and dairy options in the village because they hadn’t anticipated so many athletes would be choosing the meat and dairy options over the vegan friendly ones.
'The caterer had to rejig their numbers and bring in more of those products because surprise, surprise — world class athletes don’t have vegan diets.
'They must have watched the Netflix doco Game Changers and assumed everyone was the same. But let me tell you, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Roger Federer — none of those guys are on a vegan diet.'
Conditions in the athletes village have already raised eyebrows among the Aussie contingent.
The 'anti-sex' cardboard beds went down like a lead balloon with water polo star Tilly Kearns and her teammate Gabi Palm, who said 'my back is about to fall off' after their first night.
Tennis star Daria Saville revealed the village is nothing like being in a hotel in a social media post on Tuesday.
'We don't really have hotel-like housekeeping here in the Olympic Village, so you have to get your own toilet paper,' she wrote in a caption alongside video of herself grabbing several rolls.
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28 July, 2024
Kamala a "person of color"? Not so much
Below as she was in 1995 with her influential black boyfriend
Source:
Those white shoulders are unambiguous
So how come? Her father was a Jamaican, was he not? Again not so much. He may have come from Jamaica but there is clearly not much African in him:
His features are well within the Caucasian range
And what about Kamala's mother? She was a fair skinned Tamil Brahmin. Again not so black
Does America need a fake-tan President?
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Study makes frightening find about women who don't have sex often
The usual epidemiological rubbish. Was it low sex and depression that gave you heart disease? Or was it heart disease that depressed you and limited your sex life? The latter is the most obvious explanation of the findings but the authors do not even consider it
Women who rarely have sex may not only suffer a bit from pent up tensions — they could be heading to an early grave, a new study suggests.
Scientists found that women between the ages of 20 and 59 who had sex less than once a week had a 70 percent higher probability of dying from any cause within five years compared to women who had sex more than once a week.
These individuals had elevated levels of a protein linked to inflammation, which can cause damage to healthy cells, tissues and organs.
The study also included a sample group of men, but researchers told DailyMail.com that the 'relationship was not found in males.'
In the past 12 months, how many times have you had sex?
Never
1 to 11 times
12 to 51 times
52 times or more
The team concluded that 'there are benefits for women to having sex more than once a week.'
The study's authors, medical researchers at Walden University in Pennsylvania, used a giant database from the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for the new study.
National survey data including information on depression, obesity, ethnicity and reports of sexual activity from 14,542 men and women were pooled for this analysis.
Also included in the database were answers to the question: 'In the past 12 months, about how many times have you had vaginal or anal sex?'
The options included: never, once, two to 11 times, 12 to 51 times, 52 to 103 times, 104 to 364 times, and 365 times or more in the past 12 months.
The reports showed that about 95 percent of participants had sex more than 12 times per year, with 38 percent doing it once a week or more.
The team then compared this medical information with another CDC database on deaths up to the end of the year 2015 — which they double-checked against US National Death Index (NDI) death certificate records for those years.
'Participants who were not matched with death records were considered to be alive through the follow-up period,' the team shared in their study, published in the Journal of Psychosexual Health.
In one slice of the data, the team found that increased risk of death leapt upward a stunning 197 percent for individuals who reported low sexual frequency and depression over just depression alone.
'Individuals with depression but high sexual frequency don't feel harmful effects of depression as much,' lead author Dr Srikanta Banerjee told DailyMail.com.
But this finding also skewed along gender lines, he noted: 'What we found is that, among females only, there is a beneficial effect.'
'The theory,' Dr Banerjee explained, 'would be that depression affects men in different ways than females.'
'Depression is something that leads to more increased mortality due to health outcomes,' the former CDC researcher said. 'So perhaps sex is more effective because of the severity of how depression impacts females.'
'There are multiple theories,' Dr Banerjee noted for this apparent link.
'For instance, sex releases endorphins that may prevent severe health outcomes.'
But, regardless of race, gender, age and most other health factors, his team emphasized that relatively regular sex seems to be beneficial for most adults.
'Sexual activity is important for overall cardiovascular health, possibly due to reduction of heart rate variability and blood flow increase,' the researchers noted.
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A diversity pick in the Oval Office
Kamala Harris was a ‘diversity’ pick for Vice President. It was her skin pigmentation and the type of reproductive organs she had that got her the job. Call it identity politics. Call it affirmative action. Call it the disregard for, or despising of, the old-fashioned notion of merit. Her own accomplishments, especially in the political and electoral realm, were thin gruel. Biden wanted a black woman. He made that clear. He was going to choose from that six per cent of the US population. And he did. He opted for Ms Harris.
Kamala Harris had run for the Democratic party presidential nomination back in 2020. But she dropped out before a single state had voted, before the Iowa primary. She was polling just over one per cent when she quit. That’s one per cent of committed Democrat primary voters. And she was particularly unpopular with black male Democrat primary voters. So in 2020 not a single Democrat primary voter actually cast a vote for Kamala. Not one.
That said, Kamal Harris does have one political victory. It’s the only democratically chosen office that saw her run, required actual voters to pick the winner, and she won. That was back in 2010 when Ms Harris ran for the office of Attorney General of California. In that election Jerry Brown won the governorship against the Republican by 13 points. Barbara Boxer defeated her Republican opponent for the California Senate seat race that year by 10 points. And Kamala Harris defeated the Republican candidate in 2010 by – wait for it – 0.8 per cent of the votes. And that’s in California, let me remind you.
Yet ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ came to her rescue and was the core reason that Joe Biden picked her as his running mate. Skin colour and female reproductive organs. That, after all, is what identity politics and ‘diversity’ policies are all about. Forget individual talents. Forget merit and hard work. Look at some desirable job (never undesirable ones) and then check to see what percentage of the overall population is made up by group X. If the job doesn’t have that percentage of group X-ers then the only allowed explanation is ‘discrimination’. And the identity politics brigade pushes for a group-X person. (By the way, Australian universities have completely and totally succumbed to identity politics and ‘diversity’ thinking; every year under Coalition governments it got worse; white males – your sons, ladies – lose to every other group going; merit is just a third or fourth-level consideration.)
But back to Sleepy Joe. As all readers will know, earlier this week President Biden gave in to the pressure from the Democrat donors and bigwigs after his disastrous June debate performance and said he would not be running in this November’s election. He endorsed Kamala Harris. At the time of writing, so had both Bill and Hillary Clinton, some key Democrat governors, some important congressional Democrats, but not yet Barack Obama. It is not certain but it sure looks as though our DEI candidate, Kamala Harris, will be the Democrat’s presidential candidate. What can I say about this?
Firstly, whatever you might say about his mental state, Joe Biden took 87 per cent of the vote at the Democrat primaries. By contrast, not a single Democrat primary voter actually voted for Harris. Not in 2024. Not in 2020. Not ever. If she gets the nod it would be the sort of elitist-driven decision-making procedure that would make the European Union Commission green with envy. Probably the Black Hand gang in the federal Liberal party as well. No input at all from any voters, not even those in their own party. Kamala won’t just be Madame DEI, she’ll be the candidate of the D.C. elites, of the overtly left-wing legacy media, and of the donor and Hollywood classes. Joe Biden had 14 million primary voters. Kamala had zero, nada, none. Kamala prevailed. The two questions now for her are whether any other Democrat will challenge her at the August convention (it won’t be easy but it’s possible) and whether she can pry Joe Biden out of the Presidency before the election. I think she’d prefer to run as the incumbent President in November although I’m not certain that would in fact help her with the voters (such will be the obviousness of the stitch-up).
Next there is the question of whether Kamala Harris will do better in November against former President Trump than Joe Biden. Biden was down in all the polls. The same day he announced he wouldn’t run, a poll out of the key swing state of Michigan had Biden down seven points. My view for some time was that Trump would defeat Biden. And after the assassination attempt I figured it could be a big win, maybe a landslide. So in one sense, to use a bit of sporting terminology, you can see Kamala as the Hail Mary play. She’s a long shot but at least she has a chance. Biden had no chance. The legacy media will go all in for her. The Dems and media will play the race card. The woman card. It will be DEI talking points all day, every day. If she’s smart she’ll pick a vice presidential candidate from the Midwest because her only plausible path to victory is to sweep every single Midwest swing state. (Look for her to pick a white, male, Midwest Democrat governor.)
All that said, I think Kamala loses and loses by more than Biden would have. (That’s the downside of a Hail Mary play, the ceiling is high enough to allow for the slight chance of actually winning but the floor is lower, possibly much lower, than what you’d have seen with Biden.) Kamala Harris was part of the Biden administration. In fact, she was the ‘border czar’ and has to wear that entire fiasco and the eleven-million-odd illegal immigrants his policies (deliberately or incompetently) let in. She has to wear the massive Biden inflation – a dollar on the day Biden became President is today barely worth 80 cents. Wages have not remotely kept pace with that sort of inflation. Oh, and Kamala was an insider. She knew full well Joe Biden’s dilapidated, senile state. (Spoiler alert: so did all the lefty journalists who pretended for years Joe was just great. She lied. They lied.) She has to wear that too.
I want Donald Trump to win in November. I think it may be the most important election for the West in decades. To my mind, Joe Biden was the worst US president in at least a century. I’ve had money on The Don to win now for well over a year – there are some nice bottles of wine that will come my way if he does. Nothing about the shift to Kamala Harris makes me think she’ll do better than Joe. But only time will tell. The Democrat party has opted to Live or D.I.E. with D.E.I.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/a-diversity-pick-in-the-oval-office/
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Deadly rocket strike on soccer field raises risk of escalation with Hezbollah
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday that Lebanese armed group Hezbollah “will pay a heavy price” for rocket fire that authorities said killed 12 people on the annexed Golan Heights.
“Israel will not let this murderous attack go unanswered and Hezbollah will pay a heavy price for it, a price it has not paid before,” Netanyahu told a local community leader, according to a statement issued by the premier’s office.
The strike on a soccer field full of young people in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights left a scene of carnage Saturday and threatened to escalate the already tense standoff on the Lebanese border.
The strike killed peopled aged 10 to 20 years old, and injured 19, according to emergency services. The rocket carried a heavier than usual warhead, Israel’s military said.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz told The Times of Israel that Hezbollah had “crossed all red lines” — repeating language he used in an interview earlier in the day — “and we will respond accordingly.”
“This is not an army against an army,” Katz continues. “It is an Iranian terrorist organisation against civilians and children.”
Israel is “approaching the moment of an all-out war against Hezbollah and Lebanon,” he says, pledging that Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah will be destroyed along with his organisation, and that Lebanon will be severely damaged.
Israel’s military said it believed Hezbollah was responsible, and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said he had authorised a response by the military against the U.S.-designated terrorist group.
Hezbollah said it had nothing to do with the strike. The group has been exchanging fire with Israel on a near-daily basis since shortly after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel left 1200 dead and around 250 taken hostage.
The rocket hit Majdal Shams, a Druze minority town close to Lebanon and Syria. It was part of a barrage of about 40 projectiles that the Israeli military said were fired from Lebanon into Israel on Saturday afternoon. Hezbollah claimed a number of attacks on Israeli military targets Saturday.
Israel’s defence minister and most senior generals convened Saturday evening to assess the situation following the strike. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the premier was assessing the situation and was expediting his return to Israel from Washington.
Israel responded to a similar strike injuring civilians on a soccer field in the Druze town of Hurfeish in June by attacking military targets deep in Lebanon.
Despite intermittently ratcheting up the intensity of their strikes, Israel and Hezbollah have kept attacks at a level that will inflict pain on each other without triggering an all-out war, which would be devastating to civilians on both sides of the border. The concern has been that a miscalculation or misfire could spark an escalatory spiral neither side wants.
“This is a reminder that this type of conflict management still entails playing with fire and the sides don’t have complete control over escalation,” said Daniel Sobelman, an Israel-based research fellow with the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School.
He said Saturday’s strike was the most serious against Israel in nine months of fighting between the country and militants in Lebanon.
American-led negotiators are working to fend off a broader regional war by seeking a diplomatic solution between the two, but Hezbollah has said it won’t stop its strikes until fighting stops in Gaza. Talks on a ceasefire there have been stalled for months, with Arab negotiators and Israel’s security establishment blaming Netanyahu for impeding progress.
Netanyahu has said the fighting must continue until Hamas is destroyed and that military pressure will bring about a deal.
Hamas Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar has also held up the talks at times, calculating that the news of civilian deaths was damaging Israel internationally.
Gaza saw a bloody day of fighting as well Saturday, as Israel said it attacked a Hamas stronghold within a school in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah. The enclave’s health authorities said the school housed a field hospital and that about 30 people were killed in the strike.
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25 July, 2024
The Democrats do not care a whit about democracy
Roger Kimball
The events of the last few days have made incontrovertible something that candid observers have known for some time now: that the word “democracy” in the maw of Democrats bears the same relation to really existing democracy that the Russian word “Pravda” bore to really existing truth in the Soviet era.
If you look it up, you’ll see that “Pravda” means “truth.” At least, that’s what the dictionary says it means. But anyone on the ground, experiencing the full-court press of Soviet disinformation knew that the newspaper Pravda deployed the word “truth” only to undermine it. It was necessary to pay lip service to the charade. Otherwise the Potemkin village that had been so carefully built up and that maintained the prevailing consensus might crumble, and who knows what might happen then?
In the beginning, a large part of the population, fired by ideological zeal, actually believed the fiction that was palmed off as the truth. As time passed and the contradictions between word and deed accumulated, however, fewer and fewer believed it, even if many continued to say they did. Eventually, the acrid stench of hypocrisy overcame all but the most committed ideologues — or the most cynical powerbrokers.
That is where we are now in the twilight of Bidendom. Everyone with eyes to see has known he is and has been a malign and senile puppet. But until his debate with Donald Trump a few weeks ago, we were all told to forget the evidence of our eyes and ears and join the Orwellian chorus that insisted he was “sharp as a tack,” “intensely probing,” etc.
Now that Biden — or someone writing over his name — has declared that he would not be running for reelection, thus clearing the runway for his DEI vice president, person-of-color Kamala Harris, the farce of Biden’s cognitive competence could be retired in favor of lo-cal encomia to his “selflessness” and public-spirited support of “democracy.”
But pay attention. What just happened is essentially an anti-democratic coup. Kamala Harris, who got no delegates — zero — when she ran for president in 2020 and was only chosen as Biden’s running mate because he had promised to pick a black woman, is on the cusp of being handed the Democratic nomination for president of the United States.
Fourteen million people voted for Biden in the primaries. What about their votes? Don’t be naive. The voters don’t matter except as a matter of packaging. What matters is what the mostly unnamed Council of Elders wants. They wanted Biden when he was a useful proxy. When he ceased being useful, he was cashiered. Just today it was announced that those transcripts Special Counsel Robert Hur made of his conversation with Biden — the ones that prompted him to say that Biden was an elderly man with a poor memory who was not fit to stand trial — suddenly the DoJ found them and is about to release them. Expect a lot more where that came from.
But the real take away from this melancholy farce is that the Dems do not care a whit about democracy. They believe, as I have often observed, that “democracy” means “rule by Democrats.” In 2020 they managed the balancing act whereby they shouted “our democracy” while actually working to destroy it. They are hoping it will work again this time. The phoenix-like return of Donald Trump, together with the malevolent preposterousness of Kamala Harris, makes that exceedingly unlikely. And that, it may almost go without saying, is as reassuring a thing for genuine democracy as it is devastating for the fraud that goes under the nauseating title of “Our Democracy.”
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/the-democrats-do-not-care-a-whit-about-democracy/
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CBS News Implies Kamala Harris Should Be Exempt From Criticism
The bitter Sunday afternoon announcement that President Joe Biden would end his reelection bid spurred hours of live network television coverage. With all that time to talk, it was guaranteed that the TV newsers would start worrying out loud about a new Kamala Harris presidential campaign.
CBS News really demonstrated the protective liberal urges. The news wasn’t two hours old before Robert Costa warned that the Republican attacks were going to be “rough-and-tumble like we’ve never seen it.”
Costa received a text from Donald Trump Jr. “already attacking Vice President Harris, saying she owns the entire policy of President Biden, [is] even more liberal, and he’s saying she’s not competent!”
Stop. What in that statement is rougher than we’ve ever seen? The Democrats and their staunch media allies compare Donald Trump to Hitler and other mass-murdering dictators. They explicitly call him an “existential threat” to democracy. How is it then “rough” to say Harris is ultraliberal and incompetent?
The impression you get is that attacking Harris is exponentially worse because she’s a “woman of color.” She’s automatically “historic,” which apparently means “beyond criticism.”
“CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell joined in: “I remember the 2020 Republican National Convention, not the one we had last week, but in 2020 and the attacks against Kamala Harris then were very, very personal.”
But I can’t find any Harris attacks in the 2020 speeches of Trump or Mike Pence or Nikki Haley or even Donald Trump Jr., let alone a “personal” attack.
“Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan then uncorked this whopper: “I can only imagine that, and a woman at the top of the ticket will take slings and arrows that a male candidate won’t. That’s just the facts and we know it.”
Once again, in 2016, journalists such as Carl Bernstein called Trump a “neo-fascist sociopath.” How is a “male candidate” somehow getting it easy? But suggesting Harris makes “word salads” or “cackles” is just beyond the pale!
An hour later, O’Donnell repeated the theme, talking about Hillary Clinton and Trump in 2016: “It was personal. He called her nasty, he called her a lot of other words. I wonder whether those same types of attacks would work in 2024? There will be a different dynamic running against a black woman.”
Let’s repeat: “Nasty” is less harsh than “authoritarian” or “Hitler.”
In her 2016 convention speech, Clinton said Trump didn’t have the temperament to be president: “Donald Trump can’t even handle the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign.” Today, CBS feels the need to protect Harris from the slightest rumble.
Four hours after Biden withdrew from the race, O’Donnell recounted talking to a top Democratic strategist who said, “They are eager to have Vice President Harris run against, in their words, a convicted rapist.” That could be described as “very, very personal.”
It also can be described as false. In a civil trial—with no real requirement of evidence—a jury of New York City Democrats found Trump liable for sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll, but not rape. (Naturally, they didn’t mention that Carroll also claimed in 2019 that she was assaulted by Les Moonves, the longtime CEO at CBS.)
O’Donnell said she told this Democrat strategist to recall Trump running against Hillary, and wondered: “How will suburban women in 2024 react to attacks on the first woman of color to lead a party’s ticket?”
She’s suggesting it’s political suicide to criticize Harris because of her race and gender. This is coming from journalists, who are supposed to be about accountability and democracy.
At every turn, the media make plain they are about damaging Republicans and helping Democrats.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/24/cbs-implies-kamala-harris-should-be-exempt-from-criticism/
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The Overreaching Power of the Bureaucracy Is Destroying Our Representative Government
The United States is a republic with decision-making power held by elected legislators representing the people. Yet many of the biggest decisions affecting the lives of Americans are made by unelected bureaucrats.
In recent years, we have seen the administrative state going to levels never seen before, making decisions that Congress never told bureaucrats to make. This includes the Biden administration continuing its student loan forgiveness efforts, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s nationwide eviction moratorium, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s final rule to help kill off gas-powered cars.
The EPA car rule helps illustrate the extent of the problems. It’s a shocking attack on freedom to try and limit what cars people can drive, and it’s ludicrously expensive. The agency’s projected compliance cost of the rule is a whopping $760 billion. To put this cost in context, the projected cost of the 2009 stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was $787 billion.
Therefore, the EPA, without Congress speaking on whether it wants the agency to impose such a major change in policy, is imposing compliance costs in this one rule roughly equivalent to the cost of one of the biggest pieces of legislation passed by Congress in our history.
The modern administrative state has been a serious problem long before the Biden administration, though. It has undermined our republican form of government with executive branch bureaucrats often serving as the prime decision-makers rather than our elected representatives. Early 20th-century progressive leaders like President Woodrow Wilson who helped assemble the administrative state were bent on advancing executive branch expertise and power. In fact, Wilson himself had a shocking disdain for voters and specific groups of citizens.
Our country is looking more like the nation envisioned by Wilson and less like the republic envisioned by the Framers of the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, we must restore representative government. And reform must start with Congress, which created the agencies and the rulemaking process in the first place.
Reform is never easy. Plenty of people want to keep power within the agencies and give them a blank regulatory check to aid the ideological ambitions of those who seek greater governmental control. However, one important solution isn’t difficult: Congress should establish in law some boundaries for agency power.
For example, Congress should prohibit agencies from issuing rules outside their demonstrated regulatory expertise, unless clearly authorized to do so. After all, one of the biggest justifications for agency rulemaking is the alleged expertise of agencies. If they don’t have the expertise on certain issues, then it follows that Congress didn’t want them to promulgate rules on those matters.
That’s common sense, as are many other boundaries. For example, absent clear authority from Congress, it would be absurd to think lawmakers wanted agencies to equate shutting down businesses with regulating them, as the EPA is doing with its new power plant rule. The rule is creating infeasible requirements that necessarily will lead to plant closures.
It would also defy common sense to think Congress, without saying so clearly, is OK with an agency banning or limiting the availability of certain types of goods, such as cars; reshaping an entire industry; or doing an end-run around Congress because it’s tired of waiting on legislators to pass a law. Therefore, legislators should make it clear that such rules are prohibited unless clearly authorized by law.
It’s helpful that the judicial branch has recently put some limits on agency rulemaking power. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo, the Supreme Court got rid of what was known as the Chevron doctrine, which was a judicial creation that required courts to give deference to agencies’ often expansive interpretations of ambiguous laws they administer. This helped to make it easier for agencies to achieve their policy objectives by favoring bureaucrats over the people challenging the agencies in court.
Now that this favoritism is gone, it should make it tougher for agencies. However, make no mistake, it won’t stop sweeping and egregious rules, in part because legislation often provides vague or general authority to agencies that they can take advantage of, even if it is obviously inconsistent with congressional intent.
More relevant to putting a stop to sweeping rules is the “major questions” doctrine. The Supreme Court has said there are “extraordinary cases … in which the ‘history and the breadth of the authority that [the agency] has asserted,’ and the ‘economic and political significance’ of that assertion, provide a ‘reason to hesitate before concluding that Congress’ meant to confer such authority.” In these instances, an agency must have a “‘clear congressional authorization’ for the power it claims.”
Even with the existence of the major questions doctrine, new legislation from Congress is required because a congressionally passed law can provide clear prohibitions of agency actions and far more comprehensive protection from agency abuses than the judicial branch. Statutory language should serve as a first line of defense against agencies ignoring the will of Congress and, thereby, the will of the voters.
When asked what kind of nation the Framers of the Constitution created, Benjamin Franklin answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
If we are going to keep our republic, then we need Congress to step up with major reforms to stop the abuses of the administrative state.
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JD Vance makes an interesting point
Kamala Harris' husband's ex-wife and the mother of her two step-children has broken her silence after a clip of vice presidential nominee JD Vance resurfaced, in which he refers to Harris as a 'childless cat lady.'
Kerstin Emhoff, the ex-wife of Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, defended the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee against 'baseless' criticisms over her lack of biological children, claiming Harris is an equal co-parent of their kids.
Her remarks came just hours after Vance's 2021 interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson went viral on social media.
In the interview, Vance said the US was run by 'a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.'
'Look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC - the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,' Donald Trump's newly-announced running mate continued.
'How does it make any sense we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?'
But Harris has been a step-mother to Emhoff's two * adult * children since she married their father in 2014, and has been lovingly dubbed 'Momala.'
Ella Emhoff, now 25-years-old, was an art student when Harris was picked as Biden's running mate. She has since exploded onto the fashion and art scene as her stepmom became the first woman Vice President of the United States.
But her pro-Palestine leanings have recently made waves amid the ongoing war in Israel.
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23 July, 2024
Italy: gay couple are brutally whipped with a belt and assaulted by three men and a woman who jumped out of a car and attacked them after seeing the men walk hand in hand
A reminder that homosexual behaviour is distasteful to many people. And Italians tend to be both conservative and impulsive so are not easily influenced by political correctness. And given the attire of the woman the scene, the attackers had a strong heterosexual identity
Mattia and Antonio - fake names provided by local media - were attacked over the weekend at 4am after an LBGT+ event in Rome.
Chilling footage captured the incident which saw the two men crossing the street while holding hands before two men and a woman in lingere and knee-high boots began their assault.
The two male attackers in t-shirts and shorts could be seen tailing the couple for a moment before one wearing a white top raised his leg and kicked them as they shouted homophobic insults and called them 'f******'.
The couple, seemingly baffled by the violence, attempt to retaliate but are outnumbered as the scantily clad woman begins to intervene.
She runs towards the couple before shoving one of the men, throwing punches as they attempt to fight back while also backing away.
The two male attackers become involved in the fight again after one of them punches one of the men in the couple in the head, sending him falling towards the floor next to a lamp post.
Within seconds, the woman who appears to be returning from a strip club, grabs hold of him and continues her beating while her two pals take on the other man in the couple.
One of the attackers then removes his belt and whips one of the gay men in the stomach while his friend holds him still.
As he tumbles to the ground from the impact of the swings, he attempts to shield his face with his arms as he continues to be belted by the cruel man.
After a few seconds of violent whipping across his arms, back, and stomach, the two assailants begin punching him in the head after putting him in a headlock while he remains tackled to the ground.
The man's boyfriend seems to break free from the woman's clutches across the other side of the road as he sprints past and swings a heavy punch to his partner's attacker's head.
The woman in the thong and bra is quick to start her attack again as she grabs one of the men and slaps him around the head before kicking him down as he attempted to stand up.
As cars drive by, the couple remain tackled onto the floor of the road before three members of the public finally offer their assistance to the victims.
According to the Gay Centre, which uploaded the horror footage to YouTube, the couple ended up in the emergency room following the assault.
They allegedly did not report the incident to police, but told the Italian helpline: 'We can no longer accept living in a society where violence, like the one we suffered, is still a sad reality.
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Britain has a two-child policy?
I thought that only Communist China had such limits (now abandoned) and official Australian policy encourages extra children, so I thought I was dreaming when I heard of this. But it is a reality. Unlike China, extra children are not forbidden but are financially penalized by the welfare system. If you have more mouths to feed and you are poor, too bad for you! Your welfare pyments stay the same as if you had only two children. Making it harder to feed your children seems shocking to me
In the benefit system, entitlement and need are intertwined: the greater the need, the more benefit income a family is usually entitled to receive. But in the 2010s, two policies were introduced that delinked entitlement and need by limiting the amount of benefits some families could receive: the benefit cap in 2013, and the two-child limit in 2017.
At present, nearly half a million families are hit by at least one of these policies. Although the benefit cap affects out-of-work families only, this is not the case for the two-child limit, and six out of ten families affected by the two-child limit today contain at least one adult that is in work.
The two-child limit results in low-income families losing around £3,200 a year for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017. And when 100,000s of families lose out on £1,000s of benefit income a year, poverty rates soar. In 2013-14, 34 per cent of children in larger families were in poverty, but this is projected to rise to 51 per cent in 2028-29. In contrast, the proportion of two-child families in poverty is projected to remain more or less constant over the same 15-year period, at around 25 per cent. Other outcomes are also worse for larger families: in the year 2021-22, three-quarters (75 per cent) of larger families were in material deprivation, compared to 3-in-10 families with fewer than three children (34 per cent); and 16 per cent of larger families were in food insecurity, compared to 7 per cent of families with fewer than three children.
Abolishing the two-child limit would cost the Government £2.5 billion in 2024-25, rising to £3.6 billion in 2024-25 prices if the policy were at full coverage. These costs are low compared to the harm that the policy causes, and scrapping the two-child limit would be one of the most efficient ways to drive down child poverty rates. If abolished today, 490,000 children would be lifted out of poverty.
There are two especially sharp corners in the benefits system today
Over the last decade, successive UK governments have introduced two policies that undermine the core principle of connecting need and entitlement in the benefit system. The first was the benefit cap, introduced in April 2013, which puts an upper limit on the amount of benefit income out-of-work households can receive.[1] The second was the two-child limit, which prevents the vast majority of families from receiving means-tested benefit support for any third or subsequent children born from April 2017 onwards.[2] These two policies together affected nearly half a million families in Great Britain in 2022-23, including 34,000 who are affected by both (see Figure 1), up from 26,000 in 2013-14 (when only the benefit cap was in operation). [3] [4]
There are several reasons for the over-ten-fold growth over the past nine years. Consider the benefit cap, where the numbers affected have increased from around 26,000 in 2013-14 to 108,000 families in 2022-23. The cap’s real value has fallen every year since its introduction, with the solitary exception of April 2023 when it was uprated in line with inflation: it was cut in nominal terms in 2016, and frozen in all other years. As a result, by April 2024, the benefit cap will be worth £14,000 less in real terms for families outside of London, and £10,000 less for those in London, than it was at its introduction in 2013.[5] The impact of this can be seen very clearly in Figure 1: when benefits were substantially increased in April 2020 (when the £20 a week uplift to Universal Credit (UC) and Working Tax Credit (WTC) was in place and Local Housing Allowance (LHA) was increased to the 30th percentile of local rents), the number of households affected by the benefit cap surged.
The numbers affected by the two-child limit are inevitably growing over time because of its design: it affects families who have a third or subsequent child born after 6 April 2017. In 2018, just 70,000 families were affected by the two-child limit; by 2023, that figure had risen to 420,000, or nearly a quarter (24 per cent) of families with three or more children. When the two-child limit is fully rolled-out and affects all families with three or more dependent children regardless of their age, it is set to affect around 750,000 families.[6]
Self-evidently, it is larger families who are worse off as a result of the two-child limit. In 2023-24, families capped by the two-child limit lose up to around £3,200 a year in benefit support for their third and each subsequent child.[7] Although a range of different families are affected by the two-child limit, disadvantaged groups are disproportionately represented: almost half of the households affected by the two-child limit are single parent families, for example.
Families with more than one child are also more likely than childless or one-child families to hit the benefit cap (claimants are also more likely to be capped if they live in areas with higher private rents). That policy results in differently sized losses dependent on circumstances, but the latest data suggests affected families lose an average of £2,700 a year if benefit capped.
However, there are key differences between the types of families affected by the two policies. The benefit cap only affects non-disabled, non-carer out-of-work families earning less than £722 a month, the equivalent of 16 hours a week at the National Living Wage, but the two-child limit applies no matter the working patterns of the parents. Strikingly, nearly six-in-ten families affected by the two-child limit are in families with income from employment.
Families with three or more children have seen their poverty rates soar in recent years
The effect of losing such a large amount of money has a detrimental effect on the low-income families involved. Figure 2 shows rates of relative child poverty by the number of children in a family. The first thing to note is that child poverty rates for larger families have been consistently higher than those for smaller families. This reflects, in part, parental employment patterns: the more children a family has, the less likely the adults in the household are to be in full-time work or to work at all (especially in the case of single parents, and parents with younger children).
But the trends in the figure also reflect the benefit system and how it operates and has changed: the gap between the child poverty rates of smaller and larger families has not been static over time. There was a large fall in the poverty rate for larger families in the 2000s, which can be attributed in large part to the significant increase to per-child payments; firstly through the Working Families’ Tax Credit and other means-tested benefits (from autumn 1999), then through the Child Tax Credit (from April 2003). In addition, employment rates for parents rose in the 2000s (until the 2008 recession), particularly for lone parents, where 9 percentage points more were in work in 2010 than 1997.
However, the child poverty rates of larger families started rising from 2013-14 and, after some blips through the pandemic years, are forecast to continue the upward trend. As a result, 34 per cent of children in larger families were in poverty in 2013-14, and this is projected to rise to 51 per cent in 2028-29. In contrast, 25 per cent of children in families with two children were in poverty in 2013-14, and this is forecast to hardly change over the next few years (we forecast a rate of just 24 per cent in 2028-29). It is well-evidenced that cuts to benefit spending during the austerity years were concentrated on child-related expenditure, while working-age benefit expenditure stayed consistent during the 2010s, and the benefit cap and two-child limit intensified the income hit for those with multiple children. It is also worth noting that for eldest children born before the introduction of the two-child limit, families receive a higher amount of child-related elements of means-tested benefits (this higher element does not exist for children born after the introduction of the two-child limit).
https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/catastophic-caps/
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Small city branded 'America's jihad capital' descends into civil war - as locals reveal why they detest both Biden AND Trump ahead of election
It doesn't say much for their brains that they fail to see that HAMAS started the war by a vicious invasion that had to be answered
A city labeled 'America's jihad capital' by the Wall Street Journal has become fiercely divided over the war in Gaza - as residents refuse to vote for either candidate in the presidential election.
Dearborn, a small city near Detroit, Michigan, is home to America's largest Arab American community.
The mood amongst locals has significantly switched as the death toll in Gaza continues to mount - with little indication of a political solution in the near future.
Residents of Dearborn believe America's political leaders are playing a major role in enabling the suffering caused by ongoing conflict in the Middle East. Their apathy towards the upcoming election is dwindling by the day.
Abu Bilal, owner of Oriental Fashion - a clothing store on Dearborn's Warren Avenue, demanded to know 'where is the humanity' as he discussed the killings of 90 Palestinian civilians with The Guardian.
A man getting his hair cut at the Al-Rehab Barber Shop on Dearborn's Maple Street said - in Arabic - that he doesn't care who becomes president following the November election. It won't make any difference to him...
His barber agreed, saying that he didn't vote in 2020 and doesn't plan to this year.
Joe Biden won the battleground state in 2020 by just 154,000 votes - and the demise in political spirit could be harmful to his ability to take the key swing state come November.
Election turnout in Dearborn was 10 percent higher in 2020 than the previous election in 2016 - Biden also won 10 percent more votes than Hillary did.
These stats suggest that voters were energized in 2020, but word on the streets of Dearborn, per The Guardian, is that this year's attitudes could not be more different.
During the Democratic primaries in February, 6,432 Dearborn voters chose 'uncommitted' in protest of Biden's support of Israel's war.
Biden held a campaign rally at a school near Dearborn on Friday - but Arab Americans across the country have rejected the campaign's bid to win their votes.
'The whole community was aware [that the administration had sent campaign officials to meet with the community], and I think it says a lot, that he sees us as no more than votes and that it's been normalized for our people back home to be killed,' Jenin Yaseen, an artist whose family is from a village outside Nablus in the occupied West Bank, said.
'Dearborn is made up of people from Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and elsewhere that have been directly impacted by American imperialism,' she added.
Members of Biden's election campaign team visited Dearborn in January - and were met by an empty room on one occasion because Dearborn's mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, refused to meet them.
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Stakeholders Disconnected from Corporate ESG Efforts: Research
‘While corporate activism may appeal to a small, vocal minority, it risks alienating a broader base of stakeholders, including consumers,’ said Emilie Dye.
In light of corporations increasingly engaging in social activism, new research has found that many shareholders, employees, and customers disagree with their companies’ social and political activities.
The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) has released a report (pdf) shedding light on stakeholders opinions on corporate advocacy and activism.
The study, which surveyed 2,500 Australians (1,000 consumers, 1,000 employees, and 500 shareholders), found that most stakeholders were unaware of their companies’ social and political activities.
Specifically, 58 percent of the employees, 66 percent of the shareholders, and 44 percent of consumers did not follow their companies’ advocacy for social causes.
The figures were even higher for political causes, with 83 percent, 74 percent, and 65 percent reporting a lack of engagement.
Corporate Social Activism Misaligns With Stakeholders
According to the report’s co-author Emilie Dye, over 60 percent of employees and 41 percent of shareholders felt that corporate support for political causes did not align with their personal convictions.
“Among consumers, 60 percent say the corporate political advocacy rarely or never aligns with their views,” she added.
“In fact, 6 percent of employees say they have left a job because of their employer’s activism.
“The results suggested that far from being a mass movement, driven from the ground up, these activism initiatives are considered peripheral—if not largely ignored—by most shareholders and employees.”
While younger generations increasingly wanted businesses to intervene in contentious public debates, Ms. Dye said two-thirds of Gen Z respondents (born between 1997 and 2012) preferred companies to focus on providing good service and high returns, and stay out of public debates.
The report also found that consumers were twice as likely to avoid purchasing from a company they disagreed with, compared to those who would choose a company they agreed with.
When asked why companies engaged in social activism, 24 percent of respondents believed it was to increase profits, followed by fear of public backlash (22 percent) and gaining favour with the public and politicians (20 percent).
“The data suggest that while corporate activism may appeal to a small, vocal minority, it risks alienating a broader base of stakeholders, including consumers,” Ms. Dye said.
Echoing the sentiment, Simon Cowan, another co-author, said there was a “critical misalignment” between corporate activism and stakeholder values.
“This report should give strength to managers who feel bullied into taking a public position on contentious social issues, and make those who have been convinced to do so take pause,” he said.
The CIS report comes as companies in Australia and around the globe are increasingly engaging in political, environmental, and social issues.
During The Voice movement, an initiative by the Labor government to embed an Indigenous advisory body into the Australian Constitution, it was reported that 14 of the 20 top ASX companies supported the Yes campaign.
Despite the top companies donating millions of dollars to support the movement, it was overwhelmingly voted down by Australian voters.
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22 July, 2024
What, Exactly, Is so Great About the Mediterranean Diet?
The journal article referred to below is "Primary prevention of cardiovascular disease in women with a Mediterranean diet: systematic review and meta-analysis"
At: https://heart.bmj.com/content/109/16/1208
Meta analyses are very susceptible to finding what you want to find and the hazard ratios reported were very low, indicating very marginal effects. And it appears that the authors did not even begin to look at confounders such as ethnicity and social class.
So this study is a very poor recommendation for a Mediterranean diet indeed. The diet is essentially a fad and nothing more
Healthful eating is important at any age to lower the risk of obesity and keep the heart and everything else inside the body functioning well. This becomes especially crucial later in life, because good nutrition helps reduce the risk of chronic conditions like hypertension, high cholesterol and cardiovascular disease.
Being smart about what you eat also can affect your mood no matter your age—ultra-processed foods that include hydrogenated oils and high-fructose corn syrup, for instance, can increase the risk of depression—and some studies even suggest that healthy eating patterns can help delay or prevent developing dementia as we get older.
One way to improve your health while also eating some really wonderful foods, says Natalie Bruner, a registered dietitian and nutritionist with St. Clair Health, is to follow the Mediterranean style of eating.
Often referred to as the Mediterranean diet, it’s not so much a “diet” in the traditional sense, which is often defined by a bunch of hard-and-fast rules such as calorie counting and macro-tracking what you put in your mouth each day. Eating Mediterranean style is more of a lifestyle.
Patterned around the foods eaten by people who live in countries bordering the Mediterranean Sea—think Italy, Greece, Spain and Northern Africa—it puts a daily emphasis on plant-based dishes and heart-healthy, unsaturated fats such as olive oil instead the refined or hydrogenated oils that are so common in fast food meals and snack foods.
Half a Tablespoon of Olive Oil Daily May Protect Brain Health
The diet also emphasizes whole, minimally processed foods such as beans, seeds and legumes, antioxidant-rich fresh fruits and vegetables, and moderate portions of lean protein like chicken and seafood, with only the occasional serving of red meat.
Fish that is high in omega-3 fatty acids, such as salmon, is especially key since it can help reduce inflammation and pain caused by arthritis, which is common in seniors, as well as improve cholesterol levels.
“It’s not a diet that’s restrictive,” says Bruner. “You’re eating everything that’s good for you, which is great.”
Dietitians and nutritionists generally don’t like to characterize food as “good” or “bad” because that can lead to restrictive behaviors, she says. Yet multiple studies have shown that those who follow the Mediterranean diet have better cognitive function and brain health in old age, she says.
Because of its anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties and its effectiveness at preventing obesity, there also are a lot of heart health benefits, along with the prevention and progression of diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, which is associated with lifestyle and diet.
For instance, according to a 2023 study in the medical journal Heart, women who follow a Mediterranean diet more closely than others had a 24 percent lower risk of cardiovascular disease. They also had a 23 percent lower risk of mortality.
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A wise woman
Feminists tell women that having a career and spending your days with people you don't particulrly like is better than staying home looking after a loving family. The woman below has seen through that idiocy. But do feminists ever feel love?
Twenty-five-year-old Grace has a unique passion: cooking healthy meals for her husband. From making biscuits and gravy to baking crescent braids, she loves it all.
Grace and her husband met six years ago when she was just 19. It was love at first sight. Today, the couple reside in their Pennsylvania home with their toddler daughter. A passionate homemaker, Grace enjoys cleaning and taking care of her daughter—and doing lots of cooking.
The young wife and mother believes her husband, who has an intense job with long hours, deserves to be fed well.
She says her daily house chores are rooted in love and the desire to glorify God. (Courtesy of @thatjoyfilledhome)
The sign above her stove proudly reads, “I Love to Feed the Patriarchy.”
“Since COVID, people, especially women, started to change their views on the home,” she said. “I have seen it shift to more and more women embracing traditional values and that includes in their marriages.
“However, societally speaking, it is still not the norm to have traditional roles in marriage. There was a pendulum swing from the 50s and 60s, from ’smashing the patriarchy' to now, more women respecting the men in their lives and coming under their headship in the home.”
‘He Deserves a Good Meal While Working Hard for Us’
Grace cooks regularly, and, to stay frugal, she plans her shops according to sales. Often, she wakes up early specifically to prepare breakfast for her husband.
She adores baking. The breakfast options include crescent braids, quiche, and baked pancakes—as well as shoofly pie, the traditional Pennsylvania Dutch dessert that is one of her favorites. She also prepares lunches for her husband to eat at work.
The young mom of one lives by the age-old concept of serving her family as a caregiver. She says her husband “deserves a good meal” for working hard for the family.
“I center the meals around a protein and build from there with a carb, vegetables, etc.,” she said, using the example of roast chicken with mashed potatoes, green beans, and homemade buttered rolls. “It’s nothing fancy and probably very rusting cooking, but it’s whole-food focused and filling.”
Her husband is always grateful. “He is appreciative and after meals gives me a kiss and thanks me for cooking,” she said, adding that these exchanges have helped to strengthen their marriage.
“We both understand that neither job is harder than the other, they are hard in their own ways,“ she said. ”We don’t play a ‘tit for tat’ game, and we express appreciation for each other daily.”
Grace shares her journey to creating “That Joy-Filled Home” online, and people have responded with a wide variety of emotions.
“It usually is a mixed bag of reactions, many of which are positive, while others are angry or shocked,” she said.
While some criticized her for being “a slave” for taking care of her husband, there were also others who appreciated and recognized her traditional lifestyle.
She said: “My efforts may not be seen by the outside world, but they are seen by God, and everything I do flows out of love and the desire to glorify Him through my daily life.”
Honoring a Traditional Lifestyle
Cooking isn’t the only thing that Grace does for her family. Other chores are equally important, she says, and must be attended to daily. She keeps a list of “non-negotiables” that she gets done every day: one load of laundry, running the dishwasher, and at least three chores.
On a certain level, the young homemaker was always aware that she wanted to be a stay-at-home mother. In her sophomore year of college, however, that desire really kicked in.
She got engaged in March 2019 but put off her wedding until May 2024 because she wanted to complete her bachelor’s degree first. She was studying speech pathology and audiology but began to realize it wasn’t the path she wanted to pursue in the long run. She knew, due to the nature of the profession, that she would soon be overworked and feel burnt out.
“I knew that down the road, I didn’t want to complete a master’s degree and clinical fellowship and wait all those extra years to get married and start a family,” she said.
The young woman shared that she’s also faced pushback from others for adhering to her traditional lifestyle.
“I know it comes from a well-meaning place, but at times it was hurtful,” said Grace. “It was as if choosing homemaking was a ‘lesser’ path or that I was ’too smart‘ to dumb myself down and ’waste my potential.'”
A passionate believer in supporting all homemakers—even those who may be single or still students—Grace says she wants people to do what’s best for their family. To women who want to follow in her footsteps but are afraid of backlash, she has some candid advice.
“At some point, you have to live your life for you,“ she said, ”and not in fear of what others may say or think.”
For her, the choice to stay home has been much more appealing than a career. Serving her husband and child has produced sweet memories, and the joy of witnessing her child’s first milestones as a stay-at-home mom has made the challenges all worth it.
“I would never want to miss those moments for the world,” she said.
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We live in a new world
With a Changed Meaning of Competence
In the aftermath of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, there have been many questions concerning the competence of those assigned to prevent such an event. The key issue is whether and to what extent those charged with protecting his security displayed genuine competence at their jobs.
Some clearly did, those who put themselves directly in the line of fire, but what of the management and the advance team? This is a big issue and it goes to the heart of what is considered institutional competence in the 21st century. It has certainly changed from the past.
In normal times previously, competence meant taking initiative, achieving the goal, using creativity, being adaptive to circumstances of time and place, finding ways to be useful toward the institutional purpose, making excellent judgments even under stressful conditions, being brave and taking responsibility for the outcomes. In an ideal institutional environment, competence of this sort is rewarded.
Is this kind of competence still valued in the culture of corporate world today? In government? It seems to be ever less so. The larger the organization the more resources they have, the more they have all built elaborate systems of compliance that end up smothering all the features of employment that used to be valued and replacing them with checking boxes and not stepping out of line.
In most normal times, this suffices, which is precisely why bureaucracies, nonprofits, and corporate structures build such systems. They keep everyone in line. Provided there is no real change in the challenges or circumstances, turning workers into robotic rule followers more-or-less works. It doesn’t drive progress but it does keep everyone out of trouble.
When all is well, revenue is solid, systems are working, managers are ever more tempted to tighten rules and build ever more elaborate structures of rules, plans, routines, and compliance.
This has been going on for decades, as everyone knows.
The cartoon called “Dilbert” achieved fame by creating parodies of this culture as it affects corporations. When I first started seeing these, I took these depictions as slightly offensive to my capitalistic ideology: why was the cartoonist making such fun of private enterprise?
What I did not know is that the cartoon was realistic for millions of people. The author Scott Adams had come out of the corporate world and knew it better than I did. There was a reason why the cartoon was so popular: it connected closely with readers’ personal perspective.
In the “Dilbert” world, the path to success was being the best possible bureaucrat, helping to secure compliance as much as possible and otherwise staying out of harm’s way. Much of this involves inventing new vocabularies consisting of fancy words that have as little meaning as possible. Meetings supplant productivity. Doing as little as possible while seeming to be a good team member is the path to job security and promotion.
Not being a big corporate guy myself, I was unaware that this culture was growing up within the business world. I could imagine this in government of course. I could imagine that such a culture could be pervasive in the nonprofit world, simply because such institutions lack the discipline of the profit-and-loss system and therefore strong metrics of success that drive the mission. But I simply could not imagine how the for-profit world could become so dominated by such fakery.
Sadly, the meaning of competence has changed throughout every institution.
Some personal history, if I may. I was probably 17 and landed a nice job as a helper of some sort at a catering company. My first day on the job involved washing what seemed like 100 extremely dirty large pans from an event. They were piled high in the sink. Along with that there were several thousand plates and other items. Getting it all washed required many hours of work and I absolutely loved every minute of it.
Once that was done, I left and then returned the next day but with no clarity on what to do. So I stood around, as I recall. A few days later, more dishes would arrive and I would wash them. Each time, I got better at this and had more time to stand around doing nothing.
After a few weeks, I overheard a conversation between the owner and manager. They were complaining that I seemed lazy and unmotivated. Useless, I think I recall one person saying that. I was absolutely mortified and shocked.
The next day, I arrived with new determination. I realized that I was not always going to receive marching orders. I needed to find ways to make myself useful. As I looked around, I realized that the place was a dump. I threw myself into making a big difference. I started in one corner of the huge kitchen and started clearing, arranging, and putting stuff away. I went all the way to the other corner. I did the same with the hallways and reorganized everything. I stayed late to get it done and did the same the next day.
A few days later, the owner showed up and walked in. He was amazed at the difference I had made. He pointed out that I made some mistakes, putting some things in the wrong place but otherwise congratulated me for what I had achieved. Mostly he was happy that I had taken initiative. Later that week, he gave me a pay increase, and I stayed in the job for several more months or longer.
I took from that experience that I should always strive to make a difference and use my own initiative to see what needs to be done. Volition, perception, alertness, and action: these are the key to success. That is the lesson I took from this experience.
Such lessons seem to be the worst-possible ones in today’s organizational culture. Everyone today knows the acronyms: HR, DEI, and ESG. That’s only the beginning of it. Everything today seems to be governed by some document, some protocol, some rule, and some precedent. Success means fitting in and never doing anything you are not told to do by someone or something. This is the path to job security, exactly as described in the world of “Dilbert.”
What I had not entirely understood was how much the world of big business changed after the turn of the millennium.
There are many reasons but one traces to the new policies of the Federal Reserve. The interest rate kept being driven lower and lower, eventually to zero and then to negative territory, and for a long period of time. Economic theory can predict the consequences precisely. It amounts to a huge cash infusion, a government subsidy of sorts, to the largest of the big businesses, giving them a spigot of money with which to play, a seemingly infinite resource to tap for payrolls and expansions.
Such an environment seems to make everything possible, including replacing initiative with entitlement, derring-do with compliance, and efficiency and adaptability with sloth and waste.
This change in central bank policy created a new beast: the heavily cash-soaked corporation that could indulge in every sort of empire building over genuine enterprise and creativity. The managers and their employees simply went along.
This policy reinforced a new form of culture, one we had not seen before. Private corporations began to operate more like governments, and nonprofits did the same. The affliction hit every sector from media to medicine to tech. The virus of bureaucracy took over completely and utterly changed two generations of workers and their outlook on the meaning of their jobs.
All the old-fashioned views on what constitutes competence began to shift. Instead of taking initiative, obeying the handbook and complying with edicts became the very purpose of professional life. This new culture has eroded all the old standards and values.
Instead of productivity, we have the valorization of obedience and adherence to handbooks, Zoom meetings, dressing the part, flattering superiors, never exercising judgment without permission and oversight, checking all boxes, gaining all the correct credentials including continuing education, playing the part, and, finally the rarest of things, showing up.
Herein lies the problem. The very standards of what qualifies as competence have been upended. It would be much welcome to see the old standards restored. In the case of security agencies, which exist in the public and private sector, lives are on the line.
We have all been witness to this in the most vivid way, and it seems to have shifted the whole of the historical trajectory. This is no longer just about getting by and checking boxes. Life has suddenly become much more serious. It’s a good wake-up call to all individuals and institutions.
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Risk of Suicide 12 Times Greater After ‘Gender-Affirming’ Surgery: Study
A recent study has found that the risk of suicide, self-harm, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for individuals who have undergone gender-transition surgeries is significantly higher than among those who have not had the surgery.
The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch, found that individuals who had undergone gender-transition surgery experienced these adverse effects at more than 12 times the rate of those who did not have a history of gender-transition surgery.
The study examined data from nearly 16 million U.S. adult patients between the ages of 18 and 60 who went to an emergency room for treatment from 2003 to 2023. This data came from a larger database of over 90 million patients from 56 health care facilities. Researchers isolated data from 1,501 patients who had undergone gender-transition surgery at some point in the five years before their emergency room visit and 15,608,363 patients who had no history of gender-transition surgery, as well as two additional control groups.
The data show that 3.47 percent of the patients who had undergone gender-reassignment surgery were treated for suicide attempts, compared to 0.29 percent of patients who did not have that history, a difference of 12.12 times.
While the study does not clarify at what age the patients attempted suicide or engaged in self-harm, it does make clear that it did not include minors.
The study lacks explanations as to why these patients had higher rates of suicidality, self-harm, and PTSD, and does not cite whether the patients suffered from adverse mental health conditions before surgery.
Julie Quist, board chair of the Child Protection League, said the results of the study were “deeply disturbing.” She also said it raises “serious implications” in the health industry, mental health industry, and education system, which have almost universally adopted the “affirmation only” approach as the best treatment for gender dysphoria in children and teens.
“This is a very credible study,” said Ms. Quist, referring to the large sample size and long timespan of the study.
She said she was stunned by the 12.12 times higher rate of suicide attempt risk, recalling how parents who are reportedly coerced into allowing their children to undergo these irreversible surgeries are often asked questions such as “do you want a daughter or do you want a dead son,” implying that if they don’t allow their child to medically transition, the child will be more likely to kill themselves.
“This is standard language that they use,” she said. “It’s beyond belief.”
Ms. Quist said she was also struck by the fact that the study avoided researching the rate of attempted suicide and self-harm among minors under the age of 18.
“This study has huge implications for minors,” she said. If suicide attempts for those who have transitioned are happening at this rate among those over 18, she said it’s “counterintuitive” to assume that it’s not happening at the same, if not a higher, rate among children and teens.
“Think of all of the parents who are being told that affirming is the only answer and that the surgeries are safe and prevent suicide,” she said. “It’s a tool of manipulation that is completely false and the depth of this deception is breathtaking. They’ve weaponized the idea of suicide to coerce people into doing exactly the wrong thing.”
‘The Elephant in the Room’
Vernadette Broyles is the founder, president, and general counsel for the Child and Parental Rights Campaign. She said it’s illogical to assume that minors who undergo gender transition through surgery or medication would wait until they were 18 to attempt suicide or self-harm.
“Whatever dynamic that is present in adults stressing about their sexual transition would only be exacerbated in children because they are still in the process of development,” Ms. Broyles told The Epoch Times. “Just because the study didn’t include children under the age of 18 does not mean it has no relevance to children under the age of 18. I would expect a heightened effect among children because they’re emotionally and physically more vulnerable to negative impacts.”
While she said she was impressed that the researchers had the integrity to publish their findings, she also said she was disappointed by their attempt to explain, “without any valid evidence,” that the reason for the “alarmingly higher” rate of attempted suicide among those who had undergone these surgeries is related to minority bias, discrimination, and relational stresses.
“They pulled this out of thin air,” she argued. “There is no evidence to support that, and they’re choosing to ignore the elephant in the room—that the surgery itself is causing the suicide attempts.”
At a minimum, she said the study confirms that transitioning did not bring the happiness the patients were promised.
“That’s also how parents are coerced and cudgeled into giving consent,” Ms. Broyles said. “Yet perversely, they are correlated with an alarmingly higher rate of suicide risk. If nothing else, this is one more study that removes the legitimacy and justification for giving these surgeries is that it is going to save the person from suicide.”
False Positives in Studies
The Trevor Project is a nonprofit advocacy organization focused on suicide prevention and crisis intervention among LGBT youth. Researchers from the organization published a study in 2021 in the Journal of Adolescent Health, concluding that minors who received “gender-affirming hormone therapy” had lower rates of depression and attempted suicide than those who wished to receive them but didn’t.
But another study suggests that most minors experiencing gender confusion grow out of it by the time they reach adulthood.
Researchers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands recently released the results of a study analyzing survey data from 2,772 adolescents over a span of 15 years, starting at age 11.
The study found that in early adolescence, 11 percent of participants reported “gender non-contentedness.” However, the prevalence had decreased to 4 percent by the time they reached the age of 26.
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July 21, 2024
A software update!
Another one! Software updates normally go through alpha and beta testing before they are implemented but are still often buggy. I resist all software updates where I can and dislike a lot of those that have gone through. They are often the work of a technical team looking for something to fix where there is actually nothing that needs fixing
The perils of a cashless society were exposed yesterday as a technology blunder triggered 'the world's biggest IT meltdown'.
In what was dubbed a 'digital pandemic', a glitch in a software update sparked global chaos as computers crashed in shops, banks and hospitals.
Train ticket machines seized up, GP surgeries were forced to cancel appointments and planes were grounded in multiple countries.
Waitrose and Morrisons were among the supermarkets unable to take card payments for a time – meaning customers who no longer carry cash could not buy food.
Critics said the havoc showed the dangers of a cashless world, with almost half of Britons now leaving the house with only their phones as a means of payment.
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‘Absurd’: Joe Biden’s big misstep on Donald Trump
If you want to see what is true of the Left, just look at what they say about their opponents. They are full of projection
Politics is like sport to Americans. They nail their blue or red colours to the mast with pride.
And that interest is healthy for democracy – but it can also lead to the kind of crazed assassination attempt we saw on the weekend.
So divided is America politically that a young man tried to kill a former – and likely to be returned – president in Donald Trump.
It’s all good and well for President Joe Biden to call for the temperature to be turned down but it is Mr Biden and his Democratic Party that has driven most of the division.
They have always tried to blame it on Trump. He, they claim, is the evil causing division. But it is casting Trump as evil that actually causes the division.
The Democrats are so righteously convinced of their ideology that they have set the contest as one of good versus evil. And when you’re fighting evil, then almost anything can be justified.
Trump has been compared to Hitler, with The New Republic magazine last month publishing a front page with Trump’s face morphed with Hitler’s.
He’s been compared to a dictator. Robert De Niro in May claimed that if Trump were elected in November he would “never leave” – it would be the end of elections and democracy in the US.
Mr Biden told donors, after his disastrous debate, that it was “time to put Trump in a bullseye”.
He posted to X this month that “Donald Trump vows to be a dictator on day one”, a gross misrepresentation of a joking response he gave in an interview, and that “we must stop him”.
A bullet could have stopped him dead.
Mr Biden has repeatedly claimed that “Donald Trump will destroy our democracy” and that “this race is about our freedom – it’s about our democracy”.
He claimed in the CNN debate that anyone who exercised their democratic right to vote for Trump in a democratic election was anti-democracy.
It is all patently absurd.
But is it any wonder, with this kind of inflammatory rhetoric, that America is a divided country in which a lunatic tried to kill a presidential candidate?
Trump has never sought to divide America. His entire platform, from the beginning, was about making America great again – not splitting it in half.
His crime, the thing that has made him such an evil, Hilter-esque dictator, was to defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016 by pointing out the divisions in the US caused by ruling elites deliberately ignoring the needs and concerns of ordinary Americans to further their own ends.
And Clinton proved the division she and her cronies had created when she referred to Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables” – people for whom she had no time or regard.
Divide, divide, divide.
And now Mr Biden has the gall to say, with a straight face, that we need to turn down the heat.
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Trump would be ahead even without God
It's the electoral college that matters and Trump is way ahead there
Gerard Baker comments from Britain:
Providence was the real star of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this week. For a party in which the evangelical Christian heart beats strongly, it’s not news that Republicans claim a divine mission in their deliberations. But this year even a sceptic might grudgingly acknowledge that if there is a God, recent events would suggest he has dropped in on America, donned a Maga hat and gone to work on behalf of the Grand Old Party.
For speakers from the podium and delegates on the floor, Donald Trump’s brush with death at the hands of a would-be assassin’s bullet last Saturday was a miracle, no surer sign that the Almighty plans on putting the former president back in the White House. “On Saturday the devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle, but an American lion got back on his feet and roared,” declaimed the senator Tim Scott.
You don’t have to believe in Trump’s unlikely ordination as a leonine agent of God to think that he and his party are destined for glory as the US approaches the last 100 days of the election campaign. In the past month we have witnessed not just the failed assassination attempt, but the accelerating collapse of President Biden’s campaign after his catastrophic debate performance, the melting away of Trump’s legal problems, the rapid unification of the Republican Party under his leadership, and growing evidence of a solid and seemingly irreversible shift in the opinion polls in Trump’s direction.
I have been attending party conventions since 1996 and I can’t recall a more exuberant mood among Republicans than I have seen this week in this post-industrial city on the shores of Lake Michigan - rapturous, you might even call it. Despite three presidential election victories since then, popular electoral success has eluded them. Only once in that time, when George W Bush narrowly beat John Kerry in 2004, has the party won the popular vote over the Democrats. But in 2024 they sense the tide has turned decisively in their favour.
The simple reason is a mood shift in America that seems about to propel not just Trump to the White House but for the first time in a century to give Republicans clear majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Many readers, especially in the UK, find this inexplicable. The spectacle of prominent representatives of the British media wandering around open-mouthed at the sheer awfulness of what they were witnessing in Milwaukee helps to explain why so many in the UK now view the US as on the brink of some kind of fascist takeover, at the hands of what the new foreign secretary called, a “neo-Nazi-sympathising sociopath”. So let me try to explain what is actually happening.
American politics is indeed undergoing radical change in a way that favours, for now, the Republicans. But it is not an embrace of apocalyptic authoritarianism. If Trump were not the party’s nominee, in fact, with all his evident character flaws, I suspect the Republicans would be on the brink of a landslide. It is a mark of the depth of the frustration that even as flawed a candidate as Trump may be about to secure a historic win.
Republican vice presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, is articulate and thoughtful. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP
Republican vice presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance, is articulate and thoughtful. Picture: Joe Raedle/Getty Images/AFP
The core change is the deepening of the realignment of American politics and the Republicans’ advantage in adapting to it. This was tellingly underscored by Trump’s selection of JD Vance as his vice-presidential candidate. Vance is far from the Putin-puppet, democracy-overthrowing demon he is routinely portrayed in the press. He is the most articulate and thoughtful exponent of a new national conservatism that has shifted the axes of American political choice.
What Trump, in his instinctive way, started, Vance is fleshing out in ideas and policy - the opportunity represented by the fact that millions of working-class voters are turning to the Republicans in revulsion at the elitism of the Democratic Party, and in their alienation from the key institutions of the country that have so palpably failed them in the past two decades.
The list is familiar: a climate of intolerant extremism in American education, the media and culture; the opening of the country’s borders to mass illegal immigration in ways that upend traditional American life, suppress wage growth and increase pressure on services; the imposition of new norms on issues of race, gender and sexuality; the sense, even among Trump-sceptics, that the whole media, government and legal establishment was mobilised against him, first to prevent him becoming president and then to defeat him when he was; environmental policies explicitly aimed at weakening America’s extraordinary advantage in energy production; a strategic posture that sent Americans abroad to die in failed attempts to build foreign nations, even as the nation at home was for many disintegrating in violence, drug use and despair.
It’s worth reflecting on this last point to understand why conservatives such as Vance have opposed US support for Ukraine. Two decades of disastrous national security policies have squandered America’s post-Cold War advantage and dramatically constrained its global capabilities. Vance simply asks why in those circumstances, when it faces a far larger existential threat in the Pacific, America should commit resources to a conflict in Europe - where rich allies have resources between them that dwarf those of the Russian adversary, but still demand Americans contribute more.
It is too soon and the race is still too close, despite the lead Trump has opened up, to declare it over. While Republicans gave thanks to God this week, Democrats were working feverishly to get Biden to stand down, and it seems likely that will happen. Perhaps a fresh Democrat will be able to exploit just enough of the doubts people have about Trump to eke out some kind of win. But after two decades of ignoring the rising frustrations of so many Americans, the ground has shifted beneath them. Even God won’t stop that.
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How the Establishment Clause Protects Religious Diversity and Freedom of Conscience
The "woke" religion of the elite in the USA today would seem to meet most of the criteria for an established religion, so most of their edicts could be struck down as a violation of the establishment clause of the 1st amendment
"Agreeing to Disagree", written by Nathan S. Chapman and Michael W. McConnell, charts the political, philosophical, and legal history of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause. Contrary to the all-too-common misconception that the Establishment Clause’s function is merely to “separate church and state,” Chapman and McConnell offer a robust account of the historical evidence illuminating the original public meaning of the clause. They then explain how that meaning was lost by later generations and conclude by showing how rediscovery of the Establishment Clause’s original meaning helps clarify many of today’s most pressing religious liberty issues—from religious accommodations to school funding and church autonomy. Although written for a lay audience—and therefore perhaps a bit too familiar for those already acquainted with Chapman and McConnell’s legal scholarship— we highly recommend this accessible and thought-provoking work.
There is no question that the American public—and even many federal judges— have struggled to understand this often “contentious and misunderstood provision of the ... Constitution” (p. 1). The Establishment Clause is somewhat odd, after all. Though apparently well understood in the Founding era, an “establishment of religion” is not a familiar concept to Americans today, much less laws “respecting an establishment of religion.” Agreeing to Disagree demystifies this largely foreign concept by delving into the clause’s history, asking the all-important question: What was commonly understood by the term “establishment of religion” at the time of the clause’s writing?
Chapman and McConnell provide an answer: an establishment of religion, they say, was understood to mean “the promotion and inculcation of a common set of beliefs through governmental authority” (p. 18). Beyond this basic definition, however, they acknowledge significant variety between individual establishments. As they point out, an establishment could be “narrow ... or broad,” “more or less coercive,” and “tolerant or intolerant of other views” (p. 18). And the character of any particular establishment often changed over time. Indeed, as the authors also note, “the laws constituting the establishment” were often “ad hoc and unsystematic” (p. 18).
Even so, from their deep dive into the history of early American establishments, the authors distill six common “elements” of established churches, providing some tangible examples to supplement their general definition. These six elements are: “(1) control over doctrine, governance, and personnel of the church; (2) compulsory church attendance; (3) financial support; (4) prohibitions on worship in dissenting churches; (5) use of church institutions for public functions; and (6) restriction of political participation to members of the established church” (p. 18). In addition, the authors explain that laws “prohibiting blasphemy and enforcing sabbath observance” were widely considered to be “components of a religious establishment” too (p. 18). Laws advancing and regulating these intertwined aspects of church and state were the means by which the colonies largely controlled their established religious institutions; they gave the government authority to decide how churchgoers did or did not worship, subordinated churches to the public fisc, and restricted dissent from members of minority religions.
Chapman and McConnell also explain how these tools were used to regulate public services like caring for the “poor ... and for orphans and other homeless children,” to “impose religious restrictions on the right to vote,” and to limit “full citizenship to those who supplied proof of a genuine conversion experience” (pp. 24–27). These religious litmus tests tended to exclude many groups from full participation in public life, with this burden often falling hardest on “Catholics, Jews, Quakers,” and “Baptists” (pp. 23, 27).
By understanding these six common elements of state establishments, the authors argue, the Establishment Clause’s meaning also becomes clear. Chapman and McConnell explain—based on this common understanding of state establishments at the time—that the Establishment Clause’s plain text denies Congress the authority to create its own established church, while simultaneously preventing it from interfering with existing state establishments.
The authors’ arguments, however, become a bit more convoluted when they seek to explain how this original meaning—limited to what Congress could or could not do—was expanded by the Fourteenth Amendment to apply to all government actors (federal, state, and local). After giving the reader a taste of their arguments, Chapman and McConnell brush further questions aside, explaining that they “need not get into those complexities here, because no justice of the Supreme Court now questions the applicability of the personal rights of the Bill of Rights to the states” (pp. 75n1, 79).
This approach also points to a broader challenge inherent in a book like this one: the authors’ historical overview—covering everything from the origins of the Establishment Clause through the Fourteenth Amendment in 84 short pages—tends to both overwhelm an Establishment Clause newcomer and leave those familiar with the topic wanting more.
As noted above, when the authors address incorporation against the states (chapter 4), they attempt to make a complex topic broadly accessible in a few short pages. And while Agreeing to Disagree is largely successful in doing exactly that, the book stumbles a bit when it comes to addressing incorporation in particular. It assumes the reader understands the significance of this issue, only briefly addresses it from a historical perspective, and then ultimately throws up its hands by concluding that no one questions incorporation today—so we need not fully explore it. An unsatisfying answer, but fair enough for a 192-page book.
Not content to leave the Establishment Clause stuck in the past, Chapman and McConnell fast-forward to what they call the “modern controversies” over the clause’s application. This portion of the book is where the rubber hits the road as the authors work through the Supreme Court’s various attempts to interpret and understand the clause—starting with Everson, making a detour through Lemon, and concluding (for now) with Kennedy, American Legion, and Carson. Touching on numerous points of controversy—from government funding of religious schools to prayer and Bible reading in public school classrooms, conflicts over religious symbols on public land, and the interaction between employment laws and religious autonomy—the authors show how the Supreme Court’s decisions on these hotly contested issues have been driven by the court’s return to the Establishment Clause’s original meaning.
To take just one example, Chapman and McConnell chart the history of religious schools in the United States. They explain how a renewed focus on the original meaning of the Establishment Clause brought about, “with astonishing speed,” the complete repudiation of a whole line of Supreme Court precedent governing the relationship between government and religious schools (p. 137). According to the authors, “in all the annals of U.S. Reports, there is no example of a more complete volte-face in constitutional doctrine” (p. 137). Indeed, from the 1980s to today, the rule for religious schools went from one of “no-aid separationism” through a period of permissible neutral government aid, to (today) a rule of mandatory government neutrality between religion and nonreligion and among religions (p. 139).
Prior to this shift, the Supreme Court took a hostile approach to government aid for religious schools, imposing a requirement of “no-aid separationism”— essentially a rule that (with a narrow exception for public services like fire and police protection) mandated complete separation between church and state and barred religious schools from access to generally available government funding. This no-aid theory, according to Chapman and McConnell, reached its high-water mark in 1985 and is attributable to the Supreme Court’s misunderstanding of the meaning and purpose of the Establishment Clause.
Things changed quickly, however. Agreeing to Disagree describes this shift in three stages. The first stage, starting in the 1980s, culminated early in the twentyfirst century with Zelman v. Simmons-Harris (2002), which “explicitly replaced no aid theory with neutrality” (p. 139). After Zelman, the rule in the Supreme Court was that neutral school funding was permitted but not mandatory (stage two). This state of affairs, however, did not last long. Once neutral aid was permitted (removing the Establishment Clause barrier), litigants and Supreme Court justices alike began to question whether the Free Exercise Clause, which demands (at a minimum) equal treatment of religion, permits governments to “singl[e] out religion for unfavorable treatment” when creating generally available government funding programs (p. 140).
Within two decades, the Supreme Court answered that question in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer (2017) (stage three). Trinity Lutheran required the court to decide whether a religious school could be excluded from a government grant program for playground resurfacing solely because it was religious. The court ruled for the school, striking down Missouri’s state ban on funding for religious schools and holding that treating religious schools on equal footing with private secular schools in the resurfacing program was “not only permissible but also mandatory” (p. 141). Trinity Lutheran thus confirmed that if the government creates a generally available funding program, it has to make that funding available to secular and religious schools on a neutral basis.
Trinity Lutheran, however, created more questions than answers. Important among them: Was its rule limited to funding for facially “nonreligious” items (like playgrounds), or were governments required to treat religious and nonreligious alike even when the funds were used for things like primary school education, which included both secular and religious components?
The Supreme Court answered that question in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), holding that Montana couldn’t exclude religious schools from a tuition aid program made generally available to secular private school students. This decision, however, did not end the controversy. Following Espinoza, governments intent on excluding religious schools pivoted—arguing that they weren’t excluding schools based on their religious “status” (plainly forbidden after Trinity Lutheran and Espinoza) but based on religious “use” or religious “exercise.” But this supposed distinction, too, was quickly repudiated by the Supreme Court in Carson v. Makin (2022), which held that exclusion based on “religious exercise” was no different from exclusion based on religious status.
For Chapman and McConnell, this “abrupt doctrinal one-eighty” on school funding reflected the court’s rapid return to the original understanding of the Establishment Clause: to ensure equal treatment and inclusion of religion in public life (p. 142). And, by starting off with a thorough account of the Establishment Clause’s history and original meaning, Chapman and McConnell attempt to persuade their reader that this swift shift—despite creating the “sense of whiplash” (p. 142)—is not only more faithful to the clause’s original meaning and purpose, but also leads to a healthier public square in which religion is not banished, but is instead viewed as a natural part of the human experience.
Agreeing to Disagree combines deep expertise with a style and structure that facilitate a comprehensive introduction to the Establishment Clause’s historical meaning and enduring importance. The authors structure the book in such a way that by the time they discuss modern controversies surrounding the clause, readers have a disambiguated understanding of its origin and purpose, leapfrogging the many decades that America and its highest court spent in confusion. Chapman and McConnell also leave readers on a hopeful note for the future of religious liberty.
They conclude by laying out how the Establishment Clause has facilitated and continues to maintain one of “the most religiously heterogenous societ[ies] the world has ever known” through the values of pluralism and neutrality (p. 188). Though lawmaking by its very nature often requires the government to take value-laden stances, Chapman and McConnell also argue that the Establishment Clause “serve[s] as a caution against the use of governmental power to create uniformity in matters of opinion” (p. 191).
They thus conclude that America needs “a broader spirit of disestablishment” to prevent the forced conformity of opinions not just about religion, but also about “other ideologies” (p. 192). While heartwarming, this attempt to wrap up the book with an appeal to a “spirit of disestablishment” that is applicable to broader cultural disagreements feels forced and contrasts sharply with the text-focused, originalist stance championed throughout the book.
Though Chapman and McConnell capture the significance of the Establishment Clause for religious liberty, the resolution of these broader cultural conflicts seems out of the clause’s reach. Nevertheless, the authors’ message rings clear: the Establishment Clause was never intended to separate religion from the public sphere; rather, it is meant to promote a freely religious society in which religious people and institutions need not fear exclusion due to difference.
https://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?id=2005&omhide=true
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18 July, 2024
JD Vance Contrasts Own Biography, Youth With Biden Record
Sen. JD Vance of Ohio accepted the Republican vice presidential nomination Wednesday night, vowing to never forget where he came from as he highlighted his life story and the failures of the Washington political class.
“America’s ruling class wrote the checks; communities like mine paid the price,” Vance, 39, said in accepting the nomination for vice president at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “For decades, that divide between the few, with their power and comfort in Washington, and the rest of us only widened.”
Former President Donald Trump announced his choice of Vance as his running mate Monday, the first day of the convention. Together, they plan to take on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, although many Democrats continue to urge Biden to step aside as their nominee.
“From Iraq to Afghanistan, from the financial crisis to the Great Recession, from open borders to stagnating wages, the people who govern this country have failed and failed again,” he said. “That is, until President Donald J. Trump came along.”
Vance, elected to the Senate in 2022—five decades after Biden was first elected to the Senate—contrasted his youth to Biden’s while also saying Biden has been wrong on most policies and issues in five decades in office.
Biden has been the champion of “every major policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer,” Vance said.
“When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good American manufacturing jobs to Mexico,” he said of the North American Free Trade Agreement. “When I was a sophomore in high school, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden gave China a sweetheart trade deal that destroyed even more good middle-class jobs. And when I was a senior in high school, Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq.”
The Ohio Republican went on to highlight the struggles of Americans, especially in several battleground states in the Nov. 5 presidential election.
“Each step of the way, in small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania, or in Michigan and other states across our country, jobs were sent overseas and children were sent to war,” Vance said.
Vance’s wife Usha introduced him at the GOP convention.
“I met JD in law school when he was fresh out of Ohio State, which he attended with the support of the G.I. Bill,” she told delegates. “He was then, as now, the most interesting person I knew. A working-class guy who had overcome childhood traumas that I could barely fathom to end up at Yale Law School. A tough Marine who had served in Iraq but whose idea of a good time was playing with puppies.”
In his speech, Vance talked about his life, chronicled in his bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Ellergy,” later made into a movie directed by Ron Howard. He discussed growing up in rural Middletown, Ohio, as his grandmother or “Mamaw” took care of him when his mother had addiction issues. He enlisted in the Marines after 9/11 and later graduated from Yale Law School.
He said the movement is “about single moms like mine, who struggled with money and addiction but never gave up.”
“I am proud to say that tonight my mom is here, 10 years clean and sober,” he said. “I love you, Mom.”
The crowd in the convention hall chanted, “JD’s mom, JD’s mom.”
Acknowledging that his economic views sometimes clash with those of traditional Republicans, Vance said, “Our disagreements actually make us stronger.”
“My message to my fellow Americans is: Shouldn’t we be governed by a party that is unafraid to debate ideas and come to the best solution?” he said. “That’s the Republican Party of the next four years: united in our love for America, and committed to free speech and the open exchange of ideas.”
Vance also talked about the assassination attempt on Trump on Saturday evening, noting: “Instead of a day of celebration, this could have been a day of heartache and mourning.”
He said Trump’s enemies have told many lies about him, but his toughness was clear after the shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“They said he was a tyrant. They said he must be stopped at all costs,” Vance said of Trump’s political opponents.
“He called for national unity, for calm,” after the shooting, Vance said. “He remembered the victims of the terrible attack, especially the brave Corey Comperatore, who gave his life to protect his family.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/18/jd-vance-contrasts-own-biography-youth-with-biden-record/
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Conservative Group Goes After Investment Giant, Accusing It of Anti-Israel Bias
The conservative nonprofit Consumers’ Research launched a campaign on Tuesday going after investment firm Morgan Stanley Capital International for “embracing” an anti-Israel stance in its environmental, social, and corporate governance ratings.
The Consumers’ Research six-figure ad campaign features a new website, a national mailer, digital marketing ads, and a mobile billboard outside of MSCI’s headquarters in New York City.
The campaign came after a coalition of Republican state attorneys general opened an investigation over allegations that MSCI had implemented policies from the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel.
“MSCI is yet another example of a massive investment firm pushing their anti-Israel agenda instead of following their fiduciary duty,” Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It’s especially appalling, given the attack on [Israel] last October.”
In March, the Jewish News Syndicate reported that MSCI’s ESG policies allegedly downgraded several companies that “it said committed ‘human rights violations’ simply for conducting business in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem.” Soon after, the coalition of 18 attorneys general, led by Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, sent MSCI Chairman and CEO Henry A. Fernandez a letter expressing “great concern” over the Jewish News Syndicate report.
“In other words, it appears that MSCI is embracing the BDS movement’s false narrative of Israeli occupation and taking actions designed to pressure companies to Boycott Israel—specifically by downgrading those companies’ EGS scores if they do business in Israel,” the letter reads.
“According to [the Jewish News Service], MSCI deducted ESG points from an Israeli company specifically because of the company’s “participation in the construction of security and surveillance barriers designed to protect Israelis from terrorists,” the letter reads. “It is unthinkable to us that MSCI would stand by this position following the terrorist attacks on Israel last October.
MSCI is not the only asset management company to receive scrutiny for anti-Israel bias. In April 2023, Consumers’ Research also launched a campaign against another investment firm, Morningstar, for also assigning ESG scores to negatively impact companies with connections to Israel.
This campaign was announced after 17 state attorneys general sent a letter in August 2022 highlighting concerns that a Morningstar subsidiary, Sustainalytics, “may be furthering the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel.” This letter came after then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt opened an investigation in July 2022 after Morningstar conducted an internal review and admitted to its anti-Israel bias.
Anti-Israeli bias has become more pronounced across cities and college campuses following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack. Between Oct. 7 and Jan. 7, incidents of antisemitism skyrocketed 360% to a total of 3,291 incidents, compared with the same period in 2022-2023, which saw 712 incidents, according to data from the Anti-Defamation League.
Conservative groups and lawmakers have attacked this bias within finance firms, particularly by pushing back on ESG. In July 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, proposed legislation to ban state fund managers from taking ESG practices into consideration when investing state funds, saying its been “utilized to impose an ideological agenda on the American people.”
“The American people are sick and tired of the ESG elites allowing their personal progressive politics to interfere with their legal fiduciary duties,” Hild told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “If MSCI can’t do their job without applying an unfair double standard to Israel, then they shouldn’t be trusted by their customers or the American people.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/17/conservative-org-goes-after-investing-firm-anti-israel-bias/
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Subway worker is accused of refusing to serve customer for wearing a controversial t-shirt
So much hate towards Christians
Subway has been accused of religious discrimination against Christians after an outlet in Wisconsin refused to serve customers because of the anti-abortion and anti-gay messages on their T-shirts.
Street preacher David Grisham was in town for the Republican National Convention when he and three friends popped into a Waunakee branch of the fast-food franchise to grab a sandwich.
But they were forced to go elsewhere when a young woman behind the counter confirmed she was refusing to serve the group because of the messages on their T-shirts.
The world's largest restaurant operator has now been hit with a deluge of angry comments from Christians after video of the exchange went viral, with some warning the company it risks a Bud Light style boycott.
'I don't care what kind of response Subway comes up with,' wrote one. 'I will never set foot in one of their filthy little stores again.'
Grisham, from Amarillo in Texas, insisted that his group 'did not purposely try to antagonize anyone', with their neon T-shirts bearing slogans including 'abortion is murder', and a paraphrase of Romans I, denouncing gay sex as sin.
Was the employee justified in refusing service?
'A local pastor was buying us dinner and we had only been inside for less than a minute and hadn't said a word to anyone,' he wrote on Facebook.
'She just saw our shirts and blurted out profanity and said she wouldn't serve us.
Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act bans restaurants from discriminating against customers on the grounds of religion.
But in 2022 the Supreme Court ruled that Denver baker Jack Phillips was within his rights to refuse an order for a wedding cake celebrating the marriage of a same-sex couple.
The American Civil Liberties Union said the baker was advocating for a 'license to discriminate' that could have broad repercussions beyond gay rights.
But, in a landmark case, the court ruled 7-2 that his refusal was protected by Constitutional guarantees to freedom of speech and expression, and the free exercise of religion.
In the video, labelled 'Subway Karen refuses service to Christians in Wanaukee, WI' (sic), the woman behind the counter nods when a voice asks: 'Are you refusing to serve customers?'
'She's refusing to serve us,' the man says to his friend.
'What are you talking about?' the friend demands, 'so we have to go somewhere else?'
'I want her to say it again,' says the man doing the filming.
'I am refusing you service,' the woman confirms as she carries on preparing another customer's sandwich.
Asked why, she says 'That is a personal matter', before her thwarted customer demands 'because of my T-shirt?
'Yes,' she replies.
'OK, sure Subway Corp will love to hear that,' the man says.
Subway franchisee River Subs which operates 48 outlets filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month, and some former customers seem determined that more will now follow suit.
'Subway, I recommend you get ahead of this!' wrote one. 'It's an ugly, ugly look, and Taco Bell is right across the street. Easy switch.'
'Is Subway discriminating people who wear, Hijab or Yamaka or other religious symbols?' demanded another.
'If he was wearing a gay pride shirt and an employee refuse to serve him in some states they would call the police for discrimination,' claimed a third.
'I work at Subway in Dawson Springs,' wrote Laura Gray from Kentucky, 'and anytime you are in the area, you are welcome to come here.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13645155/Subway-christian-t-shirt-wisconsin-grisham.html
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Top doctor hits out at plans to introduce a 'sin tax' on sugary drinks in Australia
Nick Coatsworth has hit out at a proposed tax on sugary treats arguing that '$8 cans of coke' will only punish the poor and fail to fix the nation's obesity crisis.
A recent Senate report recommended a 20 per cent tax on unhealthy products such as soft drinks in order to curb surging obesity rates, particularly in children.
But the prominent doctor, who became the face of Australia's Covid vaccine campaign as the national deputy chief medical officer, argues that implementing a so-called 'sin tax' is misguided and echoes the draconian government overreach seen during the pandemic.
'It's hard to escape the conclusion that sin taxes are proposed by rich people looking down on the behaviour of the sinful masses,' Dr Coatsworth told Daily Mail Australia.
'Can you imagine a can of Coke costing $8? Is that what it will take to reduce consumption?
'In regional and indigenous communities I predict it will reduce consumption by precisely zero.'
He noted that while governments can legitimately regulate things such as age of consumption of products such as alcohol and penalise people who sell harmful products to children, it should be cautious in applying such restrictions to adults.
'The recent trend to is to make penalty and prohibition the first choice and not the last resort, and this is leading to bad policy choices,' Dr Coatsworth said.
'If you're struggling to make an income and support your family there is much less capacity to make good health choices, and the 'sins' help you get through a tough day.
'A sin tax that does nothing to lift people into a position that they can make positive health choices.'
Dr Coatsworth also warned there are limits in trying to legislate people into being healthier.
'We've just been through a very disturbing episode in our lives where we criminalised or harshly penalised legitimate actions of citizens in the name of public health,' he said referring to the Covid period.
'As a basic principle public health should operate by consent of the community not by coercion.
'This applies as much to current debates as it did to Covid.'
The Australian government already imposes similar taxes on tobacco products and raises the excise every year to make it prohibitively expensive. It currently stands at about 75 per cent of the sale price.
Although the rate of smoking has decreased from above 20 per cent in 2001 to 11 per cent now, illegal vaping rates have soared along with the illicit tobacco trade.
'It's a law of diminishing returns,' Dr Coatsworth said.
'Tobacco excise had climbed so high that a black market has blossomed.'
'It's clear that the Australian Federal Police can't stop illicit tobacco coming into the country, let alone illegal vapes and it's creating a problem for state policing who now have to deal with the emergence of organised crime.
'It's bizarre that the same people who acknowledge that a 'war on drugs' is the wrong way to tackle hard drug use passionately declare that a 'war on vapes' is likely to work.'
Despite Dr Coatsworth's opposition to raising taxes on unhealthy food and drink, he does agree that there is an 'obesity crisis in Australia and that diabetes is an enormous cost-burden for our health system'.
'There is a big gap between agreeing with that and asserting that sugar taxes will have a meaningful impact on either,' he said.
'The classic behaviour of the activist is to surf a moral panic and then criticise an opponent as being an enemy of the public good.
'Labelling someone as being an enemy of public health is a very effective way of silencing debate.'
Earlier this month a Senate report recommended the federal government implement a levy on sugar-sweetened beverages and look to international examples to fix prices.
It pointed to the British example of 'tiered tax' where the levy grows with the amount of sugar in a product.
The Parliamentary Budget Office estimated applying a 20 per cent tax on all sugar sweetened drinks would bring in about $1.4billion annually
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13638369/Nick-Coatsworth-sin-tax.html
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17 July, 2024
People don’t want to talk’: The taboo ‘zombie’ problem in medical science
Yes. Listings of detailed research results have always been taken on trust. But trust is often betrayed these days. So the need for replication is greater than ever now. I did a lot of semi replications and my results usually did not replicate previous findings. So I think crooked results go back a long way
Medical research has a major problem: an alarmingly high number of trials are based on fake, fraudulent or misinterpreted data.
Research misconduct sleuths call them “zombie” studies. They look like real research papers but they’re rotten to the core. And when these studies go on to influence clinical guidelines, that is, how patients are treated in hospitals and doctors’ rooms, they can be dangerous.
Professor Ben Mol, head of the Evidence-based Women’s Health Care Research Group at Monash University, is a professional zombie hunter. For years, he has warned that between 20 and 30 per cent of medical trials that inform clinical guidelines aren’t trustworthy.
“I’m surprised by the limited response from people in my field on this issue,” he says. “It’s a topic people don’t want to talk about.”
The peer review process is designed to ensure the validity and quality of findings, but it’s built on the assumption that data is legitimate.
Science relies on an honour system whereby researchers trust that colleagues have actually carried out the trials they describe in papers, and that the resulting data was collected with rigorous attention to detail.
But too often, once findings are queried, researchers can’t defend their conclusions. Figures such as former BMJ editor Richard Smith and Anaesthesia editor John Carlise argue it’s time to assume all papers are flawed or fraudulent until proven otherwise. The trust has run out.
“I think we have been naive for many years on this,” Mol says. “We are the Olympic Games without any doping checks.”
Now, however, Mol has presented a compelling solution.
How bad science gets into the clinic
Untrustworthy papers may be the result of scientists misinterpreting their data or deliberately faking or plagiarising their numbers. Many of these “zombie” papers emerge from Egypt, Iran, India and China and usually crop up in lower-quality journals.
The problem gets bad when these poor-quality papers are laundered by systematic reviews or meta-analyses in prestigious journals. These studies aggregate hundreds of papers to produce gold-standard scientific evidence for whether a particular treatment works.
Often papers with dodgy data are excluded from systematic reviews. But many slip through and go on to inform clinical guidelines.
My colleague Liam Mannix has written about an example of this with the hormone progesterone. Official guidelines held that the hormone could reduce the risk of pre-term birth in women with a shortened cervix.
But those guidelines were based on a meta-analysis largely informed by a paper from Egypt that was eventually retracted due to concerns about the underlying data. When this paper was struck from the meta-analysis, the results reversed to suggest progesterone had no preventative effect.
There’s a litany of other examples where discounting dodgy data can fundamentally alter the evidence that shapes clinical guidelines. That’s why, in The Lancet’s clinical journal eClinical Medicine, Mol and his colleagues have reported a new way to weed out bad science before it makes it to the clinic.
Holding back the horde
The new tool is called the Research Integrity in Guidelines and evIDence synthesis (RIGID) framework. It mightn’t sound sexy, but it’s like a barbed-wire fence that can hold back the zombie horde.
The world-first framework lays out a series of steps researchers can take when conducting a meta analysis or writing medical guidelines to exclude dodgy data and untrustworthy findings. It involves two researchers screening articles for red flags.
“You can look at biologically implausible findings like very high success rates of treatments, very big differences between treatments, unfeasible birth weights. You can look at statistical errors,” says Mol.
“You can look at strange features in the data, only using rounded numbers, only using even numbers. There are studies where out of dozens of pairs of numbers, everything is even. That doesn’t happen by chance.”
A panel decides if a paper has a medium to high risk of being untrustworthy. If that’s the case, the RIGID reviewers put their concerns to the paper’s authors. They’re often met with stony silence. If authors cannot address the concerns or provide their raw data, the paper is scrapped from informing guidelines.
The RIGID framework has already been put to use, and the results are shocking.
In 2023, researchers applied RIGID to the International Evidence-based Guidelines for Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), a long misunderstood and misdiagnosed syndrome that affects more than 1 in 10 women. As a much maligned condition, it was critical the guidelines were based on the best possible evidence.
In that case, RIGID discounted 45 per cent of papers used to inform the health guidelines.
That’s a shockingly high number. Those potentially untrustworthy papers might have completely skewed the guidelines.
Imagine, Mol says, if it emerged that almost half of the maintenance reports of a major airline were faked? No one would be sitting around waiting for a plane to crash. There would be swift action and the leadership of the airline sacked.
Breaking the taboo
With the publication of the RIGID guidelines in a high-impact journal and the PCOS example, Mol hopes this “taboo” subject will be talked about more in scientific circles. Many scientists are reluctant to speak up.
“It brings a lot of negative energy. It brings risk. It doesn’t bring you any positivity in terms of extra credits for your academic career like high-impact publications,” Mol says of calling out dodgy research.
But the honour system of science is broken, and it’s time to clean it up. Mol hopes many other medical researchers and journals take up the RIGID tool.
“There are many systems in society where trust is not enough. Paying tax, sports, traffic checks, speed cameras. If you don’t follow the rules there, then you’re at risk of being caught.
“That never happens in medicine or in scientific research.”
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WFH could be WRECKING your health, study suggests... as experts find that 'active commuters' have a 47 per cent reduced risk of death
I thought that some of the claims below sounded a bit fishy so I looked up the underlying journal article. Its full citation is below:
Health benefits of pedestrian and cyclist commuting: evidence from the Scottish Longitudinal Study, BMJ Public Health (2024). DOI: 10.1136/bmjph-2024-001295
But it appears to have been withdrawn. It is offline. It no longer exists anwhere on the net. So there must have been something REALLY fishy about it!
Working from home really is unhealthier, it seems, as a new study reveals 'active commuters' have up to a 47 per cent reduced risk of death.
People who cycle or walk to and from work have lower risks of mental and physical ill health compared to those who don't rely on these options, a large, long-term study suggests.
Active travel is considered to be one of the easiest ways to increase the amount of daily physical activity we do, and there is mounting evidence in favour of its health benefits.
Researchers from the Glasgow Centre for Population Health analysed data from 82,000 people in Scotland aged between 16 and 74.
Participants were asked questions including which mode of travel they used for the longest part, by distance, of their journey to work.
Nearly all people who walked to work had a commuting distance of less than 5km.
Four-fifths of cyclists also travelled less than 5km, while 14 per cent travelled 5-9.9km to work.
Meanwhile, 58 per cent of inactive commuters travelled further than 5km to get to work.
Over the 18-year study period, participants' health data was also collected.
The researchers found that compared with inactive commuters who drove or took public transport to work, those who walked or cycled had lower risks of death and mental and physical ill health.
Commuting by bike was linked with a 47 per cent lower risk of death and a 10 per cent lower risk of any hospital admission.
It was also associated with a 30 per cent lower risk of being prescribed a drug to treat cardiovascular disease, a 51 per cent lower risk of dying from cancer, and a 20 per cent lower risk of being prescribed drugs for mental health problems.
Meanwhile, walking to work was linked with an 11 per cent lower risk of hospital admission for any cause, a 10 per cent lower risk of being prescribed drugs to treat cardiovascular disease and a 7 per cent lower risk of being prescribed drugs for mental health issues.
The authors said active commuting has clear health benefits and can be an effective way to accommodate physical activity into everyday working life.
While the study did not directly compare the health of those working from home and active commuters, previous research has shown that working from home is linked with more sedentary behaviour and less physical activity.
Writing in the journal BMJ Public Health the researchers said: 'This study strengthens the evidence that active commuting has population-level health benefits and can contribute to reduced morbidity and mortality.
'That cyclist and pedestrian commuting is associated with lower risks of being prescribed medication for poor mental health is an important finding.
'This study has wider global relevance to efforts to reduce carbon emissions and to shift to more active and sustainable travel modes.'
While the study did not determine the ideal commuting distance, the researchers pointed out that national guidelines suggests adults should spend 30 minutes a day being moderately physically active.
Cycling and walking briskly would both count. Therefore, someone cycling at 14km/h would reach this with a 3.5km return journey to work.
Meanwhile, a pedestrian walking at 4.8km/h would achieve this guideline level after 2.4km.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13640327/WFH-health-commuters-death.html
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Alarming death-rate of restaurants
Sorry to hear of shutdowns by Denny's. I particularly liked them last time I was in the States: Good food at moderate prices
Since the start of 2024, numerous well-known restaurant chains have announced sizable closures and incrementally more drastic restructuring efforts. TGI Fridays has closed numerous locations across the US and sold eight corporate-owned locations to strengthen its franchise model and close underperforming stores. Denny’s shut down 57 restaurants in 2023 and announced additional closures for 2024 due to inflationary pressures. Boston Market drastically reduced its number of restaurants from around 300 to just 27 by March 2024, driven by landlord evictions, unpaid bills, and state shutdowns due to unpaid sales taxes. Mod Pizza abruptly closed 27 locations across the US, including five in California, just before the new minimum wage law took effect.
Also, suddenly, Coco’s Bakery and Carrows chains closed 75 locations, leading to a federal lawsuit by former employees due to the lack of notice provided for the layoffs. PDQ, a regional restaurant chain, closed eight restaurants across North and South Carolina in February 2024 due to market conditions. Outback Steakhouse’s parent company, Bloomin’ Brands, announced the shuttering of 41 locations of Outback Steakhouse, Carrabba’s Italian Grill and Bonefish Grill in February 2024 as part of a major financial restructuring. Subway has been undergoing a massive drawdown, closing over 400 underperforming locations since last year alone. Applebee’s has been selectively closing locations since the start of 2024, focusing on optimizing its restaurant portfolio by shutting down low-revenue stores.
In 2024, Buffalo Wild Wing will eliminate sixty locations in the United States. IHOP (International House of Pancakes) will wind down 100 locations. Other firms that are eliminating locations include Pizza Hut, Red Lobster, Hooters, and Chili’s. A handful of others may close down entirely.
COVID lockdowns significantly weakened chain restaurants by drastically reducing their customer base and revenue streams. This disruption made it difficult for many restaurants to sustain operations, some of which took on more debt in the face of depleted financial reserves. At the start of 2024, FSR (Full Service Restaurant) Magazine summarized:
Another after-shock of COVID was the debt pile. Going back to August 2020, the James Beard Foundation released survey data that suggested only 66 percent of independent bars and restaurants expected to survive the fall season without direct aid. Frothing to the top of this fear was the fact that close to 75 percent reported taking on new debt obligations north of $50,000. Moreso, 12 percent tagged the number at $500,000 and above. Growing debt, and the deterioration in operating performance required to service it, forced heightened levels of investor and debt-holder concern and oversight[.] … This increased debt between 2019 and the last 12 months 2020 by 8.1 percent for limited-service units and 15.7 percent for full-serves. The former, by the fall, sat at more than four times as much debt, while full service was at nearly 50 percent more than 2008 levels … [In] the current environment … 68 percent of full-service restaurants reported carrying some amount of debt. On average, it was $51,863.20—a number that could creep up as interest rates continue to rise.
FSR continues:
“If debt is a piece of the profit puzzle, food costs are another. In fact, they appear to be an even bigger, more widespread concern … than the year before. This year, 58 percent of operators in the survey said rising inventory costs was their No. 1 source of financial strain, up from 54 percent in 2022.”
The total and annual percentage changes in the index prices of six key ingredients of restaurant and diner menu items from 2010 to 2020 and then from 2021 to the present are shown below; in most cases, over the last three years, prices have risen at multiples of their annual increases over the prior decade.
Those higher prices have translated into falling foot traffic. As costs of living have risen and pandemic savings have dissipated, eating outside the home has become more costly. Where meals continue to be purchased, order sizes are falling, or cheaper items are purchased. A small handful of massive firms with tremendous economies of scale are experimenting with lower priced options, but most eateries have cost structures that preclude similarly priced offerings. In fact, some franchisees of those huge restaurant chains are claiming that the depth of those discounts is financially untenable for them.
Recent data highlights a decline in restaurant visits, with several factors contributing to this trend. A report from Bar and Restaurant points out that many top revenue-generating restaurants experienced significant year-over-year declines in customer traffic in late 2023 and early 2024, with a further pronounced drop in January 2024. This decline is attributed to consumers curtailing their restaurant expenditures and opting for more cost-effective alternatives, such as cooking more meals at home due to high menu prices driven by inflation and wage increases. (This is also behind recently emerging controversies over tipping quantities and imperatives.)
Similarly, Produce Blue Book reports that same-store sales growth for restaurants was negative in February 2024, marking the worst-performing month since February 2021. Despite a slight improvement in sales growth compared to January, the data suggests that consumers are pulling back on restaurant visits and spending due to financial pressures such as growing credit card balances, high interest rates, and inflation. The expected slowdown in restaurant sales is attributed to these economic factors, which are leading consumers to moderate their restaurant consumption. Additionally, QSR Magazine notes that US traffic for limited-service chains fell by 3.5 percent year-over-year in the first quarter of 2024, further illustrating the challenges faced by the restaurant industry in attracting customers.
More recently, atop the compounded challenges of inflation and falling consumer demand are substantial jumps in state minimum wages. Since the start of 2024, more than half of all US states have, or planned to, to raise minimum wages:
California’s minimum wage, which rose to $16.00 on January 1st, increased again on April 1st, after which all fast food restaurant employees covered by the new law must be paid at least $20.00 per hour.
On July 1, Nevada and Oregon raised their minimum wages to $12 per hour while Washington, DC, increased theirs from $17 to $17.50 per hour for non-tipped workers and from $8 to $10 per hour for tipped workers. Florida’s minimum wage will rise to $13 per hour on September 30.
For traditional restaurants, profit margins are generally low, typically ranging between 3 to 5 percent, while in the fast food industry, profit margins are comparatively higher, generally lying between 5 and 8 percent. Estimating the impact of a minimum wage increase on the profitability of these establishments requires a nuanced understanding of their current profit margins and cost structures. Given these average profit margins, labor costs are a major expense, significantly affecting profitability. Any increase in the minimum wage substantially raises costs, squeezing the already narrow profit margins. For traditional restaurants with lower margins, even a small increase in labor costs could result in operations becoming unprofitable if prices aren’t adjusted accordingly or if cost-saving measures aren’t effectively implemented. Even before the substantial rise in wages and the slowing disinflation of the first quarter of 2024, food service industry strains were mounting.
According to the National Restaurant Association (NRA) Restaurant Business Conditions Survey, nearly all full-service restaurant owners—92 percent—consider rising food costs a significant challenge. Increased labor costs are not far behind at 90 percent, and 67 percent percent say utilities present a significant challenge. But they’re also spending more on the same things you’re spending more on—dishwasher detergent, hand soap, paper products, linens, laundry services, plates, silverware, and on and on.
A little over two and a half years ago, I wrote about the breakdown of the NYC Pizza Principle as prices began to rise. Restaurants nationwide are now grappling with a financial maelstrom, including rising prices, higher minimum wages, falling sales, and, in many cases, higher debt costs. The health of the industry is summed up by comparing the stability of the National Restaurant Association Performance Index from 2010 through the pandemic with its trajectory since 2021, as the general price level hit four—decade highs and remains elevated to this day.
The cumulative impact of these pressures is straining the industry from single-location establishments to nationwide and international chains. If accelerating US unemployment registers the impact of contractionary monetary policy measures on the broader economy, the current difficulties faced by the restaurant sector are likely to escalate. And insofar as those economic conditions persist, all but the stoutest and most well-capitalized food service industry interests may find it increasingly challenging to serve customers, the impact of which will be felt by employees, investors, and peripheral businesses alike.
https://blog.independent.org/2024/07/12/the-end-of-restaurants-as-we-know-them/
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DEI at work
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16 July, 2024
Wikipedia’s powerful editors: our history is being written by Anon
Circulating the Wikipedia community is a blog post about an editor and administrator who allegedly spent an immense amount of time on Wikipedia manipulating the system to promote their biases.
The author of the blog argues that over a twenty-year period, the accused editor relentlessly used the reliable sources policy on Wikipedia to deprecate sources they didn’t like and prop up the ones they did like.
This editor would then, it is alleged, use these sources to defame people.
In one such case, the editor is said to have fed information to a news outlet that published content drawn from Wikipedia articles in what is known as conflict-of-interest editing. The Wikipedia editor was subsequently reprimanded for doing so.
The takeaway message is summed up by another Wikipedia editor:
‘…that anyone who edits a lot and has opinions is going to inevitably end up pushing those opinions one way or another. This is probably a bad thing but cannot really be fixed: the most we can do is take care of the more egregious episodes.’
As much as I want to agree with the above sentiment, it becomes harder and harder to trust the Wikipedia community to take care of its internal problems.
Wikipedia has its own page titled, Why Wikipedia is not so Great, which highlights its lack of transparency, restrictions on freedom of speech, increasingly complicated rules with a hierarchy of privileged users who enforce them, and a culture of conflict rather than cooperation which pushes new editors to basically not want to edit.
To an outsider, Wikipedia editing is riddled with laborious wiki jargon. People do not want to read through essays of talk pages on why one sentence is better than the other. For example, take the newly created page Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump and a talk page section below. The section is some 700 words all about how many times Trump’s ‘raised fist’ is mentioned in the article.
That is just one section of one article. There are now over fifteen sections on this page and growing fast. To an editor in the depths of Wikipedia, these wiki talk pages are the everything of the internet. They are the result of an editor’s immense dedication of time, specific interests, and relentless debate. This is what determines what millions of people read every day on the site. For a Wikipedia editor, they know what it means to have their edit stick.
This takes me back to a Wikipediaocracy post on why people contribute to Wikipedia.
If you have never heard of Wikipediaocracy, it’s a forum for editors and administrators to talk about Wikipedia – the tag line: Because you can’t talk about Wikipedia’s flaws on Wikipedia. Actually, you can, at the Village pump, The Signpost, Administrators noticeboard, Reliable sources noticeboard, and the multiple talk pages on articles themselves. And if you don’t want to discuss it on any one of the numerous Wikipedia pages, there’s always the r/wikipedia subreddit – one of the largest on reddit.
But I digress.
Considering Wikipedia’s ‘Google footprint’, Wikipedia is a significant platform to influence public opinion that has a strong anonymous username policy. Editors are not required to list their real name, email address, personal identity, or any unique identifier to connect an editor to someone outside of Wikipedia.
Other than an IP address, which only administrators known as ‘checkusers’ can see, there is no way of knowing who sits behind the computer editing the internet’s most read encyclopedia unless the editor discloses it as such (which some do).
An old reddit thread entitled Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People argues how most internet users are passive – scrolling pages, clicking randomly, and never contributing – whilst those creating the content range from 1-3 per cent of internet communities.
Some Wikipedia editors spend up to 16 hours per day creating hundreds of edits. It has been pointed out that this is an ‘insane’ amount of time to devote, especially when compared to the general population of editors. This figure alone raises important questions about the quality of the content, its biases, and distortions.
Back to the editor accused of being one of these Wiki power users… Do I think that some of the claims are fabricated or false? Probably not. Do I think the editor in question is a super bad guy? Likely they are not any worse or any better than any other editor. Do I think that Wikipedia is a politically driven encyclopedia with no hope for improvement? Of course not.
The point is that no matter how robust the rules of Wikipedia’s neutral point of view and good-natured ethos of volunteer editing, it is only as a good or as bad as its community.
This is perhaps why more people should edit Wikipedia, contribute hours, learn the rules (even though they rarely matter), and put in effort to improve the encyclopedia.
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JK Rowling hails ‘humane’ ban on puberty blockers
JK Rowling has described as “humane” and “considered” the new British Labour government’s decision to ban the private prescription of puberty blockers for under-18s.
The Harry Potter author said “the times they are a-changin’” after Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, said that the government would make permanent an emergency stop on the prescription of the drugs.
Mr Streeting said he was “treading cautiously” and putting children’s safety first in his decision but has faced a backlash from left-wing MPs and LGBT+ Labour.
Victoria Atkins, Mr Streeting’s predecessor in the Conservative government, used powers in the Medicines Act 1968 to stop private or European organisations from prescribing puberty blockers to people under 18, if the drugs were intended to help with gender incongruence or gender-affirming healthcare.
The National Health Service had already stopped prescribing the medication, which suppresses young people’s natural production of sex hormones to delay puberty, to children because “there is not enough evidence of safety and clinical effectiveness”, according to the health service.
Mr Streeting said he supported an NHS trial to find out what effects puberty blockers had, and said: “The evidence should have been established before they were ever prescribed.”
He said: “Children’s healthcare must always be led by evidence.”
Labour is preparing to introduce legislation which would ban so-called conversion therapy, including for transgender people.
This has raised concerns about the potential of teachers and parents being criminalised if they do not affirm a child’s gender, however the party is convinced it can protect professionals with exemptions.
Rowling, an outspoken campaigner on women’s rights and single-sex spaces, has been critical of Labour’s position on gender issues, accusing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer during the election campaign of having “abandoned” her and other women.
But she said on Monday that Mr Streeting’s position came as a “relief”.
Sharing a thread on X where the Health Secretary had set out his position, Rowling said: “It is a mark of how febrile and often vicious the discourse around child transition has become that this humane, considered thread from @wesstreeting comes as such a relief.”
She added that Mr Streeting was “doing the right, rather than the easy thing”.
Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, said she agreed with Mr Streeting and added: “I’ve read the Cass review, and in it, it’s very clear that there are serious concerns about the long term impact of puberty blockers on young people. We don’t know enough about the long-term impact on physical health, on mental health.”
(Chair of the Independent Review of gender identity services for children and young people, paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, reported serious concerns about the long-term impact of puberty blockers on young people.)
Ms Nandy told TalkTV she wanted “far more light, far less heat” in what she called a “very polarised and toxic debate”.
Rowling once said that Ms Nandy was “one of the biggest reasons many women on the left no longer trust Labour to defend their rights”, but sharing her interview on Monday said: “The times they are a-changin’.”
However, activists have said Labour’s position would put transgender young people’s lives at risk.
Jolyon Maugham, the founder and director of Good Law Project, which is supporting campaign group TransActual and a young person who cannot be named with a High Court challenge to the original ban, said the measures would “kill trans children”.
Mr Streeting unfollowed Mr Maugham on Twitter/X after he had posted 25 questions that he said the Health Secretary needed to answer, suggesting if he did not do so “the trans community and its allies will reasonably conclude they are regarded by Labour with contempt”.
Clive Lewis, the Labour MP for Norwich South, said: “A blanket ban is wrong and not what Cass recommended. Careful, clinical provision is the way forward, not this politicisation.”
Apsana Begum, the MP for Poplar and Limehouse, said puberty blockers were “a life-saving measure”, and Nadia Whittome, the Nottingham East MP said she would fight the ban.
Zarah Sultana, another backbencher, said she supported ending the ban and Stella Creasy said the Cass review “recommended caution, not exclusion”.
Mr Streeting said: “The Cass review found there is not enough evidence about the long-term impact of puberty blockers for gender incongruence to know whether they are safe or not, nor which children might benefit from them.
“The evidence should have been established before they were ever prescribed. The NHS took the decision to stop the routine use of puberty blockers for gender incongruence/dysphoria in children.
“They are establishing a clinical trial with the National Institute for Health and Care Research to ensure the effects of puberty blockers can be safely monitored and provide the evidence we need.”
Mr Streeting said clinicians can prescribe blockers to children who begin puberty too early because this has been “extensively tested”, and added: “This is different to stopping the normal surge of hormones that occur in puberty. This affects children’s psychological and brain development.
“We don’t yet know the risks of stopping pubertal hormones at this critical life stage. That is the basis upon which I am making decisions. I am treading cautiously in this area because the safety of children must come first.”
Following his posts on social media, LGBT+ Labour published a letter to Mr Streeting, signed by the organisation’s trans officer Dylan Naylor, and Willow Parker, the trans officer for the party’s student wing.
They wrote: “In line with the review’s recommendations, steps must be taken to cut waiting lists for trans youth, address long-term staffing issues, move towards a decentralised, equitable system for accessing care (including through the provision of regional centres), provide comprehensive training for NHS staff on how best to support and work sensitively with trans and questioning young people, and better address the current toxicity of public debate which is actively harmful to young people.”
The authors called on the minister to “urgently set out the timeline, scope and nature” of a clinical trial and added: “We hope that under this new Labour government progress can be made to reset the public discussion on trans rights, centring on the humanity of, and compassion for, each individual trans person.”
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The Artemis Accords and China
China’s recent moon landing, and its return with lunar rocks, is the first since the 1960s, when America and Russia competed in the space race. After planting the American flag on the moon, and returning five times, they lost interest.
After a gap of 50 years, landing on the moon is still a spectacular feat for a supposedly ‘developing’ nation, but one which, inevitably, has a potential threat attached. Japan and India have also joined the moon-landing club. It seems the industrialisation of space is the next frontier. In 2020, NASA developed, the Artemis Accords, hoping to promote peaceful cooperation in space.
On planet Earth, China has demonstrated its ruthless expansionism, starting with its takeover of Tibet which the communist party reclaimed as part of the country. Tibet had been independent for a hundred years, but was taken over in 1949. The invasion, by Chairman Mao’s PLA in 1950, resulted in the loss of thousands of lives, with no meaningful response from the United Nations. Subsequent importation of Chinese citizens and restriction of the local language and customs have resulted in its forced integration into Greater China. This expansion has led to further activity along the disputed Tibet border with India. Small-scale wars took place in 1962 and 1967 and further skirmishes in 2021-22.
Future Chinese intentions were revealed following the UK’s hand-back of Hong Kong in 1997. Despite its promise to maintain the HK government under the ‘one country, two systems’ until the agreed 2047 under Treaty, democratic institutions have rapidly been removed and authoritarian law instituted.
Meanwhile, the threat to Taiwan increases by the day. Now a thriving, independent democracy, the island’s history is of brief Chinese possession before being ceded to the Japanese in 1895. Its re-involvement with China occurred only in 1949, with the KMT forces escaping the communists and fleeing there. The mainland’s claim for re-possession is becoming increasingly menacing, as its military rapidly increases in size. It freely admits that, as in Hong Kong, it will use force if necessary and will no longer accept democracy. Again, the UN fails to comment.
Aggression has occurred, not only on land, but at sea. China’s claim to the historical ownership of the South China Sea, the route of 20 per cent of the world’s trade, as well as fishing and oil and gas resources, has been rejected by the UN Convention on The Laws of the Sea; the disputed area also involves Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. Despite rejection of its claim, China, which now has the largest navy in the world, has built military bases on coral islands in the sea and has attacked other nations’ vessels. Again, the world authority fails to respond to these actions.
Still on planet Earth, the next unauthorised activity is taking place in Antarctica. China has opened a fifth ‘research station’ on Australia’s doorstep which has significant strategic and surveillance implications. A dual-purpose satellite tracking system has already established. These bases provide access to the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.
The Antarctic Treaty, originally signed by only 12 countries, is now recognised by 57 countries, including China. It prohibits militarisation inside the Antarctica area, but Chinese military personnel have already been involved. Increased Chinese fishing activity is threatening stocks of krill. China already has a history of over-fishing. A plan by Chile and Argentina, in partnership with the 27-member Commission for Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, was proposed to establish marine conservation areas. This has been boycotted by China and Russia. Mining may be next.
There is also an undersea mining rush is on, with 168 countries signing up to a treaty dividing up the seabed for mineral resources exploration, again under The Law of the Sea Convention, with China planning to dominate. China already has a stranglehold on mineral exploitation and this move could increase its dominance. America has not signed up to the plan, believing deep sea mining is not an economically viable option.
At the other extreme, the Outer Space Treaty was first established in 1967, under the auspices of the UN, spurred on by the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and orbiting satellites, in the 1950s. It had been preceded, in 1963, by the UN prohibition of weapons of mass destruction in outer space. The ban prohibits the placement of nuclear weapons and installation of military bases in space or on the moon. It does not extend to conventional weapons or newer technology. Russia and China are signatories.
In 1979, the Moon Treaty was an attempt to formulate rules for space exploration but it was never formally ratified. The debate became heated with Ronald Regan’s Strategic Defence Initiative, the Star Wars program, planning to destroy missiles from space. The technology was not ready at the time, but laser and other researches continued and the option re-emerged in 2019. As technology improves, what was once referred to as Star Wars may become a reality.
The latest stage, the Artemis Accords, are a series of non-binding agreements, initiated by NASA in 2020. As of June 2024, they had been signed by 43 countries, not including Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea. Their purpose relates to plans to put a man back on the moon, send a man to Mars, and more significantly, the agreement covers mining and commercial activity. There are four stages of the Artemis plan. In 2022, an unmanned lunar flight took place. Stage 2 is a manned launch in 2025. Stage 3 a return of humans to the moon, although there is no clear date for this. Stage 4 is the establishment of a lunar base. NASA is faltering with its own plans. Four astronauts have completed a year in isolation to simulate life on Mars, but there is no date set for Mars or the Moon.
Russia has finally admitted that the US reached the moon in 1969. Russia’s unmanned flight was a failure, crashing on the moon in 2023. Russia also has plans for a similar moon base to be started around 2031. China plans to be on the moon by 2030. India was the fourth country to reach the moon in 2023. Japan came in fifth in 2024. The race is on once more. The International Space Station, in use since 1998, is in its final years and will be gone by 2030, replaced by a private international venture. In 2021, China started building its own Tiangong station, with subsequent launches to extend its operation and completion by 2027. It is not open to any international involvement in contrast to the joint mission of the International Space Station.
In Greek mythology, Artemis was the goddess of the hunt, connected with nature and fertility, her name has been connected to several plants; Artemesia annua, Chinese wormwood, is traditionally used to treat malaria and several modern medicines have been developed from it, Artemesia absinthium, Common wormwood, is used to make the green liqueur absinth.
The Accord is named after Artemis, the twin sister of Apollo, the god of the sun, already popularised by the early lunar launches of the 1960s. With increasing political correctness, a female is now reaching for the stars. Will she prevent Chinese intimidation, which has progressively increased from local, to regional, to international levels? The potential militarisation of space could move conflict to an interplanetary level.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/07/the-artemis-accords-and-china/
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Biden DOJ Aims to Salvage Jan. 6 Charges After Major Blow at Supreme Court
The Department of Justice is taking steps to preserve charges against Jan. 6 defendants after the Supreme Court dealt a major blow to its efforts.
After the Supreme Court issued a ruling June 28 limiting the scope of an obstruction statute used to charge hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the DOJ would “continue to use all available tools to hold accountable those criminally responsible for the January 6 attack on our democracy.”
Since then, the DOJ has taken first steps to salvage its charges, including asking judges for additional time to evaluate the impact of the ruling while stressing that the Supreme Court did not entirely reject its use of the statute.
The statute, Section 1512(c)(2), holds up to 20 years in prison for anyone who “obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding.” However, the Supreme Court held in Fischer v. United States that to charge an individual under the law, “the Government must establish that the defendant impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects, or as we earlier explained, other things used in the proceeding, or attempted to do so.”
More than 355 Jan. 6 defendants have been charged with “corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding,” according to the DOJ.
“The DOJ is not happy about the Fischer decision and is currently strategizing ways to circumvent the Supreme Court’s ruling,” criminal defense attorney David W. Fischer wrote Wednesday for the blog “Declassified With Julie Kelly.”
For example, in certain cases the DOJ may attempt to recharge using corrected charging language in indictments, which will claim that particular defendants targeted the ceremonial ballot box or other documents used by Congress during the January 6 certification. Creative charging language, however, doesn’t change the evidence, which is quite strong that none of the J6ers were targeting evidence.
In a number of cases, the DOJ is now asking for additional time to evaluate how the ruling will apply.
“The Supreme Court remanded Fischer to the D.C. Circuit for further proceedings and to assess the sufficiency of the indictment on that count,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves wrote Thursday in defendant Taylor Franklin Taranto’s case. “Based on the Supreme Court’s opinion and the forthcoming proceedings in the D.C. Circuit, the government anticipates that it will need additional time to evaluate its prosecution of charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2).”
Graves’ office wrote Tuesday in defendant Tara Stottlemyer’s case that her conduct “may very well meet the changed standard” for the statute, noting that the “government is still evaluating Fischer’s impact on this and other January 6 cases.”
Prosecutors cited Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s concurring opinion, which noted that “it might well be that Fischer’s conduct, as alleged here, involved the impairment (or the attempted impairment) of the availability or integrity of things used during the January 6 proceeding.”
“If so, then Fischer’s prosecution under §1512(c)(2) can, and should, proceed,” Jackson wrote.
Jackson joined the majority in the case to limit the statute’s scope, while Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote the dissent, which was joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Criminal defense attorney William Shipley, who represents Stottlemyer, wrote on X that the DOJ’s efforts to delay are “very frustrating for Tara and other J6 defendants who rightfully see Fischer as a victory that is now being withheld from them by procedural games.”
However, some defendants have already seen relief. Judges granted several defendants, including Kevin Seefried, Alexander Sheppard and Thomas B. Adams Jr., early release before the Supreme Court even issued its ruling.
The DOJ stated Wednesday in a filing it would not yet request Adams’ return to custody.
A federal judge also granted defendant Jorge Riley release on Friday pending the resolution of his motion to vacate his sentence. The DOJ did not oppose Riley’s request, though it declined to concede he had a “meritorious claim” under the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“In short, the United States’ decision to not oppose Riley’s motion for release should in no way be understood as a waiver or concession regarding the merits of Riley’s Section 2255 claims, collateral attacks based on Fischer generally, or any other January 6 case that may (or may not) be impacted by Fischer,” Graves wrote Thursday.
Likewise, the DOJ did not oppose defendant Katharine Morrison’s motion to terminate her special condition of home detention on Wednesday, but emphasized it should not be “construed as a concession” that she has a claim under Fischer.
Prosecutors requested dismissal of the obstruction count Friday in defendant Mark Sahady’s case to enable the trial to proceed in August on other counts and to “promote judicial economy and efficiency.”
“The vast majority of the more than 1,400 defendants charged for their illegal actions on January 6 will not be affected by this decision,” Garland noted in his statement after the Supreme Court’s ruling. “There are no cases in which the Department charged a January 6 defendant only with the offense at issue in Fischer.”
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15 July, 2024
Study finds women who regularly eat ultra-processed foods are more likely to develop lupus
The journal article:
Ultra-Processed Food Intake and Risk of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus among Women followed in the Nurses’ Health Study Cohorts
The link
https://acrjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/authored-by/Oakes/Emily+G .
This study was impressive for the range of controls used and for the fact that the HRs, while low, were a little higher than in most diet studies. But it was again a study of tertiles only, suggesting that there was no overall significance. Lupus is in any case a rare disease (213 cases out of 204,175 in this study). So the study is NO warrant to avoid UPFs
Women who regularly eat ultra-processed foods (UPFs) have a higher risk of developing a debilitating autoimmune disease, a study has suggested.
In a trial, those who had a diet rich in these foods – which are packed with artificial sweeteners and preservatives – were 56 per cent more likely to contract lupus, which leads to joint pain, skin rashes and fatigue.
And those who regularly consumed artificially sweetened beverages and sugary foods also had a 45 per cent greater risk of developing the condition.
The study, by researchers at Harvard University in the US, also found there was no connection between obesity and lupus – which suggests that the artificial ingredients in UPFs are to blame.
UPFs – such as ready meals, ice cream and some frozen food – have previously been linked to a number of life-threatening diseases, including cancer, Alzheimer’s and heart disease.
Systematic lupus erythematosus is a long-term condition where the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue in the body.
Studies have shown that roughly one in every 1,000 people in the UK has lupus – and 90 per cent of sufferers are female.
While its causes are not fully understood, it has previously been linked to viral infections, certain medications, sunlight and the menopause.
But the research from Harvard, published in the medical journal Arthritis Care And Research, suggests there could be a correlation between the disease and eating foods that contain artificial colourings, sweeteners and preservatives.
However Professor Gunter Kuhnle, of the University of Reading, warned the research may not be conclusive.
‘Ultra-processed food may be one of the risk factors [for lupus] but there are likely to be other factors as well that may be more important,’ he explained.
‘People with a high-fat and high-sugar intake are more likely to have other conditions.
‘They are already less healthy, and that may be one of the reasons why this group of women are developing lupus.’
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Support for the Rebbe
I put up yesterday some ideas from the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
A surprising person -- a Catholic -- has come out with thoughts similar to those of the Rebbe. From the statement by Melania Trump after the asassination attempt on Donald:
"Let us not forget that differing opinions, policy, and political games are inferior to love. Our personal, structural, and life commitment - until death - is at serious risk. Political concepts are simple when compared to us, human beings.
We are all humans, and fundamentally, instinctively, we want to help one another. American politics are only one vehicle that can uplift our communities. Love, compassion, kindness and empathy re necessities.
And let us remember that when the time comes to loo beyond the left and the right, beyond the red and the blue, we all come from families with passion to fight for a better life together, while we are here, in this earthly realm"
Most of the media reports left out that bit. The whole thing is quite profound actually:
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‘The Luckiest Motherf*cker’: Bill Maher Says It ‘Doesn’t Matter’ Who Dems Run After Trump Assassination Attempt
Comedian Bill Maher said Saturday evening that it “doesn’t matter” who the Democratic Party runs as their candidate following the assassination attempt of presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
During a comedy show hours after the assassination attempt, Maher condemned the violence and called Trump “the luckiest motherfucker” on Earth.
“I so unequivocally denounced. I don’t care what you think about that,” Maher said as the crowd cheered. “Not funny.”
“I’m sure that there will be jokes that people will make because they hate him so much about they wished it went, you know, the way — not from me. Not from me,” he continued.
Maher told his audience the shooter, identified by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, “has done so much damage to the Left.” The “Real Time” host said the Democrats “lost a lot of moral high ground” regarding political violence.
“You know, liberals don’t shoot people. Liberals don’t solve it that way,” Maher scolded.
Despite their political differences, Maher said, he was “glad” the former president was “okay.” He added that the former president’s luck began when he won the 2016 election with less of the popular vote than Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, who has yet to publicly comment on the incident. (RELATED: ‘Play The Game’: Former House Speaker Breaks Down Trump’s Possible VP Shortlist)
“He’s the luckiest motherfucker that has ever walked the face of the Earth,” Maher said to the backdrop of a laughing crowd. “And again, I’m happy he’s okay.”
“I don’t want to say the election is over, but… ” Maher began as his audience erupted with laughter. “Anything can happen in an election, but Jesus Christ.”
“Yes, MAGA nation finally has its full martyr,” he continued. “They loved it when he went to jail. The mugshot. I gotta say, he’s insane and he’s a criminal, but that mugshot? Fucking nailed it. Perfect.”
Trump’s mugshot was released Aug. 24, 2023 by the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office relating to his Georgia 2020 election interference case.
Maher said Trump “played this scene like he rehearsed it” before imitating the pose himself. The comedian called those suggesting the assassination attempt was fake “idiots” and “conspiracy theorists.”
“He gets grazed and the other guy gets shot? It’s so Trump,” Maher said. “I can see the memes now! The man the lib-tards couldn’t kill. Biden can’t get through a debate and a bullet can’t stop Donald Trump!”
“I mean, it almost doesn’t matter who the Democrats put up now,” Maher remarked.
On Friday’s episode of “Real Time,” Maher told Democrats to “stop fucking around” and replace Biden. The comedian said the Democratic president is “toast” and predicted that he “gives it up” on Aug. 9, 2024, the 50th anniversary of when President Richard Nixon submitted his letter of resignation in 1974.
Following President Joe Biden’s poor June 27 debate performance against Trump, Democrats reportedly held private meetings — with some publicly voicing concerns — to discuss the possibility of the president dropping his reelection bid.
https://dailycaller.com/2024/07/14/bill-maher-donald-trump-assassination-attempt-democrats/
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Support for the Gender Cult and DEI Agendas Declines
My last column in June noted that what Demos and their leftist miscreants label “pride month” ended, but the gender confusion they promote endures.
But did you notice the most recent “celebrations” of gender disorientation pathology were more subdued than those in previous years, especially all the corporate promotion?
As it turns out, they’re more teachable than we estimated.
Last year, the tide turned on some woke corporate marketing campaigns pandering to the gender confused, particularly the so-called “transgender” crowd. Retailer Target and Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light beer brand suffered substantial losses as a result of their ill-advised campaigns, and other companies have gotten the message.
Consequently, some companies and organizations are dialing back their virtue-signal pandering. One noted marketing promoter, Matt Skallerud, whose business is helping big brands reach the LGBT demographic, said he was normally “pretty busy working on Pride projects” in June, but admits, “I have not been — and I think it’s across the board.” He adds: “Nobody in the media, marketing and advertising world wants to admit how heavy and hard this has been. Ever since Target and Bud Light had their fiascos last year, a tremendous number of brands have decided it would be much better to sit on the sidelines and let this sort itself out.”
In the wake of those high-profile marketing fiascos last year, as well as other corporate bottom-line indicators, commentator Matt Walsh outlined the strategy to undermine the corporate pandering: “The goal is to make ‘pride’ toxic for brands. If they decide to shove this garbage in our face, they should know that they’ll pay a price. It won’t be worth whatever they think they’ll gain.”
And the strategy of proliferating social media slogans like “Go woke, go broke,” aimed at big brands, has gotten their attention.
Mega-brand analyst Neil Saunders offered this observation about the “pride” hole some corporations now find themselves in: “If you promote Pride, some people will be unhappy with it. If you don’t promote Pride, some people will be unhappy about that. It’s not a battle you can win completely, which is why some retailers and brands are taking a middle-of-the-road approach and keeping it moderate. They are doing some promotion, but they are restricting it to things that they think are palatable and acceptable for most people. Retailers and brands will be more cautious about how they promote issues and causes.”
You know the old maxim: “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Some corporations and organizations are finally figuring that out, but extracting themselves will be difficult.
One recent case study of a company that has boldly reversed course from the woke path it had headed down is a Tennessee-based national chain, Tractor Supply Company, a $28.8 billion rural retailer with 50,000 employees. In a reversal of its ill-advised “pride” pandering, the company issued a formal statement at the end of June, disavowing that pandering.
Company communicators noted, “Going forward, we will ensure our activities and giving tie directly to our business,” and they listed a few things they will not continue to do. For example, they will “no longer submit data to the Human Rights Campaign,” a.k.a. the Homosexual Rights Campaign, one of the nation’s largest homosexual advocacy groups. Tractor Supply declared the company would instead “focus on rural America priorities … and stop sponsoring nonbusiness activities like pride festivals and voting campaigns.”
Among those taking note was Donald Trump, who responded: “This is a huge win and proof that major brands are recognizing that going woke is bad for business. Credit to Tractor Supply for changing course and doing the right thing.”
Of course, few brands that have gotten themselves into that LGBTQ+ ad nauseam hole are going to declare they are cutting back because of the aforementioned backlash. But there is plenty of evidence they are.
One reason for the slide in support is that the ugliness of the gender agenda facade is being exposed for what it really is — especially the Demos’ promotion of their deviant degenderization agenda.
So absurd have the politics of gender identity become that leftists are now asserting men can get pregnant.
You know, these are the same leftist Demo cadres who were preaching “follow the science” to enforce compliance with their draconian ChiCom Virus pandemic rules.
For example, the Supreme Court will hear legal challenges regarding what Demos and their Leftmedia parrots complain are bans on “gender-affirming care” for children. You know those Demos, always doing it for the children … except, of course, black children, and those whose lives are extinguished before birth.
More accurately, however, so-called “gender-affirming” care for children is code for “gender mutilation” of children, and its Demo/LGBT advocates are in deep on that one.
This comes on the heels of a ruling from a Demo U.S. district judge, Robert Hinkle, who asserted: “Florida has adopted a statute and rules that ban gender-affirming care for minors even when medically appropriate. The ban is unconstitutional.” Just when exactly is so-called “transgender” chemical alteration and physical mutilation of children “medically appropriate”? (The question is rhetorical.)
Astoundingly, Biden approves of child mutilation. His official pride month proclamation objects to states like Florida protecting children from gender mutilation: “These bills and laws attack our most basic values and freedoms as Americans: the right to be yourself, the right to make your own medical decisions, and the right to raise your own children.”
Delusional parents making decisions to cut body parts off their minor children does not constitute an attack on “our most basic values and freedoms as Americans.” That mutilation is the real attack.
There is a lot of deep pathological imprinting, pain, and denial associated with the gender cult. Much of that gender-dysphoric pathology is related to narcissism and is most often the result of broken families — particularly failed fatherhood. Another major causal factor in gender disorientation pathology is homosexual predation on children, a prolific problem widely associated with child-grooming by homosexual adults — deranged behavior that leftists aggressively seek to normalize.
That notwithstanding, the leftist heterophobic cadres of binary gender deniers would like to celebrate their pathological degeneracy every day of the year, essentially a cover for the denial of their dysphoria. By extension, that public degeneracy grooms children for sexual exploitation, creating in the process, the next generation of gender disorientation.
Corporations know that a substantial plurality of women of all ages and Gen Y/Z consumers, who constitute a significant part of their consumer markets, tend to support the trendy Rainbow Mafia agendas, so digging out is going to be difficult.
As for the corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) nonsense?
"Tractor Supply" also noted in its formal statement that it would eliminate “DEI roles and retire our current DEI goals while still ensuring a respectful environment.” But that realignment goes far beyond one company.
As is the case with corporate gender cult support, it turns out that DEI is also in decline, with companies and organizations scaling back their DEI advocacy, DEI recruiting, and DEI corporate profile language.
These initiatives emerged in the last decade, spurred on in part by a spurious study by McKinsey & Company, one of the nation’s largest consulting firms. That study asserted “a link between profits and executive racial and gender diversity,” thus “proving” DEI was good for corporate bottom lines.
Of course, no corporation wants to risk being labeled “racist” for not adopting the DEI orthodoxy.
However, according to The Wall Street Journal, that bottom-line benefit has fizzled.
The Journal notes the DEI consequences in one prominent example, BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager: “McKinsey’s research figures first in BlackRock’s references for supporting a board diversity target of 30% in its proxy voting guidelines. It featured prominently among studies used by a Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner in 2020 to explain why she supported corporate disclosure of diversity metrics. Nasdaq cited it as evidence when the exchange applied to the SEC for a rule requiring companies it lists to have minimum diversity on boards, or explain why they don’t. It has been cited by dozens of campaign groups pushing for rules to support consideration of social issues by pension funds and others, too.”
But BlackRock is now suffering the consequences and is moving away from its woke investment strategies.
Other major corporations are also divesting their DEI assets. According to The Washington Post, “As DEI gets more divisive, companies are ditching their teams.” That includes Zoom, Snap, Meta, Tesla, DoorDash, Lyft, Home Depot, and Wayfair, which have cut their DEI teams by 50% or more.
And it’s not just corporations. Some big universities are being forced to get on board, including those in the Texas University system, which have slashed their DEI staff.
While these declines in corporate support for gender cult and DEI agendas are incremental in most cases, nobody would have anticipated this trend a few years ago.
It is good news for America!
Footnote: Beyond the corporate culture, there is evidence that support for gender disorientation is softening in some churches, most notably the Episcopal Church where leftist gender cult agendas have been promoted most aggressively.
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14 July, 2024
The Lubavitcher Rebbe on How (Not) to Combat Antisemitism
Antisemitism has come roaring back recently so I think we need to understand it as well as we can, and the Rebbe had some thoughts on it that seem persuasive to me. So I am going to post just one thing here today, an extended coverage of what he had to say on the matter. I will not attempt a summary of it but I did particularly like his idea that we should not try to contradict or argue against antisemitic statements but instead we should stress our common humanity
I think I do to an extent live my own life in the way he advises. My girlfriend is a furious antisemite while I have been a gentile Zionist since I was aged about 10. How does that work? I simply don't judge women according to their political opinions. For a long-term relationship it is the personality of the woman that matters. And I think my girlfriend is a good woman
But Leftists are not like that. If you have the "wrong" opinions according to them they cast you into outer darkness. They are not psychologically strong enough to bear contradiction
And the explanation that the Rebbe offers for antisemitism also seems right to me. He says that it "fills a hole" in the life of the antisemite. It fulfils a need. And I can see that in my little sweetheart. She has seen a lot of unhappiness in her life so she needs an explanation of that. So she blames "The Jews"
As the Rebbe advises, I don't argue with that
Purim of 1965 was a rare occasion when the Rebbe spoke about anti-semitism in-depth. He discussed why they hate us, and provided an overview of the Jewish approach to combating it throughout the generations.
Purim is, of course, the classic antisemitism story. Haman presented to Achashverosh an ambitious but very real plan to kill every Jew in the entire world in one day, offering ten-thousand silver pieces—today’s equivalent of several billion dollars—to pay for the expenses of getting the job done.
Achashverosh agreed to the plan, but told Haman to keep his silver.
The Talmud3 uses a parable to explain an exchange between Achashverosh and Haman:
There were once two men, who each owned a field. One had a mound in the middle of his field; the other, a ditch.
The owner of the ditch, noticing the other’s mound of dirt, said to himself, “How I wish I could use that dirt to fill my ditch; I would be willing to pay for it!”
Meanwhile, the owner of the mound thought to himself, “If only I could use that ditch as a destination for my troublesome pile of earth!”
One day, they met one another. The owner of the ditch laid out a proposition: “How about you sell me your mound, so I can fill in my ditch with its dirt?”
To which the latter replied, “Take it for free—if only you had done so sooner!”
The Rebbe asks: True, Achashverosh had a problem to deal with—an empire of 127 nations, with many Jews living amongst them. They were a nuisance, a “mound of dirt,” in his valuable field.
But what does Haman’s “ditch” represent? And in what sense does eliminating the Jews parallel the leveling of a field? You’d think that you fill a ditch by adding to the field, not by eliminating something?
The Rebbe explains that the underlying cause of the condition called antisemitism has two precursors:
One antisemite says to the Jew, “You don’t belong in my world. You people are a mound in my field. Get out!”
Achashverosh fits the description that the Midrash assigns to Esau, who said to Jacob, “Didn’t we agree that this world is mine, and the next world belongs to you? Why are you mixing into the affairs of this world? You belong in your synagogue dealing spirituality!”
For Haman, however, the problem runs deeper.
Why does the Jew irk him so much?
Because the Jew exposes a gaping void in this person’s life. G?d gave the Torah to the Jews, and with it, a higher purpose. When he sees the Jew, he cannot escape the ditch in his own field. This latter problem is the void that constitutes this latter antisemite’s “Jewish problem.”
When the antisemite sees the Jew, he cannot escape the ditch in his own field. This is the void that constitutes this antisemite’s “Jewish problem.”
If he really wanted, he could lift himself up, but he doesn’t want to do the work. So he chooses a far simpler solution: Get rid of the Jew entirely. The “ditch in his field,” his void, will be leveled when there’s no one to remind him of his own emptiness.
It doesn’t matter what the Jew does or doesn’t do. It won’t help to stop acting Jewish, to make Shabbat on Sunday, to eat, speak and dress the same as everyone else. These two causes of antisemitism have nothing to do with your actions. A Jew is a representation of Torah, and your very existence makes the antisemite feel inadequate.
So what can we do about it? Here are the Rebbe’s responses to several cases of antisemitism:
After the 1967 Six-Day War, the French president, Charles de Gaulle, decided to stop selling arms to the countries which had been involved in the conflict. In truth, De Gaulle—who had made statements to the press about how the Jewish people “through the ages” had “provoked” and “caused ill will” in certain countries—was moving against Israel alone; the Arab countries were being supplied by Russia. The Jews—“an elitist and dominating people”—were deeply offended by his words. Jewish and non-Jewish leaders sharply attacked his blatant antisemitism.
In 1970, France, now under de Gaulle’s successor, Georges Pompidou, suddenly announced the sale to Libya of 50 Mirage ground-attack aircraft, and later another 30 Mirage III?E interceptors and 20 trainer reconnaissance planes. This constituted a major threat to Israel, as these could easily be resold to Egypt or Syria (and in fact, that, precisely, was the plan). When President Pompidou visited the United States, there were a series of strident demonstrations organized by Jews in Washington, DC, New York and Chicago.
As Pompidou stepped from his limousine onto the red carpet to wave and smile at the crowd, he was greeted with a chorus of boos, hecklers, and chants of, “Shame on you, Pompidou!”
The protests caused to a huge diplomatic ruckus and, if not for a hastily arranged trip to New York by Nixon himself, Pompidou’s visit would have been entirely derailed.
Several months later, in an address that can loosely be termed, “How to Handle Antisemites in Public Office,” the Rebbe addressed the fact that the president of France was confronted publicly by protesters who hoped that the French government would be intimidated into cancelling the ban on weapon sales to Israel.
Officially there was an "embargo," but France was, in fact, selling weapons to Israel. But only small arms, items that could be shipped without publicity. But after the protests, he canceled small arms sales, as well.
After some time, when the protests quieted down, Israel once again began dealing quietly with him, and Pompidou managed to extract three hundred Jews from Egypt! No protests, no publicity, no issues!
The Israeli government asked the newspapers not to write about it [in order to protect Pompidou from pressure by foreign governments and his French constituents]. We know about this only from non-Jewish newspapers.
This demonstrates clearly that the only way to deal with an antisemite is not by coming to him every day and shouting: Listen here, you are an antisemite! Listen here, you are a thief, a murderer, etc.! Rather, speak to him in a diplomatic way.
He knows well what they think of him, but he is a human being after all and behaves like a human being.
Once Pompidou was treated this way, 300 Jews were extracted from Egypt and Israel once again began receiving arms from France.4
In a different talk that same year, the Rebbe said that he had asked a leading activist, “Why are you running around and crying antisemitism, when you see it’s simply not effective in creating change?”
The fellow replied, “I figured out ten years ago that is a good modus operandi, and I don’t have time to rethink it. Stop telling me what to do.”
This demonstrates clearly that the only way to deal with an antisemite is not by coming to him every day and shouting: Listen here, you are an antisemite! Rather, speak to him in a diplomatic way.
Efforts to shine a spotlight on antisemitism often succeed in achieving only one thing, the Rebbe stated, with a tinge of irony: attracting attention to the individuals or organizations leading those efforts.
(It’s important to note that certain situations clearly demand a different response. For example, the Rebbe established a very vocal and assertive approach to Israel and its relations with its antisemitic neighbors and other foreign nations; how it must defend itself by all means, without apology, and how Israel must be so strong militarily that her enemies are afraid to attack. These are subjects for a different essay.)
Jesse Helms and Friendship
For the duration of his first two terms in the Senate, 1972-1984, US Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) was a staunch opponent of Israel’s cause. In 1973, he proposed a resolution demanding that Israel return the West Bank to Jordan. During Israel’s 1982 war with Palestinian terrorists in Lebanon, he demanded that the United States sever diplomatic relations with Israel.
A year or so later, circa 1983, Senator Helms took part in a Friends of Lubavitch event in Washington. In an interview with JEM’s My Encounter with the Rebbe project, Professor Alan Dershowitz described what he found unacceptable about Senator Helms’ participation:
When I was involved in politics, in civil rights and human rights, the enemy of civil rights and civil liberties was Jesse Helms, the United States Senator from North Carolina. He stood against everything that I stood for and many of my friends and colleagues stood for.
And so I was a little surprised, disappointed, when Jesse Helms was honored by the Rebbe and Chabad, and so I wrote a very polite letter to the Rebbe—who I had met previously a number of times—respectfully wondering why they chose to honor a man who was against integration, was against gay rights, women’s rights, equality for all.
The Rebbe wrote back a very poignant and very powerful letter saying we honor not only to recognize the past but to influence the future, and watch carefully to see whether or not we have had an influence on Jesse Helms.
In a three-and-a-half-page letter, the Rebbe explained to Professor Dershowitz that Senator Helms had attended an event at the Capitol, along with other senators and congressmen, in order “to pay tribute to a Jew and a Jewish movement.”
The Rebbe wrote that he’s “long been concerned about the state of our nation’s public schools, the American family and society,” and the event was geared to upgrading the ethical and moral foundations of education.
After a full two pages, the Rebbe signs off — and then there’s a one-and-a-half page postscript. (Note: Always watch out for the Rebbe’s PSs!) An excerpt:
I trust you will agree that in regard to persons of influence, whether in Washington or elsewhere, the first objective should be to persuade and encourage such a person to use his influence in a positive way in behalf of any and all good causes which are important to us. We should welcome every public appearance which lends public support to the cause, especially when there is a likelihood that it may be the forerunner of similar pronouncements in the future.
The Rebbe gives several examples, continuing:
My experience with such people has convinced me that politicians are generally motivated more by expediency than by conviction. In other words, their public pronouncements on various issues do not stem from categorical principles or religious imperatives. Hence, most of them, if not all, are subject to change in their positions, depending on time, place, and other factors.
I believe, therefore, that the proper approach to such persons by Jewish leaders should not be rigid. As a rule, it does no good to engage in a cold war, which may often turn into a hot war; nor does it serve any useful purpose to brand one as an "enemy" or an "antisemite," however tempting it is to do so. It can only be counter-productive. On the contrary, ways and means should be found to persuade such a person to take a favorable stance, at least publicly. We haven't too many friends, and attaching labels, etc. will not gain us any.5
“Sure enough,” Professor Dershowitz continued, “shortly thereafter, Helms assumed a very influential role in the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and before long, he became one of the strongest supporters of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, and of other Jewish causes as well”…
Politicians are generally motivated more by expediency than by conviction. In other words, their public pronouncements on various issues do not stem from categorical principles or religious imperatives.
“[The Rebbe’s approach] had an enormous influence on persuading Jesse Helms that, even with his very conservative values, he could become a beacon for the Jewish State.” Indeed, many on the Christian right who had previously been venomous foes of Israel followed right behind him.6
Leaders and Alliances
Rabbi Yehoshua Kling was the rabbi of Lyon, France, for eight years, and thereafter, of Nice. In a meeting with the Rebbe in the mid-1970s, he sought advice for antisemitism that his community was facing.
The Rebbe explained that, in most cases, cues for antisemitism—whether by a political movement, or a certain population or demographic—come from the heads of a group, rather than the foot soldiers. It is one of those areas where the rank-and-file takes cues from their leaders.
The best way to proceed is to build connections with the leadership of these communities, and to utilize those relationships to influence them to work against antisemitism.
For this reason, he explained, the best way to proceed is to build connections with the leadership of these communities, and to utilize those relationships to influence them to work against antisemitism, or at least to stop practicing it. Conversely, spending time with the “foot soldiers” to change their attitude is, for the most part, an inefficient deployment of resources.
Defuse the Issue
This leads us to a key aspect of the Rebbe’s response to antisemitism: In the cases we can find, the Rebbe responds to each situation by doing his best to defuse it, resisting the urge to call out an incident and give it oxygen. The Rebbe repeatedly seems to turn the discussion from the ugliness of a particular incident to a more global conversation; from highlighting a problem to investing in big-picture solutions.
In late 1991, the Rebbe received a letter from the office of the President of Poland apologizing for an antisemitic incident in Warsaw. After expressing gratitude for the correspondence, the Rebbe continued:
You express the hope that in the future, intolerance and prejudice will disappear from the Polish people, and that you are working towards this end. We appreciate the sentiments expressed in your letter, and we pray that your hope and efforts will materialize very soon indeed…
Our Sages explain why the creation of man differed from the creation of other living species and why, among other things, man was created as a single individual, unlike other living creatures [which were] created in pairs. One of the reasons—our Sages declare--is that it was G?d’s design that the human race, all humans everywhere and at all times, should know that each and all descend from the one and the same single progenitor, a fully developed human being created in the image of G?d, so that no human being could claim superior ancestral origin; hence they would also find it easier to cultivate a real feeling of kinship in all inter-human relationships.
In the summer of that same year, a spasm of virulently anti-semitic riots, unfolded on the streets of Crown Heights, just outside the Rebbe’s windows. A black leader visited the Rebbe, expressing his solidarity. The Rebbe replied in terms similar to the above-mentioned letter:
…I hope that in the near future [New York’s] melting pot will be so active that it will be not necessary to underscore every time that these are “negro,” these are “white,” they are “Hispanic” etcetera, etcetera. Because they are not different. All of them are created by the same G?d, for the same purpose: to add in all good things around them…
That summer, numerous police officials, leaders of organizations and politicians visited to express their horror and outrage. The Rebbe did not spend words on condemnations, labels, or blame—even rejecting suggestions for counter-demonstrations. Rather, he consistently turned the conversation to finding shared values, emphasizing what we share as members of the human race.
Healing the Cause, Not the Symptoms
Let’s return to the second cause of antisemitism explained above. How do we fill the void? How do we address the emptiness that gives rise to hatred of Jews?
Every human being, by their very nature, needs meaning; a sense of higher purpose. These individuals are part of the same civilization as us.
Well beyond the context of antisemitism, the Rebbe returned to this theme time and again: We’re not living on an island. Ultimately, it’s in everyone’s interest that the coinhabitors of society have direction and meaning in their lives, which can only begin in earnest from an understanding of the difference between right and wrong, and by living life in accordance with that understanding.
And in Torah’s view, the only true way for a human being to lead a life of goodness and kindness and of true tolerance for the “other,” is when it is based upon the knowledge of an Eye that Sees and Ear that Hears, a Director of this world, Who cares and pays full attention to every detail, every choice, and every action of your life.
This leads to many related areas that are beyond the scope of this article; topics that the Rebbe spoke about often and at length, such as education and universal values.
Education, in the Rebbe’s view, is the cornerstone to all of civilization. As he explained in his letter to Professor Dershowitz, the Rebbe passionately advocated that public schools in the United States devote a moment of silent contemplation to the beginning of every school day. The Rebbe’s very strong and specific opinion on the importance of a Moment of Silence in the US public school system was laid out in numerous talks and letters.
In a similar vein, the Rebbe spoke often and with great urgency on the importance of publicizing the Seven Universal Laws that G?d gave for all of humanity such that individuals, and eventually society as a whole, will begin to live by Torah’s guidance for life. Here, too, the Rebbe argued that this is the only path for civilization to save itself from cannibalizing itself.
What’s more, it’s our duty. Torah teaches that we owe this to the society in which we live.
So you can’t fight antisemitism with a stick. We’ve got to help society find the “on” switch to turn on the light. It’s merely a “side” benefit, as Jews, that we’ll be helping to heal our gentile neighbors of the disease of antisemitism. Helping them to heal their emptiness is the only true way to ensure the next Haman won’t have a need to fill that ditch in his field.
Summary
Key directives we’ve garnered from these incidents and the Rebbe’s responses:
We need to realize that G?d protects us and will continue to do so.
Do engage in practical security, the natural means through which we protect ourselves.
Exert your influence through quiet diplomacy, but don’t lose your backbone. Maintain pride in yourself as a Jew, and in your Jewish observance.
It’s not effective to confront someone by proving that he or she is an antisemite. On the contrary, where possible, do your best to engage them.
Concentrate on building relationships with leaders rather than chasing down the misdeeds of the followers.
Don’t spend your energy answering specific individual complaints against the Jews.
Emphasize how we’re all in the image of G?d; the things that all human beings share.
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11 July, 2024
Air pollution can decrease odds of live birth after IVF by 38%, study finds
Oh Dear! Another "pollution" study that does not measure anything about people and pollution at all. The constancy of these empty reports has become boring. The journal abstract is here:
https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/39/Supplement_1/deae108.182/7703768?searchresult=1
They have NO data on how much pollutant each person actually breathed in at the time concerned. They have data only on what the weather was like in one place at one time in Perth.
It's the usual failure of control. WHY was time a factor in implantation success? They say it was times of low pollution that generated the improvement. But was that in fact the influence at work?
That low pollution days were also days that were more congenial to exercise was not looked at but it is an easy inference that they were. So maybe what they have really found is that doing light exercise before implantation is beneficial, which is not at all improbable. It was the exercise that conferred benefit, not the low levels of pollution
And the odds ratios were in any case very low, suggesting a high probability of non-replicability
I'll leave it at that
Air pollution exposure can significantly decrease the chance of a live birth after IVF treatment, according to research that deepens concern about the health impacts of toxic air on fertility.
Pollutant exposure has previously been linked to increased miscarriage rates and preterm births, and microscopic soot particles have been shown to travel through the bloodstream into the ovaries and the placenta. The latest work suggests that the impact of pollution begins before conception by disrupting the development of eggs.
“We observed that the odds of having a baby after a frozen embryo transfer were more than a third lower for women who were exposed to the highest levels of particulate matter air pollution prior to egg collection, compared with those exposed to the lowest levels,” said Dr Sebastian Leathersich, a fertility specialist and gynaecologist from Perth who is due to present the findings on Monday at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology annual meeting in Amsterdam.
Air pollution is one of the leading threats to human health and is estimated by the World Health Organization (WHO) to have caused 6.7 million deaths in 2019. Microscopic soot particles have been shown to cross from the lungs into the bloodstream and are transported to every organ in the body, raising the risk of heart disease, gastric cancers and dementia. The contamination has also being linked to reductions in intelligence.
“Pollution is harmful to almost all aspects of human health and it’s no surprise to me that reproductive health is also affected,” Leathersich said. “I’m hopeful that these findings will help to highlight the urgency of the situation – that climate change poses a serious and immediate threat to human reproductive health, even at so-called safe levels.”
The study analysed fertility treatments in Perth over an eight-year period, including 3,659 frozen embryo transfers from 1,836 patients, and tracked whether outcomes were linked to the levels of fine particulate matter, known as PM10. The overall live birthrate was about 28% per transfer. However, the success rates varied in line with exposure to pollutants in the two weeks leading up to egg collection. The odds of a live birth decreased by 38% when comparing the highest quartile of exposure to the lowest quartile.
“These findings suggest that pollution negatively affects the quality of the eggs, not just the early stages of pregnancy, which is a distinction that has not been previously reported,” Leathersich said.
The team now plan to study cells directly to understand why pollutants have a negative effect. Previous work has shown that the microscopic particles can damage DNA and cause inflammation in tissues.
Prof Jonathan Grigg, whose group at Queen Mary University of London uncovered evidence that air pollution particles are found in the placenta, said: “This study is biologically plausible since it has recently been discovered that inhaled fossil-fuel particles move out of the lung and lodge in organs around the body. Reproductive health can now be added to expanding list of the adverse effects of fossil fuel-derived particulate matter, and should prompt policymakers to continue to reduce traffic emissions.”
The link was apparent despite excellent overall air quality during the study period, with PM10 and PM2.5 levels exceeding WHO guidelines on just 0.4% and 4.5% of the study days, the scientists said. Australia is one of just seven countries that met the WHO’s guidelines in 2023, and this study is the latest to show evidence of harm even at relatively low levels of pollution.
Prof Geeta Nargund, a senior NHS consultant and medical director of abc IVF and Create Fertility, said further work would be crucial to better understand the full impact of air pollution, which disproportionately affects those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
“In the face of a global fertility crisis, a clear picture of the link between environmental factors such as air pollution and fertility health or treatment outcomes could play an important part in tackling falling fertility rates,” she said.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/article/2024/jul/07/air-pollution-live-birth-ivf-fertility-study
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Women wanted for cybersecurity course, no men allowed
The Left never seem to be able to see that if you discriminate FOR some group, you automatically discriminate AGAINST another rgroup. They're emphatic that discrimination is a great evil but promptly go on to practice it. It's a sort of chronic insanity among them
Only women and gender-diverse candidates will be invited to participate in the latest cybersecurity course from one of Australia's largest security providers as part of an effort to address inequality in the sector.
CyberCX launched its first full-time, women-only training course on Monday, offering 40 paid roles that will begin in November.
The announcement comes after research from Per Capita revealed women made up just 21 per cent of Australia's cybersecurity workforce, and a study from Engineers Australia showed only 13 per cent of qualified engineers were female.
The low rates of participation have persisted despite widespread predictions of skills shortages in Australia's technology workforce.
CyberCX Academy director Rosemary Driscoll said the six-month, full-time training course was designed to address the industry's gender imbalance and used feedback from other all-women training courses.
"Australia needs a more diverse cyber security workforce to meet demands of industry and government now and into the future," she said.
"Everyone has a role to play here, from the government to our tertiary institutions and the private sector."
The full-time course comes after Per Capita research found Australia was likely to suffer a skills shortage of up to 30,000 cybersecurity workers by 2026, and women represented just 21 per cent of professionals in the field.
Engineers Australia's report into Women in Engineering also found women made up just 16 per cent of engineering graduates and 13 per cent of the workforce.
Its recommendations to improve gender diversity included addressing a non-inclusive culture, providing greater opportunities for female engineers in workplaces, and offering mentoring programs.
The CyberCX entry-level cybersecurity course will be open to women studying cybersecurity or looking to change careers, and will feature 10 weeks of practice and 12 weeks of on-the-job experience.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8688492/women-wanted-for-cybersecurity-course-no-men-allowed/
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Nationalism: The Great Rethinking
Jeffrey A. Tucker
My own top intellectual influence is the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. His 1919 book was “Nation, State, and Economy.” In his view, language (speech) was the best basis to define nationhood. It’s hard for Americans to understand this since it would seem to put us in one nation with England and Australia. At the time, however, this theory made sense in a European context. Think of the strange and unsustainable amalgams of Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia; a language-centered nationalism could have predicted their demise.
Mises himself was Austrian, of Jewish heritage, and was thinking in those terms.
If a group was united in language, he argued, it was a viable nation. And this is a good path to peace.
“The nationality principle above all bears no sword against members of other nations,” he wrote. “It is directed in tyrannos. Therefore, above all, there is also no opposition between national and citizen-of-the-world attitudes. The idea of freedom is both national and cosmopolitan. It is revolutionary, for it wants to abolish all rule incompatible with its principles, but it is also pacifistic. What basis for war could there still be, once all peoples had been set free? Political liberalism concurs on that point with economic liberalism, which proclaims the solidarity of interests among peoples.”
It’s fascinating to read that passage in light of what came after. As it turns out, a different form of nationalism was rising in Germany from 1923 and onwards. It absolutely bore a sword. It took the idea of race and ran with it, postulating that the German nation should extend to everyone of “Aryan” race, purging territories of groups that fall outside that designation. In this, the rise of German nationalism drew on race studies of the late 19th century, and trampled all over both Renan’s postulates and Mises’s hopes for the future of nationalism.
What makes for fascinating reading is Mises’s own 1944 wartime history of the rise of the Nazis. His book “Omnipotent Government” offered a diametrically opposed view of nationalism. In chapter after chapter, he shredded the racial view of political community, condemned all forms of imperialism, and blasted militarism based on nationalistic ambitions. Clearly, his attitudes had changed in light of events. The Second World War caused him to turn against the ideology of nationalism, treating it as potentially aggressive and the enemy rather than the friend of freedom.
The purpose in recounting this history is simply to say that there is not one correct view of nationalism. It depends on the historical and political context and the cultural and political assumptions behind nationalist feelings.
After the end of the Cold War, many had hoped that the United States would return to its roots as a peaceful commercial Republic, doing as George Washington said: trading with all and making political alliances with no one, being a light unto all nations while staying out of the internal affairs of foreign nations. This view was widely held on the left and right. However, many in power had different views. They wanted to deploy the newly earned status as the world’s only superpower to become the globe’s policeman, with war after war, intervening in every border dispute or otherwise.
It was in those days that my own attitudes on nationalism shifted. On matters of political organization, nationalism struck me as mostly benign. But on matters of race and migration, globalism seemed to me to be the right answer. Yes, I was a product of my times and did not know it.
What I and others had not seen coming was something different, the rise of globalist institutions—built from both public and private monies—that had every intention of trampling on sovereign rights, not only of the domestic political community but also on foreign peoples.
This new globalism was never more on display than in the pandemic policy response, which the World Health Organization urged every nation to adopt the strategies and tactics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in China, locking citizens in their homes and attempting to protect health through use of extreme force. All nations in the world adopted this tactic, save only a few, and this approach wrecked economies, destabilized political systems, and demoralized people of the world. If nothing else, this experience highlighted the dangers of globalist ideology.
Here we are still grappling with the great question of nationalism. We do have experience to draw on. We know now that nationalism can be a check on globalist power, exactly as Mises imagined it after the Great War, but we are also aware of the dangers associated with chauvinism and imperialism in the name of nation building too, as Mises also mapped out.
For now, I’m inclined to have a warmer view toward the nationalist temperament if only to guard against the real and present threat of a globalist ruling class imposing rules on the entire planet, creating a regime for the world over which national political systems have no influence. This danger is real and all around us.
For now, the urge to reassert national sovereignty—whether in the form of American patriotism or European skepticism toward the European Union—strikes me as a necessary frame of mind to get us back to the fundamental principle of freedom itself.
In theory, the path toward freedom seems easy: human rights, governments that are limited to strict functions only, and diplomacy over war. In practice, this ambition ends up taking a circuitous route. It was true in the last century and it is true in ours as well.
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California Lawmakers Discover the Obvious about crime
Two California lawmakers from both sides of the aisle agree that the state’s Proposition 47 is hurting more than it is helping. The measure was designed to reduce the state’s prison population and divert resources used on incarceration toward schools and social programs.
On July 9, Reps. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.) and Jimmy Panetta (D-Calif.) appeared in an online event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the problem of rising organized retail theft in the country. They both said California’s Proposition 47 is creating more problems in the Golden State than it is solving.
Proposition 47, approved by California voters in 2014, “maximizes alternatives for non-serious, nonviolent crime” by reducing the charges and penalties associated with certain, nonviolent crimes.
In particular, Mr. Garcia noted that Proposition 47 reduced to a misdemeanor the charges for stealing less than $950 worth of merchandise. Criminals know the law, he said. So individual and organized shoplifters are taking advantage of the state’s leniency and certain district attorneys’ lack of willingness to prosecute low-level crimes.
Mr. Garcia said small businesses are “slowly bleeding by 1,000 paper cuts.”
The U.S. Chamber, a Washington-based national organization lobbying on behalf of businesses, prioritizes combating organized retail theft.
According to data collected by the organization and published in 2022, organized retail crime costs stores more than $700,000 per $1 billion in sales. Separately, small businesses are raising prices due to increased shoplifting, and some retailers are closing stores in response to theft.
The chamber says that “crime rings are operating with impunity across the country.” Criminals are profiting by reselling stolen goods online or on the street.
Mr. Panetta, a former deputy district attorney in California’s Monterey County, said Proposition 47 allows criminals to commit the same crimes repeatedly “without suffering consequences.” The law was passed with good motives, he said, but it has had detrimental effects on the state in the decade since its passage.
Elevated crime, even if it is not violent, is causing Californians to feel less safe, Mr. Panetta said. The growing perception of lawlessness in California’s biggest cities, San Francisco and Los Angeles, is contributing to recall elections and electoral challenges for local politicians in those areas.
Mr. Garcia, who represents the northern suburbs of Los Angeles, said California’s businesses, law enforcement, and politicians are so fed up with Proposition 47 that they are rolling out a ballot measure to repeal portions of it.
In April, the bipartisan group Californians for Safer Communities submitted more than 900,000 signatures to get its proposal on the state’s November ballot. As proposed, the new law would charge shoplifters with a felony if they have two prior theft convictions within a three-year span.
On the evening of June 30, Democrat leaders in Sacramento, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, announced their own version of a Proposition 47 reform plan that proposed lesser penalties for theft than the Safer Communities proposal. However, the governor withdrew the measure on July 2 citing an inability to meet the ballot deadline.
Nationally, Mr. Panetta, who represents a Pacific Coast district south of San Franciso Bay, said he, Rep. Young Kim (D-Calif.), and others are proposing a bill—the Improving Federal Investigations of Organized Retail Crime Act—that would enable federal agencies to coordinate with state and local officials to build the evidence needed to bring organized retail crime networks to justice.
Moreover, he spoke about the Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces for Consumers, or INFORM, Act of 2022. The INFORM Act requires online retailers to collect, verify, and disclose information about “high-volume third-party sellers” in an effort to stop the sale of stolen or counterfeit merchandise. The same law requires retailers to allow consumers to report suspicious activity.
Nevertheless, Mr. Panetta said that criminals are selling stolen merchandise on sidewalks and other online forums to circumvent the INFORM Act.
Mr. Garcia said lawmakers must continue to push for ways to use federal powers to stop organized retail theft around the country. He mentioned the proposed Combating Organized Retail Crime Act of 2023, which would establish a federal center aimed exclusively at tackling the problem. Moreover, he said, Congress needs to direct more money to local law enforcement that deals with the brunt of the issue.
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10 July, 2024
Microplastics in Bloodstream Increase Stroke Risk 4.5-Fold: Study
"The study SUGGESTED". Opinion masquerading as fact
The issue of microplastic pollution in the environment is gaining increasing societal attention. Research indicates that once microplastics enter the human body, they can increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes, or even death. What kind of everyday behaviors raise the risk of ingesting microplastics?
Lin Xiaoxu, a U.S. virology expert with a doctorate in microbiology, explained what microplastics and nanoplastics are on New Tang Dynasty TV’s “Health 1+1” program and how to reduce exposure to them.
Plastic is a crucial product in industrial production and is deeply intertwined with daily life. When plastic products break down, they become microplastics or even smaller nanoplastics. Microplastics are plastic pieces smaller than 5 millimeters, while nanoplastics measure below 1 micron (1,000 nanometers).
Sources of Microplastics
Mr. Lin explained that everyday plastic products release microplastics. Synthetic textiles shed fiber fragments, and worn-out tires produce plastic-containing dust. Even seemingly smooth plastic water bottles can shed microplastics during washing.
In nature, sunlight and ultraviolet radiation continuously degrade plastics into smaller particles. Textiles, hygiene products, bottles, bags, particles emitted from factories, tire dust, fishing nets, and more all contribute to microplastic pollution. Humans and other animals ingest some of these particles, while others accumulate and break down in oceans and soils. Marine organisms like shellfish, small fish, and shrimp, especially those near coastlines, are particularly prone to ingesting microplastics.
Mr. Lin emphasized that the main sources of microplastics are industrial waste and wastewater discharge, which can cause significant environmental damage if not adequately treated.
Therefore, before wastewater is released from factories, it must undergo processes like screening, sand removal, sedimentation, biological reactions, chlorination, ultraviolet treatment, membrane technology, etc., to remove over 90 percent of microplastics. However, complete elimination is not achievable. Natural environments may take thousands to tens of thousands of years to fully degrade microplastics.
Health Hazards of Microplastics
Potential Harm of Microplastics to Cardiovascular and Brain Health
“If you ingest something toxic, people usually say to wash it out quickly, but microplastics are very tiny particles that adhere to the surface of the stomach. It’s not guaranteed that washing out will remove them; the body needs to slowly eliminate them, increasing the burden on the body,” Mr. Lin noted.
Studies have found that after exposure to ultraviolet light and microbial degradation in the natural environment, microplastics become more adsorbent, forming complexes with various environmental pollutants on their surfaces, making them more toxic to organisms.
Microplastics, which serve as carriers for heavy metals and pathogens, exhibit various toxicities upon entering the body. Most microplastics ingested through food are excreted via feces, but a small portion can remain in the intestines for days, causing intestinal damage, inflammation, and disruption of gut microbiota. Over time, microplastics can be absorbed into intestinal cells and enter the bloodstream, damaging organs and systems throughout the body. Organs like the liver and kidneys and bodily systems such as the immune, reproductive, and nervous systems are particularly affected. Additionally, excessive inhalation of microplastics can cause respiratory tissue damage and disease.
In March, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that most carotid artery plaques contained microplastics. The study included 257 patients aged 18 to 75 with asymptomatic carotid stenosis. Following plaque removal from the arteries, researchers detected polyethylene in 150 patients (58.4 percent) and polyvinyl chloride in 31 patients (12.1 percent) of removed carotid artery plaques.
Macrophages within the plaques contained visible foreig particles, some with jagged edges and chlorine content. * The study suggested* that patients with detected microplastics had over 4.5 times higher risk of heart attacks, strokes, or death compared to those without microplastics.
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We Need Rational Patriotism
As we observe Independence Day, you will see patriotic displays everywhere. U.S. flags, red, white, and blue clothing, patriotic décor, and calls to appreciate our freedoms will greet us in the news, in stores and restaurants, and even in our workplaces.
Some 67% of U.S. adults report being “proud” or “extremely proud” to be an American. U.S. citizens across generations report high levels of patriotism, as do immigrants.
Unfortunately, for many, patriotism is blind. Children in forty-seven states are taught to pledge allegiance to the flag every morning in school. Do they know what they are reciting or why? We’re conditioned to place our hands over our hearts for the national anthem, to stand for the flag, and so on without giving it any thought.
Nowhere is blind patriotism more apparent than in the realm of U.S. military and foreign policy. A majority of Americans say they trust the military. We are conditioned to thank members or veterans of the armed forces for their service regardless of how long they were in the military, whether they volunteered or were conscripted (as men were until 1973), what function they performed, and despite the fact that such platitudes make many veterans uncomfortable.
Failure to do these things is a grave offense. It’s even worse to question or criticize military policy.
What if one declined to thank a 30-year-old veteran for his time in the military, having familiarized oneself with the ample evidence that the Global War on Terror has done nothing to make us safer but instead has made us less safe and less free? What if instead one said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” considering that that the veteran willingly had enlisted and engaged in operations that eroded liberty and safety at home and abroad.
To many people, such a statement would be unconscionable. The very thought is taboo in many circles and would lead to the person being labeled “un-American” and “unpatriotic.”
Both of us have been sharply criticized for our skeptical work on U.S. foreign policy. After reading or hearing us speak, people have suggested we move to another country or be forced into military service. We’ve received emails and phone calls expressing outrage.
We submit, however, that the person who says “No thanks” to the veteran, like the person who openly criticizes U.S. officials and their policies, has a better claim to the “patriot” label than the people sending us angry emails or blithely thanking every veteran.
Just before World War I, writer Randolph Bourne distinguished country, state, and government. For Bourne, “country” referred to the nonpolitical aspects of a place and its people—things like language, culture, and ideals. “State” represented the group acting as a “repository of force.” “Government” denoted the mechanisms by which the state carried out its activities.
People have come to conflate these three things. State and government have become synonymous with country. This could lead them into blind patriotism by making it seem impossible to love one’s country while being skeptical of and even appalled by the state’s and government’s actions.
Our Founders understood the need to rationally question the government and the state, especially in warmaking. As James Madison noted, “Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.” He also said, “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” Having studied the seen and unseen costs of U.S. foreign policy, we are well aware that many state actions not only fail to guard the liberties we hold so dear but actively erode them.
So, this coming holiday, as we prepare to celebrate our independence and our freedoms, let’s also embrace a healthy skepticism. We need a rational, not blind, patriotism. Our most cherished liberties depend on it.
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A Different Perspective from Governor Newsom on California’s ‘State of the State’
Last week, California governor Gavin Newsom presented his State of the State address. It opened with a warning, juxtaposing the fascist threat of Hitler in 1939 that would ultimately start World War II with forces “threatening the very foundation of California’s success.” The themes of “darkness,” “chaos,” “fear,” and “destruction” created by the “poisonous populism of the right” appear throughout his address.
But where are these forces in California? With Democratic supermajorities in both state legislative houses, with Democrats elected in all eight state executive offices (governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, school superintendent, insurance commissioner, secretary of state, treasurer, and state controller), and with Republicans representing only 24 percent of registered voters, California is perhaps the most politically liberal state in the country.
In terms of issues affecting the state, illegal migration is important for Californians, with 62 percent of registered California voters agreeing that the border is not sufficiently secure to prevent illegal entry, compared to 30 percent who viewed border protection as adequate.
The Pew Research Center estimated there were 1.85 million unauthorized immigrants living in California in 2021. The number may be higher now, as San Diego has become the most popular spot for illegal entry into the United States, with 37,370 encounters there with US Border Control in April alone.
Governor Newsom praised the state’s efforts at the border and criticized US Senate and House Republicans for not supporting a proposal by the Biden administration that would have increased funding for Immigration Control and Enforcement (ICE): “Unfortunately, California has largely had to go at this alone because Republicans in Congress, when presented with an opportunity to assist border states, have turned their backs. They’ve chosen inertia, politics, and pure political pandering.”
While criticizing national Republicans, Newsom did not mention that California is one of only 11 sanctuary states in the country and the only on the southern border. Nor did he refer to his 2019 inaugural address, when he stated that California would be a “sanctuary to all who seek it” or the fact that California’s Department of Justice shut down ICE access to California’s major crime data network because ICE would not agree to refrain from using information from the network to enforce immigration laws.
California’s sanctuary status is particularly problematic now because it provides cover for drug dealers, including fentanyl dealers, who almost exclusively arrive here from Honduras. One dealer stated the reason they come to California, and San Francisco in particular, is “because they don’t deport. . . . Many look for San Francisco because it’s a sanctuary city. You go to jail and you come out.”
Fentanyl is a significant problem within California, as its low cost has made it the opioid of choice among many users. Because of fentanyl’s potency (a teaspoon of pure fentanyl powder can kill over 2,500 people), it now accounts for the vast majority of opioid overdose deaths. Before California passed its sanctuary state law in 2017, there were around 200 fentanyl deaths annually, but fentanyl deaths have increased to about 11,000 per year in more recent data.
Fentanyl dealers in California can earn up to $350,000 per year, and these earnings are often repatriated to dealers’ families in Honduras, which is undergoing a construction boom in new housing, including gated mansions featuring the logos of the Golden State Warriors and San Francisco 49ers. California has confiscated a substantial amount of fentanyl, but removing California’s sanctuary protection would decrease the amount entering the state by reducing the attractiveness of California as a destination for illegal migration and criminal activity.
Newsom pushed back against the common claim that California’s economy is lagging and that taxes are high. “Here’s the truth Republicans never tell you: California is not a high-tax state,” he said, referencing how much the lowest earners in California are taxed compared to those in some other states. But many of the California earners he was referencing are near or below California’s poverty line, an income level where people naturally pay little in income taxes.
In contrast, the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan research organization that is the standard source for analysis in taxation and public spending, identifies California as a very-high-tax state. With the top of the list representing the lowest taxation, they rank California 49th for state income taxes, 46th for state and local taxes, and 48th for overall state tax climate. They also report that California has the highest tax collections per person among all states. California collects $7,200 per person per year in state tax revenue, about 65% higher than the national average of $4,374.
Regarding California’s economic growth, Newsom stated that 16 percent of national job creation in May occurred in California. But examining California’s job growth over the longer term presents a more pessimistic picture. Between February 2020, just before the pandemic struck, and May 2024, the number of US jobs grew by over 6.2 million, while California lost about 402,000 jobs. In contrast, Texas and Florida, two states whose policies are frequently criticized by Newsom, added about 1.1 million and 700,000 jobs, respectively.
Newsom stated that “you shouldn’t have to be a CEO to live a decent life—and in California, you don’t have to be.” But living a decent life in California requires significantly higher household income than in most other states, particularly given California’s housing costs. While Newsom praised many new laws he signed during his tenure to expand housing supply, he did not reference his major 2018 campaign promise of a “Marshall Plan” for housing, with a goal of creating 3.5 million new units by 2025—about five times more than the number that have been built since he took office.
Since Newsom’s inauguration, housing permits have not increased but in fact are below the level that prevailed before he took office. This record is likely even worse than it appears, because in 2023, about 20 percent of new California homes were accessory dwelling units, which are very small homes (averaging around 600 square feet) providing space for one person, maybe two if they get along really well.
Because housing remains scarce, only 17 percent of Californians could afford the state’s median-priced home—$814,280 during the first quarter of 2024—compared to 37 percent affordability at the national level. And California’s affordability statistic is even worse today, as the median-priced home increased to $908,040 in May. Maybe you don’t need to be a CEO to lead a decent life in California, but CEO status clearly helps when it comes to buying a California home.
Newsom argued that the state is fiscally responsible, stating, “In California, you don’t have to be profligate to be progressive. We understand how to balance budgets while protecting working families, children, and the most vulnerable people in this state.” But it is difficult to believe in California’s fiscal responsibility when the state budget rose 63 percent between 2019 and 2024, despite a population loss of about 500,000. Or when a budget emergency was declared so that around $12 billion could be drawn from the state’s rainy-day fund to help balance the 2024–25 and 2025–26 budgets.
Regarding education, Newsom stated that California K–12 education policy reforms are “transformative” and the “most significant in our nation.” I hope he is right, because California K–12 schools have been underperforming for years, with only 25–30 percent of students reaching federal proficiency standards in math and language arts and 25 percent of them chronically absent.
California remains an extraordinary state, but it faces many significant challenges. These challenges are not threats from the political right; rather, they are policy-related problems that have increased the cost of living and reduced the quality of life, particularly for middle- and low-income households. These problems can be fixed, but only if they are recognized as such by the state’s political leadership.
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Australian supermarket chain rediscovers patriotism
Woolworths will put Australian flags back on shelves, just months after the supermarket giant chose not to stock Australia Day merchandise.
Woolworths revealed it will make Aussie flags available to customers ahead of the Paris Olympics and Paralympics.
“With the 2024 Paris Olympic Games beginning later this month, and as a proud Australian retailer, we are pleased once again to be the official Fresh Food Partner of the Australian Olympic & Paralympic teams,” Woolworths said in a statement to staff.
“Given the Australian flag is the official flag of the Australian Olympic Committee and of our team competing in Paris, a locally made handheld Australian flag, made from long lasting materials such as timber and polyester, will also be available for customers to purchase across our Supermarkets and selected Metro stores.”
Woolworths went on to announce flags will now be regularly available for customers, with the supermarket deciding to bring the item in “all year round”.
“Once available in store the locally made handheld flag will be available to purchase all year round from the general merchandise section and also online,” the statement said.
“Locally made handheld Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags will be available for purchase later this year.”
The move comes six months after Woolworths dumped all Australia Day merchandise from stores across the nation, sparking outrage from customers.
In the statement sent to stores across the country, Woolworths said it acknowledges it “disappointed many” when it chose not to sell Australia Day merchandise in January.
“We have listened and accepted that, as a proud Australian retailer, that many in the community expected us to offer customers the choice of purchasing the nation’s flag when shopping with us,” the statement read.
At the time, a Woolworths Group spokesperson said a “gradual decline” in demand for the merchandise over the years and a “broader discussion” about the January 26 date and “what it means” to different parts of the community.
Woolworths has also revealed it will be releasing a limited edition range of “Green and Gold” bakery products as part of the store’s Olympics festivities.
The range will include yellow doughnuts with green sprinkles, green and gold cupcakes and a “smash cake”.
For every product purchase in the new bakery range, $1 will go towards supporting Paralympics Australia.
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9 July, 2024
McKinsey Study That Spawned Corporate DEI Programs Unravels
I smelled a rat in that study as soon as it came out -- and said so.
https://pcwatch.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-case-for-inclusion-and-diversity-in.html
I am pleased now that it has imploded
As the wind slowly goes out of the sails of corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, it’s worth noting just how much purveyors of this nonsense have peddled their ideology under the false premise of data, science, and research.
The Wall Street Journal published an article Friday about how the consulting firm McKinsey announced in 2015 that it had “found a link between profits and executive racial and gender diversity.”
This research was “used by investors, lobbyists, and regulators to push for more women and minority groups on boards, and to justify investing in companies that appointed them.”
It certainly has paid big dividends for peddlers of DEI.
Within five years, there was a massive shift in how many companies hired and conducted their business. In 2020, the DEI ethos metastasized. Companies not only embraced the “racial reckoning,” they began to implement full-scale—and almost certainly illegal—racial quotas.
The study gave corporations air cover to promote ideologically motivated diversity programs while saying that it was simply “good for business.” It wasn’t. What it was good for was transforming the world of Big Business into an outpost of academia.
In that sense, it worked.
But the original pro-business justification has turned out to be a scam.
According to The Wall Street Journal, “academics have tried to repeat McKinsey’s findings and failed, concluding that there is in fact no link between profitability and executive diversity.”
The only thing that the study found was that profitable companies ended up with more diversity—after they had succeeded, not before.
That makes sense in a lot of ways.
Big companies that are highly profitable could more easily afford to simply promote DEI with fewer consequences. A company that’s scrambling to launch itself doesn’t have that luxury.
The authors of the McKinsey study say they’ve found a way to prove correlation between DEI programs and profitability, but even that is in doubt. The Wall Street Journal noted that McKinsey won’t release the names of the companies it used for the study, and it was unable to show benefits from diversity on a large range of metrics.
There was just no link at all between diversity and corporate success.
Now, that may not seem like a big deal. What’s one sham study among many other spurious studies?
One would think it would take more than one study to persuade companies with billions of dollars on the line that using race, gender, and identity over merit is a risky proposal.
But in this case, it matters a whole lot. Not only did many companies adopt the research as true, but the most powerful financial and governmental institutions with vast powers over the market picked it up and used it to foist DEI on corporate America.
From the Journal:
McKinsey’s research figures first in BlackRock’s references for supporting a board diversity target of 30% in its proxy voting guidelines.
It featured prominently among studies used by a Securities and Exchange Commission commissioner in 2020 to explain why she supported corporate disclosure of diversity metrics. Nasdaq cited it as evidence when the exchange applied to the SEC for a rule requiring companies it lists to have minimum diversity on boards, or explain why they don’t.
It has been cited by dozens of campaign groups pushing for rules to support consideration of social issues by pension funds and others, too.
BlackRock, according to the Journal, cited the study as evidence that diversity created financial benefits when it created an exchange-traded fund that tracked a diversity index. That index has done quite poorly, “returning about 55% against more than 70% for the global index without diversity conditions.”
BlackRock has gotten into hot water over its corporate practices and has announced that it is stepping away from environmental, social, and governance investing.
We’ll see if that continues.
What’s been clear to me from the beginning is that DEI is not merely about “diversity” in the general sense. It’s about ensuring a certain mindset.
Paradoxically, the DEI industry is about creating a conformity of worldviews where every institution, every CEO, every employee is roped into the same left-wing beliefs and swims in the same direction. Those who dissent are punished and ostracized.
There is now a growing counter movement to prevent this full-scale transformation. And it’s getting harder for businesses to justify their ideological commitments when they are bleeding money.
Nevertheless, the DEI ethos has dug deep into America’s powerful institutions—and that includes corporate America—despite its increasing unpopularity. Don’t count on its purveyors to suddenly give up after real world failures.
They undoubtedly will say that true DEI hasn’t been tried and will find new ways to impose their ideology on the American people.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/07/03/bogus-study-heart-corporate-dei/
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Cruel and Unusual Punishment for Female Inmates
Sending in “gender-confused” male inmates to rape and bully them is awful
Back in 2021, investigative journalist Abigail Shrier broke the first stories of what women were experiencing inside prisons where gender-confused men were permitted to be detained. What should be common sense to everyone — i.e., men and women should be in separate prisons — is trumped by the radical gender ideologues’ sense of what is “fair.”
We’re halfway through 2024, and the horror stories coming out of female prisons are vile.
Last week, it was announced that a male double murderer was finally being moved back to a men’s prison. The convict, Bryan Kim, murdered both his parents and was convicted. However, Kim had declared that he was actually a woman, and the judge agreed to let him go to the Washington Corrections Center for Women. For the three and a half years that he was there, he had a clean disciplinary record, though he was eventually caught having sex with his cellmate.
He was put into solitary confinement while the woman was released back into the general population. Kim, of course, said this was discrimination because other prisoners engage in sex acts and don’t get disciplined like he did. Many of the other female inmates disagree — the men in their midst are generally an oppressive force.
According to National Review, a “female inmate said she and her friends inside hope that the [Department of Corrections] takes the same action against other male offenders who are disturbing the female population and making them uncomfortable and intimidated in their home. Many incarcerated women, vulnerable and battered from past experiences, need a stable environment for rehabilitation, not to have more chaos introduced, she said.”
It is a fact that many incarcerated women are victims of abuse from men. It is also a fact that being able to put their lives back together is stunted when they have to deal with a threatening male in their community. Women’s rights and lowering recidivism rates are severely ignored and jeopardized by those who have permitted this travesty to occur.
Another recent story from Reduxx entails another trans-identifying murderer. The man allegedly murdered his former lover (who was also a trans-identifying male) and was caught attempting to move the body. In Minnesota, he has been charged as a female and is currently in a female facility.
Of course, not every trans-identifying male who asks to be imprisoned with females is a wolf ready to be set loose amongst the sheep. Some are just mentally unwell and genuinely messed up about sex and sexuality. However, do the biological women in these facilities deserve to have a male inmate as their cellmate? One who could easily overpower and rape them?
Even one male predator in a women’s prison is one too many. Permitting this perversion of the law is cruel and unusual punishment and, therefore, violates the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. The women who are affected are being silenced by those in authority and by the men preying on them. Thus, they are invisible.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/108247-cruel-and-unusual-punishment-for-female-inmates-2024-07-08
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California Courts ‘Sealed My Case to Hide Their Corruption’ as Ex-Wife Seeks ‘to Castrate My Son,’ Father Warns
A Texas father is fighting in court to prevent his ex-wife from subjecting their son to experimental transgender medical interventions after she moved to California, seemingly taking advantage of the Golden State’s “transgender sanctuary” law.
A California judge has taken the extraordinary step of hiding the entire case from the public in the lead-up to trial, and even preventing lawyers from accessing case documents.
“My ex-wife, Anne Georgulas, wants to castrate my son, James,” Jeff Younger, the father, told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday. “Judge Michelle Kazadi denied me access to my own case records. She illegally sealed my case with no public access.”
He also blamed Presiding Judge Shelley Kaufman and Judge Mark Juhas of abusing the system against his claims.
“Judge Shelley Kaufman’s court has misrouted orders to the wrong address,” he added. “Judge Mark Juhas denied me access to crucial evidence by setting a too-early trial date. I can’t even get an independent medical exam of my son.”
“The corrupt Los Angeles courts sealed my case to hide their corruption as they castrate my son,” Younger concluded.
Jeff Younger has been fighting to preserve the bodily integrity of his son, James, since 2018. That year, Georgulas filed a restraining order seeking to prevent Younger from entering James’ school and referring to James as male. A jury declined to give Younger or Georgulas full custody and required Younger’s consent for any medical procedures.
Younger’s legal case drew wide attention, and the father ran for a seat in the Texas House of Representatives, advancing to a primary runoff, which he lost in 2022.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued an official opinion on Feb. 18, 2022, stating that performing any sterilizing medical procedure on a child constitutes felony child abuse. Georgulas later described Texas as having a “dangerous political climate,” and she moved to California in November 2022. Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., had signed state Senate Bill 107, turning California into a “sanctuary state” for “gender-affirming care.”
Younger appealed to the Texas Supreme Court, warning that Georgulas intended to subject his son to irreversible transgender interventions. The court rejected Younger’s case after Georgulas told the court she did not intend to subject her son to those “treatments.” However, in February, she filed a motion in Los Angeles County Superior Court, aiming to dissolve the protective order preventing her from subjecting James to “gender-affirming care.” Georgulas’ motion cites the opinions of psychologist Brigid Mariko Conn, who stated that James “is interested” in “puberty blockers,” estrogen, and “bottom surgery,” i.e. the removal of his penis and testicles.
In April, Younger filed a conflicting expert report from Dr. Miriam Grossman, who stated her opinion that James is not suffering from “gender dysphoria” and that “gender-affirming care” is not effective to treat such a psychological condition, even if he had it.
According to court documents obtained by The Daily Signal, Kazadi filed a motion on May 30 to “deem the case confidential and seal all court records” and to “close all hearings in this matter to the public.”
Juhas subsequently filed a motion on June 5 to modify the case to “confidential,” rather than sealed, but Younger’s attorney, Tracy Henderson, told The Daily Signal that Juhas’ order has not been carried out.
Henderson formally urged the court to reverse the order in a June 28 filing.
“Judge Michelle Kazadi violated the constitutional rights of Respondent Jeffrey Younger, and of the public at large, by issuing the Star Chamber Order — a blatantly illegal decree ‘sealing’ the entire case (both retroactively and going forward), while deeming the entire case “confidential” (closing the courtroom to the public and the news media),” Henderson wrote in a memorandum. “Within hours, an unknown person or persons in this court’s administration caused the entire public-facing record of the case (‘Case Access’) to be deleted, disappeared, and blocked the ability of the public to download any documents from ‘Case Document Images.'”
Younger “has not been able to access the docket to even learn when the civil clerks are setting motion hearings or obtain copies of court orders” and the court sent documents to an address Henderson “has not used in years.”
Henderson’s court filing claims that the sealing of Younger’s case resembles the “top-secret, closed-to-the-public tribunal” in medieval England that became known as the “Star Chamber.” This “Star Chamber helped to maintain tyranny by dispensing with established court procedure,” and this abuse of justice inspired the Anglo-American distrust for secret trials.
“Any argument supporting sealing the entire matter and closing the courtroom fails, as the entire history of American jurisprudence teaches us that a courtroom open to the public is a fundamental component of the justice system itself,” Henderson wrote. She also cited the California Supreme Court’s stringent rules for closed proceedings, adding that “none of these standards were articulated by petitioner, nor found by the ruling court.”
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Federal Court Blocks Title IX Expansion to Include Gender Identity in Texas and Montana
A district judge has granted Texas and Montana’s request for a preliminary injunction against the federal government’s attempt “to impose a sweeping new social policy” that allows for Title IX coverage for gender identity.
The ruling follows others in which federal judges have brought Title IX revisions to a halt.
In the most recent decision, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Kernodle for the Eastern District of Texas ruled that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can’t force state health care providers to fund gender-affirming care by threatening them with the loss of federal funding.
In May 2024, HHS issued a statement on its Final Rule, which expanded the definition of Title IX protections in 2016 to include “discrimination based on the basis of gender identity” to fit in with Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Title IX was initially established in 1972 to protect women from discrimination in public education.
“When Congress enacted the ACA in 2010, no agency—or court—had ever interpreted ‘on the basis of sex’ to mean ‘on the basis of gender identity,’” Judge Kernodle wrote. “But in 2016, HHS began to do so, issuing a rule purporting to implement Section 1557 and prohibiting discrimination on the basis of ‘gender identity.’”
Texas and Montana, two states that exclude gender-affirming care procedures from their Medicaid programs and prohibit doctors from performing them on minors, sued HHS, arguing that the federal health department has no authority to mandate that the states adhere to these revisions.
HHS said in its statement that the regulations were updated to prevent “dehumanizing beliefs” surrounding medical treatments and conditions such as gender dysphoria.
“The Department will approach gender dysphoria as it would any other disorder or condition,” HHS said in its Final Rule. “If a disorder or condition affects one or more body systems, it may be considered a physical or mental impairment.”
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said the Final Rule’s intent is to “strengthen protections” and ensure “equal access to this nation’s health care system and its social service programs for people with disabilities and their families.”
“It is comprehensive in scope, advancing justice for people with disabilities and helping to ensure they are not discriminated against under any program or activity receiving funding from HHS just because they have a disability,” Mr. Becerra said.
Judge Kernodle wrote in his order that the Final Rule proposes an “absurd” policy in that health care entities are prohibited from limiting services exclusive to one sex, such as providing a prostate exam.
The Final Rule would also allow men who identify as females to be allowed in “female-exclusive facilities, including shared hospital rooms.”
The Final Rule also affects health insurance coverage such as Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Judge Kernodle wrote.
“As applied to state-sponsored insurance plans like Medicaid and CHIP [Children’s Health Insurance Program], the Final Rule has the effect of requiring states to pay for ‘transition’ and other ‘gender-affirming’ procedures,” he said.
As in other rulings on this issue, the primary reason for Judge Kernodle’s decision was that the states demonstrated that they would face irreparable financial harm by failing to comply with HHS’s rule.
Both states receive billions in federal funding, he wrote, which would “likely be withheld for violating the Final Rule,” he wrote.
Plaintiffs in up to 15 states, including Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, and Mississippi, filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Mississippi.
Judge Gurioloa said the plaintiffs have proven that they would “incur substantial costs” by losing federal funding if they didn’t comply with the Final Rule, which was the deciding factor in his order.
“As a result, the Court finds that Plaintiffs have established all four elements for imposing a preliminary injunction and stay,” he wrote.
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8 July, 2024
Offensive statues
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Israeli Airstrike Kills Senior Hamas Official In Gaza City
When you start a war people will die
An Israeli airstrike in Gaza City resulted in the death of a senior official in the Hamas-run government, as reported by the organization. Ehab al-Ghussein, the Deputy Minister of Labor, was among four individuals killed in the strike on the Holy Family School in Gaza City, according to Hamas.
The Civil Defense Directorate in Gaza Governorate managed to recover the bodies of the deceased and assist several injured individuals following the attack on the school, which was providing shelter to a significant number of displaced persons in the western part of Gaza City.
Al-Ghussein, aged 45, had been serving as the Deputy Minister of Labor in Gaza since 2020 and was also the Head of the Emergency Committee for the Civil Service of the Northern Gaza Strip. Tragically, in May, his sister and wife were also killed in an Israeli airstrike.
Al-Ghussein was Deputy Minister of Labor in Gaza and had lost family members in previous strikes.
Israeli airstrike in Gaza City killed Hamas official Ehab al-Ghussein.
Israeli military targeted a complex believed to house terrorists near a school.
The Israeli military confirmed conducting strikes in the area, stating that the target was a complex where terrorists were believed to be operating and seeking refuge near a school building in Gaza City. The military emphasized taking precautions to minimize civilian casualties, including utilizing precise aerial surveillance and additional intelligence.
In a separate incident, an Israeli attack on UNRWA’s Al-Jaouni school in al-Nuseirat camp in central Gaza resulted in the deaths of at least 16 Palestinians and injuries to 50 others, as per the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The school was being used as a shelter for displaced individuals at the time of the strike.
The Israeli military's statement indicated that militants were utilizing structures within the school area for their operations. The situation remains tense in the region as such incidents continue to escalate, causing significant loss of life and injuries.
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New York Losing More Taxpayers to Outmigration
New York lost more than $14.1 billion in state-adjusted gross income over a two-year period as residents fled to New Jersey, Florida and other low-tax states, according to newly released Internal Revenue Service data.
The data, based on income tax returns, shows New York lost more than 222,702 residents in the 2021 and 2022 calendar years driven by “domestic out-migration” of people moving to other states. The data shows the state lost more than $14.1 billion in taxable income during those two years.
An estimated 476,051 filers and their dependents moved to other states between 2021 and 2022, a slight drop of 2% from the previous year’s outmigration, according to the IRS data. This was offset by the 253,349 filers and dependents who moved into New York from other states in the same period – an increase of nearly 13% from the 2020-21 inflow.
New Jersey and Florida were the biggest beneficiaries of New York’s transplants. More than 88,344 people moved from New York to Florida, taking $9.5 billion. Another 79,883 New Yorkers moved to neighboring New Jersey, bringing about $6 billion in income with them.
New Yorkers also fled the state for Pennsylvania, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia, according to the data.
The exact loss of the state’s tax coffers is difficult to gauge because New Yorkers are taxed at variable rates depending on their income. New York City’s top earners are taxed at 14.776%, which includes the state’s 10.9% rate and the city’s 3.876% rate – the highest top-tier tax rate in the nation.
But the decline continues a trend that critics attribute to the state’s high cost of living, a pressing housing shortage and other issues that are prompting exits.
The latest U.S. Census estimates, released in May, shows New York outmigration of 216,778 between 2022 and 2023. Between 2020 and 2023 the state lost 482,257 residents, according to the data. Nowhere was the state’s outmigration more prevalent than in New York City. The nation’s largest city with a population of 8.2 million had a net loss of nearly 78,000 residents moving out of the city between 2022 and 2023.
Experts say the outmigration has less to do with politics than it does with a lack of housing, prevailing wages and access to employment.
However, federal data shows that the population decline has major implications for the states, revenue and tax collections.
Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has blamed a lack of housing as a primary reason New Yorkers are fleeing the state, making the case for expanding housing stock and making existing homes more affordable.
“People aren’t moving for warmer weather or lower taxes. They’re moving next door,” Hochul said in her State of the State address in January. “Three of the top five states New Yorkers are moving to share our borders and have similar taxes. People are earning in New York but living in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut.”
Republicans say New York’s outmigration is being driven largely by the state’s highest-in-the-nation tax burden and a business sector that is struggling under excessive regulations, as well as rising labor cost
https://heartlanddailynews.com/2024/07/new-york-losing-taxpayers-outmigration/
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If Biden is replaced, the new candidate will still inherit Biden economy as unemployment up 1.1 million since Dec. 2022
By Robert Romano
The U.S. unemployment rate ticked up once again to 4.1 percent in June, according to the latest data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in what is surely bad new for President Joe Biden and whomever might be considered to replace him on the ballot as the Democratic nominee should he step aside.
No matter what, whether it’s Vice President Kamala Harris or someone else, that person would inherit the Biden economy, which has seen unemployment increase by 1.1 million since Dec. 2022 to its present 6.8 million level. Another 162,000 became unemployed in June alone.
Meanwhile, when inflation was peaking in 2022, the growth of consumer credit peaked at 9.9 percent annually in April 2022, but in April 2024 (the most recent reading) that growth rate has slowed down significantly to just 1.9 percent growth of consumer credit.
This is what typically happens after peak employment as the economy overheats, the American people max out their credit and curb purchases, and inflation cools. Eventually this leads to layoffs and upheaval, and has been seen the unemployment rate rise from its April 2023 low of 3.4 percent now up to 0.7 percent to the current 4.1 percent.
Meaning, whether it’s President Biden in the White House and on the ballot, or Harris, a slowing economy will definitely be weighing on voters’ minds, who are still reeling from the inflation seen the past few years.
That might make Harris or whoever else Democrats come up with as not much more than a sacrificial lamb. Besides the obvious economic concerns that might make holding onto the Presidency more difficult for the incumbent party, the sheer chaos of replacing a sitting president potentially against his will — there is talk of invoking the 25th Amendment to remove the enfeebled Biden — will almost certainly not be seen by the American people as a vote of confidence in the current administration.
Even a voluntary resignation by Biden, yielding the White House to Harris, might not quiet concerns, especially if Biden’s health problems have been widely known for some time now, as questions will shift to the new president about what she knew and when she knew it.
Even on policy, when questions about the economy come up, assurances by Harris that the economy remains strong and unemployment relatively low may ring hollow and unauthentic. If Harris could not properly evaluate the President’s mental fitness when under the 25th Amendment that’s her job, how can she be trusted to properly evaluate the lingering impacts of inflation and their aftereffects on the economy including labor markets?
Harris would be forced to say that she supported Biden’s policies 100 percent, including all the spending that has fueled the inflation as the M2 money supply grew by almost $7 trillion during and after Covid amid a spending, borrowing and printing binge by Congress and the Federal Reserve.
In other words, Democrats including Biden and whoever might replace him, own the economy, own the inflation and own any future unemployment that ensues. There’s already 1.1 million more jobless since peak employment, and the situation might not improve much before November for the incumbents. As usual, stay tuned.
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7 July, 2024
Very Presidential
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David Tennant’s attack on women shows all that’s wrong with wokeness
It’s amazing what you can get away with when you call yourself a “trans ally”.
If a normal bloke were to get up on a stage and tell a woman to “shut up”, he’d be done for. He’d face death by a thousand columns. Right-thinking writers would denounce him as a sexist old goat. The threat of cancellation would dangle like Damocles’s sword over his head.
But a trans ally? A man who chants “Trans women are women” to prove his fealty to the religion of woke?
He can bark “Shut up” at a woman as he pleases and his audience won’t so much as bat an eyelid. In fact, they will clink their champagne glasses and rattle their jewellery in giddy approval of his sexist command to uppity women.
Consider the case of David Tennant, the Scottish actor, former Doctor Who and celebrated “trans ally”.
At the LGBT Awards in London at the end of last month, Tennant was crowned Celebrity Ally of the year. The awards organisers gushed over his tireless efforts on behalf of the LGBT community, including the fact that he “often does red-carpet interviews while wearing pins associated with the community”.
Wearing badges to swanky soirees? What unbounded bravery! Not all heroes wear capes – some wear pins.
As he collected his gong for – let’s be honest – virtue-signalling, Tennant had a message for Kemi Badenoch. She is Britain’s most prominent black female politician. She’s a bright young thing of the Conservative Party who served as the minister for women under Rishi Sunak. She is brilliant. She gets Brexit, bristles at wokeness, and abhors cancel culture.
So, naturally, she irks the right-on. She especially vexes trans activists with her repeated blasphemies against the trans faith. For instance, she thinks no biological male should be allowed into women-only spaces. And she has revolted against the teaching of lunatic ideas to schoolkids, including that there are 72 genders. Or whatever the number is now. I lose count.
A woman who believes in biological sex and women’s freedom of association? Quick, fetch the ducking stool!
At the LGBT Awards, Tennant had cross words for Badenoch. Clinging to his silly trophy, his face a mix of smugness and fury, he bellowed something truly shocking into the mic. He said he’s looking forward to a future in which “we wake up and Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist anymore”.
Yes, that’s right – a privileged white man was wishing for the disappearance of a pesky black woman. He continued: “I don’t wish ill of her … I just wish her to shut up.”
There it was: a bloke issuing a stern instruction to a woman. The way he said “Shut up” felt chilling. It was sharp, vindictive and with a pop on the “p” in “up” so that everyone would know exactly what he wants That Woman to do: “Shut UP”.
The audience reaction? They whooped and cheered. They delighted in Tennant’s vision of a post-Kemi world. It was a testament to the moral immunity enjoyed by “trans allies” and woke folk more broadly. Just imagine if a right-wing bloke used his public platform to tell Michelle Obama to put a sock in it. Or if he said he longs for the day when Michelle Obama no longer existed. All hell would break loose. He’d be branded a bigot, even a danger.
But a “trans ally” taking aim at a conservative woman? Knock yourself out. The kind of people who have the BLM fist in their social-media bios and who say things like “Lift up black women’s voices” will chortle into their sauvignon blanc at your tres amusing dream of the end of Kemi, whose only crime is to understand science.
And, amazingly, it got worse. On the red carpet at the ceremony, Tennant was asked what he thought of people who raise concerns about transgenderism. “(They’re) a tiny bunch of little whinging f..kers who are on the wrong side of history and they’ll all go away soon,” he barked.
He had called for more “human decency” in his acceptance speech and yet here he was damning those who disagree with him as “f..kers” who should “go away”. Seriously, Dave, what’s this obsession with making people disappear?
It took five days for Tennant’s comments to cause a media storm. That means everyone who attended the awards ceremony, and filmed it, and covered it for the LGBT press, thought it was fine that this man slammed Badenoch and other whingeing f..kers.
It was only when an eagle-eyed tweeter posted clips of Tennant’s meltdown that others could finally say: “This is bad.”
At last, Tennant got the pushback he richly deserved. Badenoch branded him a “rich, lefty, white male” who clearly doesn’t care much for “the safety of women and girls”.
Then JK Rowling, chief “TERF”, queen of the reality-based community, got involved. People like Tennant, she said, are allowed to say whatever they want about women because, as members of the “Gender Taliban”, they enjoy “special dispensation”. Truly they are a “holy caste”, she said.
As for his wild swipe at “whingeing f..kers”, Rowling said: “(He) is talking about rape survivors who want female-only care … girls and women losing sporting opportunities … female prisoners incarcerated with convicted sex offenders”.
She’s right. Those are the “whingers”. Those are the “f..kers”. Women who want their own spaces. Women who don’t want to be locked up with rapists. Women who – brace yourselves – demand privacy and dignity.
These women rile the trans lobby. Why? Because in reasonably requesting women-only zones, they prick the entire illusion that sex is changeable and that someone with a penis can be a woman, and that the feelings of men who identify as female should override the truth of biological sex and the sanctity of women’s spaces.
Their very existence is a fly in the ointment of the trans delusion. No wonder some people would prefer it if their existence ended.
The Tennant affair has shone an unforgiving light on what passes for “progressive” activism these days.
There’s a horrible misconception that those of us who criticise “political correctness” want to turn the clock back to a time when women were in the kitchen and black people were at the back of the bus.
Not a bit of it. What worries me most about wokeness is that it is reversing some of the great and truly progressive gains of the 20th century – including racial equality and women’s liberation.
Wokeness has rehabilitated racial thinking, with its constant instruction that we view all whites as “privileged” and all blacks as “oppressed”. And it has breathed life back into misogyny, leading to a situation where blokes can barge into women’s spaces and damn any woman who says “Get out” as a transphobe, a bigot, a witch.
That self-righteous activists and luvvies can gather at a plush do in London and laugh their heads off as a man tells a woman to pipe down is proof of how thoroughly the left has lost the plot.
It’s their regressive thinking that really needs to disappear.
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Tiny homes could go up, helping to ease the housing crisis — if zoning police would allow them
Tiny House Hand Up submitted plans in 2021 for a community of southern-style cottages. Each single-family unit would be 540 to 600 square feet — the perfect size for recent college graduates, lower-income individuals, or anyone looking to declutter their lives.
This is exactly what policy-makers say they want. Yet when the charity tried to break ground in Calhoun County, the zoning police shut down the project. The reason? Code enforcers insist that new houses in the area must have at least 1,200 square feet of living space.
As supporters of the rule testified during public hearings, the idea is to keep out the “riffraff.”
Tiny House Hand Up fought back with a lawsuit, and the case is pending. Our public-interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, represents the charity as part of our Zoning Justice Project.
Other clients have faced similar challenges nationwide.
Chasidy Decker tried to live in her tiny house on wheels, which she parked on her landlord’s property behind a fence in Meridian, Idaho. Amanda Root tried to live in a recreational vehicle on her trailer-park lot, which she owns without a mortgage in Sierra Vista, Ariz. And the Catherine H. Barber Memorial Shelter tried to relocate to a business district in North Carolina.
The zoning police opposed each project.
Elsewhere, cities and counties routinely deny permits for auxiliary dwelling units, sometimes called “granny flats” or “backyard cottages.” They impose parking restrictions, limit multifamily housing, and label entire neighborhoods as blighted — even when no blight exists — so they can clear out existing homes for commercial development.
Officials in Ocean Springs, Miss., applied the “blight” designation quietly in 2023, so residents in one neighborhood did not learn what was happening until after a vote occurred. Now, family homes that have been handed down for generations are at risk of demolition. The city even wants to tear down a renovated two-story house on the National Register of Historic Places.
Some states recognize the harm. Lawmakers in California, Oregon, Massachusetts, Montana, and Utah have passed reforms in recent years to ease zoning burdens. Other jurisdictions get bogged down in the bureaucracy. New York mayor Eric Adams launched an initiative in 2023 to address “outdated, highly restrictive, and overly complicated” zoning laws. But all that has happened so far is talk.
Officials in Gainesville, Fla., eased restrictions on residential properties in 2022 but backtracked in 2023 before anyone could benefit. And Virginia lawmakers considered granting statewide permission for accessory dwelling units but tabled the measure in 2023.
Meanwhile, families are hurting. One recent survey shows half of U.S. homeowners and renters are struggling with skyrocketing housing costs. Young adults cannot afford starter homes. Renters cannot afford leases. Some people cannot afford anything. Families experiencing homelessness increased by 16 percent in 2023 compared with 2022.
“The cost of building housing is staggering, and there is a serious need for affordable housing,” says Cindy Tucker, former director of Tiny House Hand Up. “We are proposing 30 to 40 homes, but the government just will not let us build them.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/06/big-government-is-going-after-tiny-homes
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How the Grants Pass Decision Shapes Local Approaches to Homeless Encampments
The Supreme Court’s recent ruling in The City of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson will allow cities to enforce ordinances against sleeping in public spaces. This decision is a welcome victory in favor of local autonomy against federal overreach. Homelessness is a local problem that requires local solutions, and this decision will allow officials to address homeless encampments according to their city’s unique needs.
Homelessness is not a crime, but many people suffering from homelessness—particularly those suffering from mental illness or substance-abuse disorder—require intervention. Far from arresting and jailing people merely for sleeping on the street, law enforcement officers have helped many formerly homeless individuals receive the help they need, often through diversion programs that keep people out of prison while ushering them into treatment programs. The Grants Pass decision prevents the federal government from impeding such policies for cities that choose to pursue them.
City governments also have a delegated authority to protect public spaces for the safety of the housed and unhoused alike. Homeless encampments are frequent sources of open-air drug use, biohazard waste, public indecency, and fires, and their presence is detrimental to nearby businesses, homeowners, and other neighborhood residents. Local authorities could not meet their responsibility to the public in addressing these issues with their hands tied by federal judges living thousands of miles away.
The majority decision in the Grants Pass case does not mandate that cities or states adopt any specific policy regarding encampments, and this is precisely what makes the ruling so important. Federal judges, however wise, lack the knowledge of local conditions necessary to crafting city policy. As different localities take different approaches to homeless encampments, we will be able to judge better which policies produce the best outcomes for the unhoused population and the public at large.
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4 July, 2024
A good 4th July for Trump
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Identical twins separated at birth have near-identical IQs
This is an old, old finding, yet another confirmation of what is known. It always emerges when you study twin IQs
Identical Chinese twins separated at birth by the nation's draconian one-child policy grew up to have almost identical IQs, a fascinating study reveals.
The research, led by Dr Nancy Segal an expert in psychology from the University of California, considered one of the world's leading experts on twins, examined the intelligence scores of 15 pairs of identical twins adopted by different families.
Fourteen pairs of twins were female due to Chinese culture traditionally favouring male children, a bias which led to female children, including twins, being abandoned by parents during China's one-child policy which ran from 1980 to 2016.
These genetically identical twins were separated and raised in different environments — and sometimes even in different countries.
This provided scientists with the rare opportunity to test if nature or nurture was the most important factor for IQ.
The twins underwent IQ tests twice, once when they were, on average, 11-years-old and then again, after some years had passed, when they had an average age of 14.
Comparing the results between the twin pairs over time the researchers discovered their scores were nearly identical.
Publishing their results in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, the authors wrote: 'Despite their different homes, educational experiences, and (in some cases) residences in different countries, the twins appear to have interacted with their environments in ways that aligned with their genetic propensities.
'This supports the notion that environments do not act randomly in fashioning developmental outcomes — rather, individuals behave selectively and actively with respect to the people, places and events that engage and challenge them.'
Dr Segal said that the older twins got the more their IQ scores seemed to align in the long term.
'As genetic factors kick in, the environment drops out. So they become more alike with time,' she told The Times.
She based this finding off another aspect of the study which examined data from nine pairs of Danish identical twins who underwent similar IQ tests as adults.
While the data on this group of twins was more limited that the Chinese cohort, it similarly showed that twin pairs tended to match each other for changes in IQ between the two tests.
Concluding their study the authors said the results suggest that 'twins can be expected to achieve similar results on school tests, whereas unrelated siblings can be expected to achieve different outcomes.'
They continued: 'Knowing this will help parents and educators tailor their treatment, resource provision, and expectations of different children within families.
IQ stands for intelligence quotient and it is used to measure mental ability.
The score is achieved by dividing a person's mental age, obtained with an intelligence test, by their age.
Test questions focus on abilities such as mathematical skills, memory, spatial perception, and language abilities.
The resulting fraction is then multiplied by 100 to obtain an IQ score.
An IQ of 100 has long been considered the median, or most often achieved, score.
Because of the way the test results are scaled, a person with an IQ of 60 is not necessarily half as intelligent as someone with an IQ of 120.
Although the accuracy of intelligence tests is somewhat disputed, they are still widely used.
To be accepted into Mensa, the 'high-IQ society', a person by score in the top two per cent of the general population.
This currently means having an IQ of at least 132.
Dr Segal and the other authors acknowledged an obvious limitation of their study is the overall small number of participants, a somewhat unavoidable factor given the rarity of identical twins being separated at birth.
As such they say the results should be interpreted with caution.
Dr Segal added: 'Should parents and educators throw their hands up in despair?
'Absolutely not. Everybody can become smarter. But we’re not going to all be the same.'
While the latest study suggested separated twins has similar IQs some case examples have shown the opposite.
Dr Segal has previously reported the remarkable case of two identical Korean twins separated in 1976, one raised in South Korea the other in the US after they went missing.
Tracked down 40 years later, they showed remarkably similar personality traits but differed when it came to IQ with the American twin 16 points behind her genetically identical sibling.
It bears mentioning the American twin had suffered three concussions in life that her South Korean counterpart hadn't, and this may have influenced the results.
Measuring IQ and equating it to 'intelligence' in real life has proved controversial.
For example, some experts highlight that people can score highly on IQ tests which measure logic, abstract reasoning, learning ability and memory, but struggle to apply these day to day.
Identical twins are those born from the same fertilized eggs which then splits into two genetical identical embryos.
They differ from non-identical twins which happen when two separate eggs are released and then fertilised at the same time.
Identical twins have been linked to various have been linked to various shared behaviours before.
Some studies have found twins are likely to share nail biting habits, and reports have emerged that some twins share cancer symptoms even if only one of them is suffering the disease.
Perhaps the most starting twin stories come from pairs who were separated at birth but share remarkedly similar lives.
One of the most famous examples of this are the 'Jim twins' Jim Lewis and Jim Springer who were separated at birth.
Dr Segal, who has written about their case, said that despite being raised in different environments the pair both suffered tension headaches, bit their fingernails, smoked the same cigarette brand, both enjoyed woodworking, and even vacationed on the same Florida beach.
The leading expert on twins also worked with another pair separated at birth Ann Hunt and Elizabeth Hamel who were only reunited at the age of 78.
Ann from Aldershot, Hampshire, didn’t even know she had a sibling until her daughter Samantha Stacey discovered Elizabeth while tracing their family tree.
Whereas Elizabeth always knew she had a twin but had given up hope of ever finding her, and had moved to Portland, Oregon, USA.
They have earned a place in the Guinness Book Of World Records as the longest time apart for reunited twins after their emotional reunion in Los Angeles, California.
The girls were born out of wedlock in 1936 in Aldershot and their mother Alice Patience Lamb couldn’t cope and both were to be adopted.
But domestic servant Alice couldn’t find anyone to adopt Elizabeth, because she had a curvature of the spine so only gave Ann up.
When the pair finally made contact, they both learned they had married men named Jim.
Dr Segal who funded their trip to be reunited said at the time: 'Fascinating work on separated twins shows that here are twins growing up in totally different families, sometimes even totally different cultures, and yet they bring with them similar types of attitudes - in politics, religion, social behaviour.
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Thank Walmart, not Biden or Trump, for Lower Insulin Prices
With election season upon us and polling data showing that affordable health care remains a top voter concern, President Biden and former President Donald Trump, his presumptive opponent, are both taking credit for capping insulin prices.
The back-and-forth began when Fox News’ John Roberts stated that then-President Trump had signed an executive order in 2020 to lower the price of insulin to $35 a month. Biden-Harris HQ called the statement “a blatant lie,” insisting that “Trump did not cap insulin costs, President Biden did for seniors through the Inflation Reduction Act.”
Mr. Trump struck back on Truth Social, claiming that “Low INSULIN PRICING was gotten for millions of Americans by me, and the Trump Administration, not by ... Joe Biden. He had NOTHING to do with it.”
So who deserves credit: Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump?
The answer is, neither. Rather, Walmart deserves most of the credit.
Mr. Trump’s 2020 Executive Order 13937 would have capped out-of-pocket insulin prices at $35 per month. But the executive order applied only to individuals enrolled in some 1,700 Medicare Part-D prescription drug plans administered through a small group of health services centers. Of the more than 18 million Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes, 8 million, at most, would have been affected.
The executive order, however, wasn’t scheduled to take effect until January 2021. By then, the Trump administration was history. Mr. Biden could have allowed the order to stand, but he balked.
The story doesn’t end there. In August 2022, Mr. Biden signed the mammoth catchall spending bill known as the Inflation Reduction Act, which, according to a Department of Health and Human Services summary, capped out-of-pocket insulin spending “at $35 per month’s supply of each insulin product covered under a Medicare Part D plan, with similar limits for out-of-pocket costs for insulin supplied under [Medicare] Part B.” The caps went into effect in January and July 2023, respectively.
So, the basic facts are these: If Mr. Biden hadn’t short-circuited the Trump executive order, many older Americans would have seen their insulin costs capped at $35 a month starting in January 2021, some 3½ years ago. Under the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, more seniors became eligible for price-controlled insulin in January and July of last year.
But there’s also an important backstory, which involves two political falsehoods: First, that large numbers of diabetics were paying outrageously high prices for needed insulin, and second, that the solution to this (largely nonexistent) “life-and-death” problem required Washington to step in and save the day.
Mr. Biden described his heroics at a campaign event this past spring: “It [insulin] was costing 400 bucks a month on average. It now costs $35 a month.” But as fact-checkers at PolitiFact pointed out, “One government estimate for out-of-pocket insulin costs found that people with diabetes enrolled in Medicare or private insurance paid an average of $452 a year—not a month.”
Even the HHS summary touting the Inflation Reduction Act insulin provisions conceded that there was no cost crisis: “Nationally,” HHS says, “the average out-of-pocket cost was $58 per insulin fill.”
This is where Walmart enters the picture.
The ubiquitous retailer has sold inexpensive products for people with diabetes, including its house brand insulin, ReliOn (manufactured by Novo Nordisk), for over 20 years. One formulation still costs less than $25 a vial.
This and other older insulins lack many features that more modern insulin products provide, but they are effective for many diabetics and have helped keep the price of newer insulins in check—as did the arrival, in 2019, of Eli Lilly’s Lispro, a generic insulin. Several other generics are also available.
Millions of Americans with diabetes had access to reasonably priced insulin without presidential grandstanding.
Though $35 a vial may be less than many were paying, there’s a hidden cost in what Mr. Trump attempted and Mr. Biden achieved: When politicians dictate prices, whether for a vial of insulin or any other product, economic liberty and the competitive market economy are eroded.
The best way to control prices is by encouraging competition and consumer choice. Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are fighting to get credit for something that never should have been done.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14972
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Single happy photo of freed Jarryd Hayne posing with his wife and lawyers sparks a furious war of words - as his high-profile barrister staunchly defends her client
I am glad to see a high profile defence of the man. Ever since the Barry Mannix case in 1984, I have always taken a particular interest in miscarriages of justice and false accusations. I have previously argued that Hayne was a victim of a false rape accusation:
https://australian-politics.blogspot.com/2024/06/was-footballer-jarryd-hayne-victim-of.html
Jarryd Hayne's barrister has become embroiled in a furious LinkedIn row where she launched an extraordinary attack on his rape accuser and defended the rugby league star's character.
Margaret Cunneen SC shared a celebratory image of Hayne, 36, with his wife Amellia Bonnici and solicitor Lauren McDougall to LinkedIn last week, with the group posing in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
In her caption, Ms Cunneen celebrated 'justice at last' - after the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal quashed his rape conviction - and described the freed former Parramatta Eels star as a 'fine and decent man'.
But that did not go down well among some members of Ms Cunneen's professional network, with another senior lawyer, former barrister Michael McDonald, furiously objecting to the veteran barrister's characterisation of Hayne.
Mr McDonald said that he was pleased Hayne's 'appeal has been upheld and hope the persecution of him is finally over.'
But, he added: 'Respectfully, 'fine and decent' men do not engage in the type of conduct in which Jarryd Hayne engaged.'
Ms Cunneen fired back: 'You don't know what happened'.
She then went on to claim the footballer's trousers were unopened during his ill-fated encounter with his female accuser at New Lambton, in Newcastle, in 2018.
Mr McDonald was referring to Hayne's conduct on the night which resulted in his being charged with rape.
Hayne's criminal trials were told that he paid a taxi driver $550 to wait 46 minutes while he went into a house to have sex with a young woman.
The encounter resulted in three rape trials, two convictions and 23 months' jail time. Both convictions were eventually overturned, the latest last month.
One of the three NSW Criminal Court of Appeal judges who heard Hayne's appeal, Justice Deborah Sweeney, was opposed to putting the case before another jury, arguing a fourth trial 'would not be in the interests of justice'.
The DPP decided against running a fourth trial on June 25.
Ms Cunneen specifically thanked Justice Sweeney in her photo, saying Hayne was celebrating 'justice at last'.
But she took a different tone with Mr McDonald. 'You have not seen (the accuser's) fingernails - filed to points more than a bishop's mitre. Total 2 years? Please.'
During Hayne's trials it was alleged the woman was left bleeding after the sexual encounter, and when she complained via text she was 'hurting really badly', Hayne texted back 'go doctor tomorrow'.
Mr McDonald then replied, 'my comment comprises two sentences, let me reverse their order'.
'To be clear, his prosecution has been an absolute travesty and, like in the late Cardinal Pell's case, I was confident that he would eventually be cleared on appeal.
'However, in my humble opinion, a 'fine and decent man'; especially when he is married, and a father, would not have placed himself and his relationship with his wife and children in the place that Jarryd did.'
Hayne was not married to Amellia Bonnici in September 2018 when the 26-year-old woman who accused him of the Newcastle rape claimed she had been sexually assaulted. They were, however, already a couple.
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3 July, 2024
Social Media Does Not Cause Harm to Children, Meta VP Claims
I am inclined to agree with this. I let my son play computer games to his heart's content in his childhood and he now has a highly-paid job using advanced computer skills
Meta Vice President and Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis says she does not believe social media has “done harm to our children.”
At a recent social media inquiry, Nationals MP Andrew Wallace raised the issue with Ms. Davis, who on several occasions, rejected claims that digital platforms such as Facebook and Instagram hurt young individuals.
Some of the harms discussed by MPs included mental health problems, online bullying, and fostering improper perceptions of what is a healthy body.
Mr. Wallace asked whether Ms. Davis would stand by her previous statements.
In response, the Meta vice president once again said she did not think that social media had caused harm.
“I don’t think that social media has done harm to our children,” the VP said.
“I think that social media has provided tremendous benefits,” she said, noting that teenagers have used social to build community, stay connected to friends and pursue their interests.
“I think that issues of teen mental health are complex and multifactorial.
“I think that it is our responsibility as a company to ensure that teens can be able to take advantage of those benefits of social media in a safe and positive environment.”
Meta Claims It Is Providing Safe, Positive Experiences
At the same time, Ms. Davis said Meta was committed to providing a safe and positive experience for children.
Using the example of teenagers struggling with an eating disorder, she said her company had implemented a number of measures to ensure that it was not exacerbating teenagers’ problem.
“For example, we have a policy against diet ads for teens. We do not allow the promotion of eating disorder content on our platform. We’ve built classifiers to remove it,” Ms. Davis said.
“If a teen searches for that type of content on our platform, we actually provide resources. We pop up resources to redirect them.
“We make efforts to try to support people who may be having those types of issues and ensure that we are not contributing to those issues that that individual may be dealing with.”
However, Mr. Wallace was not satisfied with Ms. Davis’s answer.
“I’ve got to say, dealing with Meta is like dealing with big tobacco in the 1960s and the 1970s. You can’t be taken seriously,” he said.
Despite Ms. Davis’s claims, a 2023 study by The University of Sydney indicated that adolescents were subject to a wide range of negative experiences.
Specifically, 54 percent of the respondents said they felt they were wasting time when using social media, while 37 percent thought they overused social media apps.
In addition, 27 percent suffered from sleep deprivation and 17 percent experienced online bullying.
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‘Limiting ultra-processed foods may not always result in healthy diet’
Limiting ultra-processed foods (UPFs) may not always result in a healthy and nutritious diet, experts have said.
UPFs are widely viewed as unhealthy because they contain high amounts of saturated fat, sugars and salt.
But scientists said cutting down on UPFs may not necessarily lead to a healthier diet – because the system used to label foods based on the level of processing, known as Nova, does not look at nutritional values.
For example, some packaged foods such as unsweetened apple sauce, filtered milk, liquid egg whites, and some brands of raisins and canned tomatoes can be classed as ultra-processed, even though these are “nutrient dense”, the team said.
The researchers also found certain foods that are labelled as minimally processed by Nova can be more expensive, have a shorter shelf life, and provide a poor diet.
Presenting the findings at the American Society for Nutrition conference in Chicago, Dr Julie Hess, a research nutritionist at the United States Department of Agriculture (Usda), said: “This study indicates that it is possible to eat a low-quality diet even when choosing mostly minimally processed foods.
“It also shows that more-processed and less-processed diets can be equally nutritious (or non-nutritious), but the more-processed diet may have a longer shelf life and be less costly.”
For the study, the researchers created two breakfast menus, both containing jam on toast and eggs cooked in different ways.
The “less-processed” menu, which featured homemade jam and bread and poached egg with bacon, derived 20% of its calories from UPFs.
The “more-processed” breakfast, which contained shop-bought jam and bread, egg toast made with ham, and hash browns, derived 67% of its calories from ultra-processed foods.
Both meals received a “low” score of about 43-44 out of 100 in the Healthy Eating Index, a tool used to measure diet quality based on how well it aligns with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
But the less processed menu was more than twice as expensive and reached its expiry date over three times faster without delivering any additional nutritional value, the researchers said.
Dr Hess said: “The results of this study indicate that building a nutritious diet involves more than a consideration of food processing as defined by Nova.
“The concepts of ‘ultra-processed’ foods and ‘less-processed’ foods need to be better characterised by the nutrition research community.”
Commenting on the research, Dr Hilda Mulrooney, a reader in nutrition and health at London Metropolitan University, said the study “illustrates a major problem many dietitians and nutritionists have with the Nova classification system, namely that it distinguishes foods only on the basis of their degree of processing and not on their nutritional value”.
She said that “rejecting foods on the basis of their degree of processing would risk removing many foods which could add considerable nutritional value to diets”.
Dr Mulrooney said that, in the UK, that many foods classified by the Nova system as ultra processed, such as some breakfast cereals and high-street breads, make “important contributions” to a person’s dietary intake.
She added: “Without them, there is a risk that some groups might not meet the recommended intakes of key nutrients.”
Dr Mulrooney also said cost is also “a really important consideration” when it comes to choosing what foods to eat.
“Foods that last and are affordable are not only likely to be more attractive options to many, but to be the only options for some,” she said.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nova-chicago-london-metropolitan-university-b2571476.html
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A Religious Freedom Case for "YIGBY"
Some churches want to use their properties to get around local-government barriers to housing construction
I recently wrote about the "YIGBY" ("Yes in God's Backyard") movement, which seeks to empower churches and other religious organizations build housing on their property that would otherwise be banned by zoning restrictions. Notre Dame law Prof. Patrick Reidy (who is also a Catholic priest) recently published an article in the Yale Law Journal arguing that YIGBYism is required by constitutional and statutory laws protecting religious liberty. Here 's the abstract:
In recent years, faith communities across the United States have begun to create affordable housing on church property, inspired by sincerely held religious beliefs. Some are building microhomes behind their houses of worship. Others are converting residences once used by religious ministers—from rectories to abbeys to convents—into units for seniors and low-income families. Still others are repurposing their vacant schools, church parking lots, and undeveloped parcels of land for denser multifamily structures, from townhouses to apartment buildings. Within housing-advocacy circles and among faith communities, these continent-wide efforts to create affordable housing on church property have manifested an affirmative declaration: "Yes, In God's Backyard."
Legal scholarship and popular media have extensively documented the affordable-housing crisis. In particular, scholars and commentators have underscored the pernicious role of exclusionary zoning in strangling housing production, ultimately sending regional housing prices skyward. When faith communities create affordable housing on church property, much of which is located in residentially zoned areas, they seek something other than fair market value. Some might call it "charity" (tzedakah) or "discipleship," a commitment to "welcome the stranger" or to "love your neighbor as yourself."
Faith communities seek theologically and morally sound uses for their underutilized property, but often struggle to overcome the regulatory and financial hurdles of adaptive reuse. Local governments can incentivize redevelopment that benefits the wider community, growing their affordable housing supply. But their mutual benefit does not exempt faith communities from challenge when they choose to redevelop church property for affordable housing. Neighbors may seek to thwart faith communities from introducing denser, multifamily residential structures in their backyard, relying on land-use restrictions designed to prohibit less costly forms of housing. When they succeed, these challenges from NIMBY ("Not In My Backyard") neighbors can limit both housing supply and the free exercise of religion.
This Feature thus proposes a novel response to exclusionary zoning: religious liberty. Where sincerely held religious beliefs inspire faith communities' efforts to create affordable housing, these communities can assert constitutional and statutory free exercise protections against land-use decisions that obstruct denser, less expensive, multifamily developments on church land. This Feature also explores municipal and state legislative reforms that lower the barrier where faith communities struggle to overcome the regulatory and financial hurdles of adaptive reuse and demonstrates the breadth of potential for affordable housing on church property, drawing on public sources and a novel data set to map parcels owned by Roman Catholic dioceses in Chicago, Illinois and Oakland, California across municipal zones.
Regardless of how faith communities came to own property within their limits, or why faith communities seek to repurpose property within their limits, most local governments need property within their limits to create affordable housing. And faith communities are willing partners in their endeavor.
I am not an expert on the relevant religious liberty issues. But his argument strikes me as compelling and persuasive.
It's worth noting, however, that its scope is limited. Reidy doesn't argue that religious organizations have a constitutional or statutory religious-liberty right to build whatever housing they want. Rather, they can only do so in cases where the relevant religious property owner considers it a religious duty (usually a duty to provide for the poor and needy). Thus, they could not use this argument to, e.g., build new luxury condos in order to bring in additional revenue for the church. And that's true even though economists and land-use scholars rightly point out that building new housing for the affluent also helps the poor, by reducing competition for the existing stock of housing and by promoting economic growth. Even where there is a proper religious-freedom rationale for exemption, it could potentially be overridden by a compelling state interest.
In my earlier post, I also noted some other limitations of YIGBYism. It's a valuable step in the right direction, but not a replacement for full-blown NIMBY reforms. Ideally, we should abolish exclusionary zoning across the board, and let both religious and secular property owners build whatever housing they want, subject only to narrowly defined health and safety restrictions. In a forthcoming Texas Law Review article, Josh Braver and I explain how that can be accomplished by stronger judicial enforcement of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
But Reidy's religious-liberty defense of YIGBY is an important contribution to legal scholarship, and his argument might end up influencing court decisions on these issues, as well. It seems likely that at least some faith organizations will raise such arguments to challenge zoning restrictions in the short to medium term future.
If YIGBYism continues to spread and becomes an important focus of religious-liberty litigation, it might also help change the political valence of religious liberty exemptions to generally applicable laws. When the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and other related laws were enacted by federal and state governments in the 1990s, they enjoyed broad bipartisan support, probably even more on the left than on the right. Indeed, these laws were reactions against the Supreme Court's 1990 ruling in Employment Division v. Smith, which was authored by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Liberal lions Harry Blackmun, William Brennan, and Thurgood Marshall dissented.
The valence of the issue changed as the stereotypical religious-liberty claimant shifted from members of minority faiths seeking to use a banned drug for its religious ceremonies (like the Native American plaintiffs in Smith, who wanted to use pejote), to socially conservative Christians who oppose contraception or refuse to "bake the cake" or provide other services for same-sex wedding ceremonies.
But we now have a new generation of left-coded religious liberty exemption arguments. YIGBY is an example. So too are religious organizations who aid undocumented immigrants in defiance of federal and state laws, and people who argue they have a religious duty to provide abortion services (at least in some situations). As these types of claims become more common and more prominent, perhaps the ideological valence of religious-liberty exemption arguments will shift again.
I am one of the rare people who supports a wide range of both left and right-wing religious-liberty exemptions—despite being an atheist myself! But it's easy for me to say that, given that I'm also a libertarian who supports strong property rights, open borders migration rights, abortion rights, and also the right of business owners to refuse services for a wide range of reasons (include ones I disapprove of on moral grounds, as in the case of opponents of contraception and same-sex marriage). Indeed, I think all of these activities should be legal for people who do them for purely secular reasons, as well as religious ones. I might make a narrow exception for businesses who have a monopoly over vital services, as in the case of public utilities.
People with more conventional left or right-wing views face more difficult trade-offs here. But in considering them, they should be aware that religious-liberty claims cut both ways, and are not limited to one side of the political spectrum.
https://reason.com/volokh/2024/06/30/a-religious-freedom-case-for-yigby/
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Gender affirmative guidelines just an echo chamber, says UK expert
The British paediatrician who carried out a world-leading review of care models for children with gender distress has criticised trans healthcare guidelines as an “echo chamber” based on weak evidence that show no efficacy in alleviating the psychological distress of young people.
Hilary Cass, who led the landmark review of gender-affirming care that prompted the UK’s National Health Service to ban the prescription of puberty blocker hormone drugs for children under 16, said that gender affirmative care guidelines around the world had not followed an evidence-based approach, and “sort of copy and paste off each other” in order to justify their medical approaches.
Dr Cass, a former president of the UK’s Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, participated in a panel live from the UK on Tuesday night, which was hosted by Australian psychiatrist Phillip Morris, the president of the National Association of Practising Psychiatrists, one of the first bodies to call for caution on experimental medical treatments and greater wholistic psychotherapy for young people with gender distress.
Dr Cass criticised the activist World Professional Association for Transgender Healthcare for essentially suppressing evidence that the standards of care it devised were not evidence-based and showed no proof of alleviating the distress of children.
These standards are followed by most of Australia’s major children’s hospitals that all frequently prescribe puberty blockers and hormone treatments to children and teenagers. Dr Cass noted in her independent report handed down in April that WPATH had been “highly influential in directing international practice, although its guidelines were found by the University of York’s appraisal to lack developmental rigour and transparency”. The Cass report included an appraisal by the University of York that analysed international gender affirmative care guidelines, including those of the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne. The review found the RCH’s guidelines similarly lacked rigour and independence.
“The evidence base is weak … international guidelines have for the most part not followed standard evidence-based approaches,” Dr Cass told the Australian seminar. “And it has influenced most other international guidelines. There is a sort of echo chamber of sort of copying and pasting off each other. The only guidelines that have taken an independent and evidence based approach are the Swedish and the Finnish guidelines.”
The Cass independent Review was commissioned following patient and whistleblower complaints that prompted the closure of London’s flagship Gender Identity Development Service run by the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Dr Cass said that complex clinical presentations including mental health issues and autism among children who presented at the GIDS were “overshadowed” when the children presented with gender distress. The pediatrician concluded that puberty blockers rather than acting as a “pause button” allowing children time to explore their identity, seem to lock them into a medicalised treatment pathway.
Dr Cass’s final report endorsed a fundamental shift in approach away from medical intervention towards a holistic model that addresses other mental health problems the children may have.
The report concluded that children had been let down by a lack of research and “remarkably weak” evidence on medical interventions in gender care. She wrote in the British Medical Journal that gender medicine’s pillars were “built on shaky foundations”, expressing concern at the unknown long-term cognitive and physical impacts of puberty blockers.
Puberty blockers are now only able to prescribed as part of clinical trials in the UK, and several other European countries that have moved to roll back the experimental approach espoused by the trans activist group World Professional Association for Transgender Health.
All of Australia’s children’s hospitals including most of the country’s state health ministers have rejected the relevance of Dr Cass’s report to Australia for reasons that appear spurious given the fact that Dr Cass’s report examined gender affirming care models internationally, and that the deep research carried out by the independent review into puberty blockers is clearly relevant beyond the UK.
Dr Cass’s report said there was “no evidence” puberty blockers allowed young people “time to think” by delaying the onset of puberty — the original rationale for their use. It found the vast majority of children who began taking puberty blockers progressed to taking cross-sex hormones as they grew older, despite the fact that desistance from trans identification among teenagers was relatively common.
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2 July, 2024
Supreme court judgment only partial protection for Trump
Americans have long proclaimed that no one is above the law but one was elevated over the rest of them yesterday (Monday).
The top court had never before been called on to set out “a rule for the ages”, as one conservative justice called it, on the immunity from criminal prosecution enjoyed by the president. In doing so, it advanced the so-called imperial presidency that the country’s founding fathers tried to prevent.
No president had ever faced federal prosecution before but along came Donald Trump and challenged many of the nation’s presumptions, so the Supreme Court had to act.
American folklore sets out how the plucky colonists overthrew the absolutism of George III, which was always a useful myth, to create a republic where “all men are created equal” and treated as such under the law. That was a myth too, in a state originally run on slavery.
Yet as they prepare to celebrate the 248th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Supreme Court issued a wide-ranging but also inconclusive explication of when a president can act safe in the knowledge of immunity from prosecution.
The core constitutional activities of the president have absolute protection, the court ruled, meaning that Trump’s interactions with the Department of Justice over the election – including threatening to replace those who did not go along with him – fall under its scope.
All other official activities were ruled to have “at least presumptive immunity from prosecution”. Trump’s discussions with his vice-president, Mike Pence, were ruled official acts and it was left up to the prosecution to make an argument that he went beyond the scope of this official relationship.
But the court simply opted out of deciding whether Trump’s pressure on state officials or some of his tweets were official acts and therefore immune, adding that “most of his public communications are likely to fall comfortably within the outer perimeter of his official responsibilities”.
The court tried to set general rules for the ages which will require much more legal argument to discern in real-world situations. It concluded by asserting that “the president enjoys no immunity for his unofficial acts, and not everything the president does is official. The president is not above the law.”
But, predictably in a case with implications for this year’s election as well as posterity, the Supreme Court was split with the six conservative judges in favour of the main decision and the three liberals against. This deepens the image of the current court as ideologically driven.
However, the ruling was not as hair-raising as claimed by the most liberal member, Sonia Sotomayor, who wrote: “When [the president] uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organises a military coup to hold on to power? Immune.”
This went way too far but she was right to state that it “effectively creates a law-free zone around the president, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the founding”.
This “law-free” zone exists only for the president’s core official actions, the top court ruled. Now the lower courts have to thrash out what constitutes the core, the official and the unofficial case-by-case.
Sooner or later, in the absence of statute, these parameters of the Oval Office shield were going to have to be set down in black and white instead of simply presumed
The Supreme Court articulated something that has long been apparent – that the US president is not only the most powerful elected office in the world but is also, necessarily, very well protected, not unlike a British monarch of George III’s era.
It is clear that Democrats will now campaign hard on Trump’s alleged capture of the Supreme Court to help him evade prosecution.
But in drawing a distinction between absolute immunity, presumed immunity and legal jeopardy for private acts, the court has only just begun the process of defining the boundaries of criminal liability for the occupant of the White House.
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Incredible clash of identities: Hatred of a female black politician from a homosexual man
Julie Burchill
Most people have a soft spot for the first ‘X’ film they legitimately saw as an alleged ‘adult’; mine was Magic, the 1978 film by Richard Attenborough, starring Anthony Hopkins as a mild-mannered ventriloquist who becomes possessed by the spirit of his verbally vicious dummy, leading to awful consequences when a steaming hot and sex-starved Ann-Margret happens by. The creepy plot of Magic came to mind when I saw a clip of the actor David Tennant’s astonishing outburst of spite directed at the Tory MP Kemi Badenoch while he was picking up a prize at something called ‘the British LGBT Awards’:
What Tennant said was mind-bogglingly stupid
‘If I’m honest, I’m a little depressed by the fact that acknowledging that everyone has the right to be who they want to be and live their life how they want to live it – as long as they’re not hurting anyone else – should merit any kind of special award or special mention, because it’s common sense, isn’t it? However, until we wake up and we live in a world where Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist anymore…I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up…while we do live in this world, I am honoured to receive this.’
Perhaps Tennant should stick to the day job. Then again, maybe not: when he played Dr Who from 2005 to 2010, Tennant’s acting was so terrible that he often seemed to be mentally unbalanced.
As anyone who has ever hidden behind a sofa as a tot knows, Dr Who is full of fearsome monsters. Did he have a run-in with one of these on set? Has Tennant perchance been taken over by the spirit of the Abzorbaloff, who liked to eat people but leave them somehow alive as polyps on his skin, comparable perhaps to the way social media trends consume people? Or a Judoon, putting nothing before their desire to police wayward opinions and crush nay-sayers?
Then there are the more obvious tin-can tyrants Tennant may have been channeling when he bashed Badenoch; the Cybermen’s catchphrase ‘DELETE!’ could well apply to the way those brainwashed by the Magical Thinking of trans-substantiation seek to extirpate uppity women, or even that classic old Dalek answer-to-everything: ‘EXTERMINATE!’
Mrs Badenoch was, as ever, magnificent in her cold fury:
‘I will not shut up. I will not be silenced by men who prioritise applause from Stonewall over the safety of women and girls. A rich, lefty, white male celebrity so blinded by ideology he can’t see the optics of attacking the only black woman in government by calling publicly for my existence to end. Tennant is one of Labour’s celebrity supporters. This is an early example of what life will be like if they win. Keir Starmer stood by while Rosie Duffield was hounded. He and his supporters will do the same with the country. Do not let the bigots and bullies win.’
We’re used to opinions being called ‘hate speech’ these days; it’s generally used by the Cry-Bullies of Woke to censor those they oppose. Most adults shrug off such accusations, because they know that what they’re saying – women don’t have penises – isn’t hate at all, but Biology 101. As someone who’s never accused anyone of Hate Speech in their life, and never gone complaining to the law about any of the verbal aggression from misrepresentation (the columnist who accused me of writing a love letter to Osama bin Laden comes to mind) to the death threats I’ve received since I was a teenager (never cross a Bay City Rollers’ fan), Tennant’s rant sounds close to the bone.
No wonder Badenoch’s existence makes little men feel even smaller
What Tennant said is also profoundly, mind-bogglingly stupid. Someone could just about get away – the climate of misogyny now being as rabid as it has been since they stopped burning ‘witches’ – with wishing that JK Rowling didn’t exist. But one of the few black women in public life? Can we only imagine the squealing outrage that Owen Jones and his cronies would whip up on X if, say, Laurence Fox had said that he wished Diane Abbott didn’t exist? Yet if one identifies as a Good Guy – as Tennant so laughably does – it’s just another way of being inclusive and caring to wish that a black woman you disagree with could somehow be vaporised.
Like Hate Speech, ‘fascist’ – another word the trans-lobby like to lob at anyone who disagrees with them that testicles can be feminine – is a word I have no truck with beyond what happened in Europe in the twentieth century. It’s too serious a word to toss around like a frisbee in a park. But the road to fascism definitely begins with the desire that those who think differently from you should not exist. Tennant and his ilk might like to portray sex-realists like myself as people who wish to actively do away with transsexuals, but I don’t feel that way at all; as a child, I loved Danny La Rue.
All I want is for men who pretend to be women to keep away from actual women’s hard-won stuff, be they single-sex toilets or sporting trophies. Stop bullying us and telling us it can’t be bullying because you’re one of us: that’s called gaslighting, you gormless great navvies.
Actors often attempt to insert themselves into politics, usually making seven sorts of horse’s asses of themselves along the way. But there’s something particularly pathetic and pitiable about a performer – a person paid to preen and pretend – taking up the trans-cudgels.
Tennant prances around acting as something he’s not – a Scot playing a Cockney, a vicious little lickspittle playing a Nice Guy – just the way his imaginary friends do. We don’t hear the phrase ‘The Politics Of Envy’ much these days. But it doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to feel the inadequacy of a white man who has spent his life being handsomely rewarded for capering around next to a black woman like Mrs Badenoch, who has made her way in life through sheer hard work: real work, not sitting in a make-up chair memorising lines written by someone with a brain.
Badenoch has made her way in life through sheer hard work
Kemi Badenoch returned to London by herself at the age of 16 – after doing her homework by candle-light in Nigeria – to realise her ambition of completing her education here, enrolling in a modest part-time A-Level course in Morden, south London, and working at McDonald’s; it’s likely that she will be the next leader of the Conservative party. No wonder her existence makes little men feel even smaller.
At the weekend, I was at the LET WOMEN SPEAK rally in Brighton where a crowd of masked, black-clad men – the trans-allies known as the ‘Black Pampers’ due to their extreme youth and their verbal incontinence – told us that we were Nazis for believing that women should be permitted to hold on to our rights, making so much racket with various noisy toys that the women’s voices were all but drowned.
I have no doubt that, could they make it so, they would arrange it so that we didn’t exist either. The Starmer government seems sensible and dull, but in the area of women’s rights, they sing from the same page as these strange, sick creatures; they too have been infected with the trans-madness, the strange danse macabre which sees common sense and women’s rights as the enemy of all good people.
Still, it’s good that – unlike the Black Pampers – David Tennant has shown his true colours. Maybe he’ll regenerate as a decent human being one day. We can but hope. Until then, shame on him, for this vile attack on this exceptional woman.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/06/the-trouble-with-david-tennant/
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Emergency Exposes Folly of DEI in Medicine
If you want to know why prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion in medical schools is a bad idea, consider your priorities in a medical emergency.
Early this month, my youngest son came howling and holding his left arm. My wife thought it was broken. When he turned it, his forearm flopped and rolled like it was made of rubber. Not great.
My wife used a spatula to stabilize his arm and wrap it up. Off we went to the urgent care. His arm was indeed broken, but they didn’t feel comfortable setting it. My wife took him to a pediatric ER. They set it but wanted an orthopedic doctor to check it before putting on a cast. The next day, the orthopedic doctor saw him. He now has a big blue cast and a summer filled with regret that he jumped off the fort his brothers made in the living room.
Throughout the whole ordeal, my wife and I’s only priority was finding someone who could help our son. You know what we didn’t care about? The skin color or sex of the doctors or nurses.
Now, that sounds basic. A decade ago, it would have been so obvious that it wouldn’t have been worth mentioning. My son’s broken bone wasn’t going to throw itself back into alignment if someone with the right skin color or sex walked into the room. What mattered was a doctor’s knowledge and skill.
That’s why medical schools should be looking for the best and brightest. Medicine is hard and the stakes are high. Unfortunately, the medical training field is awash with schools and groups prioritizing how doctors look, not their ability to heal.
Consider the Association of American Medical Colleges. It’s a major player in medical education. It runs the MCAT exam, which helps determine which applicants will make it into medical school. Along with the American Medical Association, it sponsors the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which provides “accreditation of medical education programs.”
The Association of American Medical Colleges has fully embraced leftist dogma. It “works to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles across the continuum of medical education,” it states on its website.
That includes advising medical schools on how to get around the 2023 Supreme Court decision that banned racial preferences in higher education admissions. One recommendation is a “holistic review in admissions.” That “allows admissions committees to consider the whole applicant, rather than disproportionately focusing on any one factor.”
Translated: Don’t put too much focus on test scores. Look at applicants’ skin color.
One medical school that’s been doing that is at UCLA. As The Washington Free Beacon reported last month, the school has been prioritizing race over merit in recent years. The result? In some cohorts, “more than 50 percent of students failed standardized tests on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics,” The Washington Free Beacon reported. The national failure rate is 5%.
DEI turned a once-elite medical school into a failure factory. The implications are terrifying.
My son received care from a top-notch doctor. If DEI continues to fester in medical schools, doctors with that level of skill will become harder and harder to find.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/06/26/emergency-exposes-folly-of-dei-in-medicine/
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Another problem prosecutor in Australia
In the ACT, Shane Drumgold created still ongoing problems for many people by prosecuting Bruce Lehrmann against police advice. He took the feminist "believe the woman" approach instead of a proper judicial stance.
It now seems that NSW has a similar problem with prosecutor Sally Dowling. Launching a prosecution against someone can itself be a form of punishment so launching a prosection against someone on flimsy grounds in an extremeny irresponsible and reprehensible act. No wonder that even female judges are critical of her
NSW District Court judge Penelope Wass has taken the extraordinary step of making a formal complaint against chief prosecutor Sally Dowling SC, after Ms Dowling raised secret grievances about her to the court’s chief judge in the middle of a criminal hearing.
Judge Wass told the Taree District Court on Tuesday morning that she had made the complaint to the Office of the NSW Legal Services Commissioner, telling counsel she was disclosing it in case they thought it was grounds for her to withdraw from any matters before her currently.
The Australian understands the complaint was filed on Friday.
Last month this masthead revealed Ms Dowling made a complaint about Judge Wass during a sexual assault prosecution, alleging the judge was jeopardising the right to a fair trial by directing witnesses to present their phones as evidence, and threatened in correspondence with Chief Judge Sarah Huggett to “take the matter further” if the directions continued. The communications were not disclosed to the defence.
That was interpreted as a “warning” by Judge Wass, who in the past has criticised Ms Dowling’s office for shepherding “incredible and dishonest allegations of sexual assault” through NSW courts amid ongoing tension between Ms Dowling and the state’s judges.
Ms Dowling’s complaint at the time became the latest missile thrown in a war between Ms Dowling and the judiciary, after five judges complained about processes governing rape complaints, with some believing a pattern is emerging in which prosecutors prefer to take a “believe the victim” stance and push a matter before a jury, rather than dropping impossible cases.
Judge Wass disclosed Ms Dowling’s complaint to Judge Huggett the matter in an interlocutory judgment for R v SF, delivered on May 27.
According to the judgment, Ms Dowling emailed Chief Judge Huggett on May 22 “without the knowledge or consent of the other party of the Crown briefed in the trial” to make the complaint about Judge Wass directing witnesses in three separate matters to hand up their phones and, at times, their passcodes.
“The terms of the correspondence, the fact that it came from Ms Dowling who prosecutes on behalf of the Crown, a party to this litigation, the fact that it was sent to the chief judge only days before I was due to give judgment in two of the three cases mentioned, and because it contains an express warning to me, has meant that, at the very least, I am required to disclose it to the parties in those two cases, and I do so now in respect of this case,” she wrote in the interlocutory judgment.
“The content and the timing of the complaint is a relevant matter. The comments made by Ms Dowling were conveyed to me by the chief judge shortly after they were received, as was in my view appropriate. Indeed, the final remarks by Ms Dowling, as they contained a warning to me, made clear that they needed to be conveyed to me forthwith.”
The three matters were R v Chambers in 2021, R v Stenner-Wall in 2023 and R v SF.Judge Wass, in the interlocutory judgment, noted Ms Dowling did not make any complaint or comment in the Chambers or Stenner-Wall cases when the direction was made for a witness to hand up their phone.
Judge Wass, at the time, said she was preparing a sentence for the Stenner-Wall matter.
She said the direction to have a witness hand up their phone “resulted in a proper disclosure being made to both parties (that had not been made to or by the Crown) and the subsequent entry of a plea of guilty to the relevant counts on the indictment”.
In the Chambers matter, she said, the direction stopped a witness taking her phone to the bathroom with her when she sought an unscheduled toilet break during cross-examination.
Judge Wass said Ms Dowling had included a “warning” that she would “consider steps she considers to be properly available to her to seek judicial review should further directions of this nature” be made in the future.“
I regard such a warning of the contemplated judicial review, although delphic as to what form it might take, as extremely serious, particularly as it was delivered during the course of my consideration of two of the three cases at hand and where it sought to have me take that matter into account in my determination of future cases,” she said.
“Had this opinion been conveyed directly to me at any time, but particularly at this time, I would have regarded it as being highly inappropriate, particularly from an experienced Senior Counsel … particularly when I am so obviously part heard. I wish to say no more about that at present.”
The Australian has in recent months revealed Ms Dowling is facing a bitter dispute with sitting judges and members of her own staff, some of whom say her office consistently puts accused rapists on trial for crimes that will never secure a conviction.
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1 July, 2024
Salt Is OK for People With Heart Failure: Review
Not this old scare again. It has long ago been shown that salt is harmless.
I have written previously on the salt phobia here:
http://jonjayray.com/short/salt.html
And here:
http://jonjayray.com/short/salt2.html
And here:
http://jonjayray.com/saltsum.html
Salt restriction, a long-standing recommendation for patients with heart failure, has no proven clinical benefits, according to a review published Wednesday in the European Journal of Clinical Investigation.
While some studies reported possible improvements in quality of life and functionality, the review author, Dr. Paolo Raggi from the University of Alberta, wrote that there is no evidence that severe sodium restriction reduces mortality and hospitalization in patients with heart failure.
The review evaluated randomized controlled trials conducted from 2000 to 2023. Most were small, and a single large trial concluded early due to futility.
“Doctors often resist making changes to age-old tenets that have no true scientific basis; however, when new good evidence surfaces, we should make an effort to embrace it,” Dr. Raggi said in a news release.
How Does Salt Affect the Heart?
Heart failure is a chronic condition that occurs when the heart muscles cannot pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs for blood and oxygen.
Reduction in salt intake is recommended for heart failure because salt draws water. More salt in the blood can increase blood volume, thereby increasing blood pressure, which can then cause further damage to blood vessels and the heart.
Severe reductions in salt intake can also cause a drastic decrease in blood volume, which can be harmful.
Scientists cannot agree on how much salt should be reduced, and this discrepancy is due to differences in data interpretation, Dr. Raggi wrote.
It has also been difficult to conduct a proper study evaluating the long-term effects of salt restriction since low-salt diets are challenging for patients to adhere to, and salt intake is hard to measure.
Several prominent health organizations, including the American Heart Association (AHA), recommend that patients with heart failure consume under 2 grams (about half a teaspoon) of salt daily. The author said that this recommendation likely arose from the conclusions of several trials, including the famous DASH-sodium trial, which found that people who consumed less than 1.5 grams of salt daily had lower blood pressure.
While proponents of the DASH-sodium trial support its findings and recommendations, dissidents argue it was too short and that such salt restrictions are unlikely to be sustainable.
Dr. Raggi wrote that moderating salt intake would benefit people consuming high levels of salt. However, just how much salt should be reduced is unknown. Quality of life does improve with lower salt intake; however, there is no clinical evidence that it results in fewer cardiovascular events and deaths.
While salt restriction clearly lowers blood pressure, especially in hypertension patients, the effect appears to wane with time.
“It has been estimated that tens of thousands of patients (the numbers varying depending on the baseline risk profile of the population enrolled) would have to be followed for 5 to 10years [sic] to prove that a strict sodium intake is associated with a 15% reduction in cardiovascular events. Such a proposition seems unlikely to materialize,” the author wrote.
Even the Cochrane review, seen as the gold standard in research, yielded an inconclusive result.
“The Cochrane review concluded that there was insufficient power to show an effect on mortality, although there might be a reduction in cardiovascular events with sodium restriction,” Dr. Raggi wrote.
He noted that none of the studies included in the Cochrane review and the many studies before it advised that salt intake should be as low as authorities such as the AHA suggested. Therefore, he concluded that questions about appropriate salt intake remain unanswered.
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Thai Farm Workers Returning to Israel May Boost Struggling Agriculture
Thailand’s labor ministry announced on June 24 that it would resume sending workers to Israel, potentially offering a boost to the country’s agricultural sector, which was hard hit by the Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
Almost 30,000 foreigners—including 10,000 Thais and about 10,000 to 12,000 Palestinians—worked on Israel’s farms until the Hamas attack. Some were killed, others were taken hostage, and most of the remainder fled.
Thailand said it hoped to have more than 10,000 return by the end of the year.
The attack devastated Israel’s agriculture, hitting as it did Israel’s fertile zone east of the Gaza Strip.
Many farmers fled. Those who didn’t, or who came back to tend their fields, found their hands tied by a lack of laborers to weed, prune, and otherwise tend crops.
Many were called up into the military reserves.
The Thais return is critical, Ayal Kimhi, professor of agricultural economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Epoch Times in an email.
Israeli farmers generally regard them as their best foreign farm workers.
Palestinians who lived in Gaza or the West Bank and commuted to jobs in Israel are no longer allowed in the country.
The Thai government’s agreement is essential because the two governments have a formal labor agreement to avoid Thai workers being exploited by private manpower companies, Mr. Kimhi said.
The war’s damage to Israel’s farms has been pervasive.
The border areas in the north and south account for a quarter of Israel’s farm production and much of its fruit and vegetable production.
A southern farmer, Asher Tamsut, took The Epoch Times for a tour of one of his tomato greenhouses in Moshav Ami'oz in March.
Across six acres, the plants were bedraggled due to a lack of pruning and bore few tomatoes. The rows were overgrown with weeds. The plants, normally 15 feet tall, had been topped to make them less work to tend for the few workers he had remaining, he said.
The field normally produces 250 tons of tomatoes in a harvest, but its crop planted just before Oct. 7 yielded only three tons, he said.
He had already lost about $1.6 million.
According to the World Bank, agriculture, forestry, and fishing account for 1.3 percent of Israel’s GDP. That percentage has been declining in recent years, as in most advanced countries, Mr. Kimhi said.
Israel’s GDP was about $525 billion in 2022, but lost nearly 20 percent during the 4th quarter of 2023 compared with the previous year.
It was its sharpest decline since its pandemic decline of almost 30 percent during 2020’s 2nd quarter.
Israeli economists saw a recovery in the 1st quarter of 2024, but it had still not caught up with economic performance before the Hamas attack.
In addition, the nation has spent an estimated $80 billion on the war so far, an extra financial strain.
About 33,800 Israelis worked in agriculture, 0.8 percent of its labor force, Mr. Kimhi said, in addition to 15,000 Palestinians and 25,000 other foreigners.
As of 2022, Israel exported about 13 percent of its agricultural production—mostly fruits and vegetables— while importing grains and oils.
Right now, it’s the peak of the peach season in Israel, Mr. Kimhi said.
“The fruits are relatively small because the pruning was not done optimally,” he said. “Also up north the security situation still prevents many farmers [from approaching] their plantations.”
Hezbollah has since Oct. 7, 2023, steadily attacked northern Israel with rockets, anti-tank missiles, and, lately, suicide drones.
That has forced the formal evacuation of 61,000 Israelis from 43 communities within 5 kilometers of the border and the voluntary departure of thousands more, according to the Alma Research and Education Center, a strategic institute specializing in Israel’s northern frontier.
Some farmers return regularly to tend their farms but may expose themselves to attack in areas where people may have only 15 seconds to get to shelter if air-raid sirens sound.
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"Tractor Supply" company ends ‘woke’ DEI, climate change policies after boycott campaign
A major farm supply retailer said it will eliminate DEI roles, end its carbon emissions goals and cut ties to an LGBTQ advocacy group following a social media campaign calling for the firm to revoke its “woke” policies.
Tennessee-based Tractor Supply — an 85-year-old company with 2,250 stores — made the decision after conservative commentator Robby Starbuck called for a boycott over the past three weeks on X.
“We have heard from customers that we have disappointed them,” Tractor Supply said in a statement on Thursday. “We have taken this feedback to heart.”
The retail chain — which sells home improvement equipment, livestock, and agricultural supplies for farmers and pet owners — said it will stop sponsoring Pride festivals and cut ties to LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign.
It will also “eliminate DEI roles and retire our current DEI goals while still ensuring a respectful environment,” the company said.
Instead, Tractor Supply will beef up its support for veteran causes, emergency response agencies, animal shelters, state fairs, rodeos and farmers’ markets, the company said.
Starbuck claimed a victory on X, saying in an eight-minute long video, “We have extracted the largest concessions in the history of boycotts.”
He applauded Tractor Supply for ending its submission of data to the Human Rights Campaign, which Starbuck said “has nothing to do with human rights; it has everything to do with injecting wokeness and the LGBTQ agenda into corporate America.”
Human Rights Campaign said it has worked with Tractor Supply for years to create inclusive policies and slammed the company for pandering to “far right extremists.”
“Tractor Supply Co is turning its back on their own neighbors with this shortsighted decision. LGBTQ+ people live in every Zip code in this country, including rural communities,” Eric Bloem, vice president of corporate advocacy, told the Post. “We are shoppers, farmers, veterans and agriculture students.”
Tractor Supply also said it will eliminate its carbon emissions goals and instead focus on land and water conservation efforts.
The company previously aimed to achieve net zero emissions in operations by 2040, increase people of color at the management level and increase business with diverse suppliers, according to earlier coverage by the Wall Street Journal.
“We will continue to listen to our customers and Team Members,” Tractor Supply said in a statement. “Your trust and confidence in us are of the utmost importance, and we don’t take that lightly.”
The policy pivot is one of the strongest corporate reversals of progressive initiatives yet, but it is not the first time customers have used their buying power in recent years to sway company stakes.
Bud Light sales tanked after the beer company launched an ad with transgender social media influencer Dylan Mulvaney last year.
Target lost $10 billion in market valuation in a 10-day period last year when customers boycotted the company after it launched its Pride collection, which included clothing for children.
A Target shareholder filed a lawsuit last year against the company after their shares lost $20,000 during the Pride collection controversy.
https://nypost.com/2024/06/28/business/tractor-supply-ends-woke-dei-climate-change-policies/
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If Trump is elected tariffs will rise
Business strategists and economists watched every Biden stumble in the debate with Donald Trump knowing it signalled substantial curbs to the global free trading system that has dominated the world in recent decades.
The US will become a tariff protected society and the rest of the world will likely follow.
And at the weekend the strong vote for Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally, means France is headed to migration policies that have a similarity to those of Donald Trump and there will be less emphasis on Europe and more on France.
Marine Le Pen’s policies are not the same as Trump, but she is heading in a very similar direction and the combination has world implications, especially as both want the Ukraine war to end.
Back to the US, and global central bankers were watching the Biden stumbles knowing that a Trump presidential election victory would almost certainly herald a very different interest rate setting environment.
And in Beijing they also watched the stumbles. China is looking at further refining its plans to adapt to Trump’s plan to impose big tariffs on US imports of Chinese goods.
The Chinese plans would be unveiled in the four day third plenum of the Communist Party’s Central Committee starting in two weeks to map out major economic strategies for the next 5 to 10 years.
China’s top officials, provincial party secretaries, senior generals and heads of state owned enterprises will assemble in Beijing for the third plenum at a time when Trumpism is spreading and there is considerable turmoil in China.
In essence, if elected as President, Trump will impose a 10 per cent tariff on all imports, probably including those from countries where the US has a free trade agreement like Australia.
But the tariff on Chinese exports to the US would be 60 per cent.
Trump has learned from past “mistakes”, so any tariff regime change must be widespread and simple.
In effect he is imposing a GST-type tax but only on imports and he is seriously considering distributing the windfall tariff gains to the community via a reduction or even an elimination of income tax. Many other countries will follow the US lead.
In office, Biden did not abandon all the Trump tariff measures but is not planning a similar action to the 2025 proposed Trump tariffs.
Australia introduced the GST in July 2000 and it caused an immediate rise in prices. The Trump tariffs will have the same impact although the front runner in the US presidential campaign claims that importers will reduce their prices and there will be no significant rise.
Trump will almost certainly be anxious that the Federal Reserve does not increase interest rates in response to the tariffs and likely tax cuts.
Trump has already criticised some of the decisions of the Federal Reserve under chair Jerome Powell. If Trump becomes President he will almost certainly want to have conversations with the Federal Reserve Chair.It would be the start of a potentially less independent US interest rate setting system.
Given the deliberations of the US Federal Reserve impacting interest rates around the globe, this has the potential to be a major change to the way global interest rates are established.
When it comes to company tax Trump plans to lower the rate from 21 to 20 per cent . Biden plans to increase company tax to 28 and plans a wide range of personal tax increases which will not be popular.
The combination of Trump’s lower taxes, the likely investment in new plant to replace imports plus a lower labour availability as a result of the expulsion of immigrants, creates a cocktail for continued inflation even if we set aside the GST-style price rise that will follow the initial tariff introduction.
If the US Federal Reserve ignores any presidential protests there will be high interest rates which will maintain the strength of the American dollar and nullify some of the impacts of the tariff.
In China, the third plenum will tackle the trend in the global supply chain to reduce dependence on China and the fierce competition with the United States and other Western nations.for markets and technology.
China has signalled that it will aim to expand international technology exchanges, attract and retain more overseas talent, and be more active in global technology governance.
A priority will be to build what it calls a “a globally competitive” environment for technological innovations.
We are looking at a China that may respond by attacking Taiwan but may also respond by becoming a globally competitive source of new technology.
Australia will have a number of difficult decisions in that environment including nuclear power where the Chinese have developed technology around molten salt cooled thorium power for use in ships and submarines as well as power stations.
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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)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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