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With particular attention to religious, ethnic and sexual matters. By John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)
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31 January, 2024
More on John 1:18 and the born god
The most recent recension of the Greek NT that I have is by Nestle. It adds an extensive critical apparatus to support its various readings. So I got around to looking at the authorities given for "theos" in John 1:18.
He gives only the available papyri plus the codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. He clearly regards any further readings as superfluous. And he is right. Those two codices are generally regarded as the best authorities for the Greek NT that we have and the concurrence of the papyri is particularly impressive. They are the earliest texts we have.
So when the exegetes cavil about variant readings, they are not doing so on the best textual grounds but rather on theological grounds. There is no real doubt about what John actually wrote in verse 18: "Theos".
I should probably add here that I don't write to discourage Christian belief. I write only to disparage acceptance of the absurd Trinity doctrine. Up until the work of Athanasius in the 4th century, NO Christian believed in the Trinity doctrine. It is a totally non-Biblical confection. It was a useful theological compromise at the time it was adopted but it is nothing more
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Gender ideology has torn our family apart': Montana family who lost custody of their 14-year-old daughter after refusing to let her transition to a boy
A Montana mom and dad who lost custody of their daughter after they refused to transition her gender have told DailyMail.com the ordeal 'has torn their family apart.'
Krista Kolstad revealed the family's nightmare began when they received a call that their 14-year-old daughter Jennifer told friends at school that she wanted to commit suicide in August 2023.
Later that night, Child Protective Services (CPS) went to the Kolstad's home in Glasgow to inspect the house and interview Jennifer, later determining that she needed to transition to get better.
Krista, who is Jennifer's step mother, and the girl's biological father, Todd Kolstad, said Jennifer had a tough upbringing and several undiagnosed mental health concerns, including attention-seeking behavior and lying, which they believe caused the urge to transition and were overlooked by social services.
Krista told DailyMail.com: 'It's been horrible... Our family unit will never be the same. Even if they returned our daughter to us now, you're not going to have the same family unit... it's created a lot of animosity on Jennifer's part towards us, she doesn't believe she has to listen to us as her parents anymore.'
Mr Kolstad said: 'I love my daughter unconditionally, and only want her to refrain from making decisions until she has the maturity and life experiences to understand what the consequences are for her actions.
It comes as a family in Indiana has asked the US Supreme Court to review their lost custody case. Jeremy and Mary Cox, who are evangelical Christians, lost custody of their son in June 2021 after they refused, for religious reasons, for him to start identifying as a girl.
California mom Abigail Martinez, has filed a document offering support of Mr and Mrs Cox. Ms Martinez lost custody of her teenage daughter, Yaeli, in 2016, who was put on testosterone and later died by suicide.
The Kolstads said Jennifer had a traumatic upbringing. Her birth mother walked out when she was young and was only around sporadically.
Statements from Jennifer and her sister's counselor showed the girls describing their biological mother as uncaring, abusive and 'crazy.'
Jennifer has also been repeatedly bullied at school. Mr and Mrs Kolstad even moved districts to try and give their daughter a fresh start at a new school.
'She's always wanted to be the super pretty, super popular girl, and who doesn't?' said Krista. 'But she's always been the crazy smart kid who was in math club.'
When Child and Family Services arrived at the family home, the family let the case worker inspect their house and speak to their daughter alone, but warned her that she had a history of making up stories.
During the interview, Jennifer claimed to have drank toilet bowl cleaner and taken an overdose of painkillers in an attempted suicide.
Her parents said this seemed highly unlikely because Mrs Kolstad had been working at home all day, and Jennifer did not have access to either substance and had expressed no symptoms of illness.
Despite their doubts, Mr and Mrs Kolstad agreed to take Jennifer to the local hospital to be checked. Blood work confirmed Jennifer had not consumed any toxic substances.
But medical notes mentioned that Jennifer identified as male and wanted to be called Leo.
'Our daughter began demanding that she be called Leo, he and him. We explained that this is in her history but not something we would agree to as her parents. The hospital staff ignored our request,' said Mr Kolstad.
Jennifer had first expressed her desire to change gender to her parents aged 13.
Her parents told her she was too young to make such as decision and sent her to counselling to explore why she felt that way.
Mrs Kolstad said: 'It wasn't new, but she hadn't brought it up in a year. She never came to us and said, "You need to call me this, you need to call me that." That was never an issue.'
Mr and Mrs Kolstad, who are Christian, let the hospital staff know of their objections, and asked that Jennifer be called by her birth name.
'The hospital continued to call our daughter Leo, even though she's a minor and after I stated it's against our wishes, our religion and our core family values.
'The hospital told me to call their lawyer if I have an issue as they will do what the patient tells them,' Mrs Kolstad said.
While medical transitioning of minors is banned in Montana, Mrs Kolstad said the hospital told her that 'social transition' was a 'gray area of the law.'
Jennifer was placed under 24 hour supervision due to her threats of suicide, but Mrs Kolstad said an aide was placed outside her door who would regularly speak to Jennifer about having top surgery and how she was non binary.
Along with CPS, Mr and Mrs Kolstad agreed that Jennifer would benefit from specialized in-patient treatment and counseling at a mental health hospital.
There were six facilities in Montana, as well as one in Wyoming. Mr and Mrs Kolstad raised concerns about Wyoming, as the state allows minors to have gender-affirming care such as hormone blockers and surgical procedures.
They were worried this may happen without their consent.
But just hours later, Mr and Mrs Kolstad were informed there was a bed available in Wyoming Behavioral Institute and that Jennifer must go immediately.
They stated they reiterated their concerns and said they had questions that needed answering before they agreed.
Ten minutes later, CPS showed up at the Kolstad's house with police and papers removing their daughter from their care, accusing them of refusing treatment.
While Jennifer was in Wyoming, she was given men's hygiene products such as body wash and deodorant.
After a month in the Wyoming facility, Jennifer was moved to a Youth Dynamics group home in Montana where she has remained ever since.
Here, Jennifer has been allowed to wear a chest binder along with only men's clothes, shave her head and attend all-boys groups.
The Kolstads were assigned a public defender, who advised them to 'play nice' and go along with CPS's recommendations.
'We have followed their advice for the last few months and now our rights are being completely stripped away,' Mrs Kolstad said.
On January 19, the couple lost custody of their daughter to CPS, who said that allowing Jennifer to be transgender is 'in her therapeutic interest' and that her parents are 'not following recommended therapy.'
CPS was given custody of Jennifer for six months. After that, the plan is to place Jennifer in the care of her birth mother, who now lives in Canada but has never really been a part of her life.
Mr and Mrs Kolstad have chosen to defy a judge's order to remain silent on the case.
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We got it wrong: London Police apologises for 'causing offence' after volunteer officer told Christian singer to 'stop performing church songs outside church grounds'
The Met Police have apologised for causing offence after a volunteer officer told Christian singer to 'stop performing church songs outside church grounds'.
The force said the officer should not have told the Harmonie London, 20, to stop performing her songs - as she says she felt 'humiliated', 'sad' and 'bullied' following the confrontation.
Volunteer officer Maya Hadzhipetkova was accused of breaking the musician's human right to freedom of expression and religion today after she threatened to take away her instruments following a performance of Amazing Grace.
The Met has since clarified that the supposed breach was due to unlicensed busking rather than the content of the songs she was singing.
But they added: 'The officer was mistaken in saying church songs cannot be sung outside of church grounds.
'We’re sorry for the offence caused and will take the learning forward.'
The force added that they are aware of the commentary on social media regarding the incident and the clip was part of a 43 minute conversation between the pair.
In an exclusive interview with MailOnline today, Harmonie told how the officer had threatened to seize her keyboard and speakers if she did not stop singing - having already performed Amazing Grace and the contemporary song Goodness of God.
It comes as Scotland Yard continues to investigate Ms Hadzhipetkova and review body-worn footage of the shocking incident on Oxford Street in Central London last Sunday. The Met has claimed the row was over a 'specific bylaw related to busking' - while Harmonie argues that she was not 'busking', but instead 'sharing the gospel'.
After telling the singer she could not perform, Ms Hadzhipetkova stuck her tongue out at the camera. Her actions drew widespread condemnation - including from ex-Conservative minister Ann Widdecombe who said 'some people have got a problem in this country with Christianity which they don't appear to have with other faiths'.
There are no laws against singing on pavements, Christian or otherwise - only council bylaws relating to having a busking licence and not blocking roads - and Harmonie said the incident breached her article nine rights to freedom of religion.
A section of the extraordinary exchange as onlookers watched on was shared on Instagram by Harmonie - who has vowed to continue playing and singing. Back out on Oxford Street today, she said she wanted to 'bring love and peace to the public'.
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Leftist piorities leave capital city short of water
I would not usually devote a column for The Australian to problems with a New Zealand local council.
Nevertheless, the city in question is the capital, so I will make an exception. Also, Wellington’s problems are indicative of the state of New Zealand’s local government more generally.
A decade ago, in 2013, then-Prime Minister John Key declared Wellington a “dying city.” It was controversial enough that Key had to retract his statement shortly afterwards. Today, however, many New Zealanders might agree with Key.
Wellington has recently made headlines, including in Australia, for all the wrong reasons. Most shockingly because there is a real chance that New Zealand’s capital may run out of water.
If you have ever been to Wellington, you may find this surprising. The city receives around 1250 millimetres of rain per year. Rainfall is spread relatively evenly throughout the year with no distinct wet or dry season. On average, it rains on one day of every three. It is not particularly warm, either.
All that rain falls on not too many people, which makes Wellington’s water shortage even more astonishing. Wellington City has a population of around 220,000, while the Greater Wellington population is just over half a million. There are 746 people per square kilometre in the city and 68 people per square kilometre in the region.
The fact that Wellington is not doing well reminds me of a quip by Milton Friedman: “If the federal government ran the Sahara Desert, there would be a shortage of sand within five years.”
The woes of Wellington are man-made. Or, more precisely, they are a product of local government.
To understand this, you only need to stroll around the capital. You will struggle to walk for more than five minutes without running into a puddle, even on dry and sunny days.
That is because leaks are everywhere in the city. Some are small, others create impromptu fountains, and most take weeks, if not months, to repair. While one is being fixed, another two or three typically crop up elsewhere.
On Wellington Water’s online map, you can check every reported leak and its effect on the local water supply. At the moment, most of the city is coloured in pink, meaning high water losses.
In Wellington, not only are freshwater pipes breaking, but raw sewage has occasionally run through the streets. In some cases, Wellington’s water situation stinks – quite literally.
For the capital of an OECD economy, a member of the Five Eyes, and a country that likes to think of itself as Godzone, this is not good enough.
Most people do not think much about getting clean water from taps or flushing their toilets. In any developed country, a reliable water supply is taken for granted. And, probably for that reason, running the waterworks or installing pipes is not seen as glamorous, visionary or exciting.
Over many years, Wellington’s mayors and councillors have presided over an ageing network of pipes that cried out for repair and renewal, but local officials found other projects more enticing.
There are, of course, different projects that appeal to politicians of different hues. The same holds for different electorates.
The electorate in Wellington is primarily made up of civil servants. It is the national capital, after all.
Wellington also has a vibrant arts and film scene. There is a university with students and academics, too.
The private sector, however, has largely withdrawn from Wellington over the years. Wellington’s ‘business differential,’ the extra rates charged to businesses compared to residences, is the highest in the country. There are few corporate headquarters left.
It is no secret that Wellington’s electorate has a left-of-centre tilt. It was in the capital where the Greens won two of their three electorate seats in last year’s general election. In Wellington’s local elections, left-of-centre candidates have usually won most wards and the mayoralty.
Without wishing to stereotype, Wellington City Council’s projects reflect these political leanings.
Cycleways have been built in places where few people ride bikes. The rainbow-coloured crossing in the entertainment district is, well, striking. Recently, the city installed solar-powered parking ticket machines capable of communicating with drivers in both English and Maori – when they work.
However, all the council’s investments in traffic slowing, traffic reduction and climate change outreach pale into insignificance compared with a few big-ticket items.
Right opposite the national museum, Wellington now boasts a swish new convention centre. It is called Takina. At NZ$184 million (AUD$170m), it was only a bit more than NZ$5 million over budget. What a pity though that Wellington’s ratepayers will be left funding 40 per cent of its ongoing costs in perpetuity because there is no need for a convention centre of that size.
Additionally, Wellington’s ratepayers will be responsible for the reconstruction of the city library and town hall complex due to the earthquake-prone nature of the buildings. Bulldozing the plot and starting again would have been cheaper, but heritage rules obviously must be followed.
Running through the city council’s expenditure of questionable value, it becomes clear that any possibility of funding water pipes has dried up. Never mind that Wellington’s local rates on businesses are the highest in New Zealand, and that residential rates are higher than Auckland’s.
Perhaps deep down, councillors hoped the national government would eventually come to their rescue. After all, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern signalled a wish to nationalise all water infrastructure. And wouldn’t it have been nice to off-load all of Wellington city’s problems to Wellington, the capital?
Alas, these plans would have been disastrous in their own ways – not least because they would have been horrendously expensive. And so, Wellington is now left to its own devices to figure out how to deal with bursting pipes and drained taps.
Right now, no one has a clue, least of all the council. Meanwhile, all that new local government minister Simeon Brown can do for now is send ‘Please explain!’ letters to everyone involved in the fiasco.
Wellington’s water woes are a tragicomedy, but they are New Zealand’s local government problem in a nutshell. We should not expect good policy outcomes when cities are run by ideologues, when voters do not care for costs and benefits, and when councils speculate on being bailed out by the national government.
Wellington, of course, remains a wonderful place. With its temperate climate, scenic harbour and thriving population of friendly bureaucrats, it is always worth a visit. Just stay away from puddles in the street, and do not take long showers.
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30 January, 2024
Does John 1:1 contradict John 1:18?
?? ???? ?? ? ?????, ??? ? ????? ?? ???? ??? ????, ??? ???? ?? ? ?????.
(In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. KJV)
Oh boy! When you get into a discussion of the Gospel of John, you dive into complexities. John was clearly influenced by the mysterious style of the gnostic writers but at the same time made sure that what he said would not mislead a careful reader. He wrote very carefully and precisely.
So after my comments about verse 18, we inevitably get back to verse 1 (above). Does it not say there that Jesus was with God in the beginning and does it not say he is God? So how does that jibe with verse 18 where Jesus is said to be a born God? He was certainly born as a man but he was also born as a god, according to verse 18.
Both those claims about verse 1 turn, once again, on what the Greek actually says rather than conventional translations of it. The issue is anarthrous predicates -- i.e. what does it mean when the definite article is omitted? It is omitted both before "theos" and before "arche".
Omitting a definite article before a Greek noun is equivalent to our usage of the indefinite article. Greek does not have an indefinite article to indicate a class of things so where that is intended, "ho" (the) is simply omitted. An omitted definite article is significant.
The implication of that is that verse 1 should be translated to read "a beginning", not "the beginning" and "was God" should be rendered as "was a god". So verse 1 is in fact entirely consistent with verse 18. John was not confused. He was very precise. Jesus was NOT there in the beginning and he was NOT God
The exegetes know all that and try to wriggle out of it by saying it was a Greek custom to omit the definite artice where the noun is part of a predicate. That may be true of some writers but it clearly was not John's usage. No sooner than verse 4 of chapter 1 do we find John using a definite article in a predicate: ?? ???
?? ???? ??? ??, ??? ? ??? ?? ?? ??? ??? ?????????
The light was THE light of men. So the anarthrous predicate argument just will not wash. John really did say that Jesus was a god and that he existed in a beginning, which is perfectly consistent with him being a "born god"
Chapter 14 is another occasion where John's style of writing could mislead. He speaks there of Jesus being united with God. But in verse 28 he makes sure that he is not misunderstood. He emphasizes there that he is NOT God: "My father is greater than I"
My apologies to any mainstream Christians reading this. What I have said is inconsistent with your theology. But it is not me speaking. It is the apostle John
Update note: Both Theos and Phos are predicates after the verb to be (een) so are entirely comparable
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Reparations are the new affirmative action — and even more racist and divisive
Gallup poll results this month show a significant majority — 68% — of Americans agree with the Supreme Court’s ruling to abolish affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the racial-discrimination case brought by Asian Americans.
Not only has aggregate favorability shot up since right after the summer decision, when it was 52%, but a majority of blacks now approve of SFFA; among younger blacks, the favorability is a stunning 62%, almost matching the 63% among Asian Americans!
Hispanic Americans came in even higher, 68%.
Perhaps after watching in amazement the stark contrast between how campus administrators handled recent pro-Hamas riots and how they handled non-progressive events for years, Americans of all races have awakened to the fact that much-touted campus diversity has been a total sham.
The court’s 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision said it was exactly because the “robust exchange of ideas” “diversity” brings to universities was a “compelling state interest” that affirmative action, with its inherent racial preferences, was provisionally spared from being illegal under the 14th Amendment and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which guarantee equal rights under the law regardless of race.
“Provisionally” because under Grutter, affirmative action was to be practiced under highly limiting guidelines and with specific intent to end it, perhaps in 25 years — both of which universities ignored.
The SFFA decision found this “diversity rationale” to permit a little bit of racism for a little while in the name of educational benefits was incoherent; as we saw, it was also bogus.
But worse, there’s an ascendant affirmative action that couldn’t care less about “diversity” or “educational benefits.”
This new variant is brazenly racist: Affirmative action is reparations for the so-called “legacy of slavery.”
As Thomas Sowell, Jason Riley and others have shown, the “legacy” is not of slavery but of 1960s liberalism.
Regardless, there’s money and Democratic votes in Ibram Kendi’s toxic hucksterism of “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.”
So reparations commissions are sprouting in Democratic strongholds around the country — 17 and counting, with Gov. Hochul signing one into New York law just last month — and Democrats are pushing a federal commission.
In the reparations regimen, “affirmative action” is reincarnated under “integration” to justify racial quotas under the “legacy of slavery” narrative.
Thus, in the California Reparations Report’s education chapter — only the Golden State’s commission has completed its report — cognates of “integration,” “segregation” or “desegregation” occur 199 times, against seven for “diversity” and zero for “proficiency” or “excellence.”
Significantly, reparations also underlie Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissenting SFFA opinion.
This was intentional: Jackson was laying groundwork for a Supreme Court fight on reparations, perhaps in a future court with more justices on her side.
After suffering comes justification for reparations’ central demand, that of forever-legacy, but since facts and logic don’t support that, she resorts to dreamy storytelling: “History speaks. In some form, it can be heard forever. The race-based gaps that first developed centuries ago are echoes from the past that still exist today.”
She concludes with a recitation of black ills straight from the reparations narrative, with its usual inaccuracies and fallacies, including the confusion of correlation vs. causation, that wherever ills are observed, the “legacy of slavery” is the cause.
Jackson’s dissent is all reparations, only reparations.
In a lawsuit about discrimination against Asian-American applicants, she mentions them only once — just to recap a lower-court ruling.
Jackson blustered similarly elsewhere that despite explicitly guaranteeing universal equal rights in the unmistakable language of European Enlightenment, the 14th Amendment really meant for blacks to be more equal than others: whites, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, native Americans.
Democrats in power, with their proliferating state commissions, congressional bills and pseudo-legal rhetoric, are gearing up for the far bigger and toxic battle over reparations; to win, they are ready to dangle trillions of taxpayer dollars before black Americans.
Or is America’s future our founding ideal of “e pluribus unum” — out of many, one — with its promise of oneness under the law regardless of differences that made America the beacon of freedom to the world?
You decide.
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The Trick That Dropped Atlanta Crime
You have undoubtedly heard that crime is down in a lot of places. One trick often employed in places like San Francisco is not to report crimes. Shoplifting is no longer pursued, and employees of businesses can be fired for preventing shoplifting. So property theft crimes drop not because theft is no longer happening but because it is no longer treated as a crime.
Atlanta, Georgia, has seen a 21% drop in year-over-year crime. The Mayor of Atlanta, Andre Dickens, faced with a secession effort in the northern wards of his city due to crime and violent protests from the far left over a police training facility, has deployed a novel trick in The City Too Busy to Hate. He actually pushed law enforcement to enforce the law.
Under Dickens and Atlanta Police Chief Darin Schierbaum, the city began aggressively cracking down on gun crimes and gang violence. Buckhead, the financial center of the South and Atlanta’s northern ward, began agitating for secession after crime spiked during COVID lockdowns. Random suburbanites were shot while jogging, home break-ins increased, carjackings increased; violence was on the rise after the former Mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, decided to side with rioters against the police.
Then-Mayor Bottoms and the former Fulton County District Attorney, in a series of high-profile cases, prosecuted police officers for policing. They targeted one officer for shooting a man who had attacked an officer, fled and attempted to tase the pursuing officer. That officer shot and killed the man and got prosecuted. After Dickens’ election, the charges were dropped. Other officers were disciplined for trying to get college students to stop their car during a riot. The result was a collapse of police morale, police leaving the force and difficulty recruiting.
Dickens, upon taking office, had to do two things. First, he needed to calm Buckhead’s nerves. Its departure would have dramatically cut tax revenue for the city. Second, he needed to ameliorate police morale. He did both by letting the police actually police.
The results speak for themselves. Hotels in Buckhead no longer warn visitors not to go out past dark. It feels safe to go out, and the mass of people in Buckhead after dark suggests the feeling is reality. People are returning to malls and restaurants. Businesses are no longer loudly screaming for change, and much of the Buckhead secession movement has dissipated.
That’s not to say there are no problems. Drug problems remain. Homelessness and related crime are a problem. But the violence the city had seen has diminished as police have cracked down on unlawful gun possessions, gun crimes and gang violence. Buckhead has breathed a sigh of relief. People are more prone to walk down Peachtree Street after dark. People have returned to Piedmont Park. The police are visible.
Atlanta stands in stark contrast to cities like Washington, D.C., where the Mayor and City Council have hindered the police and sent mixed signals about crime control. In New York, Mayor Eric Adams has sent police back into the streets deploying variations of “stop and frisk.” It has both cut crime and inspired progressives, including the local district attorney, to campaign against the efforts to reduce crime. Progressive prosecutors in New York, not the Mayor or police, are causing the problems. In West Coast cities, law enforcement has largely given up, and crime reductions are often because police and victims have given up reporting the crimes.
Walk into a CVS in New York City or San Francisco and you will find most of the products behind glass. You will have to wait for an attendant with a key to unlock the windows. Walk into the CVS in Midtown Atlanta and few products are locked behind glass. Go up to Buckhead and even fewer are locked up.
Atlanta has had both leadership at the top and community buy-in from residents who feel safer and trust the police. The police have been engaged in the community and are both visible and available to residents. It has worked, and the results speak for themselves. It really should not be amazing to learn, but getting tough on crime reduces crime. Other metropolitan areas could learn from Atlanta’s Mayor Dickens.
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/103916-the-trick-that-dropped-atlanta-crime-2024-01-26
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US Should End, Not Pause, Funding for UN Aid Agency Tied to Hamas
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees has finally admitted what has been obvious for years: at least some of its employees support or are members of terrorist groups such as Hamas.
Evidence provided by the Israeli government that show the relief agency’s employees participated in the horrific Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel led the organization to “immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation.”
The evidence also forced the U.S. State Department to temporarily pause “additional funding” for the agency as well. This is largely symbolic, as current commitments will remain in effect. Moreover, simply delaying America’s generous payments to the agency will not send the strong signal needed to pressure it to reform.
There also might not be much money to pause. Knowing that the House of Representatives is skeptical of its funding and that the weight of evidence against the organization was growing, the Biden administration prioritized speeding its money out the door. Much of the money available for the relief agency is probably already in its bank accounts.
The announced pause is likely designed to mollify Congress until attention shifts elsewhere. The State Department has a long history of tolerating the U.N. agency’s malfeasance. And this administration’s track record suggests that, once the news fades, efforts to “unpause” funding will begin—even if the problems continue.
These problems are nothing new. The Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees has a history of employing individuals affiliated with Hamas. Over and over, the agency’s schools in the Middle East have used textbooks with extremist and antisemitic content. Photos and reports have repeatedly shown its classrooms displaying other materials that delegitimize Israel, denigrate Jews, and venerate martyrdom.
Such manifest bias was a key reason behind the Trump administration’s decision to suspend U.S. funding in 2018.
Notwithstanding the agency’s tolerance for extremism—and despite clear evidence that some of its employees were members of Hamas and supported its goals—one of the Biden administration’s first decisions was to restore its funding. Big time. According to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, “In 2023 alone, the United States has contributed more than $296 million to UNRWA [the agency]. And the Biden administration has contributed nearly $1 billion since 2021.”
Of course, Biden’s State Department said the renewed funding was contingent on the U.N. agency’s policing its employees and classrooms. But it did not enforce this expectation. Dollars continued to flow in the face of numerous reports of the agency’s violations by journalists, nongovernmental organizations, and even the European Union.
Last year, the Geneva-based nongovernmental organization U.N. Watch reported numerous examples of “UNRWA’s gross and systematic violations of neutrality and other U.N. rules in their hiring of teachers and in their use of curricula inside UNRWA schools that constitute incitement to hatred, antisemitism, and terrorism.”
Numerous reports over the years indicated that Hamas would place weapons and tunnels in or near agency schools and hospitals and even launch attacks from its facilities. Nonetheless, the organization would always profess surprise and condemn these revelations.
The current conflict in Gaza has revealed the extent of the relief agency’s corrupt relationship with Hamas. According to Israeli Col. Elad Shushan, “There is not a UNRWA site—school, mosque, or kindergarten—in which we didn’t find weapons. None. One hundred percent.”
There is no conceivable way that the vast majority of the agency’s employees did not know about this pervasive misuse of its schools and hospitals by Hamas. By failing to report such violations of its obligation to neutrality, these employees made the organization complicit.
During the recent conflict, advocates have excused the agency, asserting that it is the best option to support Gazan civilians harmed by the war. But there is mounting evidence that Hamas is stealing aid meant to help civilians. Moreover, the relief agency has been accused of covering it up.
And now, worst of all, its employees are accused of directly participating in the horrific terrorist attacks of Oct. 7 that murdered, raped, and tortured innocents—Americans as well as Israelis. As the recent announcement of a temporary funding pause implicitly admits, the Biden administration was wrong to resume funding. However, a temporary pause is woefully inadequate.
The agency has a long record of sympathy for Hamas; employment of Hamas members; and vulnerability to extremism, antisemitism, and politicization.
But the depth of this problem is only now becoming clear. This is not a situation of a few bad apples within the organization. According to The Wall Street Journal:
Intelligence estimates shared with the U.S. conclude that around 1,200 of UNRWA’s roughly 12,000 employees in Gaza have links to Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. … Two officials familiar with the intelligence said the UNRWA employees considered to have ties with militant groups were deemed to be “operatives,” indicating they took active part in the organization’s military or political framework. The report said 23% of UNRWA’s male employees had ties to Hamas, a higher percentage than the average of 15% for adult males in Gaza, indicating a higher politicization of the agency than the population at large. Nearly half of all UNRWA employees—an estimated 49%—also had close relatives who also had official ties to the militant groups, especially Hamas, the intelligence reports said.
Quite simply, this U.N. agency is fundamentally compromised and cannot be trusted to serve as a neutral humanitarian actor.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees is not part of the solution. It instead has contributed to the problem. Congress should ensure that all U.S. funding for this hopelessly compromised agency is ended immediately and permanently.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/29/us-should-end-pause-funding-aid-agency-tied-hamas/
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29 January, 2024
More Gen Z Women Embracing ‘Tradwife’ Influencers
Yes. A basic point below is that the tradwife has to have an economically successful husband. And they are not to be found under every rock.
But what counts as success? It depends on what you want and expect. In the old days most men were economically succesful enough to support a stay-at-home wife. But the lifestyle then was much simpler. I won't try to detail that but I could perhaps mention that in those days eating out and travel were often once in a lifetime affairs.
So a man on average income could to this day support a stay-at-home wife if he he could find a woman willing to accept a much lower standard of living than is now normal -- but it would probably need some sort of religious committment to support that.
So we come back to the fact that a woman accustomed to a modern lifestyle is only going to become a tradwife if she can find a man with either a well-above income or substantial wealth. It is not an option for all.
A way around that is for a woman to hunt rich men and do her best to please one when she finds one. And there have been many reports of such women. One can only hope that they are satisfied with their decisions. Most of us still have some ideals of love and romance however so would question the worth of such relationships.
But, all things considered, being a tradwife can be attractive if part of a good relatonship with a man of above average material resources.
I became economically successful at a relatively early age so by age 40 was able to support a tradwife. And I did. She was not called that in that era but when I met her she was a smart and good-looking woman aged 31 who already had 3 kids. She was a working single mother, which is one of the most difficult situations for a woman to be in.
I like kids so it was an easy choice for me to tell her to stop work and become a full-time wife and mother. She of course jumped at it. It was an instant large upgrade to her lifestyle and she enjoyed it greatly. I even gave her a car so she was not housebound. And we did have lots of good times together. And she even gave me a son.
As it happened, however, the marriage lasted only 10 years but I gave her a house to move into when we split so there are good feelings between us to this day. We still see one-another.
There is of course much more to be told about all that but I just offer it to emphasize again that an economically successful husband is required for a tradwife to be happy today
Hannah Neeleman, a Utah-based cattle farmer and mother of eight, is perhaps the most popular Instagram “tradwife”—a growing category of social media influencers who reject the not-so-traditional 9-to-5 workforce in favor of homeschooling their children, homemaking, or running a family business.
Though her content is entirely wholesome, she (and other tradwife accounts) are not without controversy.
In the case of Ballerina Farm, followers recently uncovered that Daniel Neeleman, Hannah’s husband, is the son of the founder and former CEO of JetBlue, whose estimated net worth is $400 million.
Her kitchen stove, prominently featured in many of Hannah’s videos where she bakes sourdough bread, farm-raised beef, and other dishes, costs a minimum of $20,000. For those who laud their simple lifestyle as cattle farmers, many felt blindsided by the wealth enabling their smooth transition to homesteading. After all, starting a farm requires many high-cost purchases on the front end, from the land, equipment, and animals, forcing many farmers into perpetual debt.
Yet Hannah and other tradwife accounts will easily maintain their prominence going into 2024. For many women, who increasingly report “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” and disillusionment with the “girlboss” lifestyle, these influencers offer an idyllic alternative to urban life. They are illuminating a deeper hunger among women, especially among Generation Z.
A quick search on Google Trends shows that the term “tradwife” gained popularity in 2018, but peaked in 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated women’s return to the home. Instead of being confined to religious or ultrawealthy women, the tradwife movement entered mainstream discussions. It offered women the chance to reclaim the ingredients of happiness—faith, family, community, and meaningful work—back from the career-focused model they grew up with.
Popular online accounts (explored here and here) tend to show women who don the clothes and lifestyle that they perceive women in a previous era embodied: shirtwaist dresses, aprons, a rejection of formal work outside the home, and a heavy emphasis on homemaking and care for children.
Instead of finding the home stuffy, boring, or trivial, many women found greater purpose and satisfaction than they previously imagined. Initially, the pandemic gave women the ultimate “permission slip” to explore the domestic realm (stay inside to stay alive). Later, popular and aesthetically pleasing tradwife accounts gave women the encouragement they needed to combat the outspoken expectations that all women, even mothers, ought to rejoin the 9-to-5 workforce.
It’s worth considering why Gen Z women, who have the most professional opportunities and fewest barriers to education, work, and politics, would flock in large numbers to tradwife influencers. No doubt the online accounts are more intense in their expressions of femininity, homemaking, or anti-feminist sentiment than the average follower, but then, this is always the case with influencers.
For Gen Z women who have observed the unhappy zero-sum game that is the battle of the sexes, many feel that the modern world, for all its promises, has failed them. They’re looking for an older, and truer, model for how to live a good life. Or, as Carmel Richardson said, “There are too many elders who give bad advice about marriage and family. I am trying to become the matriarch I want to see in the world.”
Similarly, it’s worth asking why this movement provokes many others to mockery or disgust. As one influencer said, “What if their husband leaves them? Then how will they support themselves?” For women who grew up observing the impact of no-fault divorce, family breakdown, the sexual revolution, and the rigid careerism of the 1990s, it seems as though their plan for survival is to depend on no one, especially a man, to provide for them.
The exhaustion and subsequent disenchantment this has produced in Gen Z is enough to spark a counterrevolution.
The harm is not borne equally, either. As both Aaron Renn and Mary Harrington have pointed out, the current workforce has meant that for elite or upper-class women to work, they require other women, who would rather stay home with their own children, to serve as nannies and day care workers just to make ends meet. Many tradwife accounts encourage women, insofar as they can, to return to their own homes and release poorer women from the expectation of handling their child care, cooking, or cleaning.
Notably, a Refinery29 article recognized this appeal for minority women: “Traditional marriage is the key to Black women’s liberation from being overworked, economic insecurity, and the stress of trying to survive in a world hostile to our survival and existence.”
Implicit in the tradwife model, of course, is the financial and ideological support of a husband. It requires husband and wife to work together in distinct roles toward a shared vision—one that ideally allows each the margin to flourish in their given space. In this way, tradwives represent a sort of anti-fragility that, in the words of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, is not merely resilient in the face of difficulty, but grows stronger because of it.
At their best, tradwives require more of the men around them. Rather than trying to replace the men in their lives (father, husband, perhaps employer) when they fail, such tradwives hold them accountable to provide, protect, and grow within the family. Few things could sound scarier to a woman who has been failed by a man she thought she could trust through divorce, unfaithfulness, or abandonment. Nonetheless, many women are realizing that the happiness they desire requires reliance upon a husband and other family members to succeed.
Whether it’s a corporate girlie, an academic, or a tradwife, each dreams of and relies upon a wealthy patron to support the lifestyle she wants to live. While some tradwives denounce all work “outside the home,” many run small businesses, write or blog, and contrary to the Luddite stereotype, manage savvy social media influencer accounts. They take the time and flexibility that their lifestyle offers and seek creative uses of their time that bless their family, their community, and the causes they care about.
Certainly, some aspects of the tradwife movement range from alt-right pagan beliefs to unrealistic forms of live-action role-play. At the heart of it, however, is a positive attempt by many women to embrace marriage and motherhood.
Countercultural movements tend to overcorrect to provide the next generation of women with a moderate option between the two ideological extremes of careerism and the rejection of all “paid work.”
For Gen Z, the result may be that women receive the flexibility and support to pursue a family and work amenable to their goals and the demands of each season.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/11/why-gen-z-is-ditching-girlboss-tradwife/
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The swastika stands for evil and mass murder. So does the hammer and sickle
But the Left like and forgive Communism because it is the ultimate case of what they want: Control over other people. They want to reform the world and you need control for that. They also despise ordinary people so killing millions of them is no problem
by Jeff Jacoby
THE WEEK that just ended was bracketed by two anniversaries in the history of 20th-century totalitarianism.
Sunday was the centennial of the death of Vladimir Lenin. The architect of the Bolshevik Revolution and first ruler of the Soviet Union was 53 when he died of a brain hemorrhage on Jan. 21, 1924.
Saturday was the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the extermination camp in Poland where 1.1 million victims were murdered by Nazi Germany between 1940 and 1945. The United Nations in 2005 designated Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Why has the UN never dedicated a similar day of remembrance for the victims of communism?
The communist system introduced by Lenin has led to more slaughter and suffering than any other movement in history. For sheer murderous horror, there has never been a force to compare to it. The Nazis didn't come close. Adolf Hitler's regime eradicated 6 million Jews in the unprecedented genocide of the Holocaust. The Germans also killed at least 5 million non-Jews, among them ethnic Poles, prisoners of war, Romani people, and the disabled.
But the Nazi toll adds up to barely a tenth of the lives that have been extinguished by communist dictatorships. According to The Black Book of Communism, a magisterial compendium of communist crimes first published in France in 1997, the fanaticism unleashed by Lenin's revolution has sent at least 100 million men, women, and children to early graves. Beginning in 1917, communist regimes on four continents — from Russia and Eastern Europe to China and North Korea to Cuba and Ethiopia — engineered death on a scale unmatched in human annals.
Yet communism rarely evokes the instinctive loathing that Nazism does. To this day there are those who still insist that communism is admirable and wholesome, or that it has never been properly implemented, or that with all its failings it is better than capitalism. Many people who would find it unthinkable to deck themselves in Nazi regalia — when Britain's Prince Harry wore a swastika armband to a costume party in 2005, a major scandal ensued — view communist-themed fashion as trendy or kitschy.
In Manhattan's East Village, the popular KGB Bar — named after the USSR's terrifying security network of secret police and torture sites — features Soviet propaganda posters and literary readings. Would any New York hipster ever set foot in a pub called Gestapo? Amazon sells scores of shirts with hammer-and-sickle designs or the images of communist dictators like Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, who were among the greatest mass killers in history. Search for "Nazi T-shirts," on the other hand, and what comes up are shirts showing a swastika in a red circle with a slash ("No Nazis") or proclaiming: "Punch a Nazi."
What accounts for the difference? Both Nazism and communism filled the world with pain, terror, and death. Yet communists are not regarded with the same revulsion that Nazis are. In the public's perception, Hitler and his Nazi Party have no equal as incarnations of supreme evil. Why isn't communist tyranny viewed the same way?
A number of reasons suggest themselves.
First: In the war against Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union ended up fighting alongside the Allies. World War II gave way to the long-drawn-out Cold War, but America's alliance with Moscow left in many minds the belief that when it mattered most, the communists were on our side. After all, the free world had labeled Nazis as the supreme evil. So anyone who helped destroy Nazis must not have been supremely evil themselves.
Second: The Nazis made little effort to disguise the abhorrent malignance on which their movement was based, above all its genocidal antisemitism. They made no secret of their implacable hatred for Jews and other "subhumans" or their belief that an Aryan master race should rule the world. Conversely, communist movements have almost always cloaked their malice and brutality with tempting rhetoric about equality, peace, and an end to exploitation. Partly as a result, the myth persists to this day that communism is really a noble ideology with the potential to liberate mankind.
Third: Nazism was utterly discredited by the fate meted out to Nazi Germany — unconditional surrender, an Allied occupation, war-crimes trials, and the hanging of senior Nazis. By contrast, communist dictatorships in Moscow and elsewhere entrenched their hold on power. The end of the Cold War eventually brought down communist governments in Russia and Europe, but even then, there was no public accounting for the ghastly crimes they had committed.
Fourth: The Holocaust became such a "byword for modern barbarism," as the authors of "The Black Book of Communism" put it, that even mass murders of greater magnitude in the communist world seem to recede in significance. In crucial ways, the Holocaust stands alone: Nazi Germany deployed every resource at its command to construct a vast industry of death with the goal of rounding up and destroying every single Jew in Europe — not as a means to an end but as an end in itself. There is good reason that so much attention has been paid to the Holocaust by scholars, historians, educators, and artists. As a result, however, the far greater level of bloodshed committed by communist regimes has never achieved the same public awareness.
Fifth: There are pictures of what the Nazis did. Filmmakers and photographers entered the death camps in 1945 and recorded what they found, providing images that shocked the world's conscience and became iconic emblems of human savagery. But there were no Allies to liberate the Soviet gulag or to halt the agonies of Mao's Great Leap Forward. If there are photos or films of those atrocities, few have ever seen them. The victims of communism have tended to be invisible — and suffering that isn't seen is suffering most people don't think about.
These are explanations only, not justifications. Nazism was unspeakably evil and only an ignoramus or a monster would deny it. Communism, too, has been unspeakably evil — no "ism" in history has spilled more blood or crushed more lives. From anyone with a conscience or a working moral compass, the response to both should be the same: Never forget, never forgive.
https://jeffjacoby.com/27517/the-swastika-stands-for-evil-and-mass-murder-so
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Another Infant Formula Shortage? Blame the FDA
On December 28, 2023, the Food and Drug Administration received information that a sample from a hypoallergenic infant formula called Nutramigen was contaminated with salmonella. Since then, Nutramigen’s producer Reckitt/Mead Johnson Nutrition voluntarily recalled 675,000 cans of formula and began undergoing hygiene and safety inspections conducted by the FDA. The plant is still under inspection.
The recall and ensuing plant shutdown are causing a national shortage of hypoallergenic infant formula. While less common than standard formula, hypoallergenic is vital for an estimated ten percent of infants with severe protein allergies who need it to receive adequate nutrition.
The shortage is quickly getting worse. Infant formula producer websites urge parents to check their real-time inventory updates to see if stores within 200 miles of their zip code have supplies. Facebook groups with over 1,000 members recently formed to support parents struggling to find hypoallergenic formulas for their infants.
Fearing a return to the devastating infant formula shortage of 2022, several politicians are demanding accountability and answers.
Pennsylvania Senator Robert Casey Jr. from Pennsylvania wrote Reckitt/Mead Johnson Nutrition to ask whether they anticipate further supply disruptions, if other plants can ramp up production to mitigate the shortage, and whether the FDA’s inspection is preventing Nutramigen from reaching shelves.
Writing directly to the FDA, Florida Senator Rick Scott wants to know what the agency is doing to help other infant formula producers make more hypoallergenic formulas and when the facility where the contaminated formula was found will be operating again.
Both senators and countless parents have the right to be upset and concerned. However, asking the FDA for guidance and remedies for this formula shortage fundamentally misunderstands the source of the problem.
Much like the current shortage, the devastating infant formula shortages in 2022 began with massive recalls after the FDA received information that some infants became sick after using formula produced by a plant in Sturgis, Michigan. The plant started recalls and underwent a full inspection. The plant remained closed for months after the inspection– even when the US infant formula supply shrank by 40 percent.
If anything, the FDA is doing a worse job in detaining plants from reopening safely this time. According to the agency’s report, “The voluntarily recalled Nutramigen product was manufactured between June 6, 2023, and June 29, 2023.” Thus, it’s overwhelmingly likely that any contaminated formula was consumed months ago.
Rather than urging the FDA to work quickly and help producers, the agency could dramatically improve the problem by eliminating barriers to importing formula.
As my co-author and I addressed in an article in Fortune written during the first infant formula shortage, the FDA could quickly increase formula supplies by relaxing their mandatory 90-day waiting period to allow foreign formula to hit markets. The agency also prohibits foreign formulas that do not meet nutritional labeling requirements even when the agency’s nutritional standards are met.
None of these easy-to-implement ideas were considered in 2022 and are less likely to be used now. Instead, European formula producers are more likely to face additional regulatory hurdles as part of the agency’s most recent effort to increase oversight over imported goods.
Sadly, as I noted in a blog for The Beacon last November, despite the FDA claiming they “never want to have this [formula shortages] happen again,” they haven’t addressed any of the reasons for infant formula shortages in the US.
Until they do, we remain vulnerable to more shortages, this being just another predictable example.
https://blog.independent.org/2024/01/22/another-infant-formula-shortage-blame-the-fda/?omhide=true
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This Jewish Cancer Counselor Got Fired For Objecting to an Anti-Trump DEI Assignment. Now, She’s Suing
A veteran social worker who says she was fired for expressing concern over racial harassment against her as a Jewish woman and political harassment over her ties to the Trump administration is suing for wrongful termination.
Tammy Weitzman last week sued her former employer, the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, now known as the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, for racial and political discrimination and for retaliating against her when she spoke up about it.
“I was called a white k–e, and I was harassed over knowing a high-ranking Cabinet member in the Trump administration,” Weitzman told The Daily Signal in an exclusive interview, using an offensive term for Jewish individuals.
She had helped care for a daughter of the Trump administration official, Weitzman said.
The leader of the group legally representing Weitzman, Coalition for Liberty President Doug Turpin, recounted how the Seattle cancer center responded when his client expressed concern to her boss about the harassment. Weitzman herself, not those harassing her, ended up in hot water. The cancer center forced her to take “racial equity” training.
When Weitzman later spoke about her experiences facing harassment as a Jewish woman, the “equity” facilitators told her that she was white.
According to the lawsuit, Weitzman’s coworkers often sent her unsolicited emails condemning the Trump administration and blaming her for Trump’s policies. When she reported the harassment, the suit says, the director of the center’s human resources office told her to simply “deal with it” and warned her that she likely would face retaliation if she filed a formal complaint.
Weitzman worked as an oncology social worker, providing counseling and therapy services for cancer patients and their families.
“While other folks on the team were able to ensure that these patients had enough resources, a place to stay, and gas money to get to the clinic, my role was very clinical,” Weitzman told The Daily Signal.
Weitzman said she had wanted to work with cancer patients since her childhood because her father died of cancer when she was 5. Until her firing, she told The Daily Signal, she had been a social worker specializing in cancer patients for “almost 23 years.”
Weitzman worked at the Seattle cancer center from January 2016 to February 2021, receiving a raise and many favorable commendations for her work, but got fired abruptly Feb. 5.
Other employees repeatedly used racial slurs against her, and her supervisors ignored them or “told me [it] was no big deal,” she recalled.
An Anti-Trump Article
Nidhi Berry, who supervised “Race and Allyship” training sessions at the Seattle cancer center, had sent an anti-Trump article as a follow-up to a racial sensitivity training that Jan. 21, the day after Joe Biden became president, according to the lawsuit. That article made generalizations about Jewish people that Weitzman found offensive.
Weitzman told The Daily Signal that the article contained instructions to lecture those around her, including her cancer patients, about Trump. She said Berry asked her to use the article “to talk about racism with patients and families.”
The social worker found that highly unethical, she said, not in the least because such political posturing isn’t remotely of interest to cancer patients:
They’re concerned about their lives. Caring for cancer patients, receiving cancer treatment, working in a cancer hospital, working in any cancer facility or any medical institution should be an apolitical matter. Period. End of story.
I should not be compelled to talk to patients about politics and about President Trump and how evil the Left thinks that he is. This is wrong—and yet this is happening everywhere.
When Weitzman complained about the article to Tiffany Courtnage, her direct boss, Courtnage told her to bring up the issue directly with Berry. Weitzman objected to that approach, but ultimately followed that instruction from her boss and spoke over the phone with Berry on Jan. 21.
Although that phone conversation proved “relatively pleasant,” according to the lawsuit, one week later Berry sent an email berating Weitzman.
The Racist Email
In that email, Berry wrote to Weitzman that she was “flabbergasted that you, a white woman and fellow social worker, would choose to burden me, a woman of color, with your feelings and triggers around this post.”
Berry asserted that “Trump’s administration did inspire hate speech and violence —this is a non-negotiable fact.”
“It is the essence of white privilege to be able to focus on a tree at the expense of seeing the forest,” Berry added in the email to Weitzman. “It is the essence of white fragility to claim victimhood when you are definitely not the victim. I’m disturbed that a white woman on a social work team at a major institution like [Seattle Cancer Care Alliance] would try to play these games, would claim the status of victimhood, in the face of a woman of color, after the years of the era of Trump.”
Berry also wrote: “You’ve mentioned to me previously that you identify as Jewish, which makes this interaction from last Thursday all the more bewildering to me, considering the anti-Semitisim [that] is stoked by the hate speech and violence Trump’s administration inspired.”
Weitzman’s lawsuit argues:
In Ms. Weitzman’s view, it is the essence of racial discrimination to assume that an individual must or should hold certain political or social views, based on his or her race. Moreover, to be lumped in with members of the white race, despite her Jewish heritage, and to be told that her views on the matter of racial discrimination did not matter because being Jewish was equivalent to being white for purposes of racial discussions, was deeply offensive and disconcerting.
Berry copied Courtnage on her email, along with HR. The cancer center’s training supervisor explicitly rejected Weitzman’s request for mutual understanding and tolerance, stating: “I will not privilege you or any other white person’s comfort over the safety of people of color and Black people, and I certainly won’t privilege your comfort over equitable patient outcomes.”
An Abrupt Termination
A little over one week after Berry’s email, Weitzman met with Courtnage and Courtnage’s boss, James Jorgenson, who fired her.
According to the lawsuit, Jorgenson said the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance fired Weitzman because her “ethnicity sensitivity” and her core values did not align with the values of her employer, and Courtnage was unable to discuss the issue with her.
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28 January, 2024
The ADL has lost its way
Originally a Jewish defence organization, the ADL lost its way under Abe Foxman, who swung the organization Leftward and made it more anti-Christian than pro Jewish. So what is it doing now under Jonathan Greenblatt?
With the huge upsurge in public antisemitism now underway, you would think it would be returning to its original focus of combatting antisemitism. Not a bit of it! Instead they have just adopted the current Leftist hobbyhorse of transgenderism! They care more about sexual confusion than the welfare of Jews. Unbelievable. See below where they focus heavily on attacking transgender critics. Leftism really is a cancer of the brain
The Anti-Defamation League flags “online amplifiers of LGBTQ+ hate” as extremists to be examined by law enforcement, an email obtained by The Oversight Project shows.
The revelation indicates that the Anti-Defamation League, “the leading anti-hate organization in the world,” is specifically pushing law enforcement to scrutinize viral dissenters against transgender ideology, such as The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh and The Manhattan Institute’s Chris Rufo. The email was obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.)
The ADL has historically focused on anti-semitism, but in recent years has directed heavy attention to hate and extremism. The ADL has described content pushing back against transgender ideology as both “dangerous” and “false,” claiming that this content inspires “real-world extremist activities, threats, and even violence.”
“The ADL, and similar organizations, are a key driver of government weaponization,” Mike Howell, the director of the Oversight Project, a division of the Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. “They provide the phony predication and intellectual cover in order to point the people with guns at their enemies. Our investigative work continues to expose examples of these groups driving government action.”
The Extremist Landscape
Oversight’s Freedom of Information Act request to Washington State Fusion Center (a “unified counterterrorism” center) turned out a February 2023 email on “the extremist landscape” from the ADL. The email was sent to Tyler Phelan, an intelligence analyst at the center, from the ADL’s “Law Enforcement” address.
The email bears the subject line: “White Supremacist Fight Clubs, Anti-LGBTQ+ Hate.” It then paints a picture of the “extremist landscape:” threats of Islamic terrorism, an alleged rise in white supremacist crews encouraging violence, and “online amplifiers of LGBTQ+ Hate” promoting “false narratives, escalating harassment of LGBTQ+ individuals.”
This section on “LGBTQ+ Hate” describes content pushed by online actors “including the vilification of drag shows” and “baseless claims of ‘child grooming’ by LGBTQ+ people.” The ADL alleges that this content has “further endangered and isolated an already at-risk community,” noting that “these accusations and stances have also been adopted by right-wing media personalities and disseminated on mainstream platforms.”
“The growing online anti-LGBTQ+ bigotry puts LGBTQ+ individuals at greater risk of physical violence and harassment,” the email notes. It refers readers to its blog for more information, and notes that ADL’s Center on Extremism monitors “extremism across the ideological spectrum” through investigators, analysts, researchers, and technical experts.
ADL touts its Center on Extremism as “the nation’s foremost nongovernmental authority on extremism.” It is comprised of “investigators, analysts, researchers and technical experts who strategically monitor and expose extremist threats—on the internet and on the ground.”
That email bears remarkable similarities in both wording and structure to the ADL’s blog post on “Online Amplifiers of Anti-LGBTQ+ Extremism” — a blog post that specifically names the viral “Libs of TikTok” social media account run by Chaya Raichik, the Gays Against Groomers social media account run by Jaimee Michell, the media company Blaze Media, Rufo, and Walsh.
According to that blog post, the ADL is interested in the government targeting these types of individuals due to their influence online related to transgender ideology.
“ADL is advocating for government partners to strengthen laws against perpetrators of online hate, as well as consulting with law enforcement partners to act on online hate speech that incites violence and/or credible threats,” the blog post reads. “ADL will continue to develop community partnerships with LGBTQ+ leaders and organizations such as GLAAD, in efforts to counter hate speech with positive speech.”
That article represents a collaboration between the pro-LGBTQ group GLAAD and the ADL intended to “counter anti-LGBTQ+ Extremism and Hate.” The collaboration explicitly aims to “alert law enforcement and community organizations to threats targeting LGBTQ+ individuals and institutions.”
“You can draw a direct line from anti-LGBTQ content and accounts on social media to real world violence: from extremists showing up at drag shows to vandalism at LGBTQ community centers to bomb threats being called into children’s hospitals that care for transgender youth,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in the November 2022 press release announcing the collaboration.
It appears that the ADL email to the Washington State Fusion Center employee links to this blog post — the email includes links that The Daily Signal could not confirm, specifically on the phrase “online actors” and the phrase “baseless claims,” referring to supposedly baseless claims of child grooming and the “vilification of drag shows.” The ADL did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Law Enforcement Denies Investigations
Chris Loftis, director of communications for the Washington State Patrol, a key partner in the Washington State Fusion Center, denied that there are currently investigations into Walsh, Rufo, Raichik, Libs of TikTok, or Gays Against Groomers.
He also said of Washington state law enforcement agencies that, though they might review information from “an organization like ADL,” they would “recognize that they, like any organization or individual, would be organized and energized around core beliefs and mission thrusts that could impact their perspectives.”
“Therefore, we treat every source of information the same, with appropriate appreciation and skepticism, regardless of where they might be on the political spectrum and do our due diligence assessing the validity of any information received,” he added. “If, after that type of broad-spectrum and multiple source review, we have actionable intelligence on a credible threat, we take appropriate action.”
“We do not investigate anyone or anything ‘at the direction of the Anti-Defamation League,'” Loftis added, referencing The Daily Signal’s press inquiry. “We receive tips from a variety of sources and interested parties and we follow each to its logical conclusion to assess if any possible public safety threat actually exists.”
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Missouri Trans Clinic Whistleblower Has a Message for the Left
Jamie Reed, the former clinician who blew the whistle last year on a gender clinic in St. Louis, tells “The Daily Signal Podcast” that there are more whistleblowers out there, and she raises the alarm about the “totalitarian” mentality of large LGBTQ organizations that seek to silence those who disagree with them.
She also warns leaders on the Left that most Americans oppose rushing kids to medical “treatments” that will likely harm them.
“We were seeing systematic harms,” Reed says of the experimental medical interventions the clinic performed on children. However, “we were never stopping treatments.”
“In medicine, there should be this built-in ‘We did X, patient is worse, we need to consider stopping X,’” the whistleblower says. She recalls the story of a 19-year-old patient who had a double mastectomy. “Within three months, she called us back, begging for her breasts to be put back on.”
The whistleblower insists that “the best way to treat” what she called “gender distress” in children is “to figure out the underlying reasons for that gender distress.” In many cases, it traces back to “early sexual abuse, early sexual trauma, trauma in their family,” which should be resolved in therapy, not through medical interventions.
Yet, the medical industry continues to push experimental transgender medical interventions for children, even though doctors have warned that minors cannot consent to interventions with lifelong consequences, such as potential sterilization.
Reed says she is in contact with more clinic workers who will likely blow the whistle on substandard care. “I know there are other whistleblowers. I know because I talk to some of them,” she says.
“I have actually been working really closely with an amazing group of adult lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people who are all opposed to pediatric medical transitions,” Reed adds. “We’ve put together an LGBT Courage Coalition.”
She says it’s hard for whistleblowers to come forward, so she aims to “give them a place to reach out, a soft landing, a group of us who are willing to walk them through their own process” to go public—or not—in their own time.
“I think the public should know that I am not the only one,” Reed adds.
The whistleblower first published her story in The Free Press, a new independent outlet founded by former New York Times editor Bari Weiss. Weiss herself is married to another woman.
“We really have seen, basically, an erosion of the press in the United States, and the press on this issue has really been beholden to—they’ve been bullied by historic LGBT organizations,” Reed notes. “The New York Times writes a piece, and, you know, the GLAAD truck shows up calling them transphobes.”
“We need journalists to go back to what journalism is supposed to be, which is seeking out the truth, no matter how hard and who that offends,” the whistleblower adds.
Reed, who herself identifies as LGBT (without the “Q”), also describes herself as “progressive” and “married to a trans man.”
When asked what she would say to the big LGBTQ organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, and the allied Southern Poverty Law Center that push transgender “treatments” on children, Reed—who herself identifies as LGBT—had a stern response.
“Simply put, they have gotten this wrong,” she says. “The science is incorrect, and these treatments are, at their core, harming young gay and lesbian people.”
Reed also warns that these groups have helped “institutionalize bullying.”
“So much of this started out that we just wanted to be kind and to fight bullies,” she explains. “Instead, they themselves have become organizations that bully those who don’t agree with every single thing they say into silence.
“That is not any sort of community I want to live in,” Reed adds. “I don’t want to claim to be in a community of the LGBT, and you all have to think the same, and free speech has been eroded and taken away.”
Her criticism grows even harsher: “I did not sign up to be in a totalitarian anything, and that’s how they’ve been behaving.”
Reed also urges leaders in the Democratic Party to reconsider their position on these issues.
“The Democrats are also with us on this,” she says, referring not to the party leaders, but to “the grassroots, the people. When you explain what’s going on, they’re not in support of sterilizing children.”
“It’s not a partisan issue,” Reed insists. “This is basics. Science, the rights of women, and the rights of gay and lesbian people to grow up with whole, intact bodies.”
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Judge says Canada's use of Emergencies Act to quell truckers' protests over COVID was unreasonable and unconstitutional.
A Canadian judge has ruled that the government’s use of the Emergencies Act to quell weeks of protests by truckers and others angry over COVID-19 restrictions in 2022 was unreasonable and unconstitutional.
Up to thousands of protesters clogged the streets of the capital of Ottawa and besieged Parliament Hill, demonstrating against vaccine mandates for truckers and other precautions and condemning Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.
The act allowed authorities to declare certain areas as no-go zones. It also allowed police to freeze truckers’ personal and corporate bank accounts and compel tow truck companies to haul away vehicles.
Members of the self-styled Freedom Convoy also blockaded U.S.-Canada border crossings in protest. Police arrested 11 people at the blockaded crossing at Coutts, Alberta, opposite Montana, after learning of a cache of guns and ammunition.
In the decision released Tuesday, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley said the invocation of the Emergencies Act led to the infringement of constitutional rights.
“I conclude that there was no national emergency justifying the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the decision to do so was therefore unreasonable,” Mosley wrote.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government will appeal. Freeland said it was a hard decision to invoke the act but called the protests a serious threat to public safety, national security and Canada's economic security.
“I don’t want to minimize the gravity of the actions we took. Neither do I want to minimize the gravity of the threats Canada faced," Freeland said.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and several other groups and individuals argued in court that Ottawa ushered in the emergency measures without sound grounds.
The government contended the steps it took were targeted, proportional, time-limited and compliant with Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
A public commission led by another judge previously concluded most of the emergency measures were appropriate.
The protests were first aimed at a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers. They eventually encompassed fury over COVID-19 restrictions and dislike of Trudeau, reflecting the spread of disinformation in Canada and simmering populist and right-wing anger.
The Freedom Convoy shook Canada’s reputation for civility, inspired convoys in France, New Zealand and the Netherlands and interrupted economic trade. For almost a week the busiest U.S.-Canada border crossing between Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit was blocked. It sees more than 25% of trade between the countries.
https://au.news.yahoo.com/judge-says-canadas-emergencies-act-193204355.html?guccounter=1
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Ohio Legislature Overrides Governor’s Veto, Bans Trans Procedures for Minors
The Ohio Senate voted on Wednesday to override Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s veto of a bill that would ban gender transition procedures for minors and prohibit male athletes from playing on female sports teams.
The state Senate voted 23-9 to override the veto. The state House voted 65-28 to do the same earlier this month. Republicans have a majority in both chambers.
The vote mostly followed party lines, except for state Sen. Nathan Manning, a Cuyahoga County Republican who consistently breaks from his party on the issue.
Mr. DeWine vetoed the bill in late December, to the chagrin of his party, telling reporters during a press conference that such a measure, if allowed to become law, would do more harm than good.
The bill, also known as the Saving Ohio Adolescents from Experimentation Act, would ban doctors from performing gender-related surgeries and administering puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to minors.
Other provisions of the bill would bar schools from allowing male athletes to join female sports teams in high schools and colleges, reflecting a nationwide trend to address concerns about fairness in women’s sports.
The ban is set to take effect in 90 days.
Advocates of the bill argue that irreversible interventions related to individuals’ favored gender identity can have long-term consequences, urging instead for a shift toward compassionate mental health care and therapy for minors.
Ohio has joined North Carolina and Louisiana in overriding the governor’s veto to enact similar bans.
Republican State Rep. Gary Click, the bill’s primary sponsor, celebrated the Senate vote and stressed that the disagreement between the legislative and executive branches was about policy, not personality.
Mr. Click said he is confident that Mr. DeWine, in vetoing the bill, acted from the heart and did what he believed was right. He added that, in time, the governor may have come around to the stance of his fellow Republicans on the matter.
“The legislature, however, felt just as strongly if not more so that HB 68 was imperative to save lives, uphold medical ethics, and reaffirm women’s rights,” Mr. Click said in a statement. “The citizens of Ohio were unequivocal in their demand that the legislature act and we did.”
Mr. Click celebrated the veto as a move that ensures “children have the right to grow up intact and that women are no longer subject to men invading their spaces.”
LGBT rights groups, such as Human Rights Campaign, have condemned the legislation, calling the ban “draconian and discriminatory.” The organization has said the bill prevents young people from accessing “best practice, medically necessary health care in defiance of the expert advice of every major medical association.”
However, groups in support of the ban, such as Alliance Defending Freedom, say it protects children from the harm of irreversible procedures.
Senior Counsel Matt Sharp, director of the ADF Center for Legislative Advocacy, applauded the Ohio Senate’s action.
“We commend the Ohio Senate for overriding Gov. Mike DeWine’s misguided veto of the SAFE Act, a bill that rejects the politicized and harmful practice of pushing minors towards irreversible drugs and surgeries in favor of compassionate mental health care that gives them time to grow into comfort with their bodies and true identities,” Mr. Sharp said in a statement.
Mr. Sharp said that denying there are two sexes risks harm to children who may experience gender dysphoria, and need their families to “guide them toward this truth” rather than undergo often irreversible and life-altering experimentation and drugs.
Gender dysphoria is described as discomfort felt about one’s sex. Recent approaches to treatment have been typically to encourage the individual, usually a minor, to undergo surgery or chemical treatments so that they can force their body to look more like the gender they identify with, including by taking puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and even surgical procedures to remove breast tissue or genitals. Some who have undergone such treatments have later said they felt tricked into it and expressed regret, saying that while the interventions brought temporary relief, they later realized they had deeper underlying mental health issues that were causing their internal distress.
Mr. Sharp said these approaches to treating gender dysphoria—which block healthy puberty, alter a person’s hormonal balance, or remove healthy organs and body parts—“are dangerous.”
“No one has the right to harm children and, thankfully, states have the power—and duty—to protect them. Ohio joins more than 20 other states and several European countries in fighting for truth and curtailing the deployment of harmful surgeries and drugs that are devastating countless lives,” he added.
After the state House vote, Mr. DeWine reiterated his belief that parents should be allowed to make medical decisions on behalf of their children rather than the government.
Despite moving to veto the legislation, in January, the governor signed an executive order that critics labeled a “de facto ban” on such procedures for minors and adults.
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25 January, 2024
Jesus was a born God (????????? ???? )
That's what it says in the original Greek of John 1:18.
???? ?????? ??????? ??????? ????????? ???? ? ?? ??? ??? ?????? ??? ?????? ??????? ?????????.
(No man hath seen God at any time, the *only begotten Son*, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. KJV)
Mainstream Christianity embraces the Athanasian trinity doctrine that identifies Jesus as God. The doctrine is rather confusing but it clearly identifies Jesus as eternal. That has always seemed nuts to me. Jesus prayed to God he was not God himself.
So I have come across something that is great fun indeed: The usage of "monogen?s theos" in the original Greek of John 1:18. See above. A single-born god! Is that not clear enough that Jesus was created, despite having divine attributes?
The KJV (see above) translates "????????? ????" as "only begotten son" in that passage. And the Griesbach recension of the Greek has that usage too "monogenes huios", begotten son. So I was unaware that both Westcott & Hort and Nestle recensions give "monogen?s theos". "theos" must be better attested than "huios" in the early MSS. Westcott & Hort above.
So in the light of the best modern recensions of the original Greek text, the translation "only begotten son" is absurd. The original text says "single-born GOD" -- ????????? ????. Jesus was a god but not THE god. That's what it says. He was in the bosom of THE god: In the bosom of ??? ?????? (THE father)
Huge fun however is the way most modern translations render "monogen?s theos". They either miss out "monogenes" entirely or say simply "only". And some stick with "son", despite that not being in the best renderings of the original Greek text. Though the NIV has the grace to put "son" in brackets! It is obviously a hugely embarrassing passage to them. Embarrassing enough for them to mistranslate it deliberately. They are just incapable of saying that Christ was both "genes", "born", "conceived" (perhaps "generated" in modern terms) but also a "theos", a god! "A born God". Let those words sink in.
I suppose trinitarians will waffle their way around that, as they usually do, but there is nothing unclear or mysterious in the original text. If the text had said a born son, it could have meant Christ's incarnation. But it does not. It was not a man that was born. It was a God.
Needless to say, the theologians and exegetes have gone wild trying to tell us that the text does not mean what it says. They say that ????????? (monogenes) just refers to a particular person etc. And they then give a pile of excerpts from classical and Biblical Greek in support of that. They also quote Liddell & Scott's definitions in support of their claims. But all the examples they give are in fact of naturally born people and people identified by their particular birth. Putting it another way, Greeks would on occasions refer to people as "borns", for various reasons. But born still meant born.
But let's leave the ???? aside and just look at ?????. They won't like Liddell & Scott's first definition of "genea", which is "of the persons in a family". Not the mystical persons of the trinity but the individual persons of a normal family. And let us look at a word we all know: "Genesis". It's exactly the same word in Greek and English and it's a form of ?????. And we know what it refers to, don't we? A beginning. So Christ was a god who had a beginning, a birth.
I would have been burnt at the stake for saying that at times in the past. But it is not me speaking. It is John 1:18.
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Feminist movie bombs at the Oscars
By KENNEDY
Dirty blonde man meat Ryan Gosling, who played Ken in the summer blockbuster Barbie, is outraged that the Oscars have snubbed his co-star and director.
Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie weren't nominated for Best Director or Best Actress.
The horror!
What's more, the Academy tapped Gosling for best-supporting actor, which – in accordance with Barbie code of honor – compelled him to undergo ritual self-flagellation.
'There is no Ken without Barbie, and there is no Barbie movie without Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie…' he said in a breathless statement rushed out to the media.
Well, that's true of a lot of movies, Ryan. You also need cameramen and caterers! Do they deserve a golden statue?
It's difficult to imagine how Gosling's 'everyone gets a prize' standard would work in practice. But what else should we expect from a plastic man with no genitals?
You can almost hear the baby goose's insufferable blubbering, which is, of course, wholly disingenuous unless he withdraws his name from consideration.
You want to overthrow the patriarchy, boy? Keep yo' name out of Academy voters' mouths, hero!
But perhaps the juiciest, most satisfying irony of all of this is that the helpless, idiot boy doll got the award - while the proud, brave Barbie girls got nothing.
And I thought only The Handmaid's Tale was a true story.
The vicious global cabal of misogynist film critics has triumphed yet again!
Oh please, I can't stop laughing.
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No policy consequences are ‘unintended’
Whenever government intervention in the private sector is ineffective — and especially when it is counterproductive — commentators frequently express surprise and excuse the consequences as unintentional or unanticipated.
Do rent controls shrink the supply of apartments, degrade housing as landlords skimp on amenities and maintenance expenses and cause them to charge extra for keys and parking spaces?
Do minimum-wage laws lessen job openings for low-skilled workers, and prompt employers to reduce the number of paid hours, substitute machines for labor, reduce nonwage benefits and cut off the bottom rungs of career ladders, propping up union wage scales?
Did business lockdowns, stay-at-home orders and school closures during the protracted COVID-19 pandemic produce widespread economic hardship, inflict lifelong learning losses on K12 students and raise morbidity and mortality as people deferred routine health care screening and elective surgeries?
Do offering needle exchanges and subsidizing housing for the homeless unconditioned on behavioral changes encourage homelessness?
Don’t blame us for those unhappy outcomes, many politicians and policymakers say. Our intentions were good. Blame the “greedy” capitalists or the wreckers bent on undermining constructive social welfare goals.
Voters should be skeptical of such self-serving rhetoric. They should rely instead on the evidence of governmental failure before their own eyes.
In a 1975 “supplementary note” to his seminal and widely cited 1971 article on the theory of economic regulation, Nobel-laureate George Stigler challenged the conventional wisdom that the problematic effects of many public policies can be excused by policymakers’ ignorance, the time pressures under which they operate or inadequate budgets.
Relying on the evidence he assembled, sometimes with Claire Friedland, on many federal alphabet agencies, Stigler showed that regulations often benefited the regulated companies rather than their customers. Proposing what has since been called the “capture theory,” Stigler advised students of regulatory processes “to look, as precisely and carefully as [they] can, at who gains and who loses, and how much,” rather than accepting political posturing at face value.
More provocatively, in seeking to explain why a regulatory policy persists, especially in the face of evidence that its real effects are “unrelated or perversely related” to its announced goals, Stigler argued that “the truly intended effects should be deduced from the actual effects.”
Mistakes of course are possible, but for longstanding, widely adopted policies “it is fruitful to assume that the real effects were known and desired.”
“[A]n explanation of a policy in terms of error or confusion is no explanation at all — anything and everything is compatible with that ‘explanation,’” he continued.
Stigler’s plea for looking beyond politicians’ and policymakers’ attempts to justify interventions as byproducts of their good intentions (and to excuse their frequent policy failures) echoes Frédéric Bastiat’s distinction between “good” and “bad” economists.
In laying out his famous fallacy of the broken window, Bastiat (1801–1850) emphasized that bad economists grasp only the immediate effects of a public policy, or, “that which is seen,” whereas good economists anticipate the sometimes-fatal second- or third-order consequences, “that which is unseen.”
Because the “science” underpinning public policy always is provisional, and necessarily is filtered through and often deformed by political processes, ordinary people must be wary of governmental “experts” and perhaps those affiliated with elite institutions of higher education. Small numbers of good economists and public health professionals warned of the readily foreseen social costs of the harmful information propagated by government officials and the draconian policies they advised during the COVID-19 era.
As Stigler and Bastiat taught, the regulatory costs imposed on the rest of us were not mistaken; nor were they inadvertent. The problem those two good economists identified goes much deeper than the identities of the politicians and bureaucrats who oversee public policies. Institutional reforms are required to change the incentives officials face, to reduce their powers and to constrain their behaviors.
Admitting and apologizing for past policy “blunders” would be a good place to start. Demanding that Congress and the administrative state objectively review the rules and policies they adopt (now very rare) would be even better.
https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/4418230-no-policy-consequences-are-unintended/
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Stunning revolt underway in Australia against political, corporate garbage policies
Robert Gottliebsen
Something very different is happening in Australia, and it has caught many political and corporate leaders on the wrong foot. Two of the leaders caught by this change, Anthony Albanese and Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci, may have woken up that they had missed the change.
This week we saw remarkable events emerging to underline the drama taking place below the surface as leaders grapple with the 2024 Australia which different to what they had expected.
In my arena I decided to collect 12 key policies of Donald Trump simply to explain to readers, including myself, what was happening below the public Trump bluster and court battles. I made a minimum of comments on those Trump polices which cover issues like migration, crime, gender, buying a house, tax cuts, tariffs, local manufacturing and of course lower energy costs as the carbon debate is turned on its head.
To my astonishment, it sparked a reader frenzy. While the drawbacks of Trump were clearly expressed, the majority of readers embraced his policies with enthusiasm and urged Peter Dutton to copy them. And, of course, none of the Trump policies involved Indigenous Australians or Australia Day. Some invited Trump to come to Australia. They wanted clear policies and leadership.
A special Roy Morgan opinion Poll, shows a majority of Australians (68.5 per cent) now say we should keep celebrating Australia Day – up 4.5 per cent from a year ago — and the date should remain at January 26 (58.5 per cent)
As the largest supermarket retailer, the Morgan poll conclusions represented Woolworths’ customers at a time when a large number of those customers are angry at supermarket prices. Clearly, Woolworths executives had lost touch with their customer base.
Wisely, Banducci took out full page advertisements that in my view represented: a “correction” and of course used all the other media channels to convey the same message.
It was classic damage control.
Then, in a most surprising decision, the Prime Minister announced that Kim Williams would be the new chair of the ABC.
Like Woolworths, the ABC had not realised the fundamental change taking place in its customer base.
I know and respect many ABC journalists, and I am not into ABC bashing. But rightly or wrongly, a big segment of its audience took the view that it was biased and they turned away. (The danger Woolworth faced).
Williams is one of the most forceful media executives in the land and when he says that he wants to restore the ABC reputation for unbiased credibility, and then he will do it. And if necessary, he will do it forcibly.
Albanese must have realised that appointing Williams as the ABC chair will mean that he and his ministers will face a lot more encounters, like the clash between the ABC’s Michael Rowland and the Prime Minister over the tax cut “promise”.
It is just possible the ABC will point out to its audience that the industrial relations bill before the Senate provides a smokescreen for an attack on mortgage and rent stressed people which, if passed, will offset the benefits they will receive via the tax cuts.
It's not an issue Albanese wants highlighted.
As my readers know Albanese by making employing casuals too complex with big fines for mistakes, he effectively stops casual employment which, if legislated, would deliver a 25 per cent cut in take home cash for those who desperately need it. And the smokescreen also extends to an unprecedented attack on the main employer of those under rent and mortgage stress, family business and greatly damages the gig economy which those under stress use to find second jobs to cover their payments.
Williams will demand that both sides of all events — not just the tax cuts and Aborigines – be fairly set out for the ABC customer base which, like the Woolworths customer base, represents the entire nation.
Commercial media needs to watch out because under Williams they face a very different ABC. But we must acknowledge that the Albanese made a decision to “rescue” the ABC in the full knowledge, but it could adversely impact portrayal of the government’s policy stances and will create unhappiness in some sectors of the ABC staff.
For Dutton issues like Australia Day and tax cuts are relatively straightforward but in watching my readers embrace Trump’s wider policy spectrum it became clear that the silent majority that turned their back on the ABC and expressed their views so clearly in the referendum and the Morgan poll have a much wider set of views which differ markedly from the views of sections of the government and large corporations.
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24 January, 2024
Glenn Greenwald Brutally Eviscerates All the Narratives Peddled By the Left About January 6
Glenn Greenwald isn’t a conservative, though he’s been more receptive and complimentary about right-leaning media outlets in recent years. The reason is simple: these outlets cover stories the media establishment refuses. Greenwald may sound like he’s been red-pilled, but he’s remained constant like Bill Maher. It’s just that more folks on his side are taking up abjectly insane and anti-democratic positions on policy and free speech rights. Still, on these topics, Greenwald has shown to be relentless and, at times, ruthless in his critiques of the Democratic Party, the media, and the Department of Justice. It’s earned him more than a few media spots on Fox News and the ire of fellow progressives.
The latest narrative Greenwald is trying to exorcise from the souls of liberals is that January 6 was an attempted coup, armed rebellion, or an insurrection. It’s an emphatic no on all fronts. Joe Biden is president, the military was not deployed, and Trump left willingly. All of the characteristics of a traditional coup d’état are absent, and the former Guardian journalist slaps down all the points made by liberals Destiny and the Krassenstein brothers, Ed and Brian.
If there is one critique of Greenwald, which could be viewed as a positive or a negative, maybe he shouldn’t agree to participate in some of these debates. This one, held on January 7, had Alex Jones on the panel. It was a ZeroHedge debate, which is an interesting site, though one which, at times, veers into territory that’s out there. But this is America, and we have free speech. And I tip my cap to Greenwald for not being afraid to discuss any issue with anyone. Someone clipped Greenwald shredding all the points made by the Krassensteins and Destiny, aka Steven Kenneth Bonnell, a video game streamer, by photoshopping bruises and cuts on their faces every time Greenwald delivered a counterpunch:
Again, Greenwald may sound like a conservative in these clips, but he’s not. He’s just not crazy like the rest of the Left. Also, what a smackdown; it was absolutely brutal.
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Ted Cruz Slams Biden’s Association With Far-Left Group Demonizing Conservatives
Sen. Ted Cruz is raising the alarm about President Joe Biden’s administration partnering with a far-left group demonizing conservatives in its efforts to combat “domestic terrorism.”
“The woke and weaponized bureaucracy of the Biden administration is using the Southern Poverty Law Center’s widely debunked database to target conservatives,” the Texas Republican told The Daily Signal in an exclusive statement.
Cruz was responding to The Daily Signal’s exclusive report that SPLC President Margaret Huang bragged in 2021 that the Biden administration had reached out to her organization in its efforts to combat “the domestic terrorism threat.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center puts mainstream conservative and Christian groups on a “hate map” along with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan. This bias suggests the Biden administration views conservatives as a threat to domestic tranquility, critics say.
“The SPLC is a one-trick pony, and its song-and-dance of labeling conservatives ‘domestic terrorists’ is tired and fraudulent,” Cruz added. “It is incredible that the SPLC has the audacity to label conservatives ‘domestic terrorists’ while one of its own lawyers is currently being prosecuted for charges of actual domestic terrorism.”
Cruz was referring to the case of Thomas Webb Jurgens, an SPLC lawyer who faces domestic terrorism charges for a riot involving Molotov cocktails last March. The SPLC and the National Lawyers Guild claimed Jurgens had been there as a “legal observer,” but did not address whether he dressed in Antifa-style black bloc clothing, nor whether he engaged in any of the violence at the riot.
While the SPLC does not, strictly speaking, label conservatives “domestic terrorists,” it has redirected the program it used to bankrupt Ku Klux Klan organizations to target mainstream conservative and Christian groups like Alliance Defending Freedom, the Center for Immigration Studies, Moms for Liberty, and the Family Research Council. The SPLC insinuates that these groups pose a domestic terrorism threat similar to the 1920s Klan by putting them on a “hate map” alongside KKK chapters.
“Joe Biden’s choice to associate with the SPLC is unacceptable, and I hope that every member of the administration associated with this extremist group is held accountable,” Cruz concluded.
SPLC Head Boasts About Advising Biden
The Daily Signal exclusively reported that Huang, SPLC’s president, appears in a video bragging to donors attending a fall 2021 meeting that many agencies in Biden’s administration had approached the center to craft a domestic terrorism strategy.
“I think there’s no question that we are unparalleled in our abilities to track and monitor the hate and extremist groups in the country, and I can tell you that we’ve had many agencies in the new Biden administration reaching out to solicit our expertise and our knowledge and information to help shape the policies that the new administration is adopting to counter the domestic terrorism threat,” Huang said, according to the video.
The Biden administration’s ties to the SPLC make Huang’s claim credible, and neither the White House nor any of the agencies involved in the administration’s domestic terrorism strategy denied Huang’s assertion.
Biden and his team have hosted SPLC leaders and staff at the White House at least 11 times since Jan. 20, 2021, when Biden became president. Biden nominated an SPLC attorney, Nancy Abudu, to a federal judgeship.
Last year, the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, office used the SPLC’s “hate group” list to target “radical-traditional Catholics” in a now-infamous memo. According to the SPLC’s logic, critics say, the entire Roman Catholic Church arguably should be listed as a “hate group” because the SPLC cited the Catechism of the Catholic Church in branding the Ruth Institute a “hate group.”
Earlier this month, the White House touted Vice President Kamala Harris’ meeting “with voting rights leaders.” Among the leaders highlighted: Seth Levi, the SPLC’s chief strategy officer.
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The Hysterical Style in American Politics
The post-Joe McCarthy era and the candidacy of Barry Goldwater once prompted liberal political scientist Richard Hofstadter to chronicle a supposedly long-standing right-wing “paranoid style” of conspiracy-fed extremism.
But far more common, especially in the 21st century, has been a left-wing, hysterical style of inventing scandals and manipulating perceived tensions for political advantage.
Or, in the immortal words of former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”
The 2008 economic emergency crested on Sept. 7, with the near collapse of the home mortgage industry.
Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, more than four months after the meltdown. In that interim, the officials had finally restored financial confidence and plotted a course of economic recovery.
No matter. The Obama administration never stopped hyping the financial meltdown as if it had just occurred. That way, it rammed through Obamacare, massive deficit spending, and the vast expansion of the federal government. All that stymied economic growth and recovery for years.
In 2016, then-President Donald Trump was declared Hitler-like and an existential threat to democracy.
Amid this derangement syndrome, any means necessary to stop him were justified: the Russian collusion hoax, impeachment over a phone call, or the Hunter Biden laptop “disinformation” farce.
Eventually, the Left sought to normalize the once-unthinkable: Removing the leading presidential candidate from state ballots and indicting him in state and local courts.
Nothing was off-limits—not forging a federal court document, calling for a military coup, rioting on Inauguration Day, or radically changing the way Americans voted in presidential elections.
In October 2017, allegations surfaced about serial sexual predation by liberal cinema icon Harvey Weinstein.
The #MeToo furor immediately followed.
At first, accusers properly outed dozens of mostly liberal celebrities, actors, authors, and CEOs for their prior and mostly covered-up sexual harassment and often assault.
But soon, the once-legitimate movement had morphed into general hysteria. Thousands of men (and women) were persecuted for alleged offenses, often sexual banter or rude repartee, committed decades prior.
#MeToo jumped the shark with the left-wing effort to take down conservative Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. Would-be accusers surfaced from his high school days, 35 years earlier, but without any supporting evidence or witnesses for their wild, lurid charges.
#MeToo hysteria ended when too many liberal grandees were endangered. Most dramatically, former Joe Biden senatorial aide Tara Reade came forward during the 2020 campaign cycle with charges that front-runner Biden had once sexually assaulted her—and was trashed by the liberal media.
The outbreak of COVID-19 in the United States during the winter of 2020 prompted an even greater hysteria.
Without scientific evidence, federal health czars Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins were able to persuade the Trump administration to shut down the economy in the country’s first national quarantine.
Suddenly, it became a thought crime to question the wisdom of 6-foot social distancing, of mandatory mask-wearing, of the Wuhan virology lab’s origin of the COVID-19 virus, or of off-label use of prescription drugs.
Left-wing politicians and celebrities, from Hillary Rodham Clinton and Gavin Newsom to Jane Fonda, all blurted out the political advantages that the lockdowns offered—from recalibrating capitalism and health care to ensuring the 2020 defeat of Trump.
The COVID-19 hysteria magically ended when Biden won the 2020 election. Suddenly, the explanations about the bat or pangolin origins of the virus faded. The damage from the quarantines could no longer be repressed. And herd immunity gradually mitigated the epidemic.
The lockdown caused untold economic chaos, suicides, and health crises.
One result was the 120 days of looting, arson, death, destruction, and violence spawned by Antifa and Black Lives Matter in the aftermath of the tragic death of George Floyd while in police custody in May 2020.
Suddenly, a hysterical lie took hold: American police were waging war against black males.
The details around Floyd’s sudden death—he was in the act of committing a felony, resisting arrest, suffering from coronary artery disease and the after-effects of COVID-19, and being high on dangerous drugs—were off limits.
The riot toll reached $2 billion in property damage, more than 35 deaths, and 1,500 injured law enforcement officers. A federal courthouse, a police precinct, and a historic church were torched.
Police forces were defunded. Emboldened left-wing prosecutors nullified existing laws.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion commissars spread throughout American higher education as meritocracy came under assault.
Racial essentialism triumphed. Racially segregated dorms, campus spaces, and graduations were normalized.
Everything from destroying the southern border to dropping SAT requirements for college admission followed.
Sometimes real, sometimes hyped crises led to these contrived left-wing hysterias—like the Jan. 6 violent “armed insurrection” or the “fascist,” “ultra-MAGA” threat.
Otherwise, the progressive movement cannot enact its unpopular agendas. So, it must scare the people silly and gin up chaos to destroy its perceived enemies—any crisis it can
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/19/hysterical-style-american-politics/
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Australia: Muslims lobby to axe ‘sinful’ student loans
Islamic clerics are lobbying the federal government to axe the “sinful’’ indexation of university loans for Muslim students, forbidden under Sharia law.
The Australian National Imams Council has told the government’s Universities Accord review that HELP (Higher Education Loan Program) and HECS (Higher Education Contribution Scheme) debts are discouraging Muslims from studying at university.
The imams are pushing for a “culturally and religiously compatible” new funding model for Islamic students.
“The current HELP system, while designed to defer university fees through a loan arrangement, may conflict with the religious beliefs of Muslims,’’ the council told the Accord panel, whose final recommendations will be made public by the government in February.
“According to Islamic laws, the HELP loan is considered riba (usury) and is generally prohibited,” the council said.
“This leaves Muslim students with the difficult choice of either disregarding their religious principles or forgoing higher education.’’
The imams said the Koran and the prophetic traditions of hadiths “explicitly condemn and prohibit riba, stressing that it harms society and promises inequality’’.
Under Islamic law, “loans must be repaid in the exact same loan principal as acquired, even after many years and inflation’’.
“Riba is a major sin in Islam,’’ they told the panel.
Nearly three million Australian university graduates face a combined $4bn increase to their HECS and HELP debts on June 30 if inflation stays at 5 per cent over the next six months.
Under the HECS-HELP scheme, university students take out interest-free loans from the federal government to pay for their tuition fees.
The debt is paid back through the taxation system once graduates begin earning about $52,000 a year.
Graduates need to pay back $78.2bn in outstanding debt, which rises in line with inflation every year to maintain the real value of the loan.
If the annual inflation rate lands at 5 per cent in June, indexation would add roughly $1325 to the average $26,500 debt.
The Canberra Islamic Centre has also complained that the current structure of HECS-HELP loans “inadvertently creates a barrier for Muslim students who seek to abide by their religious convictions’’.
“The issue is not merely theoretical; it has practical implications that discourage, prevent and disadvantage Muslim students from going to university,’’ the Islamic Centre told the panel.
“They face the unfair choice of compromising religious beliefs or foregoing higher education opportunities.’’
The Islamic Centre wants the government to “explore alternative indexing methods’’ for student loans.
Islamic Co-operative Finance Australia – which offers “Sharia-compliant investments’’ – has told the panel that Islamic teachings forbid the charging of interest on loans.
It said the “ideal scenario’’ would be to waive indexation fees for Muslim students. “A no indexation and no interest on debt approach will clear any spiritual doubts amongst Muslim students that the HECS debt is not Sharia compliant,’’ it says.
“Under Islamic law, the imposition of an additional charge on a debt, commonly referred to as ‘riba’, is unequivocally deemed as usurious and unjust.
“Interest-bearing debts are prohibited, and no form of interest or financial gain can be charged on debt.
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23 January, 2024
How old was Adam and when did he live?
Tom Croucher has done a very scholarly analysis of the numbers used in Genesis. It is long and complex so I make no attempt to reproduce it here. I reproduce below just the Abstract and conclusion.
I have myself come to a similar but much less complex conclusion when I argued that the ages of Methuselah & co were a simple decimal mistake. I argued that the scribes of the original and much older text had misunderstood the numbers they saw and assumed that they were decimal when they were not. Decimal numbering has been around as long as people have had ten fingers so it was an understandable mistake. So if we move the decimal point one place we get more believable numbers. Methuselah lived only into his 90s. My article on that is below
http://jonjayray.com/methus.html
I am inclined to defer to Croucher on the matter but I note one difficulty in his account: He fails to consider the obvious different origins of Genesis chapter 1 and the rest of Genesis. Most of Genesis is consitent with the rest of the Torah in referring to God as Yahweh but Chapter 1 only refers to him as Elohim, a much later practice. So chapter 1 is an interpolation to the original text. Both chapter 1 and the other early chapters maybe of Sumerian origin but considering both as part of the same narrative is clearly fallacious. I do not doubt that chapter 1 is of Sumerian origin. Verses 6 and 7 clearly reflect Sumerian cosmology. I expand on that below:
https://ntwords.blogspot.com/2017/03/#8618250840934603253
I discuss WHY Chapter 1 was interpolated below:
http://jonjayray.com/why7.html
Finally, I think Croucher should simply delete from his account all mention of Chapter 1. That would not greatly harm his narrative
ABSTRACT
In the first two papers of this series, I developed the following propositions: Adam was not the first human, and he lived in Sumer, Southern Mesopotamia, in the period 3200 – 3000 BC. In this paper I use those conclusions to place the early chapters of Genesis in their Sumerian context and I propose that the original
written record of Adam was a Sumerian document where the ages that appear in Genesis 5 were recorded in a numbering system of that time, and this led to translation errors that result in the problematic ages of the patriarchs. I then propose a means of reverse-engineering the ages to the correct numbers when these
events were first recorded in Sumer. The conclusion is that Adam was 81 years old when he died.
CONCLUSION
The pre-Flood portion of the SKL uses simple statements to present a list of kings. While the list of names and places may be believed the lengths of the reigns are not believable.
However, the fact that every reign is a combination of multiples of 3,600 and 600, makes it easy to demonstrate how the misinterpretation may have occurred. When reverse-engineered the resulting reigns return to numbers consistent with human
lifespans.
From beginning to the end of the whole SKL there are three sections: the pre-Flood with lengthy number, the middle section showing a reduction in the numbers, and the final section showing reigns consistent with human lifespans.
The same thing happens in the Bible: the simple writing style of early Sumer in Genesis 1, 5, and 11; the pattern of reducing lifespans and longevity in Genesis 5 that can be reverse-engineered to produce normal human lifespans.
Therefore, I propose that Adam lived in the period 3200 – 3000 BC and that he probably lived to be 81 years old. This means that Adam lived at a time when the priests of Sumer were an elite class of people.Intelligent, well-educated, and highly trained, the priests developed both writing and mathematics — knowledge essential to manage their increasingly sophisticated society.
This knowledge helps establish the social, cultural and, most importantly, the religious context for Adam and leads to a different understanding of Genesis 1-5.
If this revised chronology does prove to be acceptable, then the propositions of the first two papers (that Adam was not the first human and that he lived 3200 – 3000 BC becomes a more certain proposition.
If the best explanation for the longevity in Genesis 5 is that they are the result of a misinterpretation of a numbering system from Shuruppak around 290 BC, then the record from Adam to Noah must be a Mesopotamian text written at that time. If that is the case, then the argument for the story being passed on as oral history is redundant. When a culture has a written record there is no need for oral history.
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PhD Biologist Challenges SPLC to Debate After It Accused Him of ‘Peddling Pseudoscience’ Against Transgender Orthodoxy
Ph.D. biologist Colin Wright is publicly inviting the Southern Poverty Law Center to debate him on the subject of what the SPLC calls “anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience,” specifically on the transgender issue.
The SPLC released a 41,000-word report claiming that “the controversy over trans health care is manufactured to reinforce both white supremacy and the political goals of the Christian Right.” The report claims to reveal “anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience,” but it does not seriously address the concerns of critics of the transgender movement.
The report mentions Wright, a Manhattan Institute fellow, as part of the movement pushing “pseudoscience.”
“It’s almost not really worth responding to,” Wright tells “The Daily Signal Podcast” of the SPLC report. “It is such a poor, poorly put together document, riddled with typos.”
“Most importantly, it justs makes all these accusations that I’m peddling ‘pseudoscience,’ that type of thing,” he adds. “It doesn’t engage with any of the actual arguments and the substance of what I’m saying, or what anyone else mentioned in the report is saying. There’s not really anything to respond to.”
He calls the report “completely ridiculous.”
“It’s purely just a smear piece,” Wright says. “They just want to garner attention and stir outrage.”
“But if anyone from the SPLC wants to actually have a conversation with me about anything that I’ve ever said on this topic, if you think I’m peddling ‘pseudoscience,’ expose me in front of a huge audience,” the biologist says. “Let’s have a one-on-one conversation with the moderator of your choice.”
“I’m just here to have a conversation about the biology of sex, so let’s have that conversation,” Wright says.
He recalls getting ostracized from academia for daring to question gender ideology.
“There’s a concerted movement by activists coming from various humanities disciplines, like queer theory, that are trying to just muddy the waters about what males and females are, and it’s difficult just trying to engage with them, because they’re doing a political project,” Wright says. “I’m doing sort of a scientific truth-finding project here, and so that’s what kind of started me down this path.”
He warns that “there’s major consequences, not just for individuals, but for society as a whole, when you’re denying fundamental aspects of our biology.”
As for claims that Wright is pushing a “Christian Right” ideology, the biologist recalls his history of arguing for evolution against some of the very people the SPLC says he is supporting.
“I used to argue against creationists and Intelligent Design proponents back in the day as an evolutionary biologist, because I think evolution is a very important part of who we are as a species,” he says.
Wright said the idea of giving patients hormones and surgeries “to make your body sex align with your mind sex” is “wildly regressive and anti-scientific and horrific, grotesque.”
He says he does not object to adults going under the knife for cosmetic surgeries, “but the thing that makes the ‘gender-affirming care’ so bad is that this is covered by insurance, as though it’s life-saving, and it’s clearly not.”
As for the SPLC, it has become an enforcer of the Left’s ideology. As I wrote in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC has leveraged its track record of suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy to develop a “hate map” it uses to smear enemies. The SPLC has put conservative Christian groups, immigration-reform groups, parental rights groups, and other organizations that oppose its leftist agenda on the “hate map” alongside Klan chapters.
The SPLC’s education arm, which rejected the name “Teaching Tolerance” to become “Learning for Justice” in 2021, has long pushed transgender identity lessons, even for preschoolers.
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UK: How the National Maritime Museum is trying to decolonise Lord Nelson
I spent Christmas in Turin, with its superb and often neglected museums that are a particular delight because they are uncontaminated by preaching about the evils of European colonialism. It is not that I have no moral perspective on how the creators of empire across four millennia have acted towards their subjects. But the use of objects in museums to tell a distorted picture in the interests of supposed Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, infused with Critical Race Theory, is a betrayal of what museums are supposed to do. Museums are not political tools, as the Museums Association, with its rants against racism and colonialism, seems to think. Racism is indeed a great evil. But it is essential to look at the past through the eyes of those who lived then, realising that they operated according to different ideas about the world which, unsettling as that might be, legitimated behaviour we would deplore if it were exercised today.
These contemporary political concerns do much more to distort the past than to explain it
A madness has been infecting our leading museums in recent months. The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge put together a ‘Black Atlantic’ exhibition that brought together items connected one way or another with the slave trade. Ignoring all other explanations, the captions maintained that the reason a famous prize was offered by the Royal Society to whoever could work out how to measure longitude was that the crews of slave ships needed greater accuracy when navigating their way across the Atlantic. Now the Royal Academy of Arts is launching its own display about colonialism, imperialism and slavery.
The National Maritime Museum has been gravitating in the same direction for the last few years. This is sad because it is one of the most popular museums in London, and attracts large numbers of foreign tourists, who must be bewildered by the persistent attempts to politicise the way we look at Britain’s past. Lord Nelson and his contemporaries have been particular targets of initiatives that aim to demote them from their pedestals. A new sculpture has been installed to set the record straight. A ‘Sea Deity’ has been cast in bronze, designed by Eve Shepherd with the help of local children and the charity Action for Refugees Lewisham. The artist has moulded a beautiful face in a traditional, almost neo-classical, way, but we are expected to see the Deity as non-binary – hence the gender-neutral term Deity. The children who helped the artist design her work of art were, like the boy in ‘The Emperor’s New Clothes’, more inclined to tell the truth: when they saw the finished work, they named the lovely deity Olympia, having decided that she is female.
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Has the MAGA Movement Finally Found Its Heir?
An audience of mainstream folks
Standing inside a makeshift office, a crowd of red hat-wearing MAGA acolytes in front of him and a massive mural of piercing-eyes Donald Trump on the wall behind, Matt Gaetz comfortably took questions from the crowd until an uncomfortable one came in.
“What’s the youngest school girl you’ve been with?” a heckler in disguise wanted to know.
Most people, when faced with that question, would grow flustered or even angry. But Matt Gaetz is not like most people.
The lawmaker, standing there in a black quarter zip fleece and jeans at Donald Trump’s Manchester, N.H. headquarters, waited for the boos to subside. Then, like an AI bot programmed for the general election, he ridiculed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for their age and gender.
"Think about being a part of a party where they haven't even tried to make an argument about winning your vote," Gaetz said, sidestepping any discussion of the ethics probe launched against him for alleged sex trafficking. "The Democratic Party today has basically put up as their candidate a nursing home escapee and the annoying lady from the HR department."
No beat was skipped. No eyebrow was raised. The talking points endured. The event continued on.
Trump has a small army of surrogates working on his behalf in New Hampshire this week. None seem to be enjoying the role as much as Gaetz.
The Florida Republican has appeared at meet-and-greets across the state. He has done numerous press hits, at one point on Sunday propping up a laptop on a box of 60 Bic pens to get the right angle for a shot for a Fox News segment. And he was right offstage at Trump’s rally on Saturday night — earning a shoutout from the ex-president and a notable “We love you Matt Gaetz!!” scream from a woman one football field length across the arena.
“I love that this is the fisticuffs of politics,” Gaetz told me from his car after leaving an event Sunday afternoon. “So much of what I do is behind the committee dias or the lectern on the floor. But what is special about this is you get eyeball to eyeball with people who tell you what is on their mind.”
At his events, attendees say they view Gaetz not so much as a surrogate for the campaign but as an heir to the Trump movement. He has begun, to a degree, to physically resemble a Trump, with slicked back hair in the style of Trump’s actual sons. But most people who have flocked to his events say it is his political approach that reminds them of the former president. It’s precisely because he gets heckled that they love him.
“It’s a little bit of crazy but the right kind of crazy,” said Bill Mitchell, 54, of Troy, New Hampshire. “He does what he said he was going to do. And Trump did what he said he was going to do.”
“I love him,” said Peter Salvitti, of Sonopeake, New Hampshire. “He’s got chutzpah!”
Few Republicans in Washington would agree. To them, Gaetz isn’t the right kind of crazy. He’s a chaos agent, whose political convictions revolve around, largely, the promotion of Matt Gaetz. His role in ousting Speaker Kevin McCarthy — a feat treated by Trump fans as akin to Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile — weakened the party and left them in a state of disorder from which they have not recovered. His alleged ethical transgressions aren’t signs that he has the right enemies; if true, they’re illustrations of serious moral lapses. They'd be more than fine if he just went away.
Gaetz himself knows he’s not liked. “They think I’m the crazy one and I think they’re the crazy one,” he told the crowd in Keene on Sunday.
But as Gaetz sees it, he’s closer to the id of the party than many of his fellow congressional Republicans. And if you were to be with him on the trail in New Hampshire, you’d be hard pressed to disagree. One woman who waited in a line to get a photo with the lawmaker put her 91-year-old father on the phone to talk with him. She was so elated, her hands were shaking. She struggled to hit the right button to hang up the line.
“The way he looks at you without blinking,” said the woman, Cherie Rowe, 61, “you know he is never going to back down. It’s like a hawkeye.”
Several attendees at the event said they could very easily see themselves voting for Gaetz if he were to run for president. He was, they argued, Trumpism personified; or, at least, attitudinally and temperamentally as close to the personification as someone not named Trump could be.
But could Gaetz see it too?
“If we succeed and get Trump elected there will be many people who rightfully will lay claim to their own role in the MAGA movement,” he told me.
Between that Manchester stop and the one later in the day in Keene, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced he was suspending his presidential campaign. When Gaetz showed up at Tempesta's Restaurant to greet the waiting crowd, he seemed jubilant over the news. But beneath the surface, it wasn’t hard to detect some relief, too.
“I didn’t like when mom and dad were fighting,” he said.
Gaetz had helped get DeSantis elected governor. They were once allies. He had done debate prep with him. DeSantis was a fellow Florida man — albeit one who had not enjoyed his time in New Hampshire as much as Gaetz was now.
What, I asked Gaetz, had he and Trump understood that DeSantis didn’t.
“That they wanted to vote for Trump,” Gaetz replied.
That may be a simple observation. But it’s one Gaetz accurately made and many others didn’t. And for that, he is now benefiting, with a captive audience among the MAGA base and a powerful ally in the all-but-assured presidential nominee. He may be persona non grata among certain segments of the GOP leadership. But his brand of lightning-rod politics resonates with the people in the party deciding the elections, for better and worse.
Hours after being confronted by a heckler in Manchester, Gaetz found himself once more targeted in Keene. This time, a man wearing a MAGA hat and a backpack approached him for a photo before declaring that he had brought with him a "bag of underage girls.” He then pulled out a blow-up doll from his bag.
As the heckler was escorted out, blow-up doll in hand, Gaetz kept taking pictures as if nothing had ever happened.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/01/22/maga-movement-heir-matt-gaetz-00136968
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22 January, 2024
White Flight From Military Service
It’s no secret that the U.S. military has been struggling to meet its recruitment goals during the Biden years. Last year, for example, the Army fell roughly 10,000 short of its recruitment target. Furthermore, all military branches have seen their total number of personnel drop over the last three years, with the Army’s numbers down more than 8%, or some 40,000 soldiers.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon continues to deny that the pushing of woke DEI policies has anything to do with the drop in numbers. Instead, the Pentagon has focused on other factors, such as the growing child obesity rate across the country, which has resulted in a smaller number of young people fit enough to serve.
While there is no question that increasing obesity rates have been a contributing factor, there seems to be a much clearer and more glaring problem associated with the Biden administration’s focus on DEI.
The number of white recruits the Army has pulled in has decreased steadily and significantly. Back in 2018, roughly 44,000 new recruits were white. However, the overall number of white recruits has been steadily dropping in each of five consecutive years. As of 2023, the total number of white recruits had fallen to just over 25,000. Call it blowback.
Meanwhile, the total number of both black and Hispanic recruits has remained relatively flat. Yet the overall percentage of black recruits has increased from 20% in 2018 to 24% by 2023, and Hispanic recruits have risen from 17% to 24%. But these percentage increases are due almost entirely to the decrease in white recruits.
The cause is both apparent and understandable: the woke focus on an ethnically and racially diverse military rather than on a colorblind military.
The question the Pentagon should be considering is that which makes for the best fighting men and women, not the color of their skin. The uniform and common cause of any military organization should always be, first and foremost, the defense of the homeland. The U.S. military’s mission should thus be focused on being the best and most lethal fighting force on the planet.
The warrior’s primary commitment is to serve his nation, which requires the willingness to fight and die. A commitment to diversity for diversity’s sake distracts and is counterintuitive from this mission, as it elevates an individual’s differences as ultimate rather than uniformity in cause and purpose.
To make matters worse, the woke commitment to DEI is, at its core, antithetical to the American founding ideal of all men being created equal. Individuals are to be judged not by their social, racial, or ethnic group but on their individual merits.
The promotion of such inherently racist concepts as “white privilege” and “microaggressions” likely has a lot to do with why fewer young white folks are signing up to serve. Think about it: Who would want to serve and possibly die for a country that tells white people they are its primary problem?
When we teach our children that America is inherently racist, sexist, bigoted, and greedy, this is the bitter harvest we reap. Is it any wonder that recruiting numbers have been steadily falling?
Pride in our good nation and a commitment to colorblindness are what is needed to reverse the downward trend.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/103592-white-flight-from-military-service-2024-01-16
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Italian Police Don't Hold Back When It Comes to Anti-Israel Marchers
Italians do tend to be sympathetic to Israel
We've seen in some cities where the reaction to leftist protesters who do things like block roadways or get violent is rather muted. Some even react to them like they have a right to block other cars and protest in the middle of a highway. Even when there is violence, it often seems like no one is arrested or suffers any real consequence from these actions. The protection of the magical "D."
I wrote earlier about the tweet from the Reagan National Airport that ticked off many because it appeared to countenance blocking roads as a "First Amendment" protected enterprise. In fact there is no such right. But these folks on the left probably think there is, since they get away with this so often. But no, you don't have the right to stomp on everyone else's rights (at least not in this regard) just because you want to toss a tantrum about the latest leftist cause.
We need to start busting this myth to stop this tactic, but that requires the police who are often in Democrat-run cities to be able to enforce the law.
But the "protesters" in Vicenza, Italy got some consequences big time when they got out of hand during a protest. Hundreds of people were there to protest that Israelis were allowed to be part of a jewelry fair in the city. That's how far these folks are reaching -- they will even protest jewelry fairs. Once again showing it isn't about protesting bombing, it's about eliminating Israel.
The anti-Israel crew began firing smoke bombs and flares at the riot cops. That's when the police charged the line of marchers, and started whaling on the activists and pushing them out of the road.
Then about half way through the video, they brought out the water cannon. They weren't messing around. They managed to clear the area they wanted and the woman who appeared to be in charge signaled them to stop. Then activists tossed another lit flare at them, almost lighting up one of the cops. So the police then pushed them back even further.
Officials said that the protest and the violence had no impact on the event, which went on as scheduled.
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Wisconsin Lets Voters Decide On Abortion Rules Rather Than the Courts
Late-term abortions are on the chopping block as Wisconsin Republicans introduce legislation to put limits on the anti-life procedure.
This week, state Republicans called for a statewide referendum to decide on a 14-week abortion ban, asking voters to approve the policy through a ballot measure during April's election. The bill is being fast-tracked through the Legislature, with a public hearing scheduled for Monday.
However, Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI) has already said he would veto the bill if passed— even before it's put on the ballot.
On the contrary, Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R-Wisc.) said the measure is a reasonable approach to finding a consensus on the controversial issue that sways voters.
"Out of an abundance of respect for how sensitive this issue is, we would like to hear directly from the voters whether they agree that this is what they want the law to be - striking a balance between protecting life and showing compassion and respect for women who find themselves in difficult situations," Felzkowski said.
"The bottom line for me is this: Wisconsinites should be able to make their own reproductive healthcare decisions without interference from politicians who don't know anything about their lives, their family, or their circumstances. And I'll veto any bill that makes reproductive healthcare any less accessible for Wisconsinites than it is right now," Evers said in a statement in December.
Last year, a Dane County Circuit judge ruled that a decades-old Wisconsin law does not prohibit abortions, cleaning the state bans feticide but not "consensual medical abortions." A Republican district attorney appealed the ruling from Dane County Circuit in December, in which state Rep. Amanda Nedweski predicted that the appeal would fail in the liberal state Supreme Court.
Abortion has become the central issue in political races in Wisconsin. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos— who co-sponsored the bill— said he wants voters to decide on abortion rules rather than the courts.
"I'd like to put something on the ballot in April that allows the people of Wisconsin to be the ones who get the final say on deciding on abortion. So it's not the court. It's not the Legislature. It's not the governor. It's going to be the people who get the final choice," he said.
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Maybe They Really Do Hate Christians
We hear a lot about hate these days. It might be a “hate crime” against an individual or property. It might be “hate speech” about someone or something. But defining hate is difficult because it’s mostly subjective. It’s a little like what Supreme Court Associate Justice Potter Stewart said about defining pornography in 1964: “I know it when I see it.” But one definition of hate is easier to quantify, one denoting hostile actions motivated by intense dislike or prejudice. Using this criterion suggests government bureaucrats hate Christianity.
I don’t mean to be provocative, but recent events indicate they do. The latest example comes from the House Judiciary Committee, which announced on Wednesday that the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is in possession of documents showing that our government is surveilling the financial transactions of people buying Bibles and other religious texts.
For what purpose does one surveil another? Surveillance ordinarily involves people who are suspected of something. That means our government is so concerned about people buying Bibles that it’s spending tax money to determine who they are. This sounds like a hostile action.
For all I know, this net of surveillance may have ensnared me. I wrote a check last summer to purchase some new hymnals for my church and wrote “Hymnal Fund” on the memo line. Aside from traditional Christian hymns, the books include Old Testament Psalms, reformed Christian prayers and creeds, and a confession of faith so that the government might classify it as a religious text. In the interest of conserving taxpayer money, there is no need to surveil me any further; I freely admit to buying Bibles and religious texts.
This week’s revelations about surveilling Christians are not isolated. We learned last summer that the FBI was spying on Roman Catholic churches because they were suspected of conducting mass in Latin. Catholics have done this for more than 1,000 years, yet the government believes this is suspicious enough to merit surveillance by men with guns. This, too, sounds a little hostile.
There are many other examples of hostile actions against American Christians and their churches. From legislation that seeks to pierce the confidentiality of the confessional to a growing number of federal actions against people and institutions of faith, there’s a steady stream of hostile actions toward Christians.
I’ve received my share of unsolicited nastygrams from people who call me names, insult me, libel, and defame me, but I’m not sure whether they actually hate me. Candidly, I don’t care. People are free to disagree and believe whatever they wish; their beliefs are none of my business.
But someone’s beliefs become my business when they manifest themselves in hostile actions toward me. The hateful behavior of a couple of people is inconsequential, but the federal government is a whole different animal; they have rifles tactical vests, and prisons.
The surveillance and punishment of Christians for the crime of having and believing in the Bible is nothing new. If you live in a place ruled by the Taliban or Houthi rebels, Bible ownership is either illegal or severely restricted. China and North Korea also ban or restrict Bibles, as did the former Soviet Union.
The common thread that connects these nations is they all have authoritarian governments. Defectors report that entire families in North Korea, including a two-year-old toddler, are serving sentences of life in prison because the parents had a Bible. The Chinese Communist Party is a little less bad; a man who sold Bibles and other religious tracts was sentenced to seven years in prison. Bible readers in Afghanistan reportedly face summary execution.
This 'progressive' ideology is persecuting 21st-century Christians in a frighteningly regressive way, mirroring the Dark Ages and Medieval Europe. We’re not seeing news about Bible believers being burned at the stake, but summary executions and toddler imprisonment don’t seem like very progressive policies.
This all begs the question: Why is the government of the United States surveilling people buying Bibles and other religious texts? They must be doing it for some reason. Still, it’s unclear why the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has “urged large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression,” extending to “the purchase of books (including religious texts).”
It pains me as a Christian to say this, but all these hostile actions make me wonder whether they really do hate us. I’m not suggesting we should expect the incarceration of two-year-olds or death sentences anytime soon. Still, I am reminded of the words of famed Irish politician and orator John Philpot Curran. As a lawyer arguing in defense of religious freedom, he observed, “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.” He’s not wrong.
https://townhall.com/columnists/scotthogenson/2024/01/21/maybe-they-really-do-hate-us-n2633913
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21 January, 2024
Was Louis Scarcella a Robin Hood?
There have always been cases where people see some good in criminal behavour, with the case of Robin Hood being the classic of that. In modern times Chicago cop Jon Burge is perhaps the best example of that. I have written at some length about him previously. Chicago whites were a lot safer when Jon Burge was around.
https://dissectleft.blogspot.com/2018/12/jon-burge-gottfried-wilhelm-leibniz-and_27.html
The case below could also be an example of that. These days I interest myself in police misbehavior only when it occurs in Australia. Example below:
https://australian-politics.blogspot.com/2024/01/man-acquitted-of-murder-seeks-5.html
But in the 80s and 90s I looked more widely. I followed crooked convictions in the USA and UK too. Being now aged 80, however, I have to limit my ambitions a bit these days
And NYPD detective Louis Scarcella was one whose name kept popping up in my reading. And as I recollect it, Scarcella nearly always targeted blacks who had "form": They had prior criminal convictions, were gang-bangers or were drug dealers. When however they came to attention for something serious Scarcella would spring into action. If there was insufficient evidence to convict the presumed offender, Scarcella would make sure that evidence was provided, often in the form of forced confessions. The result was that a lot of dubious citizens got a long holiday in a government building
So was that good or bad? Mostly bad it seems to me but taking a lot of hoodlums off the street was surely a silver lining. They might or might not have not been guilty of what sent them to jail but they were rarely innocents either
Australia had a notorious crooked cop too: Roger Rogerson, who has just died. He too put a lot of bad guys away but eventually went too far. There is a memoir of him here:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12981943/roger-rogerson-aneurysm.html
A Brooklyn man who served 14 years behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit – in a case investigated by disgraced ex-NYPD Det. Louis Scarcella – had his conviction overturned Thursday, prosecutors said.
Steven Ruffin, 45, choked up in court as his 1996 manslaughter case was tossed by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Matthew D’Emic following an investigation that found several serious errors — including that he was pressured into confessing to the crime after having denied it several times.
“I lost 14 years of my life for a crime I didn’t commit, and today will help me to move on from that chapter of my life, cleared of any wrongdoing,” Ruffin said in a statement.
In court, Ruffin thanked the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office and its Conviction Review Unit for the “incredible amount of work” it did in reviewing his decades-old case.
He paused to compose himself, overcome with emotion, as he thanked his parents, noting that his mother hadn’t lived to see her son’s exoneration.
Ruffin was just 18 when he was convicted of killing 16-year-old James Deligny, who was shot on Kingston Avenue in Crown Heights around 9:10 p.m. on Feb. 5, 1996 in a case of mistaken identity.
Deligny was apparently targeted after robbing Ruffin’s sister Diana, a college freshman, of her earrings, the DA’s Office said.
Ruffin’s sister told her family about the mugging and a manhunt was underway to find the robber. Several members of a group eventually encountered Deligny and his sister a few blocks from Ruffin’s home, where a fight ensued and Deligny was gunned down.
Scarcella interrogated Ruffin, then 17, twice where he denied being the shooter, prosecutors said.
Ruffin’s estranged dad, a cop, was brought to the precinct to convince his son to confess to the slaying, saying he shot Deligny four times, according to the Conviction Review Unit report.
He was released on parole in 2010.
It would take more than a decade after Ruffin was out of jail for prosecutors to reexamine the case and find several errors in the investigation.
“The fact that they actively looked into my case, took the application and the amount of resources that they put in to exonerate me, it, it—that is what staggers my mind,” Ruffin said. “If they would have never said a word about Scarcella, I would have never known because I live in Georgia.”
Deligny’s sister had testified that the shooter had a cracked tooth, like Ruffin.
According to the investigation, Ruffin’s defense attorney at the time, botched the case by failing to tell the jury that the boyfriend of Ruffin’s sister also had a cracked tooth.
The boyfriend confessed to multiple people that he was the one who killed Deligny, the investigation found.
“After a full investigation by my Conviction Review Unit, we can no longer stand by this old conviction and will move to give Mr. Ruffin his good name back,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement.
Ruffin’s exoneration marks the 18th case that has been overturned involving Scarcella, according to the Legal Aid Society.
“The fact that they actively looked into my case, took the application and the amount of resources that they put in to exonerate me, it, it—that is what staggers my mind,” Ruffin said. “If they would have never said a word about Scarcella, I would have never known because I live in Georgia.”
“We will continue to correct miscarriages of justice and to learn from the mistakes we uncover to ensure that they never happen again,” Gonzalez said.
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Is the loss of Christian restraint behind our present problems?
The conventional wisdom among modern conservatives is that the West is undergoing a moral crisis.
This paper recently published a piece by Tom Switzer, “Instead of facing up to moral decline, the West is lowering its standards”, which was representative of this genre. It called attention to the way many aspects of our contemporary situation – family breakdown, “non-existent parenting”, drug abuse and drug-related crime, and the impossibility of civil debate in the face of cancel culture and hypocritical virtue-signalling – have been normalised when in the past they would have been regarded as unacceptable.
Unfortunately, while the piece laid out a list of symptoms, it suggested no overarching diagnosis or cure, no pathway to social renewal and health.
This is because it did not identify the underlying causes of our malaise, which has been 500 years in the making, not 50, as many conservatives would suggest.
Like many illnesses, the underlying cause is actually a positive development taken to extremes. A correction that becomes an overcorrection. A medicine that, taken in excessive quantities, becomes a poison. The ancient Greek word pharmakon means both cure and poison. So what is our pharmakon? It is individual freedom.
It may be an oversimplified generalisation to say the West’s commitment to individual freedom began as a necessary corrective cure to medieval social, cultural, religious, political and economic traditions, customs and systems that had been considered divinely ordained and so not subject to change (oversimplified because late-medieval Europe was in many ways a dynamic society that gave birth to the Renaissance flowering of the arts and the rediscovery of ancient learning). Nevertheless, it is the case that the power of the ideal of individual freedom really gained momentum and force in the wake of the Reformation and its (ultimately) secular counterpart, the Enlightenment.
In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the doors of the Wittenberg Cathedral, challenging the hegemonic power of the papacy in European society and suggesting the individual could have direct access to God unmediated by the institutional church.
A century later, Francis Bacon published Novum Organon, a milestone in the philosophy of science, championing the power of human reason, and arguing for the separation of science and religion so the individual scientist would be free to conduct their investigations without fear of ecclesial censure. (Only 13 years later, Galileo was forced by the Roman Inquisition to recant his findings that the Earth revolved around the sun, not the other way around.)
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the dominant idea of political philosophy was “the social contract”, promoted by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. While each of these had different versions of the theory, what they had in common was the view that social order was the result of some kind of unspoken agreement between the individuals who comprised a society and the state that provided the laws and the order within which they could exercise their individual freedom. In economics, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, contributed the theoretical support for free market capitalism, in which the pursuit by individuals of their own wellbeing, minimally regulated by government, would deliver improvements in living standards.
These movements resulted in an explosion of human creativity, knowledge, innovation and wealth and the development of modern parliamentary democracies.
But what began as a drive for human liberation has gradually mutated, over time, into a force for human enslavement. The enslavement is not to external forces but to our own egoistic impulses. This is because, at the same time as this expansion in individual freedom was taking place, and partly because of it, the cultural, social and moral influence of religion as a force for self-regulation began to wane. The rituals, beliefs and customs of Christianity had underpinned the sense of community and participation in a common enterprise, and a sense of life’s meaning and purpose as being connected to something greater than oneself and one’s own interests. As the influence of religion weakened, so did many of the social and cultural bonds that held communities together, leading to an even stronger emphasis on the need for the individual to assert themselves and pursue their desires.
By the end of the 19th century, the rituals of religion were for many people little more than social conventions providing a veneer of respectability that papered over the cultural cracks appearing in societies that were increasingly driven by the logic of the market. Those cultural cracks have widened into seemingly unbridgeable fissures in recent decades, hastened by the power of new communications technologies, to the point where there is growing concern that “the centre cannot hold” in secular, liberal, capitalist democracies for much longer. As Hannah Arendt pointed out in The Origins of Totalitarianism, an excess of individual autonomy at the expense of community leads to atomism, anomie, and makes us vulnerable to the appeals of demagogues.
Michael Polanyi, in his 1962 lectures History and Hope, portrayed existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre as the archetypal representative of the “moral inversion” brought about by the hyper-scepticism of the Enlightenment: “Just look how in France itself, where the dawn of unlimited hopes first arose in the 18th century, the continuous pursuit of these great hopes has led the present generation of writers to a philosophy and literature of despair. How, actually using The Age of Reason as his title, Sartre demonstrates that the ultimate outcome of the age of reason is a recognition of the total absurdity of man and the universe, and finds that this reduces man’s freedom to total arbitrariness.”
In his 2016 bestseller, Why Liberalism Failed, Patrick Duneen has argued persuasively that the scientific revolution, in promoting the hubristic idea that man could master nature, overturned the older notion that virtue was necessary to conform our desires to the forces of nature. What need have we of virtue and self-restraint when our destiny is to harness the power of science to bend nature to our will?
Four hundred years after Bacon, we live in a world where technology is developed and deployed by the forces of the market – which has become our master, not our servant – with the intention of enslaving us to our own impulses under the guise of liberating us. Gratification is the purpose of life, and the sooner the better.
In such a culture, virtue, reflectiveness and self-restraint, which are allies of democracy, are the enemies of the market. Freedom, unmoderated by virtue in the interests of the common good, has mutated into licence. The sexual liberation of the 1960s has mutated into the gargantuan global pornography industry. Freedom of speech has mutated from a mechanism for promoting political discussion into a mechanism for verbal abuse and cancel culture, sacrificing truth along the way. And the news and current affairs market has discovered outrage and prejudice can be very profitable.
Modern technocracy, by eroding cultural and religious allegiances, maintains only a superficial moral and emotional hold on us. Recognising the motivational shortcomings of a calculating ethos, modern secularists have embraced the liberalism and language of human rights while killing the god that underpinned them. But rather than asserting their own spiritual potency, liberal technocracies offer us only an agnostic, anodyne, superficial faith. This instrumentalist and limitless (thus empty) liberty cannot feed the moral imagination or fuel the quest for wider purpose.
So how do we recover? How do we embark on a process of social and cultural renewal from such a debased starting point? How do we self-correct without over-correcting?
The first step is to face up to the cultural causes of our moral malaise, namely an inadequate conception of individual freedom, which is unconnected to truth. In embarking on this quest, we could do worse than look closely at the thought of Pope Benedict XVI, who died just over a year ago.
Before he became Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had made his life project working through the implications of Christianity’s encounter and engagement with Western liberalism. At the heart of this project is the question of human freedom and its connection to truth.
In his 2007 encyclical, Spe Salvi, Benedict maintains that the fundamental difficulty with the contemporary Western concept of freedom is that it has been separated from that of truth. The general notion of freedom is that expressed by Karl Marx, when he says that in the future communist society one will be able “to do one thing today and another tomorrow; to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, breed cattle in the evening and criticise after dinner, just as I please”. This concept of freedom as the ability to do or to have anything we desire, to have one’s own will as the sole norm of our action, presupposes that one’s will is truly free. Yet, Benedict asks, if the will is irrational, can it be truly free? Can it be truly good? He proposes the need for a definition of freedom that says it is “the capacity to will and to do what we will in the context of reason”.
Benedict points out that both Marxism and liberalism have failed to deliver the freedom they promised. Although Marxism claimed to have discovered a scientifically guaranteed way to freedom, it instituted a gigantic system of slavery. Despite the promises of the liberal system of politics and economics, many people in democratic societies are excluded from freedom by unemployment and material poverty, and are “haunted by the spectre of meaninglessness”.
This crisis of meaninglessness is being manifested today in many ways, including an epidemic of teenage self-harm and our frenetic efforts to compensate for a lack of purpose through compulsive consumption.
The separation of faith and reason into hermetically sealed compartments has impoverished both, and resulted in a secularised “thin” conception of the human being as essentially an organism that is little more than a bundle of urges susceptible to scientific analysis and manipulation, whose “freedom” consists in impulse gratification and is thus illusory. Contrast this to a “thick” vision of the human being as a person, embedded in communities, oriented towards truth, beauty and goodness.
We need to restart the dialogue between faith and reason, not with a view to turning back the clock to the theocratic Middle Ages but with a view to developing a new philosophy of human freedom that is linked to truth and to higher purpose, that of love and responsibility. Hopefully, in the process, we can help save the West from itself.
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‘Break It Down’: No Consequences for Pro-Terrorism Protestors Assaulting White House
Ten weeks ago, I wrote of a November 4 protest at the White House in which a pro-Hamas mob “cursed the U.S. president, waved the flag of a foreign adversary, and endeavored to breach the White House compound.” No one was held accountable for that vile display of hate and anti-Semitism, even from the president ostensibly committed to the extermination of these evils. So, in the least surprising development ever, the pro-terrorism protest happened again this Saturday, only bigger and bolder — and again with no consequences.
This weekend’s protest imitated the earlier one in many respects: a large crowd assembled in Freedom Plaza before moving over to the White House and attempting to scale the fence. Again, rallygoers — including not only Arabs, but white college students, black race activists, and red communists — donned the black-and-white Palestinian keffiyeh scarf. Again, they left behind a mess of trash and graffiti in Lafayette Park. Again, they chanted curses at an absent president, as well as subtle endorsements of genocide, such as “Free Palestine.” Again, they flew the flags of foreign powers inside the White House’s protective fence.
And again, all who committed lawlessness at the protest got away with it. “During the demonstration near the White House complex Jan. 13, a portion of the anti-scale fencing that was erected for the event sustained temporary damage. The issues were promptly repaired on site by U.S. Secret Service support teams,” said the Secret Service, adding that they made no arrests.
D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith told reporters, “a majority of today’s demonstration remained peaceful,” but “there were instances of illegal and destructive behavior in Lafayette Park, including items being thrown at our officers.” Her statement did not indicate that D.C. police had made any arrests. Conservative reporter Julio Rosas, who was on the scene, posted on X/Twitter, “I did not personally see anyone get arrested outside the White House tonight.”
The sizable crowd — reported at anywhere from “tens of thousands” to “400,000” — overflowed Freedom Plaza, east of the White House, as buses arrived from 20 states to swell the crowd for the post-lunch rally. Organizers pompously dubbed the gathering, “The March on Washington for Gaza,” a nod to the famous Civil Rights-era event during which — unlike Saturday’s protest — the attendees actually marched to Washington on their own two legs. At around 2 p.m., an Islamic call to prayer, in Arabic, was played over loudspeakers at the park, which sits on Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol.
Attendees smothered the event in hundreds of Palestinian flags, including one apparently larger than my house. Other flags spotted at the event include the Islamic Jihadist flag, used by U.S.-designated foreign terrorists organizations, and the national flags of Egypt (the Gaza Strip’s other neighbor), Yemen (where the Iran-backed Houthis are based), South Africa (which, despite its own history of apartheid, accused Israel of genocide before the International Court of Justice), and Tunisia (which recently considered a bill to criminalize normalizing relations with Israel).
Of course, the Progress Pride flag flew there, too, right under the flag of Palestine, where the powers that be would likely kill and torture anyone who identified as any sort of LGBTQ identity. Meanwhile, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (a communist party) sponsored a banner that read, “End all U.S. funding for Israeli apartheid.”
Just before 3 p.m., the crowd began to assemble for a march on 14th Street NW, exiting Freedom Plaza from its northwest corner. At 4 p.m., the protestors began a half-circuit of the White House complex, heading north on 14th Street NW, then west on K Street NW, then south on 17th Street NW, before finally arriving at the northeast corner of the White House complex around 4:50 p.m. A large number of protestors eventually filled Pennsylvania Avenue and the adjacent Lafayette Square.
The only known arrest associated with Saturday’s demonstration occurred along the march route. On 14th Street NW, between H Street and I Street, a man brandished a knife at the head of the march. One protestor quickly disarmed him, and police took him into custody. It seems implausible that the knife-wielding man was present to attend the protest. The man’s attire (bright orange jacket and dayglow-yellow hat and gloves) and his behavior are more consistent with a mentally unstable member of D.C.‘s population, many of whom congregate in Franklin Park, a block from the incident. If so, then his arrest was a sad, bizarre intrusion of D.C.’s ordinary affairs into this national protest.
Ironically, the protestors had no problem with D.C. police closing the route of their march to vehicular traffic. Thousands of protestors walked right past scores of uniformed officers without so much as an insult. Yet after hours of such peaceful cooperation — or at least co-existence — within 15 minutes of arriving at the White House, the protestors were attempting to break through barricades.
By 5:02 p.m., conservative journalist Wid Lyman reported, “Protestors are shaking the outer fence at the White House.” At 5:16 — when it was still not quite dark — Rosas concurred, “Palestinian protesters aggressively shake and hit the security fence outside the White House.”
During the next half hour, the number of protestors swelled as more marchers completed their trek. Protestors lit flares in the colors of the Palestinian flag, draped Palestinian flags and keffiyehs on the statues of Lafayette Square, graffitied public property, and threw “bloody baby dolls” over the White House fence. They began throwing other items, too: water bottles, rocks, even staves broken off from the flags they carried.
As protestors continued to hit and rattle the security fence, they took to chanting, “Break it down!” Now, both their actions and their words declared their desire to breach the White House’s perimeter. Rosas reported at 6:13, “Palestinian protesters have shaken the fence so hard that they have moved portions of it back.” In an improvement upon the previous protest, this time the Secret Service had installed a second, temporary fence, comprised of heavy metal screens that locked together. Unlike the permanent fence, this one was not anchored to the ground.
The tensest moment came around 6:45 p.m., when protestors shook the fence so violently that they managed to partially dis-attach one section of the temporary fence at the top. As the crowd chanted, “Free Palestine” and rattled the fence in a terrible clanging, another conservative journalist, Mark Naughton, captured the moment on video in real-time, from the thick of the fray.
Secret Service agents — who had already donned riot gear — rushed to repair the fence. Protestors predicted they were about to be pepper-sprayed as officers shook up cans in preparation. At least one officer had to climb a ladder by the wildly swinging fence to secure it. “Police were not able to fix the broken fence and had to attach makeshift clamps,” reported Lyman. As officers reattached the fence, the crowd booed and began shouting, “Shame on you!”
Although the situation was quickly resolved, it did alarm the Secret Service, prompting them to order a partial evacuation of the White House. “As a precaution, some members of the media and staff in proximity to Pennsylvania Avenue were temporarily relocated while the issue was being addressed,” said the Secret Service.
The near-breach in the security perimeter might have prompted Secret Service to call in reinforcements. About 15 minutes later, more police officers appeared and dispersed the crowd. By 7:43, all that was left were the items thrown from the crowd.
The massive protest received strikingly light media attention. “I saw no obvious MSM yesterday in DC covering the massive protest,” wrote Naughton. “Some well equipped media maybe MSM (no affiliation hats or jackets) at the literal start line of the March but by the second block, all were gone. When some protesters became aggressive at the White House, only @Julio_Rosas11 and @Wid_Lyman and a few unknown media remained.”
Rosas echoed the sentiment, describing the media’s response as “passive coverage, instead of an outrage cycle.”
There were a couple stories, such as this one by PBS, but they contain little firsthand reporting of the actual riot. This, despite the fact that White House reporters were evacuated when the fence was breached; the mainstream media was situated inside the barricades, not in the crowd.
Two conversations captured during the fracas demonstrate that the protestors themselves knew that their actions were 1) not peaceful and 2) not going to change anyone’s mind. Unfortunately, some of the exchange was inaudible, but the rest is a profound denunciation of the protestors’ tactics and motivations.
In one exchange, a protestor standing by the fence asked the one standing next to him, who was shaking it with all his might, “What is the point of this [rattling fence]? [inaudible] for our point to get across?” “Yes, yes,” the other replied. “Honestly, how old are you? What’s going to happen? Do you think now he’s [Biden] going to change his mind, because you’ve proved to him that Palestine is [inaudible]?”
Afterward, another protestor exhorted those shaking the fence, “Why are we doing this? Let’s do this s*** right, bro.” Someone asked him, “Okay, what is ‘right’?” He replied, “‘Right’ is doing it peacefully, singing our songs, and doing our dances.” Those around him called him a crude name and then ignored his advice.
The fringe-left street activists aren’t alone. Employees of as many as 22 federal agencies, including the Executive Office of the President, the National Security Agency, the Departments of State, Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and the Naval Research Laboratory, planned to participate in an illegal strike on Tuesday, organized by an anonymous group calling itself “Feds United for Peace.” They planned to observe a “Day of Mourning,” as Tuesday is the 100th day since Hamas’s terror attack. However, their plans came to nothing, as all federal offices in the D.C. area were closed anyway due to a winter storm.
Somehow — does it have to do with the dissidents within the system? — the Left’s constant pressure on Biden is having an effect on his foreign policy. Although the majority of Americans supports Israel and is disgusted by the Left’s uncivilized street demonstrations, the Biden administration is heeding its warnings, ratcheting up pressure on Israel as the radical Left turns up the heat on the White House. “The president’s patience is running out” on Israel’s war in Gaza, an anonymous official told Axios on Sunday. Several weeks ago, Biden abruptly hung up on Netanyahu after a tense exchange.
After his administration has done everything possible to slow down Israel’s war and making its task harder, Biden is now annoyed with Israel that it hasn’t won yet. Or, perhaps more correctly, Biden is channeling the anger of those who are annoyed that Israel fought back at all after Hamas’s October 7 terror attack. Meanwhile, Israel’s surrounding enemies have no desire for peace and continue to attack, with a Hezbollah rocket attack killing more Israelis on Tuesday.
In addition, the U.S. military’s passive response to provocations have emboldened other Iranian proxies in the Middle East to conduct bolder attacks. As of Thursday, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen had launched 27 attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, in addition to a number of missiles aimed at Israel. On January 9, they escalated the situation even further by directly attacking U.S. military ships. “These attacks have endangered U.S. personnel, civilian mariners, and our partners, jeopardized trade, and threatened freedom of navigation,” complained Biden. “More than 2,000 ships have been forced to divert thousands of miles to avoid the Red Sea — which can cause weeks of delays in product shipping times.”
In response, the U.S. finally launched retaliatory strikes against the Houthis on Thursday and Friday.
The pro-terrorism protestors outside the White House had this message for American forces trying to keep the world’s most important shipping lane open for business: “Hands off Yemen.” Wouldn’t that be nice, if we could do so?
On Sunday, the Houthis launched an anti-ship cruise missile towards a U.S. Navy ship it was capable of sinking. Fortunately, the ship survived, but the terrorist group has now made its intentions to kill U.S. servicemembers plain. The U.S. responded with a third strike against Yemeni targets on Tuesday. Meanwhile, on Thursday U.S. Navy SEALs captured a small boat that was smuggling missile parts from Iran to Yemen. Two men went missing during that mission, possibly drowned.
In light of these tense and dangerous developments in the Middle East, why would President Biden listen to the opinions of a fringe element that embraces anti-Semitism, alienates the public, and obviously hates America? Perhaps it’s because he needs their votes in November. Biden’s approval rating sank to an all-time low of 33%, while 58% disapprove in a recent ABC News/IPSOS poll. Biden now has the lowest approval rating of any president since George W. Bush in 2006-2008. So, the radical Left can continue their pro-terrorism protests, rattling Biden’s cage in the most literal sense, and expect no consequences.
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The collapse of conservatism
James Allan below writes well but takes insufficient notice of the fact that conservative policies have always undergone a lot of change. Consistency in answer to the question "What is a conservative?" will always be hard to find over the long run. That is because ALL politicians have to react to changes in the world about them and changes in reality will often require changing policies.
That is not to say that there is abolutely no consistency in what makes a conservative. Consistecy CAN be found but it is at the pychological, not the policy level. In a nutshell, the essence of conservatism is caution and the essence of Leftism is anger. Whatever they do, conservatives will be cautious, as they see that, at the time
In the developed Anglosphere countries over the past couple of centuries, there has been a general understanding of what it means to be a conservative voter. In rough and ready terms, with plenty of arguments and differences at the periphery, conservatives wanted to keep in place the main tenets of the core institutions, practices, conventions, and principles that had worked up till then. They were for conserving. Not everything, always and forever. Not in aspic jelly with no changes or innovations ever allowed but rather with a prima facie weighting towards the status quo and with the burden on those proposing change and restructuring to make a clear case why the novel was preferable to what was already in place. Gradual reform over idealistic revolutionary aspirationalism. Clearly, as I said, there was plenty of room for intra-conservative fights and disagreements. But the general proclivity for the established and ‘what already was in place and seemed to work moderately well’ was plain.
Spelled out in those terms it is pretty obvious that the desire to conserve what happens to exist is contingent. It depends on where you happen to be and when. No sane person would want to be described as a ‘conservative’ in today’s North Korea, and only religious zealots in today’s Iran. Put bluntly, there is an element of luck as to whether it makes sense to be a Tory or conservative. It is time and place contingent, along with depending on the sort of instincts, preferences, and political taste buds the individual brings to the table.
I am a big fan of the Scottish sceptical philosopher David Hume, one of the all-time greats. In fact, I did my philosophy doctorate on his moral and legal thinking. But Samuel Johnson, London high Tory, wit, and author of the first real English dictionary, was rather scornful of Hume. His renowned biographer James Boswell reported Johnson as saying of Hume ‘that he’s just a Tory by chance; if anything he’s a Hobbesian’. I’ve always thought that Johnsonian description of Hume rather excellent. It’s just that Johnson meant it as a stinging criticism whereas I think it shows the genius of Hume.
In a way, it is just chance whether it is sensible for anyone to be a Tory or favour conservative political positions. And that brings us to the present day in countries such as the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia. Because what should those described as ‘conservatives’ want to conserve right now? You might think ‘the presumption of innocence’ would be a no-brainer. But vote for the Libs in 2019 and you got a prime minister, Scott Morrison, who wouldn’t grasp or adhere to this principle if it walked up and hit him in the head. Just ask Bruce Lehrmann. Or Christine Holgate. Or a fair few of his own cabinet ministers. And let’s be clear that today’s Australian legal fraternity hardly makes one confident it cares much, if at all, about this formerly core precept in the criminal justice system.
Or take the notions of free speech and an impartial and questioning media. No one with a functioning brain could have come through the pandemic years with any confidence our present institutions and establishment class uphold either of these. The same goes for upholding our core civil liberties. I don’t mean rushing off to bring picayune standards against the government when those seeking to come to this country illegally are involved. Our judges can be counted on to do that. I mean that over the two and half years of the pandemic, we saw the ‘greatest inroads on our civil liberties in two hundred years’ (the words of former UK Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption, and they’re correct), and yet not a single country in the Anglosphere saw judges do anything. And I mean countries with potent bills of rights included. The judges pushed back against government Covid brutality not one whit. The legal establishment was all in on the fear-mongering and enforcement of what a moment’s thought would have told you were nonsensical rules dreamt up by puffed-up bureaucrats. (Did you see Mr Fauci in the US last week concede that the six-foot separation rule was just made up out of thin air and had no scientific basis?) Put it this way, those of us known as ‘conservatives’ have very little reason to want to conserve the ABC, do we? And given its profligacy, making up out of thin air the ‘National Cabinet’, and willingness to facilitate state premiers’ thuggery, tell me what there is to want to conserve about today’s Liberal party? (I avoided mentioning the state Liberal iteration in Victoria because, well, it is so pathetic it doesn’t really feel fair picking on people who take sides against those who simply believe that those with XX chromosomes will always be different than those with XY chromosomes, and that public policies will sometimes have to reflect that core fact about the external, causal world however much it might hurt some people’s feelings.)
I could keep going for some time. Treasury and the RBA seem to be completely in thrall to Keynesianism. They just whitter on about GDP and never mention Australia’s pretty ordinary to awful recent record as regards GDP per person. A side effect is that our political class is addicted to big immigration to keep GDP looking okay even as it makes individuals poorer, traffic far worse, and house prices more astronomical. (And yes we should all feel sorry for today’s younger generation because it is way, way harder to buy a house today than when we were all younger – look at average wage to average house price – and no amount of shunning a daily flat white will fix that.) Put bluntly again, I don’t see much reason to conserve the economic thinking that prevails at present. Heck, the entire political caste, with only a few exceptions here and there, seem to be out of sync with the average voter. The Voice referendum sure showed that while exposing the faultlines in the Liberal party. Then there’s the universities, (not what they were I can assure you all), the corporate boardrooms, the list goes on.
So what do we voters formerly known as ‘conservatives’ do when much of what was worth conserving has been jettisoned? Tough question. But I think I’ve gone a long way in explaining the appeal of Mr Trump, the so-called populist parties in Europe, and the current Tory leader in Canada, Mr. Poilievre, who is up 10-15 points in the polls. He’s promised all sorts of ‘radical’ policies such as halving the CBC’s budget. And we ‘conservatives’ love it.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/taking-conserve-out-of-conservative/
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18 January, 2024
A time bomb from 2023?
It seemed like just another news report when the Supreme Court of Colorado, whose declared aim was to preserve democracy, declared by a 4–3 majority that Donald Trump wouldn’t be allowed to appear on the Colorado ballot.
The Colorado Republican Party appeal put a stay on that ruling, but not before other Democratic politicians climbed on to the “say-no-to-Trump” wagon.
Last week, Shenna Bellows, Secretary of State of Maine, took a page from the Colorado court.
She declared President Trump an “insurrectionist” and ordered him off the ballot in Maine.
Most observers believe that Ms. Bellows’s diktat will be overturned on appeal, which would mean that it occupies a place not in the history of politics but in the history of political theater.
But my point is that actions like these—pretending to save democracy by destroying it—have a built-in natural time delay like the light of the Sun.
That is to say, their full significance isn’t obvious at once.
It will only unfold itself later when the precedents set become obvious and become, as it were, operational.
What does it mean that people of the ruling political party pretend to preserve democracy by outlawing the most potent candidate from the opposing side?
That unprecedented series of actions by a weaponized department of justice controlled by one party doesn’t declare its full significance all at once.
When, for example, the FBI conducts dawn raids against ordinary citizens whom the ruling party happens to dislike, the full meaning isn’t obvious in the immediate aftermath of the raids.
Similarly, when a prosecutor transforms an unarmed protest at the Capitol into an “insurrection” and then dusts off a post-Civil War era clause from the 14th Amendment to indict a candidate his masters don’t like, the full significance of that unprecedented act isn’t visible all at once.
No one can at this juncture say for certain what such astounding partisan assaults will portend.
Perhaps they’ll help complete the transformation of democracy into that elite-run anti-democratic confect, “Our Democracy™.”
Perhaps it will be seen to have initiated the mournful eclipse of the American experiment in republican governance and individual liberty.
One thing, I believe, is more or less certain: These astounding actions to keep Donald Trump from reassuming the White House will be like the light from the Sun.
Only, they will not only be on a time delay. They will also be in the nature of a time bomb.
The people who did these things may never be called to account for their destructive actions.
Nevertheless, they’ll come to rue the day they uncorked the bottle that held the genie of anti-democratic, authoritarian passion.
At the very least, they’ll learn that it was much easier to release than to recontain.
https://principia-scientific.com/when-a-time-delay-becomes-a-time-bomb/
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Racial Preferences Replay Under Gavin’s Governance
Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court ended racial preferences in higher education. This year will feature a battle to reinstate those preferences, in the state that first eliminated them nearly 30 years ago.
The California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), Proposition 209on the 1996 ballot, eliminated racial and ethnic preferences in state education, employment, and contracting. Contrary to opponents, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the measure did not eliminate “affirmative action.”
The state could still lend a hand on an economic basis, and California had always cast the widest possible net.
The great Jackie Robinson, for example, was an alum of Pasadena City College, founded in 1924. In 1939, Robinson enrolled at UCLA and in 1954, future Olympic decathlon champion Rafer Johnson attended UCLA on both athletic and academic scholarships.
After Proposition 209, what California could not do was reject a qualified student on the basis of race, as UC Davis had done with Allan Bakke. That racist practice continued even after the Supreme Court ruled in Bakke’s favor, and by 1996 Californians were ready for change. They passed Prop 209 by a margin of 54.55 to 45.45. The disaster the preference forces predicted never occurred.
As Thomas Sowell noted in Intellectuals and Race, declines in minority enrollment at UCLA and UC Berkeley had been offset by increases at other UC campuses. More important, the number of African-American and Hispanic students graduating from the UC system went up, including a 55 percent increase in those graduating in four years with a GPA of 3.5 or higher. Despite these realities, the state education establishment still sought to reinstate racial preferences.
The 2020 Proposition 16 would have eliminated the 1996 preference ban but voters rejected it by a margin of 57.2 to 42.8, wider than the vote for Proposition 209 in 1996. As it turned out, the losers had outspent the winners by approximately 14 to 1. Despite that thrashing, the preference forces weren’t giving up. Enter Assembly Constitutional Amendment 7 (ACA-7).
The measure does not openly claim the government shall discriminate on the basis of race, or again target Proposition 209 for repeal. This measure allows the governor to make “research-based,” or “research-informed,” exceptions to the 1996 law. On the basis of research, conveniently undefined, the governor can now decide that racial preferences and unequal treatment are good things. The measure would be a huge empowerment of Gov. Gavin Newsom, known for his heavy-handed rule during the pandemic.
ACA-7 must still qualify for the ballot and in the meantime voters might examine the underlying ideology. Under diversity dogma, all groups must be represented according to their percentage of the population. If they are not, according to the theory, the cause must be discrimination and a government preference program is the only remedy.
Diversity dogma ignores personal differences, effort, and choice, and as Sowell has often noted, different racial and ethnic groups are never represented proportionally in anything. For students, parents and policymakers, Sowell’s own experience should prove educational.
He earned a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, a master’s from Columbia, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago, all without any government affirmative action scheme. Harvard law professor Lani Guinier, Bill Clinton’s pick to head the civil rights department of the DOJ, questioned Sowell’s blackness. The Harvard alum wasn’t going to take it.
“I don’t need some half-white woman from Martha’s Vineyard telling me about being black,” responded the economist, a longtime fellow at the Hoover Institution. That was in 1996, when California voters passed the California Civil Rights Initiative. In 2024, Californians will decide if an all-white governor should be able to override a law approved and upheld by voters of all skin shades and ethnicities.
As they watch this play out, people across the country might consult Sowell’s vast body of work. As of this writing, the author is still going strong at 93.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14791&omhide=true&trk=title
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Good News: Two-Parent Households Back on the Rise
There has been much cause for concern in recent years about the cultural destruction of the nuclear family. This destruction is happening despite the fact that study after study has proven that children raised by their biological parents from birth have inherent advantages.
However, there is good news on that front. According to the Institute for Family Studies (IFS), the percentage of two-parent households seems to be slowly on the rise again. The numbers IFS gathered from the U.S. Census reveal that in 2023 the two-parent household figure rose to 71.1%. This is a marked improvement even since 2020 when the percentage of children with two-parent families was 70.4%.
One caveat: These numbers incorporate not just biological parents but also stepparents, cohabitating parents, etc. However, as of 2022, a majority (53.6%) of kids ages 15-17 have been raised by their two biological parents.
What are some of the inherent advantages of nuclear families? Let’s start with the benefits of having married parents. This demographic is generally happier and more financially well-off. For the children, these benefits double. Kids being raised by their married biological parents are less likely to suffer abuse, are generally higher achievers academically, have a better chance at social mobility, and benefit from the financial stability of their parents.
The American people are slowly turning back toward that two-parent structure in spite of all the propaganda to the contrary. Moreover, as The Washington Stand points out, “The numbers appear to contradict widely accepted narratives offered by writers at legacy media outlets like The Atlantic, The New York Times, and a number of others about the supposedly inevitable decline in two-parent family structures.” These Leftmedia outfits are generally enthralled by the DEI claptrap of “equity” and would rather promote alternative family structures that “level the playing field.” In other words, they’d rather everyone fail equally than succeed meritoriously.
IFS’s stats show that U.S. citizens of Asian descent (81%) have the highest percentage of children living with married parents, and black Americans (33%) have the lowest. So, instead of trying to encourage the black community to partake of the benefits of a two-parent household, the Leftmedia insists that all forms of family are equally beneficial. Thankfully, mainstream media has lost so much of its credibility that fewer people are swallowing its poison pill.
Most Americans have a positive view of marriage, though they don’t really understand the value of it. According to The Daily Signal: “54% of people didn’t agree that society is better off when more people are married, with 19% disagreeing and 35% being unsure. As to the questions about family stability, 48% didn’t agree that marriage is needed to create stronger families and 46% didn’t agree that marriage makes families and children better off financially.”
This paradox is further underscored by a recent Gallup poll showing that most Americans believe that having families with two or more children is better, but the actual number of children they are having contradicts that. Furthermore, Gen Z is simultaneously promoting the idea of DINKs or even singleness (because kids are a drag, according to them).
Parents, kids, the nuclear family — all are being attacked from both sides.
So why is there an upward trend in two-parent families if people don’t even understand the value of marriage or family? Perhaps it’s one of those phenomena where people will say one thing and do another. Or perhaps the media, in all its forms, is out of touch with the everyday American.
Whatever the case may be, we can celebrate this upward trend and continue to encourage one another to have stable two-parent households, which provide the best chance at positive life outcomes for all.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/103593-good-news-two-parent-households-back-on-the-rise-2024-01-16
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Australia: Muslim hate speech is ok
Under NSW hate speech law, Andrew Bolt was successfuly prosescuted for criticizing the claims of some people with white skin to be Aborigines. That was construed as "hate".
The speech below is virulent hate, not the simple comment that Bolt made. Yet it skates. How come? There appears to be special liberties for Muslims
NSW Police have dropped inquiries into a cleric who prayed to Allah to “kill them one by one” in reference to “Zionist Jews”, saying the comments did not breach state hate-speech protections.
On Tuesday, The Australian revealed that Sydney sheik Kamal Abu Mariam – who has ties with former All Black Sonny Bill Williams and former league star Anthony Mundine – gave a sermon at Roselands Mosque last year, in which he made the call during an Islamic prayer.
The Australian can also reveal, in that same sermon, the sheik described the virtues Allah would bestow on martyrs, and how those unable to fight in the Middle East could still “receive rewards”.
“Oh Allah … beat the (usurping) Zionist Jews,” the sheik said in Arabic, translated to English by The Australian.
“Oh Allah, we hope you count them and kill them one by one, and don’t keep any (one) of them … shake the ground under their feet … make an example of them.”
The sheik’s comments appeared to be referring to “Zionist Jews” in Israel, as opposed to those in Australia – although a well-placed legal source said that distinction “should be irrelevant”.
On Wednesday, a NSW Police spokeswoman said the force could not pursue the matter further. “As a part of the investigation, the content of the (sermon) video was reviewed and it was ascertained that it did not meet the threshold of any criminal offence,” she said.
Section 93Z of the NSW criminal code, which outlaws incitements of violence on the basis of race or religion, was recently strengthened by the government, which removed the requirement for police to seek approval before laying charges.
Williams and Mundine have said they helped donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to help fund a new mosque “spearheaded” by the sheik and, in 2018, the former All Black called the religious leader his “spiritual guider” in a post to Twitter, now called X.
During the sermon, in English, Sheik Abu Mariam also cited the Hadith and referenced what Allah bestowed upon martyrs.
“He (a martyr) will be forgiven with the first drop of blood that comes (from) him,” he said. “He will see his place in paradise … given a crown upon his head.”
The sheik warned the audience there were “consequences for those who laze around”. “He who does not fight for the cause of Allah, nor speaks within himself about fighting the cause … he dies on a branch of hypocrisy,” he said, acknowledging that those he was preaching to would struggle to fight to become a martyr.
“We might not be able to do the first (fight for Allah), due to the circumstances and where we live,” he said.
The sheik said Muslims who boycotted Israeli-linked products would still receive “rewards”.
Federal opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said if the state government failed to act “it was time the federal government did”.
“There are anti-incitement provisions in the Commonwealth Criminal Code for this purpose,” the senator said, citing section 80.2A, which outlaws urging violence against a group on the basis of religion or race.
“If they are not used now it makes a mockery of the law and will only lead to more hateful conduct with devastating consequences.”
Visiting Australian National University constitutional law professor Matt Qvortrup, when provided with Sheik Abu Mariam’s comments, said that the rhetoric would be prosecuted in the UK. “I don’t see how it wouldn’t (breach British legislation),” he said. “Naming a group and (saying Allah) should kill them – that would have fallen foul of UK laws.”
Premier Chris Minns said he would change existing laws if they proved inoperable.
“We are not averse to changing the laws around hate speech if we don’t believe that they are capturing the kind of inflammatory and racist rhetoric that’s designed to pull people apart,” he said.
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17 January, 2024
A feminist discovers marriage
I got married and quit my job. Can I still call myself a feminist?
Four months ago, I got married, and four weeks ago I quit my job. No, this isn’t some archaic commitment to tradwifery, nor a decision based on kids. But the two, life-changing decisions weren’t entirely unrelated either.
For context, 2023 was a huge year. I started a new role – a big, stressful role – at the same time as planning my wedding. I was still low-key recovering from long COVID, and a close family member was desperately unwell.
I was balancing on the edge of burnout for months – committing to yoga classes and restful weekends as a way to preserve my energy, withdrawing from social activities and “hunkering down” to manage my stress. It wasn’t working. I loved my job, but my nervous system didn’t.
It wasn’t just me. According to an article in The New Yorker, the Great Resignation of 2021 made way for The Great Exhaustion of 2023, driven by the incessant digital ping-pong of remote work. Many of us have, quite literally, become devitalised by Zoom.
And yet, I felt I couldn’t quit. Because … well, you don’t quit. Not when you have an interesting job with a wonderful team and do work you’re proud of. Not when you have a mortgage amid rising interest rates and a cost-of-living crisis. Not when you’re a woman, nay, a feminist, raised on girl-boss culture in the prime of her working age. Not when you’re making enough money to eat at Totti’s and shop at Incu and honeymoon at Raes.
So, what changed? Well, I got married.
I didn’t expect marriage to change anything. As a thoroughly modern young woman, I’d never seen a husband as a happily ever after. A man had never been my financial plan. My partner and I had fallen in love at 20, lived together for years, bought a home, and split the domestic and financial load equally before we wed. I was just a girl, in a loving and respectful partnership with a boy, wanting to tie the knot.
But, much to my surprise, it did change things, beyond the vaguely cringy thrill of saying “my husband” to a stranger and feeling like a child playing dress up.
When you stand up in front of your loved ones and publicly declare “what’s mine is yours”, when you legally, formally, ritualistically create a new family, it means something. It might not make sense logically or rationally, but there’s a strange alchemy to it, a solidifying energy.
Our marriage gave me a launching pad from which I could take a big career risk – pursuing writing full time – knowing I have a soft landing if I stumble or fall. With this gift, I had the ability to take a break from the grind and pursue a more meaningful vocation, without worrying about the mortgage or putting food on the table. And while I’ll definitely have to sacrifice fancy dinners and bougie shopping, it’s a small price to pay for my peace.
We all know wives have traditionally got the short end of the stick when it comes to career, often sidelining their dreams in service of their husbands. They were the ones who abandoned their jobs to keep the home fires burning, facilitating men’s professional lives in the process. The result of this is generations of gender inequity, including the gender pay gap and unequal division of housework, which continues to this day.
But in a healthy modern marriage, these spousal sacrifices can swing in the other direction. By offering me a financial buffer, my husband is the one supporting my ambitions, not the other way around. Could that be, dare I say it, a feminist act?
I understand not everyone has this option, and not everybody needs it. It’s a privilege to have a safety net, whether it’s parental, spousal or even social. But in a culture where we’re questioning the value of heterosexual marriage, or painting it as innately oppressive, I think this context is worth considering.
Sure, marriage has a bit of a PR problem. Weddings are undeniably expensive and extravagant and capitalist. And for many people, being in a solid and stable defacto relationship may provide this same support. But that wasn’t the case for me. It was marriage that did it. The legal, formal, ritual of it. The weight of it.
And while this isn’t a reason to get hitched if you don’t want to, it might give us pause to re-examine our perceptions of marriage in a modern context. Perhaps it’s no longer the patriarchal prison it once was. Perhaps, with the right relationship, it could be all the things it always had the potential to be; romantic and loving, tender and supportive, a safe harbour from which we’re free to adventure, knowing someone’s got our back.
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Are 80% of Democrats Really Fascists?
You might have heard that voters choosing to elect Republicans — especially a certain one — is the biggest threat to democracy today. Democrats don’t quite put it that way, of course, but it’s why they’re throwing the kitchen sink at Donald Trump legally and disqualifying him from state ballots. It’s why dozens of Democrats around the nation are working to disqualify more than 100 Republicans from running for Congress. Heck, Democrats in a couple of states even removed other Democrats from the ballot so their dear leader doesn’t face a primary challenge.
Saving democracy by preventing citizens from voting for their preferred candidates. Welcome to Joe Biden’s America.
The theme of Biden’s first big 2024 election speech last Friday was to repeat a tired refrain and scare voters about Trump’s supposed threat to democracy. The Leftmedia’s job is to poll voters to make sure they got the message, and then report the results of the poll to reinforce the message. That’s pollaganda. After that, Biden and other Democrats can keep talking about the issue because voters say it’s important.
It’s one of the most obnoxious feedback loops in politics today, but don’t underestimate its effectiveness with low-information voters armed with bulk-mail ballots.
To illustrate the point, a coinciding CBS News/YouGov poll found that an astonishing 81% of Democrats believe that Colorado and Maine were right to disqualify Trump from their state ballots and that other states should follow suit.
In other words, 81% of Democrats are fascists.
Fascists concoct bogus charges — in this case “insurrection” — to disqualify their opponents from elections. People honestly defending democracy (and we’re a Republic in any case) don’t do that.
As Peter Heck rightly notes, “Why should it be surprising that the same movement that fought so hard to discredit Fox as a legitimate news operation, or remove Rush Limbaugh from the airwaves, or conspire with the censorial ideologues running every major social media platform, would take the next logical step and try to remove troublesome political rivals from ballots?”
Among Republicans, 90% of those polled think Trump should remain on the ballot.
Assuming Trump is the GOP nominee, the real problem is this: 44% of independents also think he should be disqualified from the ballot. (Former conservative and now New York Times columnist David French is among them, which isn’t surprising given that he suffers from one of the most acute cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome we’ve ever seen.) We don’t think it’s a stretch to say those are unlikely Trump voters, which could also hurt down-ballot Republicans. Put another way, it’s going to be awfully tough to win an election when large numbers of voters don’t think you should even be on the ballot.
Ironically, by the way, 70% of respondents in that same poll say “democracy today is threatened.” Perhaps they should look in the mirror.
Public sentiment could change after the Supreme Court settles the issue after hearing Trump’s challenge to Colorado’s Supreme Court decision on February 8. If the justices throw out the Colorado court’s preposterous reading of the 14th Amendment, voters might conclude that continuing to have a former president’s name on the ballot is tolerable after all.
Yet Democrats have also worked extremely hard in recent years to delegitimize the Court in the eyes of the aforementioned low-information voters. In this case, they’re feeding that distrust with hints that Trump’s Court appointees could line up behind him out of loyalty.
Unfortunately, Trump’s own attorney is also doing that. Alina Habba is one of the few lawyers in the country willing to take on the client from hell, so we’ll give her credit for trying, but in one of the most foolish and self-defeating things we could imagine a lawyer saying, Habba made this prediction: “I think it should be a slam dunk in the Supreme Court. I have faith in them. You know, people like [Brett] Kavanaugh, who the president fought for, who the president went through hell to get into place, he’ll step up.”
The prosecution rests its case.
That notwithstanding, Democrats have made a complete mockery of justice and “democracy” in all of this. After Trump shocked the world by defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016, Democrats pulled out all the stops, using the Leftmedia and the deep state to wage a four-year coup against him. They impeached him twice. They’re now prosecuting him on 91 charges in four separate cases. And they’re trying to keep him off the ballot.
While these fascists play their anti-democratic games, Joe Biden goes out there to make a grand speech at Valley Forge in which he said, “We’ll be voting on many issues: on the freedom to vote and have your vote counted.”
Just not if you want to vote for Donald Trump, certain GOP congressional candidates, or even another Democrat in the presidential primary.
One final note: Bloomberg ran an op-ed with this all-too-real headline: “2024 Is the Year of Elections and That’s a Threat to Democracy.”
This whole thing would be hilarious if fascism wasn’t such a threat to the Republic.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/103435-are-80-percent-of-democrats-really-fascists-2024-01-09
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Doctor is suspended for refusing to use transgender patient's preferred pronouns - during argument about danger of sex change drugs
A family doctor has been suspended for three months after telling a transgender man they were a 'biological woman'.
Dr Raymond Brière — who had been practicing for more than four decades in Montreal, Canada — was found by a complaints body to have acted in an 'inappropriate and disrespectful manner' after telling a patient that they were genetically female during an argument about the risks of hormone drugs.
During an appointment in mid-2022, the patient asked the Dr Brière for a prescription for testosterone therapy to help them transition into a man.
The individual said they were ready to take the next step and had already undergone a social transition by changing their pronouns to he/him.
Dr Brière initially noted he had never helped a patient become a man before, and then warned that testosterone therapy could make them more aggressive.
The patient disputed this, telling the doctor that their medical opinion was based on 'stereotypes'.
Dr Brière has more than 700 patients in Montreal. The trans man — who has not been named — was one of his patients since 2018.
World Health Organization accused of 'trans bias'
The organization is set to call for people to have the right to self-identify as the opposite sex.
Dr Brière then suggested the patient could take testosterone via a gel that is rubbed into the top part of the arms or into the armpits.
But this was again rejected by the patient, who said they were only willing to use testosterone injections — which can cause a body to 'masculinize' more rapidly.
The pair then had an argument about the patient's pronouns, with the patient repeatedly requesting that they are referred to as 'he/him' while the doctor said they were 'biologically a woman'.
In a recording, which the patient took on their cellphone without the doctor's knowledge, Dr Brière said that if a genetic analysis of the patient's chromosomes was carried out they would be found to be 'genetically a woman'.
The doctor also told the patient that their change in gender was 'in your brain' and that their body would remain genetically female, still having the two XX chromosomes rather than the XY chromosomes that men have.
He added that: 'A patient until today, [but] you were a woman, dear madam'.
Dr Brière also refused to use the pronouns, saying that he was only being asked to do so because the patient believed his 'circle is the absolute truth'.
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Australia on Track to Terminate Dual Citizenship for People Convicted of ‘Serious Crimes’
Legislation that would give courts the power to take away dual citizenship from Australians has passed the House of Representatives and entered the Senate on Nov. 30 for heated debate.
The Australian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Repudiation) Bill 2023 enables the court to strip a dual Australian of their citizenship if they commit serious offences.
These include terrorism, treason, advocating mutiny, espionage, foreign interference, foreign incursions and recruitment and certain offences in relation to explosives and lethal devices.
Labor Minister Murray Watt, discussing the legislation in the Senate (pdf), said the bill provides an “appropriate mechanism” to deal with dual Australian citizens who have “committed crimes that are so serious and significant that they demonstrate the repudiation of their allegiance to Australia.”
“The bill promotes the value and integrity of Australian citizenship and the ongoing commitment to Australia and its shared values, while also contributing to the protection of the Australian community,” he said.
The power to cease the citizenship of an Australian under the legislation would be left to the courts, as a judicial ruling, rather than via executive power of government.
“Under the legislation, the court would only be able to make a citizenship cessation order if the Minister for Home Affairs makes an application for the order,” Mr. Watt explained.
Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Paterson said the coalition supports the bill because it “enables the citizenship of a convicted terrorist to be removed.”
However, he explained Opposition leader Peter Dutton wrote to Prime Minister Albanese with amendments (pdf) to “strengthen” the bill.
“If the government is able to agree to these amendments, which we have also circulated in the chamber and which should now be available to senators, that would make it very easy for us to support the swift passage of the bill,” he said.
Coalition Seeks Amendments
Mr. Paterson explained the amendments expand the list of offences to include advocating terrorism and genocide; advocating violence against Australia’s national interest; child sex offences; and other serious crimes.
“We are concerned that it doesn’t capture slavery; torture; use of a carriage service for child abuse material; use of a carriage service involving sexual activity or causing harm to a person under 16; urging violence; advocating terrorism; threats to security, including training with a foreign military; offences related to monitoring devices in the Criminal Code; harming Australians, including the murder of Australians overseas; and many other matters,” he said.
The Greens did not support the bill due to concerns that dual nationals would be treated differently than Australians holding citizenship only in Australia.
Australian Greens Whip Senator Nick McKim said, “the Greens will not be supporting this legislation.”
“If you’re a dual national, you'll be treated differently under the law to someone who is just an Australian citizen,” he said.
“If you’re a dual national and this bill does become enduring law in Australia, which I suspect it will, and depending on what the High Court has to say about it, and I expect the court will be asked to think about this in due course—pending those two matters—it will create two different classes of people that are treated differently under the law,” he said.
Opposition deputy leader Senator Cash said the bill was rushed through the House of Representatives and had a number of “very clear gaps.”
“There’s a reason we are talking about this bill today: because it is nothing more and nothing less than a cover for the government’s failings in relation to the NZYQ case,” she said.
“Now, as Senator Paterson has said, in the interests of improving this bill for all Australians, the coalition will be putting forward a number of what we say are small amendments but incredibly serious amendments which will actually strengthen the bill we have before us.
Senator Claire Chandler, on behalf of colleague Mr. Paterson, moved for the legislation to be referred to an intelligence and security parliamentary joint committee after it passes the Senate.
Ms. Paterson moved a motion on behalf of colleague Mr. Paterson that after the bill is passed, it be referred to the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security for inquiry and report by March 14, 2024.
However, the Senate journal (pdf) indicates debate on the bill continued before being interrupted for Senators statements on other matters.
Law Council Raises Concerns
Meanwhile, the Law Council of Australia has raised concerns that the bill is proceeding through parliament with “insufficient scrutiny.
In a media release on Nov. 30, the Law Council suggested the bill be referred to committee prior to passing the Senate, not after, as has been proposed.
“At the very least, this Bill should be referred to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) to allow proper scrutiny—before, not after, the Bill passes,” Law Council of Australia president Luke Murphy said.
“Any measures pursued to remove the citizenship of an Australian engages the key legal principles on which our democracy was founded, and therefore demand careful consideration by the Commonwealth Parliament and Australian citizens themselves. Such measures should be reserved for the most extraordinary of cases.”
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16 January, 2024
In defence of racial discrimination?
By Roy Swan, the head of mission investments at the Ford Foundation. He defends "affirmative action" and criticizes opponents of it. He defends his wishes by cataloguing a long list of ways in which blacks are disadvantaged, principally economicaly.
His arguments are a triumph of seeing only what you want to see. He thinks black disadvantage is solely the product of white discrimination against blacks. He ignores the fact that all other minorities in America -- Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Indians -- in fact do better on average than mainstream whites economically. And they suffer from REAL disadvantages -- poor English language skills, religious differences etc.
So why do blacks not follow that pattern? Why are they a different minority? It has to be something in blacks (e.g. high impulsiveness, low IQ, psychopathy) that makes the difference, not what they experience at the hands of white society. Swan is a pathetic appartchik to be so defiant of reality. Only the deliberately blind would agree with him
There is actually something wrong with his head. He criticizes "Race-based discrimination" at the same time as arguing in favour of it
Recently, the activist whose efforts overturned affirmative action [racial preferences at Harvard] eliminating yet another vehicle for marginalized populations’ educational and economic success, filed a lawsuit against a small, Black-owned American venture capital firm over its efforts to support Black women entrepreneurs. Never mind that they receive just 0.06% of all venture capital–less than 1/1000th of their percentage of the American population—or that white men under 35 have 224 times the wealth of Black women under 35.
To this litigant and his ilk, any attempt to acknowledge the roots of this gross inequity, much less adopt a targeted approach to remedy it, is a threat. They so aggressively defend the unequal status quo because they cannot bear the alternative: facing the abominable discrimination and oppression under de facto affirmative action for white people that has created the conditions for Black women’s inability to attract venture capital. Instead, they attack, deflect, deny, and hide historical truth and consequences.
This willful ignorance is geopolitically self-destructive and irresponsible, as today’s world order is determined by the productive and innovative power of a nation’s human capital, which drives national wealth. Keeping players off the field for ideological and racist reasons will only hold America back, while other countries steamroll ahead by tapping the full potential of all the talent at their disposal.
Our allies across the Atlantic have taken an approach worthy of emulation. In acknowledgment of its historical investment in the transatlantic chattel slave trade, the Church of England recently announced a £100 million program of impact investing, grant-making, and research with the target of alleviating the ongoing consequences of its past actions. As a member of the fund’s Oversight Group, I am heartened by the symbolic financial investment but even more moved by the Church Commissioners’ commitment to truth and reconciliation. England has taken a step in the right direction, but America’s inaction and retrenchment is a catapult backward–and a costly one.
Race-based discrimination is estimated to have set America back over $50 trillion since 1990 alone. Other estimates forecast that eliminating race-based discrimination would generate 6 million jobs and $5 trillion in American economic power in just five years.
If Americans care about global economic power, moral authority, and reputation, we must explore the nation’s ugly history of targeted Black oppression, calculate the wealth transferred through exploitation and extraction, and invest in a plan for a better future in the spirit of patriotic capitalism.
It’s time to stop using bad faith claims of reverse discrimination as a polarizing wedge and give everyone opportunities and resources to unleash their potential for the sake of the nation. And everyone has a role to play. In addition to more equitable laws and policies, we need investors to become patriotic capitalists and put market rate-seeking impact investments to work to erase the compounding economic and social damage inflicted on Black people and others oppressed because of their race.
Contrary to the zero-sum claims of history-denying capital hoarders, a more just country is a more prosperous country, too. And we all win when we all win.
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CAIR lets the mask slip — again
by Jeff Jacoby
In 1994, CAIR's co-founder declared he was "in support of the Hamas movement." Three decades later, that hasn't changed.
"I WAS happy to see people breaking the siege."
Thus spake Nihad Awad, the cofounder and longtime executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, in an address to the annual American Muslims for Palestine convention in November. He was explaining why the Oct. 7 Hamas terror assault in Israel filled him with joy.
"The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege, the walls of the concentration camp, on Oct. 7," Awad told his audience, employing the antisemitic device of likening Israel to Nazi Germany. "And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land that they were not allowed to walk in."
The slaughter of more than 1,200 civilians, the frenzied sexual mutilation of women and girls, the burning of homes with families in them, the abduction of hundreds of hostages, the worst massacre of Jews since the end of the Holocaust — in Awad's telling, that was simply the people of Gaza engaging in their "right of self-defense." He made no reference to Hamas. Instead, he emphasized that Israel was not entitled to defend itself. "Yes, Israel as an occupying power does not have that right to self-defense."
When an excerpt of Awad's speech was made public on Dec. 7 by the Middle East Media and Research Institute, it drew an appalled rebuke from the Biden administration.
"We condemn these shocking, antisemitic statements in the strongest terms," presidential spokesman Andrew Bates told reporters. The Hamas atrocities "shock the conscience," he said, and "every leader has a responsibility to call out antisemitism wherever it rears its ugly head." Last spring, the White House included CAIR in a list of organizations supporting its National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. After Awad's comments became known, CAIR's name was scrubbed from the document.
To hear Awad tell it, CAIR is being unfairly maligned. An "anti-Palestinian hate website selected remarks from my speech out of context and spliced them together to create a completely false meaning," he claimed after his comments became known. All he had meant to say was that "average Palestinians who briefly walked out of Gaza and set foot on their ethnically cleansed land in a symbolic act of defiance against the blockade and stopped there without engaging in violence were within their rights under international law."
There are a few problems with Awad's protestation of innocence. For starters, MEMRI, the media database that called attention to the CAIR director's speech, is a highly regarded source of accurate information from across the Arab and Muslim world. Far from being a "hate website" as Awad described it, MEMRI strives to convey the entire scope of Arab/Muslim discourse — good and bad, ugly and admirable. It makes a point of focusing as much on reform in the Muslim world as it does on jihad and Islamism.
If Awad's words had really been taken out of context, the easiest way to prove it would be to let people view online the entire recording of his speech for themselves. Only — it's gone. American Muslims for Palestine, the group that organized the conference at which Awad spoke, has taken down the video of his remarks. Hmm.
CAIR holds itself out as a Muslim human rights organization, and that is how it is routinely described in news stories and headlines. CAIR-sponsored publicity events are given media coverage, and CAIR is invited to participate in — and at times even to host — roundtable events with local government officials. Journalists often turn to CAIR for comment in stories dealing with American Muslims and conventionally describe CAIR as "the nation's biggest Muslim civil rights group." One week before the Oct. 7 attacks, CAIR was invited to attend a White House program on "protecting places of worship."
But CAIR has a long history of sympathy with, and connections to, Hamas.
In 1994, the same year that Awad cofounded CAIR, he candidly told a Florida audience that he was "in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO." According to the Capital Research Center, CAIR opened its office in Washington, D.C., with a grant from the Holy Land Foundation, a charity listed by the Treasury Department in 2001 as a "Specially Designated Terrorist" group. In 2008, five former leaders of the foundation were convicted of funneling more than $12 million to Hamas. A year later, the Obama Justice Department severed its ties with CAIR, noting that "the evidence at trial [had] linked CAIR leaders to Hamas . . . and CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case." FBI officials were directed to "significantly restrict" any "non-investigative interactions with CAIR" and to steer clear of including CAIR in community engagement or public relations activities.
Daniel Pipes, the president of the Middle East Forum, noted in 2014 that at least seven former board members or staff at CAIR were "arrested, denied entry to the US, or were indicted on or pled guilty to or were convicted of terrorist charges." In 2014, the United Arab Emirates included CAIR on a list of more than 83 terrorist organizations, along with Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Boko Haram, and the Taliban.
For all that, CAIR insists that it is "principled and consistent" in opposing antisemitism. It regularly issues press releases condemning acts of antisemitic vandalism or violence in the United States. But such statements are best regarded as protective coloration intended to camouflage CAIR's mission of encouraging hostility to Israel and Israel's supporters in the United States.
Again and again, CAIR officials have let the mask slip.
Last February, for example, the head of CAIR's Los Angeles branch, Hussam Ayloush, declared that American police forces are "becoming more brutal, more racist, and more like an occupation army" because they are "being trained by Israel." In December 2021, the head of CAIR's San Francisco chapter exhorted supporters to oppose not only "vehement fascists" but "the polite Zionists, too," labeling as "enemies" the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish federations, "the Zionist synagogues," and Hillel chapters on college campuses. In October, CAIR's Maryland director, Zainab Chaudry, sneered at the outrage over Hamas's killing of "40 fake Israeli babies."
Whatever else CAIR is, it is no true champion of civil rights and interfaith harmony and never has been. In 2021, the Simon Wiesenthal Center put CAIR on its Global Antisemitism Top Ten list, charging it with "unleashing pollution of antisemitism into America's mainstream." Thirty years after CAIR was launched by a cofounder who openly acknowledged being in support of Hamas, it remains a front for Islamist extremism and anti-Zionist bigotry. To treat it as a legitimate "civil rights organization" that speaks for US Muslims is to set back the causes of civil rights and Muslims alike.
https://jeffjacoby.com/27462/cair-lets-the-mask-slip-again
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Our Leftist rulers have embraced the Taliban practice of destroying public art that is out of kilter with their current ideas
Do you, too, long for the good-old days when the philistines tearing down statues did so on their own dime and on their own time?
“The National Park Service proposes to rehabilitate Welcome Park to provide a more welcoming, accurate, and inclusive experience for visitors,” read a press release announcing William Penn as the latest victim of statuary murder. The public did not regard Penn’s erasure from a park bearing the name of the ship bringing Pennsylvania’s founder to Philadelphia as “accurate,” to say nothing of “inclusive” or “welcoming.” Uproar caused the National Park Service to reverse course on removing the Quaker’s statue.
Destruction of public art, de rigueur in the heady summer of 2020, now moves from the rabble to our representatives. Just as we went native in forcing masks not just on women but everybody after years in Afghanistan, we also embraced the Taliban practice of destroying public art out of fashion with the ruling ethos.
Shortly before Christmas, the Congressional Naming Commission succeeded in removing a 32-foot bronze Confederate Memorial from Arlington National Cemetery. To honor the Southern dead in a cemetery built on land expropriated from Robert E. Lee’s family struck some as too much to tolerate.
“This was a memorial to men who committed treason in defense of the supposed right of some humans to ‘own’ other humans as property,” James Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association, opined. “The very idea that this monument was still here until today reminds us not just how far we’ve come but how much further we have to go.”
The following week, Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan ordered the “Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy” removed. She denied erasing history or destroying art. “By removing the Confederate monument from Springfield Park,” she strangely claimed, “we signal a belief in our shared humanity.”
Recall that those pushing to remove public art once argued it belonged not in parks but in museums. It turns out they really did not want it in museums, either.
Houston, years after taking down statues of Christopher Columbus, Confederate officer Dick Dowling, and an angel representing the “Spirit of the Confederacy,” advanced the process of removing them from the city’s art collection in October.
Around the same time, Charlottesville secretly melted down a statue of Robert E. Lee. “Well, they can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again,” Andrea Douglas, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center’s executive director, exclaimed as the artwork melted in a furnace. “There will be no tape for that.”
The previous year, New York tore down the “Equestrian Statue of Theodore Roosevelt” that had long sat in front of the Museum of Natural History, a place owing its existence in great part to the former president.
“The board of the TR Library believes the Equestrian Statue is problematic in its composition,” the chief executive officer of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library divulged in a statement. “Moreover, its current location denies passersby consent and context.” He noted the agreement meant hiding the statue in storage while the library’s decisionmakers thought about “context,” its “problematic” composition, and much else.
In so many instances, governments forbidden from “abridging the freedom of speech” do just that — or, at least, something contrary to the spirit of freedom of speech. Beyond this, historians, museum curators, artists, and others professionally bound to oppose Talibanning art memorializing history instead cheer it on. The Orwellian shift of San Francisco’s Historic Preservation Committee and the city’s Arts Commission, for instance, witnesses people charged with protecting art and history destroying it in a city that nevertheless tolerates more than a half-dozen memorials to mass-murderer Jim Jones’ aiders and abettors.
The unforgettable Doctor Who episode “Blink” features malicious white statues that come alive when people look away. Neither bronze William Penn nor marble Robert E. Lee possesses this power. But the statuary murderers act as though they do. Their hateful behavior toward inanimate objects makes one wonder what they would do to flesh-and-blood political opponents should the rest of us blink.
https://spectator.org/attempted-statuary-murder-statues/
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Arguing with the woke left: Like wrestling an eel
Take the gender pay gap. The broadly held assumption is that this is wrong and needs to be reduced. The argument then leaps into proposals for various misguided means of reducing the pay gap. Examples include imposed pay hikes for female-intensive occupations or forcing companies to reveal information about their gender pay gaps.
The more legitimate way of thinking about this issue is to ask why the gender pay gap, using the best measurement possible, exists, and why it persists. The next step is to see if the factors that typically influence earnings can explain the gap. These include education, qualifications, occupation, industry, hours of work, job tenure, and the like. Note that we are in the positive realm.
After taking these factors into account, it turns out that the residual gender pay gap can be almost totally explained by the existence of ‘greedy jobs’ that require long and unpredictable hours and often extensive travel.
Women typically shy away from greedy jobs. The pay gap is not about systemic discrimination according to the evidence. Indeed, Claudia Goldin of Harvard was awarded the Nobel Prize last year for this insight and her empirical research.
Now unless we can do away with greedy jobs – and that seems unlikely although a degree of job redesign is possible – the gender pay gap is likely to continue notwithstanding the bleatings of the woke left and many gormless politicians. Costly, ineffective policies are an inevitable consequence of the failure to accept the evidence.
But let me return to the direction of argument used by the woke left when they know they are beaten on facts and logic. One typical accusation is to label the opponent in a debate as ‘alt-right’ or ‘far right’. This conjures up notions of white supremacy, even the KKK. The idea is that if the label can be made to stick, then no one need pay any further attention to the points being made by the dubious contrarian.
But here’s the thing: when this alt-right/far right tagline is ignored, you will often find that what is being proposed is actually sensible stuff, common sense in most instances. Pointing out the dangers of the rapid exit of coal-fired power plants and their replacement with highly subsidised intermittent, land-gobbling energy is hardly alt-right. It’s pointing out the bleeding obvious.
Another tactic of the woke left is to accuse opponents of engaging in conspiracy theories. The idea is that rational people don’t believe in conspiracies and so any line of argument put forward by conspiracists should be immediately rejected.
We saw this in relation to the Covid vaccines that were rapidly developed. It simply makes sense to point out that there was no long-term evaluation of the vaccines and there could always be unforeseen risks, such as serious adverse reactions.
The fact that it became clear very quickly that the vaccines had no measurable impact on population transmission had to be concealed by the advocates of vaccine mandates. Accusing anyone who pointed this out of being a conspiracist was a handy way of achieving this. When dictatorial public health officials, working hand-in-glove with Big Pharma and self-serving politicians, are in charge, this is the puerile level to which debate can quickly descend.
Another more subtle manipulation of debate is to suggest that opponents are mere populists and therefore their arguments should be dismissed. According to elite opinion, anything that smacks of populism must be rejected.
Of course, this rather begs the question of what is populism. It can’t just be something that is popular. After all, politicians can never get elected if they simply propose a suite of policies that are deeply unpopular. The underlying message seems to be that if something appeals to a large number of relatively uneducated people, this is populism and, by definition, is bad.
We saw this argument being used in overdrive during the Trump years in which many of his policies were decried as mere populism. But surely ‘draining the swamp’ was essentially a good idea; standing up to China made geo-strategic and economic sense; and attempting to staunch the flow of illegal immigrants was much needed.
Talking about immigration, many on the left are in favour of completely open borders and essentially disapprove of any initiatives to control the flow of migrants. To counter any alternative points of view, it is common for accusations of xenophobia and racism to be thrown about.
In other words, impugn the character of those making the case for limiting immigration, be it legal or illegal, and hope this is a winning device in the argument. Of course, it’s also necessary to ignore the preferences of the citizens, but the populist point can be made in this context.
The short-hand accusation of labelling something as neo-liberalism or trickle-down economics is often used as a device in debates about economic policy. The idea is that those who disagree with the woke left policy prescriptions of higher government spending and taxes as well as more government regulation and intervention should just be dismissed because they are using discredited theories.
It’s not clear what the proponents mean by these terms – is neo-liberalism just standard economic theory? – but the intent again is to query the standing of those who make alternative arguments. It’s so much easier than debating the main points. There is always the fear that, head-to-head, it is entirely possible that the contest would be lost.
Arguing with the woke left does seem akin to wrestling an eel. But the reality is that when opponents resort to fatuous tactics which are not really any more than name-calling, you know that you are on the winning side. If that’s all they’ve got, sticking to the theory and empirical evidence will always be a winning formula in the long run.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/arguing-with-the-woke-left/ ?
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15 January, 2024
Johns Hopkins dean apologizes to staff after DEI officer sent bigoted email telling them that anyone white, male or Christian is 'privileged' - but she gets to keep her job
The thing that lies behind these idiotic claims is that ON AVERAGE whites do better than blacks in various ways. And that upsets some people. But there are some properous and successful blacks and some street-sleeping whites. So making ANY blanket claims about whites or anybody else is simply false and can only be described as bigotry
Johns Hopkins' medical faculty dean has apologized to staff after a diversity, equity, and inclusion officer sent a woke hit list email labeling all white people, Christians, men and English-speakers as 'privileged'.
The letter, first posted on Twitter by End Wokeness, was written by Chief Diversity Officer Sherita Hill Golden [Below], and was part of the 'monthly diversity digest'.
It caused commotion and outrage online - forcing the institution to apologize.
Dr Golden was allowed to keep her job, despite cries for her to be sacked. Now, the dean and president of the medical faculty said that they 'repudiated' her language.
Theodore L. DeWeese, the Dead of the Medical Faculty, and Kevin W. Sowers, the President of Johns Hopkins Health System, wrote: 'Every month, the Johns Hopkins Medicine Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Health Equity distributes a newsletter from JHM's chief diversity officer, Dr. Sherita Golden.
'Regrettably, the January edition of this newsletter, which was distributed to all Johns Hopkins Medicine employees yesterday, included a definition of privilege that runs counter to the values of our institution, and our mission and commitment to serve everyone equally.
'Dr Golden heard the feedback from our community, sincerely apologized, and retracted the definition. We fully support and appreciate her decision to do so, and as leaders of Johns Hopkins Medicine, we too repudiate this language.'
In the initial email sent out, Dr. Golden explains that 'privilege' is the 'diversity word of the month'.
To explain who the phrase applies to, she offered a list. It reads: 'Privilege is characteristically invisible to people who have it.
'White people, able-bodied people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, males Christians, middle or owning class people, middle-aged people and English-speaking people,' all fit the bill, according to Golden.
'People in dominant groups often believe they have earned the privileges they enjoy or that everyone could have access to these privileges if only they worked to earn them.
'In fact, privileges are unearned and are granted to people in the dominant groups whether they want those privileges or not, and regardless of their stated intent.'
Among those to condemn the remarks was Elon Musk, who tweeted: 'This must end!'
Donald Trump Jr. said: 'The rot and racism in higher education goes so much further Harvard, MIT, and Penn (my alma mater) it has taken over virtually every institution and needs to end now.'
'The newsletter included a definition of the word privilege which, upon reflection, I deeply regret. The intent of the newsletter is to inform and support an inclusive community at Hopkins, but the language of this definition clearly did not meet that goal.
'In fact, because it was overly simplistic and poorly worded, it had the opposite effect.'
'I retract and disavow the definition I shared and I am sorry.'
In a statement to DailyMail.com, a Johns Hopkins Medicine spokesperson said: 'The January edition of the monthly newsletter from the Johns Hopkins Medicine Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Health Equity used language that contradicts the values of Johns Hopkins as an institution.
'Dr. Sherita Golden, Johns Hopkins Medicine's Chief Diversity Officer, has sincerely acknowledged this mistake and retracted the language used in the message.'
Other Twitter users slammed the letter too.
In response, conservative activists are trashing the institution online. 'Johns Hopkins is throwing away their legacy of being a respected and honored institution over the DEI movement that history will list as the thing that brought down this venerable institution for promoting racism, and discrimination and too many phobias to mention,' wrote one person.
'I fall in every category here-- so I must be the privilege world champion,' joked another user.
'I would love the word 'privilege' to just get sucked into a vortex, never to be seen or uttered again,' said another.
This past October, Johns Hopkins made headlines when it renamed one of its programs, the Caroline Donovan Professorship in English Literature due to the Donovan's family owning of slaves in the 19th century.
According to a 2020 announcement from the school, founder Johns Hopkins too was a slaveowner, despite being a Quaker, a group who were largely abolitionist.
'Weighing the prime legacy of any name is a subjective and imprecise process, but in taking up this work, the university seeks to reconcile history with the values it strives to protect and uphold,' Vice-chair of the university's board of trustees Sarah O'Hagan said in a statement at the time.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12962519/Johns-Hopkins-dean-apologizes-staff-DEI.html
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America’s ‘Social Justice’ Nightmares Have Only Intensified
Seattle is in King County, Washington, where Joe Biden got 75 percent of the vote in the 2020 election. King County had more than 1,000 drug overdoses involving fentanyl in 2023. These two facts are almost certainly related, but which is the cause and which the effect? Or could it be that both (a) the tendency to vote for Democrats and (b) the addiction to dangerous drugs are caused by some unknown factor? Without a careful analysis of the available data to identify that unknown background factor, is it wrong to hazard a guess that the overdosing dopeheads and Democratic voters in King County are just plain stupid?
Beyond sarcastic put-downs, it behooves those interested in public policy to take a look at what’s going on in places like Seattle, where Democrats dominate and “progressive” ideas therefore advance unhindered by any effective opposition. In the case of King County’s skyrocketing drug overdoses — which increased nearly 50 percent in just the past year — local officials have declared the problem “a public health crisis.” However, fentanyl is illegal, which means that the overdoses are also indicative of a crime problem, and progressives are against putting criminals in prison.
After the 2020 George Floyd riots — caused, not coincidentally, by the death of a fentanyl user — the progressive outcry against “mass incarceration” was part of the general anti-law-enforcement rhetoric that incited “fiery but mostly peaceful” protests. It was claimed that black people were disproportionately imprisoned because of “systemic racism,” and, it was further claimed, many of those inmates were guilty of nothing more than “non-violent drug offenses.” This rhetoric has now become the basis of national policy, e.g., Biden’s recent commutation of the sentences of 11 criminals “serving disproportionately long sentences for non-violent drug offenses.” These commutations were part of “reforms that advance equal justice, address racial disparities, strengthen public safety, and enhance the wellbeing of all Americans,” Biden declared. (READ MORE: Chauvin Did Not Murder George Floyd)
As a matter of public policy, this approach only makes sense to those who know nothing about how criminals operate or law enforcement works. Habitual felons are not specialists; that is to say, the person trafficking in illegal drugs is also likely to be engaged in other criminal behavior. Pimps and thieves are often involved in the drug trade, to say nothing of the gangbangers who shoot each other in disputes over urban “turf.” Once upon a time in America, cops and prosecutors knew how to deal with such activity, a get-tough approach that included what we may call the Al Capone principle of law enforcement.
Everybody knows that Al Capone and his gang were guilty of innumerable murders and other serious crimes, but Capone didn’t go to prison for those crimes. Instead, he went to prison for federal tax evasion. The principle expressed by this prosecution was simple — once you identify the habitual perpetrators of crime, it doesn’t really matter what charge sends them to prison. What matters is getting the bad guys off the street.
For decades, intellectuals and activists told us that the “War on Drugs” was misguided and ineffective. However, if recent experience has shown us anything, it’s that you can’t reduce the drug problem by legalizing hitherto outlawed substances or refusing to enforce existing drug laws. Just take a look at the streets of Seattle, where addicts crowd the sidewalks in open-air drug markets.
Is it a coincidence that Washington state was the first to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in 2012 and that now, more than a decade later, dopeheads are dying at record rates on the streets of Seattle? The criminals who were previously trafficking in marijuana didn’t decide to stop dealing drugs once marijuana was legalized. Drug dealers aren’t specialists, after all, and even with legalization, black-market marijuana sales continue, outside the taxed and regulated state-licensed cannabis shops. The same criminal who sells you weed will also be happy to supply you with fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, or MDMA.
The cause-and-effect questions about the correlations between (a) voting for Democrats and (b) disastrous outcomes like the drug problem in Seattle are matters of national consequence. The progressive policy agenda that tolerates — nay, that enables — the squalid scenes on the streets of Seattle and other Democrat-run cities is far-reaching in its ambitions. Even while urban “blue zones” turn into crime-ridden hellholes, the people responsible for these disasters lecture us about their plans to “save democracy” and, indeed, to “save the planet.” (RELATED: A Trashy Speech by a Trashy President: Biden Takes on Valley Forge)
In one of the all-time great moments in the history of televised political debates, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis recently confronted California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom with what instantly became known as the San Francisco “poop map”:
“This is a map of San Francisco. There’s a lot of plots on that. You may be asking, what is that plotting? Well, this is an app where they plot the human feces that are found on the streets of San Francisco,” DeSantis said, holding up the geographic depiction of the city smeared in shades of brown.
Democrats don’t seem to mind if the streets of their cities are littered with discarded hypodermic needles and other detritus. They have more important priorities, like making sure restaurants don’t provide plastic straws to their customers. This is not a joke. In 2018, Seattle became “the first major U.S. city to ban single-use plastic straws and utensils in food service.”
Think about that for a minute. Police in Seattle are patrolling restaurants to enforce the city’s plastic utensil ban, even while the city’s “progressive” policies require cops to ignore the junkies shooting up on the sidewalks. Peddlers of fentanyl go about their deadly business unmolested, but a restaurant owner could go to prison for giving his customer a plastic straw.
How many exclamation marks do you want me to put after a sentence like that? It is difficult to express in words how crazy Democrats have become. What can explain this madness? Thomas Sowell once outlined it as The Vision of the Anointed — the belief that what matters in public policy is not practical consequences but rather the expression of good intentions. This vision turns politics into a narcissistic competition in which support for “progressive” ideas is considered symbolic of one’s moral and intellectual superiority, without regard for the efficacy of the resulting policies. Even when progressive policies produce disaster — e.g., the squalor in cities like Seattle — the people who vote for such policies still cling to the vision that tells them they are more enlightened and caring than their opponents and critics who point out the failures of their policies.
It would be bad enough if these failures were merely local in their impact. Watching once-prosperous cities turn into crime-plagued nightmares — whether in Seattle or Portland, Chicago or Baltimore — is unpleasant, but people who want to avoid local disasters perpetrated by advocates of “social justice” can simply move away from Democrat-controlled cities. What happens, however, when urban progressives gain control of entire states? This was the point DeSantis was making in his debate with Newsom, namely, that the former San Francisco mayor has presided over California’s startling decline since becoming governor. We may stipulate that Newsom himself is not entirely responsible for this decline, which was underway long before he became governor in 2019. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the progressive agenda is the basic cause of most problems in California, a state where a majority of voters have chosen Democrats in every presidential election since 1996. Democrats control the state legislature and every statewide office in California, where Joe Biden got 63 percent of the vote in 2020. Is anyone surprised to learn that (a) the state now has a record $68 billion budget deficit, and (b) it is now losing population as fed-up residents leave the state?
Eventually, however, as the cancer of progressivism spreads, destroying cities and states, the health of the nation is threatened — which is, after all, why Joe Biden is in the White House. Go through the 2020 election results state-by-state and a pattern becomes clear. In every “swing” state that tilted to Biden, Trump would have won were it not for the overwhelming tsunami of Democratic votes in major cities. For example, in Georgia, where the official margin of victory was less than 12,000 votes (0.23 percent of the approximately 5 million votes in the state), Biden’s margin of victory in Fulton County (Atlanta) was more than 160,000 votes. Which is to say, the Democrats in Atlanta won and the rest of Georgia lost. Something similar was true regarding Philadelphia versus the rest of Pennsylvania, Milwaukee versus the rest of Wisconsin, and so on.
Democrat-controlled cities exercised a decisive influence in putting Biden in the White House, and, therefore, the preferences of urban progressives control the policy agenda of the administration. No matter how much Biden tries to portray himself as a blue-collar “regular guy” favoring commonsense policies, his election was the result of the Democratic Party’s urban dominance, and the agenda of the Biden administration owes much less to common sense than to the kind of ideologues who think it is good policy to legalize drugs, ban plastic straws, and turn loose violent felons in the name of “social justice.”
What is really at stake in this year’s election is whether the American people will wake up and stop this insanity before it destroys our nation.
https://spectator.org/americas-social-justice-nightmares-have-only-intensified/
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The great Canadian hysteria
Another poisonous Leftist hoax
Almost 100 Christian churches in Canada have been systematically targeted in apparent revenge attacks following a hoax about mass graves containing Native American children.
In 2021, a horrific story swept the internet as an indigenous group in Saskatchewan claimed to find 751 unmarked graves under the Marieval Indian Residential School, weeks after 215 children were supposedly discovered under another school in British Columbia.
The schools were run by Christian churches - largely Catholic - and sought to eliminate their students' Indigenous culture so they could 'assimilate' into Canadian society.
However, excavations carried out last year failed to turn up any evidence of bodies, and most experts concluded that claims of mass graves were exaggerated.
At the same time the excavations failed for the past two years, at least 96 churches have been burned, vandalized and destroyed, seemingly in retaliation, with phrases smeared on the walls including: 'Where are the children.'
The root cause of the apparent hoax stems from the early 19th to 20th centuries, when tens of thousands of indigenous children were ripped from their families and placed at 'residential' boarding schools across Canada.
Many suffered horrendous abuse, were killed or disappeared, leading to searches in recent years that claimed to find shallow graves through the use of ground-penetrating radar.
The tech only found aberrations in the ground that were mistakenly believed to be shallow graves, that may also have been rocks and tree roots disturbing the soil.
Although not every 'site' has been excavated, no bodies were discovered at those that have, leading some to now feel outrage at the 'mass graves' may have been fueled more by social media hysteria than evidence.
As backlash to the initial claims reached fever pitch, furious protests erupted at many sites, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau telling indigenous people that 'the hurt and trauma you feel is Canada's responsibility to bear.'
Since then, almost 100 churches have been burned or vandalized, with Canadian law enforcement declaring just two of the 33 church fires to be accidents.
Over 60 other churches have been marked with vandalism, including rocks thrown through windows, burglaries, and graffiti reading 'dig them up' and 'return them home'.
Although the attacks have stretched for hundreds of miles, one of the worst affected cities was Calgary, which saw 11 churches vandalized in a matter of hours on the night of June 30, 2021.
As the incidents pile up, outrage has been growing among those who feel the government's reaction was far stronger to the hoax 'mass graves' than recent attacks on Christianity.
Many of the retaliatory arson attacks have occurred on First Nation territories, since many churches are found on Native American land after Catholic missionaries built them in the early 1900s and forcibly indoctrinated locals into religion.
Deep divisions remain today, with indigenous hatred for the residential schools ongoing while they are blamed for apparent retribution toward hundred-year-old churches.
The retribution towards Canada's history has also seen Catholic churches make up a majority of those targeted, possibly also due to the church's history of crimes against children.
There is little debate that the indigenous children forced to attend the residential schools suffered awful abuse and neglect, however those that have questioned the claims have faced severe backlash and claims they are 'genocide deniers.'
After one recent excavation on August 18 of 14 sites under Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Catholic Church, experts again said the mass graves claims appeared to be baseless.
'I don’t like to use the word hoax because it’s too strong but there are also too many falsehoods circulating about this issue with no evidence,' Jacques Rouillard, a professor emeritus in the Department of History at the Université de Montréal, told the New York Post.
'This has all been very dark for Canada. We need more excavations so we can know the truth,' Rouillard said. 'Too much was said and decided upon before there was any proof.'
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Australian surrogacy advocates defend family-making practice, after Pope Francis calls for blanket ban of 'deplorable' act
I must say that I find it distasteful when male homosexuals are given access to surrogate parenting. I think all children need a mother. In the case below, however, the actual mother -- the egg donor - remains in close contact so I am less disturbed by that
Stephen Page and his husband Mitch were brought to tears when a friend offered to become a surrogate mother and give birth to a child for them so they could form a family.
"It was Christmas Day, of all days, when she said she loved us both and wanted to be our surrogate," Mr Page said.
"Then a very good friend offered to be an egg donor. "Both of them were giving the gift of life to us."
That gift is now a "magical", four-year-old girl named Elizabeth who has taken to calling Mitch "Dad" and Stephen "Daddy", so they know who she is referring to.
The women who helped to bring Elizabeth into the world are also part of her life, as they remain close friends of the family.
As the Pages are based in Brisbane, Elizabeth was born through an unpaid, altruistic surrogacy arrangement, the only kind of surrogacy legal in Australia.
A nationwide ban on commercial surrogacy — which is available to prospective parents in several countries overseas — means it is illegal to pay surrogate mothers in Australia.
But all types of surrogacy are back in the spotlight following a call earlier this week by the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, for a worldwide ban on all forms of surrogacy.
In his yearly speech to diplomats in Vatican City on Monday, the pope declared surrogacy to be a "deplorable" act that exploited poor women.
"I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother's material needs," Pope Francis said.
"A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract."
Pope Francis has previously described surrogacy as using a "uterus for rent" and a practice that commercialises motherhood.
The Catholic Church also opposes in-vitro fertilisation, abortion, artificial contraception and homosexual sex, although in a landmark ruling in late 2023, Pope Francis approved blessings for same-sex couples.
The Archdiocese of Brisbane did not respond to the ABC's requests for comment on the pope's latest condemnation of surrogacy.
Mr Page, who is a fertility lawyer and surrogacy advocate, said the pope's comments were hypocritical, as the numerous cases of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests meant the church did not have the high ground when it came to sexual morality.
"It's a bit rich to hear the Catholic Church, of all institutions, talking about women's and children's rights given their history," Mr Page said.
"They should put their own house in order first," he said.
However, Mr Page said there were legitimate concerns about women being exploited overseas, with the majority of Australians who pursue surrogacy to create or expand their families going abroad to find surrogate mothers.
He said, in his opinion, surrogate mothers should be allowed to receive payments in Australia, because the current system disincentivises local surrogacy, resulting in more people entering into commercial arrangements overseas.
A Monash University paper, 'Australian intended parents’ decision-making and characteristics and outcomes of surrogacy arrangements completed in Australia and overseas', noted that overseas surrogate mothers and the babies they gave birth to had worse health outcomes, including higher rates of preterm births, multiple births, and neonatal intensive care, than babies born via surrogates in Australia.
Sweeping changes to ACT surrogacy laws proposed
The ACT government proposes changes to the territory's surrogacy laws, including allowing single people to access surrogacy and removing the requirement for the intended parent to have a genetic connection to the child.
The researchers found that overseas surrogacy practices included many cases of multiple embryo transfers and anonymous egg donations, which are both illegal in Australia.
Their survey revealed the most common reasons Australians sought international surrogacy were difficulties finding a local surrogate and the complicated legal processes at home.
"Improving access to surrogacy at a domestic level would reduce the number of people engaging with international arrangements and, in turn, reduce the potential for harm," the paper found.
There were 213 Australian babies born through international surrogacy in the 2021-22 financial year.
This compares with 100 surrogacy births reported by Australian and New Zealand fertility clinics in 2021.
'A beautiful extended family'
Surrogacy lawyer Sarah Jefford said she felt blessed to become the surrogate mother for two Melbourne dads in 2018.
The podcaster said in her view she was receiving the gift of life just as much as she was giving it.
She said throughout the process she formed an intimate bond with the two dads and her surrogate daughter, who is about to turn six.
"While they gained parenthood and the ability to raise and parent her, what we gained together was this beautiful extended family," Mrs Jefford said.
"I am her Aunty Sarah and we spend time together, I've babysat for her, and we celebrate milestones like birthdays and Christmas together."
Growing Families global director Sam Everingham said there needed to be a global framework to regulate surrogacy overseas.
The Australia-based research organisation advises governments and families who are considering undertaking surrogacy.
Mr Everingham said some countries had very poor protections for surrogates, but the solution was not a blanket ban on all surrogacy.
He said Australian surrogacy was very highly regulated. "We've got many thousands of surrogates who do so in an ethical manner," he said.
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14 January, 2024
Pope Francis Is Right. The World Should Ban Surrogacy (?)
Oh boy! Another diffcult issue to navigate. AUBREY GULICK (below) is a young conservative but she is also a devout Catholic and that has clearly influenced her views.
I think she is wrong. As I see it, surrogacy brings human beings into the world who otherwise would not exist so it is to be praised.
Her big objection is that not all fertilized eggs during a surrogacy process will result in a pregnancy. Fertilized eggs are real human beings and their death is akin to murder.
I do agree that all fertilized eggs are full human beings but it is myopic to say that their loss is akin to murder. Fertilized eggs are routinely lost during menstruation. That only some fertilized eggs survive is nature's way and surrogacy in fact REDUCES those losses. And the products of surrogacy are clearly very much wanted so should normally be treated well
Catholicism can be very dogmatic but I hope it releases its grip on Aubrey in this matter
Blue eyes. Blond hair. Somewhere between 5’9 and 6’3. Does that sound like the ideal baby boy? Or maybe you wanted a girl with brown hair and green eyes who would grow to be 5’3. Until very recently, that wasn’t a choice anyone got to make. Now, with surrogacy, almost anyone can.
Of course, that doesn’t mean surrogacy is moral, and the Catholic Church has been consistent in its opposition to the practice because it amounts to trafficking unborn children. On Monday, Pope Francis called for a global ban on surrogacy during an address to diplomats gathered in Vatican City in which he discussed a wide range of global issues, including the wars in Ukraine and Israel and the persecution of Christians in Nigeria. (READ MORE: Kellyanne Conway’s Contraception Gambit)
“The path to peace calls for respect for life, for every human life, starting with the life of the unborn child in the mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking,” Francis said. “In this regard, I deem deplorable the practice of so-called surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs. A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract.”
Surrogacy Grows in Popularity
But Francis didn’t just speak out against surrogacy, which he has done before; he called on the world to ban the practice altogether — and he did so in the face of an industry that is growing exponentially. Global Market Insights estimates that by 2032, the surrogate market will have grown ninefold compared to 2022 data, becoming an industry worth $129 billion. Surrogacy isn’t exactly new (“Baby M,” the subject of a contentious case that went to the New Jersey Supreme Court, was born in the 1980s), but its popularity has skyrocketed over the last few years.
There are several reasons for that. As homosexuality becomes more widely acceptable, those practicing the lifestyle want to have biological children, and that requires using a surrogate. Celebrities who want children often turn to surrogacy for health reasons or convenience. Couples who were married late in life or who struggle with fertility will sometimes do the same. Of course, surrogacy doesn’t work as an industry unless women are willing to carry someone else’s child for nine months — and those living in war-torn countries like Ukraine, countries with third-world economies (some of which have wisely banned the practice), or situations with low incomes and few career opportunities, usually are.
As the practice has become more popular, stories like that of Shane Dawson and Ryland Adams have received a lot of attention in the media. Despite Dawson’s demonstrable pedophilic tendencies, the popular YouTubers were recently able to take home twin boys conceived via an egg donor and birthed by another woman. An estimated 10 children were discarded in the process after Dawson and Adams decided which babies they wanted. (RELATED: Shane Dawson and Ryland Adams’ Use of Surrogacy Showcases the Practice’s Grotesqueness)
Product of the Culture of Death
While Dawson and Adams’ case is particularly horrific, the problem with surrogacy and in-vitro fertilization isn’t only that the gay couple deprives a child of his or her mother but that the process itself is immoral. Millions of tiny, unborn babies are frozen or killed, and the miraculous process of bringing life into the world is reduced to a contractual relationship in which thousands of dollars pass hands.
The same is true when a heterosexual couple struggling with infertility or sexual trauma turns to surrogacy to build a family. The ends don’t justify the means, and the process should be illegal. Fortunately, in some places like Italy, Spain, and India, it is. Unfortunately, in the United States, surrogacy is governed by a patchwork of laws across the states, and only three ban it outright.
As Francis pointed out in Monday’s address, surrogacy and its popularity are a product of the culture of death in which we live. “At every moment of its existence, human life must be preserved and defended; yet I note with regret, especially in the West, the continued spread of a culture of death, which in the name of a false compassion discards children, the elderly, and the sick,” the pope said.
The pontiff is, of course, quite right. Children ought to be the natural product of the love between a man and a woman — a wonderful, miraculous outflowing of their relationship. They should never be a commodity, ordered out of a catalog in a desire to satisfy the egos of the people who claim to be their parents.
https://spectator.org/pope-francis-is-right-the-world-should-ban-surrogacy/
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Mega-Study Finds That Minorities Don’t Receive Harsher Criminal Punishments, But That Academics Said So Anyway
An analysis of twenty years of academic literature found that there is little or no evidence that minorities are mistreated by the criminal justice system when it comes to punishment, despite assertions to the contrary by policymakers, media, and academics.
“In recent years it has become common belief within the scholarly community as well as the general public that the criminal justice system is biased due to race and class issues. We sought to examine this with meta-analysis. Our results suggest that for most crimes, criminal adjudication in the US is not substantially biased on race or class lines,” professors Christopher J. Ferguson and Sven Smith of Stetson University found in a study to be published in the criminology journal Aggression and Violent Behavior and obtained by The Daily Wire.
“Overall, this is a cause for optimism,” researchers concluded—though their findings also called into question the honesty and rigor of the work conducted by race-fueled scholars, whose weaknesses were highlighted this month in former Harvard president Claudine Gay.
As a meta-analysis, the study did not create a new dataset on criminal sentencing and race, but rather examined 51 studies conducted by others looking at the question since 2005. The numbers suggesting no or marginal racial bias in punishment were therefore collected by the existing studies, but those authors often claimed to have found racial bias in their writings, even when their numbers did not back it up.
“We express the concern that evidence for racial bias in the U.S. criminal justice system has been consistently weak, and that scholarly narratives have too often ignored this in favor of the systemic racism narrative,” Ferguson and Smith wrote.
Some of the studies found no evidence of racism in criminal sentencing and said so clearly, but their findings were simply ignored by the media, politicians, and other academics, who at times did not acknowledge a single paper dissenting from their hypothesis in their citations.
“At present, we believe that the evidence on racial bias in criminal justice adjudication has been poorly communicated to the general public and policymakers. In many cases, it appears that data calling into question beliefs in structural racism in the criminal justice system are simply being ignored, both by scholars in the field and by policy makers,” the new paper said.
When combining the 51 studies, the numbers “did not reach evidentiary standards to support the hypothesis that race or class are predictive of criminal adjudication” when it comes to all crime types, violent crimes, or juvenile crimes. For drug crimes, “small disparities were found… suggesting that race/ethnicity is associated with between 1.6 to 1.8% of the variance in criminal adjudication” among blacks and Hispanics facing drug charges, versus whites–a percentage so small that policy discussions focused on it are unlikely to solve any problems.
“There was no evidence of a class effect, and Asians actually received more favorable treatment during criminal adjudication than Whites, albeit not at a level that met our evidentiary standard,” the paper said.
Scholars determined to find racial bias were often able to claim to have made a statistically significant finding because court records allow for studies to include tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of cases. In science, the threshold for “statistical significance” is a balance between how big the effect is and how many examples were included in the study. In studies with huge amounts of criminal cases, even the most minute differences in criminal sentences can technically be called “significant.” But in the common meaning of the word, a years-long prison term being a few days shorter or longer, on average, for different race or class groups is not actually significant, and is essentially “noise” in the data set, the paper said.
Among other signs of biased or poorly done science, race researchers often did not “pre-register” their studies by laying out in advance their hypothesis and what they would do to determine if it was true or not. That meant that if their initial methodology found no evidence of racism, they could simply slice and dice the data in different ways until they found some way in which they could claim vindication. (Ferguson and Smith’s meta-analysis was pre-registered.)
Such researchers also did not set out in advance what kind of numbers would be required to show that the criminal justice system is racist. “Put simply: it is helpful to know what data we’d expect to see if the theory is wrong and what the threshold for rejecting the theory might be. Without such clear guidelines, theories may persist endlessly despite having weak evidence,” Ferguson and Smith wrote.
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Blue state Republicans move to strike this ‘catastrophic’ drug law they say is wreaking havoc on communities
As Portland reckons with an "explosion" of open-air drug use, Fox News rode along with the police bureau's bike squad. Here's what we saw in the City of Roses.
Oregon House Republicans are sharing their plan to end the state's voter-approved drug decriminalization experiment at the same time Democratic lawmakers are weighing a more modest re-criminalization proposal.
"The citizens of Oregon understand the failures of Measure 110," Rep. Rick Lewis, one of the chief sponsors of the GOP bill, said in a statement. "We see the results on the streets, in the unacceptable overdose death rate and in the catastrophic consequences to our communities, to public safety and to livability. Change is needed, and we can’t afford to take small steps that fail to adequately address the problem."
About 58% of Oregon voters passed Measure 110 in 2020, decriminalizing small amounts of all drugs and redirecting much of the state's marijuana tax revenue to fund grants for addiction services.
Since then, addiction and overdose deaths have skyrocketed in Oregon and nationwide as fentanyl swept across the country. Now, three years into the first-of-its-kind law, numerous polls show Oregonians favor re-criminalizing hard drugs and making treatment required, not voluntary, as a jail alternative.
The Republican bill would make possession of drugs like fentanyl, heroin and meth a Class A misdemeanor and would require treatment to avoid jail. If convicted, drug users could face up to a year in jail, a $6,250 fine, or both.
"Enabling people to live on the streets and poison themselves is not compassionate," Rep. Tracy Cramer said in a statement.
The bill would also ban public drug use and set harsher prison sentences for drug dealers, especially if they sell drugs that result in a person's death.
Democrats, who control both chambers of the state legislature, have also signaled a desire to roll back parts of Measure 110 during their upcoming 35-day legislative session. One possibility is making possession a Class C misdemeanor, the lowest crime classification.
But reform advocates staunchly oppose re-criminalizing drugs.
"Any action by the Oregon legislature that criminalizes addiction would be cruel, harmful, and a failure of leadership," read a statement from the American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon, Health Justice Recovery Alliance and other groups supporting Measure 110.
"We cannot regress back to the failed war on drug tactics that harm Black, brown, and poor people and make drug addiction, overdose deaths, and homelessness more difficult and expensive to solve," the statement continued.
In Portland, where the effects of Oregon's drug laws are most stark, city officials have been urging the state to take action.
"We need to give tools to our first responders so they can take action," City Commissioner Dan Ryan told Fox News on Thursday. "If someone is smoking fentanyl in public and it's causing harm to those who are trying to access the sidewalk, then the police need to be able to respond to that … It's just common sense."
Portland's City Council unanimously passed an ordinance banning public drug use in September. But city officials said the law couldn't go into effect until state lawmakers pass a new law allowing them to enforce it.
Senate Majority Leader Kate Lieber told the Capital Chronicle that Democrats are working with Republicans to "put together a proposal that connects people to addiction treatment, gets drugs off our streets, and keeps our communities safe."
"We know we cannot go back to the failed war on drugs, and we cannot continue to allow Oregonians to die of drug overdoses on our streets," Lieber said in a statement to the outlet. "A policy has not been finalized, but once we do have a proposal to put forward, we look forward to thoroughly vetting the ideas through a public process."
A coalition of political and business leaders in Oregon have also lobbied the legislature to reform Measure 110 and promises to send a ballot measure to the voters if lawmakers don't take action next month.
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Antisemitic madness is everywhere now
It makes the brainless and the losers feel smart
For many, it was to be a respite. An escape. A place to unwind and be among nature, music, dance, yoga – a sanctuary of sorts. A safe space. The website promised an experience based on inclusivity. This promise was undoubtedly fulfilled for many Woodford Folk Festival goers, unless, of course, you were Israeli or Jewish.
Israeli backpackers flocked to Woodford keen to, at least temporarily, leave the massacre of October 7 behind them.
‘We came because we heard that it’s an amazing festival,’ said Ami, a young Israeli.
‘I went with a friend whose boyfriend was kidnapped and then killed in Gaza. Our goal was to clear our minds and leave the city – be in nature. Instead, the experience turned out to be very triggering.
‘The people there had no idea what they’re talking about. One girl on stage in shorts was holding an Aboriginal and Palestinian flag, yet if she dressed like that in Gaza she would be shot straight away.’
And for local Jewish residents, the experience was not much different.
‘As a person who’s been going to Woodford since my early teens, I’ve always found it a place of refuge and I felt safe. Each time I’d go to Woodford it felt like coming home,’ said Penny. ‘Yet this year was different. It was filled with extremely distressing experiences. It was disheartening to see casual one-sided references to the war in an inflammatory way.’
And then there’s Hagar, who has been travelling in Australia for close to a year. She is a Nova festival goer and has many friends who lost their lives on October 7, as well as friends who have fallen while serving in the army in this current war. The Nova music festival is where more than 350 young Israelis were murdered. Others were raped, tortured, or kidnapped and taken into Gaza. Some are still being kept hostage.
It was the first time, she said, during her travels in Australia that she had encountered such anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish sentiments from the other people in attendance.
‘The people they [the protestors] are supporting killed my friends and reminded me of the horrible events of October 7,’ Hagar said.
‘It [Woodford] is not an experience which I will remember as being good, [with some festival goers] supporting murder and rape in a modern society and it felt like our side wasn’t heard or given a chance to tell our story.’
The Woodford Folk Festival near the eponymous South East Queensland town has been and gone for another year. The festival is held annually over six days and six nights, following Christmas through to New Year’s Day. More than 2,000 local, national, and international, artists, musicians, and presenters put on over 500 acts. Around 125,000 people flock annually from around the globe to the event. The festival is run as a non-profit organisation supported by corporate sponsors as well as receiving state and federal government sponsorship. The festival organisers tout the event as a festival ‘based on a vision of inclusive and creative community and culture…’ and ‘…kindness, empathy, goodwill and generosity are collectively extended to all’.
For a certain minority, this year’s festival was anything but ‘inclusive’ or filled with ‘kindness, empathy, and goodwill’. Instead, it was marred by pro-Palestinian supporters high-jacking the festival, turning the event into mass political grandstanding.
‘I’m a regular attendee at Woodford Folk Festival and have worked there multiple times,’ said Imogene, who is neither Jewish nor Israeli.
‘This festival holds a very special place in my heart and is definitely considered to be one of my favourite festivals in Australia. However, I was really disappointed this year by the insensitivity towards the large Israeli and Jewish community who have supported this festival for many, many years.
‘I understand that this art and musical festival always has a hint of politics, however, this year’s festival was heartless and very inappropriate. It was incredibly unfair towards the Jewish community to have people protesting about Gaza and Palestine with signs like ‘From the river to the sea Palestine will be free’ during such a sensitive time. In festivals you should feel a sense of belonging, instead people were parading the extinction of Israel with no real understanding of the depth of their words. There were groups of people gathering at the village green with flags, and posters, and wearing Keffiyeh (which is culturally inappropriate in itself), and then parading these around the festival. People even put ‘Free Palestine’ stickers on Israeli food trucks and signs. Can you feel the suffocation? Musicians and artists praying for the people in Gaza with no remorse or prayers towards Israelis who are sitting right in front of them. It was absolutely heartbreaking!’
Imogene shared that throughout the festival her Jewish friends came up to her in tears and shared how unsafe they felt – in a festival that should be bringing nothing but love and light, she said.
‘After the horrific events that happened on October 7, in particular at the Nova festival, you can imagine the hurdle Israelis and all affected had to overcome to even bring themselves to this festival, to then feel suffocated, unsafe, and to be reminded of these events by people dressing up like the ones who brought this terror in the first place.
‘While I love this festival and all that goes into it, I was very disappointed and disheartened by the large number of beautiful people who were torn apart from all of this – including me.’
Israeli-born Australian Sivan attended the Woodford Folk Festival with her two children, aged 6 and 9. Sivan had never been to Woodford and was looking forward to spending the day at a festival that she thought would be a peaceful, welcoming, and inclusive environment. As a Jewish Israeli, what she experienced was quite the opposite. She felt unsafe, not welcome, and her children felt scared, threatened, and fearful from what they experienced.
Sivan’s best friend, Danielle, lived on Kibbutz Oz – one of the kibbutzim massacred on October 7. The parents of Sivan’s friends, Orly and David, were both gruesomely murdered by Hamas. What makes these slayings particularly grotesque is that the terrorists filmed the murder and sent the footage of this horrific act to their daughter, Danielle. Sadly, this experience is not unique to Sivan. Many Queenslanders have a close connection to the horrors of October 7.
As Sivan strolled around the Woodford grounds, she encountered a group of Palestinian protestors sporting Palestinian flags and signs. The group chanted ‘Free, free Palestine’ and ‘Genocide’. She asked this group whether they knew what had happened on October 7.
They did not respond and avoided engaging in conversation with her. She asked again. No response. She then asked them to close their eyes and imagine terrorists breaking into their houses, murdering families, slaughtering babies. One of the protestors responded with: ‘That never happened.’
Sivan said her children were left extremely scared after the encounter. Sivan said she came to the festival to enjoy the shows, the workshops, the music, and dancing: the putative community spirit of the festival. Yet the reality of the festival was anything but enjoyable. A little later, she was confronted by yet another protest.
Jewish friends of Sivan had flown up from Melbourne with their daughter to attend the festival. They had paid for two days but after the first day did not feel comfortable returning to the overtly anti-Israel environment.
An Israeli backpacker, while watching a performance, was confronted by a Palestinian flag and a mentioning of all ‘the murders in Gaza’ during the show. Another Israeli backpacker went to order some food from an Israeli food truck. A sticker had allegedly been stuck to the van: ‘Warning: Do not buy this product. Supports Israel. A country that is exceedingly violating international law, the 4th Geneva Convention, and fundamental human rights. Stand up for human rights. Boycott Israel until it respects international law. #BDS.’ Not only is this incorrect, as many international law experts will confirm, but one has to ask what a locally owned/run business has to do with Israel? Just like every other Aussie, they were there to enjoy the festival and, hopefully, make a quid while they’re at it, not to be subjected to boycotts and acts of antisemitism. The IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Association) defines what constitutes antisemitism, including: holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.
Prior to the start, both Israelis and Jews had shared their concerns with Woodford management. According to them, these concerns were allegedly met with justifications of free speech. Festival organisers provided assurances that they would respond quickly and decisively to any incitement of hatred.
The Woodford Folk Festival is a partly state and federal sponsored event and as such ought to be wholly exempt from politics and expressions of controversial opinions. Furthermore, it runs directly counter to Woodford’s stated aim of ‘love’ and ‘coming together as humans’ etc. etc. It is indeed incumbent upon the festival organisers to ensure that no festival goer is offended, but is instead able to enjoy the music, dance, art, the natural environment, and workshops.
‘I left Israel 2 months after the war started,’ Yasmin says. ‘In the first 2 months, I have not experienced any negativity from people here, even the opposite, people whom I interacted with were very supportive and understanding in conversations when I told them I am from Israel.
‘During the Woodford Festival, I was exposed to the most Palestinian and pro-Palestinian content so far in my trip. On the first day, there were Palestinian flags on the main stage at an event, which made me feel very uneasy and unsafe. They then set up a stand with their propaganda. It was the opposite to feeling welcome and at home; it was very uncomfortable. We tried to talk to the management about our feelings to no avail.
‘We talked to the police about how this makes us feel but they informed us that this was authorised by the management.
‘People at the festival asked me why don’t I go to another country and live there? What they don’t understand is the connection we have to our country, our land. It is where I live, where my cultural heritage is.
‘In my eyes that flag [Palestinian] is a symbol of Israeli annihilation, which was attempted on October 7. When I see that flag I feel my life is in danger. I did not enjoy this festival. I would have liked to have something to represent how we feel and what the Israeli side has been through. It felt like very one-sided opinions and views.’
One Israeli backpacker summed up the general sentiment: ‘If I knew it would be such an anti-Israel festival I would never have gone. I thought it was supposed to be a peaceful, welcoming festival. I came to escape – to experience positive, good vibes and be among nature – to have a good time. Yet it felt violent, aggressive, toxic.’
In my opinion, the organisers of the Woodford Folk Festival have failed miserably in their mission, vision, and values of inclusivity, kindness, empathy, goodwill, and generosity collectively extended to all. They have allowed what is one of the great festivals of ‘human connection and love’ on the annual calendar to descend into something else entirely.
‘It was the first time I felt unwanted and rejected because I am Israeli,’ Amit said. ‘I felt minimised – like someone is pointing a finger at me because of where I am from.’
I wonder if this was the experience event sponsors had hoped for…
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/a-festival-of-exclusivity/
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11 January, 2024
Antisemitism From the Left
Betsy has had a distinguished career but she seems unaware that antisemitism has always had its principal home on the Left. Karl Marx himself despised Jews even though he was one. And Hitler was a socialist.
By comparison, antisemitism among conservatives was always a token thing, a hangover from Christian enmity towards the people who had slain the Christians' God. So the British Conservative party made a Jew their Prime Minister in the late 19th century and Neville Chamberlain had some antisemitic views but he was the British Prime Minister who declared war on Hitler
Betsy McCaughey
Jews are feeling increasingly afraid and unwelcome. Last week, girls on the basketball team of a Jewish private school in suburban Hartsdale, New York, were jabbed and hit with antisemitic slurs by players from Yonkers' Roosevelt High School. "I support Hamas, you f---ing Jew," a Roosevelt player snarled. The game had to be called off in the third quarter, and the Jewish girls needed school security to help them leave.
Antisemitic incidents were already on the rise in 2021 and 2022. Now they are up nearly 400% year over year since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack against Israel, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt explains, "I am not talking about, you know, stores producing IDF T-shirts. I'm talking about a coffee shop on Long Island, an ice cream parlor in the Bay Area, a restaurant in Chicago." It reminds him of his grandparents' barbershop, which was vandalized by the Nazis in Germany. "I can't believe this is happening in our country today."
Believe it.
The mainstream media choose to downplay it and the Democratic Party is, at best, divided. Antisemitism has often come from the Right, but it appears now to be coming from the Left.
When the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the University of Pennsylvania caused outrage by saying at a congressional hearing in December that calls for Jewish genocide don't necessarily violate campus policy -- "it depends on the context" -- Democrats' reactions were mixed.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) had no problem with moral clarity. "There is no 'both sides-ism' and it isn't 'free speech,' it's simply hate speech," Fetterman said. It should be "reflexive" to "condemn antisemitism."
But former President Barack Obama, the titular head of the party, had a different response. He reached out to Harvard and made a behind-the-scenes effort to save President Claudine Gay's job.
On Dec. 13, the House of Representatives voted on a resolution to condemn antisemitism on campuses and demand the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and MIT for tolerating it. Democrats split, with 84 supporting the resolution and 125 opposing. Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) called it a "gross overreach" to tell colleges whom they should hire.
Sorry. If the discrimination had been against black students, the vote would have been unanimous, and Democrats would have clamored to pull federal funding from the colleges. But Jewish students can pound salt.
Jewish hostages, too. The public's indifference to the eight American Jews captive in Gaza, the media's silence and President Joe Biden's tepid efforts to get them released, are telling.
Recall that during Jimmy Carter's presidency, 52 American diplomats and citizens were taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and endured 444 days of captivity.
During that ordeal, Americans tied yellow ribbons around trees and Walter Cronkite announced on the nightly CBS news how many days the hostages had been captive. Carter's failure to get them out contributed to his landslide loss to Ronald Reagan in 1980.
That's unlikely to be a factor this November because this time, so few Americans care.
Granted, there are only eight hostages, and they were not serving the U.S. in an official capacity when they were taken. Even so, the silence is troubling.
In 2014, First Lady Michelle Obama made it a cause celebre when 200 Nigerian school girls were abducted. They weren't Americans, but she said, "In these girls, Barack and I see our own daughters."
Prominent Democrats today are not holding signs saying "Bring Back Our Hostages." Families of the American hostages released an ongoing TV ad on Jan. 7 to fill the void and build awareness.
Over the centuries, hatred of Jews has come from many directions. The latest wave appears linked to progressive opposition to Israel's treatment of Palestinians, according to a study done by Arie Perliger, director of security studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. All Jews must bear the guilt, the thinking goes.
By failing to condemn antisemitism, politicians, academics and their media allies are doing our enemies' bidding. One week ago, ISIS released a 67-minute diatribe calling for the destruction of Jews worldwide to avenge Israeli strikes against Gaza. The message was "kill them wherever you find them."
Meanwhile, Jewish families privately talk at the dinner table about Anne Frank, hiding in attics, and where this new wave of antisemitism could lead.
It's time for all Americans to denounce it.
https://townhall.com/columnists/betsymccaughey/2024/01/10/antisemitism-from-the-left-n2633403
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California's Next Amusing idea -- a wealth tax
Do they want to say goodbye to all their rich people? Could be. There are some amazing morons in the Democratic party
Because California is one of those places where bad ideas go to achieve immortality, a wealth tax is being placed back on the table in the state assembly.
You know, it seems like only yesterday [It was only yesterday, Steve —editor.] I reported that progressive groupthink had doomed California to a slow-motion suicide starting 30 years ago. But instead of reversing course, one representative is adding another few drops of arsenic to the state's coffee supply.
"Last year alone, billionaire growth grew by $250 billion dollars. That’s the entire size of the state budget," Assemblyman Alex Lee (D-San Jose) told KCRA 3 News this week, referring to a study by the left-leaning California Budget and Policy Center.
"And if we just impose a 100% wealth tax on those greedy bastards' unrealized gains," Lee didn't say but implied, "then we would have all the money! MUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"I'm delighted after so many times of introducing the wealth tax, it's finally getting its first hearing," Lee actually did say. Lee's Bill 259 will be taken up by the Assembly's Revenue and Taxation Committee this week.
I don't have to explain to you why a wealth tax is such a supremely stupid idea that it takes a Bay Area socialist to champion it because even Lee's brother and sister Democrats are having none of it. Brendan Richards, Deputy Comms Director for Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, almost immediately took to Twitter/X to insist that "a wealth tax is not part of the conversation – wealth tax proposals are going nowhere in California."
And that's true. Lee tried to get a hearing on his wealth tax in the Assembly last year. But Democrat assemblycritters shot the proposal with a silver bullet, drove a wooden stake through its heart, chained it in silver, set it ablaze, and finally scattered the ashes on the Santa Ana winds. That's because the comparative grownups who still run California's Democrat establishment know they can't afford to alienate California's progressive billionaire establishment.
But that's now. Tomorrow, like Dracula coming back from the dead for yet another sequel, I suspect will be a different story.
Lee is one of the Democrat-controlled Assembly's Young Turks, a 28-year-old Bay Area know-nothing progressive who is already serving his second term. He ran as a "democratic socialist" and was even endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America.
In his second race, he defeated his Republican opponent, Bob Brunton, by an almost three-to-one margin. Because people in the Bay Area would rather gnaw off their own elbows than allow themselves to be represented by a Republican who won't take all their money and use it to weaponize vagrancy.
From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York to Ilhan Omar in Minnesota to young Mr. Lee in California, socialists appear to be the future of the Democrat party in hardcore pockets across the nation. Lee might not get his wealth tax in 2024 or even in 2025 — but unless his party's trajectory changes, he'll get it by 2030 or so. You don't start running for office at 25 or 26 years old unless you're on a mission and, whatever their faults are policy-wise, the country's democratic socialists are committed.
Californians with annual incomes greater than [dr_evil_voice] ONE MILLION DOLLARS [/dr_evil_voice] are "only about one-half of 1% of all tax returns filed in the state but collectively pay about 40% of all California personal income taxes," the Los Angeles Times reported in 2022.
These are the same people Lee claims "effectively pay little-to-no taxes," even though Sacramento's income tax coffers are almost half-filled by one-two-hundredth of the taxpaying population.
But you know what? I'm done defending the likes of data thief Mark Zuckerberg and mega-polluter Leonardo DiCaprio from the likes of Alex Lee. They wanted to lord it over a permanent underclass, and now that they've got one, they'll have to live with the electoral results.
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Flooded With Good Intentions
Sen. John Kennedy is upset because Sen. Rand Paul wants to limit federal flood insurance. But Paul is right. In my new video, Paul says, "(It) shouldn't be for rich people."
That should be obvious. Actually, federal flood insurance shouldn't be for anyone. Government has no business offering it. That's a job for ... the insurance business.
Of course, when actual insurance businesses, with their own money on the line, checked out what some people wanted them to insure, they said, "Heck no! If you build in a dangerous place, risk your own money!"
Politically connected homeowners who own property on the edges of rivers and oceans didn't like that. They whined to congressmen, crying, "We can't get insurance! Do something!"
Craven politicians obliged. Bureaucrats at the Federal Emergency Management Agency even claim they have to issue government insurance because, "There weren't many affordable options for private flood insurance, especially for people living in high-risk places."
But that's the point! A valuable function of private insurance is to warn people away from high-risk places. But instead of heeding that warning, politicians said, "Don't worry. Since private companies won't insure you, we will."
Of course, the politicians claimed they'd price the insurance properly so they wouldn't lose taxpayer money. "We must (do) everything we can to protect taxpayer dollars." said Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard.
But Paul points out, "Like most things in government, they continue to lose money." So far, the government lost $36 billion of your money. Yet they still insure people who can't get private insurance.
Kennedy thinks that's fine. "The first role of government is to protect people and property," he shouts from the Senate floor. "I thought this is what libertarians believe."
No, Senator, we believe government should protect our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and then leave us mostly alone.
By insuring risky property, Paul points out, "You're actually doing the opposite of what you would think government would want to do; you're promoting bad behavior."
Exactly.
Years ago, Federal Flood Insurance encouraged my bad behavior.
I wanted to build a house on a beach. When I asked my father to help with the mortgage, he said, "No! Are you crazy? It's on the edge of an ocean!"
Dad was right. It was a dumb place to build. But I built anyway, because Federal flood insurance, idiotically, guaranteed that I wouldn't lose money.
I enjoyed my house for ten years, but then, as predicted, it washed away.
It was an upsetting loss, but thanks to Uncle Sam, I didn't lose a penny.
I'm grateful. But it's wrong that you were forced to pay for my beach house.
Paul is right to say that people with second homes "should not get insurance through the government."
Actually, no one should get flood insurance through the government, but Paul fears that his irresponsible colleagues won't approve killing the handout altogether. Instead, he just proposes limiting the handout to primary residences.
It would be a start.
But even this slight reform is too much for Kennedy, who says, "If you earn enough to buy a second home, we shouldn't discourage that."
No, we shouldn't. But we shouldn't subsidize it with taxpayer money! Doesn't he get the difference? Federal flood insurance is like buying drunk drivers new cars.
Adding to the idiocy, there is no limit on how many times the government will give away your money.
I took your money once. I apologize for taking it, but when my government offers me a handout, I feel stupid not taking it.
Let's get rid of federal flood insurance and all subsidies that encourage people to do foolish things.
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2024/01/10/flooded-with-good-intentions-n2633395
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Biden's Continued Cynical Use of Race
The Left are shameless in their preoccuption with race
President Joe Biden is "down" with Black voters and I'm not speaking street slang.
A new USA Today/Suffolk University Poll reveals one in five Black voters say they will support a third-party candidate instead of the president. That's down substantially from the 92% of non-Hispanic Blacks who voted for Biden in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center.
The president's strategy for shoring up his and Democrats' most loyal supporters? Telling them their biggest threat is "white supremacy."
Nothing about the failing schools so many poor and minority children feel trapped in; or violence in big cities that kill many young Black men most weekends and increasingly during the week; or the disproportionate abortion rate among Black women that has kept their percentage of the population mostly stagnant; or the necessity of putting more Black fathers in homes to provide loving disciple to their children.
Biden has a long history of using race as a political weapon while doing little to improve the lives of Black Americans.
Speaking at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where in 2015 a white gunman shot and killed nine members of a Bible study, Biden again demonstrated his insincerity about race by making statements that have been proven false.
He claimed to have been a "civil rights activist." He wasn't. He claimed to have "spent more time in the Bethel AME Church in Wilmington, Delaware, than most people I know, Black or white." He hasn't. He also claimed that church was "where I started a civil rights movement." He didn't.
As a New York Post editorial noted, "(Biden has) pushed such baloney time and again." He has claimed to have been arrested during civil rights demonstrations and while on the way to see Nelson Mandela in prison. Neither is true.
Biden claimed to have persuaded segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond to vote for the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Wrong on two counts. Thurmond did not vote for the act and Biden was not in the Senate in 1964.
There was also his 2006 remark: "You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent." In 2020, he said if Blacks didn't vote for him "you ain't Black." In 2010, he warmly eulogized Sen. Robert Byrd, a former Exalted Cyclops in the Ku Klux Klan, saying he was "one of my mentors" and that "the Senate is a lesser place for his going." As early as 1977, Biden said that forced busing to desegregate schools would cause his children to "grow up in a racial jungle." In 2007, he referred to Barack Obama as "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean."
So many more examples, but not enough space.
Democrats have played the race card for decades, even blaming poor performances (see former Harvard President Claudine Gay) on bigotry, not plagiarism and a failure to denounce antisemitic campus demonstrations. Their talk has been cheap and the results negligible. One wonders why so many still vote for them given their record. White Democrats only show up in Black churches at election time and are not seen for another two or four years. Shouldn't that tell them something?
White supremacy is a minority view. Christians call it a sin. There are no pure-bred people. We are all mixed up in the great gene pool of life, as Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. has brilliantly demonstrated in several PBS programs on African American lives. To hate another person because of their race is to hate a part of one's self.
Given the declining poll numbers for Biden, among especially young Black voters, it would appear they are starting to figure out how Democrats have duped them for decades. Biden's out-of-touch speech in Charleston is likely to do little to improve his favorability among their party's once solid voting bloc.
https://townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/2024/01/10/bidens-continued-cynical-use-of-race-n2633389
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10 January, 2024
Why the Ashli Babbitt Saga Isn't Going Away Anytime Soon
An unarmed 5'2" lady was no threat to anyone
The family of Ashli Babbitt, the only person who was killed on January 6, is filing a $30 million wrongful death suit against the government, according to CBS News. Babbitt was one of the individuals who entered the Capitol during the January 6 riot and was shot and killed by [black] Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd:
Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed Jan. 6, 2021, while she tried to climb through a broken door into the Speaker's Lobby outside the House Chamber, as a mob of dozens of supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol while lawmakers were preparing to certify the results of the 2020 election. The shooting was captured on cell phone video. Babbitt later died at a hospital.
In the lawsuit, which was filed Friday in federal court in Southern California, Babbitt's family claimed that she was unarmed and had her hands in the air when she was shot once by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.
"Ashli posed no threat to the safety of anyone," the lawsuit states, going on to claim that she was "ambushed" by the officer.
The lawsuit also argued that Byrd was "not in uniform," "did not identify himself as a police officer" and did not issue a warning before opening fire.
It’s the one officer-involved shooting the liberal media doesn’t want you to read a lot about since there are some peculiar circumstances concerning her death. The officer who shot and killed her was cleared reportedly without an interview, though Capitol Police maintain that Lt. Byrd acted following department policy on the use of deadly force. Her family even alleged that police ambushed her while adding that she was killed for “no good reason.” If this lawsuit gets dismissed, that’s one thing, but for now, this story isn’t going away as the family tries to find closure by placing this case on the federal docket.
Babbitt's shooting is part of the overreaction to this little riot. The Left views it as some turning point in American history, where extremist MAGA Republicans tried to overthrow the government in a moment that was worse than Pearl Harbor or the 9/11 Attacks. It wasn’t, and everyone who wasn’t mentally ill returned to their daily lives. It never caught on the way liberals thought, being viewed as more of a sideshow annoyance than some existential threat to our country. Meanwhile, as the 2024 election cycle gets going, Democrats are trying to remove Donald Trump from ballots nationwide despite not being charged with insurrection. So, who’s the real threat to the country?
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2024/01/08/the-ashli-babbit-saga-isnt-going-away-n2633309
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Speaker Johnson Is Right, Free Market Should Set Drug Prices, Not Government
A Reuters report released just days ago uncovered that America’s leading drugmakers are raising prices yet again. Due to industry greed, the American people can expect to see more than 140 brands of drugs increase in cost over the next month.
Prior to the increase, on average, pharmaceutical costs were higher in the United States than in any other country in the world. According to Bloomberg, Americans spend about $1,300 per year on pharmaceuticals. For a year’s supply of a newly launched drug, the costs have risen to $220,000 per year, an increase of more than 20% from 2021.
The most infuriating of the announced price hikes came from Pfizer. The $167 billion company routinely receives government-guaranteed business, including $2 billion from Operation Warp Speed. It has so much money that its CEO receives an average of $17.4 million in annual bonuses. Yet, it still has the audacity to raise the prices of its products.
It is one thing when drugmakers decide to raise prices independently; however, it is quite another when they seek to use government force to help them do so. Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening now.
In 2022, the Pharmaceutical Research Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the trade association that represents all the major drugmakers, contributed $52 million to “political campaigns and nonprofits, patient groups, universities and other organizations.” In the first nine months of 2023, PhRMA spent $21 million on just federal lobbying, ranking as the fourth highest in the nation.
The group recently hired more lobbying firepower, YC Consulting, in an effort to convince Congress to pass regulations on pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), entities that health plan sponsors hire to negotiate against drugmakers to keep the cost of prescriptions down.
Fortunately for consumers, PBMs are amazingly effective in keeping the cost of prescriptions as low as possible. The data shows they save each consumer an average of $1,040 annually.
Because of this successful track record, Seema Verma, the Trump Administration CMS Administrator, said she is very thankful that the federal government uses PBMs to lower prescription drug costs. Unfortunately, pharmaceutical companies are not very enthused by the successful record of PBMs. This is why they are desperately trying to neutralize the effectiveness of PBMs through regulation.
Hopefully, this situation is tailor-made for the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson (R-LA). Throughout his career in Congress, Johnson has been opposed to such special interest power plays. Johnson has lined up squarely against Big Pharma’s special interest legislative agenda. The reason is simple: he believes the free market should determine drug prices, not government bureaucrats that conspire with crony capitalist corporations and their affiliated trade associations. Imagine that!
PhRMA is hoping they can influence Speaker Johnson because the lobbyist they just signed used to work for him when he served as the chairman of the Republican Study Committee. However, this is not how the new Speaker of the House operates. The main characteristic of his career in Congress is that he is grounded in conservative principles and is not pressured by powerful interests.
In November, Speaker Johnson hired Drew Keyes, another former staffer from the Republican Study Committee, as his top healthcare policy adviser. He made this selection because of his confidence in Keyes as someone he can trust.
In fact, this summer, Keyes, then a think tank staffer, wrote an opinion piece titled “Congress Should Not Do the Bidding of a Dying Trade Association.” The trade association he referenced was, of course, PhRMA.
As Keyes noted, the PBM Transparency Act is a crony giveaway to drugmakers who “desperately [point] the finger away from themselves and towards PBMs” when it comes to discussing the reason for high drug costs in America. He wrote, “When three pharmaceutical company executives sat with their PBM rivals at a recent Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee hearing chaired by Senator Bernie Sanders, their biggest critic, they desperately pointed the finger away from themselves and toward PBMs. The next day, Sanders’ committee marked up a bill to significantly increase federal regulation of PBMs.”
Keyes correctly identified the problem, writing, “Falling for Big Pharma’s blame game by targeting PBMs won’t help everyday Americans get the care they need. That’s what Congress needs to understand.”
It would have been easy for Keyes to take “donation” money from this fourth-largest lobbying entity in the country and peddle PhRMA’s misleading talking points about PBMs, but he chose to advance the truth instead. This is exactly why Speaker Johnson hired him to a key position on his staff. More members of Congress need to follow his lead and not be afraid to show lobbyists the door.
PhRMA is not accustomed to members of Congress in leadership positions rejecting its advances. With House Speaker Mike Johnson, it would behoove them to accept this new reality.
Thank goodness House Republicans have a new Speaker who is a principled conservative. For PhRMA, it is time to put the checkbooks away and engage in serious policy discussions about the best course of action for the American people.
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Biden Admin Reverses Decision to Tear Down William Penn Statue
The Biden administration has backed off and decided not to demolish a statue of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania.
In case you haven’t been following the latest in the war on history, the National Park Service announced over the weekend that it would be removing the famous Quaker’s statue from in front of his historic home in Philadelphia as part of a supposed “rehabilitation” of the site.
It was trying to pull this off even as Vice President Kamala Harris was posting on X, apparently with no sense of irony, about how “extremists” are trying to “erase” history.
Clearly, the only “history” this administration won’t erase is one warped by ideology to fit the narrative of how America has been such a bad, awful place.
After the move to topple Penn was announced, there was a firestorm of anger on X. The National Park Service account got blasted. After a few days of anger, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, announced that the Biden administration would halt the demolition project.
It’s good news, I guess, but I won’t exactly celebrate this decision. That’s like celebrating a thief who, when he discovers a homeowner is armed, decides not to burglarize the house.
It’s shameful that removing Penn’s statue was even considered. The National Park Service didn’t even really give a specific reason. The only justification was that it was done for the purpose of making a more “inclusive experience for visitors.”
The Park Service said, according to Fox News, that it would be working with representatives from “the Haudenosaunee, the Delaware Nation, the Delaware Tribe of Indians, the Shawnee Tribe and the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma” to make changes.
This is a clear demonstration of how the ideology of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is often the opposite of the literal definition of those three words. “Inclusion,” according to DEI, actually means removing what Hillary Clinton would call “deplorables”—whether living or dead—from society, so that the “oppressed” no longer have to think of their existence.
It’s why Christ Church in Alexandria, Virginia, removed plaques for Robert E. Lee and George Washington in 2017 in the name of “inclusion.”
Inclusion means exclusion.
What’s interesting about Penn is that in addition to founding Pennsylvania as a colony, he was responsible for a treaty among Pennsylvania colonists and local tribes intended to establish just and amicable relations between the peoples.
That treaty created the so-called long peace in Pennsylvania that lasted for more than half a century. That’s a considerable accomplishment, given the complicated nature of relations between people of vastly different cultures and forms of government.
Don’t think this fact will prevent Penn from ultimately being erased, however. As we’ve seen with countless other figures, pretty much any historical figure alive more than two weeks ago can be canceled for not upholding the ever-changing standards of the modern Left.
They certainly didn’t seem to care about that fact when they first decided to tear Penn down. It didn’t matter. This was an exercise of raw power.
What really saved the statue from oblivion wasn’t the good sense of left-wing bureaucrats. It was the power of social media and politics.
If it weren’t for the story going viral and likely embarrassing Democrats in a swing state during an election year, the woke bureaucratic scrubbing of America’s past would have continued apace.
It certainly wouldn’t be surprising, if President Joe Biden were to win the 2024 election, for the statue to come down anyway. Or, alternatively, to have a plaque installed next to it shaming Penn for all his purported sins against modernity.
The war on history has moved on from the activist street phase of 2020. The Left no longer needs literal mobs to pull down statues. Instead, they can rely on the vast federal apparatus to erase and rewrite the past to conform to the ideology of DEI. Whether that’s done through the National Archives, the Smithsonian, the National Park Service, or any other agency, the game plan is the same.
And they won’t stop until they are met by the soft power of X (thanks to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter) and the hard power of electoral politics.
Arguments and reason don’t matter to these revolutionaries. They will take down every statue if they can—Confederate, Unionist, Founding Father, Quaker colonist, whatever. It’s all part of the same history of what they see as a shameful nation, built on nothing but oppression and systemic racism.
If you still think this is just about Confederates or if you are wasting your time arguing about the Civil War, then I’ve got a bridge being blockaded by pro-Palestinian activists to sell you in Brooklyn.
The Biden administration’s reversal is a good sign. It means that the Jacobins who have marched forth from our elite universities to transform every American institution are still in some way accountable to the American people.
But this victory is like Dunkirk. We’ve only managed to save one statue, one shred of our history. That doesn’t mean we are winning the war, nor does it mean the Biden administration will halt its efforts at cultural transformation.
Remember, just a few weeks ago they tore down a memorial to the Confederate dead in Arlington National Cemetery meant to recognize reconciliation between Americans. It’s emblematic of what they would like to do to anyone who questions “our democracy”—meaning the left-wing values they insist we all adopt, or else.
This war will be won when the iconoclasts won’t touch a single statue, and when every attempt to take one down is opposed, ridiculed, and rejected.
It will be won when, instead of even thinking about tearing down our history, we put up new statues to the Founding Fathers and the countless great Americans who, whatever their human faults, transformed a sparsely populated set of colonies at the edge of the world into the most powerful and prosperous country on the planet.
The only reasonable response to fanatics—and that’s really what they are—is to be unreasonable. Don’t give an inch. We still have the tools to fight back. All we need to do is to be willing to fight.
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Black Democrat Tells a Big Lie to Pin White Supremacy on Trump
During an interview with CNN this week, top Biden surrogate and Democratic Congressman James Clyburn said it was "fair" to tie President Donald Trump to the June 2015 Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina.
Clyburn made this claim despite Trump not being the president at the time. President Obama was still in the White House, but Clyburn shamelessly left that detail out. He also refused to note that the FBI failed to prevent the perpetrator from purchasing a firearm despite being ineligible to do so.
"A judge in South Carolina this week excoriated the Federal Bureau of Investigation, describing in a court order a parade of errors and a series of 'abysmally poor policy choices' that allowed Dylann S. Roof to unlawfully buy the gun that he used to kill nine African-American people in a Charleston church in 2015," the New York Times reported. "The court order described what F.B.I. officials had acknowledged less than a month after the shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church: Mr. Roof, who was 21 at the time, had been allowed to buy the .45-caliber handgun he used in the killings in April 2015 despite having previously admitted to drug possession, which should have disqualified him from making the purchase."
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is back on the campaign trail and fear mongering about race.
During a visit to the church this week, Biden made a political speech and a number of false claims about his "work" in the civil rights movement. As a reminder, Biden proudly attended the funeral of KKK leader and Democratic Senator Robert Byrd in 2010.
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9 January, 2024
Degenerates ‘Saving’ Democracy?
The left is almost always guilty of the very thing(s) they claim of others.
This past week, after Colorado and Maine had attempted to remove former President Trump from the ballots in their states, we’ve learned of newly unearthed efforts in Illinois and Massachusetts to do the same.
The argument from the Biden camp was reflected in his fictitious and largely overreaching speech he gave at Valley Forge late in the week. A speech that his supporters termed inspiring and angry. A speech about the January 6 riot at the Capitol. A riot where the only person shot or killed was a former member of the air-force who was shot and killed without cause by a Capitol police officer.
Because Joe Biden’s team had control of the Capitol video footage until 2023, we were never able to prove the “mostly peaceful” movements of people inside the building that day. Yet true to Biden form, the facts be damned, he makes a speech that passes off a fictional retelling of the day based on his swamp fevered imagination.
The supposed theme of which we are to understand points to him (Joe Biden) as the only one defending democracy in America.
So while he lies about the facts, and tries to kick his opposing party’s front runner from their own party’s nomination process, we’re supposed to believe that he and he alone is what is holding back the gates of hell against our freedoms?
Then riddle me this, why is he doing it against fellow democrats as well?
In North Carolina this week it was reported that Team Biden was in fact successful in getting then other declared and qualified candidates for the Democrat nomination removed from the ballot for the upcoming primary.
He didn’t mention that in the “I am Democracy” speech.
The extent of Biden’s double standard degeneracy knows no bounds. From day one in office he blackmailed school districts threatening to remove hot breakfasts for poor kids if the school didn’t take up his gender theory demands.
His team has been infuriated that even though they had been saying for months that they knew that Trump’s name would be on the Jeffrey Epstein flight logs — he wasn’t. DeNiro was. So was DeGeneres, Hanks, Clinton, Gates, Streep, Streisand, Spielberg, and Oprah.
A brand new sex ring scandal is unfolding now in Washington DC that is expected to entangle 100’s of politicians, military, national security, and other officials. The “Honeypot” raid is said to have occurred on a day when a major vote went down in DC and dozens of politicians voted strangely out of keeping with their constituents.
Team Biden seems to thrive in an Epstein and “Honeypot” establishment because his own family says so. His son’s laptop revealed a son who impregnates strippers, uses illegal guns, and leaves evidence at repair shops where it’s easy to find. His daughter documenting “inappropriate showers with dad” in her own journal, that again she just leaves somewhere.
These people aren’t fit to protect anything - much less the concept of democracy.
No President is perfect—never has been—but the beauty of our Founders was not the necessity to elect perfect people but rather to give them enough accountability with checks and balances to direct them towards behavior that is good for the nation.
And I’m super-real-sorry Mr. President you don’t get to claim you even understand democracy, much less are it’s valiant protector if you are degenerately undermining the ability for voters to choose.
Thankfully the nation’s highest court will settle this non-sense shortly but let the nation take note: the only candidate in this race who has tried to prevent “We The People” from voting for who they wish, is the guy who in all truthfulness should have never been in the White House to begin with.
https://townhall.com/columnists/kevinmccullough/2024/01/07/degenerates-saving-democracy-n2633288
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California to Cover Sex Change Surgeries, Hormone Treatments for Illegal Immigrants
The state of California will use taxpayer-funded health care to provide illegal immigrants with experimental transgender treatments and surgeries, according to a report from The Daily Caller.
The program, called Medi-Cal, will cover hormone therapy treatments and so-called “gender-affirming” surgeries “that bring primary and secondary gender characteristics into conformity with the individual’s identified gender, including ancillary services, such as hair removal, incident to those services.”
“Gender affirming care is a covered Medi-Cal benefit when medically necessary. Requests for gender affirming care should be from specialists experienced in providing culturally competent care to transgender and gender diverse individuals and should use nationally recognized guidelines,” a state memo about the program from May 2022 reads.
“Medical necessity is assessed and services shall be recommended by treating licensed mental health professionals and physicians and surgeons experienced in treating patients with incongruence between their gender identity and gender assigned at birth,” the memo continued.
According to the Caller, about 700,000 illegal immigrants in the Golden State between the ages of 26 and 49 qualify for full health insurance coverage from the state.
Several reports noted that the decision to include illegal immigrants in Medi-Cal was determined in May of last year. Democrat state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo reportedly called it a "historic investment" that "speaks to California's commitment to health care as a human right."
"In California, we believe everyone deserves access to quality, affordable health care coverage – regardless of income or immigration status," Gov. Gavin Newsom's office said in a statement to ABC News. "Through this expansion, we’re making sure families and communities across California are healthier, stronger, and able to get the care they need when they need it."
GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado reacted to the news on X.
Women’s sports advocate Riley Gaines stated: “Its [sic] depressing that we have to keep distinguishing what should be satire from reality.”
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GOP Governor Reverses Course, Signs Order Banning So-Called 'Gender-Affirming' Surgeries for Minors
Late last month, Townhall reported how one Republican governor vetoed measures to protect women’s sports and to protect children from irreversible, experimental transgender “care.” This includes puberty blockers, sex reassignment surgery, and hormone therapy treatment.
Predictably, the governor came under fire by women’s sports advocates and others who oppose this kind of transgender ideology. And, the state legislature had enough votes to override the veto.
At the time, the governor said that his state “would be saying that the state, that the government, knows better what is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most, the parents.”
This week, the governor, Mike DeWine of Ohio, reversed course, and announced that he signed an executive order banning gender surgeries for kids (via FOX 8):
“A week has gone by, and I still feel just as firmly as I did that day,” said DeWine. “I believe that parents, not the government should be making these very crucial medical decisions for the children.”
Still, the governor said on a Friday a ban on gender transition surgery is the exception because there is a “broad consensus against surgeries for minors.” Nick Lashutka, Ohio Children’s Hospital Association president, previously testified the state’s children’s hospitals “do not perform any surgeries on minors for the condition of gender dysphoria.”
DeWine also announced on Friday that Ohio’s Department of Health and Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services will be proposing several draft rules that “will provide protections for children and adults receiving care in this area from hospitals and clinics,” including the following:
Requirement of a multi-disciplinary team to support a patient through gender transition care.
Requirement of a comprehensive care plan that includes sufficient informed consent from parents of the risk associated with gender transition treatment.
Requirement of comprehensive and lengthy mental health counseling prior to being considered for gender transition treatment.
DeWine said these proposed rules would prevent “fly-by-night” clinics that allegedly don’t provide adequate mental health counseling.
Last month, Isabelle Ayala, 20, a female detransitioner from Florida, told the Independent Women’s Forum that she was diagnosed with gender dysphoria after meeting with a doctor for only 45 minutes when she was 14. She explained that her doctors sat her parents down and said that she would kill herself if she did not undergo gender treatment. At her next appointment, she got on hormones, which she stayed on until the lockdowns in 2020.
Now, Ayala is suing the American Academy of Pediatrics for their role in her gender care. “I still struggle a lot, mentally and physically,” Ayala said.
“I don’t even like to think about my fertility,” she added. “It is my greatest fear to go to the gynecologist and have them tell me that I can’t have children over some decisions that were made when I was 14.”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2024/01/05/dewine-executive-order-n2633244
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‘What are they trying to achieve?’ Conservative Australian legislators urge caution on religious discrimination
Should religious schools be allowed to reject homosexuals as students and as staff? The basic clash here is between the Biblical view of homosexuality and the current secular view. The two are probably irreconcilable. They certainly have been so far. Putting it crudely, are homosexuals admirable or an abomination? The Bible view is very clear, in both the Old and New Testaments.
Real Christians endeavour to live as the Bible commands. Is it the word of God or is it not? If you think it is, your course is clear. Christians have died for their faith so a "worldly" law is not likely to move them. They would be quite likely to defy it
The issue is likely to be decided by the need to placate Muslims. Prosecuting Muslim school leaders for practicing Islam will just stick in all throats. In the Hadiths, Mohammed tells his followers that homosexuals should be thrown from the top of tall buildings. That is pretty clear disapproval
Two federal Liberal Party MPs are warning that a debate over religious discrimination laws must not again descend into a culture war that captures LGBTQ Australians in its crosshairs, as faith leaders and equality advocates urged the Albanese government not to delay legislating.
Tasmanian MP Bridget Archer and NSW senator Andrew Bragg were among a small bloc of moderate Liberal MPs who broke ranks with their party room in favour of stronger protections for LGBTQ students during the former Morrison government’s failed attempt to pass religious discrimination laws on the cusp of the 2022 federal election.
A renewed debate on the issue is expected to kick off when federal parliament returns in February and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus releases the findings of a review by the Australian Law Reform Commission. The review is designed to inform the government’s plans to legislate a religious discrimination framework while also bolstering protections for LGBTQ students and staff at religious schools.
Archer and Bragg said their positions remained unchanged on the issue and that any reform must simultaneously protect people of faith while also repealing laws that provided a legal basis for discrimination against LGBTQ teachers and students.
Archer, who went a step further than the other moderate Liberals and crossed the floor to vote against the Morrison government’s proposed religious discrimination act, said while she supported protections for people of faith from discrimination, she remained concerned the issue would again be caught in a fight over “identity politics, culture wars and moral panics that never really ends well”.
“The Albanese government needs to be very clear from the outset if they are introducing this legislation, what are they trying to achieve? What’s the problem we’re seeking to solve? This would be worthwhile to justify what I would guarantee will be the damage to people on the way through,” she said.
Archer said a clear lesson from the last parliament was that vulnerable Australians, in particular LGBTQ students, were exposed to a protracted, divisive debate.
The debate devolved into a political fight over whether faith schools should retain legal exemptions in the Sex Discrimination Act to discriminate against gay and transgender students and staff, including in employment and enrolment practices. The Morrison government’s proposal to couple its religious protections with a ban on schools expelling gay students, but not trans students, inflamed the debate.
Of the six Liberals who split from the party room in 2022, only Archer, Bragg and MP-turned-NSW senator Dave Sharma remain in parliament after the others lost their seats at the election. Sharma declined to comment.
Bragg said he had written to Dreyfus in 2022 urging Labor to deal with the issue early in their term. “I agree with the religious leaders that the government shouldn’t leave this to the last minute – that’s a recipe for disaster. I do believe there is a strong case for federal protections for people of faith,” Bragg said.
“I don’t want to see any minority group, whether it’s LGBTQ groups or it’s a religious group, damaged as part of this debate. I think that’s very achievable, but Labor has to deliver a constructive, collaborative process.”
After the Coalition’s aborted attempt in 2022, Labor went to the election promising its own religious discrimination and anti-vilification laws to close a gap in the federal law – which already has anti-discrimination acts covering age, race, sex and disability – while also outlawing discrimination at faith-based schools against staff and students based on their gender status and sexual orientation.
Dreyfus received the report from the law reform commission in December and is expected to release it in February, with religious leaders and equality groups hopeful laws will be introduced into parliament before July.
What’s the proposed religious discrimination law about?
Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne Peter Comensoli said he was eager for an exposure draft of Labor’s legislation to be made available in the first half of the year.
“The further delay in the release of the [Australian Law Reform Commission] report until February pushes out the timeline for the government in dealing with the Religious Discrimination Bill. This raises the risk of pushing the bill into the election cycle, which would be most unfortunate, and should be actively avoided,” Comensoli said.
Anglican bishop of South Sydney Michael Stead insisted that no Anglican schools wanted the right to discriminate against LGBTQ students – a view echoed by other faith groups – and said he expected the sticking point this time around for religious institutions would be securing their rights to preference staff who reflected the school’s religious ethos in hiring practices.
“The last thing that any of the communities want is for this to still be an election issue next time around. I’m really hopeful that it can be done in this calendar year,” Stead said.
Equality Australia chief executive Anna Brown said after years of failed attempts to change the law it was vital the Albanese government did not delay these reforms any longer.
“Students should be able to go to school and be supported to learn and grow as who they are, and teachers should not fear losing their jobs because their sexuality or gender, or because they support a student who is gay or trans,” Brown said.
“We urge all MPs to deal with this issue in a measured and respectful way to spare LGBTIQ+ communities, particularly young people, the distressful and hurtful debate that took place when this issue was last before federal parliament.”
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8 January, 2024
Who Sounds Silly Lecturing Conservatives About 'Authoritarianism'?
The Left have been calling conservatives authoritarian for decades. It diverts attention from the fact that Leftism itself is intrinsicaly authoritarian. They want to change what other people think and do -- by force if need be. What could be more authoritarian than that?
On the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, President Joe Biden and the Democrats still operate as if this one terrible afternoon is the No. 1 issue of the 2024 campaign.
In a new campaign ad, Biden proclaims, "I've made the preservation of American democracy the central issue of my presidency." He says he and Vice President Kamala Harris have pushed for voting rights since Day One of the Biden administration, and "I ask every American to join me in this cause."
Democrats pose as the guardians of democracy and smear the Republicans as pushers of autocracy. No one expects the "independent fact-checkers" to look at this Biden-Harris ad and question how their alleged stand for democracy and voting rights stands next to Biden backers trying to rip Donald Trump off primary ballots and deny any Biden-challenging Democrats access to primary ballots.
Biden and his media enablers clearly think they can acquire the votes of people disgusted by Trump's stubborn refusal to concede defeat in 2020 (and his reluctance to stop rioting on Jan. 6) by just citing "democracy" as the all-encompassing issue that cancels all focus on their failures, from inflation to immigration. They're clearly unwilling to hear arguments that Democrats are the ones who are carrying around the seeds of authoritarianism in their policies. Here's a short list:
* COVID Authoritarianism. Democrats suggested Trump (and Ron DeSantis and Brian Kemp) were basically mass murderers because they resisted the Left's ardor to lock everything down in 2020, from businesses to schools to churches. Firing people who wouldn't accept a vaccine mandate wasn't autocracy. It didn't seem to matter that their lockdown "science" had holes, that somehow a Black Lives Matter protest couldn't be a "super-spreader event" because it was a just cause.
* Climate Authoritarianism. A global elite meets regularly to impose mandates that could dramatically affect everyday lives, starting with "ending fossil fuels." The COVID lockdowns inspired them to see how an oppressive lockdown on allegedly catastrophic carbon emissions could be their utopian (not dystopian) vision of the future.
* Student-Debt Authoritarianism. Journalists are pushing around Team Biden on how young voters think they "haven't done enough" to unilaterally erase billions of dollars of student loan debt unilaterally, ignoring any need for approval of spending by Congress or rulings from the judiciary branch. The supposedly fairness-obsessed Left never asks if this effort is unfair to the sizable minority of young people who do not go to college or don't incur thousands of dollars in college debt.
* Gender Authoritarianism. Leftist-run fiefdoms like New York City have imposed regulations suggesting that "misgendering" or "dead-naming" an individual who identifies as transgender or nonbinary is unlawful. Newsweek reported a poll by Redfield & Wilton Strategies that found 44% of those aged 25-34 think "referring to someone by the wrong gender pronoun (he/him, she/her) should be a criminal offense," and that's also supported by 38% of those aged 35-44. People must be forced to deny biological realities.
On the Left, they find it "authoritarian" to deny the right to abort a baby at any point in pregnancy, and so by their logic, killing an unborn person is less offensive than "misgendering" a person.
Anyone who thinks these notions are overwrought should be told that it's overwrought for Biden-Harris campaigners to imply that asking voters to present a picture ID is some kind of descent into dictatorship or Jim Crow. Requiring an ID isn't half as intrusive as mandating vaccinations. Democrats are not synonymous with democracy. Energetically arguing that they're the party of overweening statism is not an offense against democracy. It defines democracy.
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California Would Have Low-Cost Housing If Government Allowed It: The Mortenson Experiment
Chris Mortenson, a San Diego developer, hired an architect to find out what type of SRO (single-room-occupancy) building he could develop for very low-income people, many of them homeless, if unnecessary state and local regulations were ignored. SROs are basically apartment buildings that typically have rooms without kitchens and shared bathrooms at the end of hallways. SRO units are no-frills, but they are safer and cleaner than the streets.
Here’s what the architect came back with:
A four-story building
10-by-12-foot units (about half the size required by the existing building code)
Microwave in each unit
Sink in each unit
Toilet in each unit (partitioned, but not separated)
Communal showers at the end of each hall
Remarkably, San Diego waived its building code, and the building was built for less than $15,000 per unit, allowing people to rent each room for $50 per week. The building was immediately filled with grateful occupants.
Mortenson conducted his experiment in the late-1980s. Today, the inflation-adjusted costs would be about $34,000 per unit to build and $110 per week to rent ($440 per month), still a bargain. The cost to build one apartment unit to code in San Diego County ranges from $192,000 to $375,000, according to an analysis by Xpera Group. The average monthly rent in San Diego for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,808, according to RentJungle.com.
Mortenson showed that it is possible to build affordable, yet profitable, SROs if the government gets out of the way. Government is the root cause of unaffordable housing in California, and government impediments have dramatically increased since the late-1980s (for more on government barriers to housing development in addition to building codes, such as impact fees, permits, environmental reviews, zoning, and other land-use restrictions, see How to Restore the California Dream: Removing Obstacles to Fast and Affordable Housing Development).
The San Diego experiment was discussed in the book The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America by Philip K. Howard, who wrote that building codes “dictate minimum room dimensions, require that bathrooms and kitchens be separate from rooms for every other use, and mandate hundreds of other details. Good ideas and technological advances fill every page of the code book. Who can object to any of this? No one, provided society can afford it.” Low-income people, however, cannot afford it, resulting in more homelessness as building codes make it impossible to build inexpensive housing in California.
Building codes have eradicated low-cost housing for decades. Sold by politicians as “getting rid of substandard housing” and “improving the lives of poor people,” William Tucker explains in Housing America: Building Out of a Crisis, “buildings are condemned as ‘firetraps,’ for not having adequate ventilation, not providing kitchen or bathroom facilities, and for not offering people ‘a decent place to live.’” Too often, the streets become the next home for people forced out of low-cost housing by burdensome, idealized codes.
Politicians and bureaucrats argue that “it’s in the best interests of poor people” to have their apartments “upgraded to code” lest they live in “crowded unsanitary substandard deathtraps.” The problem, of course, is that every so-called “improvement” will price many people out of a home, pushing some to the street. Howard notes that “the virtual extinction of single-room-occupancy buildings illustrates the side effects of this drive toward mandated perfection.”
In addition to building codes, some cities have eliminated SROs using density limits, occupancy restrictions, or “urban renewal” projects that raze entire neighborhoods, often targeting minority communities. (Walter Thompson wrote an excellent historical series on the disgraceful Fillmore project in San Francisco: “How Urban Renewal Destroyed the Fillmore in Order to Save It” and “How Urban Renewal Tried to Rebuild the Fillmore.”)
Philip K. Howard reminds us that,
Real people tend to have their own way of doing things—a little borrowed, a little invented, and so forth. Law, trying to make sure nothing ever goes wrong, doesn’t respect the idiosyncrasy of human accomplishment. It sets forth the approved methods, in black and white, and that’s that. When law notices people doing it differently, its giant heel reflexively comes down.
Inexpensive housing would be built in California if government allowed it. Instead, streets teem with 151,000 homeless people, a human and moral tragedy caused, in part, by government barriers to housing development in California.
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Neither Left nor Right Understand Obamacare
Both parties are getting it wrong. And that’s surprising. Don’t these folks ever talk to the voters?
In the House of Representatives, the GOP’s “number-one priority for health care reform” is lowering health insurance premiums.
As for the White House, its response is all about protecting people with expensive health care problems. If Republicans had their way, 4.8 million Texans would lose protection for their preexisting conditions, according to the Biden administration.
Here is why both of these messages miss the mark.
To give Republicans their due, it is certainly true that premiums in the (Obamacare) exchanges are sky-high. In fact, if you add together the average premium and the average deductible for a family of four, a family without any subsidy must pay more than $25,000 before it gets any benefit from their plan. That’s the equivalent of buying a Volkswagen Jetta every year just to get health care.
However, the vast majority of folks who buy their own insurance are getting hefty subsidies. So much so, that 8 in 10 enrollees in the exchanges pay $10 a month or less. For a family with average income, the premium is usually zero.
Wake Up!
Wake up Republicans. If you begin by talking about high premiums, you are failing to reach 80% of the voters who buy their own insurance.
Meanwhile, the mistake Democrats are making is to believe their own talking points. “Preexisting conditions” was the main argument for Obamacare when it was enacted in 2010. But what is the situation more than a decade later? It’s awful.
Wake up, Democrats. The average annual out-of-pocket exposure for a family in 2024 is $18,900 in the federal marketplace exchanges. And if health care problems linger (which is the very definition of “chronic illness”), the family faces that expense every year. To make matters worse, medical centers of excellence around the country (which house specialists that some patients really need) won’t accept Obamacare insurance.
Here is the brutal truth. Families with the worst medical problems and the most expensive medical needs would in many cases be better off if Obamacare had never become law.
It is true that before the passage of the Affordable Care Act, people entering the individual market could be denied coverage if they had an expensive-to-treat medical condition. Although Democrats talk as though this was an everyday event, in fact it rarely happened.
When it did happen, in most states people could join a risk pool, where there was a higher premium, but with out-of-pocket exposure well below Obamacare plans today. Further, risk pool plans were typically garden-variety Blue Cross plans—with access to just about any doctor or medical facility.
The Reality
Here is the reality that both parties are missing:
If you have to buy your own insurance, have average income and are healthy, your options have never been better. But if you have a chronic illness and high medical costs, your options have never been worse.
The healthy family not only is paying little or no premium, but the only health care they need is preventive care, which must be made available at no charge. For this family, health care and health insurance are free.
By contrast, if you are sick, the out-of-pocket costs can be crushing; and even then, narrow networks may not include the specialty care you need. Further, in almost all cases, if a patient goes out of the network, the insurance plan pays nothing. In that case, getting the care you need is just as expensive as if you were completely uninsured!
Another disastrous feature of the Obamacare exchanges is the very high implicit marginal tax rates imposed on average-income families with high medical expenses.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Beverly Gossage and I gave the example of a Dallas family of four, earning $60,000 a year, with two children who have expensive-to-treat medical conditions. Fortunately, the two children qualify for Medicaid. The two parents are healthy; and since they pay zero premium for their health insurance, health care for this family is essentially free.
Suppose the family earns $10,000 more dollars of income, however. The two children no longer qualify for Medicaid and must be included in an exchange plan. Although the plan has a zero premium, the family’s out-of-pocket costs are now as high as $18,200. That’s a 182 percent marginal tax rate!
Politicians Ignore the Problems, But Voters Shouldn’t
When Democrats in Congress had a chance to pass an Obamacare reform, they did nothing about the outrageous out-of-pocket costs or the draconian marginal tax rates for the sick. Instead, they chose to spend $64 billion a year to lower premiums for high-income healthy families.
All the while, not a peep of complaint came from Republicans—who still wrongly think premiums are too high for most people. It is not the premiums; it is the sky-high out-of-pocket exposure.
While politicians ignore these problems, all voters should care about them. Even if you are completely healthy and are enrolled in a conventional employer plan with very generous coverage, remember: we all can get sick, and the individual market is only one layoff away.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14784&omhide=true&trk=rm
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Hamas Terrorism isn’t 'Self-Defense' Against 'Occupiers'
Council on American Islamic Relations Los Angeles executive director Hussam Ayloush recently defended Hamas’s barbaric slaughter of 1,200 Jewish, Thai, Filipino, Bedouin, and other men, women, and children. He claimed Israel is “an occupier” that “does not have the right to defend itself.” Only Palestinians have “a right of self-defense,” he said and condemned Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza.
His assertions reflect language in the Palestinian Liberation Organization and Hamas Charters. Israel is “imperialist, colonialist, racist, anti-human,” even “fascist,” “colonizers,” they declare. The “Zionist entity” “occupies” Palestinian lands and denies Palestinians their “right to return” to their homes. The charters call for the “liberation of Palestine” through “resistance,” “armed struggle,” and “self-defense.”
Mobs of students, faculty, and fellow travelers flaunt their ignorance of historic and modern reality by echoing these claims, justifying the October 7 massacres, calling for a “global intifada” (uprising), and demanding the eradication of Israel and its non-Muslim inhabitants “from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea.
You have to wonder: How does a group of people achieve permanent “refugee” or “colonized victim” status with a “right of return” that no others have had? What constitutes a “legitimate right” of “resistance” or “self-defense”?
Particularly across the Europe-Asia-Middle-East mega-continent, human history has been a saga of settlement, invasion, victory or defeat, continuation or disintegration, expansion or dispersion. Those who lost wars were annihilated, lost title to their land, accepted subservient status (dhimmi in Muslim countries), emigrated, melded into the victorious civilization, or otherwise adjusted.
Over their six-thousand-year history, including since arriving in “the Promised Land” that is now Israel over 3,600 years ago, Jews have played all these roles. They defeated the Amorites, Canaanites, Philistines, and Jebusites, created the Kingdom of Israel, fell to Assyrians and Babylonians, lived under Persian and Greek rule, established the Hasmonean dynasty, and were slaughtered, enslaved, and dispersed by the Romans in 70-133 AD (CE).
However, they did not entirely disappear from the Promised Land. Indeed, Muhammed’s Muslim empire hired Jews as administrators after the Arab army arrived in 636. Jewish fortunes ebbed and flowed under Christian, Mongol, and 500-year Ottoman Turkish rule.
Anti-Semitism and pogroms brought Western European and Russian Jews to their ancestral land in the late 1800s. Theodore Herzl’s Zionism increased the purchase of agricultural and other land. Turkey’s loss to the Allies in WWI transferred ownership and control of the area from the Ottoman Turks to Britain.
The Roman term Palestine had applied to the region for two millennia, but there was never a Palestinian state or empire. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and other Middle Eastern countries emerged as independent nations from British-French-Russian rule over the Ottoman Empire before, during, and after WWII – but no Palestinian nation. Palestinian ancestors were always citizens or subjects of ruling empires.
Jewish immigration and land purchases from local and absentee Arab landlords increased significantly between the world wars. The Holocaust and the end of World War II brought surging Jewish immigration ... and more conflicts. Land ownership in the pre-1947 British Mandate area that is now Israel was roughly 15% Arab, 9% Jewish, and 76% public/Mandate land.
1948, despite Arab states’ opposition, the United Nations made Israel's nationhood a reality. Local Arabs and five Arab countries declared war on the fledgling state. Some 700,000 Arabs fled, emigrated, or were persuaded to leave Israel “temporarily” under hollow promises of victory over the Zionists. After the ’48 war, some 850,000 Jews were displaced, banned, or banished (Hamas charter language) from Muslim countries across North Africa to the Middle East and Afghanistan; most of them settled in Israel.
The 1967 and 1973 wars between Arab countries and Israel also ended in Israeli victory and expansion. Two intifadas (1987-1993 and 2000-2005) brought many deaths on both sides but no gains for Palestinians. The war in Gaza has been far more destructive.
Wars have consequences – now and throughout history. Assertions in charters or speeches do not change that, nor do they convey an “inalienable right” of return, even under some imagined “basic principles of human rights and international law” (Hamas Charter, Article 12). If a new Palestinian nation is created and recognized, there will be a right of return to that new nation – but not to Israel.
Imagine former German-speaking inhabitants asserting a right of return to lands that are now France, Poland, and Russia. Hindus and Muslims returning to their prior homes in India and Pakistan. Berbers and other conquered peoples reclaimed their villages and pastures across the Maghreb in North Africa. Spain regained Gibraltar from Britain. Turkey is regaining Greece, Spain, or its other Ottoman territories. China surrendered control over Tibet and Russia over Crimea.
Imagine descendants of Celts and other ancient peoples across Britain and Europe demanding redress because their ancestors were subjugated by the ancestors of today’s British, French, Italian, Hungarian, Balkan, and other nations. Descendants of the Mongols demanding the return of eastern Europe. Or Israelis demanding the return of Jewish Banu Qurayza lands near Medina.
The history of colonizers and colonized nations is long, complicated, and ill-suited for assertions in self-serving charters. Perhaps Hamas’s elimination as a military and political power in Gaza will clarify that. Perhaps it will finally resolve the matter of Palestinians still being “refugees” 75 years after the ’48 war.
Columbia University defines “colonization” as “a system of oppression based on invasion and control that results in institutionalized inequality between the colonizer and the colonized.” That certainly describes the fate of countless nations and peoples, including those subjugated by Muhammed and his caliphs, European countries, Lenin and Stalin, and Islamists today in Nigeria and Sudan. It does not apply to Gaza.
But Hamas and its allies assert that “armed struggle” is required to “liberate Palestine” from Israeli occupiers (PLO Charter, Art. 9) ... families, schools and mosques have a “national duty” to raise individual Palestinians “in an Arab revolutionary manner” (PLO Art. 7) ... and Palestinians have “a legitimate right” to use “all means and methods” to “resist the occupation” and meet the “demands of self-defense” (PLO Art. 18; Hamas Arts. 25 and 39).
For decades, Hamas terrorized Israelis by firing thousands of rockets at civilian targets, bombing buses, cafes and bar mitzvahs, and shooting or stabbing parents and children. To claim this was “resistance” or “self-defense” is patently absurd. The calculated, barbaric October 7 massacres crossed the line of what any nation can permit.
Hamas terrorists gunned down hundreds of unarmed concertgoers; gang-raped and mutilated scores of women; soaked people in gasoline and burned them alive; beheaded babies or roasted them alive in ovens; cut a pregnant woman open, murdered her baby and butchered her; wiped out entire families as they begged for mercy; kidnapped 240 more – and then hid behind, among and under Gazan citizens.
Gaza has smart, capable people and miles of gorgeous Mediterranean coastline. It could be as magnificent and prosperous as the United Arab Emirates. Its people just need to reject Hamas, tear up the PLO and Hamas charters, install a proper government, and build a genuine future for their children.
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7 January, 2024
Maniacal hatred of Jews festers in cocoon of denial, says GEMMA TOGNINI
She sees that there are NOT "two sides" to the events in Gaza. I thought I might mention that, as her name suggests, Gemma is of Italian descent. Her father was Italian. And Italians have long been unusually sympathetic to Israel. I grew up among Italians and admire their emotional warmth
The New York Times, well known as a predominantly left-leaning paper (that’s important, stay with me) published a devastating feature about the weaponisation of sexual violence by Hamas.
This long-form feature is the result of interviews with more than 150 people, including survivors and witnesses to the slaughter of October 7. It cites first-hand accounts and multiple primary sources, and meticulously explains how facts were verified. I don’t know how they managed. I could barely get through it. Their words dripped with grief, measured yet urgent with the weight of responsibility. The cadence of every line whispered: the world must know, the world must know.
Reading the responses to this article were an exercise in despair. Almost all expressed horror at the savagery of what had been documented, and thanked the reporters and the paper for bearing witness. Many more concurrently dived into the filthy waters of moral equivalence; this was savage and barbaric, they said. But, also, Israel sort of deserved it.
I realised in that moment there is a bloodstained thread that bound Ryvchin’s book to the article and the comments that followed. Denial. Denial of truth. Denial of facts. Denial that a moral centre has been violated.
I see no difference in the societal elites who centuries ago concocted the most ridiculous blood libel tales to violently enact pogroms on Jews across Europe and those who today are responding to the unthinkable sexual violence of Hamas with, well, Israel really is the oppressor.
Surely this thinking is a kind of sickness?
The NYT report details verified images of women’s corpses with nails driven into their thighs and groins. It verified a video showing two dead female IDF soldiers who had been shot directly into their vaginas. They interviewed a survivor who, hidden and feigning death, watched Hamas fighters mutilate a woman’s breasts while she was being raped.
I don’t want to go on, to keep recounting these horrors, but we must, as long as there are still people whose response is conditional. Who respond with, yes … but.
Let’s bring this closer to home and tease it out further, because we must. Nobody wants to have their world tipped upside down. Denial is a form of weakness. It is the ultimate form of self-preservation. It’s the person who stays with a cheating partner, ignoring the signs because the pain of dealing with it seems greater than the humiliation of the status quo. It’s the parent that refuses to accept their child is on drugs.
Vision has been released of 21 year old Mia Schem running towards her mother, after she was released from… Hamas. Ms Schem was abducted from the Supernova music festival in early October and appeared in a video released by Hamas 10 days later, pleading for her release. Mia was More
In corporate life, where I spend 99 per cent of my days, it’s the dysfunctional board that denies the existence of red flags, hiding behind the notion of stability, unable to acknowledge that this stability is a Band-Aid by another name.
It’s in myriad situations in everyday life where denial has consequences at only a personal level.
But, as a friend of mine said earlier in the week, what we’re seeing here is so different. It is uniquely directed at Jews, and at Israel and its right to exist. I can’t recall any other manifestation of hatred and denial on this scale.
French-Israeli hostage Mia Schem has given details of her ordeal during her 54 days held in Gaza. She was held captive by a Palestinian family. She talks of being confused – why is there a woman here? Why is there a family here? Then the penny dropped.
The same media that have been so swift, say, to believe all women, believe any woman who says anything about sexual violence, published an insulting disclaimer to Schem’s words, saying her account was yet to be verified. By all means, pop over to Gaza and ask the family that held her. I’m sure they will be honest and transparent.
Ah, but to believe Mia Schem means a brick in the protective wall of ideology comes down. Perhaps the wall itself. To deny her story is to stay in the same cocoon that refuses to accept a ceasefire, without Hamas surrender and the safe return of the still living hostages, is a fool’s errand.
How many would need to completely reframe their political thinking, perhaps even parts of their identity? Mia Schem’s testimony says what history taught us. Just as not every German was a Nazi, there were many enthusiastic Nazis in German society. Not every Gazan is Hamas, but only the greatest fool would deny that a proportion of everyday Gazans are complicit. That they know where the hostages are, and are happily complicit.
Denial feels safe, but it never is. It simply postpones the inevitable pain of realising what was there all along. To the many who continue to say, oh but sexual violence has always been a weapon of war, you are in denial. You are minimising the most atrocious acts of femicide in our times.
The blood of every innocent civilian life lost in Gaza is on Hamas. Not only has it rejected every ceasefire offered, refusing to release the living hostages, it has promised it will repeat October 7 until Israel, Jews and Christians are wiped from the map. Hamas is not denying this and neither must democracies in the West.
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The furious Leftist hostility to Trump is what threatens American democracy
Unlike in 2020, when then-candidate Joe Biden was leading almost all of the polls — out of 293 national polls taken during that cycle compiled by RealClearPolitics.com, Biden led 285 of them, or 97 percent of them — this time around, former President Donald Trump has an observable advantage in the polls, leading President Biden in 103 out of 214 polls taken, or 48 percent of them. Biden has only led 81, or just 38 percent, and 30 are tied, or 14 percent.
Since, given Democrats’ historical advantage in the popular vote — Republicans have not won the popular vote since 2004 but still managed to eke out Electoral College wins in 2000 and 2016 without it — any potential tie in the popular vote would still bode well for Trump and Republicans in 2024. So, really, about 62 percent of the polls (and rising) showing that at this point in the race, with less than a year to go until November, Trump definitely has an advantage.
This has tended to be true even in the four-way, five-way race polls and seven-way race polls as the political parties attempt to stack the deck in every way imaginable to find a configuration of candidates that might show Biden prevailing.
Since the polls are real and show Biden is quite vulnerable regardless of which race is considered rather early in the process — the primaries haven’t even begun yet — this is leading to widespread panic in the Washington, D.C. establishment and attempts to remove Trump from the ballot first from Colorado and now Maine as GOP appeals rush to the Supreme Court so that Republicans in the primary and general election voters will be the ones to determine who the next president is.
This panic and push to remove Trump in turn is threatening to continue the constitutional crisis that began in 2016 with the attempt to subvert his candidacy and then administration on false charges he was a foreign agent. Even after Trump won, official Washington, D.C. could not accept the outcome and sought to overturn if not the election’s outcome, then to delegitimize it and effectively run out the clock.
By 2020, with the help of Covid and the ensuing economic lockdowns plus mail-in balloting, Democrats managed to boost turnout in the election to narrowly defeat Trump, winning by a scant 43,000 votes in Georgia (10,000), Arizona (10,000) and Wisconsin (23,000), which if they had gone the other way, the Electoral College would have been tied 269 to 269, sending the election to the House of Representatives.
Given the closeness, Trump returned the favor visited upon him after 2016 and challenged the outcome of the election, and its legitimacy as well. This unfortunately led to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, numerous prosecutions of rioters whether they were peaceful or not, and now prosecutions of Trump himself in a bid to imprison him and add legitimacy to the attempt to keep him off the ballot.
This is all insane. Every bit of it. Because it’s dangerous. The U.S. Civil War began in 1860 because the defeated political party, the Democrats, could not accept the outcome of the election. And in 2016, they began that process again as now both parties have joined in what appears to be mortal combat over who gets to sit in the White House even though whether it is Trump or Biden, both would be constitutionally term-limited and second terms are usually very difficult to move legislation or get much accomplished anyway.
As things proceed, the election does not even appear to be turning on issues so far, but when those are considered, on issues like the war in Ukraine, Trump's opponents appear to rather the world burn in nuclear hellfire than admit he was right about the powder keg there as in 2016 the counterintelligence investigation was predicated on Trump’s electoral opposition to U.S. intervention in that region.
And now, Trump’s opponents would apparently rather see the republic fall in civil war (just like almost every other republic that fell in civil war) than see him in office again. They are hoping supporters — it doesn’t matter which side — do something stupid, thus creating a predicate for the federal government to seize even more police powers for itself atop the mass surveillance and censorship regimes that have already been exposed.
That is, everything appears to be on the table except for backing off or admitting a mistake. Historians might look back and ascribe the inevitable outcome as a product of hubris, and surely that is present, but to merely note the pridefulness on display would be to ignore the deliberate catalyzing that has occurred as constitutional norms have been destroyed as the nation appears on the brink of catastrophe.
In short, Washington, D.C. perceives an existential threat to their power, real or imagined, and thus have created one, but now to all of our liberty. 2024 will test the civil society's longevity but I fear we lack knowledge of its institutions to truly preserve them. We understand the consent of the governed but that's not enough to want to preserve it.
https://dailytorch.com/2024/01/2024-will-test-the-longevity-of-the-civil-society/
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Is Wikipedia struggling to maintain neutrality in times of political unrest?
In the realm of social media, Wikipedia isn’t a platform that comes to mind. It isn’t thought to possess hate speech, misinformation, let alone antisemitism. Rather, Wikipedia presents itself as a well-sourced, crowd-generated, free encyclopaedia, relying on consensus building and the neutrality of editors. The aim is ‘to inform, not influence’. Yet, Wikipedia’s collective consensus building to achieve neutrality is an assumption that is naïve at best, revealing what I believe to be unsettling editor bias on the platform. Essentially, while Wikipedia has systems in place designed to correct mistakes, these systems appear to be struggling to cope with political narratives.
As I have demonstrated in the past, during periods of geopolitical conflicts and when contentious topics dominate the news, there is a noticeable uptick in Wikipedia page views. Consequently, editors flock to these pages striving, in my view, to influence the narrative. A closer examination of editor user pages and article talk pages unveils a disconcerting parallel with major social media platforms.
Wikipedia has not been left untouched by the disturbing surge in antisemitic speech and conspiracy theories about the Jewish people seen online. Wikipedia’s access and editing for all (crowd sourcing) shows the platform’s vulnerability to bias and political influence.
In the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, one editor’s portrayal of a Palestinian flag branding ‘Judaism as a religion of life and Zionism as a cult of death’ led to reprimands from administrators. However, the editor denied that the statement qualified as hate speech and went so far as to lobby other like-minded senior editors to defend it. Another case is of an experienced editor quoting antisemitism denialists and going on to draw parallels between the current Israeli government and the Nazis. The same editor argued that an attempt to label said editor as antisemitic is a mere tactic to enforce silence.
Wikipedia editors hide behind anonymity and a user interface of talk pages that are not so obvious to the public allowing for hate speech and misinformation to go unchecked. Here, editor discussions take place in a pseudo-academic format on what an article should and shouldn’t include. All positions need to be well-sourced, yet sources are also voted on via consensus in order to make the reliable sources list. It seems like an alternate reality when media outlets with questionable neutrality are used as reliable sources. Moreover, the dominance of left-leaning sources means that information is limited and skewed. Academic articles take precedence but with the current state of academia – when calling for genocide is defended by some university presidents – Wikipedia is found wanting.
Moreover, cherry-picking information from sources is common in order to bolster an editor’s or a group of editors’ narrative. Take this article and talk page on Palestinians. There is a group of pro-Israel editors arguing with a group of pro-Palestinian editors about the misuse of a source on the genetic link between the ancient Canaanites and modern Jews and Arabs. The pro-Palestinian editors omit mentioning the genetic link between Jews and Canaanites in order to bolster the Palestinian genetic link. The pro-Israel editors are dismissed, the senior administrator involved doesn’t care to comment on the misuse of the source, and if a reader were to only read this page, they would be getting half the information. An encyclopaedia should be unbiased but there is no shortage of opinions within it.
The many editors most prolific on political articles use sources to their advantage, omitting and adding the information that suits their narrative. It is an unsettling thought that this free encyclopedia has nearly seven million articles in English with active editors equating to less than one per cent of the total 46 million editors on the site. It means that the most active editors are a very small group with their own interests and biases. It also means that editing Wikipedia becomes a numbers game reminiscent of the quote, ‘Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.’ In other words, if you are outnumbered by a group of like-minded editors, you become the dinner.
This consensus policy with no checks and balances means the potential for biased narratives permeates the articles. A very recent and crucial example of this taking place was investigated in March of this year, where a group of Polish editors distorted Holocaust articles over a period spanning 15 years. The editors were familiar with Wikipedia’s mechanisms and created the appearance of adhering to the rules. They were also willing to invest a vast amount of time in debating other editors in order to build consensus and worked together to discredit established historians, often propping up fringe voices. The editors created the semblance of a real-world academic debate over what should be considered a non-controversial genocidal event, yet it was rendered a discussion on semantics and interpretation. The 15-year delay by Wikipedia in banning these distortionists prompted suggestions for external experts to address controversial political issues on the site, yet the experts are still nowhere to be found.
Take a discussion on 22 November 2023 about changing the blue Star of David in an article about Jews. Editors can be found disputing its connection to Jewish identity citing that it isn’t representative of all Jews. One editor is quoted as saying, ‘I think it would be accurate to say that Zionism invented the Jewish people, and therefore is as much a part of Jewishness as Judaism.’ The discussion is painted as academic, quoting sources, pitching argument against argument, all whilst the only Jewish nation is fighting a war after the most heinous attacks on Israeli civilians.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realise that these discussions are not happening in a vacuum. Editors that start these types of debates have a narrative they want to push and these very same editors know that millions of people will read it and believe it. Wikipedia fails to effectively manage the dominance of editor group think and the platform’s consensus-building model is consistently manipulated. For this reason, Wikipedia is no more than a social media platform with citations.
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Sen. John Fetterman slams ‘pinko’ Harvard, calls Israel beacon of ‘progressive ideals’
I haven't aways approved of Fetterman but he's got his feet on the ground in this matter
In an interview this week, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman slammed the BDS movement and said that although Harvard University has always been a little “pinko” he doesn’t “recognize” it 25 years after he attended the school following Claudine Gay’s resignation as president.
“As an alum of Harvard — look, I graduated 25 years ago, and of course it was always a little pinko,” Fetterman told Semafor this week “But now, I don’t recognize it.”
Fetterman’s comment comes shortly after Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned from her position after struggling to answer a question condemning antisemitism in front of Congress and being accused of plagiarism almost 50 times.
Fetterman also told Semafor that “Israel is really a beacon of the kind of values, the American values and progressive ideals, that you want to see.”
“In that region, it’s our strongest ally, and we have a very special kind of relationship. I don’t understand how anybody could vote against the Iron Dome, or want to harm Israeli businesses or the nation or anything. I’ll never understand that. Calling them ‘colonizers’— like, where does this come from? It must be TikTok or some kind of obscure classroom talk.”
Fetterman also addressed calls for a “cease fire” in Israel from within his own party.
“More and more of my colleagues are calling for it,” Fetterman said. “It’s so strange. Why aren’t you calling for Hamas to surrender? If Hamas surrendered, and turned over their guns, all the killing and all the misery would.”
Fetterman has drawn criticism from fellow Democrats on some of his positions including Israel and immigration and he recently told NBC News that he is “not a progressive.”
“I just think I’m a Democrat that is very committed to choice and other things. But with Israel, I’m going to be on the right side of that. And immigration is something near and dear to me, and I think we do have to effectively address it as well,” Fetterman said.
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4 January, 2024
Cynicism in America Is Growing
It’s no secret that Americans today are collectively losing their faith in our cultural and governmental institutions. We have previously noted polling data indicating that an increasing political polarization has been spreading across the country, characterized by the bluing and reddening of the states. People move away from governments they don’t trust.
One of the primary drivers of migration in America today is politics. As states like California and New York increasingly embrace hard-left policies, a growing number of conservative residents of these states have opted to move to greener pastures in states like Texas, Florida, and Tennessee.
As a result, this migration has allowed for and even encouraged a broadening gap in the political polarization between the states.
Against this backdrop, Gallup has observed four distinct big-picture trends becoming more apparent across the nation. These four trends, outlined by Gallup senior scientist Frank Newport, are declining public trust in America’s institutions, declining sexual morality, declining religious affiliation, and growing political polarization.
Not only have all of these trends been developing for years, they are all interrelated. As Newport observes, “We can look at these shifts in American public opinion as representing a report card on how America is doing these days (the people’s answer: not well!).”
Newport’s assessment leads him to ask a fundamentally important question: Are these normal societal growing pains, or is the U.S. experiencing a significant cultural crisis that is increasingly defined by national cynicism? If the latter is the case, it’s difficult to see how the growing divergence in American identity will be bridged.
Trust has fallen in America’s institutions in part because too much trust has been afforded to them in the first place. Just as a narrow footbridge is ill-designed for a car, so too America’s institutions were never intended to uphold the totality of our cultural and individual identities.
While Gallup correctly notes the negative impact of the declining role of religion in Americans’ lives, there doesn’t seem to be a true appreciation for the significance of this decline. Indeed, it is from this one foundation, religious liberty under the Judeo-Christian worldview, that our great nation was birthed.
America rightly traces its history back to the Mayflower and those bold and brave pilgrims who came to the New World seeking to build a world where religious liberty flourished. Without that foundation of a Judeo-Christian worldview, there never would have been America; there never would have been a Constitution; and there never would have been the embrace of equal value for every individual citizen under the law. As John Adams presciently put it: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
It also comes as no surprise that with the erosion of Americans’ Christian religious faith comes the erosion of Americans’ sexual ethics. With the loss of faith in God, who is the ultimate sustainer of life and happiness, that vacuum is quickly being filled with idols. Given this reality, it comes as little surprise that sexual deviancy has not only been embraced by the broader public as permissible but is increasingly viewed as normal and even celebrated as virtuous. If there’s no Creator or objective standard, then anything goes.
Similarly, a loss of trust in America’s institutions is ironically tied to that cultural loss of religious faith as well. With fewer people looking to God as the ultimate source for solving the myriad problems they face, people are instead turning to institutions like the government for salvation.
Once again, however, that only affords greater polarization. If people view government as the only means to better themselves, then government becomes ultimate, and the stakes grow ever higher with each election cycle. Out of this comes intense tribalism, wherein tribal identity takes precedence over everything else. Under these conditions, the foundational principle view of the equality of every individual is lost to a chaotic sea of identity politics.
Americans are facing a time eerily similar to that of the Israelites of old as described in the Old Testament book of Judges: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” If there is no recognition of a uniting value system and a commitment to a common culture, then all that’s left is a bunch of individuals judging everything and everyone as if they themselves were God. And the inevitable result is a fracturing and disintegrating of the nation.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/103250-cynicism-in-america-is-growing-2024-01-03
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Federal Appeals Court Foils Another Biden Abortion Scheme
The Biden administration will stop at nothing to push abortion on the country, but a federal court put a stop Tuesday to another of its illegal schemes.
The Supreme Court’s June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization returned regulation of abortion to where it belonged all along, to “the people and their elected representatives.”
But that is too risky for the abortion warriors in the Biden administration. Those warriors are constantly looking for some statutory ambiguity to exploit, some legal hair to split, some regulatory spaghetti to throw at the wall to keep abortions happening.
President Joe Biden’s latest abortion scheme is to turn a law that requires hospital emergency rooms to treat patients into what is a federal abortion mandate.
The law, called the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act or EMTALA, was enacted in 1986 to combat “patient dumping” in which hospitals refuse to treat, or unnecessarily transfer, indigent patients.
EMTALA covers emergency rooms in hospitals that participate in the Medicaid program. It requires the screening of patients, regardless of their ability to pay, to determine whether a patient has an “emergency medical condition.” If she does, she must be offered either “stabilizing treatment” or transfer to another medical facility.
Two weeks after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, issued “guidance” about enforcing the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act in pro-life states.
If a physician believes that “abortion is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve” an emergency medical condition, the agency said, “the physician must provide that treatment.” In that situation, a state pro-life law “is preempted.”
In other words, according to federal guidance, EMTALA mandates whatever a physician decides is necessary to stabilize whatever medical condition he observes, regardless of what state law may say.
The state of Texas and two pro-life medical associations challenged this guidance, arguing that it amounts to a substantive policy change that EMTALA does not support and, in any event, requires a formal rulemaking process rather than a mere guidance letter. The U.S. District Court, and now the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, agreed.
The 5th Circuit’s unanimous opinion Tuesday in Texas v. Becerra was written by Judge Kurt Engelhardt, a Trump appointee. The appeals court made three important observations about the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act.
First, the law “does not mandate any specific type of medical treatment, let alone abortion.”
Second, the law does not clearly supersede the states’ historic power to regulate both the medical profession and abortion. In fact, a provision specifies that it preempts state or local law only when those measures “directly” conflict.
“In sum,” Engelhardt wrote, “EMTALA does not govern the practice of medicine. … While EMTALA directs physicians to stabilize patients once an emergency medical condition has been diagnosed … the practice of medicine is to be governed by the states.”
Third, under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, emergency medical conditions include those that place “the health of the woman or her unborn child … in serious jeopardy.” The 5thCircuit said that this approach “imposes equal stabilization obligations.”
EMALA’s text, the court concluded, “speaks for itself” and “requires hospitals to stabilize both the pregnant woman and her unborn child.” It does not establish an “unqualified right for the pregnant mother to abort her child.”
Not only did the Biden administration attempt, as the 5th Circuit put it, to “expand the scope of EMTALA” through an executive branch agency rather than Congress, but it did so in the wrong way. The Medicare Act requires a formal rulemaking process for rules or statements of policy that establish “a substantive legal standard.”
That formal process requires public notice and an opportunity for public comment; in other words, it is open and transparent. Using a “guidance” letter, like the one from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, instead shuts out the public and minimizes any scrutiny.
The Biden administration has tried to push its abortion agenda through every avenue from AIDS relief programs to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Nor is it the first time the administration has tried to turn a federal statute into something else to facilitate abortion. The Comstock Act, for example, prohibits using the U.S. Postal Service to send any “article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.”
Biden’s Justice Department issued an opinion claiming that the Comstock Act simply doesn’t mean what it plainly says, offering a different version that would be virtually unenforceable. Its arguments are untenable on their face, but demonstrate how far the Biden administration is willing to go to promote abortion.
The 5th Circuit decision in this case, like the District Court’s, is limited to the state of Texas. But this scheme of using the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act to promote abortion is being implemented elsewhere, so we can expect more challenges and rulings on this important issue.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/03/federal-appeals-court-foils-another-biden-abortion-scheme/
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Are You a Maker or a Taker?
John Stossel
Politicians are often takers. They take our money (and freedom) in the name of achieving goals they rarely achieve.
Elon Musk and Sen. Elizabeth Warren may be the best examples of maker and taker. They’re the stars of my video this week.
Warren shouts, “Tax the rich!” She especially wants to tax Musk, the richest man in the world.
In her eagerness to grab his money, she spun a scandal in the media, claiming Musk paid no taxes. She went on TV again and again to tell people that in 2018, “He paid zero!”
It was true. In 2018, Musk paid no federal income tax. But that was only because his pay was entirely in the form of “stock options,” and that year, they gave him no income.
But at the very moment Warren launched her “zero tax” screed, Musk was paying the U.S. government $12 billion—more tax than anyone has ever paid in history.
Warren didn’t mention that.
I wish Musk paid much less tax. It would be better for the world if he spent the $12 billion himself—rather than giving it to Warren and her cronies.
I say that because Musk, a maker, does so many useful things. That includes things that government is unable to do.
NASA has given up building spaceships. Even NASA bureaucrats now understand that they don’t do things very well.
In 2008, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said, “We can’t keep doing the same old things as before,” and invited private companies to join the space race.
That got results.
By 2020, Musk had sent astronauts into orbit, something NASA hadn’t been able to do for nine years.
Musk lowered the cost of nearly every component of space flight. NASA spent $1,500 on door latches. Musk’s team built the part for $30 by modifying a latch from bathroom stalls.
Musk developed reusable rockets, which drastically cut costs.
“Reuse the rocket, say, 1,000 times,” said Musk. “That would make the capital costs of the rocket per launch only about $50,000.”
Why didn’t NASA do that? Because in government, people do what they’ve always done. Lowering costs isn’t important. They’re spending other people’s money.
Musk also created Starlink. Starlink satellites now provide low-cost internet service to people all over the world. He’s so successful launching satellites that most satellites now orbiting Earth are Musk’s. He’s given more poor people access to the internet than any government ever has.
Musk develops the world’s most popular electric car, gives poor people internet access, reinvigorates space exploration, and creates 110,000 jobs.
So, Warren wants to punish him?
She sent a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission, demanding the government investigate Tesla for “not properly representing shareholders.”
Seems like a bizarre accusation, given that Tesla’s stock has increased in value by $790 billion.
Warren didn’t like that Musk became CEO of Twitter. She demanded that “conflict of interest” be investigated.
But it’s great that Musk bought Twitter. He told Joe Rogan that he’s lost money on the company, but that taking over Twitter was still worth “everything,” because he’s protecting open debate.
I agree. Twitter’s previous owners censored political views that didn’t conform to left-wing bias.
They even reduced the number of my Twitter followers. Only when Musk took over did the total climb back above a million again.
Now Musk’s company, Neuralink, is trying to help paralyzed people access the internet and operate artificial limbs—just by using their thoughts.
Neuralink, Tesla, SpaceX, Starlink. Musk is a maker and a hero!
Warren, the taker, attacks people who create wealth. She pushes a skewed narrative about “greedy” corporations.
Of course corporations are greedy! Greed works. It motivates people to try harder.
But (outside of government) greedy people can only satisfy their greed by pleasing customers. Unlike politicians, they can’t force anyone to pay.
Our world needs fewer Elizabeth Warrens and more Elon Musks
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/01/03/are-you-a-maker-or-a-taker/
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The Arrogance of the Media Creates an 'Illiberal Bias'
An essential ingredient in the stew of hysteria over a second Trump term is a heavy-breathing concern for "vital institutions" like the press. On the badly named public radio podcast "Left, Right & Center" -- originating from KCRW, the NPR affiliate in Santa Monica, California -- former NPR morning host David Greene furiously pushed the panic button in a yearend review on Dec. 29.
Greene is supposed to be the "center" in this program's name, but he never is. Pondering a Trump reelection, he kvetched about how he "lived through" Donald Trump's presidency at NPR, where they had the "hardest conversations" ever in newsrooms.
They couldn't figure out how to cover Trump. The more they would cover him, the more they wanted to "fact-check" him, and "then your fact-checking became this very self-validating thing." But this self-righteous Trump-bashing only led to the feeling that Trump was using you, playing off your self-validation. You just became part of Trump's "constant show."
Greene quoted from journalist George Packer in a special issue of The Atlantic magazine, chock-full of jeremiads about a second Trump term. Packer's article is titled "Is Journalism Ready? The press has repeatedly fallen into Donald Trump's traps. A second term could render it irrelevant."
This is the purple prose that Greene shared: "Trump doesn't have to have journalists poisoned. He doesn't even need to have them investigated. His most powerful weapon is his ability to convince large numbers of Americans that the press has no particular value for democracy and deserves no special protection."
Greene left out what came next: the notion that the media are "just another racket of corrupt, self-serving elites." Did that cut too close to the bone? They can't believe anyone would think they're self-serving while they're energetically "self-validating." He's like Packer, who couldn't imagine The New York Times is "supposedly unfair." Their bubble is impenetrably thick.
Democracy needs a free press. The problem for leftists like Greene is they think their voices are the only essential voices and that their media outlets are the only "vital institutions" that help democracy function. They refuse to acknowledge that the Republican half of the electorate thinks they're all stooges for Democrats, and they can't imagine that conservative journalists have any important function in holding Democrats accountable.
Sarah Isgur, the current "Right" member of this cast, pressed Greene with a quote from James Bennet, who was fired from The New York Times for publishing an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.). Bennet wrote the newspaper's "problem has metastasized from liberal bias to illiberal bias, from an inclination to favor one side of the national debate to an impulse to shut debate down altogether."
Greene sputtered at this, saying this was the "heart of the problem," that people complain about a liberal bias while the media worried about "elevating extreme voices," like the elected president. After asking four follow-up questions, he lazily claimed, "I could show why your argument is really weak. But I'll set that aside." He did not elaborate.
So good for Isgur, but it was even better when the "Left" of this equation, Democrat Mo Elleithee, quoted from the late Fox News chief Roger Ailes when he said, "We are the balance" at Fox News, the corrective to all the liberal tilt. Elleithee surprisingly said the solution to rebuilding trust -- with conservatives and with minorities who feel unrepresented -- is to "diversify, in every way."
Fat chance! But if NPR were ever forced to admit any confident conservatives to work there, that old Greene lament about the "hardest conversations ever" in the newsroom would pale by comparison.
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3 January, 2024
California Is Off the Rails
Having a happy New Year this year won’t be easy in California.
The state is a fiscal, social and economic train wreck that just keeps on wrecking.
As we roll into 2024, we’ve learned we’re looking at a projected budget deficit of $68 billion.
The Los Angeles Times explained the cause of California’s huge shortfall this week in its usual biased way — without pinning blame on the Democrats in Sacramento whose policies are responsible for it.
The deficit is not just because the state’s tech economy has cooled, unemployment is up and state income tax revenues are projected to fall by 25 percent. Or because gazillionaires like Elon Musk have taken their big companies and fortunes to Texas.
The experts in the Los Angeles Times pointed to another important contribution to the budget shortfall — more and more well-off, well-educated, ordinary Californians are leaving the state.
The escapees — the middle-class people who average about $150,000 a year — have finally had it with California’s higher taxes and permanently higher cost of living.
And, though the Los Angeles Times article does not mention it, the escapees have also had it with the general decline of the California Dream.
The state’s $68 billion shortfall is bound to grow even larger next year when a wave of costly new illegal immigrants arrives and a few hundred thousand more Californians flee to income-tax-free states like Florida, Texas and Tennessee.
But don’t worry, a mere $68 billion in red ink won’t stop California’s Democrats from spending more money than they have.
It’s the way they roll.
I remember what happened way back in 1966, right after my father became governor after defeating incumbent Pat Brown in a landslide.
On his way out the door after cleaning out his desk, Brown’s budget director stuck his head in my father’s office.
“By the way,” he said, “We’re spending a million dollars more a day than we’re bringing in.” Then he left.
My father just sat there, shocked. He had no idea. No one did.
Ultimately, because the state constitution says the budget has to be balanced, my father was forced to do something he never would have done otherwise — raise taxes.
But then he did something else. A few years later, his budget guy came in and said, “Governor, we have an issue.”
“What is it,” my father said.
“We have a surplus. We need to know what to do with a budget surplus.”
My dad simply said, “Well, give it back.”
“We don’t have a way to do that,” the budget guy said. “No one has ever done that before.”
My dad told the budget guy to find a way to give the money back to the taxpayers who had overpaid and given the state a surplus, and that’s what happened.
If you want to know the difference between a Red State and Blue State, that’s a pretty good example.
Of course, what my dad did almost 60 years ago is not how things work in Sacramento today.
We’re living in a one-party state run by Democrats who, whenever they get a surplus, yell “Windfall!” and spend and tax us even more.
It’s really sad to see what’s happened to California.
In the 1960s and 1970s it truly was the Golden State. Everything the Beach Boys said about it was true.
But it wasn’t just the sunshine and the beaches that made California a paradise.
Back then it was America’s model state. It had a sensible government, the best infrastructure and its economy was wide open, healthy and growing.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans came out to California from dull or dying places like Des Moines and Pittsburgh every year. They lived better, happier, more prosperous lives — and never dreamed of leaving.
Every year I look forward to the New Year. I don’t feel too good about what 2024 will bring for my wrecked state. But there’s always hope that the people still here will wake up and put California back on track
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/103213-california-is-off-the-rails-2023-12-29
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The Left are Consistently Inconsistent
You can always rely on the radical Left to be inconsistent, can’t you. They make an art of it.
We know how strongly they feel about the claim of Aboriginal people to be the original owners of our land. That bold clarion cry, “Always was, always will be,” has become very familiar to all of us.
What a strange thing it is, then, to find that the claim of the Jewish people to Jerusalem and the land of Israel is not upheld by the Left with the same vigour.
In fact, ask the average Leftie, and you'll not only get a firm denial of any Jewish title to the land, but probably also a very immoderately expressed imprecation against Jews in general.
That’s an understatement, because the radical Left hates Jews.
Their hatred is usually partly concealed by the use of such limiting terms as “anti-zionist” or “anti-semitic,” but the loathing behind the widespread celebration of the bestial savagery of Hamas in October has sadly been plain to see.
They do have a case, admittedly—and the Western media are determined to make the most of it.
Israel partly contributed to modern terrorism. The bombings and other violent activities of the Stern Gang in the 1940s were deeply shocking to Western sensibilities. And it appears that Israel’s use of force in the current conflict has been excessive on occasion.
But that’s war for you. If you think it can be sanitised, and that soldiers—any soldiers—never get frenzied or cruel in the heat of battle, you’re dreaming.
The Media Bias
But if you watch the coverage of this war on “our” ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) you'll conclude that Israeli soldiers alone offend against the agreed “decencies” of war.
They will show you the bloodied bodies of Gazan civilians being brought into what’s left of the hospital emergency rooms. And the shocked and weeping relatives. You will share some of the anger.
But wait a minute.
Are the Israelis gratuitously and pointlessly bombing and hammering an inert, defenceless civilian population? Is that all that’s going on?
Is the fighting over? Are they persevering in violence just for the heck of it, as a form of spiteful payback, or maybe just to test the power of their weapons? That is absurdly implausible. Hamas is still fully engaged in the conflict, and they too are sending their victims to hospital.
The only way Hamas will give up their fight—for the complete destruction of Israel, let’s remind ourselves—is if they are well and truly eliminated.
That’s why the fighting continues. Hamas doesn’t know the meaning of surrender.
But don’t expect clarity on that from mainstream media. If you watch the news on ABC or SBS (you’re probably wasting your time, but it’s your choice) you'll notice that almost every time Hamas is mentioned it is accompanied by a kind of mantra—“Hamas, regarded as a terrorist organisation by many countries, including Australia.”
This terminology makes it clear that most of the ABC’s correspondents do not share that view. Their bias is palpable.
Picking and Choosing What to Report
That said, they cannot rationally explain their affection for the Arab cause because they are blind to both the best and the worst qualities of Islam.
For example, the secular Left in the West cannot appreciate, just cannot get its head around, the genuine Muslim’s prayerful devotion to Allah, the merciful and compassionate.
The spirituality of Islam, and of Christianity too, is a completely closed book to the almost wholly secularised West.
Sure, the Left appears or pretends to understand Aboriginals’ spirituality, and their “connection to the country” (whatever that means), but that’s just an excuse to further their agenda.
Being told by a modern secular thinker that he respects your religion is a bit like being told by a crocodile that he loves your humanity.
Here’s another big inconsistency. They ignore one of Islam’s grimmer aspects, namely its intolerance towards homosexuality.
Intolerance is an understatement: Israel is probably the only country in the Middle East in which homosexuality is legal.
In many, it is not only illegal but actively persecuted—and the penalties can be heavy indeed.
Radical Islam’s tendency (let’s say no more than that) to undervalue women’s education is another matter on which Western secular feminism is mysteriously silent.
If you’re looking for examples of inconsistency you can hardly do better than the West’s heartfelt sympathy for the muscular goals of Islam, while turning a blind eye to its less attractive prejudices, and its refusal to countenance the legitimate territorial claims of democratic Israel.
Legitimate claims? Well, if any claims to hereditary and historical land rights deserve respect, Israel’s surely do. You couldn’t make up a better pedigree. Jerusalem, the ancient capital of Judea, is one of the world’s oldest continuously occupied cities, founded at least four millennia ago. Israel’s city of peace was already ancient when Jesus walked its streets.
Another six centuries passed before Muhammed appeared on the scene.
The persecution and expulsion of the Jews by more powerful neighbours such as Egypt and Babylon, then by the Romans, then by so many others, and their subsequent diaspora throughout the world, are as well documented as any events in history.
The Jewish claim to be the original owners of their land is impeccable. They want their land back, not the whole of the Middle East, but that which originally was their home.
Many of their neighbours, on the other hand, especially the Shiites, are less conciliatory: they want it all.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/being-consistently-inconsistent-5554341
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A Word of Warning About International Aid Organizations
Many well-known international aid organizations for decades have not given anything to Israel or helped Israeli citizens. Think twice before giving them a penny of your hard-earned money.
Telling readers of Townhall that the UN is a garbage organization is wholly unnecessary. That said, I want to tell a personal story related to one of those self-important international aid organizations, Doctors Without Borders, or as it is known in this house, Doctors Without Morals.
I have mentioned more than once that our oldest son and I were wounded in a suicide bombing here in Jerusalem in 2002. Our son spent most of his initial recovery in Hadassah Hospital’s Pediatric ICU (PICU for short). One day while we lived our new lives there, staff came in and out in a great hurry. Security guards with guns showed up periodically. Sensing that something was happening, I took the liberty to ask what all of the commotion was about. I was told the following: a wanted Palestinian terrorist was identified in his car. An Apache helicopter sent a missile to get him in the express lane for his 72 virgins. The terrorist jumped out of the car at the last second and conveniently left his son in the exploding vehicle. The boy was burned over 90 percent of his body. The staff there spent hours at a time changing his bandages, washing him, and helping him to recover. He was not treated any less well or any differently than any other child, Jewish or Arab. The security guys were there should his dad decide to come uninvited.
While I was sitting in the parents’ lounge outside of PICU, two French fellows showed up. I knew exactly who they were and I blocked the door, saying, “Only parents are allowed in.” The two guys were from Doctors Without Borders and Reuters. Security came and took them somewhere else in the hospital. The mother apparently was trying to get permission to visit her son, and Doctors Without Borders claimed that they were representing the family in her absence.
After the two fellows departed, I got to thinking. Doctors Without Borders never inquired about our son. Not that I would want them anywhere near our boy. But our son had had the head of a Philips screw pass fully through his right brain. He was at the time blind and paralyzed on his left side. The hypocritical doctor of the Hippocratic Oath could not find the time or interest to check on the health and well-being of a Jewish child? His argument would probably be that the Jewish kid had family with him, but the burned Arab boy did not. But that was not the issue. He simply couldn't care less as to the well-being of a Jewish child. And for that reason, I won’t give a dime to any of these antisemitic international organizations. A real doctor would want to check up and maybe even bring some cheer to any child. A modern Mengele would not.
I was reminded of this story when my lawyer, Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, released on X a tape her organization, Shurat Hadin, had recorded. They had their people call UNICEF-UK and UNICEF-Australia in order to donate money to Israeli children who have been harmed by the pogrom and ensuing war. Those who answered the phones said that they had active programs in Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza—but nothing in Israel. The UK fellow tried to convince the caller that Gaza and Israel were one and the same. When the caller insisted on giving money to Israeli children, the staffer admitted that he had nothing to offer. My mother warned me 50 years ago when people went trick-or-treating with those little blue charity boxes that UNICEF was anti-Israel, and nothing has changed.
During the height of the second intifada, the Palestinian observer to the UN introduced a non-binding resolution to the General Assembly asking for the protection of Palestinian children from harm. It was a very general resolution and passed easily. Dan Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador to the UN at the time, very cleverly changed “Palestinian” to “Israeli” and submitted the modified version. It was rejected by a large majority. The resolution was non-binding and only asked for the general protection of children during the rampant bloodshed. The nations of the world were not having it. The UN has condemned Israel in the past decade more than all other nations combined.
This tendency of international organizations to be anti-Israel and effectively antisemitic is not surprising. Muslim and third-world countries dominate the UN and their position with respect to Israel is well-known. Look at Turkey's Erdogan going off on Israel non-stop since the mass murder of Jews on 10/7. And as to the Western do-gooders who populate antisemitic organizations like Doctors Without Borders or Oxfam, we have seen for the past two months that they are enamored with psychotic Jew killers. Thus, the hapless UNICEF staffers could not find any program for Israel—their only goal is to help the next generations of rapists, beheaders, butchers, and kidnappers in Gaza. Why would they also want to help the enemy?
Americans are the most generous people in the world. If there is a catastrophe anywhere, American organizations are often among the first to arrive (ditto for Israeli groups). Americans give generously to help those affected by hurricanes, tsunamis or the like anywhere on the globe. While I would certainly want Americans to keep that generous spirit, I would strongly encourage them to give their money carefully. If an organization can differentiate between a Jewish and non-Jewish child or Israel and any other nation state, then I would suggest that you find a better place to give your money. Let the antisemites at Doctors Without Borders get their money from elsewhere. Your money can be better spent.
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Australian unions warn the government not to allow religious schools to hire based on faith
A clear attack on freedom of religion. Wars were once fought to achieve it. This amounts to a call to abandon religious teaching -- precisely what many parents enroll their kids for. One wonders what Muslim parents will make of it
Union leaders have raised concern over signals from Labor that it will introduce religious discrimination laws in the first half of this year, arguing the focus should be on cost of living and not on rules that could allow bosses to hire staff based on their faith.
Federal Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus has told faith leaders he is working on a draft bill that will be ready before July as part of the government’s promise to deliver on legislating against religious discrimination, which the Coalition failed to do before the 2022 election.
Health Services Union national secretary Lloyd Williams said his union’s membership – nearly 50,000 people – would stand against any legislation that allowed an employer to preference hiring someone of faith.
“The Coalition’s bill would have allowed discrimination towards workers of a particular faith, and certainly people of a different sexual orientation,” he told The Australian.
“We would hope that this government, when it goes forward with any bill, will put protections in there for workers so they can’t be discriminated against based on what religion they do or do not follow.”
CFMEU national secretary Zach Smith also declared his union stood for the clear principle that “no one should be discriminated against at work”.
Mr Smith cautioned Labor not to lose focus on addressing the cost of living and housing crisis in 2024, declaring his union would push the government hard on a more ambitious housing plan.
“Alongside delivering on its promises from the last election, the federal government must use 2024 to tackle the two biggest issues facing working people today,” he said.
Electrical Trades Union secretary Michael Wright said he was “confident” the government could address both the cost-of-living crisis and legislate the religious discrimination laws at the same time.
The debate over faith protections came as the Coalition accused Labor of “mounting an attack” on religious charities and non-government schools after a draft Productivity Commission report recommended changes to the tax treatment of charity donations. The report called for deductible gift recipient status to be scrapped for non-government primary, secondary, childcare, aged care and other religious organisations.
Opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson said the PC’s recommendation to scrap the “basic religious charity status” would also increase red tape and reporting requirements for almost one in five charities.
“This proposed school building tax is a direct, ideological attack on independent and faith-based schools and must immediately be ruled out by the Albanese government,” she said.
Assistant Minister for Charities Andrew Leigh said the Coalition knew the Productivity Commission was independent and its recommendations were “not government policy”.
“When we ask an independent body like the Productivity Commission to conduct an inquiry, it’s important that we respect their independence and let them complete the process,” Mr Leigh said.
“The Productivity Commission has not made any final recommendations as it is midway through its work.”
After winning government, Labor tasked the Australian Law Reform Commission with providing advice on designing religious discrimination legislation.
However, an alliance of faith leaders raised alarm with a draft proposal from the ALRC released early last year, which recommended the government allow religious preference only where “the teaching, observance or practice of religion is a genuine occupational requirement”.
In response to the criticism, the government extended the ALRC’s reporting deadline to December 2023, with Mr Dreyfus confirming he had received the ALRC’s report.
When asked if the legislation would allow institutions to take staff’s faith into account when hiring, a spokesman for Mr Dreyfus said: “The government is now considering the ALRC review of anti-discrimination law.”
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
2 January, 2024
Conservative Values Make People Happier
Surveys always show that conservatives and GOP voters report themselves as happier than Leftists and Democrats. It's a very consistent finding over a long period. Since Leftists are always angry about something, it's no surprise. If they get their way in something -- such as homosexual marriage -- they just find something else to get angry about -- such as transsexualism. They are born unhappy
Despite the Left’s best efforts to paint conservative values as outdated and oppressive, official studies and even people’s public admissions about being betrayed by liberal ideas continue to prove the opposite.
Progressives have tried to convince women that a career or a pet can take the place of family and children; to tell teens and young adults that the sense of “right and wrong” is unnecessary and only meant to keep them from living their best lives; and to tell boys and men that previous expectations of being masculine, strong providers can be abandoned in pursuit of more self-serving objectives.
We’ve seen the overall mental health situation in America and across the Western world plummet into what are now crisis levels. If we are truly interested in improving people’s outlook on life and fostering a more stable and healthy society going forward, we need to acknowledge that certain ideas and beliefs benefit people because they fulfill their souls on the deepest levels.
In an attempt to understand the underlying causes for the downward spiral of young people’s outlook on life, Gallup and the Institute for Family Studies recently conducted a study to find out what ideas and concerns might be leading this next generation to feel more hopeless than those who came before them.
The results indicated that things like household income, educational level, race, and ethnicity (all valued at a higher level by those who lean left on the political spectrum) had little impact on the well-being of children and adolescents. Instead, the views of their parents, the type of relationship between family members, and the way mothers and fathers treat each other were all factors that could lead to a more positive worldview for children.
Blaze Media summed up the kind of conduct that leads to a positive perspective in children: “regulation and enforcement, including settling well-established rules; demonstrating affections daily; setting a regular routine; and authoritatively regulating behavior.”
“Political ideology was found to be a strong predictor of parenting style,” the article adds. “According to the study, adolescents with ‘very conservative parents are 16 to 17 percentage points more likely to be in good or excellent mental health compared to their peers with very liberal parents.’”
The lead author of the study, Jonathan Rothwell, pointed to the work of Stanford University psychologist Eleanor Maccoby to confirm that children raised in homes with boundaries and respect for authority were more likely to develop “self-control, social competence, success in school, compliance with rules and reasonable norms, and even exhibit more confidence and creativity.”
The results also found a direct correlation between the political views and overall perspective of the adults in the home and the mindset that their children carry with them into society.
Conservative parents use their foundation of traditional beliefs to raise children — meaning they foster a bond with their kids and prioritize the mother in the home during their children’s most vulnerable and formative years. Politically, conservatives see people as individuals capable of achieving success based on their skills and choices, while understanding that decisions can either contribute to a better outcome or cause struggle and hardship.
These philosophies held in conservative homes heavily dictate how we vote and ultimately who we believe is responsible for what our lives look like — ourselves or the government.
By contrast, a common thread in more liberal views is to hear the words of politicians who promise the world to their constituents and who claim that if social programs and local and federal workers can provide for their needs, there is no need to make the effort with their children in the home. Believing that someone else is responsible for the outcome of your life fosters the desire to absolve yourself of personal responsibility. This leaves room to blame “the system” when things go downhill, as they inevitably will.
Outside of the realm of home and family, there has been an increasing trend of women in their mid to late 30s, or even older, discovering too late that they were lied to by feminist ideologues, convinced that they would never naturally feel inclined toward a husband and kids if society instilled other values into them. With time, maturity, and experience, these women are finding out that the traditional view of getting married and raising a family was never based on the desire to oppress women but rather to empower them in the greatest pursuit in which a human being can engage.
The New York Post highlighted one 38-year-old woman who told of how, at age 22, she married a man with those dreaded traditional life goals of having a wife who cooks meals and raises their children. She made it clear that her priority in life was a career and that she did not want kids — and after a decade together their relationship ended in divorce.
Heavily immersed in the false promise of fulfillment that modern feminism sells to young women in the form of career and self-love, she did not believe that her views would change as she got older. She was determined to fight any inclination that her instincts might try to impose on her as a woman and told herself that work could fill the hole that might otherwise have been dedicated to raising kids.
However, her older and more mature self kicked in, and her previously held feminist views are no longer drowning out what her mind and heart have always known — that having a husband and a baby is ultimately what she wants.
These studies and public admissions from young progressives continue to confirm the truth. Conservatives tell women, men, and young adults daily about the values that will lead to the greatest joy and fulfillment for individuals and families. They are tried, true, and traditional for a reason.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/103118-conservative-values-make-people-happier-2023-12-22
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Trump? The Democrat Party, the radical left, and Joe Biden are the real threats to our freedom
It is not Donald Trump and the Republican Party that are threatening our constitutional Republic. It is the Democrat Party, the radical left and Joe Biden that are the real threats to our freedom.
Clearly, the 2020 election was rigged. (You don’t have to believe that there were false ballots cast to know it was rigged, and I have outlined why for the past three years.)
Immediately after taking power, Biden and the Democrats moved to ensure that Trump and Republicans would never win another election.
They tried to pack the Supreme Court. They tried to nationalize all federal elections. They wanted to create new states so we could never again win the Senate.
Thanks to Elon Musk, we know that Big Government collaborated with Big Tech to censor the views of millions of Americans who supported Trump. The left is in court today fighting to keep the right to censor us — in the name of defending democracy.
They have done everything they can to delegitimize the Supreme Court, and then refused to enforce the law banning protests outside the homes of justices because they want the justices and their families to be afraid. Chuck Schumer threatened them, saying, “You won’t know what hit you.”
Biden surrounded the Capitol Building with barbed wire and deployed troops to deny the American people their right to free assembly and to visit their own Capitol.
He went to one of our most historically iconic places — Independence Hall — and accused half the country of being “fascists” and a threat to America.
At this moment, he has surrendered the borders of the United States to foreign invaders.
He gets up every morning thinking of how to fuel racial tensions for his own gain.
And through all this, we are supposed to conclude that Donald Trump is a “threat to democracy.”
https://patriotpost.us/articles/103123-the-real-threat-2023-12-22
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Reparations movement in California is plunged into chaos after San Francisco mayor abandons $4 million pledge
California's reparations movement faces an uncertain future after San Francisco's mayor scrapped plans for a designated office to explore the issue.
Mayor London Breed has quietly withdrawn $4 million in funding to establish an Office of Reparations as she struggles to fix a massive budget deficit in the city. The decision sparked frustration among campaigners who are pursuing cash payments of up to $5 million for the city's black residents.
The decision also comes after California Governor Gavin Newsom distanced himself from demands for cash payments - a radical policy recommended by his own state-wide Reparations Task Force, which published a landmark report in June that recommended reparations valued at roughly half-a-trillion dollars.
The Governor was also expected to meet with members of the California Legislative Black Caucus in December to hear their proposals for reparations legislation but it remains unclear whether a discussion has taken place.
Mayor Breed axed funding for an Office of Reparations in December as part of broader cuts to services.
In a letter to department heads, she said: 'The reductions leave intact basic City services and priorities so we can continue making progress on hiring police officers, expanding shelter beds, advancing behavioral health initiatives, and cleaning up our streets.'
The decision came after the city's African American Reparations Advisory Committee published a draft plan in March with recommendations including $5 million cash payments. Other proposals included the creation of an Afrocentric K-12 School.
Newsom said earlier this year that reparations is 'about much more than cash payments'.
A spokesman for Breed also said 'opening a separate office is not an efficient use of funds' and told SFGate that 'the Mayor does not believe we need a new bureaucracy to implement programs to benefit the African American community'.
Shamann Walton, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, said it was 'disheartening', adding: 'I understand the importance of no cuts to existing programs, but the Black community will continue to pursue justice and equity through reparations here in San Francisco.
'My hope is that the city's deficit is eliminated quickly so that we can fund the Office of Reparations and fulfill the commitment made to address the historical injustices and inequities that have persisted for generations for Black San Franciscans.'
The stalled reparations campaigns in California come as other continue with their own programs to explore reparations.
Earlier this month, New York became the third state in the country to create a task force exploring reparations, after Illinois, whose commission is still examining the issue, and California.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation on December 19 to establish the state's commission.
'Today, we are continuing our efforts to right the wrongs of the past by acknowledging the painful legacy of slavery in New York,' Hochul said during a signing ceremony at the New York Historical Society in Manhattan.
Governor Hochul signed the legislation six months after state lawmakers passed the bill to examine the extent to which the federal and state government supported the institution of slavery.
A nine-member commission will study the lasting impact of slavery and make non-binding recommendations on reparations.
She said there was a 'moral obligation' to address New York's history of slavery and added: 'Let's be clear about what 'reparations' means. It doesn't mean fixing the past — nobody can do this. But it does mean offering more than an apology.
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Detransitioner blasts Ohio Gov. DeWine as ‘complicit’ in child ‘mutiliation’ after vetoing ban on gender-affirming care
Detransitioner Chloe Cole had some tough words to offer Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine days after he shot down a bill that would have banned gender-affirming care for minors in his state, lambasting his decision for allegedly being “complicit” in the “sterilization and mutilation” of children.
“Parents don’t have a right to abuse their children. This is no different from any form of abuse,” Cole said Sunday on “Fox & Friends Weekend.”
“This is the sterilization and mutilation of thousands of children happening within a state that is being entirely complicit in the choice to continue this.”
DeWine, a Republican, vetoed the GOP-backed Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act on Friday, sparking outrage from conservatives who blasted him as a “coward” for his decision.
The bill would have banned gender-affirming procedures for minors in the Buckeye State and would have additionally barred transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.
“Were I to sign Substitute House Bill 68 or were Substitute House Bill 68 to become law, Ohio would be saying that the State, that the government, knows what is best medically for a child rather than the two people who love that child the most, the parents,” DeWine said in his veto message.
He additionally cited the “profound” consequences the bill could have on children struggling with gender dysphoria as well as their families and said his decision boiled down to input from parents who believed their children’s lives depended on the treatment they received.
“Ultimately, I believe this is about protecting human life. Many parents have told me that their child would not have survived, would be dead today if they had not received the treatment they received from one of Ohio’s children’s hospitals. I’ve also been told by those who are now grown adults that but for this care, they would have taken their life when they were teenagers,” he said.
Cole, who formerly took steps to complete a female-to-male transition and has since been among the most outspoken critics against gender-affirming care for minors, claimed DeWine’s veto came just days after she shared her story with him during a Zoom call.
“When I was describing every step of the treatment, and especially when I brought up how young I was during every step, having been 13 when my puberty was suppressed, when I was drawn to androgens, and that I was 15 when my breasts were surgically removed, he was visibly disturbed,” she said.
“He knows just how horrific this is to do to children. His decision to continue this… it’s not just a matter of pure incompetence or ignorance.”
Cole previously told Fox News Digital that she feared the painful side effects of gender transition procedures would never cease, adding that she had lost trust in her health care provider and perhaps even healthcare in general.
She revisited the discussion during Sunday’s segment, telling Fox News’ Rachel Campos-Duffy about the “lie” that “activist doctors” sold to her parents.
“They were told that the decision was either going to be between one [of] two things, either having a very suicidal and eventually dead daughter or a living transgender son – but that is not true. These children are not committing suicide because they were born in the wrong body. This is an entirely psychological issue and these children are not getting the help that they need,” she said.
“They need psychiatric help. They need to know that they’re perfect in the bodies that they were born with. If he [DeWine] truly believes in his heart that perfectly healthy children can be born wrong, that they need to be corrected, I think he should be expelled from office.”
Governor DeWine’s office declined a request for comment from Fox News Digita
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1 January, 2024
Sleep divorce isn't just a trend — new scientific research backs the separate beds theory
I have been practicing this for many years, amid some disapproval. So I am glad that science has caught up with me. I am now apparently an exemplar, not a pariah. I am however a very restless sleeper so I had little choice in the matter
New research from the University of Michigan finds that it’s actually more beneficial for couples to sleep apart than together, if a disruption-free eight hours is the goal.
The news comes as more and more couples are opting out of conventional, shared bed sleeping arrangements, with celebrities like Cameron Diaz pushing to end the stigma around sleeping in other rooms.
Called a “sleep divorce,” one in three Americans are keeping the sheets to themselves for improved health — and for sake of their relationships, a recent survey by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine found.
That correlates directly to the number of U.S. citizens not getting enough sleep, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We know that poor sleep can worsen your mood, and those who are sleep deprived are more likely to argue with their partners,” said Dr. Seema Khosla, a pulmonologist and spokesperson for the AASM.
“Getting a good night’s sleep is important for both health and happiness, so it’s no surprise that some couples choose to sleep apart for their overall well-being.”
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Kanye West’s Aussie wife Bianca Censori made him reverse course on antismitism
Bianca is more than a sexy body
Kanye West’s unexpected apology to the Jewish community after a series of vile anti-Semitic tirades came after a furious “smackdown” by his Australian wife, according to a new report.
The controversial musician, 46, posted an apology on social media on Tuesday, expressing regret for his offensive “outbursts”, including an anti-Semitic rap and praise of Hitler during a performance in Las Vegas in early December.
“I sincerely apologise to the Jewish community for any unintended outburst caused by my words or actions, it was not my intention to hurt or disrespect, and I deeply regret any pain I may have caused,” read West’s message, which was written in Hebrew.
“I am committed to starting with myself and learning from this experience to ensure greater sensitivity and understanding in the future.”
It marked an abrupt attitude U-turn for the rapper, who has been embroiled in increasingly erratic and offensive anti-Semitic behaviour in recent years, culminating in this month’s vile display in Sin City.
“It’s 60 million of us in America, 60 million Jews in the world,” he falsely screamed in a video, obtained by TMZ.
“Who’s going to make the hospitals, though? He’s a Zionist, Trump. This is what I’ve been trying to tell you. Jesus Christ, Hitler, Ye, third party, sponsor that.”
According to the Daily Mail, his apology, which came just weeks later, was prompted by a stern warning from his 28-year-old wife, Bianca Censori, who reportedly “laid the smackdown on him” and told him he was putting them in danger with his outbursts.
“She told him that his recent behaviour was unacceptable and that he needs to apologise because he was putting them in danger and setting a horrible example for his children.
“Bianca is really sick of his attention seeking and she knows that this is not who he truly is, but it is making her look like she is anti-Semitic, which is so far from the truth.
“She has many Jewish friends who she loves dearly and he knows this.”
The insider added that most of his troubling behaviour occurs when she is not around – which they claim is a deliberate choice by West.
The insider added: “It is very upsetting to Bianca and he does it anyway. He just waits until she is gone. By the time that she finds out what he’s done and said, it is too late.
“And now it’s at the point where she is starting to fear for her safety – not because of Kanye hurting her or anything like that. It is more like she fears that a Jewish extremist could potentially do something to hurt both of them.”
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Tulsi Gabbard Says Democrats ‘Will Stop at Nothing’ to Keep Trump Off 2024 Ballot
Former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, responding to efforts to keep former President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot, said Democrats “will stop at nothing” to maintain power.
In a candid interview on Fox News’s “Hannity” on Thursday, the Democrat-turned-Independent former congresswoman raised an alarm over what she described as a concerted effort by Democrats to sideline President Trump from the 2024 ballot.
She described the decision by Maine’s top election official, a Democrat, to remove President Trump from the state’s ballot as a dangerous precedent and urged Republicans and Democrats alike to “stand up for our democratic process” and the right of voters to pick their president.
“This is the MO of the Democrat elite,” Ms. Gabbard said. “They will stop at nothing to try to maintain their power, even if it means taking away the right to vote of Americans.”
Furthermore, Ms. Gabbard charged that Democrats “have no issue taking Trump off the ballot,” including by “pursuing him and persecuting him through a weaponized and politicized Department of Justice.”
“They have no qualms about doing whatever they feel is necessary to hold on to power,” she added.
The former Hawaii congresswoman pointed out the “ridiculous” hypocrisy in the eagerness of some Democrats, whom she referred to as “war hawks,” to intervene in foreign countries when political candidates face similar actions to those experienced by President Trump.
“We’ve seen how the war hawks in Washington, they will see this happen in another country, and they'll be very quick to say we must go and intervene; we must go and topple this banana republic or this dictatorship,” said Ms. Gabbard.
Many of the congressional lawmakers who advocate along those lines, she added, “are the people who are driving” these efforts against President Trump.
She noted that efforts to sideline President Trump extend beyond the Democratic Party, with some Republicans “threatened by” his departure from “their establishment ways.”
Ms. Gabbard accused the White House of being in “complete denial of what every American is seeing.”
The influx of migrants making their way to the southern U.S. border and crossing illegally “poses a direct threat to our national security,” said Ms. Gabbard. “They have no idea who these people are who are coming across the border,” she added.
“We do know that they’re coming from around the world. We do know that these are not just poor women and children who are trying to escape oppressive conditions. This is a very real direct threat to our national security,” she added.
Ms. Gabbard, who formerly represented Hawaii in Congress as a Democrat before retiring to run for president, publicly resigned from the Democrats in 2022, saying she could “no longer remain in today’s Democratic party that is under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoking anti-white racism.”
On Thursday, Ms. Gabbard suggested that “there are many Democrats like myself across the country who are disgusted with the direction the Democratic Party has taken but acknowledged that unlike her, ”they’re afraid to speak up“ for fear ”the Democrat leaders will smear, destroy, and try to cancel anyone who doesn’t go along with their narrative.”
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The war on Christmas
By Naomi Wolf, a recent progressive apostate, a former liberal feminist and now an anti-vax influencer. Not to be confused with another prominent Jewish girl, Naomi Klein. Wolf has better hair
In the 2000s, a new wave of cultural change is targeting what little is left of the warm memory of the season, and erasing entirely the story of that baby’s birth, from Western culture. The Daily Mail reported in 2020 that half of Britain’s schools had cancelled Nativity plays—surely the breaking of the chain of memory among generations of British schoolchildren. This breaking of the chain between generations of children, was one goal of the “lockdowns,” a point I made generally in my book “The Bodies of Others.” The Daily Mail reports now that Nativity plays in schools are being “repackaged” to refer to pop TV shows, such as “The Great British Bake Off,” and to celebrities, instead of following the traditional Nativity scripts handed down for decades.
Alarmingly, when I searched “Daily Mail” and “Nativity Plays No More,” I saw that stories about schools banning Nativity plays, or barring parents from attending their own children’s Nativity plays, go back to 2012, with a drumbeat of escalation in recent years. This is the drip, drip, drip of water intentional set slowly to boil—of deliberate cultural change.
Of course, you know where this is going, because Marxists do not like families, just as they don’t like religion. Schools in England now banned parents from attending their own children’s Nativity plays. Due to? Colds, flus, and COVID. The State has finally taken your child, and your Christmas, away.
What else debuted by the 20-teens? A range of new Christmas movies that depicted cherished Christmas symbolism as tawdry, drunk, or sexually licentious. There was the 2014 film “Bad Santa,” with Billy Bob Thornton.
There is 2022’s “It’s a Wonderful Binge,” a send-up of Christmas classics such as “It’s a Wonderful Life”; but in this Holiday movie, “St Nick” is “inebriated” and the setting is a world in which all alcohol is banned, so Christmas represents the one time to binge on intoxicants.
“In this first trailer for It’s A Wonderful Binge—the forthcoming sequel to 2020’s The Binge—its revealed that the recklessly wild event has inexplicably been moved by the government to Christmas Eve, and the drugs and booze are flowing freely.”
And finally there is SantaCon—which seems like a cute idea, at least superficially. It launched in 2011, the decade in which all the public Santas first went bad. It is a mass gathering of people dressed like Santa (or like elves; and now pandas have debuted—echoes of China’s cultural intervention in our world, anyone?). The Santas—and now elves, and pandas—storm cities drinking steadily in various bars. By the end of SantaCon, thus, little children (this happened to our family) get to witness Santas vomiting at scale in the street, or engaging in corny super-drunk public sex jokes.
I could go on, but there you are. It’s a slow war.
I remember the purity, the clarity of the energies around us all at Christmases before this war.
How people would grow more gentle; how their faces would soften as they counted out change for a customer at a grocery store. “Merry Christmas!” we would call to one another. Who cares what religion we were? It was Christmas for all of us. No one owned Christmas.
How could the energies around us not have purified, softened, and uplifted us all? I’ve shared how aware I was of “energies” as a child, and even, I am sometimes sorry to admit, to this day. I realized when I was five, that the Christmas Spirit was called forth by the thoughts of the people.
How could all of those people thinking all day, consciously or not, of a baby who had been born to save the world from itself—of a holy star sent to guide us even in the middle of the darkest part of our winter—of animals and strangers and kings recognizing that someone so small and vulnerable had been sent in fact to rescue us—not have made for the Christmas miracle?
How could all of those thoughts, not have made us all kinder, sweeter, more hopeful?
I remember in January, when the trees were thrown out onto the streets, naked now, and the decorations were taken down, that the sour mood of adults in ordinary life returned to the world. Christmas was over.
And I would wonder at this, because I understood what I had lived through in December. “Didn’t they realize?” I asked myself as I watched. Christmas never had to be over.
It was up to them.
Didn’t they understand that the magic was not just something that came and went... it was not caused by the decorations or the gifts; didn’t they understand that they had created the magic? Did they not realize that they had accomplished this feat by thinking those sweet thoughts—by singing those uplifting songs—by elevating their attention—together?
No—year after year, the adults took down the decorations, and it was over; and they did not realize that Christmas never needed to end.
Lastly, I want to speak to this dangerous notion—emblematized by the metastasis of “Merry Christmas!” to the fearful, euphemistic “Happy Holidays!”—that your Christmas, your proud, happy, eager, delighted, full-blown public Christmas, somehow offends or erases me, a non-Christian.
This notion—that one’s sense of self is so fragile that others’ cultural or religious expression alone can damage it—is the neo-Marxist theoretical basis for the wholesale targeting of Western culture, as I have said before.
When I was a child, I never felt that the overt, uncensored, exuberant celebration of Christmas, by the Christians around me, diminished Jewish little me, one bit.
I felt enriched by it.
I knew I was a Jewish child, and that this was not our holiday. So what?
I got to have the happiness and wonder of watching it all, and of sharing in the warmth of it; we did not need to be Christian—we did not need to have a tree at home or to open Christmas presents—to get joy from the religious expression of others.
I got to learn about a story of hope and redemption; about a society that was changed when mortal kings bowed down to a baby; kings who had visited a poor woman who herself could find no room in an inn.
Those were not just Christian values. They were Western values. They thus included me, and I knew it. That story was part of my story, as a Western child, and I got to inherit pride in those values too.
If anything, experiencing and reveling in these differences among my friends and classmates, strengthened my identity as a Jewish child. I learned what I was not, and I also learned what I was. How does others’ culture or religious expression “erase” an identity? Identities are not like drops of water, so fragile that they lose all shape when anything touches them.
We had our own thing, and it was awesome too. Christian friends who learned about Hanukkah got the chance to learn about other wonderful values from another extraordinary story that had influenced the West; about courage, about facing the greatest empire of the time and bringing it to heel against all odds, about miracles.
How would learning about the Hanukkah story make any Christian child less Christian, or offend anyone? We were sharing our values too. All of that sharing of religious difference, as our Founders knew in their wisdom, simply adds to America’s blessedness and richness.
This illogical, childish notion—that asserting a cultural or religious identity somehow by definition offends or diminishes or erases anyone else’s—has to be consigned to the garbage heap of history’s most pernicious ideas.
This premise will leave our culture a parking lot with a quarantine camp attached, as I have said before. And that is exactly its intention.
This premise is China’s and the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) way of making us all ashamed of ourselves, so that we never have transcendence again—and so our kids have no idea what Western—or American—values, really are.
The WEF and China know what they are doing. Bring on the barfing Santas, and bring on the Christmas Pandas. Close the Nativity plays in British schools. Bring on “The Great British Bake Off” characters and the moment’s celebrities, instead.
And for heaven’s sake, don’t mention that little child who began it all.
How will children of any religion or background, raised on “binging Christmas” and vomiting Santas, almost ignorant of the story of a baby in a manger, really feel what Christmas really brings: this elevation in consciousness?
Eventually the Western religious celebrations of this season—that energy that redeems and saves us from the deepest, scariest winter—will be the faintest and most marginalized of memories, for the generations to come.
But no one will notice what is really happening, or understand—or care.
So let us fight these plans too that the demons of our era, have for us. ACLU vs. Allegheny was decided wrongly.
We need to honor and remember the terms of our Constitution, and strengthen ourselves in our current life-and-death fight against the “globalist neo-Marxists,” by refusing to let our free expression of religion, be silenced.
Bring on the not-drunk Santas. Bring on the cookies. Release the carolers. Put the golden stars of the past, over the crosswalks. Raise up your giant menorahs.
Haul out your creches. Put them on your lawns. I won’t sue you.
Turn up “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”
I am not offended at all. You make me richer, and I make you richer.
Whoever you are, however you worship, please honor our Founders by expressing your religion freely out in the open without fear in exactly the way you choose.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/i-remember-the-real-christmas-5555798
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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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