Toby Young becomes a victim of the Leftist tendency to make negative things up about conservatives

No evidence is needed for Leftist accusations. And courtesy flies out the window

I first met Caitlin Moran at Julie Burchill’s flat in Bloomsbury. This was in the early 1990s and she was a precocious teenager who’d written a play and published a few pieces. Julie had asked her to write for the Modern Review, a magazine I co-owned with Julie and her then husband Cosmo Landesman, and Caitlin’s stuff was really good. After that, she became a kind of junior member of our gang and I remember liking her a great deal – she was warm and funny and didn’t seem remotely intimidated by older, more experienced journalists. It was obvious that she was going to have a brilliant career.

Fast forward about 15 years, by which time we’d lost touch, and I was somewhat taken aback by her reaction to my appearance on a BBC2 discussion programme with Germaine Greer. As the two of us duelled away, Caitlin shared her feelings about me on Twitter. My ability to irritate, she said, was so reliable it ‘could be used to power an atomic clock’. She continued: ‘Oh, Germaine Greer. You’re still MAGNIFICENT. Please end this brilliant monologue by running a sword through Toby Young’s face.’

I joked about this at the time, particularly when Caitlin raised the alarm in a hand-wringing, deeply concerned way about how often women are threatened with violence on Twitter. She campaigned for a ‘report abuse’ button on the platform and launched a ‘boycott Twitter’ day in 2013 because of its failure to deal with offensive comments directed at journalists and politicians. Talk about hypocrisy! If she thought users should be banned from social media for encouraging people to assault those with whom they disagreed, shouldn’t she start with herself?

But the truth is, I was quite upset. I racked my brain, trying to think of something I’d said or done to her that could have prompted such a visceral hatred – and came up blank. On the contrary, I could only remember behaving decently to her when she worked for the Modern Review, always trying to be encouraging, telling her she was going to go far, etc. Since those days, I’d looked at her burgeoning career with a kind of paternal pride. I knew her politics were different from mine, but I didn’t let that colour how I felt about her. I was pleased she’d become so successful. So her comments cut me to the quick.

The only explanation I could come up with is that sending the right signals to her political tribe – saying something she knew they’d approve of – trumped any other considerations. She was just joining in the chorus of abuse I routinely get on Twitter, without giving a thought to how it might make me feel. Our little scrap of shared history, which I looked back on so fondly, meant nothing to her.

I find it a bit embarrassing to talk about this, but I’ve been reading Caitlin’s new book – What About Men? – and the advice she gives to the opposite sex is to talk more about our feelings. Like Prince Harry, she believes men are in the throes of a ‘crisis’ that’s rooted in our unwillingness to talk about our vulnerabilities, ideally accompanied by floods of tears. The rot starts in the playground, apparently, and she quotes approvingly from a book called Why Does Patriarchy Exist? by Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider. She summarises their analysis as follows: ‘Boys being put in a “masculine” environment – say, a school with hundreds of other boys, many of them older – quickly learn they must hide “their tenderness, their empathy, their vulnerability”, as it will not be responded to positively. Or at all. No hugging, no crying, no fear.’

Having wheeled out this cliché, she then ignores her own advice by ridiculing Jordan Peterson for crying on a podcast with Russell Brand. Crying is marvellous, she emphasises, but can you imagine how a successful woman would be treated if she cried at work? In any event, she says, what does he have to cry about? She contrasts his difficulties with those faced by notable female public figures she met with shortly after listening to the podcast: ‘All have had rape and death threats: two have panic buttons in their houses. One has never even mentioned she has children – as the police told her there was the very real possibility that, if the knowledge became public, there would be threats made against the children’s schools.’

Encouraging men to cry, only to accuse them of being crybabies, is typical of the book. Caitlin purports to be in earnest about helping men with their problems, but cannot resist scoring points at their expense. Anything for a laugh, or a nod of approval from a fan – as with her comments about me. Maybe I’m a bitter old man, but I expected more from that witty teenager who so impressed me 30 years ago.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/i-expected-more-from-caitlin-moran/

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Fascist China

It seems to me, the Chinese Communist Party, CCP, gave up on communism and turned to fascism in the 1980s. Since then, their economic fortunes have gone up dramatically, while the liberty of the people has flat lined. Today’s CCP is a full blown nationalist, imperialist and expansionist power. They seek Lebensraum in the First Island Chain and have marshaled their society along military lines. Just as Hitler envisioned it. The fascism practiced by the CCP is a blending of Nazism and mercantilism. Very effective at increasing national prosperity at the cost of other nations. With the added benefit that the subjects are told they are supermen and so are willing to die for their oppressors. Which makes a war over Taiwan, another war between fascists and the rest of the world, almost inevitable.

Racism is inseparable from classical fascism. Even the globalist fascists, like George Soros, have racism as one of their core principles. In the case of Nazi Germany, they hated the Jews, today’s globalists hate Europeans. The CCP hates everyone, who is not Han Chinese, and doesn’t especially like them either. The racism that fascists promote fuels nationalism based on race. When Chinese students attack students from Hong Kong in Canada, over protesting the suppression of Hong Kong by the CCP, it’s nationalist expansionism that’s their justification. Is Hong Kong seeking to Invade mainland China and impose freedom on its people? Of course not. Hong Kong is occupied by the CCP… as is Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang. The Han are expedient… but any race would do.

Communism is united in one thing… economic disaster. It may be wonderful at marshaling the poorest into a fighting force, to usurp power, but it fails miserably at producing enough food to feed those people once in power. The CCP discovered this first hand. Tens of millions starved to death by economic centralization. Mao saw that there wouldn’t be enough food to go around, so he made the hard decision, to round up all the food from everyone’s pantry, at gunpoint, and store it in a central location. To be handed out at a rate so it would last until the next season’s harvest. The result was, as Mao became obese… some say, fifty million people starved to death. Others say it was only ten million. No one will ever know because records were not kept and most died in the bar ditch.

Fascism and mercantilism, are good at hoarding money, but poor at leading a people to anything but oppression. The CCP gave up on communism and instead embraced fascist economics, Corporatism as Goebbels and Mussolini called it. Privately owned publicly controlled is another way to describe fascist economic theory. All for one and one for all, led by a single titular head, who chooses the overall path and takes responsibility for the results. No need of elected representatives, who talk incessantly and do nothing, and take responsibility for nothing. It has been a process though. The economy was mutated first, and now, the CCP may have found the leader it’s looking for… in the personage of Xi. A lifetime dictator who will lead the CCP to ultimate victory and Lebensraum!

What we have in the CCP, is an expansionist, fascist empire (in the classic definition) that’s cut from the same cloth as Nazi Germany. Our globalist rulers appear to be on the same track as Xi. They are expansionist fascists as well. We’re advancing to Russia, for the glory of globalism, while creating a valid excuse why we can’t come to the aid of Taiwan. In WWII, Japan was busy in the Pacific, while Germany expanded throughout Europe, and into Russia. Just as NATO controls Europe and is expanding into Russia. Almost like the new Axis is NATO and the CCP. The thing that stands in the way of that beautiful friendship, is the military industrial complex. They’ve never seen a war they didn’t like. I suspect they’re licking their chops at the idea of war with the PLA. Korea was a moneymaker.

https://www.thinkspot.com/discourse/dlukry/post/numapepi/is-fascism-the-future/dQtPaNK

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New York agrees to pay more than $19 million to George Floyd death protesters in class action

Protesters who were arrested or beaten by police during George Floyd death protests in 2020 could receive a share in more than $US13 million ($19.2 million) after New York City agreed to pay them in a civil rights settlement.

The class action on behalf of 1,300 people, focused on 18 of the many protests that erupted in the city the week after Mr Floyd was killed by a police officer in Minneapolis.

The settlement which was filed to Manhattan federal court on Wednesday, will be among the most expensive payouts ever awarded in a lawsuit over mass arrests if approved by a judge.

With certain exceptions, people arrested or subjected to force by NYPD officers at those events will each be eligible for $US9,950 in compensation, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs.

The agreement, one of several stemming from the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, allows the city to avoid a trial that could be both expensive and politically fraught.

Many other cities across the US are negotiating their own settlements with protesters who spilled into the streets to decry racist police brutality after Mr Floyd's death, a period of unrest that saw 10,000 people arrested in the span of a few days.

Adama Sow, one of the named plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said their group of marchers were trapped by police without warning.

They said the other arrestees were placed in zip ties until their hands turned purple, then held in a sweltering correctional bus for several hours.

"It was so disorganised, but so intentional," they said said. "They seemed set on traumatising everyone."

'Indiscriminate brutality'

Lawyers with the National Lawyers Guild, which represented the plaintiffs in New York, accused NYPD leaders of depriving protesters of their 1st Amendment rights through a "coordinated" campaign of indiscriminate brutality and unlawful arrests.

"The harmful realities we were protesting in 2020 persist. Black and brown people are disproportionately harassed, prosecuted, jailed and killed by police," Savitri Durkee, one of the named plaintiffs, said in a statement.

Through more than two years of litigation, lawyers for the city maintained that police were responding to a chaotic and unprecedented situation.

They pointed to some unruly protests in which police vehicles were set on fire and officers pelted with rocks and plastic bottles.

A spokesperson for the NYPD deferred questions to the city's Law Department, which did not respond to a request for comment from the Associated Press.

During some of the 2020 protest marches, officers deployed a crowd control tactic known as "kettling" against peaceful protesters, corralling them in tight spaces and attacking them with batons and pepper spray before making mass arrests.

Protesters who were arrested on certain charges — including trespassing, property destruction, assaulting an officer, arson or weapons possession — will be excluded from the settlement.

Those who were seen on video blocking police from making arrests may also be ineligible.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-21/george-floyd-protesters-to-be-paid-millions-new-york/102630624

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Louisiana Overrides Dem Governor to Ban ‘Transgender’ Surgeries, Puberty Blockers for Minors

Louisiana has become the 20th state to protect minors from irreversible “transgender” procedures, including surgeries and cross-sex hormone injections, over the veto of its Democratic governor.

Members of the state Legislature assembled in a special veto override session in Baton Rouge Tuesday to pass the Stop Harming Our Kids Act (HB 648), which prevents surgical or chemical conversion therapy to create an underage person’s “gender identity” that is “inconsistent with the minor’s sex.”

The bill forbids the “removal of any healthy or non-diseased body part or tissue”—such as mastectomies, hysterectomies, and sterilizations—and the construction of artificial breasts or genitalia. The bill also forbids placing children on puberty blockers or administering cross-sex hormone injections.

Gov. John Bel Edwards vetoed the bill on June 29, asserting it “needlessly harms a very small population of vulnerable children, their families, and their health care professionals.”

The Legislature’s Republican supermajority then called a special veto override session where the child protections passed the state House of Representatives by a 76-23 vote—a larger margin than their initial passage on May 3. The bill then cleared the state Senate, 28-11. It takes effect on Jan. 1.

Public health and child protection advocates cheered the outcome. “Detransitioner” Chloe Cole, who has lamented losing organs as a result of her teenage “transition,” noted the tremendous progress the state had made in one year. Before Tuesday’s vote, Louisiana stood as “the last state in the South that was sterilizing and cutting up children,” she noted.

“Last year, Louisiana tried to ban talk therapy for kids with [gender dysphoria]. As of today, Louisiana has done a full 180 and has now placed age restrictions that prevent what happened to me from happening to any child in the South,” she said. “To the Louisiana Legislature, thank you so much for listening to my cautionary tale” and handing the Pelican State’s children a “major win!!”

Family Research Council also played a role in lobbying legislators to enact these child protections. Jennifer Bauwens, director of the Center for Family Studies at the Family Research Council, testified that lawmakers should ban “scientifically unsupported, highly invasive, and potentially irreversible interventions” for children whose brains have not yet fully developed—a process that ends in the early to mid-20s.

In a letter to Louisiana state Senate President Page Cortez, a Republican, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins (himself a former Louisiana legislator) urged the senator to heed “valid medical evidence,” “tragic personal stories of regret by people who tried to medically ‘transition’ from their biological sex,” and “heartbroken parents” victimized by counselors and school personnel who “encouraged their children to ‘identify’ as something they can never be.”

The leaders of both chambers of the state Legislature met with dozens of pastors for a time of prayer and to hear their concerns as the veto override session came into session, Gene Mills of the Louisiana Family Forum told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” on Monday.

“We had robust participation from the public today here at the Capitol, and I appreciate how involved average citizens have been in our important discussions this year,” said Speaker of the House Clay Schexnayder.

In the end, six House Democrats joined all of that chamber’s Republicans on Tuesday’s veto override: state Reps. Roy Daryl Adams of Jackson, Robby Carter of Amite, Chad Brown of Plaquemines, Mack Cormier of Belle Chasse, C. Travis Johnson of Vidalia, and Dustin Miller of Opelousas.

Two Democratic state senators also crossed the aisle: Katrina Jackson of Monroe and Greg Tarver of Shreveport.

Two Democratic state legislators, Reps. Francis Thompson and Jeremy LaCombe, switched parties to the GOP due, in part, to the governor’s position on the Stop Harming Our Kids Act.

U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson, R-La., offered his “congrats to my former colleagues in the Louisiana legislature who stood up for children today” and assured “children will not be mutilated in the South.”

The State Freedom Caucus Network called the override “a major victory to protect children.”

The bill makes an exception for children who enter puberty too early, for those born intersex, or who require such actions to treat a separate physical injury.

Edwards, who tried to kill the bill in a procedural move during the legislative session, said on Tuesday, “I expect the courts to throw out this unconstitutional bill.” Yet U.S. District Judge David Hale, an Obama appointee, allowed a Kentucky bill protecting children from transgender procedures to take effect last Friday.

The veto override session is the state’s third since 1974—all in Edwards’ second term as governor. The override puts Edwards in the history books as the only modern Louisiana governor to have lawmakers override more than one veto.

Lawmakers previously had a showdown with Edwards over the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which prohibits men from competing against women in most sports activities. Edwards allowed the law to take effect without his signature after a strong bipartisan coalition of legislators, led by sponsor state Sen. Beth Mizell, a Republican, passed the bill with enough votes to override his veto. The governor called that bill “very distressing” and “mean-spirited.”

Nearly two-thirds of Americans (61%) say males should not be allowed to compete in women’s K-12 and collegiate sports.

In addition to the 20 states that have signed such bills, similar bills have passed three additional states.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/07/19/louisiana-overrides-dem-governor-ban-transgender-surgeries-puberty-blockers-minors

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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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