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My Home Page. Email John Ray here. My other blogs: "Tongue Tied" , "Dissecting Leftism" , "Australian Politics" , "Education Watch International" , "Immigration Watch" , "Greenie Watch" , "The Psychologist" (A summary blog). Those blogs are also backed up. See here for details
With particular attention to religious, ethnic and sexual matters. By John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)
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31 August, 2023
Women who give birth after IVF may be 66% more likely to suffer a STROKE a year later, major study suggests
This is a rather misleading study. For a start, it considers only events within one year after birth. It can tell us nothing about women who have had IVF earlier in their lives
Secondly, the controls used were naive. Demographics seemed well controlled for but what about psychological factors? The women who had a stroke may have been chronically anxious and it was the anxiety that caused the stroke and not the IVF
Thirdly, the effect observed was derisorily small. 8 episodes among 100,000 women tells us that the effect was very rare and improbable so hardly worth noticing when considering risk of IVF
Journal abstract appended
Women who give birth after having fertility treatment are more likely to suffer a stroke than those who conceived naturally, a study suggests.
Researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey, who tracked 30million pregnancies found women who conceived using fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) or intrauterine insemination (IUI), among others, were 66 percent more likely to experience a stroke within a year of giving birth.
They were twice as likely to suffer the deadlier form of a stroke, a hemorrhagic stroke, when there is a bleed in the brain, and 55 percent more likely to suffer an ischemic stroke, caused by a blood clot cutting off blood supply to part of the brain.
Stroke is the number one cause of death among pregnant women, said to be due to the strain pregnancy puts on the body. About 30 out of every 100,000 women who give birth suffer a stroke up to one year after delivery.
It was not immediately clear why women who received fertility treatments were at higher risk, but the researchers said it could be because of the hormone treatments women undergoing the procedures must take, as well as a higher risk for these women that the placenta does not implant properly.
Risk of Stroke Hospitalization After Infertility Treatment
Devika Sachdev et al.
Question Is receipt of infertility treatment associated with stroke hospitalization?
Findings In this cohort study of 31 339 991 pregnant individuals who delivered between 2010 and 2018, compared with those who did not receive infertility treatment, those who received infertility treatment had an increased risk of stroke hospitalization within 12 months of delivery, with the risk of hospitalization for hemorrhagic stroke being substantially greater than that for ischemic stroke.
Meaning These findings suggest that infertility treatment is associated with an increased risk of stroke hospitalization within 12 months of delivery; therefore, optimal screening for risk and timely follow-up should be considered to mitigate factors associated with stroke in the antepartum and postpartum periods.
Abstract
Importance Stroke accounts for 7% of pregnancy-related deaths in the US. As the use of infertility treatment is increasing, many studies have sought to characterize the association of infertility treatment with the risk of stroke with mixed results.
Objective To evaluate the risk of hospitalization from hemorrhagic and ischemic strokes in patients who underwent infertility treatment.
Design, Setting, and Participants This population-based, retrospective cohort study used data abstracted from the Nationwide Readmissions Database, which stores data from all-payer hospital inpatient stays from 28 states across the US, from 2010 and 2018. Eligible participants included individuals aged 15 to 54 who had a hospital delivery from January to November in a given calendar year, and any subsequent hospitalizations from January to December in the same calendar year of delivery during the study period. Statistical analysis was performed between November 2022 and April 2023.
Exposure Hospital delivery after infertility treatment (ie, intrauterine insemination, assisted reproductive technology, fertility preservation procedures, or use of a gestational carrier) or after spontaneous conception.
Main Outcomes and Measures The primary outcome was hospitalization for nonfatal stroke (either ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke) within the first calendar year after delivery. Secondary outcomes included risk of stroke hospitalization at less than 30 days, less than 60 days, less than 90 days, and less than 180 days post partum.
Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to estimate associations, which were expressed as hazard ratios (HRs), adjusted for confounders. Effect size estimates were corrected for biases due to exposure misclassification, selection, and unmeasured confounding through a probabilistic bias analysis.
Results Of 31 339 991 patients, 287 813 (0.9%; median [IQR] age, 32.1 [28.5-35.8] years) underwent infertility treatment and 31 052 178 (99.1%; median [IQR] age, 27.7 [23.1-32.0] years) delivered after spontaneous conception. The rate of stroke hospitalization within 12 months of delivery was 37 hospitalizations per 100 000 people (105 patients) among those who received infertility treatment and 29 hospitalizations per 100 000 people (9027 patients) among those who delivered after spontaneous conception (rate difference, 8 hospitalizations per 100 000 people; 95% CI, ?6 to 21 hospitalizations per 100 000 people; HR, 1.66; 95% CI, 1.17 to 2.35). The risk of hospitalization for hemorrhagic stroke (adjusted HR, 2.02; 95% CI, 1.13 to 3.61) was greater than that for ischemic stroke (adjusted HR, 1.55; 95% CI, 1.01 to 2.39). The risk of stroke hospitalization increased as the time between delivery and hospitalization for stroke increased, particularly for hemorrhagic strokes. In general, these associations became larger for hemorrhagic stroke and smaller for ischemic stroke following correction for biases.
Conclusions and Relevance In this cohort study, infertility treatment was associated with an increased risk of stroke-related hospitalization within 12 months of delivery; this risk was evident as early as 30 days after delivery. Timely follow-up in the immediate days post partum and continued long-term follow-up should be considered to mitigate stroke risk.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2808926
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Woke U.S. Diplomacy: Not 100% Popular Around the Globe, nor at Home
The Biden administration is fraying relations with some allies and generating pushback from Congress by spending millions of taxpayer dollars to promote the woke ideology abroad that has stirred controversy at home since President Biden took office.
In a "national security memorandum" shortly after his swearing-in, Biden ordered all federal agencies with dealings abroad not only to protect LGBT rights in the face of discrimination and violence but to actively advance them. His State Department has said one of its goals is to “embed intersectional equity principles into diversifying public diplomacy and communications strategies” in relations with other nations.
U.S. ambassadors around the world have translated those words into action, championing LGTB rights in countries that oppose them; funding performances that feature drag queens; and holding diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) seminars.
The State Department would not provide a list of initiatives and programs connected to these goals or how much money it is spending. Recent reports estimate nearly $5 million has been spent abroad on LGBT programs alone, and U.S. senators including Republican J.D. Vance of Ohio are holding up appointments of new ambassadors over concerns about exporting “woke” ideology.
Vance criticized what he called the “injecting” of “personal politics” into the U.S. foreign service, saying: “You can call it ‘extreme left,’ ‘woke.’ To me it’s leaning toward cultural progressivism in a way that alienates half of our country and, frankly, it probably alienates about 80 percent of the countries these guys are going to represent us in front of.”
American LGBT and black advocacy groups concerned with foreign policy and diplomacy declined to respond to RealClearInvestigations’ inquiries about the State Department programs. The groups are Gays and Lesbians in Foreign Affairs Agencies (GLIFAA) and the Thursday Luncheon Group, which was founded “to increase the participation of African Americans in the formulation, articulation, and implementation of United States foreign policy.”
Among the State Department initiatives are a $10,000 grant to a Portuguese LGBT activist group to finance a film festival featuring drag performances, incest, and pederasty. It also provided $20,000 to support a series of drag shows in Ecuador.
A $300,000 State Department grant to Botswana aimed “to promote greater social acceptance of LGBTQI+ persons, including among influential religious groups and traditional groups” who preach or teach that homosexuality is immoral: Roman Catholics, most evangelical Christians, Muslims, and Orthodox Jews. Earlier this year, Republican scrutiny pressured the State Department to cancel drag shows it had been hosting on U.S. military bases.
Conservative governments, including those of predominantly Muslim nations, are similarly negative. Kuwait, for example, sharply criticized the acting chargé d'affaires of the U.S. embassy for promoting Pride month in June via official channels on Twitter. In an official statement, Kuwait’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs stressed to the U.S. “the need for the embassy to respect the laws and regulations in force in the State of Kuwait,” where public morality laws ban same-sex sexual activity.
In Hungary, Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó clashed with U.S. Ambassador David Pressman, who is openly gay and publicly criticized the Hungarian government over LGBT issues. “[I]f he wishes to use his stay in Hungary to criticize the actions of a government elected by a clear majority of the Hungarian people and legitimized by the Hungarian people,” the foreign minister said, “he will have a very difficult job in working effectively to improve cooperation between the two countries.”
Elsewhere, the U.S. ambassador to Poland, Mark Brzezinski, and some 30 staffers participated in Warsaw’s Pride parade, despite Poland’s constitutional ban on both same-sex marriage and civil unions. In South Korea, where same-sex marriage is illegal, the U.S. Ambassador, Philip S. Goldberg, promoted Pride month and spoke at a “Queer Culture” event in Seoul.
The U.S. embassy to the Holy See posted its Pride flag on social media, disregarding the Catholic Church’s longstanding position against homosexuality. Criticized for, in the words of Republican Rep. Warren Davidson of Ohio, “flying flags that are hostile to the doctrine of the Catholic Church,” Ambassador Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the State Department’s top DEI officer, defended the decision, saying the embassy did not need to coordinate with or seek the Vatican’s permission: “We are a sovereign nation and we make our own decisions.”
According to a tally by RealClearInvestigations, 118 U.S. embassies tweeted or retweeted posts celebrating Pride Month in June.
But the promotion of LGBT ideology is only one part of the State Department’s broader push for DEI abroad. When State Department DEI officers managed a Pride event at the U.S. embassy in Trinidad and Tobago, Ambassador Candace Bond said one of the conference’s goals was to establish “an inclusive DEI framework within their [Trinidad’s] organizations.” To that end, the State Department funded a three-day DEI training program.
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There's a New Player in the Government's Censorship Game
The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) is in the crosshairs of the House Judiciary Committee and Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government after reportedly working with the Biden administration to censor political and other speech online. CCDH describes itself as an "international organization disrupting the production and spread of hate & misinformation."
"The Committee on the Judiciary is conducting oversight of how and to what extent the Executive Branch has coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech. To develop effective legislation, such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the Executive Branch’s ability to work with social media platforms and other companies to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users, the Committee must first understand the nature of how the Executive Branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediates to censor speech. To this end, the Committee asked that the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) produce communications with the Executive Branch relating to the moderation of content online," a letter from Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan to CCDH states.
"In addition, we also asked for communications between companies including social media companies and the CCDH, to understand, among other things, the extent to which content moderation occurred as a result of the government’s influence. In response, your counsel has informed the Committee that CCDH will not comply voluntarily with our requests," Jordan continues.
So far, CCDH has refused to voluntarily comply with Committee requests for documentation. As a result, the group has been subpoenaed.
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Australia: Tyrannical childcare regulator blasted
Determined to make childcare unaffordable
A HUNTER child care service facing up to $50,000 in fines for failing to comply with "inequitable and impractical" Department of Education regulations has hit back, and won.
St Nicholas Early Education services, which operates 33 out-of-school-hours OOSH services for children at Catholic schools in the Maitland-Newcastle Diocese, as well as 12 early childhood learning centres, caters to about 5,200 children.
The service was taken to task over allegations it failed to properly manage children with asthma at six of its OOSH centres in Abermain, Branxton, Lochinvar, Maitland, Rutherford and Scone.
However, Supreme Court Justice Des Fagan criticised the department for inflicting "impractical burdens" on St Nicholas rather than adopting a sector-wide standard.
He described the laws regulating the industry as a "superstructure of minute regulation" which comes at "significant cost, and with considerable burden and absorption of resources - for government, for approved providers, and for the users of their services".
"The burden of heavy regulation is illustrated in this case by evidence of the manner in which authorised officers of the secretary have scrutinised the operation of some of the plaintiff's centres and by the documentary evidence of the plaintiff's painstaking and protracted efforts to reason with departmental offices about the impracticability of their enforcement directions," Justice Fagan said.
As it was, the centres operated on a not-for-profit basis, and there was evidence before the court that many of the clients of the business are "families wherein both parents work".
"There is a strong inference that the scope for the plaintiff to increase its charges, in order to cover additional operating expenses including the cost of complying with statutory requirements and departmental directions, is very constrained," he said.
In this case, the department was seeking for St Nicholas to keep on the premises asthma-related drugs which were only required to be taken once per day, at home.
"It appears unsatisfactory, to say the least, that medically untrained personnel should, in the name of the secretary, formally allege on medical grounds that an offence has been committed ... carrying a $50,000 fine, and issue a statutory notice for which non-compliance attracts a $30,000 fine ... (when) 'online research' was considered (upon review) sufficient to show that by following parental instructions, which accorded with the nature of the medication, the plaintiff (St Nicholas) took 'every reasonable precaution' as required by the Law," Justice fagan said.
"It is difficult to see why the inspector and (department) should not have been sufficiently trained either to refrain from making medical judgments beyond their expertise or to make the online inquiry themselves, before imposing upon an authorised provider the risk and burden of dealing with a compliance notice that was unjustified in this material particular."
The department's requirements were outside of accepted industry practise, medical advice and community standards.
Being forced to approach parents for updated asthma plans in an effort to appease the department, St Nicholas reported that four families withdrew their child's asthma plans saying they had outgrown them, and two families left the service citing the requirement of a new asthma plan where it was not a requirement at other services.
"A significant number of parents have expressed concerns around the cost and availability of accessing their GP/specialist to request a further update to the plan and whether this accessibility issue will threaten the ability of their child/children to continue attending care," the department's legal counsel said.
"Out of the responses received, less than 14 per cent have been able to provide updated plans that [meet] the requirements [the department] have outlined. We believe this to be further evidence that the department's current approach with the approved provider's services is outside of accepted industry practice, medical advice and community standards."
Justice Fagan ordered the department to pay St Nicholas's costs, saying the money it had spent on its approach to enforcement could probably have funded "an appropriately qualified medical specialist" to advise on standardised directions to all approved operators, taking into account the autonomy of parents to choose the extent to which they will authorise or require childcare staff to administer medication.
"The department's relationship with this provider has been one of enforcement, penalisation and legal disputation rather than guidance and support," he said.
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30 August, 2023
City Can’t Ban Farmer From Market for Views on Same-Sex Marriage, Judge Rules
The original 2017 decision by East Lansing to exclude farmers Steve and Bridget Tennes and their Country Mill Farms from the market “constituted a burden on plaintiffs’ religious beliefs,” District Judge Paul Maloney ruled last week, citing Supreme Court precedent.
Tennes and his wife, who are Catholic, “were forced to choose between following their religious beliefs and a government benefit for which they were otherwise qualified,” Maloney, of the District Court for the Western District of Michigan, wrote in his Aug. 21 opinion.
“He serves and welcomes everyone to his stand [at the farmers market]. No one is ever turned away,” lawyer John Bursch, a senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, said of Tennes, The Associated Press reported.
“The District Court’s decision rightly protects Steve’s freedom to operate his business according to his convictions,” said Kate Anderson, another senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom who argued before the court in July 2021 on behalf of the Tenneses and their farm. “Country Mill has continued to participate in the farmers market without issue during this litigation.”
East Lansing first barred Country Mill Farms from its farmers market in 2017 after the Tenneses posted on Facebook in August 2016: “Due to our religious beliefs, we do not participate in the celebration of a same-sex union.” The post was in response to a question about the family farm’s services as a wedding venue.
Jay Richards, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family, praised the Michigan court ruling in an email to The Daily Signal, Heritage’s multimedia news organization.
“The District Court made exactly the right judgment,” Richards, also the think tank’s William Simon senior research fellow in religious liberty and civil society, said. “East Lansing was using the cover of ‘nondiscrimination’ not to protect its citizens, but, to, well, to discriminate against religious believers with whom it disagrees.”
As The Daily Signal previously reported, the Tenneses filed a federal lawsuit in May 2017 against East Lansing over its decision to ban them from selling produce at the farmers market even though their farm is 22 miles outside the city in a different jurisdiction.
That September, The Daily Signal reported, Maloney ordered East Lansing to reinstate the couple at the farmers market while the lawsuit over their refusal to host same-sex weddings made its way through court. At the time, the couple hosted traditional weddings at their farm.
Heritage’s Richards echoed the sentiment of the Tenneses’ lawyer.
“Mr. Tennes serves everyone, but not to participate in activities that violate his religious and moral convictions,” Richards said. “Americans shouldn’t have to surrender their free exercise of religion when they enter the market. It’s nice to see that this U.S. District Court agrees.”
The Tenneses told The Daily Signal in a 2017 interview that East Lansing’s farmers market is the largest market where they sell.
“Since June 1, [2017,] we’ve already missed three and a half months of being able to attend East Lansing Farmer’s Market, where we’ve served everyone for the last seven years,” Steve Tennes told The Daily Signal that September.
The Tenneses said they never before had faced a discrimination complaint of any kind.
The city initially responded to the couple’s lawsuit by filing a motion to dismiss the case, which Maloney denied while allowing Country Mill Farms to continue to sell at the farmers market as the case continued.
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South Carolina Supreme Court Upholds Ban on Post-Heartbeat Abortions
In June 2022, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court said what we can all read for ourselves, that the U.S. Constitution “does not confer a right to abortion.”
That shifted the venue for those who want to eliminate any legal protection for the unborn to state courts and state constitutions. In January, the South Carolina Supreme Court held that a ban on most abortions after detection of a “fetal heartbeat” violated the South Carolina Constitution.
That court has now examined a slightly modified statute and, this time, found it constitutional.
The Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act of 2021 allowed abortions after detection of a fetal heartbeat only in cases of “fetal anomaly,” when the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest, or when the abortion was “necessary … to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to prevent a serious risk of a substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”
Planned Parenthood went to state court, arguing that the law violated the state constitution.
The South Carolina Constitution does not explicitly protect a right to abortion and uses the word “privacy” only once. Article I, Section 10 provides: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures and unreasonable invasions of privacy shall not be violated.”
That’s an unusual provision. Some state constitutions, such as in Alaska, California, and Montana, protect a stand-alone “right of personal privacy.” South Carolina and Illinois, however, connect privacy directly to the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures—language similar to the Fourth Amendment in the U.S. Constitution. The Illinois Supreme Court held in 2013 that, in this context, “privacy” did not include abortion.
The South Carolina Supreme Court now had its chance to address the issue.
The court’s first decision in Planned Parenthood v. South Carolina (Planned Parenthood I), however, was so fractured that only its 3-2 judgment that the abortion ban was unconstitutional seemed clear. Each of the justices in the majority offered different reasons for that conclusion, and the two dissenters each wrote their own opinion explaining their position.
Two justices, for example, plucked “privacy” from its search-and-seizure context and said that it included a right to abortion. Justice John Few disagreed with that conclusion, but still voted to find the law unconstitutional. He focused on the possibility that women might not know they are pregnant, and therefore would be unable to make an informed abortion decision until after a fetal heartbeat can be detected and the opportunity to choose abortion no longer exists.
That, Few wrote, made the law “arbitrary.”
The Legislature went back to the drawing board, attempting to address the issue that concerned him. The basic ban on most abortions after a detectable fetal heartbeat remained, but a revised section describing the Legislature’s findings and the statute’s purposes put less emphasis on the woman’s informed choice and more on how the Legislature balanced “a woman’s interest in autonomy and privacy” against “the interest of the unborn to live.”
In a 4-1 decision (Planned Parenthood II), the court concluded that “the balance struck by the legislature was [not] unreasonable as a matter of law” and, therefore, upheld the revised statute.
While pro-life advocates are cheering this result, this decision has its own serious flaws. The most important constitutional question was whether the reference to “privacy” in Article I, Section 10, was limited to the search-and-seizure context or, freed from that context, included a right to abortion.
The court in Planned Parenthood I did not clearly answer that question. Few and the two dissenters rejected the idea that “privacy” could be pulled out of its context and given a broader meaning, but it was not a formal holding of the court.
Planned Parenthood II is even more confusing on this important point. The court “reaffirm[ed] our finding from Planned Parenthood I that there is no fundamental constitutional right to abortion under Article I, Section 10.” Just two sentences later, the court said that “in the interest of unity, we shall assume only for purposes of our analysis and decision today that the privacy provision reaches beyond the search-and-seizure context to include bodily autonomy.”
Wait, what?
In Planned Parenthood I, Few “rejected” the idea that “privacy” in Article I, Section 10, applies beyond search and seizure. Similarly, Justice George James wrote in dissent that “a citizen’s right to be free from unreasonable invasions of privacy does not extend beyond the context of searches and seizures.”
Yet Few and James both signed onto the majority opinion in Planned Parenthood II, asserting that “the privacy provision reaches beyond the search-and-seizure context.”
Reaffirming a precedent means, by definition, that the previous decision affects the later one. But “assuming” that a holding applies only to the present case means that it does not affect later ones. This is made all the more confusing when both decisions address the same point of law—and come to different conclusions. All “in the interest of unity,” no less.
The confusion continues. In his Planned Parenthood I dissent, Justice John Kittredge wrote that the reference to privacy “is part of the search-and-seizure clause and is not a standalone provision.” There is, he wrote, “no language in Article I, Section 10 of the South Carolina Constitution that supports an interpretation of a privacy right that would encompass a right to abortion.”
In his Planned Parenthood II majority opinion, however, Kittredge wrote that (at least for this one decision) “the privacy provision reaches beyond the search-and-seizure context to include bodily autonomy.” Whew!
In a disturbing sign of the times, most news reports on Planned Parenthood II—from ABC, The Associated Press, Axios, Detroit News, The Hill, the Los Angeles Times, NBC, PBS, Politico, U.S. News & World Report, and many others—made sure everyone knew the court was “all-male,” but didn’t bother explaining why that fact was relevant.
By leaving that innuendo hanging, the media contribute to the public’s misperception that courts decide cases based on personal opinions and politics (or in this case, gender), rather than law.
Courts decide cases in two parts: the judgment, which identifies the winner, and the opinion, which explains the judgment. Both are important. The judgment decides the case before the court; the opinion can influence cases beyond that one.
Especially when a case involves a volatile issue, such as abortion, courts have a duty not only to find the right answer, but to explain it so that the public can better understand and evaluate what the judicial branch is doing.
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More Courts Uphold Bans on ‘Gender-Affirming’ Care for Minors. Is Supreme Court Next Stop?
Activist judges who believe the propaganda on “lifesaving” “gender-affirming” care for minors are weeping into their lattes this month as a second federal appellate court has just upheld a duly enacted state law banning these practices for children.
A few short weeks after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upheld Tennessee’s law banning “gender-affirming” care for minors in the state, the 11th Circuit followed suit and upheld Alabama’s law prohibiting the same.
In an opinion for the unanimous three-judge panel written by Judge Barbara Lagoa, the court overturned a lower court order that had enjoined a portion of Alabama’s Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act.
The act makes it a felony, punishable to up to 10 years in prison, to administer “gender-affirming care” to minors—including chemical castration and radically transformative body modification procedures.
The state’s appeal from the lower court’s decision halting the law centered specifically on section 4(a)(1)-(3), the portion of the law banning the administration of puberty blockers or “cross-sex hormones.”
But as the 6th Circuit did in its decision upholding the Tennessee law, the 11th Circuit wasted no time in both overturning the lower court decision and going so far as to hold that the lower court had abused its discretion in applying the wrong standard of judicial review.
Lagoa wrote, “The plaintiffs have not presented any authority that support the existence of a constitutional right to ‘treat [one’s] children with transitioning medications subject to medically accepted standards.’ Nor have they shown that [the law] classifies on the basis of sex or any other protected characteristic. Accordingly, section 4(a)(1)-(3) is subject only to rational basis review.”
There are three standards for judicial review when a court must determine the constitutionality of a particular law: the rational basis test, the intermediate scrutiny test, and the strict scrutiny test.
The intermediate and strict scrutiny tests are more restrictive standards of review than rational basis, and more difficult for a state to satisfy. Rational basis, however, is used when no fundamental right (such as free speech, voting, or religion) or suspect classification (such as race or national origin) is at issue. Under this standard, the state must simply show that the law is rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest.
This standard, the 11th Circuit held, was easily satisfied by the state of Alabama, and the state’s regulation of the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone treatments for minors was to be afforded a “strong presumption of validity.”
The court continued with a discussion of whether the right to treat one’s children with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones could be found within the more general 14th Amendment right to direct the upbringing of one’s children—as plaintiffs had claimed.
The court found it did not.
Citing the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision of last June, the court noted that in order to determine whether a claimed right is one of the “substantive rights” guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, “Courts must look to whether the right is ‘deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition’ and ‘essential to our Nation’s scheme of ordered liberty.’” But, it continued, “the use of these medications in general—let alone for children—almost certainly is not ‘deeply rooted’ in our nation’s history and tradition.”
Because the judges were being asked to break new ground in the field of substantive due process under the 14th Amendment, the court wrote that it was bound to exercise the “utmost care.” This, Lagoa wrote, the lower court had not done.
In fact, she pointed out that the lower court had “grounded its ruling in an unprecedented interpretation of parents’ fundamental right to make decisions concerning the ‘upbringing’ and ‘care, custody, and control’ of one’s children,” and then applied the wrong judicial review standard of this new “right,” to boot.
As far as the plaintiffs’ argument that the Alabama law was subject to intermediate scrutiny because it made sex-based classifications (relative to “gender nonconformity”), the court was unconvinced.
While the lower court had applied the Supreme Court’s 2020 decision, Bostock v. Clayton County, to equate “gender nonconformity” with “sex,” the appellate court disagreed, noting that the Alabama law treated both sexes equally. Because it “classifie[d] on the bases of age and procedure, not sex or gender nonconformity, [it was] therefore not subject to any heightened scrutiny.”
The court also slapped down the lower court’s application of Bostock—a case with a limited holding, and one that solely concerned the prohibition against sex discrimination in employment found in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.
Lagoa wrote, “The Equal Protection Clause contains none of the text that the Court interpreted in Bostock. It provides simply that ‘[n]o State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.’”
She added, “Because Bostock therefore concerned a different law (with materially different language) and a different factual context, it bears minimal relevance to the instant case.”
Within a few short days of the 11th Circuit’s decision, a Missouri state court upheld that state’s own SAFE (Save Adolescents from Experimentation) Act—the first trial court victory to date in cases interpreting laws that ban the mutilation of children in the name of “gender-affirming” care.
In declining the plaintiffs’ request to halt the law, Judge Stephen R. Ohmer ruled, “The science and medical evidence is conflicting and unclear” and that “the evidence raises more questions than answers.”
Nearly simultaneously, however, a Texas state court halted the operation of that state’s “transgender” medical procedures ban. The state immediately filed an appeal to the Texas Supreme Court, which temporarily halts the trial court’s ruling. The Texas attorney general’s office responded to the trial court’s decision by saying that it would “continue to enforce the laws duly enacted by the Texas Legislature and uphold the values of the people of Texas.”
Still pending before a federal trial court in Florida is a challenge to that state’s “gender-affirming” medicine ban for minors as adopted by the Florida boards of Medicine and Osteopathic Medicine. That case should now be relatively easy to decide since that ban is nearly identical to the Alabama law that the 11th Circuit just upheld.
In a previous case, Adams v. St. Johns County School Board, the 11th Circuit determined (again in an opinion written by Lagoa) that a school’s sex-segregated bathroom policy was not a violation of the Constitution because, just as the Alabama law does, it treated all students equally, regardless of sex.
This is good news for the state of Florida as officials chart a path forward in defending their “gender-affirming” medical ban.
With 22 states having enacted restrictions on “transgender” medical interventions for minors, and with courts in different states and different federal circuits reaching different conclusions in terms of upholding or overturning such laws, the battle to protect the minds and bodies of adolescent children seems ultimately destined for the Supreme Court.
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Australia: Wrongly jailed father successfully sues judge for false imprisonment in landmark case
Salvatore Vasta finally went too far with eccentric judgments. He comes from an interesting family of ultimately Sicilian origin. His father, Angelo Vasta, was born in my home town of Innisfail and was also a prominent senior judge -- but was so tainted with apparent corruption that he was removed from office by by an act of parliament. An extraordinary family
A father who was wrongly jailed by a judge for an alleged contempt of court in a family law case has been awarded more than $300,000 in damages after he took the rare step of suing the judge personally.
In a landmark decision on Wednesday, Federal Court Justice Michael Wigney held Federal Circuit and Family Court Judge Salvatore Vasta could not rely on a judicial immunity and was personally liable for the man’s false imprisonment. The Commonwealth and the state of Queensland were also held liable.
The father of two, given the pseudonym Mr Stradford, was awarded a total of $309,450 in damages.
Vasta alone was ordered to pay $50,000 of the total sum in exemplary damages for false imprisonment and deprivation of liberty. Exemplary damages, which are punitive rather than compensatory, are awarded in rare cases.
Each of Vasta, the Commonwealth and the state of Queensland were ordered to pay a combined $59,450 of the total to cover Stradford’s personal injury and loss of earning capacity.
Vasta and the Commonwealth were also ordered to pay $35,000 for false imprisonment and deprivation of liberty, while Vasta and the state of Queensland were ordered to pay $165,000 for false imprisonment.
Stradford launched proceedings against Vasta, the Commonwealth and the state of Queensland in the Federal Court in 2020 after the Full Court of the Family Court overturned Vasta’s 2018 order imprisoning him in that state.
The Full Court said in a scathing judgment in 2019 that it would be “an affront to justice” to leave in place the declaration that Stradford had committed a contempt of court and the order imprisoning him for a maximum of 12 months.
“What occurred here ... constituted a gross miscarriage of justice,” the Full Court said at the time. It said Vasta had no power to make the declaration or order and no factual basis for doing so.
Vasta has been the subject of a series of excoriating appeal judgments, and is facing a second lawsuit brought by another man he jailed for an alleged contempt of court. That case was paused pending the outcome of the Stradford case.
The Federal Court heard Vasta told Stradford, whose former wife strenuously opposed him going to jail, to “bring your toothbrush” after he allegedly failed to hand over all his financial records in the family law case.
Neither Stradford nor his former wife had lawyers acting for them in the property dispute and the man insisted he had “in good faith tried to provide every aspect of my financial life”.
“Don’t tell me ‘I tried’,” Vasta told the man. “Rubbish ... I didn’t come down in the last shower.
“And that’s the strange thing, is you really don’t think that the court ever will jail you for contempt. You’re about to find that lesson is going to be a very hard one for you to learn.”
Stradford was held for seven days in police custody and prison, during which he said he was bashed in prison, became suicidal and woke up to his cellmate strangling him. He was eventually released from custody after obtaining a stay to prevent the order jailing him taking effect pending his court challenge.
Under the doctrine of judicial immunity, judges cannot ordinarily be sued for decisions they make, and Vasta sought to rely on this immunity in the Stradford case.
Wigney found this immunity did not protect Vasta. He said Vasta had engaged in a “gross and obvious irregularity of procedure” and denied Stradford “any modicum” of natural justice or procedural fairness.
Vasta was a Federal Circuit Court judge at the time he imprisoned Stradford and is now a judge of the Federal Circuit and Family Court, after the two courts were merged.
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29 August, 2023
NIH Seeks to Change Its Mission Statement to Avoid Perception of Perpetuation of "Ableist" Beliefs
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), America’s apex biomedical research institute, and largest funder of medical-related research worldwide, just recently issued a Request for Information (RFI), to change or update its mission statement to be more mindful of sensitivities associated with disabled communities. Current language in the agency’s mission statement looked to perpetuate ‘ableist’ beliefs.
The largest public funder of biomedical and behavioral research in the world, NIH seeks to translate scientific discoveries into better health for the U.S., as well as the rest of the world's population.
This RFI will inform NIH's efforts to update its mission statement to ensure that it reflects the NIH mission as accurately as possible. Language and words matter more than ever in America in this day and age.
This call for change stems from the commitment in 2021 to the matter via the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) Working Group on Diversity, Subgroup on Individuals with Disabilities.
The call for this RFI originates from a report published in December 2022 containing several recommendations, including the updating of the NIH mission statement. The NIH reports that the ACD adopted the Working Group’s recommendations, sending them to the NIH Director.
According to that report, “One immediate action for the NIH to support disability inclusion is to remove the language of ‘reducing disability’ from the NIH mission statement. The current mission statement could be interpreted as perpetuating ableist beliefs that disabled people are flawed and need to be ‘fixed’.”
Clearly, the NIH leadership has taken the observations seriously.
The NIH’s current mission statement is “to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.”
Seemingly harmless language, but sensitivity associated with the topic means interpretations can vary significantly.
America’s apex research institute sought to look into the mission statement, particularly mindful of the inclusion of the phrase “reduce [...] disability,” with an aim to update, better reflecting what the agency describes as “the current and future vision for the agency.”
NIH leadership and teams of subject matter experts spent considerable time, energy and resources to generate a proposed revised NIH mission statement.
A public agency under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the NIH issues an RFT seeking the elicitation of feedback on a proposed update to the agency’s mission statement
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Democrats And The Hitler Lie
Since the year 2000 (and possibly before, but definitely after), Democrats have been engaged in the despicable game of calling everyone they view as a threat or obstacle to their agenda “Hitler,” “Hitler-like,” “Worse than Hitler,” etc., etc. They do this because it’s easy, without concern that it’s insulting to Hitler’s victims or a complete lie, a bastardization of history. What is that last part about? Well, I’ll explain.
Hitler was a fascist, obviously, and a totalitarian. Somewhere along the line, these characteristics have become ascribed to the political right, or as they love to say nowadays, “The extreme right.” But it’s not true, not even close. There is no such thing as a “right-wing strongman.” Simply put, every single dictator is of the left. Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, Castro, Mussolini, Marcos, Chavez, Kim, Amin, and everyone else you can think of are people of the political left, plain and simple.
I know this cuts against everything you’ve heard in the media, and if you’re under 40, it probably goes against everything you were taught in school. But, to put it mildly, you were lied to.
First off, socialism, fascism, and communism are all very similar – they advocate different ways for the government to grow and “give” people things. Communists provided people with everything they deemed the people needed, for example, and everyone had to “contribute” by working for essentially slave wages. There was a thin veil of economic transactions, but the government all ultimately controlled them. Fascism and socialism are the same way, just slightly different methodologies.
They also all have tens of millions of dead bodies in their wake – the elimination of opposition is a cornerstone of all of them. Those who weren’t killed were imprisoned because why not? They had to go, but some people would cause more problems as dead martyrs than living but inaccessible ones.
Yes, these groups fought amongst each other, but really only for control. They all believed themselves to be the true heirs to Marx and wanted to be the ones to lead the people to Utopia. The irony of them killing each other over this was utterly lost on them.
So, now we get to the real point at which the argument is made about how all of these evil ideologies are of the left, and it’s pretty simple.
Progressive is the left, conservative is the right, OK? Progressives want a bigger government that does more, and with a bigger government doing more individual liberty necessarily shrinks. Conservatives want smaller government, limited by the Constitution, and more individual liberty. It stands to reason that the further you go down the progressive direction, the bigger and stronger the government gets, just the opposite for the conservative side.
The natural end of the road for progressives is absolute power, a totalitarian regime imposing its will on the people, whether they like it or not. It’s a disaster, always, and the average person suffers greatly, but they suffer equally. It’s equity on display. Of course, that suffering never makes it to the top – as Soviet citizens starved, Stalin and his pals were fat. While North Koreans ate dirt, every leader in the Kim family was obese. It holds for almost all of them.
Now, the logical end for the conservative side of the horizon is anarchy. The further you go down the right, the smaller the government becomes and the more personal liberty there is. The end of that is no government at all, the opposite of the left.
But to hear the Democrat/MSNBC brain trust tell it, as you work your way down the right side, as government power shrinks, there is a magical point at which it somehow spikes back up to be all-powerful, and that’s where Hitler and every other of these monsters somehow lived. It doesn’t make any sense, but they also know people have been conditioned by a horrible left-wing public education system not to understand politics or history and to believe what they hear from “journalists” on TV, so it sticks. It only sticks with stupid people, but there are enough of them to fuel a movement.
When you point out that the Nazis were literally the “National Socialist German Workers Party,” they don’t get how nothing about that is conservative. That they advocated for a great many of the policies Democrats did and do doesn’t matter either. The concepts of “equity” (meaning the same outcome, not the same opportunity – finish line vs. level playing field) and critical race theory being used as means of division and control are lost on them. They simply obey.
The left, everywhere it exists in the world, demands obedience; they insist on conformity of thought. You wear whatever you want, screw whoever you want, but you’d better think only what is acceptable or else. It is the new slavery, and people don’t even realize it.
The public is too busy being told war is peace, crime is harmony, men are women, and more. That so many people swallow this insanity unquestioningly is a testament to just how far those cancerous ideologies have metastasized into our culture and how deeply we have to cut them out.
That fight starts by acknowledging the reality that Hitler and every other of history’s greatest monsters in the modern world were wholly and firmly on the left. Once you open yourself up to that, you see what Joe Biden and this current crop of Democrats are attempting to do (not just to Donald Trump but to everyone who stands in their way – how many times has Ron DeSantis been called Hitler already or Tim Scott an Uncle Tom?) in a completely different, but accurate light.
https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2023/08/27/column-n2627582
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Who Best Avoided the COVID Religion?
One of the greatest contributions that the United States gave to the world was and is religious freedom. In 2020, that freedom was taken away from all religions in the United States. We’ve not yet come to terms with this awful reality and what it means for the future of faith.
The lockdowns were a major blow to religious institutions and practice. Every major survey shows that attendance at weekly religious services is down from pre-lockdown times.
“The share of all U.S. adults who say they typically attend religious services at least once a month is down modestly but measurably (by 3 percentage points, from 33 percent to 30 percent) over that span,” Pew writes. “And one-in-five Americans say they now attend in person less often than they did before the pandemic.”
I’ve had this confirmed by many friends who report that the religious houses of their choice seem to show far less participation. This very likely translates to a decline in financial support, too. Once people got out of the habit of participating in a physical church, the ritual was broken, and now we see the spreading of indifference. This surely isn't a good sign.
But that picture is complicated by a strange feature: The religious congregations that resisted COVID-19 controls and shutdowns have likely earned trust and loyalty from their members. Indeed, this weekend I happened to attend the debut of a new opera where attendance was dominated by what are called “traditionalist” Catholics. Talking with people after, I was thrilled to learn just how many of their congregations never closed down.
A priest friend of mine in the Midwest tells the story of Easter 2020, when most every church in the country was closed. That’s an outrage, by the way. It’s a devastating commentary on the Catholic bishops that they uttered no protest against this. It’s a black mark against an entire generation of church leadership.
My priest friend, however, stood up to his own bishop and said he would sooner resign his post as pastor than lock his own parishioners out of church on Holy Week.
“You are bluffing,” the bishop said. “Try me,” the priest answered.
The bishop couldn't afford to take the chance of losing this man because his parish had a very large school and was thriving. So the meeting ended with the bishop neither giving permission nor refusing it. The parish allowed parishioners to come in the back entrance where the media wasn't on the lookout, and they kept the lights in the building very low so as not to attract government officials.
Services went on. The parishioners haven't forgotten this act of bravery, and they increased their participation and financial support in gratitude. The priest was tested and showed that he took seriously the Gospel message. He wasn't going to throw away the words of Jesus that wherever two or three gather in his name, there is God.
There is nothing in the Gospels about social distancing, much less mRNA jabs as a moral imperative.
Jesus ate with the lepers, but Dr. Anthony Fauci told us not to get near each other because of a virus circulating with a 99 percent and higher survival rate, even while he was banning therapeutics and killing people with ventilators and toxic pharmaceuticals.
Those who trusted Jesus over Dr. Fauci have earned the respect of their congregations. But there is even more to it than that.
There is something about a very strong religious faith that protected people against government propaganda in those times. They could see straight through the lies even as more secular people in general went for the government-pushed baloney.
Think back to those times. Who resisted? Certainly the traditional Catholics did, more than a few of them devoted to the older form of liturgy with Latin and all the smells and bells. They teach a stricter doctrine about sin and salvation than you get from the watered-down version in modern parish life. Those people were certainly among the resistance to government decrees.
It was the same with Jewish congregations. The typical Reform, Conservative, and Modern Orthodox temples and synagogues shut down and went to Zoom. This infuriated people and alienated them from their places of worship. But in many communities called “ultra-Orthodox,” or Hasidic among others, there was indefatigable resistance.
Indeed, both the governor and mayor of New York dared blame these faithful Jews for the spreading of disease. The New York Times agreed completely, despite how this claim revived one of the more grotesque smears of the Jews from the Middle Ages.
The Amish never paid the slightest attention to the disease frenzy that shut down the rest of society. In the Anabaptist tradition, which also includes the Mennonites, there is no real distinction among the community, the way of life, and the functioning of the place of worship. It's all in unity in both belief and practice. And so there simply was never a chance that these people would stop worshiping God in the way their tradition demands.
It was all true of many break-off sects of the so-called Mormons. Outside the confines of the official church that is forever seeking respectability of the media and secular elites, these communities continued right on with their practices. And why not? Their whole lives are defined by the choice to believe and live in a certain way. Some hysterical screaming from D.C. and the media elites isn't going to shake them from something much more fundamental: the relationship of their members to their God.
The evangelicals were a bit slow to catch on to the scam that was the lockdowns, but they figured it out, too, many by the summer of 2020, and they started holding weddings and funerals. Regular weekly services returned, to the howls of the media hounds, but they didn’t care. Once they had shaken off their fears, they were ready to get back to their religious obligations.
Tellingly, it was the more secular areas of the country that stayed closed longer. And the mainline Protestant and Catholic churches proved themselves all too willing to go along with the demands that they shut down services because of Dr. Fauci’s diktats.
For most of 2020 and 2021, many of these churches simply kept their doors closed or forcibly masked their parishioners. Horribly, some of them even went along with the vaccine mandate, not only for staff but for parishioners, too.
“Nationwide, a number of churches and synagogues are implementing vaccine mandates,” the Deseret News wrote in September 2021. “Some are requiring not just clergy and staff to get vaccinated but even congregants. Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal church in San Francisco, California, is enforcing such an all encompassing mandate — complete with ushers who will politely turn away those without proof of vaccination.”
I’m not saying that such churches deserve to go out of business, but ... actually, such churches deserve to go out of business.
What have we learned? People who take their faith seriously have proven that they are more immune to the lies of the secular elites than those who barely go through the motions. It’s the hardcore among them who put God ahead of government, their teachings ahead of the media, and their personal convictions ahead of the biomedical elite and their bogus claims.
In other words, it was faith itself that enabled people to follow real science better than those who outsourced their hearts and salvation to pharmaceutical companies and government bureaucrats. In still other words, it was the people of firm religious conviction who proved to be better practitioners of both science and human values.
Think about what that means in terms of the history of science and faith. For centuries, we’ve been told that only a faithless rationalism provides a guide to truth, while faith is merely a superstitious distraction. There are perhaps some valid historical reasons for this bias—certainly the union of church and state wasn't good for religion or civic community—but the truth is more complicated.
The past three years have shown that this claim might be completely inverted. It's faith that allows people clarity to see through government propaganda and inspires people with moral conviction to do what is right regardless of what a totalitarian government happens to be preaching at any one time.
In the end, it was Dr. Fauci and the whole COVID regime that was the superstitious distraction, while robust and traditional religion provided the best guide to light and truth.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/who-best-avoided-the-covid-religion-5477689
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London Police chief to BAN officers from backing woke causes: Sir Mark Rowley won't allow cops to take the knee, fly the rainbow flag or tack eco badges on uniforms - but wearing poppies for Remembrance is 'perfectly proper'
Met Police officers will be banned from supporting 'woke' causes while on duty, Britain's most senior policeman has warned.
Sir Mark Rowley says officers won't be allowed to take the knee, fly rainbow flags or wear badges that support environmental causes, The Telegraph reported.
However, the police commissioner said it is 'perfectly proper' for officers to wear remembrance poppies, Help for Heroes wristbands and the police memorial badge.
Sir Mark told the newspaper he is 'fairly narrow-minded' on the issue, adding that there are 'very few causes policing should be attached to'.
He argued that while many officers may 'personally support' the so-called woke causes, the force 'explicitly supporting' any of the causes is 'quite tricky' because officers need to be impartial.
Sir Mark told the Telegraph that there are 'not a lot' of causes the force should align with because of the 'danger' doing so poses.
The police chief argued that it is 'not woke' to engage with community members to 'understand what worries them' but claims policing as a whole should not align itself with causes.
'The danger is that once you say, "we are going to align ourselves to a cause because 90 per cent of the population support it", what about the 10 per cent?' he said.
Sir Mark said that modern activism is challenging because of the differing directions that protest groups can take.
Many groups have 'very sensible majority membership', he argued, but says that there are also members with extremist views and 'you can't legislate that from outside it'.
He warned that it could be 'pretty fatal' for the force if people if don't believe that officers operate 'without fear or favour'.
Sir Mark's latest ruling comes after he recently banned officers from sporting the 'thin blue line' badge which had been created as a way to honour and remember those who died in the line of duty.
The ban came after the symbol was linked to white nationalism in the US. According to the newspaper, Sir Mark defended the band by saying if he did not 'take a firm line' on what officers could and could not wear.
His view on the issue differs significantly from that of his predecessor, Dame Cressida Dick, who had said it was at each individual officer's discretion if they wanted to take a knee in support of Black Lives Matter.
Under her command officers were initially allowed to take a knee even when they were policing protests - however Dame Cressida later claimed she ordered officers not do so.
She also allowed a police vehicle to be decorated in a rainbow colour scheme to show support for the LGBTQ community.
The Met was also criticised in 2019 after officers were seen dancing and skateboarding with Extinction Rebellion demonstrators at a protest they were meant to be policing. The behavior was later branded as 'unacceptable'.
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28 August, 2023
The hugely inflated egos of older women
For various reasons I have been keeping an eye on internet dating sites over the last 3 years. And it has never ceased to astound me to see how highly older women praise themselves on such sites. They seem to see themselves as perfect examples of what a desirable female partner should be. They have a great list of praiseworthy descriptions of themselves. What they describe has no correspondence to actual women of that age whom I know. They are flawless.
I am moved to comment on it by a particularly egregious example of it that I have just encountered on a dating site. It is by a 68 year old Australian woman. I have no idea who she is and certainly do not want to know. She writes::
"I’m quite resilient, confident and strong. Lateral/logical thinking, I can be perceptive, creative & problem-solving. Often quirky and sometimes left-field. Witty, absurd, off-beat comedy is cool. Capable, sometimes passionate/sassy/playful & often resourceful.How could any man find love from someone as deeply in love with herself as that? Who could offer a range of virtues big enough to complement that? Just how did she get so wonderful? She presumably means to impress by her self-description but an inflated ego is the last thing that impresses favourably. Humility is much more attractive.
Notably, I have a soft side where compassion, equality & fairness are highly regarded. I'd like to think I'm otherwise generally agreeable albeit discerning. Open-minded & kind to others, including myself is what I strive to be, along with a good listener. Young-at-heart, fun-loving & not so typical for my age, also describes me.
I’ve a long social sciences career. I mostly live a healthy life, grow food plants & walk or cycle to keep fit & energised. Versatile in interests with a wide range, e.g. art, science, architecture, culture & a great many music types, especially some techno, house & alternative. Ask me more if you like music. Like to experiment with & am currently studying photography at uni, which I really enjoy for a sense of purpose. As I'm curious, like learning & being adventurous, I’ve had my fair share of exploring cultures & remote localities. Have swum with piranhas! Also like city haunts, e.g. funky laneways & quirky places. Would love to share further fun experiences with you, with or without the piranhas! My ultimate goal is for a supportive, committed relationship"
The sad thing is that she presumably believes every word of what she has written about herself. That being so, she would be insufferable company and ultimately very boring. Only a lapdog would suit her as a partner. I wish her the joy of such a partner. Any normal man would run a mile from her.
As women's looks decline, it is understandable that they would want to promote themselves as having other virtues, but, when such promotion degenerates into unbridled self-congratulation, it becomes simply nauseous
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A Foolish Generation
How moral relativism, technology, and lockdowns have shaped the behavior of our culture.
No rules, no right and wrong, live your truth, the "me generation": these are all apt descriptions of our modern culture's moral values. Moral relativism along with the infiltration of technology and the boredom of the COVID lockdowns have metastasized into a genuinely heartless generation.
The motto of the era is "you do you," and that is leading to all sorts of chaos. As Federalist writer Maureen Mullarkey points out, we can mark our own cultural decline by the influx of amoral celebrities as the leaders of public voices and by the lack of public intellectuals.
She also throws out this disturbing stat: "The word 'influencer' is no longer an ordinary noun; it has become a career goal. To some 26 percent of today's young people, it eclipses occupational choices that require training and formal qualifications like a college degree. The thrill of online affirmation, measured in followers, crowds out time-honored pride in useful work."
Mullarkey accurately traces the start of this descent into cultural decline with the advent of screens. When this writer was training to be an elementary school teacher, it was common knowledge that screens, particularly personal screens like phones and tablets, were not good for children's brain development. The overstimulation of the blue light alone is rewiring their brains. Now, though, it's not talked about as much because there is a big push in education and really in all spheres of life to modernize with personal screens.
But alas, it is a Faustian bargain, and the trade-off of books for screens is taking its terrible toll.
Besides the warped world of life on screens and through social media, another disturbing aspect appears through our modern notion of dating and relationships. There is the whole kerfuffle of online dating that is more often used for a one-night stand than for finding a serious long-term relationship.
Part of the problem goes back to the moral relativism so celebrated in our culture. It prohibits more serious people from feeling like they can be honest about what they want. It manipulates both men and women into settling for a lifestyle that they really don't want but culture says they should celebrate (hookup culture, ghosting, living with someone before marriage, and other risky behaviors).
No one is happy in the long term, and everyone pursing this is ultimately so lonely. The lack of taking love and relationships seriously is another factor messing with this foolish generation.
Podcaster Matt Walsh in a show this week addressed another interesting aspect that has been exacerbated by the lockdowns: the lack of etiquette people show during performances.
During the COVID pandemic, people got used to doing everything for their social media accounts, including all sorts of behavior that, in a kinder time, would have gotten them kicked out or arrested. These range from the rude (scrolling on their phones during a performance or movie) to disruptive (throwing things at performers on stage). These people are so addicted to their screens and so addicted to propping up their own social media profile that they are willing to do just about anything for clicks.
No such thing as bad publicity, right? Wrong.
The attitude of self-centeredness is not unique to our generation, though the technology certainly is. There is nothing new under the sun. In the Bible, the book of Judges cites over and over again the struggles that God's chosen people had with following him. They were constantly doing "what was right in their own eyes." Pastor John MacArthur called this period of Bible history "an age of absolute moral chaos."
Our foolish generation must abandon moral relativism — which enables and glorifies all atrocity and evil — lest they follow it to its logical, disastrous conclusion. The cure in Judges was total repentance and turning back toward God. That is also the cure for today's moral decay. Let's pray that miracle happens.
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Whose Medical Freedom? 11th Circuit Shoots Down Gender Affirming Care for Children
Yesterday wasn’t a good day for transgender advocates in the State of Alabama. A state law that went into effect last April in Alabama banned gender affirming care for children, which includes the use of puberty blockers, hormones or surgery. Legal battles ensued. The plaintiffs in this case, five parents of trans-identified children, a physician and a child psychologist sued and were able to secure a preliminary injunction from Judge Liles C. Buke, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. That ruling effective at least temporarily, afforded the ability of the plaintiffs to continue with gender affirming care in the state. However, on appeal, judges with the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overturned the injunction, effectively enforcing the law as is. In Alabama, parents and physicians and other licensed providers may not direct children to gender affirming care if it involves prescriptions for puberty blockers, hormones or surgery.
Statement by the plaintiffs
Appalled by the decision at the appellate level, groups in support of the plaintiffs and generally, advocating for the rights of transgender people included nonprofits such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and Human Rights Campaign which issued a statement objecting to the ruling.
“Every federal district court that has heard the evidence presented in these cases has come to the same conclusion: these medical treatments are safe, effective and lifesaving for some youth, and there is no legitimate reason to ban them."
The pro-gender affirming care for minors contingent continued making a fundamental medical freedom case:
“We believe that at the end of the day, our nation’s courts will protect these vulnerable youth and block these harmful laws, which serve no purpose other than to prevent parents from obtaining the medical care their children need. Parents, not the government, are best situated to make these medical decisions for their children. These laws are a shocking example of government overreach and a jarring intrusion into private family decisions. This case is far from over, and we will continue to aggressively seek legal protection for these families.”
What’s the state law at issue?
The Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act, is a state law establishing gender affirming care for children as a felony. It’s no longer lawful for parents and doctors to direct children to prescriptions such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy or surgery for that matter.
This law extends into the schools. For example, under the Alabama law, school officials may not retain for dissemination select gender-identity information of children secret from their parents.
Governor Kay Ivey signed the legislation into law in April 2022, immediately driving a deeper wedge between conservatives and liberals across the generally conservative state. Drawing opposition in courts, lawsuits ensued, including the present litigation.
Who are the plaintiffs of this case?
The plaintiffs are represented by a group of people including the parents of five transgender identified youth, a doctor and child psychologist.
What is the plaintiff’s argument?
Their argument is that the new Alabama law outright violated the rights of people to direct the medical care of their children, which is a classical medical freedom argument. Additionally, because some puberty blockers and hormones are prescribed to minors for indications such as endocrine disorders, the plaintiffs also contend that because the law excluded gender dysphoria, this represented a fundamental discrimination based on sex.
Did the lower court buy the plaintiff’s argument?
Yes, at least in part. The court issued a preliminary injunction in May of this year, halting enforcement of the law. Specifically, while upholding parts of the law, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama Judge Liles C. Buke issued the injunction regardless. Judge Liles, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote:
“Because the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit have made clear that parents have a fundamental right to direct the medical care of their children subject to accepted medical standards; and discrimination based on gender-nonconformity equates to sex discrimination, the court finds that there is a substantial likelihood that [the medication portion] of the act is unconstitutional and, thus, enjoins defendants from enforcing that portion of the act pending trial.”
So, the state appealed to the U.S. 11th Circuit—how did the appellate judges rule?
The appellate panel included three Trump appointees including Judges Barbara Lagoa, Andrew Brasher and Jean-Paul “JP” Boulee sitting by designation.”
A member of the conservative-leaning Federalist Society--Barbara Lagoa for the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit determined that the provision was only subject to the rational basis review, not a heightened standard of scrutiny as embraced by Judge Liles.
Judge Lagoa wrote:
“The plaintiffs have not presented any authority that supports the existence of a constitutional right to treat [one’s] children with transitioning medications subject to medically accepted standards.”
Importantly, Judge Lagoa continued on precedents identified by the lower court’s judge, “Those decisions applying the fundamental parental right in the context of medical decision-making do not establish that parents have a derivative fundamental right to obtain a particular medical treatment for their children as long as a critical mass of medical professionals approve. Moreover, all of the cases dealing with the fundamental parental right reflect the common thread that states properly may limit the authority of parents where it appears that parental decisions will jeopardize the health or safety of the child or have a potential for significant social burdens.”
Concurring with his colleague on the circuit court bench as well as recording his own opinion addressing the equal protection claim, yet another Trump appointee Judge Andrew Brasher wrote that “Alabama’s statute does not treat one sex differently than the other.” He continued, “It does not use sex as a proxy for some more germane classification. And it is not based on a sex stereotype. Instead, I think the law is best read to classify — not based on sex — but as between minors who want puberty blockers and hormones to treat ‘a discordance between [their] sex and sense of gender identity,’ and those minors who want these drugs to treat a different condition.”
What did the winning side have to say?
Attorney General for Alabama, Steve Marshall, went on the record with a statement yesterday:
“The Eleventh Circuit reinforced that the state has the authority to safeguard the physical and psychological wellbeing of minors, even if the United States Attorney General and radical interest groups disapprove.”
Marshall continued, “Alabama takes this responsibility seriously by forbidding doctors from prescribing minors sex-modification procedures that have permanent and often irreversible effects. This is a significant victory for our country, for children and for common sense.”
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Big Tech, led by Elon Musk, appears to be easing up on fighting "disinformation"
Social media companies are receding from their role as watchdogs against political misinformation, abandoning their most aggressive efforts to police online falsehoods in a trend expected to profoundly affect the 2024 US presidential election.
An array of circumstances is fuelling the retreat. Mass layoffs at Meta and other major tech companies have gutted teams dedicated to promoting accurate information online.
An aggressive legal battle over claims that the Biden administration pressured social media platforms to silence certain speech has blocked a key path to detecting election interference.
And X CEO Elon Musk has reset industry standards, rolling back strict rules against misinformation on the site formerly known as Twitter. In a sign of Musk’s influence, Meta briefly considered a plan last year to ban all political advertising on Facebook. The company shelved it after Musk announced plans to transform rival Twitter into a haven for free speech, according to two people familiar with the plans who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive matters.
The retrenchment comes just months ahead of the 2024 primaries, as GOP front-runner Donald Trump continues to rally supporters with false claims that election fraud drove his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden.
Multiple investigations into the election have revealed no evidence of fraud, and Trump now faces federal criminal charges connected to his efforts to overturn the election. Still, YouTube, X and Meta have stopped labelling or removing posts that repeat Trump’s claims, even as voters increasingly get their news on social media.
Trump capitalised on those relaxed standards in his recent interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, hosted by X. The former president punctuated the conversation, which streamed on Wednesday night during the first Republican primary debate of the 2024 campaign, with false claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” and that the Democrats had “cheated” in order to elect Biden.
On Thursday night (Friday AEST), Trump posted on X for the first time since he was kicked off the site, then known as Twitter, following the January 6, 2021, assault on the US Capitol. Musk reinstated his account in November. The former president posted his mug shot from Fulton County, Ga., where he was booked Thursday on charges connected to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. “NEVER SURRENDER!” read the caption.
The evolution of the companies’ practices was described by more than a dozen current and former employees, many of them speaking on the condition of anonymity to offer sensitive details. The new approach marks a sharp shift from the 2020 election, when social media companies expanded their efforts to police disinformation. The companies feared a repeat of 2016, when Russian trolls interfered in the US presidential campaign, turning the platforms into tools of political manipulation and division.
These pared-down commitments emerge as covert influence campaigns from Russia and China have grown more aggressive, and advances in generative artificial intelligence have created new tools for misleading voters.
Experts in disinformation say the dynamic headed into 2024 calls for more aggressive efforts to combat it, not less.
“Musk has taken the bar and put it on the floor,” said Emily Bell, a professor at the Tow Centre for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, where she studies the relationship between tech platforms and news publishers. For the 2024 presidential election, misinformation around races is “going to be even worse,” she added.
The social media platforms say they still have tools to prevent the spread of misinformation.
“We remove content that misleads voters on how to vote or encourages interference in the democratic process,” YouTube spokesperson Ivy Choi said in a statement. “Additionally, we connect people to authoritative election news and information through recommendations and information panels.”
Meta spokeswoman Erin McPike said in a statement that “protecting the US 2024 elections is one of our top priorities, and our integrity efforts continue to lead the industry.”
Yet it is already changing what some users see online. Earlier this month, the founder of a musical cruise company posted a screenshot on Facebook appearing to show Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker (D) falsely signing a bill that would allow undocumented immigrants to become police officers and sheriff’s deputies. “In Illinois American citizens will be arrested by illegals,” reads the post, which has been shared more than 26o times.
Fact-checkers at USA Today, one of dozens of media organisations Meta pays to debunk viral conspiracies, deemed the post false, and the company labelled it on Facebook as “false information.” But Meta has quietly begun offering users new controls to opt out of the fact-checking program, allowing debunked posts such as the falsified one about Pritzker to spread in participants’ news-feeds with a warning label. Conservatives have long criticised Meta’s fact-checking system, arguing it is biased against them.
Meta Global Affairs President Nick Clegg said the ability to opt out represents a new direction that empowers users and eases scrutiny over the company. “We feel we’ve moved quite dramatically in favour of giving users greater control over even quite controversial sensitive content,” Clegg said. McPike added that the new fact-checking policy comes “in response to users telling us that they want a greater ability to decide what they see”.
YouTube has also backed away from policing misleading claims, announcing in June it would no longer remove videos falsely saying the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump.
Continuing to enforce the ban would curtail political speech without “meaningfully reducing the risk of violence or other real-world harm,” the company argued in a blog post.
These shifts are a reaction from social media executives to being battered by contentious battles over content and concluding there is “no winning,” said Katie Harbath, former director of public policy at Facebook, where she managed the global elections strategy across the company.
“For Democrats, we weren’t taking down enough, and for Republicans we were taking down too much,” she said. The result was an overall sense that “after doing all this, we’re still getting yelled at . . . It’s just not worth it anymore.”
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27 August, 2023
A Lot Of Government Officials Should Be Going To Prison For The Hawaii Fires
If we had a functioning news media, there's a video that would be leading every newscast right now. It has nothing to do with a plane crash in Russia, a GOP primary debate, or even the indictment of every lawyer who's ever given Donald Trump legal advice, as important as all those topics may be. This video is about Americans — including children — who died horribly this month. It's about how their deaths could have been prevented if their government was even remotely competent.
The footage I'm talking about is an interview with a survivor of the fires in Maui. This interview was conducted not by CNN or NPR but by a real estate agent who moonlights as a citizen journalist. He spoke with a man who goes by "Fish" and survived the blaze in Lahaina. Here's what that man saw:
He says, "All the cars were lined up, but none of them were moving. ... And I was wondering what was stopping the traffic. It was a policeman."
As incredible as that account may seem, it's clear now that it's accurate. There are now multiple witnesses saying the same thing. The Associated Press reports that, as residents of one West Maui neighborhood tried to flee using the only paved road in town, "car after car was turned back toward the rapidly spreading wildfire by a barricade blocking access to Highway 30." Supposedly, authorities were worried about downed power lines. And there certainly were downed power lines. But the problem is that the other option — rather than navigating around that hazard — was to stay and die in the blaze. It seems obvious which was the better choice, and yet police tried to force the residents to stay put. Many people who listened and turned back ended up burning to death in their cars. Others were forced to jump over the seawall and tread water while inhaling smoke. The people who obeyed the authorities ended up dead, in many cases.
On the other hand, the people who ignored the authorities fared a lot better. Around 3 p.m., for example, a man named Nate Baird and his family tried to drive south out of town but found that the road was blocked by cones and crews "working on downed electric poles," according to the AP. That's when Baird decided to ignore what the work crews told him. He drove around the cones, and his family traveled for about an hour until they reached safety. The article lists several other examples of people who are alive today because they ignored barricades and authorities' instructions.
One 38-year-old woman, Kim Cuevas-Reyes, ignored authorities' instructions to turn towards the local civic center, which became an ad hoc shelter for refugees. Instead of doing that, the AP reported, "she takes a left, driving in the wrong lane to pass a stack of cars heading in the other direction." That decision saved her life. "The gridlock would have left us there when the firestorm came," the woman said. "I would have had to tell my children to jump into the ocean as well and be boiled alive by the flames, or we would have just died from smoke inhalation and roasted in the car."
It wasn't until several hours later that authorities announced that the road out of Lahaina was open for traffic. By that point, indeed, many people on that road, called Front Street, had burned to death in their cars or died of smoke inhalation.
How is it possible that authorities blocked off one of the only usable routes to safety during a wildfire? Given that officials in Hawaii were aware of the risk of wildfire for a long time, that's an excellent question. Last summer, in regulatory filings, Hawaiian Electric made it clear that the risk of deadly wildfires was real, especially during high winds. And yet, apparently, the plan for dealing with this kind of disaster didn't preclude sealing all the roads and trapping people in the middle of a wildfire.
If you think back to Hurricane Katrina, one of the biggest failures of FEMA was a lack of planning. The government ran evacuation simulations but didn't implement the necessary improvements after those simulations. So, when the hurricane struck, there was chaos. A lot of people died as a result. We're seeing that again. All these years later, the same lack of preparation is causing people to die.
The difference is that we aren't hearing much about FEMA in the aftermath of the catastrophe in Maui. Why is that? Deanne Criswell is the administrator of FEMA, the federal emergency management agency. She has the same job Michael Brown did in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina made landfall in New Orleans. Brown, you might remember, became a household name in the wake of that disaster — and not in a good way. When George Bush told Brown he was doing a "heckuva job," it instantly became a national scandal. Brown was so radioactive that no one was allowed to say anything nice about him.
Unlike Michael Brown, Deanne Criswell is not well-known. You probably haven't even heard her name. I didn’t know it until I looked it up. Despite the ongoing disaster in Maui, the national news media and the major political parties in Washington still hold her in high regard. Just the other day, she sat for a friendly interview on “Face the Nation”:
The burned-out cars were the most shocking thing, says the FEMA director. It was "like an apocalyptic movie." There's no scrutiny from “Face the Nation” or any media outlet about why those cars were stranded there in the first place. There wasn't a single question in that segment about why FEMA didn't have evacuation plans that might have ensured the survival of all those people.
We learned yesterday that Hawaii's top emergency response officials were on another island, supposedly learning how to respond to wildfires, on the day the blaze began in Maui. And some key federal disaster officials were apparently busy at some FEMA meetings. What explains that? Again, we have no idea because no one is asking. Reporters are busy talking to Deanne Criswell, the FEMA director, like she's some bystander visiting Maui for the first time.
This is the opposite of how the press treated Michael Brown decades ago. It's not hard to see why this might be. Deanne Criswell, unlike Michael Brown, is working for Democrats. She's also the first woman to run FEMA, so she has the whole identity politics thing going for her. It would look very bad if the first woman to run FEMA is also responsible for bungling the response to one of the worst disasters in American history. Of course, no matter how it looks, that’s exactly what happened. But the media has decided to plug its ears and close its eyes and pretend it’s not happening.
But if you do what no major media outlet is interested in doing — if you look into Criswell's past — there's a lot to discuss. As investigative journalist Nick Sortor pointed out the other day, Criswell's government biography states that "one of her most significant accomplishments was leading the coordination of [New York City's] response to the COVID-19 pandemic" when she served as the Commissioner of the New York City Emergency Management Department.
New York's handling of COVID led to more than 10,000 deaths in nursing homes — deaths that were undercounted for several months until investigative reporters noticed discrepancies in the government's data. In most countries, everyone overseeing a response like that would never work again in any capacity, much less in disaster relief. They'd go to prison for life, if anything. But Deanne Criswell was never even criticized. In fact, she got a promotion. Ten thousand deaths in nursing homes, and she gets promoted. And then, overseeing yet another failed disaster response, she gets softball questions from every news outlet.
It's astonishing, really. We've seen our public health authorities and political leaders lead us into one disaster after another. And they're not slowing down. Right now, because it's an election year and Pfizer stock is in trouble, the media is gearing up for COVID 2.0. Several major corporations and some universities are already implementing mask mandates again. Watch:
Along these lines, CNN just published an article entitled, "It may be time to break out the masks against Covid, some experts say." The report scolds Americans for not being sufficiently deferential to people with advanced degrees and positions of power. "Despite the concern among experts and some institutions, Americans don't appear to be worried enough about the recent rise in cases to change their behavior. Covid-19 was at the bottom of their list of key public health threats, according to the latest Axios [poll]."
It's not hard to see why Americans are reacting that way. The first time around, more than three years ago, the conventional wisdom was that if you wanted to survive, your best bet was to trust the experts. Then the experts said you could protest for BLM but couldn't protest against lockdowns. They admitted they were lying about herd immunity. They misled everyone on the effectiveness of the COVID shot. No one really trusts these experts anymore, for good reason.
That's encouraging, but the truth is, it's not enough. A lot of people just died in Maui because officials forcibly blockaded them. The government and the "experts" prevented these American citizens from leaving their neighborhood as a wildfire approached them. The only way to survive was not simply to doubt but to disobey. When the next lockdown comes, whether the pretext is a COVID variant, a climate emergency, or something else — that's the correct response. Do what Nate Baird did on Maui. Ignore the liars calling themselves experts. Do what you think is best for yourself and your family, and do it fast. Otherwise, quicker than you might think, you'll be trapped. By that point, like the people of Maui, you will have no way out. Because the fact is that, increasingly, we live in a country where only those who disobey will survive.
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Court rules against Dr. Jordan Peterson, upholds regulatory group's requirement that he undergo 're-education' for expressing his opinions
A governing body for psychologists in Canada ordered Dr. Jordan Peterson to undergo re-education training after complete strangers took issue with views he had expressed online.
Peterson was previously in good standing with the College of Psychologists of Ontario and had no public record of any complaints. However, he made the mistake of angering strangers online with opinions at odds with leftist speech codes and dogmas.
TheBlaze previously reported that individuals whom Peterson indicated were neither clients nor familiar with his clients complained to the CPO, which then launched an investigation into the cultural commentator.
The CPO's inquiries, complaints, and reports committee concluded in November 2022 that the doctor's comments were "degrading, demeaning and unprofessional," adding that his conduct "poses moderate risks to the public" and runs the risk of "undermining public trust in the profession of psychology, and trust in the college's ability to regulate the profession in the public interest."
Peterson's offending speech included:
criticism of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trudeau's former chief of staff, Gerald Butts, who resigned amid the liberal leader's disgraceful and damning SNC Lavalin scandal;
a suggestion that the doctor who cut off actress Elliot Page's healthy breasts was a "criminal physician"; and
a retweet of a comment made by the leader of Canada's official opposition party regarding the unnecessary severity of COVID lockdowns.
Peterson refused to undergo the regulatory board's equivalent of a Maoist struggle session or admit fault over his lawful speech.
Not long after being presented with the order from the CPO committee, Peterson penned an article in the National Post, stating, "I’m not complying. I’m not submitting to re-education. I am not admitting that my viewpoints — many of which have, by the way, been entirely justified by the facts that have emerged since the complaints were levied — were either wrong or unprofessional."
"I have done nothing to compromise those in my care; quite the contrary — I have served all my clients and the millions of people I am communicating with to the best of my ability and in good faith, and that’s that," he added.
Instead of bending the knee, he took the CPO to court, stressing that its order ran afoul of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Free only to say the right things
The Ontario Divisional Court ruled against Peterson Wednesday, concluding the CPO committee's ruling "is not disciplinary and does not prevent Dr. Peterson from expressing himself on controversial topics; it has a minimal impact on his right to freedom of expression."
The suggestion that the ruling has a "minimal impact" on Peterson's right to speak his mind appears to gloss over the fact that he now stands to lose his hard-earned license to practice clinical psychology unless he caves to the ideological parameters set by regulators.
Although he hasn't practiced in recent years, Peterson stressed earlier this year, "I deserve [my license]. I earned it. I haven't done anything to justify suspending it, and I don't want to give the hyenas their bones."
Per the ruling obtained by Canadian state media, Peterson must also pay his censors $25,000.
The panel of superior court judges — Paul Schabas, Nancy Backhouse, and John Krawchenko — appeared to agree both that Peterson's free speech was subordinate to the sensitivities of the CPO committee and those strangers filing complaints from afar and that the CPO committee had "reasonably" concluded that "Dr. Peterson's behavior raised a moderate risk of harm to the public."
Peterson responded to the ruling on Twitter, writing, "If you think that you have a right to free speech in Canada you're delusional. I will make every aspect of this public[.] ... Bring it."
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Another attempt to twist clear Bible teachings about homosexuality
I enjoy studying the Reformation and its tremendous influence on Western civilization and the founding of America. So when I discovered an organization called The Reformation Project, I was organically intrigued. Their Statement of Faith looks mainstream enough. Described as “a Bible-based, Christian organization,” they espouse beliefs in the triune God, the supremacy of God as the creator, and Jesus Christ as the son of God.
But something caught my eye on a significant point. The Reformation Project declares, “We believe in The inspiration of the Bible, the Word of God.” Many Christians, myself included, believe scripture is God's inspired and inerrant word. But being inspired by the Bible is different from believing God inspires it. To what does the Bible inspire The Reformation Project?
The organization is the brainchild of Matthew Vines, who was catapulted into the establishment media in 2012 when the New York Times wrote a glowing feature about him speaking in a Manhattan church and telling the Times, “It is simply a fact that the Bible does not discuss or condemn loving, gay relationships.” Neither the King James Bible, the Geneva Bible, nor my increasingly dog-eared Reformation Study Bible discuss “loving, gay relationships.” All three, however, do address the behavior that defines such relationships.
A perusal of The Reformation Project’s Brief Biblical Case for LGBTQ Inclusion reveals some extraordinary arguments. The authorship of this document is uncertain, but it reflects a degree of rhetorical adroitness expected of one who studied philosophy at Harvard, which Vines did for two years before leaving in 2010.
This treatise takes a creative approach to rationalizing a “biblical case” for promoting LGBTQ ideology. One rationale is “the inclusion of Gentiles in the church.” Another is “the New Testament’s trajectory toward greater inclusion of eunuchs.” The author further explains that Pentateuchal proscriptions of LGBTQ behavior don’t apply to Christians because "male same-sex relations reflect culturally-bound concerns about patriarchal gender roles,” that were prevalent during the time of Moses.
Vines may have left Harvard to pursue full-time study of the Bible. Still, he seems to disregard the Apostle Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, which reads, “men who practice homosexuality,” or commit other sins, will not inherit the kingdom of God. Vines also dismisses the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans, where Paul delineates a number of “dishonorable passions,” which include, among others, “men (who) likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another.”
We see the same sentiment in the first letter to Timothy, whom Paul reminded that the law of God is laid down “for the lawless and disobedient,” including “men who practice homosexuality” and other sins. None of these New Testament passages, nor any of the Old Testament prohibitions of LGBTQ behavior, are given much credence in the works promoted by this “Bible-based” organization.
The Reformation Project argues that “Non-affirming beliefs about same-sex relationships and transgender people contribute to serious harm in LGBTQ people’s lives,” and there may be a grain of truth in that. If I defined myself by behavior that scripture tells me is wrong, I, too, would feel very bad when others notice and counsel me against it. But we don’t soothe hurt feelings by rewriting the Bible.
Individual guilt or shame over behavior that the Bible explicitly and repeatedly defines as sinful doesn’t seem like a very sound basis for reversing millennia of Christian doctrine. But The Reformation Project has a response to that too, confidently asserting that believing the Bible’s admonitions against LGBTQ ideology is analogous to clinging to disproved beliefs that Earth is at the center of the solar system.
Paul’s instructions to Timothy were to love each other in a way that “issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” Paul also advised Timothy to be wary of people “desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make confident assertions.”
The Reformation Project’s promotion of LGBTQ ideology also invokes the Sermon on the Mount, arguing “sound Christian teachings should show good fruit.” But the Gospel of Matthew records Jesus Christ saying in this sermon, “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.” Try as I may, I can’t shake the feeling that Harvard made Matthew Vines very hungry.
All of humankind is sinful in different ways and falls short of God’s glory. That includes me and everyone I know and don’t know, gay or straight. My own sins preclude my inheritance of the kingdom of God, absent my confession and the gift of grace through faith in Christ. We cannot promote or rationalize sinfulness through novel interpretations or rewrites of the Bible.
https://townhall.com/columnists/scotthogenson/2023/08/26/coln-n2627573
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Liberal, Feel-Good 'Driver Equity Laws' Actually Endanger the Public
Knee-jerk responses by government officials and legislators following incidents in which individuals have been killed by police can cause lasting harm to law-abiding citizens. One of these dangerous policies is something called the “Driving Equity Act,” which is now the law in Philadelphia.
The Driving Equity Act, known also as the “Driving Equality Act,” is an overreaction to isolated incidents of alleged police misconduct, and reflects a troubling trend going back nearly a decade.
For example, following the 2014 death of Michael Brown during a confrontation with police in Ferguson, Missouri, the U.S. Justice Department launched a drive against a number of local police departments that resulted in “consent decrees” – mandatory edicts that made it demonstrably more difficult for those departments to carry out their mission of protecting the public.
Several years later, the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers sparked a nationwide backlash against law enforcement generally which led to policies that reduced or defunded law enforcement agencies, causing problems that resonate still today.
Early this year in Memphis, Tennessee, members of a “special” police unit beat Tyre Nichols to death, a tragedy that revived calls for state and local governments to defund and disband specialized anti-crime units.
Often camouflaged as “restorative justice” or “reimagined policing,” legislative and executive actions to curtail police funding and powers usually are premised on the notion that traditional police powers, including traffic stops, are inherently racially biased and thus have been abused as tools to target members of racial minorities, especially Black men. It is not, however, as if there are not ways to deal with such abuses.
At the federal level, and in every state and municipality across the country, there are regulations as well as civil and criminal laws available with which to hold accountable and punish police officers who violate a person’s civil rights. The conviction and lengthy prison sentence handed down against the Minneapolis police officer whose actions caused the death of George Floyd is the clearest example.
Holding individual officers accountable for unlawfully harming or killing an individual, however, takes time and hard work by investigators and prosecuting officials. Many government officials, especially those in liberal jurisdictions or those beholden to progressive supporters, find it easier and more politically rewarding to paint with a broader brush.
Responding to police misconduct incidents by characterizing an entire police unit, or the whole department as racist, to then justify new “progressive” policies to rein in such abuses, appears the solution of choice for many local and state legislators and executives.
Tossing aside long-standing law enforcement authorities rather than tackling specific incidents of police misbehavior, reflects the adage of throwing the baby out with the bathwater -- leaving the law-abiding public at greater risk than were a more focused, incident-based solution implemented.
There is no better example of this endangering policy than the so-called Driving Equity (or “Equality”) Act signed into municipal law by Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney in late 2021.
The law took effect in March 2022 and prohibits city police from stopping vehicles for a number of alleged violations, including driving with an expired registration sticker or operating a vehicle with a missing headlight or taillight. These violations have been used for decades by police departments across the country to protect against unsafe drivers or vehicles endangering the public.
Certainly there have been incidents in which such traffic stops have served as a pretext for a stop not truly warranted, but the laws themselves are sound and do enable police to protect against unsafe vehicles, and at times lead to arrests for far more serious crimes (including murder).
No longer is this the case in Philadelphia (and perhaps soon in Memphis), thanks to Philadelphia Councilmember Isiah Thomas, who sponsored the Driving Equity Act simply because he saw “a history of oppression and institutional racism” in the city’s police department, predicated also on a previous incident in a different city involving a police shooting of a detained driver.
For Councilman Thomas and Mayor Kenney, thus handcuffing the police responsible for protecting the citizens of a major American city, is justified if it results in “reimagining” police behavior that will “reduce the likelihood of negative interactions between police officers and Black drivers.”
Police organizations including Philadelphia’s Fraternal Order of Police (which has challenged, thus far unsuccessfully, the Driving Equity Act), common sense, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration analysis of traffic fatality rates on U.S. roadways resulting from limits on police enforcement powers, paint a far more sobering picture of such feel-good policies like Philadelphia’s.
Liberals in charge of “blue cities,” however, would rather traffic fatalities and injuries continue to rise rather than allow police to continue using tried-and-true methods to keep roadways and drivers safe for the rest of us.
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25 August, 2023
Even under the Tories, the authoritarian Left rules Britain
It's a sort of "sub rosa" Fascism
Living in London for a few years in the late noughties, I opened a NatWest bank account. At the end of my time there I joined Tony Abbott’s office. The bank account was abruptly closed soon after, without explanation. Might this have been related to Abbott’s extreme political incorrectness from the perspective of the London blob? The possibility never occurred to me until Nigel Farage’s recent experiences with Coutts, one of the banks in the NatWest group.
Thank goodness the managers of Britain’s banks are dim as well as sinister. Any intelligent person knows that you don’t pick a fight with Farage, the country’s smartest politician. As a result of the managers’ ineptitude, we now know how deeply the left has captured the corporate world – on top of much of the education system, the public service, the media, entertainment, the armed forces, the Church of England and, since the accession of King Charles III, the monarchy.
The Sunak government has, probably reluctantly, sided with Farage against Coutts’ ‘debanking’ of him for his political views, so bringing down the career of NatWest’s chief executive, Dame Alison Rose, an establishment favourite knighted by the King and recently invited by him to discuss climate change issues with President Biden. Paid the absurd salary of £5.25 million last year, she demonstrated farcical incompetence, both breaching client confidentiality in gossiping to a BBC journalist about the closing of Farage’s account and claiming wrongly that this was not for political reasons but because his balance wasn’t high enough. Farage then easily obtained Coutts’ 40-page charge sheet against him. Charges included: his support for Donald Trump; sharing a ‘transphobic’ tweet by Ricky Gervais; suspected anti-vaxxing views; calling for a referendum on net zero; and the claim he is a racist – all, of course, inconsistent with the ‘inclusive values’ of Coutts, a bank available only to millionaires and long a favourite of famously inclusive Middle Eastern autocrats.
Rose claimed to be unaware of the dossier and apologised to Farage for its ‘deeply inappropriate’ content, claiming that ‘it is absolutely not our policy to exit a customer on the basis of legally held political and personal views’ – although that is precisely what happened. After the fiasco, NatWest’s board, amazingly, expressed continued confidence in her. An off-the-scale public backlash followed, after which the government, which owns 38.6 per cent of NatWest, having initially seemed relaxed about the board’s support for Rose, suddenly ordered her axing. Coutts’ Australian chief executive, Peter Flavel, soon followed. The bank has now done a U-turn, telling Farage he can have his accounts back.
The saga revealed that Britain’s deranged right-on banks aren’t confined to the NatWest group: a further ten refused Farage an account. And it emerged that account closures are a vast and growing phenomenon. In 2016 the number was under 50,000. Last year it was 343,500 and so far this year it’s 200,000. Accounts are almost always closed suddenly and without explanation, an act as devastating as having the electricity or water cut off. Many of the closures relate to fraud and money laundering and others are because customers are deemed ‘politically exposed persons’, based on the odd justification that people connected, even indirectly, with public office are somehow more susceptible to fraud. This has led to the ‘debanking’ of people of all political persuasions, even their relatives, and seemingly anyone with a Russian connection, even if anti-Putin. But the banks’ commitment to ‘progressive’ values means conservatives in particular have come under their spotlight. Columnist Simon Heffer was interrogated about his friendship with Farage before he could top up his pension fund; and NatWest abruptly closed the account of Professor Leslie Sawers, a staunch defender of women’s rights on transgender issues.
The government has said it will introduce new rules requiring banks, if they propose to close an account, to explain to customers why and to allow them an increased 90 days to challenge a decision. And Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has said banks cannot close accounts because of customers’ political beliefs. These steps, if followed through – never a given under the Tories – might make other corporate leaders hesitate before targeting customers for their politically incorrect views.
But the Farage-gate revelations suggest the wokery of Britain’s corporate institutions has gone too far to be easily reined back. What was once seen as core business now everywhere seems to be less important than leftist ideology. So we see, for example, Costa Coffee featuring in its advertising not messages about the quality of its coffee, but its commitment to transgender rights, via an image of a person bearing the scars of a double mastectomy. Just as the police seem to find plenty of time to participate in Pride parades – but not to respond to burglaries – Coutts managed to devote significant resources to compiling their Farage hatchet-job against a background of banks closing 5,000 branches since 2015 and making it ever more difficult for customers to speak to a staff member.
The saga also says much about what it takes these days to get to the top of the corporate ladder. Many of us might have assumed it had something to do with improving customer satisfaction and increasing profits. But it’s now clearer than ever that, certainly when it comes to Britain’s banks, it’s more important to signal commitment to the latest woke pieties. When Rose took over NatWest in 2019, she said ‘tackling climate change would be a central pillar’ of her leadership. Sure enough, she immediately ended new loans for North Sea oil and gas extraction, lessening Britain’s energy security and driving up energy prices. Under her tenure, NatWest’s share value dropped by 11 per cent.
The mostly woke Tories don’t want an extended battle with woke companies. But the trend to leftist capitalism would be worse under Labour. Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer echoed the government in saying Rose had to resign. But his front-benchers liked the idea of companies blacklisting conservatives.
This raises the question of whether, in time, the corporate social justice warriors might extend ‘debanking’ to other undesirables, eg. beef and dairy farmers or consumers of ‘inappropriate’ or ‘problematic’ media or entertainment. Don’t be surprised if, under Britain’s next government, the drift towards woke corporate authoritarianism strengthens further.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/setback-for-britains-thought-police/
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Media Giant Gannett Sued for Allegedly Discriminating Against White Employees
The largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., Gannett, was hit with a class-action lawsuit Friday that alleges its diversity efforts discriminated against non-minority employees.
Current, former, and prospective Gannett employees filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleging the company’s “Reverse Race Discrimination Policy” discriminated against “non-minorities” on the basis of race.
The policy, announced in 2020, sought to ensure its newsrooms’ demographics reflected the communities they covered by 2025.
“Gannett executed their Reverse Race Discrimination Policy with a callous indifference towards civil rights laws or the welfare of the workers, and prospective workers, whose lives would be upended by it,” the complaint states.
Leadership was incentivized to comply with the new policy through bonuses, awards, and promotions, according to the complaint.
Gannett publishes hundreds of local media outlets across the U.S., along with publishing USA Today.
In 2020, Gannett also promised to “expand the number of journalists focused on covering issues related to race and identity, social justice and equality,” USA Today reported.
Steven Bradley, former sports editor for the Rochester, New York-based Democrat and Chronicle and one of the plaintiffs on the lawsuit, previously sued the company in April in state court for allegedly firing him because he is white.
“Gannett always seeks to recruit and retain the most qualified individuals for all roles within the company,” Gannett Chief Legal Counsel Polly Grunfeld Sack said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We will vigorously defend our practice of ensuring equal opportunities for all our valued employees against this meritless lawsuit.”
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The Woke can’t handle Queen: "Fat Bottomed Girls" axed from album
I must say that I don't like the name at all. I am as much an admirer of a well-rounded female posterior as any man, but you can have too much of a good thing
Only yesterday, I was reading about the website Worth it or Woke created by cinephile James Carrick, whose mission is to offer movie-goers an alternative to the US left-leaning review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.
Worth it or Woke serves up ‘red-pilled movie reviews’ for conservative audiences. The site assesses each film, giving it a rating of ‘woke’, ‘woke-ish’, or ‘non-woke’ to help guide right-wing viewers. In May, Carrick told Rolling Stone magazine that a ‘woke’ rating [on his website] indicates a strong emphasis on activism over narrative.
When I woke up this morning to the news that the 1978 hit Fat Bottomed Girls had been given the arse from Queen’s greatest hits album to appease a younger audience – the ‘Worth it or Woke’ website came to mind.
Perhaps we need more websites like this? Rating books, music, artists, publishers, festivals, and politicians who have been sucked down the plughole of wokeism.
Queen’s new album (released by Universal Music) was made available on Yoto – a screen-free audio player for children. A cautionary disclaimer on the Yoto website reads:
Please note that the lyrics in some of these songs contain adult themes, including occasional references to violence and drugs. These are the original and unedited recordings. Whilst no swear words are used parental discretion is advised when playing this content to or around younger children.
So references to adult themes, violence, and drugs in Queen’s songs are perfectly acceptable for children yet they oppose the celebration of a woman’s BIG, beautiful booty? Are you kidding me?
And whilst Yoto are getting all prudish and self-righteous about Fat Bottomed Girls 45-years after the fact. Why wasn’t Killer Queen (which is about a high-class escort) or Another One Bites The Dust (which is about a deadly massacre) cut from the greatest hits album? I’m pretty sure the ‘meaning’ of the latter is a lot worse for kids than a sexy rock song about a boner-causing rump.
Anyway, it turns out Sir Brian May wrote the song for Freddie Mercury to sing because he knew that Mercury had a penchant for big-bottomed girls and boys.
During an interview with Mojo Magazine, May states:
On the face of it, it’s a heterosexual song because it’s called ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’, but I was totally aware of Freddie’s proclivities and the fact he was going to sing it. Plus, some of the inspiration for the song came from stuff that I saw in Freddie’s life as well as my own. So it’s actually not so much of a heterosexual song as you might think. It’s a sort of pansexual song. There are so many ways you can take it.
The removal of Fat Bottomed Girls is just so baseless whether it’s for a child-audience or not. Children don’t spend their days analysing song lyrics. Kids live in the present moment and are more interested in the melody and the beat.
I had heard Fat Bottomed Girls hundreds of times (by the time I was 12) blaring from my brother Damian’s bedroom in the 80s. I never thought about whether the song was sexist or misogynistic or body-shaming because I didn’t know what any of those words meant. I was just a child.
All I knew is that the tune made me want to dance and TURN UP THE VOLUME.
And dance I did…
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/the-woke-cant-handle-queen-fat-bottomed-girls-axed-from-album
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Class grievance has failed. Other grievances needed
Grievances is what the Left do. Now that defending "the worker" makes little sense, some other group -- any group -- is needed to be defended. Gays are also now old hat so they have lost their steam. And blacks are not as good as they were. Amid affirmative action it is takes imagination to brand their treatment as oppressive. So transsexuals are a godsend from Marx. They support doing ghastly things to young people so that needs a lot of defending
At the end of the second world war, socialists around the world still believed in the inevitable overthrow of capitalism and the emergence of a workers utopia. Today capitalism is alive and well and, every socialist government that has been attempted, has failed utterly. There were varying degrees of failure from the Marxist nightmare of Cambodia to the relatively painless collapse of the Soviet Union. The astonishing economic success of the Peoples Republic of China only occurred when it abandoned all pretence at socialism and embraced state capitalism.
This left the millions of socialists around the world in a position which Amir Taheri has termed ‘ideological bankruptcy’. He argues the ‘the European left has developed a grievance based discourse… to form a coalition of real or imagined victims’. The class struggle beloved of 1950s socialists has been replaced by constant reference to historic sins such as slavery, colonialism and racism. The replacement of traditional Marxist ideology began in European universities but has infected education systems throughout the West in the past seventy years and has spread into state-owned media such as the ABC here, and the BBC in the UK.
This trend has also led the publishing industry to create a market for books which tell us how awful white people are. Dark Emu is one of the most successful of locally produced books in this genre but there are dozens, and most of them can be found on university reading lists, and HSC set text lists. My own particular favourite is White Fragility by the American academic, Robin DiAngelo, which, according to my Penguin edition, is, ‘A vital, necessary and beautiful book’.
Dr DiAngelo tells me that I am a racist of the worst kind as I don’t believe that I am a racist. There is something reminiscent of the witch-finder-general in Professor Dr DiAngelo’s tone. The fact that I don’t believe I am a racist is not something to be debated. Rather, it is proof of the depth of my moral and social blindness. She argues that, ‘Being perceived as white, carries more than a mere racial classification; it is a social and institutional status… imbued with legal, political, economic and social rights and privileges that are denied to others’. The problem with this sort of generalisation is that we can substitute the word ‘Aboriginal’ for ‘white’ and it till holds true. The legal and economic rights that apply to Aboriginals include mining royalties running into the billions, the right to deny non-Aboriginals access to ‘sacred sites’, free education and health care, the right to appear on The Drum and Q&A to tell white people how racist they are, and so on.
No one denies that there is a substantial gap between the life-chances of the 3.8 per cent of the population that is Aboriginal and the rest us. Everyone agrees that this situation must be addressed. But the latest great idea, the Voice, is doomed to failure because, like all its predecessors, it is based on establishing more government intervention through the creation of yet another bureaucracy. The great irony is that the Marxists and socialists who, half a century ago argued that capitalist governments were established to suppress the proletariat and ensure that the bourgeoisie remained in power, now argue for the establishment of yet another taxpayer funded bunch of government ‘advisers’.
The Pascoes and DiAngelos of the publishing world, cashing in on a gullible public, may not see themselves as Marxists or socialists. They may not subscribe to most of the central pillars of Marxist ideology, and they may not believe in the inevitable overthrow of capitalism. But they would all subscribe to the belief that the state and the white population today conspire to oppress a black population in exactly the same way that, in the 19th century, the state and the bourgeoisie oppressed the proletariat. In other words they would both subscribe to a Marxist analysis of the distribution of power within the state.
The political tradition of classical liberalism holds that a free market and laissez-faire economics, along with civil liberties under the rule of law, provide the best form of government. Economic freedom, political freedom and freedom of speech represent classical liberal ideals and they are all under attack today. In particular, freedom of speech is contested across the Western world. As John Roskam recently noted, ‘Bill Leak, Archbishihop Julian Porteous, Israel Folau… and Calum Thwaites are just some of the Australians either persecuted or prosecuted… because of what they said or believed’ (‘Live not by lies’ The Spectator Australian 22 July). The same trend is flourishing in the UK where J.K. Rowling who, because of her unremarkable views about gender, is only one of many people subjected to abuse which, a few decades ago, would have been unimaginable.
The economic freedom which is central to liberal values is also under attack on many fronts. One current example it the recent debacle in WA concerning the legislation impinging on the right of farmers to put up fences on their own properties. This was a restriction of the economic freedom of the landholders and is also an example of how the WA government’s policy of appeasement of the various Aboriginal lobby groups was always doomed to failure.
And on it goes. A relentless list of injustices and atrocities perpetrated on a victimised Aboriginal population by white oppressors supported by a racist police force and justice system. One problem with this viewpoint is the growing number of Australians from a non-white background. Are the millions of people of Chinese, Indian and Arabic descent, who choose to live here, part of the victimised non-white minority, or are they also involved in perpetuating the discrimination against the Aboriginal population? Are they oppressed or oppressors? This is a question in the left’s too hard basket.
A century ago there was a genuine distinction between working and middle classes in the Western industrialised economies and Marxist ideas of class struggle were relevant. While the structure of modern economies has completely changed, the ideologies which supported the Marxists and socialists have not. The diminishing number of people parading outside government offices in support of ‘voice, truth, treaty’ are a vestigial remnant of a once important movement. The ABC is their life support mechanism – a sort of artificial tongue.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/aussie-life-129/
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24 August, 2023
Balneology etc
A person I respect has recently undergone balneology at Aix-Les-Bains and claims benefit from it, so it has attracted my interest
Criticism has long been a basic element in scientific progress and I have been publishing criticisms of what I regard as shoddy science since the 1970s.
But much criticism of scientific claim seems to be frowned on these days. Criticize Global warming, transsexualism, critical race theory etc and you may well suffer serious consequences -- loss of job etc.
I have however been unbowed by such strictures and have continued to defend real science. But what I want to derogate today is a lot safer. I refer to a popular European health practice, one that is particularly popular in Germany
Germans are great fans of herbal and other "alternative" health treatments and there may be some real basis for some of them but the faith they attract is massive. You have no idea of what Camomile tea can do, for instance. It does nothing for me.
And balneology is so popular in Germany that you can get prescribed it on the government's dime. Balneology is the centuries-old practice of "taking the waters". There are many natural hotsprings or "Spas" in Europe and Europeans have long believed that dipping yourself in the waters concerned gives health benefits.
That is in principle dubious. The whole function of the skin is to keep what is underneath it from any external influences. So how is mineralized water supposed to break through that barrier and have some influence? There may be some rare molecules that can defeat the skin barrier but the simple salts in spa water would seem to be the least probable such influences, though the radioactive ones might be another matter.
There have of course been studies to check on the efficacy of balneology but none have come up with anything conclusive.
In some spas you do get to drink the water but that is a different issue. You could drink the same water out of a bottle at home. No need to attend a spa.
But taking the waters may have other benefits. It is generally experienced as a relaxing holiday and relaxation can have real benefits
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UK: Ex Green deputy set to sue party after he was sacked from his position 'due to views on gender' in a 'fanatical clampdown on legitimate debate'
An ex-Green deputy is set to sue the party after he was sacked from his position for expressing 'gender-critical' beliefs, a report has claimed.
Shahrar Ali, who served as deputy between 2014 and 2016, will speak at trial tomorrow to share what he perceives as a 'fanatical clampdown on legitimate debate'.
According to The Sunday Times, Ali claims this case is a 'battle for the soul of the Green Party' at a time when it has become an 'oppressive space for freedom of speech'.
This landmark trial comes after Ali was removed as the party spokesman last February, with officials ruling that his 'controversial' views on trans rights did not align with the role.
Most notably, the British politician believes that gender should not be confused with biological sex which he claims is 'immutable'.
In July of 2020, he also issued a statement titled 'What Is A Woman?' which detailed his thoughts on the 'rights of women and girls'.
'A woman is commonly defined as an adult human female and, genetically, typified by two XX chromosomes,' it read.
'These facts are not in dispute nor should they be in any political party.
'We campaign for the rights of women and girls to be treated equally on the basis of the protected characteristic of biological sex, as enshrined in the Equality Act 2010.'
While this sparked controversy among party members, Ali was not sacked until last year once he had become the policing and domestic safety spokesman.
Now, defending his rights under the 2010 Equality Act, Ali will reportedly claim that he faced hostility and discrimination under the wing of the Green party.
His claims were also hinted in a crowd-funding campaign for the legal battle, stating: 'Following my appointment, on 7 June 2021, I was subjected to a coordinated campaign of discrimination and victimisation because of my gender critical beliefs, which are protected under s.10 of the Equality Act.
'This campaign of discrimination was conducted, induced or aided by members of the Party including by officers, elected representatives and committee members.
'...Morally and politically my determination is as strong as ever. Fighting injustice is not something I can just switch off. It's in my bloodstream.'
His solicitor, Elizabeth McGlone also told The Sunday Times: 'A lot of people are being deplatformed, and this is another example of people being removed from pivotal positions because of articulating a belief or belief system which is protected.'
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Pre-school children in Sutherland Shire, Sydney forced to make 'sorry' cards about Australia's colonisation by Europeans
A class of four-year-old children were forced to make 'sorry' cards about the colonisation of Australia by Europeans in what their families have slammed as 'indoctrination'.
Kim, a grandmother, told 2GB's Chris O'Keefe her twin grandchildren brought home the 'sorry' cards on National Sorry Day, May 26, from their pre-school in the Sutherland Shire in the Sydney's south.
One card read: 'Sorry for hurting you. Sorry for hurting your land.' The other card read: 'Sorry for hurting the Dharawal people. We will be kind now.'
The cards were written by pre-school teachers and decorated by the kids.
However, the children weren't taught what the cards meant and were instead encouraged to discuss the history of Sorry Day with their parents.
Kim said both her grandchildren were 'very upset' and felt 'very guilty'. 'As a grandma, I said, "You've done nothing wrong, it's all in the past, you have nothing to worry about, you're kind little children",' she told O'Keefe on Tuesday.
She said her son and daughter-in-law were 'not impressed' by the lesson because it wasn't an age-appropriate topic for pre-schoolers.
'It's something for them [the parents] to talk about, they don't have to be indoctrinated at pre-school,' she said. 'If this is what's happening at pre-school, I'm worried what will happen next year at kindy.'
National Sorry Day is held every year on May 26 to remember the children who were forcibly taken from their parents under Australia's assimilation policy, now known as the Stolen Generations.
Kim said while it cannot be disputed that wrongs were committed, parents should have the chance to discuss historical injustice with their kids before it's taught in classrooms.
'I'm shocked, it's certainly not for them [the teachers] to talk about these things,' she said. 'I don't know why we have to make our little children feel guilty for the sins of our fathers. 'It's nothing they've done wrong.'
How Australia's colonial history is taught to young children has been hotly debated in recent weeks. Many parents say they don't believe young kids should be exposed to the complicated and violent topic until they can properly understand it.
Several worried mums and dads told O'Keefe how the current approach has failed.
'My children attended a beautiful little preschool, both came home at different times saying they'd learned that "white men came here and took away the Aboriginals' children",' one parent said. 'They chopped down all the trees and poisoned the waterways and then they asked me, "Are all white men bad?".'
One Indigenous family said their daughter learnt about the Stolen Generations in Year One, before they'd had the chance to talk with her about it.
'She had to learn it at a very young age because her great grandfather and grandmother were taken from their families which is a huge horrible concept to teach to her at any point,' they said.
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Wolves and the Greens: why Germans are flocking to the AfD
Leon Mangasarian
‘Ku Klux Klan Brandenburg’ was emblazoned across the black T-shirt on a guy in line behind me at the Total petrol station in Peitz, 90 minutes south of Berlin. I considered asking why he liked the KKK but thought better of it after noting his girth and the grimace he gave me.
Popularity of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and neo-Nazi groups is surging in eastern Germany. The AfD is now the second strongest party in nationwide opinion polls after the opposition Christian Democrats and ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats. It is anti-immigrant, pro-Russian, anti-American and demands Germany quit the euro. The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence service, the Verfassungsschutz, says the AfD is ‘spreading hatred and hate speech against all types of minorities.’ The party targets Muslims and Jews with subtle messages skirting German defamation laws. An AfD election poster showing two women in bikinis has the words: ‘Burqas? We like bikinis.’ Earlier this year, the AfD demanded a ban on kosher and halal animal slaughter in Germany.
‘In contrast to Le Pen in France, the AfD keeps getting more and more radical,’ said the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in a leader.
In three eastern German states that hold regional elections next year, the AfD tops the polls, including in my home state of Brandenburg. Saxony and Thuringia also vote in 2024. AfD candidates are winning direct elections for the first time and no longer slip into parliament via Germany’s proportional voting law that give seats to parties winning at least 5 per cent. In June, the AfD won its first directly elected chief administrator, or Landrat, in a small district council in eastern Thuringia. In July, the party won its first directly elected mayor in eastern Saxony-Anhalt state. Both victories strengthen the AfD by showing voters that ballots cast for it aren’t wasted on politicians doomed to opposition.
I recently met the owner of a recycling company with over 600 employees. Within half an hour, he was showing me Nazi memorabilia
Voters are turning to the AfD partly in anger at what they see as an open-door migration policy of Scholz’s SPD-led coalition with the Greens and Free Democrats. This is a continuation of ex-chancellor Angela Merkel’s model in which she revived a then-dying AfD by refusing to close Germany’s border to huge numbers of migrants in 2015. The AfD pivoted from being an anti-euro party to opposing migration and instantly surged in popularity.
Germany’s migration contradiction is that it’s almost impossible for a state with a generous social welfare program to take in large numbers of unskilled migrants without blowing up the system. As former president Joachim Gauck said: ‘Our heart is large, but our possibilities are finite.’ A University of Leipzig poll shows over 40 per cent of eastern Germans believe foreigners come to Germany solely to exploit the social welfare system.
Last year, over 244,000 people applied for asylum in Germany – the highest number since 2016 in the wake of Merkel’s refusal to impose border controls. Today, the Scholz government continues this policy by rejecting tougher controls on the Polish and Czech borders despite knowing they’re conduits for both illegal migrants and the drugs trade.
Racism and anti-Semitism grounded in ‘neo-Nazi ideology and ethnocentrism’ have remained a constant in eastern Germany over the past 20 years, the Leipzig study shows. More than one-third of eastern Germans either openly or latently believe the influence of Jews is ‘too big.’ Almost 30 per cent agree with the statement: ‘The Jews work with evil tricks more than other people to get what they want.’
There are practically no Jews in eastern Germany but I’ve lost track of the number of times people tell me someone negotiating a price is trying to ‘Jew them down’ or lectured me on how Israel’s policy regarding the Palestinians is ‘like what the Nazis did.’ I recently met, for the first time, the owner of a recycling company with over 600 employees. Within half an hour, he was showing me Nazi memorabilia and photos on his mobile phone of Adolf Hitler portraits he was planning to buy. There was not only no sense of secrecy or shame but rather an atmosphere that this was entirely normal.
A European grey wolf (Credit: Getty Images)
Then there was the guy who organised the hunting at my forest near the village of Bärenklau. After grumbling about Jews and repeatedly telling me that ‘only a dead Pole is a good Pole,’ I finally threw him out. There are no Jews in the village but a big Jewish cemetery is just down the road and Poland’s Neisse River border is eight miles away. So much for coming to terms with the Holocaust and what Germany did to the Poles in World War II.
Israel’s ambassador to Germany, Ron Prosor, says there are three types of anti-Semitism in Germany: from the right, the left and from Islamists. In an Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper interview, he notes that while rightist anti-Semitism is the most visible, leftist anti-Semitism is becoming ‘socially acceptable’ by disguising itself as freedom of the press or artistic freedom and Islamists in Berlin openly collect money for terrorists who kill Jews in Israel.
Eastern German political frustration, however, is often more concrete than crude racial hatred or anti-Semitism. Chancellor Scholz’s unpopular government fuels a view in the east that normal citizens have no power over what the government does. A staggering 77 per cent say this, according to the Leipzig poll. Given the high-handed style of the Scholz government to passing laws, this shouldn’t be a surprise.
A draft energy bill by Green party economics and climate protection minister Robert Habeck would have fast-tracked a ban on new gas and oil heating systems in new homes. It could also have affected those using wood for fuel in some situations. Among many Germans, this sparked both fear of freezing in the winter and fury over the cost of up to 30,000 euros (£25,000) for installing electric heat pumps demanded by the government. The law was subsequently changed but the damage was done. After all, Germany has some of the highest electricity costs in the world, so this is a perfect recipe to tip more people into poverty.
Most people in Bärenklau, population 300, still heat with wood and the planned crackdown on new wood heating systems in certain cases (which was later watered down) sparked not merely disbelief but a sense that Scholz’s cabinet is deranged. The government revamped the legislation but the political damage is massive. Completing the debacle, Germany’s constitutional court halted the bill by ruling that Scholz’s government was trying to ram the law through parliament without giving members time to even study it. The legislation now faces a vote in the autumn after politically festering all summer.
Wolves are another reason rural Germans are turning to the AfD
‘This is why people vote for the AfD,’ said Thomas Fiedler, the Bärenklau village superintendent, who is a non-party independent. ‘They’re fed up with Green policies that force them to spend money on things they don’t want.’
You may not believe it, but wolves are another reason rural Germans are turning to the AfD. After being eradicated in the 19th century, the wolf returned to Germany over the past two decades. The population has exploded and is now estimated at around 2,000. They kill thousands of sheep, calves and other domestic animals each year.
Despite this, successive German leaders, now loudly led by Green-controlled ministries in Scholz’s government, insist on strict protection for wolves and maintaining a ban on hunting them. Kill a wolf and you can go to prison for up to five years in Germany. That the presence of wolves collides with another of the Greens’ priority of fighting industrial farming by keeping livestock grazing in open pastures seems lost on the party.
The AfD has seized on the wolf and crusades for hunting to cut the population. This resonates with rural voters like Bärenklau superintendent Fiedler, who keeps sheep in a fenced pasture 300 yards from my home.
‘The wolves have broken in five times since 2016 and killed 36 of my sheep,’ said Fiedler. Farmers are supposed to be paid state compensation for dead livestock but Fiedler says he’s never received a penny.
‘One time they told me I couldn’t prove it was wolves that killed my animals and the next time they said my fence was built wrong,’ he said. ‘There are too many wolves and they have to be reduced – but the parties with their city voters don’t care about us.’
Opposition to arming Ukraine and widespread pro-Russian sentiment in eastern Germany is another vote-winner for the AfD. Eastern Germany is curiously the only part of the former Soviet bloc that serves up pro-Russian, anti-Nato and Putin-the-good-strongman sentiment in a weird cocktail. This despite the fact that the region has benefited from trillions of euros in German and EU aid since the 1990 reunification – far more than any other part of the ex-East Bloc.
‘Nato should never have expanded and we should not be helping Ukraine and its Nazis,’ says Holger Reichardt, an architect in the eastern city of Gardelegen. City employee Michael Brohmann agrees: ‘I don’t care about Ukraine. Just reopen all the gas pipelines to Russia.’
Bärenklau superintendent Fiedler is more circumspect: ‘We shouldn’t be sending all this money to Afghanistan and Ukraine – we need it here.’
The AfD builds on these views by demanding a return to Otto von Bismarck’s 19th century Russia alliance politics. To mark 9 May, the date celebrated in Russia as the end of World War II, AfD chief Tino Chrupalla took part in a ceremony at the Russian embassy in Berlin. Brushing off Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he tweeted that his gift had been a tea-cup adorned with a Prussian eagle ‘for peace and reconciliation.’
These policies have helped make the AfD the strongest party in most of eastern Germany. As AfD leaders delight in saying, political screw-ups by established parties are active campaign measures boosting AfD support.
The AfD is a dangerous, far-right, populist party
In 2015, it was Christian Democrat chancellor Merkel who saved the AfD from the political ash-heap by refusing to close German borders. Today, it’s a raft of policies being pushed by the Greens – banning conventional heating systems, de-growth, protecting wolves, closing all nuclear power plants and obsession with gender – that’s supercharging AfD support to levels it has never before enjoyed.
Now anchored in Germany’s political system, the AfD isn’t going away despite much wishful thinking. Establishment parties may vow never to form a coalition with the AfD but they still have a massive problem.
The AfD is a dangerous, far-right, populist party. That said, it is still a legal party in Germany and it asks some of the right questions for which German voters are demanding answers.
Yet the response of old school German politicians is feeble. They mainly try to evade questions instrumentalised by the AfD. Another genius response, that’s sure to win back voters, is insulting those casting ballots for the AfD.
Social Democrat Sawsan Chebli, a left-wing icon, is a prime example. Writing in Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper, she absolves the German government of any role in the rise of the AfD. Instead, she calls AfD voters ‘destroyers of our democratic society’ and demands ‘hard civil, political and state stop signals’ aimed at all those who vote for the party. Exactly what sanctions she has in mind are left unsaid.
In a nutshell: voting rights are fine as long as people vote for the correct parties.
‘We had this in communist East Germany,’ says Harald Malek, a forester in Gardelegen. ‘A regime that was always telling us what to think, what to do and, above all, how to vote.’
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/wolves-and-the-greens-why-germans-are-flocking-to-the-afd
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23 August, 2023
Soft drinks make you depressed?
Fer Chrissake! Why is rubbish like this still being published? No hint of demographic controls. Poor people have worse health and drink more junk drinks. That is all that was going on in this "study". No causal link was shown
In a study recently published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers found that the risk of depression was directly and proportionally correlated with the amount and frequency of consuming sugar- sweetened carbonated beverages (SSCBs). This association was independent of age, sex, and the presence or absence of preexisting diabetes in the study participants.
SSCBs are drinks with high concentrations of added sugar. High intake of SSCBs is a key factor in the global obesity epidemic and has been linked to an increased risk for cardiometabolic disease.
The negative impacts of SSCBs have been attributed to the large quantities of high-fructose corn syrup and added sugar, which increase serum triglyceride levels and dietary glycemic load, leading to insulin resistance (IR). Epidemiological studies have potentially linked metabolic disorders, IR, and depression.
Other research has confirmed that individuals with a predisposition for obesity and diabetes have a higher prevalence of depression than those with normal glucose metabolism.
Small-scale cross-sectional studies have investigated the association between SSCBs and depression. However, these studies have focused on the combined effects of SSCBs, glycemic status, and IR, with mixed results.
For the present study, a team of researchers led by Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine in Korea used a longitudinal study approach to investigate the association between SSCB consumption and the risk of developing depressive symptoms. Their analyses were designed to eliminate the confounding impacts of glycemic status and IR, thereby elucidating the independent effects of SSBCs.
The researchers analyzed the risk of depression according to the consumption of SSCB in 87,115 working-aged Koreans who responded to Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression (CES-D) scale.
Clinical and biochemical data was collected from hospital records supplemented with a health-related behavior questionnaire. The questionnaire recorded physical activity levels, health behaviors (smoking, alcohol consumption), and educational status.
Fasting blood glucose was recorded at each follow-up session to evaluate subjects’ glycemic status, which was classified into normal glycemia, prediabetes, and diabetes mellitus (DM). This classification was based on the homeostasis model assessment-insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) model.
A semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) was used to evaluate and classify subjects’ SSCB consumption, both in terms of quantity (expressed in serving sizes where one serving = 200 mL) and frequency (per week).
The participants were categorized into 5 groups by SSCB consumption based on one serving dose. The categories were: never/almost never, < 1 serving/week, 1 ? serving/week < 3, 3 ? serving/week < 5, and 5 ? serving/week.
The CES-D questionnaire was used to evaluate depressive symptoms per week. The questionnaire comprised 20 questions about negative/depressive feelings, with answers ranging from 0 (seldom/never) to 3 (5-7 days a week). If the total score from the CES-D questionaries was 16 or higher, the individual was classified as having depressive symptoms.
Results revealed that 28.9% (25,246) of individuals had SSCB intakes higher than one serving per week. Of these, individuals consuming more than five servings per week depicted more elevated fasting glucose, HOMA-IR, BMI, alcohol consumption, smoking, total calorie intake, education, and hypertension prevalence than other groups.
Over almost six years of follow-up, 14.9% of participants developed depressive symptoms, predominantly from high SSCB intake groups. Statistical analyses adjusted from covariates revealed a repeating trend of proportionally increasing risk of DM with increasing SSCB consumption.
These results were mirrored across sex, BMI, and glycemic status, implying that SSCBs play an independent role in triggering depression, and are not just cofactors in the development of depression along with IR and obesity as suggested by prior studies.
The authors noted that, considering the young age of the study participants (39.5 ± 6.8 years), it is postulated that the adverse effect of SSCB consumption on mental health can begin at an early age. Thus, the results may be evidence to recommend abstaining from SSCB at a young age, they conclude.
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He was wrongly locked up for 17 years – but Andrew Malkinson is one of the lucky ones
Why did the authority that investigates miscarriages of justice ignore vital new DNA samples that would clear a man of rape? What excuse did they give for sitting on the evidence – handed over to them by the police – for four years? The answer is truly shocking
It might seem odd – offensive, even – to describe as “lucky” a man who was wrongly convicted of a heinous sexual offence, and who served 17 and a half years in prison before being released to attempt to rebuild his life whilst branded as a registered sex offender and subject to onerous licence conditions.
None of us can begin to contemplate the immense trauma that has been endured by Andrew Malkinson and his loved ones in the decades in which he described himself as having been “kidnapped” by the state before his conviction was finally quashed by the Court of Appeal last month.
Yet it has become increasingly clear that Mr Malkinson was extremely lucky to have managed to overturn his wrongful conviction at all due to serious failings from every part of the criminal justice system, including the public body which was established with statutory authority to investigate miscarriages of justice, the Criminal Cases Review Commission. The CCRC was established in the wake of a series of serious miscarriages of justice – notably the Guildford Four and Birmingham Six – which had raised serious questions about the weaknesses of the criminal justice system and the ability of the system to recognise and remedy wrongful convictions.
Major questions have been asked about their ability to fulfil their mandate, particularly in light of savage financial cuts to their budget in recent years. The Westminster Commission on Miscarriages of Justice released a report in 2021 following a rigorous investigation into the workings of the CCRC. The report highlighted some of the significant roadblocks that currently exist to prevent miscarriages of justice from being effectively identified and remedied in a timely manner.
One of the chairs of the Westminster Commission, Lord Garnier KC, is one of two former solicitors general, alongside the former justice secretary Robert Buckland, who have now called for a public inquiry to be launched into the Malkinson case, so serious are their concerns over its failings.
The Westminster Commission had drawn a clear conclusion that the structure of the CCRC requires reform, including recommending the strengthening of the investigative capability of the organisation through an increase in their budget, and a reinforcement of their available sanctions for non-compliance with disclosure requests, both of which are viewed by most campaigners as long overdue. These recommendations have yet to be taken forward, although the Law Commission has recently published an issues paper as a part of a wide-ranging review of the criminal appeals system, meaning the current attention on this issue could be timely indeed if the lessons of the Malkinson case can be swiftly learned.
Mr Malkinson’s plight perfectly illustrates that many of the fears expressed by the Westminster Commission as to the potential failings of the CCRC are clearly well founded. The impact of budget cuts had an explicitly negative impact on the decision making of the CCRC on the two previous occasions when they considered Mr Malkinson’s applications and failed to uncover the crucial evidence which fatally undermined the safety of his conviction. The internal case logs from the CCRC reveal that when discussing Mr Malkinson’s application for them to conduct the DNA testing which eventually cleared his name, the CCRC dismissed his request, commenting “the cost cannot be ignored” and “further work would be extremely costly”.
It must be noted that the CCRC were declining to carry out this work some four years after the CPS and Greater Manchester Police had first been told in 2009 that a searchable DNA profile which was not Mr Malkinson’s had been recovered from a “crime specific area” of the victim’s clothing. Had the CCRC taken the basic step of obtaining and reviewing the police files, it is they and not the charity APPEAL who would have uncovered the many flaws in the case, including evidence hidden in the police files which was not disclosed to Mr Malkinson’s defence team, and which the Court of Appeal found to be an additional ground on which the conviction was unsafe.
The current system is built around the premise that the CCRC are the safety net in uncovering miscarriages of justice. They alone have the legal powers to access all necessary police and prosecution files for review, should they choose to do so. Appellate lawyers acting for victims of miscarriages of justice like Mr Malkinson face untold hurdles in trying to gain access to such material; in Mr Malkinson’s case, his lawyers had to take Greater Manchester Police to court twice to gain access to the relevant material.
This brings us back to consider in what way Andrew Malkinson could possibly be described as lucky. He was repeatedly failed by every element of the criminal justice system which not only saw him convicted for a crime of which he was innocent, but which repeatedly ignored his pleas of innocence, unnecessarily prolonging his detention more than a decade beyond his initial tariff period because of his failure to admit guilt and to reduce his risk of reoffending by carrying out offending behaviour courses.
He was “lucky” because some other people did hear his pleas and took action. His friends and family remained steadfast in their support through his years of incarceration, and they were joined in their fight for his freedom by notable supporters including the investigative journalist Bob Woffinden, who in 2016 wrote a chapter on the Andrew Malkinson case in his book The Nicholas Cases: Casualties of Justice. He, unlike the CCRC, appreciated the glaring flaws in the conviction.
Suzanne Gower, then the managing director of the legal charity APPEAL and now a lecturer in Miscarriages of Justice at the University of Manchester, recalls having read the chapter a short time before receiving a letter on behalf of Mr Malkinson, which was a crucial factor in his being one of the tiny proportion of cases which the small charity is able to take on for further investigation and eventual representation. This was a key moment in his long fight for justice as it was only due to the dogged and persistent efforts of the lawyers and investigators at APPEAL that the key evidence which led to the quashing of the conviction was finally uncovered.
Andrew Malkinson was one of the tiny number of applicants able to secure legal representation from charities like APPEAL, or Innocence Projects such as the one we run at the University of Manchester, where I am the chancellor. The proportion of applicants to the CCRC able to secure legal representation has plummeted in recent years, and yet it is widely acknowledged that unrepresented applicants have a much lower prospect of having their cases referred back to the Court of Appeal. Such applicants are entirely dependent upon the CCRC case review managers having the resources and desire to conduct all necessary inquiries. Critics of the CCRC fear that for both financial and cultural reasons, this simply is not happening.
Lord Garnier KC summed up this lack of investigative vigour on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
“The word bystander or spectator was going through my mind. What’s the point of the CCRC if, presented with questions which need answering and which they have the constitutional duty to investigate, they do nothing?
Andrew Malkinson’s wrongful conviction has been uncovered in spite of the mechanisms set up to carry out this task, not because of them. It is an indisputable fact that juries can and do make errors and sometimes the wrong person will be convicted.
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The Evil Of The Democrat Party
The city of Chicago might as well not exist to Democrats on the national stage. Yes, that party has ruled the city with an iron fist since 1931, and the dead there has a remarkable turnout rate for elections, but in Washington, DC, the city doesn’t exist. Joe Biden and the swamp gang don’t mention it because they’d have to acknowledge the piles of dead bodies the city racks up annually. While they’ll show up occasionally in the region for a photo-op, they won’t talk about the murders, the drugs, or the terror citizens there feel on a daily basis. It is, for lack of a more perfect word, evil.
Republicans have zero say over what happens in Chicago; everything terrible there is directly a result of liberal policies. All the blood spilled drips off the hands of Democrats. They know it; they don’t care.
Why would they? What consequences have Democrats faced for their failure? In the last 92 years, there hasn’t been a blip on the radar of a threat to Democrats winning elections there, so why would anyone give a damn? The city had a chance to pull up, just a little, from its nosedive when they tossed out the incompetent Lori Lightfoot in the mayoral primary last year. But rather than go with a more sane option, they voted for someone even worse. The new Mayor gets more upset when someone refers to murderous goons as a mob than he does any of the murders in the city.
Why is anyone supposed to care if the people who live there don’t? If you continually vote for people who beat the hell out of you, why would people care that you’re regularly getting the hell beat out of you?
Still, it’s an embarrassment to Democrats to see what Chicago has become. The same goes for Detroit, Baltimore, Philadelphia, St. Louis, and every other city controlled by Democrats for generations. Not all the crime, not all the death, the pointing out of the crime and the death by Republicans. That’s what Democrats are concerned with – the extent to which the white, suburban chardonnay-swilling soccer mom who votes blindly for Democrats become aware of the indifference with which the progressive power structure views human life and how those dots are connected in their heads between the violence and their “safe” lives. If those voters realize they aren’t more than a few election cycles away from their quiet slice of life being overrun by the same mentality, they might not slavishly vote and donate to Democrats.
These Democrats in power only care about anything to the extent that it can harm their electoral prospects. In these killing fields called cities, those electoral prospects are unburdened by responsibility – Democrats will continue to mine the votes of people who’d elected the morons they’ve elected to mayor’s offices in perpetuity. It’s the suburbs they’re afraid of losing.
It tells you something that the left doesn’t care about all the murders. From “Black Lives Matter” to “Shut up about all the black people getting murdered by black people,” people don’t look to politicians for intellectual consistency. It’s one thing when the neighborhood liquor store or downtown shoe shop gets looted by a group of “teens,” it’s something else entirely when it hits their suburban salon or boutique of choice.
The thought of that keeps Democrats up at night. The thought of that makes Democrats believers in walls, at least metaphorical ones enforced by culture and police. If that wall is breached… lookout.
In the meantime, Democrats have to do something, usually, the bare minimum, to pretend to care about the carnage they really only seek to contain. Which brings us back to Chicago.
In their latest attempt to put a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, the Democrats in the city are calling for a ceasefire…between the hours of 9 am and 9 pm. This, presumably, means it’s game on from dusk till dawn. It’s like holding “The Purge” every night, just as long a suburban Karen can make it home safely from her early dinner downtown. The people who live there…screw them.
It truly is evil. But to not practice evil, you have to view the people being harmed as, well, people. Then you’d have to care about them on top of it. Since the days of slavery, Democrats haven’t viewed black people as people. That’s an “I’m better than you" attitude, not one based on skin color, so the black leadership in the city carries it with them as well.
As long as the violence can be maintained as a “made for TV event,” specifically made for Fox News, nothing will change because there’s no threat to Democrats. Scores of people will continue to die, children will continue to have their future set on fire by a failed education system, and Karen will still get her suburban mani-pedi with her morally superior future cirrhosis circle of friends while watching Bravo, utterly oblivious to the destruction in the wake of her voting habits. And Democrats will laugh all the way to the end.
https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2023/08/20/column-n2627260
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Florida Becomes First State to Sanction Medicaid Providers for Covering Minor Transitions
Florida has become the first state to sanction Medicaid providers for covering the attempted gender transitions of minors.
The state is fining five Medicaid health care insurers for violating Florida’s new rule banning taxpayer funds from going to transgender treatments, such as performing a double mastectomy or administering puberty blockers, Jason Weida, secretary of the Agency for Health Care Administration, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.
A year ago, in August 2022, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration had promulgated a rule that Florida Medicaid would not cover puberty blockers, hormones, sex-reassignment surgeries, or “any other procedures that alter primary or secondary sexual characteristics.”
“Given the notice that they are on now, with the rule being passed last year, and now that we have this audit and the letters and this discipline, any type of violation going forward would be deemed an intentional violation and would be subject to very severe consequences,” Weida promised.
The Daily Wire’s news podcast, “Morning Wire,” first reported the news on Friday.
Weida emphasized to The Daily Signal that transgender surgeries are irreversible and “mutilate children at a very young age when they can’t consent to these types of procedures” with serious long-term consequences. He also praised Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is currently vying for the Republican presidential nomination, for taking “concrete steps” within Florida to protect “the innocence of our children.”
“A lot of people are talking about this on the news right now, about gender issues and other things,” Weida said. “But none of them have done as much as Gov. DeSantis and his team has done over the last year … He really believes in protecting the innocence of our children.”
The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration initiated legal action against the five Medicaid health plans that included issuing cease and desist letters as well as liquidated damages for the transgender procedures that these plans had covered for providers.
Letters from Florida’s Medicaid Plan Management to Simply Healthcare Plans Inc.; Sunshine State Health Plan Inc.; Humana Medical Plan Inc.; Molina Healthcare of Florida Inc.; and Children’s Medical Services Health Plan warn these health care insurers that they inappropriately paid for treatments related to gender dysphoria and transgender treatments.
Following an agency audit that took place between December 2022 and February 2023, the agency discovered that the five health insurers (Simply, Sunshine, Children’s Medical Services, Molina, and Humana) had covered puberty blockers or hormones, as well as one instance where Sunshine covered a young girl’s double mastectomy, though she was a minor.
One of the letters, to Simply Healthcare Plans Inc., specifically names a Dr. Sara Danker and states that Simply Healthcare Plans Inc. paid for “services related to the treatment of gender dysphoria for a minor” that Danker performed.
Danker, who performs plastic surgery procedures in Miami, did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Daily Signal.
These letters remind the Medicaid health plans that “effective August 21, 2022, Florida Medicaid does not cover the following services for the treatment of gender dysphoria: puberty blockers, hormones and hormone antagonists, sex reassignment surgeries, and any other procedures that alter primary or secondary sexual characteristics.”
DeSantis had also signed SB 245, Treatments for Sex Reassignment, in May. That legislation banned “mutilation” of minors through attempted gender-transition surgeries, but a federal judge temporarily blocked portions of the new law in June.
“In Florida, we follow the science and the law,” Weida said in a statement this week.
“Simply Healthcare failed to comply with Florida law, rules, and regulations by covering the costs for a double mastectomy of a minor performed in December 2022,” he said. “Therefore, the agency is imposing a sanction for the plan’s violation of Florida Rule 59G-1.010. We appreciate Simply’s recent action to replace their leadership team.”
“We are also issuing fines against four other Medicaid plans that used public dollars to support prescription drugs used for gender dysphoria,” he added. “These plans recklessly continued to cover these services with permanent, harmful effects, after the rule was adopted. These Health Plans will not stand in the way of our fight to protect the innocence of Florida’s kids.”
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21 August, 2023
Israel’s Elites Revolt Against Democracy
The Left have always been antidemocratic, as shown by their vast attempts at political censorship we are now seeing. Their ideal has always been revolution.
It's amusing that the Left often accuse conservatives of being anti-democratic. It's projection. To see what is true of them you just have to see what they say of others
In his New York Times opinion piece titled “The U.S. Reassessment of Netanyahu’s Government Has Begun,” Thomas Friedman wrote that he likes to say of his job that he is “a translator from English to English”: He takes complex things and renders them understandable. Israel, he explained, is turning its back on the shared values which have underpinned the friendship between the American superpower and the Jewish state. As Friedman explains it, the judicial reform proposed by Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition poses a grave threat to democracy because it would “change the long-established balance of power between the government and the Supreme Court, the only independent check on political power.”
It turns out that translating from English to English may not be the most useful skill when you need to understand something that is happening in Hebrew. Friedman is right that Israel’s democracy is in danger, but Netanyahu’s government is not the source of peril. The real danger comes from the court itself, which is now asserting a made-up “right” to remove a sitting prime minister—that is, to nullify the results of a legal election and eclipse Israel’s democratic politics and institutions through its own self-perpetuating fiat. The protest movement that arose to defend the court’s power (and its backers among the country’s economic and military elite) are together attempting to block the redemocratization of Israeli politics, as the reforms intended to do.
This is not some innovative hypothesis. If you read Hebrew, you can hear some protesters and their backers in the country’s establishments announcing their intentions more or less explicitly: Democracy is the very thing they are out to prevent. The movement’s ideologues are longtime staunch opponents of the democratic form of government who have devoted whole academic careers to opposing it; their political leaders in parliament and outside it use the term “democracy” in a deliberately deceptive way, as they sometimes admit; and their street-level ringleaders more or less openly confess disdain for the mass of enfranchised citizens. Most poignantly, when it comes to the rebelling IDF reservists—virtually all of them from elite unites, mostly in the air force—they don’t even bother with lip service to the idea of majoritarian decision-making. Rather, they express open contempt for the majority of Israel’s citizens, peppered with thinly veiled references to ethnicity, religiosity, and class.
At least some of this unabashed condescension must be fairly obvious, even to foreigners—especially those like Friedman who claim to be in touch with Israeli opinion. At around the time that Friedman wrote his piece, it seemed like a military coup against Israel’s democracy was in the making. News stories accumulated about more and more reservists declaring they wouldn’t report to duty unless the reform was shelved. Speculation about Israel’s battle readiness, or lack thereof, filled the news cycle. For the most part the media framed the issue as a story about heroic reservist martyrs determined to fight “the battle for democracy” rather than calling it what it was: a bunch of officers threatening to jeopardize Israel’s security if the parliamentary majority did not yield to their demands. As the title of one Haaretz piece read: “A Military Coup Is Underway in Israel—and It’s Completely Justified.”
Some writers were not content with cheering on the rebelling reservists. Sima Kadmon, a senior political pundit for the popular daily Yedioth Ahronoth, wrote a full-page piece on the paper’s prestigious page 3, calling on the brass to take command of the situation. The title said “Only They Can Make Him Stop” (July 19, 2023). The piece called on the IDF chief of staff, the head of Mossad, the chief of the National Police and the head of Shabak (Israel’s General Security Service) to walk into the prime minister’s office and tell him “Enough!” thereby forcing him to overturn his cabinet’s policy. In normal language, we don’t call that “democracy.” We call it a military coup.
Threats of a coup continued all the way up to the day of the Knesset vote on the first bill of the reform, a bill already diluted in the negotiations with the opposition, which nevertheless kept demanding more concessions. This was the by-now famous bill to limit the court’s use of the highly subjective “reasonableness” test. The vote was set for Monday, and on Friday a new petition of air force reservists was trumpeted in the press—1,142 signatories, or so we were told, all using only their initials, declared they would no longer report to duty if the bill was voted into law. Among them, we were told, were hundreds of active army pilots and navigators, along with air control officers and special air force personnel.
Shabbat was about to set in and there was no way to verify the initialed names in time for the vote, so nobody could tell how much of this was true and how much a publicity stunt. But that didn’t stop the mainstream press, along with the leadership of the protest movement and the opposition MKs, from rushing to deliver threats—thinly veiled as “warnings”—that Israel’s security would soon be dangerously impaired. Straight-faced pundits placed the blame on the government’s shoulders, attempting to justify the threatened mutiny based on a look-what-you-made-us-do argument. It seemed not to have occurred to most of these journalists that forcing a parliamentary majority to surrender before a group of army officers is the way democracies are generally destroyed, not saved.
The coalition, this time around, saw the coup for what it was and closed ranks, leaving aside the few disagreements that still remained about “reasonableness.” It kept negotiating with the opposition in an effort to reach wider agreement till the very last moment. Yet it still made it clear that with or without agreement the bill would pass because the Knesset would not bow down to threats from army officers. The opposition, for its part, led by Yair Lapid, refused to take part in a vote, and in yet another show of its anti-democratic spirit marched out of the chamber to leave the coalition to vote by itself.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-elite-revolt-against-democracy
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A government agency that has lost sight of its duty to protect consumer health
It protects its own rules instead. Who cares about actual damage to health?
"They came with a search warrant," softly spoke Samuel B. Fisher, a mild-mannered cattle farmer operating a 100-acre farm tucked away in Virginia's heartland. Fisher's bread-and-butter, Golden Valley Farms, carves out the scenic countryside that's a hop, skip, and a jump away from historic Farmville, a postcard-perfect small Southern town with classical Main Street charm.
The father of five had graciously invited us down to his idyllic pasture to rehash the whirlwind of unforeseen events that unfolded over the cruel summer. It was a tumultuous time on the Fisher farm, an upheaval that threatened to upend the man's livelihood.
"Then, they tagged the meat, so that we can't touch it; we can't sell it; we can't feed our family with it," Fisher told Townhall.
There, we sat in Fisher's office on the periphery of a multi-purpose barn, surrounded by sparsely scattered cardboard boxes of farm-fresh squash situated across the concrete floor and vintage-style empty half-gallon glass jugs labeled with "Golden Valley Farms CHEMICAL FREE A2/A2 Goat Milk" stickers that lined the nearby shelves, awaiting to be filled and delivered statewide.
Moments earlier, upon our arrival, we were greeted by the welcoming committee: a trio of barefoot, dirt-covered kids holding four-week-old kittens, sized smaller than an ear of corn and clutching the children's arms for dear life. One of the young boys, sporting suspenders and a straw hat with an LED headlamp strapped to it, left to fetch his father—whose workdays begin before daybreak at 5:30 a.m. and end past sundown—from the fields. The other boy, his sandy-haired brother in a bowl haircut, asked if we'll "put it on the news." Now, the children were captivated by the camera, gathered wide-eyed around Fisher after dragging a handful of upside-down milk crates over to perch themselves upon. A little girl, draped in a sunflower-colored dress, bobbed in-and-out of frame to wrangle one of the family's dogs, as Fisher hushed her in Pennsylvania Dutch.
The firestorm of Big Government saber-rattling ignited in mid-June when an inspector with the Virginia Department of Agriculture (VDAC), without warning, paid the Fisher family a visit. To date, Fisher has no idea what could've prompted VDAC's impromptu inspection on June 14, except "maybe they just finally found us through word of mouth," the farmer speculated.
What was clear: The state sought to penalize Fisher for selling meat that was not processed by a USDA-inspected facility (U.S. Department of Agriculture). Fisher processes—an industry euphemism for butchering—his farm-raised meat on-site and sells it directly to his customers, feeding about 500 consumers and their families, who are part of a buying club. As members enrolled in the Golden Valley Farms program, they're buying into the herd of 100% grass-fed golden Guernsey cows.
"They own part of the business. They own some of the herd," Fisher explained. "My thinking was [...] We can butcher their cows, process it, and sell it to them. I told the state all of this, but they said, 'No, there's no way around that. You can't do that.' They asked permission to get in here" to search the farm, which Fisher denied. "And, they told me, 'We'll be back,' and left."
The next day, on June 15, the VDAC inspector did, in fact, return, this time with a Cumberland County sheriff's deputy to serve Fisher a search warrant. "They went through everything, house, every building, in the barn. They just raided through everything, put their nose in everything, and wanted to know every detail of everything. They went out back, trying to find all the failure they can find on a farm, which, of course, some of their stuff, which they think is wrong, is just normal stuff on a farm," Fisher stated.
"I wasn't on the farm at the time" of the full-scale raid that lasted approximately three to four hours, Fisher added.
Then, the state slapped a tag on Fisher's walk-in freezer, placing the meat under "administrative detainment" and declaring that he wasn't supposed to take any meat out of his own storage room. By the weekend, his kids were crying for scrapple, a mush of pork scraps and trimmings characteristic of Amish country, that sat behind the door on Fisher's property that should, otherwise, be open and easily accessible. The following Monday, Fisher "even made a special phone call," asking again, "if that's the way it is." And, as Fisher recounted, the VDAC inspector replied, "Yes, [you] cannot feed your family with it, cannot do anything with it."
There's "nothing illegal" about Fisher processing his own meat and eating it for his own consumption, asserted Mindy, the farm's officer manager, who oversees sales, handles email marketing, and fulfills online orders. "So, he decided he was gonna go and feed his family, and since he would most likely be fined for doing that, he decided to open up meat sales again. Because if he's going to be fined, he's going to be fined, and you might as well do it," she, wanting to go by "just Mindy," stated matter-of-factly.
"Anybody can go and raise animals for their own family to eat. That's where I got to the point: He [the VDAC inspector] crossed the line, so I'm going to cross the line," Fisher stated. "He crossed the line by telling me I cannot feed my own family with this meat. So, I decided I'm going to cross the line, I'm going to sell it. And that's why I didn't honor the state."
"This ain't right," Fisher decided. "We're going to feed our family. We're going to feed our customers [...] We did not honor that tag. We sold some meat out of there, whatever customers ordered. Then, the state came back and saw what we did."
"They really gave me a mouthful for doing that," Fisher said. That's when the state took Fisher to court.
After photographing every inch of the farm, stockpiling pictures as evidence that the Fishers were slaughtering and selling raw meat, which the Commonwealth of Virginia claimed was "mislabeled, uninspected, and possibly unadulterated," the state summoned the farmer to a hearing on July 18 in Cumberland County Circuit Court to try the civil case. At its conclusion, a judge authorized the state to seize and forfeit Fisher's products.
Later that day, the state wasted no time pouncing on the court's order with glee. Within hours, two men backed a U-Haul truck right up to Fisher's door, cleared the premises of Golden Valley Farms meat products, and hauled it all to the dump for disposal.
Fisher was also criminally charged, accused of violating state law, Virginia Code 29.1-521(A)(10). And, on Aug. 3, Fisher was found guilty of "unlawfully possessing, selling, and/or transporting animals," a Class 3 misdemeanor, and forced by a Cumberland County criminal court to pay a fine as punishment.
Though the future is uncertain, Fisher is considering next steps, including consulting with attorneys, if the state seeks to continue targeting him and Golden Valley Farms. Fisher is one of many targets in the government's wars of attrition that drag fiercely independent farmers through shock-and-awe judicial proceedings.
Unsanitary conditions were not found at the farm and no one has ever been sick from the meat. Quite the opposite. Fisher calls the meat "medicine." Customers with allergies and medical conditions claim that their ailments are alleviated when switching to a chemical-free, certified organic diet. Fisher's food appeals to that need.
Backed by a loyal customer base, Fisher has received an outpour of support from consumers, who've written testimonies attesting to the high-quality of his products. Fisher once sold USDA-inspected meat, but that was before the government-mandated shutdowns, when access to the nearest USDA processor became burdensome during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The drive was hours away and the cost was hefty. Plus, the pandemic meant "you'd have to schedule your animals around eight to 12 months ahead of time," Fisher said, making the timing hard to predict. "So that's when the trigger pushed us to do it ourselves [...] We put an addition to the building and made a processing room and we certainly like it now," Fisher stated.
"Amish people—They don't follow the rules. That's the point," Mindy said. "So, it shouldn't be a surprise to somebody that an Amish person is not following the rules. They opt out of everything. They don't send their kids to school. They don't have to be involved in the [military] draft. They don't pay into the Social Security system and they don't receive money from the Social Security system. Why would anybody think it'd be a stretch that he wasn't getting his meat inspected by the government, too?"
"He thought he can do it himself, so why not do it himself?" Mindy questioned. "And, you know, these people that are buying from him, they're choosing to not buy USDA-inspected meat. That's their choice. They're adults. They can make choices like that."
In fact, a survey was sent to Fisher's customers, asking if they'd prefer the meat to be USDA-inspected or processed here himself. The poll came back overwhelmingly in support of the latter—92% of customers wanted Fisher to process on the farm.
Asked why he's become the consumer go-to source for meat over big-box retailers, Fisher responded: "Oh, because it's a huge differs. When you go to the store, you don't know what's in your food." Fisher went on to describe how whole carcasses of animals are often shipped into assembly-line warehouses. Though they're partly rotten and emit a putrid odor, factory workers dip the meat into some kind of preservatives, be it sodium chloride or another nitrate, to manufacture a red, pinkish "fresh look."
"And they send it off to the people. They don't care if people get sick or what happens because you can't track it," Fisher explained. "If you buy stuff from a store, you can't track where it comes from [...] So, that's why I say if you buy food from a farmer, go to that farm, ask the farmer you want to see their animals, you want to see the farm, you want to know where your food comes from. You do have the full rights. Ask for that. If you are not given it, take it as a warning," he advised.
"I want this world to have the opportunity of finding raw real food, because I've seen what you're buying at the store," Fisher said.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/miacathell/2023/08/18/golden-valley-farms-n2627121
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Descendants of famous 19th century Leftist will apologise for his links to slavery on trip to Caribbean
The family of legendary reforming Prime Minister William Gladstone plan to travel to the Caribbean to apologise for slavery.
Six descendants of the 19th century politician who served as PM four times have made an official apology and are traveling to Guyana on Thursday.
William Gladstone was elected Tory MP for Newark in December 1832 at 23-years-old, his education and career was funded by his father's links to slavery.
The former Prime Minister's father owned or held mortgages over 2,508 enslaved Africans, who worked on his sugar plantations in Guyana and Jamaica. Early in his career, William spoke in parliament in defence of his father's involvement in slavery and spoke out against the abolition of slavery.
John Gladstone was compensated £106,000 when the Slavery Abolition Act was passed in 1833, making him the fifth largest beneficiary.
Charlie Gladstone, 59 - who describes himself as an entrepreneur, author, husband, father of six and grandfather of three - said John Gladstone was a 'vile man'. He lives in in Hawarden Castle, the home of his great-great grandfather William, and said: 'John Gladstone committed crimes against humanity. That is absolutely clear.
'The best that we can do is try to make the world a better place and one of the first things is to make that apology for him.'
Charlie, who owns a restaurant, pub, and holiday rental operation, added that John Gladstone was 'greedy and domineering'.
It has been 200 years since the Demerara rebellion by around 13,000 Africans - which began on one of John Gladstone's plantations. It was led by Jack Gladstone, who was first to take his owners name, and his father Quamina.
More than 300 Africans died as a result of the uprising.
Charlie said much of his family's privilege stems from John Gladstone. They have agreed to pay reparations to fund further research into the impact of slavery.
Some on social media have branded the family's decision as 'pathetic' and 'more woke nonsense'.
One user said: 'The idea of guilt based on genes is nuts.' Whilst another questioned what the family were apologising for.
Another user said: 'More woke nonsense, slavery in the UK ended roughly sixty years before Gladstone took office as PM.'
The 21st century Gladstones are members of the Heirs of Slavery - a group of families who can trace their ancestors back to the enslavement of Africans.
They will make their apology at the launch of the University of Guyana's International Institute for Migration and Diaspora Studies - to which they have given £100,000.
Eric Phillips, chair of the Guyana reparations committee and vice-chair of the Caricom Reparations Commission, said the Gladstone's apology was 'an example to others' and means a great deal on the anniversary.
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The Aboriginal reality
This week, Aboriginal children will walk into the store at Warburton in Western Australia and purchase the typical fare of an Aboriginal diet. On the same latitude as the border of Northern Territory and South Australia, Warburton is as remote as it gets. But cake, Coca-Cola, and energy bars are all available, and expensive. For adults, throw in smokes. These are typical purchases. Week in and week out. Eating and drinking junk foods, not working, and having no purpose in life other than consumption, is a death sentence.
And then there is the violence by children, women, and men.
My mate in Warburton texted this: –
8pm at night here and 6-year-olds are wandering the streets throwing fireworks into our and others yards. Why? Because the 6-year-olds today told us to Get F….d because we were F…..g white trash C…s. 6-years-olds. What hope is for them?
Another day in Paradise. Two women fist-fighting and hitting each other over the head with Coke bottles. Roll on my plane on Tuesday please.
Shop was open for an hour today, before a local man ran in with an iron bar, and started smashing the shelves and walls, calling us f…..g white trash c….s.
Closed now for the day. We fly out in an hour…
No Voice, no committee, no treaty, no ‘truth-telling’, no Makarrata can save these people.
Aboriginal people are a modern people. In Warburton, mobile phones are commonplace. Electricity keeps the food and drink cool. Without the paraphernalia of the modern world there would be no Warburton, it would have closed decades ago. Aboriginal people rely on modern means to survive. Most have no idea how it is made. This is cruel.
And yet, too many legal professional associations are for the Voice, medical professional associations are for the Voice, the Australian Academy of Science is for the Voice. Why is it that these professional associations would cast their lot with an industry that refuses to release its own most vulnerable people into the open society? What is it that keeps these poor souls locked into an ancient and ignorant world? The very antithesis of the professionals, the brilliant and trained minds, condemn their objects of concern to a life of ignorance and violence.
Not only professionals are being taken for a ride, but shareholders are also being taken for a ride, as are donors, trade unionists, sports fans and taxpayers. Egotistical professional leaders, CEOs, charity leaders, trade union leaders, sports administrators, and politicians, foolish enough to forsake their duty and send other people’s money to the referendum Yes case, are doing harm. A majority of their members and funders are against the proposition. They are not as foolish as their leaders.
Leaders who think that a solution to Aboriginal despair lies in permanent government intervention in the lives of those few Aborigines who are failing in this modern society should think again. It is not all about government. Changing the constitution does not change behaviour. Changing the constitution will not get children to attend school. Changing the constitution will not stop the grog, or the abuse, or the awful habits that cause early death.
The task of leaders is to have every child understand how it is that the mobile phone and electricity that makes their food and shelter available comes into being. Government may be the provider, but it is not the maker. Government makes nothing, it merely covers the indignity of woeful ignorance. Why do governments refuse to teach their citizens how their lives have been degraded to the point of begging? This referendum proposal is no gracious gift; it is stealing the future of these people. It is an abandonment of leadership.
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August 20, 2023
Will exercise help you live longer?
The article below claims to have found that it will but the hazard ratios they report are so low that if there is an effect it is so tiny as not to be worth the bother. I have reached 80 without ever doing any significant exercise so the findings are no surprise to me. Apologies to the gym bunnies
Prospective Associations of Different Combinations of Aerobic and Muscle-Strengthening Activity With All-Cause, Cardiovascular, and Cancer Mortality
Rubén López-Bueno et al
Question What is the optimal combination of moderate aerobic physical activity (MPA), vigorous aerobic physical activity (VPA), and muscle-strengthening activity (MSA) to reduce the risk of all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality?
Findings In this cohort study of 500 705 participants, balanced amounts of MPA, VPA, and MSA combined were associated with a lower risk of mortality. These risk reductions may be greater with aerobic physical activity at higher vigorous and moderate intensities than current recommendations for all-cause and cancer mortality, respectively.
Meaning Balanced levels of MPA, VPA, and MSA combined may be associated with optimal reductions of mortality risk.
Abstract
Importance Studies examining the associations of different combinations of intensity-specific aerobic and muscle strengthening activity (MSA) with all-cause and cause-specific mortality are scarce; the few available estimates are disparate.
Objective To examine the prospective associations of different combinations of moderate aerobic physical activity (MPA), vigorous aerobic physical activity (VPA), and MSA with all-cause, cardiovascular (CVD), and cancer mortality.
Design, Setting, and Participants This nationwide prospective cohort study used data from the US National Health Interview Survey. A total of 500 705 eligible US adults were included in the study and followed up during a median of 10.0 years (5.6 million person-years) from 1997 to 2018. Data were analyzed from September 1 to September 30, 2022.
Exposures Self-reported cumulative bouts (75 weekly minutes) of MPA and VPA with recommended MSA guidelines (yes or no) to obtain 48 mutually exclusive exposure categories.
Main Outcomes and Measures All-cause, CVD, and cancer mortality. Participants were linked to the National Death Index through December 31, 2019.
Results Overall, 500 705 participants (mean [SD] age, 46.4 [17.3] years; 210 803 [58%] female; 277 504 [77%] White) were included in the study. Compared with the reference group (doing no MPA or VPA and less than recommended MSA), the category associated with the lowest hazard ratio (HR) for all-cause mortality was more than 0 to 75 minutes of MPA combined with more than 150 minutes of VPA and 2 or more MSA sessions per week (HR, 0.50; 95% CI, 0.42-0.59). The optimal combinations for CVD and cancer mortality risk reduction were more than 150 to 225 minutes of MPA, more than 0 to 75 minutes of VPA, and 2 or more MSA sessions per week (HR, 0.30; 95% CI, 0.15-0.57), and more than 300 minutes of MPA, more than 0 to 75 minutes of VPA, and 2 or more MSA sessions per week (HR, 0.44; 95% CI, 0.23-0.82), respectively. Adjusted mortality rates represented an approximately 50% lower mortality rate for all-cause and cancer mortality and an approximately 3-fold lower mortality rate for CVD mortality.
Conclusions and Relevance This cohort study demonstrated that balanced levels of MPA, VPA, and MSA combined may be associated with optimal reductions of mortality risk. Higher-than-recommended levels of MPA and VPA may further lower the risk of cancer and all-cause mortality, respectively.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2807854
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Is Kratom Our Newest Addiction?
It used to be that you had to hang out at seedy joints and dimly lit street corners to get your high from marijuana. Eventually, though, the drug was legalized for medical use and has since been decriminalized in several states, despite legitimate questions as to its safety.
Now there’s a new substance on the block — one that’s as readily accessible as the corner convenience store, health food shops, and even specialty drink bars. As the FDA describes it: “Kratom is a tropical tree native to Southeast Asia. Consumption of its leaves produces both stimulant effects (in low doses) and sedative effects (in high doses), and can lead to psychotic symptoms, and psychological and physiological dependence.”
With its chemical ingredient, called mitragynine, natives of the area have used it for centuries to enhance their energy and increase their endurance, often chewing the leaves directly off the tree or brewing them into a tea — botanically, the plant is a member of the coffee family.
Those who use it, such as the patrons in a Florida bar called Kavasutra that sells only non-alcoholic botanical drinks, claim it has those good qualities. “It relaxes you,” says one of those patrons. “I feel like being more social and open to these cool conversations.” Another imbiber said while playing a video game, “I feel more focused; I’m more on point.” And a bartender says the tea “completely took away my back pain” from a degenerative spinal condition. Indeed, kratom is also allegedly used as a step-down drug for those in recovery from addiction to opioids.
While there has been a push for the FDA to regulate kratom as it would other supplements, thus far the effort hasn’t borne fruit, leaving uneducated consumers vulnerable to improper dosage. One tragic example of overuse resulted in a Florida lawsuit in which the plaintiff, whose mother died from “acute mitragynine intoxication,” was awarded $11 million. The kratom that killed the victim was sold to her in a small baggie hand-labeled as “Space Dust.”
Research has shown that the average kratom user tends to be 20- or 30-something, which also raises the question of long-term effects as well as its interaction with other medications being used by older Americans. And while some may compare kratom to marijuana because of its medicinal purposes, the former is on the opposite trajectory of the latter: While states continue to decriminalize marijuana, a few states have banned the purchase of kratom.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/99649
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The Best Presidential Candidate in the World Is Running in Argentina
The media would like you to know that Javier Milei, the upstart candidate who improbably won Argentina's presidential primary this week, is a "Trump admirer," "right-wing populist," "far-right outsider," "far-right populist," "rightist," "far-right libertarian," a "radical" -- and did they mention he's on the "far right"?
Anyway, I'm no expert on Argentinian politics, so this coverage sparked my curiosity. And it turns out, Milei -- also known as el Peluca ("The Wig") because he sports the hairstyle of a man spinning jazz-flute fusion records in his velvet-draped bachelor pad circa 1972 -- is far more interesting than headlines would have us believe.
An economist and rhetorical pugilist, Milei's philosophical outlook could more precisely be described as "doctrinaire ultraliberal," (the good kind) as Andres Malamud of the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon recently put it. That is news because it is an exceptionally rare outlook.
Milei threatens to upend the political order in a country in the middle of another economic meltdown. Once-low poverty rates have exploded -- some estimates put it at 43% -- while the currency continues to lose its value. Milei, a longtime television personality, has made the case that Argentines are "hostages" to generationally destructive economic policy. (Interest rates were hiked to 118% this week.) He argues that politicians -- or, as he calls them, "rats" of the "parasitic, useless and useless political caste" -- have destroyed one of the richest countries in the world "with nefarious ideas to line their pockets."
Many of those ideas, Milei argues, can be found in Keynesian economics, which lies at the heart of most of Western society's ills. The candidate promises to shut down the central bank, dollarize the economy, deregulate markets, open up trade, cut taxes and pare the regulatory regime. Not incidentally, his English Mastiffs are named after Milton Friedman, Murray Rothbard and Robert Lucas.
When Milei was asked if happiness was more important than liberty, he responded, "They go hand in hand. You cannot be happy without being free." I'm skeptical that's the case for everyone. But Milei's placing of personal liberty as the prerequisite for not only a prosperous society but a virtuous one is welcome in a world where politicians increasingly look to bureaucracies, the welfare state and "industrial policy" to save us.
In the United States, big-government conservatives like to complain that "libertarians" like Milei aren't equipped, or are unwilling, to take on social issues. Yet the candidate not only does so, he frames his defense as both a moral and liberal imperative. "I am openly against abortion," Milei says. "As a liberal I believe in unrestricted respect for others. You can choose over your body, but not over the body of the other." When asked why he wants to shut down government "sex education" programs, Milei referred to them as "a mechanism" of propaganda that destroys the family and "comes down from the state with the intention of promoting everything that the line of the left and gender ideology has."
While Milei has a Trumpian disdain for "elites" and engenders loyalty from his fans, the Argentine does not share the former president's adoration for state power and believes (rightly) that free markets offer a massive positive upside for the working and middle class.
Milei has promised to raffle off his presidential paycheck, and 2.4 million Argentines have already registered to win $3,200 every month. "To me, that is dirty money," he explained. "From my philosophical point of view, the state is a criminal organization that is funded through taxes taken from people by force. We are giving back the money that the political caste has stolen." And along with rejecting climate alarmism as a destructive attack on modernity, he proposes an armed citizenry and calls for Argentina to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. (Both the United States and Israel, he says, are his "natural allies.")
Into my veins, as the kids say.
And what might seem surprising is that Milei's popularity is driven by younger voters. It is, of course, likely that part of that support is a protest vote against the failures of the Argentinian establishment rather than any ideological statement. Most ordinary people aren't "doctrinaire" about anything. Still, it shows that individual liberty -- mocked as antiquated and puerile rhetoric by both right and left these days -- can still have some currency.
All this radical liberalism talk has prompted President Alberto Fernandez to warn that Milei is "a threat to democracy" and invoke Adolf Hitler and totalitarianism, as one always does. As far as I can tell, with authoritarian ideas gaining ground at an alarming rate, we could use more charismatic populist liberals like Milei.
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‘Bidenomics’ Has Been a Disaster
After 40 years of “trickle-down economics,” President Joe Biden says, “Bidenomics is just another way of saying restoring the American dream.”
It’s not often that a politician openly pledges to bring the country back to a time of crippling inflation, high energy prices, and stifling interest rates. But this president is doing his best to keep that promise.
Unsurprisingly, “Bidenomics” is failing to gain traction among voters. This has caused consternation in the media. One thing to remember, though, is that “Bidenomics” isn’t really a thing.
Unlike, say, “Reaganomics,” which helped bring about the largest expansion of the middle class in world history, the president does not subscribe to any coherent or tangible set of economic theories or principles. The White House defines its economic policy as being “rooted in the recognition that the best way to grow the economy is from the middle out and the bottom up,” which is just platitudinous gibberish.
“Bidenomics” encompass anything and everything that’s convenient for Democrats. And in this moment, it’s convenient for them to take credit for merely letting people go back to work.
Biden, who once claimed that the Democrats $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan cost “zero dollars,” isn’t exactly a math whiz. But when he says stuff like “13.4 million jobs have been added to our economy” under his watch, more than “any other president in a full four-year term,” anyone with even a passing familiarity with the events of the years preceding 2023 knows it’s a lie of omission.
The notion that presidents “create” jobs is itself a fantasy. In this case, though, Biden supported efforts to shutter private businesses during the pandemic, basically closing the entire economy, not only while running for president but after winning office.
When Florida, and other states, attempted to ease some restrictions, Biden told them to “get out of the way” so that people could “do the right thing.” The pressure exerted on states to “do the right thing” was immense.
All of which is to say that the president and his allies had far more to do with destroying jobs than creating them. We don’t need to relitigate the efficacy of COVID-19 policy here, but approximately 10 million of the jobs that Biden now brags about overseeing are just people coming back to the workforce after state-compelled lockdowns.
Then again, if “Bidenomics” had meant doing absolutely nothing, it would have been the president’s greatest political accomplishment. But that would have meant allowing a crisis to go to waste. Instead, what “Bidenomics” did help create was the biggest four-year inflationary spike under any president in 40 years.
By the time the American Rescue Plan was passed, there was already too much money chasing too few goods. Tons of people warned about the consequences of dumping more money into the economy. Even when inflation began inching up, Biden dismissed it—“no serious economist” is “suggesting there’s unchecked inflation on the way,” he said.
Democrats, of course, wanted to cram through a $5 trillion progressive agenda spending bill. So, when inflation became a big, nontransitory political problem, the Biden administration began arguing that more spending would help ease inflation.
Again, the vital thing to remember about “Bidenomics” is that it makes absolutely zero sense.
Only after inflation became a political issue did the Democrats rename Build Back Better the Inflation Reduction Act. It still contained all the historic spending, corporate welfare, price-fixing, and tax hikes, but, more importantly, it also still had absolutely nothing to do with mitigating inflation.
None of this is to even mention the hundreds of billions “Bidenomics” “invested”—the enduring euphemism for spending money we don’t have—in social engineering projects that would force us to abandon modernity in the name of “climate justice.” This brand of spending was based on a (misguided) moral prerogative, not any kind of prudent economic decision making, to say the least.
A writer in The New Yorker recently asked, “Why Isn’t Joe Biden Getting More Credit for a Big Drop in Inflation?” Probably because there is no “Bidenomics” policy that has helped lower inflation. Quite the opposite. We’re still trying to recover from the president’s economic policy. It’s the Fed that was compelled to hike interest rates at a level not seen in 30 years to inhibit economic growth partly due to government-induced inflation. It, not Biden, brought down inflation.
Presidents who oversee strong economies, often benefitting from the luck of history or existing policies, will see fewer jobs “created” during their terms because space for growth is limited. Biden was given more economic headroom than any president in history—and blew it. That’s the real legacy of “Bidenomics.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/14/bidenomics-has-been-a-disaster/
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August 18, 2023
Wife slammed for telling other women to date rich men
This advice is not uncommon but is not really smart. Very rich men tend to be spoilt and sometimes go broke so are not a good target. A well-off but not super-rich man would probably be a better deal. And you might actually get real affection with it. Real affection beats any number of helicopter rides (etc.)
A self-proclaimed “femininity influencer” is being slammed online for her advice to women they should only date men who are cashed up.
Digs like “gold digger,” “delusional” and “money dog,” are being savagely slingshotted at a self-crowned femininity influencer after she advised women to aviod dating “broke men”.
Sofia Kralow praised her husband for his deep pockets and went viral recently for encouraging women against dating guys without cash but her unsolicited advice just isn’t clicking with keyboard critics.
“Daily reminder to never date broke men,” urged TikTok tastemaker Sofia Kralow, based in Dubai, in the on-screen text of her controversial clip, New York Post reported.
The trending footage, which has stacked up over 1.3 million views, features the brunette being lavished with helicopter rides, designer accessories, luxury cars and wads of cash via husband Thomas Kralow, an affluent hedge fund manager and YouTuber.
“Raise your standards,” she penned in the caption, punctuating her pearls of wisdom with hashtags such as “#PrincessTreatment,” “#Goals,” and “#Millionaire.”
As a finishing touch, Kralow — who, in other clips, unabashedly flaunts the posh perks of being a wealthy man’s wife such as hulking bouquets of roses, exotic vacations, enviable spa treatments and fistfuls of dough — topped off the post with a remixed sound bite of rapper Latto coquettishly saying, “Thank you to my man”.
But rather than being dazzled by her glamorous trappings, women were disappointed in Kralow’s presumed financial dependence.
“No thanks I rather have my own money and be in love,” wrote a self-sufficient naysayer in the comments.
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The Left’s Desperate Attempt To Deflect on Crime
In recent weeks, the Biden administration and its allies in the corporate media have been attempting to deflect attention from America’s ongoing crime crisis. Exhibit A: an article by the impulsively liberal Axios titled “GOP’s crumbling case against Biden on crime.”
This comes on the heels of a similarly vacuous “report” by Third Way, which acknowledged that there is a homicide problem, but claimed it is actually in “red states” that voted for former President Donald Trump.
The truth is that crime rates have been rising in blue cities since 2016 because of progressive, pro-criminal, anti-police policies. And when you remove the progressive-run blue cities from the equation, states’ relative rankings on homicide change dramatically, disproving Third Way’s attempt to blame red-state governors.
Regular Americans, especially the minorities who often live the reality of high crime rates every day, don’t believe the liberal media’s lies. Indeed, they know whom to blame: blue-city prosecutors and, more specifically, George Soros-funded or -inspired prosecutors.
As we pointed out in a recent paper, 27 of the 30 cities with the highest murder rates are run by Democrats. And 14 of those cities—accountable for 68% of the homicides—have rogue district attorneys backed or inspired by Mr. Soros.
Those prosecutors have enacted pro-criminal, anti-victim policies, as we explain in detail in our book, “Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Communities.”
Which raises the question: Why the constant drumbeat and attempt to flip the narrative?
Answer: Because the left knows that it is its policies that have led to the increase in crime in most cities since 2016 and now they are politically vulnerable. In poll after poll after poll after poll, the issue of crime is on voters’ minds, just behind the economy.
And no one believes for one second that Republicans, independents or law-and-order Democrats support pro-criminal, anti-victim, police-hating policies … because they don’t.
Indeed, even liberal Democrats in San Francisco and Baltimore threw out their rogue prosecutors, Chesa Boudin and Marilyn Mosby respectively, in recent elections because of skyrocketing crime rates in their cities.
And the first Soros rogue prosecutor, Kim Foxx of Chicago, was shoved off the political stage earlier this year by the Democratic machine because they know that her policies, which they secretly endorse, have caused homicides, rapes and thefts to rise to heights not seen since the early 1990s.
Rather than trying to solve the problem, though, Democrats want to trick voters.
But it’s hard to hide dead bodies, shuttered stores, videos of looting in broad daylight, and rampant criminal activity in major Democratic-run cities.
What the Axios story and others don’t tell you is that in Chicago, New York, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and other cities with rogue prosecutors, rates of crime, including homicide, were at historic highs last year. So, any minor dip in crime rates so far this year in those cities is nothing to brag about.
Neither Axios nor Third Way nor any of the other outlets engaged in this deceptive attempt to flip the political narrative and blame Republicans for increased crime rates defend the “merits” of defunding the police, rogue prosecutors’ menu of pro-criminal policies, disregarding victims’ rights, or the scourge of not asking for bail.
Why not?
If they’re so great, and lower crime rates based on the hilarious (and false) assertion that “data and science” back up these policies, why not dig in and offer a full-throated defense?
Because deep down they know that these policies don’t ensure public safety and are defensible only in a Marxist, equity-oriented framework that most Americans reject.
So, the next time you see an eye-catching headline about how crime is not as bad as so-and-so wants you to believe, or that rising crime rates and the dystopian hellholes that have been created in inner cities are the fault of Republicans, you’ll know what is really happening and why.
https://www.heritage.org/crime-and-justice/commentary/the-lefts-desperate-attempt-deflect-crime
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Beverly Hills Wants Rabbi’s In-Home Religious Gatherings to Cease and Desist. He’s Not Budging
A rabbi in Beverly Hills is fighting for his First Amendment rights after the Los Angeles suburb sent him a “notice of violations,” seeking to prevent him from holding Jewish services in his home.
The nonprofit First Liberty Institute and the law firm of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, which represent Rabbi Levi Illulian, sent a letter to Beverly Hills Code Enforcement Attorney and Prosecutor Steven H. Rosenblit on Wednesday calling on Beverly Hills to retract that notice.
“We have demanded that the city immediately withdraw its June 12, 2023, ‘Notice of Violations’ letter and acknowledge in writing that Rabbi Illulian is within his legal rights to engage in religious activities at the Home with family and friends,” First Liberty, a Plano, Texas-based conservative law firm, specializing in religious freedom, told The Daily Signal in an email.
If it doesn’t, First Liberty made clear in its letter to Rosenblit that it will take the city to court for violating Illulian’s First and 14th Amendment rights.
For several months, Illulian provided Jewish religious services, such as Shabbat, for his guests. That was until February, when he received a notification that a neighbor had reported him for causing noise, parking trouble, and increased trash in Illulian’s backyard.
The city investigated, but as First Liberty noted in its letter to Rosenblit, “After spending nearly a month investigating the complaints, the City initially (and correctly) concluded that the alleged violations were unfounded and closed its case.”
After receiving another complaint in March, the city reopened its investigation and utilized what “Orwellian tactics” to spy on Illulian and his guests by taking photos of them and flying drones over his home, First Liberty noted in its letter to the city.
On June 12, the city notified Illulian through the “notice of violations” letter that if he did not stop holding private religious gatherings at his home, he would be “subject to criminal and/or civil proceedings in the Los Angeles County Superior Court.”
Illulian responded by contacting First Liberty while continuing “to host his private and intimate religious gatherings … as is his right under the Constitution,” First Liberty told The Daily Signal.
Since then, “the City has continued its concerning and potentially unconstitutional surveillance of the home during that time, including by photographing guests coming and going from the Rabbi’s home and even using a drone to survey the property,” First Liberty noted in its letter to Rosenblit.
First Liberty told The Daily Signal, “The City’s actions here, including barring all religious gatherings with friends and family and engaging in multi-hour stakeouts, are particularly egregious abuses of government power,” especially since Illulian only sought to provide community.
Illulian started celebrating Jewish dinners at his home “as a means of supporting an aging, home-ridden Holocaust survivor,” First Liberty’s press release says.
The rabbi wanted to create what he called an “intimate religious gathering.” As a result, he made sure he did not invite more than his home could hold and asked those he did invite to park varying distances from his home so as not to inconvenience his neighbors.
First Liberty said it will continue to defend Illulian “because the First Amendment and the [federal] Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act … protect the right of Rabbi Illulian and all Americans to engage in private religious exercise at their homes with family, friends, and neighbors, free from government burden and interference.”
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Australia's Matildas are named 'one of the gayest teams at the World Cup' by leading LGBTQ news site
I had been told that female footballers are mostly butch Lesbians but I follow no sport so wondered if that was correct. Looks like it was. It may explain why play in their most recent match was pretty rough. It must be a first that a team of homosexuals received great public praise but one must wonder if many fans knew the full score about the team
The Matildas have been named one of the 'gayest' teams in the Women's World Cup, having the equal highest representations of lesbian players of all teams in the competition.
Pink News made the assessment ahead of Australia's semifinal against England on Wednesday night which the Matildas lost 3-1.
The UK-based news site said the Matildas had nine first-team players and three reserves who were in same-sex relationships, tying the squad with the Brazil team for the most openly lesbian players in the 2023 World Cup.
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August 17, 2023
Modern society and government programs actively punish women who choose to lead traditional lives
‘Barbie changed everything because Barbie can be anything.’ Many have heard the marketing phrase. Even if that was true, which it isn’t, is being able to ‘be anything’ really the answer, or does the tyranny of choice leave us with too little time when we finally figure out what is meaningful in life? By substituting the ‘be anything’ Kool-Aid with words like family or career (that imply choice and sacrifice), social media-induced ‘be everything’ anxiety pushed on young women and the heartbreak of unmet expectations would be lessened.
The pain is real. Only 6 per cent of women who worked full-time considered childlessness to be their ideal, according to a report by the Australian Institute of Family Studies. Yet, about 25 per cent of Australian women will remain childless by the end of their reproductive lives, according to a report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. That’s one in five women who wanted kids and didn’t have them.
In the distant past, career-focused women were valued lower than family-focused women. Now the opposite is true to the point that tax laws consider family women as a non-entity. A family woman’s tax-free threshold is not considered unless her family owns a business or has a family estate trust to distribute income to her. Further, I’m told the work test means that mums have to get back to work after 6 months if they want their $15,000 maternity leave payment for their next pregnancy. A mum that couldn’t work because they were sick, couldn’t find work, had post-natal depression, or wanted to spend time with their newborn only gets $500. A far cry from feminism’s ideals of equality.
Does that mean family-focused women need to become 60s-style vacuum cleaner ad caricatures, or should we create a new version of pre-industrial revolution femininity, where family-focused women are side-hustle founders and equitably taxed mums? That’s a markedly different image to the prevailing narrative where the pinnacle of female achievement is the boardroom. I’ve been in boardrooms, they aren’t that exciting.
Meanwhile, career-focused men have had their teeth removed and their claws pulled out. Nominally feminist, they are powerless to take the cause of family-focused women for fear of being labelled as a misogynist.
The solution? According to one American psychiatrist, a disarming technique is to agree. The only way to stop someone thinking you are something is to admit, without reservation, that part of their judgment is true. Paradoxically, by finding a grain of truth in the accusation, the assailant immediately stops believing it. Defence is futile. David D Burns’ EAR method steps in:
Empathy: ‘You’re completely right, you must think I am a misogynist because I think women should stay at home with their young ones.’
Assertiveness: ‘I feel like career doesn’t give most people the same life fulfilment as parenthood. I feel like mums miss out by missing their kids’ infant years. I feel like their kids miss out by being in childcare. I feel like society misses out when these kids grow up having missed this time with their mum (and dad). I feel like it takes about 15 years to get to where you want to be career-wise, and by this time, women are running out of time to have kids. I feel like feminism’s recognition of career success and neglect of family success implicitly promotes career and demeans family.’
Respect: ‘I think all women should be totally free to choose and every woman is different, and there is no right path for everyone.’
Contrast this with every man’s natural defensive posture: ‘How could you say I’m a misogynist, I’m not a misogynist. I’m a feminist and don’t have any thoughts beyond completely agreeing with the narrative. I’ll stop talking now.’
Even the language is feminist. We don’t have words like masculinist and misterogynist. While they might even things up, I’m not sure more verbal warfare is what we need.
Imagine that instead of ‘isms’ we had four sub-groups: Family-focused women, career-focused women, family-focused men, and career-focused men, all with an equal say. Family-focused women would need to speak up to the career-focused women and start burning their business suits. Career-focused women would need to admit that being able to be anything hasn’t really been the answer they were searching for. Family-focused men would need to embrace the label of being a misogynist for wanting a wife that stays at home with the kids. Career-focused men would need to stop talking over career-focused women who don’t want to compete with their booming voices. Rather than one group with outright emotional control, it’s a two way street, and each group has checks and balances on each other.
The game has changed. Instead of women taking on masculine traits to compete in the workplace, or men taking on feminine traits to become sensitive new age guys, women now identify as men and men as women.
That might mean that men who don’t identify as women still feel more effeminate than men of previous generations. This stacks up, young men of this generation produce measurably less testosterone than the previous generation at the same age. It would be interesting to know if similar hormonal phenomena were happening with women. If so, it would be interesting to compare hyper PC Australia and Canada with family-focused countries like Spain and Italy.
Do career-focused women and testosterone-depleted men find each other attractive? I’m not aware of any data on this, but anecdotally it doesn’t look good. If so, could ‘isms’ be contributing to spiralling fertility rates?
Arguably, fertility rate has more to do with financial concerns. Rightly or wrongly young people want to be responsible and able to provide for their family before taking the leap. They do pretty well, getting lenient tax treatment on a high surplus income while focusing on their career, but is this a mistake? Most couples figure out their finances together, and the necessity is the mother of invention. The tax system could be set up in such a way that instead of incentivising the highest possible surplus income, it incentivised the highest possible contribution to society. Income tax affects money in and GST affects money out. Parents earn less (combined) and spend more.
Tax brackets and tax laws are remnants of the industrial revolution that attempt to keep people in factories making widgets paying their taxes and paying off their home loans. Rather than taking the short-term view of ‘more kids means more mums not working, means less tax revenue’, the tax office could learn delayed gratification. Long term, more kids means more trade means more work means more tax revenue, it just takes 20 years before the tax office sees a return on investment. They get better, more productive adults thrown into the bargain for free.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/barbie-ism-feminisms-unhelpful-verbal-warfare/
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Hilariously failed gender re-education caught in the wild
Alexandra Marshall
I was sitting in a cafe last week when I overheard the pair sitting beside me. It was one of those pigeon-hole coffee houses where patrons are elbow-to-elbow rendering eavesdropping a requirement.
As best I could gather, the woman – in her mid-thirties – was a biology lecturer at one of the many nearby universities. The young Asian man was a foreign student with near-perfect English and a calm demeanour. She was restless and became more so as the conversation dragged on until she reminded me of a toddler squirming around with a distinct air of immaturity.
The conversation appeared to be one of those ‘re-education’ chats common among Western universities when a student does something crazy – like refuse to bow and scrape at the feet of progressive propaganda.
In this case, the biology lecturer was interrogating this poor young man about the difference between biological sex and the post-modernist re-imagining of gender.
‘Sex and gender are the same thing,’ the young man shrugged. His crime was evident. How dare he see the world so clearly!
‘What it means to be a ‘man’ has changed. What it means to be a ‘woman’ has changed,’ she replied, as if that was some sort of answer to his statement. ‘That’s why you can change sexes.’
‘Means to be makes no sense. What does it ‘mean’ to be a woman?’ he replied, searching for a clarification.
That had her stumped. ‘Uh… It – through history – like – it changes.’
My faith in the youth of this world was immediately restored. This young man was not buying the half-arsed ramblings and nonsensical rebuttals that amounted to ‘because I say so’.
‘Why separate sex and gender?’ he pushed, no doubt sensing the woman’s fidgeting panic. ‘It is stupid. It makes no sense.’
The starkness of his ungilded words threw her off. ‘It – it was the same thing with racism. Like – we didn’t want to separate them.’
This time the man’s eyebrows furrowed. He took a sip of his coffee, bewildered by her pivot to ‘racism’. ‘What…?’ he eventually replied. ‘That – that’s not an argument.’
‘It needs to be forced. We have to force the separation of gender and sex.’
‘Why?’ he asked, still not following.
‘Because it is more inclusive!’ her voice rose in annoyance. ‘It – you know – it says what it means to be a woman because they identify as that.’
Keep in mind, at this point I’m transcribing word for word, pretending to drink my coffee. I couldn’t help it – they were fascinating. I’d found a wild case study on the demise of social justice propaganda.
The man took another sip of coffee. I don’t blame him. ‘None of that makes any sense…’
‘Sex is used for men,’ she declared. ‘Sex – sex is for like… If I’m a transwoman and I went to a hospital and they want to know my sex – that’s when I would say I was born male. That’s where it ends.’
He narrowed his eyes, not sure if the woman was aware of what she’d admitted to. ‘So, you’re a transwoman but you’re still a man when reality gets involved?’
‘No! No. Transwomen are real women. But a man.’
The male student’s face fell into a distinctive ‘I’ve wasted ten years of my life studying to get into this university’ look. Remember, he’s the kid – she’s the biology lecturer.
It was at this point that I required a quick coffee top-up, but when I came back, the woman had resumed her attempts to re-educate the student.
Her course of action was to start a debate about gender being an outward expression of appearance – the clothes, the makeup, the wigs etc. It’s the ‘womanhood is a performance’ argument we see propagated to validate the social media trend of men ‘experiencing womanhood’ through vacuous TikTok posts bankrolled by fashion labels.
‘If you want to wear a dress, wear a dress…’ he said, picking at the tangled net of her logic with a fishing knife. ‘It doesn’t make you a girl. It makes you a dude – in a dress – who wants to look feminine.’
‘That’s – no!’ Her argument shifted again. ‘Gender is influenced by more than just biology.’
His head tilted, like a bird of prey spying an injured bug on the lawn. ‘So… You wouldn’t separate sport based on gender?’
‘No… Sport segregation is based on sex.’
‘But you just said transwomen should be allowed to play women’s sport because they are real women. That’s a gender argument for sex division. You’ve confused the two.’
The student was correct. His biology lecturer was using two mutually exclusive arguments surrounding the definition of gender to suit different points. When viewed holistically, her comments became incoherent. If this was a debate on Twitter, she would have rage-quit by now, blocked the man, and put up some kind of ‘I’ve been bullied by toxic masculinity’ post. Trapped in a cafe with real people, all she could do was bang her spoon around the insides of her coffee cup in frustration.
He dug her deeper into that hole. ‘We don’t separate sports teams by race. There is no Asian football team. But we do separate by gender. That implies there is a real, biological difference.’
‘You’re really focused on the words,’ she complained. ‘Why does it matter so much?’
‘Because reality matters.’
The banging of her spoon grew louder. She changed the topic.
‘Gender has something to do with what you look like,’ she re-attempted her point. I believe this is what transpeople call ‘passing’. The likes of Blaire White have explained this far better.
‘I’m a big guy. If you saw me in a dark alley, would you feel safer if I was wearing a dress?’
‘No…’ she replied quickly.
‘But according to you, I’m a woman when I’m wearing a dress.’
‘No… Uh, not exactly. Like, being a woman is – like – women wear bras. Bras are part of the female identity. It’s part of their gender expression as women.’
‘Are you wearing a bra?’
‘Um – not right now – actually – I don’t wear them very often.’
‘So, you’re not a woman?’
If there was a reply to that, I didn’t catch it.
‘What if someone was a menacing woman?’ he tried again. ‘A woman who looked blokey. Is their gender male?’
She was taken aback. ‘No – like – if you were a man in a dress – but – still looked manly – uh…’
That was a critical error on her part.
‘But you just said a few seconds ago that gender is all about how you feel, not your biology or looks…’
‘No – but…’
‘So, women are always women, even if they feel blokey, but men are only transwomen if they look the part of a woman – unless they are feeling female, because self-id is always valid.’
She was stumped. ‘What?’
Finally, the poor boy lost it. ‘EXACTLY! IT MAKES NO SENSE. YOU MAKE NO SENSE!’
It was at this point the assumed biology lecturer was interrupted by the Harry Potter ringtone on her phone and I decided to leave before I did something embarrassing – like shake the guy’s hand and congratulate him on permanently traumatising his university ‘elder’.
Whether he passes his biology course is another matter.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/hilariously-failed-gender-re-education-caught-in-the-wild/
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Appeals Court Says DC ‘Selectively’ Enforced Statute to Arrest Pro-Life Activists but Not BLM Protesters
A federal appeals court ruled 3-0 Tuesday that Washington, D.C., “selectively” used a defacement statute to arrest pro-life activists for chalking a message on the sidewalk while permitting Black Lives Matter protesters to mark property without consequences.
During the summer of 2020, at the same time thousands of BLM protesters were taking to the streets of Washington, D.C., and covering public spaces with paint and chalk, two pro-life activists were arrested for chalking the words “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on a public sidewalk.
The Frederick Douglass Foundation and Students for Life of America, who organized the pro-life protest and filed the lawsuit over the arrests, “plausibly alleged” that the statute’s enforcement was viewpoint discrimination, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia found.
“The First Amendment prohibits discrimination on the basis of viewpoint irrespective of the government’s motive,” Circuit Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, wrote in the opinion for the court. “We hold the Foundation has plausibly alleged the District discriminated on the basis of viewpoint in the selective enforcement of its defacement ordinance.”
“The District all but abandoned enforcement of the defacement ordinance during the Black Lives Matter protests, creating a de facto categorical exemption for individuals who marked ‘Black Lives Matter’ messages on public and private property,” the ruling states.
Pro-life activists had a permit to assemble and verbal permission from a police officer to point their message, according to the ruling.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/15/appeals-court-dc-treat-pro-lifers-blm-protesters-same/
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Why Australians should be worried about the thought police
ROBERT GOTTLIEBSEN
Prepare yourself for the danger of an Australian 1984-style ‘thought police’ masquerading as ‘truth police’. Sadly, we need a truth disclosing force because we have entered an era where public servants, politicians and those in the private sector are embracing the habit of making misleading or untrue statements.
In recent times, misleading information has emerged via the Uluru statement summary which we discover is very different from the actual statement; renewable energy cost concealment, PwC, and so on. Accordingly, the proposed outlawing of ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation’ on social media looks reasonable.
But we already have a form of so-called ‘fact checking’ operating on Facebook and other parts of social media, and its performance is sending out alert signals that apply to the proposed legislation.
I emphasise that I have not conducted detailed research into the outcomes of the current ‘fact checking’ exercise, but an incident hit my desk where I was familiar with the actual facts and the so-called ‘fact checking’ looked dangerously like an exercise in political correctness.
If fact checking becomes opinion vetting then we will experience a very serious curb on public opinion via social media as ‘fact checking’ becomes a form of ‘thought police’ designed to stifle views that the government does not like or that are ‘politically incorrect’.
For example, on social media, both the ‘yes’ and the ‘no’ campaigns will be very active and presenting two entirely different set of facts.
A fully operational ‘thought police’ on social media might block opinions based on the full Uluru statement or even blocking the full statement itself, given it has been so damaging to the government supported ‘yes’ case.
My long-term readers will remember the coverage of the case brought against WorkSafe Victoria by Independent Contractors of Australia, which had asked WorkSafe to investigate 27 individuals and entities – including Victoria’s premier, former ministers, the chief health officer and the health department – for alleged breaches of the Occupational Health and Safety that allegedly led to the deaths of 801 people.
The case came before the Supreme Court and the hearings lasted almost the entire 2022.
In December, the Victorian court rejected the cases against the defendants, partly on the basis that early in the hearings, a particular document was lodged later than the court claimed it should have been. The decision was handed down just after the state election returned the Andrews government.
The declaration on timing was legally very controversial because it meant that issues raised by the case were not addressed, and had the opinion been reached early in the case, expensive legal bills would have been avoided.
The judge declared that if Independent Contractors of Australia “is not granted an extension of time, the individuals … will be freed from the not insignificant stress of potentially being subjected to prosecution for serious criminal offences which may carry lengthy terms of imprisonment”.
He added that the 20 individuals “may suffer considerable prejudice” if Independent Contractors of Australia are granted an extension of time.
Australia has WorkSafe laws that carry lengthy jail terms if the courts find there has been a breach of the act.
Although stress was not the reason why the case failed, the fact that a judge declared that in a WorkSafe case the stress of the people being sued was an issue, opens a whole new set of legal issues that may be used to block cases that carry large penalties and stress for those on trial.
On Facebook, a long debate was posted that canvassed the multitude of issues being debated. It was about opinions on the issues raised by judgement. The so-called fact-checkers shifted the opinion entry to the fact-checking section of Facebook, and then superimposed an introduction before the link.
Given this was a discussion about legal opinions, for it to be declared the subject of a fact check on political issues sets a dangerous precedent. Then to make matters worse, the so called ‘factual’ introduction contained statements that were factually incorrect, but were politically correct.
And what is of further concern is that AAP Factcheck that undertook the manoeuvre is a reputable organisation. Australian Associated Press aims to be an independent, nonpartisan Australian not-for-profit organisation.
Again it is unfair to reach conclusions on one example, but non-profit organisations need income to pay salaries and while this may simply be a mistake of judgement, it is a warning that when a fact checking organisation becomes involved in opinions, a 1984-style ‘thought police’ can emerge.
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August 16, 2023
Sexual abuse hysteria in the Church of England finally put
right
Sex-related hysteria resulting in the defamation of the innocent has recently come undone in Australia's Higgins/Lehrman affair. See below about that:
https://australian-politics.blogspot.com/2023/08/drumgold-rise-and-fall-of-boy-from-mt.html
But the C of E got there first with abominable zeal to convict a genuinely holy man on no good evidence. "The woman must be believed" was again the poisonous basis for action. Who ever heard of a lying woman? I have posted previously on the matter. The source articles are below
Last week, 4 Canon Lane, Chichester, was renamed George Bell House. It had been called 4 Canon Lane since 2016. Before that, it had been called George Bell House. This forth-and-back reflects the strange sequence of events.
In 2015, the diocese paid compensation to ‘Carol’ for an alleged sexual assault by Bell, when Bishop of Chichester, in the late 1940s or thereabouts. In that year, the present Bishop of Chichester also gave her a formal apology. Bell had died, unaccused, in 1958.
The church process by which he was posthumously convicted nearly 60 years later had not included anyone speaking on his behalf. A number of us, one or two of whom had known Bell, started an informal group to clear his name. We were confident that the accusation was false and certain that the process had been wrong.
The latter point was conceded by the Church after a fine review by Lord Carlile. The former was not. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, asserted that a ‘significant cloud’ still hung over Bell. He finally retracted this in November 2021.
By then, poor Bell had been unpersoned by the diocese – his name, which had been hallowed, effaced. George Bell House, founded to promote his interest in vocation, education and reconciliation, was one example.
The re-renaming all but completes the formal restoration of Bell’s reputation. The Chapter of the cathedral, especially the interim Dean, Simon Holland, deserves credit, because this change was resisted in some quarters. The innocent man won in the end.
I hope history will record this fully. If, for example, you look online at the ICSA report on child abuse, which made Bell one of its cases, you will not pick up the vital fact that Bell did not abuse anybody.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/the-spectators-notes-280/
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Judge orders Southwest lawyers to take ‘religious-liberty’ classes with conservative Christian legal group
A federal judge has ordered three lawyers for Southwest Airlines to submit to “religious-liberty training” after it fired a flight attendant for her anti-abortion stance.
US District Judge Brantley Starr said the three legal eagles need to hone up on religious freedoms after defying his court orders in the flight attendant’s case — and said conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom “is particularly well-suited” to set them straight.
While critics questioned the ruling, a spokesman for the group defended the judge’s ruling.
“The judge’s order calls for ADF to provide training in religious liberty law — not religious doctrine,” Jim Campbell, the group’s chief counsel, told Fortune magazine.
“It is baseless to suggest that people of faith cannot provide legal instruction if their beliefs differ from the audience.”
Starr, who was appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump in 2019, is the nephew of former special counsel Kenneth Starr, who spent years probing Bill and Hillary Clinton’s alleged Whitewater scandal and uncovered the 42nd commander in chief’s affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.
The judge issued the ruling in the Southwest case after he said lawyers for the airline needed to brush up on the law after flight attendant Charlene Carter sued over her termination and won.
Southwest Airlines.
A federal judge in Texas has ordered lawyers for Southwest Airlines to undergo “religious-liberty training” after a flight attendant was fired after voicing anti-abortion views.
AP
Carter, who had been on the job for more than 20 years, was fired after she posted a series of social media messages slamming the flight attendant union boss for attending the anti-Trump, pro-abortion Women’s March in Washington, DC, in January 2017.
“You truly are despicable in so many ways,” Carter allegedly wrote in one message, which included an attached video of an aborted fetus, Fortune reported.
She took her case to arbitration after she was fired but lost — yet filed a lawsuit and was awarded $5.1 million by a Dallas jury last year — although Starr later lowered the award to $800,000.
The airline and the union are appealing the verdict.
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Businesses brace for deluge of new regs from Biden's labor cops
President Joe Biden’s appointees are poised to dramatically reshape the work lives of tens of millions of workers and the businesses that employ them. The Department of Labor, National Labor Relations Board and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — each operating on a separate track — are readying to push out new regulations and rules on everything from overtime pay to who counts as an employee.
The packed agenda will allow Biden to champion his pro-worker agenda as his re-election campaign heats up and the president works to tamp down grumbling from some segments of organized labor, most notably the United Auto Workers.
Employers are bracing for the deluge, as August shapes up to be the start of a critical stretch for the federal government’s top workplace enforcers.
“It’s coming, and it’s coming in a big way,” Ed Egee, a vice president at the National Retail Federation, told POLITICO.
Several of the policies being developed have been in the works since the early days of Biden’s term but are only now coming to a head.
After a lull in public activity that overlapped with former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh’s departure and Julie Su’s bruising confirmation effort to succeed him, DOL in recent weeks has picked up the pace of its rulemaking.
This summer the agency has proposed safety standards for coal miners’ exposure to hazardous silica dust, completed a requirement that employers using anti-union consultants disclose their federal contractor status, and sent over language for several regulations to the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — typically one of the final hurdles before public release.
DOL also has several closely watched policies that have not yet been finalized, including a revamp of the regulations that govern prevailing wage standards for federally funded construction projects, commonly known as Davis-Bacon, that has idled for nearly a year and a half since the initial proposal was released in March 2022.
But above all, employers are bracing for the unveiling of new DOL rules potentially expanding overtime pay requirements for millions of workers and a tighter definition of which workers can be classified as independent contractors instead of employees.
Both will inevitably face court challenges — including some that may seek to invalidate DOL’s policies by contesting Su’s ability to serve as acting secretary — and have been the subject of intense lobbying from both business groups and labor unions.
Raj Nayak, DOL’s assistant secretary for policy, said its regulatory agenda is a “key part of our broader efforts to improve the lives for workers around the nation.”
“The rules are a key part of our broader effort to make real improvements in workers’ lives — to give them more money in their paychecks, make sure they come home from work safe and healthy, that all workers have real opportunities, and that they can rest at night knowing their pensions are protected,” Nayak said in a statement.
The regulatory rush is partly being driven by the calendar. NLRB, in particular, is facing a time crunch as Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox’s term expires August 27.
“The board is going to have a very, very active month of August,” Michael Lotito, who represents businesses for the law firm Littler Mendelson. “If you're thinking about going on vacation in August, you're going to have to take some time to see what the board is up to."
Democrats currently have a 3-1 majority, but the board has historically refrained from issuing precedent-shifting decisions and taking other controversial actions without at least three votes in support. Chair Lauren McFerran, whom Biden tapped in 2021, is viewed outside the agency as an institutionalist unlikely to break from that precedent, so Wilcox’s absence could bring consequential actions to a halt.
An NLRB spokesperson declined to comment.
Biden has re-nominated Wilcox for another term. But with Congress in recess for the month, a lapse is virtually guaranteed, though it is an open question for how long that will be.
As such, the board is expected to hand down decisions on several high-profile cases in the coming weeks — as it did Wednesday when the Democratic majority altered the framework used to assess the legality of employee handbooks and other workplace rules.
Companies fear the move will lead to even boilerplate conduct policies putting them at risk of NLRB investigations.
The ruling “inserted instability and confusion into the workplace and created risks for employers attempting to implement common sense policies that protect workers, customers, and the community,” Kristen Swearingen, head of the business-backed Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, said in a statement.
The NLRB is also racing to finalize regulations for determining joint-employer status, or when a worker is subject to two or more employers linked together in some way.
The issue is of particular importance to the tech and fast-food industries, among others, as the initial proposal released last fall would make it easier for the NLRB to hold companies liable for labor law violations committed by their franchisees or contractors.
“We really question how that’s how that's going to be implemented,” the National Retail Federation's Egee said, adding that the group is prepared to go to court over the issue.
While DOL and the NLRB have garnered the bulk of the pushback from businesses under the Biden administration, the EEOC has struggled. Democratic appointees have yet to hold a majority on the five-member panel during Biden’s time in office — boxing in Chair Charlotte Burrows.
The Senate in early July voted narrowly to confirm Kalpana Kotagal, whom Biden nominated more than a year prior. Kotagal will swing the commission over to Democrats — once she arrives, that is.
Kotagal is still in the process of joining the EEOC and does not have an official start date, she wrote in an email Friday.
Burrows’ window of opportunity may be brief. The chair’s own term has expired, and she will have to vacate her seat at the end of the year if the Senate does not reconfirm her.
That leaves only a few months for EEOC Democrats to act before they may again face a 2-2 split in 2024.
Burrows has been a vocal proponent of enhancing pay data reporting requirements as a tool to measure — and combat — wage disparities. The business community bristled at a previous attempt by the Obama-era EEOC to collect this data through the EEO-1 form that tracks workforce demographics, arguing it was too onerous and of questionable utility.
“We are very much expecting to see a return to some type of compensation reporting requirements that they tried to do back in the Obama era,” said Marc Freedman, vice president of employment policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. However, "there’s a real sort of uncertainty on how they proceed on that issue."
An EEOC spokesperson said it is continuing to review the recommendations from the outside analysis of the Obama EEO-1 policy it commissioned and that any future changes would receive ample opportunities for public notice and comment.
There are other factors bearing down on Biden’s labor agencies, namely Congress.
House Republicans have proposed steep budget cuts for all three, which if enacted would likely require trimming headcount and other reductions. On the other hand, Senate appropriators have proposed very slight funding cuts to DOL and EEOC while holding flat the NLRB, and lawmakers will have to meet over the coming months to hash out a spending deal.
Regulations completed late in a president’s term can also leave them vulnerable following the election cycle, either through use of the Congressional Review Act by a hostile majority or — in the event of a change in administration — by being kept from ever taking effect.
“Everybody watches the calendar, and everybody knows how long things really take,” said Patrick Pizella, a former deputy and acting Labor secretary during the Trump administration.
He also said there is an emphasis on trying to get rules completed before the last year of a term to avoid last-minute bottlenecks or competing with other agencies for the administration’s attention.
“There's a tendency for departments to think that they're the only department that has something before OIRA,” he said. “That's just not the case. Their bandwidth is limited like everybody else.”
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Thank you, Dame Alison, thank you, Peter. For exposing the craziness of your woke banking practices
Judith Sloan
Forget ‘thank you, linesmen; thank you, ball boys’ or should that be linespersons and ball persons? I offer my deep appreciation to Dame Alison (Rose) and Peter (Flavel), the respective former heads of UK banks, NatWest and Coutts.
Without your valiant efforts to de-bank Nigel Farage, we wouldn’t be where we are now – which is hopefully at the beginning of an emerging sweet spot. It’s given new meaning to own goal, which we are all fully onboard with given the Women’s World Cup currently being played down under.
In my view, Ali – can I call her that? – should have walked the plank much sooner than she did and not because of any law. When is it OK for a banker to reveal the personal details of a customer to anyone, let alone a journalist? Call me old-fashioned, but that was always a sackable offence. As for the pathetic chairman, ex-Bank of England, he must surely go very soon. He wanted Ali to stay on after an imperceptible slap on the wrist.
I’m not sure I really blame the BBC journalist here. After all, he did ring through to Ali’s office the next day to confirm the story that the account had been cancelled for commercial reasons which was wrong, but what the heck. Farage’s account had been terminated after a 40-page dossier was assembled on him – just think of the resources consumed in that little exercise, including by wet-behind-the-ears graduates?
The conclusion was that Nigel’s views and values – racist, xenophobic, pro-Brexit, yada yada – didn’t align with those of an inclusive bank with purpose and so his account needed to be cancelled. I guess that’s because it’s such an inclusive thing to do, to cancel a customer.
Whoever thought that managing the reputational risk of the bank could involve de-banking a high-profile person like Farage, with almost unlimited scope to use the media, clearly had rocks in their head – and that’s being kind. Is the real conclusion that an adherence to wokedom is the equivalent of a non-surgical lobotomy?
The fall-out has been a joy to behold, well beyond Ali and Peter getting the chop (with generous termination packages, of course – they’re bankers). It turns out that de-banking is widespread and it is actually partly the fault of government policy and the crazy anti-money laundering regulations.
Of course, these regulations don’t really affect murderous Russian oligarchs or violent Albanian gang members. But given the proven law of unintended consequences, there have been some truly bizarre results.
Under the Know Your Customer Act – I’m not making that title up – a bank and certain other types of companies must identify politically exposed persons (PEPs) to guard against money laundering. Initially, it was only going to apply to non-UK PEPs, but that restriction was soon lifted. Being a PEP or related to a PEP is sufficient reason for a person to have their bank accounts cancelled, with no scope for appeal.
The current UK Energy Minister, Grant Shapps, has had a bank account cancelled and the same fate has befallen a number of his relatives. And this is someone who has net zero in his ministerial title!
But the story I love most is about Domenica Lawson, granddaughter of Nigel Lawson, former UK chancellor and then member of the House of Lords. In 2016, her mother applied to open a bank account with Barclays for her 16-year-old daughter who happens to have Down Syndrome. The request was denied and the reason given was her grandfather; he was deemed a PEP.
By this stage, Lawson was in his late eighties and it’s hard to conceive of any opportunity for Domenica to be involved in laundering money for her own or other person’s benefit. But the bank wasn’t backing down. The rules were the rules and Domenica was unable to open an account at Barclays.
It has also emerged that many businesses that deal mainly in cash have had their bank accounts cancelled. This is notwithstanding the fact that cash is still very commonly used for many small household transactions.
A number of Traveller groups has established window-cleaning businesses in an attempt to wean themselves off welfare, which is surely a welcome development. But various banks have decided to cancel their accounts because the transactions are excessively cash-based. Let’s face it, you can’t run a legitimate business without a bank account.
Understandably, Nigel Farage has a spring in his step as he encourages the de-banked to let him know their stories and to build up a picture of wilful, woke and insane behaviour by UK’s financial institutions.
The whole imbroglio has also lifted the spirits of the Sunak government, with various ministers expressing their displeasure at the treatment of Farage. The government has now committed to introduce legislation to prevent banks from cancelling accounts on the basis of the lawfully held views of account holders.
(Does this safeguard exist in Australia, you ask? It would appear not, with banks having wide authority to cancel the accounts of any customer they dislike or disagree with. At this stage, we haven’t seen any stupid behaviour on a par with that of Ali and Pete. But, let’s face it, you cannot survive without a bank account. It’s not the equivalent of being denied a decorated cake by a store owner who doesn’t like your sort. Just go to another bakery.)
As the Sunak government also takes the sensible and electorally palatable decision to walk back from net zero, a new broad pitch is emerging to no-nonsense, hard-pressed voters – we’re on your side, we think all that woke stuff is rubbish and we will wind back stupid policies as soon as possible. Chief among them is stopping the extension of the Ultra Low Emission Zone to outer London and the Zero Emissions Vehicle mandate.
Under the current terms of the Zev, 22 per cent of all cars sold in 2024 – yep, next year – must be fully electric (hybrids don’t count). The penalty for every normal car over the limit is 15,000 pounds – that’s right, 15 large ones – paid by the customer.
It has dawned on the Business Secretary, Kemi Badenoch, that this mandate will be impossible to meet, leading to angry and frustrated consumers as well as potential job losses in the industry. It’s odds-on to a dollar that the mandate will be significantly watered down.
So thank you Ali, thank you Pete: your stupid behaviour may have just been the jolt that the political leaders needed to focus on what voters are really seeking – genuine fact-based policies that deal with the issues at hand rather than the woke fantasies of a handful of inner-city luvvies, civil servants and rich bods dealing with their post-material anxieties.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/thank-you-dame-alison-thank-you-peter/
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August 15, 2023
The Man Behind the Curtain
By: Judd Garrett
I don't entirely agree with this article. It is painfully obvious that Biden is gaga but who is writing his speeches? Garret is drawing a long bow in identfying Obama but I am inclined to think it is simpler than that. I think that some of Biden's closest advisers are very Leftist and it is they who are putting the words into Biden's mouth. Just who is the closest adviser we do not know as yet, There have been various suggestions so we may just have to wait and see
In the 1939 classic movie, the Wizard of Oz, in the climactic scene at the end of the movie, when Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion, finally meet with the all-powerful Wizard of Oz whom they all hope will solve their problems, they stand before a gigantic screen, with the Wizard’s enormously round face projected on it, speaking to them in a loud ominous voice with fire and smoke flashing all around. As the Wizard is rejecting their requests, Dorothy’s dog, Toto, jumps out of her arms, runs off to the side of the big screen, and pulls back a curtain revealing a little man, pushing and pulling different levers. The voice from the big screen, tells the group, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” The little man behind the curtain was, in fact, projecting onto the screen, the image of himself as the all-powerful Wizard of Oz that they were all terrified of. It was all a fraud.
In an article released this week by historians, David Samuel and David Garrow, it was revealed that Barack Obama is currently “serving as a third-term president in all but name, running the government from his iPhone.” This aligns with his wishes that he revealed to Stephen Colbert in a 2015 interview when he mused, “I used to say if I can make an arrangement where I had a stand-in or front man or front woman, and they had an earpiece in, and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, and I could sort of deliver the lines while someone was doing all the talking and ceremony… I’d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating.” Most people who observe the political landscape with their eyes and ears open, and are not blinded by their partisanship, realized over two years ago that this is what the Biden presidency actually was – Biden is the avatar for Obama’s third term. There are many so-called journalists who work in the mainstream media who have collectively decided to ‘pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, pulling the levers of our government.’
Joe Biden is the perfect politician to play the figurehead for Barack Obama. Any politician worth their salt – and Joe Biden is clearly not worth his salt – would refuse to play the fraudulent role that Joe Biden is willingly playing right now. Gavin Newsom wouldn’t do it. If he were elected President, he would want to be the President. He would have the job and the title of the most powerful man in the free world, so he wouldn’t sit idly by taking orders from someone who isn’t the President of the United States. That’s why the Democrat party has hesitated in replacing Joe Biden when it is clear to everyone, he is a bad candidate, an unpopular President, and will most likely be completely catatonic by the year 2028. Joe obliges because he knows that there is no other way that he would have become President other than this charade. So, Obama needs to do anything possible to push Biden across the finish line one more time so he can serve his fourth term.
This is another reason why I believe that the 2020 election was stolen. Any politician who campaigned legitimately and won the Presidential election legally would never allow a former President to call the shots in his administration. Biden is allowing that to happen because he knows that his entire election is fraudulent. It was Barack Obama’s voter fraud apparatus that ushered Biden into the White House, which in turn, makes Joe beholden to Barack, causing him to allow Obama to call all the shots. Joe knows that if he doesn’t do as he’s told, Obama will pull the rug out from under him. If Biden had actually won legitimately, he would turn to Obama and tell him, “I’m the President now, you sit off to the side and be quiet.” Ronald Reagan was not calling the shots in the George HW Bush White House. If he were, Bush probably would’ve been reelected in 1992.
Everything about Joe Biden is fraudulent. Joe Biden‘s entire political career has been mired in dishonesty. Biden has been selling influence from his political office to enrich himself and his family for the last 40 years. We all know that Joe Biden could not possibly get 81,000,000 legitimate votes. We all know that Joe Biden is not running our country. He couldn’t run a lemonade stand. He doesn’t know that he’s President half the time. He can barely spit out a coherent sentence. He’s been caught on camera, shaking hands with people who aren’t even there. His face is frozen in a deer-in-the-headlights look. Barack Obama is the puppet master, and Joe Biden is the willing puppet.
Biden made himself a puppet 35 years ago when he stole the speeches of accomplished politicians like British politician, Neil Kinnick, and also the speeches of John F Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. By doing that, he made the statement that ‘I cannot speak for myself, I need the words of other, smarter people to speak for me.’ He was plagiarizing – pawning off the words of others as his own – all the way back in law school. And that is what Biden continues to do being Obama’s puppet. How ironic is it that the one Democratic challenger that Biden is facing in this primary season is Robert Kennedy Jr, the son of the politician from whom Biden stole the speeches in 1988 which forced him to drop out of the Presidential primaries back then.
So, we hear a lot about threats to our democracy (which we are not) and threats to our elections, but what is playing itself out right now at Pennsylvania Avenue where the person who has the title of President, actually, isn’t the President, and another politician, who wasn’t elected to be President is working behind the scenes, as President, is the real threat to our political system. The most important part of our political system is the people’s ability to hold our politicians accountable. So, when the person who is calling all the shots is hiding behind a curtain, and never asked a question about any decision that he makes, his feet are never held to the fire for any of the problems that his decisions have created, we no longer have a democratic system, we no longer have a Constitutional Republic. We have a banana republic.
And that is what we have become over the last three years. This administration, run by Obama, is actually indicting, arresting, and trying to throw political opponents into prison for the rest of their lives for their political speech. Last week, Republican frontrunner, Donald Trump was charged with defrauding the federal government and defrauding our election system. As always, the Democrats will accuse the Republicans of doing what they themselves are doing. Barack Obama calling the shots in the White House behind the scenes, and Joe Biden, simply being a figurehead, is defrauding the United States federal government, and defrauding our election system. Like Joe Biden, everything about Barack Obama is fraudulent.
His policies which are run through the Biden administration, have caused over 5 million illegal immigrants to walk into our country over the last 2 ½ years with the sole purpose of changing the racial dynamic in our country under the guise of that “diversity is our strength“. But diversity is not our strength, unity is our strength. We are the United States of America, with the emphasis on “United”. As the saying goes, “United we stand, divided we fall.” And the man behind the curtain, pulling the levers of our government is hell-bent on dividing our country, so he can destroy our country because he hates our country. In 2008, his wife, Michelle said, that the first time she was ever proud of our country was when her husband won the presidency. Does that mean that only 45 wives should be proud of their country? Obama is determined to bring in millions and millions more illegal immigrants into the country because he knows that very few of those illegal immigrants have the love and respect for our country that citizens need to have for America to remain united and strong. They will eventually cause our country to implode because their loyalties are elsewhere.
At the end of the movie, it was revealed that each of the characters looking to the Wizard of Oz to solve their problems had the power to solve their own problems themselves. The Scarecrow was in fact smart; the Tin Man did indeed have a heart; the Cowardly Lion was actually very courageous; and Dorothy had the power to go home all along. The problems that each of them looked to the Wizard to solve were either not problems at all or could be solved by themselves without any help from the all-powerful Wizard. And that is true in our country as well. Most of the problems that we turn to the government to solve are either not problems – fictions created by the government to scare the people into giving them more power – or are problems that are best addressed and solved by the people themselves without the damaging help of the all-powerful government. But the leftist politicians must maintain the fiction of the all-powerful government who can fix all problems in order to cling to the power over us that they so desperately crave. When in reality, the government is just a group of elected and non-elected citizens who are no smarter and no more moral than the average citizen walking the streets. When we remove the pomp, the circumstance, the smoke and mirrors of the government, each politician and each government official look as small and as powerless as the man behind the curtain in the land of Oz.
https://juddgarrett.substack.com/p/the-man-behind-the-curtains
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So much for an ‘insurrection’. The real story behind January 6 is slowly emerging
A never-aired Fox News interview with the former Capitol Police chief, leaked last week, puts the lie to much of the January 6 ‘Insurrection’ (J6) narrative, still playing centre stage in US politics as a handy weapon against GOP contender Donald Trump. Chief Stephen Sund asserts in the Tucker Carlson interview that the J6 crowd included an unprecedented number of federal agents, that he was inexcusably denied threat intelligence and military support, and that ‘everything appears to be a cover-up’. Sund also notes Tucker was stood down as he was about to air the interview and asks, ‘Coincidence?’
While no one could or should excuse any of the violence that occurred that day, the notion that the chaos was anything like an armed insurrection has crumbled over time, Russia’s recent Wagner revolt with tanks and bombs showing what the real thing looks like. More than two years later, the relentless grind of a thousand emerging small points of evidence has built a persuasive case that J6 was a false flag event, driven by a weaponised Washington elite. Much as the Russia collusion hoax fell apart over time, so a steady accumulation of facts has undone much of the official narrative, the made-for-TV performance of the January 6 House Committee inquiry notwithstanding. The constant drip of evidence has been such that an April 2023 Rasmussen poll found 65 per cent believed intel agencies helped provoke the J6 riot, a view strongly echoed recently by popular, politically unaligned podcaster Joe Rogan. Nonetheless, the day itself must stand as one of then-speaker Nancy Pelosi’s and the Democrats’ greatest triumphs, allowing them both to mount an historic smear campaign against Trump and his followers, and also avoid confronting the 2020 election fraud evidence, as had been organised for Congress that day.
The enduring question is how much of it was a staged event, and how involved federal agencies were that day. This is where the Sund interview becomes important. Sund, who resigned the day after J6 under pressure from his boss Pelosi, complains that the House Committee never asked him to publicly testify, despite his leading the police response. He’s now written a best-seller, out last January, to tell his story.
Sund’s main contention is that he was deliberately handicapped in his efforts to defend the Capitol: key intelligence threat assessments were not shared with him; extra security resources were denied as was his request for thousands of National Guardsmen, although Trump had requested between 10 to 20,000 troops, according to Defense official Kash Patel. The Capitol was lightly defended by design; Sund was set up to fail.
On the question of federal provocateurs in the J6 crowd, Sund says he initially didn’t believe the FBI had agents there that day, because they hadn’t told him about it, per normal practice. Now wiser, he cites a government inquiry that there were 18 FBI operatives in the crowd, plus around 20 from a Department of Homeland Security agency. The 30-year police veteran says he’d never known of that many at a single event before.
Undercutting the official story of organised domestic terrorists planning to overthrow the election is the extraordinary saga of ex-marine Ray Epps, who is now suing Fox News over the characterisation of him as a federal agent provoking violence – which he denies. Epps is famously caught on video the day before the riot, urging protesters to enter the Capitol; men in the crowd start chanting: ‘Fed! Fed! Fed!’ Epps appears on the initial FBI Most Wanted lists for the riot but his photo later vanishes. A big man in red Trump cap and camel shirt, he turns up in later videos at critical junctures, such as the first breach of the Capitol barricades, where Epps confers with another red-capped protester who then helps break through the barricades. Yet Epps, unlike many others who did much less, has still never been charged.
The Arizonan claims he went to Washington to support Trump, but he leaves the White House area where Trump is about to speak, to take a half-hour walk down to the Capitol. He arrives there by 12.50pm, where he mingles with protesters before the first barricade breach. Between 12.45pm and 1.07pm two pipe bombs are found, one each at Republican and Democrat National Headquarters. Sund later describes the pipe bombs as a diversionary tactic, which redirects police resources. At 12.50pm the attack on the Capitol perimeter barricades begins. Sund cites the timing of the pipe bombs discovery and the breach of the barricades as evidence that the attack was coordinated. With the barricades gone, protesters who stayed to hear Trump arrived at the Capitol unaware that they were now trespassing on Capitol grounds.
At 2.12pm that day Epps texts his nephew, who has asked if he is safe, saying: ‘I was in the front with a few others. I also orchestrated it.’
Subsequent investigations into the pipe bombs lead nowhere, although both buildings are surrounded by CCTV cameras. Shades of Epstein, the footage turns out to be grainy and partial. And although a likely bomber is seen speaking on a phone, at a precise location the night before, his phone location data, wouldn’t you know it, just can’t be found.
Years of stonewalling and bad faith behaviour by the powers-that-be add to the sense of hidden guilt. Many thousands of hours of Capitol CCTV footage have never been released. It took the FBI nearly a year to admit no guns were recovered from the Capitol grounds – meaning no protesters were armed. While FBI leadership has consistently stymied congressional quizzing about federal agents, using ‘ongoing investigations’ or ‘protecting sources and methods’ to block sunlight, trials of J6 defendants have exposed informants. For example, a court filing for charged Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola details at least 40 informants or agents from bodies such as DC Metro Police, the FBI and Homeland Security. Conservative site Gateway Pundit estimates around 100 operatives were involved on the day, and last month ran a story entitled ‘20+ documented reports of Feds in the J6 crowds’. The New York Times reported during the trial of five Proud boys that the FBI had up to eight informants in the group.
Another former senior Capitol police officer, ex-Lieutenant Tarik Johnson, is speaking out on Twitter for ‘J6 Justice’ in the wake of Sund going public. He believes that both officers and protesters were set up, and that intelligence was withheld. This story has a way to run.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/so-much-for-an-insurrection/
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The left careens down the road toward totalitarianism
The Democrat Party is intent on destroying our nation from the inside out. And while the leftists might not come bearing physical weapons, they do have a more insidious kind of attack: ideas.
“It’s the battle of ideas. People are persuaded by socialism and Marxism. Why? Because they never produce what they say they’re going to produce. They produce horror, they produce death, they produce impoverishment. But the promises are endless,” Mark Levin explains.
Because Americans have historically enjoyed the greatest freedoms, they are also at the highest risk for giving them away. “Liberty takes some explanation. Not to those who don’t have it, but to those who do,” Levin says.
If we’re incapable of even understanding the liberty we have, it becomes much harder to stop it from being taken away — and Levin believes that’s what’s happening right now.
“We are definitely on the road to totalitarianism,” he warns.
They don’t want you to see this … Big Tech does its best to limit what news you see. Make sure you see our stories daily — directly to your inbox.
But he has a solution.
“We have no control over the culture, and so we need to push back. We have to claw our way back. We have to fight our way back.”
“It is important that we are successful, when it comes to the debate over ideas. It is important that we are successful in passing the word along from our family to our friends to our neighbors to our co-workers. It is important that we quietly in our churches and synagogues and mosques or anywhere else explain to the people who may not understand or even engage in debate,” Levin adds.
https://www.theblaze.com/shows/levintv/marxism-2662969639
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Radicals vs. Atlanta: The Global Left's Violent Rage Over a Police Academy Meant to Prevent Killings
Leftist hate floweth over
Municipalities have recently turned to the Integrating Communications, Assessment and Tactics standard of police training. The ICAT approach, focused on communication tools to calm volatile situations, is credited with lowering use-of-force incidents by nearly one-third, reducing injuries to officers and civilians. As part of a reform agenda, city leaders in Atlanta announced a police academy focused on adopting the most modern de-escalation tactics, including the ICAT method.
Despite the clear need for more and better police training, opposition to the planned Atlanta Public Safety Training Center – derisively dubbed “Cop City” – is now among the most popular protest causes of self-styled radicals. Viral social media posts have claimed that the academy is focused on advancing “white supremacy” and that it is designed for “militarization” tactics. Some claim, ominously, that Israeli special forces will be brought to the training center to teach the Atlanta Police Department to terrorize minority groups.
The conspiratorial allegations have frustrated local officials, who say that planning meetings, which have been open to the public, made it clear that the academy is doing nothing of the sort. Instead, it will feature modern facilities to train police, firefighters, and other emergency responders in professional best practices.
Protest organizers carefully ignore any of the publicly debated training curriculum and have instead made the center into a target for an abstract smorgasbord of left-wing causes. In one recent podcast from a local organizer and several national left-wing influencers, activists called the “Cop City” protest an attempt to “link intensive policing, undemocratic land use processes with the issue of climate change,” and “a global struggle against fascism” to “disrupt the machinery of capitalism.”
Such rhetoric has made meaningful discussion nearly impossible. In June, as the Atlanta city council debated the future of the training center, demonstrators from as far as Los Angeles mobbed the hearing. Outside the government chamber, protesters chanted, “If you build it, we will burn it.”
The slogans were far from an idle threat. Demonstrators have thrown fireworks and incendiary devices at law enforcement and set fires at the proposed police academy site in the forest.
"Atlanta has an opportunity to create the prototype of what real training should look like, a model for the rest of the country," said Rev. Timothy McDonald III, senior pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta. But he added that the role of anarchists has prevented substantive debate about the proposed center.
"Antifa, they don't want any kind of training, they don’t want any police. No policing is no answer. We got to have police and you got to have trained police," said McDonald.
McDonald runs a community center designed to reduce gun violence and serves as a board member of People for the American Way. He’s one of many local progressives frustrated by the escalating violence and opposition to the training center.
"Training is everything. You don't go to the doctor unless the doctor is trained," said McDonald, who has advised police reform efforts around the country.
But such arguments are lost on radicals singularly dedicated to destroying anything with “police” in the name.
Leftists from around the world have come to Atlanta to protest the training center. During violent confrontations with law enforcement earlier this year, only two of the 23 arrested at the site were from Georgia. The rest were from as far as Canada and France. Last year, at another protest over the proposed Atlanta police academy, every single arrested demonstrator was from outside the state. Construction crews have been attacked and local legislators followed to their homes in a bid to intimidate them.
In January, the dangerous protest tactics led to deadly violence. During an attempt to clear an encampment of protesters at the proposed training center site, an armed protester and Georgia state troopers exchanged gunfire. The activist, 26-year-old Manuel Esteban Paez Teran, graduated in 2021 from Florida State University with a degree in environmental science. Known as “Tortuguita” (Little Turtle), he had moved from Tallahassee to join the protesters. Georgia investigators say that on Jan. 18, Teran refused to clear the area and fired a shot that injured a state trooper. In response, law enforcement returned fire and killed him.
The death of Teran at the “Cop City” site, one local Atlanta columnist worried, would likely only fuel even more of an “activist Lollapalooza” environment, attracting a festival-like atmosphere of roving leftists seeking the latest, most fashionable outrage, further polarizing the issue. Online leftists have incorporated the slogan, “Trees give life, police take it. Viva, viva, Tortuguita!”
And indeed, the protest has gone global. “Stop Cop City” signs can be spotted in Paris, Brooklyn and San Francisco, while the movement has spread. The official activist coalition includes three groups from Santa Cruz, Calif. Anarchists are now targeting a new program proposed this year by liberal New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy that trains police to work alongside mental health professionals. That program, one local anarchist group claims, shows that the “white power establishment wants to build cop city everywhere.”
The anti-police training movement is well-funded and receives glowing, uncritical coverage in many prestige media outlets. James “Fergie” Chambers, the anarchist heir to a billionaire media fortune, recently promised $600,000 for the anti-training center campaign. Another liberal foundation called Solidaire, funded by Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg among other wealthy California donors, is offering tips to activists on how to derail the police training center.
Why is better police training now the focus of progressive left ire? Not long ago, President Barack Obama convened a commission on police reform, addressing the inadequate training of officers as the top priority.
The episode highlights the divergent views around policing that formed in the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter movement. Many saw the moment as an opportunity for substantive reform, such as requirements for body cameras, enhanced training, and legal accountability. Others, especially upper-class activists, have used the movement as fuel for theatric protest violence with no tangible goals and no serious concern for public safety.
The “Stop Cop City” momentum has shifted the norms of the criminal justice movement. In 2015, the NAACP, for instance, strongly backed Obama’s calls for greater investments in police training and de-escalation tactics, calling such reforms “absolutely critical” in testimony before Congress. Those days appear to be long gone. In June, Gary Spencer of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund described the proposed Atlanta training center as a project for "perpetuating militarized policing that will endanger the lives of our residents, our visitors, and put the Black people and Brown people in Atlanta at a heightened risk of police violence."
Atlanta in particular began the process of creating this academy as part of a series of reforms to reduce police brutality while addressing crime. In the aftermath of 2020, following violent protests after the police killing of Rayshard Brooks – a young man who grabbed an officer’s taser, leading to a violent confrontation and the police officer killing him – then-Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms faced a crisis.
Bottoms promised better training of officers and greater police oversight, but she also faced a crime wave and low morale among officers. Homicide in her city was up by 58% while over 200 police officers had either resigned or retired in the wake of the Brooks riots. Bottoms needed to navigate calls for criminal justice reform from the protest movement the year prior while responding to rising crime.
In April 2021, the mayor announced the creation of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, a new complex to be built on an 85-acre plot of land owned by the city. The idea married the problems into one solution. Bottoms said the facility would help overhaul the force to recruit new officers and train them with modern policing techniques, focused on tactics to avoid officer-involved shootings.
The new academy would train officers, emergency medical staff, and firefighters with input from community leaders and civil rights experts. Both Atlanta firefighters and police currently train at decrepit old buildings, and the unions representing both workforces have long called for new facilities.
“People say we need to abolish police or defund the police, well I don't know how you do that, unless somebody is going to abolish crime,” said Bottoms at a press conference defending the center. “What I've said repeatedly over the last year is that holding the men and women who serve us in a public safety capacity accountable is not mutually exclusive from supporting them.”
The mayoral proposal for reform made clear that every Atlanta police officer will receive ICAT de-escalation training.
The notion that the training center is a stalking horse for white supremacy strains credulity. Bottoms and her successor, Andre Dickens, are black, as are the majority of city council members backing the project.
If anything, the “Stop Cop City” movement has rippled with identity-based rage. Atlanta City Councilman Michael Julian Bond, the son of the civil rights icon Julian Bond and an outspoken proponent of the training center, has said that his office has been deluged with death threats and racist messages from protesters. "There’s been gratuitous use of the ‘N-word’ against me," Bond told reporters earlier this summer. "They wish I was dead like my father.”
But the proposal instantly faced opposition from leftist groups who saw the investment in a new training center as a bitter rebuke of the “defund the police” movement.
Before the first city council hearing, demonstrators swarmed the home of Atlanta Councilwoman Joyce Sheperd, gathering on her lawn and porch to bang pans and chant. There was no interest in discussing the proposal. "No cop city," the protesters yelled.
Not long after, environmentalists joined the protests, claiming the forest for the proposed site is a habitat worthy of special protection. Encampments sprouted on the proposed site, and activists began funneling Molotov cocktails and weapons, preparing for clashes with law enforcement and construction workers.
The city has in turn promised plans to build one of the largest public city parks on the 300-acre site, and will plant 100 hardwood trees for every tree removed to build the 85-acre training center. The academy shooting range will be indoors, muffled from noise. Atlanta has passed special additions to the training center plan, forbidding the use of helicopters and explosives, and requiring special training for police on protecting speech rights.
But no attempted engagement has pacified the movement. The opposition has only intensified, with activists viewing the center as an existential threat.
"This project is based upon genocide," implored one activist at the most recent city council meeting. A man covered in tattoos claimed that he had dedicated his life to "fighting fascism," and was anguished that the U.S. had gone from "putting bullets in Nazi's heads” to now “reward[ing] them with pay raises and playgrounds," a reference to the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center. "If this facility is built, queer trans people, black people, indigenous people are going to be killed," claimed another activist at the hearing.
Despite such talk, ordinary Atlanta residents remain supportive of the project. A poll conducted earlier this year at the direction of Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, found 61% of residents in favor of moving forward with the center. The council hearing in June on the project ended with a 10-4 vote in favor.
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August 13, 2023
No mystery at all
Ted Bauer has encountered something he doesn't understand. A lady said in his hearing something that is a mystery to him. Yet it is in fact very common. It even has a name: The ‘intimacy-desire paradox’. One description of it:
"That which we desire most in a relationship (read: security and comfort) rarely coexists with that which keeps us attracted to a partner (read: passion and sexual intimacy).
It’s a frustrating contradiction some sex therapists refer to as the ‘intimacy-desire paradox’. In short, this hypothesis proposes the more comfortable we are with someone, the more our sexual desire for them is likely to decline.
Which makes sense, given desire is essentially the result of wanting something we don’t already possess"
In plain terms sexual desire tends to fall off within established couples. The commonest example is where the man in a young marriage expects sex every night but the lady is not nearly as keen. It can be a source of friction.
When the crisis will strike is however a bit unpredicable. Some men still want it every night even into their sixties and the women go along with it to keep a problem marriage alive. As long as the guy uses lube there is no problem.
In the particular case I have in mind, there was no loss of overall desire in the lady concerned. She was occasionally having great times with a much younger man. She is a respectable High School teacher by day. I did not get even a kiss from her.
But that is an extreme case. In one of my relationships I lost interest in sex with my lady after only 6 months while in a subsequent relationship we were still going strong after 7 years. The emotions involved make a difference.
So what Ted has encountered is desire that has diminished to the point where it is a chore. But the only odd thing about it is that the feeling was broadcast so publicly. Her feelings were perfectly normal for her age and were known to be so
I get very confused about gender dynamics and relationship dynamics almost constantly, which shouldn’t be that surprising if you consider that I am divorced and remarried — and, like most 40-something males, I don’t have a ton of friends swirling around me. I have no idea what I’m doing in most relationships, which might explain why I write about relationships and friendships constantly. It’s an effort to explain some of the stuff I cannot seem to grasp. I just psychoanalyzed myself. Should I now bill myself $200 for this hour?
About two years ago, I was at some social event. I think it was related to horses because of where I live. About five feet over from me, there was a table of women in their 30s. I knew two of the seven, and maybe four of the seven’s husbands. I am not really “friends” with any of them.
One lady gets up and loudly announces to her girlfriends/mom friends: “Well, (name of husband) turns 37 tonight. Guess I gotta go home and fuck.”
Admittedly this is one statement by one woman in one town at one moment in history, but it was still kinda impactful to me for a few reasons:
If it was his birthday that day — and in this specific case I do know they have children — why was she at this thing and not spending time with him and their kids?
Why is having sex with your husband a chore? (I know for many it is.)
Why is it a prerequisite on a birthday?
Why was it said with such resignation and an eye roll, and elicited laughter from the other ladies there?
https://tedbauer.medium.com/my-husband-turns-37-tonight-guess-i-gotta-f-ck-f139c0da0657
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August 11, 2023
Additionally ...
Ok. Ok.. I have had a bit of correspondence about my recent posts involving mention of my personal life. Several men have been fascinated by my story of finding an attractive female form under the covers of my bed when I got home. They want to know how they can arrange something similar! Seriously, though, despite having only average looks I have had a lot of fine women flitting in and out of my life over the years, including 4 marriages. My life story would make incels suicidal. So how do I do it?
I can and will give an exact and succinct answer to that but before I do, I want to stress that I personally do NOT regard myself as a great success with women. I see myself as more of a failure. As my 4 marriages attest, I am very marriage-minded and at age 80 I find myself unmarried. That is a great regret to me. I do still have 4 fine women calling on me regularly but none stay all day which is what I would like.
So on to the point of this post: How have I managed to attract many fine women into my life? I am afraid my answer is a rather brutal one, that will not be of much help to anyone else. I have always said that I am attractive to only about 2% of women but 2% is a lot of women. So who are those 2%? They are unusually bright women.
Women greatly dislike having man in their life who is dumber than they are and in the end they usually cannot stand it. They just cannot respect him. And the smarter the woman gets the bigger the problem that is for her. The top-scoring ones have a devil of a job finding a man who is at least as smart as they are. Smart men are a small minority to start with and such men often use their smarts to find a suitable lady fairly early on in life so are not long "on the market".
And that is where I come in. I am a genuine top-scorer in IQ. I ran Sydney Mensa for a number of years. So when a very bright lady encounters me it can be like finding water in the desert to her. And I don't have to be all that good in other ways -- such as looks. For the sake of having conversations on her own level, she will put up with a lot.
Let me give just two examples of the sort of conversation concerned:
I was sitting in her living-room with a very highly educated lady. We were both reading but reading different things. She piped up at one stage and asked me: "What does "peynted" mean? I replied immediately: "It is Middle English for "painted". That was the correct answer and what she needed -- as she had been trying to decipher a Middle English poem at the time. But 99% of women would not even know what Middle English was. They would certainly not be prone to reading poetry written 600 years ago. But high IQ people can be that weird
Another episode was with one of my current girlfriends. She is very bright and intellectual but is from Serbia. So her cultural awareness is East of most of mine -- from Germany to Russia. She has only a nodding acquaintance with English literature. So recently she asked me something about Rilke. Rilke who? Rainer Maria Rilke to be precise. I not only knew who he was but had read some of his poems in the original German. I even showed off a bit by pronouncing his name using Die gehobene Sprache, which was more than she can do.
So very bright women can be very advantageous. They are usually pretty good-looking too. But to be accepted by them you usually need to be on their level or higher and only your genes can take you there. I do know women who have accepted a less intelligent man into their lives in return for various advantages but they know the bargain they have struck and live with it. They are however derisive of their man on occasions, which is sad.
August 10, 2023
Forgiving infidelity
I have little to say about infidelity in marriages and other committed relationships because my morality is very old fashioned. Once in a committed relationship I don't usually look aside. I am not "unfaithful" so there is never anything to forgive. When women leave me they will usually have some gripes but infidelity is not one of themBut I am not always in committed relationships. In the interval between such relationships it is not unusual for me to have two or three girlfriends at the same time. And that is a situation where women might conceivably feel hard done by and feel anger at the "betrayal" So I think I might have something to add to the discussion below.I think the discussion below is pretty moronic. It presents itself as new and exciting wisdom but in a nutshell simply says that infidelity should be forgiven because the unfaithful one is simply "finding" themselves. That would have to be the oldest excuse for infidelity in the book and does not even to touch on the big problem of infidelity: The loss of trust.It appears close to universal that lying and deception is associated with infidelity. An unfaithful man will hide his affair from his wife for some time. And it will be devastating to the wife when she discovers the deception. A man in whom she confided her trust was not trustworthy at all and that will tend to upset her entire mental world. She will have lost her condidence in her own judgment. And recovery from that will be very difficult and bromides about the man "finding himself" will be no help at allSo what can a man do to prevent such a devasting upset in someone for whom he still presumably cares? I have an answer to that and it has always worked wonders for me: I don't lie to women. And that is not as hard to do as you might think.Let's say you met a gorgeous female on a business trip and coupled with her. What I would do would be to to tell immediately the other woman or women in my life something like: "Sweetheart, I met this attractive woman on my trip and we did go to bed together. I think it will be a passing thing but at any event I will not hide it from you. I will make sure that you are kept aware of anything relevant."The admission might be upsetting but her confidence in you as honest and trustworthy will have been preserved. You will gain credit as an honest man. There may still be upset about your revelation but the lady with be profoundly comforted by your trust in telling her everything. You will be trusted in return.And even in a committed relationship that strategy should be enormously beneficial. What works for me in more casual relationships should work well in general. It is certainly what I would recommendAnd let me allude once more to what I pointed out And let me allude once more to what I pointed out recently: It is amazing what a woman will put up with from a man they like. I gave a rather vivid example of that. So I have some confidence that even in a committed relationship, honesty about infidelity would often preserve good will and trustOn the topic of honesty, let me give one more anecdote. I was for some years married to a bright, shapely and good natured lady. I was a lucky man. And she had an equally bright friend who I came to like. I eventually decided that I would like to sleep with that friend. So what did I do? Did I scheme to make an arrangement behind my wife's back that would enable me to sleep with that friend? Not at all. I told my wife that I fancied her friend. Did she rage and scream? Not at all. She arranged for her friend and me to get together. In the event I didn't feel right to go ahead with it but I think you can again see the great benefit of being honest.I obviously have somewhat unusual relationships but I think there is something to be learned from them. I have certainty had a good life with no angry woman in it at any timeI discovered Esther Perel a few years ago through a TED Talk.She spoke about relationships and examined why people cheat. But it wasn’t just any TED Talk — it was more like an awakening. Perel, a Belgian psychotherapist and author, has left her mark on me. I ended up reading her books, saving her podcasts, and coming back to them every now and then.I started reading The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity about three years ago, and I still haven’t finished it — only because I don’t want to. Every single page holds insurmountable wisdom and information. I would spend many days and nights reflecting on an idea or a particular discovery.Perel has revisited modern relationships and given them a new meaning. She discusses marriage, infidelity, love, and monogamy like nobody else. Her ideas are new, rational, and sometimes shocking. To read and accept them, one must be brave.Perel was the first to tell us that having an affair doesn’t mean the end of a relationship. And having an affair doesn’t always mean there’s something missing in the relationship — it means there’s something missing within us. She puts it like this:“We are not looking for another lover so much as another version of ourselves.”In a world that associates cheating with endings, Perel shatters our inherited perceptions and tells us that cheating could serve as a window to something totally different and new.After years of reading and watching Perel, I wholeheartedly believe that we need a certain level of openness and readiness to welcome her ideas.Here’s a glimpse of what Perel has in store for everyone who has ever been in a relationship:“Divorce happens now not because we are unhappy, but because we could be happier.”“Sometimes, when we seek the gaze of another, it isn’t our partner we are turning away from, but the person we have become. We are not looking for another lover so much as another version of ourselves.”“There is never ‘the one.’ There is a one that you choose and with whom you decide that you want to build something. But in my opinion, there could also have been others.”“The grand illusion of committed love is that we think our partners are ours. In truth, their separateness is unassailable, and their mystery is forever ungraspable. As soon as we can begin to acknowledge this, sustained desire becomes a real possibility.”“However authentic the feelings of love, the dalliance was only ever meant to be a beautiful fiction.”“When we select a partner, we commit to a story, yet we remain forever curious. What other stories could we have been part of? Affairs offer us a window into those other lives, a peek at the stranger within. Adultery is often the revenge of the deserted possibilities.”“Until now monogamy has been the default setting, and it sits on the premise (however unrealistic) that if you truly love, you should no longer be attracted to others.”“Sex is about where you can take me, not what you can do to me.”“Today, we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity. At the same time, we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling. Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?”“But one theme comes up repeatedly: affairs as a form of self-discovery, a quest for a new (or a lost) identity. For these seekers, infidelity is less likely to be a symptom of a problem, and is more often described as an expansive experience that involves growth, exploration, and transformation.”“Monogamy used to mean one person for life. Now monogamy means one person at a time.”“Our partners do not belong to us; they are only on loan, with an option to renew — or not. Knowing that we can lose them does not have to undermine commitment; rather, it mandates an active engagement that long-term couples often lose. The realization that our loved ones are forever elusive should jolt us out of complacency, in the most positive sense.”“It’s hard to experience desire when you’re weighted down by concern.”“If you start to feel that you have given up too many parts of yourself to be with your partner, then one day you will end up looking for another person in order to reconnect with those lost parts.”“Acceptance doesn’t mean predictability. Sex isn’t always for 11 at night — it’s also ‘meet at a hotel room at noon.’ What you feel during dating can exist at home, if you don’t suffocate it.”https://medium.com/mindfullove/15-quotes-from-esther-perel-that-will-shatter-everything-you-know-about-monogamy-affairs-ac5cbe356b13
August 09, 2023
Why the men are no good
Some excerpts below from an article that condemns the immaturity of most men on the dating scene.
The female author below, Karen Marie Shelton, does her best to explain why men become so unsatisfactotry to women but can come up with nothing definite. I am going to suggest that it is because she is a woman. It needs a male point of view to understand men. And I think I know a major thing she misses.
I know I will raise some hackles by saying so but I am going to suggest that men have been made selfish, unreliable and demanding because women have made them like that. Women spoil men. Men are inconsiderate, insensitive etc because they can be. Is is the "sisters" of the dissatisfied women who have made men so unsatisfactory.
OK. Why do I say that? For one reason: It is amazing what women will put up with from a man they like. Good looking men experience that regularly but even average-looking men like me experience it.
I am just going to give one example from my own life that I think drives home the point.
At one time I had a girlfriend who I would visit regularly at her house. Our routine was for her to cook us a dinner followed by a trip to her bedroom. And we went well together in that department. But she would get such a blast out of sex that she would fall asleep at about 9:30, whereupon I would make my exit and go home.
And when I walked into my bedroom at home I would find another woman in my bed waiting for me, naked under the covers. She knew perfectly well where I had just been but still wanted sex with me -- and I was able to oblige. And she was no dragon. She was rather pretty and quite bright
So what does that tell you? It tells you that women can be amazingly flexible in what they ask of a man. They can forgive the unforgiveable
So how does that affect the men concerned? It obviously makes them expect a lot of indulgence from women. And they get it. They have no reason to behave more considerately. Women not prepared to behave indugently will mostly not get what they want, sad to say.
And let's face it: What woman would not want a man who is "emotionally intelligent, kind, understanding, compassionate, and empathic" That's what the woman writing below expects.
And there are indfeed some men like that. But the competition for them will be fierce. Men like that will get lots of offers and will therefore be in a position to pick the best of the available women. Most women will sooner or later have to settle for a less ideal man. And many do.
So do I have a message for the women who think most men are no good? I do. You are right. But are you any good from a man's point of view? The frankness of your answer to that will determine whether or not you have much in the way of relationships. We are all imperfect and the path of wisdom is to truly accept that. Two of the ladies in my life at present are very imperfect from certain points of view but I enjoy the company of both of them greatly
I’ve recently been watching the latest 2023 season of Peacock’s show ‘Love Island USA.’ The reality dating show features male and female singles in the 18–29 category looking for love.
Watching even a few episodes makes it painfully clear why so many men are single today.
As the show unfolds, the couple’s male or female can decide to dump their partners for other Love Islanders. This encourages a lack of loyalty, lying, cheating, hurt feelings, and drama.
Toward the end, couples have a few days to decide whether to have a more permanent relationship outside the villa. At this point in the reality dating show, the shit hits the fan.
Although there have been five seasons of the show — and I confess I binge-watched all of them — the current 2023 season has a toxic and unhinged cast.
While most female islanders seem genuine in their search for a permanent boyfriend, a long-time love, and maybe even marriage in the future, the male participants are not close.
It’s hard to begin to pick the worst of the boys.
The man-child syndrome is in full bloom
We’ve already experienced over-the-top toxic-male bullying and gaslighting from 28-year-old Victor Gonzalez.
Even though his partner, 22-year-old Carmen Kocourek, expressed a wish to go slow with the relationship, Victor continued to violate her boundaries. The rest of the women couldn’t seem to connect with him either.
Leonardo (Leo) Dionicio is a 21-year-old salesman who has already demonstrated some serious Island bed-hopping. He can’t seem to decide between two women, which allows him to act disrespectful, inappropriate, childish, or all of the above.
Harrison Luna Hans’ is also exhibiting relationship red flags. The 29-year-old diamond merchant has made it clear to all the men that he cannot be honest with his true feelings for his unsuspecting partner, Destiny Zammarra, 27.
There are so many other subplots of male immaturity and overt toxicity it’s hard to keep track of them all.
The man-child pattern is famously known as the ‘Peter Pan syndrome.’ Psychologist Dan Kiley first described in his iconic 1983 tome ‘Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up.’
Some psychologists use more informal terms to describe boys who refuse to become men.
A Peter Pan man-child is unreliable, struggles to form meaningful relationships, is socially and emotionally immature, may exhibit narcissistic behaviors, and often ‘mommy-zone’ their partner.
Those traits sound like many, if not most, of the guys from ‘Love Island USA.’
Although there isn’t much research on the triggers, some experts believe it might result from boys being coddled by their parents. Or conversely, they are raised in environments with strict gender roles.
The old theory that ‘boys will be boys’ or ‘boys mature slower than girls’ may have some value in this scenario.
Some might find it ‘adorable’ when men need a woman because they can’t cook, clean, do their laundry, express their emotions or handle adult responsibilities. Are all those things really that complicated?
Maybe it is if you’re a male who’s been socialized to believe it’s a woman’s responsibility to act like the mommy of the man you’re dating.
Being a man’s mommy, maid, cook, housekeeper, personal assistant, and whatever else they may want becomes incredibly exhausting, especially when a woman has their own life to manage.
It’s not like men can’t possibly know what most women seek in a relationship. It’s not some great mystery buried deep in a file cabinet somewhere.
Women have been outspoken about what they want in a man. They want one who is emotionally intelligent, kind, understanding, compassionate, and empathic.
They don’t want a self-centered man-child who’s needy, has zero emotional control, throws tantrums when things don’t go his way, and is overly focused on a woman’s looks.
Of course, not all men are like that, nor is that the only reason so many men are lonely, single, and sexless. But it’s definitely one of the reasons.
I doubt any woman in their right mind wants to babysit a fully grown-a** man. Most ‘Love Island USA’ couples don’t form long-term, off-island relationships. It’s not all that shocking, is it?
Some people speculate that the show’s producers intentionally cast immature toxic men because they want the viewers to get angry.
Is that true? Maybe. But the current season illustrates a broader problem women often face in heterosexual relationships: having to mother their partners.
https://medium.com/bitchy/peacocks-love-island-reveals-why-so-many-men-are-single-today-fc7fdfc862b6
7 August, 2023
Russian star soprano refused to repudiate Putin, so the Metropolitan Opera dropped her. Now she's suing
The new respectable form of bigotry: Anti-Russian bigotry. I have three Russian friends so this grieves me. Why should individual Russians be oppressed just because the present tyrant of their country has behaved abominably? Why should individual Russians be asked to criticize their government when doing so would risk their lives and liberty in their beloved homeland? It is totally unjust
Netrebko is a world-famous soprano. Her art in opera is supreme. So anti-Russian bigotry against her is particularly deplorable. She has done nothing to hurt anyone. She is just a dear little thing who sings. She is simply preserving her safety in her homeland by going silent on Putin
See her below in a famous duet with Dmitri Hvorostovky
The Metropolitan Opera last year cut ties with Russian star soprano Anna Netrebko after she refused the general manager's demand that she repudiate Russia President President Vladimir Putin over the invasion of Ukraine.
Now Netrebko is suing, the Associated Press reported.
Her suit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan is against the Met and its general manager Peter Gelb, alleges defamation, breach of contract, and other violations, and asks for at least $360,000 in damages for lost performance and rehearsal fees, the AP said.
Netrebko claims the Met caused ”severe mental anguish and emotional distress” that included “depression, humiliation, embarrassment, stress and anxiety, and emotional pain and suffering," the AP added.
“Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Met and Peter Gelb have used Anna Netrebko as a scapegoat in their campaign to distance themselves from Russia and to support Ukraine,” the management of the 51-year-old soprano said in a statement, according the AP.
The suit also notes that “due to the Met’s requirement that Netrebko issue public statements opposing the actions of Russian government, Russian politicians have denounced Netrebko, Russian theater companies have canceled contracts with her, Russian audiences have criticized her on her social media channels and in the Russian press, and Netrebko and her family and friends in Russia have suffered the risk of harm, retaliation, and retribution by the Russian government," the AP also reported.
The Met said in a statement, according to the outlet, that “Ms. Netrebko’s lawsuit has no merit.”
After Netrebko withdrew from Met performances over the Putin issue, Gelb last year told the AP that "it is a great artistic loss for the Met and for opera. Anna is one of the greatest singers in Met history, but with Putin killing innocent victims in Ukraine, there was no way forward.” Gelb also told the outlet at the time that the Met would not engage artists who back Putin.
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Media ignores Muslim killing of gay man because it doesn’t fit narrative
There is a bit more to this than a Muslim attackig a gay. Sibley was "vogueing" which is a form of homosexual dancing. I have got nothing against homosexuals in general but I myself find homosexual prancing about rather nauseous so I can imagine how strongly it would have disgusted a Muslim. Sibley below
It is worth pausing over every murder that goes on in this city. But a brutal killing this week deserves special attention.
Not least because it tells us something it appears we don’t want to know.
O’Shae Sibley was a talented 28-year-old dancer and choreographer.
He was stabbed to death last Saturday night at a gas station in Brooklyn.
Video surveillance footage obtained by The Post shows that Sibley and three of his friends stopped at the local Mobil station to refill.
While they were there Sibley and one of his friends started dancing (“voguing”) to Beyonce.
This drew the attention of another group of men at the station.
Words were exchanged and Sibley was stabbed. His friends and some bystanders called 911 and tried to help him.
But he bled to death on the sidewalk.
But lives are cruelly disposed of every week in this city. Why do I say that we should linger on this one?
Firstly, because it is strange that O’Shae Sibley’s killing has not had more attention.
Every life matters. But Sibley happened to be black and gay.
Normally either of these things — let alone both — would attract serious attention from the media and campaign groups.
Yet while the killing has widely been reported as a “hate crime,” it is the wrong sort of “hate crime.” One that doesn’t fit the dominant, enforced narrative of our time.
Had the group who confronted Sibley and his friends been white and shouted that they didn’t like gay people, or black people, this country would be in meltdown right now.
Every Presidential candidate would be condemning it.
All the “community groups” who make a profession out of campaigning against “hate” would be in full fund-raising mode.
The New York Times would have cleared the pages for days of reflections on what this said about America.
But that is not what happened. Here’s what happened according to the people who were there.
One of the friends who was with Sibley when he was murdered posted a photo on social media of the bloodied sidewalk and wrote: “They hated us cause we are gay! Screaming we Muslim and we don’t like gays!!!!! As we are innocently pumping gas and y’all decided to stab one of us!!! #justice.”
Perhaps the media were simply cautious about reporting this, given that it was only one eye-witness?
Yet there is a second witness who has spoken to a local website.
An employee at the gas station said that the “flamboyant” behavior of Sibley and his friends offended the other group because the other group were Muslims.
Here’s what the gas station employee said: “These people were like ‘We’re Muslim, I don’t want you dancing.’ The gay people, they were not trying to fight.”
Yet these facts don’t fit the narrative. The victim was gay and black. The perpetrator was Muslim.
Our era is obsessed with “hate-crimes.” So much so that it sees them in places where they don’t even happen.
Yet last Saturday in Brooklyn was a hate crime. And the media are actually covering it up.
All because Sibley’s assailants were not hood-wearing members of the KKK or “MAGA” hat-wearing Republicans.
Instead they come from another group that our media identifies as a victim class.
The fact that the men were Muslim is why the media has been actively dishonest in its reporting. Despite the story going around the world.
The New York Times has written about the case. But it has not bothered to inform its readers of why Sibley bled out on a Brooklyn sidewalk.
Had the Times had even a whiff of this being a white-on-gay hate crime they wouldn’t have waited for one eye-witness, let alone two.
They would have told all, speculated about everything and asked what this said about this country and everyone in it.
But because the identity and motive of the perpetrators are an awkward glitch in that paper’s big narrative the Times simply covered over the facts.
The Guardian went one worse. That paper quoted Sibley’s friend who I quoted above, but they actually edited out the detail about the attackers being Muslim and the words they said.
Because again, it doesn’t fit The Guardian’s narrative.
The most that newspaper could bring itself to say was that an eyewitness said that the perpetrators mentioned “defending their religious beliefs” during the confrontation.”
Apparently dancing to Beyonce can be an assault on some peoples’ religious beliefs.
But whose? The Guardian wouldn’t tell you. It is happy to leave its readers with the impression that white Christian rednecks or Orthodox Jews might have carried out the killing.
Shamefully the gay press has done the same. In their usual betrayal of the people they claim to speak for, gay rights groups have reacted to the story by helping to cover it up.
Some gay groups have even tried to link the killing to recent debates about transgender issues.
Ignoring the fact that the men at the Brooklyn gas station seem to have been more influenced by the views of the founder of Islam than the Governor of California.
Obviously such false reporting is another reason why so many people don’t trust the media these days.
But this cover-up also displays an appalling cowardice.
Because we should be able to look facts in the face.
We should be able to face the complexity of the world. “Reality,” as we used to call it.
Nobody should be murdered because of who they are. But nor should a murderer be given cover because of who they are.
In particular they should not have their crime-scenes tidied up for them by a media and activist class who can’t deal with facts.
The reality is that life is more complex than the lies we have been telling ourselves in recent years.
America shouldn’t be divided by groups. And evil shouldn’t be divided by groups either.
Anybody might be a victim of hate. And anyone, from any group — even a minority — might be a perpetrator.
Ponder that and we’ll do this one victim, at least, a fragment of the justice he deserves.
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Does Anyone Else See the Glaring Problem in the New Barbie Movie?
The film’s anti-patriarchy message leads to more patriarchy
Jared A. Brock
There was only one problem with the new Barbie movie that all the critics missed:
The message of the anti-patriarchy film inevitably leads to more patriarchy.
One thing director Greta Gerwig and her co-writer husband get right is to avoid the false dichotomy between patriarchy and matriarchy. When given two bad choices, choose neither.
But spoiler alert, here’s the supposedly-meaningful epiphany that Barbie and Ken discover nearly simultaneously:
It’s not Barbie & Ken. It’s Barbie and it’s Ken.
As in, they don’t end up together. They part ways, each setting off on a journey of self-exploration to discover their “true selves.”
Alone.
Isolated.
Autonomous.
“Free.”
No wonder Millennials are so depressed and devoid of meaning.
The philosophical conclusion of Barbie is: The patriarchy is bad and the only way out is more hyper-individualism.
Let’s play that out and see how it ends.
“Autonomy comes from the two Greek words autos, meaning “self”, and nomos, meaning “law.” Someone who is autonomous is a law unto themselves. He has no restraints whatsoever. An autonomous person can do or be whatever he wants, whenever he wants, however he wants. That ultimately leads to total chaos because if I’m a law unto myself and another person’s “law unto themselves” conflicts with my law, who will decide who’s right?” — Abdu Murray
The moral point of Barbie is to reject the patriarchy, not necessarily embrace the matriarchy, but definitely find your own way and meaning and truth.
The film makes no mention of the fact that homo sapiens are communal creatures shaped by others. No mention that we are highly social interdependent beings with varying strengths and weaknesses. No mention that absolute truth rationally has to exist and we don’t just get to make up our own rules.
Autonomy. This is the typical definition of American freedom, and it’s proven to be an unmitigated disaster. Modern American “freedom” — autonomy — is actually a collective anti-freedom.
This is where I have no choice but to quote Abdu Murray again:
“We talk about freedom all the time, but we’ve stopped talking about freedom a long time ago. Now we’re talking about autonomy. Freedom is different than autonomy. Freedom has boundaries. Truth is one of those boundaries. And morality is one of those boundaries. Autonomy is the ability to do whatever you want whenever you want in whatever way you want. The problem is this: If I’m autonomous and another person is autonomous, and I have preferences and those matter more than the truth, and that person has preferences and their preferences matter more than the truth, when two autonomous preference-seeking beings come together and their preferences don’t match, who is going to win? If truth is on the bottom shelf, truth won’t decide. What will decide will be power. And isn’t it ironic that in our quest for “freedom”, someone gets enslaved?”
Let’s say the Barbies throw off the shackles of patriarchy.
And then magically somehow manage to practice enough selflessness to not immediately seize power for themselves.
But the Barbies tell everyone to discover their true selves, seek their own truth, find their own individualist way.
What happens when a bunch of autonomous individuals have clashing desires?
The strongest prevail.
The corporations take over.
The dictators and tyrants rule.
The Kens win again.
If you love movies, get dressed up in breast-cancer-pink and go see Barbie in cinemas. Stuff your face with overpriced popcorn and laugh until you snort.
But ignore the movie’s meaningless Millennial message.
If you want true freedom, you don’t need more hyper-individualism.
You need rootedness in a community of healthy people who are selfless enough to sacrifice some of their own rights and preferences for the flourishing of others. You need to seek and find the actual truth. You need to stop pretending like you can do it all on your own.
Some commenters have suggested this is a misinterpretation of the movie, and that the actual point is to simply “find yourself” before committing to anyone else. But that’s not how life works. We are who we are because of others. We find ourselves in relation to society. It’s not like Ken is going to go off and become a cave-dwelling monk who just listens to the voice of God until he comes back enlightened. If you follow the Barbie suggestion, you need to find yourself before committing to others. Find yourself where?
By meeting other rootless and untether people while traveling?
By diving deep down the clickhole of social media?
Committing ourselves to others is how we become healthy and whole individuals, not the other way around.
Barbie is not the most important person in the universe.
Ken is not the most important person in the universe.
We were made for each other. It’s not Barbie and it’s not Ken. It’s Barbie & Ken & you & me & everybody else in this wicked and wonderful world.
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Australia: NSW gay conversion opponents may have to be careful what they say under new anti-discrimination law
Opponents of gay conversion practices may need to be careful about criticising its promoters under new anti-discrimination laws passed in New South Wales parliament on Thursday, legal experts have said.
The Minns government’s religious vilification bill, which with backing from the opposition, amended the existing Anti-Discrimination Act to make it unlawful to vilify people or organisations on the grounds of their religion.
Alistair Lawrie, an expert in anti-discrimination law at the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, said he supported, in principle, reforms that protected people from vilification for their religious expression or affiliation.
But he said ahead of the bill being passed changes were broader than religious vilification laws enacted in other state and territories, leaving the door open to restrictions to freedom of speech.
“It would be disappointing if this bill passes in its current form,” he said.
Lawrie said this could see people or organisations who engage in gay conversion practices bring forward complaints of vilification if criticised for engaging in the activity.
The Minns government, with backing from the opposition, has vowed to ban gay conversion practices.
But Lawrie said religious people or groups who continued to engage in the activity after it was banned would still be protected from vilification under the laws, given it protects criticisms against unlawful religious practices.
Prof Simon Rice, a University of Sydney expert in anti-discrimination law, said the bill would not restrict people from advocating against the practice, but it draws the line at anything said or done that risks “engendering hatred towards promoters of gay therapy”.
“They’d have to be careful about what they said so that they didn’t incite hatred against that religious view, but they’re certainly still free to attack the [practice],” he said.
Labor promised to introduce the religious vilification bill in the lead-up to the election. But given the government recently referred the act for review under the NSW Law Reform Commission, Rice said the government should have waited to introduce the religious vilification laws until that review was complete.
“We’ve got an [anti-discrimination] act which is almost unworkable. It’s so old and dated and cobbled together,” he said. “And then we go and add another little bit to it at the same time that we’re acknowledging that it’s a problem and we’re going to review it, I just think that’s bad policy.”
Dr Haroon Kasim, of the Coalition Against Caste Discrimination, had also written to the NSW attorney general, Michael Daley, ahead of the bill passing calling for more protections for people who experience discrimination on the basis of their caste.
As migration from south Asia rises, Kasim said the communities were experiencing escalating discrimination on the basis of their caste – a hierarchical system assigned at birth that determines occupations and social status.
“It affects every part of a person’s life,” he said. “People of the so-called ‘lower caste’ are refused houses and jobs because of that status.”
Kasim said people deemed to be from “lower” castes who speak out about caste discrimination were often harassed by others deemed part of the “higher” caste groups. He was concerned the new laws would give licence to religious groups to accuse those who speak up about caste discrimination of religious vilification.
“We just want to be seen and heard,” he said.
An amendment to the bill proposed by the Greens spokesperson for anti-discrimination, Jenny Leong, that would have excluded protections for unlawful activity and organisations was rejected by the lower house on Thursday.
Leong said the government should prioritise holistic reforms to the bill rather than “putting protections first”.
“At a time when there has been a disturbing increase in anti-trans and anti-LGBTQIA+ aggression online and on the streets, what message does this send to the LGBTQIA+ community?,” she said.
The president of the NSW Council for Civil Liberties, Josh Pallas, said the group also opposed the new laws. .
“We want an Anti-Discrimination Act that does not discriminate,” he said. “To move on one part without moving on other glaring deficiencies sends a bad message to the community about whose rights and interests are privileged over others.”
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6 August, 2023
Are looks the whole of male-female attraction?
Amanda Platell below says that looks are the whole of it but I think that what she says applies to some couples only, maybe most of them but certainly not all. There are a lot of people of average looks who get married. Where do they fit in?
I am in a way a living refutation of her thesis. I have never been good looking but I have had lots of relationships with fine women -- including 4 marriages. So something other than looks has been at work for me
I have certainly noticed how some women turn aside after one glance at me but I think they are the shallow ones. Other women give me a chance to spark their interest. And I sometimes do.
At age 80 I have in fact recently acquired a new girlfriend aged 33. So looks are impossible there as a cause of the attraction. I won't attempt to say how that relationship happened as, regardless of what I might say, readers will almost universally conclude that she must be a gold digger. I will say, however, that it was an instant attraction for both of us. My point is simply that there are other sources of attraction than looks and most of us can be pretty glad of that
The truth is that what most men are attracted to is the way a woman looks. Her radiant face, her curvy body, her bosom . . . that is a simple fact, an inalienable truth. Having brains is a bonus which you may, or may not, discover after a few days or weeks in bed.
If you're looking for equality, perhaps find it in the fact that women are just as guilty of judging men on their physical attributes. It has nothing to do with feminism or being enlightened or enthralled by a clever mind.
Allow me to educate Baddiel on something he has clearly never thought about: the existence of the female gaze.
Men of a sensitive disposition should not read on because — sorry — this will be brutal.
For when a woman first meets a man, she is not interested in his mental muscle but purely in his physical brawn. We are as callous as men and judge potential paramours only on their appearance.
We first look to see if he is fit, with nice muscly arms to embrace us and firm thighs to entangle us. Does he have a man-belly overhanging his trousers? Are his fingernails tatty? Is he one of those men who never go to the dentist?
And, yes, the clothes — are they well-cut or shabby? If he's in jeans, does he, um, fill them out nicely? Yes, women are as susceptible to such carnal considerations, too.
Does he have, heaven forbid, tattoos? If he's an older man, does he need to hold onto the restaurant table before getting up for the loo? Again.
In fact, when it comes to assessing a potential partner, women are like the Terminator. We can coldly and cruelly decipher a male human form in minute detail in seconds, deciding whether to accept or reject him purely on his body.
Too short, too fat, too thin, too sweaty. Shabby shoes, greasy hair, the shadow of a wedding ring, a shoddy suit he's been wearing for decades — we give them five minutes before moving on, and that's when we're feeling generous.
Men mistakenly believe their wit and banter will win us over, that these are the 'most important things', but don't believe it. They're not. We women will size you up in the blink of an eye.
Like most of my female friends, I have never, ever, dated a man I didn't find physically attractive at the very first meeting. If there is no physical chemistry, then there is nothing.
With apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who wrote How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43), when I count the ways I have loved men in my past, it is always based on physical looks — at least at first. Names are changed to protect the innocent.
First love, Mark: smitten at first sight by a fit young man singing A Hard Day's Night on a late shift while typing out the weather report for our local newspaper. Blond, burly, scruffy hair, cheekbones you could cut Cheddar on.
Our first date was to the ballet Swan Lake; he turned out to be highly intelligent, but that was not what mattered. It was pure lust.
Second: a languidly beautiful man I met at a bar in Sydney which was frequented by journalists. I don't recall at any stage considering how clever he was. Call me shallow, but I was bedazzled by his beauty. I think he felt the same about me — I was young then — but either way there was an instant chemistry and we married.
Third: a bloke I thought at first was a brickie on a building site but who turned out to be a wealthy property developer. He thought I was a secretary when I was in fact deputy editor of a national British newspaper. Our eyes met across a dusty suburban street. Not once during our six years together did anything matter but the sheer physical longing between us.
To conclude, what I and any woman of any age is looking for in a man is someone fit, sexy, gorgeous, gregarious, confident and supportive, with a glint in his eye. We make no apologies for it because that's what men look for in us.
If, in the end, he has a brain, that's a bonus. We can read Crime And Punishment to each other in bed.
But be warned, the female gaze is deadlier than the male.
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Andrew Tate is RELEASED from house arrest but will not be allowed to leave Romania amid sex trafficking charges
They are gradually easing up on him. They may be realizing that they don't have much against him.
Andrew Tate has been released from house arrest but he will not be allowed to leave Romania following rape and sex trafficking charges.
Tate, his brother Tristan and two Romanian women have been released from house arrest today and are now under judicial control, a lighter restrictive measure.
In an exclusive statement to MailOnline, a spokesperson for Andrew and Tristan Tate said: 'The authorities are yet to decide on the frequency of the control checks with the Romanian police.
'We would like to extend our sincere gratitude to the Romanian judicial system for their fair consideration.
'This positive outcome gives us confidence that more favourable developments are on the horizon and the truth is beginning to prevail. We also want to thank all the supporters who have shown great resilience and patience during this time.'
Earlier this week the brothers were appealing against a court decision made last month to keep them under house arrest for a further 30 days.
Their appearance at the Court of Appeal in Bucharest came after the influencer was formally charged with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to exploit women in June. Tristan and two Romanian women were charged with human trafficking.
The four will not be able to leave Romania or travel to some parts of the country but can leave home and travel within Bucharest and Ilfov.
The release is subject to judicial controls for 60 days.
Upon his release Tate, 36, tweeted: 'After 10 months. 3 in jail, 7 at home. After 15million euro of asset seizures. After an inditement based on nothing.
'The file was passed to a Judge who has ruled it weak and circumstantial. I have been released from house arrest but must remain within Romania. Now. To the Mosque. Alhamdulillah.'
The Bucharest Court of Appeals said in a written ruling that it 'replaces the house arrest measure with that of judicial control for a period of 60 days from August 4 until October 2.'
Tate, who was arrested on December 29 in Bucharest and has denied the allegations, had previously lost a series of appeals against his house arrest.
'I am in the Bucharest Court of Appeal to find out if I will be detained for a ninth month,' Tate wrote on Twitter on August 1. 'Three months in jail, six months locked in my house.'
After spending three months in police detention in Bucharest, the Tate brothers won an appeal on March 31 to be moved to house arrest. They are now able to move freely within parts of the country.
The brothers are banned from from contacting the two Romanian associates who are also charged with trafficking as well as witnesses, alleged victims and their families. Breaking these rules could lead to further house arrest or detention.
In June, Romania's anti-organised crime agency known as DIICOT had requested that judges extend the house arrest measure after it filed its investigation.
Tate, who has been accused of peddling conspiracy theories online and has amassed 7.2 million Twitter followers, has repeatedly claimed that prosecutors have no evidence against him and that there is a political plot designed to silence him.
DIICOT alleges that Tate, his brother Tristan and two Romanian women - Luana Radu and Georgiana Naghel - formed a criminal group in 2021 'in order to commit the crime of human trafficking' in Romania, as well as in the United States and Britain.
There are seven female victims in the case, DIICOT said, who were lured with false pretences of love and transported to Romania, where the gang sexually exploited them and subjected them to physical violence.
One defendant is accused of raping a woman twice in March 2022, according to the agency. The women were allegedly controlled by 'intimidation, constant surveillance' and claims they were in debt, prosecutors said.
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Richard Dawkins’ frank ‘sex’ talk infuriates many
Richard Dawkins has been trending on social media for days. Usually outrage mobs get sore arms if they hold their pitchforks aloft for more than 24-hours, but in this case, they’ve made an exception.
What was Richard Dawkins’ great crime?
He sat down for a chat about ‘sex’ (or ‘gender’ as the trendy would say these days). Worse, he committed this sin while being a former darling of left-wing thought who has long-railed against religious doctrine and now finds himself at odds with a genuine leftist cult.
Speaking on his podcast, The Poetry of Reality, he said:
‘Sex really is binary. No question about it. You’re either male or female and it’s absolutely clear you can do it on gamete size, you can do it on chromosomes… To me, as a biologist, it is distinctly weird people can simply declare, “I am a woman (though I have a penis)!”’
Kinky.
He went on to call it an ‘odd distortion of reality’ – which is an understatement to people who find themselves labelled as hateful bigots for telling blokes to leave the women’s bathroom.
As someone cleverly pointed out in the comments to this podcast, written in response to one of those ‘but gender is a social/cultural/feeling construct’ replies, sports are not played with philosophical statements – they are played with biological ‘sexed’ bodies.
Therefore, if the transgender argument is that gender is something other than biological sex, it does not follow and cannot be argued that transgender people should access sex-segregated activities in which ‘gender’ is being used with the intended translation of ‘sex’.
For example, when women’s sports was created, it was not intended as a category for ‘people who feel as they are women’. It is a deliberate biological segregation to give women a fair go at competition. The inclusion of transgender individuals appears to be a fleeting experiment, as sporting bodies finally bow to pressure from furious women.
In the interview, Richard Dawkins was speaking with author Helen Joyce. She said, ‘I don’t think that “male” and “female” are prizes for effort. They are just observations of categories that we are…’ She went on to say that ‘this is a linguistic movement’. It is an interesting observation, and goes a long way to explaining why censorship – particularly from Australian levels of government – is being employed as barbed wire to keep public criticism out of the conversation.
The podcast contained a ruthless discussion where nearly every sentence stirred the bristles on the backs of keyboard warriors. They are yet to recover.
‘Science is all about reality,’ said Dawkins. He has spent his whole life within the fold of the scientific community. ‘Science and reality have come up against some competition.’
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/richard-dawkins-frank-sex-talk-infuriates-internet
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The great Canadian history hysteria
An epic demonstration of the power of the Left to believe what they want to believe -- facts regardless
Readers would doubtless find it hard to believe that the late Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh kidnapped and killed indigenous children while on a state visit to Canada in 1964. Yet this story circulated for years in Canada along with other horror stories of the rape, torture and murder of indigenous children at the hands of depraved priests and nuns. The bodies, it was said, were thrown into furnaces or secretly buried at dead of night. These accusations were linked to boarding schools run by various religious bodies first established in the 19th century and finally closed in the 1990s. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission was set up in 2008, and millions of dollars were given by the government to search for clandestine mass graves. None was found.
Then, in 2021, a single survey of an orchard at Kamloops in British Columbia by a young anthropologist using ground-penetrating radar found ‘disturbances in the ground’, and this was taken as proof of a mass grave of hundreds of children. Soon other communities announced that they too had found forgotten cemeteries, and the media portrayed these as hidden mass graves, implying terrible crimes. Canada descended into a frenzy of allegation and public self-flagellation. Dozens of churches were vandalised or burnt down, and the Trudeau government ordered the national flag to be flown at half-mast for several months. The Pope apologised, as did the Archbishop of Canterbury. China denounced Canada at the UN. But no investigation has been made of the site at Kamloops and no bodies have been found there.
Yet sensationalist stories of abuse and murder have gained credence in official circles, or at least are not publicly contested. Investigation is hampered by a reluctance to hint at scepticism concerning accusations (‘survivors’ truths’) made by members of indigenous communities, who insist that inquiries should be led by indigenous people and their ‘Knowledge Keepers’, not by the police. The highly activist Nationalist Centre for Truth and Reconciliation took control of much of the documentary evidence, which it has been unwilling to show to researchers.
A moderate view would be that these schools were often sites of harshness and neglect, but there is also plenty of evidence of happy children and dedicated teachers. The schools were often asked for by local indigenous communities. There is no proof of children being kidnapped and forced into them. Many were close to their homes and supported by their parents. Even in the recent past, nuanced discussion of the schools was possible. No longer. Those indigenous leaders who formerly praised their own school experiences are silent. The official story focuses solely on horrors.
Nevertheless, several prominent – and in the circumstances, brave – Canadian historians have expressed reasoned doubt. Careful record-keeping means that suggestions of thousands of missing children and unexplained deaths can be disproved. Old cemeteries that have lost their grave markers have been identified, but still no secret mass graves have been found.
Far from there being relief that the most appalling fears appear groundless, a deadening cloak of silence has been thrown over the whole subject. The former executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is pressing for an ‘anti-colonial approach’ making ‘denialism’ subject to ‘both civil and criminal sanctions’. The justice minister says that he is open to the idea. The deliberate vagueness is doubly intimidating. Would asking for the radar scans at Kamloops be ‘denialism’? Or pointing out that no human remains have been uncovered?
We are used to ‘denial’ of some controversial assertion being proclaimed a moral and intellectual offence. As far as I know, though, only Holocaust denial is a crime in some countries. Note the obvious difference: evidence for the Holocaust is overwhelming and denying it in good faith impossible. The situation in Canada is precisely the opposite: it is not denying but rather sustaining these accusations in the absence of evidence that tests good faith.
But there is a lot of money at stake. Hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation have been handed out to former school children. Ideology too: the schools symbolise a policy of integration – broadly followed until the 1960s – when full citizenship was offered to indigenous peoples, as opposed to the present policy of maintaining them as separate ethnic groups in territorial reservations. Integration is now tantamount to genocide for many liberals, so accusations that schools were literally ‘institutions of genocide’, killing and secretly burying ‘thousands of children’ is too powerful a story to be given up by those pursuing greater land rights, huge reparations and ‘rewriting national history’ to promote separate nationhood.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/antisocial-history/ ?
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3 August, 2023
The Culture of Transgression: Our antinomian elite’s war against tradition has become a war against the working class
I generally agree with MICHAEL LIND but think he is being too polite below. There are both Leftists and Rightists in elite positions but it is the Leftist elite that gets the press and does the damage. Their chronic anger at the world around them is the motive. And any target will do as an outlet for their need to condemn -- even the absurd "gender" campaign. A completely overlooked group suddenly becomes a major object for Leftist concern
Everywhere we see our political, cultural, and financial elites bankrolling activists to dismantle traditions. While flags and slogans celebrating racial or sexual identity are proudly displayed by Western governments and corporations, overt displays of national patriotism are regarded by establishmentarians on both sides of the Atlantic as vulgar and distasteful. Religions tend to be viewed with distrust and contempt by the trans-Atlantic elite, unless their premodern teachings have been modified into alignment with the views of the campus left. The Western canon, instead of being enlarged to include unjustly excluded authors, has been jettisoned, and liberal education has been replaced by ideological indoctrination in the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI).
Iconoclasm is nothing new in history. The term was coined to describe the controversy over icons in medieval Byzantium, and has come to mean any attack on cherished traditions and familiar imagery. Radical Protestant reformers broke the stained glass and smashed the statues of Mary and the saints. The Taliban dynamited Buddhist statues in Afghanistan in 2001, and later ISIS destroyed many ancient Mesopotamian monuments and statues.
In most historic cases, programmatic iconoclasm has been temporary and accompanied or followed by the fabrication of new traditions and the imposition of new orthodoxies. In communist Russia, the statues of the czars went down and statues of Lenin and Stalin went up.
Some on the Western right fear that the wave of statue-toppling which began with Confederate statues and spread to practically any historic statue in North America and Europe will lead to the rule of a woke Taliban. But the cancellation of the Great Books curriculum has not led to a new consensus canon featuring minority, female, and nonbinary authors along with a smaller number of “dead white males” who are deemed acceptable. Instead, much of the energy of woke jihadists goes into purging or censoring existing works of art and thought—rewriting the novels of Roald Dahl, for example—or randomly parachuting nonwhite or “queer” characters into movie remakes instead of creating something new.
The cultural ferment in contemporary North America and Europe does not feel like an interregnum between one cultural regime and a stable successor. It feels like a permanent revolution.
Put another way, the Western elite culture of transgression is an example of antinomianism, not iconoclasm. Unlike iconoclasm, antinomianism is not a temporary campaign of destruction of older iconography and traditions to clear the way for the imposition of new canons and orthodoxies. Derived from the Greek words meaning “against” and “law” or “norm,” the term antinomianism refers to the view that all laws and norms are oppressive always and everywhere, and that the act of transgression in itself is virtuous, if not holy.
Antinomian sects have popped up in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, usually to be repudiated and sometimes violently suppressed by the orthodox. Luther and his Catholic opponents could agree that Christian antinomians were heretics. In the early years of political or religious revolutions, antinomians sometimes flourish, only to be crushed by other revolutionaries whose goal is to create a new order, not permanent disorder.
At the moment, the fashionable justifications invoked by the elite antinomian vandals attacking Western society from within are climate change, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, and “anti-fascism” as a catchall category. Upper-middle-class young men and women who throw paint at artistic masterpieces or glue themselves to trains claim they are defending the earth’s environment, but they could just as well say they are fighting white supremacy or patriarchy. They are acting out the ethos of a Western elite culture that believes the act of transgression itself is virtuous; the alleged goal of the transgression is merely an excuse.
Call it “the culture of transgression” of the dominant overclass in North Atlantic democracies. The three saints of transgression are the illegal immigrant, the transsexual, and the woman who proudly celebrates abortion. All three are idealized by our revolutionary ruling class precisely because they violate traditional norms—the traditional norm of patriotism, based on the legitimacy of the city-state or nation-state or kingdom and its laws and borders; traditional gender norms; and traditional family norms, which celebrate the capacity of women to give birth and to nurture their infants and of men to provide for them. Most of what is called “progressivism” today is really transgressivism.
The cultural ferment in North America and Europe does not feel like an interregnum between one cultural regime and a stable successor. It feels like a permanent revolution.
By now the antinomians in Western nations have won their war against tradition in every realm. The members of the credentialed corporate-government-nonprofit-academic-media oligarchy, along with billionaire entrepreneurs and bankers who themselves are usually born into managerial-professional families, are almost all modernist in their aesthetics, libertine in their views of sex and recreational drug use, and dismissive of nationalism and patriotism and religion, which they regard as mental diseases of the lower classes. They work in offices designed by trendy “starchitects” decorated with abstract art, and often live in postmodern homes designed to be sterile, off-putting, and the very opposite of petty bourgeois comfort.
Having vandalized every premodern tradition, the elite antinomians of the modern West now don’t know what to do next. What should rebels against the bourgeoisie rebel against when the bourgeoisie has fallen?
The answer, it is increasingly apparent, is to rebel against the proletariat. Instead of shocking the bourgeoisie, our post-bourgeois managerial overclass now delights in shocking the working class. Most working class people in the U.S. and Europe of all races and classes live in suburbs or exurbs—therefore our elite pundits and academics constantly denounce suburban “sprawl,” idealize life in high-style micro-apartments and expensive designer tiny houses, and call for the replacement of cars by mass transit. Many working class people like to cook with natural gas, so naturally our elite seeks to ban gas stoves. Gasoline-powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers? Forget it. California will ban gasoline-powered lawn equipment in 2024. Rising incomes that accompany development allow the masses to eat meat; therefore meat is redefined by the oligarchy as unhealthy and harmful to “the planet.”
Whatever working-class “normies” believe and enjoy, the most influential tastemakers of the trans-Atlantic ruling class denounce and seek to ban, using one of their three or four specious all-purpose justifications. If non-college-educated Americans were to take up square dancing as a fad, the powers that be in the media and academia would solemnly inform us that square dancing is problematically racist or sexist or worsens climate change.
To add insult to injury, when the multiracial working class rebels at the ballot box against this unrelenting and unprovoked bullying by the overclass and casts protest votes for demagogic and usually ineffectual anti-establishment politicians like Silvio Berlusconi or Donald Trump or Boris Johnson, the elite denounces the protest voters as irrational and bigoted cretins who threaten to overthrow democracy, liberalism, and the rule of law. By declaring the democratic preferences of the working class a danger to society, the West’s oligarchs justify subjecting their enemies to pervasive surveillance and other counterextremism measures originally designed for foreign terrorist groups.
We are hostages, then, of a trans-Atlantic ruling class which in turn is the prisoner of its own culture of perpetual antinomianism, of ceaseless rebellion, of never-ending transgression. The question is whether the state and capitalism, on which the overclass depends for its power and wealth, can maintain their legitimacy, now that Western elite antinomians—often through government agencies or corporations or banks they control—wage campaigns to wipe out the last autonomous institutions and inherited traditions in civil society.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/culture-of-transgression
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Canadian 'Transsexual' Requests Assisted Suicide Due to Post-Operation Pain and Suffering
Lois Cardinal, a self-described “sterilized First Nations post-op transsexual” in Alberta, Canada, has sought medical assistance in dying (MAiD) through the country’s progressive socialized healthcare system.
Cardinal, who underwent gender-affirming surgery in 2009 to create a “neo-vagina,” expressed profound regret over the procedure, citing constant pain and discomfort.
The surgery often results in the “neo-vagina” being akin to an open wound, necessitating daily dilation to prevent closure.
Cardinal, speaking to the Daily Mail, stated, “I’m in constant discomfort and pain… It’s taking this psychological burden on me. If I’m not able to access proper medical care, I don’t want to continue to do this.”
Despite Canada’s liberal approach to assisted suicide, Cardinal’s request was initially denied because she did not meet the current MAiD criteria.
The program is typically open to those suffering from incurable diseases or disabilities, but the doctor’s evaluation concluded that Cardinal’s pain from the sex change surgery could potentially be mitigated through other means.
The case has sparked concerns among opponents of transgender surgery and the recent liberalization of euthanasia laws in Canada.
They worry that the increase in state-backed suicides, reaching a record of 13,500 in the previous year, up from 10,064 in 2021, might be driven by individuals seeking euthanasia instead of traditional terminally ill patients.
Cardinal argued that euthanasia seemed like the only remaining option, as the prescribed numbing cream failed to alleviate the pain caused by the surgically constructed “vagina.”
However, some critics believe that the case highlights the potential dangers of not only transgender surgery but also the broader implications of the liberalization of euthanasia laws.
Cardinal, once an active supporter of the radical LGBT ideology, has now become a vocal critic, warning that vulnerable groups, including children and her native community, could be influenced by a medicalized trend.
She expressed disagreement with the current rhetoric within the trans community and emphasized the importance of honest and open conversations.
A recent study by researchers from the University of Florida and Brooks Rehabilitation found that 81 percent of people who underwent sex change genital surgery in the past five years experienced long-lasting pain following the procedure.
Additionally, 57 percent reported painful sexual experiences after the surgery.
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Dad fights to save his 3-year-old son from 'NON-BINARY' life forced upon him by mother
Harrison Tinsley was so excited when he found out he was going to be a dad. His story started in the same way many do – he met a girl, they fell in love, and a baby was soon on the way.
But a nightmare was waiting around the corner.
A few months into pregnancy, the mother of Harrison’s child became hostile toward him when he wouldn’t bend to her political ideology. The two had always been on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but until pregnancy, it had never been an issue.
“I was constantly getting threatened that I wouldn’t see my son if I wasn’t exactly who she wanted me to be, particularly in a political sense,” Harrison tells Allie Beth Stuckey.
“I’m not changing who I am; I’m going to love my son no matter what, and there’s no reason that we have to agree on everything to have a beautiful family,” he continues.
Their relationship ended, a cease-and-desist letter was issued to Harrison, all communication was cut off, and he was effectively barred from seeing his son.
Shortly after his son’s birth, however, he went to court to establish paternity, visitation, and custody, but the process took months, and by the time Harrison met his son, the boy was fifteen months old.
Fortunately, however, Harrison was able to win half custody and begin making up for lost time with his son.
But then another nightmare reared its ugly head.
Harrison is now fighting for full custody of his son for a number of reasons, the main one being that the child’s mother is raising him as non-binary.
“She would post pictures of him in dresses and makeup,” he says.
But that’s just the beginning.
“There’s defamation of me on social media,” says Harrison – specifically claims that he was abusive during their relationship.
“Which was completely untrue, and I’ve proven that to be untrue in court,” he says.
Then Harrison discovered that his son’s mother was placed on a 5150, which is an involuntary psychiatric hold, for an incident involving head trauma.
“There’s the defamation of me, there’s the gender stuff,” and then “mom was arrested for child endangerment.”
“It was extremely, extremely scary,” he tells Allie.
A trial was held, and to Harrison’s dismay, the court ruled to keep custody the same.
“My son had to continue to see the doctor that the mom preferred, which is a doctor” who believes “it’s okay to treat kids as non-binary,” he explains.
But Harrison isn’t one to give up without a fight.
“If they’re not gonna’ protect my son, I am,” he says, “so I decided I’m gonna scream it from the rooftops and tell as many people … what’s going on and try to get support that way, and I’m appealing the court’s decision to a higher court.”
“That’s where I’m at now. … I’m just speaking out, and it’s now become more than just protecting Sawyer; it’s also about protecting all kids.”
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ACT’s system of justice hangs in the balance over crooked prosecutor
There is a dark cloud hanging over the proper administration of justice in the Australian Capital Territory. The Sofronoff report, handed to the ACT Chief Minister on Monday, will go some way to lifting that cloud. But only a series of resolute responses to that report can reset justice in the nation’s capital territory.
One of the most serious issues aired during the May public hearings concerned evidence that ACT Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold instructed a very junior solicitor to draft an affidavit asserting that legal professional privilege attached to police documents known as the Investigative Review Documents.
These documents, sought by Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyers but withheld by Drumgold, revealed inconsistencies in evidence provided by Brittany Higgins about her allegation of rape and questions about her credibility.
When Lehrmann’s legal team made an application to the court for disclosure, Drumgold instructed solicitors in his office to draft an affidavit to support nondisclosure on the basis that the documents were protected by legal professional privilege. Drumgold gave evidence that it was for the Australian Federal Police, not him, to assert legal privilege over the documents.
Therefore, an affidavit would need to cite the AFP was the source of information about privilege. Drumgold emailed two solicitors in his office about drafting the affidavit. The more senior of the two solicitors asked Drumgold, by return email, what the source of the information about legal privilege would be.
Drumgold did not respond to that question. Instead, he told the more senior solicitor that he would instruct the junior solicitor to deal with this part of the affidavit. Drumgold sent the young solicitor suggested wording for the critical part of the affidavit that claimed the police documents sought by the defence were privileged.
That wording was included in the affidavit sworn by the junior solicitor at the DPP’s direction. It created a falsehood, when presented to the court and to the ACT Chief Justice, that police had claimed privilege over the investigation documents. In fact, the AFP had not claimed privilege over these internal investigation documents. Evidence presented to the inquiry revealed that police believed these documents should have been disclosed to defence.
If Walter Sofronoff KC finds the DPP was knowingly involved in presenting a false affidavit to the ACT Supreme Court for the purposes of withholding information from the defence, Drumgold’s demand for this inquiry last year will rate as the biggest legal own goal since Oscar Wilde brought a defamation suit against the Marquess of Queensberry.
The ACT government’s response will be critical to the administration of justice in the ACT. Consider what was at stake. A young man was on trial for rape. If he was found guilty, he would, in all likelihood, go to jail. If the DPP tried to withhold evidence on false grounds, and if he presented that falsehood to the court, the DPP’s removal from high office is the easy decision. So is his removal from the roll of legal practitioners.
The most important decision will be to investigate whether the DPP knowingly attempted to pervert the course of justice.
The information that the DPP potentially tried to withhold from Lehrmann’s lawyers may have assisted them in formulating their client’s defence. The information may have revealed material that could have given rise to trains of inquiry for Lehrmann’s lawyers to pursue. Any attempt to withhold that information would interfere with those avenues of defence, and potentially it would keep information hidden that should probably have gone to the jury.
As was revealed during the Sofronoff inquiry, even if the material was not admissible in court, it was still material that should have been disclosed to the defence. It is a serious crime if Joe Citizen makes a false statement with the intent to pervert the course of justice. It is another level of seriousness if done by a person charged with upholding the administration of justice.
A prosecutor, entrusted with the enormous powers of the state over citizens, must behave as a minister of justice at all times: searching for the truth in an objective, impartial and fair manner.
Chief Minister Andrew Barr had better start consulting numerous sections of the ACT Criminal Code. First, under section 703(1), a person commits perjury if they make a sworn statement in a legal proceeding that is false and the person making it is reckless about the statement being false.
It becomes aggravated perjury, under section 702, if a person makes a false statement in a legal proceeding with the intention of procuring a person’s conviction for an offence. If the DPP knowingly presented a false affidavit to the ACT Supreme Court for the purposes of withholding information from the defence, section 708(b) is also relevant. It makes it an offence if a person deceives someone else so that this other person gives false or misleading evidence in a legal proceeding.
Consider, too, section 713, which makes it a criminal offence if a person, by his or her conduct, intentionally perverts the course of justice. It won’t matter that the affidavit was sworn by the junior solicitor and not by Drumgold. Under section 46 of the ACT Criminal Code, a person is taken to have committed an offence if they procured someone else to engage in the conduct. That means if the DPP was knowingly involved in presenting a false affidavit to the ACT Supreme Court for the purposes of withholding information from the defence, he could face multiple charges, each charge giving rise to maximum jail terms of seven years.
Let us be emphatic about this: in any criminal prosecution, should it come to that, Drumgold is entitled to the presumption of innocence and a fair trial, just as Lehrmann was, and may have been denied that by Drumgold. The rule of law applies equally to all.
Barr and his Attorney-General, Shane Rattenbury, will need to refresh their memories about Marcus Einfeld, the federal court judge who was sentenced to two years in jail in 2009 for lying about a speeding fine. The judge completed a false statutory declaration that stated he was not driving his car at the time his silver Lexus was clocked for doing 60km/h in 50km/h zone. The potential fine was $75 and the loss of three demerit points. Einfeld claimed his friend, an American academic, Teresa Brennan, was driving his car. This was a gross lie. Brennan had died three years earlier and Einfeld knew it.
When sentencing Einfeld to jail, NSW Supreme Court judge Bruce James said the judge’s lies struck “at the heart of the administration of justice”.
Outside court that day, the head of the police fraud squad, Detective Superintendent Colin Dyson said there were “no winners today but justice has been served”.
If Drumgold is found to have knowingly lied to try to keep police investigation material from a defendant who faced jail if found guilty of rape, it enters a different realm of gravity.
A decision to launch an investigation into a possible attempt to pervert the course of justice will fall squarely on the shoulders of three institutions: first, the ACT Chief Minister, as the first recipient of the Sofronoff report; second, ACT Policing, the unit within the AFP responsible for investigating criminal offences in the ACT; and, third, the ACT Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the body charged with carriage of prosecutions.
This raises obvious challenges. The ACT government appointed Drumgold. The AFP had a fractious relationship with Drumgold, as laid out over many weeks in public during the Sofronoff inquiry. And a new minister of justice who heads up the ODPP in the ACT won’t relish the prospect of having, as one of their first jobs, the prosecution of the previous director.
That said, if any of these powerful institutions of state turn a blind eye to a possible attempt to pervert the course of justice, then they will be responsible for the darkest chapter in this saga, one that will do the most harm to the administration of justice in the nation’s capital territory.
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2 August, 2023
Diet Coke fans warned as more evidence shows it could increase the risk of ‘silent killer’
This "new study" is garbage. No attempt at allowing for demographic confounds was made. It's probably just another proof that poor people have worse health. I append the original journal article below
The new study, published in the Diabetes Journal, found people who consumed artificial sweeteners were more at risk to type 2 diabetes compared with those who didn't.
“The findings strengthen evidence that these additives may not be safe sugar alternatives,” the researchers wrote.
“[It also] provides important insights in the context of ongoing worldwide re-evaluation of artificial sweeteners by health authorities.”
The French scientists analysed the diets and health of 105,588 people for nine years.
By the end of the study, 972 participants had developed type 2 diabetes.
The experts found those who consumed between 16 and 18mg of artificial sweeteners per day had a 69 per cent higher chance of developing the condition than those who ate less.
While those who ate and drank aspartame-containing products specifically had a 63 per cent higher chance of developing the disease.
Artificial Sweeteners and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes in the Prospective NutriNet-Santé Cohort
Charlotte Debras et al.
OBJECTIVE
To study the relationships between artificial sweeteners, accounting for all dietary sources(total and by type of artificial sweetener) and risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D), in a large-scale prospective cohort.
RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
The analyses included 105,588 participants from the web-based NutriNet-Santé study (France, 2009–2022; mean age 42.5 ± 14.6 years, 79.2% women). Repeated 24-h dietary records, including brands and commercial names of industrial products, merged with qualitative and quantitative food additive composition data, enabled artificial sweetener intakes to be accurately assessed from all dietary sources. Associations between artificial sweeteners (total, aspartame, acesulfame potassium [K], and sucralose) and T2D were investigated using Cox proportional hazard models adjusted for potential confounders, including weight variation during follow-up.
RESULTS
During a median follow-up of 9.1 years (946,650 person-years, 972 incident T2D), compared with nonconsumers, higher consumers of artificial sweeteners (i.e., above the sex-specific medians of 16.4 mg/day in men and 18.5 mg/day in women) had higher risks of developing T2D (hazard ratio [HR] 1.69; 95% CI 1.45–1.97; P-trend <0.001). Positive associations were also observed for individual artificial sweeteners: aspartame (HR 1.63 [95% CI 1.38–1.93], P-trend <0.001), acesulfame-K (HR 1.70 [1.42–2.04], P-trend <0.001), and sucralose (HR 1.34 [1.07–1.69], P-trend = 0.013).
CONCLUSIONS
Potential for reverse causality cannot be eliminated; however, many sensitivity analyses were computed to limit this and other potential biases. These findings of positive associations between artificial sweetener intakes and increased T2D risk strengthen the evidence that these additives may not be safe sugar alternatives. This study provides important insights in the context of on-going reevaluation of artificial sweeteners by health authorities worldwide.
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Cutting off your thumbs to spite your country
This is an important article from Australia, grounded in the classics. It notes the constant nagging attacks on our society from the Left and asks will those criticisms cause young people to think our country is not worth defending? That is clearly a possibility
The truth is that our country is a great triumph of civilization but no media will say that. They would be condemned as "racist" if they did.
The Trump phenomenon shows that at least half of the American population have not bought the negative view of their country preached by the media. One can only hope that there are similar large numbers of unblinded people in Australia
Wallace Breem’s 1970 novel Eagle in the Snow is a really excellent read that I couldn’t recommend more highly, and the work upon which the 2000 film Gladiator was loosely based. This Maximus, a Roman general holding the Rhine before the barbarian migrations of the late fourth century, must shoulder the heavy duty of protecting a civilisation that has lost any conception of itself. He faces young men who have cut off their thumbs to avoid conscription, middle-aged bureaucrats who impede him at every turn seeking to enrich themselves, and old priests who extol the brotherhood of man. ‘Cross the river,’ says Maximus, ‘and find out what your brothers are like.’ I won’t spoil the ending for you; pick it up if you can.
The image of young men severing their own thumbs, rendering themselves incapable of wielding gladius or pilum, left a lasting impression on me, one that was brought recently to mind by an apocryphal story regarding the Ukrainian ambassador. This worthy was asking local high school students who would join the Australian military, should the need arise, and was disappointed by the spattering of hands that appeared. It would seem his concern is well documented: the ADF report that they are struggling to gain recruits and retain soldiers. This is not unique to us down under, as the United States army expects to be twenty thousand recruits short next year. There’s something in these sorts of stories, apocryphal or otherwise, as there are in all the stories we tell ourselves, and we ought to be perhaps a little careful what those stories are. We might consider a little more Thucydides and a little less, well, whatever you receive when you tune in to what our culture presently manufactures.
None of this should cause any eyebrows to rise among those who’ve been paying attention. The schools are the right place to start asking questions and investigating stories, not because the young have any special claim to wisdom – they absolutely do not – but because if you want to know what Australia will look like in the future, that’s where you should look. Those who aren’t here today, as Mark Steyn said, won’t be here tomorrow. Those that are here today are manifestly very different from those who made up the schools even thirty years ago, courtesy of our ill-thought-out and entirely flippant leap into multiculturalism. And as all multiculturalism is premised on the belief, now all but mandatory, that the state of affairs that pre-existed it was irredeemably evil, it’s unsurprising that few want to fight for it, and fewer still want to die for it. Those who do are typically Anglo-Celtic males, whose very existence appears a little problematic according to certain narratives presently in vogue.
We, a nation increasingly propositional in ideation and multicultural in composition, don’t tell the right stories to make the hands fly skyward. All that’s left to love, for the everyman, is ease of living and money to be made, and it doesn’t seem like those are a given anymore, either. On the other hand, the only Australia our elites seem to think matters is the Australia that doesn’t exist yet, an Australia severed from the past and couched in banal progressive sentiments, the Australia imagined by the most fervent university professor, ABC journalist, or member for the Greens. It’s an Australia that could never be born, and even if it could be created, wouldn’t be one worth dying for. The young know this, and this is why their hands do not shoot upwards when asked – why they have, in equivalent terms, cut off their thumbs.
As we tend to address collapsing birthrates, shortfalls in labour or consumption, and the ever-upward valuation of property via opening the valves of endless migration, it’s not unfair to assume answers to our military problems might come from the same source; hence a recent proposal to reimport kanakas, with Austeyr rifles instead of machetes, despite how poorly that went down last time. Hoping for a reimagined version of the foederati – those tribes that were bound to defend Rome but weren’t citizens – to fight our wars might seem a sound plan. After all, Stilicho was a barbarian, and Honorius a Roman. Many Australians from various backgrounds fought bravely in the past, like Billy Sing in Gallipoli, to name only one. But we live in different times now, and the age of the citizen-soldier is gone. The difference then was not merely numbers, but that we gave those characters – as Rome gave Stilicho, even in those darkening days – something to love and aspire to. The ‘citizen’ part of the equation is important, and robust citizenship cannot spring from contempt for a nation’s past.
The truth is that we think we can hold onto the status quo, a status quo that has been predicated on the Anglosphere’s overwhelming advantages, without being prepared to make sacrifices. The fate of those who espouse naive principles in the face of power is that of the Melians in the Peloponnesian War, who badly needed their Dorian brothers across the sea rather than a ‘great mass of words nobody would believe’. That is no argument against principles; rather, an exhortation that we ought to be careful our body politic is composed of strong ones, and not prey to bad ones.
The funeral oration by Pericles, where Thucydides relates that the men of Athens meet danger with a light heart but laborious training, has been thrown about as the best defence of democracy from the ancient world. If one thing could be said of the Athenians, it was that they loved their flawed city-state, and were unselfconscious about it. Even the metics, for whom they threw open their city, were expected to serve, if they could never be citizens by simple matter of course, nor form the mainstay of the trireme crew or the hoplite phalanx. The franchise was alive, and mattered, and we take the word ‘idiot’ from the Ancient Greek for he who was willing to let politics wash over him.
The value of such a spirit is not to be expressed in words, as Pericles exhorted; and we must wonder if our modern spirit, a motley collection of bad principles with no purchase among the young, is worth anything at all.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/07/cutting-off-your-thumbs-to-spite-your-country/
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NAACP Finally Gets Crime?
For decades, crime in America had been declining. Our cities became safer as murder, theft, and all manner of other crimes happened less frequently — all while, we might add, private gun ownership and concealed carry permits skyrocketed. That wasn’t coincidence.
Then George Floyd died under the knee of white Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin and all hell broke loose. The summer of rage saw many American cities literally lit on fire by angry and violent mobs bent on demanding justice or something. Murder drastically increased, especially black-on-black in our inner cities, and black neighborhoods were generally hit hardest by the violence and mayhem.
Chauvin was convicted of murder less than a year later, but it almost didn’t matter to the mob.
The Left launched an insane new “social justice” cry: Defund the police. Months later, after launching a record surge in crime, Democrats could no longer ignore the destruction wrought by anti-police policies and Black Lives Matter mobs, so they pretended they never had anything to do with defunding the police, even blaming Republicans for it.
Now we get this from Newsweek:
Authorities in Oakland, California, are being urged to “declare a state of emergency” by the local branch of a leading civil rights group, in response to a surge in crime that “overwhelming impacts minority communities.”
The call was made by the Oakland branch of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) in a statement that hit out at “failed leadership, including the movement to defund the police” and what they claimed was the local District Attorney’s failure to “prosecute people who murder and commit life threatening serious crimes.” Speaking to Newsweek Cynthia Adams, president of the Oakland NAACP, said: “We need the police!”
We quote that to highlight the language used by both the NAACP and the Leftmedia.
First, let’s marvel at the semantics. Newsweek tells us what NAACP stands for — “the Advancement of Colored People.” Just a couple of weeks ago, however, a Republican in Congress was denounced as a racist for using the term “colored people” instead of the Left’s new and approved formulation “people of color.”
You can’t put the adjective BEFORE the noun, you bigot! It has to go AFTER the noun!
We admit to finding that amusing. But far more important than such word games is the acknowledgement from NAACP leaders that “We need the police!” We welcome them to the side of Rule of Law.
“Oakland residents are sick and tired of our intolerable public safety crisis that overwhelmingly impacts minority communities,” the Oakland NAACP added. “Murders, shootings, violent armed robberies, home invasions, car break-ins, sideshows, and highway shootouts have become a pervasive fixture of life in Oakland. We call on all elected leaders to unite and declare a state of emergency and bring together massive resources to address our public safety crisis.”
Despite the fact that the NAACP’s statement is a lengthy denunciation of crime and the policies that led to its increase, it strangely never mentions the word “Democrat.”
Who runs California, again? Oh, that’s right — it’s a one-party state ruled up and down the line by Democrats. That’s doubly so in Oakland. Like gun ownership and reduced crime, Democrat leadership and increased crime also isn’t a coincidence. Yet the NAACP has been at the forefront of the Democrat strategy for decades.
Call us crazy, but that doesn’t seem like a good way to achieve the “Advancement of Colored People.”
California Democrats have made it declared policy that policing crimes like shoplifting just isn’t worth their time. The predictable result is not only more shoplifting but a rise in other related crimes as lawlessness becomes a way of life for more people. Cops are leaving police departments and new recruits are harder to come by. Law-abiding conservatives have fled California in droves, leaving the state to the leftists who destroyed it.
Newsweek is ever the propaganda organ for the Democrat Party, however, so the magazine couched the NAACP’s statement with the patronizing phrase “what they claimed.” These are not random claims but provable facts. Thanks to an army of George Soros-backed district attorneys dedicated to not prosecuting crimes in the name of “social justice,” cities like Oakland and neighboring San Francisco have become cesspools of humanity where businesses have no choice but to leave.
The NAACP is right to be outraged by this and to demand accountability from city leaders. The statement says numerous right things. Then again, the national NAACP just issued a “formal travel advisory for the state of Florida.” Not California. Florida. Why? Because Governor Ron DeSantis is supposedly making “aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools.” Good grief, what a bunch of lies.
Until inner-city residents including blacks are willing to sever their blind allegiance to the Democrat Party and work to restore mom-and-dad-headed families as the building block of society, and until the national NAACP gives up mindless attacks on Republicans, the Oakland NAACP can send all the outraged letters it wants and nothing will change.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/99283-naacp-finally-gets-crime-2023-07-31
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Diversity Isn’t ‘America’s Greatest Strength’
Last week, Joe Biden commemorated an important American anniversary. And then he defiled it.
“Seventy-five years ago today,” his statement began, “President Truman signed Executive Order 9981, ending the unconscionable racial segregation of our Armed Forces and bringing our nation closer to our founding values. This landmark Order, issued more than a decade before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, directed the military to ensure the ‘equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin.’”
All well and good. But then he stopped talking about racial equality and started talking about racial discrimination: “It is critical that the full diversity and strength of our force is reflected at every level of the Department of Defense, including at the highest levels of leadership.”
When a leftist starts talking about diversity, what he’s really talking about is quotas and race-based promotion.
To make his point, Biden trotted out one of the Left’s most infernal lies: “America’s greatest strength has always been our diversity, and there is no greater testament to this than the success of our military.”
Always? What the heck are Joe Biden and his speechwriters talking about?
How “diverse” were our fighting forces at Lexington and Concord? At Saratoga? At Yorktown? At New Orleans? At Chancellorsville? At Gettysburg? At Belleau Wood? At Midway? At Guadalcanal? At Normandy? At Bastogne? At Iwo Jima? At Okinawa?
These battles, and dozens of others equally successful though not as well known, represent our nation’s finest hours in combat. And none of these victorious units was “diverse.”
But nor were the Tuskegee Airmen diverse, and their valor and their exploits and their expertise were equally glorious. Nor was the legendary 442nd Infantry Regiment diverse, and yet this World War II unit made up almost entirely of Japanese Americans became the most decorated regiment in American military history.
To say that our military has “always” been great because of its diversity is either a purposeful lie or a lazy, ridiculous, demonstrably ignorant falsehood.
Diversity doesn’t make great fighting forces. Courage and cohesion and indomitable spirit make great fighting forces. And above all, great fighters make great fighting forces — from private to general, from seaman to admiral.
And, no, we’re not calling for a return to our long-ago racially segregated military. Far from it. What we are calling for is a return to a military that promotes its warriors based on merit rather than skin color or any other irrelevancy. Or does someone out there honestly believe Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, given his well-known weaknesses and failures, was the best man for the job?
What about Air Force General Charles Brown, Biden’s racially aggrieved nominee to succeed Mark “White Rage” Milley as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff? Is Brown the right man for the job at this perilous time of international threats, low troop morale, and terrible recruitment numbers, or is there something about the color of his skin that made him stand out among a crowd of well-qualified warfighters?
For that matter, is Admiral Lisa Franchetti the best person Joe Biden could find to be the Navy’s Joint Chiefs chairperson? Or was she selected because she, like Lloyd Austin and C.Q. Brown, checked one of those irrelevant boxes? In other words, was she simply the best woman Joe Biden could find for that crucial role?
As for those irrelevancies, Biden rattled off a lengthy list of them: “Let us continue to break down barriers so that all qualified servicemembers, no matter their race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, or religious background, are treated with dignity and respect, can reach their full potential and have their contributions valued,” he said. “That is how we will ensure the United States Armed Forces remains the greatest fighting force in the history of the world.”
Everyone got that? Biden’s statement in commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the integration of our Armed Forces couldn’t be simply that. It couldn’t be simply a celebration of black Americans and white Americans fighting together, side by side. No, he had to diminish racial equality by conflating it with gender cultism.
According to the commander-in-chief, then, our only hope of remaining history’s greatest fighting force is to have military-wide stand-downs to talk about white supremacy, to actively recruit soldiers with two moms, to show our Marine Corps “Pride” with rainbow-colored rounds, to name Navy ships after gay activists, and to use taxpayer funds to pay for active-duty warriors to have sex-change operations.
All this wokeness comes at a cost. As defense analyst Frank Gaffney observes: “What especially imperils our national security now is the fact that the subversive legacy of the previous Obama-Biden terms is becoming manifest in the U.S. military, as well. It is, arguably, the last national institution to undergo the Marxist makeover Barack Obama set in motion. But, thanks to officers aggressively promoted during his 1.0 and 2.0 presidencies becoming senior commanders, it is perilously devastating morale, retention, recruitment and readiness.”
That Marxist makeover no doubt has the Russians and the Chinese laughing at us. And if we had to guess, we’d imagine some of our allies are laughing, too, albeit nervously. They’re wondering what the heck happened to the once-proud U.S. military.
Joe Biden happened. And before him, Barack Obama happened. That’s what happened to the U.S. military.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/99261-diversity-isnt-americas-greatest-strength-2023-07-31
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1 August, 2023
Traditional views are "vile" and "cruel"??
I am no fan of Tate but what he said was not obscene and he used no words of abuse. What he said was simply old-fashioned. I am old-fashioned in some ways too. I open car doors for womem, for instance. Am I vile and cruel? What a lot of nonsense!
Friends and supporters of Amanda Holden have backed the Britain's Got Talent star after she was subjected to a cruel swipe by misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate.
The Heart FM presenter, 52, tweeted a racy image of herself enjoying a poolside shower in a sexy black two-piece, igniting a vile response from the former Big Brother contestant, dubbed 'the king of toxic masculinity'.
Replying to Amanda's tweet featuring her snap, Tate, 36, who is currently under house arrest in Bucharest over sex trafficking charges wrote: 'You are a wife and a mother and you're far past a teenager. There is no need for this post.'
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I shouldn't laugh but this guy did a wonderful scare reaction
https://video.dailymail.co.uk/preview/mol/2023/07/31/6569875760229104273/636x382_MP4_6569875760229104273.mp4
The story:
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Angus Cloud dead at 25: Euphoria star who played Fez passes away at home in Oakland
He was getting his arm around women as nice-looking as the one above and he committed suicide? He really must have been mentally ill. An arm around a slim waist is one of life's pleasures
Actor, 25, was found dead at his family's home in Oakland, California +
His family said that he 'intensely struggled with this loss' of his father recently. Cloud 'was open about his battle with mental health,' his family said
His mother reported a 'possible overdose' to authorities early Monday. She told 911 operators that Cloud didn't have a pulse
Cloud had dealt with 'severe suicidal thoughts' following his dad's death
A number of Cloud's peers in Hollywood took to social media with sad sentiments in memory of the late actor
The family requested following Cloud's passing, 'We hope the world remembers him for his humor, laughter and love for everyone. We ask for privacy at this time as we are still processing this devastating loss.'
The family of Cloud, who played Fezco on the HBO series from 2019 through 2022, did not state a cause of death for the actor.
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Fury as Costa uses cartoon image of 'trans man' with mastectomy scars: Angry customers now warn they will boycott chain over 'horrific imagery' being used 'to sell coffee'
Another case of some sad soul desperate to prove they are wiser and better than everybody else
Costa Coffee was today accused of glamourising 'complex and dangerous surgery' by covering a van with a cartoon image featuring mastectomy scars.
The UK's largest coffee chain defended its use of the image to promote 'inclusivity and diversity' but was branded 'crass and irresponsible' and 'absolutely bonkers' – and there were calls for a boycott of the company on social media.
The image, depicting an androgynous-looking character wearing long shorts with scars below each nipple, is taken from a mural designed by the chain for Brighton and Hove Pride last year.
Use of the image on a mobile coffee van used at events around the country was condemned by feminist campaigners and people who had breasts removed due to cancer.
Tanya Carter, spokeswoman for child safeguarding campaign group Safe Schools Alliance, said: 'It's almost unbelievable that Costa would do something so crass and irresponsible as to use this image.
'The executives clearly have no idea what message this conveys, that irreversible surgery on healthy female breasts is to be applauded. Is this really any way to sell coffee?'
Feminist writer Julie Bindel, who is concerned about the impact of trans activism on 'vulnerable' girls and young women, said: 'I remember stories about when a woman was thrown out of a Costa shop (in 2018) because she was discreetly breastfeeding.
'Are we not allowed to breast feed but you are allowed to celebrate a woman having breasts removed for reasons of social contagion and vanity? It's absolutely bonkers.
'What's really scary about it is the actual mastectomy scars are seen as a badge of honour, as cool.'
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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