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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
29 September, 2023
Tainted love: is it all over for the workplace romance?
Listen
I see nothing wrong with it but lying and deceiving about it could obviously be a problem -- destroying trust
Workplace relationships have existed as long as there have been workplaces. Many people find their life partners in the place where they spend most of their waking hours.
But the politics of the office romance have changed. For generations of senior male executives, relationships with more junior staff were commonplace. Now they are a minefield.
BP’s chief executive, Bernard Looney, has become the latest business leader to find this out to his cost.
His shock resignation took the markets off guard. Looney was forced to fall on his sword after admitting that he had failed to be fully transparent with the BP board about the number of colleagues with whom he had engaged in personal relationships. The company’s directors said they expected everyone at BP to behave in accordance with its “strong values”, while requiring its leaders to “act as role models and to exercise good judgment”.
Looney thereby joins the not-so-hallowed halls of executives whose careers have been scuppered by private dalliances.
Just days after Looney’s departure, Edward Tilly, the chair and chief executive of US-based stock market operator Cboe Global Markets, resigned after a company investigation found he had failed to disclose “personal relationships with colleagues” which “violated” company policies.
Steve Easterbrook, the British chief executive of the US group McDonald’s, was fired by the fast-food company in 2019 for violating company policy, which forbids managers from having personal relationships with direct or indirect employees. Easterbrook was this year fined $400,000 (£328,000) and banned as an officer and director for five years by the US stock market regulator for “allegedly concealing the extent of his misconduct” by failing to disclose other relationships with other colleagues.
In April, Jeff Shell departed as boss of NBC Universal, one of the world’s largest media groups, after acknowledging an “inappropriate relationship” with a female colleague.
US companies have traditionally had stricter guidelines than British employers. Some implement so-called “love contracts” – signed by two colleagues confirming they have freely chosen to enter a romantic relationship – which are designed to prevent potential future sexual harassment claims.
Such contracts would not be possible in the UK.
“US corporations do have outright bans on their management having relationships at work. In the UK that would be illegal under our Human Rights Act because of the right to a private life and the right to a family life,” said William Granger, a partner at the law firm Wedlake Bell, who specialises in employment matters.
However, he said UK companies increasingly expect senior leaders to declare relationships with colleagues either on joining, or when they are promoted.
Granger said firms’ HR departments needed to tread carefully to protect employees’ privacy and keep any disclosed romances confidential.
Tina Chander, a partner and head of employment at the law firm Wright Hassall, said that on a basic level, office romances could be challenging for employers, especially at smaller organisations, because they could knock productivity.
“I’ve been practising employment law for about 16 years and I have dealt with issues arising from what we call workplace romances. I think they used to be very, very hidden,” she says.
Warwickshire-based Wright Hassall conducted their own survey about workplace relationships in 2022, finding that almost a quarter of the 2,000 people polled had had a romantic encounter with a colleague.
Chander adds: “They can impact performance because people will be emailing all day or having conversations as opposed to actually getting on with their jobs.
“It can also cause unrest among the wider workforce if that relationship is between two different tiers of staff.”
This is the particular concern for businesses: that romantic relationships – especially those between a boss and a more junior staff member, where there is an imbalance of power – could lead to unfairness, or accusations thereof, if other members of the workforce feel that a boss’s partner could be given preferential treatment, including bonuses or promotions.
Indeed, BP’s own code of conduct for staff makes clear that “a conflict of interest may occur when your interests or activities affect, or appear to affect, your ability to make objective decisions for BP.”
It specifies that this can include “having an intimate relationship with someone whose pay, advancement or management you can influence”.
One way for organisations to prevent conflicts of interest resulting from office romances would be to move one partner to a different department – especially if their liaison was with their line manager – although this would be far easier in larger organisations.
A question for those who embark on a relationship with a colleague may be at what point they decide to report the start of a relationship.
A key moment for organisations comes when appointing, or promoting senior executives, according to Ann Francke, the chief executive of the Chartered Management Institute, something which has once again come into focus as a result of Looney’s departure from BP.
“Boards and senior leaders would be well advised to thoroughly probe not only the competence of senior executives, but also their behaviour, prior to appointing,” she said.
There had been a generational shift, said Francke, with staff “much more likely to put pressure on organisations to deal with these behaviours”. The solution, she said, was to act before the fallout damaged the business.
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We're in Trouble: When Teaching American Values Is Considered Problematic
If news anchors and teachers union representatives continue to label pro-American and age-appropriate educational materials as “problematic,” does it mean our schools are in more serious trouble than we thought? YES.
Over the past several weeks, television and online media continues to lose their virtual minds with the news that PragerU Kids is now approved to provide supplemental and optional curricula in Florida, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, and now Montana. Vanity Fair has multiple articles lambasting PragerU’s content. USA Today, Forbes and People all jumped on the groupthink bandwagon too – with talking points nearly identical to Daily Beast’s initial interpretation. MSNBC’s Alex Wagner scoffed that our videos mention Judeo-Christian values on occasion—despite that our Pledge of Allegiance contains the words “under God” and the fact that the official motto of the United States remains (at least, for now) “In God We Trust.” Local news stations have featured countless panicked soundbites from uninformed parents and union reps committing to keep PragerU Kids “out” of their schools. Media Matters for America ranted on X detailing our “lowlights.” And, Yahoo News warned readers that we “lack academic accreditation” despite countless school districts across America currently using non-accredited teaching materials from Black Lives Matter that encourage political activism and Amaze.org that includes videos on pan-sexuality.
While accusations labeling PragerU Kids as “right-wing propaganda in schools” are outright lies (go to our website and judge the videos for yourself), the frenzy started as hilarious but now has turned terrifying for everyone – regardless what side of the aisle you happen to be on. Why does aiming to unite youngsters, despite our differences and historical faults, make people angry? Because much of our school system, government leaders and powerful unions no longer seem to want children to be unified as Americans. Rest In Peace, E Pluribus Unum?
Another tragedy is that the media, school boards, and educators have bought into the anti-American rhetoric. Civil discourse and rational questions from concerned parents and citizens continue to be squashed online and in public forums, in what seems to be an effort to protect a politicized education system that not only embraced the idea that America is a terrible place, but has also downright failed children.
Recent findings from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) prove reading scores have plummeted to dismal levels, with 30-40% of 4th graders falling below basic standards. The NAEP recently cited “20 years of progress… gone.” Only 13% of America’s 8th graders are capable of explaining significant people, places, and documents in U.S. history. Meanwhile, many state education departments insist on prioritizing gender fluidity activities, systemic racism lessons, and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) surveys that ask young learners if they are “non-binary”—often without parental knowledge or consent.
And, if parents like me question these separatist tactics and realities in a public forum, we are told to shut up for being racist or unkind. For decades, the left has stripped us of having a voice for our own children’s education—scrapping American values and ideas from schools while promoting radical ideology and rewriting history. The result? Timeless American values like hard work, equality, responsibility and tolerance are lambasted as being “problematic.”
This is a major problem.
As a California mom, I sought choice. I pulled my children out of our “high-performing” school district years ago because of age-inappropriate initiatives and lack of transparency. Those of us who begged for a renewed focus on academics that support common cultural literacy to connect us as Americans are labeled “domestic terrorists” or “extremists.” We refuse to be bullied anymore.
And, PragerU Kids—created by a few moms in California two years ago, who were frustrated with activism in our classrooms (me being one of them)—is now approved to provide a bridge between parents and educators seeking wholesome options for children. What does this mean? Transparency and local control. Schools in Florida, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, and Montana (with more states being added soon) now have the option to use our materials and turnkey lesson plans at their discretion, per needs that differ from district to district—whether that includes our Otto’s Tales books about American holidays for young learners, our Cash Course video about understanding taxes, our Street Smarts episode about the Bill of Rights, or our 5-Minute Video about president Calvin Coolidge’s accomplishments. No secrets. No surprises. You don’t like something? Don’t use it. How does this squash diversity of thought, critical thinking, or freedom of speech?
Yes, PragerU Kids is a firm believer in teaching students life skills, goodness, appreciation for each other, and love for country with wholesome materials—what any reasonable American parent wants. And if learning about how money works, how our government was set up to function, or how America is a great country to live in is now considered “harmful and hateful,” liberals and conservatives should equally be terrified.
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The 'Don't Hire Women' Act
Having a baby? There's a new law meant for you: the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act.
America needs this law, say activists, because "pregnant workers, especially those in low-wage and physically demanding jobs, have been forced to choose between their health and a paycheck."
In my new video, Vanessa Brown Calder, director of Family Policy at the Cato Institute, explains why this new law will make life worse for many women.
"These policies are motivated by good intentions," says Calder. "But that doesn't mean that the consequences of these policies will turn out well."
Calder, who is pregnant, thinks the law will lead to fewer women being hired in the first place.
The Americans with Disabilities Act is a good example of that.
Both Democrats and Republicans applauded when President George H.W. Bush signed it. Everyone loves the ADA.
But the law hurt disabled people who want to work.
Before it passed, more disabled people got jobs, year after year. When it passed, almost 30% were in the workforce. But once the ADA passed, employment of disabled workers dropped by half!
It happened because of the job "protection." Employers fear disability lawsuits. They're afraid that if a disabled person doesn't work out, they'll never be able to fire them. Now the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act will make hiring young women risky.
"You may be a lawsuit bomb," I say to Calder, who nods and says: "It does make women more risky and more costly to hire. Employers don't know exactly what accommodation the woman might ask for."
It's safer for the employer to say, "I'm just not going to hire you. There's no way for the government to know why I didn't hire."
"Companies get good at working their way around these regulations," Calder responds.
But government officials assume their laws will do what they're supposed to do. They also are eager to please special interest groups.
The chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission went before cameras to brag that this law has support from "businesses, faith, health, women's and civil rights organizations!"
So, what?
"Activists think of the short-term effects of the law," says Calder. "It's pretty easy to get behind a superficial reading of the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act and think that it could be a good idea."
"The momentum is always for more rules," I say.
"Oftentimes there's guidance issued many years after the fact," says Calder. "This is probably just the beginning."
The growing number of rules kills jobs in several ways.
Since the rule applies to companies with 15 or more employees, it's an incentive for companies with 14 employees to stay small.
"You get penalized as you grow," says Calder.
"Without a law like this, who would hire someone like you?" I ask. "You might have more medical problems. You're going to leave, for weeks at least."
"Pregnant workers bring a lot to the table," she responds. "Many employers see that. But when you create a one-size-fits-all policy like this, it starts to raise many employers' concerns."
I ask: "The Cato Institute should have the right to fire you because you got pregnant?"
"I think they should," responds Calder. "Because I want people like me to be able to be hired in the first place."
Exactly. I'm a stutterer. I didn't have my stuttering under control when I applied for my first job. Had the ADA existed then, I could have demanded special accommodation. "Disability lawyers" would have been ready to protect my "rights."
No TV station would have risked hiring me! I would have never gotten a chance.
Now the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act will kill opportunities for women.
https://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2023/09/27/the-dont-hire-women-act-n2628985
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Decay: Major Retailers Announce Hundreds of New Store Closures Due to Mounting Crime in Cities
Back in the tumultuous summer of 2020, rioting was shockingly widely excused within Democrat-Left political circles -- to the point that Joe Biden indulged "defund the police" toxicity, and Kamala Harris encouraged her supporters to contribute to a radical bail fund for criminals. A prominent news editor was forced out of his post by a howling mob for allowing a headline that critiqued property destruction. Terrible, lasting, destructive pro-criminal policies were enacted, in the name of "progress" and "equity." We were even lectured by "experts" not to accurately describe the criminal activity exploding across the country. Our society is still grappling with the consequences more than three years later.
One of the fashionable justifications for rioting and looting was that large companies held insurance policies, so such crimes were, essentially, victimless. This was always dangerous ignorance. It fueled lawlessness that has resulted in immense harm and even deaths. Many small businesses could not, and still cannot, weather crime sprees. Blathering about insurance doesn't save a family-owned store teetering on the brink, as neighborhood safety deteriorates. Even large corporations can only withstand so much, hence the exodus of businesses from decaying urban center and the shuttering of franchises by enormous companies like Starbucks (which has faced other woke comeuppance), McDonald's, Whole Foods, and other major chains.
When, say, a Walgreens location is closed down due to crime and deteriorating conditions, "insurance" doesn't fix that. It doesn't magically provide new jobs for the displaced employees. It doesn't suddenly furnish local senior citizens with convenient local options to pick up necessary prescription medication. It doesn't patch up a community that's slowly, or rapidly, circling the drain. These are very real costs, for real people. And the wages of such reckless policies continue to pile up across America's major cities -- the vast majority of which operate under one-party rule. The damage continues:
CVS is set to close hundreds of stores across the country as it undergoes a complete retail overhaul – as more outlets move towards online sellers amid rampant increases in crime. The major drugstore chain is coming to the end of a policy launched in 2021 which will see 300 stores closed each year - meaning 900 will have shuttered by 2024. In the announcement, which has hit headlines again recently amid rampant shoplifting at the chain, bosses they said that they were undergoing a new 'retail footprint strategy.' ...Thousands of stores across the US have been forced to lock up basic products like toothpaste and deodorant following a spike in shoplifting...Stores catch shoplifters roughly 2 percent of the time, with the average shoplifter being arrested once out of every 100 incidents...Rival pharmacies are making similar moves to close their doors, with Rite Aid and Walgreens also closing stores. Rite Aid announced it would close two more stores earlier this month, following the closure of 25 stores earlier this year, amid reports the company is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
These decisions aren't entirely about crime; other pressure-building trends are also in the mix. But consequence-free lawlessness plunges a dagger into any hopes of keeping many of these brick and mortar stores open. Companies can't make a profit and can't keep employees safe. Another new example:
Target put itself in some consumers' crosshairs by wading into certain controversial culture war matters, reaping negative impacts from resulting boycotts. Throw in "mounting thefts and organized retail crime," and it's literally lights out for multiple locations, and potential unemployment for dozens or hundreds of people -- including those who can't afford to commute to other retail locations further away. The great hollowing out continues:
Target will close nine store in four states, including one in East Harlem, New York and three in the San Francisco Bay Area, saying that theft and organized retail crime have threatened the safety of its workers and customers. The closings, which will be effective Oct. 21, also include three stores in Portland, Oregon, and two in Seattle...Target described the decision as "difficult." "We know that our stores serve an important role in their communities, but we can only be successful if the working and shopping environment is safe for all," Target said in a statement on Tuesday.
New York City, the Bay Area, Portland, and Seattle. What a surprise. We've seen similar movement in Chicago, who's soft-on-crime leaders then have the gall to complain about the "food deserts" being created by their own failed policies (with the mayor now suggesting a guaranteed-to-fail communist "solution" out of desperation). "They have insurance" doesn't cut it, and it can't make up for gaping holes in business models that are this large. The words "only modestly" are doing a lot of work in this report:
Retail executives over the past year have talked a lot about “shrink” — or the losses they take due to theft, fraud or employee error — amid a flood of headlines about sometimes violent organized thefts at stores. But results from a retail-industry survey released Tuesday found the metric rose only modestly last year. The report from the National Retail Federation, a retail industry group, found that the average shrink rate in 2022 crept higher to 1.6% from 1.4% in the prior year, when calculated as a share of sales. The figure from 2022 is in line with those seen in 2020 and 2019. Still, the losses amounted to billions of dollars — $112.1 billion, up from $93.9 billion in 2021 — according to the report. And the report said that retailers were increasingly concerned about the violence of those crimes.
The costs of "shrink" aren't just absorbed. They're passed down to consumers, which is the last thing consumers need in an age of sky-high, inflation-fueled prices. Either that, or stores disappear altogether. Call it a Democratic policy two-fer.
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27 September, 2023
Evangelical Christian family begs Biden administration to stop their deportation back to Germany where it's illegal to homeschool their kids - while MILLIONS pour across open US border
A Christian family is begging the Biden administration to intervene in their upcoming deportation after living in the US for 15 years seeking asylum from persecution in Germany.
Uwe and Hannelore Romeike fled Germany in 2008 after being threatened with prosecution for homeschooling their five children.
Homeschooling in Germany is only allowed in very limited circumstances, and the family was facing a $9,000 fine, so they moved to East Tennessee and filed for asylum.
Authorities denied their claim in 2013, with the family attempting to appeal the decision after the Obama administration challenged the initial ruling that was approved. They do not have citizenship in the US.
They have been able to live in the US for the last ten years under an 'indefinite deferred action status', but were told earlier this month they must return to Germany.
Their bid comes as millions of asylum seekers are pouring into the US near the Texas border.
In their initial argument, the family claimed that 'God was calling them to homeschool their five children', claiming that the 'anti-Christian' message in German schools was also a factor.
The couple are now begging the Biden administration to intervene in the decision after they were told to obtain German passports on September 6.
During a routine check-in, the family were told their deferred status had been revoked and were given four weeks to apply for German passports.
Speaking to Fox and Friends, Uwe said: 'They did not tell us anything. We don't really know why. We wonder ourselves because we can't understand.'
His wife added that the 'laws haven't changed' in Germany so they would still face 'the same persecution.
The family was reportedly not giving any prior warning or explanation, other than there had been a 'change of orders.'
In a legal brief in 2014, the Justice Department wrote: 'The goal in Germany is for an open, pluralistic society. Teaching tolerance to children of all backgrounds helps to develop the ability to interact as a fully functioning citizen in Germany.'
Kevin Boden, an attorney representing the family, said: 'They found that the Romeike family did have a well-founded fear of persecution based on their participation in a particular social category, that being homeschoolers.
'The Obama administration appealed that to the Board of Immigration Appeals. That appeal court agreed with them, as did the Sixth Circuit, and the Supreme Court denied it….
'We think this is, in fact, an asylum case. We do think they have a well-founded fear as we testified.
Kevin Boden, an attorney representing the family, said that they entered the country legally and have a right to stay
Kevin Boden, an attorney representing the family, said that they entered the country legally and have a right to stay
'I can tell you today, I talked to families today that have fear in Germany and the fight there, the persecution there, is very real today as it was 15 years ago.'
The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) said in a statement: 'In the 10 years that the Romeikes have lived peacefully in the United States, they've built a second life.
'They have two children who are American citizens, and two other children who married American citizens (one of these couples recently welcomed their first child).
'Deportation to Germany will fracture these families, while exposing the Romeikes to renewed persecution in Germany, where homeschooling is still illegal in almost every case.
'But there is still hope. The United States executive branch intervened once before to grant the Romeikes a respite, and it has the power to do it again.'
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Canada’s parents are taking to the streets
In the biggest demonstration since the Freedom Convoy, large numbers of Canadian families and supporters took to the streets across the country on 20 September to assert the rights of parents as primary educators and protectors of their children with the slogan, ‘Leave our kids alone!’
The ‘1 Million March 4 Children’ was spearheaded by Muslim Canadians in response to increasingly aggressive policy and curriculum changes in publicly funded schools, pushing radical gender ideology and putting content before children that protesting parents say is indecent or age-inappropriate. Turnout was impressive, with many thousands of participants in over 100 cities and up to 10,000 marchers reported at the largest gathering in Ottawa.
Yes, it was the biggest Canadian demonstration since the freedom truckers – and yet there was barely a ripple in mainstream reporting. Left-wing gatekeepers – the Trudeau government, the unions, and radical progressive activists – declined to engage with the rallies in good faith. (In fairness, it must be hard to keep up an unsullied image as the white knights of democracy if the peasants get to keep rising up against you on live TV.)
The state-subsidised Canadian media, knowing which side its bread is buttered, got to work downplaying the event, focusing on the relatively small counter-protests. These counter protests were partly organised by senior union leadership in Ontario and radical activists, as a secret Zoom meeting leaked ahead of the event showed.
At the meeting, protesting parents were described as right-wing extremists, hate-filled, and racist. (Is it right-wing extremism to want a say in what your child learns in school?) Yet the March’s organisers had been clear that the protest was specifically focused on a single issue, that of parental rights in education, not on other aspects of radical social change, or, on anything remotely connected with race.
Nonetheless, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau felt the need to ‘strongly condemn this hate and its manifestations.’ Why should he mischaracterise the perfectly ordinary issue of parental rights as hateful? Canadian academic Jordan Peterson later rebuked Trudeau directly on Twitter, telling him, ‘Once again, you are on the wrong side of history…’
Along the same lines, the mayor of Ottawa declared that he supported the right to protest, but not the targeting of children ‘for being who they are’ – implying that this was the goal of the March 4 Children. He did not explain why he thinks parents wanting to care for their own offspring is equivalent to ‘targeting’ children.
Jagmeet Singh, leader of the NDP, joined a counter-protest in Ottawa and made cryptic remarks to reporters about ‘a lot of folks that don’t feel safe because of the rise in hate and division that’s targeting vulnerable people.’
As for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, the party originally instructed MPs not to make any public comment about the mass protest, though in an internal memo the party allegedly admitted that protestors had ‘legitimate points’ to make about parental rights. On Thursday afternoon, Poilievre criticised Trudeau for demonising concerned parents and expressed support for parental authority over what is taught to children.
The Conservatives’ original reticence to support the protests is probably because they fear that if they are perceived to be supporting a grassroots protest criticising gender ideology in schools, they will be smeared as extremist, divisive, racist and hateful. But who are they trying to please? The state-subsidised media? That’s a lost cause, particularly after Poilievre’s promise to defund the CBC.
Much more courageous was Premier Blaine Higgs of New Brunswick, who came out to welcome pro-family protestors in front of the provincial legislature. Premier Higgs recently took a great deal of heat from all sides for obliging schools to obtain parental consent to use new names or pronouns for children under 16 – hardly an extreme policy from any perspective. His own – conservative! –party attempted to pressure him out of it, but he stayed firm, expressing his willingness to trigger an election over the motion, and ultimately carried the day.
But traditional families are also good, full stop
The federal Conservatives could learn from Roger Scruton’s commentary on UK conservatives over ten years ago: ‘For the ordinary voter the family is a place in which children are produced, socialised and protected. That is what the party should be saying, but does not say, since it is prepared to sacrifice the loyalty of its core constituents to the demands of a lobby that is unlikely to vote for it.’
There is only one way that progressive activists will endorse the Conservatives, and that’s if they believe Conservatives will serve to further the progressive agenda better than other parties. They’ll be willing to compromise on some issues to get what they want on others – and right now, that’s unfettered access to children’s minds through public education.
Will the 1 Million March 4 Children protestors vote Conservative? Probably, if they have any reason to believe that Conservatives will protect what they cherish most – their children. If not, maybe not.
And aside from pleasing the voters, Conservatives might like to consider another Scrutonism: The traditional family has not just an instrumental value, but an intrinsic value. Sure, traditional families are good for the economy, good for the wellbeing of children, good for the stability of society, good for getting leaders with conservative values into power.
But traditional families are also good, full stop. So is standing up for them – whatever the cost.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/canadas-parents-are-taking-to-the-streets/
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Combatting Woke tyranny: can science be saved?
Joseph Forgas
The takeover of universities and scientific associations by radical Woke activists seeking to impose an ideological straight jacket on academia has now reached alarming proportions. Compelled speech, compulsory DEI declarations, de-platforming, and worst of all, the hounding and cancellation of anyone accused of departing from politically correct dogmas, have become hallmarks of coercion in academia.
The totalitarian objectives of Woke activism are directly traceable to Marxist-Leninist conflict ideologies, something I was forced to study for several years in my youth while living in a communist society. Strangely, the Woke academic revolution is not a movement by the dispossessed, but rather, is driven by secure upper middle-class activists who infiltrated powerful institutions, straining to outdo each other in vacuous moral posturing and virtue signalling.
The dispassionate pursuit of truth and free speech cannot coexist with such blind ideological activism in our universities and scientific associations. Much damage has already been done by the creeping take-over by zealots of our institutions. This happened while the silent majority remained silent and did nothing to prevent the destruction of some of our most important universities, research institutions, and scholarly associations.
A case in point now worth revisiting is the major recent scandal in psychological science when the executive of the Association of Psychological Science (APS) summarily terminated Prof. Klaus Fiedler, the Senior Editor of their flagship journal, Advances in Psychological Science. Fiedler was accused of racism by racial scholar Steven Othello Roberts, who was offended by critical reviews by four distinguished scientists (Hommel, Stanovich, Stroebe, Jussim) of his paper on Racial Inequality in Psychological Research. The Spectator Australia also covered this disgraceful incident at the time.
Rather than responding rationally to critical comments, as academic authors must do when getting negative feedback, Roberts published a denunciation of Fiedler and his critics, insinuating that as they were, to quote: ‘All senior White men.’ This illustrates his point that ‘…systemic racism exists in science. There is a racialised power structure that marginalises research by (and about) people of colour.’
Within days, an internet lynch mob was formed demanding Fiedler’s dismissal, while Fiedler was given limited opportunity to present his case. To its indelible shame, the Association of Psychological Science obliged.
Following the time-honored pattern of Woke activism and attendant moral outrage, the Woke warriors specifically demanded that APS should ‘empower and fund your Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee to … address racism’, to ‘conduct remedial training for all editors on … anti-racism’, and ‘give Dr. Roberts the option to have his outstanding and important commentary published in PoPS, with the four other articles in question available only as supplementary online material … and grant him any additional reparative action he might deem necessary’.
This is a complete mockery of how science, and refereed publications in particular, are supposed to work. Woke activists now define what truth is and decide what should or should not be published. Freedom of speech, evidence, and rational discourse are summarily dispensed with, and political pressure is exerted to exact revenge on those declared as ideological enemies. And our scientific associations go along with this.
These are the same Orwellian strategies that oppressive tyrannical regimes have employed throughout history. The carefully constructed institutional edifice of universities and scientific associations exist precisely to resist ideological tyranny – but these institutions have largely failed us in recent years. It could be argued that the only racially-charged rhetoric in this sorry saga came from Dr. Roberts, who did not argue his case in the journal as invited by Fiedler, and resorted instead to publicly accusing Fiedler and his critics.
However, there are some incipient signs that a kind of resistance to Woke tyranny in science may be slowly forming. Recently, over 130 psychological scientists sent a strong letter of protest to APS demanding that the Association revisits Fiedler’s termination. The letter was signed by such influential academics as Steven Pinker, Jonathan Haidt, Robin Dunbar, and Roy Baumeister, among others. Perhaps this rare reaction is due to Fiedler’s widely recognised qualities as an eminent scholar with a highly respected editorial track record for several major journals, also explicitly acknowledged by APS at the time of his appointment.
Once criticisms of the APS decision surfaced, and five out of six associate editors as well as numerous academics resigned in protest from the Association, APS then disingenuously claimed that Roberts’ allegations of racism had nothing at all to do with Fiedler’s termination. This lame explanation lacks credibility.
APS can now be fairly accused of compromising the values of scientific integrity and transparency they are obliged to represent. Their claim that Roberts’ incendiary allusion to racism had nothing at all to do with Fiedler’s termination is unlikely. As Fiedler argues, ‘The APS action was prompted by widespread disquiet about ‘racism’, not editorial practices. A disquiet was triggered by a misconceived and unfounded accusation, as the unreported evidence shows’.
Claims by disgruntled authors against editors would never succeed if it was not for the Woke mob baying for retribution. The spineless activism of APS, the wanton destruction of the career and reputation of a decent and highly respected scientist, and the feeble and dishonest protestations amount to a complete betrayal of APS’ mission that has brought shame and disrepute on the field.
The real issue is that in addition to many university administrations, independent scientific associations like APS have been taken over by ideologues, for whom social activism is more important than defending truth and scientific integrity.
APS is not alone in betraying their foundational values. Numerous scientific associations and conference organisers now impose an absurd requirement that scientific papers must be prefaced by regurgitated statements about how the work promotes diversity, equity, and inclusiveness, a policy reminiscent of the well-honed coercive ideological practices of totalitarian regimes.
Just such Woke activism is also ripe in the STEM disciplines like physics and chemistry, as documented at a recent meeting on free speech and academic freedom at Stanford University.
As the Economist recently noted, many academic job advertisements mandate elaborate statements about an applicant’s commitment to DEI principles, and scientific merit often comes second to political correctness and activism as a selection criterion. Some job ads explicitly exclude white males from applying, all in the name of social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusiveness.
Academic institutions are also eliminating objective tests in the name of improving inclusiveness and equity. Good luck with going to a doctor next time who has not been selected on merit…
Woke ideology sees entire disciplines, such as mathematics, as racist that must be de-colonised because it insists that there can only be one correct answer to a mathematical problem – thereby privileging white supremacy, and denying the legitimacy of alternative ways of ‘knowing’. Once reputable institutions such as the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation go along with such bizarre nonsense, and California has a proposal to do away with advanced math programs in schools because they are considered racist.
Is there a way back from such lunacy? Some scholars at Stanford University’s forum on free speech argued that the situation is beyond redemption. As many faculties in the arts, humanities, and social science are now exclusively staffed by like-minded ideologues, even if free speech was miraculously restored, there is nobody left to voice alternative views. After decades of hiring faculty based on ideology and Woke principles rather than merit, entire disciplines may be doomed. The only solution may be to start new institutions and new associations explicitly committed to heterodoxy. Within psychology, just such an initiative is now in progress so that disgraceful episodes like Fiedler’s cannot re-occur.
Recent protests in the Fiedler case may offer a faint hope that things might be slowly turning. But this will only happen if all scientists, and all concerned citizens consistently speak up against the kind of injustice committed by the APS.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/02/combatting-woke-tyranny-can-science-be-saved/
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New Zealand's housing density experiment saw approvals for new builds in Auckland 'skyrocket' while house prices kept climbing
Deregulation works its usual magic
There is a place just a few hours from Australia's east coast where a change in policy has seen the number of approvals for new homes "skyrocket" while increases in rents and house prices have been kept to moderate levels.
In Auckland, the council has been running an experiment, and at the heart of it is a bold decision to remove restrictions around zoning, opening up suburban blocks to higher-density developments.
The test case went so well, New Zealand's national government adopted a version of it for the whole country, but recently the opposition withdrew its support, meaning the upcoming election could change things.
There are all kinds of arguments against the idea of opening up suburban blocks to higher-density housing, and often the debate is a hypothetical one.
But the Auckland up-zoning change happened in 2016.
Since then, blocks of land that were once the site of single-family homes have been developed into new medium and high-density housing projects all over the city — and now the data is in.
The top line is that building consents — or council approvals for new homes — started to increase the moment the new approach to zoning was proposed.
Then, the data shows, rents started to stabilise, with Auckland's rents now rising at a slower rate than New Zealand's other major cities.
House prices are still going up, just at a slower pace. And now indicators are showing housing affordability is slowly improving.
Research economist Matthew Maltman said: "I have seen very few economic phenomena like it." "The new plan came into place and just absolutely skyrocketed these dwelling consents," he said.
He said New Zealand was "broadly a pretty comparable country to Australia" and the experiment showed what was possible.
"And we have all these debates about how can we increase housing supply. How can we improve affordability?" Mr Maltman said. "And there's this place that's not far away from us that's actually done it and implemented these reforms that people have been talking about for years."
At the heart of the experiment is an ambition to use land inside the city of Auckland more efficiently — growing by densification, as opposed to sprawl.
That approach keeps new housing close to existing infrastructure such as transport, schools and employment hubs.
Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy, an associate professor in economics at the University of Auckland, said prior to the 2016 change, most of the city was zoned for buildings of no more than two storeys high and covering a maximum of 35 per cent of the block.
"Those are sort of typical, single-family detached policy settings, and so those restrictions were relaxed to various degrees," he said.
"In the residential zone that allows the most density, you can build five to seven storeys now and have a site-coverage ratio of 50 per cent."
Auckland's suburbs have been transforming. A space that was once quarantined for a small cottage now accommodates multiple families.
Not every project that is approved to be built actually is, but research suggests that in New Zealand more than 90 per cent of building consents turn into bricks and mortar projects.
Another caveat to keep in mind is that the data that shows how many new buildings are being approved does not factor in those old dwellings that were demolished to make way for the modern developments.
But five years after zoning regulations were relaxed across more than three-quarters of Auckland, Dr Greenaway-McGrevy's research has found the changes have resulted in more than 20,000 additional homes across the city.
"It's not just about developers," Dr Greenaway-McGrevy said.
"It enables the state to provide medium and high-density housing as well.
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26 September, 2023
Conservatives Are Not All Christians, So Please Stop Presuming It
This is an important article. American conservatives do need to recognize that there are irreligious conservatives too. I am one. And in that regard I am a fairly typical Australian conservative. Perhaps due to its convict origins, Australia is a dominantly irreligious place. Church attendance is around 20%, mostly Catholics and ethnics. So NEITHER side of politics is very likely to be religious.
And Australia manages to be a very civilized place nonetheless. One index of that may be that the homicide rate in Australia is less than one per 100,000 people. In the USA is over 6 per 100,000 people. Irreligious places can be pretty good. I am profoundly grateful for where I live
It happens so often that I am amazed when the contrary occurs. I am at a gathering of Republicans/Conservatives, and someone gives the benediction. This could happen at a luncheon, certainly at a dinner, and other types of gatherings. Usually, these prayers are only a couple of minutes in length. Then, after all has been said, the speaker adds a final sentence, “In Jesus’ name do we pray.”
Messaging Matters
I’m not the first to observe that Republicans and Conservatives have better programs and policies and a firm grasp of what actually helps the nation, but they have lousy messaging. The Democrats have harmful programs and policies but better messaging. They know how to twist and turn a phrase. Consider the difference between the terms “pro-abortion” and “pro-choice.”
When it comes to benedictions, conservatives can enhance their phrasing. Rebel is all you want, but citing the name of Jesus in the benediction is unnecessary. Once you say, “Heavenly Father,” or “God,” or “the Lord,” that is more than enough for a benediction in front of a group.
A benediction speaker once said, “In Jesus's name do I pray.” That, at the least, seems more appropriate than roping in the entire audience. Upon hearing such a closing statement, one might think, “Yes, I'm with you,” or “Fine, that is your prerogative.” Indeed, we are all for free speech. The last thing we want to do is squelch somebody else's speech. The Left shouts down conservative speakers, creates safe zones, and requires toeing the politically correct line. We're bigger than that.
Concurrently, it is vital to understand and acknowledge that many people at the political gatherings that you attend are NOT Christians. When you make the blanket and wrong assumption that all are Christians, your messaging is wrong and frankly unhelpful.
Who Might be a Republican?
For many years, I have been a greeter and foot traffic director for Wake County, NC, Republican primaries. With 100% assurance, I can tell you from personal experience that a significant sliver of those arriving are of Indian descent. Most Indians are Hindu, 79.8%, so the odds are Hindus attend GOP events. Muslims account for 14.2%, while Sikhs, Buddhists, Christians, and Jains largely account for the remaining six percent of Indians.
A notable number of Asians also attend in Wake County. The Chinese government recognizes five major religions: Buddhism, Catholicism, Daoism, Islam, and Protestantism. Other faiths are prohibited while often tolerated.
The majority of Jews are still staunchly Democrats for reasons that I’ll never understand. Right-leaning Jews are in attendance at conservation gatherings. The point is that the ties that unite us are our political views. We do not have to be of the same religion.
I am not a Christian, but I share many of the same values that they do. I'm not offended when a speaker, giving the benediction ends with “In Jesus’ name do we pray.” I am, however, dumbfounded that here, past mid-2023, the speaker and possibly the meeting host still do not understand their constituency. It’s as if they are merrily proceeding along with blinders. It makes me wonder: do they seek non-Christians, vote-wise as well as ideologically, or are they pushing some kind of doctrine? Politics based on religion, bordering on theocracy, is not pretty.
Unhelpful Presumptions
To presume that everyone in the room is a Christian or a devoted follower of Jesus is to make the same kind of error that the Left makes every waking moment. The Left paints a broad brush over their constituency, believing that every single one of them is pro-choice, hates Donald Trump, wants open borders around the clock, regards sexually grooming children as appropriate, and so on.
As conservatives, we should be smarter, more aware, and more ready to embrace those in our ranks who are not necessarily of the same religion but of the same politics.
I'm not spouting platitudes here, such as “diversity is our strength.” The issue is a call to fellow conservatives everywhere to recognize that our ranks contain people from different backgrounds and different walks of life. The sooner we embrace this notion, which is going to be impossible to ignore, the stronger we will be.
https://townhall.com/columnists/jeffdavidson/2023/09/17/column-n2628461
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Can Trump get a fair trial?
You’d think by now that Trump would have assembled a crack legal team to fight off the avalanche of legal peril the Democrats are raining down on him. Yet you’d be wrong. Trump cannot get first-class lawyers, largely because of the seeming certainty of deep and serious legal, personal and career reprisals against lawyers who sign on to his team.
If you want a legal career, you can’t afford to work for Trump, that’s the message.
A Democrat-linked legal hit squad called ‘The 65 Project’ is largely to blame for what amounts to an attempt to deny Trump access to counsel, in the US this being a right that is even enshrined in the 6th Amendment. The 65 Project has personnel linked to the powerful Washington DC Democrat lawfare centre, Perkins Coie. Even Forbes, no Trump-supporting outlet, says the 65 Project is funded by ‘dark money’. And as you read this the 65 Project is seeking to disbar more than 100 lawyers in 26 states who worked on Trump post-election lawsuits. The two-year-old group, named after the number of Trump post-election lawsuits, has filed 79 ethics complaints, and while it claims to be bipartisan, it is reported no lawsuits have hit lawyers representing Democrats despite Democrats themselves questioning election results myriad times over the years including one Hillary Clinton. Managing director of the 65 Project Michael Teter explains this by saying in USA Today no one on the left manufactured facts in court to overturn an election. That’s his outlook in a nutshell. The crime, as the Babylon Bee puts it, is ‘Questioning Election Results while Not Being a Democrat’.
Notice that the 65 Project mission is couched in Orwellian nicespeak. They are ‘defending democracy’ and holding ‘Big Lie Lawyers accountable… so that lawyers, including public officials who subvert democracy, will be punished’. But the line between a frivolous lawsuit and a merely weak one is not always clear – in fact, lawsuits with little chance of success are a dime a dozen especially in the US where, uniquely, there is no costs rule so that losers pay two-thirds of the winners’ legal costs.
Put differently, and as the saying goes, the absence of evidence is not always evidence of absence. High-profile lawyer Alan Dershowitz, himself a Democrat, cuts to the chase over what he calls the ‘nefarious’ 65 Project: ‘It’s a tactic. People will not take on Trump-related cases. That’s the intention and that’s the result.’
Dershowitz himself was targeted after defending Trump against what he says was an ‘unconstitutional’ impeachment in 2020, and in 2023 Dershowitz wrote, in a paper entitled ‘Why Trump cannot get a top-tier lawyer’: ‘I was cancelled by my local library, community center and synagogue. Old friends refused to speak to me and threatened others who did. My wife, who disagreed with my decision to defend Trump, was also ostracised. There were physical threats to my safety.’ Most long-time Trump associates bear similar or worse scars, financial, emotional and career-affecting, of this vicious targeting; Roger Stone, John Eastman, Rudy Guiliani, Jenna Ellis, Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Steven Bannon, Peter Navarro and many more have all been dragged through the courts or are in the midst of financially ruinous lawfare. There is talk of personal harassment, nails in driveways, protesters outside lawyers and judges’ homes, as happened with the Supreme Court justices after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
These sort of ad hominem attacks sure look to us like naked intimidation. And this in the same country in which, as a young lawyer, the future second president of the US, John Adams, served as a lawyer for the defence in the trial of eight British soldiers accused of murder during a riot in Boston on March 5, 1770. Adams and the other defence lawyers got all the soldiers acquitted but two who were given token sentences for manslaughter. Adams remained proud of upholding the presumption of innocence and right to counsel his whole life.
So as much as we are both the most pro-American non-Americans going, this politicisation of the lawyerly caste is way worse in the US than in the Westminster common law world. The US criminal justice system is bottom of the class, to be blunt.
Few lawyers can afford to challenge this formidable, if despicable, onslaught against a presidential candidate’s legal rights. The result is another stacked deck against Trump. Trump conservative, the influential Charlie Kirk of youth organisation Turning Point USA, said on a recent podcast: ‘If you talk to any sophisticated lawyer, Donald Trump’s team is made fun of constantly… in serious legal minds a better legal team could crush these indictments.’ That’s the point for these 65 Project Democrats, isn’t it? To get attorneys to walk away by threatening them with an ability to earn a living in the future and even to practise law.
It’s a dangerous game these partisan left-wing lawyers are playing. Public confidence in the legacy press has already cratered and, let’s be honest, it’s never been that high as regards lawyers. It took hundreds of years to build up the cab rank rule type thinking. It is crucial to a well-functioning legal system.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/lawfare-as-politics/
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John Cusack says Democratic elite ‘sold out the working class for decades’: They’re ‘full of s—‘
John Cusack had some strong words for the Democratic Party elite, Monday, when he branded them as being “full of s—” and blasted them on social media for allegedly selling out the working class “for decades.”
“They have played a major part in creating the precise conditions for fascism to flourish – Obama corporatist democrats – are to the right of Richard Nixon on domestic policy – Don’t believe me – look it up – and Dems have sold out the working class for decades – and this kind of bought and paid-for betrayal of principals [sic], fairness – historical precedent -any sense of moral or intellectual honesty – The kind of brutal selfish horrific actions one only does – because they can get away with it,” he wrote in part on X, formerly Twitter, Monday.
The 57-year-old “Say Anything” and “High Fidelity” star’s lengthy post continued with a takedown of the party’s complacency with the wealthy, not-far-enough-left politics and neglecting certain principles.
He argued that the party elite’s trajectory has planted fertile ground for Republicans like Trump to win.
“All your Yale and Harvard buddies will tell you how great and smart you all are – and they are all in bed with all the same big , big money power players- And we run the world – right ? – this kind of staggering amoral bulls— is one of the main reason ( yes there are others ) Trump’s demagoguery works on people. The Democratic elite ARE full of s—,” he continued.
The lengthy statement came in response to an article from Jacobin Magazine which claimed some top Democrats seek to outlaw federal wealth taxes.
“Imagine what FDR would say about such a proposed law ?! Don’t worry fellas – the Democrats will save the .ooooooo1 % from paying tax – the hubris to do this – is staggering – it’s a sham and an insult to everyone’s basic intelligence – the contempt for people – To even attempt this … Unbelievable,” he continued.
He ended the spiel by accusing Obama’s famous “hope and change” slogan of becoming “another branded hustle.”
Cusack has been outspoken about his political stances in the past, slamming former President Donald Trump on multiple occasions, including by calling for an impeachment over his alleged mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Christian Bookstore Under Attack on Military Base
A small, family-owned Christian bookstore that operates inside the Fort Liberty Exchange mall is under attack from a hate group that claims the store's presence violates the U.S. Constitution, the Todd Starnes Show has learned.
Faith2Soar has operated in an Army and Air Force Exchange mall for the past eight months. Prior to that, the for-profit company ran kiosks on military bases.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an activist group known for targeting Christian ministries operating on military bases, filed a complaint arguing that the store violated the so-called "separation of church and state."
“We have no trouble with any of these stores at all if they’re in some local mall. But it’s about the time, place and manner. This is on U.S. military property,” MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein told Military Times.
He claims he was alerted to the store’s existence when a soldier emailed about the bookstore “selling t-shirts reading ‘Salvation is Found in JESUS.'"
Imagine that. A Christian bookstore selling a t-shirt adorned with a Christian message.
Weinstein alleges that 211 Military Religious Freedom Foundation clients complained and out of those - 165 purported to be Christians. Smells like a lot of bull fertilizer to me.
He also claimed “the Constitution makes it clear that [the government] will not establish religion. This is the epitome of establishing religion, in a post exchange.” Again, not true.
First Liberty Institute, one of the nation's largest religious liberty law firms, is representing Faith2Soar.
“First Liberty is proud to stand with our client, Josh Creson, and his faith-based business," attorney Mike Berry told The Todd Starnes Radio Show. Berry is the law firm's senior counsel director of military affairs.
"The Army should simply ignore Mikey Weinstein and his hollow threats that have no basis in law or reality. This is exactly why Congress is considering a bill that would prohibit the military from wasting its time responding to Mikey Weinstein’s blatant religious hostility," he told me.
Weinstein, who has been incredibly successful at removing Nativity scenes and Bibles from POW/MIA tables, also took issue with products that he said promoted "Christian nationalism."
“It represents the heinously un-American, unconstitutional epitome of unlawful, ‘in-your-face’, fundamentalist Christian nationalism, triumphalism, exceptionalism, domination, bullying and supremacy,” Weinstein wrote in a letter to Lt. Gen. Christopher Donahue, the commanding general at Fort Liberty.
“The obvious COMMAND endorsement and favor of fundamentalist Christianity, to the exclusion of all other faith and non-faith traditions of your subordinate U.S. Army soldiers, by the Fort Liberty command structure is unmistakable, untenable, illegal, immoral, and unethical," he added.
Store owner Josh Creson told Military Times that mall officials officials met with him to look at the items in the store since Weinstein’s complaint. But no action has been taken.
“We’ve never been approached by anyone complaining about our presence here at all. We’ve received a tremendous amount of praise and appreciation from people saying they are so thankful we are here, but nothing ever negative,” Creson said.
Creson says he and his wife have been subjected to profane and threatening emails and telephone calls. In spite of that, he is calling on people to pray for "Mr. Weinstein and other angry people, some of which have sent some mean, expletive-laden messages and attacks, to come to know the goodness of God."
"We want nothing more than to serve, honor, and glorify God and to help our community in having access to Christian material," he wrote on the store's Facebook page.
Here's a thought. How about booting the godless heathens and keeping the bookstore?
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25 September, 2023
Blackwashing: False stories about black prominence
Threre is a good summary of past blackwashing episodes below:
https://pcwatch.blogspot.com/2023/02/blackwashing-just-side-issue-to.html
If you listen to some historians there have been blacks in Britain since prehistoric times. How you tell skin colour from a skeleton is unclear. But a new example of blackwashing has emerged in the form of a book called "Brilliant Black British History". It says; "the very first Britons were black” -- with not a shred of good evidence for most of the claims. Even Stonehenge was built by blacks, allegedly.
The one bit of real evidence offered is that the Roman historian Tacitus reported that the Silures people in Wales were “dark-skinned and curly-haired”. In Tacitus’ full account, he theorised that they may have been from Spain.
The account by Tacitus is confirmed by Jordanes in his "Origins and Deeds of the Goths , where he says, “The Silures have swarthy features and are usually born with curly black hair ... They are like the Gauls or the Spaniards.” So both ancient authors saw the Silures as having a Mediterranean appearance, not an African appearance.
A fuller critique of the book below:
Such appropriations have been rather common from American black authors -- again as mere evidence free assertions. Blacks built the pyramids, of course. I have written on that before. See:
http://jonjayray.com/short/gyppos.html
One instance of blackwashing stands out, however: A BBC program in 2017 that describes black and mixed-race families in Britain during the Roman era. It has the distinction that a couple of British historians have defended it. A graphic from the BBC program.
I have commented on the claims of British hisorian Mary Beard elsewhere so will not repeat that. Link below:
https://pcwatch.blogspot.com/2017/08/lying-old-leftist-broad-as-professional.html
A much more sustained defence of Africans in Roman Britain comes from Mike Stuchbery so I partly reproduce it below. Stuchbery's argument is mainly in a long series of tweets, which would be rather tedious to reproduce but the opening of the article concerned is as follows:
Alt-right commentator gets 'schooled' by historian over diversity in Roman Britain
An alt-right commentator who complained about the BBC portraying Roman Britain as ethnically diverse has sparked a row with a historian on Twitter.
Paul Joseph Watson (PJW), editor of alt-right website InfoWars, shared a screengrab of a BBC educational video on life in Britain, suggesting it was inaccurate. “Thank God the BBC is portraying Roman Britain as ethnically diverse,” he tweeted. “I mean, who cares about historical accuracy, right?”
Step forward writer and historian Mike Stuchbery, who gave PJW a quick history lesson on ethnic diversity in Roman Britain.
“Roman Britain was ethnically diverse, almost by design. To begin, occupying legions were drawn from other parts of the Empire,” Stuchbery responded.
“Every year we dig up new remains that suggest that Roman Britain, anywhere larger than a military outpost, was an ethnically diverse place.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/07/27/alt-right-commentator-gets-schooled-historian-diversity-roman/
All the examples he gives of Africans in Britain are of Mediterranean people, not sub-Saharan Africans. North Africans were and are white, of course. To this day, telling a Berber he is black will get you a dusty response. He will think you are blind or mad.
Berber woman in ethnic dress. It seems likely that the Berbers are in part descendants of the ancient Carthaginians. They are at any event the native people of most of North Africa -- JR
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As the deficit soars, Biden boasts that he has cut the deficit
by Jeff Jacoby
PRESIDENT BIDEN has a well-earned reputation as a fabulist. PolitiFact, the Poynter Institute's accuracy project, debunks his assertions so often that its releases are wearily headlined "Latest False Fact-Checks on Joe Biden." He was rebuked most recently for claiming that he had traveled to Ground Zero in New York on the day after the Twin Towers fell in 2001.
"I remember standing there the next day, and looking at the building," Biden said in a speech at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska, on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. "I felt like I was looking through the gates of hell."
In reality, as PolitiFact, CNN, Forbes, and other news sites pointed out, Biden didn't go to New York on Sept. 12. He waited until Sept. 20 to visit the scene of devastation.
To be fair, how soon after 9/11 Biden visited Ground Zero isn't, in itself, that big a deal. What makes it notable is that it is one of an ever-lengthening string of whoppers he has told — including, as CNN pointed out, three false personal anecdotes in a single speech last month.
But worse still is a particular fiscal boast of Biden's that is so deceitful it has been repeatedly discredited by fact-checkers. All to no avail: Biden insists on trotting it out again and again, as he did in a speech on Labor Day.
"In my first two years, all this stuff — guess what?" the president said in Philadelphia during an appearance before the local Sheet Metal Workers union. "I cut the deficit $1.7 trillion. Here's the bottom line: My economic plan is working. It's reducing the deficit."
Biden has made that claim in scores of speeches, many of which are posted on the White House website. According to an online database of his public remarks, he has recited that statistic 44 times this year alone.
But, to use a Bidenesque phrase, here's the thing: He hasn't cut the deficit by a penny.
What Biden's brag is based on is that in fiscal year 2020, before he took office, the federal deficit shot up to $3.1 trillion, whereas by 2022, his second year as president, it had fallen to a little under $1.4 trillion. The difference is $1.7 trillion, the amount of red ink that Biden keeps claiming to have eliminated.
But the 2020 deficit was so gargantuan because of the sudden and unforeseen explosion of spending in response to COVID-19. The CARES Act, passed by near-unanimous votes in Congress and signed by President Donald Trump on March 27, 2020, jacked up federal outlays by $2.2 trillion. Most of that had to be borrowed by the Treasury — that is, it was paid for by adding to the deficit. Later that year, another huge pandemic relief bill, for $900 billion, was passed by Congress and signed into law. Result: The budget deficit soared to levels never before experienced (or even imagined).
Yet that tidal wave of spending was always meant to be temporary. When the funding expired in 2022, the budget receded. The government's borrowing levels dropped — not because of anything Biden did but because that's how the law was written.
In fact, just weeks after Biden's inauguration, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that the deficit in 2022 would be $1 trillion as the emergency outlays were winding down. By 2023, the CBO forecast, the deficit would have shrunk to $963 billion. That wasn't what happened. The 2022 deficit was almost $1.4 trillion — 40 percent higher than projected. And the deficit for the current year is now headed toward $2 trillion.
Far from reducing the level of red ink as was expected when he became president, Biden has raised it.
Though he has sometimes acknowledged that "we need to cut spending," outlays — and borrowing to cover those outlays — have kept going up on his watch. Early on, Biden signed an unnecessary stimulus package worth $1.9 trillion. Then came a $1.2 trillion "infrastructure" package, a huge increase in food stamp spending, and a continuation of the years-long halt in requiring student loans to be repaid.
Oblivious to all of it, Biden boasts that he has "cut the deficit" and proved himself more fiscally responsible than his predecessors. The truth is exactly the opposite.
"My economic plan is working," the president said in his Labor Day speech. As a candidate for reelection, what else is he going to say? But the public isn't buying it. In a survey released Thursday by Suffolk University and USA Today, 70 percent of US residents say the economy is getting worse. Nearly 6 in 10 respondents hold Biden responsible for the nation's economic anxiety. The share of Americans living in poverty has risen dramatically since 2021, inflation has sent the price of pantry staples and gasoline skyward, and home mortgage rates are at their highest level in decades.
And all the while, Washington continues spending money it doesn't have — the Treasury is borrowing $4.6 billion per day. Because interest rates are much higher than they were a couple of years ago, it costs the government much more to service its debt. So much more, in fact, that the United States now pays nearly as much in interest on the federal debt ($644 billion per month) as it spends on national defense ($692 billion). Spending on Social Security and Medicare is up by double digits this year, while revenues are down because tax brackets are indexed for inflation.
We are headed for a fiscal cliff and no one in Washington seems to have a grip on the steering wheel. The $2 trillion federal deficit is a big flashing red light warning policymakers to curb their out-of-control spending. But Congress and the White House won't take their foot off the accelerator. And in the face of onrushing disaster, the president keeps bragging that he has cut the deficit.
It isn't only money that the US government lacks. The worsening fiscal shortfall is deadly serious — but even more ominous is our national deficit of leadership and good judgment. Dollars can be borrowed. But where can Americans find political leaders capable of dealing with this crisis?
https://jeffjacoby.com/27219/as-the-deficit-soars-biden-boasts-that-he-has-cut
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Here’s Where to Take Your Kids When Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts Go Woke
I sat down Wednesday with Patti Garibay, founder and executive director of American Heritage Girls, the leading scouting alternative to the Girl Scouts. She founded American Heritage Girls back in 1995, after she realized that the Girl Scouts were promoting homosexuality and abortion.
While the Girl Scouts had begun moving in that direction during the 1970s, Garibay said, it really hit her in 1993 when the Girl Scouts removed an oath to God from the Girl Scout Promise.
“Well, when you kick God out of a character-development program, what are you going to set the stone on? It’s going to be the shifting sands of cultural winds, and that can be crazy,” she said.
“They have come out of the closet with this,” Garibay added. She mentioned a “Pride patch” with a “very enticing” rainbow and a “Camp Culture Code that tells campers and leaders that you have to use the proper pronouns of whoever the camp counselor might be.”
“I’ll tell you, they are manipulating our kids,” she said. “I believe it’s indoctrination.”
She tried to reform the Girl Scouts from within, but eventually realized she needed to start a separate organization. “Sometimes, we can’t just curse the darkness. We have to light a candle, and we’ve got to start to be part of the solution, rather than the problem,” she said.
American Heritage Girls grew and grew, and it even partnered with the Boy Scouts of America from 2009 to 2013. Garibay lamented that the Boy Scouts changed its policy to allow openly homosexual scouts in 2013, even though the Boy Scouts had won a historic Supreme Court case in 2000 (Boy Scouts of America v. Dale) in which the BSA argued that homosexual conduct was inconsistent with the values it was attempting to instill in young men.
Garibay said that she helped a group of men launch Trail Life USA, a Christian alternative to the Boy Scouts.
While American Heritage Girls is an explicitly Christian organization, it does allow Muslim, Hindu, and Jewish girls to join, so long as they believe in God.
“The girls do all kinds of fun things,” Garibay explained. “They go camping. They serve in the community. They learn about citizenship and government so that they can be good citizens one day. They also learn about badges. We have over 330 badges that the girls can earn, and these are life skills.”
The organization also defends America’s heritage.
“With American Heritage Girls, what we’re training the girls to understand is the Judeo-Christian values upon which our country was founded,” she said. Her organization is bringing back the “basic tenets of America” that are “not being taught in the public schools” or on social media.
Garibay also mentioned resources that American Heritage Girls puts out to help equip families to instill a biblical worldview in their children, and to innoculate them against the lies of transgender identity.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/21/heres-where-take-kids-when-boy-scouts-girl-scouts-go-woke
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ObamaCare Turns Out to Be Affordable Only for the Healthy
The old advice still holds: Don't get sick in America
When Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act of 2010, President Obama and lawmakers made the same claim over and over: The act would make good, affordable health insurance available to people with pre-existing conditions. The actual result has been the opposite. ObamaCare makes health insurance as good as possible for the healthy and as bad as possible for the sick.
According to President Biden, health insurance in America is free or almost free (“as little as $10 a month or less” after subsidies) for about 80% of people who acquire it in an ObamaCare exchange. Most preventive care—the only kind of care healthy people require—is also free.
If you are sick, things are different. Consider a hypothetical middle-aged couple in Dallas earning $70,000 a year. Suppose they have two children, both of whom have serious birth defects. Although this family will pay no premium for a Blue Cross bronze plan in the ObamaCare exchange, they will face a $9,100 deductible for each child. Their total out-of-pocket exposure is $18,200 a year.
It gets worse. Patients with serious diseases often require the care of highly trained specialists who usually work at centers of excellence. But that family in Dallas will discover that their Blue Cross plan isn’t accepted at leading cancer providers nearby, including Baylor University Medical Center and the University of Texas Health Science Center, or MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
The problem isn’t unique to Texas. ObamaCare plans have very skinny networks in every state. They tend to pay providers Medicaid rates or close to them. As a result, ObamaCare looks like Medicaid with a high deductible. A great many providers, including prestigious medical institutions, won’t accept Medicaid managed care—the version of Medicaid most recipients receive—or ObamaCare.
When a patient with ObamaCare coverage goes out of network, the plan usually pays nothing and the patient’s payment doesn’t apply to his deductible or out-of-pocket maximum.
In addition to ObamaCare’s high medical expenses for the sick, there is an implicit tax on their earned income. Suppose our Dallas family earned only $60,000. According to Healthcare.gov, their children could qualify for CHIP, (the Children’s Health Insurance Program) or Medicaid, and they wouldn’t be allowed into a subsidized private exchange plan. Given their lower income, the best exchange plan the family would qualify for would now be the Blue Cross silver plan, which carries zero premium. This means that if the parents stay healthy, they would have no out-of-pocket medical expenses.
But things quickly change if they rose to $70,000 household income again. The penalty would be an $18,200 increase in maximum medical costs—a marginal tax rate of 182%.
Even with the children on CHIP, the parents could have serious medical problems of their own and an accompanying implicit tax on income. At an income, say, of $30,000, the best option is a silver plan with a small premium combined with a small deductible. But if their income doubles to $60,000, the out-of-pocket exposure will increase by $14,200. That’s an implicit marginal tax increase of 47%.
Healthy people tend to buy health plans based on premium alone and ignore all other features. So when premiums are set so low that the enrollee pays nothing, the plan will attract enrollees who will cost almost nothing. But they will generate government subsidies worth thousands of dollars to large insurance companies.
By contrast, sick enrollees are potentially financial losers. High deductibles and narrow provider networks deter the sick, who are guided by these plan features. If a sick potential enrollee chooses a competitor’s plan, so much the better.
If you wonder why ObamaCare was designed this way, consider that it wasn’t designed by Mr. Obama or by Democratic lawmakers. It was designed by special interests. ObamaCare has been pouring about $60 billion a year in new money into the healthcare system. All that spending is lining the pockets of insurance companies, hospitals and some doctors—although it doesn’t appear that there has been any overall increase in the amount of healthcare being delivered.
Most people with serious health problems who have to buy their own coverage would have been much better off in the pre-ObamaCare health system. In Texas there was a risk pool for people who delayed buying a plan until they really needed one. Premiums were higher than what others were paying, but less than ObamaCare premiums today. A typical offering was a standard Blue Cross plan, with reasonable deductibles and networks that covered almost all doctors and medical facilities.
In the last two sessions of Congress, Democrats had an opportunity to reverse some of the worst aspects of ObamaCare. Instead, they added $30 billion of “enhanced subsidies,” which will make health insurance cheaper for healthy people making as much as several hundred thousand dollars a year.
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Australia: Racists under every bed
Cancel culture is about to get interesting and happening right here on Australian campuses. Get your popcorn and tune in!
But be warned: the first episode – the cancelling of Alfred Deakin through the push to rename Deakin University – is dreadfully dull and predictable. It is episode two and three where it gets juicy, where the cancellers cannot escape the undeniable analogies between the deemed offences of Deakin and those of left-wing heroes, John Curtin and (gasp) Gough Whitlam. The cancellers just haven’t realised this yet, which makes it particularly engaging.
Before getting too far ahead of ourselves, let’s recap on developments from earlier in the month which set the scene.
As reported in the Age newspaper, academics and students at Deakin University have decided that the university’s name needs to change, because Alfred Deakin, a founding father and our second prime minister, was apparently – you guessed it – a racist.
The university leadership is resisting the change for the moment, but have established a truth-telling process to document Deakin’s record, which will inevitably add further pressure for a name change.
On what basis do they argue that Deakin was a racist? As it turns out, on the basis of some quite racist policies and statements, as viewed from today’s perspective. In particular, he supported the introduction of the White Australia policy when he was Australia’s first attorney general and continued this support in his times as prime minster.
According to the activists, one of his greatest sins was predicting that Australia would remain a white country in decades to come.
Deakin’s views on race would not be acceptable in Australia today, and I don’t know of a single parliamentarian who would hold such views. Today, we are the most successful multi-racial country and this is a great source of pride to the vast majority of us.
But at the time, Deakin’s views were mainstream. In fact, every political party, including the Labor party, supported the White Australia Policy and nearly the entire population tended to view people through a racial lens. As the federal Parliamentary Library notes, there was ‘almost universal support’ for restricting non-Europeans and the extensive parliamentary debate of the policy concerned the method of exclusion, rather than whether it should occur.
So why single out Alfred Deakin from the entire political class and population of the time? Particularly when Deakin is broadly regarded as an important figure in the development of modern Australia, including being critical in the creation of our federation.
I suspect because he is seen as a figure of the right. The National Union of Students’ Xavier Dupe is clear on this: ‘The University should be renamed, just like other institutions named after right-wingers,’ he is reported as saying.
The problem for left-wing activists, like Dupe, who want to reassess historical figures through the values of today is that their own heroes are likely to be caught up in the revisionism.
And this is certainly the case here with two of the giants of the left, John Curtin and Gough Whitlam. Both were substantial figures in Australia’s history; both have universities or university institutions named after them (Curtin University, the Whitlam Institute) and both said similarly objectionable things to Deakin.
Consider John Curtin’s position on the White Australia policy. He was an ardent supporter, telling the federal parliament in late 1941 that, ‘Our laws have proclaimed the standard of a White Australia…. It was devised for economic and sound humane reasons. It was not challenged for 40 years. We intend to keep it because we know it to be desirable.’
Gough Whitlam’s statements are not as directly analogous. After all, Australia’s discriminatory immigration policy had already been abolished for six years by the time he became prime minister.
However, his position on the south Vietnamese was arguably as appalling. When Saigon fell in April 1975, Whitlam overruled his Foreign Minister’s willingness to admit significant numbers of South Vietnamese refugees, famously telling Foreign Minister Willesee that he didn’t want an influx of ‘f-cking Vietnamese Balts’.
No Labor figure today tries to justify Whitlam’s position. Because it can’t be justified. But if cancel culture activists on campuses are consistent, then surely Curtin University and the Whitlam Institute are also targets for renaming?
Chris Watson, Labor’s first prime minister, was also amongst the Labor luminaries who supported racist policies. In fact, while many unions and Labor people at the time were against non-European immigration for industrial reasons – fearing an undercutting of wages – Chris Watson made it clear that racial impurity was his primary concern, stating, ‘The objection I have to the mixing of these coloured people with the white people of Australia… lies in the main with the possibility and probability of racial contamination.’
Should Watson also be cancelled? Watson doesn’t have a university named after him, but there is a federal electorate and Canberra suburb named in his honour – just like Deakin. Should they be renamed? Tony Burke, who holds the seat of Watson doesn’t think so. Nor does Anthony Albanese who, in his 2015 ‘Light on the Hill’ address, praised Chris Watson as a ‘great leader’ whose record speaks to ‘our [Labor] ideals’.
The truth is that no person in the past would withstand the scrutiny of everything they said if they are judged from today’s moral values. No political leader from the earlier days of Australia’s modern history. And what about the past family members of the activists? Even their own grandparents?
So how should we judge people like Deakin and Watson?
We certainly shouldn’t let left-wing activists be the moral arbiters. Rather, we should assess them in their historical context. This means being honest about our past – the good and the bad.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/its-time-to-cancel-gough/
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24 September, 2023
The Surge of Populism -- and Nationalism
Michael Barone is a respected conservative commentator but he has missed the point below. Trump is popular but that does not make him a populist. Populists are generally poorly informed, not graduates of the Wharton School. Nor is he a nationalist. Read Orwell for a very clear definition of nationalism.
Trump is simply an enthusiastic patriot. His love of America comes strongly through and endears him to masses of his fellow Americans. And his policies are in no need of new labels either. He is a conservative, very much so, but one with a take on economic issues that is both old and new -- but was also thoroughly conservative in practice. Read below for an understanding of that
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com/2023/09/left-right-divide-no-longer-relevant-in.html
Historical context below:
http://jonjayray.com/trumpism.html
Perhaps in passing I should mention that noted British conservative philosopher Roger Scruton saw patriotism and conservatism as very closely allied
http://jonjayray.com/rightism.html#1173
"Populist politicians and parties," writes the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Henry Olsen in The Spectator, are "rapidly gaining strength and power across the developed world." They're doing so despite the opposition and angry scorn of political and intellectual establishments of Left and Right and with a resilience that they find baffling.
Nothing exemplifies that resilience more than the current standing of Donald Trump's third presidential campaign. Trump didn't come close to a plurality, much less a majority, of the popular vote as the Republican nominee in 2016 and 2020; his conduct led to his party's loss of its House majority in 2018, and his endorsements of weak nominees cost it its Senate majority in 2022. Of course, despite his claims, he failed to win reelection in November 2020.
But there he sits, despite four indictments with 91 counts, polling 59% against multiple opponents in primary pairings and a 45%-45% tie against President Joe Biden, who led him 51%-47% in 2020.
As Olsen points out, Trump isn't the only politician often labeled as a populist who is doing well despite elite scorn. Italy's prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, comes from a party with roots in the fascist movement of Benito Mussolini. Though Mussolini has been dead for 78 years, that aroused more unease than the election of a former Communist to that post in 1998, just nine years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Other populists doing well lately include Germany's Alternative fur Deutschland and Canadian Conservative party leader Pierre Poilievre, longtime Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and, back in 2019, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
In different ways and to different extents, these populists abjure the market economics and interventionist foreign policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher and have been winning the votes without entirely endorsing the platforms of cultural conservatives.
The stock response of financial and corporate establishments has been to use any means to exclude such politicians from positions of power. In this country, that has included concocting and promoting the Russia collusion hoax rather than accepting Trump's election as legitimate and using intelligence officials to muscle social media to suppress news of the legitimate Hunter Biden scandal in 2020.
Now, the establishment may be throwing in the towel. In its most recent edition, the London-based Economist left off worrying about populists' supposed authoritarianism and conceded that "Europe is not about to be overrun by fascists, in a repeat of the 1930s."
"Rather than trying to exclude hard-right parties entirely from government and public debate," it went on, "the best response is for mainstream parties to engage with them, and on occasion to do deals with them. If they have to take some responsibility for actually governing, they may grow less radical."
Quite possibly, and quite possibly, some establishment folks may one day concede that some of their policies and presuppositions have not worked out well. Olsen cites "the blind faith elites had that the pursuit of wealth would transform China's Communist party," the "elite economic mismanagement" that caused the 2008 financial crash and today's inflation, and "elite insistence that traditional mores be disregarded," which has led to "culture wars." He might have added the overly stringent and scientifically unjustified COVID-19 lockdowns in this and other countries.
Some 30 years ago, in the late Irving Kristol's Public Interest Quarterly, I wrote an article in which I argued that democracies have had "four major types of political parties: religious, liberal, socialist, and nationalist." Some democracies over the preceding 160 and the intervening 30 years have fared better than others.
Religious parties in Europe have disappeared or changed character with the decline of religious belief. The Republican Party, for three decades since the 1980s, has had some of the character of a religious party, which has faded in the Trump years, while today's Democratic Party sometimes advocates with religious fervor the secular liberalism of an increasing number of its supporters. As I predicted in 1993, "parties will attack their opponents by calling them religious."
Liberal parties dedicated to 19th-century liberalism, free trade, market economics, religious toleration, and freedom succumbed in the 20th century to socialist parties closely allied with labor unions. Grover Cleveland's laissez-faire Democrats become Woodrow Wilson's statist Democrats. Britain's Liberal Party, with a 397-156 seat margin in 1906 and a front bench with two later wartime prime ministers, David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, faded to third-party status as Labour elected a prime minister in 1924.
Anti-clerical liberal parties in Italy, Spain, and France "died from failure of nerve," as I wrote, failing to protect democracy against Mussolini, Franco, and Vichy. Socialist policies didn't work and were repudiated by Thatcher and Reagan -- and Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.
The democratic parties with staying power have been nationalist parties -- "not the nationalism of Hitler, of course," as I wrote in 1993, but the "nationalism that is open to various economic programs and compatible with cultural toleration." Olsen identifies "national solidarity" as the guiding principle of populist voters, who favor "the particular over the global, the communal over the individual, and the traditional over the novel."
"The United States may be entering a happy period," I wrote in 1993, "where it has two nationalist parties, with differing positions on important cultural and economic issues, but a fundamentally favorable outlook toward American nationalism, a condition we have not enjoyed since the mid-1960s."
Those hopes have been disappointed, most recently by the personal shortcomings of Donald Trump and Joe Biden, by the refusal of Trump's opponents to accept the legitimacy of his victory in 2016 -- and by his refusal to accept the legitimacy of theirs in 2020. It's looking like they will be disappointed for some time to come.
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The Cuban horror
“I want to recognize everyone in the audience who has their own painful but important story to tell about the true and brutal nature of the Castro regime,” remarked President Donald Trump during a speech in Miami’s Little Havana on June 16, 2017. "And we want to thank you all for being a voice for the voiceless...."
“Many of you witnessed terrible crimes committed in service of a depraved ideology," continued Trump's remarks, announcing his Cuba policy. "You saw the dreams of generations held captive, you saw what communism has done. You knew faces that disappeared, innocents locked in prisons, and believers persecuted for preaching the word of God. You watched the Women in White bruised, bloodied, and captured on their way from Mass. You have heard the chilling cries of loved ones, or the cracks of firing squads piercing through the ocean breeze. Not a good sound.
“Among the courageous Cuban dissidents with us onstage here today are Cary Roque, who was imprisoned by the Castro regime….She looks awfully good," he added.
“Mr. President, on behalf of the Cuban people, the people thank you, and we appreciate your love,” Roque responded.
“The Castro dictatorship may have taken 16 years of her life in a gulag, but they were never able to take her dignity," wrote Alberto de la Cruz at Babalu Blog. "The indomitable Cary Roque was an inspiration for the Cuban exile community and all women. She passed away in Miami on Wednesday (9/20) at the age of 82, but she leaves behind an incredible legacy of valor and perseverance that we would all do well to follow."
Not only was Caridad Roque a victim of The Left’s premier pin-up boys (Fidel Castro and Che Guevara) but she was also singled out for praise by President Donald Trump. Any more questions about the media black-out of her history, suffering and death?
On the other hand:
"She was an early b*llbuster, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. She rattled a lot of cages before women were even allowed into the zoo," said Katie Couric hailing Barbara Walters in Vanity Fair upon her passing on Dec. 30, 2022.
Some women living in the U.S. today (and with long experience in literal cages) strongly differ with Couric. Barbara Walters “interviewed” Fidel Castro in 1977 and again in 2002. But the famous ABC Wicked Witch who interrogated Nixon, Reagan and Bush – when confronted by Fidel Castro – morphed into Ann Margaret in front of Conrad Birdie. No hint of the famous ABC News dominatrix in Washington was evident in the smiley and goo-goo-eyed groupie in Havana.
Instead this famous “feminist” shamelessly stroked among the most brutal and insatiable male egos in modern history—and within walking distance of where hundreds of his female victims (including Cary Roque) languished in filthy, rat-infested and sweltering torture chambers.
When feminist icon Barbara Walters sat quivering alongside Fidel Castro in 1977 cooing that “Fidel Castro has brought very high literacy and great health-care to his country. His personal magnetism is powerful!” dozens of Cuban (genuine) feminists suffered in nearby torture chambers. From exile today many of them recall the horrors:
“They started by beating us with twisted coils of wire," recalls former political prisoner Ezperanza Pena from exile today. “I remember Teresita on the ground with all her lower ribs broken. Gladys had both her arms broken. Doris had her face cut up so badly from the beatings that when she tried to drink, water would pour out of her lacerated cheeks.”
“On Mother’s Day they allowed family visits,” recalls Manuela Calvo from exile today. "But as our mothers and sons and daughters were watching, we were beaten with rubber hoses and high-pressure hoses were turned on us, knocking all of us the ground floor and rolling us around as the guards laughed and our loved-ones screamed helplessly.”
“When female guards couldn’t handle us male guards were called in for more brutal beatings. I saw teenaged girls beaten savagely, their bones broken, their mouths bleeding,” recalled prisoner Polita Grau.
Fidel Castro’s regime, so “magnetic” to Barbara Walters, jailed and tortured 35,150 Cuban women for political crimes, a totalitarian horror utterly unknown—not only in Cuba—but in the modern history of the Western Hemisphere. Some of these Cuban ladies suffered twice as long in Castro’s Gulag as Alexander Solzhenitsyn suffered in Stalin’s.
Their prison conditions were described by former political prisoner Maritza Lugo: “The punishment cells measure 3 feet wide by 6 feet long. The toilet consists of an 8 inch hole in the ground through which cockroaches and rats enter, especially in cool temperatures the rat come inside to seek the warmth of our bodies and we were often bitten. The suicide rate among women prisoners was very high.”
“Only minutes after my arrival at the Hotel Riviera in Havana, I was told to be in his (Fidel Castro’s) office within 15 minutes,” wrote Barbara Walters about her first interview with Fidel Castro in May 1977. “There I found a very courtly, somewhat portly Fidel Castro. He apologized for making me wait for two years and said that now he wanted to cooperate…On Wednesday, Castro himself came to our hotel to pick us up…Then, driving a Russian-made jeep, he took us to the Bay of Pigs, where we boarded an armed patrol boat. We thus became, according to Castro, the first Americans to cross the Bay of Pigs since the U.S.-supported invasion there in 1961.”
Barbara Walters’ crossing of the Bay of Pigs was probably more than a historical sight-seeing junket. On the other side and near the mouth of the bay sits Castro’s personal island-resort Cayo Piedra, that houses his luxurious get-away chateau. According to defectors, when younger, Fidel Castro often repaired to this remote but luxurious villa for spearfishing among other recreational pursuits.
Juan Reynaldo Sanchez, a Lt. Col. in Cuba’s Armed Forces who spent 17 years as Fidel Castro’s bodyguard/valet, had just been promoted to the position when Barbara Walters visited Cuba for her first interview with the Stalinist dictator in May 1977. Sanchez defected to the U.S. in 2008 and explained to this writer how he was part of the Castroite entourage that accompanied Ms Walters and Fidel to the latter’s island chateau. Ms Walters does mention that:
“We stopped at a little island for a picnic lunch of grilled fish and pineapple. During which Castro swapped fish stories with the ABC crew. It was here that we taped our first but brief and candid interview with him.”
Argentinian journalist Juan Gasparini in his Spanish language book Mujeres de Dictadores (Women of Dictators) writes that, “It is widely supposed that Fidel Castro had several amorous adventures with the North American reporter Barbara Walters who twice visited Cuba to interview him. It is alleged that she later visited Cuba more discretely for private visits. According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Walters has admitted to developing an attraction to the Cuban leader while boating with him on assignment in 1977, but she denies things got physical."
When Castro’s torturers were transferring his female prisoners from cell to cell while Barbara Walters visited Castro’s Bay of Pigs’ “Love Shack,” the guards were forced to drag many of these Cuban women around like dead animals. They were simply incapable of walking. The constant beatings had incapacitated many of them. The excrement and menstrual fluid caked to their legs and bare feet made it more difficult still. Some of the cells called “Tapiadas,” were barely big enough to stand and walk in and were completely sealed except for a few tiny air holes. The women were confined completely underground in total darkness and suffocating heat for weeks at a time. These were tombs by any other name, except that their occupants were still alive, if barely and if only by ultra-human perseverance.
In marked contrast to Cary Roque’s horrific ordeal in Castroite prisons, the celebrated Nobel Peace Price winner Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar has served a total of 15 years under house arrest. The late celebrated human rights activist Elena Bonner of the Soviet era served a total of 5 years of internal exile.
So you’ll please excuse these Cuban ladies (most of them U.S. citizens today) if they regard the “struggles” of Betty Freidan, Gloria Steinem – and yes, the “b*llbusting” by Barbara Walters – as a trifle overblown.
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Police drop charges against British woman for silently praying outside an abortion clinic
After a six-month investigation, police in England have decided not to bring charges against a woman for silently praying outside an abortion clinic.
Police also issued an apology to Isabel Vaughan-Spruce, the director of the UK March for Life, for the length of time it took to reach the decision not to prosecute her for silent prayer. In March, the charity volunteer was arrested after she told police she "might" be praying silently when they asked why she was standing on a public street near an abortion facility.
The abortion clinic was in a so-called "buffer zone," which was introduced by local authorities via a "Public Spaces Protection Order" and bans activities, such as prayer, that are considered a protest against abortion.
Vaughan-Spruce said in a statement upon receiving the apology from police that she never should have been arrested or investigated for the thoughts she held in her own mind because "this isn’t 1984, but 2023."
"Silent prayer is never criminal," she said. "I welcome West Midland Police’s decision to end their investigation and their apology for the time it took to do so, but it’s important to highlight the extremely harmful implications of this ordeal not just for myself, but for everyone concerned with fundamental freedoms in the UK."
"What happened to me signals to others that they too could face arrest, interrogation, investigation, and potential prosecution if caught exercising their basic freedom of thought," she added.
Vaughan-Spruce is currently considering options to pursue redress for her treatment by police with support from Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) UK, which has been supporting her legal defense.
"Now that authorities have twice settled on the conclusion that silent prayer is not a crime – a conclusion also reached by the Home Secretary last week – I am thankful to resume my practice of praying silently for women in crisis pregnancies," Vaughan-Spruce said.
Jeremiah Igunnubole, legal counsel for ADF UK, said in a statement to FOX News Digital that in a democracy, speech and thought must be protected, not criminalized.
"We welcome the decision of the police to drop this investigation and apologise to Isabel for the length of her ordeal, but the fact remains - by arresting innocent people for the thoughts in their head, the UK has put the world on notice that fundamental freedoms are not robustly protected in our country," he said.
Parliamentarians in the UK are considering legislation to introduce similar censorship zones in other parts of England and Wales. The Public Order Act, which passed through Parliament in May 2023, would prohibit "influence" in an area of 150m around abortion facilities, but free speech advocates have raised concerns that its vague terminology will lead to criminalization of peaceful conversations, leafleting and prayer.
"There is now an urgent need for the UK government to address ideological policing by robustly protecting freedom of speech and thought and consistently applying the rule of law," Igunnubole said in his statement. "At a time when confidence in policing is at an all time low, it is crucial that police officers remember that they exist to protect citizens from crime, not to victimise law-abiding citizens for peacefully holding and expressing a diverse range of views."
"ADF UK are proud to have supported Isabel's legal defense," he added. "We are considering all options to pursue legal redress for Isabel's treatment at the hands of the police."
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Newsom gets one right
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, vetoed a bill late Friday night that would have required judges in child custody cases to consider whether a parent has affirmed their child's gender identity.
AB 957 originally proposed that courts deciding custody cases must consider whether each parent affirmed the child's gender identity. An amendment in June added a parent's affirmation of their child's gender identity to the state's standard of what constitutes parental responsibility in a court of law for providing for "the health, safety, and welfare of the child."
The bill was passed earlier this month by the state assembly, and was sent to the governor's desk for his signature. But Newsom said in a statement released Friday night that he cannot sign the legislation.
The governor said he appreciates the "passion and values" that led Democrat Assemblywoman Lori Wilson to introduce the bill and that he shares a "deep commitment to advancing the rights of transgender Californians, an effort that has guided my decisions through many decades in public office."
"That said, I urge caution when the Executive and Legislative branches of state government attempt to dictate -in prescriptive terms that single out one characteristic -legal standards for the Judicial branch to apply," Newsom wrote. "Other-minded elected officials, in California and other states, could very well use this strategy to diminish the civil rights of vulnerable communities."
"Moreover, a court, under existing law, is required to consider a child's health, safety, and welfare when determining the best interests of a child in these proceedings, including the parent's affirmation of the child's gender identity," he added.
When parents divorce and cannot agree on child custody, judges will determine custody based on a variety of factors.
Under AB 957, gender affirmation would have been one of the several factors for judges to consider in custody cases. Wilson, who coauthored the bill along with Democrat state Sen. Scott Wiener, has said the bill would not have required parents to move forward with gender transition medical treatment.
"I am extremely disappointed. I know the Governor's record. He's been a champion for the LGBTQ+ community for years and even before it was popular to do so," Wilson said in a statement after the governor's veto on Friday. "However, on this point, the Governor and I disagree on the best way to protect [Transgender, Gender-Diverse and Intersex] kids."
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Senator Bob Menendez, his 'consultant' wife and kilos of gold: The Egyptian bribery claim that's hit US congress
It's an old saying that the weakness of Leftist politicians is for money while the weakness of conservative politicians is for women. Gold versus "girlfriends"
By the time FBI agents showed up at the New Jersey home of Bob Menendez last year, the US senator and his wife had allegedly been taking bribes for years.
According to court documents unsealed in New York overnight, the agents found hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of evidence to back their suspicions.
The documents accuse Senator Menendez and his wife Nadine of accepting the bribes in exchange for, among other things, providing sensitive information to benefit the Egyptian government.
The 69-year-old, who chairs the Senate's foreign relations committee, is also accused of using his position to try to "protect and enrich" a trio of Egyptian-American businessmen – Wael Hana, Jose Uribe and Fred Daibes.
"The FBI found many of the fruits of this bribery scheme, including cash, gold, [a] luxury convertible, and home furnishings," the US Attorney's Office for New York's Southern District said today.
During the June 2022 search, more than $US480,000 ($745,000) in cash was found stuffed into envelopes and hidden in clothing, closets and a safe in the home, and another $US70,000 cash in Nadine Menendez's safe deposit box.
Some of the envelopes were found inside jackets emblazoned with Senator Menendez's name, hanging in his cupboard, and others had the fingerprints or DNA of Mr Daibes.
There was more than $US100,000 worth of gold bars in the house.
FBI agents also found home furnishings and a luxury car parked in the garage – all allegedly provided by the three New Jersey businessmen who have also now been charged.
Mr and Ms Menendez are each charged with three criminal counts: conspiracy to commit bribery, conspiracy to commit honest services fraud and conspiracy to commit extortion.
In a statement, Senator Menendez said prosecutors had mischaracterised routine legislative work.
"The excesses of these prosecutors is apparent," he said. "The facts are not as presented."
A lawyer for Nadine Menendez said she also denied any wrongdoing.
A trade in sensitive state information
Four years earlier, the powerful Democrat senator allegedly hosted a group in his Washington office. According to federal prosecutors, this was no ordinary meeting.
The sweeping corruption indictment alleges Egyptian military officials and Mr Hana were present. The businessman was a friend of Nadine Menendez. She was then Nadine Arslanian, and she had just started dating the senator.
The charging documents say she and Mr Hana arranged the meeting. It included discussions about foreign military financing to Egypt.
It did not include staff from Senator Menendez's office or the foreign relations committee.
Two months later, the senator and his girlfriend allegedly met with Mr Hana again.
According to prosecutors, that same day the senator asked the US State Department for some information. It wasn't classified but was highly sensitive due to security concerns.
He wanted to know the number and nationality of people serving at the US embassy in Egypt's capital, Cairo.
The next day, Senator Menendez allegedly texted the information to Ms Arslanian, who then forwarded it on to Mr Hana, who sent it to an Egyptian government official.
The same month, after dinner at a high-end restaurant with Senator Menendez, Mr Hana allegedly texted another Egyptian official with some more "non-public information".
This time, it was that a ban on sending small arms and ammunition to Egypt had been lifted. "That means sales can begin. That will include sniper rifles among other articles," said one of the texts.
The players
Bob Menendez, the senior US senator from New Jersey, is a lawyer who was elected to the seat in 2006.
He is perhaps best known in Australia as a prominent supporter of the AUKUS military alliance between Australia, the US and the UK.
He and Nadine Menendez married in October 2020. He had proposed with a performance of a song from The Greatest Showman outside the Taj Mahal while the couple were holidaying in India.
According to prosecutors, she was unemployed before she met Senator Menendez in a pancake restaurant and began dating him in February 2018.
For years beforehand, she'd been friends with the businessman Wael Hana, who operated a halal certification company.
Jose Uribe, a business associate of Mr Hana's, worked in trucking and insurance after previously being convicted of fraud and having his insurance broker's licence revoked.
He's accused of giving Ms Menendez a Mercedes-Benz convertible, in exchange for her husband's efforts to influence a criminal insurance fraud investigation targeting one of Mr Uribe's associates.
Ms Menendez later allegedly texted her husband: "Congratulations mon amour de la vie, we are the proud owners of a 2019 Mercedes"
The fifth defendant, Fred Daibes, is a real estate developer and long-time fundraiser for Senator Menendez.
Prosecutors say Senator Menendez agreed to try to influence a pending federal prosecution of Mr Daibes, including by recommending the US president nominate a candidate for US attorney that Senator Menendez believed could be influenced.
The 'corrupt agreement'
Prosecutors allege Nadine Arslanian and Wael Hana worked for years to introduce Egyptian military and intelligence officials to the senator, in order to establish "a corrupt agreement".
It meant receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of bribes in exchange for "acts and breaches of duty" to benefit the government of Egypt and Mr Hana himself, and others.
The first alleged bribe was a 2018 promise to put Ms Arslanian on the payroll of Mr Hana's company in a "low- or no-show" job.
In exchange, the couple allegedly promised Senator Menendez would use his authority to facilitate military sales and financing to Egypt.
The alleged meeting in Senator Menendez's Senate office occurred a few months later.
Around the same time, Ms Arslanian allegedly passed on a request from an Egyptian official. The official wanted Senator Menendez's help to draft and edit a letter lobbying US senators to support American aid to Egypt.
According to the charges, Senator Menendez "secretly edited and ghost-wrote the requested letter … seeking to convince other US senators to release a hold on $US300 million in aid to Egypt". He then sent it to his girlfriend from his personal email account, and then deleted it.
A meat monopoly pushes up prices
The following year, Mr Hana's company was granted an exclusive monopoly on the certification of US food exports to Eygpt. That's despite neither Mr Hana nor his company having any experience with halal certification, and the company making "little to no revenue" between 2018 and early 2019, according to the indictment.
"The monopoly … advanced the scheme by, among other things, providing a revenue stream from which Wael Hanna could make good on the bribe payments he had promised," the indictment said.
"The monopoly also resulted in increased costs for various US meat suppliers and others."
After the Department of Agriculture raised concerns about the monopoly with the Egyptian government, Senator Menendez allegedly called a high-level official to insist the department drop its opposition.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-23/bob-menendez-nadine-egypt-bribery-allegations/102893042
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21 September, 2023
‘Society Must Be Rooted in the Truth’: DeSantis Unveils Religious Liberty Agenda
As president of the United States, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will rely on God, empower parents, protect religious liberty, and stand up to the government and corporate forces waging a war on Christians, the governor told the 2023 Pray Vote Stand Summit on Friday night.
“I don’t know how you could be a leader without having faith in God,” the 46th governor of Florida told the audience of conservative Christian leaders. It is “faith in God that gives you the strength to stand firm against the lies, against the deceit, against the opposition.”
“People ask me, ‘How do you become a good leader?’ Well, one of the first things you need to do is put on the full armor of God,” DeSantis told a capacity crowd inside Washington, D.C.’s Omni Shoreham hotel.
Personal suffering brought him to rely on divine providence. After the candidate announced that doctors had diagnosed his wife, Casey DeSantis, with cancer in October 2021, “we received prayers from people all across the United States, and we were able to witness firsthand the power of prayer as that lifted her spirits and put her on the road to a full and complete recovery,” said DeSantis. “So, thank you.”
The governor said specialists designated Florida’s first lady cancer-free last May.
Prayer has become increasingly important because “we do have a spiritual decline in this country,” said DeSantis. Democrat-dominated states such as California imposed lockdowns in the name of fighting COVID-19 that closed churches and synagogues but left liquor stores and strip clubs open. Deaths of despair skyrocketed, as more than 100,000 Americans overdosed in a combination of open borders, lax drug enforcement, and isolation.
Rather than crack down on illegal border crossings, which broke historical records under President Joe Biden, “we see weaponized government going after parents who are going to a school board meeting or faith leaders who are engaging in pro-life activism.”
“We see the sense of becoming unmoored from our traditions, faith, and even common sense itself,” DeSantis continued. “Attempts have been made to wipe our Judeo-Christian religious symbols from our national heritage and national culture” because liberal bureaucrats do not like competing narratives.
“They want political leftism to be the established religion of this country,” he said. “The minute you try to bring [a Christian worldview] outside of that Sunday morning context, then the elites in our society are going to drop the hammer.”
But during this time of national decline, Americans must “be able to live their faith in all aspects of their life, not just on Sunday morning” because “reviving the spirit of America is essential to helping reverse America’s decline. And this revival is going to begin in our religious institutions.”
Religious liberty has won in recent Supreme Court cases involving coach Joe Kennedy’s right to pray in public and the right of the Christian-owned firm 303 Creative to refrain from designing websites that violate the owner’s Christian view of marriage, he said. But “the fact that that even had to go to the U.S. Supreme Court shows us that religious liberty is not flourishing the way it should.”
“Your right to practice your faith is not something that’s given to you and simply tolerated by political elites. It is something that is endowed to you by the hand of Almighty God,” said DeSantis. “We must win the fight to restore religious freedom as the Founding Fathers of this country intended.”
DeSantis, the most significant challenger to former President Donald Trump in the polls, vowed to restore religious freedom through an ambitious agenda that mirrors his actions in Florida, which “stood strong as a citadel of freedom and a refuge of sanity.” He promised to name Supreme Court nominees who reflect the jurisprudence of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito Jr., “the two greatest justices on the court.”
“We are going to tear up all government regulations that force groups to choose between government funding and their faith. Instead, we’re going to actively incorporate the faith community into our administration,” he said. He touted the Hope Florida program, started by his wife, Casey, that connects disabled people with jobs—a program he said had taken “6,200 mostly poor women who are trying to raise children off of government assistance entirely.”
DeSantis vowed to instate “universal school choice,” to end discrimination against religious schools and faith-based institutions in public funding, to repeal a federal law that bans clergy from endorsing candidates in elections, and to end the judicial punishment and persecution of people who put their Christian views into practice. Instead of divisive equity programs, “we’re going to create divisions of conscience and religious freedom in the departments of Education, Labor, and [Health and Human Services] to protect religious liberty across all agencies of government,” he said.
“My Department of Justice will investigate and prosecute attacks on faith-based pregnancy crisis centers and pro-life activists, which the Biden administration is currently ignoring,” he said. His administration will begin “quickly dismissing these meritless lawsuits” and hold those who initiated them accountable. “We have also stood up to protect the culture of life by enacting the strongest pro-life protections in the modern history of Florida: The Heartbeat Protection Act.”
The crowd responded most heartily to DeSantis when he took on the transgender political agenda. DeSantis took pride in outlawing “the gruesome practice of giving minors puberty blockers and gender surgeries,” he said. “It is mutilation. It is wrong, and it has no place in a free and just society.”
DeSantis won a sustained standing ovation when he promised “to stand up to the biggest, baddest companies, like Disney,” he said. “We are not going to let these big companies run roughshod over the education of our children,” and “Republicans out there who side with companies like Disney are wrong.”
He added that he will clarify “whenever sex and gender appear in a government document, we refer to the only two sexes that actually exist.”
“We are also the first state to prevent teachers from forcing students to identify their pronouns. We’re not doing the pronoun Olympics in the state of Florida,” he quipped. “We have ensured that our bathrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms are safe places for our girls and for our women.”
Through a comprehensive attack on each facet of intersectionality, DeSantis promised to “leave the woke mind virus in the dustbin of history where it belongs, once and for all.”
DeSantis, who won a double-digit reelection in the state with America’s third-largest Jewish population, said he governed as “the nation’s most pro-Israel governor,” opening trade missions with Israel and opposing the boycott, divestment, sanctions movement. “America must always stand with the Jewish people,” DeSantis said.
“We led with purpose. We led with conviction. And we delivered unprecedented results,” he said. “What we’ve shown in Florida is that there’s a hunger for truth. People see the deceit that’s out there. They see lies told by the media and the Left. They know that we need to restore sanity to this society once and for all.”
“We cannot fly the white flag of surrender into the face of the hostile forces that are doing everything they can to upend our way of life. We must stand firm for the truth. We must fight back. And we must win in 2024,” he said.
“I will get the job done,” DeSantis vowed. “And with God’s help as your president, I will not let you down.”
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Study Reveals Children’s Mental Health Deteriorated After Taking Puberty Blockers
The majority of children on puberty blockers experienced fluctuations in their mental health, including one-third who experienced negative impacts, according to a study reviewed by BBC.
According to the outlet, the original 2021 study of 44 children who all took puberty blockers for a year or more found “no mental health impact,” reportedly. Now, a re-analysis of the data suggests that 34 percent of the children saw their mental health deteriorate while 29 percent saw improvements.
Reportedly, the authors of the new study have welcomed the new evidence. Though, the new study has not appeared in a peer-reviewed journal yet. The authors claimed that “they felt there was an urgency in getting the information into the public domain,” (via BBC):
In 2011, a team from the Tavistock's Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) - England's only NHS specialist gender clinic for children - and University College London Hospitals (UCLH) embarked on what became known as the early intervention study.
They enrolled 44 children, aged between 12 and 15, over the following three years. The study looked at the impact taking puberty blockers - medicines used to postpone puberty in children - was having. It resulted in the age at which puberty blockers could be offered on the NHS being lowered.
When the landmark study's results were published in 2021, it revealed blockers brought "no changes in psychological function" to those taking them.
[...]
Prof Susan McPherson, from the University of Essex, and David Freedman, a retired social scientist, have since re-analysed the data. They instead looked at the individual trajectories of each of the young people in the early intervention study.
They found, after 12 months of puberty blocker injections - 34% of the children had reliably deteriorated, 29% had reliably improved, and 37% showed no change, according to their self-reported answers.
The proportions were a little lower in the parents' scores, but in three quarters of the cases, there was broad agreement between parents and their children.
Last year, Townhall covered how England’s NHS warned that most transgender children could be experiencing a “transient phase” they will eventually grow out of. This came after the NHS announced that it would shutter its only dedicated gender identity clinic for children, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in response to recommendations from an “expert review.” The review criticized the clinic’s long waiting lists and “raised concerns over a lack of consensus about how the health service should assess, diagnose and treat young people seeking gender services,” Reuters noted.
Daily Mail reported that at least 15 children under the age of 4 years old were referred to the Tavistock clinic to undergo “gender-affirming” care, which can include hormone therapy treatments, puberty blockers and sex reassignment surgery. In total, over 5,000 children were referred to the controversial clinic in the past two years. Only half of the referrals were for children aged 15-plus.
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Like other ‘antiracist’ activists, Ibram X. Kendi proves he’s only in it for himself
The real measure of an individual’s character isn’t what he portrays to the public but how he treats people in private. Truly righteous people treat others with respect and dignity when there is no one else around and no social credit to be earned for doing the right thing.
This distinction matters — especially for people who’ve made a career lecturing others on the appropriate way to treat people, especially those with perceived less power in society.
But when no one was looking and nothing was to be gained, it seems Ibram X. Kendi used his power and privilege as the director of a think tank to exploit and mistreat the people who worked underneath him as if they were people who are beneath him.
Amid confirmation of layoffs being made at Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research, former and current faculty have spoked out about the mismanagement, “exploitation” and enrichment of Kendi.
“There are a number of ways it got to this point, it started very early on when the university decided to create a center that rested in the hands of one human being, an individual given millions of dollars and so much authority,” stated Spencer Piston, BU political science professor.
Former assistant director of narrative at the center and a BU associate professor of sociology and African American & Black Diaspora Studies, Saida Grundy, also described a lack of structure, leading to her working additional hours that were unreasonable, especially for the pay she was receiving.
“It became very clear after I started that this was exploitative and other faculty experienced the same and worse,” Grundy lamented.
With tens of millions of dollars flowing in from major donors shortly after the center’s founding in 2020 from Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, the Rockefeller Foundation and biotech company Vertex, Grundy also saw the missed opportunity to directly help black students at Boston University.
“Those donations could have been going to benefit black students.”
Grundy is correct that much of the donation money could have been utilized in objectively more helpful ways to serve the people Kendi claimed to be advocating for. But the line between rhetoric and action was a line that Kendi never had any intentions of crossing.
Kendi used the dogma of antiracism to project a new moral standard at a time when many Americans momentarily questioned their behavior and culpability.
As he demanded that everyone should check their privilege and feel socially accountable for the exploitation of people, he was simultaneously exploiting the emotions of a nation to solidify his nobility status amongst the upper class in academia.
Kendi’s boutique moral philosophy on historical events and human interaction has only made him notable amongst the upper class.
Those elites declare racial enlightenment over the naïve majority who prefer to treat people like they’d want to be treated.
The antiracism think tank operated more like an antiracism piggybank with only one man listed as its financial beneficiary.
Kendi’s interest have become clearer as time has gone on: His “research center” was for the benefit of one black person, not black people.
Remember the $90 million windfall Patrisse Cullors and the Black Lives Matter organization scored and their frivolous spending habits with donation money, buying mansions and funneling cash to board and family members?
Activist Shaun King has also repeatedly been accused of raising money for recipients and causes that never saw it.
This is a similarly disappointing realization after tens of millions of dollars have been placed in the hands of an advocate who has shown little regard to produce a return for his bold aspirations.
Kendi had systemic control over his own research center yet used his position to take advantage of the people whom he was leading and continued to reap the academic clout that legitimizes his profiting in over $32,000 a speech.
Kendi suggests that people should become more race-conscious to be better anti-racists, but I believe it’s more important to be elitist conscious.
We need to be aware of the behavioral patterns and condescending rhetoric of the people who think they know better than us about everything.
If we were all good anti-elitists, we’d ignore the utopian rhetoric of social progressives and anti-racists and focus on their behavior.
This readjustment would help us quickly realize that race is a tool to distract us from noticing they are getting rich from dividing us into categories of human characteristics.
The only remedy to moral elitism is moral anti-elitism: This is how we have an anti-elitist society.
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Guards with assault rifles hired to protect Philly cheesesteak joint
A Philadelphia cheesesteak restaurant has reopened for business — now with assault rifle-carrying guards because of violent crime plaguing the City of Brotherly Love.
A video from the reopening of Jim’s West Steaks & Hoagies in West Philadelphia on Sunday shows customers lining up to order sandwiches under the watchful eye of heavily armed security guards.
“The violence has spiked,” co-owner Cortez Johnson told WPVI of the city that has seen a surge in murders, many in an area close to the newly reopened food spot.
“You want people to feel safe and be safe. So when they come out and eat, they don’t have to worry about no type of harm,” Johnson said.
The gun-toting security guards will stand vigil outside the eatery during business hours from Thursday to Sunday each week, according to WPVI.
“Our lines are down the block, so while you’re standing here in line, connecting with other people you may not know, we have security right here just to keep you guys safe,” Saul Landers, the chief financial officer of Jim’s West, told the outlet.
“If you want to secure your business and you want to make sure everyone is safe, you have to spend that extra money,” he added.
Kevon Darden, the owner of Presidential Protection Services, said those working security at the beloved food joint all have a “military, police and law enforcement background.”
“It’s not just myself, it’s usually other agents who are sworn and certified by the state of Pennsylvania to do security work when they’re off duty,” he told WPVI.
Some customers voiced their support for having heavily armed guards on the lookout.
“Safety and good food is always a plus,” Nitah Dunham told the outlet.
Mario Maiale said he’s “not a big fan of guns, but I get it. “If it deters it [crime], I can’t complain,” he said.
But another customer, William King, said he was worried about the optics in the city, where a nearby gas station also made headlines for hiring AR-15-toting guards. “It’s a little overkill. Even if you have an armed guard, OK. But, walking around with a machine gun, it’s not family-friendly,” he added.
In 2015, the eatery was targeted by armed robbers who made off with $215 in cash stolen from the register and customers, the Philly Voice reported. No injuries were reported.
The business recently reopened after being closed since 2019.
Philly’s famous cheesesteak joints have sometimes been the scene of violent disputes among customers.
In 2021, a football argument between a Giants fan and an Eagles fan who were waiting at Pat’s King of Steaks escalated into a deadly shooting.
https://nypost.com/2023/09/18/armed-security-guards-patrol-philly-cheesesteak-shop/
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20 September, 2023
Left-Right divide no longer relevant in modern politics?
A very good essay below which sets out how policy preferences change over time. The changes can indeed seem rather surprising.
What the author overlooks is that changing times require changing policies. A policy that seems right in one context may seem wrong in another. Change is always ongoing so policies have to cope with that and may need to change too
Because policies change so much, the author sees no continuity. He says a policy simply cannot reliably be described as Right or Left. There is no consisteny over time in the policies of our major political groups.
He is however looking in the wrong place for consistency. Consistency can be found only at the psychological level -- at the level of basic motivations. The "Right" will always be cautious and the "Left" will always favour feelgood ideas. And those two can very easily be in conflict.
The author gives as an example Trump's support for tariffs. That did indeed make some conservatives' head spin. It was a major departure from something dear to the hearts of most conservatives: free trade.
But Trump's respose to free trade arrangements was a cautious one. He was was acutely aware that by the time of his Presidency, free trade had become socially disruptive and he wanted to stop that disruption. He was cautious about how it was impacting the lives of many Americans and wanted to call a halt to the disruptions concerned. He felt that free trade had gone too far.
He was precisely NOT subservient to prevailing conservative policies. He saw the need to call a halt to something that had got out of hand. He saw that the prevailing circumstances in the world called for a new approach if Americans were to be looked after.
So he put forward a new policy that had very old and basic underpinnings. His cautious values had not changed, only the application of them to changing times. Trump was perfectly consistent in his love of America and its people
You’ve probably heard Donald Trump described as “right-wing” or “far-right” even. But what does this actually mean?
It turns out very little, given the former US president advocates policies that only a few years ago were considered “left-wing”, making a mockery of the idea that some timeless unidimensional spectrum informs how we should understand politics.
It’s really all just name-calling nonsense, as US politics demonstrates. Trump is in favour of higher tariffs on imports and a foreign policy anchored in isolationism, which were considered left-wing positions during the presidency of Republican George W. Bush less than two decades ago.
On the other side of the divide, President Joe Biden’s administration is in favour of empowering government agencies to censor “misinformation”, a position diametrically opposed to the anti-censorship stance of Democrats a generation or two ago.
For most of the 20th century it was “the right” in favour of political censorship.
In the US, as in Australia and throughout the world, the left-right dichotomy has become a divisive delusion, a legacy going back to who sat where in the National Assembly during the 18th-century French Revolution that has no relevance to the complexity of modern political life.
Modern political parties promote a hodgepodge of policies that bear little relationship to each other. Why, for example, should someone who supports the voice or abortion necessarily be in favour of higher taxes or using the military to “spread democracy” abroad?
What individual political leaders advocate at any given time and place determine the left and right, far more than any underlying ideology.
Lockdowns during the pandemic, for instance, became identified with left-wing politics in the US purely because Trump at one point opposed them – even though socialist governments in Mexico and Sweden roundly rejected them. “Ideologies do not define tribes, tribes define ideologies; ideology is not about what (worldviews), it is about who (groups); there is no liberalism and conservatism, but liberals and conservatives,” write Hyrum and Verlam Lewis, two American politician science academics (and brothers), in a provocative new book, The Myth of Left and Right.
We are social creatures who tend to feel strongly about one particular aspect of a political party’s platform, and then feel obliged to support the rest of it. Yet there is far more disagreement within political parties than between them.
“Why do we refer to Milton Friedman (a Jewish, pro-capitalist pacifist) and Adolf Hitler (an anti-Semitic, anti-capitalist, militarist) as right-wing when they had opposite policy views on everything?” the authors ask.
Of course, tribalism is often determined by social background and governs most political interaction. Julian Assange is widely perceived as left-wing in Australia, but right-wing in the US, simply because he infuriated the Democratic Party in the US by releasing its embarrassing private emails before the 2016 election.
Members of the two warring tribes like to tell themselves stories to justify their positions: leftists advocate for “change” and “progress”, while those on the right apparently “conserve”.
So why, then, do conservatives support capitalism, the most intrinsically revolutionary economic system ever devised?
Meanwhile, the supposedly pro-change left has for decades fought globalisation to maintain national and indigenous cultures.
The “left” is also for bigger government (except in the US for issues relating to policing and illicit drug regulation).
Why were Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton – Democrats allegedly in favour of bigger government – the most fiscally conservative presidents in half a century? Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan, a champion of limited government, increased US debt and deficits more than any other administration outside war time.
As for religion, for much of the 19th and 20th centuries, Christian socialism was the predominant combination; the somewhat bizarre relationship between faith and free-market ideology developing much later.
Private banking, once the enemy of left-wing parties everywhere for a multitude of philosophical reasons, is now far more comfortable with parties of the left. Democrats in the US get far more donations from Wall Street, while the Labor Party has been the best friend to Australia’s funds management industry.
Italy’s “far-right” Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, was recently attacked by mainstream media outlets for proposing a tax on bank super profits, something Ben Chifley (one of Australia’s most left-wing leaders) would have been proud of.
Cynicism about mandatory vaccination was more common among those who considered themselves left-wing until Covid-19, when it became a “right-wing issue” across much of the West.
Left-wing China, meanwhile, was one of the few nations not to mandate Covid vaccines. Maybe Xi Jinping is right-wing?
The left-right dichotomy serves two purposes. First, it enables many of us to feel righteous and principled – even though the vast bulk of political participants are really tribal lemmings without any real beliefs except, perhaps, for personal career advancement.
Second, it provides a simplistic framework to dismiss people we don’t like. Because the bulk of those in the media and academia now consider themselves “left-wing”, one almost never sees individuals described that way. By contrast, the pool of alleged “right-wingers” has exploded.
Elon Musk, who openly supported the Democrats, is now “right-wing” because he wasn’t enthusiastic about the war in Ukraine, which is currently a “left-wing” cause. The top US podcaster, Joe Rogan, who openly supported Bernie Sanders, is now regarded as “right-wing” because he questions compulsory Covid-19 vaccination.
Germaine Greer has also been called “right-wing” for suggesting trans women aren’t real women. In a similar vein, a powerful essay by John Pilger, published last month about Western propaganda, could just as easily have been written by Tucker Carlson.
But Pilger remains firmly associated with the “left wing” because he’s in the “right” tribe, while Carlson is “right-wing” because he’s in the “wrong” tribe.
If the term “right-winger” has any meaning at all, it appears to be one that dissents from whatever official orthodoxy prevails at the time for any given policy.
Whatever, the terms are highly divisive and it’s time to move on from this meaningless division. Individuals have complex views and they should be treated on their merit.
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Biden's relationship with his AG Merrick Garland is now in 'DEEP FREEZE' because White House 'thinks tough probes into Hunter and classified documents are unfair'
Hoist with his own petard
Joe Biden's relationship with his attorney general, Merrick Garland, is so icy it is 'in the deep freeze', according to a report on Saturday.
Biden and his aides are infuriated by Garland's decision to appoint special counsels to investigate both Biden's handling of classified documents, and his son Hunter's business affairs. They told The Wall Street Journal that Garland was seen as going too far in his effort to appear independent from Biden, who appointed him.
But Garland's aides told the paper that the widely-respected, low-key official was simply trying to stop any suspicion that Biden was influencing his decisions.
Biden, 80, stressed repeatedly in his hiring of Garland, 70, that he was choosing someone with integrity and independence.
Determined to differentiate himself from Donald Trump, who repeatedly lent on his two attorney generals - Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, Biden vowed that he would not interfere in Garland's work.
'The past four years we've had a president who's made his contempt for our democracy, our Constitution, the rule of law, clear in everything he has done,' said Biden in January 2021, naming his Cabinet as president-elect.
'More than anything, we need to restore the honor, the integrity, the independence of the Department of Justice that's been so badly damaged.'
As he ushered Garland onto the stage, he told him: 'You don't work for me.'
Yet now that very independence is proving problematic, sources told the paper.
Biden's aides noted that prosecutors have already closed their investigation into former vice president Mike Pence's handling of classified documents, after papers were found at his Indiana home.
Pence's papers were found in the same month that documents were located at Biden's Delaware home: both Biden and Pence handed over the documents to the authorities, and declared the discovery themselves - unlike Trump.
But Biden's case has now been referred to a special counsel, the aides pointed out.
And a lawyer for Hunter Biden - who on Thursday was federally indicted on charges of lying about his drug use on a gun permit - accused Garland of being biased against the Bidens.
The lawyer said the decisions to appoint a special counsel and indict Hunter, after he had agreed to a plea deal, showed 'partisan interference in this process.'
Some Biden aides felt that Garland should have done more in response to an IRS whistleblower, Gary Shapley, who claimed publicly that the Justice Department was interfering in an investigation into Hunter Biden's business and tax affairs.
Biden's aides believed Shapley's approach to Republican members of Congress, telling them he had concerns, was improper leaking of information.
Garland worked as a senior official at the Justice Department under Bill Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno, who angered Clinton by launching an investigation that ultimately led to the revelations of his affair with Monica Lewinsky.
'Merrick comes from exactly the same school,' said a former department official who worked with both Reno and Garland.
'They both believe very strongly in the independent and nonpolitical nature of the department, which is good for the department, but not always so good for the attorney general's relationship with the president.'
Barack Obama, conversely, was criticized for being too close to his attorney general, Eric Holder.
Trump, however, was famously combative with his, publicly criticizing them and weighing in on their decisions.
'Attorneys general should be sympathetic to the goals of the administration but shouldn't be too close personally to the president,' said Bill Barr, Trump's last attorney general.
And Barr told The Wall Street Journal it was a thankless task.
'There's no escaping,' he said. 'The attorney general has to own these decisions in high-profile cases. He can't say, 'Well, I just left it up to someone else.'
Garland's spokesman declined to comment.
White House spokeswoman Olivia Dalton said Biden appointed Garland 'because of his decades of fidelity to the rule of law consistent with his commitment when he ran for president to restore the independence of the Justice Department, free from political interference.'
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NYC Council advances bid that could yank monuments honoring Washington, Jefferson, Columbus
New York’s City Council — which just passed a budget that’s already been deemed a flop — is now spending some of its time advancing a plan that could kill off monuments honoring figures such as George Washington.
The Democratic-led council’s Cultural Affairs Committee is set to hold a public hearing Tuesday on a proposal to yank artworks from city property dedicated to historical figures such as George Washington, Peter Stuyvesant and Christopher Columbus because of their controversial pasts.
But critics immediately branded the effort as cancel culture run amok.
“Columbus was a migrant!’’ fumed Angelo Vivolo, president of the Columbus Heritage Coalition.
Vivolo vowed to fight any attempt to remove monuments of the famous Italian explorer from city parkland — including the most recognizable statue at Columbus Circle.
Among the council’s usual major responsibilities is passing a budget.
The lawmakers approved a spending plan at the end of June, but it’s already a disaster — with Mayor Eric Adams ordering city agency cuts because it’s potentially out of balance to the tune of billions of dollars thanks to the migrant crisis, critics note.
The 51-member council also oversees the operation of city agencies and passing of local regulations and laws that span everything from outdoor dining to zoning matters.
But now, a main focus is cancelling historical figures.
And it’s not an idle threat.
A statue of Thomas Jefferson, the drafter of the Declaration of Independence and America’s third president, was removed from City Hall because he was a slaveholder.
The Cultural Affairs Committee’s upcoming hearing involves legislation that would require the city’s Public Design Commission to publish a plan to remove works of art on Big Apple property “that depict a person who owned enslaved persons or directly benefited economically from slavery, or who participated in systemic crimes against indigenous peoples or other crimes against humanity.”
If the commission determines that a statue or monument honors a person who committed crimes against humanity but votes not to remove the artwork, it would require the city to install an “explanatory plaque” about the misdeeds of the historical figure, according to the bill authored by Brooklyn Council Sany Nurse and co-sponsored by 16 other lawmakers.
“This bill would also require the Department of Transportation to consult with the Department of Education to install plaques on sidewalks or other public space adjacent to schools that are named after a person that fits the criteria,” Nurse said in a memo explaining the bill.
There are more than a half-dozen monuments on city property honoring slave-holder Washington, also America’s first president and revolutionary hero — including in Washington Square Park and Union Square Park.
Peter Stuyvesant, a Dutch governor, early New York settler and a slaveholder, has a statue in Stuyvesant Park, and prestigious Stuyvesant High School is named after him.
Other famous slaveholders who have schools in the city named after them include John Jay (CUNY’s John Jay College) and Dewitt Clinton (Dewitt Clinton HS).
Columbus, while lauded for discovering the new world, has been targeted for elimination from the public square for brutalizing native populations during his travels, and monuments of him have been taken down elsewhere.
“This is little more than an attempt by the radical left to rewrite our nation’s history,” said Joann Ariola (R-Queens). “These men all had an enormous impact on this country, and these statues commemorating their achievements have been in place for decades.
“The radical left has been trying to reframe our nation as one born from evil, and it is time we put our foot down and say enough is enough,” she said. “The Founding Fathers and the others who worked so hard to establish this great country should be celebrated, not eliminated from memory.”
Council Republican Minority Leader Joe Borelli, who represents parts of Staten Island with the largest Italian-American and pro-Columbus population, said his left-wing Democratic colleagues are turning the council into a punchline.
“How original. The Council is good for a statue-banning committee every year or so, second only to our annual ‘cars are bad’ hearing,” Borelli said.
“By now, they get the same attention as the World Series of obscure Canadian winter sports on ESPN Ocho. Even the MyPillow guy wouldn’t buy ads during the broadcast,” he quipped.
Former city Mayor de Blasio also created a panel while in office to look at monuments honoring famous figures to see if any should be removed for a history of inhumane actions.
But the 18-member panel of experts whose commissioning led to protests ended up focusing on just four public monuments — with controversial 1800s gynecologist Dr. J. Marion Sims being the lone figure to get the boot.
“I thought this was behind us,” Vivolo said. “This woke group wants to cancel our culture.
“I’m here for the fight. The Italian-American community will come out strongly against this move to ban Columbus, a symbol of Italian-American accomplishment. But it’s not just Columbus. You’re going against Washington, Jefferson. You’re going against the people who contributed greatly to America,” he said.
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Binary Australia campaigner Kirralie Smith has AVO against her withdrawn
How absurd can you get? This pleasant country lady was held to be a physical threat because she spoke out about transgenders in sport. The only thing she would be likely to threaten anybodyn with would be an offering of pumpkin scones. "apprehended violence" indeed. Another case where the law is an ass
A high-profile campaigner against transgender women competing in female sports is claiming victory after a restraining order against her was withdrawn in court.
Police had taken out an apprehended violence order out against Kirralie Smith, 52, to protect an amateur NSW soccer player at the centre of a transgender row.
The player, who towered over most players, was the league's leading goal scorer and a clip of them sending a rival player flying in a tackle went viral earlier this year.
The director of Binary Australia led a protest campaign which bombarded soccer bosses with more than 12,000 emails demanding Football NSW take action.
Ms Smith's campaign also included a petition entitled: 'Keep blokes out of women’s sport!'
Police initially applied for the AVO in April and served it to Ms Smith at her home in Mt George, 200km north-east of Newcastle, NSW.
It prevented her from discussing or approaching the player, and also covered electronic harassment of the trans activist player, who lives more than 300km away.
But when the case returned to Burwood Local Court in Sydney on Monday, police withdrew their application and the AVO was dismissed.
'We won!!!!!!' Ms Smith posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. 'The AVO was withdrawn!!!! 'It is not violence to defend women’s spaces or sport.'
The mother-of-three added: 'The police prosecutor simply withdrew the application - after wasting a lot of time and $.'
Ms Smith currently has one other AVO application against her, which is due back in Taree Local Court on October 10, and another previous AVO was withdrawn in April.
She added on Tuesday: 'The first win in this series of law fare against me is greatly encouraging. 'I still have an AVO application by another male player in a female team and two vilification complaints. I will stand firm and not shrink back. 'I will have this week off to celebrate and recover and be back soon!'
The decision comes as Ms Smith celebrated her birthday on Tuesday. 'I can’t stop smiling,' she said. 'What a gift for my birthday today. A win for female sport and freedom of speech.'
Ms Smith has been highly vocal around the participation of transwomen in women's sports and the risk of injury to female players.
She was backed by failed federal Liberal candidate Katherine Deves who has been a high profile critic of transgender athletes in women's sport.
Ms Smith angrily denied she was a threat to the player after the AVO was imposed and told Daily Mail Australia in May: 'I've never been violent in my life. 'I have a very long-standing knee injury. I'm not violent and not capable of violence.'
She added: 'It's important for women to be able to draw boundaries and speak freely about how males impact their spaces and services.' 'I will continue to speak truthfully about matters of biology and how they affect women and children in Australia.'
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19 September, 2023
"I'm a traditional wife who doesn't work or pay bills - I think all women should care for the home while their husbands work because equal marriages are unnatural and unhappy"
The woman below is of Arab origin and Arab societies are very traditional so her decisions are not so surprising in that context.
It does however happen elsewhere also. When I married my third wife I was already well-off so told her she could give up work and become a full-time wife and mother. She leapt at it. She is a very confident and capable person but had always thought that the traditional female role was a good one. She now looks after me in my old age
A woman who believes that equal relationships are 'not natural' has revealed that her husband gives her a percentage of his earnings every month so she doesn't have to work.
Linda Andrade, from California, appeared on a recent episode of Truly's Love Don't Judge to explain her lifestyle.
The 23-year-old proudly stated how she has 'never paid a bill in her life' before declaring that bills are 'irrelevant to her.'
Linda, who once dreamed of being a doctor, explained that while partner Ricky, 27, is raking in a six-figure salary she stays home to cook and clean.
The couple, who first met after Linda joined a gym where Ricky worked as a health coach, have been together for nearly eight years.
They tied the knot when Linda was just 19 and she quickly fell into the role of being a stay-at-home wife.
'He was making so much money that I didn't need to work and it was making more sense for me to stay home,' she said,
Ricky claimed that he makes more than $150,000 each month working as a real estate investor who also has investments in stocks and cryptocurrency.
He revealed that the couple 'have a traditional marriage' where he makes the money and Linda 'takes care of the home.'
The jet-setting couple has three homes - an apartment in Dubai, a condo in Orange County and a house in Las Vegas.
Linda, who was originally born in Jordan but relocated to the US when she was just two years old, said: 'I believe that modern relationships that do 50-50 are unhappy. It's not natural.
'I have never paid a bill in my life. I don't even know how to pay the mortgage... Bills are so irrelevant. Honestly, they're irrelevant to me.'
She continued: 'I personally love doing household chores because I love taking care of my husband...
'I spoil him, I cook him his favorite meals and I make sure the house is clean. I hire a maid for the cleaning for the most part.'
Linda said it had once been her dream to be a doctor 'but as of right now my focus is on my marriage.'
She continued: 'It does take a lot of trust in a relationship for you to give up your dreams and give up everything to take care of a man but I don't have any fears about that.'
In return, Ricky gives Linda a percentage of his earnings each month.
The social media star now regularly flaunts her wealth online where she has faced fierce criticism over the relationship dynamic and has been branded as a 'gold digger' and 'spoiled brat' who 'brings nothing to the table.'
The couple have faced a slew of hate including claims her husband is going to leave, cheat and abuse her.
She has also received questions about when she is going to 'stop spending her husband's money.'
But Linda insists that the pair met before Ricky had money and is 'not taking him for all he is worth.'
Linda has regularly hit back at the claims via her TikTok account - with one particular video asserting: 'When people say I'm dumb for relying on a man for my livelihood but they rely on a job for theirs?'
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Why don't the British boast about their country like Americans?
Phillip Watson
I think the British mentality can be summed up by this Sir Terry Pratchett quote from his book Night Watch
"Tom?’
'Yes, Clive?’
'Have you ever sung the national anthem?’
'Oh, lots of times, sir.’
'I don’t mean officially.’
'You mean just to show I’m patriotic? Good gods, no. That would be a rather odd thing to do,’ said the captain.
'And how about the flag?’
'Well, obviously I salute it every day, sir.’
'But you don’t wave it, at all?’ the major enquired.
'I think I waved a paper one a few times when I was a little boy. Patrician’s birthday or something. We stood in the streets as he rode by and we shouted “Hurrah!”’
'Never since then?’
'Well, NO, Clive,’ said the captain, looking embarrassed. 'I’d be very worried if I saw a man singing the national anthem and waving the flag, sir. It’s really a thing foreigners do.’
'Really? Why?’
'WE don’t need to show WE’RE patriotic, sir. I mean, this is Ankh-Morpork. We don’t have to make a big fuss about being the best, sir. We just KNOW.’"
British people are innately suspicious of tub thumping jingoism and cry your eyes out patriotism with lots of flag waving.
As seen above we feel it is rather vulgar.
https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-the-British-boast-about-their-country-like-Americans
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Donald Trump: I like the idea of a female running mate
I am rather besotted with Governor Noem so I really like this idea
Donald Trump has said he likes the idea of having a female running-mate for the election next year and will consider the governor of South Dakota, who has appeared on stage with him.
His remarks in a television interview on Sunday put fresh attention on Kristi Noem, whom Trump has described as a “warrior for American values”.
Noem’s allies cast her appearance beside Trump as an audition, showcasing the image of a potential Republican presidential ticket. Behind the stage, some supporters held “Trump-Noem 2024” signs. The Rapid City Journal said the governor teased the crowd with the idea. The newspaper reported that she said people had asked if Trump would name her, pausing before adding ”. . . the most popular and favourite governor”.
Trump’s team has deferred questions about his potential running-mate until after he has secured the nomination. Asked in a lengthy interview on the Sunday NBC show Meet the Press if he was leaning towards selecting a woman, he said: “I like the concept but we’re going to pick the best person. But I do like the concept, yes.”
He said Noem had been “a great governor” and “she gave me a very full-throated endorsement, a beautiful endorsement actually”. He added: “And you know, [South Dakota has] been a very good state for me. And certainly she’d be one of the people I’d consider, or for something else maybe.”
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Pitting modern secular beliefs against the entire Bible
That faith ledership should be by men only is made clear in both the Old and New Testaments. It's not a view common to all religions. Many pagan religions actually worshipped women. But it is a marker of the Judeo-Christan faith as recorded in the Bible.
So you either believe the Bible is right or not. If not, you are just a modern pagan, not a Christian. Christ himself was most energetic in preaching from the Old Testament so there is no doubt where the loyalties of his folowers should lie
There is no doubt that women can and do good works both within and outside the church and a division of labour between men and women is very common. Why must a faith-based division be condemned? The opposition is in fact religious: Pitting a Leftist equality religion against the religion of the Bible
The claim below that Bible-based Anglicans are obsolescent is the big joke. The Sydney diocese hosts around a third of the nation's Anglicans. They are thriving. It is the secularists who are obsolescent. As ever, the faith of the Bible is powerfully attractive to people. The secularists have nothing compared to it. The Sydney diocese is having the last laugh
One of the oddest, little-known contradictions in this country will be occurring in Christchurch St Laurence, on the fringes of the Sydney CBD, this weekend, quietly and with little fanfare.
The most powerful woman in the Australian Anglican Church, the Archbishop of Perth Kay Goldsworthy, will be preaching in the Sydney Diocese – a place where women are not allowed to be priests or lead congregations that contain men. Here, Goldsworthy can’t be an archbishop, a bishop or even just a priest once her plane’s wheels hit the tarmac in Sydney – she can only operate on the lowest rung of the clergy, as a deacon.
If she were to fly here when a bloke was being consecrated as bishop or inaugurated as archbishop, she could not take her rightful part alongside her male colleagues, but would sit in the pews. She can’t wear her funky purple episcopal robes, either.
It’s so weird, and wildly offensive to female clergy around the country. You are less, you are different, you must step back, here, you must submit to men.
A private protocol – of which I have obtained a copy - was drawn up to manage this situation after all bishops, including the females, were accidentally invited to the consecration of a male bishop in St Andrew’s Cathedral, Sydney, in 2014. Awkwardly, then Archbishop Glenn Davies needed to uninvite all the women.
Davies pointed out that these bishops must operate as deacons in Sydney, with an important caveat: they cannot contravene Sydney Diocese’s “understanding of the restrictions of the apostle in 1 Timothy 2:12.” This verse, reflective of the patriarchal culture of its time, reads: “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.”
Sydney Diocese is now operating under a kind of gender apartheid, where women operate under a different set of rules, and need to submit to men, and male authority, or be ostracised. Some have gone to be ordained elsewhere, and very many have left. It’s pure geographical absurdity.
A spokesman for Sydney Diocese advises me this protocol is still in place.
The Sydney diocese has fought long and hard, at great expense, in synods, courts and commissions for more than half a century, to stop women becoming priests. It has come to define it, and been their symbol of doctrinal purity, a source of internal pride if occasional public embarrassment.
When he was archbishop, Glenn Davies continued to hold the line against women priests. Like Peter Jensen before him, and Raffel after, he has been a leader in GAFCON – the Global Anglican Future Conference, which aims to counter the liberalising tendencies of church leaders who have accepted women as priests, same-sex marriage and been relaxed about divorce.
The Sydney diocese has actively promoted and supported “church planting” in other Anglican dioceses for nearly two decades – setting up churches in other parts of the country that are theoretically independent but closely aligned with their conservative ethos, thumbing their noses at the geographical differences they enforce for women, ignoring the protocols of the local bishop.
In those four decades, a lot of women, especially those of a modern, feminist bent, have left the church over this nonsense. Yes, I know there are women who comply with this doctrine of headship, who claim to thrive under its hierarchy, but most just think the whole thing is nuts.
Some church leaders try to shove it under the rug when visitors come by. But it matters; the Anglican church runs schools, aged care homes, counts three million odd Australians as members. There are many fine people there doing important work. As Keith Mason, KC, a retired judge who has struggled for the equality of men and women in the Diocese for many years told me: “The idea that you can be ‘separate but equal’ was a terrible and deceiving lie in South Africa. It doesn’t work for an Australian Church claiming to be modelled on the teachings of Jesus either.”
Did you know the Sydney synod – the parliament of the church – was sitting this week? No, nor did most people. Once it was front page news, now it’s barely reported on, barely discussed outside the church. Many people have, quite simply, forgotten that this is going on, that women are treated this way. This pure, distilled sexism once provoked outrage, now it is seen as absurd, archaic and inexplicable. Surely undervaluing and silencing women for decades, in both flamboyant and secretive ways, simply underwrites your own obsolescence.
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18 September, 2023
Post-Postmodern America, Meet Mao’s Cultural Revolution
By Victor Davis Hanson
When the progressive woke revolution took over traditional America, matters soon reached the level of the ridiculous.
Take the following examples of woke craziness and hypocrisy, perhaps last best witnessed during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution:
The Biden administration from its outset wished to neuter immigration law. It sought to alter radically the demography of the U.S. by stopping the border wall and allowing into the United States anyone who could walk across the southern border.
More than 7 million did just that. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden ignored the role of the Mexican cartels in causing nearly 100,000 annual American fentanyl deaths.
Then border states finally wised up.
They grasped that the entire open-borders, “new Democratic majority” left-wing braggadocio was predicated on its hypocritical architects staying as far away as possible from their new constituents.
So, cash-strapped border states started busing their illegal aliens to sanctuary blue-state jurisdictions.
Almost immediately, once magnanimous liberals—whether in Martha’s Vineyard, Chicago, or Manhattan—stopped virtue-signaling their support for open borders.
Instead, soon they went berserk over the influx.
So, now an embarrassed Biden administration still wishes illegal aliens to keep coming, but to stay far away from their advocates—by forcing them to remain in Texas.
That means the president has redefined the U.S. border. It rests now apparently north of Texas, as Biden cedes sovereignty to Mexico.
Pre-civilizational greens in California prefer blowing up dams to building them.
They couldn’t care less that their targeted reservoirs help store water in droughts, prevent flooding, enhance irrigation, offer recreation, and generate clean hydroelectric power.
Now an absurd green California is currently destroying four dams on the Klamath River. In adding insult to injury, it is paying the half-billion-dollar demolition cost in part through a water bond that state voters once thought would build new—not explode existing—dams.
The Biden administration is mandating new dates when electric vehicles will be all but mandatory.
To prove their current viability, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm led a performance-art EV caravan on a long road trip.
When she found insufficient charging stations to continue her media stunt, she sent a gas-powered car ahead to block open charging stations and deny them to other EVs ahead in line.
Only that way could Granholm ensure that her arriving energy-starved motorcade might find rare empty charger stalls.
In some California charging stations, diesel generators are needed to produce enough “clean” electricity to power the stalls.
The state has steadily dismantled many of its nuclear, oil, and coal power plants. It refuses to build new natural-gas generation plants.
Naturally, California’s heavily subsidized solar and wind plants now produce too much energy during the day and almost nothing at night.
So, the state now begs residents to charge their EVs only during the day. Then at night, Californians may soon be asked to plug them in again to transfer what is left in their batteries into the state grid.
Apparently only that way will there be enough expropriated “green” electricity for 41 million state residents after dark.
One of the loudest leftist voices to defund the police, and decriminalize violent crimes in the post-George Floyd era, was Shivanthi Sathanandan, the second vice chairwoman of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
She was recently not shy about defunding: “We are going to dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department. Say it with me. DISMANTLE.”
But recently the loud Sathanandan was a victim of the very crime wave she helped to spawn.
Last week, four armed thugs carjacked her automobile. They beat her up in front of her children at her own home, and sped off without fear of arrest.
The reaction of the arch police dismantler and decriminalizer on her road to Damascus?
The now-bruised and bleeding activist for the first time became livid that criminals had taken over her Minneapolis: “Look at my face. REMEMBER ME when you are thinking about supporting letting juveniles and young people out of custody to roam our streets instead of HOLDING THEM ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS.”
Andrea Smith was an ethnic studies professor at the University of California at Riverside. But now she has been forced out after getting caught lying that she was Native American.
Prior to her “outing,” she was well-known for damning “white women” (like herself) who opted to “become Indians” out of guilt, and (like her) for careerist advantage.
The Takeaway
The common theme of these absurdities is how contrary to human nature, impractical, and destructive utopian wokeism is, whether in matters of energy, race, crime, or illegal immigration.
There are two other characteristics of the woke revolution.
One, it depends solely on its advocates never having to experience firsthand any of the nonsense they inflict on others.
And two, dangerous zealots with titles before (and letters after) their names prove to be quite stupid—and dangerous.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/15/post-postmodern-america
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Federal Judge Again Declares DACA Program Unlawful
A federal judge in Texas on Wednesday declared the revised version of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program illegal.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen’s ruling reiterated that the Obama-era federal policy is unlawful and should have come from Congress. DACA provides hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children with a two-year renewable shield from deportation.
"The remaining provisions of the original injunction are to remain in place and are to be applicable to Final Rule DACA," Judge Hanen wrote.
The ruling blocks the federal government from accepting new DACA applications but maintains the program for existing recipients during the appeals process. The ruling does not mandate immediate action against current DACA beneficiaries.
Texas and eight other states have been actively opposing DACA. Their central argument is that the Obama administration exceeded its authority by creating DACA in 2012, bypassing Congress. They have contended that President Joe Biden also overstepped his authority when he renewed it in 2022, bypassing Congress.
The nine Republican-led states also asked the court to phase out the program over two years, calling the Biden administration's revised version "substantively unlawful" for the same reasons as the original Obama-era DACA Memorandum.
"The Court should declare it unlawful and unconstitutional, vacate it in its entirety, and permanently enjoin its implementation (with a prudent transition for existing DACA recipients),” their lawsuit, filed earlier this year, stated.
Around 800,000 individuals are believed to be recipients of DACA, with two-thirds of those enrolled in the program thought to be aged between 21 to 30, having lived and worked in the United States for most of their lives after illegally entering as young children.
The plaintiff states in the case also contend that they bear substantial costs, including hundreds of millions of dollars for health care and education, when immigrants are allowed to remain in the country without legal status.
In 2021, Judge Hanen, an appointee of President George W. Bush, declared the program illegal, citing its lack of compliance with required public notice and comment periods. This decision was upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022.
Attempting to address the judge's concerns, President Biden announced the renewal of the DACA program in August 2022, making it a federal regulation. It came into effect in October, subject to public comments in a formal rule-making process, replacing former President Barack Obama’s 2012 memo that initially established DACA.
At the time, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said the administration was "taking another step to do everything in our power to preserve and fortify DACA."
Mr. Mayorkas said that the United States has "been enriched" by the young people on the DACA program, referred to as "Dreamers," contending that they "have known no country other than the United States as their own."
The plaintiff states, meanwhile, argued that President Biden overstepped his constitutional authority by renewing DACA without getting approval from Congress.
Judge Hanen agreed, maintaining in his ruling on Wednesday that the revised version of DACA is unconstitutional and that the policy should come from Congress.
The judge’s ruling is expected to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The DACA program has been overseen for the last decade by a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memorandum that established it under President Obama who described the action as a "temporary, stopgap, measure."
The Trump administration's attempts to terminate DACA in 2017 were thwarted by the courts.
The nine states that filed the lawsuit are Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/federal-judge-again-declares-daca-program-unlawful-5491209
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My grandson might not remember our games, but does that matter?
Richard Glover
What’s your first memory? Mine is from when I’m five. I’m at a kindergarten in Hornsby and they have Cuisenaire Rods, plus there’s a jelly-bean reward system for any child who succeeds in using the Rods. They also have a large boat in the playground, just sitting there in the dirt, unsecured, as if abandoned by Sturt on his trip to find the inland sea. We kids love playing in it.
These are not even important memories. They are just first in the memory queue. I wished I’d picked something consequential.
Some people can recall a few things from when they were three or four. Rarely earlier. This, it seems to me, is a design fault when it comes to our species. The first few years determine who we are, yet we remember none of it.
These early years are also, generally, so full of fun. Why do we remember all the terrible years of adolescence in such forensic detail, but recall nothing of the joy of being a little kid?
I think about the rich life led by my grandson Pip. He is adored, and adorable. Strawberries, his favourite, are widely available, and at a good price. He lives in the era of Bluey. He has share rights in a good dog. He has a Nana who makes a particularly fine banana pancake. He has spectacular parents.
In truth, I’m a little envious. Why can’t we all live like two-year-olds?
I hope it will somehow become part of him, and his sense of how lovely he is.
When Pip feels a book has outlived his interest, he throws it to the floor. I believe he’s onto something. I’ve read a few recent British literary works that deserved exactly this sort of vigorous review, and yet I merely placed them back on the shelf with a defeated sigh.
Pip eats when hungry. Jocasta and I, involved as we are in a cult led by Michael Mosley, have nary a bite until noon, by which time Pip has already eaten his own body weight in banana pancakes. My point: it’s better being two.
Pip has great clothes, with pants and tops festooned with animals, mythical creatures and, most of all, diggers. Me? Not so much. I am constrained, by the rules of the adult world, to attend work in a shirt that’s plain white, plain blue or plain grey. I team this with a pair of grey pants.
My young friend understands the attraction of repeating an enjoyable activity. If it’s fun doing it once, why not do it again? And again. And again. And yet when I want to watch Steve Coogan’s Alan Partridge for the 27th time, there’s criticism from other family members, even though it’s no match for the 145 times Pip has already viewed Paw Patrol.
I laugh easily, but not as easily as Pip. He finds pretty much everything to be hilarious. Joy, with him, is so close to the surface. I wish it was still like that for me.
Why do we not remember these first years? Is there a way we could summon them up, through photos, anecdotes, or most of all, by assessing our own psychology and figuring out the role those years must have played?
In my case, I spent most of it in Port Moresby with Danota, the young Papua New Guinean woman who looked after me. From the evidence of my father’s photos, I know that she showered me with love in a way that other supposedly closer family members failed to do. We had fun together, I am sure. I know she saved me. She gave me my life. I’d just like to remember the details of how she did it.
Curiously, when we hit our teenage years, we seem to remember everything. For many people, 14 to 17 are the toughest times they ever have, and yet we remember every single thing. Why is 14-to-17 so privileged in human memory when it’s so likely to be difficult?
Again: design fault.
Meanwhile, Pip suggests another game of Paper Clips on Pa’s desk, a game of his own invention. We’ve played it a million times, but that just increases its allure.
Pip pours the paper clips from my jar, we slap each other’s hands in the battle to put them back in the jar, and I say: “that’s good, all good, they are back in the jar”, which is my main role in the game, at which point he again upends the jar, and it all starts again.
It’s true he won’t remember the game, or the delight I have for him as we play the game. How can he? Science says he won’t.
But I think about my experience with Danota. She made me, even if I can’t recall the details. Adult Pip will know nothing of this game – or our laughter as we battle for the paperclips - but I hope it will somehow become part of him, and his sense of how lovely he is.
I’m only a small part of the building of this boy – his parents are the chief architects - but my own story tells me that extra love matters, at whatever age it’s delivered.
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The Feelgood versus the rational
I have set out at some length here why Leftists tend to have ego problems. They have a great need for praise and admiration. So if an opportunity comes up for a Leftist to say or do something that will win him/her congratulations for being caring (etc.), he/she will grab that opportunity. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that. The problem arises when the feelgood policy has consequences that are destructive or dangerous. What if some action that at first seems praiseworthy turns out to do a lot of harm if you take that action?
A Leftists will not normally be deterred by that. His/her need for praise will cause him to close his eyes to the bad consequences down the track and keep advocating anything that sounds good. He needs the praise too much to give up the feelgood policy
But conservatives are not like that. They are cautious and want to avoid doing anything that will hurt people. So they will point to the future harms of the feelgood policy and will oppose it because of those harms. The conservative does not allow the feelgood nature of some policy to swamp all other considerations.
And Australia is at the mmoment gripped by a debate over a policy that feels good to most people but which could do real harm if implemented: The "Voice" debate.
Leftist feel all warm and righteous at advocating a special voice in Federal parliament for Aborigines. Aborigines as a group are in a hell of a mess in many ways so "doing something" for them has great appeal. It shows how much heart you have for their problems and may lead to better treatment of them by future governments.
But conservatives know their history and are quite appalled by the prospect of racial privileges for one particular group. If the 20th century taught us anything, it taught us the evils of racial favoritism. There can be no doubt that racial preferences are simply evil and provoke disharmony.
So conservatives are against the Voice on that and other grounds. And that makes them the enemies of the Leftist feelgood policy. So what do the Left do when thretened with the loss of their feelgood policy? Do they simply concede the point and desist from advocating something that could be very harmful? No way. They like ther feelgood policy too much to abandon it.
So what do they do? In good Leftist style they resort to abuse and lies. They go "ad hominem". They cannot answer the conservative arguents so they impugn the motives of conservatives who oppose the polcy. In the oldest bit of Leftist abuse in the book, they accuse conservatives of racism. They say that it is racism that lies behind opposition to the "voice". That they are are the one who are advocating something racist seems quite lost on them.
So they pretend tat it is white supremacists who are their opposition while they are the good and noble guys. It's a sad commentary on the ego needs that drive such irrationality but it is a classic bit of Leftist argumentation.
The toon below describes the mythical world that the Left have created around the "Voice". One of the many things that the Left are sedulously ignoring is that it is not only white conservatives in opposition but many Aborigines too. Around half of Aborigines seem to be opposed to the Voice and say so. How come they oppose something that is supposed to help them?
The only way the Left have of dealing with that puzzle is by ignoring the Aborigines concerned. The toon features some well-known Aborigines who oppose the Voice and shows them as canvassing for a "No" vote
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17 September, 2023
California Passes Bill Requiring Parents to Affirm Kids’ Gender ‘Transitions’
The California State Assembly passed a bill Friday that would require judges in child custody cases to consider whether a parent has affirmed a child’s “gender transition” by making “gender affirmation” an equal part of a child’s “health, safety, and welfare” under state law.
Democratic lawmakers’ bill, AB 957, passed the Assembly by a vote of 57-16 along party lines. The California Senate passed the bill Wednesday, 30-9, also along party lines.
Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is expected to sign the bill into law. Under it, parents who refuse to participate in transgenderism by pretending that their child is a different gender could be guilty of failing to provide for the “health, safety, and welfare” of their child—therefore losing custody to another parent or the state.
Assemblymember Lori Wilson, D-Suisun City, whose child identifies as transgender, wrote the bill and introduced it Feb. 14. State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, co-sponsored the measure.
The Daily Signal previously reported that Wiener amended the bill June 6, altering AB 957 from requiring a judge to consider whether a child experiencing gender dysphoria was “affirmed” by parents to making “gender affirmation,” an essential need of a child in California.
“Gender affirmation” isn’t defined or explained in AB 957 or any other California law, drawing concerns over interpretation.
Susannah Luthi, who covers California for The Washington Free Beacon, pointed out: “The bill makes no distinctions regarding the age of a child, how long a child has identified as transgender, or affirmation of social transition versus medical sex-change treatments.”
Greg Price, communications director for the State Freedom Caucus Network, reported that bill author Wilson had said: “Parents affirm their children. Typically, it happens when their gender identity matches their biological gender. But when it doesn’t, the affirmation starts to wane. … Our duty as parents is to affirm our children.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/08/california-passes-ab957/
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Nebraska Detransitioner Sues Medical Providers for Removing Her Breasts at 16
Detransitioner Luka Hein is suing the medical providers who surgically amputated her breasts at the age of 16 in 2018, “leaving her physically and psychologically scarred.”
“Proceeding straight to breast amputation in a depressed, anxiety-ridden, gender-confused adolescent, who was incapable of understanding the lasting consequences of her decision, constitutes negligence for which Defendants are jointly and severally liable,” Hein’s lawsuit states.
Hein, now 21, is one of a growing number of young women who are coming forward to sue the doctors and therapists who propelled them along the path toward surgical and hormonal transition. A detransitioner is someone who sought to change his or her gender through hormonal or surgical interventions and ultimately regretted the attempt and returned to living as his or her biological sex.
Hein’s lawsuit describes how she struggled through her parents’ divorce in her early teens, how she was groomed online by predatory adults, struggled dramatically with her mental health, and ultimately was put on testosterone for four years, causing disruptions in her endocrine system, heart damage, her voice to deepen, pain throughout her body, and “permanent dysregulation of her reproductive organs.”
Represented by the Pittsburgh-based nonprofit legal group Center for American Liberty, Hein is accusing her doctors of causing her physical pain and mental suffering, both past and future, heavy medical expenses, permanent impairment of her earning capacity, inconvenience and loss of enjoyment of life, and permanent scarring, injury, and disability.
“As a proximate result of the actions of the Defendants, and each of them, Luka’s breasts were surgically amputated, leaving her physically and psychologically scarred,” the lawsuit says. “If she has not also suffered the loss of her fertility, Luka has lost her ability to breastfeed, thereby depriving her of the maternal benefits of nursing.”
The filing continues: “Luka’s future children will be deprived of the natural bonding effects and nutritional benefits of breastfeeding.”
The suit names University of Nebraska Medical Center; Nebraska Medicine; Nahia J. Amoura, M.D.; Perry Johnson, M.D.; Stephan Barrientos, M.D.; and psychotherapist Megan Smith-Sallans. Nebraska Medicine declined to comment, and the rest of the medical professionals did not respond to requests for comment.
In July, 21-year-old Texas detransitioner Soren Aldaco filed a lawsuit alleging that her doctors behaved more like “ideologues” than medical professionals and that they did not properly take her autism, depression, anxiety, and other comorbidities into account when they evaluated her for an attempted gender transition.
“The repercussions of these interventions have led to Soren’s permanent disfigurement and profound psychological scarring,” the suit alleges. “The Defendants’ breaches of their fiduciary duties are only underscored by the fact that each Defendant met Soren and facilitated these ‘therapies’ at a pivotal juncture in Soren’s life—when she was grappling not only with the universal challenges of adolescence and body image, but also with a complex amalgamation of diagnosed mental health comorbidities and other psychological and social disorders.”
Earlier in July, Prisha Mosley filed a lawsuit accusing her doctors and therapists of rushing her down a dangerous and life-altering path. Both Mosley and Aldaco are represented by Campbell Miller Payne PLLC. Detransitioners Chloe Cole and Layla Jane, represented by the Center for American Liberty, have also recently announced high-profile lawsuits against medical practitioners at Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and Permanente Medical Group.
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Róisín Murphy and the limits of the new authoritarianism
Has cancel culture finally met its match? Have the new blacklisters who hasten to erase anyone who gives voice to a view that displeases them finally had their comeuppance? The roaring success of Róisín Murphy’s new album, Hit Parade, suggests it’s possible. The digital inquisitors tried to silence the queen of new disco over her sinful utterances on puberty blockers, and yet she’s soaring up the charts. Meet Róisín the Uncancellable.
It is wonderful to see elitist intolerance of wrongthink crash against the shores of decency and liberty
All sorts of mud and insults were hurled at Murphy when it was revealed she is sceptical of puberty blockers. Pumping gender-confused kids full of hormone suppressants is… absolutely desolate’, she said on her private Facebook page.
Millions will nod in agreement with her fruitily expressed, eminently sensible comments. Not the trans lobby, though, or its legion allies among the bourgeois left. In their eyes, it is blasphemy to question the synthetic prevention of puberty in bewildered youths, and anyone who does so must be sent packing from polite society. Murphy was given her marching orders.
Her metaphorical tarring and feathering was as swift as it was brutal. Virtual mobs declared her finished. They swore not to buy her album. They damned her as a phobe, a bigot, a traitor to her LGBTQ fanbase. Her record company reportedly called off all promotions for Hit Parade. Some of her public appearances were cancelled.
Then there were the reviews. They gushed over her album – it really is as good as everyone says – while shaming its maker as a possessor of wicked beliefs. This record comes with an ‘ugly stain’, said the Guardian, sounding for all the world like a neo-religious crackpot. One reviewer branded Murphy ‘cowardly’ and ‘disappointing’ and suggested she ‘unlearn [her] ignorance’. It was bleak stuff.
Now the BBC has been dragged into the ‘Get Róisín’ hysteria. Two five-hour shows of Murphy’s songs and interviews were put together by its 6 Music radio channel and were due to go out next week. But they’ve been scrubbed. Instead, in a switcheroo that will dishearten music lovers everywhere, ‘new shows have been made to feature woke rapper Little Simz’, says the Mail.
The BBC denies that its replacement of Róisín is an act of cancel culture. It is normal in 6 Music’s ever-changing schedule that things get shifted around, it says. Let’s give Auntie the benefit of the doubt. But if there is so much as a speck of truth in the concern that the Beeb sidelined Murphy because of her views on puberty blockers, it will be the final straw. The corporation is meant to be impartial. It cannot be allowed to punish artists for their beliefs. Some kind of action will be required if the unscheduling of Murphy turns out to have been in any way ideological.
Now here’s the hilarious twist in this tale: the cancellers have failed. Far from being banished beyond the pale, Murphy is enjoying the greatest success of her career. She has shot to number two on the UK album charts. Her album is being raved over. Some say it’s the album of the year. Both old fans and new fans are doing the thing we were severely warned not to: listening to Róisín Murphy.
The mob’s pitchforks have been blunted by the public’s common sense. The bitter howls for the censure of a disobedient woman have failed to break beyond their own tragic little echo chambers. A combination of a public love of good music and old-fashioned solidarity – witness the armies of gender-critical women who said they would buy Murphy’s album as a screw you to her pointy-fingered denouncers – has ensured that Hit Parade is a hit.
It is wonderful to see elitist intolerance of wrongthink crash against the shores of decency and liberty. Of course we should not be complacent. The very attempt to cancel Murphy, however forlorn, confirms the censorship instinct is alive and raging. To my mind, Murphy’s witch-hunting was one of the worst of recent times. Even for a privately stated comment, and a perfectly rational one at that, she had the guillotine of cancellation rolled out for her. This will act as a chilling warning to women everywhere, famous and unfamous.
It tells them that everything they say, privately and publicly, everything they think, is being keenly watched by the mob. Speak out of turn and they’ll darken your door. Murphy might have survived this menace – less well-known women might not.
We have seen, clearly now, the misogyny in today’s shaming campaigns against women who question any aspect of transgenderism. Some self-styled LGBTQ activists even gloated that they could bring Murphy down. We’re your biggest fans and now we’re going to switch off your income and stardom, they effectively said. It’s like these men – they were mostly men – think they own her. They have no idea how much they sound like those brutes of Old Hollywood who loved to remind their starlets, ‘We built you up and we can knock you down’.
They can’t knock down Murphy, though. The rest of us have seen to that. Murphy’s success is proof that cancel culture can be held at bay by solidarity, reason and a love for art. Let’s keep it up
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/roisin-murphy-and-the-limits-of-the-new-authoritarianism/
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Two cases of political correctness distorting justice in Australia
The parallels between the investigations and the prosecutions of former political staffer Bruce Lehrmann and former police officer Zachary Rolfe are unmistakable and disturbing.
In both cases, a hasty investigation and charging of a young man for a serious crime was accompanied by diarised police concerns about lack of evidence.
In both cases, the politicisation of events by politicians and other senior figures occurred against a backdrop of social movements fuelling a febrile environment.
In both cases, a pattern of non-disclosure of material to defence lawyers put at risk their ability to properly defend their clients.
The difference is that the public has now had the benefit of a thorough public inquiry into the exercise of state power in the Lehrmann matter.
If we are to trust in all aspects of the criminal justice system, from policing to prosecutors, the issues raised by Rolfe’s lawyers and reported by The Australian’s Kristin Shorten today must be investigated. An internal police investigation is not enough.
There should be a transparent and meticulous public inquiry by a skilled and fearless senior judge into the circumstances surrounding the investigation and prosecution of Rolfe.
That the former constable was unanimously found not guilty by 12 jurors within a few hours is not a reason for institutions that wield tremendous power against a citizen to avoid a public inquiry into their behaviour.
The Northern Territory’s new Police Commissioner, Michael Murphy, has an opportunity to start his term in office by encouraging proper and overdue public scrutiny of the most controversial police investigation in the Territory’s history.
In his letter to Murphy on June 16 this year, Rolfe’s lawyer, Luke Officer, laid out serious concerns about the conduct of Detective Senior Sergeant Wayne Newell. They included claims that Newell amended and edited an expert report, that he obtained opinions from a purported expert denying the lethality of the scissors that Walker used to stab Rolfe and threaten his partner, even though that expert said it would be inappropriate for her to give evidence, and that Newell withheld supplementary opinions given by two other experts to him about the lethality of the scissors that would have assisted defence but were revealed only during the trial.
The Darwin-based lawyer in his letter says it was only down to “sheer luck” that he became aware of the undisclosed material.
Again, by sheer chance, Rolfe’s lawyers became aware of a series of draft police coronial reports – known as the “Pollock reports” – that police had not given to the DPP, and could therefore not share with Rolfe’s defence team.
When making his order for disclosure of those reports, Supreme Court judge Dean Mildren said: “If the documents are never revealed, it may be that an innocent person has been wrongly convicted. It is to be hoped that this situation will not occur in the future.”
In his final report into the investigation and prosecution of Lehrmann, Walter Sofronoff explained why full disclosure was central to our trust in the criminal justice system by ensuring a fair trial, and addressing the imbalance of power and resources between the state and a citizen. “Criminal litigation is not a poker game in which a prosecutor can hide the cards,” he wrote.
In the Lehrmann case, the former DPP was exposed as failing to disclose material.
In the Rolfe matter, disclosure failures concern police.
Disclosure duties are the same for police and prosecutors because both are instruments of enormous state power, just as the damage to a defendant, and our trust in the criminal justice system, is the same whether non-disclosure is by a prosecutor or by police.
Many other parts of the Rolfe saga echo the Lehrmann case. For example, police diary entries reveal senior police officers expressed concerns at charging Rolfe before sufficient evidence had been amassed.
Just as the Lehrmann saga unfolded against the background of the #metoo movement and nationwide March 4 Justice protests, the arrest, prosecution and trial of Rolfe occurred as the Black Lives Matters movement grew in prominence, alongside “Justice for Walker” protests nationwide.
More concerning than the wild west of social media, which became hunting grounds for Lehrmann and Rolfe, leaders behaved badly. On November 12, three days after the fatal shooting, then-commissioner Jamie Chalker and chief minister Michael Gunner travelled to Yuendumu, where the latter told the community there would be an independent investigation into the shooting and “consequences will flow as a result.”
Recall that former prime minister Scott Morrison delivered an apology in parliament to Brittany Higgins, saying “I’m sorry to Ms Higgins for the terrible things that took place here”.
On the morning after Gunner’s comments – hours before Rolfe was charged – the NT’s then Independent Commissioner Against Corruption Ken Fleming attended a rally at Alice Springs, where thousands gathered to protest after Walker’s death, and said “one of the most important messages today is ‘Black Lives Matter’.
“Anybody who says contrary to that is guilty of corrupt behaviour,” he said.
A promised ICAC investigation into the shooting was to be headed by Fleming but after his rally speech, he was forced to remove himself from the probe and soon after retired. The probe never eventuated.
In 2022, after Rolfe was acquitted, ICAC investigated whether his murder charge had been politically influenced by Gunner or anyone else and found the claims were baseless.
If those leading our most powerful institutions do not show respect for this fundamental value, why would other politicians, let alone citizens who serve on a jury?
There are other matters of concern in Operation Charwell – the criminal investigation of the shooting. The police’s mission statement included this: “To provide a brief of evidence to the Director of Public Prosecutions in support of the offence as alleged against Constable Zachary Rolfe.”
The mission for police should have been to conduct a complete, accurate and reliable investigation of all evidence: that which supported the charge against Rolfe and that which did not.
According to police notes, a report was commissioned from a US criminologist about Rolfe’s use of force after NSW police advised NT police that “They were not keen to put themselves into the firing line if their SME [subject matter expert] offered an opinion that may be adverse.”
Did this mean NSW police didn’t want to express opinions that did not fit charging Rolfe?
The US criminologist, paid almost $100,000 for his 12-page report, was not provided with all the information on the incident but senior police told him via email that “it is important we make sure we have a good fit otherwise I will struggle to be able to convince my bosses of the value in utilising your extensive expertise”.
Given that Rolfe was arrested, did a “good fit” mean a report that fitted the mission statement of “in support of the offence” of murder?
If there is an ICAC investigation underway into these serious issues, the corruption watchdog won’t tell us.
The NT Police Professional Standards Command advised Rolfe’s lawyer that the Office of Ombudsman NT refused to investigate, stating it was “not in the public interest”. In response to Rolfe’s June complaint, the head of the PSC said he did not consider any further action was required.
It is passing strange that when The Australian sent questions to NT police on Monday, they said they were investigating Rolfe’s complaints. What is going on?
Had there not been a full public inquiry in the ACT, we would never have learned about serious wrongdoing by then DPP Shane Drumgold. The Rolfe fiasco raises similarly concerning questions about the conduct of police.
Only a thorough and public inquiry can settle concerns that Rolfe was the victim of brute politics, misguided social movements, a deeply flawed police investigation and serious failures to disclose material his lawyers should have had to properly defend him.
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14 September, 2023
Children need protection from adult madness
The Texas Supreme Court just upheld a state law banning so-called gender-affirming care for minors, to explosive consternation from predictable quarters. Progressive commentators portray this and similar laws passed by more than a dozen Republican-controlled state legislatures as ‘anti-LGBTQIA+’. In truth, the laws are aimed not at that whole bramble of capital letters, but solely at the ‘T’.
Slamming these bans histrionically as ‘genocide’ (four in 15,000 patients of the Tavistock or on its waiting list committed suicide between 2010 and 2020, but according to propaganda it’s up to 50 per cent of trans kids who try to kill themselves), the American left claims withdrawal of cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and sex ‘reassignment’ surgery for children violates the ‘rights’ of trans kids. Yet progressives never seem indignant over the gross unfairness that children can’t buy alcohol, purchase cigarettes, join the army, get a tattoo, work in factories, marry or consent to sex with an adult. Why doesn’t being prevented from snagging a packet of Marlboros violate children’s rights?
Oh, no, we must protect minors from injuring their health when they’re too young to appreciate the threats of cancer and addiction. But according to the American left, which used to decry female genital mutilation, 12-year-olds are mature enough to decide to halt the progress of puberty (potentially imperilling their brain and skeletal development), commit to a costly pharmaceutical regimen replete with irksome side effects for the rest of their lives, have healthy body parts hacked off, accept a future of sexual dysfunction and forego parenthood altogether. In the frenzy of the culture wars, Republicans have passed some clumsy legislation, but these laws are spot on. Nevertheless, Canada has issued a comical travel advisory about the ‘risks’ in certain US states for citizens who belong to that ever-extending string of upper case letters.
Gotta hand it to these doctors: ‘gender-affirming care’ is genius branding. Usefully, ‘gender’ has become a nonsense word. What could possibly be wrong with ‘affirming’? Why, the adjective exudes niceness, solace and esteem. And no physician or parent could oppose ‘care’. Yet the euphemism translates to ‘sex-denying medical experimentation’.
One witness who testified in support of the Texas bill during the legislature’s debate was Corinna Cohn – who now often goes by ‘Corrie’ – a self-identified ‘transsexual’ who was well ahead of the curve when he transitioned in 1994 at 19. He now says he is male and always has been, though he can never turn back the clock, having lopped off certain equipment. Pilloried as a quisling by trans activists, Cohn is on a national mission to stop underage transitions.
As he told Wesley Yang on the Year Zero podcast, the rage for castration and mutilation of minors is bound to ‘blow up on us’, and ‘it’s going to get worse from here’. He predicts that similar laws will soon be passed in most states, even Democratic ones. The trans phenomenon, he says, is about ‘self-perfection. It’s not to cure an illness. It’s not to cure even a mental disease. This is about helping someone who has a fantasy achieve their fantasy. It would not be ridiculous at all for us to string up guide wires from building to building and let people strap themselves on so that they can pretend to be superheroes flying from place to place.’ Cohn despairs: ‘Doing this to kids? It’s so unjust, the amount of pain, and the elimination of so many healthy futures.’ And he warns that the products of ‘gender-affirming care’ are prone to exaggerate their happiness with the results: ‘No one wants to seem like a fool for getting what they asked for.’
Another famous early adopter was Jazz Jennings, who under the influence of his lunatic Munchausen mother became quite the online poster boy – or girl – for trans in 2007. Though as a kid Jennings had an androgynous cuteness, alas, he’s grown up. Having never gone through puberty, the boy developed only a micro-penis, giving surgeons fashioning a fake vagina little to work with. Constant dilation to keep the wound from healing shut is excruciating. Politically what’s happened to Jazz Jennings, now 22, is a powerful cautionary tale. He’s not only in pain, neurotic and miserable; he’s fat. Really fat. Any woman could have warned him about the effect of all that oestrogen. Let’s hope Jennings tours the same states where Cohn is campaigning: Look, kids. Do you want to grow up to be like me?
In a rare instance of taking the cultural initiative, both Europe and the UK are steadily retreating from ‘gender-affirming care’ in preference for talk therapy – a story the American left-wing media scrupulously buries. By contrast, the entire US medical establishment is intoxicated by Frankensteinian maiming of children. In a self-sustaining feedback loop, the enthusiastic endorsement by the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics of an ‘affirmative’ approach to underage confusion has been successfully deployed to strike down in court multiple state bans on sex-change treatments for minors.
The trans mania took off in 2013, and I didn’t stick my neck out in public on the issue until 2016. Although the unwritten prohibition on saying a single discouraging word about the transgenderism craze didn’t partially lift until around 2021, I’m still not proud that I kept my journalistic mouth shut for three years. But then, even in 2016 observing ‘this is completely nuts’ could have been career-ending, and it still paints a bullseye on one’s forehead.
We’re an adaptive species, and it’s possible to get used to anything. Hence it takes daily application to maintain a crucial incredulity. On a dime, the entire western world became obsessed with drastic medication and gratuitous cosmetic surgery to allow tens of thousands of mostly young people to pretend to be the opposite sex. There will be hell to pay in the fullness of time, but not soon enough. The Texan families complaining on the American news that they can’t get their kids poorly researched off-label puberty blockers, irreversible cross-sex hormones and permanently mangling surgeries don’t know how lucky they are
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/children-need-protection-from-adult-madness/
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Does Anyone Really Believe This Nonsense?
Ideological disagreement is one thing — and in fact it’s a good thing. There’s always room for alternative lines of thinking on broad, subjective issues. But clinging to an assertion that is patently, objectively absurd? That’s another thing altogether.
We’re seeing a lot of those these days. More often than not, the absurdities are necessary to justify political actions or objectives. If reality gets in the way, too bad. Whether the adherents admit it to themselves or not, surely they recognize nonsense when they see it.
Examples abound; here are a few:
Is there anyone who actually believes that a girl can be a boy, or a boy can be a girl? That’s a bizarre idea wholly inconsistent with biology and human history — but it’s now accepted as gospel truth by the Left and promoted enthusiastically. Those who dare disagree are castigated as haters.
Of course, anyone can wish they had been born with a different body, or pretend to change genders, or alter their physical appearance or lifestyle. And we can all agree that no one who thinks or acts on those inclinations should be subjected to discrimination of any sort. Theirs are personal choices and ours is a free country. We treat one another with respect.
But my guess is that even staunch proponents of gender fluidity know that modern miracles such as “male birth” and “chestfeeding” are ridiculous.
Imagine if Donald Trump’s fevered wish had come true and his vice president had refused to certify the election of Joe Biden on 1/6/21. Does anyone believe that the U.S. Congress and judiciary would have just nodded politely, the nation would have just shrugged its collective shoulders, and Trump would have stayed in office for another four years?
Or does anyone really believe the other variants of January 6 mythology? That Proud Boys with flag poles would have subdued the Capitol Police, beaten back the U.S. Armed Forces, and taken over the United States of America?
Yes, it is true that many Americans believe that there was an insurrection on January 6 — no doubt because the word “insurrection” has been conveniently redefined by media and partisans in two and a half years of relentless propaganda. The American Civil War — four years of brutal conflict taking 620,000 combatants’ lives — was an insurrection; January 6 was not. It was an ugly, stupid riot, carelessly provoked by a man who should not be our next president.
Does anyone believe that a tiny, fully formed infant child in his mother’s womb is not a human being, has no rights, and deserves no legal protection? Having recently held a squirmy two-day-old infant, kicking her little legs just as she did in her mother’s womb a week before, I don’t believe that for a second.
Who could possibly disagree? Evidently quite a few Americans do, as evidenced by law in at least seven states that allow abortion up until natural childbirth. Under cover of protecting women’s (i.e., voters’) health, those states conveniently ignore the lives of the most vulnerable among us.
The list goes on. Does anyone really believe that the obviously frail, doddering Joe Biden is physically up to the mental and physical challenges of another presidential term? Or that it’s a good idea to nominate for president someone busy defending himself from indictments (fair or not) on 91 felonies? Does anyone really believe that a flood of unvetted migrants is good for our country? Does anyone really believe that a wholesale switch to electric vehicles will prevent wildfires and hurricanes?
So, is this just an old guy’s grumbling about wildly diverse political views? Do they matter?
I think they do. Party-line positions like these may initially raise an eyebrow or two — but repeated often enough and authoritatively enough, they become part of the landscape, and then sooner or later they become the foundation for policy, behavior, business practices, and social expectations.
Back to the first example above: I suspect that when proponents first floated the notion that gender is simply a matter of personal choice and is completely changeable, most Americans, knowing better, brushed it off — weird, but harmless.
Then, the tsunami, hitting where least expected — our children. Gender anxiety in various forms is now rampant among teens and pre-teens. Having unnecessarily precipitated that problem, we turn to the new cottage industry of specialists who offer “gender-affirming care,” sometimes including drastic surgeries to “transition” their patients from one gender to another.
These are life-altering actions, visited on young people who have not yet grown into the bodies they’ve decided they don’t like. It’s a self-inflicted wound, seeded by our too-casual acceptance of the myth of gender fluidity.
It’s amazing how much trouble hazy thinking — or no thinking at all — will get us into.
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Australia: Inquest to examine apparent suicides of five trans and gender diverse Victorians
The apparent suicides of five people who were undergoing a gender affirmation process before they died will be investigated by the Victorian coroner.
The inquest, scheduled for November, will consider the otherwise unrelated deaths together, as the coroner is likely to make recommendations that could help prevent future suicides.
While the suspected suicides are not directly linked, the coroner believes investigating the deaths during the one inquest will lead to better informed recommendations.
All five of those who died were born between 1987 and 2001. The lead case involves Bridget Flack, whose body was found in bushland in the Melbourne suburb of Kew two weeks after she was reported missing.
The 28-year-old was last seen by her friend on the morning of 3o November 2020 in Lygon Street, Carlton. She had said she was going to take a walk in a park in Fairfield, but despite contacting people via phone later in the day, Flack never returned home.
Flack’s disappearance made national headlines and more than 120 people helped her family search for her, before her body was eventually found by a member of the public.
The Victorian coroner, Ingrid Giles, has issued an order on how the five people should be publicly referred to during the inquest.
“In July 2023, I assumed carriage of the investigation into the deaths of five young people who were undergoing a gender affirmation process prior to passing, and who had died by way of apparent suicide,” the order said.
“In order to assist the court in referring to the deceased persons in a respectful and culturally appropriate manner in these proceedings, the loved ones of the deceased were consulted in relation to the names that were in use by the deceased prior to passing, and which had been chosen by the deceased to correspond with their gender identity.”
“I have determined it appropriate to refer in this proceeding to each deceased by what the evidence supports as their chosen name, even where this had not been legally changed.”
In one case, a pseudonym of “AS” will also be used, Giles said in the order.
Shortly after Flack’s disappearance, her sister described her as an incredibly intelligent and articulate person.
“She’s artistic, she sings, plays music, writes music, DJs. She writes beautifully, beautiful poetry and stories. She loves her job, she loves studying,” her sister said at the time.
A directions hearing will be held on 13 October before the inquest begins in late November. Three days have been set aside for the inquest.
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Australia: Northern Territory Police to open Zachary Rolfe complaint inquiry
Politically correct detective apparently did his best to "get" an innocent cop. That may now be investgated
The Northern Territory Police Force has vowed to investigate Zachary Rolfe’s allegations of serious misconduct against a Darwin detective involved in his failed murder prosecution despite recently telling the complainant no further action would be taken.
In June, the former police officer formally complained to Police Commissioner Michael Murphy about the conduct of Detective Senior Sergeant Wayne Newell during the criminal investigation into Kumanjayi Walker’s death and asked the police chief to initiate a thorough investigation into the matters raised.
NT Police’s Professional Standards Command wrote to Mr Rolfe last month, advising him his complaint against police fell to the Office of Ombudsman NT to investigate but that the Ombudsman had declined because it was not in the public interest and Mr Rolfe’s one-year time limit to complain had expired. The letter, sent in early August, said PSC believed no further action was required.
In a confusing backflip, NT Police on Tuesday told The Australian, in response to questions about PSC’s decision, that “police are investigating the allegations”.
“As the matter is ongoing no comment will be made at this time,” a spokesperson said.
Sen-Sgt Newell, the senior investigating officer for the criminal investigation – codenamed Operation Charwell – into Walker’s death, also declined to comment with an investigation under way.
In May 2022, two months after Mr Rolfe was acquitted of murdering Walker at Yuendumu, he complained to police, in writing, about certain aspects of the criminal investigation before detailing his “very serious concern” over Sen-Sgt Newell’s conduct in relation to “evidence collecting” and nondisclosure in June.
The 11-page complaint, sent by his lawyer, Luke Officer, alleged the experienced detective “may have engaged in criminal conduct, such as, for example, perverting the course of justice”, and included excerpts of court transcripts from his trial, as well as emails and other internal police material – including coronial reports – supporting his claims.
Mr Rolfe’s concerns were distilled into five issues, including that email correspondence between detectives – including Sen-Sgt Newell – and American criminologist Geoffrey Alpert suggested the investigation team was editing its expert’s report.
The Australian revealed in April last year NT Police had paid Mr Alpert $100,000 to produce a 12-page report supporting the murder charge against Mr Rolfe and that he repeatedly altered his conclusions at the request of detectives.
The second matter raised was that Sen-Sgt Newell had allowed pathologist Marianne Tiemensma to give expert evidence at trial about the lethality of the scissors Walker had stabbed Mr Rolfe with despite Dr Tiemensma expressing that it may be inappropriate because she had performed Walker’s autopsy and may be accused of bias.
Two complaints were about Sen-Sgt Newell being aware of or withholding supplementary expert opinions from trauma surgeon Keith Towsey and forensic pathologist Paul Botterill that would have helped the defence and were only revealed in the course of the trial.
The fifth complaint was that Sen-Sgt Newell withheld evidence of a conversation with Australian Federal Police forensic analyst Timothy Simpson seeking a supplementary opinion and that the conversation only came to light during the trial.
Before Mr Rolfe’s trial started, his lawyers learned of the existence of police coronial investigation reports – which were critical of the criminal investigation including the use of particular expert witnesses – that had not been provided to the Director of Public Prosecutions or the defence. Mr Rolfe’s legal team had to subpoena then police commissioner Jamie Chalker for their production.
Commander David Proctor wrote in his coronial investigation report that the criminal investigation was biased against the accused. Commander Proctor claimed the prosecution’s use-of-force expert, Detective Superintendent Andrew Barram, was subject to “confirmation bias”, that he was “firmly ensconced within the investigation team” and that his independence as an expert was “compromised”.
Mr Officer this week told The Australian “the highest-profile murder trial in recent times” was plagued with issues of nondisclosure from the start.
After receiving Mr Rolfe’s complaint in June, police also referred it to the Independent Commissioner Against Corruption but Commissioner Michael Riches refused to confirm whether he is investigating the allegations.
An ICAC spokesperson this week said “the Commissioner does not comment on such matters”, despite having publicised other investigations it was conducting.
Mr Rolfe was dismissed from the NT Police in April “due to serious breaches of discipline” during his policing career. He has lodged an appeal.
The 32-year-old will be called to give evidence at Walker’s inquest when it resumes at Alice Springs next month.
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13 September, 2023
More Americans Jobless Than Biden’s Official Unemployment Rate Shows
The labor market is nowhere near as strong as it appears. If that sounds surprising, it’s because the absence of millions of Americans from the workforce artificially lowers the unemployment rate.
Accounting for the missing workers reveals an unemployment rate of over 6%, not the official 3.8%.
To make sense of the numbers, we need to understand what led to today’s labor market conditions. The two-month recession in 2020 wasn’t a normal downturn caused by bad investment, misallocation of capital, and/or overextension of credit. It was an artificial recession caused by the government forcibly shutting down a robust economy during COVID-19, ending a period of both fast growth and low inflation.
Tens of millions of Americans became unemployed in a span of two weeks. But when those artificial constraints were lifted, the labor market came back at the fastest rate ever and quickly was approaching its pre-pandemic trend. This is the opposite of a normal recession, where the labor market slowly accelerates into a recovery.
President Joe Biden inherited an economy that was growing at a $1.5 trillion annualized rate and was adding an average of 1.4 million jobs per month after the government-imposed shutdowns. At the same time, inflation was only 1.4%, below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
But Biden’s anti-growth, big-government agenda slammed the brakes on the economy and the labor market.
After just 18 months of the Biden administration, inflation soared to 40-year highs, and the economy contracted for two consecutive quarters. Average monthly job growth has slowed 70%, and America remains 4.6 million jobs below its pre-pandemic trend.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ survey of households contains even worse data, showing the number of Americans employed remains 5.5 million below its pre-pandemic trend. The survey also shows a depressed labor force participation rate and a shocking increase in the number of those not in the labor force, relative to February 2020.
Before the government-imposed lockdowns, the number not in the labor force was about 95 million and falling. Since June 2020, however, the level has been stuck around 100 million. That means millions of Americans left the labor market and still haven’t come back, which explains why the ratio of employment to the population also shows a gap of 4.5 million relative to its trend.
These millions of missing workers skew many of the statistics used to gauge the health of the labor market. Imagine a labor force of 100 people wherein 10 are unemployed, giving an unemployment rate of 10%. If one of those unemployed persons leaves the labor force, the unemployment rate drops to 9.1% (with 9 divided by 99).
No jobs were created, but the unemployment rate went down. That’s exactly what’s been happening in the real economy.
Accounting for the millions of people currently excluded from the labor market reveals an unemployment rate between 6.3% and 6.8%, much higher than the official 3.8% rate.
To further illustrate the point, over 700,000 Americans rejoined the labor force last month, in part because families are having trouble making ends meet. Less than a third of them were able to find work, and even fewer found full-time jobs. Yet despite the increase in employment, the unemployment rate rose because so many more people are finally being included in the official number of unemployed.
Yet there are even more indicators showing weakness in the labor market. The number of job openings has plummeted to below the pre-pandemic trend, indicating softening labor demand, which will put downward pressure on wage growth. At the same time, businesses are cutting hours and reducing the number of full-time employees.
As inflation continues to eat into family budgets and more households need a second income, additional people are reentering the labor market, all while businesses are hiring less. That will drive the official unemployment rate much higher and expose this shell game for what it is
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/11/real-unemployment-rate-higher-than-bidens-official-number/ ?
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California Groomin’: Parents and schools are being forced to acquiesce to the “transing” of kids through the strong arm of state law.
California, the most radical of all the blue states, has set yet another horrible precedent for the rest of the country. What has been going on in that state is a pitched battle between parental rights and the faux rights of schools and teachers to hide gender transitions or sexual identities of students from their parents.
Five Golden State school districts — Murrieta Valley Unified School District, Chino Valley Unified School District, Rocklin Unified School District, Temecula Valley Unified School District, and Orange Unified School District — have voted in favor of making it policy for teachers to inform the parents should a child choose to change his or her gender identity.
Last week, San Bernardino County Superior Court Judge Thomas Garza blocked Chino Valley Unified School District’s new policy from going into effect. Garza claimed that the policy had “no stated, clear purpose” and that it is “singling out a group that is exposed to a clear and present danger.” In other words, Garza is another deluded judicial activist who believes that informing a parent about the radical and harmful decision to adhere to transgender ideology is a suicide risk for the child.
He also justified hiding a gender change by comparing it to hiding a student’s change in religion. It prompts one to wonder if Judge Garza sees radical gender ideology for what it is: a dangerous and harmful cult.
On a larger scale, the state of California is reacting to this push by a handful of school districts for parental rights by passing a horrible piece of legislation. AB 95 passed the State Assembly by a vote of 57-16 and the Senate by a vote of 30-9. This bill is a mandate of sorts that would force parents to affirm their child when he or she decides to declare a different gender. The consequences for not adhering to this new law, set to be signed by Governor Gavin Newsom very soon, would be the removal of children from parents’ homes.
How will that work out? Ask Abigail Martinez, whose daughter was removed from her home over this very issue, and later committed suicide.
To add insult to injury, the State Assembly added another liturgical holiday to the cornucopia of LGBTQ+ days of celebration. The Assembly has declared August “Transgender History Month.” (They are going to run out of calendar days at the rate they are declaring new holidays for the new state religion.) It’s as if to say that not only will they take your children away if you don’t comply, but they are going to make sure your kids are thoroughly “educated” in all the LGBTQ+ doctrine.
For anyone who has been watching this debate in California, the surprising part isn’t the new law. The surprising part were the few school districts that wanted to affirm the rights of parents to raise and guide their children. In essence, what the state of California has told parents is “mess around and find out.”
This cult of radical gender ideology has just launched its first religious inquisition. What starts in California will likely spread to other states like a cancer. Parents, if you value both the physical and mental health of your children, get out of that authoritarian state. “If you love your children,” said state Senator Scott Wilk, (R-Santa Clarita) in June, “you need to flee California.”
Democrat lawmakers there are happy to take away your parental rights and your children if you don’t toe the line. They are happy to set your children up for a life of misery and make them vulnerable to predators. There have already been horror stories from parents in other states of what happened to their kids when the state took them away because of this ideology.
That isn’t freedom. It’s tyranny and state-sanctioned child abuse.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/100376-california-groomin-2023-09-12
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Shocking: Virginia Mother Details Nightmare Unleashed By Daughter's Secret In-School Transition
A Virginia mother is suing her local school district in federal court, saying staff there secretly transitioned her daughter, putting her in such dangerous situations that she ran away only to be kidnapped and sex-trafficked. Michele Blair, mother of Sage, filed a lawsuit against the Appomattox County School Board and district staff, as well as Baltimore, Maryland, area public defender Aneesa Khan, who is accused in the lawsuit of conducting a "series of acts aimed at depriving Mrs. Blair of custody of her daughter and keeping [Sage] in Maryland to be affirmed in a male identity."... Blair said her daughter was severely bullied in school, but alleges that the school district withheld information as to why that was happening: the fact that Sage was identifying as a boy in school. "It was verbal, physical, sexually harassed with constant threats of rape by the male classmates," she said of her daughter's 2021 freshman year at Appomattox County High School. "Despite this, the school encouraged her to use the boys' bathroom." Sage had a history of mental health issues including depression, eating disorders, self-harm, and hallucinations, and Blair informed the school of it prior to any of the incidents. However, the school pursued a social transition for Sage behind the back of her parents, the lawsuit filed by the Child & Parent Rights Campaign alleges.
When this child, with a history of mental illness and emotional distress, faced ongoing bullying for her gender transition -- which, again, had not been shared by school officials with her 'non-affirming' parents -- she ran away. Things got much worse:
Vernadette Broyles, Blair's attorney from the CPRC, told the Washington Examiner that Sage ran away from home due to severe bullying and harassment at school. "The school officials were encouraging her to use the boys' bathroom, even though they knew she was being threatened with sexual assault, so she perceived herself that she wasn't safe and she runs away from home," Broyles said. "She runs into the arms of a waiting pedophile, who encounters her, rapes her, traffics her with two other men, and takes her across state lines into Washington, D.C., and then ultimately into Maryland."
This child was eventually recovered by the FBI, but was not returned to her home. Why? According to the lawsuit, a Maryland public defender decided it would not be 'safe,' due to parental opposition to the child's gender transition. Where was young Sage then kept 'safe'?
Broyles explained that the "nightmare should have ended" in Maryland, when Sage was eventually rescued by Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, but the Baltimore juvenile court system took custody of the young girl at the behest of Khan. Khan concluded that the Blairs were not "sufficiently affirming" of her new identity, and "concocts a fabricated story of abuse and neglect by the parents and convinces a judge to keep this child in custody," Broyles said. While in custody, Sage was put into a juvenile facility for adolescent males "where she was again sexually assaulted, exposed to drugs, and denied medical and mental health care," the lawsuit states. "This is a 100-pound girl, what do you think happens in this facility?" Broyles said. Sage, again in fear for her safety, ran away from the facility and was again found by another pedophile who brought her to Texas "where she was again raped, drugged, starved, and tortured until law enforcement in Texas rescued her and notified her mother who returned her to Virginia," the lawsuit states.
Having been sexually assaulted and trafficked once already, this 100-pound female was placed not in her own home, but in a males-only juvenile facility, where she was again assaulted. The family's attorney says she then ran away again, resulting in another series of horrors at the hands of a separate pedophile sex trafficker. The state of Maryland's chief public defender told the Examiner that her office "fully support[s] our attorney, who appropriately represented her client in accordance with her legal, ethical, and professional obligations." Youngkin has been highlighting this shocking story for months:
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How the New Deal Harmed Black Americans
A new exhibit at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, N.Y., “Black Americans, Civil Rights, and the Roosevelts, 1932–1962,” provides new evidence that the New Deal was often a raw deal for black Americans. For example, FDR’s housing policy reinforced neighborhood segregation; he refused to support anti-lynching legislation introduced in both the House and the Senate, and, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture now freely admits, his “New Deal was for the most part a bad deal for black farmers,” forcing thousands off their land.
The exhibit leaves out one of the most egregious illustrations of FDR’s dismal record on the Bill of Rights, however: the “policing” of a prominent African-American political leader, Republican J. B. Martin, and the brutal quashing of free speech in Memphis, Tenn., even as President Roosevelt was proclaiming his “four Freedoms”—the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom to worship God in one’s own way, “the freedom from want,” and the freedom from fear.
Many African Americans regarded Martin as a folk hero. His South Memphis drug store and its black-controlled post-office substation were major sources of pride. Martin and his brothers had one of the first black-owned baseball teams; he built Martin Stadium, home of the local Negro American League baseball club, the Memphis Red Sox, and eventually served as league president.
Martin’s prominence as a Republican leader derived from the peculiarities of Memphis’s political environment. Because of a special arrangement with Edward H. “Boss” Crump, a Democrat and the head of the city’s political machine, Memphis was one of the few places in the South where African Americans still had the franchise. In return for this small measure of freedom, however, Crump manipulated black votes to favor his cronies in Democratic primaries.
A key source of Crump’s power was a cozy alliance with FDR, which was based on raw political calculation and mutual gain. Since 1932, Crump had played the role of an efficient foot soldier at Democratic conventions. In return, Memphis reaped a steady flow of federal funds, which Crump conveniently controlled.
His toleration for “Negro voting” ended abruptly in 1940 after Martin became the local Republican Party chair. Martin’s dream was to build a competitive multiracial party and carry the state for GOP presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, an outspoken champion of civil rights. National polls showed a tight race, and it seemed possible, though unlikely, that Willkie could win Tennessee with the help of Memphis’s African-American voters.
On hearing about Martin’s plans, Crump demanded his resignation and that he shutter the GOP’s local headquarters. When Martin upped the ante by staging a massive Willkie rally, Crump ordered the police to start frisking customers entering Martin’s drug store, using the pretext of uncovering a “dope ring.” Not bothering with such niceties as warrants, Crump openly admitted the true reason for the harassment: “Negroes might as well learn their places.” Martin fled the city rather than face a near-certain sentence in the workhouse. When he briefly returned in 1942 to attend a ball game at Martin Stadium, the police arrested him and ordered him to leave town.
Crump’s outrages were widely denounced, but he knew he had a friend in the White House who had no intention of abandoning him, or of throwing Martin a lifeline.
Despite overwhelming evidence, and the willingness of the head of the Civil Rights Section of the Department of Justice to prosecute Crump, no charges were brought. More than a year later, labor leader and civil-rights activist A. Philip Randolph urged Eleanor Roosevelt to press for a federal investigation. Her curt response came after some delay: “I was advised not to do anything, as it might do more harm than good.” Rather than offend Crump, the president and first lady chose expediency.
The treatment of J. B. Martin provides another illustration of FDR’s abysmal record on the Bill of Rights. It also foreshadowed the extraordinary civil-rights violation yet to come: the February 1942 executive order that led to the mass confinement of Japanese Americans in what FDR himself called “concentration camps.”
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14660&omhide=true&trk=title
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12 September, 2023
NY: In the Last Days of Summer, Government Comes for the Ice Cream Trucks
City Council Member Lincoln Restler and eight of his colleagues recently introduced a bill to ban the use of gasoline or diesel generators on ice cream trucks.
Banning generators from New York City ice cream trucks would make no measurable difference to the climate.
Like the canary in the mine shaft, seemingly crazy policies that take hold in local jurisdictions often portend what’s coming for the rest of us.
This Labor Day, people all over the country will be savoring the last days of summer with ice cream. But some New York City politicians want to eliminate even that small sweet treat. What does New York have against ice cream?
Already home to crazy ice cream rules that prohibit folks from enjoying the summertime treat while waiting at a bus stop or that make carrying your ice cream cone in your pocket on Sundays illegal, now some city politicians want to essentially take away ice cream trucks.
Specifically, City Council Member Lincoln Restler and eight of his colleagues recently introduced a bill to ban the use of gasoline or diesel generators on ice cream trucks. According to Restler, the move would “severely reduce air pollution and noise and address the climate crisis.”
This is absolute nonsense.
Let’s take a look why. We will start with noise.
Ice cream trucks require generators to keep the ice cream cold, and generators can, admittedly, be noisy. However, modern gas and diesel generators exist on a spectrum of noise, and many fall well within what any reasonable person would conclude is acceptable. Some inverter generators already can be as quiet as a private office. Further, generators can be combined with dampeners to reduce noise even further.
If this were really the issue, then the City Council could simply put reasonable noise restrictions in place rather than total bans. This is precisely what they’ve done with ice cream truck bells by restricting their use to trucks in motion.
That leaves the environmental question. For this, we need to separate out traditional air pollutants and alleged global warming effects.
Critics of ice cream truck generators make the same mistake as critics of coal and other hydrocarbons by conflating the pollution from old and new technology. It may well have been the case that old generators, especially in densely populated areas such as New York City, emitted unacceptable levels of pollution. However, advances in fuel efficiency and emissions treatment technology significantly reduce emissions, and the technology is only getting cleaner.
So, that leaves climate change.
Putting aside the real debate over the human effect on climate, and accepting for the purposes of this discussion Washington’s underlying climate policy assumptions, banning generators from New York City ice cream trucks would make no measurable difference to the climate. In fact, eliminating all carbon dioxide emissions in the United States would have virtually no environmental benefit.
The Heritage Foundation’s chief statistician, Kevin Dayaratna, has investigated exactly this using the same models used by government agencies. a href="https://www.heritage.org/energy-economics/report/the-unsustainable-costs-president-bidens-climate-agenda">He found that eliminating all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would reduce temperatures by less than 0.2 degrees Celsius by 2100. (The Daily Signal is the news and commentary outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
The facts, of course, don’t matter to environmental extremists who dislike ice cream trucks. They are more than happy to push their agenda on us no matter the cost or lack of efficacy. Instead, they make empty promises about seamless, low-cost alternatives and how everyone will be better off if we just comply.
Obviously, compliance has real costs. While some estimates come in below $10,000 per truck to comply, real world costs could be much higher. According to one ice cream truck company CEO, upgrading a single truck can cost upwards of $65,000. So, does Mr. Restler expect every mom and pop ice cream vendor and small ice cream truck business to just lay down more money per truck than what a decent used ice cream truck costs to keep operating in New York City?
With average annual incomes of around $30,000 for mom and pop ice cream trucks in the United States, even the expense of the lower $10,000 estimate could be enough put them out of business.
This is out of the question and is why everyone should understand this legislation as a virtual ban on ice cream trucks.
At a minimum, there will be far fewer ice cream trucks serving New York citizens, and those trucks will be owned by a small number of large companies that can afford the compliance costs. That assumes that larger companies think they can even make such a substantial investment back in sales. Finally, the fewer trucks and higher operation costs will mean much more expensive ice cream.
Like nearly every other mandate, this one will hurt the poor the most, drive companies out of business and take away the jobs of those who work for them, and serve only the egos of wealthy do-gooders and busy-body politicians.
But if that’s what New York City wants, why should we care?
Because like the canary in the mine shaft, seemingly crazy policies that take hold in local jurisdictions often portend what’s coming for the rest of us. Revealingly, Restler tells us as much when he says that he’s “excited to see how they can serve as a model for electrifying mobile food truck vendors.”
In other words, environmentalists won’t stop at ice cream trucks in New York this Labor Day. Rest assured, environmental extremism will be coming for your ice cream trucks in your neighborhood next Labor Day, and that’s why this proposal needs to be stopped now.
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Why Sunak’s prayers in Delhi matter
Ever since Alastair Campbell’s declaration that ‘we don’t do God’, no prime minister – and almost no politician – has discussed their faith. David Cameron said his Christianity came in and out ‘like MagicFM in the Chilterns’, a line he borrowed from Boris Johnson who self-defined as ‘a kind of very, very bad Christian’. But Rishi Sunak is different. He’s a practising Hindu who has a shrine in No. 10 for family worship and works with a Ganesh idol on his desk. This being Britain, no one cares: a distinguishing point about our country. Sunak gets flak for being a Winchester old boy, a Brexiteer and an ex-banker, but no one is suggesting any tension between his faith and his office.
Sunak is leaning into his faith in his trip to India, offering prayers at the Akshardham Temple in Delhi and letting the cameras follow him as he knelt barefoot in front of the shrines. Pretty much wherever he went, he put his palms together in an namaste greeting (handshakes are less of a thing in India) and posed for pictures with flower garlands with his Indian wife next to him. It’s the kind of scene India would not have seen before from a visiting head of government. To British Hindus it will mean a great deal: that a Hindu can not only become prime minister but can be open about his faith.
When Tim Farron quit as Lib Dem leader amid questions about his evangelical Christianity, he concluded it was no longer possible to reconcile faith and politics, that he had to choose between his faith and his career. I know several other MPs who share this view, who think their faith is a liability in a secular country so it needs to be hidden away. But this year, we’ve seen three politicians go the other way.
When SNP leadership contender Kate Forbes defended her faith – a Free Church of Scotland member with unfashionable views on gay marriage, pre-marital sex and abortion – some thought it waas politically suicide. Instead, she ended up almost winning, with 48 per cent of the vote. She won support from people who admired her refusal to edit or conceal aspects of her identity from fear that it would be a vote-loser. On Humza Yousaf’s first day as first minister he released pictures of himself at prayer with his family in Bute House.
Sunak is doing the same in India. The age of these three – Sunak is 43, Yousaf 38 and Forbes 33 – is also a factor. We can see a new generation of British political leaders who are doing God (or, in Sunak’s case, gods) and thereby normalising faith in the public sphere. These are small things that happen without fanfare or comment, but are important milestones in establishing Britain not as an anti-religious secular state but a multi-faith democracy.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/why-sunaks-prayers-in-delhi-matter/
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The strange link between HIGHER education and antisemitism
WHAT KIND of person considers Jews "the central enemies of Western civilization"? What sort of individual spreads caricatures of leering, hook-nosed Jews or claims that Jewish Germans used their influence to introduce "sexual perversions of all sorts," including "sadism, masochism, lots of homosexuality"?
It likely wouldn't surprise you to be told that those grotesque and hateful slurs, which attracted attention recently in the British press, were spewed by a knuckle-dragging boor who never got past grade school. In fact, they are the words of Boštjan Zupan?i?, who for 17 years was a judge on the European Court of Human Rights. Until recently, Zupan?i? had a sterling record as a legal scholar and a protector of human rights. He earned degrees from Harvard, lectured at colleges around the world, and published extensively in multiple languages. He even wrote poetry.
He is also, it transpires, a raging antisemite. Zupan?i? has spread numerous smears about Jews, of which the examples quoted above are merely a selection.
Such rank antisemitic bigotry is often believed to be associated with ignorance or lack of education. The sociologist Frederick Weil, surveying the academic literature in 1990, concluded that "the better educated are much less antisemitic than the worse educated." Surveys by the Anti-Defamation League have found that education appears to reduce intolerance in general and the demonizing of Jews in particular.
The recently released US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism devotes more attention to education than to perhaps any other theme. The words "educate," "educator," and "education" appear in the document more than 120 times. Of 18 "strategic goals" set out in the Biden administration's 60-page report, the very first is to "increase school-based education about antisemitism." It stresses that "education enables students to understand what can happen in a democratic society when hatred goes unchecked." It emphasizes the importance of "more education on Jewish American history and the valuable role that Jews have played in our national story."
Of course all this is well intended. But as the example of Zupan?i? shows, education is no prophylactic against the hatred of Jews. The judge is about as learned as anyone in the 21st century can be. And not only learned but an educator himself, an honored jurist who made his mark as an upholder of human rights. How could someone known for such intellectual achievements be an unabashed Jew-hater?
It's a trick question. The premise is false. Towering artists and learned intellectuals have always been numbered among the most virulent defamers of the Jewish people. Martin Luther, T.S. Eliot, Richard Wagner, Voltaire, Karl Marx, Edgar Degas, Amiri Baraka — the list could be extended indefinitely. On college campuses, hostility toward Jews is becoming endemic. The Nazi genocide may have been inspired by Adolf Hitler, but it was planned and carried out by SS men with PhDs.
So why have studies repeatedly shown a link between low levels of education and antisemitic beliefs? Because, as University of Arkansas researchers Jay P. Greene, Albert Cheng, and Ian Kingsbury explained in 2021, "for the most part, these studies measure antisemitism simply by asking respondents how they feel about Jews or by asking whether they agree with blatantly antisemitic stereotypes." Respondents with more education are sophisticated enough to realize what is being asked, the three scholars hypothesized, and more likely to respond in ways that hide their antisemitism.
To examine their hypothesis, they devised an entirely different test, focusing on whether respondents held Jews to harsher standards than others. They drafted two equivalents of a series of questions, with one in each case asking about an explicit Jewish example, while the other applied to a non-Jewish context. For instance, one of the questions asked whether someone's "attachment to another country creates a conflict of interest" when they lobby for certain foreign policy positions. For half the respondents, Israel was the country in question; for the other half, it was Mexico. Another question asked "whether public gatherings during the pandemic posed a threat to public health and should have been prevented," with Orthodox Jewish funerals and Black Lives Matter protests as the parallel examples.
What Greene, Cheng, and Kingsbury discovered turned the conventional wisdom upside down. "More highly educated people were more likely to apply principles more harshly to Jewish examples," they reported. "Contrary to previous claims, education appears to provide no protection against antisemitism." By preventing respondents from knowing that the purpose of the study was to measure attitudes toward Jews, they demonstrated that more highly educated people in the United States tend to have greater levels of antisemitism.
The recently released US National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism devotes more attention to education than to any other theme. But that emphasis is misplaced.
It may be comforting to cling to the conventional wisdom that the best inoculation against the toxic virus of Jew-hatred is more education. But contrary facts have always been apparent to anyone willing to look. More than 30 years ago, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., a renowned scholar of African American thought, lamented in The New York Times "not only that blacks are twice as likely as whites to hold antisemitic views but — significantly — that it is among the younger and more educated blacks that antisemitism is most pronounced."
Some forms of intolerance do result from ignorance and can be overcome through education. But antisemitism is more than mere hatred of a minority. It is a moral derangement and a form of conspiracy thinking, and it can seduce the author or statesman or human-rights judge no less than the unlettered high school dropout. Unlike other forms of racism, Jew-hatred is a variety of intellectual disease. Those afflicted with it attribute to Jews whatever in their worldview is uniquely hateful or treacherous, so that it is constantly assuming new shapes and expressing itself in new accusations.
The preventive and cure for antisemitism is not more book learning. It is the cultivation of good character, which is a far harder task. An enduring lesson of history is that where society is disordered, antisemites grow louder and bolder. A human rights judge who loathes Jews? I fear worse is yet to come.
https://jeffjacoby.com/27204/the-dubious-link-between-education
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Too much free stuff
Judith Sloan
I was a big fan of P.J. O’Rourke, who sadly departed this world too soon. Who didn’t love his biting, satirical books and essays, poking fun at the ardent devotees of the trendy zeitgeists of the day?
My absolute favourite O’Rourke quote is this: ‘If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.’ The point is that when governments give away free stuff – of course, it’s not really free, just provided free of charge to the users – all sorts of negative consequences follow.
Sadly for us, the vast majority of politicians either don’t understand, or prefer to ignore, this message. They simply can’t wait to offer more free (or excessively subsidised) stuff in order to amass the greatest number of grateful recipients. While there will be various spins put on why free stuff is necessary – helping the disadvantaged, improving the environment, lifting education standards, yada yada – the reality is far too many government spending programs are simply a means of using the power of the government purse to hoover up more votes. And all sides of politics do it.
Before I cover some of the big free stuff, let me first outline one of my current favourites – free fishing rods and other fishing gear to Grade 5 students in Victoria. It will cost $1.5 million out of a $96 million package ‘to improve fishing, boating, piers and aquaculture’. There must be votes among anglers, obviously.
The blurb reads: ‘The Minister for Outdoor Recreation announced 60,000 kits will be made available to grade five primary students in more than 1,900 Victorian schools. The kits will set families up with everything they need to wet a line including a fishing rod and reel, line, tackle box, some tackle and a Kids’ Guide to Fishing that includes information and links to educational resources to learn the basics such as fishing safety, knots and rigs. The kits will help youngsters get active, learn about the aquatic environment and have fun in the great outdoors whether they be down the coast, on Port Phillip Bay or by a river in regional Victoria.’
You probably think that I am making this up, given the extremely parlous state of public finances in Victoria. But, no, this free fishing gear is currently being sent out to primary schools so the kids can nag their parents to take them fishing, even though this will prove highly inconvenient in most cases and most parents will have no expertise or interest in fishing.
By the way, most Victorians don’t live close to the sea or a river.
I’m only guessing here, but perhaps Dan the Man, current premier of Victoria, has fond memories of fishing with his dad and he wants to spread the love using other people’s money. The more likely outcomes are family disputes, a few nasty accidents as fishing hooks end up in the wrong places and all that hardly used fishing gear being left on front lawns to be picked up in the next rubbish collection. At best, some parents might make a few bob by selling it on eBay.
At a bigger level, free stuff is flourishing as an idea in the minds of many political leaders. One of the current popular ones is free kindergarten/pre-school. If you believe the promotional material, all three- and four-year-olds are guaranteed a certain number of hours per week in kinder/preschool with no charge to the parents. But, of course, the parents are perfectly capable of gaming the system to maximise the benefits for them.
In New South Wales, for example, parents of four-year-olds are entitled to three days of free preschool at any one centre. But go to another centre and you can get the other two days for free as well. The net effect is that the centres are full of four-year-olds and there are simply no spots for three-year olds, notwithstanding the commitment the NSW government made.
They’re called supply constraints which is clearly an alien concept to those who are designing and running these programs. Not only are there a limited number of physical centres, but there are also shortages of suitably qualified carers to work there. It’s all very well offering free kinder/preschool but the reality is it will simply not be possible to make good the promise, at least in the short term. In the longer run, it will prove very expensive.
Similar problems have arisen in Victoria where many kindergartens are run by local councils. According to the Age – don’t ask – ‘Knox City Council will stop running all but two of its 28 kindergartens from January 2025, affecting placements for 1100 children aged three and four.’ The combination of rapidly rising costs and inadequate funding by the state government has led to this decision.
Free TAFE courses and even free university courses have also become popular among politicians. The argument is that you just need to identify the skills in need and then lure students into the relevant courses by making them free of charge. Sadly, the evidence is that people don’t actually value highly something that they receive without charge: the completion rates of these free courses are wretchedly low.
And again, there is very little attention given to the supply side. The fact is that the providers of these free courses are often inadequately funded using inappropriate funding formulas. Moreover, the instructors often have weak incentives to provide quality courses because the students aren’t paying anything anyway.
Of course, free stuff can be very popular with the users as long as the stuff is available and deemed to be of acceptable quality. It’s why bulk-billed medical services have tended to be a hit with patients, even for those who clearly have the means to make a financial contribution to consultations.
But here’s the thing: if something is free, there tends to be overuse and runaway government spending. It is also the case that the quality of the service will almost always decline – superficial, single-issue six-minute GP visits, anyone?
Asking everyone to pay, say, the equivalent of a cup of coffee or two is surely not asking too much. In the meantime, politicians need to wake up and realise that providing lots of free stuff is extremely poor public policy.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/too-much-free-stuff/
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11 September, 2023
UK: Right-on Kew Gardens
Rod Liddle
We must all hurry down to the Temperate House at Kew Gardens next month to enjoy Queer Nature After Hours, an evening of drama, music, comedy, drag acts and ‘a sprinkling of queer joy’. If, like me, you have never previously been sprinkled with queer joy, here’s your chance to find out what it’s like. There will be a performance by Trans Voices as well as a chap, or maybe not a chap, called Bi-Curious George. Here’s what George will be doing: ‘Within the splendour of the Temperate House, Bi-Curious George (he/him) will broadcast immersive parody-monologues, set to soaring classical scores. The audience becomes George’s parade of beautifully queer creatures and George becomes some of the animals too. Expect cabaret, parody songs, lip syncs, dancing, and sparkly costumes.’
Can’t wait, can you? Kew has helpfully provided attendees with the correct pronouns to employ in regard to each performer, so nobody should leave having been triggered or merely affronted. Anyway, this should all meet with the approval of the plants, 90 per cent of which are, like about half of our country’s sixth-form students, possessed of both male and female sexual organs and would most certainly object to being referred to as ‘him’ or ‘her’, were they capable of objecting to anything other than an injudicious watering regimen. In point of fact, the plants actually don’t get much of a mention in the blurb for this extravaganza, despite the fact that this is why Kew Gardens exists.
In other words it is not a celebration of the beauty tended over the years by less stupid curators, but yet another example of fashionable, top-down, performative grandstanding – a simpler description of which is ‘narcissism’. The people invited along, and the performers, are not there to marvel at the miracles of nature, but at their own miraculousness and to shout about it and show off. It is a revelling in themselves and how wonderful they are and yet also how victimised and oppressed by the horribly white, straight hegemony. In this it is much like the rest of the stuff which makes up what we refer to as the ‘culture war’ – whether it’s the gays or the trans people or indeed the Black Lives Matter crew, identitarianism is always an act born of narcissism: we are important, everybody else not so much. Perhaps I should get on board and be a bit more identitarian myself, in the hope that one day Kew Gardens might put on a special event for my tribe – An Evening Among the Giant Ferns For Ageing Fascist Gammons.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/09/right-on-kew/
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A Blue State Will Recognize ‘Transgender History Month’
The state of California will recognize August as “Transgender History Month” going forward, becoming the first state to do so.
The California State Assembly voted and passed the resolution this week, according to Fox 40 in Sacramento.
Democratic Assemblymember Matt Haney, who authored the bill, said: “I couldn’t be more proud to have introduced legislation that will designate August as the first statewide Transgender History month in the nation."
“I believe that as Californians our strongest defense against the anti-trans agenda is just to tell the truth. Let’s tell the truth about transgender people’s lives, and let’s lift up the history of the transgender Californians who left their mark on our great state,” he added.
"Many Californians remain unaware of the real lives and experiences of transgender people, even here in California," Honey Mahogany, San Francisco's Democratic Party Chair, told Fox 40.
"We can change that through awareness, education, and outreach, and I believe that establishing a Transgender History Month in California is one way we can do just that."
Last year, San Francisco announced that it would observe August as Transgender History Month, as Townhall covered.
Townhall has noted how many states have passed laws protecting children from the harms of so-called “gender-affirming” care, which includes hormone replacement therapy, puberty blockers, and sex reassignment surgery. Additionally, many states have passed laws protecting women’s sports and locker rooms from so-called “transgender” athletes who are biological males.
Currently, school districts in California have come under fire by Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration for implementing policies that protect parents rights and keep them in the loop about their child’s gender identity. This comes after a school district in the state agreed to settle a lawsuit accusing teachers of encouraging a student’s gender transition and keeping it a secret from their mother, which Townhall covered.
Now, parents in the Golden State have created an organization called Protect Kids California and launched a ballot initiative aimed at allowing voters to decide on these issues.
“We have a system in California that sells false choices and false hope to parents and their kids,” the group’s co-founder, Jonathan Zachreson, said during a press conference about the initiative. “This bill of lies has been sold to many young people, especially young women, in California.”
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Legalized Shoplifting Becomes a Racket, and Minorities Hardest Hit
You could blame Victor Hugo. In 1846, the French novelist observed a young man being arrested for holding a loaf of bread he stole.
Deeply touched, he fashioned his novel “Les Miserables,” published in 1862, around the character Jean Valjean, who is imprisoned for 19 years for stealing a loaf of bread and pursued relentlessly after his release by Inspector Javert.
You may have followed the story, sort of, in the musical “Les Mis,” which began its run in Paris in 1980 and London in 1985. Or you may have heard the quip by the later French writer Anatole France that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
Curiously, some people, even in the United States in the 21st century, seem to think that the conditions Hugo and France described in their fiction still prevail here — even though their relevant writings were set nearly 200 years in the past, and no one without severe mental handicaps goes hungry today for want of bread in countries such as France and the U.S.
But the assumption persists that if someone steals, particularly if someone steals items worth small amounts of money, that person must be in dire want or acting to help someone who is. Didn’t Karl Marx and others of Hugo’s generation teach that mankind acts always and everywhere primarily out of economic motives?
Something like this line of thought, perhaps without the literary references, explains the laws decriminalizing the thefts of items worth small amounts of money. Primary examples include California’s law, passed in a referendum in 2014, raising from $400 to $950 the amount of shoplifted goods justifying a felony prosecution.
Similarly, in New York State, stealing property worth less than $1,000 is a misdemeanor. So prosecutors, many financed by the left-wing billionaire George Soros, in these two large states and elsewhere have effectively decriminalized shoplifting.
Proposition 47 was pitched as a measure to relieve prison overcrowding and defended by an Associated Press reporter as not preventing misdemeanor prosecutions of those filching goods worth $949 or less. But of course, that’s not what happened.
Instead, shoplifting has become a mass, and scary, phenomenon, encouraged by organized criminals who resell stolen merchandise.
Those who see low-dollar shoplifters as 21st-century Jean Valjeans should realize that theft is not necessarily a nonviolent crime and that low-value theft losses can inflict severe damage on those with modest incomes.
It’s like what Jack Maple, an architect of New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s police reforms, concluded when told that burglaries of under $10,000 weren’t investigated in Manhattan. “If you were Donald Trump and had a painting taken,” he recalled, “we would have 30 … cops there. If you’re poor , you could have your life savings stolen from you, and nobody was going to investigate it, which is outrageous! I just saw what the rule was, and I changed it.”
In most cases, the flash mobs swarming into chain drugstores and bodegas in Manhattan and San Francisco, invariably ignored by unformed security and police officers, don’t take much directly from customers. But they do put people just going about their daily lives in fear of injury or death, the common law definition of assault, and increase the cost and availability of goods in their neighborhoods.
So chain drugstores place under lock and key razor blades and toothpaste and shampoos, which can be sold to organized gangsters who sell them at low prices with no sales tax. Other stores just close, such as Nordstrom on San Francisco’s Market Street and CVS branches in Midtown Manhattan.
In southeast Washington, D.C., Giant Foods has removed brand-name merchandise from its supermarket (store brand items apparently aren’t fencible).
That’s supported by local Councilman Trayon White (last seen blaming the Rothschilds for a heavy snowfall), who reports that Giant’s shoplifting loss is 20% of sales and says that, without changes, the store, the only one in the neighborhoods, will close.
It’s an uncomfortable and rarely reported fact that the large majority of shoplifting mobs are young black men, some of whom may believe they’re redressing Jean Valjean-type grievances. White disagrees. “We know it’s tough times, and we know the price of food has skyrocketed in the last three years,” he said. “But we cannot afford to hurt ourselves by constantly taking it out of the store.”
In saying so, he shows an appreciation of the inevitable result of effectively decriminalizing stealing that evidently evaded sophisticated New York state legislators and the 60% of California voters who voted to do so. As the San Francisco longshoreman/philosopher Eric Hoffer put it about 50 years ago, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
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Top Military Brass Press Tuberville
As the Senate returns from its August recess, one of the top focal points for the Biden administration is to smash the roadblock that is Alabama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville.
For months now, Tuberville has held the line on his demand that the Biden administration reverse course on its unprecedented and arguably unconstitutional decision to pay for service members’ transportation to other states in order to obtain elective abortions. Of course, the Biden administration maintains the fiction that such elective abortion services are essential to ensuring “service members and their families have access to reproductive health no matter where they are stationed.” At best, this is a violation of the spirit of the longstanding bipartisan-supported Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortions.
Refusing to back down, Team Biden ran a blitz against the old football coach in the form of a Washington Post op-ed cowritten by the secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. They warn of “the dangers of politicizing our military leaders” and insist, “It is time to lift this dangerous hold and confirm our senior military leaders.”
The people politicizing the military occupy the White House.
Since Tuberville took his principled stand, the U.S. military has incurred a backlog of hundreds of pending officer promotions, including the heads of three of the five military branches — the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps.
The Democrat-controlled Senate could easily take the time to individually vote on these officer promotions, especially the pending heads of the military branches. But rather than doing so, which would involve more time that could potentially derail some of the Democrats’ legislative agenda, they have chosen to play what amounts to a game of chicken.
Democrats and the Biden administration argue that Tuberville’s stand is threatening national defense by impacting military readiness. Yet if that were indeed the case, Senate Democrats would have long ago acted to hold individual nominations. And according to calculations by the Washington Examiner’s Conn Carroll, “[Senator Chuck] Schumer could have been popping one [confirmation] out every two hours for the past 40 days.”
This is a battle of political wills. Tuberville is standing between Joe Biden and an expansion of the power of the executive branch beyond constitutional limits — all because the commander-in-chief and his administration view elective abortion as a (non-enumerated) constitutional right. (Where do we apply for subsidizing elective gun purchases? Asking for a friend.) But Congress doesn’t see it that way, and Biden knows he can’t get what he wants via the legislative process, so he’s going around it.
Thus far, Tuberville has proven himself much more of a stalwart than the Biden administration bargained for. And it appears this game of chicken is nowhere near ending. As Tuberville rightly sees it, the lives of pre-born Americans are at stake, not just a political agenda.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/100247-top-military-brass-press-tuberville-2023-09-07
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10 September, 2023
The ADL Does Not Speak for the Jews
Their lack of interest in their historic mission to defend Jews goes back a long way. Under Abe Foxman (1987 to 2015) they focused heavily on criticizing Christians
Elon Musk has threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League for some $22 billion over its slandering of him as an antisemite, which he alleges has tanked X's advertising revenue. "Based on what we've heard from advertisers, ADL seems to be responsible for most of our revenue loss," Musk says.
Judging from my own feed, there are plenty of real-life antisemites who have taken to X, formerly Twitter, to participate in the #BanTheADL movement over this kerfuffle. It's unsurprising that more open discourse brings out more bigots. That's an unfortunate price of free speech. Clearly, those who campaign to "ban" accounts don't care about an open platform. Nothing stops us from calling them out.
That said, though, Musk's criticism of the ADL isn't antisemitic. First off, the ADL isn't a "Jewish" organization in any genuine ethnic or theological sense. Its primary mission is no longer to stop the defamation of Jews. The ADL's CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, a former Barack Obama appointee who often appears on MSNBC to chat it up with bigots such as Al Sharpton, has created a partisan leftist social justice outfit. And its primary goal these days is cynically using the organization's historical position to advance often illiberal, completely irreligious, leftist ideas.
One of the ways it does this is by dishonestly framing an endorsement of free expression as an endorsement of the things people say using free expression, including antisemitism. That's what it has done with Musk. So it would be no surprise if the ADL were leading a politically motivated boycott effort.
Musk, for example, contends that the ADL wants him to ban the Libs of TikTok, a popular account run by an orthodox Jew, Chaya Raichik, who gained fame by reposting real leftists saying real things. It's certainly plausible, considering the ADL already has an entry for Raichik in its "glossary of terms." Now, I'm not a big fan of nitpicking, but I haven't seen anything in her feed that could be rationally construed as antisemitic. And that speaks to the problem of who gets to decide what "hate speech" entails.
For Greenblatt, who worked to get Tucker Carlson fired but can barely muster a word of disapproval for Jew-baiters such as Rashida Tlaib or any other elected progressive, hate speech is a finely tuned political weapon. The ADL has spent years exaggerating the threat of antisemitism on the right, finding offense not only in demonstrably ugly speech, but also in an endless number of dog whistles (including criticisms of leftist megadonor George Soros). At the same time, it gives perfunctory attention (but mostly ignores) the threat and normalization of anti-Jewish sentiment among leftists on college campuses, within activist movements, and in the government.
Don't think of it as a double standard. Think of the ADL as a run-of-the-mill activist shop -- something akin to the Southern Poverty Law Centery -- and it all makes complete sense.
You only need to look at the organization's educational recommendations to understand that its worldview is detached from any traditional understanding of Judaism. One strongly doubts the founders of the ADL could have foreseen their organization endorsing the idea that Jews were among the racial oppressors of American society.
Yet the ADL's school curricula and readings on race and racism are littered with identarian tracts such as "How to Be An Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi, a fan of a number of brazen antisemites, and "White Fragility" by Robin DiAngelo. How can the ADL claim to fight against the defamation of the Jewish people and recommend authors who insinuate, or worse, that Jews represent a disproportionate amount of power in the United States -- one of the most enduring tropes of antisemitism? The ADL also recommends the pseudohistorical 1619 Project and the podcast "The Urgency of Intersectionality" by Kimberle Crenshaw, a leading "scholar of critical race theory," the teachings of which are also inherently anti-Jewish.
I'm not saying that many, maybe most, American Jews don't agree with the ideological outlook of the ADL. But many do not. Nothing in Judaism teaches that our immutable appearances predetermine our societal role, actions or worth. Why is a group claiming to fight Jewish defamation spreading trendy ideological puffery? Because it is not what it says it is.
Now, the ADL, self-anointed arbiter of antisemitism, is certainly useful in providing lazy journalists with quotes confirming preexisting notions about antisemitism being largely a right-wing phenomenon. And risk-averse corporations might use them for guidance. But it has no moral standing to dictate appropriate speech. Certainly not in the name of Jews.
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Utah’s Economic Prosperity Illustrates the Importance of Marriage, Family, and Religion
A recently released report says that Utah’s economy ranks No. 1 among all 50 states and attributes this top ranking to the influence of the state’s dominant culture of heterosexual marriage and the strength and stability of its families.
Authors Brad Wilcox, Jenet Erickson, and Patrick T. Brown conclude in the Sutherland Institute report that marriage and families have proven to function as effective anti-poverty programs. Higher levels of marriage —and in particular, higher levels of married-parent families—are strongly associated with greater economic growth, more economic mobility, less child poverty, and higher median family income.
“The percentage of parents who are married in a given state is typically a stronger predictor of the state’s economic mobility, child poverty, and median family income than are the education level, racial makeup, and age composition of its population,” the authors state.
Intact heterosexual married families outperform other living arrangements (including cohabitation) when comparing the outcomes of basic economic measures such as employment, income, net worth, poverty, receipt of welfare, and the economic well-being of children. These are relevant economic indicia that define the economic prosperity of individual states.
A different study that examined the relationship between religion and economic prosperity concluded that “religion is good for the economy.”
An important ingredient of these findings is that individuals with a religious affiliation are more likely to be married than those who are not. Because the Mormon Church dominates Utah’s culture and because marriage represents a core teaching of that church, Utah leads other states in its number of marriages.
Wilcox et al. point out that “no state in the Union has as many men, women and children in married households” as does Utah. They stated, “In 2021, 55% of adults in Utah (age 18-55) were married and 82% of its children were living in married couple families. This compares to 45% of adults married and 75% of kids living in married families nationally.”
However, we are informed that Utah is not immune to “a broader national tendency to delay marriage and postpone or defer childbearing.” In 1950, almost 90% of newborn children until age 14 lived with married parents in America. The proportion has now dramatically fallen to less than two-thirds of such children. Since the late 1970s, every state has witnessed a substantial drop in the percentage of adults who are married.
In spite of the fact that a historically low marriage rate exists in society today and a record number of people in today’s culture are projected to forgo marriage altogether, studies show that family breakdown is three times more common among unmarried/cohabiting couples. Parents who cohabit but never marry are the most likely to separate by the time their child turns 14. Some 60% of cohabiting parents separated by the time their child turned 14, compared with just 21% of couples who married before the birth of their first child and 32% who married after.
The onslaught of what we today call “woke” culture has adversely affected the entire country’s view of marriage and, in turn, the economic gains a culture based on matrimonial monogamy can produce. In addition, the recent influx of new residents into Utah from more liberal states with less traditional values suggest that “as the state has grown, its status as a family outlier may be starting to converge with national norms.”
Nevertheless, conservative states with high degrees of religiosity like Utah experienced less of a retreat from marriage than more secular states. Recognizing this fact leads to a conclusion that our country as a whole needs to rebuild the culture of marriage and family. How? By strengthening traditional values incorporated within the Judeo-Christian ethic that exhort marital fidelity and the raising of children. (Parenthetically, it is also helpful to reduce government intervention that adversely affects marriage rates, such as the marriage penalty for welfare beneficiaries.)
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The Weaponized Left Is Completely Out of Control
In 2009 and 2010, conservatives and small-government Americans from across the country came together in protest of President Barack Obama's big spending projects and plan to upend the U.S. healthcare system through Obamacare. They were opposed to this fundamental transformation of the country and decided to exercise their First Amendment rights by peacefully organizing against it. The Tea Party was born.
The Obama administration didn't like the opposition, especially ahead of the 2010 midterm elections, and used the IRS to silence everyday Americans with phone calls, harassment and threats of imprisonment.
"The fact that officials at the IRS wielded their power to target certain Americans for their political views is both outrageous and contrary to our nation's values. Our government is supposed to work for all Americans, not for a particular partisan agenda. As a result of the IRS' targeting, conservative groups were singled out across the nation, resulting in lengthy paperwork requirements, overly burdensome information requests, and lengthy, unwarranted delays in their applications," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte said in a 2013 statement when Republicans were investigating the matter.
That was just the beginning.
Fast forward to the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, and the left has supercharged their efforts by criminalizing the contesting of elections. Not for Democrats but for Republicans, with the Department of Justice and local prosecutors leading the charge.
In August, President Donald Trump and 18 of his associates, including his attorneys, were indicted by Fulton County Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis — a partisan Democrat — after a grand jury recommendation. Willis claims there is evidence of racketeering and that questioning results is a crime. Additionally, the indictment states tweeting about election hearings, an exercise of the First Amendment, was "furtherance" of a conspiracy.
"On or about the 3rd day of December 2020, DONALD JOHN TRUMP caused to be tweeted from the Twitter account @RealDonaldTrump, 'Georgia hearings now on @OANN. Amazing!' This was an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy," the indictment states.
Keep in mind that the grand jury didn't need to be unanimous and only required 12 people in deep blue Fulton County to return an indictment. Foreperson Emily Kohrs expressed her own bias when she told CNN she would be "sad" if Trump wasn't indicted.
"I will be sad if nothing happens. That's about my only request there is for something to happen," Kohrs said in February, saying it was "too much of her time" for nothing to happen. "I will be frustrated if nothing happens…I will be happy as long as something happens."
Now, we're learning just how out of control the grand jury really was.
"According to the now-released grand jury report originally dated December 15, 2022, there were additional individuals the panel recommended indictments against. In all, the report shows that indictments were suggested against 21 other individuals against whom charges were not ultimately pursued by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis," Townhall reports. "Among the individuals the grand jury wanted to add to its laundry list of indictment individuals are U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), attorneys Cleta Mitchell and Boris Epshteyn, former U.S. Senators for Georgia David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, and the full slate of 'alternate electors.'"
An indictment for Senator Lindsey Graham? Who at the time served as the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman? Dangerous nonsense.
"I'm very worried about the country right now. I was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. This election was contested in courts in multiple states. I had to explain to the people of South Carolina my vote. I had to decide whether or not to have a hearing about the allegations in Georgia and other places. I called around different states, including Georgia, as a sitting United States senator, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I eventually certified the election in all states, including Georgia. I didn't find any evidence of mass voter fraud, but I did have concerns about the mail-in ballot systems in Georgia and other places," Graham said in response to the news. "This is troubling for the country. We can't criminalize senators doing their job when they have a constitutional requirement to fulfill. It would have been irresponsible, for me, in my opinion, as chairman of the Committee, not to try to find out what happened."
"We're opening up Pandora's box here," he continued. "We have to be careful not to use the legal system as a political tool."
The left claims Trump is somehow uniquely dangerous, and therefore, actions taken to stop him are justified. That assertion isn't true and never has been, but their latest indictment spree proves they want everyone who even remotely challenges their political power and narratives to be finished.
The weaponized left is completely out of control, and it seems they have no plans to reel in their efforts. As usual, for them, the ends justify the means.
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Biden Is Killing the American Dream of Homeownership
In boasting about “Bidenomics” two weeks ago in Milwaukee, President Joe Biden declared that his policies are “restoring the American dream.” Then he went into his creepy whispering mode and assured us “it’s working.”
Huh?
Isn’t a big aspiration of the American dream owning a home? Biden keeps making first-time homeownership harder for young families for two reasons. One is that the overall jump in inflation and the slower increase in wages and salaries means that homes are more expensive. High home prices benefit those who already own their homes, but much of the increased value is due to general inflation, which reached a high of 9% last year and hurts everyone.
A bigger killer for first-time homebuyers has been the steady rise in mortgage rates under Biden. When he came into office, the mortgage rate was 2.9% nationally. Now it is 7.1%, thanks in no small part to the Federal Reserve’s 11 interest rate increases prompted by the $6 trillion Biden spending and borrowing spree in 2021 and 2022.
So now, according to the mortgage company Redfin, just the increase in interest rates on a 30-year mortgage from 5% to 7% means that a middle-income family that could once afford a median-value home of $500,000 can only afford a home worth $429,000.
Great, spend more and you get less house. Or instead of a single-family home, you can only afford a three-room condo or a townhouse. If we compare the rates today versus when Donald Trump was president, the typical homebuyer can only afford a house with a price tag more than $100,000 less than three years ago.
What a deal? Maybe this is one reason the size of a new home is smaller than in the past.
Here’s another way to think about the damage done by Biden policies: If you want to buy a $500,000 home today, which is close to the median price in many desirable locations, your total interest payments will be at least $800 more per month. That means over three decades of payments totaling at least $250,000.
Of course, rents are up nearly 20% as well, so for many 20-somethings, this means sleeping in the parents’ basement.
Biden talks a lot about bridging gaps between rich and poor and blacks and whites. But the group that is most handicapped by these interest rate shocks is minorities. Black homeownership is still less than 50% for black households. The Washington Post calls this “heartbreaking,” but they blame racism, not bad government policies.
There’s one other impediment to homeownership for Generation X and millennials. Many 30- and 40-somethings are hamstrung by their existing and expanding debt. Credit card debt is now $1.03 trillion. Half of all families are expected to have problems paying off this debt each month. Delinquencies are rising, which can mean penalty rates of 20% to 25%.
So, if families can’t afford their existing debt, how will they get a bank to approve a $400,000 or more mortgage loan?
An even bigger question is how in the world can Biden call his economic policies a success?
Perhaps Biden has a secret plan to “forgive” trillions of dollars of mortgage debt, as he has already attempted to do with student loans. But that just shifts the debt burden to taxpayers—hardly a solution.
The Biden administration’s assault on homeownership isn’t just harmful to the families that are being priced out of the market. It’s bad for communities and cities around the country. When families become homeowners and set roots in a town, they are much more prone to care about not just improving their own house and maintaining the upkeep and mowing the lawn and trimming the hedges, but it gives them a stake in the schools and children in the neighborhood and the quality of the public services. In other words, homeownership gives Americans a sense of Tocquevillian civic pride.
Crime is lower, neighbors are friendlier, and everyone’s property values rise when they live in a community of owners, not renters.
There is one reason to feel today’s downward spiral can be reversed. Back in 1980, when Jimmy Carter was president, mortgage rates weren’t 7%; they reached above 17%. Voters rebelled against the economic mayhem and chased Carter out of office. Ronald Reagan came into the White House, and with wiser economic fiscal policies, mortgage rates quickly fell in half and then lower still. It can happen again.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/09/05/how-bidenomics-is-destroying-homeownership
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8 September, 2023
Whence the sudden mania about transsexualism?
Up until quite recently, effeminate men and butch women had mostly found a happy home among homosexuals. And they had flown quite under the radar. They were mentioned only in passing. Suddenly, however, a new rage-filled religion has emerged around such people. Quite recently they have changed from being ignored by the Left to becoming the great new cause of the Left. How come?
It's not hard to understand once you realize that the Left are the angry people and angry people need something or someone to be angry about. They need someone to shout at and tear down and attack. They need a "cause"
And their old causes have mostly lost their steam. The workers now mostly vote for Republicans so there is no longer any joy in patronizing them; The battle for gay rights has been won and pitying blacks has become too obviously a failure. But more on that:
The Left once thought that the very low average economic success of blacks was the result of them being badly treated by the educational system. The "gap" between black and white success is huge there. But no matter what Leftist educators tried, the "gap" between black and white school results remained quite immovable.
And affirmative action was not much of a remedy either. Blacks put into jobs for which they were poorly qualified tended not to do those jobs well and their children tended to do no better than other black kids. So equalizing blacks and whites was frustratingly elusive. All the anger about black disadvantage clearly achieved nothing of substance. Trying to equalize blacks became simply frustrating and boring. Leftist anger changed nothing
But the fact that blacks could not often be lifted up economically still cried out as a gross breach of the fundamental Letist faith that all men are equal. If the black/white "gap" could not be changed it had at least to be explained. So critical race theory was born. It says that hidden white prejudice is responsible for black failure.
But telling whites that they are secretly prejudiced does not do much. You cannot easily aim your anger at something hidden. And whites seem generally not too moved by the charge against them. It is hard to make whites suffer for their invisible evil. Most whites simply ignore the accusation and that is that. Some weirdos may self-flagellate but they are too few to be satisfying.
So the left had simply run out of things that they could make into a great cause for their anger. They needed a new enemy. And all that pent up anger is now directed at people who think that there are only two sexes. It's absurd but absurdity has never held the Left back. Their core belief that "all men are equal" is absurd.
And policies born out of anger are seldom wise or constructive. And the latest obsession is no exception. Who would ever have thought that cutting of a young girl's breasts or a young mans penis would ever be seen as virtuous and in need of encouragement? One almost pines for the day when all that Leftist anger required was a mandate to give High School diplomas to illiterate blacks
But who are these angry people? What makes the Left seethe with anger? Have you ever seen anyone seethe with anger the way the Left did when Donald Trump was elected President? Leftist anger was a great foaming torrent at that time -- completely unrestrained. We saw then with crystal clarity the anger that was behind the mask of doing good
All the studies of it show that the Left/Right political polarity is strongly inherited genetically -- so to a large extent the Left are just born in their unhappy state. The world just looks all wrong to their eyes. But there may of course also be life events and circumstances which generate chronic anger. Failing to get much of the rewards that life offers might well make one an unhappy person. Black anger is explicable that way. I go through various other possibilities elsewhere:
http://jonjayray.com/leftism2.html
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Canada Takes 'LGBTQ' To A Whole New Level
It has become easy to poke fun at Canada’s Gen-X Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau. From his incessant warbling about Climate Catastrophe to his bedrock antagonism to firearms, Trudeau personifies Woke-ism more than any other leader of a major nation. It is his Liberal government’s obsession with the LGBTQ phenomenon, however, that takes the cultural cake.
At the beginning of this month, for example, Trudeau’s Global Affairs Canada, a counterpart to our country’s State Department, issued its latest “travel advisory” for its citizens to be wary of travelling to the United States. Among the myriad dangers for which Canadian visitors to the United States are urged to prepare (including volcanoes, earthquakes, wild fires, mass shootings, yellow fever, and rabies), is the “danger” they face because their neighbor to the south has become exceptionally hostile to “LGBTQ people.”
Of particular concern to Trudeau’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrysti Freeland, is the fact that some jurisdictions in the United States have passed legislation limiting “drag shows.” Freeland’s office also singled out for specific criticism the fact that certain American states have “restrict[ed] the transgender community from access to gender affirming care.”
Although Canada has published a general advisory for LGBTQ matters at least since early this year, the most recent advisory warning about LGBTQ hostility being prevalent in the United States, appears to be the first time Ottawa has specifically flagged our country in this way.
The Global Affairs department did not cite any statistics on how many visitors from Trudeau’s country actually have attended or plan to attend drag shows in the United States, or how many, if any, of its visiting citizens might otherwise have sought access to “gender affirming care” while visiting America. Nonetheless, the advisory cautioned visitors to carefully check the “laws and policies” of jurisdictions to be visited before venturing across the border.
A review of Canada’s official positioning on LGBTQ issues reveals an even more complex and extensive inclusionary framework than commonly used here in the United States.
For example, the basic gender nomenclature government policy in Canada is officially deemed to be “2SLGBTQI+” rather than our culture’s more constrained “LGBTQ.”
Unfamiliar as I am with this longer acronym, I discovered that the “2S” prefix is used to identify “a person whose gender identity, spiritual identity and/or sexual orientation comprises both male and female spirits.” Apparently, at least in Canada, such two-spirit sexual orientation is “traditional to many Indigenous cultures.” Learn something new every day. (The “I” stands for “Intersex,” with an explanation that is at once ambiguous and all-encompassing, and ultimately meaningless.)
The Canadian gender identity bureaucracy includes a lengthy and downright confusing glossary of applicable terms, including “SOGI” (“Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity”), “SOGIE” (“Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression”), and “SOGIESC” (“Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression and Sex Characteristics”). It is a complex world, indeed.
In addition to the now-commonly employed terms such as “Cisgender,” “Questioning” (which, according to the official government glossary, can be an indefinite state of existence), and “Pansexual,” our northern neighbor pays homage to an individual “who lacks romantic attraction or interest in romantic expression” – identifying such person as “Aromantic.” Similarly, for the Canadian government it is critical to distinguish a person who is “sexually attracted to two or more genders” (“Bisexual”) from one who is “romantically attracted to two or more genders” (“Biromantic”).
The Trudeau government’s fixation on LGBTQ matters, as reflected in these official edicts -- including the travel advisory warning against travel to the United States simply because some states have passed laws reflecting concern that gender-altering medical procedures can be undertaken without parental consent or even knowledge -- is but the latest manifestation of what many in Canada see as an “incompetent” and “unserious” administration led by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. In this assessment, I agree.
https://townhall.com/columnists/bobbarr/2023/09/07/canada-takes-lgbtq-to-a-whole-new-level-n2628073
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Massachusetts’ Religious Bigotry Leaves Foster Kids Without Homes
Religious freedom, Congress said unanimously in 1998, “undergirds the very origin and existence of the United States.” Today, however, an obsession with gender ideology is driving governments to ignore the First Amendment, defy clear Supreme Court precedent, and even violate their own laws and regulations to root out those with the “wrong” religious views about sexuality. This bigotry not only violates fundamental rights, but it also puts vulnerable children at risk.
During the 2021-22 fiscal year, more than 9,700 children were placed in the custody of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families, which had already acknowledged a serious lack of both foster families and group homes.
While DCF does not publish an official number, reports began to emerge that abused and neglected children removed from their homes who had no place to stay ended up sleeping in social workers’ offices, sometimes for nights at a time. Other foster children were forced to stay in hospitals or emergency rooms because no other placements were available.
Especially in the middle of this crisis, what could possibly be more important than finding families who could provide a safe and loving home for foster kids? The answer is the same thing that drives disastrous business decisions, dangerous educational practices, and media self-censorship: gender ideology.
Here’s what Massachusetts is doing.
Mike and Kitty Burke are lifelong residents of Springfield, Massachusetts. Mike is an Iraq War veteran, and Kitty has experience working with special needs children. After finding they could not bear their own children, the Burkes applied to be foster parents, successfully completing training and going through extensive interviews and an evaluation of the home environment in which foster kids would live. DCF, however, rejected their application solely because of their religious beliefs, as faithful Catholics, about sexuality and marriage.
DCF regulations require foster families to “support and respect a child’s sexual orientation and gender identity” but, unfortunately, do not further define what this means. The Burkes’ objective qualifications and commitment to accept, love, and care for children regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity was not enough.
During their foster parent training, the Burkes were told that foster parents must actually affirm same-sex relationships and transgender identities, a requirement that apparently extends to their own personal beliefs.
The home interviewer recommended against allowing the Burkes to foster children “due to the couple’s views. … They are heavily involved in their Catholic Church and cite their religious views” as the basis for how they look at sexuality and marriage. In the end, DCF rejected the Burkes because of their “beliefs.”
In rooting out applicants with the “wrong” religious beliefs, DCF ignored its own regulations. DCF’s Foster Parents’ Bill of Rights, for example, prohibits discrimination against prospective foster parents “on the basis of religion,” and its regulations claim that it “does not deny any adult the opportunity to become a foster family on the basis of … religion.” Tell that to the Burkes.
DCF policy supposedly prevents staff from “imposing their personal, cultural, and/or religious beliefs on children and families involved with the Department.” At the same time, DCF makes this very imposition more likely by leaving key determinations about applicants’ fitness to a social worker’s unfettered subjective discretion.
Here, DCF rejected the Burkes because, as the primary social worker assigned to their application put it, their “faith is not supportive” of every child’s sexual orientation and gender identity.
DCF claims to prioritize applicants willing to care for sibling groups, children from diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds, and those with special needs. The Burkes checked all of those boxes, and evaluators noted that Mike’s experience of PTSD following his military service and Kitty’s work with special needs children would enhance their effectiveness as foster parents. The Burkes even said they were open to adopting foster children who could not be reunified with their birth families. Still not good enough.
In a way, DCF’s discrimination is worse than if it had simply excluded all people of faith. DCF, you see, claims to recruit foster families from diverse faith communities. No, DCF discriminates among religious families, rejecting those with religious beliefs that the state finds objectionable. In other words, Catholics (as well as Muslims and many Jews and Protestants) have a shot only if they reject their church or faith tradition’s teachings on sexual orientation and gender identity.
DCF not only disregarded its own policies and regulations, it also ignored the U.S. Constitution and several recent Supreme Court decisions interpreting it:
In Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, for example, the Supreme Court held that Philadelphia violated the First Amendment by terminating Catholic Charities’ contract to be a foster care agency solely because it declined to certify same-sex couples for foster child placement.
In Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Human Rights Commission, the Supreme Court held that government must enforce its laws and regulations in a “fair and neutral” manner and may not show hostility toward religion.
In Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, the Supreme Court made clear that government may not exclude otherwise qualified individuals from participation in programs solely because of their religious views.
In 303 Creative v. Elenis, the Supreme Court held that government may not “coerce an individual to speak contrary to her beliefs on a significant issue of personal conviction, all in order to eliminate ideas that differ from its own.”
The desperate need of children, DCF’s own policies and regulations, and even clear Supreme Court directives are not enough to hinder gender warriors in Massachusetts. Foster children have already endured enough trauma; they should not be collateral damage in the war over gender ideology.
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Racist duck hunting regulations in Australia
The recent state parliamentary report into recreational native bird hunting gives Victorians a taste of the kind of division the Voice to Parliament will have across every area of life in regional Australia should advocates for constitutional change be successful at the October referendum.
The report, almost 300 pages long, lays out a recipe for the kind of race-based division of laws and rights that the federal government would make permanent nationwide.
Without any solid justification – except, it would seem, that some people do not like bird hunting – the committee has recommended the Victorian government end recreational bird hunting on all public and private land from 2024.
Only that would not apply to everyone. According to the committee, the hunting rights of ‘traditional owners’ should be retained.
Other key recommendations include that the government introduce additional protections for ‘Aboriginal cultural heritage’ sites and current penalties for ‘cultural destruction’. The committee even recommends a government re-education program that would require hunters to learn about ‘Aboriginal cultural heritage awareness’.
One of the claims made in support of the committee’s proposed restrictions is that bird hunting is a niche practice and only 0.4 per cent of Victorians hold a bird hunting licence.
It is not clear whether the committee questioned how many ‘traditional owners’ are currently exercising their hunting rights. One gets the impression that it would not matter to the committee members, as its position is that one category of Victorian deserves greater protection.
This goes right to the heart of the concern of a growing number of Australians when it comes to the proposed Voice to Parliament, that laws are increasingly being used to separate people into different groups.
Brazen in its divisiveness, the Victorian parliamentary committee said it would be too cruel if Victorians who do not have Indigenous heritage were allowed to continue to hunt, but it would not be too cruel if those Victorians were Indigenous.
The same concerns became a flashpoint in Western Australia recently, with the confusion and concern generated by proposed Indigenous Cultural Heritage laws. These now abandoned reforms would have mandated property owners obtain permission from local Indigenous authorities before even a fence post could have been dug on land only slightly larger than a suburban block.
The Western Australian reforms were abandoned after overwhelming community pressure following statements of the newly appointed Premier Roger Cook let the cat out of the bag saying his ‘cultural heritage laws do the same thing as the Voice.’
Claims that people should be divided and given different rights would become more commonplace if the indigenous-only voice to parliament – a parallel system of political representation based on race – is inserted into the Australian Constitution.
The federal government’s proposed constitutional change would establish the voice and give it the constitutional duty to make ‘representations’ to the Parliament and the executive government. This means the voice would be empowered to intervene at all stages of the lawmaking process – not just the drafting, review, and debate of laws, but also the right to make representations about how laws are enforced.
There is no limit to the scope of matters that the voice may make recommendations. If passed, the Voice would have the right to make representations to the government ‘on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’. This, in effect, means any issue because all Indigenous Australians are Australians, and the law applies to all Australians equally – or at least it should.
Any disputes in the lawmaking process between the Canberra Voice to pParliament and the elected Parliament will not be resolved democratically. Because the Canberra Voice to Parliament will be enshrined in the Constitution, it will be the High Court that will determine the scope, rights, and powers of the Voice and adjudicate disputes.
The Victorian bird hunting inquiry demonstrates how issues of general concern can quickly be hijacked by activists pushing a divisive agenda and demands for separate treatment can be accommodated by dismantling the principle of equality before the law. At the referendum on October 14, 2023, this could become a permanent feature of our way of life.
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7 September, 2023
Slippery logic about Excess Death Rates for Republican and Democratic Registered Voters in Florida and Ohio
If this study were to be submitted as a Statistics 101 essay, it would be deservedly rejected. But it in fact appeared in a top medical journal. It is yet another instance of the deception surrounding Covid
The leap of logic: They had data about all-cause mortality but somehowthat tells us about mortality from Covid (!!). How come? Because the data was gathered DURING Covid it supposedly tells us ABOUT Covid: Logic only a Leftist could love. That things other than Covid might have happened in the period concrned is ignored.
There's not much point flogging a dead horse but I might also note that excess deaths in Ohio and Florida are supposed to tell us something about Republicans. What about all the Republican States that did NOT have excess deaths? How do they fit in? They don't. The findings tell us exactly NOTHING about Republicans. Mention of them is a red herring
I sensed that this study would be garbage even before I looked up its details. It is truly lamentable how often science is subjugated to ideology
The original title of the article was "Excess Death Rates for Republican and Democratic Registered Voters in Florida and Ohio During the COVID-19 Pandemic"
Key Points
Question Was political party affiliation a risk factor associated with excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in Florida and Ohio?
Findings In this cohort study evaluating 538?159 deaths in individuals aged 25 years and older in Florida and Ohio between March 2020 and December 2021, excess mortality was significantly higher for Republican voters than Democratic voters after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults, but not before. These differences were concentrated in counties with lower vaccination rates, and primarily noted in voters residing in Ohio.
Meaning The differences in excess mortality by political party affiliation after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults suggest that differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republican and Democratic voters may have been a factor in the severity and trajectory of the pandemic in the US.
Abstract
Importance There is evidence that Republican-leaning counties have had higher COVID-19 death rates than Democratic-leaning counties and similar evidence of an association between political party affiliation and attitudes regarding COVID-19 vaccination; further data on these rates may be useful.
Objective To assess political party affiliation and mortality rates for individuals during the initial 22 months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Design, Setting, and Participants A cross-sectional comparison of excess mortality between registered Republican and Democratic voters between March 2020 and December 2021 adjusted for age and state of voter registration was conducted. Voter and mortality data from Florida and Ohio in 2017 linked to mortality records for January 1, 2018, to December 31, 2021, were used in data analysis.
Exposures Political party affiliation.
Main Outcomes and Measures Excess weekly deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic adjusted for age, county, party affiliation, and seasonality.
Results Between January 1, 2018, and December 31, 2021, there were 538?159 individuals in Ohio and Florida who died at age 25 years or older in the study sample. The median age at death was 78 years (IQR, 71-89 years). Overall, the excess death rate for Republican voters was 2.8 percentage points, or 15%, higher than the excess death rate for Democratic voters (95% prediction interval [PI], 1.6-3.7 percentage points). After May 1, 2021, when vaccines were available to all adults, the excess death rate gap between Republican and Democratic voters widened from ?0.9 percentage point (95% PI, ?2.5 to 0.3 percentage points) to 7.7 percentage points (95% PI, 6.0-9.3 percentage points) in the adjusted analysis; the excess death rate among Republican voters was 43% higher than the excess death rate among Democratic voters. The gap in excess death rates between Republican and Democratic voters was larger in counties with lower vaccination rates and was primarily noted in voters residing in Ohio.
Conclusions and Relevance In this cross-sectional study, an association was observed between political party affiliation and excess deaths in Ohio and Florida after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults. These findings suggest that differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republican and Democratic voters may have been factors in the severity and trajectory of the pandemic in the US.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2807617
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Biden Betrays Israel in the U.N., Rescinding Trump’s Recognition of Sovereignty over the Golan
The latest act in the Biden administration’s Middle Eastern Kabuki theater is the use of Lebanon to rescind America’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. No formal announcement of this major policy shift was made, of course. Instead, it was buried in the fine print of the U.N. Security Council’s reauthorization of UNIFIL, the force that ostensibly secures Lebanon’s border with Israel. In a reprise of Barack Obama’s passage of Security Council Resolution 2334 in the final days of his second term, Team Obama-Biden on Aug. 31 again used the route of the Security Council to abandon a formal American commitment and implement a new policy with extreme repercussions for Israel’s security.
With UNSCR 2334, Obama adopted the so-called 1967 lines as the official U.S. position on Israel and its conflict with neighboring Arabs. The resolution called upon all states “to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967,” and reaffirmed that all Israeli communities established in territory “occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, have no legal validity.” It meant that the U.S. had adopted the position of Israel’s enemies on East Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, as well as on the Golan Heights.
UNSCR 2334 was the twin of UNSCR 2231, the resolution Obama used to lock in his deal with Iran at the Security Council. Obama’s objective in both cases was to bypass Congress and to tie the hands of his successor by etching his preferences—what people like to call his “legacy”—in Security Council resolutions.
Both planks of Obama’s “legacy” were cracked by Donald Trump, who made two historic moves of his own: moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
When Trump made his move, officials from Team Obama (who now serve in the Biden administration) publicly opposed it. Obama’s former ambassador to Israel, Daniel Shapiro, who is currently the Biden administration’s senior adviser for “Regional Integration,” was particularly vocal in his opposition to the recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan. In fact, Shapiro wrote, the recognition might become an obstacle to a future Israeli-Saudi agreement—a line that offered a preview of how the Biden administration would invert the Abraham Accords in order to reassert Obama’s framework.
The growing divide between the policies that America claims to be pursuing and the policies that it’s implementing on the ground poses a growing threat to America’s global standing, as well as to its democracy.
Upon returning to power, the Biden administration underscored its plan to reopen the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem. It also quickly tipped its hand on its intention to reaffirm Obama’s position on the Golan. In February 2021, Secretary of State Antony Blinken telegraphed the administration’s rejection of Trump’s decision, as well as their plan to rescind it during their tenure. The administration continued to speak of Israel’s “control” (as opposed to “sovereignty”) over the Golan as a “practical” matter. The issue of “legality,” however, was “something else” that the administration was “still working on,” as U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield put it in June 2021.
And work on it they did. This past June, the administration took measures to reaffirm Obama’s UNSCR 2334 legacy, issuing new guidance to government agencies ending scientific and technological cooperation with Israel “in geographic areas which came under the administration of Israel after 1967.”
Then Team Obama-Biden received an assist from a party that shared the same objective: Hezbollah. A few months ago, Hezbollah set up an outpost in the Mount Dov region of Israel, in the area of the Golan that the Lebanese refer to as the Shebaa Farms. Hezbollah orchestrated a full-blown campaign around this calculated move, which pro-Hezbollah media framed as a response to Israel capitalizing on Trump’s recognition of its sovereignty over the Golan. The purpose of the campaign, Hezbollah’s leader made clear, was to force the reopening of the border file, from the coast to the Shebaa Farms
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/biden-back-doors-israel
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‘Transportation Equity’ Coming to a 15-Minute City Near You
Freedom of movement is one of the defining characteristics of American history. Indeed, Article IV of the Articles of Confederation expressly recognized the right of interstate travel. Citizens have the right to travel throughout the country at their own leisure. This fundamental right helped ensure the growth and expansion of the United States into the nation that it is today.
Of course, the primary means by which Americans travel around this great big country is via gas-powered vehicles, which the Biden administration increasingly opposes.
In the name of fighting “racism” and “climate change,” one of Joe Biden’s many diversity hires, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, recently appointed a group of 24 “leading experts” dubbed the Advisory Committee on Transportation Equity to help him come up with a plan for — you guessed it — “transportation equity.” It’s a revival of an initiative started under Barack Obama, which Donald Trump wisely ended. And judging by Buttigieg’s choice of “experts,” this is nothing more than a group designated to come up with new ways to attack Americans’ preferred and necessary form of transportation, gas-powered cars.
For example, Buttigieg’s group includes Andrea Marpillero-Colomina, who has stated that “ALL CARS ARE BAD” because they cause “a myriad of environmental issues and conditions.” Another one of Buttigieg’s “experts” is Veronica Davis, who last month wrote a paper ridiculously claiming that cars perpetuate “systemic racism” and are the biggest problem with the nation’s transportation system. Who knew that inanimate cars were racist?
As our Emmy Griffin noted earlier this summer regarding so-called 15-minute cities, the pipe dream of leftist global elites is to create these walkable cities where everyone lives within 15 minutes of each other and all the necessities of life. Necessities as these global elites define them. And cities that would ideally obviate the need for individual motorized transportation, “racist” or otherwise.
The real goal of these 15-minute cities is that of lifestyle control. No more of those “bad,” “racist” cars. Everyone will walk everywhere and be happy about it because they’re “saving the earth.” Far from utopia, this is a vision for dystopia.
Back to Buttigieg and his transportation “equity” group, this is merely the latest in the growing list of ways in which the Biden administration aims to exert more control over Americans’ lives, infringing upon our individual liberty. The EV push, the net-zero crusade, the raising of new regulations on household appliances from gas stoves to ceiling fans — all of it is being done using the excuse of curbing CO2 emissions. Yet it’s ultimately all about pursuing a bloodless revolution against the American people.
Authoritarian socialism is the goal, and individual rights, private property rights, and free speech rights all get in the way of the elites establishing their rule. For Buttigieg’s advisory committee, the goal is not the erasure of all cars but the erasure of the individual right to private ownership of cars.
In this view, cars should be reserved for elites who “need” to travel. Air transportation should be reserved for elites who “need” to jet across the world to fight climate change — elites like John Kerry. The Biden administration’s view is eerily similar to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. It’s all about control — more and more control. Power can be a corrupting elixir, and those who come under its spell just can’t seem to get enough.
Moreover, this obsession with greater control over the lives of Americans won’t stop with cars or 15-minute cities. It will expand into what you eat, what you wear, what you are allowed to read and watch, and of course what you are allowed to say. Individual liberty is the real “problem” these Washington elites are working to eradicate.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/100215-transportation-equity-coming-to-a-15-minute-city-near-you-2023-09-06
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Single parents discriminated against in rental market
It IS discrimination but why? It's mainly because single parents are usually stretched financially. So it is rational to question whether they would be reliable rent-payers. So it is rational for a landlord to pass over them and rent to people who would have less difficulty in paying rent. But not all single mothers are the same so those in well-paid employment would normally deserve a chance
A whistleblowing real estate agent and a landlord say that single parents are “heavily discriminated against” and “stigmatised” in the rental market, with one single mother who works full-time telling of how she lives in her car because no real estate will lease a property to her.
Vicki Eriksson, now a rental property manager with Five Rivers Sales and Rentals in Cairns, has broken ranks with other firms to say discrimination against solo parents is a “massive issue” in the real estate industry.
“In my experience, it was tough to get a rental when I was a single parent … and it’s because there is a stigma attached to it (being a single parent).”
Ms Ericksson said she got involved in real estate management off the back of her difficult experiences as a single parent trying to find a rental and works hard in her role to give single parents rental properties.
“Being a single parent means you are discriminated against and stigmatised in the rental market, just for being a single parent” she said of other real estate agents.
She said the “stigma comes from the fact there is only one income,” and the result is “people becoming homeless and often trying to make ends meet through stealing and violence”.
Indeed one single mother Stephanie Williams, said she works full-time, but is living in her car because of constant rental knock-backs that she believes is because she is a single parent.
“My boss even helped with a letter stating he would pay three months of rent to try help myself get stability for myself and kids. But here I am living in my car” she said.
“When you have kids and you’re on your own it’s tough, but you have to just keep powering on.”
Single parents Patricia Breuil and Jane Mcdonald say they have been forced to share rooms with their teenage daughters after applying for 40 properties between them in the last six months.
Single father Scott Jones says he has applied for around “50 properties” over the past two years.
“It’s beyond a joke” he said.
He is now living in a 14-foot caravan with his three children.
The single parents who contacted the Post know the rental market is already tight with record low vacancy rates and around 1300 homeless people in Cairns, but believe real estate agents are rejecting them simply because they are single parents.
However, another real estate agent property manager who is also a single mother said that while she often leases out to single parents and wanted to remain anonymous – the issue is usually that single parents come to her with poor references.
However, landlord Sarah Wild disagreed.
As a new property owner in the area she told a couple of real estate agents she wanted to rent out to single parents.
“They immediately warned me against this,” she said. “I asked the real estate why and ‘she said you don’t know what their life is like and they come with ‘complications’.”
Ms Eriksson said she believes the stigma against single parents is unfair and unfounded. “Single parents are my best tenants,” she said.
“I advise any single parent to contact a property manager directly. Don’t just keep making applications online. Share your story, tell them who you are, it puts them in a different focus – you become a real person to a property manager that way.”
https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/cairns/single-parents-discriminated-against-in-cairns-housing-market/news-story/8e4ba55b0c85b5afa84cc7d8c8d690ec
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6 September, 2023
As my husband shows, there is great hope for the fathers of the future
NIKKI GEMMELL is a famous author so it is good to hear from her something other than the usual contempt for men that we so often read online. I think she is right in seeing modern fathers as potentially being helpful to children with problems. I am very happy with the way I was able to help my stepson from an early age. I was the only one who made sense to the boy. We still have a strong relationship now many years later
And if an old-fashioned "patriarchal" man such as myself can achieve that, there should be some hope that younger men who have been encouraged to involve themselves with their childrem might also be able to achieve much
But as Gemmell says, it depends very much on the individual. There always have been good fathers and there will continue to be
Long ago I believed in the will of the father, omnipresent within the family; that his desires, beliefs and needs prevailed over all others. This was how family was done. Yet the father in my own little family has taught me a different, more effective and egalitarian way of existing: that it isn’t about the will of the father, but about his attention. And that is the glue that holds our family together.
Recently one of our children was going through a tough time. There have always been little spot-fires to put out; there’s always something. But this situation had an edge to it. It felt deeper, more serious, and as parents it has taken all our concentration and instinct to get through it.
We’re there now, I think, as much as you can ever relax with the parental vigilance. But through it all I observed my husband enveloping a cherished child with love. Cocooning them so that the child felt utterly safe. Home was their calm space.
It was father as rock. It felt miraculous: a quiet, solid thing anchoring our entire family. I was observing a man repairing a vulnerable child with his careful love. Vanquishing fears. Circuit-breaking with laughter. Making no demands, for this was not the time. There was a wild beauty to this love. I handed over to the father on this one, to this man drawing our child within his cloak of tenderness, shutting the blare of the world out.
Do we, onscreen, see these good fathers enough? Not at all. The father so often portrayed in popular culture is the bumbling, comically hopeless goofball, or conversely the man clotted by silence and bewildered by the demands of a patriarchy that won’t let him be who he really is.
“You are Kenough” is the mantra of the moment, and there’s so much truth in that gentle pop culture joke. The film Barbie made a feature of the many men among us who are Kenough, actually, when the universe is telling them to be something they don’t necessarily want to be.
Increasingly though we’re seeing men who recognise they’re enough in the space called Fatherhood. Tender Dad. Involved Dad. Comfortable-In-Himself Dad. I have great hope for the fathers of the future when I look at the young men of today, because this modern father feels like a new and improved version of the father of old; those men of past worlds haunted by wars and weighted by expectations and pole-axed by a failure to communicate their truths.
Those men didn’t change nappies, didn’t talk like they do now. And they didn’t realise that a more equal world leads to less of a desire to have power over another, to dominate and control.
The best fatherly love is energised by vigilance to family. Love as attention. Love as service. Love defined not so much during the big, declarative occasions but in the quotidian. “I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments,” Umberto Eco wrote, “when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.” We become what our parents label us, from an early age; and we carry those labels, good or bad, throughout life. It’s label as burden, or rocket fuel.
My father was my rocket fuel, as I can see my husband is to his own children. This coming week I’ll be visiting dad’s grave, watched over by ’roos in a place too far away. While there I’ll give thanks for the only two fathers I’ve closely known. Men from vastly different backgrounds, with a similar aim: to be the father who makes their children feel safe. I carry that gift like an underground seam strong through my own life.
And as I walk in the world dad loved I’ll remember the words of Italo Calvino: “So, with my thoughts following my father’s footsteps through the countryside, I fell asleep; and he never knew that he had had me so close to him.”
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Facebook attacked as not Leftist enough
Allowing free speech is "hate"
The advertising boycott battering Facebook is unlike anything the social-media giant has faced in its 16-year history: Three days in, 800 companies worldwide have pulled millions of dollars in advertising from the social network, with brands from Coca-Cola to Ford to global conglomerate Unilever demanding that Facebook monitor hate speech more aggressively.
With pullouts mounting and the company’s name constantly tied to racism and hate in the news coverage, CEO Mark Zuckerberg responded by livestreaming part of an employee meeting — one of the few times he’s done that in the company’s history. Then, on Wednesday, Facebook’s powerhouse policy and communications chief, former British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, issued an open letter, titled “Facebook does not benefit from hate,” touting its efforts to police its content.
The boycott has emerged as a crucial test for a company that has become a key player in American politics simply because of what it hosts and promotes on its site, and which until recently had been vocally doubling down on its commitment to keeping an open platform for users’ speech.
It is also a behind-the-scenes triumph for a novel coalition of civil rights groups and other advocacy organizations — the architects of the #StopHateForProfit campaign that many of the boycotting companies have signed on to.
Interviews with leaders of the nine coalition partners reveal how the groups spun up a boycott idea in a matter of days, responding to the George Floyd protests late this spring and using public energy to join together several long-simmering, frustrated efforts to hold Facebook to account for its content. They lobbied corporate leaders in private and, in some cases, shamed companies on social media to join the effort.
“[Facebook] is a breeding ground for racial hate groups,” says Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP, one of the groups that made up the coalition. Referring to Zuckerberg, he said, “You can’t reason with the guy.”
In short order, the coalition has emerged as perhaps Facebook’s most formidable antagonist, when little else — not Congress, not European regulators, not public declarations by celebrities that they were deleting their Facebook accounts — has had much effect on how the site operates. And their campaign might offer a blueprint for how activist groups can tackle a modern tech giant: fusing novel pressure tactics with the weight of legacy civil rights groups.
It remains to be seen whether Facebook will really be dented, either financially or as a brand. The company declined to comment for this article except to point to a statement issued in response to the boycott, saying Facebook “invest[s] billions of dollars each year to keep our community safe and continuously work[s] with outside experts to review and update our policies,” and that it is taking steps to address hate. The statement added, “we know we have more work to do.” So far, the company hasn’t made major concessions, though. And while its stock price has dipped sharply, Zuckerberg — who has long defended the platform as a space for free expression — reportedly has said advertisers would be back “soon enough.” Analysts likewise say Facebook can weather the storm; most of its ads come from small and medium-size buyers, not the large corporations making boycott headlines, and Bloomberg researchers predicted Monday that the boycotts could cost Facebook only $250 million in ad sales — a sliver of the company’s $77 billion in annual revenue.
But a look at the origins and dynamics of StopHateForProfit suggests the campaign has at least one insight that people often forget when it comes to a tech behemoth with the Silicon Valley sheen of Facebook: At the end of the day, the social network is just an advertising vehicle, with 98 percent of its revenue coming from ads. And like old-line pressure campaigns against TV networks or newspapers, if you can get to the advertisers, the company has to pay attention.
While the boycott came together quickly, its roots trace back to the 2016 election. Amid widespread outrage over the role Facebook had played, one complaint was that Russians were using the site to exploit America’s racial tensions. But the site wasn’t just amplifying them, activists came to believe. It was a petri dish for racism and discrimination; it was growing hate. And, by taking a largely hands-off approach, Facebook wasn’t taking the issue seriously, the activists decided.
In the months after Donald Trump was sworn in as president, civil rights groups and other social justice organizations began quietly comparing notes about their interactions with Facebook and Silicon Valley more broadly.
“The conversations started really informally, just collecting information. But what we learned was that we were getting played by Facebook and other big tech companies,” says Jessica González, co-CEO of the left-leaning media advocacy organization Free Press. “They had a very strategic appeasement strategy, where they gave us breadcrumbs, but in a way that made it look like they were doing such great work when in fact hate and disinformation were rampant on their site.”
The advocates tried to figure out how to get Facebook and other tech companies to take their complaints more seriously. Campaigns to get users to stay away from the platform, or to allow civil rights groups to alert the companies of hateful activities, largely sputtered. In 2018, Facebook announced it would undergo an audit to better understand how it was affecting communities of color and other marginalized groups, led by Laura Murphy, a highly regarded civil rights advocate. But a pivotal five-week stretch this past fall largely erased whatever goodwill was left.
On a Tuesday afternoon in late September, Clegg, Facebook’s head of policy and communications, announced the company was exempting politicians’ ads from its fact-checking process, arguing that the public should be able to see, and vet, what political leaders say. Clegg told me in an interview at the time that it was long-standing policy but that, “The purpose of it, I hope, was pretty clear, which was: This is what we’re doing ahead of 2020. These are our plans.”
Facebook’s critics took umbrage at both what Clegg said — revealing, they thought, that Facebook failed to grasp the history of American politicians stoking racial divisions — and when he said it. Color of Change, which was founded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to organize African Americans online, and other groups had been working for months to pull together an event, called “Civil Rights x Tech,” with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg; it was scheduled for just two days after Clegg’s speech. At the summit, against a backdrop of soaring brick walls and exposed piping in an events space in Atlanta’s West Midtown, Sandberg and Neil Potts, a Facebook public policy director, were pressed on what Clegg had said and reassured the advocates, González told me.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/07/03/activists-advertising-boycott-facebook-348528
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TikToker divides internet with admission she asks men to see bank account balance on first date
This woman is just doing openly what other women do discreetly. Just asking about the man's occupation will usually reveal a lot but there are many indicators of economic success. For instance, when women hear that I retired at age 39, they normally have no further doubts about money
A TikTok influencer has divided the internet after revealing that she asks potential suitors to show her their bank account balance on the first date to ensure she's not "wasting" her time.
Former ‘Call Her Daddy’ co-host Sofia Franklyn confessed on her podcast, "Sofia with an F," that she's begun to ask men to show her their "bank account info" early on in the dating process because she "only want[s] to date a wealthy guy that has money."
"I think I have every f-----g right to be like, ‘Hi, are we on the same level or am I wasting my time?’" she said, adding that she considers herself to be "very successful" and expects her dates to have similar financial success.
"I think I’m just being efficient?" Franklyn wrote in a caption of the clip shared on her TikTok.
Fox News commentator Tomi Lahren said that while it's important for couples to discuss financials, she finds Franklyn's method to be "demeaning."
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Australia: politically incorrect journalism awards under fire
Calls to boycott the Walkley Awards because of the event’s links to petroleum company Ampol have met a growing backlash from the nation’s top journalists, with eight-times Walkley winner Hedley Thomas urging colleagues to stand up for the awards “lest our craft be further undermined by knee-jerk activism”.
The Australian’s national chief correspondent added his voice to the debate after legendary political correspondent Laurie Oakes branded the boycott – proposed by a group of cartoonists – as “white-anting” that would further undermine public trust in journalism.
Other cartoonists, including the Herald Sun’s Mark Knight, The Daily Telegraph’s Warren Brown and The Australian’s Johannes Leak, have slammed the boycott. “The custodians of the journalism awards should not be cowed,” said Thomas, who has twice been a member of the Walkley judging board.
“There will be no end to demands from activists if they sense weakness in the Walkley Foundation and leadership team.
“Those who are currently attacking the Walkley Awards for having been supported by ‘fossil fuel’ companies deserve, in absentia, a new gong – Most Hollow Virtue Signalling – at the 2023 event in Sydney in November.
“Our annual celebrations of journalism are always bleary, but I can’t recall seeing a bicycle rack outside the Walkleys, nor any of the current critics pedalling there in past years.
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5 September, 2023
Fish oil supplement claims don't necessarily ring true, study finds
The powers of fish oil are a most enduring myth. I have been taking pot-shots at it for many years e.g.
https://dissectleft.blogspot.com/2014/09/some-amusing-medical-news-one-of.html
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2010-10-fish-oil-linked-colon-cancer.html
https://john-ray.blogspot.com/2012/09/horrors-fish-oil-supplements-do-not-cut.html
New research into the apparent health benefits of fish oil supplements has made a splash, warning consumers the supplement's multiple health benefits may indeed be exaggerated.
Marketed to emulate the health rewards that come with a diet full of fatty fish and seafood, fish oil supplements have long been a go-to daily health habit for many people. For decades, people have been told taking a daily tablet (or a spoonful for the fearless) of the golden oil is a tactic guaranteed to improve their heart health, among other benefits.
But the latest research into the benefits of our favourite golden tablets is a blunt reminder that we shouldn’t always believe what’s written on a label.
And since they’re not the most pleasant pills to swallow, consumers might be more than relieved to have an excuse to ditch their bottles.
Like most questions regarding our health, different studies surrounding the impact of fish oil supplements on our long-term health have yielded remarkably contradicting results over the years.
However, the latest stream of research seemingly disproves the link between optimised heart health and fish oil supplement consumption. The findings have left experts sceptical that taking the supplements sufficiently prevents heart disease, one of the major reasons consumers swallow the pills.
Essentially, supplement companies have long been copying and pasting the list of cardiovascular benefits associated with seafood onto the labels of their products.
A deep-dive analysis by JAMA Cardiology has found that despite supplement companies’ claims, the overwhelming majority of cardiovascular improvement is in fact solely derived from diet practices, not supplement use.
If being rebranded as a heart health fad wasn’t damning enough, other studies have even suggested that fish oil tablets might be directly contributing to some heart conditions.
The European Society of Cardiology released a study just two years ago that found direct evidence of a link between omega-3 fatty acid supplements and an increased link between developing atrial fibrillation in people with existing heart disease.
“Our study suggests that fish oil supplements are associated with a significantly greater risk of atrial fibrillation in patients at elevated cardiovascular risk,” says study author Dr Salvatore Carbone.
Dr Alyson Kelley-Hedgepeth, a cardiologist, Published in Harvard Medical School’s publishing arm, cardiologist Dr Alyson Kelley-Hedgepeth describes how the inconsistencies in fish oil supplement studies have encouraged her to instead recommend more proven lifestyle practices to her patients.
“Eat a heart-healthy diet, get regular exercise, and pursue other lifestyle changes that have proven benefits for cardiovascular health,” urges Dr Kelley-Hedgepeth.
But what about the real thing?
While the advantages of the oils and supplements have largely been discredited, experts still stand by the health benefits linked to eating fatty fish two to three times a week, especially types containing omega-3.
And while the cost of fresh salmon per kilo is enough to make most people shudder at the moment, there are other, more cost-efficient alternatives. Omega-3 fatty acids can also be found in tinned sardines, mackerel, flaxseeds and chia seeds.
To put it simply, fish oil tablets and oil should not be considered as a supplement for the real thing, and if you’re still taking the daily tablets, it might be time to find more direct ways to incorporate omega-3 into your diet.
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Pete Buttigieg Wants You to Stop Driving Cars
Apparently blacks don't own cars! A lot of peopole would be surprised to hear that. The more usual accusation is that blacks spend too much on cars
No gas stoves, no gas-powered cars, and no beer are just a few things the Biden Administration has put the kibosh on.
The Democrat-controlled White House is now fear-mongering Americans into believing all cars cause climate change and promote racism and should, therefore, be banned.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg appointed an Obama-era group made up of 24 "leading experts" to advise him on "transportation equity," claiming the privilege of owning a car ignites "systemic racism" and should be banned because of their negative impact on the environment.
Members of the Advisory Committee on Transportation Equity include "spatial policy scholar" Andrea Marpillero-Colomina, who says, "All cars are bad" and calls for "zero emission transit."
However, she told the Free Beacon that she is not "advocating for a complete erasure" of cars but hopes to convince Buttigieg to re-direct the U.S. from relying on private motor vehicles.
Veronica Davis also claimed cars are the "problem" and divide communities because, according to her, vehicles are a "status symbol" that only privileged white people own.
"This isn't anti-car propaganda, but vehicles have wreaked havoc on the environment and communities," Davis said, according to her book about inclusive transportation. "Racism shaped the urban and suburban areas, where even today we see the residual effects."
Scrapped by the Trump Administration, the committee will advise Buttigieg on "promising practices to institutionalize equity into agency programs, policies, regulations, and activities."
In 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that required federal agencies to "pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all." The agency reportedly has to conduct an "equity assessment" to identify policies that create "systemic barriers" for minority communities.
In January, Buttigieg promoted a climate plan to reduce "commuting miles" through an "increase in remote work and virtual engagements."
"The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted major opportunities for telework, with some studies showing the possibility of ten percent long-term reduction in annual vehicle miles traveled," the plan states.
Along with several other things, the Biden Administration has advocated for Americans to purchase electric vehicles to push their radical New Green Deal.
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Mother, Daughter to Receive $100,000 Settlement in Landmark Secret Gender Transition Case
A California school district that was sued over allegations teachers and staff at Buena Vista Middle School in Salinas, Calif., coached an 11-year-old girl to socially transition to a male gender identity settled with the girl and her mother for $100,000.
The lawsuit, filed on June 14 last year, named Spreckels Union School District, the principal at the school, and two teachers as defendants.
Jessica Konen, the child’s mother, came forward after a leaked audio recording revealed the two teachers telling other educators about how they secretly recruited students into the school’s LGBT club at a California Teachers Association weekend conference in Palm Springs in October 2021. The CTA event was billed as the “2021 LGBTQ+ Issues Conference, Beyond the Binary: Identity & Imagining Possibilities.” The two teachers were later suspended and no longer work in the district.
Ms. Konen told The Epoch Times she’s relieved that a settlement has finally been reached.
“It’s a massive victory across America for myself, for my daughter, and for other parents experiencing similar situations,” she said. “Our voices made a difference.”
While she is grateful to the Center for American Liberty for taking on the pro-bono case, she said the battle for parental rights has only begun.
“I just feel social transitioning done in secrecy is the real evil. We need to get rid of it, period. So, the fight must continue,” she said.
Her daughter, Alicia Konen, who is now 16, echoed her mom’s sentiments, saying she’s ready to put the experience, which she described as “evil” and “horrible,” behind her.
According to the Center for American Liberty and allegations in the lawsuit, Alicia was recruited to join an “Equality Club,” where she was taught about bisexuality, transgender identities, and other LGBT concepts when she was in the sixth grade.
Alicia began to use a male name and pronouns and wore a chest binder under boy’s clothes.
School staff finally called a meeting the last day before winter break during Alicia's seventh grade year and demanded that Ms. Konen refer to her daughter by a male name and male pronouns, she said.
“I was definitely intimidated,” she said.
Ms. Konen recalls feeling awkward and stressed when she was tagging Alicia’s Christmas gifts.
She wanted to be supportive to her daughter but wasn’t ready to call her by a male name and pronouns, so she wrote “Baby” and “Sweetheart” instead.
“I was an emotional wreck trying to process everything. I was scared to mess up or to use the wrong pronouns,” she said. “I never used the male pronouns, and I never used the name.”
Ms. Konen warned parents to “be vigilant,” talk to teachers, and pay attention to what’s happening at local school board meetings.
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Australia: Documentary on trans ‘regret’ stirs heated debate
Debate over a TV documentary advertised as being the “most controversial” of the year has raged online amid accusations its portrayal of trans rights issues is “misinformation”.
The 7 News Spotlight special De-Transitioning aired on Sunday night following days of heated debate over claims on the program children were being told to “change” genders.
Earlier advertisements, which stirred debate on social media, presented testimonials from children purporting to have undergone gender affirming surgeries only to later “regret” it.
While many commentators backed the documentary as being “brave” for its portrayal of a contentious issues, others said the program posed significant harm to young trans people.
“Awful contribution to the discourse,” Twitter user Catherine Michelle said. “Why not discuss boob job regret? It’s higher than transition regret. “It’s controversial because you amplify people with an agenda.”
Lawyer and former “captain’s pick” of former Prime Minister Scott Morrison Katherine Deves supported the program online. “Families and children misled, lied to and let down in the worst way,” Ms Deves said. “Since when was lying to children about their sex and selling irreversible medical interventions the right side of history?”
Former Australian Christian Lobby director and Family Frist party chairman Lyle Shelton claimed activists had pushed “gender fluidity”. “Hopefully this will finally cause our politicians to act against the indoctrination of children in schools,” he said. “And, against the (LBGTQ) child gender clinics.”
Gender affirming surgeries, according to the Australian government, range from breast and facial augmentation to voice modulation, and is available only to people 16 and over for “top” surgery and 18 and over for “bottom”.
Some surgeons will provide surgery to younger people in very specific situations, with potential patients needing to demonstrate in all cases the ability to make a fully informed decision and that any mental conditions are “well managed”.
A 2023 report by the Associated Press found that according to World Professional Association for Transgender Health guidelines, evidence of regret following gender transitions is “scant”, but said patients should be properly counselled.
The same report also quoted Dutch researchers as having found no evidence regret in transgender adults who had comprehensive psychological evaluations in childhood before undergone puberty blockers or hormone treatments.
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4 September, 2023
From One Unapologetic Media Hoax to the Next
Joe Biden lied repeatedly when he claimed he knew nothing of his son Hunter's influence-peddling businesses.
The president further prevaricated that he had no involvement in Hunter's various shake-down schemes.
Yet, the media continued to misinform by serially ignoring these facts.
Had journalists just been honest and independent, then-candidate Joe Biden might have lost a presidential debate and even the 2020 election. The public would have learned that Hunter's business associates and his laptop proved Joe was deeply involved in his son's illicit businesses.
Later, as the evidence from IRS whistleblowers mounted, the White House stonewalled subpoenaed efforts and sought to craft an outrageous plea deal reduction in Hunter's legal exposure.
Reporters ignored the Ukrainians who claimed Joe Biden himself talked to them about quid pro quo arrangements.
They again discounted Hunter's laptop, explicitly demonstrating that Hunter was whining that he had handed over large percentages of his income to his father, Joe --variously referred to as the Big Guy and a "ten percent" recipient on many deals.
They played dumb about Joe Biden's use of pseudonyms and alias email accounts to hide thousands of his communications to Hunter and associates.
They attacked the former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who now claims Ukrainians likely bribed Biden.
Yet the media can no longer hide the reality that the president of the United States likely took bribes to influence or alter U.S. policy to suit his payers. Those two crimes -- bribery and treason -- are delineated explicitly in the Constitution as impeachable offenses.
In denial, the media has instead pivoted with hysterical glee over various weaponized prosecutions of former President Donald Trump.
But now, to use a progressive catchphrase, the proverbial "walls are closing in" on Joe Biden.
So will we at last expect the media to confront the truth?
Answer -- only if Joe Biden's cognitive and physical health continues to deteriorate geometrically to the point that he can no longer finish his term or run for reelection -- and thus becomes expendable.
Such a cynical view of the media is justified, given their record of both incompetence and unapologetic deceit.
From 2015 to 2019, we were suffocated 24/7 with lies like "Russian collusion," "Putin's puppet," "election rigging," and the "Steele dossier."
When all such "evidence" was proven to be a complete fraud cooked up through Hillary Clinton's stealthy hiring of and collusion with a discredited ex-British spy, a Russian fabulist at the Brookings Institution, and a Clinton toady in Moscow, did the media apologize for their untruth?
Was there any media confessional that perhaps Robert Mueller and his leftwing legal team (the giddy media-dubbed "all-stars," "dream team," and "hunter-killers") proved a colossal waste of time?
Not at all.
Instead, the media went next right on to "the phone call" and "impeachment."
The country then wasted another year.
The same biased reporters now claimed that the heroic Andrew Vindman had caught Trump fabricating lies about the Bidens -- given Joe Biden was a possible 2020 opponent -- to force Ukraine to investigate them or lose American foreign aid.
On that accusation, Trump was impeached.
Then the truth emerged that, unlike Joe Biden, Trump never threatened to cancel aid but merely to delay it.
Trump was fitting that the Bidens were knee-deep in Ukrainian bribes and influence peddling.
And that the whistleblower had no first-hand knowledge of the Trump call but was spoon-fed a script cooked up by the gadfly Vindman and California Rep. Adam Schiff.
The result was journalistic glee that we impeached a president for crimes that he did not commit but exempted another president, Biden, who had likely committed them.
Then came the subsequent hoax of the Russian fabricated facsimile of Hunter's laptop.
The 2020 Biden campaign and an ex-CIA head rounded up "51 intelligence authorities" to mislead the country into believing that Russian gremlins in the Kremlin had fabricated a fake laptop.
Ponder that absurd fantasy: Moscow supposedly had created fake nude pictures, fake photos of Hunter's drug use, and fake email and text messages from Hunter to the other Bidens.
The media preposterously convinced the country that the Russians and, by extension, Trump had once again sandbagged the Biden campaign.
No apologies followed when the FBI later admitted it had kept the laptop under wraps for more than a year, knew it was authentic, and yet said nothing as the media and former spooks misled the country and warped an election.
Now we are enmeshed in at least four court trials on cooked-up charges that could as easily apply to a host of Democrats as to Trump.
For the last eight years, discredited media has never expressed remorse for any of the damage they did to the country. And they will not again when their latest mythological indictments are eventually exposed.
https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2023/09/01/column-n2627841
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Women Speak Out Against YMCA ‘Transgender’ Bathroom Policies
Small-town YMCAs in suburban Ohio have launched themselves headfirst into the transgender debate by allowing men who “identify” as women to access women’s locker rooms. And women who have belonged to these supposedly family-friendly YMCAs for years are discovering, to their shock, that management considers their safety and privacy inferior to the feelings of men.
Local media broke the news earlier this year that an obese man who allegedly identifies as a woman would not be guilty of indecent exposure since, when he was naked in the women’s locker room, his stomach fat supposedly concealed his genitalia.
Now, for the first time, some of the women whose privacy he invaded are speaking out in interviews with The Daily Signal.
One Ohio mother, who asks not to be identified to protect the privacy of her two daughters, says that she saw the man, who goes by the name Rachel Glines, fully naked and “leering” when she and her daughters were showering and changing in November 2022.
Another local woman, Janell Holloway, shares that she was shocked and startled to find a naked man in her locker room when she went to change in September 2022. She says she unsuccessfully sought help and comfort from the Xenia, Ohio, YMCA’s leadership, only to find that this man had been given permission to use the women’s facilities.
Kateisha Young, an employee of the neighboring Fairborn YMCA, shares with The Daily Signal that this same man, also known as Darren Glines, allegedly assaulted her by groping her genitals in December 2022 as she sought to offer emotional support for his struggles living as a transgender-identifying woman.
And Kyle Kettering, a minister at the Church of the Messiah in Xenia, Ohio, shares with The Daily Signal that his 10-year-old and 5-year-old daughters had seen the allegedly naked Glines from the back while they were in the locker room in September 2022, though it appeared that he was covering his genitals with a towel.
“I was sending my girls in by themselves!” the father said in a phone interview. “That was pretty naive on my part, I guess.”
The Daily Signal learned of these stories through the Independent Women’s Forum. The organization’s storytelling coordinator, Andrea Mew, slams the YMCA’s actions as “disappointing” but “unsurprising” in a statement to The Daily Signal, saying that “the YMCA has once again let down its female members, ultimately stripping them of any commonsense protections.”
“Just like when 16-year-old Abbigail Wheeler spoke out about a biological male in her Illinois YMCA locker room, these women’s dignity and their right to privacy is once again on the chopping block,” she adds. “Thankfully, Janell Holloway came to Independent Women’s Forum with her story because we are determined to prevent woke ideology from silencing and canceling women’s voices.”
Glines has not responded to requests for comment from The Daily Signal. Neither the Fairborn nor the Xenia YMCA has responded to requests for comment.
Dale Brunner, president and CEO of the YMCA of Greater Dayton, refused to address The Daily Signal’s specific questions about protecting women’s spaces and privacy. He also would not address Young’s allegations against Glines but sent the following statement:
The YMCA of Greater Dayton adheres to Ohio and Federal laws and anti-discrimination laws which allow all members access to its facilities and programs.
In addition, the Greater Dayton YMCAs have a strong record of both protecting personal privacy and modesty in our facilities which are both safe and accommodating while serving and including all members of the community equally.
In addition, we cannot investigate an individual’s birth gender identity and then, assign individuals to locker rooms. That would be counter to the law and counter to respect for all people.
We are committed to following the law in order to protect the rights of all members and to protect their right to use YMCA facilities. Should Ohio’s Attorney General provide clarification, the YMCA will always strive to be in full compliance with all State and Federal laws while still serving the rights and interests of all our members.
Ohio Attorney General David Yost said as recently as May that the law does not protect subjective preferences of transgender-identifying individuals and that “allowing men to share bathrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms with women increases the ease with which biological males—most especially men who identify as men—can victimize women and girls.”
Holloway believes that Glines was acting predatorily when he began using the women’s locker room.
“He was given free access to the women’s locker room to undress and act out any fetishes or fantasies he wants in front of women and girls,” she tells The Daily Signal. “And that’s what was happening. The men need to stay out of the locker room. … It’s not my job, my responsibility to say it, but I’m going to, and I have been speaking out.”
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What if the ‘out of Africa’ theory is wrong?
Those who have lived through the last two decades will be well acquainted with the increasing rigidity applied to scientific theories that also hold political value.
One of modern science’s cornerstones is the ‘out of Africa’ theory that posits the birth of humanity in the cradle of Africa. It plays into the preferred mythology of Africa’s Eden-esque beginning destroyed by the greed of European nations. Africa is the innocent victim of history and the tarnished creation around which global bureaucracies circle.
To question the ‘out of Africa’ narrative is a sin against evolutionary science.
And yet for some time there has been a suspicion that ‘out of Africa’ may be wrong. It has been a cascade of little things. A fossil here. A clash of migratory patterns there… A gradual accumulation of facts that chip away at the grand theory.
Recently, one of those chips has become a crack. As reported in various scientific journals after being published in Communications Biology, an 8.7 million-year-old fossil from Anadoluvius turkae has been found in Central Anatolia in Turkey.
The journal states:
‘Fossil apes from the Eastern Mediterranean are central to the debate on African ape and human (hominine) origins. […] Here we show, based on our analysis of a newly identified genus, Anadoluvius, from the 8.7 million-year-old site of Çorakyerler in Central Anatolia, that Mediterranean fossil apes are diverse, and are part of the first known radiation of early members of hominines.’
The fossil is part of a group known as the Late Miocene apes that have been found across this region and in Europe, with more than one sub-species discovered. They are a common ancestor sitting above gorillas, humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos in the Tree of Life. Those researching the find believe this species moved from the Mediterranean into Africa around 8 million years ago.
‘These findings contrast with the long-held view that African apes and humans evolved exclusively in Africa. While the remains of early hominines are abundant in Europe and Anatolia, they are completely absent from Africa until the first hominin appeared there about 7 million years ago,’ said Professor David Begun, according to Sci-News.
He noted that at this particular time, South-Eastern Europe contained the ancestors of rhinos, giraffes, and other animals more commonly associated with Africa. His point being that if these animals could get into Africa over 7 million years ago, why not the apes?
‘This new evidence supports the hypothesis that hominines originated in Europe and dispersed into Africa along with many other mammals between 9 and 7 million years ago, though it does not definitely prove it. For that, we need to find more fossils from Europe and Africa between 8 and 7 million years old to establish a definitive connection between the two groups.’
The original report concludes:
‘Hominines may have originated in Eurasia during the late Miocene, or they may have dispersed into Eurasia from an unknown African ancestor. The diversity of hominines in Eurasia suggests an in situ origin but does not exclude a dispersal hypothesis.’
If this theory eventually distils into an undeniable fact – that humans are of European origin, not African – what happens to the social structure of our society?
It was always believed that African-born humans colonised Europe, but there remain glaring inconsistencies between migration patterns and the diversity of finds.
There are lots of inconsistencies in the story of humanity. Given how little information we have of our ancient ancestors, let us switch to an example found in modern humans. Despite excellent preservation conditions, the oldest human remains in Australia (the Lake Mungo remains) are dated to 42,000 years. Modern humans are thought to have reached Southeast Asia no more than 55,000 years ago (with Indonesian and Chinese fossils dating to 25,000 years old). This is a long way from the 65,000+ years we hear cited as the arrival date for Aboriginal Australians.
As one government website states, ‘Aboriginal people are known to have occupied mainland Australia for at least 65,000 years. It is widely accepted that this predates the modern human settlement of Europe and the Americas.’ Geographically speaking, at least part of that statement seems to represent a blurring between mythology and science.
This lineage of human migration must have a consistent and sequential timeline across Europe, through Asia, into Indonesia, and finally into Australia because no one was swimming or flying to the Great Southern Land. Sea levels and their corresponding land bridges are the best mechanism we have to date migration along with the odd catastrophic event, such as major volcanic eruptions, that give us accurate dates.
The divergence between fossil dating and artefact dating (which has a wider margin for error) may be to blame for some of these figures. The source of the 60,000+ date is a site in the Northern Territory – a rock shelter originally dated to no more than 50,000 years (although it is likely younger). 65,000 years is a date that remains highly contested and heavily doubted, yet it has been latched onto and repeated as fact to the point most Australians have no idea where it comes from. For whatever reason, dating Aboriginal settlement has become part of the political activist narrative, which is not a good sign for science or the direction of politics.
Returning to our pre-human ancestors… Fragmented history is always tricky, but while people have been hunting for fossils in Africa for a long time, the careful excavation of Europe is new and the more people look – the more they find. Any change of story here could upset the global story of humanity and its political power structures.
Will the truth be ignored, buried, censored, banned, and marked with a little ‘offensive’ tag by social media?
Will we end up in a situation similar to the gender debate in biological science where ‘experts’ are compelled by law to lie about the sex of individuals to suit the current ideological narrative and the institutions that depend on the fiction?
The point of this article is not to prove one way or another where humans first arose. In a sensible, ideologically modern world, ‘origin’ does not matter either way aside from establishing an accurate picture of our history. And frankly, we do not know the answer yet.
Instead, it is a situation that gives us the opportunity to examine what sort of world we live in and where science, as a concept, is headed.
The rise of neo-Marxist identity politics has dangerously placed weight on what we call ‘first peoples’ which is ultimately predicated on patterns of human migration. While most will realise that it is impossible to divvy up the world based on ‘original ancestral ownership’, that is what we are being asked to do by activist movements endorsed by major political parties. From here, Australia risks creating an ethno-state and fresh era of race-based discrimination where the tally of ancestral ghosts equals political power. If you have been here for 200-years, your rights are diminished compared to those who have been here for 40,000 years. 60,000 sounds better. Or do we go with the creation narrative that Aboriginal people have been here since the time of creation therefore giving them eternal privilege over other Australians… The communist regime in China plays this game too, using fossil remains and migration patterns to justify racial discrimination and the supremacy of the Han over other groups. It is not something Australia should tolerate if we want to remain a unified and peaceful nation.
Given all of this, how enraged do you think your average ‘Yes’ activist would be upon discovering that we are all ‘ancient Europeans’ after we have endured their offensive and hateful demands that we should ‘go back to England’?
While the story of our ancient birth is fascinating, one wonders if this will be the next hunting ground for ‘compelled speech’ and social media censorship.
If the scientific establishment can be conned into lying about biological sex, there’s nothing stopping it from deleting our birth.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/what-if-the-out-of-africa-theory-is-wrong/
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Australia:Negligent or reckless federal public servants face 25 years’ jail under industrial manslaughter laws
Yay!
Negligent federal public servants found responsible for the death of a worker could be imprisoned for up to 25 years and commonwealth departments fined up to $18m under federal plans to criminalise industrial manslaughter.
Under changes in the Closing Loopholes bill to be tabled in federal parliament on Monday, Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke will make industrial manslaughter a crime under the commonwealth’s work health and safety laws.
While most states have legislated industrial manslaughter, the federal government will act on the 2018 Boland review and introduce a new offence that would apply where the gross negligence or recklessness of a duty holder leads to a workplace death.
Under the proposed changes, to operate from July next year, individuals will face a maximum penalty of 25 years imprisonment if convicted of industrial manslaughter, and body corporates face fines of up to $18m.
Monetary penalties for the Category 1 offence, which applies when a work health and safety duty is recklessly or criminally negligently breached, will be increased from $3m to $15m for body corporates.
The imprisonment penalty will be increased from five years to 15 years, while fines for other offences in the Work Health and Safety Act will be increased.
Mr Burke said it was imperative that fines acted as a deterrent, ensuring employers and businesses were aware of their responsibilities “to do everything in their power to keep workers safe”.
He said criminalising industrial manslaughter would make workplaces safer.
“Every worker should be able to go to work knowing they’ll come home safely,” he said. “But so far this year, 91 workers have been fatally injured in the workplace. That’s 91 too many. People go to work to give themselves a life. That work should never take away a life.”
Eric Windholz, senior lecturer at Monash University’s faculty of law, said “there are scenarios where you could find individuals being prosecuted”.
“The fact that they are talking about imprisonment means that the legislation will have the scope to apply to an individual whose individual acts are considered to be so grossly negligent to warrant criminal punishment,” Dr Windholz said.
“Clearly, they’re contemplating a possibility of individuals being imprisoned. That’s a possibility that a senior officer of a government department, and maybe not such a senior officer if it’s gross negligence by someone at the coalface, could find themselves potentially in that position.
“The more the commonwealth and government per se gets involved in service delivery, the more chances there are.”
University of Adelaide law professor Andrew Stewart said the federal health and safety act also applied to some private sector businesses.
“I really do think this is (the federal government saying) ‘we can’t really be expecting the states to be moving on the Boland recommendations and introducing industrial manslaughter if we then say well we as an employer are not going to be subject to those same rules and those same sanctions’,” he said. “I’m pretty sure it’s a question of consistency.”
Meanwhile, the dispute between Chevron and unions is heading to mediation before the Fair Work Commission, opening the prospect of a settlement before industrial action next week.
Chevron applied for mediation after union members at the company’s Gorgon and Wheatstone downstream gas processing facilities in Western Australia rejected an enterprise agreement not endorsed by union negotiators.
Protected action ranging from work bans to stoppages of work has been endorsed by members and is due to start next Thursday.
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3 September, 2023
Why America’s Hustle Culture Might Kill Us Before Anything Else Does
Writing under the above heading, Katie Jgln is critical below of America's hard-driving money oriented culture. And she is right that it is exceptional to the point of excess. We Australians see enough of Americans to know what she is talking about. We tend to see Americans as "money-hungry".
But why are they like that and why is Europe much more relaxed? There are two major reasons why and I am going to put first the least challenging of them. I am going to have to be very careful how I put the second reason. But first:
Compared to Europe (and Australia), America has a much more limited economic support network. If you become unemployed or seriously ill you are in much bigger trouble in America than in other advanced countries. In Australia if I go to the doctor or the hospital it is mostly "free" and if I get unemployed the "dole" is generous enough that some people actively choose to live on that and not work. They are not supposed to but some do.
That must sound like anathema to most Americans but it does promote a relaxed, laid back lifestyle, something Australia is famous for. So the big difference is basic personal security. Americans largely have to provide it for themselves whereas others do not. Americans NEED the money more.
There is a story here about a woman in the People's Republic of Maine being denied all monetary support after becoming unemployed. She had to rely entirely on her savings. That would never have happened in Australia.
Now we get on to what I believe is another powerful factor behind American money-motivation: crime. The rate of violent crime is huge in America but it varies greatly by region. Places like NYC are crime hellholes but civility reigns upstate.
And there are big differences even within cities. And it is the big cities that matter because that is where the good jobs are. So you have crime and poverty stricken inner cities and relatively peaceful and secure exurbs. You have more living space and a generally nicer environment in the outer suburbs but it costs you. You have to have real money to live there. And the bonus is that the crime-prone poor of the inner cities can't afford to live there, so you are free of them. Putting it very simply, you need money to live safely in America. The safety of you and your family depends on you being a high income earner. It's a powerful motivator.
And America is again different in that way. In Australia, I live in an inner-city area with no security qualms whatever. It's a bit more expensive but it saves a lot of driving
So Americans are not as irrational as Katie Jglin thinks they are. She has just not come to grips with her own culture
I have commented on these matters at greater length elsewhere
Just like every year, I took much of August off.
In many — if not most – European countries, this is still a pretty normal and common thing to do. Actually, it existed for long enough for some historians to start calling it a ‘tradition.’
When I used to work for an Italian-owned company in London, it wasn’t even a question of whether I would take time off during that month, but how many weeks this time. (I still burnt out, but that’s another story.)
However, our fondness for enjoying the brief existence on this giant piece of rock floating through space while we can doesn’t always seem to go down well with our neighbours across the pond.
Over the years, I’ve gotten several mostly passive-aggressive, but sometimes even downright aggresive, emails from Americans I worked with precisely because of it. It’s ‘slowing them down’ and ‘makes things less efficient,’ they claimed.
This year, my ‘sorry, I’m out of the office this month’ email was met with the following response: ‘that’s a shame, but let’s try to schedule a call anyway.’
I’ve also seen some refer to this phenomenon as ‘Euro Laziness.’
Is it really ‘laziness’, though? And why are so many people adamant about driving themselves to an early grave?
Because, yes, American hustle culture’s ‘grind never stops’ ethos is a slow but steady killer. And we don’t talk about it nearly as much as we should.
The hell that is the American work culture
I feel sort of bad even just talking about taking time off when chatting with my brother who lives in the US.
He spent most of the last two decades working there, and by now, he’s positively soaked in its toxic work culture. And even though he isn’t all that crazy about what he does for a living, he’s pretty much a stranger to the whole holiday business.
When I recently suggested that he and his partner should finally take some time off next summer and consider going to an adults-only hotel, he asked me if it was some sort of a ‘big sex party.’ (It’s not.)
And while for many Americans taking time off is impossible from a financial standpoint — according to a recent survey, 58% point to money as the main reason for not taking a vacation — for many others, including my brother, it mostly boils down to ‘work ethic.’
If you choose your job over taking time off, you might be rewarded. But if you choose to take time off over your job, you might be punished for your ‘laziness’ and ‘lack of ambition.’
This mentality is just absurd.
And so is the fact that citizens of one of the world’s wealthiest countries on this planet can’t even afford to rest.
But what I find equally shocking is the number of people who glorify and defend the very system that sucks them dry.
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Sex and gender – it’s in the genes
This shouldn’t have to be said, but it’s possible to be supportive of women’s rights without being a feminist. That something as uncontroversial as this needs to be explained is evidence of the influence that feminism holds over contemporary culture. Along with environmentalism, identity politics (which is another name for racism), and other forms of left-wing philosophy, feminism is the dominant ideology in Western, liberal-democratic countries. You can’t watch a television program, open a newspaper, or observe any cultural activity without being metaphorically hit over the head by feminist propaganda. This morning, to give one example, I watched a clip from a British television program, where the guests were complaining that not enough non-blonde, non-skinny women were represented on the English women’s soccer team, and that girls need to see players like themselves, with their identities, to become enthusiastic about playing football.
This was the opposite of my upbringing in Ireland where every second boy wanted to play guitar like Jimi Hendrix and box like Muhammad Ali, both of whom were loved simply because they were brilliant. Hendrix and Ali’s identities were invisible to us. This attitude is shared by both sexes, but is more common in men, who, in general, admire people with talent, whether the talented person is a woman or a man. It’s why men detest the feminist ruse of exaggerating the brilliance of untalented women. They have exactly the same attitude to male braggarts.
You cannot, however, no matter what you do, escape feminist propaganda, which is so pervasive that it’s become the background noise of contemporary life. If an audience was not presented with a strong, feisty, gutsy, extraordinarily intelligent and wise female character, the effect would be so jarring to contemporary sensibilities that they would become instantly bamboozled. (The only exception to this trope is when a woman is the victim of male turpitude).
Of course, if a stupid, unwise, afraid-of-her-own-shadow, shifty female character, without the nefarious influence of a man, was portrayed on television, in literature, or in the cinema, the siren song of whinge would become so loud as to drown out the sound of a twenty-one-gun salute.
Feminists for too long have spouted a deluge of nonsense, which is why we’re seeing a growing revolt against feminist ideology.
I write the above to show that while I’m an advocate for women’s rights, I’m tired of the constant whirring of the feminist dirge that’s been the background noise of cultural life for decades. Another reason is that, while I’m almost entirely immoral (contra philosopher Derek Parfitt’s claim that morality is objective), I do hold some principles, most notably, the absolute importance of free speech. Without free speech, no other goods can exist, at least for any extended period of time.
Recently, however, I’ve found myself, much to my bemusement, absolutely, steadfastly, on the side of the minority of feminists who believe, (as anyone with a semblance of a brain should), that biology is real, that you can’t change your sex, and that women are entitled to their own spaces without the influence or presence of men.
That these truths need to be stated is an absolute condemnation of contemporary culture.
But, and here’s the rub, while I am one hundred per cent on the side of these brave feminists (for once the word brave in relation to feminists shouldn’t be in scare quotes), I am not going to let the greatest gaslight in recent history occur without some sort of pushback. Which is that feminism created our current mess and no amount of rewriting the past can change this truth.
Feminists have not been particularly creative, all the time relying on the work of, ironically, male philosophers such as Marx, Nietzsche, Derrida, Foucault, etc. (Simone de Beauvoir is the intellectual progeny of Sartre, who was a disciple of Heidegger); or psychologists such as the egregious John Money, (even the first wave of feminism was derivative of the ideas of men).
However, it was feminism that weaponised these male theorists’ ideas and pushed them through an institutionally captured –initially feminised, then politicised – education sector.
While most feminists believe in the nebulous idea of patriarchy, which is as empirically valid as Klingons living on the Moon, (ecology and evolution explain the cultural differences between societies), it is the feminist ideas of social construction and, particularly gender, (these notions are two sides of the same coin), that have caused the most damage to contemporary culture.
The feminist claim that everything, including biology and science, is socially constructed, and that gender is distinct from sex, (and is an invention of society), is the root cause of our contemporary insanity. To understand why this claim is nonsense, imagine, as a thought experiment, the relative height of men and women. That men, in general, are taller than women is true. But because some women are taller than some men does not negate the premise that men are taller than women. But this is exactly the argument that feminists use to separate sex from gender.
For the majority of people our gender (whether our behaviour is more stereotypically male or female) coheres almost exactly to our biological sex. A small percentage of people, both male and female, behave in ways that are more typically identified as that of the opposite sex, but they are an anomaly, just like women in general being taller than men.
Even the redoubtable Helen Joyce, scourge of nonsense and author of Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, uses this argument in interviews. One moment she states that gender is how we behave and that women manifest their gender in all sorts of ways, and the next moment she’s stating that men are responsible for the majority of rapes and sexual violence, which is true; but her claim about men negates her claim about gender. Male sexual abuse is inseparable from sex. It’s genetics, in other words. Sex, not gender, explains egregious male behavior.
Men and women are the same species, but we have different likes, psychopathologies and interests. It’s time we put feminist gender nonsense in the dustbin of history.
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Our Sad Departure From Dr. King’s ‘Dream’
This past week, the nation noted the 60th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
The speech is without question a historic landmark, both in terms of recalling the unique stress of the time and in terms of King’s eloquence in capturing the situation.
But beyond being interesting, why do we bother at all with history?
It brings to mind Albert Einstein’s famous definition of insanity: “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Einstein essentially touched the question about why we study history. Our track record of success and failure is spotted. Looking back, we get a sense of what works and what doesn’t. Regarding our failures, Einstein was conveying we should be honest about them, learn from them, and have the courage to change.
Given that King spoke that day to all Americans—not just black Americans or white Americans—we should assess where we are today given how King defined then what was wrong. What have we learned, and what remains for us to learn?
We need to ask why, 60 years later, race still occupies such a large part of our public consciousness.
King’s complaint was not about our national charter. He referred to the “magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.”
His complaint and indictment were that the nation was not living up to that charter.
In the grand scheme of things, King, in that speech, defined the movement he led as about leading America to its full potential, as defined by the ideals and principles in its founding documents.
He implored that the struggle to realize the American charter of freedom and protection of the rights of all citizens take place “on the high plane of dignity and discipline.” He urged black Americans to not “satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”
And King’s final appeal was to see our nation as a nation under God.
It is a critical point.
King’s vision, as expressed that day, was that the American ideal of freedom would be made possible when “all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.'”
Although our realities today are far different from August 1963—certainly the material state of black Americans is far, far better—there is a prevailing sense that things are not good.
If we take King’s words at face value, then it is questionable we have learned much since then.
When he spoke about failing to live up to the “magnificent words” of our founding documents, he got applause from the crowd.
It is questionable that would be the case today. Many on the Left see our nation as fundamentally flawed. They see government and politics as the answer, not individual freedom.
The nation’s deplorable fiscal situation today reflects this change in attitude. Government spending now takes two-thirds more from our national economy than when King spoke in 1963.
King’s appeal that the struggle take place “on the high plane of dignity” is also, sadly, lost. The divisions and hate between citizens today are an unfortunate and troubling reality.
And what should trouble us most is we have moved in the opposite direction from King’s vision that ultimately our freedom will be realized as children of God.
The political Left sees our future in socialism and secularism.
If, over the 60 years since King spoke, we pursued freedom in terms of personal responsibility, limited government, and faith, we would be far, far better off today.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/08/30/our-sad-departure-from-dr-kings-dream/
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Transgender Backlash: Parental Rights Advocates Launch New Strategy to Combat Gender Ideology in California
Under Gov. Gavin Newsom, California, has enacted policies endorsing “transgender” identity over the broad concerns of critics who claim the policies threaten parental rights, fairness in women’s sports, and the long-term health of children. Those critics have launched a new strategy to counter the gender ideology policies by going directly to the voters of the state.
Protect Kids California, a coalition of parental rights advocates and others who oppose gender ideology, filed three ballot initiatives Monday for the November 2024 ballot, aiming to circumvent the Golden State’s Legislature.
The ballot measures require schools to notify parents if their children claim to identify as transgender, prevent biological males from entering women’s spaces and sports, and forbid medical professionals from putting kids on experimental drugs or performing surgery on them to “affirm” a gender identity opposite their biological sex.
“We have legislators and institutions taking advantage of vulnerable children and busy parents,” Jonathan Zachreson, a member of the Roseville City School Board and spokesman for Protect Kids California, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview Tuesday. “It’s going to take parents, grandparents, and concerned citizens from all over to stand up to protect kids from these harmful practices.”
“We have a Legislature that does not represent the people very well,” added Zachreson, a parental rights advocate who founded Reopen California Schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The best polling that’s out there suggests that these initiatives would pass in California overwhelmingly.”
He cited numerous polls suggesting that more than 60% of California voters support schools notifying parents if their kids are questioning their gender identity, oppose biological males competing in women’s sports, and support restricting “sex-change” surgeries and drugs to patients over 18.
The Protect Kids California leader said transgender policies “are quietly being passed by the Legislature, and people are not sure what’s going on.”
He noted that transgender advocates are “basically saying that parents are a danger to their kid.” They lament that “transgender kids are bullied at school, yet we’re going to keep that secret from parents? No one cares more about their kids than parents do.”
“They’re acting like parents are the enemy,” Zachreson noted. “It’s scary that that’s their state of mind.”
In September 2022, Newsom signed SB 107, a bill declaring the Golden State a “trans refuge state” and empowering California courts to reassign custody of children who flee to California from other states seeking experimental medical interventions often euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming care.”
The California Senate is also currently considering AB 957, which would make parents who refuse to “affirm” their child’s preferred gender identity liable for child abuse.
The state’s education code explicitly allows students to access sex-segregated school programs and facilities “consistent with his or her gender identity.”
The three ballot initiatives would change some of these policies.
Protecting Children
The Protect Children from Reproductive Harm Act would bar health care providers from prescribing experimental drugs to or performing surgeries on minors to make their bodies resemble those of the opposite sex.
“It is in the interest of the people of California to protect the reproductive, sexual health, and bodily integrity of children as they grow into adults, including their natural ability to function sexually, reproduce, and breastfeed,” the ballot initiative states.
It notes that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved the use of the medical interventions for gender dysphoria in minors and that countries like the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Finland no longer recommend such interventions on children.
The initiative defines biological sex as male or female, determined by whether an individual’s body is developed for the production of sperm or eggs. It defines “sex-reassignment prescriptions or procedures” as any intervention aimed at “affirming a child’s perceived gender identity if that perception is inconsistent with the child’s biological sex.”
While the initiative would prevent most “sex-reassignment” procedures, it allows key exceptions for minors with “a medically verifiable genetic disorder of sexual development” and it would allow a minor who previously underwent such procedures to reverse those effects. It also allows children who already started sex-reassignment procedures before Jan. 1, 2025, to continue those procedures.
Violation of this law would be considered unprofessional conduct and would subject a health care provider to discipline.
Protect Kids California cited a national Harvard-Harris poll finding that 78% of Americans say “surgery to change gender and puberty blockers” should only be allowed for people over 18 years old. Protect Kids California weighted the poll to fit California’s party affiliation, finding that 64% of California voters (including 48% of the state’s Democrats) would likely support restricting sex-reassignment procedures to adults.
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1 September, 2023
A VERY sad story
I certainly feel sorry for Yael Wolfe below. She has had a a string of disappointing romantic experiences that have left her deeply wounded. She is now in her '40s so is precluded from having children, which makes the disappointment acute.
It is notable however that she blames the men she has known for her bad experiences. She shows no awareness that she might have behaved in a way to bring on her misfortunes. I know nothing of the details of her failed romances but I think I can make a stab at where she may have gone wrong.
It could be that she has simply aimed too high. We social pychologists see all relationhips as transactional. They are a "deal" where both people get a lot of what they want from the other. I think she just did not have enough to offer the men she sought out. Judging by the photo above, she may not be very attractive physically, for instance. So the attractive men she involved herself with felt that the "deal" she was offering was lopsided and, after exploration, acted on that by departing her life.
A woman who prioritized a kind heart over good looks would have done better. I have always chosen kind women in my life and have been richly rewarded for it. But that is a whole other story
I’m pretty sure I’m dead between the shoulders and knees. There’s nothing going on in there if you know what I mean. Not in my heart and definitely not southward, either.
Time of death: December 13, 2021.
Yes, I know exactly when it happened.
Cause of death? I know that, too. The sight of two, icy blue eyes staring at me on a video call embedded in the emotionless face of the man who had just, a week before, been talking about how we were going to be making love into our eighties. Until, that is, we actually did make love, and then he didn’t seem quite as interested in his daydreamed version of the two of us forty years in the future.
I can’t say I was surprised by the breakup. I guess you could say I was more surprised that he bothered to end things before disappearing from my life, though I’m the one who insisted on that conversation when he suddenly stopped texting me without explanation.
What does surprise me, however, is that our breakup forever changed me. No, not the way heartbreak leaves a scar that we will carry with us for the rest of the our lives. I mean it changed me.
I lost something that I don’t think I will ever get back.
How many times do we swear off dating when we are experiencing the aftermath of a breakup? I’ve been known to throw that promise out to the universe while curled up on my bed, crying uncontrollably. “Never again,” I vowed after a few early breakups.
Interestingly, it wasn’t the abusive breakups that inspired my decision to opt out of dating. I think it was simply youth.
By my thirties, I feel I was admirably resilient, if you don’t mind me patting myself on the back. In fact, I’m especially proud of myself that during the long, drawn-out breakup with the man who left me for a younger woman, I never once swore off men, never once felt anger toward men in general, and never once believed that my chances of finding a healthy relationship were over.
On the contrary, thanks to the fact that we had been struggling in our relationship for over a year before the breakup, I was positively itching to get out on the market again. I was in deep, deep grief, but I kept reminding myself that one day, the pain would ease and I’d be ready to try again.
Unfortunately, the next half dozen romantic encounters I had with men were absolutely disastrous. Every single one of them was like a burning meteorite falling from the sky right into my lap. I was putting out fires everywhere. Fires someone else had started.
By the time I genuinely fell in love with someone for the very first time since that awful breakup, a grueling seven years later, I believed my luck had finally changed. Due to our significant age difference, I wasn’t interested in pursuing a long-term relationship with this man. But a romantic fling — perhaps a year or two — felt like the perfect arrangement. We could remain independent and still have a beautiful experience that would be a win for both of us.
I couldn’t have been more stunned by the way that relationship unfolded. Let’s just say that I ended up naked with my feet in stirrups with a swab up my swollen vagina, which was then followed by a trip to the lab where they drew three vials of blood for STI tests.
He’d already exited my life by that point.
Though there has been some healing in that relationship since then — the only semi-healing I’ve ever experience with any ex — I still find it astounding that our romantic connection ended with such a humiliating, horrifying experience. As I mentioned, it wouldn’t have cost either of us anything to have ended things in a way that we both could have called a win.
Instead, the choice was made to end things at my expense, while he came out ahead.
The blue-eyed man entered the scene just weeks after that. We were already friends. Colleagues, he made me believe, though that turned out to be a ruse.
At the time, I still believed the best in people. I thought he felt compassion for me and everything I had endured because of that breakup. I thought he felt tenderness for me.
I didn’t understand then — even at 45 — that there are so many men who will swoop in right after a breakup. It’s a vulnerable time. How can you keep your defenses up when you are still tending to your wounds?
He was so convincing. He said everything I’d always wished a man would say to me. He treated me the way I’d always wished a man would treat me. He made promises to me I’d always wanted a man to make.
Once again, I didn’t realize what was really happening. He was reading my words, combing through my essays like an archaeologist, excavating the landscape of my heart.
I came to realize — far too late, I’m sorry to say — that during those months leading up to our first face-to-face meeting, he wasn’t wooing me. He was using what he’d learned about me to woo me.
Sowhat makes this breakup any different? Why did this encounter so completely destroy my capacity for romantic love and sexual desire?
These aren’t easy questions to answer. Certainly not in less than 2,000 words. How do you summarize a lifetime of being exploited and abused by male romantic partners and fully illustrate the impact that has on a woman’s life once she reaches middle age?
And after decades of therapy, self-examination, growth, maturing, and rigorous efforts at improvement, all of this culminates in the back-to-back gut punches of two brutal breakups. One that left you naked and trembling on an examination table, and the other that left you naked and trembling in the infinite emptiness of the cosmos. Because that’s what it feels like when you realize you invited a man who was pretending to be someone else into your bed.
None of it felt hopeless at the time. He had been so real, so sincere, so loving when we were dating. I was absolutely convinced that he loved me but perhaps felt overwhelmed or scared. He was afraid to let me in, right? Isn’t that what women always say to one another when trying to soothe over the rough edges of a breakup?
But my hopes for reconciliation were dashed a few months later when I reached out to him. He was so angry. So cruel. He couldn’t apologize, he said, because it felt so rote. And he didn’t want to apologize if he didn’t mean it.
I was stunned. How many times now had I found myself in a breakup with a man who had said this to me? Who had shamelessly told me he wasn’t sorry, at all?
How many times would it take for me to realize that they almost never are?
I’ve always been a very forgiving person. That boyfriend who left me for a younger woman…that wasn’t the first time he had an affair. I forgave him for the first one.
And believe it or not, I would have forgiven him for the last one. He’d always said we would be friends forever — how can you not when you’ve been through the seven years we weathered together? I thought for sure he would come back after he and his new wife settled down and apologize to me for his horrible treatment and propose we make peace. I would have embraced it.
But I never heard from him again. Nine years and counting.
The blue-eyed boyfriend had a similar pass. Honestly, even after the way he treated me, blowing through my life like a hurricane and then dumping me right before Christmas, I still would’ve forgiven him had he just treated me with compassion and expressed his regret over hurting me.
But that wasn’t in the cards. He couldn’t say he was sorry because he wasn’t sorry. He couldn’t show me compassion because he felt none. I’d never be a part of his kids’ lives because he’d never intended for me to meet them in the first place.
That’s when I had to come to terms with the fact that this man who had said he loved me, this man who had said we were going to get married, had lied to me just to get into my bed. He had never loved me, at all.
How bad does it have to get? How catastrophically do romantic relationships have to end? How many times do you have to experience a boyfriend cheating before it’s just too much? How many times do they get to push you, hit you, pin you to the floor before you break? How many lies do you have to endure before you can’t take it anymore?
And how many times can a woman look into the cold, icy faces of the men who had a fun time in the bedroom but are done now? How many times can we face that level of inhumanity before we stop feeling human?
Ihaven’t had any interest in dating since the last time Sam and I spoke. I haven’t had any interest in sex, either — at least not with another person.
Something has shifted deep inside me. I no longer feel aroused by a man’s naked body. On the contrary, I have a whole slew of other emotional responses, and for the sake of the feelings of the men reading, I will keep that to myself for now.
Sex with a man no longer feels like an option. It is guaranteed danger, according to my own experiences. Not a bit of a risk. No, it’s closer to inevitable exploitation and ruin.
People love to say that women like me are responsible for our own “bad luck” in romance. We purposefully chose abusive men to perpetuate our own need to be victims. And you know what I say to that: pure misogyny.
How can a woman access a healthy heterosexual relationship in a patriarchal culture? In a society in which we are seen as objects for men’s pleasure? In which men are taught to value women more for how they enhance their own social status and personal fulfillment than for their humanity? In which sex is conflated with love? In which porn teaches them how to interact with a woman’s body? In which rape and violence against women is normalized? In which a woman’s love is seen as worthless, except for the fact that its acquisition will give a man access to a woman’s body?
See the problem?
Even if I wanted to keep dating, the odds are not in my favor. And why would anyone choose to keep playing a rigged game?
Iknow this might surprise people, but I’m not sad. I feel no grief over the prospect of never having a partner, never again experiencing sex with another person, never again falling in love.
After everything I have been through, I feel I am losing nothing by remaining alone. I have never had a sexual experience that made what came later worth it. And I have no reason to believe the next man who utters the words “I love you.” I have seen what follows such a declaration, and believe me, it is not love.
I do grieve what I have lost to the men in my life. I grieve the dignity they stole from me, the pain they inflicted upon me, the love they threw away. But I don’t grieve the thought of never having an opportunity to experience a loving relationship with one. It no longer occurs to me that it is likely.
Sometimes, I think this is a good thing. If one of men’s greatest failings is their single-minded obsession with obtaining as much sex with as many new partners as possible (thanks to the patriarchy for that one!), one of women’s greatest failings is the way we’ve been conditioned to have the same single-minded obsession with fairy tale romance.
I truly never realized what a grip that had on me for so many decades, and the freedom I feel in its absence is staggering.
This is a good thing, right? This deprogramming from all the most toxic narratives about heterosexuality?
But I will admit, I do have some concern about the state I’m in. I am not sure it’s ever healthy to experience this level of apathy. Something tells me that’s a bit of a red flag.
And an ever bigger one? The fact that I experience a trauma response at even the thought of the naked male body. The overwhelming nausea that floods me at the idea of a letting a man anywhere near my own naked body. There’s the next chapter in my therapy journey, I suppose.
This, I do grieve. No woman should ever have to end up in a place like this. And god help us, I know so many women just like me who no longer feel safe to continue dating, who no longer are willing to risk their mental health for the prospect of meeting a potential partner. The stakes should not be this high.
Yet here we are.
I would have forgiven Sam. I would have forgiven them all. But, with one exception, they had so little regard for me that amends were not an option. Why apologize or attempt to make peace with someone you don’t see as a fellow human being?
Maybe it’s no wonder that so many women have gone numb. It’s not a good option — but it appears to be the best one available.
https://medium.com/liberty-76/how-my-last-relationship-changed-me-forever-ad1f349e6a50
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The great Leftist hysteria in Canada: About something for which there is no evidence
Doubts are growing about the scale of historic abuse at Canada's notorious residential schools for indigenous children after a dig at one of the country's most high-profile sites uncovered no bodies.
The country has set aside billions of dollars in compensation and declared a 'cultural genocide' in the treatment of indigenous children who were taken away from their families and placed at the schools for much of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Teams using ground-penetrating radar claim to have found mass graves in the last two years containing the remains of more than 1,000 children who were buried in secret.
But no bodies have since been recovered, and researchers have now confirmed that none have been found during a four-week dig in the basement of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Catholic Church, on the site of the former Pine Creek Residential School, where the remains of more than 60 children were thought to be hidden.
'People believe things that are not true or improbable and they continue to believe it even when no evidence turns up,' said Tom Flanagan, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Calgary. 'People seem to double down on their conviction that something happened.'
James McCrae, Manitoba's former attorney general, resigned from a government panel in May after his skepticism infuriated some indigenous groups.
'The evidence does not support the overall gruesome narrative put forward around the world for several years, a narrative for which verifiable evidence has been scarce, or non-existent,' he wrote.
The issue has polarized Canadian society with inquiry chief Kimberley Murray accusing skeptics of desecrating graves by organizing digs of their own at suspected sites.
This week she called on the country's justice minister David Lametti to criminalize 'denialism'
'I think we need to send a message that it is not okay,' Ms Murray told The Globe and Mail.
Professor Flanagan compared the issue to the 'moral panic' over repressed memories and supposed Satanic cults, and University of Montreal history professor Jacques Rouillard said the actual scale of the horror is still not known.
'I don't like to use the word hoax because it's too strong but there are also too many falsehoods circulating about this issue with no evidence,' he added.
'This has all been very dark for Canada. We need more excavations so we can know the truth. 'Too much was said and decided upon before there was any proof.'
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Lankford Demands Answers on FBI’s ‘Unconstitutional’ Targeting of ‘Traditional Catholics’
Eight Republican senators are demanding answers from the FBI as the bureau continues to stonewall investigations into the Richmond, Virginia, office’s January memo citing the Southern Poverty Law Center to target “radical traditional Catholic hate groups” for surveillance.
“The U.S. Constitution protects the right not just to have a faith but to live your faith as well, and the FBI’s decision to label traditional Catholics as ‘extremists’ is a violation of that First Amendment right,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told The Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “It is unacceptable that the FBI is hiding the truth about how many offices and agents were involved in drafting its unconstitutional memo.”
“I refuse to let this blatant faith-based targeting continue,” the senator added.
Lankford joined seven of his fellow Senate Republicans in sending a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray Thursday. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, led the letter.
“Director Wray needs to shoot straight with Congress and the American people by providing a full explanation about the origin of this outrageous memo and his congressional testimony,” Grassley told The Daily Signal in a statement Wednesday. “My colleagues and I won’t allow the FBI to pull the wool over Congress’s eyes while public faith in the agency continues to erode.”
“We have seen one public example after another of the strong arm of federal law enforcement weaponized against ordinary Americans,” senators wrote in the letter. “Targeting Americans because of their ideas or political affiliations is always wrong and an abuse of the FBI’s power, but it’s especially alarming when it threatens the fundamental rights guaranteed in our Constitution, including the free exercise of religion.”
In January, the FBI’s Richmond office circulated a memo urging agents to probe the supposed nexus between “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists” and “radical-traditional Catholics,” citing the SPLC and including a list of SPLC-designated “hate groups” for agents to target.
The FBI told The Daily Signal in February that it was rescinding the memo after FBI whistleblower Kyle Seraphin published it on UncoverDC.com on Feb. 8. The national FBI office claimed that the memo “does not meet the exacting standards of the FBI” and promised to remove the document from its systems and “conduct a review of the basis for the document,” but it refused to answer further questions about the move.
As I explain in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC took the program it has 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. The SPLC places conservative groups on a “hate map” with KKK chapters.
After the SPLC fired its co-founder amid a racial discrimination and sexual harassment scandal in 2019, a former staffer claimed that the SPLC’s accusations of “hate” are a “cynical fundraising scam” aimed at “bilking northern liberals.” Critics across the political spectrum have voiced opposition and alarm at the organization’s “hate group” smears.
A terrorist even targeted an SPLC-designated “hate group” in Washington, D.C., in 2012, and he told the FBI he used the “hate map” to find his target. The SPLC condemned that act of terror, but kept the target on the list and the map.
The SPLC has also suggested that the Catholic Church itself holds a position on human sexuality that would qualify it as a “hate group.”
Grassley and his fellow senators expressed frustration about the FBI’s reticence to reveal how the memo came into existence.
“As we have expressed to you previously, the FBI’s memo from the Bureau’s Richmond, Virginia, Field Office inappropriately, and without evidence, relied upon blatantly biased and discredited sources to tie Catholic Christians to violent extremism based largely on their conservative political views on issues like ‘abortion rights, immigration, affirmative action, and LGBTQ protections,’” the senators wrote.
“Upon its release, we were pleased by the FBI’s swift and firm disavowal of that memo and its contents and were led to believe it was an isolated incident,” they added. Yet even though Wray testified that the memo was “a product by one field office,” the House Judiciary Committee revealed that previously-redacted sections of the memo cited work from other field offices, leading to accusations that Wray lied under oath.
The FBI contested that claim at the time.
“While the document referred to information from other field office investigations of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremist (RMVE) subjects, that does not change the fact the product was produced by a single office,” the national office told The Daily Signal.
The senators noted that the FBI has promised to brief members of the House and Senate on its internal review of the memo’s origins, but the House Judiciary Committee revealed that “such a briefing could have happened much earlier.”
“Although the FBI quickly disavowed the report and explained that it did not meet FBI’s standards, six months after the fact, information continues to reach Congress in trickles, member and staff inquiries are ignored, and the information that has come to light conflicts with the FBI’s original assurances that the report was limited in scope,” Grassley and his fellow senators wrote.
The senators asked Wray to “provide immediate explanation with respect to your potentially-misleading testimony before Congress, as well as a full explanation of information that came to light during the internal review.” They also demanded an explanation of the FBI’s “failure to produce information we requested that did not rely upon completion of the FBI internal review” and that the FBI hand over all documents it provided to the House on the matter.
The senators demanded answers by Sept. 7.
Six Republican senators joined Lankford and Grassley on the letter: Utah’s Mike Lee, Texas’ Ted Cruz, Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn, Indiana’s Mike Braun, Missouri’s Josh Hawley, and Florida’s Rick Scott.
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Racism in Australian workplaces
The guff below is mostly misattribution. There are people of Chinese origin frequently to be found in almost all Australian workplaces -- from medical specialists to waitresses. How did they get there? There were clearly no racial barrier for them. They did what was needed to get the job and succeeded.
What is sytematically ignored below is that there are many NON-RACIAL barriers to certain jobs. A poor command of English is the obvious one. A person with poor English may fail to get a job because of difficulties in communicating with them. But another person of the same race with good English will get the job. It is commumnication difficulties that are being avoided, not the person's race
Similarly, overseas qualifications may be looked at askance because qualifications from the country concerned may be of unknown quality. Qualifications from India and Africa may be doubted because comparability with Australian qualifications is doubtful. A person from such contries may be rejected not because of their race but because of realistic doubts about the standard of their qualifications. It's not racism. It is realistic caution.
The pharmacy I go to is almost entirely staffed by people of Asian origin -- including a very black South Indian -- so you would have a hard job convincing me that their race held them back. They do their jobs well
The point of the whine below is to ask for racial discrimination. They argue that a person with sub-par qualifications should be given a job because of their race. Surely we all have every right to reject racial discrimination. It is almost always a call to treat someone else unfairly
Before lawyer Molina Asthana had begun working at an Australian law firm, she was being prepared for the problems she'd encounter there.
Recruiters regularly encouraged Ms Asthana, who is Asian-Australian, to apply for smaller firms, even though she already had years of experience and was highly qualified.
An acquaintance even made a point of telling her about doctors who've migrated to Australia who went on to drive buses.
"That's the first time I faced racism," Ms Asthana says.
The experience instilled a significant level of self-doubt in her.
When Ms Asthana did get a job at a top tier Australian law firm, she was one of only a few people of colour, and she often felt marginalised.
She says other employees had "studied at the same private schools, watched the same TV shows [and] barracked for the same AFL teams, which I didn't really follow". "I was constantly feeling isolated."
Working there took a toll on Ms Asthana's mental health and, after a year and a half in the job, she started suffering anxiety.
But Ms Asthana's story could have been entirely different.
However, she says we are slowly "gathering the data on what racism looks like in the workplace".
And it's important to understand that "even if we're not racist … our practices in our organisations might be".
"People immediately think anti-racism is about me not being a racist, an individualist attitude [or] prejudice that we can train out of people," Dr Fernando says.
She says it's much broader than that. Being anti-racist means addressing racism in "your practices, your procedures, your policies, the way you do things, how you put your communications out to the world".
"Race is about exploitation. Race is about putting somebody down. Race is about creating those ladders of upper and lower. It's an active thing."
'We lack the language'
Better understanding the power of race and the impact of being racialised requires gaining "racial literacy", Dr Fernando says. "Race is not taught. We don't get taught to understand race the way we got taught maths or we get taught about civics."
Consequently, she says "we don't have the words [to] actually talk about it. So [the conversation] is silenced. "We lack the language, we lack the critical thinking."
Dr Fernando says race education needs to be taught, and workplaces are an excellent place to do it.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-09-01/anti-racism-in-the-workplace-needs-racial-literacy/102755866
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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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