This document is part of an archive of postings on Political Correctness Watch, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written.
My Home Page. Email John Ray here. My other blogs: "Tongue Tied" , "Dissecting Leftism" , "Australian Politics" , "Education Watch International" , "Immigration Watch" , "Greenie Watch" , "The Psychologist" (A summary blog). Those blogs are also backed up. See here for details
With particular attention to religious, ethnic and sexual matters. By John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)
This page is a backup. The primary version of this blog is HERE
31 October, 2023
The left is infected with a moral rot: anti-Semitism
It's actually worse than that. They lack not only morals but also any genuine feelings for others. As communists they murdered millions without a second thought. So what Hamas does is nothing to them. They have no feelings for the innocent victims of Hamas barbarism. Their occasional moral claims are an empty pretence for propaganda purposes only
Following Hamas' heinous and unspeakably evil terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, which resulted in the death of 1,400 innocent Israelis, protests erupted across the country and around the world, with pro-Hamas protesters siding with the terrorists, excusing the atrocities or outright denying them.
At college campuses and even some high schools, woke students chant, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." A call for the genocide of the Jewish people and the destruction of the only Jewish state.
Pro-Palestinian supporters are tearing down posters of missing and abducted Israelis. As Matt put it in his recent VIP column detailing these despicable actions, "If you rip down these posters, you're with [Hamas]."
Thanks to 21st-century technology, a light is being shined on this anti-Semitism through some of our reporting, and these terrorist sympathizers are paying the consequences. Some have lost their current jobs, and some have seen their cushy careers lined up post-graduation disappear.
Not only has this anti-Semitism crept into the Ivy League universities and workplaces across the country, but it has also infected Congress and the Biden administration.
Democrat Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are notorious for their pro-terrorist anti-Semitism. They'd rather side with Hamas. They've even spread terrorist propaganda, blaming Israel for an explosion at a hospital in Gaza that was later confirmed to be from a failed rocket attack by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Instead of condemning Hamas for using innocent Palestinians as human shields, they call Israel an apartheid state and say it's carrying out genocide, despite Hamas' own charter calling for the eradication of Israel.
And just yesterday, when asked what the Biden administration is doing to combat anti-Semitism across the country, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had this atrocious response:
We have not seen any credible threats, I know there's been always questions about credible threats, and so just want to make sure that that's out there. But look, Muslims, and those perceived to be Muslim, have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks. And certainly, President Biden understands that many of our Muslim, Arab-American, and Palestinian-American loved ones and neighbors are worried about the hate being directed at their communities.
Jean-Pierre made a question about the dangers of anti-Semitism all about "Islamophobia."
Of course, the White House communications team is backtracking after facing severe backlash, with Jean-Pierre posting on X, "To be clear: the President and our team are very concerned about a rise in anti-Semitism, especially after the horrific Hamas terrorist attack in Israel."
If the administration's position is so clear, why couldn't she have said this from the beginning?
Here at Townhall, we will not stop shedding light on this moral rot that's spreading across our great country. We will expose these Hamas supporters and never stop supporting the nation of Israel's right to defend its people from 7th-century savages and their barbarism.
https://townhall.com/columnists/townhallcomstaff/2023/10/27/the-lefts-moral-rot-n2630295
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California Spent $110M to Stop Asian Hate Crimes. Where Did It Go?
Two years ago, amid a national wave of violent crimes against Asian immigrants and Asian Americans, the state of California awarded $110 million over 3 years to non-profit organizations to provide services to victims and to develop programs to prevent anti-Asian hate crimes. “In response to the visible rise in anti-Asian hate, both locally and nationally,” the California Department of Social Services wrote on the program’s website, the state legislature provided those funds “to address the rise in hate against Asian and Pacific Islander Californians.”
What was that money spent on? Through a public records request, Public recently obtained grant applications from close to 50 grantees in the San Francisco Bay Area region, through two rounds of funding. The programs proposed by most of these groups, which typically received hundreds of thousands of dollars each, have little obvious connection to the goal of protecting Asians from violent attacks.
Collectively, the applications provide a glimpse into how much of the activist non-profit sector sustains itself by exploiting high-profile crises to raise funds that are then diverted into barely related or entirely unrelated causes. It also indicates how little the actual victims of those crises — in this case, Asian hate crime victims — actually benefit from these ballyhooed government spending sprees, which keep non-profit workers employed but do little for the communities they purport to serve.
“I have questions about the effectiveness of this program,” Carl Chan, a leader in Oakland’s Chinatown community who was once the victim of an anti-Asian assault, told Public. “Some of the organizations are getting millions of dollars to ‘stop AAPI hate,’ but it doesn’t look like they’re doing anything to actually stop it. That money isn’t going where it was supposed to.”
Per their answers to a question on the application asking them to describe what services they intend to provide with the funding, 16 of the groups described what many might expect from a program designed to protect Asians from violence: self-defense training, safety patrols, escort services for elderly Asians, legal services, “know your rights” workshops and psychotherapy for crime victims.
But the majority of the groups that received funding proposed programs that have little obvious direct impact on the lives of Asian hate crime victims or potential victims.
The Oakland Asian Cultural Center was awarded $90,000 for the 2021-22 fiscal year to produce an anti-racism podcast. (For the second fiscal year, the same organization received $168,000, though the documents that the California Department of Social Services provided to Public did not include the group’s application for its second round of funding.)
Richmond Area Multi-Services, Inc. received $100,000 in the first round to provide mental health services for a group of children the organization took on an anti-racism road trip. (RAMS received $375,000 in the second round, but again, its application for continued funding was not provided to us.)
One group received funding to combat “anti-Blackness in the PI (Pacific Islander) community,” as if the reason Asians were victims of hate crimes was because of their own racism. Likewise, a group that represents Asian nail salon workers boasted of publishing a statement “condemning anti-Black racism in nail salons.” Another group aimed to “address biases against individuals who are houseless, formerly incarcerated, or Black/African American” — presumably biases held by Asians in the Oakland Chinatown community that the organization serves. Yet another group described its work educating the Asian community about the “connections” between anti-Asian violence and “anti-Black racism and white supremacy.”
Other groups didn’t pretend to serve Asians at all. Six groups proposed programs to protect LGBT people but made no mention of Asians. One of those groups, the Positive Resource Center, received $620,000 to produce “an anti-racism and anti-hate film that highlights the experiences of Black transgender folx through interviews.” Another worked on behalf of Latino LGBT immigrants. Yet another puts up posters against “hate,” without specification of any group in particular.
For some of the applicants, the language describing what they would do with the funding was impenetrable. “Through cross-racial dialogue and exchanges as well as stakeholder briefings,” read one, “we will gather and disseminate lessons and best practices to develop and strengthen system-wide wellness practices and program offerings to better serve youth in community as well as schools.”
“We cannot make change until we move away from operating in our traumatized selves and into power; we cannot fully heal until we dismantle the oppressions of the systems around us,” read another. “Therefore our approach includes supporting through a blend of traditional, ancestral and western evidence-based healing practices, as well as restoring a sense of self, voice, and power through curricula that addresses identity, inequity, and root causes.”
It isn’t even clear that the organizations that purport to provide meaningful services to Asians are actually fulfilling those roles. In February, Anthony Morales, a Filipino-American private investigator whose work extracting minors from sex slavery we’ve reported on at Public, called and emailed 17 of the Bay Area groups that received funding, posing as the nephew of an elderly Asian woman who was violently attacked. Only three of them offered any specific service. One was a non-profit law firm that offered to do an intake session. Another provided counseling services, but never called back as they promised they would. The third also offered counseling and made an earnest effort to serve the victim.
The rest either did not return Morales’ calls or emails, referred him to another organization, or told him they had no help to offer.
“As much as we would love to help, we aren’t currently set up to offer assistance to victims of hate crimes,” responded one organization that received over $1 million in state funding. Another group, which received $140,000, told him they don’t provide “services” and focus only on “environmental justice” and “organizing.”
If most of these organizations aren’t even trying to provide real services to victims or direct interventions to prevent future hate crimes, why is California giving them tens of millions of dollars to “stop Asian hate?”
https://public.substack.com/p/california-spent-110m-to-stop-asian ?
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White Residents Sue City Over Racially Discriminatory Human Rights Policy
Residents of Asheville, North Carolina, are suing the city in federal court over allegedly unconstitutional racial discrimination at the local human rights board.
The residents argue that the city’s discriminatory treatment runs afoul of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That provision forbids governments from discriminating against individuals on the basis of their membership in a racial group.
Asheville has a history of alleged racial discrimination. In January 2022, the city settled a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch over a racially discriminatory city-funded scholarship program. At the same time, the city agreed to erase racially discriminatory eligibility provisions from a related program that hands out grants to educators.
Racial criteria are used in the selection process to fill positions on the Human Relations Commission of Asheville (HRCA), which was created in 2018.
The HRCA initially enforced quotas, requiring the city council to fill the 15-member board with specific numbers of people from specific classifications of people, such as African Americans, Latinos, LGBT members, “professionals with influence,” youth members, a representative from each of the city’s geographical areas, public housing residents, and individuals with disabilities.
“Under the HRCA’s membership criteria, the City Council will not endeavor to appoint white residents unless they also satisfy a separate category, such as being a member of the LGBTQ+ community, a youth member, disabled, living in public housing, or recognized as a community leader. On the other hand, the City Council will automatically prefer minority applicants without requiring those applicants to satisfy a separate category,” the legal complaint states.
In 2022, as it struggled to fill vacancies and reach a quorum, the city revamped the HRCA, reducing the number of seats to nine. The city also removed the numeric race quotas from the HRCA’s membership requirements but replaced them with equally discriminatory race-based membership preferences.
What remains is a de facto race quota in which the city prefers individuals from certain races, according to Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a public interest law firm that challenges government abuses and that represents the plaintiffs in the legal action.
Andrew Quinio, a PLF attorney, said, “The opportunity to serve your local community should not depend on your race. “Asheville’s candidates for public service should be treated as individuals, instead of mere members of arbitrary racial groups. Asheville needs to stop making assumptions about people’s experiences and qualifications based on arbitrary and offensive racial classifications.”
One HRCA candidate, plaintiff John Miall, is a white man and lifelong resident of Asheville. He spent almost 30 years working for the city, including as its director of risk management. He co-founded The Asheville Project, a community-based health care program for the city’s workforce in 1997 that became a national model for improving patient care at lower costs, evolving into what’s known today as value-based insurance design.
He felt his decades of municipal experience and continued service to his community would be a natural fit for the HRCA. But when he applied for one of the vacant seats, Asheville turned down his application because of his race and re-advertised the open positions, according to PLF.
But there is a new wrinkle in the lawsuit, Mr. Quinio told The Epoch Times in an Oct. 25 interview.
After the lawsuit was launched, the city appointed Mr. Miall to the HRCA. “It may be an attempt by them to get rid of this lawsuit,” the lawyer said.
But there are still four other plaintiffs in the lawsuit who have been harmed by the city’s discriminatory policy, he said. All of the plaintiffs are white.
“This lawsuit moves forward until the city changes its ordinance and agrees not to use race as a criterion in making appointments to this commission.”
“If you’re running a race and you get tripped along the way, even if you’ve crossed the finish line, well, someone’s got to answer for tripping, for you not being to compete fairly.”
The other plaintiffs whom the city failed to appoint to the HRCA are Robyn Hite, David Shaw, Willa Grant, and Danie Johnson.
Ms. Hite serves on the North Buncombe Elementary Parent Teacher Organization board and is a past president of the North Windy Ridge Parent Teacher Organization.
Mr. Shaw is a sales manager for a construction company. He earned an MBA from Western Carolina University and is working towards a master’s degree in social work. He also interns in the women’s behavioral health unit at a local hospital, where he provides group therapy and support to patients.
Ms. Grant taught at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and Blue Ridge Community College. She currently serves the Western North Carolina Rescue Mission, mentoring homeless citizens and helping them obtain housing.
Mr. Johnson is an architect who started his own firm in Asheville in 1974. He designs commercial and residential buildings throughout the city and across North Carolina.
Attorneys have asked the court to certify the lawsuit as a class action.
Asheville spokesperson Kim Miller told The Epoch Times the city will continue to contest the lawsuit.
“The City vehemently denies any allegation of discrimination. It is our intention to defend the City’s interests in the suit vigorously. Beyond this, it is our policy not to comment on active litigation,” Ms. Miller said by email.
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Australian government effort to nip toxic masculinity in the bud.
I cannot even imagine how they might do that. Talk is cheap and kids are already preached at from dawn to dusk. To change behaviour you have to change the needs that drive it and that will rarely be possible.
Andrew Tate is a symptom, not a cause. Disrespect for women comes naturally to meny men and feminist preaching will only magnify that. Being constantly told that women are so much more admirable and worthy than men will usually provoke defiance and an attitude opposite to that desired.
The one faint hope of change would be to replace the currently pervasive valorization of women with a much more balanced message but that is not going to happen. The idea that men too have problems seems to stick in the throats of feminists
Even a heavy legal assault on domestic violence would achieve little. Bashing women is clearly something impulsive and done out of anger -- and laws are unlikely to restrain that.
The only preaching that might help would be to stop mindless praise of women and demonization of men and replace it with lessons about the needs that the respective sexes have. At its simplest, both sexes could be told that men have needs for adventure and women have a need for security. Men often say that they don't understand women at all but explanations of what drives female behaviour are posible and could be widely deployed.
I long ago wrote an explanation of female behaviour -- unlikely though that may seem. I have four women calling on me regularly these days despite my frail old age so maybe I do know something. My explanation below:
https://johnjayray.com/women.html
To end violence against women and children, the federal government aims to reshape young male attitudes toward healthy, respectful relationships as “extremist influencers” like Andrew Tate influence minds.
The initiative, known as the “Healthy Masculinities Project,” is poised to launch next year as a three-year trial, supported by $3.5 million in funding.
This innovative project will tackle the insidious impact of social media messaging targeting young men and boys, with the primary aim of eradicating gender stereotypes perpetuated online and promoting a culture of respect and supportive relationships among peers.
The project will engage the target school-age male audience through face-to-face interactions at sporting clubs, community organisations, and on social media.
Recent research has revealed 25 per cent of teenage boys in Australia look up to social media personalities who propagate harmful gender stereotypes and endorse violence against women.
The government has channelled funding through the First Action Plan Priorities Fund, an $11.9 million fund which is part of the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-32.
Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth said there is a need for young men to develop supportive relationships with their male peers and marked the project as a critical first step towards fostering healthy male attitudes.
Ms Rishworth cited the links between harmful forms of masculinity and the perpetration of violence against women.
“Research shows there are strong links between harmful forms of masculinity and the perpetration of violence against women,” she said.
“Educating boys about healthy masculinity and providing them with positive role models are important steps to ending cycles of violence.”
The grant round for this trial will open its doors in early 2024 and will offer an opportunity for organisations equipped with specialist expertise to sign on.
Ms Rishworth emphasised the necessity of addressing violent behaviour at its roots.
Andrew Tate is a controversial kickboxer and reality TV star turned content creator who has amassed billions of views among tens of millions of followers despite being de-platformed by most social media platforms.
He has been known to preach troubling views regarding women, including that rape victims “must bear some responsibility” for their attacks; or that women should be choked by their male partners and stopped from going out.
But Mr Tate, who often flaunts his lavish life, is seen by many young men as an authority on what it is to be successful.
In August, he was released from house arrest in Romania and placed under judicial control, a lighter restrictive measure, while he awaits trial on charges of human trafficking.
As National Director of White Ribbon Australia, Allan Ball, previously explained to news.com.au, “the use of gaming, extreme bravado and music [in the videos of Tate] overlays his deplorable actions with a filter of normalcy”.
“Impressionable young minds are drawn in by money, power and unwavering confidence to become part of a tribe,” he said.
Mr Tate created the Real World Portal in recent months, after closing his subscription-based “Hustler’s University”, an online academy for his fans, promising to assist them in making big money while helping his videos on social media go viral.
Real World, which bills itself as an anti-university, promises members will make over $10k a month online.
A joint statement from Dr Stephanie Wescott and Professor Steven Roberts, two leading experts in the education field from Monash University, broadly welcomed the government’s initiative while highlighting the hazardous influence of misogynistic influencers like Mr Tate on impressionable boys and young men.
The pair are currently conducting research on the impact of Mr Tate’s content on boys in Australian schools, and have already revealed its far-reaching consequences on girls and women in classrooms across the country.
The research further highlighted that boys consuming Mr Tate’s content were more likely to harbour unhealthy views on relationships — an alarming finding given the high rates of family violence in Australia.
Dr Wescott and Prof Roberts raised a critical concern about the potential pitfalls of implementing short-term, “quick-fix” programs and interventions that might lack the capacity for sustained engagement with young men.
They cited mixed evidence regarding the effectiveness of such approaches and emphasised the absence of a uniform strategy for evaluating their impact.
The experts recommended long-term, direct, and targeted initiatives that challenge detrimental social norms affecting boys’ mental health and emotions while adopting a “gender-transformative” approach based on best practices.
“We also challenge the assumption that boys need only to hear from other men about how to develop positive masculinity, and note that the inclusion of only male role models in healthy masculinity programs are not backed by robust evidence,” they wrote.
They argued boys benefit from interacting with individuals of diverse gender identities at all life stages.
The experts warned that featuring only male role models may reinforce negative aspects of healthy masculinity programs.
“The reasons boys and young men find extremist influencers like Andrew Tate appealing are complex and multifaceted, and so must be the approaches we use to address them,” they said.
The pair urged the federal government and the Minister for Social Services to consult widely with experts in the field and lean on established research.
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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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The left is infected with a moral rot: anti-Semitism
It's actually worse than that. They lack not only morals but also any genuine feelings for others. As communists they murdered millions without a second thought. So what Hamas does is nothing to them. They have no feelings for the innocent victims of Hamas barbarism. Their occasional moral claims are an empty pretence for propaganda purposes only
Following Hamas' heinous and unspeakably evil terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, which resulted in the death of 1,400 innocent Israelis, protests erupted across the country and around the world, with pro-Hamas protesters siding with the terrorists, excusing the atrocities or outright denying them.
At college campuses and even some high schools, woke students chant, "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free." A call for the genocide of the Jewish people and the destruction of the only Jewish state.
Pro-Palestinian supporters are tearing down posters of missing and abducted Israelis. As Matt put it in his recent VIP column detailing these despicable actions, "If you rip down these posters, you're with [Hamas]."
Thanks to 21st-century technology, a light is being shined on this anti-Semitism through some of our reporting, and these terrorist sympathizers are paying the consequences. Some have lost their current jobs, and some have seen their cushy careers lined up post-graduation disappear.
Not only has this anti-Semitism crept into the Ivy League universities and workplaces across the country, but it has also infected Congress and the Biden administration.
Democrat Representatives Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are notorious for their pro-terrorist anti-Semitism. They'd rather side with Hamas. They've even spread terrorist propaganda, blaming Israel for an explosion at a hospital in Gaza that was later confirmed to be from a failed rocket attack by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Instead of condemning Hamas for using innocent Palestinians as human shields, they call Israel an apartheid state and say it's carrying out genocide, despite Hamas' own charter calling for the eradication of Israel.
And just yesterday, when asked what the Biden administration is doing to combat anti-Semitism across the country, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had this atrocious response:
We have not seen any credible threats, I know there's been always questions about credible threats, and so just want to make sure that that's out there. But look, Muslims, and those perceived to be Muslim, have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks. And certainly, President Biden understands that many of our Muslim, Arab-American, and Palestinian-American loved ones and neighbors are worried about the hate being directed at their communities.
Jean-Pierre made a question about the dangers of anti-Semitism all about "Islamophobia."
Of course, the White House communications team is backtracking after facing severe backlash, with Jean-Pierre posting on X, "To be clear: the President and our team are very concerned about a rise in anti-Semitism, especially after the horrific Hamas terrorist attack in Israel."
If the administration's position is so clear, why couldn't she have said this from the beginning?
Here at Townhall, we will not stop shedding light on this moral rot that's spreading across our great country. We will expose these Hamas supporters and never stop supporting the nation of Israel's right to defend its people from 7th-century savages and their barbarism.
https://townhall.com/columnists/townhallcomstaff/2023/10/27/the-lefts-moral-rot-n2630295
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California Spent $110M to Stop Asian Hate Crimes. Where Did It Go?
Two years ago, amid a national wave of violent crimes against Asian immigrants and Asian Americans, the state of California awarded $110 million over 3 years to non-profit organizations to provide services to victims and to develop programs to prevent anti-Asian hate crimes. “In response to the visible rise in anti-Asian hate, both locally and nationally,” the California Department of Social Services wrote on the program’s website, the state legislature provided those funds “to address the rise in hate against Asian and Pacific Islander Californians.”
What was that money spent on? Through a public records request, Public recently obtained grant applications from close to 50 grantees in the San Francisco Bay Area region, through two rounds of funding. The programs proposed by most of these groups, which typically received hundreds of thousands of dollars each, have little obvious connection to the goal of protecting Asians from violent attacks.
Collectively, the applications provide a glimpse into how much of the activist non-profit sector sustains itself by exploiting high-profile crises to raise funds that are then diverted into barely related or entirely unrelated causes. It also indicates how little the actual victims of those crises — in this case, Asian hate crime victims — actually benefit from these ballyhooed government spending sprees, which keep non-profit workers employed but do little for the communities they purport to serve.
“I have questions about the effectiveness of this program,” Carl Chan, a leader in Oakland’s Chinatown community who was once the victim of an anti-Asian assault, told Public. “Some of the organizations are getting millions of dollars to ‘stop AAPI hate,’ but it doesn’t look like they’re doing anything to actually stop it. That money isn’t going where it was supposed to.”
Per their answers to a question on the application asking them to describe what services they intend to provide with the funding, 16 of the groups described what many might expect from a program designed to protect Asians from violence: self-defense training, safety patrols, escort services for elderly Asians, legal services, “know your rights” workshops and psychotherapy for crime victims.
But the majority of the groups that received funding proposed programs that have little obvious direct impact on the lives of Asian hate crime victims or potential victims.
The Oakland Asian Cultural Center was awarded $90,000 for the 2021-22 fiscal year to produce an anti-racism podcast. (For the second fiscal year, the same organization received $168,000, though the documents that the California Department of Social Services provided to Public did not include the group’s application for its second round of funding.)
Richmond Area Multi-Services, Inc. received $100,000 in the first round to provide mental health services for a group of children the organization took on an anti-racism road trip. (RAMS received $375,000 in the second round, but again, its application for continued funding was not provided to us.)
One group received funding to combat “anti-Blackness in the PI (Pacific Islander) community,” as if the reason Asians were victims of hate crimes was because of their own racism. Likewise, a group that represents Asian nail salon workers boasted of publishing a statement “condemning anti-Black racism in nail salons.” Another group aimed to “address biases against individuals who are houseless, formerly incarcerated, or Black/African American” — presumably biases held by Asians in the Oakland Chinatown community that the organization serves. Yet another group described its work educating the Asian community about the “connections” between anti-Asian violence and “anti-Black racism and white supremacy.”
Other groups didn’t pretend to serve Asians at all. Six groups proposed programs to protect LGBT people but made no mention of Asians. One of those groups, the Positive Resource Center, received $620,000 to produce “an anti-racism and anti-hate film that highlights the experiences of Black transgender folx through interviews.” Another worked on behalf of Latino LGBT immigrants. Yet another puts up posters against “hate,” without specification of any group in particular.
For some of the applicants, the language describing what they would do with the funding was impenetrable. “Through cross-racial dialogue and exchanges as well as stakeholder briefings,” read one, “we will gather and disseminate lessons and best practices to develop and strengthen system-wide wellness practices and program offerings to better serve youth in community as well as schools.”
“We cannot make change until we move away from operating in our traumatized selves and into power; we cannot fully heal until we dismantle the oppressions of the systems around us,” read another. “Therefore our approach includes supporting through a blend of traditional, ancestral and western evidence-based healing practices, as well as restoring a sense of self, voice, and power through curricula that addresses identity, inequity, and root causes.”
It isn’t even clear that the organizations that purport to provide meaningful services to Asians are actually fulfilling those roles. In February, Anthony Morales, a Filipino-American private investigator whose work extracting minors from sex slavery we’ve reported on at Public, called and emailed 17 of the Bay Area groups that received funding, posing as the nephew of an elderly Asian woman who was violently attacked. Only three of them offered any specific service. One was a non-profit law firm that offered to do an intake session. Another provided counseling services, but never called back as they promised they would. The third also offered counseling and made an earnest effort to serve the victim.
The rest either did not return Morales’ calls or emails, referred him to another organization, or told him they had no help to offer.
“As much as we would love to help, we aren’t currently set up to offer assistance to victims of hate crimes,” responded one organization that received over $1 million in state funding. Another group, which received $140,000, told him they don’t provide “services” and focus only on “environmental justice” and “organizing.”
If most of these organizations aren’t even trying to provide real services to victims or direct interventions to prevent future hate crimes, why is California giving them tens of millions of dollars to “stop Asian hate?”
https://public.substack.com/p/california-spent-110m-to-stop-asian ?
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White Residents Sue City Over Racially Discriminatory Human Rights Policy
Residents of Asheville, North Carolina, are suing the city in federal court over allegedly unconstitutional racial discrimination at the local human rights board.
The residents argue that the city’s discriminatory treatment runs afoul of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That provision forbids governments from discriminating against individuals on the basis of their membership in a racial group.
Asheville has a history of alleged racial discrimination. In January 2022, the city settled a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch over a racially discriminatory city-funded scholarship program. At the same time, the city agreed to erase racially discriminatory eligibility provisions from a related program that hands out grants to educators.
Racial criteria are used in the selection process to fill positions on the Human Relations Commission of Asheville (HRCA), which was created in 2018.
The HRCA initially enforced quotas, requiring the city council to fill the 15-member board with specific numbers of people from specific classifications of people, such as African Americans, Latinos, LGBT members, “professionals with influence,” youth members, a representative from each of the city’s geographical areas, public housing residents, and individuals with disabilities.
“Under the HRCA’s membership criteria, the City Council will not endeavor to appoint white residents unless they also satisfy a separate category, such as being a member of the LGBTQ+ community, a youth member, disabled, living in public housing, or recognized as a community leader. On the other hand, the City Council will automatically prefer minority applicants without requiring those applicants to satisfy a separate category,” the legal complaint states.
In 2022, as it struggled to fill vacancies and reach a quorum, the city revamped the HRCA, reducing the number of seats to nine. The city also removed the numeric race quotas from the HRCA’s membership requirements but replaced them with equally discriminatory race-based membership preferences.
What remains is a de facto race quota in which the city prefers individuals from certain races, according to Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a public interest law firm that challenges government abuses and that represents the plaintiffs in the legal action.
Andrew Quinio, a PLF attorney, said, “The opportunity to serve your local community should not depend on your race. “Asheville’s candidates for public service should be treated as individuals, instead of mere members of arbitrary racial groups. Asheville needs to stop making assumptions about people’s experiences and qualifications based on arbitrary and offensive racial classifications.”
One HRCA candidate, plaintiff John Miall, is a white man and lifelong resident of Asheville. He spent almost 30 years working for the city, including as its director of risk management. He co-founded The Asheville Project, a community-based health care program for the city’s workforce in 1997 that became a national model for improving patient care at lower costs, evolving into what’s known today as value-based insurance design.
He felt his decades of municipal experience and continued service to his community would be a natural fit for the HRCA. But when he applied for one of the vacant seats, Asheville turned down his application because of his race and re-advertised the open positions, according to PLF.
But there is a new wrinkle in the lawsuit, Mr. Quinio told The Epoch Times in an Oct. 25 interview.
After the lawsuit was launched, the city appointed Mr. Miall to the HRCA. “It may be an attempt by them to get rid of this lawsuit,” the lawyer said.
But there are still four other plaintiffs in the lawsuit who have been harmed by the city’s discriminatory policy, he said. All of the plaintiffs are white.
“This lawsuit moves forward until the city changes its ordinance and agrees not to use race as a criterion in making appointments to this commission.”
“If you’re running a race and you get tripped along the way, even if you’ve crossed the finish line, well, someone’s got to answer for tripping, for you not being to compete fairly.”
The other plaintiffs whom the city failed to appoint to the HRCA are Robyn Hite, David Shaw, Willa Grant, and Danie Johnson.
Ms. Hite serves on the North Buncombe Elementary Parent Teacher Organization board and is a past president of the North Windy Ridge Parent Teacher Organization.
Mr. Shaw is a sales manager for a construction company. He earned an MBA from Western Carolina University and is working towards a master’s degree in social work. He also interns in the women’s behavioral health unit at a local hospital, where he provides group therapy and support to patients.
Ms. Grant taught at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and Blue Ridge Community College. She currently serves the Western North Carolina Rescue Mission, mentoring homeless citizens and helping them obtain housing.
Mr. Johnson is an architect who started his own firm in Asheville in 1974. He designs commercial and residential buildings throughout the city and across North Carolina.
Attorneys have asked the court to certify the lawsuit as a class action.
Asheville spokesperson Kim Miller told The Epoch Times the city will continue to contest the lawsuit.
“The City vehemently denies any allegation of discrimination. It is our intention to defend the City’s interests in the suit vigorously. Beyond this, it is our policy not to comment on active litigation,” Ms. Miller said by email.
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Australian government effort to nip toxic masculinity in the bud.
I cannot even imagine how they might do that. Talk is cheap and kids are already preached at from dawn to dusk. To change behaviour you have to change the needs that drive it and that will rarely be possible.
Andrew Tate is a symptom, not a cause. Disrespect for women comes naturally to meny men and feminist preaching will only magnify that. Being constantly told that women are so much more admirable and worthy than men will usually provoke defiance and an attitude opposite to that desired.
The one faint hope of change would be to replace the currently pervasive valorization of women with a much more balanced message but that is not going to happen. The idea that men too have problems seems to stick in the throats of feminists
Even a heavy legal assault on domestic violence would achieve little. Bashing women is clearly something impulsive and done out of anger -- and laws are unlikely to restrain that.
The only preaching that might help would be to stop mindless praise of women and demonization of men and replace it with lessons about the needs that the respective sexes have. At its simplest, both sexes could be told that men have needs for adventure and women have a need for security. Men often say that they don't understand women at all but explanations of what drives female behaviour are posible and could be widely deployed.
I long ago wrote an explanation of female behaviour -- unlikely though that may seem. I have four women calling on me regularly these days despite my frail old age so maybe I do know something. My explanation below:
https://johnjayray.com/women.html
To end violence against women and children, the federal government aims to reshape young male attitudes toward healthy, respectful relationships as “extremist influencers” like Andrew Tate influence minds.
The initiative, known as the “Healthy Masculinities Project,” is poised to launch next year as a three-year trial, supported by $3.5 million in funding.
This innovative project will tackle the insidious impact of social media messaging targeting young men and boys, with the primary aim of eradicating gender stereotypes perpetuated online and promoting a culture of respect and supportive relationships among peers.
The project will engage the target school-age male audience through face-to-face interactions at sporting clubs, community organisations, and on social media.
Recent research has revealed 25 per cent of teenage boys in Australia look up to social media personalities who propagate harmful gender stereotypes and endorse violence against women.
The government has channelled funding through the First Action Plan Priorities Fund, an $11.9 million fund which is part of the National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-32.
Minister for Social Services Amanda Rishworth said there is a need for young men to develop supportive relationships with their male peers and marked the project as a critical first step towards fostering healthy male attitudes.
Ms Rishworth cited the links between harmful forms of masculinity and the perpetration of violence against women.
“Research shows there are strong links between harmful forms of masculinity and the perpetration of violence against women,” she said.
“Educating boys about healthy masculinity and providing them with positive role models are important steps to ending cycles of violence.”
The grant round for this trial will open its doors in early 2024 and will offer an opportunity for organisations equipped with specialist expertise to sign on.
Ms Rishworth emphasised the necessity of addressing violent behaviour at its roots.
Andrew Tate is a controversial kickboxer and reality TV star turned content creator who has amassed billions of views among tens of millions of followers despite being de-platformed by most social media platforms.
He has been known to preach troubling views regarding women, including that rape victims “must bear some responsibility” for their attacks; or that women should be choked by their male partners and stopped from going out.
But Mr Tate, who often flaunts his lavish life, is seen by many young men as an authority on what it is to be successful.
In August, he was released from house arrest in Romania and placed under judicial control, a lighter restrictive measure, while he awaits trial on charges of human trafficking.
As National Director of White Ribbon Australia, Allan Ball, previously explained to news.com.au, “the use of gaming, extreme bravado and music [in the videos of Tate] overlays his deplorable actions with a filter of normalcy”.
“Impressionable young minds are drawn in by money, power and unwavering confidence to become part of a tribe,” he said.
Mr Tate created the Real World Portal in recent months, after closing his subscription-based “Hustler’s University”, an online academy for his fans, promising to assist them in making big money while helping his videos on social media go viral.
Real World, which bills itself as an anti-university, promises members will make over $10k a month online.
A joint statement from Dr Stephanie Wescott and Professor Steven Roberts, two leading experts in the education field from Monash University, broadly welcomed the government’s initiative while highlighting the hazardous influence of misogynistic influencers like Mr Tate on impressionable boys and young men.
The pair are currently conducting research on the impact of Mr Tate’s content on boys in Australian schools, and have already revealed its far-reaching consequences on girls and women in classrooms across the country.
The research further highlighted that boys consuming Mr Tate’s content were more likely to harbour unhealthy views on relationships — an alarming finding given the high rates of family violence in Australia.
Dr Wescott and Prof Roberts raised a critical concern about the potential pitfalls of implementing short-term, “quick-fix” programs and interventions that might lack the capacity for sustained engagement with young men.
They cited mixed evidence regarding the effectiveness of such approaches and emphasised the absence of a uniform strategy for evaluating their impact.
The experts recommended long-term, direct, and targeted initiatives that challenge detrimental social norms affecting boys’ mental health and emotions while adopting a “gender-transformative” approach based on best practices.
“We also challenge the assumption that boys need only to hear from other men about how to develop positive masculinity, and note that the inclusion of only male role models in healthy masculinity programs are not backed by robust evidence,” they wrote.
They argued boys benefit from interacting with individuals of diverse gender identities at all life stages.
The experts warned that featuring only male role models may reinforce negative aspects of healthy masculinity programs.
“The reasons boys and young men find extremist influencers like Andrew Tate appealing are complex and multifaceted, and so must be the approaches we use to address them,” they said.
The pair urged the federal government and the Minister for Social Services to consult widely with experts in the field and lean on established research.
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30 October, 2023
The DEI Complex Will Never Protect Jews
In a good example of Leftist deception, DEI in reality promotes uniformity. inequality and exclusion. And guess who is excluded
The vast diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) complex has sucked away incalculable sums of money and institutional energy and now all but defines the purpose of American higher education. For this industry to overlook the needs and anxieties of Jewish students during the toughest times they’ve ever faced would invite hard questions about what campus DEI is even for. Surely, there’s no way the DEI establishment, a former oddity of higher education that rose to shape the morals, sentiments, and business models of the mainstream corporate, entertainment, and cultural world—would botch something so simple as providing basic moral or rhetorical support to a besieged minority group when the stakes are this high. If the DEI offices’ hearts aren’t in it—Jews being rich white people whose near ancestors just happened to have been the Nazis’ chief targets—they could at least feign a strategic interest in Jews, thus protecting themselves from future accusations of willful neglect.
Young Jews have never felt more alone on American campuses as they have during these past two weeks. Classmates and soon-to-be-former friends have rallied in large numbers to celebrate the burning and torture of 1,400 Israelis. Professors have announced their glee at the redemptive spilling of settler blood. University administrators who treat every scratch of racist graffiti as a kind of communitywide soul-murder have discovered a newfound sense of nuance when faced with the 21st century’s worst butchery of Jews.
The nation’s army of campus DEI staff presumably exists for moments like this one, where an already unpopular minority group confronts an unanticipated surge of stress and potential danger. Yet DEI offices haven’t even bothered with pro forma expressions of fake concern. This week, I called or emailed over a dozen equity divisions at prominent colleges and universities to ask whether they had released any statements, held any events, or created any new programming for Jewish students since the Hamas rampage of October 7 and the wave of campus unrest that followed. The answer is no—of course not.
The fact Jews put their names on buildings and otherwise lavishly support many of these institutions apparently makes no difference to DEI bureaucrats. For example, I received no response from any of the diversity czars at the University of Pennsylvania, where internal dissension over the administration’s refusal to condemn the Hamas attack has already cost the most Jewish of Ivies hundreds of millions in pledged funding.
One of the few responses I did receive came from the University of Michigan—which makes sense, since according to a 2021 Heritage Foundation report, the school had 163 DEI employees, the most in the nation. A representative of the university directed me to two statements from Santa J. Ono, the school’s president. Neither announcement made any specific mention of Jews, while the list of “support resources” appended to each press release did not include any service that the university Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion was itself offering. Which is as clear an answer as one might ask for, I guess.
The City University of New York might have just purged the final Jews from the institution’s 80-member senior leadership team, but a staffer still helpfully pointed me toward two post-attack statements from Chancellor Felix Matos Rodriguez. His short concern-blurbs from October 7 and 9 deserve credit for naming Hamas as the perpetrator of the violence that set off this latest round of war. Still, the latter statement contains a startling admission that CUNY campuses have become an incubator of sympathy and justification for some of the darkest acts imaginable. “We want to be clear that we don’t condone the activities of any internal organizations that are sponsoring rallies to celebrate or support Hamas’ cowardly actions,” Rodriguez wrote in anticipation of these exact events. “Such efforts do not in any way represent the University and its campuses” he continued—a suggestion that according to his own statement is clearly false.
George Washington University, the site of an act of vandalism against a Torah in 2021, is so serious about social justice on campus that the website of its Office for Diversity, Equity, and Community Engagement puts a self-flagellating land acknowledgement at the very top of the page: “We acknowledge the truth that is often buried: We here in the D.C. area are on the ancestral homelands of the Piscataway, Anacostan, and Nacotchtank Peoples, who were among the first in the Western Hemisphere. We are on Indigenous land that was stolen from the Piscataway, Anacostan, and Nacotchtank. We pay respects to the Piscataway, Anacostan, and Nacotchtank elders and ancestors. Please take a moment to consider the many legacies of violence, displacement, migration, and settlement that inform and impact us all.”
Impressive, no doubt. Yet the university’s equity bureaucrats apparently did not take a moment to consider the plight of Jewish students horrified at the butchery in Israel and the celebration it provoked among their peers. When asked what that office itself did the week of October 7, I was directed toward two statements from university President Ellen M. Granberg—who, I should add, deserves credit for being one of the very few in higher education to describe the Hamas attack in appropriate moral terms. “We know there is a long and complex history associated with this conflict,” she wrote. “Still, this does not justify the evil we have collectively witnessed.”
If the DEI offices’ hearts aren’t in it—Jews being rich white people whose near ancestors just happened to have been subjected to the Holocaust—they could at least feign a strategic interest in Jews, thus protecting themselves from future accusations of willful neglect.
Given the dearth of replies by either phone or email, it became necessary to look through Twitter feeds, event schedules, and recent announcements on the universities’ DEI pages in order to ascertain their level of activity in response to the worst crisis Jewish college students have faced lately. On Oct. 18, the Twitter feed of the Rutgers University Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community posted a pair of graphics about “meeting the moment with humanity.” In one of them, the #RUWorkforinclusion hashtag appeared below a quote from Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was once one of the world’s leading opponents of the existence of the State of Israel. The office did not put out any statement in the immediate wake of the October 7 assault, although it did host a webinar on “micro-inequities” on Oct. 17. Presumably, even according to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the mass slaughter of Israelis might qualify at least as a “micro-inequity.” However there was no sign Jewish students were particularly encouraged to attend that or any other Rutgers DEI event.
Not to be outdone by its less rarefied rival to the north, the University of Virginia’s Division for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion held events on microaggressions on both Oct. 17 and Oct. 18. Those who missed “I Felt That: Intro Microaggressions” must have been a little lost at “I Felt That: Microaggressions—The Remix (Intermediate)” the following night. The idea that the survivors of the Hamas massacre and their fellow Jews on campus might have also felt something worth recognizing was nowhere in evidence.
The University of North Carolina saw a faceoff between mourners and celebrants of the Hamas attack that nearly turned violent. Jewish students and their campus allies—assuming they have any—might have looked at the resistance enthusiasts in their midst and wondered in horror at exactly who they’d been going to school with. If they’d looked at the University Office for Diversity and Inclusion’s web page, they’d have found an infographic about “inclusive excellence.”
Nobody picked up the phone when I called Michigan State University’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, whose website includes handy and potentially disgrace-preventing instructions on how not to botch a land acknowledgement ritual. “Although land acknowledgements are powerful statements,” the guide reads in boldface type, “they are only meaningful when they are coupled with authentic and sustained relationships with Indigenous communities and community-informed actions.” Those of a Talmudic cast will be intrigued to learn that there is both an official land acknowledgement for Michigan State University and a shortened land acknowledgement for Michigan State University that satisfies the rigors of equity Halacha. No one at the school’s DEI office seems to be acknowledging the turmoil of the university’s Jewish students, though.
For the past two weeks, DEI offices have had a chance to show they can be responsive to the real-life needs of young people facing a scary and unfamiliar crisis. But these offices clearly do not exist to serve Jews, or wish to recognize Jews might be capable of feeling pain, even when their friends and co-religionists have been slaughtered en masse. That’s because DEI bureaucracies don’t exist to serve actually existing people of any background. The purpose they serve is a theological one, and dogma enforcement is a big part of what universities do these days. The aforementioned Heritage study found that in the aggregate, there were 1.4 times as many DEI staff as history professors across the 65 institutions surveyed. “Promoting DEI has become a primary function of higher education,” the report observed.
An equity office’s job is to engineer the values of the rising elite so that DEI and the wider ideological edifice it serves will remain powerful, protected, and even feared. These bureaucracies are not burning through institutional capital in order to salve the anxieties of Jewish students, because helping students was never the point. Their ambitions are of a different order: DEI embodies the moral authority of a larger system for distributing status and power. It doesn’t care about actual human beings—and as we’ve learned since the massacre of October 7, it especially doesn’t care about Jews.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-dei-complex-will-never-protect-jews
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Why they rip down the 'Kidnapped from Israel' fliers
by Jeff Jacoby
A CAT from my neighborhood has gone missing. Her owner has distributed fliers around the area, asking residents to keep an eye out for her. "LOST CAT," it says in big letters beneath a photo of Coco, a beautiful animal with fluffy white fur and blue eyes.
Whether the fliers will lead to Coco's recovery I don't know. But of one thing I am certain: No one walking through the neighborhood will be grabbing all the posters and stuffing them in the trash. Even people who dislike cats wouldn't be that callous and mean.
But ever since fliers calling attention to something far more terrible than a missing cat — the plight of the more than 200 hostages abducted from Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7 — began going up on telephone poles, subway walls, utility boxes, and worksite fences in cities around the world, a startling number of people have been eager to tear them down. Individuals have been filmed destroying or defacing the posters in Boston, London, Miami, New York, Melbourne, Philadelphia, Richmond, Ann Arbor, and Los Angeles.
There is no possible justification for such heartlessness. The whole purpose of the fliers is to heighten awareness of the Israeli (and other) civilians kidnapped by the Hamas terror squads — to put names and faces to the hostages, all with one goal: to bring them back home. How can a project so heartfelt and humane trigger such a poisonous response?
The posters were the brainchild of two Israeli artists, Nitzan Mintz and Dede Bandaid, who were visiting New York when Hamas carried out its bloodbath. Aching to help in some way, they drew on their art backgrounds to design the eye-catching fliers. Each is topped with the word "KIDNAPPED" in large white letters on an orange background; below that heading is the name, age, nationality, and photo of one of the hostages, who range in age from 3 months to 85 years.
The posters went viral overnight. Within days they were appearing everywhere, a powerful symbol of Israel's anguish and of the desperate yearning for the captives' safe return. Then came the backlash. "Within minutes or hours of going up," reported the New York Jewish Week, "many of them had been partially ripped off the subway station's walls, tears obscuring the victims' faces or details about their lives, while others were defaced with marker or surrounded by messages such as "Free Palestine." On a poster of two of the youngest hostages, 3-year-old twins Emma and Yuli Cunio, Hitler mustaches were drawn on the girls' faces. On other posters, the words "Lies" or "Actors" were scrawled.
Those ripping down or damaging the signs are by no means abashed about doing so. Some have filmed themselves attacking the fliers and posted the video online. Others, when asked why they were trashing the pictures of civilian hostages, have yelled about "genocide," declared their support for "Palestinian civilians," claimed the fliers contained "inaccurate information," or simply cursed out the person filming them.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is intensely controversial and generates great emotion on both sides. But these assaults on the "Kidnapped" posters have nothing to do with the merits of the dispute. The sole purpose of the fliers is to emphasize the humanity of the innocent hostages seized by Hamas (many of whom, as it happens, were peace activists deeply committed to Arab-Israeli coexistence). What drives the people ripping down the posters or adding Hitler mustaches to the pictures is a pathological need to deny the humanity of those kidnapped Jews.
A core principle of antisemites in all times and places is that Jews are not fully human and are never innocent. A thousand years ago, Jews were slaughtered by Crusaders for being satanic Christ-killers who consumed the blood of children; a century ago Hitler preached that they were subhumans who polluted the racial purity of Aryan Europe. Today the Jewish state is accused of committing the demonic crimes of genocide and apartheid. The poison never changes, only the vial it comes in.
The "Kidnapped" fliers are intolerable to the haters because they so urgently challenge the antisemitic paradigm. They make it vividly clear that in the war between barbarism and civilization, between oppressor and oppressed, it is Jews who are under attack. That infuriates those whose worldview revolves around the certainty that Israel and its supporters are the victimizers. The outpouring of sympathy for Jews kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists — and the moral force of that sympathy — is anathema to them.
That explains as well why the atrocities committed on Oct. 7 immediately triggered so many vehement public demonstrations in support of the Palestinians. Precisely because the massacre and abductions had been so unspeakably horrific, it was necessary to reinforce the narrative of Jewish villainy. At times, denunciations of Israel gave way to naked antisemitsm. At a pro-Palestinian rally in Sydney, a chorus of voices chanted "Gas the Jews! F*** the Jews!" Others expressed their hatred by rejoicing in the slaughter of Israelis. A professor at Cornell, for example, told a crowd he was "exhilarated" by what Hamas had done.
In the wake of terrible mass shootings like the one that took at least 18 lives and convulsed Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday, grieving family and friends often display pictures of their loved ones. It is a way of reinforcing the humanity of the victims and of evoking compassion from passersby. Who, seeing such a display, would destroy or vandalize it? Some norms are so ingrained as to be all but inviolable. When someone puts up an image of a missing or murdered child, no decent person rips it down.
But antisemitism has the power to override every norm and decent impulse.
On Reddit last week, a commenter explained that coming across a "Kidnapped" flier made him feel not empathy with the hostage, but "the exact opposite." It filled him with "white hot rage," he wrote, and he decided that "ripping it down and tearing it to shreds is the only thing I can do."
The ripped-up fliers are one more indication of the rising tide of antisemitism in America and the West. A "white hot rage" is building. I, for one, cannot shake the conviction that Jews are at graver risk than they have been in decades, and not only in southern Israel.
https://jeffjacoby.com/27308/why-they-rip-down-the-kidnapped-from-israel-fliers
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Premodern Diversity vs. Civilizational Unity
Victor Davis Hanson
Few Romans in the late decades of their 5th-century A.D. empire celebrated their newfound "diversity" of marauding Goths, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Huns, and Vandals.
These tribes en masse had crossed the unsecured Rhine and Danube borders to harvest Roman bounty without a care about what had created it.
Their agendas were focused on destroying the civilization they overran rather than peacefully integrating into and perpetuating the Empire.
Ironically, Rome's prior greatness had been due to the extension of citizenship to diverse people throughout Europe, North Africa, and Asia.
Millions had been assimilated, integrated, and intermarried and often superseded the original Italians of the early Roman Republic. Such fractious diversity had led to unity around the idea of Rome.
New citizens learned to enjoy the advantages of habeas corpus, sophisticated roads, aqueducts, and public architecture, and the security offered by the legions.
The unity of these diverse peoples fused into a single culture that empowered Rome. In contrast, the later disunity of hundreds of thousands of tribal people flooding into and dividing Rome doomed it.
To meet the challenge of a multiracial society, the only viable pathway to a stable civilization of racially and ethnically different people is a single, shared culture.
Some nations can find collective success as a single homogenous people like Japan or Switzerland.
Or equally, but with more difficulty, nations can prosper with heterodox peoples -- but only if united by a single, inclusive culture as the American melting-pot once attested.
But a baleful third option -- a multicultural society of diverse, unassimilated, and often rival tribes -- historically is a prescription for collective suicide.
We are beginning to see just that in America, as it sheds the melting pot, and adopts the salad bowl of unassimilated and warring tribes.
The U.S. is now seeing a rise in violent racially and religiously motivated hate crimes.
The border is nonexistent.
Millions of unlawful immigrants mock their hosts by their brazen illegal entrance.
They will receive little civic education to become Americans. But they will learn that unassimilated tribalism wins them influence and advantages.
In contrast, America was once a rare historical example of a multiracial, but single-culture democracy that actually worked.
Multigenerational Americans were often energized by keeping up with new hard-working immigrants determined to have a shot at success in a free society long denied them at home.
Other large nations have tried such a democratic multiracial experiment -- most notably Brazil and India. But both are still plagued by tribal feuding and serial violence.
What once worked for America, but now is forgotten were a few precepts essential for a multiracial constitutional state wedded to generous immigration.
One, America is enriched at its cultural periphery by the food, fashion, art, music, and literature of immigrants.
But it would be destroyed if such diversity extended to its core. No one wants Middle-East norms regarding gays or emancipated women.
No one prefers Mexican jurisprudence to our courts.
No one here wants the dictatorship of Venezuela or the totalitarianism of communist China.
Two, people vote with their feet to emigrate to America. They flee their native culture and government to enjoy their antitheses in America.
But remember -- no sane immigrant would flee Mexico, Gaza, or Zimbabwe only to wish to implant in their new homes the very culture and norms that drove them out from their old.
If they did that to their new home, it would then become as unattractive to them as what they fled.
Three, tribalism wrecks nations.
Just compare what happened in Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, or Iraq.
Anytime one ethnic, racial, or religious group refuses to surrender its prime identity in exchange for a shared sense of self, other tribes for their own survival will do the same.
All then rebrand their superficial appearance as essential not incidental to whom they are.
And like nuclear proliferation that sees other nations go nuclear once a neighboring power gains the bomb, so too the tribalism of one group inevitably leads only to more tribalism of others. The result is endless Hobbesian strife.
Four, immigration must be measured, so that newcomers can be manageably assimilated and integrated rather than left to form rival tribal cliques.
Five, it must be legal. Otherwise, the idea of citizenship is reduced to mere residency, while the legal applicant is rendered a fool for his adherence to the law.
Six, it must be meritocratic, so immigrants come with English and skills and do not burden their hosts.
And last, it must be diverse. Only that way, can all groups abroad have equal access to the American dream.
A diversity of immigrants also ensures that no one particular ethnic or political tribe seeks to use immigration to divide the nation further.
The old immigration once enriched America, but our new version is destroying it.
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Is Australian multiculturalism failing?
The events described below are real but isolated. They do not well reflect everyday life in Australia. Let me tell another story: Most days I have my breakfast in a local suburban cafe that has a very good menu. And it is very popular and busy.
But as I sit there day after day I observe a minor miracle. There are usually only one or two other people with my Celtic coloring (freckles!) but everybody behaves in a manner that I see as proper. There are always some Chinese, some Indians and probably some people from Europe. The cafe was formerly run by an Italian and is now run by a Vietnaese. Both were superb managers
And there are no raised voices and no aggression of any sort. Everybody there remains polite at all times. I have not once seen an exception to that. There are even some apparent Middle-Easterners of probably Muslim persuasion who make no waves at all. They usually keep in their own groups but no harm comes of that.
So every day I sit in the middle of a very multicultural population and experience nothing that disturbs my Old Australian soul. I have no doubt that in Australia I live in a brilliantly successful multicultural society
In March 2022, Declan Cutler, a working-class 16-year-old, died after being stabbed over 50 times by a ‘gang of teenagers’ in a random attack in North Melbourne.
Hours after the incident, one of the attackers allegedly went home and searched the question, ‘Is hell guaranteed for a Muslim who commits murder?’
Earlier this year, Jason Langhans, 17, was killed when he tried to stop a fight between gatecrashers and partygoers at a get-together in the small coastal town of Tooradin.
The attacker, a 17-year-old Afghan who has not been named, moved to Australia as a refugee, drove a screwdriver 8cm into Jason’s brain. The judge noted that he had a ‘traumatic upbringing’, leaving Afghanistan for Pakistan, Indonesia, and then Australia by boat.
Earlier this month, hundreds of protesters gathered at the Sydney Opera House and called for the death of an entire race of people … the Jewish people.
Minister for Immigration Andrew Giles says that Australia’s multicultural diversity is ‘a source of national strength’.
But these increasingly common events, along with a changing conversation abroad, might give us pause to reflect.
Suella Braverman, Home Secretary for the United Kingdom, recently stood in front of a crowd last month and announced that ‘multiculturalism in Great Britain had failed’.
Her analysis of Britain’s handling of immigration and diversity was scathing, and perfectly reflected the way the debate around multiculturalism is changing.
‘Uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism have proven a toxic combination for Europe over the last few decades.
‘We are living with the consequence of that failure today. You can see it play out on the streets of cities all over Europe. From Malmo, to Paris, Brussels, to Leicester. It is 13 years since Merkel gave her speech, and I’m not sure that very much has changed since.’
Australia’s official policy of ‘Multiculturalism’ is celebrated in ministerial white papers and corporate boardrooms but its real-life consequences are starkly different.
In the streets of Melbourne’s CBD earlier this year, Sikh separatists attacked Hindu protesters with sticks while chanting ‘death to India’.
In Sydney, Hindu protesters were filmed allegedly menacing Muslim-run businesses in Harris Park, an area with a long history of ethnic-religious violence.
In Brisbane, during the Hong Kong independence protests at the University of Queensland, students were physically assaulted by a number of pro-Chinese students.
Fireworks and celebrations erupted in the Sydney suburb of Lakemba following the attack of Israel by Hamas.
The question has to be asked: How is the average Australian benefiting from this? And if we’re not benefiting, what are we doing to stop it?
Because as one British writer put it, the eruption of ethnic tensions in our cities doesn’t just reflect the complete failure of integration, it also reflects a complete repudiation of our systems, laws and way of life.
‘When you watch people have so little respect for British values and British laws they gleefully saunter around Britain’s streets saluting atrocities committed by ISIS-style terrorists then you know multiculturalism is failing.’
This has happened, he says, ‘Because of mass immigration into Britain, because of the total failure of our politicians to integrate old and new immigrants into British society, and because of their determination to continue to import more culturally and religiously distinctive migrants and tribal grievances from abroad.’
It isn’t just Britain changing their tune on multiculturalism.
Last year, the Sweden Prime Minister announced: ‘Integration has been too poor at the same time as we have had a large immigration. Society has been too weak, resources for the police and social services have been too weak.’
More than Sweden, the other paragon of Scandinavian progressive pragmatism, Denmark, instituted an abrupt turnaround on its previously generous immigration program, with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen citing a multi-decade failure of its newcomers to integrate.
And just weeks ago, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview that ‘it was a grave mistake to let in so many people of totally different cultures, religions, and concepts’.
‘It creates a pressure group inside each country.’
Is it now time to admit that Australia also made a ‘grave mistake’? Do we have pressure groups inside our country, and if so, what are we going to do about it?
‘I think we are starting to realise there’s a difference between being an Australian and living in Australia,’ wrote one person in a viral tweet, following the Opera House incident.
Australian politicians like to claim we’re the ‘most successful multicultural nation on Earth’, but how much longer can they ignore the fraying edges that has become increasingly evident this month?
Opposition leader Peter Dutton is talking tough on the issue, saying that anyone on a visa at the protests who was breaking the law ‘should be deported’. But what of the hundreds of thousands of new arrivals coming in next year? What of the gangs roaming our streets, killing unsuspecting teenagers? There is simply no plan to deal with these multicultural clashes – governments are just throwing a Hail Mary and hoping it doesn’t explode on their watch.
With a record 450,000 migrants arriving in Australia this year alone – many of which not only from nations with which we share little culturally, but who are also adversaries to our allies – it can be assumed Labor isn’t heeding Braverman’s warning about ‘uncontrolled immigration, inadequate integration, and a misguided dogma of multiculturalism’.
Moreover, with Australia’s legitimacy increasingly attacked by the political left, and with the country referred to as a ‘coloniser state’ that disenfranchised indigenous people, it’s hard to see what the large numbers of people coming here will integrate into.
Our country is heading down a strange path. The roots that once held us together are increasingly weakened, while the rapidly rising number of people coming from other countries have no dominant culture or way of life to integrate into.
Until a stronger discussion is had around multiculturalism and immigration, these cultures will inevitably clash again, with increasingly tragic circumstances.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/is-multiculturalism-failing/
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29 October, 2023
Capital Crime Wave Prompts DC Mayor’s Major Reversal on Police Restraints
Amid escalating crime in the nation’s capital, President Joe Biden went to bat for a “police reform” law passed by the D.C. Council by vetoing a bipartisan congressional measure that would have overturned it. Now, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser wants to roll back the same law that Biden protected.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee, whose oversight includes the District of Columbia, held two hearings earlier this year on the D.C. crime problem.
“Unfortunately, President Biden refused to stand by the Metropolitan Police Department and allowed the D.C. Council’s anti-police bill to go into effect,” House Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told The Daily Signal in a written statement Tuesday.
“As a result, crime in the District has continued to surge and now the D.C. mayor is even trying to roll the D.C. Council’s disastrous law back,” Comer said.
The D.C. Council previously enacted laws to restrict police and to reduce sentences for felons. Congress voted to block both.
Meanwhile, Biden signed a measure—also pushed by the oversight panel to reverse a D.C. law reducing sentencing for felonies, including carjackings and burglaries.
The Oversight Committee adopted a resolution blocking the D.C. Council’s 2022 police reform legislation from taking effect. However, Biden vetoed that bipartisan measure in May.
House Resolution 42, which blocked the D.C. anti-police law, was sponsored by Reps. Andrew R. Garbarino, R-N.Y., and Andrew Clyde, R-Ga.
“I’m glad that Mayor Bowser can admit that her policies have contributed to rising crime in the District of Columbia. However, the proposed legislation is the definition of too little, too late,” Garbarino said Tuesday in a written statement.
The city’s new law expanded the definition of chokeholds, already banned for the Metropolitan Police Department, to mean most neck restraints; established a new office to investigate complaints against police; and made it more difficult for officers to disperse riots.
The formal name of the D.C. law is the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022.
“MPD has hemorrhaged officers over the last two years, leaving the department severely understaffed,” Garbarino said, adding:
Criminals have been empowered to break the law while our men and women in blue have been vilified and hindered from doing their jobs. D.C., New York, and [other] liberal cities across the country are paying the price for their anti-police policies and rhetoric. If Mayor Bowser wants to make a real difference to D.C. crime rates, she would completely roll back all of the D.C. Council’s anti-police efforts and empower law enforcement to tackle rising crime as they see fit.
Axios first reported Bowser’s proposal over the weekend. The mayor released a public statement Monday about a proposal (dubbed the Addressing Crime Trends Now Act, or the ACT Now Act) to amend the D.C. police reform law.
“This legislation reflects what our community is telling us: They want appropriate accountability for those who choose to commit crimes and inflict fear in our neighborhoods,” Bowser said. “At a time when we’re dealing with historically low staffing levels at MPD, we’re making commonsense changes that recognize the day-to-day operational challenges our officers experience and that will better support safe and effective policing.”
Bowser’s proposal would reinstate the ability of the Metropolitan Police Department to declare drug-free zones for 120 hours, to prohibit congregating in public space to purchase, sell, or use illegal drugs. The legislation also would impose criminal penalties for organized retail theft, establishing that “directing organized retail theft” is a crime.
The mayor’s bill also calls for reinstating a law against wearing a mask for the purpose of committing criminal acts or intimidating and threatening others.
House Republicans first raised concerns that the D.C. Council’s “policing reform” would lead to more crime. The Oversight Committee pushed the resolution to block the law in April. and the Senate followed in May.
However, Biden then vetoed the measure, saying:
While I do not support every provision of the Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022, this resolution from congressional Republicans would overturn commonsense police reforms such as: banning chokeholds; setting important restrictions on use of force and deadly force; improving access to body-worn camera recordings; and requiring officer training on de-escalation and use of force. The Congress should respect the District of Columbia’s right to pass measures that improve public safety and public trust.
After Biden vetoed the congressional resolution, Comer noted that crime in the District of Columbia was up 27% from 2022 levels. Specifically, homicide was up by 19%, other violent crime by 16%, and vehicle theft by 118%, Comer said.
“House Republicans have pledged to advance policies that make our nation safe and take on left-wing efforts to defund the police,” Comer told The Daily Signal.
“The House Oversight Committee has held two hearings on historic crime in the District and we’ve advanced legislation to block the D.C. Council’s radical pro-crime and anti-police bills from taking effect,” he said.
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Anti-racism supersedes actual medicine, endangers patients
Ibram X. Kendi’s gravy train could soon screech to a halt. The famous "anti-racist" professor is under intense public and institutional scrutiny after a Boston University investigation revealed that his "Center for Antiracist Research" squandered tens of millions of dollars, producing practically no research.
But while the ideologue is disgraced, his ideological fingerprint remains impressed upon academia. Nowhere is anti-racism’s influence more concerning than medical research, where racialized pseudoscience has effectively replaced scientific rigor in making sense of matters of life or death.
Anti-racism asserts that race-blind policies allow bigoted attitudes and beliefs to flourish, and that disparities across racial groups must be evidence of racism. In accordance with the ideology, leading healthcare organizations now uncritically and reflexively claim that health disparities across racial groups must be the result of racism disguised or fueled by race-neutral policies.
In writing on the "impact of racism on our public nation’s health," the CDC now claims that racism is a "fundamental" cause of "health inequities, health disparities and disease." It further states, "these health disparities underscore the urgent need to address systemic racism as a root cause of racial and ethnic health inequities and a core element of our public health efforts." The National Institutes of Health similarly states that structural racism "lies at the center" of health disparities.
Previously, leading health experts dispassionately embraced intellectual curiosity and the scientific method to understand and address health disparities. Take, for example, a Health and Human Services initiative launched in 2000 called "Healthy People 2010." The initiative made eliminating health disparities across populations one of its overriding goals.
The final review noted that such disparities arise due to a "range of personal, economic, and environmental factors that influence health status, including factors such as biology, genetics, individual behavior, [and] access to health services."
The 560-page "Healthy People 2010" review doesn’t once speculate or assert that disparities are caused by racism, and for good reason. Across society, racist beliefs are rare and declining. Doctors in particular are laser-focused on treating individual patients, regardless of skin color.
Yet racism is now blindly stated as fact, in service to the anti-racist demand that medicine be viewed through a racial lens. As Yascha Mounk points out in his recent book "The Identity Trap," it remains baffling why attempting to purge unverified individual racism through training and other coercive measures would even solve supposedly systemic issues. Orthodoxy supersedes not only facts, but basic logic.
Problems aside, anti-racist ideology is enforced and propagated through peer-reviewed medical journals, the information bank that journalists, judges, and lawmakers generally entrust to make sense of what "science" says about critical issues.
The American Medical Association’s "Organizational Strategic Plan to Embed Racial Justice and Advance Health Equity," for example, cites research as a "lever for change." It goes on to clarify that "methods will be informed by social epidemiology and critical race theory."
The American Medical Association’s strategy is perverse. Research is fundamentally about the pursuit of knowledge, not a "lever" for social transformation. Once the objective of research is determined to be something other than the pursuit of knowledge, it ceases to be research, but opinion weaponized as "fact" operating under the guise of "science."
Consider, for example, a recent meta-analysis (i.e., compilation of studies) published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. It found that Black patients in the emergency department were more likely to be physically restrained.
A curious scholar might probe whether this finding is related to factors like the disproportionate number of Blacks treated in the emergency department for substance abuse disorders or schizophrenia. Instead, the "researchers" dismiss this possibility by saying that racial difference in these measures would also be proof of racism.
The Journal of the American Medical Association is not alone in this radicalism. Health Affairs, another widely cited journal, devoted their October 2023 issue to "structural racism," essentially accepting the argument that disparities are evidence of racism.
The New England Journal of Medicine, the world’s most widely cited medical journal, has pledged a commitment to anti-racism that routinely plays out in its pages. For instance, a commentary published in early October notes the disproportionate number of Black medical residents who face remedial intervention or dismissal from their programs, which is alleged to be a sign of racism.
In writing on the "impact of racism on our public nation’s health," the CDC now claims that racism is a "fundamental" cause of "health inequities, health disparities and disease."
Yet Occam’s razor would point to radically lower medical school admissions standards for Black students, who are more likely be unprepared for the demands of the job.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/anti-racism-supersedes-actual-medicine-endangers-patients
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Rodeo Events: The Far Left's Latest Target
The Far Left - ranging from elected Democrats to their preservationist environmental friends - are determined to ban rodeo events across the U.S.
On October 17th, 2023, the San Diego County Democratic Central Committee unanimously voted in favor of a resolution condemning an upcoming rodeo event scheduled for January 2024 at Petco Park. What’s their beef? The SDCDC equated rodeos to “animal torture devices.”
The San Diego Rodeo is tentatively scheduled for January 12-14, 2024, at the scenic ballpark in downtown San Diego.
“The San Diego County Democratic Central Committee condemns the plans of the Padres and City of San Diego to bring a rodeo to PETCO Park and encourages the San Diego City Council to immediately pass an ordinance banning animal torture devices used at rodeos,” the resolution read.
“Cute, innocent, docile farm animals should not be subjected to cruel treatment and torture devices used at rodeos!” Bryan Pease, the lead author of the resolution, wrote. “There has not been such a cruel event in the City of San Diego since the 1980s, and never before at PETCO Park.”
These attacks on rodeo events, however, aren’t new. These campaigns started to ramp up in the early 2000s. More recently, anti-rodeo efforts have materialized several hours north of America’s Finest City in Los Angeles.
The Democrat-majority city council has been toying with a ban for several years. The body passed an ordinance in December 2022 aimed at these events and could spell doom for the annual February Professional Bull Riding (PBR) event at Crypto.com Arena. This past October 10th, the L.A. Board of Animal Services Commissioners unanimously recommended by a 5-0 vote the city ban rodeos within city limits—alleging they promote “animal cruelty.”
Thankfully, not all Angelenos agree with this misguided campaign. Different cowboy organizations - including organizations boasting Hispanic, Black, and Native American members - have sounded the alarm over L.A.’s obtuse ordinance.
Sixth-generation cowboy and professional bull rider Dakota Louis, who is Native American, defended his way of life to Los Angeles Magazine, saying: “The cowboy way is always going above and beyond and taking care of everyone else before you take care of yourself, and that’s exactly how it is at our dinner table. Our animals are taken care of and fed before we eat dinner.”
In February 2022, the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo- named after legendary black cowboy and rodeo performer Bill Pickett- urged its Facebook followers to “step up and help keep the LA city council from passing a ban against rodeo and equestrian events.”
Which groups are behind the anti-rodeo pushes? Townhall readers will recognize two familiar groups.
The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) - a serial alarmist organization - is a big proponent of rodeo bans, writing on their website: “Countless animals have paid with their lives to satisfy humans’ desire to play cowboy in events such as calf roping, bull riding, steer wrestling, and bronc riding.”
PETA also advocates banning the American pastime by urging its supporters to “work to institute a state or local ban on calf roping, the event in which cruelty is most easily documented. Since many rodeo circuits require calf roping, eliminating it can result in the overall elimination of rodeo shows.”
Animal Legal Defense Fund is a litigious outfit behind the bans. The group is also vehemently against predator management, hunting, and wildlife management.
Their workplace culture is similarly hostile to meat products and animal agriculture, with their mission statement reading like this: “Consistent with this mission, the Animal Legal Defense Fund’s staff and volunteers agree that they will not introduce into any Animal Legal Defense Fund office, or at any Animal Legal Defense Fund function outside the office (e.g., staff lunches, meetings, etc.), products that are derived, in whole or in part, from an animal. Such products include, but are not limited to, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dairy products (including milk, yogurt, and cheese), leather, and wool. This prohibition does not apply to products to be used for the purpose of educating the public about animal cruelty.”
Interestingly, suing in the name of “animal rights” is very lucrative. ALDF reportedly has net assets worth nearly $20 million (as of 2021). But the group, nonetheless, isn’t without internal strife either and has been seen as insufficiently woke and progressive. A June 2023 report revealed former employees found ALDF to employ “union-busting tactics while perpetuating a transphobic, racist, and retaliatory work culture that undermined the organization’s mission and pandered to conservative donors.” Ouch.
Protect the Harvest reminds us that today’s cowboys and cowgirls are “demonstrating their skills across the country, bringing our rich history and culture to cities and towns across America.”
Much to the chagrin of anti-rodeo activists, rodeo events like PBR are quite popular. Bullriding T.V. events are watched by millions. Paramount Network’s hit show, Yellowstone, and its spinoffs have reinvigorated interest in the sport and accompanying culture. And even unlikely venues –including Madison Square Garden in far-left New York City – are holding sold-out events.
Rodeo, like hunting and fishing, is pure Americana. It must be protected and preserved at all costs.
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Imported haters in America
In last week's column, we noted the popularity of Hamas terrorists with BLM representatives. This week, we'll consider the other main contingent of Hamas Boosters: foreigners, who, for reasons I can't understand, are in my country.
In the past few weeks, Muslims and Arabs have poured into the streets in nearly every U.S. city to celebrate the slaughter of Israelis, while wearing scarves, keffiyehs and other clown outfits and waving the flags of Palestine, Egypt, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Yemen, Turkey, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Nigeria, and on and on.
It's so obvious that these people don't belong here that the immediate reaction of a number of politicians was to demand that their visas be revoked. (Nobody looked at anti-war protests in the '60s and said, Revoke their visas!)
Question: Why are we importing millions of people from lesser cultures who will inevitably despise and resent the West for its very success?
This isn't the old They hate us for our freedoms! Rather, it is simply an acknowledgment of the fact that the most common and destructive human emotion is jealousy. People will brag about being gluttons, prideful, greedy, angry, lustful and lazy. The only venal sin no one will cop to is envy. That's how insidious it is.
Consider the "open letter" from 33 Harvard student groups blaming Israelis for their own slaughter. In addition to about a dozen Muslim and Arab groups, the letter was signed by clubs for immigrants from various locales notable for their high levels of corruption and leprosy (e.g., Bangladesh, Nepal, Bengal and South Asia).
You think Harvard had a problem with the "Bengali Association of Students" before the 1965 Immigration Act?
Freshly installed and deeply unimpressive Harvard president Claudine Gay (daughter of Haitian immigrants) issued a kumbaya statement in response to the bloodthirsty student letter, expressing sadness about both the 1,500 slaughtered Israelis AND "the war in Israel and Gaza now underway."
At this, billionaire donors to the university finally began to notice the insanity they've been funding. A couple of Israeli billionaires, Idan and Batia Ofer, quit Harvard's Kennedy School of Government board in protest. Another Jewish billionaire, Bill Ackman, demanded the names of the students behind the letter. Gentile -- and Republican! -- Ken Griffin (cumulative gifts to Harvard: more than $500 million) also raised a ruckus.
The same thing happened at other institutions of higher learning.
Sorry to roll my eyes, but where have they been? The gleeful cheering for the mass murder of Israelis is only the latest expression of hate by inferior cultures toward the superior culture of the West -- of which the donors are a shining example.
Here are a few other signposts of our descent into Calcutta.
In the last few years, statues of one great man after another have been toppled, among them: Christopher Columbus, Ulysses S. Grant, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, Teddy Roosevelt and Francis Scott Key. White, white, white, white, white and white.
Portraits of scientists at Rockefeller University who'd won the Nobel Prize or Lasker Award had to be removed on the grounds that they were all white men. The portraits made medical student Max Jordan Nguemeni Tiako sad, so they had to go.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art disemboweled Beethoven's opera, "Fidelio," to turn it into a story about BLM triumphing over a white supremacist conspiracy to oppress immigrants and people of color (with a discussion sponsored by Columbia University on dismantling "systems of incarceration").
Responding to student demand, the University of Pennsylvania removed a portrait of William Shakespeare and replaced it with a picture of a black feminist writer.
And how did Gay become the president of Harvard in the first place? Obviously, it was a rigorous competition -- just as it was for Vice President Kamala Harris, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sen. Laphonza Butler.
Gay's "historic" appointment gave Harvard its first black president! (Who could've seen that coming?)
The shocked Harvard alums might not even be admitted today, with their cisgender white privilege. The college's admissions office describes its job as "antiracism work."
But when the exact same people who hate our country turned out to hate Israel, too, our clueless elites were gobsmacked. Gee, where'd that come from? We thought you liked us.
Of course barbarians hate Israel! Surrounded by enemies, Jews transformed an unforgiving desert into a first-rate civilization. Did anyone imagine the Holocaust would temper the bitter jealousy? That's like heterosexual white coeds claiming to be "binary" to earn woke street cred. You're still pretty, and they still hate you.
The conflict is far larger than a few hundred disaffected immigrants, "colonized" and "indigenous" people cheering mass murder by invading paragliders.
This is an endemic problem. Israel can't do much about the neighborhood, but why on Earth is the U.S. importing preposterous foreigners from third-rate cultures? The failure of their ancestors to create anything worthwhile, certainly compared to the stupendous accomplishments of the West, is too glaringly obvious. Inviting millions upon millions of them here, to gawk at our magnificent civilization, is a guarantee of perpetual strife and resentment.
It could never work. It was always an insane idea.
Instead of trampling on the free speech rights of people who hate the West, how about avoiding the problem altogether by leaving them where they are? They'll like it! Vastly fewer "white supremacists" to oppress them. They can hate us all they want. Just do it from their own countries.
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26 October, 2023
Nigel Farage branded ‘sketchy crackpot’ in secret NatWest emails disclosed after de-banking scandal<
Nigel Farage claims a “woke brigade” is marching through public and private companies after emails revealed NatWest staff gloated about the closure of his bank account in a series of sniggering internal messages.
The crowing remarks were handed over to the former Ukip leaders through a subject access request, and shone light on conversations among staff members who joked he had been “debanked” by Coutts, a NatWest subsidiary, and that they hoped it “knocked him down a peg or two.”
In an angry tirade agains the bank, Mr Farage also revealed the internal documents referred to him a “crackpot”, “sketchy” and “a fool”.
The internal gossip followed the closure of Mr Farage’s Coutt’s account, which he claims was a politically motivated decision.
Mr Farage was also described in one of the emails as an “awful human being”, while another said they would have paid a significant sum to have been the one to tell the GB News presenter his account was being shut down.
A third said: “I’d throw a milkshake at him if I was approached to open an account for him.”
In one exchange, published by the Daily Telegraph, an employee points to Mr Farage claiming NatWest has a “political agenda”.
A colleague replies: “No it’s just you are an awful human being Nigel Farage lol. He’s so politically relevant right now. Like who even are you anymore.”
The colleague goes on to mock the Brexiteer’s past attempts to portray himself as a man of the people, saying it is “good that an ‘everyman’ banked at Coutts”.
Following the publication Mr Farage called for former NatWest boss Dame Alison Rose, who quit over her role in the scandal, to have her multi million pound severance pay deal scrapped.
“This is the culture that the queen of woke, Dame Alison Rose, brought into the head office and throughout the Bank of NatWest,” he said.
And Mr Farage called for an investigation into all the staff who had made mean comments about him.
But he told GB News: “It does not hurt at all. I am so used to the illiberalism of the so-called liberals, that I can deal with it. It is horrible stuff.
“But it all goes to show the arrogance of those in power, the march of the woke brigade through our public and private corporations.
“I have the honour to be the first person to genuinely have the voice and the position to stand up and fight back.”
NatWest is hosting a board meeting on Thursday to agree the terms for Dame Alison’s departure. It is set to unveil its quarterly results on Friday.
Mr Farage said any payment to Dame Alison would be a “reward for failure” paid for by taxpayers, given the public’s 39 per cent ownership of the bank.
The closure of Mr Farage’s bank account led to a row over so-called de-banking of those with controversial political views, but a review by the Financial Conduct Authority foud no firm evidence of banks denying people access to accounts over the last year due to their political views.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nigel-farage-natwest-coutts-alison-rose-b2435066.html
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UPenn faces free speech hypocrisy storm for refusing to discipline pro-Hamas protesters - despite probing into law professor who said 'America would be better with fewer Asians'
A typical deliberate misquote from the Left. What Prof. Wax actually said:
"But as long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”
It was clearly a political, not a racist statement
The University of Pennsylvania has been accused of hypocrisy for trying to oust a controversial law professor who said 'America would be better with fewer Asians' while claiming free speech means it cannot punish anti-Semitic students.
The beleaguered Ivy League college has spent two years trying to discipline tenured professor Amy Wax over her remarks and other comments, which include arguing that some ethnicities have lower IQs than others.
University leaders claimed her behavior undermines Penn's commitment to attracting a 'diverse student body to an inclusive educational environment' and 'harmed' students.
But amid a backlash to the Palestine Writes festival last month that invited speakers who have made anti-Semitic remarks, Penn reaffirmed its commitment to upholding free speech.
Among those who appeared was Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, who has previously performed in an outfit closely resembling a Nazi uniform and once suggested 'bombing' audiences with confetti in the shape of swastikas, stars of David and dollar signs.
Although Penn released a statement condemning anti-Semitism ahead of the event, it still copped furious criticism that it tried to deflect by hiding behind a commitment to free speech.
The Palestine Writes festival - held on the eve of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar - featured a lineup of well-known antisemites. It drew extra attention after the Hamas attacks on Israel two weeks later.
A memo to the university's board about the Palestine Writes event asserted that 'Penn does not regulate the content of speech or symbolic behavior,' the Washington Free Beacon reports.
Recipients were reminded that faculty may invite 'hateful' figures on campus so long as there is 'no imminent threat of harm.'
The note, written by the university's president Liz Magill and chairman of trustees Robert Bok, also rejected the term 'hate speech' as too difficult to define and noted the college had done away with its anti-hate speech policy following a political correctness dispute in 1994.
That was despite the school using the term 'hate speech' in its complaint against Wax.
Penn bosses have been attempting to remove the professor following her comments and concerns she has assigned work related to racist thinker Enoch Powell and invited Jared Taylor a white identity politics advocate to speak in her class.
She is now attempting to use the university's memo and its stance on free speech as an argument that she is afforded the same protections.
In a letter to university officials, Wax's lawyers said: 'The [memo] makes clear that even if Jews are 'harmed' by the speech of radical left Palestinian supporters appearing at the [Palestine Writes] Festival, those organizing the [Palestine Writes] Festival and inviting Jew-hating Palestinian nationalists will not be punished because Penn permits and protects the expression of all viewpoints, even those that are contrary to Penn's 'institutional values.
'But if a strongly conservative and tenured professor invites Jared Taylor, assigns Charles Murray and Enoch Powell, and takes to social media to tell very hard-to-hear truths about group differences, she is not protected. Rather, she is sanctioned.'
The letter was sent two days after the devastating Hamas attacks of October 7 and argues that there is a 'glaringly obvious' double standard.
It comes as the university battles to hold onto donations after several major donors pulled the plug on funding amid what they deemed to be an unsatisfactory response to the Palestine Writes festival, anti-Semitism and the so-called lax response to the attacks.
'We are devastated by the horrific assault on Israel by Hamas that targeted civilians and the taking of hostages over the weekend. These abhorrent attacks have resulted in the tragic loss of life and escalating violence and unrest in the region,' Magill said in a statement three days after the attack.
'Many members of our community are hurting right now. Our thoughts are especially with those grieving the loss of loved ones or facing grave uncertainty about the safety of their families and friends.'
But, some took exception with the statement, saying it didn't go far enough and condemn the attack.
That led several prominent alums to sever ties with Penn including David Magerman, a Jewish computer scientist who helped build the trading systems of Renaissance.
Magerman's decision came after Apollo CEO Marc Rowand and Highsage Ventures founder Jonathan Jacboson reduced their donations down to just $1.
Estee Lauder heir Ronald Lauder also vowed to 're-examine' his financial commitment to the institution unless it did more to protect Jewish students.
Meanwhile trustee Vahan Gureghian called for Magill's resignation after resigning from the board over what he feels is an insufficient response to mounting anti-Semitism on campus.
'Like so many elite academic institutions, the leadership of UPenn has failed us through an embrace of antisemitism, a failure to stand for justice, and complete negligence in the defense of its own students' well being,' Gureghian said.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12672425/UPenn-free-speech-anti-Semitism-Amy-Wax.html
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Homes in 99% of the country are below the affordability threshold, meaning that they cost more than 28% of a family’s income
Home ownership was supposed to be the American dream, the thing to which the entire middle class could not only aspire but also achieve. That dream has turned into a nightmare, thanks in large part to the Biden administration and the big spenders in Congress. Now home ownership is increasingly out of reach for Americans.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta began maintaining a Home Ownership Affordability Monitor Index in 2006 because homes were so unaffordable at that time. The latest reading from that index, which has plunged 36% since President Joe Biden took office, is the lowest in its history and indicates record unaffordability. It now takes 44% of median income—before taxes—to afford a median-price home.
It’s even worse in several major metropolitan areas across the country. The cost of a median-price home is 50% of median income in Boston, 55% in Miami, 63% in New York, 84% in San Francisco, and 85% in Los Angeles. But these are percentages of before-tax income, which means the cost of home ownership in some of those places exceeds 100% of net income. “No joke,” as Biden would say.
And it’s not just a problem in a few major cities—it’s everywhere. A recent report estimated the affordability of the median-price home for the average American in 572 counties. Going through the data in the report reveals that homes in 99% of the country are below the affordability threshold, meaning that they cost more than 28% of a family’s income.
What’s even scarier is that measurements like the one from the Atlanta Fed are underestimating the problem. Its index assumes a buyer has a 10% down payment, but most people can only comfortably afford a 3% down payment. If the median prospective buyer wipes out all his savings, he still only has enough for an 8% down payment.
Putting less down means a larger loan, which means larger monthly payments, which means lower affordability. Additionally, interest rates have continued to rise and are now over 7.6%, compared with the 6.8% used in the Atlanta Fed’s calculations. Home prices have also risen, and both factors further increase the monthly payment on a mortgage.
How we got here is a lesson in excessive government spending.
During the pandemic, the government spent trillions of dollars it didn’t have and created money out of nothing to pay for it all. In 2021, instead of allowing government spending to return to normal levels, Biden and a spendthrift Congress rammed through trillions of dollars in additional spending while the Federal Reserve continued creating money to finance the deficit spending.
The predictable result was 40-year-high inflation. That sent prices, including the prices of homes, through the roof. Artificially low interest rates compounded the problem by allowing people to take on ever-growing mortgages without increasing their monthly payments. Home prices rose even higher.
But inflation caused people’s real (inflation-adjusted) earnings to fall and forced interest rates to rise. This was a deadly combination for home-ownership affordability.
Lower real earnings mean everyone is spending more on food, transportation, energy, etc., with less available in their monthly budget for housing. At the same time, home prices have been pushed to record highs and mortgage rates are at the highest level in 23 years. At the same moment as people have less money to pay for housing, the price of housing has shattered all previous records.
To be clear, the foundation for this problem was laid long before Biden became president. The Fed’s persistently artificially low interest rates have been causing asset bubbles for two decades, and its purchase of housing-related financial derivatives has further buoyed housing prices.
In the years immediately preceding the pandemic, the Fed had begun a tighter monetary policy, which helped blunt the inflationary impact of government spending in 2020. But Biden’s continued overspending, excessive borrowing, and oppressive regulating—along with creating money to pay for it all—gave the problem a violent shove into overdrive.
For example, impractical corporate-average-fuel-economy and heavy-haul-emissions standards—along with higher fees on coal power plants and leases for oil and gas wells on public lands—have all increased energy and transportation costs, which have trickled down throughout the economy, raising prices everywhere.
Had Biden not imposed these regulations and merely allowed spending to return to previous levels, the problem, and $2 trillion annual deficits, could’ve been avoided. But now we’re trapped in a nightmare it’ll be hard to wake up from.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/10/23/home-prices-from-american-dream-to-american-nightmare
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First peoples?
There has been a lot of indecision in recent years about what to call those people whom for many decades Australians have called "Aborigines". That word now seems to be taboo. "Indigenous" is a favourite replacement but the Canadian practice is increasingly creeping in. Canadians say "First Nations" for the early inhabitants of their country.
Using "first Nations" for early inhabitants of Australia is a however a substantial misfire. The many pre-white tribes of Australia had few of the characteristics of nations except perhaps informally understood borders. Making "nations" out of hundreds of tribes is quite a stretch. There was certainly no language or DNA common to them all and not much that we would recognize as governing bodies or a defence department.
Perhaps for that reason the angry article below refers to "first peoples" instead, a more defensible usage.
But both usages founder on the claim that the pre-white inhabitants of Australia were in any sense "first". They were not. It enrages the Left for anybody to mention it but it is well documented that the original inhabitants of what we now call Australia were a race of pygmies. And the pygmies concerned are far from a lost tribe. Some of them still survive in areas of the Atherton Tableland.
One of them walked right past me in 2004 as I was sitting in an open-air cafe in Kuranda. He was black but was only about 4'6" tall, a height commonly given for the Australian pygmies in early documents. There certainly are still some very short blacks in the mountainous areas behind Cairns
In the early days, anthropologists and explorers took photos of the pygmies which showed them as being about 4.6" (1.3 meters) tall
There is a long article by the irreverent historian Keith Windschuttle which gives the full story. See
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/history-wars/2002/06/the-extinction-of-the-australian-pygmies/
There were quite a lot of reports of contact with pygmies throughout the 20th century. See:
https://www.mysteriousaustralia.com/our_lost_pygmy_tribe.html
There have been many attempts from the Left to debunk the story that there were a race of pygmies in Australia but have a look below and you will see one of them, 3"7" tall and still alive when the picture was taken by a news photographer in 2007.
She is pretty substantial to be a "myth". There is an article about her reprinted below
https://tongue-tied2.blogspot.com/2023/10/elder-faces-eviction-article-originally.html
It’s a measure of the confidence assimilationists now feel, not to mention their profound indecency, that they’ve wasted no time pushing to start rolling back what few gains have been made on Indigenous policy.
Tony Abbott immediately demanded that Indigenous flags no longer be flown and acknowledgements of Indigenous people be abandoned at official events — signs of separatism, he says. If even those most basic acknowledgements that First Peoples exist are now to be erased, then we are indeed seeing full-blown separatism. The LNP in Queensland abandoned support for a treaty process in that state. Peter Dutton, in the words of one of his own MPs, sought to “weaponise” claims of child abuse within Indigenous communities.
The mainstream media also wasted no time in trying to fit the result into a narrative that carefully avoided the core issues of the referendum. The Australian Financial Review echoed the argument of The Australian that it was all Anthony Albanese’s fault for his “failure to genuinely consult with Mr Dutton to try to secure bi-partisan support for the Voice,” arguing that it was down to Albanese’s “hubris”.
This is a self-serving lie that gets everyone — Dutton, the No campaign, racists, the media — off the hook. There is literally no referendum proposal that Dutton would have supported, as his goal was to damage Labor, not address the substance of either recognition or closing the gap. The AFR goes on to complain that Albanese has ruled out “pursuing other forms of constitutional recognition or legislating for an Indigenous advisory body”.
Let’s coin a name for this fiction: how about the White Man’s Recognition Myth? It’s one many No supporters, including Abbott and Dutton, cling to — that if only they’d been asked to support simple recognition without a Voice, they’d have backed it.
White Man’s Recognition found a full flowering in an extraordinary column by David Crowe last week. Normally the doyen of both-sidesist press gallery commentary, Crowe came alive during the campaign to lash the No campaign but lamented last Thursday “a Yes vote is only possible for leaders who compromise more than they would like. This is true for Indigenous leaders as much as party leaders. As late as June this year, there was a pathway to success for recognition without the Voice, something Dutton says he supports.”
That is, the failure of the referendum is on First Peoples and their inability to compromise, their unwillingness to accept a token White Man’s Recognition, their insistence that recognition actually be meaningful and involve a two-way interaction, not imposed on them like so much else has been imposed on them for more than two centuries.
Stop complaining, accept what you’re given, abandon any agency, it’s non-Indigenous people who’ve done all the compromising, why won’t you? Being recognised as actually existing should be enough. It’s not just Albanese, evidently, who is afflicted with hubris.
It shouldn’t need to be said, but after the ferocious and resentful dismissal of genuine recognition by non-Indigenous Australia, no non-Indigenous person is in a position to lecture First Peoples about what they should have done differently in order to please us.
It is non-Indigenous people who have killed off recognition and reconciliation in favour of maintaining a white fantasy in an occupied country. The next steps, whatever they are, must come from First Peoples. And if those steps are away from the rest of us, we’ve only ourselves to blame.
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24 October, 2023
DonorsTrust Defies SPLC Pressure to Blacklist Turning Point USA
The Southern Poverty Law Center routinely attempts to shame charities into blacklisting conservative nonprofits to defund the SPLC’s ideological opponents, whom it brands as hateful.
This week, the SPLC released a report condemning six donor-advised funds for directing money to “extremist finance.” The report aims to shame the charity sector into blacklisting specific organizations.
The list includes many of the SPLC’s former targets, but it also features two new names: Turning Point USA and Project Veritas.
As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC took the program it had used to bankrupt organizations associated with the Ku Klux Klan and weaponized it against conservative groups, partially to scare its donors into ponying up cash and partially to silence ideological opponents. Amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal in which the SPLC fired its co-founder, a former employee called the “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.”
The SPLC brands conservative Christian nonprofits that advocate religious freedom, such as Alliance Defending Freedom and Family Research Council, “anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups,” while it brands organizations that advocate enforcing U.S. immigration law, such as the Center for Immigration Studies, “anti-immigrant hate groups.” The SPLC brands organizations that warn about radical Islam, such as the David Horowitz Freedom Center, “anti-Muslim hate groups.”
The SPLC recently added parental rights groups such as Moms for America and Parents Defending Education to its “hate map,” branding them as “antigovernment extremist groups” that are part of an “anti-student inclusion movement.”
Each of these groups appears in the report published Wednesday by the SPLC.
“Hate and extremist groups have received upward of $23 million in cash from ‘donor-advised funds,’ recently released forms show,” Megan Squire, the SPLC’s deputy director for data analytics and open-source intelligence, writes in the report.
“The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project and other media organizations have reported for years that donor-advised funds can act as a consistent and significant source of income for groups peddling a variety of hateful and extremist beliefs,” Squire adds.
Squire analyzes the 2021 annual reports of the Bradley Impact Fund, Donors Trust, Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, National Philanthropic Trust, Paypal Charitable Giving Fund, and Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program, concluding that five of these six donor-advised funds directed more than $1 million to organizations on the SPLC’s naughty list.
DonorsTrust, which the Southern Poverty Law Center accused of sending $2.2 million to “hate and extremist groups,” condemned the SPLC report as an attempt to demonize those with different beliefs and insisted that the report wwon’t affect DonorsTrust’s commitment to serving its donors.
“DonorsTrust is committed to honoring our givers’ charitable wishes and their right to freely express themselves through their giving,” DonorsTrust President and CEO Lawson Bader told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “It’s sad that organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center demonize those who simply have different approaches to issues or hold different deeply held beliefs on, for example, abortion or border security.”
“Demonized or not, DonorsTrust will continue to do what we’ve done since our founding: Defend all donors’ constitutional right to free speech and freedom of association, as upheld numerous times by the Supreme Court,” Bader added.
Fidelity declined to comment on the report, while the other donor-advised funds didn’t respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time.
The Southern Poverty Law Center did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment, but some organizations blacklisted by SPLC did.
“Everyone should be able to give to the causes that they believe in, but left-wing political activists like the SPLC are trying to limit that freedom by targeting mainstream, conservative organizations,” Jeremy Tedesco, senior vice president of corporate engagement at Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “The SPLC wants to silence rather than debate people they disagree with.”
“One way they do that is by pressuring financial institutions to cut off giving to organizations they put on their ideological blacklists,” Tedesco noted. “Their end game is tyranny, not tolerance. People should have the freedom to give to the charitable organizations they cherish most.”
“The Southern Poverty Law Center is a discredited smear factory which already had to pay out millions over its slanderous claims,” Daniel Greenfield, executive vice president at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday.
“Its plot to cut off donations to patriotic groups like the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Moms for America and Turning Point USA by targeting ‘donor-advised fund’ donations are not part of a fight against ‘hate’, but a conspiracy to suppress those who stand up to its extremist politics,” he added.
Project Veritas, which doesn’t often find itself in the SPLC’s crosshairs, contested that organization’s suggestion that it is “extreme.”
“Project Veritas has broken some of the most important stories in a generation,” Hannah Giles, the company’s CEO, told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “The only thing extreme about Project Veritas is the extreme impact our reporting has on the national conversation regarding corruption in government, Big Pharma, education, Big Tech, and other powerful institutions.”
“Investigative journalism isn’t right or left,” Giles added. “We will always expose corruption, waste, fraud, and abuse—wherever it may be found. Unlike the SPLC, which keeps its doors open by convincing donors that ‘hate’ is around every corner, we offer hope to the American people through our relentless efforts to combat the propaganda that is so prevalent in our society.”
Squire, author of the SPLC’s report, reportedly has ties to Antifa.
The magazine Wired profiled Squire as Antifa’s “secret weapon,” noting that although she doesn’t identify as a member of Antifa, she refuses to condemn the extremist group’s use of violence.
Eventually, Squire joined the SPLC as deputy director for data analytics and open-source intelligence and spoke at the Eradicate Hate Global Summit held in September 2022 in Pittsburgh.
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‘Heartbreaking’: Maine Parents Resent Daughters Losing to Trans Cross-Country Runner
Parents of high school girls in Maine having to compete against a biological male say they fear the end is near for women’s sports.
“In the mind of these young ladies, it’s going to really deter them from even giving the effort, because we’re never going to be able to beat this person,” said Chris Boyington, whose daughter lost to transgender runner Soren Stark-Chessa in a recent Maine cross-country race.
Soren Stark-Chessa, a biological male runner who “identifies” as a female at Maine Coast Waldorf High School in Freeport, went from the middle of the pack in boys’ races to winning the Fastest Sophomore Girl award at Maine’s largest high school cross-country race, in Belfast, Maine, on Sept. 30.
At the Festival of Champions that day, Stark-Chessa placed fifth, though his time would have placed 162nd in the boys’ race. He is set to run against girls again at the state championship meet on Oct. 28.
The 2021 Maine Human Rights Act makes it unlawful to “deny a person equal opportunity in athletic programs” on the basis of “sexual orientation or gender identity.”
Previously, the Maine Principals’ Association didn’t allow transgender students to compete if the student would have an “unfair athletic advantage,” but association members voted to repeal the policy at an April 27 meeting, deciding the policy violated state law. The principals group maintained its Gender Identity and Equity Committee.
The 2022-2023 Maine Principals’ Association handbook defines trangender as “an individual whose gender identity does not match his or her assigned birth gender.”
Association Executive Director Mike Burnham told The Daily Signal the transgender athlete issue is in the hands of the state legislature.
“The MPA, and its member schools, don’t make state law, but are required to follow it,” he wrote in an email.
The majority of the handbook remains in effect other than the gender equity and inclusion policy, Burnham said. The association’s board of directors is working on updating changed portions of the handbook, though the handbook containing the prior gender policy remains on the association’s website.
When Cathy Ross, the mother of two runners, heard biological males were competing in girls’ high school sports in other states, she thought it could never reach her conservative community in Houlton, Maine. Houlton is just two miles from Maine’s border with New Brunswick, Canada.
Ross first heard about transgender athletes beating high school females in Connecticut. Biological male athletes beat Chelsea Mitchell, who calls herself the fastest girl in Connecticut, in more than 20 races during her high school career.
Biological males have won more than 30 separate girls’ and women’s sports titles in the past 19 years, with the trend accelerating greatly in the past three years, according to a tally by the Washington Stand.
Ross was shocked when a female-identifying male competed against her two high school-age daughters at the Festival of Champions.
“Anybody who’s the parent of a daughter, if they have watched their daughter work hard and try to succeed at this, only to be thwarted and to not have a fair chance, I would think that any parent, no matter what their political background is, would feel just as strongly that this is not fair,” Ross said.
Ross said Stark-Chessa took the spot of a girl who would have been in the top 10, discouraging her daughters and their teammates.
“It has been very frustrating for them,” she said. “It’s humiliating for them. I think it’s very confusing in the sense that they’re looking at this world around them and wondering, ‘How did the adults allow this to happen?’”
Ross said her girls are in a lose-lose situation, as they don’t want to pretend Stark-Chessa is a girl and congratulate him on beating females, but they fear they will be seen as “hateful” or bad sports otherwise.
“Eventually, if more young men get the idea, it’s possible that you could end up with nothing but biological boys in the top 10 in the girls’ race, and then what do you have left? You don’t have girls’ sports anymore,” she said. “At that point, the girls are going to be despondent, and they won’t bother. They will have lost the exact thing that so many women prior to us have worked so hard at achieving, which was sports specifically for girls.”
Federal Title IX was enacted in 1972 to ensure athletic equality for women and girls, but laws prohibiting so-called discrimination on the basis of “gender identity” have brought an influx of biological males into female spaces.
Boyington, who lives in Milford, Maine, said his daughter is constantly practicing to achieve her athletic goals, but he fears the entrance of a biological male in her races will greatly reduce her chances.
“She’s got so much athletic ability and so much potential,” he said. “It would break my heart to see that taken away because of something like this.”
Boyington said he wishes the Maine Principals’ Association would find a way to protect girls’ sports.
“I have no ill feelings toward the trangender community. I really don’t care what anybody else wants to do in their life,” he said. “But I feel like there’s other alternatives without being discriminating, that maybe [Stark-Chessa] can identify the way he wants to identify and still run with the boys, or, let him run with the girls and just compare his time to the biological males to keep a fair playing field.”
Katherine Collins is the mother of a freshman cross-country runner. Collins’ daughter and her teammates fear they will have to run against biological males like Stark-Chessa for the rest of their high school running careers.
“You can see this kid from 200 meters away, and you can look at his thighs and know he’s a boy,” Collins, who lives in Winterport, Maine, said. “His heart is bigger, his lungs are bigger, he’s pumping more hemoglobin through his arteries and veins, his legs are bigger. And that’s because he’s a boy.”
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Reporters Capture Stark Differences Between Pro-Israel and Pro-Palestine Protests
Following the Hamas attacks on Israel, thousands of protestors across the world have been coming out in support of either Israel or Palestine. But the differences in the demonstrations between the two have been stark, with mostly mourning from pro-Israel demonstrators and justifications for violence and even calls for Jewish genocide from among the pro-Palestine protestors.
On Oct. 7, Hamas militants began an attack on Israel, leaving 1,400 dead and roughly 200 abducted. Mostly civilians, including the elderly, women, and children, were among those who were killed or tortured.
Many pro-Palestinian protests have shocked the world, such as one in Australia where demonstrators chanted, “Gas the Jews,” “F–k the Jews,” and “Allahu Akbar” (“God is greatest” in Arabic). The protest drew roughly 1,000 people who chanted in front of the Sydney Opera House holding flares and Palestinian flags.
Across the world in the U.S., many smaller protests took place in cities and on college campuses. In Indianapolis, pro-Israel and pro-Palestine protestors faced off.
The pro-Israel protesters sang songs while carrying signs that said things like, “There is no excuse to killing babies” and “Hamas=ISIS.”
Meanwhile, the pro-Palestine protestors echoed a common chant: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” This chant is a call to action to make the State of Palestine occupy the land from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west. Israel is in between, so if this actually happened, Palestine would become the 57th Islamic state by fully eradicating Israel, including “ethnically cleansing” the Jewish people who currently live there, as the Palestinians have decreed that they refuse to live alongside the Jews.
At George Washington University, dozens of students gathered for a planned “Vigil for the Martyrs of Palestine.” Many of the attendees covered their faces. Daily Signal Reporter Mary Margaret Olohan was given a face mask and told to wear one by the pro-Palestine participants so “they” wouldn’t identify her later in pictures.
On the George Mason University campus, an alum said the pro-Palestine protest there was “terrifying” for the Jewish students on campus. She added that the protests were “enabling Hamas to continue to oppress the Palestinian people.”
On Oct. 17, a pro-Palestinian group called for a cease-fire outside the White House. Forty-nine of these protestors were arrested for allegedly blocking entrances and crossing barriers.
The following day, pro-Palestinian protestors entered a House of Representatives office building protesting and calling for a cease-fire. Over 300 were arrested, and at least three were charged with assaulting a police officer, according to the Capitol Police.
“Demonstrations are not allowed inside congressional buildings,” Capitol Police said on X (formerly Twitter) before the protests. “We warned the protestors to stop demonstrating, and when they did not comply, we began arresting them.”
Many American college students have come out in support of Palestine, including over 30 Harvard student groups that said they held Israel “entirely responsible” for the Hamas attacks.
At George Mason University in Virginia, many of the students denied the atrocities that happened to Israelis or tried to justify it.
“The one time [Hamas] decide[s] to fight back because it is their land, they’re just going to make a big deal of it, that doesn’t make any sense to me,” one student said.
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Royals stand strong against Hamas, while BBC had to be shamed before calling group 'terrorists'
As in America, the Middle East conflict sparks fierce debate and opposing viewpoints among citizens of our strongest ally, the U.K., creating deep division within British society. Indeed, in recent days, thousands of pro-Palestinian activists swarmed London to demonstrate support for the Palestinian cause.
Amidst this ideological battle, the British monarchy has stepped forward with a clear and unambiguous stance, condemning the barbaric atrocities of Hamas against innocent Israelis. The values of fairness and humanity embraced by this position are foundational to Western societies, but they are currently under threat by terrorist organizations like Hamas.
In times of chaos and crisis, the world turns to its leaders for wisdom, guidance and comfort. But, as a presidential republic, America lacks a respected apolitical voice of integrity provided in Britain by its monarchy. Our often-misguided celebrities and social influencers let us down in this regard, more often than not.
The horrors committed by Hamas have focused the minds of many around the globe, sometimes in alarming ways. Consider the egregious handling of the conflict by many of our universities, and some of our U.S. news outlets.
This is no different in Britain, where until late last week, the national broadcaster, the BBC, refused to refer to Hamas murderers as "terrorists," notwithstanding the British government’s official designation of Hamas as a terrorist organization.
For the moment, President Joe Biden, in his support of Israel, has come down on the side of civilization over barbarism. But electoral winds could challenge his laudable stance at any juncture.
Britain is fortunate in its royal family to have a clear-eyed, benevolent element of society that reminds its people of their noble shared values. These values, under threat by extremists like Hamas, are the very principles of fairness and humanity that underpin liberal Western civilization.
The royal family moved swiftly and courageously to condemn the appalling terrorist acts, and, unlike the BBC, did not hesitate to identify them as such. The palace’s statement reported that the king was: "appalled by and condemns the barbaric acts of terrorism in Israel."
Jerusalem deputy mayor details posture in Israel after Hamas attacks, demands proof of life for hostagesVideo
Charles personally called Israeli President Isaac Herzog to express his condolences and solidarity. Herzog rightly expressed that the king’s call was an important gesture to Jewish people around the globe. This acknowledgment by Israel’s president underlines the king’s standing as a critical figure of global leadership, beyond just the borders of Britain or the commonwealth.
Faithful to his role as head of nation, the king also held a private audience with Britain’s chief rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis to express his care and concern for the U.K.’s Jewish population.
For their part, Prince and Princess of Wales William and Kate issued a heartfelt statement condemning the Hamas attacks while recognizing, Israel’s "right of self defence." Their distress over the unfolding events was palpable. Prince William went a step further by writing a letter to Ephraim, underlining his own solidarity with the Jewish community.
The support for an embattled Israel was not limited to the royal family. It has been affirming to witness Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and a huge swathe of British parliamentarians, authors and public intellectuals express vocal and unambiguous support for Israel since the murderous Hamas attacks commenced. Along with the royal family, these enlightened voices also reinforce our great ally’s position and values in these times of global anxiety and despair.
Undeniably, kings and queens play valuable roles in times of international crisis, and the British monarchy, in particular, has consistently demonstrated its effectiveness in this regard. An outstanding illustration is the late Queen Elizabeth II’s response to the 9/11 attacks.
Just two days after the 2001 attacks, Queen Elizabeth broke with tradition and ordered the band of the Coldstream Guards to play "The Star-Spangled Banner" during the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.
Her majesty further demonstrated solidarity by attending a service of remembrance at St. Paul's Cathedral, where she ordered "The Star-Spangled Banner" to be played, wiping away a tear as thousands of churchgoers sang along.
For their part, Prince and Princess of Wales William and Kate issued a heartfelt statement condemning the Hamas attacks while recognizing, Israel’s "right of self defence." Their distress over the unfolding events was palpable. Prince William went a step further by writing a letter to Ephraim, underlining his own solidarity with the Jewish community.
These actions, like the present royal family’s gestures of solidarity with those innocents — both Israelis and Palestinians — enduring loss and violence in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks, will never be forgotten.
In turbulent times, the world craves moral clarity and a restored sense of stability. Risking public scrutiny, King Charles III and his family have risen to the occasion to shine a light on what is right, just and compassionate. The horrors of the October 7 attack are stark reminders that, though we live in relative peace and security, evil is very much at work remotely.
In a world filled with complexities and chaos, the British monarchy serves an important purpose in reminding citizens of all civilized nations of our fundamental values, and the necessity to defend them at all costs.
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/royals-stand-strong-against-hamas-bbc-shamed-group-terrorists
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23 October, 2023
Two major studies reveal devastating effect of PFAS and food additives on male and female sexual health: From sperm damage to smaller testicles, early menopause and ovary cysts
Oh dear! Another meta-analysis. A meta-analysis is only as good as the studies fed into it and there are a number of problems with that. A big problem is selection bias -- using only those studies with conclusions that suit you. I have seen a meta-analysis that omitted around 100 "inconvenient" articles. It was in an area that I know particularly well
That mostly arises when a popular hypothesis is under examination. The analysts are very lenient at using studies that confirm the popular idea but very sniffy about including studies that contradict the same theory.
And the hypothesis here is just such a fashionable one. It just seems so obvious. How can a pervasive industrial chemical that we all consume one way or another NOT be bad? People have been trying for decades to prove that PFAS and BPA are bad for you. But the data is unco-operative. No effect or a barely significant effect is the normal finding. Pesky!
And, knowing the literature, I am sure that the confirmatory studies that they fed into this analysis were ones with marginal magnitude. Such studies rarely survive exact duplication and really should at best be regarded as disconfirming the hypothesis. In summary, PFAS and BPA can NOT be shown as bad for you. Sorry about that
In recent years concerns about the contaminants in our foods and everyday products have made headlines due to their links to cancers.
But a growing body of research suggests the microscopic molecules also have a devastating effect on fertility and may be contributing to America's 'baby bust'.
In two new reviews of scientific literature, researchers from across the globe looked at the impact of exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) on male and female reproductive health.
They found these substances can cause infertility, genital malformations, lower sperm count and quality, early menopause and an increased risk of breast and testicular cancers.
EDCs include PFAS but also pesticides, phenols, a group of chemicals found in toys and dental products; phthalates, a group of chemicals in food packaging; parabens, a group of chemicals used as food preservatives; and triclosan, an antimicrobial agent used in soaps and hand sanitizers.
Some primary sources of PFAS and other contaminants include plastic food containers, makeup, cleaning sprays, medications, contaminated food and pollution of water and air.
Researchers from Vietnam, India, New Zealand and the United States reviewed more than 300 sources of information, including previous experimental studies and data from national and international health monitoring databases, as well as animal studies.
In the review of the impact on women, the team looked at studies that had analyzed levels of and exposure to contaminants and tested and evaluated placenta, urine, blood, hormone levels and tissues.
Researchers found exposure to Bisphenol A, or BPA, can lead to a decline in the development and quality of eggs and an increased risk of implantation failure, when fertilized eggs do not implant in the uterine lining correctly, frequently resulting in pregnancy loss.
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a leading contributor to infertility, and a risk factor for endometrial cancer and diabetes, has also been linked to BPA exposure.
BPA is a type of plastic used to make plastic dinnerware, car parts, toys, beverage containers and CDs.
Exposure to phthalates, compounds in soaps, shampoos, lubricating oils and plastic packaging, was associated with a reduced probability of pregnancy and lower-quality eggs.
Additional impacts in women seen in the previous studies, include early menopause, an increased risk of breast cancer, endometriosis, which can lead to infertility, and metabolic syndrome, which increases the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
These harmful substances can also result in longer menstrual cycles and early onset of puberty, which has been linked to depression, substance abuse, sexual assault and adult breast cancer.
The EDC group of PFAS has been linked to a reduction in a mother's lactation period, the timeframe that a woman produces breast milk, and researchers found a type of pesticide led to shortened menstrual cycles, which can affect reproduction.
During pregnancy, exposure to EDCs has been linked to maternal obesity, high blood pressure and preeclampsia, a life-threatening blood pressure condition.
Studies have also shown mixed results on EDC exposure and preterm birth.
Based on their results, researchers strongly advocate for eating organic food and avoiding plastics and canned foods and beverages.
Data also supports avoiding fast food, following a vegetarian diet, changing personal care products and reducing dust.
Using stainless steel or glass bottles and containers, as well as cardboard wrapping instead of plastic packaging and avoiding plastic utensils and non-stick cookware will also help reduce exposure to contaminants.
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Economist makes data-driven case for stable two-parent households: 'It's clear that kids benefit'
Brad Wilcox of the Institute for Family Studies shares the latest research which finds married Americans are much happier than singles. He explains why it's important for society to encourage young adults to pursue serious relationships.
It's no surprise that households have changed in the United States in recent decades. As marriage rates have declined, only 63 percent of children in the U.S. are now raised in homes with married parents. That number is even lower among the children of parents who don’t have a four-year college degree, one economist says.
But bringing awareness to the advantages of married families has become an "ideological battle," University of Maryland economics professor Melissa Kearney told Fox News Digital.
In her new book, "The Two-Parent Privilege," she analyzed research from dozens of economists, sociologists and psychologists on the class gap, and found married parents to be a common denominator affecting a child's success.
Married parents tend to have more time, energy, and resources available to bring to their children, she said. Children who are raised by parents who are in a stable, long-term relationship are more likely to graduate high school, to graduate college, and to have higher earnings as adults. The opposite is true for children who don't grow up in these households.
"So kids who grow up in a one-parent household are more likely to grow up in poverty. They're less likely to finish high school, they're less likely to go to college, they're more likely to get suspended from school or be involved with the criminal justice system," Kearney said.
This has less to do with parenting styles and more to do with the constraint on household resources, parental time, and supervision available to just one parent, she clarified.
While this information shouldn't be controversial, Kearney says just talking about the benefits married parents bring to children has unfortunately become politicized.
"And I think this is part of the problem as to why I don't think we do more to really focus on efforts to strengthen families and two-parent families, because it has become a very politicized issue. One of the main things I'm hoping to accomplish with my book is to take this out of the ideological cultural wars and say that, look, as a matter of social science, it's clear that kids benefit when they are growing up in healthy, stable two-parent homes," Kearney said.
Economist Melissa Kearney argues society benefits from more married parent households. She hopes her book will prompt a cultural discussion in how society can change these trends, at the policy level and elsewhere.
"We should talk about and experiment with and fund programs to try and figure out how to help more adults who have a child together, achieve that family structure for their kids and for themselves. We should be doing that at the same time as we're trying to strengthen the safety net in productive ways and improve schools," Kearney said. "It shouldn't be an ideological battle."
According to a report from the AEI-Brookings Working Group on Childhood in the United States, the percentage of young children, 12 and under, living in households with married parents, "declined from 83 percent in the mid-1970s to 71 percent in 2019."
"This decline in children living with two parents was accompanied by a steady increase in the percentage of children living with only their mother. This trend was entirely driven by a rise in the share of children living with never-married mothers, which increased from 3 percent in 1976 to 18 percent in 2019. The share of children living with divorced mothers held relatively steady over this period at 6 percent," the report said.
Nearly half of adults in a new Pew Research Center poll, believe the trend of children being raised by unmarried parents will have a negative impact on the country's future.
While on average, across all groups, kids from married parent homes have better outcomes, Kearney says there are clear outliers to these findings. For instance, children who are raised by two parents without college degrees may fare worse than children raised by a single mother with a college degree, she said. When a parent who has been convicted of a crime is removed from the home, kids typically fare better with just one parent, she explained.
There is no clear "policy lever to pull" to change these trends, Kearney says. Although she supports a strong Medicaid program for low-income children and an expanded child tax credit, she thinks there should be more funding and research into developing programs promoting safe and stable families as well.
"I agree that we need more public support to economically insecure families, but a government check is never going to make up for all the income and other types of support a loving, working second parent in the home would bring. Even in countries with much more generous welfare states than the U.S., family background matters for children’s outcomes. We should have a stronger safety net in the U.S., but we should also invest directly in parents and their ability to establish strong families." Kearney wrote.
Marriage doesn't just impact children's happiness; it also is the "number one predictor of happiness in America today," according to sociologist Brad Wilcox.
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Democrats Are Showing You Who They Are, Believe Them
Make no mistake, I never really thought they were great people. The party of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation isn’t suddenly going to pull a 180 and not be monsters; it’s who they are. They’ve never changed their objectives, only their tactics. Now, their embrace of segregation is done in the name of tolerance, of providing a “safe space” to minorities. But make no mistake, the end result is the same.
The terrorist attack in Israel two weeks ago brought out the worst in the left, but it’s also their true self. You can’t cheer for the wholesale murder of innocent people and “really be a good person, deep down.” No, that’s not how it works. It’s the opposite – they are raging bigots and monsters who manage to tamp it down below the surface most of the time until there’s something to protest or celebrate. It’s really that simple.
I’m not Jewish, and I’m disgusted. I can only imagine the sense of betrayal and horror Jews feel, as friends, neighbors, and colleagues felt so compelled to defend the murderers of Jews, for the express reason that they were Jewish, 24 hours after the attack. The Democratic Socialists of America, who count Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, and pretty must every other Nazi scum “progressive” among their ranks and supporter, marched in support of Hamas in New York City, the next day, before there was anywhere near an accurate body count, let alone an understanding of the scale of the evil. They didn’t march against Israel; they marched in favor of Hamas, literally celebrating the paragliders in the posters promoting it.
In the face of that, how can any normal person care what they have to say or do anything but recoil in disgust at what they’re advocating? They can’t.
The examples of the aforementioned Members of Congress spewing their anti-Semitism or lying about 500 dead in the most densely populated hospital on the planet, when there was really just a small parking lot fire caused by “friendly” terrorist fire, are well known. What isn’t as well known are the examples of small people in positions that wouldn’t get the attention an MSNBC host would, showing people the monsters they are.
Twitter, or X, is like a spyglass into the soul of its users. And in support of terrorists and hatred of Jews, X is marking the spot for leftists around the world to show the world their true selves.
A professor at UC Davis posted, “One group of ppl we have easy access to in the US is all these zionist journalists who spread propaganda & misinformation. The houses w addresses, kids in school. They can fear their bosses, but they should fear us more,” then added a knife, an ax, and three blood emojis. This person is also a “trans woman,” which means a man in drag. If you “misgender” him, the state of California would like to put you in prison. Still, he’ll probably be appointed to a tolerance board over his tweets.
A “doctor” in Denmark can’t stop posting about her hatred of Jews, a “libertarian” in the US pretends she’s a regular on “CSI: Gaza” for attention, college students everywhere sign letters that would be at home in Munich with the Brown Shirts, and seemingly “normal” people chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a blatant call for the genocide of Jews in Israel. And that’s without mentioning that all of these people have taken the side of Hamas, a terrorist organization with the self-professed purpose of eliminating Jews in Israel and everywhere on the planet.
These people have shown you who they are. Believe them. Do not hire them, do not say hello to them, or engage at all.
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‘Reliable’ Media Aren’t Ashamed of Fake News on Gaza Hospital Blast
The massive social media companies have all employed “independent fact-checkers” to improve their public image. Democrats and their allied media outlets have lamented that too much “misinformation” is shared on their platforms. “Fact-checkers” flag questionable posts, and they get blocked or limited.
None of this happens when left-wing media outlets commit their own misinformation. Facebook, Google and X (formerly Twitter) aren’t going to punish those “reliable sources” when they are egregiously incorrect. Their freedom of reach is never in doubt.
On Oct. 17, the terrorist group Hamas claimed Israel bombed a hospital in Gaza and killed hundreds of people. The headlines sounded like repeaters, not reporters.
The Associated Press: “Hundreds killed in Israeli airstrike on Gaza City hospital, health ministry says.”
The Reuters wire service: “Israeli air strike hits Gaza hospital, hundreds dead.”
CNN: “Israel hits hospital and school in Gaza as blockade cripples healthcare system.” Their first paragraph unspooled like this: “A school and a hospital in Gaza were among the civilian refuges lethally blasted during Israeli airstrikes on Tuesday, as humanitarian concerns mount over ongoing deprivation of food, fuel and electricity to the isolated population.”
On TV, CNN’s Jake Tapper claimed in those initial moments after the explosion that there was “no reason to doubt” the Hamas claims. Almost every other national outlet repeated these claims, at least on social media.
The New York Times homepage declared, front and center: “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinians Say.”
By the next morning, they all casually walked it back. The front page of the Times said, “Palestinians and Israelis Blame Each Other Ahead of Biden’s Arrival.” On Oct. 19, their front page asserted it “remains disputed,” but Biden “backed Israel’s contention that a Palestinian group” caused the explosion.
Biden’s National Security Council told reporters that a blast analysis suggests it was a ground explosion rather than an airstrike that hit the hospital, and that the extensive fire damage and scattered debris was consistent with an explosion starting from the ground level.
No one expects CNN or AP or Reuters — who all blamed Israel at the drop of their pens — to put their own “fact-checkers” on the case and explain how wrong they likely were. But the “prestige media” that lecture everyone else about being patsies for disinformation ought to be humbler and more apologetic about how they report on “mass casualty” events that have the potential to cause global unrest.
Instead, a Reuters Fact Check article from Oct. 19 shamelessly reported it is still in dispute: “The Palestinian Authority said an Israeli air strike on Oct. 17 killed hundreds of people at the Gaza hospital, while Israel said the blast was caused by a failed rocket launch by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad militant group.”
Those “independent fact-checkers” aren’t flagging Hamas for disinformation, but they’re still focusing on Republicans. CNN’s Daniel Dale pounced: “DeSantis campaign falsely describes (Nikki) Haley’s comments on the people of Gaza.” The only recent check by Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post is “Nikki Haley misleads town hall audience on Chinese land acquisitions.”
The leftist media can’t admit when they’ve dreadfully botched a story. Look no further than Hunter Biden’s laptop. In this case, they didn’t warn of the “hallmarks of Hamas misinformation.” They looked like slack-jawed amateurs.
Then they just washed their hands of it. The “PBS NewsHour” arrogantly insisted “Biden’s claims did little to dampen the fury ripping through the region.” They demand everyone outside their “professional” sphere should be rigorously fact-checked and deplatformed for a mistake. It’s not surprising that Gallup found public confidence in the press is at an all-time low.
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22 October, 2023
The moral problem is not the cycle of violence; it is Palestinian violence
Moral equivalence has two purposes. One is to enable the morally confused to hide their confusion. The other is to enable the immoral to hide their immorality.
Here are two examples as applied to the Israeli-Arab conflict:
One is the assertion we hear regarding the latest Israel-Hamas war by members of the Western Left, by Muslim supporters of the Palestinians and even by a few individuals on the Right: “Palestinian babies are as precious as Israeli babies.”
Professor Cornel West, a lifelong progressive running for president as a Democrat: “As I have said for the past 50 years, a precious Palestinian child has the same value as a precious Israeli child.”
David Cronin, an editor at Electronic Intifada, a large pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel website: “Palestinian babies are just as precious as my new daughter.”
A second example is to avoid condemning Hamas for the wars they start by instead condemning the “cycle of violence.”
Let’s analyze the two statements.
That the lives of Palestinian children are as precious as those of Israeli children is a given. But it is meaningless given that virtually no Israeli or Israel-supporter has ever claimed otherwise. Indeed, it is usually worse than meaningless. It is usually a nice-sounding way to attack Israel and its supporters.
Would those who make this assertion have made it during World War II?
After all, it is certainly true that Japanese and German children are as precious as American children. But what purpose would such an assertion have served? Would it have meant that Americans should drop no bombs on Japan or Germany? Presumably not.
And if it would have, the statement would have been nothing more than a pro-German or pro-Japanese sentiment.
Or would it have meant that America should avoid gratuitously killing Japanese and German civilians? If so, it would have served little purpose, since even if American pilots bombed only military and industrial targets inside Japan and Germany, many Japanese and German civilians, including children, would still have been killed.
And, to cite the best-known example, the killing of Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war in the Pacific, thereby saving an exponentially greater number of Japanese and American lives.
The reason America, Britain, and Canada dropped bombs on Germany, and the reason America dropped bombs on Japan, was solely because Germany and Japan started World War II and because they committed horrific evils.
Defeating those two countries was as clear a moral imperative as there could ever be. The Germans unleashed the unique slaughter known as the Holocaust and committed a massive number of atrocities against civilians in every country they conquered. The Japanese committed mass murder and Nazi-like atrocities on Chinese, Korean and Filipino civilians (such as grotesque medical experiments on non-anesthetized Chinese and the use of conquered women to be gang-raped on a daily basis by Japanese soldiers).
Therefore, why would someone have noted during World War II that Japanese and German babies are as precious as American or British babies? If it were to encourage the Allies to avoid gratuitous civilian deaths, and the maker of the statement were clear about the necessity and morality of bombing those terrible countries, no one would have disputed the statement. But if it were to draw some moral equivalence between the Allies and Japan and Germany, between their bombings and the Allied bombings, the person would be abettor of evil.
The same holds true for all those who now assert that Israeli and Palestinian children are equally precious. Given that the Palestinian regime in Gaza (i.e., Hamas) is dedicated to murdering every Jew in Israel—great-grandmothers down to infants; given that Hamas and all their Muslim and non-Muslim left-wing supporters around the world seek to annihilate the nation of Israel; given that Israel has, almost uniquely among the nations of the world, regularly warned Gaza civilians to evacuate buildings that Israel planned to bomb (thereby losing the advantage of a surprise attack on Hamas operatives); and given that Hamas places its leaders and weapons in schools, hospitals and apartment buildings for the express purpose of bringing death down on women and children, what exactly do those who assert that Israeli and Palestinian babies are equally precious seek to accomplish?
Unless accompanied by a completely unambiguous condemnation of the Hamas attacks on Israel via thousands of rockets and directly on Jewish parents and children, including babies, as war crimes and utter evil; and unless accompanied by a clear moral distinction between Israel and Hamas, the only reason for announcing that Israeli and Palestinian babies are equally precious is to engage in anti-Israel moral relativism.
Indeed, the only context in which this assertion would be useful is if it were directed at Hamas and its Muslim and left-wing supporters. It is they who do not believe that Israeli and Palestinian children are equally precious. As Al-Monitor, a nonpartisan Mideast news website founded by an Arab-American, reported:
“The Israeli medical staff of Tel Hashomer Hospital is fighting for the life of a 6-month-old Palestinian infant abandoned by her parents. … Cancer-stricken children from the West Bank and Gaza have always been treated there alongside children from Israel.”
As regards the “cycle of violence,” it is hard to imagine a more anodyne description of the Israel-Hamas war.
Again, did anyone ever use this as a description of World War II? Why not? There certainly was a cycle of violence. But no one ever used the term, because it would have been an immoral description of what was happening. The “cycle of violence” was not the problem; Japanese and German violence was the problem.
And that is the case now. The moral problem is not the cycle of violence; it is Palestinian violence.
Without violence from Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, there would be no “cycle of violence.”
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UK: Tories in name only
By SIR JACOB REES-MOGG
Nothing is being done to inspire voters to turn out, and to assume that they will do so next year to stop Sir Keir Starmer is wishful thinking.
Sir Keir has been busy putting on Tory clothes, learning from the electorally-successful Sir Tony Blair.
In such a way, he appears much less threatening than either Corbyn or Miliband.
In recent weeks, some of the Government's rhetoric has improved a little.
However, as yet, the actions do not follow the words.
Rishi Sunak's speech on reducing the impact of net zero regulation was a start.
But the penal Energy Bill is just days from Royal Assent.
Among other terrors, it makes provision for sending people to prison who make mistakes on their home insulation
It is simply no good to oppose more regulation in the spoken word while introducing it in the black letter of legislation.
Words and actions must meet and as the words are popular, they need to be followed up with action.
We also need to stop attacking Tory voters.
On Monday, we'll see the landlord-bashing Renters Reform Bill in the Commons.
It is unpopular with Tory MPs and the Whips' Office apparently advised against it.
But Downing Street insists on ploughing ahead with a Bill that will hurt renters as well as landlords in a socialist belief in regulating free contracts to stop landlords and tenants agreeing mutually beneficial arrangements.
It should be dropped.
Moreover, whichever clever clogs in Number 10 thought announcing a ban on conversion therapy on the morning of a by-election needs to be found a comfortable place in a rest home.
It is a policy that accepts the most extreme version of the gender change fanatics, bans abuse that is already illegal and is at the apex of woke ideology.
It is in no way conservative and I expect any Conservative who read about it on Thursday morning in Tamworth or Mid-Bedfordshire left their umbrellas firmly furled and their front door firmly closed.
Taxation is another area where there is no incentive for Conservatives to go out to vote.
Even Sir Keir Starmer says that the burden is too high, while the Government is in thrall to the OBR and the Bank of England, whose error-strewn record is only too apparent.
The State spends and taxes too much, and both need to be reduced.
The recently-announced decision to trim the Civil Service is simply not ambitious enough.
It is only two-thirds of the plan that was ready to be put into action a year ago.
More decisions to cut back on folly, as with the welcome cancellation of HS2, need to be made, and Tory Ministers need to stop defining their success by how much they spend.
When a Minister says we have increased government spending on this or that worthy cause, what he really means is: I have placed an extra burden on taxpayers.
Instead, the money needs to be found to help families and businesses.
The Corporation Tax rise should be reversed, death duties scrapped and fiscal drag - that is putting millions of people's income tax rate up from 20 per cent to 40 per cent on the same real income, needs to be tackled.
To boost the economy further, the Government must use the Brexit freedoms that it has been so timid about thus far.
Instead of scrapping EU regulations, the Government decided to keep them, worried that it might accidentally abolish unnecessary red tape.
However, this has meant it has kept hundreds of unnecessary regulations that British governments opposed when they were introduced, and has so far only repealed fairly unimportant items.
It needs to act swiftly to remove any regulations that damage the consumer interest, such as the ban on parallel imports, or the REACH regulations, which simply act as a barrier to innovation and competition in the chemical industry.
Deregulation lowers costs, helps reduce inflation and makes everyone better off.
The Government also needs to be clear on immigration.
Small boats are a problem which needs to be tackled.
But it is by no means not the whole problem.
Net migration of 606,000 in 2022 is simply too much.
Post-Brexit, it is under the control of the Government to reduce this scale of net migration as the rules are made by secondary legislation.
Yet once again, the malign hand of the Treasury and the OBR is behind the excessive influx as they focus on GDP, not GDP per capita.
But it is not just an economic issue.
It is also about integration and infrastructure.
How can society cope?
In a way, the focus on small boats has been a distraction from the real problem.
But it has not distracted the communities affected by this scale of inward migration.
Above all, the Prime Minister needs to concentrate on the big issues and forget the trivial.
No-one is excited about maths to 18 or changes to A levels in 20 years' time, or indeed a smoking ban set for an arbitrary date that means Peter and Mary can buy cigarettes for Thomas, Anselm, Alfred and Sixtus for the rest of their lives.
A ban that encourages a domestic black market for the Rees-Mogg family is nugatory.
It is high time to stop hitting our own voters with policies that make them worse off or with woke nonsense that offends them.
Instead, we need to start cutting the size of the State, tax cuts that give people back their own money and a solution to the migration issue.
Perhaps like Henry the Sixth, the Conservative Party and government will suddenly wake up.
If we don't, last week's by-election results will be simply an early taste of the bitter outcome of next year's General Election.
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Why aren’t ‘anti-fascists’ condemning the tide of anti-Semitism?
I have a question about the events of the past few days: where is Antifa? Where are those self-styled anti-fascists who love to rage against anything that is even vaguely reminiscent of the 1930s?
Jews in Israel have been rounded up and murdered. Disgusting anti-Semites are on the streets of Sydney screaming, ‘Gas the Jews! Fuck the Jews!’ Mobs in London have taunted Israel, essentially laughing over its dead Jews. Britain’s Jewish schoolkids are taking off their blazers lest anyone recognise them as Jews and attack them. Across Europe security is being beefed up at Jewish establishments — schools, synagogues, museums — out of fear that Hamas-supporting mobs will invade and desecrate them.
And yet Antifa is nowhere to be seen. The thing these lefties fearmonger about all the time — the creeping return of the boiling hatreds of the 1930s — feels more real than ever and they’re saying nothing. It’s a strange anti-fascism that takes a break when something very much like fascism rears its repulsive head.
Following the slaughter in Israel the Western left stands exposed like never before
To the modern left, everything is fascism except actual fascism. Everything is ‘like the 1930s’ except the slaughter of Jewish youths, the kidnapping of Jewish grandmothers, the rise of mobs demanding a second Holocaust.
‘Fascist!’, they cry at everyone they disagree with, like real-life versions of Rick from The Young Ones. Yet when real Nazi scum show up, like that mob in Sydney crying ‘Gas the Jews!’, they turn coy.
Back Brexit and they’ll call you far right. Say a man can never become a woman and they’ll brand you a fellow traveller of fascism. Wonder out loud if we should try to do something about illegal immigration and they’ll say, ‘This is starting to feel a bit 1930s’.
But wipe out entire Jewish families? Gun down Jewish festivalgoers? Kidnap an elderly woman who survived the Holocaust? Mock Jews on the streets of our cities? Then they’ll erm and ahh. That’s ‘resistance’ apparently, not racism. It’s a rebellion, not fascism. It’s a ‘day of celebration’, as Novara Media’s commissioning editor said of Hamas’s invasion of Israel on Saturday, not a return of the bigotries of the 1930s.
Surely nothing better captures the moral disorientation of the radical left than the fact that they are more likely to use the word ‘fascist’ about their own fellow citizens who voted Leave or who defend women-only spaces than they are about a radical Islamist in Gaza who spits on the dead body of a woman who was murdered on the presumption that she was Jewish.
The surrealism of the ‘fascism’ issue is best summed up by events in Australia. Something genuinely horrific happened outside the Sydney Opera House yesterday, as mobs of Hamas backers hollered for the mass murder of Jews.
The opera house was lit up in the colours of the Israeli flag but Australia’s Jews could not go there to mourn or to connect with one another because a baying mob was there calling for them to be shoved back in the ovens. This requires serious self-reflection on Australia’s part. Any nation in which such a sick thing can happen has a duty to reckon with itself.
And yet I remember there being far more online fury, especially from Antifa, when Kellie-Jay Keen, aka Posie Parker, was in Australia earlier this year. Her Let Women Speak events Down Under, at which women agitate against the idea that blokes can become women, were furiously counterprotested by the masked anti-fascists of the modern left.
Where were these people yesterday? Why were they not counterprotesting the radical Islamists who were calling for another genocide of the Jews?
It is a curious anti-fascism that gets more riled up by a diminutive British lady whose only crime is to understand biology than it does by a baying mob that wants to eliminate the Jewish people.
Following the slaughter in Israel the Western left stands exposed like never before. I don’t think they realise how hard it will be for them to come back from this. Jews murdered by a virulently anti-Semitic movement, Jews taunted on our streets, Jews living in fear across our continent, and they said: ‘Well…you know…what did Israel expect?’
They’ve been fighting fantasy fascism for years, yet when real fascism came, they hid, they looked the other way, they made excuses. If they think this isn’t being clocked by people around the country, by the decent majority who abhor radical Islamist bigotry against Jews, women and others, then they’re even dimmer than I thought.
Here’s the thing: today’s Jew haters are even targeting the same people that yesterday’s Jew haters did. It is reported that the wheelchair-bound grandmother snatched by Hamas and spirited into Gaza is a survivor of the Holocaust. If you want to know how you would have reacted the first time this lady’s life was turned upside down by a movement of violent anti-Semites, just look at how you’ve responded the second time it happened.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/why-arent-anti-fascists-condemning-the-tide-of-anti-semitism
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Australians the most promiscuous?
There would seem to be a number of problems with the figures below. For a start, men and women are not separated out A lot of women do have few partners and a lot of men have many. I stopped counting when I had been with 50 women.
And the age of the people could matter too. I came of age in the 60s when "free love" was all the rage. I did participate in that culture to a degree. I have happy memories of it in fact. I gather that young people these days tend to be less promiscuous than their parents were at the same age.
But it is possible that the figures below have some accuracy. Australians do tend to be laid back and religion is not influential for the great majority of Australians
Despite the country’s Puritan past, the average US citizen has slept with more than 10 people, according to raunchy research into the world’s most promiscuous countries.
NapLab compiled data from various sources to come up with their list, looking at national sexually transmitted infection rates, a country’s attitudes toward premarital sex and the average number of sex partners, among other criteria.
America was declared the 15th most promiscuous country on the planet by NapLab, with the average resident sleeping with 10.7 people over the course of their lifetime.
That’s on par with Canada, as our naughty northern neighbors also notch up an average of 10.7 bedroom buddies.
However, Mexicans are less promiscuous than those in the US, with their average citizen sleeping with nine people.
Brits were also less likely to have as many sex partners (9.8 on average), as were the Spanish (6.1), the Polish (6) and the Chinese (3.1).
Meanwhile, Australia was named the most promiscuous country in the world, with the average citizen sleeping with 13.3 people and 81% of residents approving of sex before marriage.
Prostitution is also legalized Down Under, while the average Aussie loses their virginity at a younger age than the average American (17.8 years versus 18 years).
Despite their citizens seeming to sleep around more on average, Australia had lower rates of sexually transmitted diseases, also known as STDs, than the US.
The STD rate is 14,454 per 100,000 citizens in Australia, while it’s a far higher 19,900 per 100,000 people in the US.
India was named by NapLab as the least promiscuous of the 45 countries they examined. Just 19% of Indians thought premarital sex was acceptable, while the average citizen had had just three sex partners. India also had relatively low STD rates when compared to other countries on the list
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20 October, 2023
Jews, Like Palestinians, Are 'Indigenous' to the Middle East
Leftists who openly celebrated the horrifying Hamas attacks in southern Israel argued that the end -- liberation of Palestine "from the river to the sea" -- justified the means, including the indiscriminate slaughter of young rave revelers, elderly Holocaust survivors, children and babies. Although that is a minority position even among harsh critics of Israeli policy, it reflects a more widely endorsed view that Jews, as "settlers" and "colonizers," have no legitimate claim to any of the country's territory and no business living there.
That view, in turn, is based on a simplistic morality tale that pits white European oppressors against "indigenous" people, eliding Israel's demographic roots and the ancient Jewish connection to the land. While this missing context is unlikely to faze people who see mass murder as a noble and heroic act of resistance, it is relevant for anyone who can imagine a less bloody resolution of Palestinian grievances.
In a speech last August, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who supposedly is committed to a peaceful settlement with Israel, asserted that "the Ashkenazi Jews, at least, are not Semites," meaning it is impossible for them to be victims of antisemitism. Abbas was invoking a theory positing that the Jews of Europe descended from the Khazars, a Turkic tribe that supposedly converted en masse to Judaism in the ninth century.
According to a 2016 summary by genetic researchers Ariella Gladstein and Michael F. Hammer, however, "Ashkenazi Jews are not closely related to modern populations that best represent the Khazars." Rather, they "appear equally close to both Middle Eastern and European populations," and they "likely arose from a genetically diverse population in the Middle East."
Notably, Abbas did not address Mizrahim, Jews of Middle Eastern and North African origin, who account for about 45% of Israel's Jewish population, compared to 32% for Ashkenazim. Overall, a 2000 study found, "a substantial portion" of Jewish and Arab Y chromosomes (70% and 82%, respectively) belonged to the same chromosome pool, results that were consistent with "previous studies that suggested a common origin for Jewish and non-Jewish populations living in the Middle East."
A 2001 study by the same researchers, which found "a high degree of genetic affinity" among Ashkenazi, Mizrahi and Kurdish Jews, also found that Jews were "even closer to populations in the northern part of the Middle East than to several Arab populations." The authors suggested that "the Y chromosomes in Palestinian Arabs" reflected "early lineages derived from the Neolithic inhabitants of the area," which "are part of the common chromosome pool shared with Jews," combined with the impact of subsequent migrations from the Arabian Peninsula.
While genetic research belies the notion that Jews are newcomers to the Middle East, it gets you only so far. In particular, it does not address conflicting land claims based on much more recent developments.
Israel's founding in 1948, which most Jews celebrate but most Palestinians remember as the Nakba (catastrophe), involved a mixture of prior land purchases, arbitrary line drawing by the United Nations, and a war in which the nascent state was attacked by the combined armies of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Some of the 700,000 or so Palestinians who fled their homes planned to return after the anticipated Arab victory, while others were forcibly expelled.
Israel's defenders have long argued that it could rightly claim land won in defensive wars -- in 1967 as well as 1948. They have noted that Israel absorbed Jewish refugees from Arab states and wondered why Arab states could not likewise absorb Palestinian refugees.
While there is something to these arguments, the overall message -- that Palestinians should suck it up and start over somewhere else -- is less than completely satisfying for anyone who values individual rights and peaceful coexistence. But that no-compromise position is only reinforced by extremists who take a similar view of Jews, whether or not they are prepared to endorse the final solution that Hamas prefers.
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Antisemitism rampant
The murderous attack on Israel has ripped away what remained of a thin veneer that has covered up growing antisemitism in America and some of the rest of the world. Until now it has only periodically raised its ugly head. The reaction by pro-Palestinian groups to Israel's necessary and defensible response to the terrorist attacks from Gaza reveals how this disease has spread.
For years prior to the invasion, there were occasional demonstrations against Jewish and pro-Israel speakers on some college campuses. Now, students and even some college presidents have blamed the killings on Israel for its "occupation" of land that is rightfully and historically theirs. This is like blaming Jews for their own deaths in the Holocaust.
After the attacks by Hamas, swastikas emerged in several U.S. cities. The BBC reported antisemitic incidents "quadrupled in the UK."
We are constantly warned that words matter and so they do. Words can be used to heal, or to incite. The American Jewish Committee (AJC) has compiled a partial list of words used against Jews that have fueled hatred and violence, dating back to medieval times, and now reborn and spread by antisemitic websites.
Two of these include "Dirty, filthy Jews" an d " dual loyalty," the latter even used by ex-President Trump to suggest that Jews born in America a re more loyal to Israel than the U.S.
"From the river to the sea" is another. AJC notes " At a London rally organized by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign on October 9, demonstrators in front of the Israeli embassy chanted 'From the River to the Sea' - a call for Palestinian control over the entirety of Israel's borders, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea."
While it is free expression to advocate for Palestinians to have their own state, this chant is an undisguised call for the state of Israel to be eliminated, which is the point of the Hamas Charter and the goal of Iran.
Add "Deicide" and "Blood Libel" to the list. AJC cites a protestor's sign in Miami that read "Jesus was Palestinian, and you killed him too!"
"In Los Angeles, protesters hoisted a banner with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wearing a Hitler mustache and devouring a Palestinian child. Both tropes voiced in 2021 echo centuries-old methods of maligning Jews."
Then there are the Holocaust deniers. These include people who say The Diary of Anne Frank is fake. Some also claim the Holocaust (if it happened) was a rationale for illegally establishing the modern Jewish state in 1948. Jews have had a presence in the land for nearly 4,000 years. There are also those who say the number of Jews killed during World War II was far less than 6 million.
No wonder Gen. Dwight Eisenhower ordered photographers to capture images at some of the Nazi death camps. He foresaw there would be people who would deny it happened.
Lyricist Oscar Hammerstein wrote a powerful song for the Broadway musical "South Pacific." Producers wanted to keep it out of the film adaptation, but Hammerstein argued for its inclusion and prevailed. It's called"You've Got to Be Carefully Taught." Babies aren't born haters. Antisemitic books like "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and other literature have been amplified today because of social media and various groups with which troubled minds associate, teaching them to hate Jews (and others).
There is no "cure" for antisemitism, but universal denunciation by all people of good will might help push it back in the closet, or under the Earth where it belongs. It also might help if some pro-Palestinian students were forced to listen to a Holocaust survivor and the true history of Judaism and Israel.
https://townhall.com/columnists/calthomas/2023/10/17/raw-antisemitism-exposed-n2629902
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JK Rowling Says She’ll ‘Happily’ Do Prison Time for This
This week, “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling said she would “happily” do prison time for misgendering someone who identifies as transgender.
Rowling’s remarks came after the outlet Daily Mail published a story claiming that calling someone by the “wrong” pronoun could become a crime under a left-wing government.
“Labour would make attacks motivated by hatred of the victim's gender identity into 'aggravated offences', including deliberately calling a person by the wrong pronouns,” the report stated. “ “This would bring transphobic abuse into line with assault and harassment motivated by hatred on the grounds of race or religion, which are punishable by up to two years in prison.”
Rowling responded to the news on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“I’ll happily do two years if the alternative is compelled speech and forced denial of the reality and importance of sex,” Rowling wrote.
In recent years, Rowling has faced criticism, harassment and death threats for refusing to “affirm” transgender ideology, which Townhall has covered. This year, on a podcast episode of “The Witch Trials of J.K. Rowling,” the author said she has come to the conclusion that the transgender movement is “dangerous.”
“I can only say that I’ve thought about it deeply and hard and long. And I’ve listened, I promise, to the other side,” she said. “And I believe, absolutely, that there is something dangerous about this movement, and it must be challenged.”
“I am fighting what I see as a powerful, insidious misogynistic movement that I think has gained huge purchase in very influential areas of society. I do not see this particular movement as either benign or powerless,” she added. “So I’m afraid I stand with the women who are fighting to be heard against threats of loss of livelihood and threats to their safety.”
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/10/19/jk-rowling-transgender-n2630070 ?
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So many things in society are "wrong" to the Left -- but slaughtering Jews is OK
I'm hoping liberals' instinct for taking the side of barbarism against civilization has taken a hit after seeing so many stories of the BLM movement bellowing their love for Palestinian terrorists paragliding into Israel to butcher, rape and kidnap thousands of Israeli civilians, including infants and elderly dementia patients. It's hard not to notice that the most unrestrained celebrations of the Hamas killers are coming from BLM members, the "colonized," diversity beneficiaries, the "Indigenous," non-Western immigrants and other affirmative action cases.
You unleashed 'em, liberals!
After George Floyd died and was deified on May 25, 2020, the left's coddling of black people (and the black-adjacent) went into overdrive. For three years, this Brahmin caste has been able to get away with anything.
They've gleefully dynamited historic statues, destroyed industries with their racist "equity, not equality" demands, bullied their way onto corporate boards and into every TV commercial, and openly discriminated against white men to elevate the incompetent.
They've shamelessly grafted multiple millions of dollars from post-Floyd "causes" like Black Lives Matter and Ibram X. Kendi's Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University.
They've succeeded in getting the media and universities to ban words like "picnic," "chief," "American," "master bedroom" and "English department." Seriously.
And that's to say nothing of their penalty-free shoplifting, carjacking, maiming and murdering.
But say one little thing wrong about Israel, and everybody gets upset!
Black Lives Matter Chicago put out a statement on Twitter (screw you, Elon -- it'll always be Twitter to me), exuberantly praising Hamas' indiscriminate murder of 1,500 Israeli civilians. Under a drawing of a Palestinian paraglider, the post said, "I STAND WITH PALESTINE."
Facing outrage, the little darlings doubled down, tweeting:
"Yesterday we sent out [messages] that we aren't proud of. We stand with Palestine & the people who will do what they must to live free. Our hearts are with the grieving mothers, those rescuing babies from rubble, who are in danger of being wiped out completely."
This was followed by lots more tweets about defunding the police, Stop Cop City, Israel training the Chicago police -- along with more cheerleading for Hamas.
As they explained, it's all the same thing: "Another mean zionist attempt to get us to switch sides to the genoside [sic] & shut up while they bomb away the homeland of our Palestinian fam who stood on the front lines with us against cops (who get weapons & training from where?) when they killed Laquan & tried to cover it up."
Yes, it is the same thing. It's always barbarians against civilization. Are liberals still OK with the monsters they've created? Are liberal Jews?
Ryna Workman, the black president of New York University's School of Law Student Bar Association, issued a doozy of a statement about the attack in her weekly newsletter. She vowed her "unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression." She held Israelis 100% responsible for their own murders, saying, "Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life."
Did I mention Workman is also nonbinary? With that bio, what couldn't she get away with? "They" (as we're supposed to call her) soon found out! The prestigious law firm Winston & Strawn promptly rescinded her offer of employment.
Next partners meeting: Whew! We sure dodged an affirmative action bullet with that one!
Brain teaser: Would the law firm's offer have been withdrawn if Workman had merely burned down a police station during a BLM riot?
Cornell University professor Russell Rickford, whose areas of concentration are African Americans, Africa, African people, black power, African culture and the Renaissance -- oh no, I'm sorry, I mean African radical politics -- spoke at a pro-Hamas rally, saying that after the attack, Palestinians were "able to breathe for the first time in years." He added: "It was exhilarating. It was energizing ... I was exhilarated." (I think he liked it!)
The Anti-Defamation League (business model: defame white Christians) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (business model: defame white Christians) have long defended the systematic murder of white farmers in South Africa, claiming that anyone who mentions it is promoting a "racist conspiracy theory."
Just a few months ago, a South African politician was leading tens of thousands in the song, "Kill the Boer" (the farmer). (Soon to be available on Apple Music, no doubt.)
Genocide Watch (run by a former Clinton State Department official) published the personal account of a South African a few years ago, explaining that most of the country's political parties "view SA-whites as imperialist colonisers and blacks as the exploited local population. In light of SA's Apartheid-history, whites' property is seen as illegitimately acquired (the colonizers vs colonised paradigm) and therefore needs to be redistributed to blacks."
Hey, Jonathan Greenblatt! Sound familiar? Maybe the head of the ADL should try reading Hamas literature sometime and leave white people alone.
Like night follows day, the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, responded to the bloodbath in Israel by pledging "solidarity with the people of Palestine." (BLM Chicago approved!)
If the ADL gives him any guff, maybe he should try putting out a statement calling the slaughter of Israelis a "racist conspiracy theory."
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19 October, 2023
Why Do Liberals Love Hamas So Much?
It's not all that mysterious. Leftists are angry people -- angry at the world about them, their own country and society most particularly. But Israel is very much a chip off the block of successful Western society. It is prosperous and successful and tolerant in many ways. It is almost an outpost of America. And the Left hate it for that. So at a minimum they will not support Israel and they love it that Hamas really hates Israel. They see Hamas hate as akin to their hate.
Hamas hate is in fact a different hate. Both in the Quran and in the Hadiths, Mohammed condemned Jews, even though he stole large parts of their holy book. Even the Arabic word for god -- "Allah" -- is a steal from the Hebrew word for a god -- "Eloah". So Hamas hate is religious hate. But any hate against Israel is ok to the Left
In the days of Harry Truman, the Left supported Israel. But since then Israel has become triumphant and strong -- and that is unforgiveable
As reports of Hamas war crimes, inhuman atrocity, and medieval Muhammadist brutality continue to stream into our consciousness, a steady parade of terror apologists bugle their inveterate support for all things barbaric.
We’ve heard unimaginably callous statements from The Squad, Ivy League students, and the “social justice” organization BLM regarding the manifold cruelties perpetrated on Israeli citizens. Hamas swine have carried out their diabolical tasks with a relish not witnessed since the genocidal mania displayed by Hitler, Mengele, and Himmler.
Then, as now, the usual suspects have appeared to offer their heartfelt support for the forces of tyranny and homicide. The New York Times famously lent the considerable weight of its commentary to the budding dictator and would-be second coming of Alexander the Great — Adolph Hitler. You’d have thought the Times learned a lesson with Adolph, but the Grey Lady’s sages swooned for the Iron Curtain and one of history’s most accomplished butchers, Joseph Stalin.
And, as the leading publication of record, the Times bore the banner of hate, racism, and bigotry for a media complex now completely devoted to the mechanism of statist propaganda. Hate for anyone guilty of naughty thinking; racism as a tool of political and social subjugation; and bigotry against any democratizing influence that threatens the hegemony of elitism.
Liberalism is legion — finding a host and corporeal form in the Democrat party, our institutions of “higher learning,” and in the legacy media. And, as Christ said speaking of another demonic spirit, “This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.” (Matthew 9:29)
There really are only two worldviews. One view acknowledges the fundamentally fallen, depraved nature of man. The other views mankind as containing a spark of Divinity. Basically good, but prone to do evil as the result of outside forces shaping human nature. This is the fundamental presupposition of Utopianism which has spawned every totalitarian regime since the Tower of Babel.
Think about every “people’s movement” throughout history. The promise of heaven on earth, built brick by brick into a towering ziggurat of hubris, is always the same. If only we could construct a government with benevolent and supremely intellectual autocrats, we could bask in the light and comity of a blossoming humanity fostered by an enlightened citizenry educated, or as Hillary would put it, “deprogrammed” out of every vice. This is the simpering stupidity of liberalism. Sixty million murdered soviet citizens speak most eloquently to that point.
At the very center of the utopian model is the exercise of centralized power over a subjugated populace. The flavors vary, but it’s all the same slurry of empty calories and sugar. Democrats lust for bigger government because it represents movement toward the ultimate objective, their complete and total control, effectuated by their radiant intellect, and performing the necessary modulations of social control to optimize, support, and perpetuate the metabolic functions of the state.
Just as in the Matrix, liberalism’s Kingdom Come is an exalted state that utilizes individuals as batteries—a disposable and renewable resource in the service of its own biological function.
Hamas, and terrorist organizations like it, represent the exercise of sheer power, both physical and psychological. The anarchy it creates excites the totalitarian spirit and inflames the insatiable lust of statists who witness the transformation of the geopolitical space in real time. They are titillated by the destruction of democratic processes and institutions, and are pressed beyond measure by their exuberance—excusing the inexcusable in a frenetic attempt to publicly reconcile barbarism with their utopian vision.
The terrorism of Hamas is an opportunity to see statists for what they really are. Whether in academe, politics, or pop culture, they can’t help but cheer the slaughter and mayhem, because secretly, they’d blithely sacrifice whole continents to their benevolent, all consuming governmental god.
Make no mistake, they’d feed naughty thinkers wholesale into the furnace if they could only eradicate the people’s tool of power—the gun.
It’s no coincidence that Israel is the Middle East’s only democracy. An oasis in a sea of totalitarian Muhammadists. Israel is the repository of the Biblical principles that make the civil society possible, the fundamental social precondition for democratic republics. Israel is the political embodiment of the Biblical truth that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
America shares the same theological and philosophical traditions as Israel. Our founding fathers understood that man is fallen, bent toward evil, and never to be implicitly trusted with temporal authority. This understanding is the reason for the meticulous construction of checks and balances in our Constitution. It’s the reason we have enjoyed liberty and the ability to pursue happiness for over two centuries.
Liberalism maintains a view of humanity that is antithetical to what the Bible teaches. And, not coincidentally has produced social systems and political structures that have dehumanized and transformed the individual into a resource for the state to use and dispose of according to the capricious inclination of dictators and despots.
What they don’t want you to understand is that organizations like Hamas are, in their view, agents of change, catalysts in the struggle of the proletariat in a Marxist materialistic dialectic. Statism, Utopianism, and Marxism are all kissing cousins, and that’s why you often find them making common cause across the geopolitical spectrum. China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, and other countries that make up the modern axis of evil share a commonality as ancient as Babylon—they hate the idea of the individual, created in the image of God, imbued with inalienable rights that supersede the interests of the state.
Why do liberals seem to love terrorism so much? Because the significance of the individual is less than nothing in comparison to their political ambition. Of course, they may not admit to themselves the staggering scale of their own inhumanity. But, that’s the whole problem isn’t it? “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnnantz/2023/10/17/why-do-liberals-love-hamas-so-much-n2629938
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Religious Freedom Again in Legal Peril in Finland
“It is not for the district court to interpret biblical concepts.”
Such was the judgment of the Finnish court tasked with ruling on the case of Päivi Räsänen, a 28-year member of the Finnish parliament, former minister of the interior, medical doctor, grandmother, and Christian prosecuted for “hate speech.”
Her “crime”? Publicly sharing her faith-based views of human sexuality.
In the spring of 2022, Räsänen was unanimously acquitted by the court. The court even ordered the prosecution to pay more than 60,000 euros in legal costs.
That was a tremendous victory for free speech with reverberations heard around the world.
Unfortunately, the decision did not satisfy the Finnish state prosecutors, who appealed the “not guilty” verdict on the basis that the court reached the wrong conclusion.
For simply sharing her faith-based convictions, Räsänen, 64, went back on trial on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, with the support of the Christian legal organization ADF International. A verdict in her case is expected in the coming months.
The case dates back to 2019, when Räsänen posted on Twitter, questioning her church’s official sponsorship of the Helsinki “Pride 2019” event. Her tweet included a snapshot of a Bible verse.
Following the tweet, authorities dug into her past, investigating a pamphlet that she authored for her church in 2004 on sexuality and marriage.
She subsequently faced three criminal charges—for the tweet, the pamphlet, and for comments she had made on a 2019 radio show. At that point, it was becoming clear that the basic human right to free speech was not alive and well in Finland.
Following a criminal trial and countless lies spread by the media, Räsänen has become a global champion in the fight for free speech and religious freedom.
It is a scandal worthy of international attention that this case has been prosecuted not just once, but twice. The first, unanimous ruling affirmed what we all know; namely, Räsänen committed no crime in exercising her fundamental freedoms.
Free speech is a myth if religious speech is not protected. The restriction of peaceful speech has no place in a free society.
This case demonstrates how censorship starts to tear apart democracies like their dictatorial counterparts. After all, Finland regularly receives high marks for its fidelity to the rule of law, but how free is a country where the full force of the law can be weaponized to silence peaceful speech?
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/10/16/religious-freedom-again-in-legal-peril-in-finland
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Trans Access to Girls’ Restrooms and Related Legal Claims Fail in Federal Court
A federal district court in Idaho just declined to halt the operation of a state law mandating that public schools separate their bathrooms and housing accommodations by biological sex.
The commonsense decision Thursday comes as more and more federal courts across the country conclude that state laws preventing the expansion of “gender identity” rights are constitutional.
The growing line of precedent cabining transgender arguments is good news for those who understand the category of biological sex to be more important than a subjective state of mind—which is the entire premise of gender identity.
For example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upheld Tennessee’s law banning so-called gender-affirming care for minors in the state; the 11th Circuit upheld Alabama’s law prohibiting the same.
Neither federal court found the state laws to be a violation of a parent’s constitutional due process right to raise his or her children as desired. The 11th Circuit also held this year that a school’s sex-segregated bathroom policy isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause because it treats all students equally, regardless of sex.
In Idaho, in Roe v. Critchfield, a federal district court judge earlier had issued a temporary restraining order against the law to maintain the status quo. But after considering additional arguments by counsel, the court declined to block the law, finding that the plaintiffs had failed to meet their burden of proving that they had a substantial likelihood of ultimately winning the case.
However, the court did allow the legal challenge by an anonymous transgender student, known as Rebecca Roe, to proceed to trial. The judge said it was a “difficult case,” and this “area of law (and societal policy) is evolving.”
Roe, a 12-year-old biological boy who sought to use the girls’ bathroom at a middle school within the Boise, Idaho, school district, filed a lawsuit to invalidate Idaho’s law, known as SB 1100. (Having been the mother of two 12-year-old boys, I know full well that 12-year-old boys are hormonal cretins. What could possibly go wrong? *Eyeroll*)
Although the law requires public schools to maintain sex-separated bathrooms and overnight accommodations, it provides an option for schools to make a “reasonable accommodation” to any student who is “unwilling or unable to use a multioccupancy restroom or changing facility designated for the person’s sex.”
Dissatisfied with the accommodation carve-out, Roe claimed that the Idaho law violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and Roe’s right to privacy.
The Constitution’s equal protection clause requires that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
When considering a claim premised on sex or gender discrimination, a court must apply intermediate scrutiny review. That is, the government must establish that the challenged law furthers an important government interest and the means chosen to advance that interest must be substantially related to that interest.
In his opinion, Chief Judge David Nye found that the privacy and safety of students were important government interests, and that separating bathrooms based on sex was substantially related to those interests.
Nye also was not convinced that Roe’s claim was likely to succeed under Title IX—the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any educational program that receives federal funding. Nye wrote that Title IX specifically allows for sex-separate facilities, and as a result, SB 1100 did not violate Title IX, but rather, adhered to it.
As for Roe’s claim that the law violated his right to privacy, Nye wrote that the issue was whether a “student must, against his or her wishes, be forced to change (or undertake other private duties) in the presence of someone of the opposite sex.”
The law, Nye determined, wasn’t based on any animus against transgender students, but rather was enacted to protect the legitimate privacy interests of the sexes. A statute can lawfully classify individuals based on biological sex without unlawfully discriminating based on transgender status.
Nye’s decision also hearkened to the 6th Circuit’s decision in upholding the Tennessee law banning “gender-affirming” medical interventions for minors.
The judge wrote:
The court, however, must stay in its lane. It cannot provide guidance on how elected officials should navigate these difficult situations. It can only decide whether the action they have taken withstands constitutional scrutiny. As the 6th Circuit aptly noted just a few weeks ago with respect to regulations about medical care for transgender minors: ‘[L]ife-tenured judges construing a difficult-to-amend Constitution should be humble and careful about announcing new substantive due process or equal protection rights that limit accountable elected officials from sorting out these medical, social, and policy challenges.’
The case now will proceed to a full trial on the merits of Rebecca Roe’s claims.
The outcome of this latest legal challenge based on “gender identity,” albeit a preliminary one, is a timely reminder that, as Nye wrote, “in a pluralistic society … everyone cannot win every time.”
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Big news. Australia has become one of the world leaders when it comes to men suffering false allegations
A new YouGov survey, involving 9432 people across eight countries, found Australia was the worst country, after India, when people were asked if they had been falsely accused of abuse.
What’s going on here? The answer is simple. It’s the feminist capture of our family law system.
The YouGov survey showed false accusations in Australia are more likely to be made as part of a child custody dispute than anywhere else in the world – they are 41 per cent of such allegations in this country.
Overall, the survey showed 80 per cent of victims of false allegations in this country are male and almost a third (30 per cent) of people surveyed know a victim of false allegations made in the last year.
For decades, feminist ideologues have been manipulating the family law system by claiming that all women and their children are at risk of attack by violent ex-partners.
This sets the scene for women to make false violence allegations — a tactic which works a treat to give women control of the divorce process, denying men any real role in their children’s lives.
It’s a brilliant ploy, which feminists have been systematically cementing in place. Soon their ship will come in.
Labor’s draconian new family law bill is about to sail through the Senate, with the Greens joining forces with Labor to enshrine women’s absolute power to use false allegations to destroy men’s relationships with their children.
Having long been internationally celebrated for protecting the right of children to care from both divorced parents, this new Act will mean Australia will return to the grim days of mostly sole mother custody.
This is the most significant social change in recent history, impacting millions of families across the country. Current estimates suggest there will be more than 300,000 family breakups involving children in the next decade.
It is just astonishing that this is all passing unchallenged, indeed almost unnoticed.
Well, perhaps not. Given Australian feminists’ brilliantly orchestrated march through our institutions, we shouldn’t be surprised that these powerful ideologues have cowed most of our parliament and media into silence.
Silence, that is, about the truth of what is happening here, which is nothing to do with the feminist narrative that the new bill is about keeping children safe.
Their critical goal has been to set aside the many decades of international evidence showing it is harmful for children to grow up without dads.
That was the message enshrined in the Howard government’s landmark 2006 law act promoting joint parental responsibility.
It was passed with bipartisan support and proved a real hit with the public — “overwhelmingly supported by parents, legal professionals and family relationship service professionals,” according to research by the Australian Institute of Family Studies.
Feminist scholars were determined to resist this recognition of the vital role of dads in the family. They leapt into action pouring out articles claiming sharing care risked exposing children to violence.
This set the scene for Julia Gillard’s proudly feminist government to remove the 2006 penalties for perjury and place violence accusations front and centre of decision-making about sharing of care of children.
Her government also greatly expanded the definition of domestic “violence” to include emotional and psychological abuse, threatening behaviour etc, adding enormously to the list of families precluded from court-approved shared care.
Now the war was on, with magistrates’ courts overwhelmed with false violence accusations which most magistrates have acknowledged are being used to gain strategic advantage in child custody matters.
A survey of 38 magistrates in Queensland found 74 per cent agreed restraining orders are often used for tactical purposes.
Similarly, 90 per cent of 68 NSW magistrates agreed restraining orders are often sought as tactical devices in family law disputes, “serving to deprive former partners of contact with their children”.
In a national survey of over 2500 respondents, more than half agreed that “women going through custody battles often make up or exaggerate claims of domestic violence in order to improve their case”.
People know this is happening — even police are speaking out about the enormous amount of their time consumed by false allegations.
Two years ago the Queensland Police Union made a submission to a family law inquiry pointing out that false allegations of domestic violence are regularly used to gain advantage in family law disputes, with members of the police force sometimes finding themselves on the receiving end.
In some areas of Queensland, domestic violence takes up to 80 per cent of police time. Note that in NSW, domestic violence assaults make up only 4.8 per cent of major crimes but take up 50-70 per cent of police time.
That’s the current reality. But now, without any mandate from the electorate and ignoring recommendations from a series of inquiries, this Labor government is taking matters a huge leap further.
They are wiping out any mention in the law of children’s rights to two parents in their lives, watering down the joint presumption of shared parental responsibility and ditching the requirement to consider shared or substantial care in parenting plans — the key elements which promote the sharing of parenting.
Under the new Act shared care is only to be considered “when it is safe to do so”.
What’s absolutely shocking is that these momentous changes passed largely unnoticed through the lower house of parliament, with remarkably little protest.
It wasn’t until the legislation came under fire this week with questions in the Senate that Michaelia Cash let fly with a devastating attack on Labor for stripping away the key parenting sections of the bill. Labor was caught with their pants down but the press gallery chose not to notice.
And no one dared mention the war — except for brave Pauline Hanson, a lone voice daring to speak about false allegations.
Everyone else ignored the elephant in the room, knowing our feminist-led media would attack anyone who told the truth about what is going on here. The domestic violence card worked brilliantly to silence all proper debate about the bill.
Hanson was the only one with the guts to point out what every judge, magistrate, lawyer and police officer knows to be the case — that these changes to the law will bring poorer outcomes for children, a fresh flood of new accusations against fathers, more conflict between divorced parents, a huge surge in litigation as men pay out to try to see their children and more suicides for men as they realise that their chances of a fair hearing in an already biased court system will now be further reduced.
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18 October, 2023
The PFAS panic continues
See below. As usual, only the weakest effects were oberved, consistent with no stable real effects. The study had its amusing side. Rather a lot of substances correlated with the alleged effect, including a form of acetic acid. Acetic acid is the key ingredient of vinegar. So might vinegar delay puberty onset in girls? Could be on these figures!
Exposure to Perfluoroalkyl Substances and Associations with Pubertal Onset and Serum Reproductive Hormones in a Longitudinal Study of Young Girls in Greater Cincinnati and the San Francisco Bay Area
Susan M. Pinney et al.
Abstract
Background:
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), endocrine disrupting chemicals with worldwide exposure, cause changes in mammary gland development in rodents. A few human studies report delay in pubertal events with increasing perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) exposure, but to our knowledge none have examined reproductive hormone levels at thelarche.
Methods:
In a cohort of Greater Cincinnati (GC) and San Francisco Bay Area (SFBA) girls recruited at 6–8 years of age, clinical examinations were conducted annually or semiannually with sequential Tanner staging. PFAS concentrations were measured in the first serum sample of 704 girls. In 304 GC girls, estradiol (E2), testosterone (T), and dihydroepiandrosterone sulfate (DHEAS) were measured in serum at four time points around puberty. Relationships between PFAS and age at thelarche, pubarche, and menarche were analyzed using survival and structural equation models. The association between PFAS and reproductive hormones was assessed using linear regression models.
Results:
Median PFOA serum concentrations in GC were higher than in the U.S. population. In multivariable Cox proportional hazard models [adjusted for race, body mass index (BMI)], increasing serum log-transformed PFOA was associated with a delay in pubarche [hazard ratio equals 0.83hazard ratio (HR)=0.83
; 95% CI: 0.70, 0.99] and menarche (hazard ratio equals 0.04HR=0.04; 95% CI: 0.01, 0.25).
Structural equation models indicated a triangular relationship between PFOA, BMI percentile, and the age at the pubertal milestone. Increased PFOA had a statistically significant direct effect of delay on all three milestones, as did BMI. Perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA), perfluorodecanoic acid (PFDeA), and 2-(N
-methyl-perfluorooctane sulfonamido) acetic acid (Me-PFOSA-AcOH) also were associated with later thelarche, and Me-PFOSA-AcOH also with later pubarche. PFOA was inversely associated with DHEAS (E1), and T concentrations at 6 months prior to puberty.
Conclusions:
PFAS may delay pubertal onset through the intervening effects on BMI and reproductive hormones. The decreases in DHEAS and E1 associated with PFOA represent biological biomarkers of effect consistent with the delay in onset of puberty.
https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/full/10.1289/EHP11811
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India's top court refuses to legalise same-sex marriage in landmark verdict
India's top court said today it cannot legalise same-sex marriages, with the chief justice of the country saying making such a law is the domain of parliament.
A five-judge bench headed by the Chief Justice of India, D.Y. Chandrachud, heard arguments in the case between April and May this year and pronounced its verdict today.
Chandrachud said there was a degree of 'agreement and disagreement on how far we have to go' on same-sex marriages as he began reading his order.
Two of the other four judges agreed with Chandrachud on the court not legalising same-sex marriages, making it a majority. Two other judges are yet to speak.
The news was greeted with disappointment by those who had gathered outside the court in the hopes of celebrating India becoming the second Asian jurisdiction outside Taiwan to legalise same-sex marriages.
The petitioners had said validating same-sex marriage would help them access some of the legal benefits of matrimony, including adoption, insurance and inheritance.
Advocates representing nearly two dozen petitioners said it was time for India to treat the country's LGBTQ community as equal citizens under its constitution.
But the verdict said that the charter did not guarantee a fundamental right to marry that would extend to same-sex couples under existing law.
'It lies within the domain of parliament and state legislatures to determine the law on marriage,' Chandrachud said during his verdict.
Chandrachud added that India still had a duty to acknowledge same-sex relationships and protect those in them from discrimination.
'Our ability to feel love and affection for one another makes us feel human,' he said from the bench. 'This court has recognised that equality demands that queer unions and queer persons are not discriminated against.'
The court ruling comes five years after a historic 2018 judgement when the Supreme Court scrapped a colonial-era ban on gay sex.
Only Taiwan and Nepal allow same-sex unions in Asia, where largely conservative values still dominate politics and society.
But the Hindu nationalist government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has staunchly opposed same-sex marriage, calling the petitions 'urban elitist views' and stating that parliament is the right platform to debate and legislate on the matter.
'Any interference... would cause a complete havoc with the delicate balance of personal laws in the country and in accepted societal values', the government said in its submission.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12639055/Indias-court-refuses-legalise-sex-marriage.html
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Father Whose Son Had Transgender Surgery Despite Court Order Issues Dire Warning About Parental Rights
A California father has urged a court to find his ex-wife, her lawyer, his son’s lawyer, and a hospital in contempt of court after they went around a court order stipulating that his son would not receive transgender-related surgery unless the father approved it.
“This is not an accident,” Ted Hudacko, the father in question, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview last week. “This was intentionally done.”
He also warned that two of the figures in his story—the judge who revoked his visitation rights and the lawyer who represents the University of California, San Francisco (where the surgery took place), are pro-transgender activists who train custody attorneys to undermine the parental rights of “non-affirming” parents (parents who refuse to affirm their child’s decision to identify as another gender).
Hudacko exclusively shared the four contempt of court filings with The Daily Signal. The filings claim that his ex-wife, Christine Hudacko; her attorney, Nathaniel Bigger; his son’s attorney, Daniel Harkins; and the university violated an August 2020 order from California Superior Court Judge Joni Hiramoto.
Hiramoto had granted Christine Hudacko full custody of the son, Drew Hudacko, but restricted any transgender medical interventions Drew might receive to non-surgical alterations. (The son’s name has been changed in this article to preserve his anonymity.)
“Citees Christine Hudacko; her attorney, Nathaniel Bigger; minor’s counsel, Daniel Harkins; and University of California, San Francisco should each be held in contempt because each knew about, then collectively conspired to willfully disobey what is herein termed the ‘no surgery injunction,’ i.e. Judge Hiramoto’s valid August 26, 2020, court order explicitly prohibiting ‘any gender identity-related surgery’ upon the minor child,” the motions read.
Ted Hudacko’s motions note that the case “centers around the parties’ disagreement over whether it was or was not in the minor child’s best interest to undergo gender identity-related medical procedures,” with Christine Hudacko supporting a medical “transition” and Ted Hudacko opposing it.
The father “will establish that the law will hold non-parties liable for contempt when they know of the order and assist in its violation,” the filings read.
Ted Hudacko claims that “each of the citees was aware of the no surgery injunction, and that they individually and collectively decided to cause the minor child to undergo the gender identity related medical procedure of histrelin (brand name ‘Supprelin’) subcutaneous implant (‘Supprelin implant’), a surgery under the acceptable statutory definition, and by UCSF’s [University of California, San Francisco’s] own statements.”
The filings cite the Aug. 26 order’s two provisions on the issue:
[Drew] shall be permitted to pursue the services provided by UCSF as to [Drew]’s gender identity, and shall be permitted to commence hormone therapy, if recommended by UCSF.
[Drew] will not be permitted to undergo any gender identity related surgery until they are 18 years of age, absent a written agreement by both parties, Christine Hudacko and Edward Hudacko, or an order of the court.
On Feb. 17, 2021, Christine Hudacko took 16-year-old Drew to the University of California, San Francisco Child and Adolescent Gender Center. Doctors discussed experimental medical interventions often referred to as “puberty blockers.” They presented Drew and his mother four different options, only one of which involved any surgery. Drew and his mother selected that option, and the boy went under the knife on Aug. 4, 2021.
Ted Hudacko, who had a right to know about his son’s medical progress, did not learn about the surgery until Oct. 18, 2021, when his ex-wife notified him. He told The Daily Signal that he recalled wondering, “Why is there a $209,820.34 charge on my insurance?”
He cited a June 8, 2021, progress note from the court mentioning that the father is “not supportive” and he pushed back on the idea that he did not support his son.
“No, I’m supportive because I want to protect my child’s health. I don’t want to subject him to being a guinea pig in an experiment,” Ted Hudacko said. He mentioned a growing list of doctors in the U.S. and elsewhere who warn that medical interventions aimed at making a male appear female or vice versa—often euphemistically termed “gender-affirming care”—are experimental and not advisable.
“They easily could have avoided violating the court order,” the father added. “It’s not like this was a lifesaving surgery. This was completely elective, and they had nonsurgical options available, but they didn’t choose the nonsurgical options.”
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Hundreds Killed by Islamic Jihad After Misfire Causes Explosion at Gaza City Hospital
Following a blast at a hospital in Gaza City on Tuesday, Hamas immediately claimed that an Israel Defense Forces strike was to blame — but the evidence does not support such claims from Hamas officials pretending to be impartial government ministers inside the Gaza Strip. In fact, the evidence disproves what Hamas — and many of its sympathizers in the media and politics — have said.
Instead of what Hamas rushed to claim, it appears the attempt to blame Israeli forces and further demonize Israel and its people is nothing more than scrambling to draw attention away from the mass-casualty event that was, in fact, the result of a misfired Hamas or another Iran-backed terrorist's rocket and, potentially simultaneously, an attempt to cover up the fact that Hamas was again using a hospital to house terrorist infrastructure and weapons stockpiles.
In addition, Al Jazeera unwittingly broadcast live video of the terrorist rocket misfiring and blowing up the hospital in Gaza City.
The blast occurred just minutes after a large barrage of Hamas rockets were fired toward Tel Aviv and Hamas reportedly announced that they were in the process of launching their "most robust weapons" at Haifa just before the hospital explosion — but no such weapon reached Haifa.
After an initial investigation on Tuesday, the IDF said they have evidence showing the hospital explosion was in fact caused by a botched Hamas rocket launch intended for Israeli civilians, potentially from the surveillance drones swarming the skies. What's more, IDF was not active in the area of the explosion at the time it occurred.
Even pro-Gaza outlets have reported that the hospital was struck by a misfired rocket which also set off more terrorist weapons stored in the hospital.
Subsequent investigation by the IDF led them to the conclusion that the explosion was caused by a misfired rocket launched by Islamic Jihad, a frequent coordinating partner of Hamas:
It's no secret that terrorist rockets launched from the Gaza Strip — often cannibalized from street signposts, sewer pipes, and other tubes intended for other peaceful uses — often misfire and land inside the Gaza Strip.
Also worth noting is the fact that Israel called for the evacuation of civilians from hospitals and other locations in the northern Gaza Strip on Friday — something Hamas worked to prevent by blocking evacuation routes and telling residents to stay put in order for the Iran-backed terrorists to maintain the presence of human shields.
As Fox News Channel's Trey Yingst pointed out, every claim from Hamas and subsequent reporting of those claims must be scrutinized and verified — but that hasn't stopped pro-Hamas media outlets from quickly parroting their anti-Israel narrative.
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17 October, 2023
The Gathering Storm: The world is beginning to look a lot like the 1930s
Russia has been attacking Ukraine for 20 months now. Iran, through its terrorism partner Hamas, attacked Israel this weekend. China has been threatening to attack Taiwan.
The world is beginning to look a lot like the 1930s, when Japan attacked and overran much of China, and Nazi Germany and its then-ally the Soviet Union attacked and overran Poland and the Baltic States.
Former President George W. Bush has been ridiculed for describing an “Axis of Evil.” But at this point, the axis of Russia, Iran and China seems to be acting in greater unison than the axis of Germany and Japan acted during World War II. And we have no reason to assume today’s axis will turn on itself as when Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941.
No American military forces are currently fighting in Ukraine, none will surely be fighting in Israel, and no forces are currently stationed in Taiwan. But then there were no American military forces fighting in Asia or Europe in June 1941. Soon, there would be.
And conceivably, they could be again sometime soon. As military historian Eliot Cohen points out, no one lately has a good record of military predictions.
What is clear is that the United States will be called on to provide large numbers of conventional weapons to Ukraine and Israel for some unspecified time. This could be a strain for a nation concentrating in recent decades on producing high-tech weapons in small numbers.
In prolonged on-the-ground fighting, however, numbers matter. Production of artillery shells (“munitions”) in adequate numbers was the issue that ousted one British prime minister and installed David Lloyd George in World War I (see Andrew Roberts’ biography of Lord Northcliffe). And President Franklin Roosevelt’s foresighted enlistment of top corporation executives made America the world’s “arsenal of democracy” in World War II (see Arthur Herman’s “Freedom’s Forge”).
Those were the days when America was capable of building big things, in large numbers — a capacity, as liberal writers Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson have lamented, we have lost.
One reason is that our leaders lack Roosevelt’s capacity to pick men (and women) good at getting things done, which made big government look misleadingly easy for the next few generations of Americans. Roosevelt picked the leaders who built the Pentagon in 15 months (see Steve Vogel’s “The Pentagon”), and the generals and admirals who assembled from almost nothing the 16-million-men military (see Eric Larrabee’s “Commander in Chief” that produced the “absolute victory” that Roosevelt promised on Dec. 8, 1941).
Currently, American defense stockpiles are already strained in supplying arms and ammunition to Ukraine, and supplying Israel will strain them more. “The threat from China has not dissipated in the slightest while our defense spending and industry remain basically status quo as threats multiply,” former Pentagon official Elbridge Colby wrote. “We should have been on a national mobilization footing for our defense industry a long time ago.”
That would require a major shift in budget priorities, away from things such as the Biden administration’s $400 billion forgiveness of college loan debt (with benefits tilted toward above-average-income borrowers). Moreover, thanks to inflation stoked by Trump and Biden COVID-era stimulus spending, government interest costs have skyrocketed. And will American armed forces, currently failing to meet recruitment goals, need to be expanded?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is ordering a vigorous response to Hamas but in time will have to answer why his government was apparently so unprepared for the Oct. 7 attacks. And in a forthright statement on Oct. 10, President Joe Biden said unambiguously that “we’re with Israel” and “we will make sure Israel has what it needs.” But in time, he may need to answer why he and his appointees and colleagues in the Obama administration tilted U.S. policy toward Hamas’ patron Iran, to the point of releasing $6 billion to Iran in September and appointing an Iranian sympathizer and possible spy to a national security post.
Meanwhile, America is bitterly split on partisan lines, with a narrowly Republican House (which nonsensically ousted its speaker), a narrowly Democratic Senate, and a Democratic president who, like Woodrow Wilson and unlike Franklin Roosevelt, has not taken Republicans into his councils as the storms of war gather. Stormy weather ahead.
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/101264-the-gathering-storm-2023-10-13
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The Superpower That Can’t Arm Itself
No matter how much we’d like to believe in the inevitably of human progress and the spread of enlightened norms, we’ve learned the past couple of years that we still need artillery shells — lots of artillery shells.
The Hamas terror attack, together with the ongoing Ukraine war and the looming Chinese threat to Taiwan, is putting a spotlight on the pitiful state of our capacity to manufacture the weapons necessary to the defense of our allies and ourselves.
According to a CNN report, an Israel ground invasion of Gaza would “create a new and entirely unexpected demand for 155 mm artillery ammunition and other weapons at a time when the U.S. and its allies and partners have been stretched thin from more than 18 months of fighting in Ukraine.”
We are learning to our regret that we are using an attenuated post-Cold War, “end of history” defense-industrial base to try to meet the security needs of a newly threatening international environment with the real risk of Great Power conflict.
As it turns out, the peace dividend was very expensive.
It now should be a matter of the highest national priority to use every lever of government and the private sector to bolster the defense-industrial base in all its aspects.
The Biden administration should care about this at least as much as incentivizing the production of electric vehicles most people don’t want to buy.
We aren’t being asked, by the way, to fight a three-front war in Europe, the Middle East and Asia ourselves. No, the call is simply to provide arms to allies under attack or threat. If we can’t do that, what does it say about our status as the world’s preeminent power?
In Ukraine, the hopes of Moscow for a lightning victory and of the West for a sweepingly successful Ukraine counteroffensive both appear to have come a cropper. Now, it’s a grinding artillery war.
Ukraine is estimated to need 1.5 million shells a year, and has been firing as many as 6,000 a day. Russia was firing even more at the peak of its offensive.
The U.S. had supplied 2 million artillery shells to Ukraine as of July, and has been scrounging around — along with other Western powers — to feed whatever supplies it can find into the maw of the war.
It’s not that we have been completely asleep. The U.S. was making 14,500 shells a month at the beginning of 2023, and has roughly doubled that. We hope to get to 100,000 a month in 2025. Still, highly sanctioned Russia is more proficient at producing shells.
If we can’t supply Ukraine, what if we become embroiled in a major war with China?
War games conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies have the U.S. firing 5,000 long-range missiles in the first weeks of war, instantly depleting our stocks. According to CSIS, the U.S. would expend all its Long-Range Anti-Ship Missiles within the first week of a conflict — when it requires almost two years to manufacture one of the missiles.
We are also in the bizarre position of being dependent on our potential enemy for the materials we’d need in a war with that enemy. China has a dominant position in the market for rare earth metals — so important to the production of high-end weapons — and is the world leader in cast products.
There is no easy way out of the hole we’ve dug ourselves. It will require more spending on defense; more reliable, long-term contracts for the production of key weapons; a focus on securing the supply chain necessary to the production of high-tech munitions; and assistance to manufacturers in training workers, among other things.
The history of empires and nations that don’t mind the need for up-to-date weapons at the scale necessary to defeat or deter adversaries isn’t a happy one. It’s in our power to avoid this fate — if we have the will and don’t waste more time
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/101276-the-superpower-that-cant-arm-itself-2023-10-13
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SNP pulls the rug on Scots who have second homes in idyllic holiday hotspots
SECOND home owners are to be targeted by the SNP as part of a radical shake-up of rural housing rules.
Amid the biggest land reforms in a generation, Humza Yousaf’s government will force families with holiday homes – or those not classed as main residences – to pay up to double their council tax from April next year.
Holiday home owners could even see their boltholes acquired by councils in compulsory purchases and converted into private rentals to ease the housing crisis.
Meanwhile, a socialist-style clampdown on lairds will introduce a ‘public interest test’ applied to the ‘sale or transfer’ of estates – which could see large landholdings being taken into public or community ownership.
The proposals outlined by the Scottish Government yesterday in its Rural Housing Action Plan are designed to make it easier for young families to buy first homes in the Highlands and Islands, as well as encourage youngsters not to leave rural communities for work.
Critics fear it will punish people who have worked hard to buy a holiday home – and could even drive money abroad.
Last night SNP rebel Fergus Ewing, the MSP for Inverness and Nairn and a former Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy, slammed the proposals.
He told The Mail on Sunday: ‘These proposals will punish those who have invested hard-earned cash in homes and will lead many to invest abroad instead, driving money out of Scotland and damaging many local economies with less money going to local builders, shops and tradesmen.’
He added: ‘The damaging short-term let regulations have seen thousands of small businesses simply give up – so there’s already less money going into many rural communities. Added to this wilful destruction of small businesses, more new regulation will further damage these communities.’
Stephen Young, a director at Scottish Land & Estates which represents the country’s largest landowners, said: ‘Policy reform to increase housing supply in rural areas is badly needed but it needs a coherent approach which is all too often missing.
‘Between obstructive planning policy, restrictive grant funding and the recent war waged on landlords, the Scottish Government has done little to encourage new housing in rural areas.’
The Action Plan comes in the wake of the SNP’s Programme for Government last month which saw Mr Yousaf commit to introducing a £35 million council tax raid on second home owners.
Several local authorities later confirmed they will look to charge the 100 per cent levy, including Angus, the Western Isles, Edinburgh, North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire and West Lothian.
The document released yesterday shows councils will be able to impose the tax double whammy from April. The move comes despite those buying second homes in Scotland already paying a 6 per cent ‘additional homes supplement’ on top of land and buildings transaction taxes.
Meanwhile, a further clampdown on short-term lets will go ahead. This will allow councils to expand control areas, limiting the number of Airbnb-style properties in a particular location. They will also be able to force tourism lets to switch to private rentals.
The Action Plan document states: ‘The growth of online platforms has fuelled the trend for residential homes, particularly in tourist hotspots, to be changed from primary homes to short-term lets or second homes.
‘Making the best use of existing housing can make a significant contribution to increasing the supply of permanent homes.
‘This could be by limiting the number of second homes, changing the use of properties used for tourism to private rental, acquiring properties back into the affordable sector as well as bringing empty homes back into use.
‘Demand for second homes can reduce the supply of permanent homes and inflate house prices, making it more difficult for people, particularly younger people, to access the homes they need.’
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The moral vacuum that is the Left
Their claim to care is revealed as mere pretence. Just as they once excused Soviet slaughter, they now excuse Muslim slaughter
Recent events in the Middle East and the limp-wristed response by some of our most senior elected representatives to the slaughter of the innocents that took place in Israel at the hands of Hamas show that
The response by Labor frontbenchers such as Tony Burke and Chris Bowen was muted at best and fell well short of outright condemnation.
It’s no coincidence that their electorates contain a significant Muslim population, so was it with an eye of the next election and their political survival that they failed to denounce the atrocity in the strongest possible terms lest it cost them votes?
The response of the Greens and teals was just as odious, with some hiding metaphorically under their desks and declining to offer any comment at all when asked.
We have as a nation just emerged from one of the darker periods of modern times with millions of us accused either directly or indirectly of being racists.
We shredded these accusations at the ballot box by declaring that we regard all Australians as equal, thus ensuring that in the words of Bob Hawke that “in Australia there is no hierarchy of descent; there must be no privilege of origin.
“The commitment is all. The commitment to Australia is the only thing needful to be a true Australian.”
Why is it then that while people will swear that they have never entertained a racist thought and denounce racism as one of the great evils, when it comes to calling the cold-blooded massacre of people murdered on account of their race and religion out for what it is, there are those among us who would look the other way?
Events in Sydney, with pro-Palestinian protesters chanting “gas the Jews” and preaching genocide have revealed that there are malevolent elements in our society that have no respect for our rule of law and who applaud wholesale bloodshed in the name of their religion or political beliefs.
These are the people who are not true Australians. They have no commitment to our country.
They abuse the freedom of speech and assembly our democracy grants them.
Civil libertarians have been quick to claim that the demonstrators have a right to protest, but when you incite people to murder Australian citizens – and it is absolutely clear that this what happened – you lose that freedom.
Can you imagine the outcry if a mob was to start yelling “kill the Poms”, “kill the Italians” or “kill the Catholics”?
The members of our political class would trample each other underfoot in their stampede to demand that the offenders be dealt with harshly, but when it comes to anti-Semitism and calls to kill Jews, be they be living in Australia or elsewhere, the outrage is filtered.
In Sydney, to their eternal shame, the police stood by and did nothing.
In Germany in the 1930s, the police stood by and watched as Adolf Hitler’s Brownshirts smashed and burnt Jewish businesses, dragged their owners into the street and beat them. Much worse was to follow.
Those who fail to denounce anti-Semitism are either blind to history or choose to ignore it.
Wokeism, alas, does not extend to anti-Semitism. It is not seen as worthy of attention by the virtue-seekers.
Will Qantas paint an Israeli flag on the tails of its aircraft to signal its abhorrence of anti-Semitism or will the corporate elites, who in the light of last Saturday’s result have gone strangely quiet, denounce it? Never.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was fond of warning us that if we did not pass the referendum, the world would think less of us.
I can assure him that images of crowds referring to the gas chambers of the Holocaust and the systematic murder of more than six million people will have well and truly damned us in the eyes of many in the international community.
It’s easy to dismiss those responsible as a bunch of ignorant clowns, but it would be dangerous to do so.
The Jews have an expression that encapsulates the horrors that they suffered in Europe 80 years ago. It is “Never again.”
It falls to those of us who regard ourselves as true Australians to make sure it never does.
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16 October, 2023
The mismeasure of population differences: A critique of Kevin Bird's critique
PETER FROST puts up some precise arguments about IQ below that may not be easily followed by all readers. So I think I should attempt a summary:
He notes that genetic studies now strongly support what IQ tests have been telling us all along: There is such a thing as educational attainment and it can just as strongly be predicted by a person's genetic makeup as by his/her IQ tests results. The genes behind IQ have in other words been substantially identifed. IQ is real and it makes a difference.
But the old, old issue of racial differences arises. Do the genes that predict educational attainment among whites also predict attainment among Africans? One answer is that by using white gene counts Africans score poorly. Both according to IQ tests and genetic scores they do badly
That of course upsets some people and arguments have been put up to say that the genes for educational success are not the same among blacks. Black genes are different, to put it crudely. So we really have to redo all our genetic studies if we want to use genes to predict black educational success.
Not much of that has been done but what is available suggests that black genetics may indeed give a poor prediction of educational outcomes. Blacks and whites may not be "equal" genetically. That of course treats blacks as being almost a separate species, which is unlikely to please everyone but that is a price you may have to pay if you want to use genetics to predict black educational attainment.
Meanwhile the "gap" in educational attainment between blacks and whites is as large as ever, no matter how you explain it. Great efforts have been expended to close that gap but nothing so far has worked. There does seem to be something in blacks that militates against high average levels of educational attainment. Genetics may one day explain it but that is out of reach at the moment. We can predict it (via IQ tests) but not explain it with any certainty
We have identified thousands of genes (SNPs) whose alleles are associated with variation in educational attainment (Lee et al., 2018). By finding out which alleles are present on the genome, we can create an estimate of cognitive ability that strongly correlates with performance on standardized mathematics, reading, and science tests (r = 0.8) and, on a group level, with mean population IQ (r = 0.9) (Piffer, 2019).
Those high correlations are made possible by the logic of sampling. To estimate the mean cognitive ability of a population, it is unnecessary to identify all of the relevant SNPs, just a large enough sample. The SNPs are "witnesses" to natural selection. We need only question a sufficient number of them to understand the strength and direction of selection, and its consequences.
Like IQ, the polygenic score differs on average among human populations. It seems to have increased during the northward spread of modern humans out of Africa and into Europe and Asia, with East Asians scoring the highest. This pattern is in line with IQ data. The mean polygenic score is also high among Ashkenazi Jews and Finns, again in line with IQ data (Piffer, 2019).
Can a mean polygenic score be used as a proxy for mean IQ? No, says biologist Kevin Bird (2021) in his paper “No support for the hereditarian hypothesis of the Black-White achievement gap using polygenic scores and tests for divergent selection.” Although Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans have different alleles associated with educational attainment, these differences, he argues, correspond to trivial differences in cognitive ability. In fact, they are more consistent with genetic drift than with natural selection.
To prove his argument, he performed two analyses on the genetic data: an Fst and a test for polygenic selection. In my opinion, both analyses are dubious.
Fst
This is the most common measure of genetic differentiation between populations. If the Fst is low, differentiation is trivial and consistent with genetic drift. If it is high, differentiation is substantial and consistent with natural selection. For SNPs associated with EA, Kevin Bird reports an Fst of 0.111. Is that low or high?
When the American geneticist Sewall Wright created Fst, he defined four categories of differentiation:
0 to 0.05 - little genetic differentiation
0.05 to 0.15 - moderate genetic differentiation
0.15 to 0.25 - great genetic differentiation
0.25 to 1 - very great genetic differentiation (Wright, 1978, pp. 82-85)
Wright's categories are widely cited. A search in Google Scholar for "moderate genetic differentiation" and "0.05 - 0.15" shows over two hundred papers.
So does an Fst of 0.111 mean moderate genetic differentiation? Not according to Kevin Bird, who sees little to none below a benchmark of 0.118. That benchmark may be valid, but it cannot be easily verified and appears nowhere else in the literature. Nor does he explain why it is better than the ones put forward by Sewall Wright. In fact, he makes no reference to the latter's benchmarks.
One may also question the Fst of 0.111. For the data source, the reader is referred to Lee et al. (2018), a study done only with European participants. Moreover, Kevin Bird used 1,259 SNPs to calculate that Fst, even though he found only 685 SNPs that had data on both Africans and Europeans. The Fst of 0.111 seems to refer only to Europeans. That value is what would be expected, but it says nothing about diversification between Europeans and sub-Saharan Africans.
Polygenic selection analysis
The second analysis is more relevant but poses another problem. There are two possible ways to calculate the effect size of each allele. One way is to use between-family data, and the other is to use within-family data. When Kevin Bird used the first dataset, he found a clear difference in genetic capacity for educational attainment between Europeans and Africans. When he used the second dataset, he found a much smaller one that could easily be explained by genetic drift.
Kevin Bird prefers the second dataset. All things being equal, it would indeed be preferable. There would be less statistical noise because siblings have similar upbringings. With less noise, population differences could more easily be identified. Yet, here, we see the opposite: Europeans and Africans are significantly different in the between-family data but not in the within-family data. The reason is that the between-family data came from over a million participants whereas the within-family data came from 20,000 sibling pairs. Being smaller, the second dataset had a lot more noise. All things being equal, it should have had less. But some things were not.
If we repeat the analysis with a much larger sample of sibling pairs, there would be less noise and Europeans and Africans would clearly differ in alleles associated with educational attainment. Kevin Bird anticipates this eventuality. Even with a much larger within-family dataset, "there is still likely to be some level of confounding from population structure" (Bird, 2021, p. 7). He elaborates on this point:
[...] the [polygenic] scores might be biased by a variety of factors, including the nonrandom ways that society is geographically structured [...]. For instance, Black people in the US, for reasons unrelated to genetics, live in areas with poorer air quality and more exposure to environmental toxins (Bird, 2021, p. 8)
Yet, as he notes further on, the SNP alleles were identified only in European participants, and the effects on educational attainment were estimated only from European data. How, then, could different alleles among Europeans be spuriously associated with differences in educational attainment among Europeans because of socioeconomic deprivation among Black Americans? How do the latter enter the picture?
Kevin Bird is right on one point: cognition in other human populations may not be accurately predicted by alleles identified from European participants or by allele effects calculated from European data. This is especially so for sub-Saharan Africans, who seem to have a different architecture of cognition (Fuerst et al., 2021; Guo et al., 2019; Rabinowitz et al., 2019). That factor, however, would introduce even more noise into the data and decrease, rather than increase, any measurable differences between Africans and Europeans.
It does look like cognitive evolution has followed a different trajectory among sub-Saharan Africans. Rabinowitz et al. (2019) found that the polygenic score of Black Americans predicts some abilities better than others, notably general academic success (pursuit of postsecondary education) and compliance with rules (absence of a criminal record). For school tests, it has some power to predict ability in mathematics but none in reading. Processing of language may be the mental domain where people of sub-Saharan African descent have undergone the most cognitive evolution since their separation from other ancestral humans.
https://peterfrost.substack.com/p/the-mismeasure-of-population-differences
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US privileged elite preach diversity but practise intolerance
Among the many depressing realities to emerge in the wake of Hamas’s medieval attack on innocent Israelis is the failure of multiculturalism across the developed world to temper – let alone stamp out – anti-Semitism.
Scores of rallies attended by tens of thousands of Americans popped up across the US over the weekend seeking to justify Hamas’s horrific terrorism.
In Baltimore, speakers at one rally repeatedly called to “end the scourge of Zionism” and “destroy Israel” as cars drove past, honking in approval.
But nowhere is the moral rot more egregious than in the nation’s most prestigious universities, which, for all their talk of “diversity” and “inclusion”, have become intellectual wellsprings of militant intolerance.
Where university students half a century ago protested for free speech and pacifism, a large minority at America’s most elite educational institutions would appear to prefer a holy war alongside the aggressive exclusion of any ideas deemed “harmful” or too contrarian. Incredibly, 31 student organisations at Harvard University signed off on a public statement last week that declared Israel was “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence”.
The views of highly privileged, teenage brats might not be too concerning, but their high tolerance for outrageous views also appears to extend to university administrators. Harvard’s president was quick to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but his successor, Claudine Gay, said nothing immediately in the wake of last week’s heinous crimes against Israel.
Professor Gay, widely celebrated as Harvard’s first black president, was quick to issue a statement in mid-2020 following the death of George Floyd, saying she “watched in pain and horror the events unfolding across the nation this week, triggered by the callous and depraved actions of a white police officer”.
But Hamas’s brutal murder of well over 1000 innocent people, including around 30 Americans, was not enough to move her until a public outcry compelled a statement that extolled the virtues of free speech.
Earlier this year, Harvard was ranked last among 248 US universities for enabling free speech on campus, according to a survey of more than 55,000 undergraduates conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. A 2021 survey by student publication the Harvard Crimson found 3 per cent of its faculty identified as conservative, less than 20 per cent as moderate and the rest as “extremely liberal”, which in the US context is more likely to signify support for Palestine.
In June, Harvard offered its employees a two-hour workshop on “addressing microaggressions at work”. Heaven forbid staff accidentally use the wrong pronoun, but mass murder … “well, it’s complicated”. Harvard isn’t the only elite institution exhibiting support for terrorism. Last week at Stanford – the Harvard of the west – a teacher was reportedly suspended for physically separating Jewish students from others in class and downplaying the Holocaust.
Of course, the concerning trends predate Hamas’s latest attacks. In 2022, nine student law groups at the University of California, Berkeley sought to ban any speaker who promoted Israel on campus.
Perhaps part of the cause must be these institutions no longer accept the best and brightest. The growing capture of the Democrats by university elites, as their blue-collar support dwindles, has left one of America’s major governing parties with an existential division.
Much is made of Republican squabbles over Donald Trump and the party’s inability to pick a speaker, but these divides pale in comparison to the minority of Democrats who instinctively sided with Hamas. Last week Democrats in Michigan’s state legislature refused to support a bipartisan resolution condemning Hamas. Prominent congresswoman Rashida Tlaib flies a Palestinian flag outside her office on Capitol Hill.
The Chicago branch of Black Lives Matter – which enjoys wide support among Democrats – issued a repulsive graphic on social media of a Hamas paratrooper above and an “I Stand with Palestine” slogan.
Democratic congressman Ritchie Torres denounced the Democratic Socialists of America rally held in New York in support of Palestine “as an anti-Semitic stain on the soul of America’s largest city”, but for moderate Democrats it’s a very uphill battle.
President Joe Biden delivered one of the best speeches of his presidency last week, aggressively condemning Hamas as terrorists and declaring America’s unequivocal support for Israel. But news reports suggest the President and his very closest advisers significantly changed the text from what was a more lukewarm expression of support. His Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, issued a tweet calling for a ceasefire immediately after the attacks, and then deleted it.
When I went to watch a rally in Baltimore, I was struck by how few Arabs appeared to be in a crowd of mainly young people who you might expect to see at a trans rights march or “save the planet” rally. Most of them were wearing Covid masks. At first it might seem a strange combination, especially given Islamic fundamentalist groups loathe LGBTQ rights. But Black Lives Matter, anti-Semitism and “Covidianism” seem to share a preference for authoritarian, dogmatic approaches to politics.
That America’s elite universities – at the very least large segments of the student body and administrators – have become so infested with odious ideas presages an ominous future. “What I saw at Harvard was a total disgrace. I would run the other way if I saw any of those kids wanting a job from me, I can tell you that,” Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said in a speech last week.
The best hope is their extremism ultimately destroys their prestige, and new institutions of higher learning emerge.
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Restricted Speech and the Arrogance of the Overeducated
In American society today and in other Western and industrialized nations, an insidious movement has taken hold, denying the rights of those with whom one disagrees to have a platform.
Stifling Classrooms
In academia, for example, overeducated professors, who should know better, have little tolerance for viewpoints that differ from their own. As such, classrooms have become stifling. If you're a student who leans Right, you might have to keep a low profile for the entire semester in order to receive a grade that will not ruin your grade point average.
Discussing controversial topics, particularly in institutions of higher learning, should be something participants look forward to. Yet, respecting the rights of others who have differing views is rapidly becoming passé.
Why are those in control, namely professors, deans, and high-ranking university officials, no longer champions of free speech? What prompted them to create “safe spaces” that are not safe from groupthink and restricted ideas?
What do academics fear if an opinion that differs from theirs? If an opinion is outrageous, it likely will be dismissed by those who have the capability to illuminate its flaws articulately. If an idea is less than outrageous, then engage in healthy debate and do your best to dissuade its adherents. To not hear it at all speaks volumes. To have no need even to attempt to find common ground says more about the opinion gatekeepers than those with differing viewpoints.
Safe Spaces are Unsafe
Schools and other institutions that have set up safe spaces and media, internet giants, and other gatekeepers of American discourse who seek to cancel people, as opposed to protecting their free speech, ought to reflect upon what they are doing. Someday, maybe they'll hold an opinion that differs from those with whom they currently identify. Then what will they do? Stifle their true feelings?
Freedom of speech, as often observed, requires that you are going to hear things that you find to be offensive or that upset you. Soon enough, you might say things others find outrageous and offensive. That is what free speech is all about. If all speech has to toe a certain line, then it is not free speech.
Being exposed to ideas that upset you or notions you've never previously considered is part of free speech in a free society. Free speech is the cornerstone of a true democracy and a true representative republic such as the United States. Yet, free speech is squelched every day in America by those on the Left who believe that they have a lock on what is right, true, and good. They do not.
Notably, those among us who are highly educated – professors, literate journalists, and other media gatekeepers – could be the most vigorous champions of free speech in our society. Professors could encourage students to share different viewpoints. The media could be more tolerant towards those having opinions that differ from theirs.
Biden and Company Are Bad News
When the Biden Administration tells the social media giants to diminish Conservative voices, in effect, it is conveying that they can't afford to have differing viewpoints aired; that might be risky. People might start thinking for themselves instead of conforming to the groupthink that Leftists have concocted.
When a celebrity or noted figure makes an erroneous statement, even from 40 years ago, and the gatekeepers on the Left clamber to cancel this person, they are being elitists: “You are less worthy than we are and not entitled to your position in society. We must shun you and ensure that you do not progress in your career. We must hold you out as an example.”
Yet, who among those Leftist gatekeepers has not made such a statement, certainly in their youth, let alone during their prime working years? And who, indeed, ought to be canceled as a result of a single statement? Even if that statement is horrible, still, it must be tolerated because that is the essence of free speech.
Surrendering Over Your Rights
You are free to disassociate with such a person individually, but when you allow the gatekeepers of political correctness to prevail, you have surrendered your right to free speech. You simply don't realize it
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Has Soviet-style self-censorship come to Britain?
There is now more free speech in the East than in the West
Heli-Liis VÕrno
When the Soviet system fell in my native Estonia I was 17 years old. I’d spent the entirety of those years mastering the main rule for surviving the USSR: you needed two separate identities. One was for home and those you trusted, the other for public places: we knew that in front of outsiders or certain relatives, you simply didn’t speak about some topics. If you followed the rules and kept the two identities apart, you could survive and even prosper. But if you mixed the two worlds up, woe betide you.
My grandparents – who’d separated in the early 1950s – led lives that illustrated this. My grandfather had joined the party and never said a word against the regime. For this he was allowed to have a new flat, a summer house and a car – a Moskvitch! My grandmother, meanwhile, never hid what she thought of the Soviet occupation, and her life was correspondingly harder. She knitted at night to make ends meet and grew vegetables in her backyard.
Superficially the USSR was supposed to be Paradise on Earth. Free education, free healthcare, a guaranteed job and housing. But what could you do with that education? You couldn’t scheme under communism – it goes without saying – to become a world famous rockstar or a multimillionaire entrepreneur. You couldn’t even dream of going travelling or visiting the countries whose languages you learned. As for that guaranteed job, it was often nominal, to save you from state-prosecution as a ‘parasite’, and the same applied to accommodation. Everything needed to be checked and ‘permitted, and whoever you were, you were expected to show up to May Day parades, wave the red flag and speak never less than glowingly of the Party.
Britain has started to remind me of the system I thought I’d left behind forever
Of course we knew about the Free World – a colourful place full of hope, we believed, and we longed to join it. We watched overseas TV channels if we could tune into them and listened – if we could avoid the frequency-jamming – to channels like the BBC World Service: a message from that Free World we longed for. By the time the Soviet Union fell in 1991, we were ready for every kind of freedom: to think, speak, gather, travel, freedom to succeed and, sure, the freedom fail too. All the freedoms, here we come!
I came to UK in 2011 after a decade in Asia, fully confident I was entering another free society. I could, within reason, say whatever I wanted to whomever I wanted. Holding different opinions, post-Soviet, from someone else hadn’t been a problem: we’d argue and end with compromise or simply agree to disagree.
Yet increasingly, Britain has started to remind me of the system I thought I’d left behind forever. Of course, it isn’t called communism this time, but various names like ‘Diversity’, ‘Equality’, ‘Inclusion’, ‘Multiculturalism’. Just like communism, it takes the ideals of the brotherhood of man but then adds on others from western individualist tradition – LGBTQ rights, open borders, MeToo (a full pantheon is getting ever more complex, potentially wrong-footing you at every turn). Like communism, it presents many ideals which, on the face of it, are hard to disagree with: equality of the sexes and of different races, for example – and then constructs a kind of secular religion out of them.
It’s one of the central ideas of Christianity that humans are inherently flawed and sinful – and the new religion too seems to be drawing on this. Anyone failing to abide by this religion’s tenets must repent at once – or rather, in Newspeak, ‘Educate Yourself’ and ‘Do Better’. This doesn’t involve the physical re-education camps of the USSR (not yet), but compulsory (re)training sessions in anti-racism, anti-sexism and anti-ableism already abound.
If you’re ostracised, you have two choices, as you did under communism: either apologise profusely and publicly and grovel to the current orthodoxy, becoming, if not a good little member of Komsomol, then a vocal and obedient ally to BLM or LGBTQIA+ (or whatever the currently favoured minority is) – or never be seen or heard of again. As in both systems, the Evil needs to be rooted out and the witches burned. Just as saboteurs and dissenters had to be removed from Soviet society, the perceived racists, bigots, transphobes, misogynists, and toxic males etc. must vanish before the Western Paradise on Earth can be achieved. Of course, the categories are constantly ramifying as are the varieties of ideological crime. One of the main features of an institutionalised religion is that it has answers to all questions – and the ones it doesn’t have answers for, you’re not allowed to ask.
Just as in the USSR, there is the issue with language and the reality it hides. ‘Democracy’ in the USSR was often the obligation to vote for one single candidate chosen for you by the Party. ‘Rule of the Proletariat’ meant rule by a small group of high-ranking Party workers. Likewise, in the Newspeak of the West, ‘inclusivity’ means making sure anyone who disagrees is not included. ‘Diversity’ spells a deadening uniformity of thought. And ‘equality’ frequently means shamelessly privileging one group over another. As to that equality, while the old communists were obsessed with the economic kind, the new communists are fixated on culture and history. The current rewriting of Britain’s past, with many dubious claims, to give minority-cultures an equal historical standing here is merely the same old taking from the ‘rich’ and giving to the ‘poor’ – except in cultural form.
This doublespeak is developing at an alarming pace, and if you don’t self-censor, you risk punishment. In the Soviet Union this came from the Party and its adherents, but in modern Britain the sources of correction are more scattered and omnipresent – it’s a multi-headed dragon, seemingly everywhere and nowhere, making it even more scary. Your neighbour may be with you on some topics, but could have signed up to their own pet cause – Refugees Welcome, Climate Change, Trans-allies – you simply don’t know. So to avoid social cancellation it’s easier simply to avoid certain issues – especially the important ones – altogether. And, you can’t help wondering, is that neighbour a true believer, or someone simply as scared to express a wrong thought as you are? It’s all increasingly familiar.
The recent debanking of Nigel Farage was a prime example of a step into new territory. After long denials from the bank it soon became clear the reason was simply disagreement with his politics. All wrapped in the elaborate justifications of the Newspeak – ‘his views did not align with our values’ or were ‘at odds with our position as an inclusive organisation.’ It was the closest thing one had seen to the Soviet jailing of dissidents, and you couldn’t help wondering what new level of punishment, to keep the masses in line, was going to come next. ‘If this can happen to me it can happen to you,’ Farage said. And as someone brought up in the ex-Soviet system, I can tell you he’s right.
So I find myself facing a dilemma: whether to pack up all of our belongings and move, perhaps back to Eastern Europe – to the Free East, where I don’t have to sing to the red rainbow flags. Or correct my speech to avoid being detected by the KGB Trans Allies. Or get labelled a dissident Alt-Right.
Or perhaps I should simply stay in the UK after all and enjoy the feeling of being back home. Back home to keeping my mouth shut.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/has-soviet-self-censorship-come-to-britain/
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15 October, 2023
RSPCA again: Under pressure to explain why 74% of the money raised from its weekly lottery goes on expenses
From prior reports I have seen, their chief talent seems to be for quickly putting down animals entrusted to their care. Do they care about animals at all or are they just another bureaucracy? Some of them talk animal rights a lot but animal rights seems mainly to be people hatred
The RSPCA faces questions over how it spends the proceeds from its lotteries after it revealed more than 74 percent of money raised is spent on administration and expenses.
Twenty percent of proceeds help fund the vital work of the charity, the minimum amount set by the Gambling Commission, and the remainder goes towards prizes.
The RSPCA raised £3,335,704 through its various lotteries in 2022, meaning about £2.5mn was spent on expenses, as reported by The Sunday Telegraph.
The charity runs a weekly £1-entry lottery offering a jackpot of £1,000, and up to £10,000 in quarterly 'superdraws'.
According to the RSPCA's website: 'In 2022 £3,335,704 was raised from ticket sales in our Weekly Lotteries, Quarterly Superdraws and seasonal Raffles, with 5.77% spent on prizes, 74.16% spent on expenses and 20.07% being used to fund the work of the RSPCA in England and Wales.'
The figures were 'based on the Lottery Submissions made by the RSPCA to the Gambling Commission, during the 2022 calendar year'. 'This translated to a fantastic £669,669.24!'
The Gambling Commission states that 'the level of expenses and prizes allocated from the proceeds must not be such as to reduce the profits to below 20%'.
That means at least 20 per cent must be 'applied to its purposes' - going towards the running of the charity.
It says that proceeds can otherwise only be used to go towards prizes or to pay expenses 'reasonably incurred' organising the lottery.
This can include the salaries of those running it, the cost of selling or supplying tickets, printing and distributing tickets, marketing, or paying any fee to an external lottery manager.
As reported in The Telegraph, Anne Kasica, founder of The SHG help group for people experiencing issues with the charity, said: '[If] the RSPCA is unable to match the prudence and financial competence of other charities, it is no wonder that they are always claiming to be in crisis and desperate for money.
'Perhaps it is time for the Charity Commission to take a much closer look at the RSPCA's financial [proficiency].'
An RSPCA spokesperson said: 'We aim to keep expenses as low as possible.
'We regularly review where savings can be made and will explore if costs can be reduced further without impacting the vital funds raised and remaining compliant with the strict Gambling Commission guidelines.'
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Authoritarian Thugs Continue Their Persecution of Jack Phillips
I've been writing about Denver-area baker Jack Phillips for over a decade now. It's clear to me he's going to be badgered into the grave by authoritarians intent on punishing him for thought crimes. From the first time his name appeared in the news until this day, the media have misled the public about him, about the case and about the law.
The latest chapter in Phillips' Kafkaesque saga involves a transgender lawyer named Autumn Scardina, who demanded Phillips create a pink cake with blue frosting to help celebrate a gender transition. As expected, Phillips, who'd already spent years fighting government coercion, refused to participate.
The Colorado Civil Rights Commission agreed that Scardina had been discriminated against as a transgender person. Then, the dishonorable A. Bruce Jones of the 2nd Judicial District upheld the commission's flagrant attack on free expression. Now, the Colorado Supreme Court has agreed to take up the case.
The entire case is built on ludicrous contortions of logic and law. The Colorado Court of Appeals, for instance, ruled in favor of Scardina, contending that the colors pink and blue aren't really speech because, in and of themselves, they aren't expressive of anything. The message, says the court, is "generated by the observer."
Yes. Because Phillips isn't a complete idiot, he understands that context matters. The color white has no inherent meaning, either. If a known Klansman asks a tailor to fit him for some white sheets, it definitely does.
Then again, if you believe Scardina just happened to approach the most famous Christian baker in the country to create a "transition" cake the same day the Supreme Court announced it would hear the Masterpiece case in 2017, you're certainly an idiot. The entire Scardina episode, including the configuration of the cake -- using colors but no words -- was calibrated to set Phillips up.
In the initial complaint to the Civil Rights Commission, Scardina claimed to be "stunned" by Phillip's rejection. It should be noted, because it isn't in any media coverage, that Phillips' lawyers had very good reason to suspect Scardina, whose name appeared on a caller ID, first requested "an image of Satan smoking marijuana." Later, an email was sent to the shop requesting "a three-tiered white cake" with a "large figure of Satan, licking a (nine-inch) black Dildo ... that can be turned on before we unveil the cake."
Then again, Scardina admitted it was a setup. As the Associated Press reported last year, according to the activist's lawyer, "She called Phillips' Masterpiece Cakeshop to place the order after hearing about the court's announcement because she wanted to find out if he really meant it ... It was more of calling someone's bluff."
There was no bluff to call. Phillips isn't going to create cakes to celebrate gay weddings or gender transitions or the grand openings of strip clubs or bawdy bachelor parties or for a 'happy divorce!' or any other event that undermines his faith. And even if he was the biggest hypocrite in all of Christendom -- which he most certainly isn't -- it wouldn't change anything. Americans don't have to justify their free expression to anyone.
Scardina claims the lawsuit was intended to "challenge the veracity" of Phillips' claim that he would serve LGBTQ customers. This is the central lie of the case. Phillips never once refused to sell a gay couple or a transgender person or anyone else anything in his store. But Phillips isn't Scardina's servant, and the government has no right to compel him to endorse or participate in any lifestyle.
Speaking of which, the media keeps contending that Phillips is looking for a religious "carve out" in anti-discrimination law -- or something along those lines. No such thing exists. It is unclear if the people who write those words are unfamiliar with the First Amendment or just instinctively dismiss it, but religious liberty and free expression are explicitly protected by law. Anything that infringes on those rights is the "carve out," not the other way around. If "anti-discrimination" laws dictate that the government can compel Americans to express ideas they disagree with, as Colorado does, then anti-discrimination laws need to be overturned, tout de suite.
At this point, the best-case scenario is for Phillips' case to reach SCOTUS, so the court can either repair the Masterpiece decision -- which basically provided the state and activists with a guidebook on bullying people of faith (basically, don't show public animosity while doing it) -- or shelve the First Amendment.
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German Nazism's Successor: Islamic Nazism
"In every generation they arise to annihilate us." That statement appears in the Haggadah, the book read from at the Passover Seder. The book is about 1,000 years old; the statement is more than 2,000 years old.
A generation or two ago, it was the Nazis who arose to annihilate the Jews.
In this generation, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Islamic movements have risen to annihilate the Jews.
The widespread overuse of the term "Nazi" -- like the overuse of the terms "fascist," "racist," "existential threat," "genocide," "misinformation," "threat to our democracy," among others -- has rendered "Nazi" little more than a word to dismiss people who oppose the Left.
"Nazi" should never be used to describe non-Nazis. Nazi evil was sui generis. There has never been as organized, as industrialized, an attempt to murder every member of a religious/ethnic group -- "every member" meaning babies, women, and the elderly as well as adult males -- as the Nazi attempt to murder every Jew in Europe. Within a mere four years, they nearly succeeded: The Nazis murdered two out every three Jews in Europe.
But the term "Nazi" is applicable to one ideology today. There is an ideological successor to the Nazis. Just as the primary aim of Nazism was to kill every Jew in Europe, the primary aim of tens of millions of radical Muslims is to kill the seven million Jews in Israel and eradicate the one Jewish state.
The Muslim leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran regularly announce that the annihilation of Israel is their paramount aim. They would rather murder the Jews of Israel and eradicate Israel than feed their people. In fact, they have stated that the death of tens of millions of their fellow Iranians is a price worth paying if it means annihilating Israel.
That is why the purpose of Hamas's attack was to slaughter as many Jews as possible. No army base was attacked -- because the attack had no military aim. Hamas Einsatzgruppen (the name of the Nazi mobile killing units) attacked a music festival, where they murdered at least 270 young people and maimed an untold number of others. Their other targets were homes, so as to kill entire families -- because their aim was not military victory but the murder of Jews. Babies and grandmothers are not military targets.
Many Jews not initially killed by Hamas were taken as hostages, including toddlers and grandparents. "Social media," the Times of Israel reported, "were filled with horrifying videos of men, women and children being carried into the (Gaza) Strip, many of them appearing to have been abused."
The celebrations in Gaza and elsewhere in the Muslim world were over Jews having been murdered and displayed. You can see the ecstatic joy of throngs of Palestinians in Gaza as Hamas terrorists display Jewish bodies in the back of pickup trucks driving through the streets of Gaza.
From the Times of Israel:
"The video of the woman stripped down to her underwear appears to be of Shani Louk, a German citizen who was identified by her mother, and who had been attending the music festival which was staged close to Kibbutz Re'im. Hamas operatives are seen celebrating and cheering in the pickup truck in which they had placed Louk's body, which was contorted in an unnatural angle, while Palestinians surrounding the truck shouted, 'Allahu Akbar' ('God is the greatest'). Two of the men spit on her."
From the Daily Mail:
"A woman was seen being kidnapped with her children as horrified onlookers screamed: 'She has a baby.' The mother was later identified as Shiri who was taken with her husband, Yarden, sons Ariel, three, and nine-month-old Kfir, as well as her elderly parents Yossi and Margit. They were believed to have been snatched from Shiri's home ... on the border with Gaza.
"Disturbing footage shows a boy of ten being dragged towards an opening in the border's fence by terrorists.
"Erez Kalderon, who was snatched from his home in Nir Oz in the south of Israel by Hamas, looks terrified as he is led through the streets by the heavily armed men. His father Ofer and sister Sahar, 16, were also abducted.
"Ditza Heiman, 84, was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, close to the border, and taken into Gaza... Another grandmother, 85-year-old Yaffa Adar, was bundled into a golf buggy at gunpoint by a group of terrorists."
The result was that on Oct. 7, 2023, more Jews were murdered than on any one day since the Holocaust. Percentagewise, it was as if 40,000 Americans had been murdered. And these Israelis were murdered for the same reason Jews were murdered during the Holocaust -- because they were Jews.
Radical Islam's useful idiots on the Left deny this fact. They say that Muslims who seek to annihilate Israel are not motivated by antisemitism but by anti-Zionism, as if there is any real-world difference between the two, and as if seeking to eradicate one nation in the world -- the only one that happens to be Jewish -- is in no way anti-Jewish.
It should therefore be noted, to cite but one example of non-Israeli Jews being murdered by Islamists, that in 1994, Hezbollah, the Iran-backed terrorist organization in Lebanon, bombed the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 85 people and injuring more than 300. They weren't Israelis; they were Argentinian Jews.
It should also be noted that Hamas's charter makes no distinction between Zionists, Israelis, and Jews:
"The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.'"
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Divide over Israel: We can only hope the ‘descent from civility’ dissipates quickly
Gerard Henderson
Former Australian prime minister John Howard has a good turn of phrase. His description of the anti-Israel protest that took place in Sydney on Monday as “a catastrophic descent from civility” is precisely accurate.
The unauthorised protest march took place from the Town Hall to the Opera House. I watched hundreds of protesters – men and women with children – march down Phillip Street chanting loudly: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” At the rear of the protest was a large number of NSW police vehicles, including members of the riot squad. The contingent gave the impression that this was a movement that required a police escort.
I did not know at the time that the march was unauthorised or that the police had instructed Jewish Australian supporters of Israel to remain at home.
Or that the only person arrested on the day was a man peacefully carrying an Israeli flag – he was subsequently released without charges laid. But he did not receive a police escort home.
When the protesters reached the Opera House, there were audible cries of “F..k the Jews” and “Gas the Jews”. The former is racially motivated abuse, the latter an incitement to murder, even genocide. No arrests were made on the night – not even when demonstrators threw lighted flares at the feet of police on the Opera House steps and burned Israeli flags in a public place.
On Wednesday morning, NSW Premier Chris Minns apologised to the Jewish community on behalf of the government and himself for what had occurred. He pointed out that the intention “to light up the Opera House” in Israeli colours had been to “create a place and a space for that community to come together to commemorate (following) these terrible events in the Middle East”. But he added that the Opera House forecourt “was obviously overrun with people that were spewing racial epithets and hatred on the streets of Sydney”.
In fact, the spewing of hate had begun the previous Sunday evening outside Lakemba station in southwest Sydney. At the time it was known that the Hamas terrorist group based in the Gaza Strip, and supported by Iran, had indiscriminately fired thousands of rockets into southern Israel and was attacking civilians on the Israeli side of the border as well as that part of the Israel Defence Forces that was in the vicinity.
Sheik Ibrahim Dadoun, an imam from United Muslims of Australia, said he was elated at the events, declaring this to be “a day of pride, a day of victory”. The next day pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through Sydney.
We now know that Hamas terrorists, who like to be called militants, involved themselves in war crimes as they attacked and murdered children and babies, men and women (some of whom were raped). It wasn’t a day of pride and it’s unlikely to be a day of victory following the war that Hamas initiated.
There is not much that unites the extreme left and the extreme right in Western nations – apart from hostility towards Israel. The protesters marching through Sydney consisted not only of individuals with a Middle Eastern background but some white Australians of a green-left bent.
The chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” means only one thing: that the Jewish presence should be driven out of the land that exists between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. That is, the elimination of Israel (in which a large Muslim minority lives peacefully) that was formally recognised by the UN in 1948.
As Daniel Mandel documented in his book "HV Evatt and the Establishment of Israel" (Routledge, 2004), Australia’s external affairs minister at the time, Bert Evatt, played an important role in the creation of Israel.
On Sunday evening, John Lyons, the ABC’s Sydney-based global affairs editor, told viewers of ABC TV news the Israeli public faced this “big question”: namely, whether “the cost of maintaining its occupation over three million Palestinians in the West Bank and its blockade over the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza is worth the price that it pays”.
It’s true that Israel occupied the West Bank after the success in its defensive war of 1967. But the area in southern Israel that Hamas attacked has been part of Israel for ages. The Gaza Strip is currently blockaded by Israel to an extent as a means of a democratic nation defending itself from Hamas, which is intent on destroying it. In any event, there is an exit from Gaza into Muslim-majority Egypt.
On ABC TV News Breakfast on Friday, Ebony Bennett, the deputy director of the left-wing Australia Institute, described Gaza as “occupied” by Israel. There have been no Israelis living freely in Gaza for more than a decade.
It is possible that Israel and the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah on the West Bank (which has limited autonomy) can eventually bring about a situation in which Israel can exist within secure borders as part of a two-state solution. But there will be no deals between Israel and Hamas.
The key political opposition to Australia’s support for Israel comes from the left. On Monday, Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi put out a post declaring “One colonial government supporting another – what a disgrace”.
This overlooks the fact Pakistan-born Faruqi willingly settled in what she terms a colonial society, in which she has achieved much success.
Many of the Muslim Lebanese who criticise Australia’s support for Israel overlook that they or their immediate ancestors became Australian citizens due to the decision of the Coalition government in 1976 to accept those affected by the Lebanese civil war despite the fact they were not formally refugees. I wrote about this in these pages on November 24, 2016.
The success of modern Australia is that Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and others live freely in a democratic society – despite differences.
However, right now some Jewish Australians – including students – do not feel safe. We can only hope that this week’s descent from civility as identified by Howard dissipates quickly and that relative peace returns to the Middle East.
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13 October, 2023
Ivy league students and far-left politicians call conservatives Nazis - but don't condemn Hamas, killers of Jews
The Left have long ago taken leave from reality
If you thought the idiotic bile, the bizarre rationalizations, the inane whataboutism from the Left over the Hamas slaughter of Israelis had run its course – think again.
None other than Democratic Socialist hero Senator Bernie Sanders has joined the chat.
In a dizzying statement full of equivocation and gross omissions on Wednesday, Sanders demanded that Israel’s response to the terrorist massacre be reigned in.
He accuses the Jewish State of a ‘war crime’ and ‘serious violation of international law’ by cutting off its supply of food, water and power to Gaza. ‘Children and innocent people do not deserve to be punished,’ he writes.
Of course, they don’t, Senator. And neither does Israel target civilians.
But what’s so strange about his statement is that he doesn’t say much about the Israelis indiscriminately killed.
There’s nothing of the credible reports of children beheaded by Hamas savages, women raped and burned to death, threats to execute hostages, including defenseless elderly, young festival-goers and the disabled.
There’s scant recognition of the undeniable mass slaughter of Jews.
It’s outrageous. Sanders accuses Israel of ‘war crimes’ but soft-pedals on Hamas?
What must be shouted – loud and clear by all – is these terrorists can never again be allowed to walk this Earth. But in Sanders’ nauseatingly cautious prose, he fails to even come close to saying that.
President Joe Biden mustered an outright condemnation of these barbarians. Why can’t he?
This moment demands moral clarity – not confusion, caveats and obfuscation.
Now, it may be easy to dismiss the scribblings of a wild-haired, 82-year-old, Soviet-sympathizer from Vermont as the raving of a fringe lunatic. But Sanders is no backbencher.
He won nearly 30 percent of the Democratic electorate in the 2020 primaries. In 2016, he came even closer, with almost 45 percent of the vote against Hillary Clinton.
Sanders is the face of raging Left-wing progressivism and America must now admit that a large part of that movement is viciously anti-Israel and possibly even worse.
You need look no further than Sunday's rally of the Democratic Socialists of America in New York City’s Times Square.
Holding signs that read ‘When people are occupied, resistance is justified,’ they marched through the streets of the city with the largest Jewish population in the world.
One protestor waved a swastika displayed on his smartphone.
Up until this week, six Democrat members of Congress were DSA members. So far only one has resigned from the organization and it took their most prominent member, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortes, two whole days to condemn this disgusting display of hatred.
But will she now step down from the DSA, too?
Witness the social media postings of the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter on Tuesday. They tweeted an image of a paragliding soldier with a message of support for the Palestinians – an obvious reference to the murder on Saturday of 260 innocent people at the Nova music festival, after armed Hamas terrorists had flown in from across the border.
Pure filth also continues to pour from the most elite American universities.
At Harvard, 31 student groups signed on to an outrageous statement holding Israel 'entirely responsible for all unfolding violence', while similar sentiments have been expressed at Columbia, the University of Virginia and other so-called institutions of higher-learning.
How did we reach this point where the most educated stare into the face of evil and somehow fail to see it?
The college students that regularly denounce Trump supporters and everyday run-of-the-mill conservatives as Nazis won’t condemn the actual killers of Jews.
Is this what the progressive movement has become?
To switch on television is to witness the unbelievable: Liberal American news anchors and guests defending terrorists.
Barely before the bodies had gone cold, CNN's Fareed Zakaria invited a Hamas apologist on his Sunday show to spew incredible lies, utterly unchallenged.
‘Hamas mainly attacked military establishments, military installations,’ the flak for rapists and kidnappers said, ‘and most of the people they have arrested and taken as war prisoners are military people. I do not accept [they are] attacking any civilian.’
How ridiculously, insultingly untrue. That interview remains on Zakaria’s Twitter feed even today.
The New York Times refers to Hamas savages in its copy as ‘fighters’ or ‘militants.’
The cowardly Gray Lady cannot bring herself to call those who executed possibly the most gruesome terror attack in history what they clearly are – terrorists.
Meanwhile, MSNBC’s Ayman Mohyeldin took things a bit further, arguing Monday that the brutal slayings were the fault of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for running a ‘Jewish supremacist’ government.
It was so bad on the Lefty news channel that the Anti-Defamation League's Jonathan Greenblatt, who spends most of his time attacking Republicans, scolded MSNBC live on MSNBC.
‘Who is writing these scripts – Hamas?’ he asked, ‘When we say this was an escalation, that it was bound to happen, I’m sorry, this was a massacre.’
Again and again – we heard the rationalizations.
Only when the horrific details – the beheadings, the child murder – became too terrible to ignore did some of the anti-Israel fanatics move off their talking points and concede the terrible truth.
But, not all of them.
On Wednesday, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib was followed through the hallways of Congress by journalists and peppered with questions.
‘Congresswoman, Hamas terrorists have cut off babies’ heads and burned children alive. Do you support Israel’s rights to defend themselves against this brutality?’ a reporter asked.
Silence.
‘You can’t comment about Hamas terrorists chopping off babies’ heads?’
Silence.
‘Congresswoman, do you have a comment on Hamas terrorists chopping off babies’ heads? You have nothing to say about Hamas terrorists chopping off babies’ heads?’
Tlaib – clearly uncomfortable – kept walking.
But the answer should have been simple: I condemn Hamas. They must be destroyed. Why couldn't she say it? Why can’t they all say it?
There is evil in this world, even when it is committed by those the Left views as victims of capitalism or Western progress or colonialism. Anyone who cannot or will not call it out for what it is has no place in our public discourse.
Hamas wants one thing – to exterminate Jews.
Anyone who tries to rationalize or overlook their atrocities belongs in the dustbin of history along with the Nazis.
It is that serious. It is that terrifying.
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Rhode Island Town Defies Mob, Erects Columbus Statue
If we really want to make America great again, we need to elevate what is good and noble about us and defy those who insist on tearing down our past.
On Monday, designated as Columbus Day, the town of Johnston, Rhode Island, unveiled a statue of Christopher Columbus in a local park. A few protesters turned up, but they were drowned out by the hundreds who gathered to celebrate.
The statue of Columbus had been removed from Providence, Rhode Island, in the summer madness of 2020 after being defaced repeatedly by vandals.
The statue was created by Auguste Bartholdi for the 1892 Columbian Exposition in Chicago marking the 400th anniversary of the explorer’s voyage. It later was moved to Providence and remained there until city leaders ultimately surrendered to the mob.
But I’ll give them credit in one sense: They didn’t melt down the statue, as others planned to do.
Former Providence Mayor Joe Paolino went a step further. He bought the statue and donated it to the town of Johnston, population under 30,000.
“It means a lot,” Johnston Mayor Joseph Polisena Jr. said in September about the statue’s pending arrival in his town.
“You know, we have a high percentage of Italian Americans here in Johnston, but it goes beyond Italian-American history,” Polisena said. “It’s worth history. It’s important, and I don’t think the majority of people want to see the statue melted. So we’re very grateful to Mayor Paolino for donating it to Johnston.”
The Washington Examiner reported that Johnston officials put a fence around the Columbus statue, made of bronze and standing nearly 7 feet tall, and added a 24-hour security system to protect the work from further vandalization.
Good for Johnston. Maybe this will start a trend.
As I wrote in my book “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past,” we have every reason to continue celebrating Christopher Columbus. It was his bold expedition into the unknown of the vast Atlantic Ocean that ultimately led to the creation of the United States and countless other countries in the Americas.
Columbus brought Christianity to the Americas too, another reason for the Left’s contempt.
Columbus was flawed—as all men are—but he was a great man, maliciously and falsely maligned first by the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century and now the Left in the 21st. If we all believe that it is right and good that our country exists, then it is right and proper to celebrate the brave explorer who made it possible.
Several years ago, I speculated that Columbus Day may soon come to an end in this country. As the generation raised on Marxist historian Howard Zinn came of age without a foundation of informed patriotism, eliminating Columbus Day seemed to be inevitable.
The modern West is full of navel gazing, self-doubt, narcissism, and ingratitude. In that climate, young fanatics with disordered souls turned on the great figures of our past and marked them for destruction. Our corrupted institutions gladly placated and followed the mob, much as the intellectual elites of the French Revolution followed the Parisian mob to their doom.
The institutional capitulation has been total.
Yet there are countless Americans who never gave up on the old republic that once proudly embraced the symbol of Columbia.
I offer that putting up a Columbus statue—surely slated for destruction, warehousing, or placement in a woke museum to “contextualize” and shame the Italian explorer—in a Rhode Island town is a noble act of defiance.
It’s also a sign that perhaps the revolutionary fever of 2020 is beginning to break, if not in the institutions then among the people.
Ibram X. Kendi, the Rasputin of “anti-racism,” has proven to be the con artist peddler of ideological pseudoreligion that he always was. His gazillion-dollar anti-racism center at Boston University wasted tens of millions of dollars and has been accused of misusing its ample funds.
The New York Times even published an editorial suggesting that maybe Kendi’s ideas aren’t the best and that promoting racism in the name of racism might be a tad problematic.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/10/11/rhode-island-city-defies-mob-erects-columbus-statue/
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Rent Control Is a Disaster. Don't Let It Spread Across the Nation.
America's renters -- more than one-third of the nation's households -- are in for trouble. Left-wing politicians are demanding rent regulation from coast to coast. Wherever it is adopted, the result will be a disastrous reduction in the rental housing supply, leaving renters desperate for places to live.
New York City is the poster child for the failures of rent regulation. The U.S. Supreme Court is currently mulling a challenge to the constitutionality of the city's rent regime.
Whatever the justices decide, the public needs to consider less destructive, more targeted ways to help low-income people pay for housing. The court of public opinion needs to consider these facts.
Fact No. 1: Rent regulation isn't targeted to the poor. In New York City, there's no means test. What you need is luck or connections. The mean income of a rent-stabilized apartment dweller is $47,000, but census data shows that tens of thousands of them earn more than $150,000 year. Some occupants use what they're saving on rent to pay for a weekend place in the Hamptons or New England.
The pols don't object --- a sure sign they're calling for rent regulation to help themselves politically, not the poor.
In New York City, 44% of rental apartments are regulated by the Rent Guidelines Board, established in 1969, which sets the maximum amount landlords are allowed to raise the rent. Those limits apply to all buildings of six or more units built before 1974.
In 2022, the RGB set the maximum rent hike at 3.25% on one-year leases, and this year at 3%. Never mind that last year, fuel costs to heat the buildings soared 19% and overall inflation hit 8.3%.
The decisions are political, not economic. Many Democratic politicians vilify building owners as "greedy landlords" and depict themselves as the champions of the downtrodden. It's a scam.
Fact No. 2: Winners and losers. The winners are the lucky few with rent-regulated apartments, and the pols who count on an army of tenant activists to turn out at the polls. The losers are the 56% of renters who don't score a regulated apartment and have to scour neighborhoods for an unregulated place they can afford. They're paying more.
Why? Because regulation causes some landlords to walk away, reducing the overall supply of apartments. The laws of supply and demand mean rents go up. New Yorkers in unregulated apartments are paying the highest rents in the U.S. for a one-bedroom apartment. They are the real victims, and they should be furious.
Yet the left-wing press pretends rent control offers only benefits. The New Republic warns that the Supreme Court challenge threatens "laws that have benefitted the city's tenants for generations." Sorry, untrue -- only some tenants, and not always the neediest.
It's economic madness. The saner way to help those who need assistance paying rent is with a voucher. We offer the needy SNAP debit cards to help them pay for groceries. No one slaps price controls on grocery stores or designates certain stores as "regulated," forcing them to sell at below cost.
Yet New York forces certain landlords to pay what should be a public cost shared by all, an argument made to the court.
Fact No. 3: The Marxist fantasy that rent regulation will help the poor is spreading across the U.S. and Europe as well. Maine and Minnesota have enacted laws allowing municipalities to impose rent regulations. In November 2024, California voters will be asked to approve a proposition allowing local governments to add additional restrictions to the state's existing rent caps.
The laws of supply and demand are international. Berlin froze rents in 2019 and the rental supply plummeted, according to the Ifo Institute, a think tank.
Yet London's Mayor Sadiq Khan is calling for freezing rents for two years. London provides housing vouchers to the poor -- a smarter approach -- but when the city froze the voucher amounts during COVID, fewer apartments were available in the price range. The answer is to raise the voucher amount. Freezing rents will only make the shortage worse
Ignore the demagogues. The evidence is in: Rent regulation is a political scam. There are better ways to help Americans afford a place to live.
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To Protect and Destroy
What happens when police, trying to catch a bad guy, destroy your house? This happens surprisingly often.
In my new video, Los Angeles print shop owner Carlos Pena describes how a man running from police knocked him to the ground and then ran inside his shop.
"I didn't know what was going on until I saw the SWAT team showing up," says Pena. They launched "31 or 32 rounds of tear gas into my shop."
When the SWAT team finally broke in, the suspect had already escaped.
When Pena was finally allowed to return to his shop, he discovered that the SWAT team's tear gas had wrecked all his equipment.
Pena assumed they would reimburse him. Federal marshals gave him a form to fill out about damages. "I got a little happy! ... I itemized everything that was damaged."
But the marshals rejected his list. They said it was because he didn't include a precise total. So he added it up and resubmitted.
"A couple months later I got another letter of denial," says Pena. This time, the marshals simply said they "were not responsible" for the damage. They told him to pursue his claim with the city.
He did. But the city told him their SWAT team is "immune."
Pena thought he'd finally get paid when "the new mayor of Los Angeles' assistant called (and said), 'The mayor is very interested in helping you.'" Half a year later, the mayor still hasn't helped.
Pena tried the city council. "They just gave me numbers to call. When you call, they refer me to somebody else. It's unbearable."
It is. A city destroys his business, and then ignores him.
We asked Los Angeles officials for a comment. They didn't respond.
An attorney at the Institute for Justice, Jeffrey Redfern, says what happened to Pena is unconstitutional. He's taken Pena's case for free.
"But police sometimes do need to wreck a house to get the bad guy," I tell Redfern.
"Absolutely," he replies. "We're not suggesting that police did anything wrong. But if they destroy property, they must compensate innocent owners. Then the city can decide what policies it wants to adopt."
Maybe next time they'll shoot in a little less tear gas?
"When they get to offload these costs to random, unlucky individuals," says Redfern, "they don't have to do that kind of cost benefit analysis."
But the Institute for Justice lost a similar police destruction case in Colorado.
"The city did not compensate the owner at all," says Redfern. "It's absolutely crazy. The court said because law enforcement is doing this for the public good, it wouldn't be fair to force them to compensate people. But that's the entire point of the Takings Clause!"
The Takings Clause is the part of the Fifth Amendment that says government can't take or destroy private property without "just compensation."
"If the government takes your house to build a road or a school," explains Redfern, "you get compensation because it's not fair for you to bear that burden alone."
But Pena and his family must bear the burden of his lost business alone. He now works out of his garage, but he's lost most of his customers. His wife had to go back to work as a house cleaner to try to make ends meet.
"It sickens me to know that this can happen to you when you are doing everything right," says Pena.
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2023/10/11/to-protect-and-destroy-n2629640
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12 October, 2023
'Gender-bending' chemical found in food and plastic bottles now linked ADHD and autism
The logic here is obscure. Are they saying that BPA causes autism? If so they are going beyond the evidence. It could equally be that autism causes difficulty with BPA. And wherever the cause may lie, no evidence of harm from it is offered
A toxin found in food, drinks and other everyday items lingers longer in the bodies of kids with autism and ADHD, a study suggests.
Bisphenol A (BPA) is a chemical compound that has been dubbed a 'gender-bending' chemical because of its ties to hormonal and sexual problems.
Now, researchers from Rowan University and Rutgers University in New Jersey have found that kids with autism and ADHD cannot expel BPA from their bodies as quickly as neurotypical kids. BPA has been linked to both conditions previously, though this is the first to find that kids with ADHD and autism have a harder time eliminating the chemical.
The researchers also believe increased BPA exposure may increase the risk of developing these conditions but admit it is not clear how that works.
But the new link is bound to reignite calls to clamp down on the amount of BPA allowed in products in America, which has some of the most lax rules in the Western world.
Earlier this year, European officials drastically reduced the maximum amount of BPA by 20,000 times after finding that millions of people are likely consuming too much of the dangerous chemical. However, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows much higher levels.
The US also has some of the highest autism and ADHD rates in the world, with rates of autism in particular increasing by 52 percent since 2017.
The study, published last month in the journal PLOS One, measured detoxification efficiency- how quickly the body eliminates chemicals like BPA- in 66 children with autism, 46 with ADHD, and 37 neurotypical children. The participants were three to 16 years old.
In order to determine how much BPA they purged, researchers collected urine samples from each child between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., which were then frozen. The team also measured the children's dietary and vitamin intake.
They found that children with autism are 10 percent less able to eliminate BPA from their bodies, while kids with ADHD are 17 percent less able to purge the chemical.
Dr T Peter Stein, professor at the Roman-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine and lead study author, said this compromised ability to clear BPA and other pollutants from the body is 'the first hard biochemical evidence of what the linkage is between BPA and the development of autism or ADHD.'
'We were surprised to find that ADHD shows the same defect in BPA detoxification.'
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Why aren’t ‘anti-fascists’ condemning the tide of anti-Semitism?
Brendan O'Neill
I have a question about the events of the past few days: where is Antifa? Where are those self-styled anti-fascists who love to rage against anything that is even vaguely reminiscent of the 1930s?
Jews in Israel have been rounded up and murdered. Disgusting anti-Semites are on the streets of Sydney screaming, ‘Gas the Jews! Fuck the Jews!’ Mobs in London have taunted Israel, essentially laughing over its dead Jews. Britain’s Jewish schoolkids are taking off their blazers lest anyone recognise them as Jews and attack them. Across Europe security is being beefed up at Jewish establishments — schools, synagogues, museums — out of fear that Hamas-supporting mobs will invade and desecrate them.
And yet Antifa is nowhere to be seen. The thing these lefties fearmonger about all the time — the creeping return of the boiling hatreds of the 1930s — feels more real than ever and they’re saying nothing. It’s a strange anti-fascism that takes a break when something very much like fascism rears its repulsive head.
Following the slaughter in Israel the Western left stands exposed like never before
To the modern left, everything is fascism except actual fascism. Everything is ‘like the 1930s’ except the slaughter of Jewish youths, the kidnapping of Jewish grandmothers, the rise of mobs demanding a second Holocaust.
‘Fascist!’, they cry at everyone they disagree with, like real-life versions of Rick from The Young Ones. Yet when real Nazi scum show up, like that mob in Sydney crying ‘Gas the Jews!’, they turn coy.
Back Brexit and they’ll call you far right. Say a man can never become a woman and they’ll brand you a fellow traveller of fascism. Wonder out loud if we should try to do something about illegal immigration and they’ll say, ‘This is starting to feel a bit 1930s’.
But wipe out entire Jewish families? Gun down Jewish festivalgoers? Kidnap an elderly woman who survived the Holocaust? Mock Jews on the streets of our cities? Then they’ll erm and ahh. That’s ‘resistance’ apparently, not racism. It’s a rebellion, not fascism. It’s a ‘day of celebration’, as Novara Media’s commissioning editor said of Hamas’s invasion of Israel on Saturday, not a return of the bigotries of the 1930s.
Surely nothing better captures the moral disorientation of the radical left than the fact that they are more likely to use the word ‘fascist’ about their own fellow citizens who voted Leave or who defend women-only spaces than they are about a radical Islamist in Gaza who spits on the dead body of a woman who was murdered on the presumption that she was Jewish.
The surrealism of the ‘fascism’ issue is best summed up by events in Australia. Something genuinely horrific happened outside the Sydney Opera House yesterday, as mobs of Hamas backers hollered for the mass murder of Jews.
The opera house was lit up in the colours of the Israeli flag but Australia’s Jews could not go there to mourn or to connect with one another because a baying mob was there calling for them to be shoved back in the ovens. This requires serious self-reflection on Australia’s part. Any nation in which such a sick thing can happen has a duty to reckon with itself.
And yet I remember there being far more online fury, especially from Antifa, when Kellie-Jay Keen, aka Posie Parker, was in Australia earlier this year. Her Let Women Speak events Down Under, at which women agitate against the idea that blokes can become women, were furiously counterprotested by the masked anti-fascists of the modern left.
Where were these people yesterday? Why were they not counterprotesting the radical Islamists who were calling for another genocide of the Jews?
It is a curious anti-fascism that gets more riled up by a diminutive British lady whose only crime is to understand biology than it does by a baying mob that wants to eliminate the Jewish people.
Following the slaughter in Israel the Western left stands exposed like never before. I don’t think they realise how hard it will be for them to come back from this. Jews murdered by a virulently anti-Semitic movement, Jews taunted on our streets, Jews living in fear across our continent, and they said: ‘Well…you know…what did Israel expect?’
They’ve been fighting fantasy fascism for years, yet when real fascism came, they hid, they looked the other way, they made excuses. If they think this isn’t being clocked by people around the country, by the decent majority who abhor radical Islamist bigotry against Jews, women and others, then they’re even dimmer than I thought.
Here’s the thing: today’s Jew haters are even targeting the same people that yesterday’s Jew haters did. It is reported that the wheelchair-bound grandmother snatched by Hamas and spirited into Gaza is a survivor of the Holocaust. If you want to know how you would have reacted the first time this lady’s life was turned upside down by a movement of violent anti-Semites, just look at how you’ve responded the second time it happened.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/why-arent-anti-fascists-condemning-the-tide-of-anti-semitism/
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What really motivates the ‘new progressives’
Dramatizing their own virtue is all they really care about
Kemi Badenoch is right to say that Britain is not a racist country. The data simply does not support the claim that black and ethnic minority (BME) people in the UK are generally disadvantaged because of the racial prejudice of white Britons – that ‘systemic racism’ is the cause of the problem. It also suggests that some ethnic minorities tend to perform better than others because of internal cultural factors – not least, strong families and high educational aspirations. By the same token, the cause of relative disadvantage often lies in culture, not racism.
In Beyond Grievance: What the Left Gets Wrong About Ethnic Minorities, Rakib Ehsan writes: ‘Family dynamics and internal cultural attitudes can have a very real impact on the life trajectory of people living in Britain’s competitive society.’
So why, in defiance of the empirical data, has the Labour party given itself over to the brainless importation of radical identity politics from the US? This holds, as a matter of political dogma, that we may speak of BME people as if they are a single homogenous body, united in their common disadvantage, which is simply attributable to a systemic racism rooted in every white person’s ‘privilege’. Why cling to this narrative, when the evidence says you shouldn’t?
People who really cared to correct unjust economic and social disadvantages would be eager to understand the causes correctly, since accurate diagnosis is requisite for effective remedy. So, when presented with data that their wonted diagnosis – say, systemic racism – simply doesn’t stand up empirically, they would react with keen curiosity, even if with scepticism. That’s because what matters above all else to them is solving the real problem.
Yet that is not how the new progressives react. Over the past six years, I have presented evidence that Britain’s alleged systemic racism cannot be made to derive from a colonial history epitomised by slavery and the dehumanising racism that justified it – not least, since the British Empire devoted the second half of its life to anti-slavery on the basis of fundamental human equality. I have been met not with sceptical curiosity or thoughtful criticism, but with spitting abuse and the fist of repression. My antagonists never get as far as disagreeing, since they are determined not to listen in the first place. But if they really were concerned about the world’s victims, they would open their ears, perchance to learn, improve, and become more effective.
What do they really care about? One answer, according to Ehsan, is money: ‘The financial health of bad-faith actors ultimately rests on the peddling of fundamentally warped interpretations of British society and its institutions.’ And then of course there are jobs and influence at stake, all manner of ‘anti-racist’ political careers having been built upon carefully fashioned personas which attract social status and power.
But there’s more to it than that. It is notable that members of this ideological group are determined to think the very worst of their country. It is important to them that Britain is, and remains, as Ehsan puts it, a ‘hellish island of rampant institutional racism’. They don’t need to believe this. Indeed, the hard evidence says they shouldn’t. But they plough ahead regardless. Why? What’s going on here psychologically, even spiritually?
One plausible candidate is the operation of a degenerate Christian sensibility. For Christians, the paradoxical mark of the genuinely righteous person is a profound awareness of their own unrighteousness. The saint is distinguished as the one who knows more deeply than others just what a sinner he really is. There is considerable virtue in this, of course, since it tempers self-righteousness with compassion for fellow sinners, forbidding the righteous to cast the unrighteous beyond the human pale.
Yet, like all virtue, it is vulnerable to vice. For it can degenerate from genuine humility into a perverse bid for supreme self-righteousness, which exaggerates one’s sins and broadcasts the display of repentance: holier-than-thou because more-sinful-than-thou. The Jesuit-educated French philosopher, Pascal Bruckner, captured this when writing of contemporary, post-imperial Europe in the Tyranny of Guilt:
This is the paternalism of the guilty conscience: seeing ourselves as the kings of infamy is still a way of staying on the crest of history. Since Freud we know that masochism is only a reversed sadism, a passion for domination turned against oneself. Europe is still messianic in a minor key… Barbarity is Europe’s great pride, which it acknowledges only in itself; it denies that others are barbarous, finding attenuating circumstances for them (which is a way of denying them all responsibility).
There is a self-obsessive quality about this. While the rhetoric claims the mantle of the oppressed, the action ignores them:
[By] erecting lack of love for oneself into a leading principle, we lie to ourselves about ourselves and close ourselves to others … In Western self-hatred, the Other has no place. It is a narcissistic relationship in which the African, the Indian, and Arab are brought in as extras.
And so it was in the December 2015 Rhodes Must Fall agitation in Oxford. The protests involved several hundred students, many of these overseas postgraduates privileged with scholarships to study at one of the world’s most prestigious universities, who were clamouring for the downfall of an obscure statue of a British imperialist who had been lying in his grave for well over a century. Some were even Rhodes scholars, cheerfully biting the hand that was feeding them.
Meanwhile, back in the home of RMF’s student leader, Ntokozo Qwabe, Jacob Zuma and the ANC were busy looting the state, driving South Africa to the verge of collapse and exposing its people to destitution. About that real-time political scandal and looming human crisis, what did Oxford’s student Social Justice Warriors have to say? Nothing at all.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/bad-faith-2/
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Housing policy built on dodgy foundations: Government hasn’t got a clue about the economics of renting
It is an unfortunate reality that modern Australian government has become an enterprise in search of instant political self-gratification; in delivering reams of announcements and volumes of spending while producing very little in the way of sustainable positive outcomes.
The bleak state of housing, where too many Australians are experiencing a genuine rental and accommodation crisis, is borne not of a lack of government action, but rather consistently wrong action and of decades of bad policy across all tiers of government. This is a situation that cannot be quickly remedied, especially through yet another cash-splash.
Following the recent agreement between the Albanese government and the Australian Greens to pass the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) legislation, Greens leader Adam Bandt said that ‘the Greens are the party of renters’. Bandt is more correct than he realises because this policy and the concessions extracted, will lead to ever more Australians being locked out of home ownership and trapped into perpetual renting.
Eminent US economist Thomas Sowell frequently counselled that there are no solutions and only trade-offs. This is advice Australian governments consistently refuse to heed, regularly announcing new policies with accompanying billions in spending, all while failing to properly account for the associated costs and consequences. This latest housing announcement, coupled with Prime Minister Albanese’s earlier New Homes Bonus (NHB) announcement just demonstrates that our political leaders are prepared do anything to address Australia’s housing and rental crisis – anything except undertaking the necessary reforms to address underlying causes.
A significant driver of Australia’s housing problems is a policy-driven supply squeeze caused by a toxic cocktail of bad planning, tax, energy and industrial relations policies. It should not surprise that a political and bureaucratic ecosystem driven by ‘announceables’ and not results has increased the cost of housing for Australians. The effects of this toxic policy cocktail is further exacerbated by the Commonwealth’s large immigration intake.
Australians experiencing housing price stress should genuinely question whether they will be better off following all the recent announcements.
As a case in point, the most recent $3billion committed by the government to mollify the Greens to pass the HAFF legislation and the earlier $3bn for the NHB to provide ‘performance-based funding for states and territories’ will need to be funded from somewhere. And that somewhere will be from taxes imposed, directly and indirectly, on those these policies claim to benefit. All these claimed supply enhancement announcements are however more reflective of an episode of Yes, Minister with the government proposing to increase housing supply by destroying housing supply. Invariably, the principal beneficiaries of these new schemes will be the public servants hired to administer them.
The most recent Commonwealth budget papers that showed that over the past thirty years, inflation-adjusted per capita Commonwealth spending has nearly doubled, and taxing has more than doubled. Our governments have taken ever more from Australians, including by borrowing from the future, and given it back less a ‘handling’ fee, all while asking to be thanked.
Not satisfied with the economic damage caused by the current policy mix, the Greens have indicated that they will continue to fight for ‘a freeze and cap on rent increases’. This is the bedrock of the Greens housing policy and they even produced analysis suggesting that, were a rental freeze implemented last year, two million renting households could have saved $3.1bn in 2022-23 and $4.9bn in 2023-24.
Such a rent freeze would just result in a temporary transfer of economic pain from one group to another. According to Treasury’s most recent Tax Expenditures and Insights Statement, almost half the 2.6m taxpayers who claimed rental deductions in 2022 experienced rental tax losses. These losses summed to $10.2bn and provided $3.6bn of negative gearing offsets. These losses were before interest rates started rising and before inflation driven increases on council rates, insurance and property maintenance set in. A rental freeze would just further increase the pain on landlords and the Commonwealth budget, a pain that will ultimately be transferred back to renters including via higher taxes for longer.
Landlords would also likely respond by either selling, withdrawing rental stock, or reducing maintenance, and the Commonwealth would just need to collect more taxes from other sectors of the economy. The net effect would be further harm to renters and the broader economy.
The Greens even equated their rental cap proposal to the gas price cap agreed to by National cabinet. However, gas industry expert Saul Kavonic noted that the price cap is already being unwound and that, ‘It will go down as one of the most anti-market, poorly planned and economically damaging policies Australia has seen in recent memory, with no discernible benefit to show for it.’ Kavonic added that, ‘The goal of the (gas price cap) policy, to lower prices for end users, has not been achieved. Unfortunately, even with the policy now being walked back, the economic harm may prove lasting.’
To address Australia’s housing and rental issues requires not a cash splash but rather a comprehensive productivity and supply side reform program including through reduced government spending, taxing, and regulation.
Some 150 years ago, Leo Tolstoy wrote describing the Russian government of his day. This description could aptly describe contemporary Australian government: ‘I sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means – except by getting off his back.’
If Australian policymakers want to ease the economic pain of Australians, whether in housing or general cost of living, they should first get off our backs.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/housing-policy-built-on-dodgy-foundations/
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11 October, 2023
Co-Ops are no substitutes for capitalism
Co-ops were the nearest thing to capitalism allowed in the old Communist Yugoslavia. Compared to state-run enterprises they did well but are no match for market forces in postwar democratic Croatia
The walls of ITAS, the last remaining co-operative factory in post-socialist Croatia, are lined with reminders of faded glories. A framed photo of Josip Broz Tito, former president of Yugoslavia, watches over a sprawling mural commemorating ITAS’s unique victory in 2005: facing a government plan for privatisation, the employees successfully occupied the factory and won a court case to continue running the plant as a worker-owned enterprise.
Beginning in 2015 and shot over the course of five years, Srdjan Kova?evi?’s rigorous, riveting documentary observes the troubled waters that follow this triumph. Having led the 2005 mutiny, Dragutin Varga is now the head of the factory’s union, and his steadfast idealism over ITAS’s future represents the generational divide among the workers. Dissatisfied with continuous delays in salary payments, the younger workmen are doubtful of the plant’s current organisational structure. Meanwhile, the middle-aged and older employees, who make up the majority of the workforce, still hold dear the socialist values inherited from Yugoslavia’s halcyon days.
Far from favouring one position over another, Kova?evi?’s documentary threads together heated arguments – either between Varga and the directorial board or among the workers themselves – to illustrate an unsolvable state of stagnancy. Lost among these gripping scenes of fervid discourse, however, is a more detailed examination of the management missteps as well as larger global issues that have driven ITAS to a financial crisis. Furthermore, by establishing a solidarity agreement where all the featured subjects have a share of the film’s profit, Factory to the Workers is a rare and commendable example of a documentary that strives to be as radical as its subject.
Still, when the chorus of justified grievances ends in forlorn silence, and Varga embarks on a hunger strike for the sake of his union, a scene where he looks out of a window and into the unknown paints a portrait of a modern-day Don Quixote, tilting at impossible windmills
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Jeff Jacoby: I used to defend Columbus as 'magnificent.' I don't anymore
IN 1997 I wrote a column for Columbus Day weekend that opened on a smart-alecky note: "Say," I asked, "is it OK to admire Christopher Columbus again?"
Ever since the quincentennial of Columbus's first voyage to the New World in 1492, denunciations of the Italian navigator as a brutal conqueror and bloody enslaver had been growing louder and more vehement. I didn't think much of the denouncers — "commissars of political correctness," I called them — and wanted to remind readers that there were good reasons why Columbus had been regarded by generations of Americans as a great man. To be sure, by present-day standards he was no sensitive, enlightened role model. Columbus was "a zealot, greedy and ambitious," I acknowledged, "capable of cruelty and deception." He and the Spaniards he led to the New World were vicious in their treatment of the indigenous people they encountered. But there was no denying his astonishing feats of seamanship or the world-changing impact of his discoveries. "For all his flaws," I concluded, "he was magnificent."
I wouldn't write that today. My view has changed.
In the past quarter-century, progressive attacks on Columbus's reputation have grown even more fervent. Statues of the explorer have been repeatedly vandalized or toppled. In at least 14 states and more than 130 cities, Columbus Day has been refashioned as Indigenous Peoples Day. Even Columbus, Ohio, no longer honors its namesake with a holiday. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard historian Samuel Eliot Morison wrote of Columbus in 1954 that "his fame and reputation may be considered secure for all time." But under the relentless pressure of revisionists, Native American activists, and woke iconoclasts, Columbus's prestige has been shredded and stomped on.
In general, I consider it dishonest and arrogant to measure individuals who lived centuries ago by standards that didn't exist in their day or to judge them pitilessly for behavior that we find detestable but that they and their world would have regarded as normal.
But what changed my mind about Columbus wasn't anything written or said by his modern detractors. It was the testimony of his contemporaries. I didn't realize in 1997 that Columbus's behavior toward the native peoples of the New World had indeed violated the principles of his own age. In fact, they violated the specific orders he had been given by Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, the Spanish rulers who authorized and financed his journeys.
Columbus returned from his first voyage to what he mistakenly called the Indies with a dozen abducted natives, as well as plans to capture and exploit many more. His first trip had been rushed, he told the monarchs, but on his next he was sure he could amass "slaves in any number they may order."
The king and queen ordered him to do no such thing. In written instructions dated May 12, 1493, they directed Columbus to "endeavor to win over the inhabitants" to Christianity and not harm or coerce them. He was to ensure that everyone under his command "shall treat the Indians very well and affectionately without causing them any annoyance whatever." In fact, they told Columbus, he should present gifts to the natives "in a gracious manner and hold them in great honor."
But the Admiral of the Ocean Sea had other ideas.
During his second journey to the Caribbean, historian Edward T. Stone wrote in a 1975 essay for American Heritage, Columbus captured a large number of indigenous men, women, and children, sending them back as cargo in 12 ships to be sold in the slave market at Seville. Anticipating that the royal couple might be outraged by his failure to comply with their orders, Columbus advised the captain transporting the native people to explain that they were cannibals lacking any language with which they could be taught the elements of Christianity. Surely it would be a kindness, Columbus contended, for such heathens to be "placed in the possession of persons from whom they can best learn the language."
Perhaps that ploy worked at first. But reports of the savagery, slaughter, and enslavement committed by Columbus could not be ignored indefinitely. In 1500, the Spanish sovereigns finally lowered the boom. They commissioned Francisco de Bobadilla to investigate and report on the admiral's conduct. After gathering information from Columbus's supporters and detractors, Bobadilla filed a no-holds-barred indictment detailing the cruelties committed by Columbus and his lieutenants.
"Punishments included cutting off people's ears and noses, parading women naked through the streets, and selling them into slavery," reported The Guardian when a copy of Bobadilla's statement was discovered in 2006 in a state archive in the Spanish city of Valladolid.
The charges were taken seriously. Very seriously: Bobadilla had Columbus arrested and shipped back to Spain — in chains — to stand trial. It was, in Stone's words, a "harsh and humiliating" downfall. Columbus eventually received a royal pardon, but Ferdinand and Isabella refused to restore his position as governor of the Indies.
It wasn't woke 21st-century progressives who first found fault with Columbus's actions. It was his contemporaries. Accusations of abuse by Columbus were taken so seriously that he was arrested in 1500 and sent back to Spain in chains to answer the charges against him.
Another of Columbus's contemporaries to excoriate his deeds was Bartolomé de las Casas. He accompanied Columbus on his third voyage and participated in the violent suppression of indigenous people on the island of Hispaniola. Later he underwent a profound change of heart. Las Casas took holy orders, freed the people he had enslaved in 1514, and spent the rest of his long life passionately denouncing the "robbery, evil, and injustice" done by Columbus and the Spaniards who followed in his wake.
Five years ago I read Las Casas's most famous work, "A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies," which he published in 1542. It is ferocious in its wrath and graphic in its descriptions of the horrors inflicted on the native people. He raged against the sadism, greed, and treachery of the Spaniards. No one who reads his book can cling to the belief that condemnations of Columbus are nothing but 20/20 hindsight, or that they are based on moral standards by which no one in the 1500s would have judged him. His contemporaries did judge him by the standards of their age, and found him grievously wanting.
None of this is to deny Columbus's brilliance and courage as a mariner. His name will forever be linked to what Morison called "the most spectacular and most far-reaching geographical discovery in recorded human history." In 1997, I thought that was what mattered most about Columbus. I know better now.
https://jeffjacoby.com/27260/i-used-to-defend-columbus-as-magnificent-i-dont
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EU Is the True Face of Modern Socialism
Proposals for new EU regulations on the energy performance of residential buildings are causing a stir in many European countries. Take Germany, for example: calculations show that German property owners alone would be forced to spend 200 billion euros on energy efficiency upgrades, per year! This is equivalent to four times Germany’s annual defense budget. According to estimates, the cost of an energy saving heating system and thermal insulation for a single-family house is at least 100,000 euros.
Whether the EU directive is eventually implemented in its current form is still an open question, but the debate alone is enough to unsettle hundreds of thousands of property owners. And this is just one of many examples of how the EU is increasingly turning the European economy into a planned economy. The term “planned economy” may seem exaggerated to some readers who associate it with the nationalization of means of production and real estate. However, the modern planned economy works differently: Formally, property owners remain property owners, but they are gradually stripped of control over their assets as the state increasingly determines what they are allowed or required to do with their property.
The ban on the registration of new cars with combustion engines in the EU from 2035 is another example: It is no longer companies or consumers who decide what is produced, but politicians and civil servants. This is underpinned by the belief that, when it comes to what is good for people, politicians know better than millions of consumers and entrepreneurs.
And this is precisely the difference between a market economy and a planned economy: A market economy is economic democracy in action. Every day, millions of consumers decide what is and is not produced. Prices send a signal to companies as to what products are needed – and how many – and which are not.
Coming back to the example of real estate, many countries have extensive rental legislation that prevents landlords from securing the rents that could be obtained on the free market. In Germany, for example, this is achieved via a whole package of laws: A rent increase ceiling (Kappungsgrenze) determines the percentage and level of permissible rent increases. Even when inflation hits 7% or more per year, rents in many German cities are only allowed to increase by a maximum of 5%. And the SPD, the senior partner in Germany’s ruling coalition, is now calling for the ceiling to be lowered to 2%, which in effect equates to cumulative expropriation. In real terms, the value of rents is falling year in, year out. Then there’s the Mietpreisbremse (literally, rental price brake), which determines how much rent an existing apartment’s landlord may charge when renting it out.
As a result, a property’s supposed owner is increasingly constrained: The government imposes almost unaffordable renovation obligations on landlords – see the raft of German and European energy performance directives – and forces them to comply with ever stricter and ever more expensive environmental requirements for new buildings. At the same time, it prevents landlords from securing the rents they could achieve on the free market. In effect, property owners become little more than government-appointed property managers. In the worst case, however, they also stand to lose their formal rights of ownership if the gap between what the government allows them to earn and what the government forces them to spend continues to widen.
And this regulatory frenzy not only affects real estate, it also has a significant impact on businesses: The EU is not content with regulating its member countries and the companies based in them. The so-called EU Supply Chain Directive is designed to make large companies in the EU liable if, for example, their suppliers abroad operate under occupational health and safety regulations or environmental standards that do not meet the EU’s expectations. Another European regulation, CBAM, introduces carbon tariffs on imports from around the world. If, for example, a company imports screws from India, where the EU’s climate standards do not apply, it will have to pay extra. This is how Brussels wants to reduce emissions – not only within the European Union, but all around the world.
The erosion of property rights is not, however, an exclusively European phenomenon. In the U.S., too, property rights are being steadily eroded under the banner of the Green New Deal. This will continue until the owner or manager of a company is reduced to a mere agent of bureaucracy. The government will stipulate what goods and services are to be provided (and how) by means of stricter and stricter laws. At some point, entrepreneurs will be no more than civil servants.
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How the Left Lies to Our Faces, Seemingly Without Consequence
One common denominator that explains why previously successful societies implode is their descent into fantasies. A collective denial prevents even discussion of existential threats and their solutions.
Something like that is happening in the United States. Eight million illegal immigrants have entered the United States by the deliberate erasure of the southern border.
Apparently, the Biden administration sees some unstated advantage in destroying U.S. immigration law and welcoming in would-be new constituents.
Yet, the more the millions arrive, the more President Joe Biden and his homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, flat out lie that “the border is secure.”
They both live in a world of make-believe, passed off to the American people as reality.
And the more the Americans are lied to that the border is secure, the more they poll—currently 77%—that it is not.
Biden apparently has reversed course and begun using the former pejorative “Bidenomics” as a term of pride.
He now praises this three-year effort to borrow $6-$7 trillion, and spike interest rates threefold to 7% on home mortgages—even as prices on essentials like food and fuel have spiked 25%-30% since he entered office.
The more that Biden brags about what he did to the economy, the more people poll—over 60%—dissatisfaction with his alternate reality of “Bidenomics.”
Do we remember the humiliation in August 2021 in Afghanistan?
The more retired Gen. Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Biden assured that the American military presence was stable, the more swiftly it crumbled and descended into the worst mass flight of an American army since Vietnam.
Consider natural gas and oil. The Biden administration waged war on both by canceling pipelines, drilling on federal lands, and entire oil fields.
When the price soared and the 2022 midterms neared, Biden suddenly begged formerly shunned illiberal regimes like Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela to pump all the hated oil they could to lower the price.
A desperate Biden drained much of the strategic petroleum reserve—he has yet to refill it—simply to lower the price of gasoline and thus win voters back to the Democratic Party.
When the midterms passed, Biden resumed his attack on once bad, then good, and now bad again fossil fuels—at least until the 2024 election.
Stranger still is the denial of the current crime wave in our major cities. Predators and thugs have turned once iconic downtowns into either war zones or ghost towns or both.
Smash-and-grab swarming of stores and matter-of-fact shoplifting are destroying commerce in our major cities.
Unsustainable stores either leave or shut down. Communities that vote for politicians who defund the police blame the stores for leaving—but not the criminals whose brazen thefts made it impossible to do business in the inner city.
Now modern-day pirates with impunity storm, sink, and rob boats of all kinds in the Oakland, California, marina and estuary.
Left-wing journalists and activists, and even Democratic politicians, who all supported defunding the police, now cannot escape the resulting street violence and unleashed murderous predations.
Everyone knows the culprit is the post-George Floyd effort—with Biden administration complicity—to defund the police, end cash bail, institutionalize catch-and-release of criminals, and show more sympathy toward victimizers than victims.
Yet neither state nor local officials nor Biden himself even admits to a crime wave. The more the public is attacked and avoids major downtowns, the more it polls furor over the crime wave.
The more our officials, in gaslighting style, claim such alarm is all in our collective heads, the more they themselves are attacked by the very criminals their policies empowered.
Sometimes the fantasies extend to the trivial. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., for months has dressed like an utter slob while on the Senate floor. As a gesture of approval, Democrats junked the dress code so he could wear his sloppy cut-offs and hoodie.
Americans were to assume his slovenly costume was normal apparel—and they were hypercritical for thinking otherwise.
Recently, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., pulled a fire alarm to disrupt and delay a vote on continuing the funding of the government. But he got caught on a Capitol surveillance video committing the crime.
Bowman whined that he got confused. He preposterously claimed that by pulling the alarm, he thought he was opening a door to go vote.
All of that was pure fantasy. The alarm was clearly marked. A sign in front of the door warned not to enter. And the door itself was placarded with cautions that any attempt to open it would set off emergency alarms.
No matter. Bowman assumed by calling his critics “Nazis” and using the race card, he could invent a virtual reality.
Despite our epidemic of fantasy, there remains reality.
And we will soon rediscover it all too soon.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/10/06/victor-davis-hanson-lefts-lies-paint-alternate-reality/
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10 October, 2023
The girl from Sderot
A heartfelt comment from Rowan Dean that I wholly applaud
Israel is at war. In 2014 I visited Israel, thanks to the NSW Board of Deputies and the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), on a trip with a group of fellow journalists from a variety of media outlets.
The trip was wonderful, as well as extremely informative. We saw the most incredible sites and travelled the length and breadth of this amazing land.
We floated aloft in the Dead Sea. We flew in a light aircraft over Tel Aviv and the Sea of Galilee, and even towards the Golan Heights. We went to the militarised zones and the border with Lebanon overlooking the Bekaa Valley. We went into Romolo. We dined in the home of a Druze widow. We went to the deeply moving Holocaust Remembrance Centre at Yad Vashem, and spent an hilarious afternoon with a firebrand member of the Knesset. We saw so much that makes the land of Israel special. We saw the settlements, the wall, spent a morning with the PLA in Ramallah and of course visited Bethlehem, Jerusalem, wandered into the desert, visited the Australian memorial at Beersheba, and traversed much of the Holy Land.
But the one thing that touched me more than anything else, that has stayed with me ever since, was our trip to the small town of Sderot in Southern Israel, only a stone’s throw, forgive the pun, from the heavily fortified border with Gaza.
The young woman we met there, a student whose name I don’t remember, showed us around. In fact, when we returned to Australia I wrote an article about the girl from Sderot.
This young student who, at a moment’s notice had taken the day off her studies to show us around her town because our guide was ill, started off by taking us to the unusual and somewhat disquieting re-enforced children’s playground that doubles as a bomb shelter.
Often these kids and families only have 15 seconds to seek shelter between the sound of sirens and rockets from Hamas crashing down on them. She showed us the massive collection of shells from deadly rockets that have been sent over from Gaza in the intervening years aiming to terrify and terrorise the population.
One of this girl’s best friends died when she threw herself on top of her younger brother to protect him from one of those shells.
As a child, she had grown up in Gaza – an area completely out of bounds to her despite being only a few miles away. She told us how, as a child, her best friends were the local Arab kids. But when Israel handed Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005 – foolishly, in my opinion – her family was amongst the nearly 10,000 Jewish settlers expelled from 25 settlements in Gaza and the West Bank where they had made their homes and livelihoods – never to return.
As the girl from Sderot took us around the town of Sderot, including to the very spot – and indeed the very sofa – that featured in a disgracefully antisemitic cartoon in the Sydney Morning Herald that year… The girl from Sderot talked passionately and endlessly about her great dream to devote her life to studying Arabic and learning the ways of Palestinian culture so that she could help bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians and reunite herself with the friends of her childhood in Gaza.
She herself did not hate those who made life in Sderot terrifying every single day because she passionately believed that peace would prevail if enough people wanted it to.
Last night I thought of the girl from Sderot for the first time in many years. I have no idea what she is doing now – whether she graduated or if she got the job she wanted.
I thought about her on Saturday night when we witnessed the horror of the atrocities being perpetuated by the evil butchers of Hamas on elderly Jews, on children, and above all on women and girls in southern Israel, around and in Sderot.
For decades now the left in Australia, the left in Britain, the left in America and throughout Europe have relentlessly sought to demonise the Jews and delegitimise the state of Israel. They have pretended that there is some kind of moral equivalency between terrorism and self-defence and grotesquely distorted the history of the region in order to do so.
The left has falsely claimed that Israel is some kind of imperialist occupier and the Palestinians are the victims of colonial oppression.
Let me be perfectly blunt – and I apologise if I offend you – but all of you who have indulged in that sort of grotesque, dinner party antisemitism. Who have slyly denigrated Israel and the Jews. Who have prattled on about the ‘noble Palestinian cause’. Who have dismissively sneered at Donald Trump’s amazing Abraham Accords which brought peace for the first time. And those who celebrated the election of the obnoxious Biden regime with its repugnant dealings with Iran. Those of you who applauded Biden’s sick surrender to the Taliban and the total betrayal of the women and girls of Afghanistan. And all of you snivelling Australian Labor and Greens politicians and left-wing activists with your pro-Palestinian flags who have allowed Australian taxpayer money to be poured into the coffers of Palestinian terror organisations. And all you media outlets – both here and abroad – including ‘our’ ABC – who have always twisted the headlines so that Israel appears to be the aggressor. They have emboldened the terrorists by making excuses for their depraved actions.
Jewish blood is on your hands. You have encouraged American and Western weakness and denigrated a great democratic country. You have literally hung Israel out to dry for decades.
Donald Trump warned only a few weeks ago that the $6 billion Biden gave to Iran would be used to fund Palestinian terrorism. Looks like, as usual, Trump was right.
We have witnessed some of the most horrific and barbaric scenes of our lifetimes as Palestinian terrorists butcher innocent civilians. Kidnap and torture innocent Jews. Desecrate young Jewish bodies in macabre evil celebrations in the streets of Gaza. It is horrific, yet this is what the West has been encouraging for decades with the boycott movements, with endless antisemitic actions, dehumanising Jews, demonising Israel, and leaving Hamas and the Iranian-backed terrorists to believe they can get away with murder.
You can have your political differences, of course. But Palestinian terror is evil, pure and simple. Yet they have – for decades – been indulged and I would argue even been encouraged by the leftwing political parties of the West including our current Labor government. To their eternal shame. Penny Wong urged the Israeli government to ‘show restraint’ at this time where maximum retaliation is required, yet she showed no restraint whatsoever when she restored $10 million of Australian taxpayer funds – your money – going to the Palestinian authorities.
Let me be clear. There is no two-state solution. You are fantasists and fools if you think there is. And your stupidity costs lives. There never was the remotest genuine possibility of a two-state solution.
I have sat in the bowels of the Palestinian authority in Ramallah on that very same journalist trip with a group of Australian journalists where an answer to my question about how many Jews would exist in the two-states – we were told by a Palestinian authority that the Palestinian cause requires the removal of all Jews from Palestine and the removal of all but ‘a handful of Jews’ from whatever you want to call Israel. Their words. The Palestinian authorities. Not mine. And I have a dozen journalists who sat there next to me who heard them but didn’t report them. I did, in The Spectator Australia.
Well, eradicating Jews is clearly what the Gaza terrorists have in mind today.
Let’s pray for all the people of Israel. Pray that Jewish children will not grow up permanently scarred by the horror they are now witnessing. Pray that Netanyahu can restore a sense of peace as swiftly as possible with a minimum amount of bloodshed. But I also urge the Israelis to do what they should have done long ago – ignore the hand-wringing of the West’s pathetic liberals and leftists. Take back Gaza and destroy, once and for all, the evil entity that is Hamas. Crush those individuals who wish you nothing but harm. For the safety of your people. For the young women, the children, the elderly – for the survival of the Jewish race – they must beat these terrorists.
I pray for Israel, and I pray for the girl from Sderot.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/the-girl-from-sderot/
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Adoption or abortion?
Erin Boggs was 16 in 1992 when she learned she was pregnant.
“I was scared, definitely kind of alone,” Boggs says. “So, I knew the decision was going to land on me solely, and it felt like a critically important decision.”
Boggs says people around her suggested she could parent or abort, but no one recommended adoption, but that was ultimately the choice she made.
“It was honestly through prayer and putting myself in each scenario and thinking through what each would look like, and adoption just made sense,” she says.
About 23 years after Boggs placed her son Jordan for adoption with Jeanne and Scott Hamilton, she had the opportunity to meet him.
From their first meeting, Boggs and Jordan Hamilton began building a relationship, and nearly eight years later, they, along with Jeanne and Scott Hamilton, are sharing their family story.
Boggs and Jordan and Jeanne Hamilton join “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain how adoption changed all their lives, and why it’s a powerful answer to unplanned pregnancy.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/10/09/she-chose-adoption-16-tells-story-alongside-son-his-mother
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UK: Has the NHS lost sight of its real purpose?
As doctors down stethoscopes and walk out of hospitals in their ongoing strike for better pay and working conditions, the public might reasonably conclude that the NHS is underfunded. How, then, do we make sense of this week’s revelation that NHS England is set to open three new departments focusing on equality and diversity? Either there are insufficient funds to pay doctors and nurses a decent wage or there is money to splash out on rainbow lanyards and unconscious bias training. Both cannot be true at the same time.
The three new NHS England departments, set to open in April 2024, will be called ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion’, ‘People and Culture’ and ‘People and Communities’. I am no highly-paid inclusivity expert, but it strikes me there is potentially some overlap here. Are the ‘communities’ and ‘culture’ staff not also concerned with equality, diversity and inclusion? And what about all the existing human resource officers? Are we to believe they are unconcerned about the employment rights of transgender nurses?
The phrase ‘jobs for the boys’ comes to mind, but it is no doubt outlawed as transphobic
None of this potential duplication seems likely to prevent the new centres from employing 244 people at a cost, the Daily Telegraph has uncovered, of almost £14 million. The dedicated Equality Diversity and Inclusion department alone looks set to spend £3 million employing 50 people.
The establishment of new departments with the same core purpose, the numbers of people to be employed in non-clinical roles, and the vast sums of money to be given over to these politicised concerns, all suggest this grand reorganisation plan is little more than a job creation scheme for diversity bureaucrats.
The phrase ‘jobs for the boys’ comes to mind, but it is no doubt outlawed as transphobic by multiple NHS style guides. Yet surely nothing else explains how senior NHS England officials, overseeing a health service with a record 7.7million people currently on waiting lists for treatment, can conclude that what is really needed right now is a greater focus on diversity and LGBTQ issues.
Even without these new departments, the NHS has managed to find time and money for promoting identity-driven, non-medical concerns. Right now, the NHS Business Services Authority is busy celebrating Bisexual Awareness Week. Staff are urged to ‘come together to share experiences, celebrate, and support our bisexual colleagues and friends’. Whether this awareness raising involves cake or a lecture is unclear.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph also notes that the General Medical Council (GMC), the regulatory body for doctors, has been busy updating its internal documents by deleting references to women. In an apparent bid to be transgender-inclusive, the word ‘mother’ has been removed from maternity policies and ‘women’ from its menopause guide. The GMC prefers gender neutral phrases like ‘surrogate parent’ rather than ‘surrogate mother’. It is committed to supporting not women but ‘individuals experiencing the menopause’.
The GMC’s internal policy documents matter because the organisation is responsible for improving medical education and practice across the UK. The language it adopts helps set the tone for the rest of the health service. Indeed, it is a sign of how successful this project has already been that there are now plans for three new equality and diversity departments. And all this comes despite Health Secretary, Steve Barclay, having already ordered NHS England to put an end to the expensive proliferation of such woke projects in a bid to ‘ensure good value for money’.
The cash dedicated to equality, diversity and inclusion does not just take away from the pay of doctors or the medical care of patients. It begins to alter the very purpose of the NHS. Decking hospitals with rainbow flags suggests they are not there to treat people who are physically sick but to correct the wrong-thinking of those deemed politically sick. The goal of the NHS risks becoming the correction of public opinion – and senior managers have seemingly unlimited access to public money to meet this aim.
There is a grim irony to NHS England considering spending even more on equality and diversity projects in the same week that doctors and consultants take unprecedented, co-ordinated strike action. Patients, especially cancer patients, will suffer as operations are cancelled and their treatment delayed yet again. Lengthy waiting lists will be extended further, with potentially life altering consequences for some patients. In one breath we are told the NHS has money for diversity vanity projects, the next we are informed that nurses need to use food banks. If both are true then taxpayers’ money has been shockingly misused.
Right now, only one thing seems clear. Both the striking doctors and the woke projects show that, despite all the saucepan-banging and rainbow-drawing during the Covid-19 pandemic, the British public’s love for the NHS is not reciprocated. Those in charge seem to hold us in contempt. They do not want to cure us but to re-educate us. We deserve better.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/has-the-nhs-forgotten-its-real-purpose/
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Angry Leftist assaults elderly man over Australia's "Voice" controversy
There has been a huge outpouring of hate and abuse from the Left against "No" voters, so this was probably inevitable. It is a vivid illustration of how hate-motivated Leftists are. I note that as the hate-speech has ramped up, the lower the "Yes" vote has become. As the Left revealed what they really are, normal people became repulsed. Much of the "No" vote was probably produced by the angry Leftists themselves. By their obnoxious words and behaviour they discredited their cause.
A man has been charged with serious assault and another taken to hospital after a shouting match between Yes and No voters at the Ipswich early voting centre descended into violence.
It comes as thousands of Queenslanders descend on pre-polling booths across the state ahead of Saturday’s referendum.
The Courier-Mail can reveal the serious incident at the North Ipswich early voting centre led to Queensland Police charging a 30-year-old Raceview man.
Police allege about 11.30am on October 3 the 30-year-old man entered into a verbal altercation with a 65-year-old man, before he physically assaulted him.
“It will be further alleged the Raceview man initially left the scene before returning a short time later, where he was taken into police custody,” a police spokesman said.
He has since been charged with serious assault and is due to appear in Ipswich Magistrates Court on November 17.
The 65-year-old man was taken to Ipswich Hospital for treatment. It is understood the man suffered injuries to his skull.
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9 October, 2023
Suella Braverman wages a new war on woke as she vows only the Tories can stop political correctness strangling Britain
Suella Braverman ignited a new war on woke yesterday – vowing that only the Tories could stop political correctness strangling Britain.
The Home Secretary told the Tory party conference the country would 'go properly woke' under a Labour government.
To a packed auditorium in Manchester, she mocked 'Keir 'take the knee' Starmer', predicting that wokery would 'run riot' if he won the keys to No 10.
She also launched attacks on the 'luxury beliefs brigade in their ivory towers', a stinging reference to those in privileged positions, such as Sir Elton John, who have taken her to task over her strong language on migration.
In a speech that ranged far beyond the scope of her Home Office role, and won a minute-long standing ovation, Mrs Braverman called political correctness 'pernicious nonsense'.
She told the gathering of party activists that whole institutions – including parts of government – had been 'distorted' by wokery. 'Things are bad enough already,' the Home Secretary said. 'We see it in Whitehall, in museums and galleries, in the police, and even in leading companies in the City.
'Under the banner of diversity, equity, and inclusion, official policies have been embedded that distort the whole purpose of these institutions. Highly controversial ideas are presented to workforces and the public as if they are motherhood and apple pie.
'Gender ideology, white privilege, anti-British history. The evidence demonstrates that if you don't challenge this poison, things just get worse. Whole institutions become captured.'
It had already led to people being 'chased out of their jobs for saying that a man can't be a woman' and 'disciplined for using the wrong words'.
Mrs Braverman said Sir Keir was the Tories' secret weapon because he 'believes in nothing' and 'will say anything to anyone'.
'Imagine what would happen if he became prime minister,' the Home Secretary said. 'Britain would go properly woke.
'This Conservative Government has begun the task of clearing out this pernicious nonsense. The British people will get to decide if they want to curb woke with Rishi Sunak, or let it run riot with Keir 'take the knee' Starmer.'
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The hypocritical mindset of the woke elite that exposes the huge ideological gulf between Labour and the Tories
At the eleventh hour, with the General Election perhaps less than a year away, the Tory leadership seems to have regained some fighting spirit.
That mood of determination is embodied by Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who almost daily bravely dares to attack the entire destructive ethos of the progressive elite.
Through its dominance of the public realm, she warned, this upper echelon of society has been able to impose its enthusiasm for soft penalties for criminals, for open borders, gender fluidity, EU control and net zero environmental policies against the wishes of the majority of the public.
For his part, Rishi Sunak is now stressing the need to challenge the failing consensus that has had a stranglehold on British politics for the last three decades.
Already a hate figure on the Left for her outspoken attacks on doctrinaire multiculturalism and uncontrolled immigration, Braverman last week denounced the smug ranks of virtue-signallers who, cocooned by affluence, are personally protected from the disastrous consequences of the policies they advocate, such as the abandonment of robust policing in inner-cities, the disintegration of the traditional family structure or the refusal to deport illegal migrants.
Braverman said the elite's policies are not driven by any real desire to bring improvements in British society but by an eagerness to display moral superiority over the 'bigoted' mass of working people. She declared of these woke elitists: 'The migrants won't be taking their jobs. In fact, they are likely to have them mowing their lawns or cleaning their homes.'
And in a compelling phrase – which could determine the result of the next General Election if drilled home repeatedly – Braverman went on to say: 'The luxury beliefs brigade sit in their ivory towers telling ordinary people that they are morally deficient because they dare to get upset about the impact of illegal migration, net zero, or habitual criminals.'
For me, the impact was all the greater because as a political academic I have written extensively about the chasm between mainstream public opinion, with its emphasis on traditional, patriotic common sense, and the narrow outlook of the progressive elite, with its attachment to deluded theorising. It is a division that I analyse in my latest book, Values, Voice And Virtue, which interested Braverman so much that she asked to meet me after reading it.
A world where hashtags and use of pronouns show which side you're on
One of the concepts I cover in the book is that of 'luxury beliefs' –defined as ideas or values that confer status on the wealthy, but are not fully embraced or practised by them. The influence of 'luxury beliefs' as a means of winning social esteem has been charted by a number of academics, led by Rob Henderson, formerly of Cambridge University. Their fascinating research shows that in the past, members of the old elite derived their sense of status from physical manifestations of wealth, such as fine clothes, jewellery, foreign travel, servants, private carriages and large properties. But today, with prosperity spread across society, such ostentatious displays of riches have less significance. So, instead, the quest for social status now focuses more on 'cultural capital' than 'economic capital'.
For the sophisticated, urban-dwelling, university-educated class that is overwhelmingly in the ascendancy across the media, the civil service, public management, quangoland, the voluntary sector and the arts, a certain set of fashionable beliefs has become the new signifier of a higher rank in society.
Adherence to the values of the progressive orthodoxy is now the surest way to win acceptance into the elite and gain applause from its other members.
Alongside these 'luxury beliefs' are slogans such as 'diversity is our strength' as virtue-signallers spout jargon such as 'intersectionality' or peddle bogus concepts such as 'heteronormativity', 'gender spectrum' and 'white privilege'.
This is a world in which social media hashtags or the use of pronouns show which side you are on in the culture wars.
Yet as the phrase infers, 'luxury beliefs' impose few costs on those who espouse them – even though the price paid by everyone else can be heavy. A classic example, as Braverman highlighted, is mass immigration.
The affluent Left loves to trumpet its commitment to open borders, 'safe routes' for asylum-seekers and multiculturalism as a badge of moral superiority, while portraying opponents of uncontrolled immigration as xenophobes.
The affluent Left loves to trumpet its commitment to open borders
But as research shows, the wealthy elitists are the least likely to suffer the financial and social costs of surging mass immigration.
They don't have to compete with mainly low-skilled migrants for jobs and housing.
They don't live in deprived neighbourhoods where rapid demographic change is eroding social solidarity and mutual trust.
The truth is that it is the working-class, the non-graduate majority, who are most likely to see their pay cut or have their rents pushed up by accelerating demand.
The same disastrous results from the elite's posturing can be seen on a host of other fronts. Its determination to uphold the narrative of multiculturalism's success led to a vast cover-up of sex-grooming gangs, often involving men from the Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian communities in towns such as Rotherham and Rochdale, while it was often vulnerable, white, working-class girls who paid a savage price for this deceit.
Similarly, residents of disadvantaged housing estates, not those of gated communities, suffer most from the elite's 'luxury belief' that criminals are actually victims of society who need support rather than punishment.
Meanwhile, women prisoners are the ones in danger from the grotesque belief that a double rapist with a penis should be housed in a women's jail because he 'identifies' as a woman.
There is also a huge amount of hypocrisy about the elite's stance, especially on the issue of the family. Liberals dismiss attempts to uphold traditional, married family life as the best way to provide stability for child-rearing.
'Families come in all shapes and sizes,' they cry as they extol hybrid arrangements and sneer at monogamy. Yet for all their ideological disdain for the traditional family structure, the new elite are the most likely to get married and have children within marriage.
A study by the Marriage Foundation discovered that 87 per cent of mothers from higher income groups are married, compared with just 24 per cent at the other end of the social scale. Once again, it is the working-class, non-graduate majority who are the most likely to suffer the effects of the breakdown in family values that the new elite condones but rarely practises.
But there is a danger for these 'luxury believers'.
The lesson from America is that even wealthy ideologues risk being caught up in the turmoil that is fanned by their own misguided theories.
In the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests, there were widespread demands from the Left to 'defund' the police. The result? A cataclysmic rise in violent crime and several Left-wing campaigners are among the roll-call of the dead.
In Britain, people are already profoundly concerned about the effect of luxury dogma. One survey showed that 66 per cent of voters support Braverman's view that uncontrolled immigration is 'an existential threat' to the West. Support, too, for transgender rights has collapsed.
As so often has been proved by history, the mainstream majority has more common sense and pragmatism than their ruling elites.
Over the coming months, the Tories have a great opportunity to expose the 'luxury belief' class as hypocrites who shamelessly try to garner status among their fellow elites without having to live, like the rest of us, with the pernicious effects of their virtue-signalling.
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You Didn’t Really Think Democrats Cared, Did You?
It’s nice to see some residents of cities like New York and Chicago protest against their governments, shocked that their elected officials would divert so many resources from citizens to non-citizens. I’m reminded of the scene in Die Hard where Bruce Willis yells at the cop after he tosses the body of a terrorist onto his car – “Welcome to the party, pal!” It’s about damn time. But, honestly, it won’t matter. Voters in these cities are lumped into two groups: the wealthy, largely unaffected, and brainwashed people suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. Both are afflicted with the same disease, one in which they all believe Democrats genuinely give a damn about them. Suckers.
That it’s taken this many years – years of carnage, murder, crime, and drug overdoses – for residents to push back on any kind of large enough scale to notice is a testament to the ability of progressives to simply ignore the obvious, be it human suffering or human evil.
What do I mean by that? Well, thousands upon thousands of people have been murdered in Chicago, particularly on the city’s predominantly black south side. The vast majority of those murder victims and perpetrators were black, and it barely rated a mention in polite progressive circles. Residents in the area of the city where Oprah lived didn’t give a damn; that was “those other people killing each other,” not the civilized residents. As long as it was contained to the poor zip codes, they did not care.
Unemployment, economic depression, and an education system everyone involved should be ashamed of did nothing to upset the apple cart. No one was “happy” with it, per se, but they weren’t upset enough to rally on a mass scale. Every once in a while, the great unwashed would venture into the rich area, loot some stores, then retreat to their residences with a bunch of shoes, feeling like they’d stuck it to “the man.” Meanwhile, the actual man – the rich liberals who control the city – sat in their luxury apartments on Lakeshore Drive laughing. While people stole footwear and some sporting goods, billions of dollars in jewelry, art, precious metals, and cash sat twenty stories above, unmolested.
If you think these people cared about the riots, you haven’t been paying attention. Their valuables were secure; Apple and Footlocker have insurance, so who cares?
The riots weren’t against the people who empowered the city’s failed leadership; it wasn’t against anything. It was opportunism organized through social media and inspired by the same Democrat leaders who told those kids they didn’t stand a chance of success in life because of the color of their skin and definitely NOT because of the horrible education system they’d created.
It’s a hell of a racket, and the blind voting loyalty is truly just this side of Stockholm Syndrome.
But then the illegals came.
These Americans appear to be genuinely surprised that resources would be diverted from them toward people with no business being in the country. They’re shocked their absolute loyalty would be rewarded with indifference, without realizing that the decades-long pouring of government resources to numb the stagnation, that oppression in the name of “social justice” to “compensate” for a union-controlled education system better suited for the 4th world, were the reward. Just enough to get by with the constant threat of it being pulled keeps people loyal. It's not oppression, exactly, but it’s closer to that than freedom.
Now they’re pushing back, some. Seeing buildings, schools, parks, and other resources taken away and given to the illegal alien invaders. When was the last time the south side rose up? They’re now angry.
It likely won’t mean much of anything. Voters in the city had a chance last year to vote for a more sane candidate for Mayor and sided with an extremist progressive, so it’s hard to feel sorry for them. But it will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Will Chicagoans eat it again, or will they say “enough”? I’m not sure they’re truly hungry anymore, but time will tell.
Until then, these upset people are going to have to go without. They’re going to have to suffer more. They elected these people. Without major cities voting for ultra-left-wing, anti-American progressive Democrats, they wouldn’t win anything. We wouldn’t be in this mess. Americans losing resources wouldn’t be suffering because they’d be better off in the first place.
As you watch these communities wrestle with the indifference and, actually, animosity Democrats hold toward them, hope they connect the last few dots in their head and realize this indifference is not new; it’s policy. It is, in fact, “progressive” to make people dependent on the government and then control them through it. It was never a concern that motivated them; it was always their own grip on power. The voting loyalty amounts to nothing; a more numerous and desirous voting bloc is moving in. I mean, you didn’t really think Democrats cared, did you?
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'Trans Women' Taking Hormones Are More Likely to Suffer ‘Severe’ Health Conditions
People who believe they are “transgender” and take so-called “gender-affirming” hormones are more likely to suffer from serious conditions, such as heart disease, compared to “cisgender” individuals,” according to a new study.
The study published in the European Journal of Endocrinology found that people who identify as “transgender” had a “significantly” higher risk of heart attacks, strokes, and a slew of other serious health conditions (via the New York Post):
The authors used health data from 2,671 trans people in their early to mid-20s living in Denmark.
They then compared the rate of heart disease seen in the trans patients to a control group of 26,700 people.
The increased risk of any type of heart disease was higher in both transgender men and women as compared with the control group, the study found.
Transgender women taking estrogen had a 93% increased risk of heart problems versus control men, and a 73% higher risk when measured against control women.
Transgender men taking testosterone had a 2.2 times increased risk of cardiovascular ailments compared with control men, and a 63% increased risk compared with control women.
High blood pressure and abnormal blood fats were the most common cardiovascular problems observed in the trans study subjects.
The study also found that biological males who believe they are transgender women are up to 95 percent more likely to suffer from heart disease.
“For trans women, hormone treatments such as estrogen will increase fat mass and lower lean body mass, and increased estrogen is usually associated with increased risk of autoimmune disease and inflammation,” Dr. Dorte Glintborg, the lead study author from Denmark’s Odense University Hospital, reportedly wrote.
Townhall previously reported how many left-wing organizations and lawmakers have expressed support for allowing children to undergo this type of so-called “gender affirming care.” One organization in particular, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, was exposed for providing irreversible, experimental transgender surgeries for children because it’s profitable.
Following these shocking revelations, GOP Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance announced legislation that would outlaw transgender surgeries for minors completely.
“Under no circumstances should doctors be allowed to perform these gruesome, irreversible operations on underage children. With this legislation, we have an opportunity to save countless young Americans from a lifetime of suffering and regret,” Vance said of the legislation.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/10/07/trans-women-heart-disease-n2629471
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8 October, 2023
Left-wing authoritarianism: Hiding in plain sight
In 1950 a book called "The authoritarian personality" appeared. It was under the lead authorship of Theodor Adorno, a prominent European Marxist theoretician. It was immediately popular among psychologists but also had to be one of the most wrong-headed books ever written.
The very title of the book was faulty. It claimed to be about personality but everything in the book was in fact about people's attitudes. Personality tells you about what people normally DO whereas attitudes tell you about what people THINK. The distinction is important. It is not at all uncommon for people to say one thing and do another. And that was particularly so in this case.
The basic thesis of the book was that authoritarianism is uniquely conservative. And that has been the prevailing view among psychologists ever since. The vast authoritarian structures of the Soviet Union and Mao's China seem to be invisible. In a world beset by vast authoritarian regimes of the Left, there was somehow no Leftist authoritarianism!
And Leftism is intrinsically authoritarian anyway. What is a Leftist if he/she is not someone who wants to impose change on the world, whether the world likes it or not? Despite all that, Leftist psychologists often still insist that there is no such thing as Leftist authoritarianism. Something foundational to Leftism is said not to exist. The whole thing is a vivid example of Leftist reality denial.
The way out of reality used by Leftist psychologists is to look at what people SAY rather than what they DO. And there is a great discordance there. It has been known for decades that attitudes do not always reflect behaviour. People often say one thing and do another. That would seem to me to indicate the relative unimportance of attitudes. What people DO is what matters.
But if we look at Leftists of all stripes, what they DO is to attempt to impose their idea of what is a good thing onto everybody else, whether by public shaming, legislation or revolution. So Leftist expositors of authoritarianism work almost entirely with attitude statements and largely overlook what is actually happening in the world. It is only by looking at words, not deeds that they can support their claim that authoritarianism is peculiarly conservative. The many Leftist criticisms of so much in the world about them are held to show Leftists as anti-authority, while conservative acceptance of existing arrangements is said to make them pro-authority or authoritarian.
This Leftist analysis of conservatives attitudes struck me as wrong-headed as soon as I heard of it so I spent the first 20 years of my academic career (1970-1990) questioning it and endeavouring to show by survey research that is was incoherent and wrong. See http://jonjayray.com/auth.html
My work did not budge the leviathan one bit. Leftist psychologists continued on their merry way of relying on a perverse analysis of attitudes to convict conservatives of authoritarianism and exonerate themselves from it. I was wasting my time.
20 years of banging my head against a brick wall was enough, however so I ceased my survey research and attitude studies and have focused my writing ever since on looking at what Leftists DO, largely using history as my data source. See http://jonjayray.com/leftism2.html
But my studies were still focused on WHY Leftists and conservatives do different things. The explanation for what they do does not rely on attitudes so what does it rely on? And I have concluded that it does after all rely on personality, even though attitudes tell us little about personality. I have concluded that the essence of conservatism is caution and the essence of Leftism is anger. Leftists and conservatives differ in those two fundamental ways. The stance that they take on the issues of the day will vary but underlying and influencing the stance will be one of those two personality types.
So I got a rather pleasant surprise recently when some mainly Norwegian psychologists published an article questioning the non-existence of Leftist authoritarianism (Lane et al., 2023) . And they did it by the old Leftist method of analysing what people say. And one of the things that they found was that Leftist attitudes were primarily influenced by anger! They too found that anger was fundamental to Leftist authoritarianism
So even using basically Leftist methods you can -- with a lot of work -- show that Leftists are the angry people. The study concerned is a very complex one and something of a brain-breaker if you want to follow it in detail but I reproduce the abstract from it below:
The Moral Foundations of Left-Wing Authoritarianism: On the Character, Cohesion, and Clout of Tribal Equalitarian Discourse**********************************************
Left-wing authoritarianism remains far less understood than right-wing authoritarianism. We contribute to literature on the former, which typically relies on surveys, using a new social media analytic approach. We use a list of 60 terms to provide an exploratory sketch of the outlines of a political ideology "tribal equalitarianism" with origins in 19th and 20th century social philosophy. We then use analyses of the English Corpus of Google Books (n > 8 million books) and scraped unique tweets from Twitter (n = 202,582) to conduct a series of investigations to discern the extent to which this ideology is cohesive amongst the public, reveals signatures of authoritarianism and has been growing in popularity. Though exploratory, our results provide some evidence of left-wing authoritarianism in two forms: (1) a uniquely conservative signature amongst ostensible liberals using measures derived from Moral Foundations Theory and (2) a substantial prevalence of anger, relative to anxiety or sadness, in tweets analyzed for sentiment. In general, results indicate that this worldview is growing in popularity, is increasingly cohesive, and shows signatures of authoritarianism.
Biden Admin Tries to Force Its Religion on Employers. Here’s How You Can Fight Back
In President Joe Biden’s America, if you disagree with transgender orthodoxy, you might not be able to run a business.
Federal law prohibits harassment on the basis of sex in the workplace, and under Biden, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission aims to weaponize that law against employers who believe that biological sex can’t be altered by mere identification.
The EEOC published its proposed rule for workplace harassment Monday.
The proposed rule cites the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), stating that “sex-based discrimination includes discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
“Accordingly, sex-based harassment includes harassment on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, including how that identity is expressed,” EEOC claims:
Examples include epithets regarding sexual orientation or gender identity; physical assault; harassment because an individual does not present in a manner that would stereotypically be associated with that person’s gender; intentional and repeated use of a name or pronoun inconsistent with the individual’s gender identity (misgendering); or the denial of access to a bathroom or other sex-segregated facility consistent with the individual’s gender identity. (emphasis added)
To underline the point, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission provides an example of how this works in practice.
“Jennifer, a cashier at a fast food restaurant who identifies as female, alleges that supervisors, coworkers, and customers regularly and intentionally misgender her,” the EEOC narrates. “One of her supervisors, Allison, frequently uses Jennifer’s prior male name, male pronouns, and ‘dude’ when referring to Jennifer, despite Jennifer’s request for Allison to use her correct name and pronouns; other managers also intentionally refer to Jennifer as ‘he.'”
“Coworkers have asked Jennifer questions about her sexual orientation and anatomy and asserted that she was not female,” the EEOC adds. “Customers also have intentionally misgendered Jennifer and made threatening statements to her, but her supervisors did not address the harassment and instead reassigned her to duties outside of the view of customers. Based on these facts, Jennifer has alleged harassment based on her gender identity.”
In July 2022, a federal judge prevented the EEOC from applying a “guidance” document encouraging Americans to file complaints against employers who violate transgender orthodoxy, including by “misgendering.”
The EEOC—and the Department of Education—claimed that it did not need to comply with the Administrative Procedure Act in drafting such a document because it was not binding. The judge ruled otherwise, and this proposed rule seems to be EEOC’s belated response.
Federal courts repeatedly have ruled that employers cannot compel employees to endorse speech with which they disagree—including gender pronouns.
Shawnee State University attempted to force philosophy professor Nicholas Meriwether to use students’ preferred pronouns, even neologisms such as “xe” and “ze.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit ruled that Meriwether had alleged sufficiently that the university burdened his rights to free speech and religious expression by requiring him to refer to a male student using female pronouns.
The university settled with the professor, avoiding a ruling that it actually had violated Meriwether’s rights, but the case established a clear precedent on the matter.
Yet the Meriwether case doesn’t necessarily doom the EEOC rule.
In the Bostock case, the Supreme Court ruled that the discrimination “because of sex” prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
The EEOC’s proposed rule adds that an employer’s duty to protect workers from “religiously motivated” harassment overrides the Title IV requirement that employers “accommodate employees’ sincerely held religious beliefs, practices, and observances in the absence of undue hardship.”
“Employers are not required to accommodate religious expression that creates, or reasonably threatens to create, a hostile work environment,” the rule says. “As with other forms of harassment, an employer should take corrective action before the conduct becomes sufficiently severe or pervasive to create a hostile work environment.”
In other words, if a female employee asks for a religious exemption to use male pronouns when referring to male employees, regardless of their stated gender identity, her boss should dismiss her request because she’s attempting to engage in harassment.
This rule imposes the Biden administration’s view that stated gender identity overrides biological sex, a highly dubious contention that Americans reject in many arenas.
The two sexes are a biological reality, constituting two basic body structures and corresponding gametes—sperm for males and eggs for females. Each person is either male or female. Biological sex impacts how a baby develops in the womb, how an adolescent goes through puberty, how certain drugs affect a person’s body, how an adult reproduces, and even how anthropologists analyze the skeletons of human beings long dead.
Disorders of sex development may lead to ambiguous genitalia and sterility, and they can make it harder to determine visually whether an individual is male or female, but even “intersex” people are still either male or female.
Gender ideology attempts to muddle the clear differences between men and women, and in doing so, it creates a host of harms. Although most people who suffer from a gender dysphoria (the persistent and painful identification with the gender opposite one’s biological sex) may not represent a threat, nefarious opportunists can use a gender identity as a weapon.
Males can claim to identify as women to gain admittance to women’s private spaces, such as locker rooms and restrooms. They can claim a female identity in order to compete in women’s sports, where their male physiology gives them a distinct advantage. In some horrifying situations, men convicted of rape have convinced authorities to move them to women’s prisons.
Gender ideology arguably constitutes a religion at odds with scientific fact. It propagates a narrative of oppression—society inherently hates transgender people. It promotes a pseudo-gospel of personal transformation—from “living the lie” of one’s biological sex to adopting a transgender “true self.”
From social media influencers to schools to the Biden White House, many on the Left praise as “brave” those who “come out” and embrace a transgender identity. Some dismiss those who identify with their biological sex as “cisgender” or even “cissies.”
This ideology presents an entirely different notion of reality—one grounded in an individual’s feelings rather than plain biological fact.
Sensing the wide-ranging impacts of this ideology, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued a dire warning about the high court’s Bostock decision.
The ruling “may even affect the way employers address their employees and the way teachers and school officials address students,” Alito warned. “Under established English usage, two sets of sex-specific singular personal pronouns are used to refer to someone in the third person (he, him, and his for males; she, her, and hers for females). But several different sets of gender-neutral pronouns have now been created and are preferred by some individuals who do not identify as falling into either of the two traditional categories.”
“Some jurisdictions, such as New York City, have ordinances making the failure to use an individual’s preferred pronoun a punishable offense, and some colleges have similar rules,” the justice warned. “After today’s decision, plaintiffs may claim that the failure to use their preferred pronoun violates one of the federal laws prohibiting sex discrimination.”
Alito warned that the court majority’s ruling in Bostock could lead to the kind of forced orthodoxy that the Biden administration now has officially supported.
This Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s proposed rule may drive tens of thousands of small business owners out of business because they refuse to kowtow to the administration’s new speech codes.
On the other hand, if the rule faces opposition in the courts, it may force the Supreme Court to reconsider the Bostock ruling.
In either case, Americans can make their voices heard by commenting on the EEOC’s proposed rule. Federal law requires the agency to read every comment you send before the deadline of Nov. 1. You may comment on the rule at this link.
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Smithsonian’s Planned Latino Museum Is Woke Move Intended to Radicalize US Hispanics
The growing controversy over the Smithsonian Institution’s planned National Museum of the American Latino is making one thing perfectly clear: The once-august organization cannot now be trusted to refrain from “decolonizing” history.
The recent revelation that it hired two radical professors to create a second forerunner to the museum, an exhibit aimed at making Hispanics question capitalism, makes its proclivities clear. The Smithsonian only got cold feet and suspended the second exhibit to the museum late last year after critics complained that the first precursor exhibit was absurdly Marxist.
As two of the three critics who raised the alarm, in a column for The Hill newspaper in August last year, we are happy to have contributed to making the Smithsonian hit the pause button on yet another project to radicalize Hispanics by telling them they are victims in America.
But we also take no pleasure in being proven right, again, that the coming National Museum of the American Latino has been set up to promote a leftist take on the experience of Hispanics in the United States, and Congress must scrap the project altogether.
One need only consider that the museum’s 18-member Scholarly Advisory Committee, which is responsible for reviewing all exhibits, is dominated almost completely by woke professors, researchers, and activists whose work focuses on advancing culturally Marxist concepts such as critical race theory and gender and queer theory. Many teach the academically questionable subject of “Latinx” studies.
What can one expect from this museum?
The first exhibit, “Presente! A Latino History of the United States,” made clear to us after it opened its doors in June 2022 at the National History Museum that the upcoming museum—created by Congress in the giant omnibus COVID-19 bill in the waning days of 2020, and yet to be built—will be used to curate neither art nor history, but grievances and resentments against the United States.
That the second exhibit—ostensibly devoted to “civil rights”—was going to be more of the same, or worse, should now prove this to everyone else.
A Time magazine article this month revealed that two scholars—Felipe Hinojosa of Baylor University and Johanna Fernandez of Baruch College—had been working for two years on the second exhibit. It also revealed that the Smithsonian told them to cease and desist in an email last Nov. 28. In a subsequent phone conversation, the Latino Museum’s director, Jorge Zamanillo, told them their exhibit would interfere with funding.
Hinojosa and Fernandez were not told why, but Time additionally reports that “they believe it was because they planned to feature a variety of countercultural organizations of the 1960s that questioned how well American democracy was meeting the needs of its citizens under a capitalist system.”
Time reported that the Smithsonian confirmed halting the exhibit, and added that new one on salsa and Latin music “is being developed in its place.”
The article quotes Hinojosa as saying, “The tragedy and really the story here is around who controls the future of Latino history.”
Hinojosa is not wrong. We think it would be dangerous for professors like him and Fernandez, or the members of the museum’s Scholarly Advisory Committee, to control how the history of these immigrant groups is told. Taxpayers should definitely not fund an effort to divide America.
Quick research reveals that Fernandez is a socialist who also lobbies for the release of cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. She edited a prison book by Mumia, and, in a 2021 Workers’ World Party webinar, Fernandez said that Mumia “has a critique of the state and of capitalism. This means that he represents a continuity in the black radical tradition, a continuity in black radical descent from the 1960s to the present.”
Hinojosa, for his part, sympathizes with Latin America’s liberation theology, which proposes that the church should be an instrument of mobilization and even revolution to overturn the traditional structures of society. Hinojosa militates for the preservation of Hispanics as a separate group inside the U.S., rejecting assimilation, and no doubt would have used the exhibit now suspended to promote this separatism.
“What the 1960s and 1970s did for Latinos, especially the rise of liberation theology, was to be able to see themselves in a brand new way, to be able to rearticulate their identity, to reject this notion that they were to just assimilate and become white Americans, to take on a brown identity, a sense of difference and a connection with indigenous roots … . That was a beautiful moment,” Hinojosa told a podcaster in 2021.
These are the people the Smithsonian hires to shape the identity of Hispanics.
It was perhaps inevitable that Hispanics would find themselves smack in the middle of the culture wars. The group now comprises almost one-fifth of the U.S. population. At 60 million strong, they have begun to drift rightward, and progressives are getting desperate.
Congress appeared to get what was happening, and the House Appropriations Committee in July passed a funding bill that cut the museum’s funding. But Republican members of Congress then met later that month with Smithsonian leaders who made reassurances that they had learned their lesson. Sources tell us that the Smithsonian leaders told members that they had “fired” people, presumably a reference to Fernandez and Hinojosa.
But members of the House of Representatives need to understand that they were apparently lied to. Despite the assurances of bipartisanship by Smithsonian leadership, the museum is controlled by woke academic elites who only want to recruit Hispanics into the victimhood Olympics.
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Hillary Clinton Calls for 'Formal Deprogramming' of Trump Supporters
This sounds more like North Korean brainwashing than any kind of democracy
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for the reeducation of supporters of former President Donald Trump during a CNN interview on Thursday.
The former Democratic presidential nominee who lost to President Trump in 2016 told Christiane Amanpour that though there have always been “bitter battles over all kinds of things” between Republicans and Democrats, there wasn’t “this little tale of extremism wagging the dog of the Republican party as it is today.”
“And, sadly, so many of those extremists—those MAGA extremists—take their marching orders from Donald Trump who has no credibility left by any measure,” she said.
Referring to his legal issues, Ms. Clinton said he’s “only in it for himself.”
“He’s now defending himself in civil actions and criminal actions, and when do they break with him?” she asked. “Because at some point—you know—maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members. Something needs to happen.”
When Ms. Amanpour asked Ms. Clinton how this could be done given that he could be the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential election, she replied, “At this point, I think sadly he will still be the nominee, and we have to defeat him, and we have to defeat those who are the election deniers as we did in 2020 and 2022, and we have to be smarter about how we are trying to empower the right people inside the Republican party.”
'Basket of Deplorables'
Ms. Clinton has criticized President Trump's stance on the 2020 election being stolen—a stance for which he is facing federal charges—while she herself has stated multiple times that the 2016 election was stolen, yet she faces no charges.
“I believe he knows he’s an illegitimate president,” she told Jane Pauley on CBS Sunday Morning in 2019. “He knows. He knows there were a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out the way it did, and I take responsibility for those parts of it that I should, but Jane, it was like applying for a job and getting 66 million letters of recommendation and losing to a corrupt human tornado.”
Despite special counsel John Durham's May report not only debunking Ms. Clinton’s allegation that President Trump conspired with Russians to steal the election but also pointing to her documented intent to “vilify Trump by tying him to Vladimir Putin,” she continues to blame the Russian president for her election loss and claims Russians are determined to infiltrate U.S. elections.
“I don’t think despite all of the deniers there’s any doubt that he interfered in our election or that he has interfered in many ways in the internal affairs of other countries," Mrs. Clinton said. “He hates democracy, and he especially hates the West, and he especially hates us. I fear that the Russians have proved themselves to be quite adept at interfering, and if he has a chance, he’ll do it again.”
Her call for deprogramming echoed her 2016 sentiment when she expressed disdain for Trump supporters who are largely in the middle class.
“You can put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call a basket of deplorables,” she said at a campaign event. “They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it. And, unfortunately, there are people like that, and he has lifted them up.”
To critics, her views are representative of the Democratic Party’s disconnect and disdain for many everyday Americans in its entanglement with elite and corporate self-interests.
Most recently in Mississippi, current Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. commented on Mrs. Clinton's characterization of Trump supporters as "deplorables," and the Democratic party’s willingness to suspend constitutional rights to serve its own interests.
“It has an antipathy toward the American middle class,” he said. “I don’t think it was an accident when Hillary Clinton referred to people as deplorable. I see that sentiment a lot. It’s become a party that is opposed to freedom of speech, and that is tolerant of government-enforced censorship.”
In the CNN Primetime interview, Ms. Clinton told Ms. Amanpour that there are some “sane” Republicans in the House, but that they are afraid of other members.
"You saw the number of Republicans who voted along with Democrats to keep the government open, so there’s clearly a commonsense, sane part of the Republican caucus in the House,” she said. “But I think they are intimidated. They oftentimes, you know, say and do things which they know better than to say or do, and it will require us defeating those most extreme measures and the people who promote them in order to try to get to some common ground where people can again work together.”
MAGA Responds
Though President Trump himself has not yet commented on Ms. Clinton’s statement on deprogramming MAGA Republicans as of this writing, the Make America Great Again Inc. super PAC issued this statement:
“President Trump has said countless times that they are only coming after him because he stands in their way from coming after you—and Hillary Clinton just confirmed that to be true. Tens of millions of Americans will reject the Democrat Party’s re-education camp agenda in November 2024 when we make Donald Trump the 47th president of the United States.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/hillary-clinton-calls-for-formal-deprogramming-of-trump-supporters-5505316 ?
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5 October, 2023
A powerful voice for sanity in Britain
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has sparked an intense reaction after declaring “we shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be” during a speech at his first party conference as leader.
Mr Sunak — who is looking to rally his ruling Conservatives for next year’s general election — is trying to position his party as a force for change, even after 13 years in power and increasing disaffection among voters.
In a speech lasting more than an hour to the party’s annual conference, he promised that the Tories — on course for defeat at the next vote, according to opinion polls — would break the mould of the last 30 years of government.
“We will be bold, we will be radical. We will face resistance and we will meet it,” he told delegates.
Many will see his comments on the transgender debate as the most bold and radical of his speech.
“It shouldn’t be controversial for parents to know what their children are being taught in school about relationships,” he said. “Patients should know when hospitals are talking about men or women. We shouldn’t get bullied.”
At this point, Mr Sunak was interrupted by loud applause from Tory delegates including his Cabinet colleagues.
When it died down, he continued: “We shouldn’t get bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. They can’t.
“A man is a man and a woman is a woman, that’s just common sense.”
The conference again erupted into applause and cheers, with some in the audience whistling.
But there was also widespread concern among the transgender community and advocates online.
“Outrageous hate, which is going to encourage bullying and physical attacks by thugs, utterly vile,” transgender British newsreader India Willoughby wrote.
“If a single trans person gets attacked or murdered after today then Rishi Sunak should be arrested and charged,” added another.
“Never had so many DMs from worried UK trans people and their families,” wrote a third.
“The important thing following Rishi Sunak’s hate speech: IT IS NOT LAW. Nothing has changed. Trans are still legally recognised and protected. Yes it’s scary – but they do not have time to change rules/law.”
Mr Sunak earned a much-needed standing ovation from Conservative diehards gathered in Manchester, as he used his first party conference as their leader to pitch his vision for Britain’s long-term future.
With next year’s expected general election high on attendees’ minds, Mr Sunak was intent on delivering the message that he represents change — despite more than a decade of Tory governments.
And the message seemed to land well with members who last summer picked his short-lived predecessor Liz Truss over him to be leader, only for her premiership to implode weeks later.
“I came here from last year as a Truss-ite, I probably up ‘til yesterday … would’ve voted for Truss again, but he did well,” said Conor Boyle, 20, a student Tory from Northern Ireland.
“I actually thought it was brilliant,” he added of Sunak’s hour-long keynote address, describing him as “a bit of a breath of fresh air”.
Ahead of the 43-year-old former finance minister’s speech, a slick big-screen video montage themed around “change” and how Mr Sunak is “different” left onlookers in little doubt about his imminent message.
His Indian-born wife Akshata Murty then arrived at the podium as a self-proclaimed “surprise addition” to the speakers’ line-up, insisting her husband had “no idea what I’m going to say”.
Delivering personalised remarks about their 14-year marriage without a teleprompter, she nonetheless stuck to the script that Mr Sunak is a new kind of leader willing to take tough, unpopular decisions.
“Sometimes when the going gets tough, I remind Rishi that he’s fighting for his values, that he’s fighting for this party’s values, knowing that it’s a hard road ahead,” she said.
Large banners on the hall walls in front of her hammered home the intended message, bearing the conference’s slogan: “long-term decisions for a brighter future”.
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"I've travelled the world and Kemi Badenoch is right, Britain IS the best place to be black"
NANA AKUA
Just like the party faithful at this week's Conservative conference, I applauded Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch when she said — quite rightly — that Britain is the best country in the world to be a black person.
But I've learned that it's always worthwhile paying attention to the reaction to big political speeches.
A quick survey of the blowhards lambasting her on social media, among them the usual suspects such as Left-wing commentator Owen Jones and Green MP Caroline Lucas, revealed a fascinating detail: a lot of them happen to be white.
I'm prepared to be charitable and accept that some of these liberal do-gooders may have noble, anti-racist intentions. But that doesn't make them right — either about their misrepresentation of what Badenoch said, or their assumptions that black people in Britain are systematically 'oppressed'.
First of all, Badenoch never said Britain was perfect, but I've travelled and lived all over, and I know it to be far better than most places when it comes to racism.
In Britain, I've scarcely been exposed to aggressive, in-your-face abuse since the bad old days of the 1970s. But I have experienced exactly that sort of abuse in France — where people of colour are often effectively segregated in rough and crime-ridden suburbs — as well as in Italy and Spain.
In these nations so beloved of Remainers, I have been eyeballed by local people who spat out racial epithets and made me feel not only unwelcome, but unsafe. I recall one particularly terrifying experience on a crowded train in Spain, where a middle-aged woman directed a lengthy diatribe against black people directly at me. I was scared because I had no easy way to escape until a Spanish-speaking friend physically intervened to defend me from her.
I lived in the USA in my teens and I would never want to be a young black person there, either. During my childhood in Essex, I was the only black girl in my state primary school and all my friends were white. Many of my boyfriends have been white and both my children are mixed-race to different dads.
But in my experience, American blacks and whites tend to live separate lives with unequal life opportunities and little prospect of mixing.
That's just not true here, which is why so many people risk their lives to come to Britain. We can see the success of integration all around us in the huge numbers of families who have accepted black and brown people with open arms, seeing them as a son or daughter-in-law without judging them for the colour of their skin.
As the Prime Minister himself said today, he is 'proud' to be the first British-Asian PM, but 'even prouder that it's just not a big deal'.
In fact, it's the race zealots — and some black activists — who pigeonhole people according to the colour of their skin, a form of discrimination that starts with the ridiculous assumption that all black people are the same, have the same aspirations, the same problems and also — the Labour Party is particularly bad in this regard — the same political views.
But that's clearly nonsense and the statistics speak for themselves.
Some 62 per cent of black people aged 19 are in higher education — compared to 40 per cent of young white people. British-Nigerian students are doing better than their white counterparts in their GCSEs and A-levels.
Black people have thrived in this country in everything from sport and music to business and, particularly, politics — especially the Tory party.
So it is no surprise to me that Kemi Badenoch should become a Conservative minister. She can see the Tories still operate according to that famous message of civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King: 'I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.'
The irony is that judging people by the colour of their skin is what the liberal elite loves to do. And this doesn't do black people any favours. If you tell a thousand black youngsters they are 'oppressed', a few might work harder and succeed, but more will be demoralised and give up altogether.
Tell them anything's possible and you will inspire a generation.
That's what Britain offers to black people. It's not perfect, but as Kemi Badenoch said, I firmly believe that it's the best country in the world for us to live in.
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Another Company Is Closing Locations in Crime-Ridden San Francisco
Earlier this year, Townhall reported how a Nordstrom store in San Francisco’s massive Westfield Mall announced that it would shut down for good amid rising crime. In addition, AT&T announced that its flagship store in the city would close for several reasons, with “street conditions” being one of them. And, one retailer announced that it would sue the owners of the Westfield Mall for failing to bump up its security measures amid rising crime.
Starbucks is the latest major company to announce that it would shrink operations in the Golden City. The coffee chain is slated to close seven stores in San Francisco as the city struggles with rampant crime.
Starbucks’ regional vice president for Northern California, Jessica Borton, sent a letter to employees at the stores to inform them of the decision.
"There are several factors Starbucks considers when tasked with the tough decision of closing a store, but it is all part of ensuring a healthy store portfolio," Borton reportedly wrote in the letter.
"We will continue to listen to the needs of our partners to ensure they can focus on crafting beverages and creating connections in a welcoming environment,” she added.
In a statement to SFGate, Starbucks spokesperson Sam Jefferies said that “each year as a standard course of business, we evaluate the store portfolio to determine where we can best meet our community and customers’ needs.”
“This includes opening new locations, identifying stores in need of investment or renovation, exploring locations where an alternative format is needed and, in some instances, re-evaluating our footprint,” he added.
“This includes opening new locations, identifying stores in need of investment or renovation, exploring locations where an alternative format is needed and, in some instances, re-evaluating our footprint,” he added. The employees of all the closing stores will have the option to transfer to another location.
According to the New York Post, around 40 retail stores in the Union Square section of the city alone have closed in addition to “dozens” more in other areas of town.
Earlier this year, San Francisco Mayor London Breed asked for federal assistance to deal with the city’s issues, including drugs, violence, and homelessness. In a letter obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle, Breed said that the problem is “beyond our local capacity.”
https://townhall.com//tipsheet/madelineleesman/2023/10/04/starbucks-san-francisco-n2629344
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UK: Hunt pledges law change to stop de-banking for ‘wrong political views’
The Government has pledged to change the law to prevent people being de-banked for having the “wrong political views”.
It plans to amend existing rules to ensure banks, building societies and other financial services firms are not undermining people’s right to freedom of speech.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said during the Conservative party conference on Monday: “Nobody should have their bank account closed because somebody else decides they’re not politically correct. “We’ll tighten the law to stop people being debanked for the wrong political views.”
It is already illegal for financial institutions to discriminate against customers on the basis of lawful freedom of expression.
But the Treasury moved to tighten the rules on account closures earlier this year after former Ukip leader Nigel Farage said Coutts bank, which is owned by NatWest Group, had moved to shut down his account unfairly.
The changes included extending the notice period for banks deciding to close someone’s account from two months to 90 days.
The move was intended to give customers more time to challenge the decision through the Financial Ombudsman Service or to find a replacement bank.
Banking firms will also be required to give customers “clear and tailored” explanations for why they have chosen to close an account – except in some circumstances where it is unlawful to do so.
It means it only applies when there is a commercial reason for doing so, such as if a financial firm thinks having a certain customer will pose a reputational risk.
But they will not have to provide an explanation or a 90-day notice period in serious cases, such as if they believe a customer has committed an offence or to protect staff and customers from harm.
Meanwhile, the UK’s financial watchdog is reviewing the treatment of so-called politically exposed persons (PEPs) and their families who are subject to extra checks by banking providers.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said it wants to make sure financial firms are being “proportionate” in their risk assessments of PEPs.
Last month, the FCA said it found no firm evidence of banks denying people access to accounts over the past year due to their political views.
In its preliminary review of the issue, it said data submitted to it by banks and others suggests that no firms had closed an account primarily because of customers’ political beliefs. But it admitted that the information collected was limited and needs further investigation.
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4 October, 2023
UK Report: Over One-Third of Children on Puberty Blockers Experienced Worsened Mental Health
New research from the United Kingdom is showing that over a third of children placed on puberty blockers and hormone drugs suffered severe mental health deterioration afterward.
A 2011 study conducted at the Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service clinic for children reported that children who were put on puberty blockers suffered no adverse mental health effects. However, new analysis conducted by Susan McPherson, a professor of psychology and sociology at the University of Essex, and retired social scientist David Freedman found that the majority of children put on puberty blockers and hormone drugs experienced erratic and fluctuating mental health, including over a third whose mental health “reliably deteriorated.”
The original study, conducted on 44 children between the ages of 12 and 15, was reportedly based on group averages, while the new analysis relied on individual results, which McPherson and Freedman explained “allows us to look at how a treatment is performing in terms of the percentage of patients improving, deteriorating, and showing clinically significant change. … It is possible, using this approach, to look at patterns, such as who is benefitting and who is not.”
Last year, Britain’s National Health Service opted to close down the Tavistock Gender Identity Develop clinic after a government report found that the staff rushed and even pressured minors into taking puberty blockers and hormone drugs with almost no psychological or medical oversight.
A reported 96% of child patients were placed on puberty blockers by Tavistock staffers, and concerns were raised over a tendentious focus on “gender dysphoria,” instead of considering other psychological factors in recommending drugs or surgeries for minors, which were summarily dismissed.
In fact, the situation was so concerning that Dr. Hilary Cass, the pediatrician tasked by the government with investigating the claims against Tavistock, offered her recommendation to shut down the clinic several months early, saying she had enough information already to justify closing Tavistock.
Cass particularly stressed concerns she had over the use of puberty blockers and other hormone drugs, which the Tavistock clinic had been prescribing to children as young as 10 years old, many of whom were already on the autism spectrum or suffering various mental health issues like depression or eating disorders.
In her interim report to the NHS, Cass noted, “There is lack of consensus and open discussion about the nature of gender dysphoria and therefore about the appropriate clinical response.” She added, “There has not been routine and consistent data collection, which means it is not possible to accurately track the outcomes and pathways that children and young people take through the service.”
Over the years, numerous whistleblowers—former staff governor Dr. David Bell, consultants and nurses like Marcus and Sue Evans, child safeguarding officer Sonia Appleby, and countless former patients who now, as adults, regret being put on puberty blockers and hormone drugs—have sounded the alarm over the Tavistock clinic’s practices. Most have pointed out that children and their parents were often denied informed consent as staffers rushed children onto puberty blockers after only three or four meetings.
Some whistleblowers even explained that topics like “sexual orientation” were effectively off-limits and that a transgender identity and a battery of hormone drugs were the only options explored by clinicians. Others pointed out that the drastic rise in children going through Tavistock (from about 250 “patients” in 2011 to over 5,000 in 2021) and linked it to the growing puberty blocker and hormone drug industry.
The findings of the new analysis of the Tavistock study are in line with research conducted and published by Family Research Council. Jennifer Bauwens, director of Family Research Council’s Center for Family Studies, explained earlier this year:
At one time, gender dysphoria was considered a mental disorder, but now, due to the increasing prevalence of a worldview shaped by gender identity ideology, it has morphed into a human rights issue. The ideology borrows from the mental health aspects of gender dysphoria in order to justify medical ‘intervention.’
She continued, “Advocates of gender-affirming care insist it is both lifesaving and evidence-based health care for those who identify as transgender. But the research used to make such a claim is full of methodological errors and can be easily disputed as a research body that is incomplete.” Notably, the original Tavistock study from 2011 focused on group studies instead of on individual situations and results.
Bauwens added, “Not only are the currently published studies problematic, but there is a lack of ongoing and long-term follow-up reports that address the impact of cross-sex hormones and surgeries.”
In June, the NHS banned the use of puberty blockers and hormone drugs on minors, following a growing swath of European medical experts who have backed off gender-transition procedures for children. France, Sweden, Finland, and Norway have also put restrictions on the use of puberty blockers and hormone drugs on children. The U.S. still hasn’t.
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US Court Upholds Tennessee Ban on Transgender Procedures for Children
An appeals court upheld Tennessee’s ban on transgender procedures for children, ruling that the law does not violate the 14th Amendment as claimed in a lawsuit challenging the ban.
In March, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed into law SB0001, which prohibits transgender treatment for minors. It came into effect in July. The bill requires children who started such treatments before July 1 to end it by March 31, 2024. In April, groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit challenging the law on behalf of families with “trans-identifying” children.
On Sept. 28, the Sixth Circuit Court of the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected the petitioner’s challenge in a 2–1 ruling, upholding Tennessee’s ban on transgender treatment for children.
In the lawsuit, the families argued that the Tennessee law violated their due process rights under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The due process clause of the 14th Amendment states that no state shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
In the court opinion (pdf), the judges wrote that they have to consider “norms that are ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’” in order to determine whether a specific law violates the amendment.
“This country does not have a ‘deeply rooted’ tradition of preventing governments from regulating the medical profession in general or certain treatments in particular, whether for adults or their children,” the judges wrote.
“The government has the power to reasonably limit the use of drugs. ... If that’s true for adults, it’s assuredly true for their children. ... This country does not have a custom of permitting parents to obtain banned medical treatments for their children.”
The court said that nobody debates the existence of gender dysphoria or related distress. However, the question is whether the use of puberty blockers, hormone treatments, and surgery should be allowed on those aged 17 and younger.
“This is a relatively new diagnosis with ever-shifting approaches to care over the last decade or two," the court's opinion reads. "Under these circumstances, it is difficult for anyone to be sure about predicting the long-term consequences of abandoning age limits of any sort for these treatments.”
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The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital has stopped providing gender-transition procedures for minors
It announced earlier this month, due to a provision in the Missouri SAFE Act that “creates unsustainable liability” for its operations.
The law was passed earlier this year and became effective on Aug. 28.
In June, an analysis by The College Fix found that 14 youth gender centers were likely to close this year as a result of state legislation protecting minors from gender-transition procedures. This month, two transgender centers at children’s hospitals in Missouri confirmed that they have ceased operations, specifically because of the state’s new SAFE Act.
The Missouri Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act of 2023 (SB 49) forbids a health care provider from “knowingly perform[ing] a gender-transition surgery” or “knowingly prescrib[ing] or administer[ing] cross-sex hormones or puberty-blocking drugs for the purpose of a gender transition” to anyone under the age of 18.
The provision protecting minors from gender-transition hormones exempts anyone who began treatment before the law’s effective date and expires after four years. Any health care provider who violates these provisions would have their license revoked.
Missouri’s SAFE Act also makes prescribing or administering puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones for the purpose of gender transition “a cause of action against the health care provider.” The law offers infertility as an example of the types of harm that could be caused.
A Daily Wire investigation this summer discovered that a transgender center at the University of Virginia Children’s Hospital listed “irreversible infertility” as a possible side effect of cross-sex hormones. Missouri minors harmed by these drugs can bring a malpractice suit until they reach the age of 36 or until 15 years after treatment for their injury has ceased.
In such a suit, the law places a heavy burden of proof on the health care provider, while the person harmed “shall be entitled to a rebuttable presumption that the individual was harmed … and that the harm was a direct result of the hormones or drugs prescribed or administered.”
If a health care provider lost such an unfavorable suit, it would be required to pay a minimum of $500,000.
The Washington University Transgender Center shut down because of this provision, which it said “creates unsustainable liability.”
“If it was real medicine, that wouldn’t be an issue,” the Family Research Council’s senior fellow for biblical worldview and strategic engagement, Joseph Backholm, told The Washington Stand. “Doctors have always faced liability for their work, and if they knew it was the right thing to do, they would continue doing it.”
In February of this year, a whistleblower described the practices at Washington University’s Transgender Center as “morally and medically appalling.” According to the whistleblower, who self-identifies as far-left and pro-trans, the center lacked formal protocols for treatment, placed children on drugs without proper review, and lied to government officials about referring minors for gender-transition surgery.
In 2021, the center encouraged a school to “affirm” a group of fifth grade girls who identified as transgender en masse.
The whistleblower’s explosive account led Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey to launch an investigation of the center in February, which was still ongoing in late July. “If even one-tenth of the allegations are true, they’re abusing children,” said Bailey.
“And, in fact, parents were coerced into making these decisions,” Bailey added. One mother who took her 13-year-old son to the center said she “felt bullied” by clinic staff who bombarded her with suicide statistics. “I really felt like this is not a meeting for me to get answers to my questions and for everybody to have equal say.”
In March, Bailey filed an emergency regulation to restrict the transgender center’s access to minors, but he withdrew the rule in May after it was blocked by a judge.
Although Washington University’s Transgender Center has been among the most controversial, it is not the only one to close due to recent state laws. A transgender center at the University of Missouri Children’s Hospital also stopped providing gender-transition procedures to minors on Aug. 28, a spokesperson said. “Both blamed a section of the law that increased the liability for providers,” The Associated Press reported.
Also according to The AP, “at least some providers” in North Dakota and “across the South” have stopped providing gender-transition procedures to minors simply due to uncertainty about what the laws prohibit.
“The number of clinics stopping this ghoulish work once liability is firmly established illustrates their own lack of confidence in the long-term benefits for the kids and themselves,” Backholm said. “Clinics do this because they get rich and because they win progressive brownie points for doing so, but this suggests they may be unable to defend the work they do today years from now.”
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Australia: Leftist ban thwarted by Christians
The Left are always wanting to ban something. Homosexuals must be prevented from getting help with their unwanted inclinations, apparently. No freedom of choice for them!
Independent MP Alex Greenwich has urged the Minns government to support his bill to outlaw gay conversion amid fears among LGBTIQ+ groups that Labor’s promise to ban the practice has been stalled following a targeted campaign by religious groups.
The NSW government is consulting on legislation to ban so-called gay conversion therapy, after promising before the March election it would follow Victoria in ending the practice.
But the Australian Christian Lobby told its members last week the laws “have been put on pause, no doubt influenced by our phone campaign”.
The ACL has promised to campaign against the bill, and recently appointed a NSW state director, Joshua Rowe, to spearhead its fight against the legislation.
In an email to members seen by the Herald, ACL managing director Michelle Pearse said the group had made more than 8000 calls “explaining their concerns and asking MPs to consider the negative consequences for our children”.
The ACL did not respond to a request for comment.
The government has denied it paused the bill, saying consultation is ongoing and legislation will be finalised “in due course”. But despite not giving any timeline on when it might introduce the bill, there was an expectation it would be finalised before the end of this year.
That is now extremely unlikely, with a bill not expected to surface until the first half of next year at the earliest.
Premier Chris Minns announced Labor would introduce a bill banning gay conversion therapy before the election after Greenwich said he would make it a priority in this term.
Rather than support Greenwich’s bill, which has already been drafted and introduced into the parliament, the government has insisted on drafting its own bill.
But concerns about pushback from religious groups, and the prospect of delays to the reform, have prompted Greenwich and others to urge Labor to drop its bill and support his legislation before the end of 2023.
This week the heads of three peak gay conversion survivor groups wrote to NSW Attorney-General Michael Daley urging the government to support Greenwich’s bill, saying it “strikes the right balance and is sensitive to the needs of all affected stakeholders”.
“The focus of the bill is to protect LGBTQ people from harmful attempts to change who they are and who they love in a way that keeps communities of faith together and allows them to practice their doctrine. The bill takes the least punitive approach to prevent conflict between parties,” the letter stated.
“We are especially concerned that the Australian Christian Lobby has now claimed credit for delaying progress on reforms. Banning conversion practices should be about protecting the health and welfare of LGBTQ people first and foremost, not appeasing those who seek to perpetrate those practices at the expense of the health and welfare of LGBTQ people.”
‘There is no other form of abuse where consultation with the perpetrators of that abuse would lead to a pause in reform.’
Greenwich has worked closely with the government seeking support for his landmark equality bill in the new parliament, but urged Labor to support a bill he said had been drafted in consultation with survivors.
“The bill is ready to go, supported by survivors, and consistent with schemes already adopted in Victoria and New Zealand. There is enough time to debate and pass the reform this year through the parliament,” he said.
“There is no other form of abuse where consultation with the perpetrators of that abuse would lead to a pause in reform, and I urge the government and parliament to make NSW safer for LGBTQ people and prohibit this harmful practice that tragically leads to suicide in too many cases.”
Gay conversion law would ban suppression of gender identity
Victoria, Queensland and the ACT all have bans on gay conversion practices, though they vary in scope. The Victorian model faced a fierce pushback from conservative groups when it passed in 2021.
While the NSW government has not explained why it would not support Greenwich’s legislation, senior Labor sources indicated that their bill was unlikely to go as far as Victoria’s.
However, Greenwich said that while his bill was based on the Victorian model, it made a number of key changes to ensure things such as prayer or parents referring children to psychologists were not captured by the law.
A spokeswoman for the premier’s office said the government had consulted with more than 130 stakeholders on its bill, including LGBTQI+ groups and religious organisations to “develop a model that is right for NSW”.
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3 October, 2023
Pat Condell is back
His latest video "OK Groomer" has already been taken down by YouTube but is still available on his own site:
It is a scathing takedown of the transsexual mania
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UK: Trans women patients will be banned from female hospital wards under proposals to be announced by the Health Secretary today.
Steve Barclay will unveil the plans to push back against 'wokery' in the health service amid concerns that women's rights are being sidelined.
The move will also see 'sex-specific' language return to the NHS, meaning terms such as breastfeeding will no longer be replaced by 'chestfeeding'.
Mr Barclay said: 'We need a common-sense approach to sex and equality issues in the NHS. That is why I am announcing proposals for clearer rights for patients.
'And I can confirm that sex-specific language has now been fully restored to online health advice pages about cervical and ovarian cancer and the menopause.
It is vital that women's voices are heard in the NHS and the privacy, dignity and safety of all patients are protected.'
The changes will give men and women the right to share wards with people of the same biological sex and have intimate care only from those of the same sex, the Daily Telegraph reported last night.
A source close to Mr Barclay told the newspaper: 'The Secretary of State is fed up with this agenda and the damage it's causing, language like 'chestfeeding', talking about pregnant 'people' rather than women. It exasperates the majority of people, and he is determined to take action.
'He is concerned that women's voices should be heard on healthcare and that too often wokery and ideological dogma is getting in the way of this'.
The proposals follow 2021 NHS guidance that said trans patients could be placed on single-sex wards on the basis of the gender with which they identified.
Mr Barclay will use his speech to the Conservative conference to announce a consultation on changes to the NHS constitution in order to strengthen protection for women.
Under the proposed changes, trans patients could be housed in separate accommodation or their own rooms.
Maya Forstater, executive director of campaign group Sex Matters, praised the plans, telling the Telegraph: 'This is fantastic news – the return of common-sense.'
An NHS Trust is allowing staff to take a year of paid leave for the 'male menopause', The Daily Telegraph reported last night.
East Midlands Ambulance Service managers have been told to give consideration to men experiencing menopausal-like symptoms, despite the condition not being clinically recognised.
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Inside Defamation Lawsuit That Could Blow Southern Poverty Law Center Wide Open
The Southern Poverty Law Center is notorious for branding mainstream conservative and Christian organizations, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom and Moms for Liberty “hate groups” or “antigovernment extremist groups,” placing them on a map alongside chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.
Many of the SPLC’s targets have sued for defamation, but almost every lawsuit has failed. Earlier this year, however, a judge allowed one defamation lawsuit against the SPLC to move forward.
D.A. King, founder and president of the Dustin Inman Society, brought a uniquely strong case against the SPLC. King didn’t just argue that the SPLC was lying by branding his organization, which supports the enforcement of immigration law and has legal immigrants on its board, an “anti-immigrant hate group” that “focuses on vilifying all immigrants.”
King argued that the SPLC had reason to doubt the claim that the Dustin Inman Society is an “anti-immigrant hate group” because the SPLC itself had explicitly stated that it did not consider his organization an “anti-immigrant hate group” years before it later did so.
In 2011, Heidi Beirich, then-director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project (the project behind the “hate map”), told The Associated Press that the SPLC did not consider the society a “hate group.” In 2019, however, the SPLC published its 2018 version of the “hate map,” and it included the Dustin Inman Society. The SPLC has kept the Dustin Inman Society on that map ever since, including this past June, even after a judge ruled that the society is likely to succeed in its lawsuit.
In another interesting twist, most of the quotes the SPLC uses as evidence to brand the society a “hate group” date to before 2011.
I sat down with King recently to discuss his important case. In our interview, he noted, “It’s the SPLC versus the SPLC.”
Many defamation suits against the SPLC fail due to the quirks of Supreme Court jurisprudence on defamation law. The bar for a plaintiff suing for defamation is extremely high, especially if the plaintiff counts as a “public figure.” While the Supreme Court precedent that established this kind of rule—New York Times v. Sullivan (1964)—actually involved an elected official, later precedents expanded the definition of “public figure” to include anyone who puts himself or herself out to the public, and nonprofits such as the Dustin Inman Society fit that definition.
Public figures who seek to restore their good names in court have to prove that those they’re suing acted with “actual malice,” which means proving they published their statements with “reckless disregard for the truth.”
In order to demonstrate that, a plaintiff such as King must prove that the SPLC had reason to doubt the truth or falsehood of its claims, and the 2011 AP article would appear to meet that criteria.
A federal judge rejected the SPLC’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit earlier this year, allowing the case to move to discovery. That means King can request documents from the SPLC that may help prove his case (and the SPLC can also request documents from him).
King is far from alone in facing the SPLC’s “hate group” accusation.
As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC took the program it had used to bankrupt organizations associated with the Ku Klux Klan and weaponized it against conservative groups, partially to scare its donors into ponying up cash and partially to silence ideological opponents.
In 2019, amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal that led the SPLC to fire its co-founder, a former employee came forward to call the organization’s “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.”
In 2012, a terrorist with a gun used the “hate map” to target a Christian nonprofit in Washington, D.C. Although the SPLC condemned the attack, it kept the gunman’s target on its “hate map.”
The FBI used the SPLC’s “hate group” list to target “radical-traditional Catholics” in an infamous memo earlier this year. According to the SPLC’s logic, 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 small pro-family nonprofit the Ruth Institute a “hate group.”
Yet President Joe Biden—a self-described devout Catholic—and his team have hosted SPLC leaders and staff at the White House at least 11 times since Jan. 20, 2021, and Biden nominated an SPLC attorney, Nancy Abudu, to a federal judgeship.
Earlier this year, the SPLC added Moms for Liberty, along with other parental rights groups, such as Parents Defending Education, to its “hate map.”
King’s lawsuit represents the best chance to date to expose how the SPLC chooses whether to add an organization to its “hate map,” and that information may prove vital to restoring the good names of so many of the SPLC’s targets.
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Biden is boosting ‘equality’ in the US — by making everyone poorer
By Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore
The latest Census Bureau report on income and poverty could hardly have been grimmer.
The US “supplemental poverty rate” (a new measure that takes into account government benefits and expenses related to working) rose over the course of a year.
The child-poverty rate doubled.
Almost every group — old people, young people, males, females and residents of every region of the country — lost ground.
There were virtually no bright spots.
Indeed, the middle class got hammered. Median household income fell by 2.2%.
The average family is roughly $2,000 poorer than when Biden entered office.
This followed a more than $6,000 rise in middle-class incomes under Trump.
Biden’s miserable results during his first two years in office are an entirely predictable consequence of his enacting more than $5 trillion of new debt spending — which sent inflation soaring to nearly 8%.
Very few workers received 8% wage increases to keep up with the cost of living.
Just ask the UAW strikers.
There was one quirky piece of “good news” for White House progressives obsessed with “income inequality.”
The income gap between the rich and poor has narrowed, according to several standard measures of income inequality.
The so-called Gini Coefficient — a standard measure of that spread — showed a reduction in inequality.
The ratio of the total income of the top decile of earners to that of the bottom decile fell — by 10%.
How did that happen? Not by making the poor richer.
We now have an all-time high of 38 million Americans living in poverty.
Instead, the incomes of the rich fell at a faster pace than the incomes of everyone else.
Biden says he’s abandoned “trickle-down” economics. And he has: Now there aren’t higher incomes to trickle down for anyone. Everyone is getting a smaller slice of a smaller pie.
Instead of JFK-style aspirations of a rising tide that lifts all boats, we now have a falling tide that is capsizing all boats — but the big yachts have sunk more than the row boats.
Biden has accomplished this through his radical income-redistribution plan, which puts equality over prosperity.
First, he’s raised taxes on the richest Americans; second, he’s redistributed $1.2 trillion per year of taxpayer money to the poor via anti-poverty programs without any requirements that the recipients work. Free money.
This is a recipe for making a nation poorer.
It’s simple math. First, every dollar that the government takes in taxes from the rich reduces their incentive to produce. The higher the tax penalty, the greater the disincentive to work.
Meanwhile, every dollar that is given to the poor (and not related to working) reduces the incentive to produce for those at the bottom.
So, the overall size of the economic pie keeps shrinking, and the more the politicians try to equalize income through taxes and subsidies, the fewer the number of rich and poor alike who will work.
Just look at the historically low level of the labor-force participation rate.
Biden and the Democrats have responded to the rise in poverty by arguing that we should return to COVID-era federal policies that handed out large cash benefits (such as checks of up to $3,600 per child) to families that are poor.
They seem to think that if we make the checks large enough, there will be no poverty in America.
But wait. If we give every family $30,000 (without requiring work), how many Americans with a wage and salary below or anywhere near that level would stop working in order to receive the freebie benefits?
The Holy Grail of perfect equality leads inevitably to everyone becoming poorer and more miserable.
The latest Census report is a warning that Biden has put us well on that road to ruin.
https://nypost.com/2023/09/29/biden-boosting-equality-in-us-by-making-everyone-poorer/
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2 October, 2023
‘Selfish society’: Tradwife says marriage must be protected ‘at all costs’
The article below tends to portray Tradwives as if they are a rarity totally out of step with modern society. I doubt that they are actually rare. My impression is that many mothers would gladly embrace a full-time wife and mother role if family finances permitted it.
I am admittedly harking back 40 years but I once had a Tradwife -- long before it was called that. When I met my third wife she was a working mother with three small kids. And I was already affluent. So I told her to ditch her job and I would support her to be a full-time mother. She jumped at it. The traditional female role had always seemed a good one to her.
She was not housebound. I gave her a small car so when the kids were at school, she would shop, visit friends and explore her other interests. She still buzzes around at a great rate to this day but always has time to look after me in my frail old age
I think that adds up to a good recommendation for tradwifery. Any man who can afford it should have one. Many single mothers would volunteer. It sure beats spending your money on boats, planes and other toys
Tradwife and influencer Estee Williams says being a traditional homemaker doesn’t necessarily have to be associated with the 1950s and 60s. Ms Williams said traditionalism is putting “family before yourself”. “I think it is having those traditional values that were once definitely more in place in God, family and love,” she told Sky News Australia host Piers Morgan.
Ms Williams said we now live in a “very selfish” society. “You see self-love promoted everywhere – women are leaving marriage far more easily than men and are doing it because they think there is something better out there for them," she said. “Marriage is a bond and it’s a sacred bond – you have to protect that at all costs, and I think part of that is putting your partner’s needs before your own every single day.”
“I think it is having those traditional values that were once definitely more in place in God, family and love,” she told Sky News Australia host Piers Morgan.
Ms Williams said we now live in a “very selfish” society.
“You see self-love promoted everywhere – women are leaving marriage far more easily than men and are doing it because they think there is something better out there for them," she said.
“Marriage is a bond and it’s a sacred bond – you have to protect that at all costs, and I think part of that is putting your partner’s needs before your own every single day.”
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Career-Driven Feminist Abandons Liberal ‘Fantasy’ for Family, Tells How Lies Target Young Women
She had been climbing the career ladder of science her entire adult life, but as 33-year-old Rachel Bock neared her goal of getting her Ph.D., her once confident strides began to buckle. The hairline fractures in her worldview really started to show.
“One more year,” her then-roommate said to her, looking up from her laptop as they sat at the kitchen table, both students working over breakfast. “I can't wait to start trying to have a baby, I can't wait to be done with this. I hate this.”
Ms. Bock had indeed heard correctly. The younger woman let it slip out, saying what many of her peers were thinking.
It wasn’t the first time Ms. Bock had heard the sequestered longings of her female cohorts—which, to some degree, she felt herself.
In private, hanging out together, the young women confided to each other, “I don't want to keep doing this, this is crazy!” or “I'll get my degree, but then I'm staying home.”
Ms. Bock distinctly remembers a friend telling her point blank, “I can't wait to leave so I can get on with my life and have a baby already!”
Nor had Ms. Bock failed to spot the sequestered tears of her female fellows who were new mothers, painfully separated from their babies at daycare.
All the young ladies at this level of university had something in common, Ms. Bock, now 39, told The Epoch Times. (Rachel Bock is a pseudonym, used for privacy.) They were all 30-somethings working for their Ph.Ds., as she was.
“That's when reality kind of hits,” she said. “It's not like in undergrad where everybody's 18 and 19 and you can just pretend that, like, ‘I'm going to have this crazy career, it's going to be great!’”
Ms. Bock had bought into the promises, as they had.
“The way they describe it to you your whole life is like, you'll slip on a banana peel and a baby will come out,” she said. “It just didn't seem like [a family] needed the planning that a career needed.”
By they she meant her parents, friends, extended relatives—basically the entire, very liberal eastern seaboard state where she was raised.
“I don't feel like I was ever not a feminist,” she said. “Everybody seemed to be a feminist. It didn't have any bad connotation.”
She followed the feminist mantras faithfully: Don't get distracted by a man. School comes first.
“I had boyfriends, but they always came second to everything I was doing,” she said.
As she moved around the country pursuing her career, her actions spoke volumes: she was leaving and it was assumed that if he was supportive, he would come too.
Doubtlessly, over the course of her education Ms. Bock has garnered many stellar accomplishments. Her 12-page CV would wobble the knees of any freshman—and many graduates.
A top-rate scientist, she had been a team lead in professional lab settings; had garnered multiple publications; partook in a prestigious fellowship program at an R1 institution; and was awarded Most Outstanding Graduate Student in her class.
Until, in the second year of her Ph.D. program, her then-fiancé—the one she placed on the backburner—fell by the wayside, for good.
Ms. Bock came to grasp that a family also takes much planning: You have to meet somebody you want to have a family with. You must plan it out. Decide to get married. Then actually get pregnant.
Now, that ship had sailed, or so it seemed to Ms. Bock at that time.
As she checked her experiments at 3 a.m. in the lab during Christmas, she realized, “I don't have anything that's real. I don't have a family.
“It was heartbreaking.”
All but having completed her Ph.D., lacking only her dissertation, she left academia for good after the third and final year.
Pondering where things went wrong, Ms. Bock recalled hearing words as a young girl—the seeds of feminism being planted in her very early on, shaping a comprehensive worldview, guiding her decisions.
Those words targeted little girls holding their dolls:
You don't have to have a baby; you can do whatever you want one day. You're just as smart as the boys, and don't let them tell you you're not.
“Everything that I did was to prove I was better than [men] or beat them in something,” Ms. Bock told the newspaper, adding that she was always being “measured against them.”
It's fine for girls to pursue stereotypical boy things, she said, if it’s “because they find interest in it” or if they “think it's fun or want to pursue it.”
In her drive to climb the ladder—and shatter glass ceilings for all women—this constant competition with men became a complex.
She never asked: What if, in the end, you never really shatter any glass ceilings? What if that far distant shore is just a feminist fantasy?
“A career is a never-ending climb,” she told us, revealing her newfound wisdom. “You don't ever reach the top, it's just a never-ending list of goals.”
What many women are seeking is settledness, she adds. And “family is really the only place that I feel that happens.”
It seemed late in the game for Ms. Bock to have an epiphany. Yet the once career-driven feminist had a profound change of heart, and would come to call it “all part of God's plan.”
All of her woes and worldviews collided in 2017, after leaving the bubble of academia, the echo chamber where only feminist viewpoints dominated, and after she met her now-husband.
They met in her home state, at a grocery store, and hit it off. Now outside the narrow university perspective, they had conversations.
“I was really angry for a while, and then it turned into sadness,” she said. “It was just a painful breaking of my worldview.”
They shared their wants in life, their beliefs, and what they felt was missing.
“I was finally able for the first time to just talk about all the ways I had been misled,” she told us, adding that her disillusionment with feminism led her to explore alternative viewpoints, including those of Jordan Peterson and Christina Hoff Sommers, a.k.a. the "Factual Feminist."
Setting her considerable research skills to seeking the truth, she found out scientifically how males and females have distinctly and inherently different traits.
Women are more nurturing, and it’s natural for them to desire a family to nurture.
Little girls look at their mother's faces for longer than little boys, she learned.
“Girls will draw more things related to people,” she said. “Boys draw projectiles, or things moving, or objects.”
The sexes are different, and that’s okay.
With this sensible new revelation, everything suddenly made sense and, moreover, it lifted off the maddening pressure. Girls don't have to compete to be like boys. It's all just a misnomer.
But it is actually much darker, she learned.
Amid her soul-searching, Ms. Bock attended a feminist march in 2017. Seeing how angry all of the women were with signs saying, “The future is female” and “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle,” it was nonsensical, she said. “I didn't feel like I was even part of the march even though I was there.”
In her quest to understand this disconnect and reconstruct her own worldview, Ms. Bock uncovered the cultural Marxist roots of feminism, that it was something more deliberate to begin with.
It was “designed to frame women against men and fracture the institution of the family,” she said. “They've been making me into a victim my whole life. … It's so handicapping.”
For her whole life, “everything was sexism, and you had to … convolute what was happening in order for it to be sexism,” she said. When she realized “there's just these inherent differences between men and women, everything just became so much simpler.”
After marrying her now-husband and moving to his home state of Colorado to pursue their shared dream of having a family, she had another, more spiritual, revelation.
Before their entire belief systems had been dashed into a million pieces, Ms. Bock and her husband had both been atheists.
But their deeply humbling experience of being duped had opened their minds to new spiritual possibilities, in addition to scientific, and one day she picked up the Bible to see what was inside.
That’s where she saw a passage, inquiring whether someone had been around when the rivers and mountains were built.
“Essentially, God's saying, ‘You don't know everything,’” she told The Epoch Times. “You weren't there when the world was created.”
Today, Ms. Bock and her husband are Orthodox Christians living rurally in the Centennial State. Now with their 1-year-old firstborn and “one on the way,” she said, “God willing, we’ll have two, at least.”
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Black teens who killed white youth found not guilty
The family of Ethan Liming, the 17-year-old who was brutally beaten and killed near LeBron James’ I Promise school in Akron, Ohio, said they are “completely devastated” after two of the men involved in their son’s death were found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter on Monday.
Jurors on Monday handed up their verdicts in the involuntary manslaughter trial of two brothers for a fight that ended in the death of 17-year-old Ethan Liming.
Deshawn and Tyler Stafford were acquitted of involuntary manslaughter charges. Deshawn was found guilty of felony aggravated assault as well as a misdemeanor count of assault. Tyler was also found guilty on a misdemeanor count of assault.
A third, first-degree felony count of involuntary manslaughter against Deshawn was dismissed as jurors failed to reach a verdict. Summit County Common Pleas Judge Tammy O’Brien declared it a mistrial. (Fox 8)
On June 2, 2022, Liming and some friends were “joy riding in a car” when they shot at three males on a basketball court with a toy Splatrball Water Bead Blaster, prompting the confrontation that led to his death.
The teen, who died of blunt force trauma to the head, was beaten so severely there were footprints on his chest wall, according to a preliminary autopsy.
"The Liming Family is completely devastated by the outcome of this trial and cannot understand how three young men can get away with viciously beating their son, Ethan, to death," the family's attorney James A. Gutierrez said in a statement.
"Ethan didn’t get a fair shot that night when three men brutally attacked him and now again Ethan did not get a fair shot in court," the statement continued.
"They feel like Ethan has been killed again and now the Liming Family is victimized by the system and the media for publishing articles that were not only hurtful to the Liming Family, but were also simply not true.
"This case had nothing to do with race when it happened," he added. "The community picked sides and in a symptom of our society, lost sight of what is simply a matter of right or wrong. Clearly the jury lost its way and the Liming Family cannot understand that if they convicted the defendants of assault and aggravated assault then what killed Ethan, the concrete? That is like saying I just happened to be holding the gun that killed someone. The Liming Family yet again was victimized by jury nullification where the jury ignored proven facts to come back with an inconsistent verdict. As their attorney, to witness the injustice, to witness the grief, the harassment, the cruel and unimaginable things said on social media reflects how broken we are as a community, as a city, and as a nation. Nothing will bring back Ethan. His death goes without justice. The people who killed Ethan go without consequence and our community remains crippled in its failure to recognize the simple concepts of fairness and compassion."
https://townhall.com//tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2023/09/27/ethan-liming-murder-update-n2629004
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How Washington’s $7.5 Trillion Deficit Spending Spree is Bankrupting America
If you are an American with money saved in a bank, a significant slice of that money has already been stolen from you by the government and you will never get it back. And they plan to keep stealing. Your greenbacks will one day be worth dimes only
Polls show that Americans are pessimistic about the economy, with inflation as the top concern. That’s understandable, but do they understand where this inflationary surge came from and why Washington’s addiction to government spending threatens the future prosperity of the country?
That may sound hyperbolic, but consider the numbers. The sum of new spending authorizations between 2020 and 2022 was a staggering $7.5 trillion—over $57,400 per household.
According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, roughly $700 billion (less than 10% of the total) was directed toward public health in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the spending spree focused on welfare expansions, cash handouts, and opportunistic subsidies for a variety of special interests.
Badly flawed, Keynesian “stimulus” spending escalated even after the economy had stabilized in the summer of 2020.
Legislative packages passed in December 2020 and March 2021 combined to dump trillions of dollars into the economy. Such reckless, unrestrained spending was the definition of inflationary.
The Federal Reserve’s role is often overlooked. The Fed purchased a massive volume of Treasury securities from 2020 through 2021, covering almost all above-baseline spending during the period. This not only created money out of thin air, but also served to provide artificial demand for federal debt at low interest rates.
Without the Fed’s intervention, global markets would have struggled to absorb the historic volume of debt that Washington issued, triggering demand for higher interest rates. Since Congress did not face immediate discipline from debt markets, the spending spree continued long after it was remotely justified.
American families have paid and continue to pay a steep price for the greedy indulgence of politicians. Inflation spiked in 2021 and 2022 with sky-high deficit spending as one of the primary drivers.
Households have lost thousands of dollars in purchasing power as a result. While the rate of inflation is now lower than it was a year ago, prices are still rising faster than before the pandemic. Families are struggling to catch up to the 17% price hike that has already been baked into the system.
The Fed eventually responded with a dramatic increase in interest rates and a reduction of the monetary supply. While that did help to bring the rate of inflation down, it also had serious consequences for financial markets.
This was especially the case for mortgages, as the combination of high list prices and higher interest rates pushed the dream of home ownership even further away for millions of Americans. Over this period, mortgage rates have increased almost 2.5-fold and total interest on a new mortgage on a median home is over $300,000 higher than before.
In turn, higher interest rates have increased the cost of servicing the now mountainous federal debt. This will mean hundreds of billions of dollars per year of deadweight drag on the economy for decades to come.
As the Fitch credit agency explained when it downgraded U.S. creditworthiness in August, there is no light at the end of this tunnel. Driven by the unchecked growth of Social Security and Medicare spending, annual deficits could soon exceed $2 trillion per year indefinitely, further compounding the cost of debt service.
Incredibly, Washington still refuses to act with a modicum of responsibility.
The so-called Fiscal Responsibility Act highlighted this reality. The package was loaded with tens of billions of dollars in budget gimmicks so that Congress could pretend that there would be spending reductions without the political inconvenience of actually reducing spending.
The Biden administration’s supplemental spending request is another way for Congress to dodge the slightest amount of budgeting.
By claiming that spending on Ukraine and natural disasters shouldn’t count toward spending caps, the administration and many congressional leaders are demonstrating that they have no problem with tens of billions in additional deficit spending regardless of the cost to the American people.
It seems increasingly unlikely that the legislators will choose the path of fiscal sanity on their own. Fortunately, there is a somewhat recent example of turning things around.
The tea party movement, which began as a reaction to bailouts and overspending, led to spending restraint and deficit reduction in Washington. While the pandemic-era spending spree undid this progress, the fact remains that public pressure can push Congress in the right direction.
It is crucial for Congress and taxpayers to take federal budgeting seriously as soon as possible. The alternative is the destruction of the growth and prosperity that are at the core of the American dream.
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1 October, 2023
Outrage in Germany after video shows revellers 'performing the Nazi salute while listening to song linked to Third Reich' at Oktoberfest event
This story is rather over-egged. "Erika" is simply a rather pretty love song for a woman. German soldiers sang it out of nostalgia for the times before they went into the "Heer" (army). It is a very good and innocent song and I would conclude that the salutes were for the song, nothing else. It is a very catchy song and the German "Oom-Pah-Pah" bass is mesmeric. American evangelical Christians often raise their hands high to indicate enthusiasm for the preaching and associated hymns
I am putting up a video of one performance. It has subtitles so if you understand German you can confirm what I say of the song. Note that the flag in the song is the flag of the present German Federal Republic. The Maltese cross also in the video is the "Balkenkreuz" dating from before Hitler's rise
German revellers have sparked fury after a video emerged showing them performing the Nazi salute while listening to a song linked to the Third Reich at an Oktoberfest event.
Video reportedly shows three men and a woman dressed in traditional Bavarian costumes repeatedly raising their arms in a Nazi salute while singing along to the song 'Erika' by composer Herms Niel.
The tune is a German marching band song published in 1938 and was associated with the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of the Third Reich.
One man is accused of making the Nazi salute, which is a crime in Germany, as many as 14 times in 16 seconds while the woman raises her arm seven times.
The video was filmed by a shocked onlooker at an Oktoberfest event in the small town of Zieschützen near Dresden, Germany, on Saturday night.
Police are now investigating the incident, with a spokesman telling local media: 'We are investigating the initial suspicion that unconstitutional symbols were used. State security is also participating in the investigation.'
One of the event's organisers, Matthias Braune, also distanced himself from the revellers' actions.
He told Bild: 'We clearly distance ourselves from these types of visitors. We just want to celebrate a normal Oktoberfest.' He added that the song 'Erika', which is not banned, will not be played at future events.
According to German law, performing a Nazi salute or using any Nazi-related symbols is considered 'unconstitutional', and offenders can be sent behind bars for up to three years.
One local commented on the video: 'It's not too late to reinstate the Nuremberg Trials with harsher penalties yet.'
Another said: 'This gives the same energy as southern Americans still rocking confederate flags because of heritage and nothing else.'
Someone else wrote: 'In fairness, a good number of Germans would be outraged too!'
Another responded: 'Herms Niel wrote Erika in 1938. Niel was definitely a Nazi through and through. The song Erika was incredibly popular in both the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS. Like the song or not, it is a song by a Nazi for Nazis.'
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Leaked Messages From UAW Official Reveal a Big Cause of Unions’ Decline
“If we can keep them wounded for months, they don’t know what to do … this is recurring reputations damage and operation chaos.”
That leaked statement, first reported by The Detroit News, is not a military tactic nor a hostile takeover plan. Rather, it’s a strategy for wounding and weakening American companies, with collateral damage that includes the American economy.
And it’s the strategy—expressed in a private group chat on X (formerly Twitter) by United Auto Workers communications director Jonah Furman—of an organization whose foremost mission statement is to “improve and protect” the compensation and work environment of UAW members.
The utter disconnect between the UAW’s strategy of wounding, damaging, and inflicting chaos on the companies upon which its members’ jobs and compensation prospects depend is astounding.
Big Labor’s increasingly distorted understanding of unions’ role in America—and of free enterprise and democracy—are a cause of their decline.
At their heyday, unions represented about 35% of workers in the U.S. Today, they represent 10% of workers, and only 6% of private sector workers.
Workers realize that the viability of their jobs and the compensation they receive are interwoven with the success of their employers. In science, this is referred to as a symbiotic relationship: two groups working together toward a common goal.
(There will, of course, always be some bad employers who take advantage of workers or deny them a voice in the workplace. And when that happens, the best remedies are for workers to either seek better job opportunities or for those who want to band together collectively to do so.)
But despite surveys that show that teamwork and good relationships with managers are primary components of employees’ engagement and satisfaction, Big Labor seems intent on convincing workers that they must be at war with their employers.
When critiquing the suggestion that unions would do better to abandon their focus on politics and adversarial tactics, two Teamsters union attorneys essentially admitted that creating conflict is how they survive, saying, “It is no secret that such a ‘non-adversarial’ approach would gravely weaken organized labor.”
That’s where unions have gone astray, thinking that “it’s us or them.”
Even in 1950, when the only cars Americans could buy were those made by the Big Three automakers, that flawed interpretation of labor unions’ roles was short-sighted. Yes, the UAW was able to drive up compensation above market wages to the benefit of its members, but the result of higher car prices meant fewer families could afford cars and, thus, fewer cars were produced and fewer workers were needed to produce them.
Now, in the globally competitive 21st century, unions inflicting damage and chaos are at odds with unions’ short- and long-term goals. How can companies whose reputations have been crippled and who’ve suffered financial losses somehow pay workers 40% more for 20% less work?
That’s like eliminating 11 players from the Arizona Cardinals roster, not allowing players to access to their practice stadium, and expecting them to win the Super Bowl.
Understandably, the Big Three automakers are frustrated.
A Stellantis spokesperson said that the reported comments “are incredibly disturbing and strongly indicate that the UAW’s approach to these talks is not in the best interest of the workforce. We are disappointed that it appears our employees are being used as pawns in an agenda that is not intended to meet their needs.”
GM said that it’s “now clear that the UAW leadership has always intended to cause months-long disruption, regardless of the harm it causes to its members and their communities.” GM also said this “calls into question who is actually in charge of UAW strategy and shows a callous disregard for the seriousness of what is at stake. UAW leadership needs to put the interests of its members and the country over their own ideological and personal agendas.”
And a Ford spokesperson said, “It’s disappointing, to say the least, given what is at stake for our employees, the companies, and this region,” and noted, “For our part, we will continue to work day and night, bargaining in good faith, to reach an agreement that rewards our workforce and allows Ford to invest in a vibrant and growing future.”
If union officials actually want to protect UAW jobs and improve workers’ compensation, then they have to want the Big Three American automakers to succeed and to grow. Considering that U.S. auto production is less than half of what it was two decades ago, success is likely going to require that the UAW work alongside—rather than against—U.S. automakers to help them become more competitive.
To the extent that involves lobbying policymakers, the focus should be on getting the government out of the business of picking winners and losers by its subsidizing of more expensive electric vehicles that require 40% less labor while also seeking to ban gas-powered vehicles that Americans still overwhelmingly desire.
And if unions across America want to increase their membership, they should appeal directly to workers by offering things they value instead of using their dues to get politicians to go against their interests by doing things like attacking secret ballot union elections, restricting employers’ ability to share important information with workers before union elections, and establishing a pathway to force an employer to bargain with a union even if workers don’t want to be represented by it.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/28/leaked-messages-uaw-official-reveal-big-cause-unions-decline
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As Ibram X. Kendi’s ‘Anti-Racism’ Center Implodes, Let’s Make Sure to Stop His Noxious Ideology
Kendi is a very third rate intellectual but that suits the Left. They are haters, not thinkers
Much like the crooked Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation before it, author and agitator Ibram X. Kendi’s noxious “anti-racism” grift has imploded at Boston University.
After three years of existence and tens of millions of dollars in funding, Kendi’s organization reportedly is falling apart.
Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research received, at minimum, $43 million in grants and donations since it went into operation in 2020, according to the Boston University’s student newspaper, The Daily Free Press.
“The $43 million, according to 2021 budget records obtained by The Daily Free Press, includes general support, such as the $10 million from Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, as well as donations for specific projects,” the student newspaper reported.
Kendi’s center had the budget of a small market sports franchise, which is a lot of money for an ambiguous research institute. The production that Boston University got for this massive investment ended up to be about the same as my beloved but hapless Oakland A’s.
Kendi’s organization is now laying off staff en masse.
“There’s a mismatch between the amount of money that [the Center for Antiracist Research] has received from these grants and what they’ve actually produced,” an anonymous source told The Daily Free Press. “You can juxtapose that with other research centers either at BU or other universities that have received a tiny fraction of what CAR has received and has produced a lot more.”
It appears that, for all its money, Kendi’s anti-racism center produced next to nothing. Former employees are publicly burying it.
“It’s not that Kendi tried and failed to generate meaningful scholarly output; he seems to have had no interest in doing so to begin with—and no concept of what would have been involved if he tried,” writes Spencer Klavan at the Spectator.
Really, what did Kendi’s backers expect?
At no point has he ever been expected to prove his thesis with data or information. Academia never questioned the fundamental premise of Kendi’s ideology, especially after the “racial reckoning” of 2020. Any who did within the official institutions of approved thought would have found themselves quickly banished for thought crimes.
The legacy media praised Kendi breathlessly. In the few cases in which he’s been called on to defend his more ridiculous ideas—like how lowering capital gains taxes is a racist policy—his unsatisfactory answers never got a follow-up.
He was treated not as a scholar or researcher but as the Rasputin of anti-racism. Even at that, he’s been woefully deficient. He got tens of thousands of dollars for short speaking engagements and a huge contract from Netflix.
Still, there was nothing to show for it.
At an extremely friendly Aspen Ideas festival event, Kendi was asked to define “racism.” The venerated swami of our woke elite answered: “I would define it as a collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity that are substantiated by racist ideas.”
According to Kendi racism is defined as doing a racism, leading to racism, the result being racism and inequity, which is racism. Got it?
I will give Kendi his due in one sense. His ideas have become akin to official orthodoxy in our country’s public and private institutions. That’s more a product of our institutions looking for someone to say what Kendi would say rather than his unique and insightful brilliance.
He just took advantage of the situation and sold them the snake oil they’d been yearning for.
For a refresher on Kendi’s worldview, I’ll point to my review of his book, “How to Be an Antiracist.” This book, alongside “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo, became a kind of foundational tract for college-educated liberals burning with the fire of the Great Awokening.
Kendi’s work revolved around three main concepts: First, that racism had to be redefined. It was no longer good enough to simply not be racist. There are only two modes of thought, Kendi wrote: racist and anti-racist. Denying you are a racist can actually make you a racist—the classic Kafka trap.
Second, anti-racists such as Kendi have posited that “colorblindness” in dealing with race is itself racism. You must see race all the time, recognize it, then address it. Under the anti-racist rubric, race becomes the defining feature of human existence.
Third, Kendi wrote that the way to deal with past discrimination is present discrimination. In addition, literally any racial discrepancies in society, according to Kendi, are a product of racism. To be a good anti-racist, you really must be the right kind of racist.
Here’s what Kendi wrote in his book:
If discrimination is creating equity, then it is anti-racist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist. Someone reproducing inequity through permanently assisting an overrepresented racial group into wealth and power is entirely different than someone challenging that inequity by temporarily assisting an underrepresented racial group into relative wealth and power until equity is reached. The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.
To think that one can tinker with society to ensure perfect racial equity in all situations makes traditional Marxism seem downright pragmatic.
Did it matter that Kendi’s project was philosophically absurd, in practice discriminatory and tyrannical? Not at all.
Big money and big institutions went all in on this project.
Millions of Kendi’s books have flooded American bookstores and libraries, most of them now gathering dust.
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Why Are Gun Companies Losing Payroll Services? Cruz Investigation Finds Underlying Culprit
JPMorgan Chase admitted to pressuring the financial software company Intuit into preventing gun sellers from using the company’s payment processing services, according to a letter Sen. Ted Cruz sent Monday after looking into the policy. Bank of America, meanwhile, denied pressuring Intuit into banning gun manufacturers from using its famous QuickBooks software.
“Woke big banks are increasingly weaponizing their power to cut off law-abiding businesses from accessing banking services,” Cruz, R-Texas, told The Daily Signal in an email statement Monday.
“The American people and small businesses must be protected from this discriminatory overreach,” Cruz added. “We cannot allow giant corporations to get away with punishing customers who do not fall in line with the Left’s political whims and leanings.”
Intuit, the financial software company best known for producing QuickBooks, had adopted an acceptable use policy previously listing “guns and firearm manufacturing” as one of the business types prohibited from using payroll services. Intuit also listed “firearms and weapons sales” as a business type prohibited from using payment processing services.
Intuit removed its prohibitions on payroll and payment processing for gun manufacturers and firearm sellers Aug. 1, following Cruz’s investigation of the company. The Texas Republican thanked Inuit in his letter Monday.
Cruz learned about the issue after Intuit withdrew its services from Dawson Precision, a Texas company that manufactures firearm parts. Intuit gave Dawson Precision no warning and simply refused to process payroll. Intuit later notified Dawson Precision that the software company had canceled the manufacturer’s account because Intuit’s acceptable use policy excluded firearm manufacturers.
When Dawson Precision explained that it manufactures only parts for firearms, not firearms themselves, Intuit directed the company to lodge a complaint with a third party that had flagged it. The third party didn’t respond to Dawson Precision’s attempts to appeal the decision.
Intuit also stopped processing credit card payments for the Arizona company Gunsite Academy, citing Intuit’s ban on companies that engage in gun sales that aren’t face to face. After Gunsite Academy explained that it legally shipped firearms to local dealers rather than directly to consumers, Intuit refused to reverse the decision.
When Cruz’s staff approached Intuit about its firearm policies, the company said its banking partners, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, demanded the policies. Specifically, Intuit said Bank of America required it to prohibit gun manufacturers from using QuickBooks and JPMorgan required Intuit to prohibit gun sellers from doing so.
JPMorgan admitted its role in the policy, but Bank of America denied that it ever gave Intuit any instructions about firearm companies.
This doesn’t mark JPMorgan’s first foray into cracking down on bank accounts associated with conservative causes.
In May 2022, Chase Bank (a division of JPMorgan Chase) closed an account for the National Committee for Religious Freedom, an organization founded by Sam Brownback, a former Kansas governor and President Donald Trump’s ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.
Brownback, along with conservative organizations, suggested that Chase closed the account for religious or political reasons, which Chase denied. The bank said it closed the account because it needed more information about donors and recipients than the nonprofit provided.
Chase also closed accounts associated with the Arkansas Family Council and Defense of Liberty in 2021.
The threat that conservatives may face blacklisting from banking services extends beyond JPMorgan Chase.
Far-left groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center have pressured donor-advised funds to cut off charitable donations to conservative organizations that the SPLC brands “hate groups.” The left-leaning group SumOfUs also pressured Mastercard to refuse to process any credit-card transactions for “hate groups.”
As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC took the program it had used to bankrupt organizations associated with the Ku Klux Klan and weaponized it against conservative groups, partially to scare donors into ponying up cash and partially to silence ideological opponents. In 2019, amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal that led the SPLC to fire its co-founder, a former employee came forward, calling the “hate” accusations a “highly profitable scam.”
In his letter, Cruz wrote that “Intuit did the right thing regarding its payroll and payment services.”
“I encourage other companies to follow your company’s lead and take note that banning customers from using their products due to political differences is not good business,” the senator’s letter concludes.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/26/jpmorgan-admits-pressured-intuit-cutting-gun-companies
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