Monday, December 04, 2023


Leftist moral claims forever punctured

Leftists routinely champion groups seen as underdogs as it makes them seem heroic and caring, so their championship of Palestinians is routine for them. They have goofed this time, though. These underdogs are amoral monsters. Had the left had any real moral anchors they could have mourned BOTH Israeli and Paletinan deaths. But they did not. They have consciously aligned themselves with moral monsters. Know them by the company they keep. It's their need to look heroic and wise, not ethics, morality or caring that lies behind their apparently moral concerns

Oct. 7 should have been an open-and-shut case of moral condemnation.

During peace and holiday, invading Hamas gunmen murdered, tortured, mass-raped, decapitated, and mutilated some 1,200 Israelis. The vast majority were unarmed women, children, infants, and the elderly.

The cowardly murderers proudly filmed their atrocities and then fled back to Gaza—to cheers from the Gaza street.

Before Israel even retaliated, the mass murdering of Jews earned praise from the Middle East, the international hard Left, and especially the faculty and students of elite Western campuses.

When the Israel Defense Forces struck back, the killers dispersed to the safety of their multibillion-dollar subterranean cities. The cowardly elite architects of the mass murder fled to Arab sanctuaries in Lebanon and Qatar.

From its headquarters burrowed below hospitals, mosques, and schools, Hamas bartered hostages for a reprieve from the Israel Defense Forces and the release of its own convicted terrorists in Israeli jails.

Hamas shot any of its own supporters who refused to shield Hamas gunmen.

It continued launching rockets at Israeli civilian centers. It serially lied about its casualties, expropriating intended relief food and fuel for its underground tunnel city of killers.

Abroad, Hamas supporters also emulated the methods of the pro-Nazi demonstrators in Western cities of the 1930s. Unlike their pro-Israel critics, the pro-Hamas demonstrators in the U.S. and Europe turned violent.

They took over and defaced private and public property. They chanted genocidal antisemitic slogans calling for erasure of the nation of Israel.

They interrupted shoppers, blocked highways, attacked businesses, and swarmed bridges. They assaulted police.

The majority wore masks to hide their identities in the fashion of antisemitic Klansmen.

Why did the doctrinaire Left, the youth of the Democratic Party, and the campuses outdo each other in their antisemitic venom toward Israel?

For the first time in their lives, many of the ignorant protesters suddenly professed concern about refugees, colonialism, disproportionality, innocent civilians, and the rules of war.

But none could explain why the Palestinians who fled Israel in 1947-48 still self-identify as victimized “refugees” when 900,000 Jews ethnically cleansed from Middle East Arab cities about the same time do not.

The 200,000 Greek Cypriots driven out from northern Cyprus by Turkey apparently do not warrant “refugee” status either.

Few protesters knew that Jews have lived in present-day Israel for over three millennia. The longest colonialist presence there was Muslim Turks who brutally ran the Holy Land for 300 years until they lost in World War I and were expelled.

How exactly did it happen that the eighth-century A.D. Al-Aqsa Mosque was built within King Herod’s earlier Second Temple enclosure?

The pro-Hamas crowd has little appreciation that colonizing Arab Muslims have one of history’s longest records of “settling” other countries far from their historic birthland.

They “settled” and “colonized” the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Middle East, Berber North Africa, and southern Spain. Millions of Middle Easterners migrated to—“settled?”—supposedly infidel European cities, where they often self-segregate and do not assimilate fully with their magnanimous hosts.

As far as “disproportionality”—it is the goal of every power at war, Hamas included.

What protesters are furious about is that Israel is more effective at being disproportionate in retaliation than Hamas and its Iranian supporters were in their preemptive mass murdering.

Targeting innocent civilians? Hamas is among the current greatest offenders in the world.

It rockets Israeli cities without warning. It mass murders Jews in their beds during peace. It exposes Gazans to mortal danger by impressing them as human shields. Hamas shoots those who refuse.

The “rules of war” are violated by Hamas daily. Such protocols require combatants to wear uniforms so as not to blend in with civilians, not to use them as shields, not to murder noncombatants, not to rape them, not to mutilate them, and not to execute civilians without trial.

Why then would millions ally themselves with this odious reincarnation of the SS?

Are they ignorant of the history of the Middle East?

Are they arrogant since few challenge their hate and threats?

Are they opportunists who feel mouthing anti-Western shibboleths gains them career traction in leftist-run media, academia, and popular culture?

Are they bullies who count on the Western silent majority remaining quiet as they disrupt lives, trash Western tolerant culture, and commit violence?

Like Hamas that they support, do they despise Jews? Why else do they express an existential hatred toward Israelis that they never display to any other group?

Those now on the street utter not a peep about the Sudanese Arab mass killers in Darfur; Chinese oppressors of the Muslim Uyghurs; Russians targeting civilians in Ukraine; or ISIS, Syrian, and Yemeni murderers of fellow Muslims.

Yet all of these terrorist killers are guilty of the very charges the protesters falsely attribute to Israel. But they are all not Jewish—and that explains the pass given them by our antisemitic, pro-Hamas street.

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Chauvin: A Sacrifice to the Social ‘Justice’ Mob

It’s been an awful stretch of days for Derek Chauvin. Chauvin, the Minneapolis cop who’s now serving a 22.5-year sentence for the death on May 25, 2020, of a drug-fueled noncompliant career criminal named George Floyd, was recently denied by the U.S. Supreme Court his appeal for a new trial and a new venue due to jury bias.

It wasn’t just jury bias that plagued the Chauvin case, though. As we noted last month, when a key witness says “the actual evidence doesn’t match up with the public narrative that everyone’s already decided on,” you know you have problems. How so? The chief medical examiner in the case says that Floyd had a severely enlarged heart; that the autopsy showed no physical signs of neck injury or strangulation; and that if Floyd had been found alone in an apartment building, his death would be certified as an overdose without a second thought due to the lethal level of methamphetamines in his system.

Adding injury to that constitutional insult, Chauvin was stabbed and gravely injured Friday afternoon by a fellow inmate at a federal prison in Arizona. As the Associated Press reports: “The attack happened at the Federal Correctional Institution, Tucson, a medium-security prison that has been plagued by security lapses and staffing shortages. … The Bureau of Prisons confirmed that an incarcerated person was assaulted [and] said responding employees contained the incident and performed ‘life-saving measures’ before the inmate, who it did not name, was taken to a hospital for further treatment and evaluation.”

Does it strike anyone else as reckless for the prison to have exposed a convict as notorious as Chauvin to the general population? Is there a prisoner in all the United States with a bigger bullseye on his back than this guy?

As for Chauvin’s case, if you haven’t yet seen the documentary film “The Fall of Minneapolis,” you’re doing the truth a disservice. Indeed, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

The film wasn’t produced by one of the major studios, wasn’t directed by one of Hollywood’s best and brightest. Instead, it’s a free-of-charge crowdfunded documentary from a committed local journalist. As the New York Post’s Miranda Devine writes, “‘The Fall of Minneapolis’ reveals a shocking tale of injustice and perfidy, and a ruthless political operation that contained the seeds of the January 6 Capitol riot eight months later and the consequent hyperbolic crackdown on Trump supporters.”

But perhaps before watching “The Fall,” you should first ask yourself why you’re only now hearing about so many of the facts of the case — only now, more than three years after the long hot summer of 2020 and the riots that spread outward from Minneapolis to urban centers nationwide, killing more than two dozen people, causing more than $2 billion in property damage, and fueling a Democrat-driven crime wave whose effects continue to plague us today.

The reason you haven’t heard of this documentary is because it tells an inconvenient truth: that Derek Chauvin was railroaded.

You haven’t heard of this film because Hollywood, and the mainstream media, and social media, and Big Tech more broadly, and Democrats all across the country — none of them want you to know about it. As Devine continues, “The film was produced by Liz Collin, a former anchor at a CBS affiliate in the Twin Cities who was taken off air during the riots and demoted because her husband, Bob Kroll, was the Minneapolis police union chief at the time.” Despite having had their home terrorized by The Mob, Collin drives the narrative matter-of-factly and with “shocking new evidence,” and she interviews Chauvin in prison, Chauvin’s mom, and many of the Minneapolis cops who’ve since resigned from the force.

“From false testimony in Chauvin’s trial,” writes Devine, “to police bodycam footage of Floyd’s arrest that was withheld for two months, to the autopsy report that was altered after the FBI got involved, Collin presents a damning forensic record that needs avenging.”

Among the film’s hardest-hitting moments is the disgraceful abandonment of the city’s Third Precinct police station by local Democrat leaders to rioters who eventually torched it. In a better America, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey would’ve been tarred and feathered for gross dereliction, and the city’s police would’ve had permission to use deadly force to defend their building.

As for the officers on the scene during Floyd’s arrest, who knew they called for an EMS ambulance just 36 seconds after they pulled an increasingly agitated and uncooperative Floyd out of their squad car and put him face down on the pavement?

Who knew that Floyd had a similar interaction with police a year earlier, in 2019 — an interaction in which he appeared agitated and uncooperative, and appeared to be eating drugs in order to keep them from being discovered by the officers.

During the film, one Minneapolis cop after another — black cops, white cops, male cops, female cops — agree that they were all taught the MRT, the maximal restraint technique that Officer Chauvin used on Floyd on May 25, 2020. And yet their own police chief, Medaria Arradondo, took the stand in Chauvin’s trial and claimed that he didn’t recognize the MRT and that “it was not” a trained technique within the Minneapolis Police Department. “Yes, I heard him say that,” said one incredulous officer. “It’s tough to hear people lie, just straight lie.”

The more we learn about the Chauvin case, the more troubling it becomes. And the more unavoidable is the conclusion that a white male police officer was sacrificed to the social justice mob as a means of appeasement. To hell with his Sixth Amendment rights.

“What’s been done is done,” says Alex Kueng, the black cop who helped Chauvin detain George Floyd on that fateful day and is serving a three-year sentence for it. “I just hope, at the very least, people in the future keep an open mind and not let instances like this happen. Use my case as an example to not jump the gun, not knee jerk, not fall to this race bait, to the social media, to the media, and not let them get away with what they do.”

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School District Discussed ‘Chest Binder’ Fundraiser With Students, Documents Show

This month, Townhall reported how an investigation showed that LGBTQ+ clubs are infiltrating America’s public schools as early as pre-school. This report came after a poll showed that almost half of all respondents indicated that lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity are receiving too much attention in schools.

Documents obtained by parental rights organization Parents Defending Education and shared with Townhall show that a Colorado school district discussed creating a fundraiser for “chest binders,” which flatten a women’s chest. Women who believe they are “transgender” are known to wear chest binders to appear more masculine.

This year, PDE requested information from Littleton Public Schools in Colorado about a number of groups and curriculum surrounding sexual orientation and gender identity. In addition to the chest binder fundraiser, it was discovered that children as young as middle school were taught to keep parents in the dark about students’ gender transitions.

At the high school level, PDE obtained documents about Arapahoe High School’s Sexual and Gender Alliance (SAGA) club. Resources that were available to students last year included links to organizations such as the Trevor Project and Gender Spectrum. And, the SAGA club's website previously featured books that students had access to in the “SAGA meeting room,” including “The Gay Revolution,” “David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music,” and “All Boy Aren’t Blue” (via PDE):

The organization Gender Spectrum previously offered resources specifically targeting “youth” and even teachers. Gender Spectrum offered resources to educators on a page titled “Integrating Gender Diversity Into Everyday Curriculum.” This page explained that the discussion of gender can be integrated into subjects like history, science, mathematics, and even physical education. In targeting the youth, Gender Spectrum offered online chatrooms for children as young as 10 years old who identify as “trans” or “non-binary.”

The Trevor Project is an organization specifically known for providing children with resources such as the “Understanding Gender Identities” guide. This resource states that “gender is actually a social construct.” The organization’s resource also appears to encourage children to question their gender and mentions the possibility of having surgery to transition:

If you decide that your current gender or sex just isn’t right for you, you may want to make your gender identity fit with your ideal gender expression and presentation. This is called transitioning, and can include social (like telling other people about which pronouns you like), legal (like changing your name), or medical (like taking hormones or having surgery).

In the SAGA club’s meeting slides for the 2022-2023 school year, it showed that the group discussed a “binder drive/fundraiser.”

Another high school in the district, Heritage High School, asked for the preferred pronouns of students, along with other questions about the students’ parents (via PDE):

PDE additionally received over 160 pages of material from Heritage High School’s GSA club. Page 73 of the first group of documents appears to show a Google form for students to complete. This form asks for the preferred pronouns of students. One question specifically asks: “Can I use your pronouns in front of parents?” Other documents include presentations on “neopronouns” and “different types of attraction.”

The second group of documents include resources for “National Coming Out Day,” the “Gender Unicorn,” and the “It Gets Better Project,” which is an organization that provides grants to schools for LGBTQ causes.

In September, PDE shared that Littleton Public Schools provided students with a survey that asked students their “preferred name” and “preferred pronouns.” The pronouns students could choose were “She/Her,” “He/Him,” “They/Them,” and “Other.” A member of the school community told PDE that students in a high school class were “forced” to complete the survey.

Additionally, PDE revealed that Littleton schools stated that parents can be left in the dark regarding their children’s gender identities.

“In general, a student should not be required to disclose information about their transgender status or gender identity to anyone until they are ready for others to know this information,” the school district’s guidance stated. “In situations where the student is requesting use of a new name or gender pronouns by staff and peers at school and/or access restrooms or locker rooms of a new gender but does not want to inform their parents/guardians, the school mental health professional will meet with the student to proactively discuss parental involvement, resources for support, limitations to privacy due to school being a public place and to clarify that school staff will not lie to parents / guardians if asked about this information.”

Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for Parents Defending Education, spoke about this with Townhall.

"Schools say they want parents as trusted partners while deliberately deceiving them at the same time. There is no justification for a school facilitating psychosocial or physical interventions without the knowledge or consent of parents,” she said.

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Australia's male suicide problem

Toxic feminism at work

Australia’s suicide prevention policies are failing. We are falling behind the rest of the world when it comes to suicide prevention. From 2000-19 global suicide declined by 11 per cent. In Australia, rates increased by 31 per cent.

The reason? For many decades our health authorities have blatantly refused to target the group most at risk – men. Seven of the nine people who end their lives each day in Australia are male.

In 2019, the female suicide rate in Australia (5.6 per 100,000) while tragic, was similar to the rest of the world (5.4 per 100,000). However, male suicide rates in Australia (17.0 per 100,000) are now much higher than elsewhere (12.6 per 100,000).

The discrepancy is stark, and yet funding initiatives and bodies appear to fall short when it comes to targeting men who are most at risk.

Just look at the $1.8 billion of funding allocated in the 2022 National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement. This includes:

$735 million for adult mental health services that generally reach twice as many women as men.

$300 million for youth mental health services, which generally reach twice as many young women as young men.

$465 million for aftercare support for people who attempt suicide, a model with a track record of helping more women than men.

$35 million for suicide postvention support providing suicide bereavement services that predominantly support women.

It is hardly surprising that men feel as if they are being left behind. And when these programs do manage to support vulnerable men as a priority, the tend to invoke the toxic masculinity model in which men are told it is their fault the system is failing them because they are too stoic to reach out for help with mental health issues.

Yet here too there is big news.

There’s now statistical data to show that mental health problems are no longer considered the key risk factor for one of our major groups of vulnerable men. For the first time, this year the Australian Bureau of Statistics published statistics based on coroners’ reports showing relationship/family breakdown is the major suicide trigger for family men – men in their peak child-raising years from 25-44.

Here’s what the ABS said:

‘The top risk factor for males aged 25-44 years was problems in spousal relationships circumstances, present in over one-third of suicides. Problems in spousal relationships overtook mood disorders as the top risk factor in this age group for the first time and can include separation and divorce as well as arguments and domestic violence situations.’

We’re talking family law issues, men under fire in our increasingly hostile family law system, facing the risk of losing their children, home, and assets. Men who are facing the stress of monstrous legal costs. Plus we have the sad reality that ‘domestic violence situations’ often include false allegations.

Last month there were 2,500 empty shoes on the lawn in front of Parliament House representing the men who have lost their lives by their own hand this year. This powerful memorial event was sponsored by the Zero Suicide Community Awareness program which aims to educate Australia about what needs to be done to reduce these shocking suicide numbers.

Here’s a brief video giving an overview of the memorial – produced by Dads4Kids, one of the many men’s groups who came together to make this all happen.

Listen to Mary O’Brien, who runs a rural suicide organisation called Are you Bogged, Mate? O’Brien started speaking out about the high suicide rate in rural areas many years ago, pointing out how many of these blokes were driven to take their lives by family law battles. She’s touring the country speaking about rural suicide – rural men are twice as likely to take their lives as metropolitan men. Five times more likely than metropolitan women.

We lose a farmer every ten days in this country – and this crisis has led O’Brien to give up her work as an agricultural scientist to devote herself to calling out the health authorities’ failure to tackle male suicide properly. ‘Everything I read was bullsh*t,’ she says, spelling out the misguided approach being taken to male suicide.

She’s also concerned about the way statistical bodies report male suicide. For example, the Australian Bureau of Statistics graph below clearly shows the glaring difference in male and female suicide rates.

The ABS highlighted this telling graph in their reports on suicide trends until 2020 when it suddenly disappeared, to be replaced with two separate graphs – one for men and the other for women. The net effect of this change in the display of data obscures the reality that suicide is overwhelmingly a male problem.

What’s left in a prominent position is this graph, where the gender split is no longer obvious.

The gender disparity has not gone away, it is obscured by the choice of display. Here, the suicide rate for 35-39-year-old males and females appears comparable when the reality is suicide rates for males are more than 3 times higher.

Instead, the suicide figures for each age group are shown as a proportion of total suicides in each gender, rather than for all suicides. Therefore, in the 35-39 age bracket, the figure of 9.2 per cent for women represents 73 individuals, while the figure of 9.2 per cent for men represents 227 individuals. The graph makes these figures look the same.

The Zero Suicide event attracted various Opposition and One Nation MPs and Senators, speaking out about the male suicide crisis. As usual mainstream media did a brilliant job ignoring the event – despite the organiser Paul Withall having sent over 1,000 emails to media groups seeking publicity.

Male suicides are 35 times as numerous as deaths from domestic violence.

How come we are willing to spend millions of dollars each year to try to protect women from domestic violence while working so hard to ignore the tragedy of all those dead men?

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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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