Woman falls for "Hi Mum" scam
I once received the "Hi Dad" version of that scam. I have however always insisted that even the littlies call me "John", so I knew immediately that it was a scam. And anybody who tried to impersonate my brother would have a problem too. We still address one-another by our childhood names, which are nothing like our normal names. So crazy customs have their uses
A loving mother fell victim to cruel scammers who stole thousands by posing as her daughter, even sending love heart emojis to make the messages more convincing.
Victorian mum Nina Merrilees, who lives near the state's border with NSW, did not think twice before sending $11,600 after receiving a seemingly innocent text from her daughter.
The message that appeared on Ms Merrilees' phone via WhatsApp read: 'Hi Mum, my phone is broken, this is my new number'.
Ms Merrilees, a mother-of-two, said that this type of message from her daughter, who lives in New Zealand, was not out of the ordinary.
The person posing as Ms Merrilees' daughter asked her to make some urgent payments as the phone was new and didn't have a banking app installed.
Once more this did not strike Ms Merrilees as anything out of the ordinary. 'I'm not sure about other parents, but we quite often make payments for our kids and they always pay us back straight away,' she said.
The mother-of-two sent the sums of $3,450, $3800 and $4,350 using online payments system Osko while the person poising as the daughter promised to pay it all back promptly the next day.
During the text conversation the scammer maintained the facade by peppering the messages with love heart and smiley face emojis.
Despite sending the money Ms Merrilees felt uneasy about the transaction and emailed her daughter straight after.
Her daughter immediately called Ms Merrilees using her previous phone number.
'As soon as I saw that number flash up I just knew I had been scammed out of $11,600 and just felt physically sick,' Ms Merrilees said.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13032661/text-message-scam-Nina-Merrilees-hi-Mum.html
*****************************************Canadian authoritarianism
In their latest bout with the Leviathan, Canada’s little guy and gal came away with a victory: Judge Richard Mosley ruled last week that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s 2022 use of emergency powers to break up protests against Covid-19 restrictions and mandates was unjustified and “infringed” on the constitution. Truckers 1, Nanny State 0.
But don’t break out the Molson yet. The government says it will appeal, and the case could end up at the Supreme Court. As clinical psychologist and University of Toronto professor emeritus Jordan Peterson can attest, that doesn’t augur well for Canada’s Forgotten Man.
If not for the wide latitude the high court has given the administrative state across Canada, an Ontario regulator wouldn’t have the power it’s now using to punish Mr. Peterson for his political beliefs. As Bruce Pardy, executive director of Toronto-based Rights Probe and a professor at Queens University in Kingston, explained in an August op-ed for the National Post, “judicial deference grants control not to a monarch but to a professional managerial class.”
That “broad discretion in the hands of administrative bodies,” Mr. Pardy wrote, “has become the foundation of our modern system of government.” The Peterson case is only the latest example of creeping Canadian authoritarianism.
Mr. Peterson hasn’t seen patients since 2017. He makes a living as speaker, author and podcaster. He calls himself an “online educator.” He has five million followers on Twitter. He is, in a word, influential.
He’s also controversial in that he bucks the academy. According to Ontario court documents, he’s been the subject of complaints since 2018 about his public statements “on topics of social and political interest, including transgender questions, racism, overpopulation, and the response to COVID-19, among others.” The complainers—none of whom seem ever to have been his patients—mainly tweeted their objections to the provincial licensing board known as the College of Psychologists of Ontario.
The board’s job is to regulate for competence, not for political views. Nevertheless it assigned a committee to investigate the complaints. In March 2020 the committee recommended no action, though it said Mr. Peterson’s “manner and tone” were of concern.
The griping continued. In August 2022 the board wrote to Mr. Peterson on behalf of its panel of investigators about his “demeaning, degrading and unprofessional” public statements and the “harm” they could cause people. He could solve the problem, the bureaucrats said, if he would agree to attend a re-education camp of its choosing.
Mr. Peterson declined the offer—though he wrote in a letter to the board that he had turned to people in his life he trusts for advice and counselling. The board said failure to be re-educated its way “may constitute professional misconduct.” This is all the more surprising because there was no disciplinary hearing, a necessary step in a judgment of misconduct.
Mr. Peterson took the board to the Ontario Divisional Court, which ruled against him in August. Earlier this month the Ontario Court of Appeal said it wouldn’t hear his case. That’s the end of his legal road. Either he agrees to provincial rehabilitation or he might lose his credential.
It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s Mr. Peterson’s worldview, not his delivery, that has gotten him into trouble with the authorities. After all, online snark isn’t yet a crime in Canada. Court documents cite instances of name-calling politicians and his refusal to use pronouns other than those that correspond to biological sex. In May 2022, court documents say, “he commented on a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition cover with a plus-sized model, tweeting: ‘Sorry. Not Beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.’ ”
In his willingness to fight back, Mr. Peterson may be an outlier. Many Canadians undoubtedly prefer self-censorship to the risk of getting crosswise with the Red Guard or being reported to human resources. But Mr. Peterson is a polemicist who is unafraid. This makes him a problem for the mob and a danger to a system that relies on cultural repression to advance its agenda.
It isn’t necessary to decide whether Mr. Peterson is correct in his views, or in the way he expresses them, to decry this bullying from on high. In a free society there is a right to be wrong. Sardonic commentary is an age-old rhetorical weapon. Mr. Peterson is entitled to his politics as much as the butcher or the baker.
If only Mr. Peterson’s treatment were an exception to the administrative state’s modus operandi. In 2018 the law societies of Ontario and British Columbia refused to credential Trinity Western University’s law school because the university makes students take a vow not to engage in sex outside marriage, traditionally defined. This would seem to be a matter of religious freedom. But the court said the regulator was acting in the public interest.
A court that cancels liberty has lost its way and the nation can’t be far behind.
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New Jersey Dad Sues School Over Daughter’s Secret Gender Transition
More tyranny from the Left
A father is suing a Garden State school district after his daughter’s gender transition was allegedly kept a secret from him.
The father, who is remaining anonymous to protect his daughter’s identity, found that New Jersey’s Delaware Valley Regional High School had been calling his daughter by a male name and male pronouns for at least two months, after a pro-LGBT student club’s staff adviser—who is not licensed to practice either medicine or psychology, according to the lawsuit—asked teachers and other school staff, faculty, and administration to refer to the girl by a male name and male pronouns and not to tell her father.
“I was devastated,” the father said. “If a kid gets a headache in school, they have to call the parents to give them Tylenol, but they’re going to choose to allow them to identify as something?”
He said that his wife died when his daughter was only 4 years old, and his daughter has been in treatment for depression and anxiety since 2022. She has also been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and borderline personality disorder, prompting her doctors to agree to a “cautious approach” regarding her gender-identity confusion.
The father says he only learned of his daughter’s social transition when a neighbor and fellow parent accidentally told him. The neighbor referred to the girl by her male name, and the father asked, “What the hell are you talking about?”
The father removed his daughter from DVRHS and began homeschooling her. He said that LGBT activists in the school system showed her a “fantasyland” version of transgenderism, and once he showed his daughter photos and videos of the reality of gender-transition surgeries, she began crying.
Last month, the father met with DVRHS staff to inform them of his daughter’s mental health history, but was told that the school district would continue to use a male name and male pronouns for his daughter unless she requested that they stop. The girl’s therapist and doctor both approved of removing her from DVRHS.
In comments to The Washington Stand, Meg Kilgannon, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for education studies, said, “These cases are becoming more and more common. And while some of the details are the same, the overall situation is still shocking.”
She explained, “Children who have their names changed at school by teachers and are treated as the opposite sex or an imagined gender are not able to consent to these therapies. Social transition is made to seem harmless and reversible by school counselors and gender activists, but it’s neither of those things.”
Last summer, a poll showed that a majority of New Jersey voters—including a majority of Democrats—support mandatory parental notification policies for students’ attempted gender transitions in schools. Another poll found that parental notification requirements were supported by a majority of Americans nationwide.
But New Jersey Department of Education’s official guidelines say, “There is no affirmative duty for any school district personnel to notify a student’s parent or guardian of the student’s gender identity or expression.” Although the guidelines are not state law, lawyers say that they are enforced by state anti-discrimination laws.
According to an updated list from Parents Defending Education, nearly 1,100 school districts across the U.S. have policies in place prohibiting teachers from telling parents about students’ gender-transition attempts. The majority of those school districts are in California, where Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, has actually sued school districts for keeping parents informed.
The U.S. is increasingly alone in its support of gender-transition procedures for children. Last month, the U.K.’s Department of Education introduced new guidelines not only demanding that parents be notified and involved in students’ social gender transitions, but also that teachers wait a period of time before agreeing to even consider a student’s request to be called by a new name or pronouns, in order to ensure the decision is made after careful consideration over time.
A report last summer also declared the U.S. an “outlier” among Western nations, where gender-transition procedures for minors were concerned. A number of liberal nations have backed away from the subject—including France, Sweden, Finland, and the U.K.
The New Jersey father’s lawsuit names the DVRHS Board of Education, Superintendent Scott McKinney, School Counselor Ashley Miranda, New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, acting Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Education Angelica Allen-McMillan, and other school staff and administrators. The case will be heard by the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.
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Ohio Pastor Fights Back After City Attempts to Shut Down Church’s 24/7 Outreach to Poor, Homeless
After seeing the needs in his community, Pastor Chris Avell made the decision to keep the doors of his church open 24/7.
“We’re called to reach the lost, 24/7,” Avell says, adding that that includes the “the hurting, the broken, the least of these.”
Avell’s church, Dad’s Place, in Bryan, Ohio, is “a place they can come if they’re weary and burdened and find rest and true rest for their souls,” the pastor says. Bryan, a town of some 8,600 people, is located about 64 miles southwest of Toledo.
Some people in the community, whether those struggling with mental health issues, addiction, or physical needs, began frequenting the church and even sleeping there if they needed a place of shelter. But several months after the church opened its doors wide with round-the-clock help for the needy, the city told Avell he had to stop.
“According to the city,” First Liberty attorney Jeremy Dys explains, “Dad’s Place has converted itself from being a church and into a homeless shelter, which they believe is a change of use from the approval that the city had previously given for them to be a church. Well, of course, that’s not true,” he says.
“This is a church, and they’re doing church things,” Dys says of Dad’s Place, adding that churches throughout history have kept their doors open 24 hours a day in order to fulfill the biblical mandate to serve the needy.
Avell, along with Dys, joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to explain how he’s fighting to continue doing the work he and the congregation at Dad’s Place feel called by God to do
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Team Biden Targets Peaceful Pro-Life Activists
Equal justice under the law is supposed to be enshrined in our Constitution. Furthermore, Joe Biden and his administration love to prattle on about their concerns for promoting equality and equity. But, as the Good Book states, "You will know them by their fruits."
What fruits might those be? While the Biden administration pays lip service to "equity" and "justice," their actions belie the fact that they are motivated by no such altruistic concerns. Rather, it's all about promoting their political agenda and selectively applying the law when it suits them. A case in point is the Biden administration's targeting of pro-life advocates and activists with the dubious and likely unconstitutional Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act.
Six pro-life activists who conducted a peaceful sit-in at an abortion clinic in Nashville were prosecuted by Biden's DOJ on charges of violating the FACE Act. They were subsequently found guilty, and they face a sentence of up to 11 years in federal prison.
But it's not just a selective and targeted application of the FACE Act; it's also the DOJ's needless application of heavy-handed tactics when charging and arresting these individuals.
For example, one of the pro-life activists charged is Paul Vaughn, whom the FBI swooped down upon with guns drawn, pounding on his front door and shouting at him as if he were American gangster John Dillinger. At the time of his arrest, with which he fully cooperated, Vaughn was simply getting ready to take his kids to school. These types of dramatics and needless escalation are solely intended to bully and intimidate.
The Thomas More Society, which is representing Vaughn, has called on the DOJ to drop the case, citing unequal application of the law. The filing states, "Defendants submit that the government has engaged in selective and/or vindictive prosecution motivated by an intent to punish defendants for the content of their viewpoints and their protected expressions thus making this case an unconstitutional application of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act."
The filing also argues that "FACE is an unconstitutional content-based regulation of speech; as applied, it violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as well as the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment; and this court lacks jurisdiction because, especially after the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, FACE is an invalid exercise of Congress' Commerce Clause authority."
Other pro-life activists and advocates that the Biden administration has targeted using the FACE Act include the leftist group Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, whom the Thomas More Society is also representing, and Mark Houck, who was acquitted by a jury after he was ridiculously charged by the DOJ of violating the FACE Act for defending his young son from an aggressive pro-abortion activist. The FBI used heavy-handed tactics against Houck as well when agents raided his home and arrested him.
Meanwhile, the FBI has hardly raised a finger to investigate — let alone prosecute — a myriad of instances of violent actions and clear violations of the FACE Act against pro-life facilities and churches. Indeed, it has been pro-life centers, facilities, and churches that have most often been the target — not to mention the threats pro-abortion activists have leveled against Supreme Court justices.
Regarding the Biden administration's selective enforcement of the FACE Act, journalist Greg Price observes: "A grand total of zero people have ever been arrested for protesting outside the houses of Supreme Court justices after Roe was overturned, which is a federal crime. But peaceful pro-lifers now face 11 years in jail for praying outside an abortion clinic."
https://patriotpost.us/articles/104053-team-biden-targets-peaceful-pro-life-activists-2024-02-01
**************************************************New York father loses legal battle to stop his son, 8, from taking puberty blockers to change gender
New York family court officials have denied a father the legal right to stop his eight-year-old son taking life-changing hormones that would begin his medical transition to a girl.
Dennis Hannon, 32, a senior software engineer from Buffalo, has been locked in a 'nightmare' legal battle with Erie Supreme Court spanning seven years, fighting to retain his fundamental parental rights.
He claims that the boy's mother 'pushed' their child's transition, and says the boy himself was not distressed about living as a boy.
What's more, a year after the court's ruling, the young child, Matthew*, reverted back to his original male gender and is now 'a regular little boy.'
However, the father has lost any say in medical decisions about his son and sees him for just a few hours every week.
He cannot afford to appeal to regain full custody. 'It's been a nightmare,' Mr Hannon told DailyMail.com. 'It's completely destroyed my life.'
It comes days after DailyMail.com revealed that a Montana family had lost custody of their 14-year-old daughter after refusing to let her transition to a boy.
Child Protective Services (CPS) turned up at the family's home in Glasgow and later determined that their daughter, who suffered mental health difficulties, needed to transition to 'get better'.
She was sent to a mental health institute where she was allowed to live as a boy called Leo, shave her head and wear a chest binder.
Mr Hannon claimed his ex-wife began dressing his son in girl's clothes when he turned three, in 2017 - two years after he had split from his child's mother.
Mr Hannon saw his son twice a week and every other weekend, while his ex-partner had custody for the remainder of the time. 'When I was picking him up, he was a boy named Matthew*,' he said. 'And I didn't realize that when he was in his mom's care, he was actually a girl named Ruby.'
In 2019, mother sent him to a 'transgender affirming' therapist and sought puberty blockers to stop the production of male hormones, according to court documents seen by DailyMail.com
But Mr Hannon only discovered this information in 2020, when he took his ex-wife to court to find out what had been going on.
And a year before that, Mr Hannon had received a letter from his son's kindergarten addressed to 'the parent or guardian of Ruby Rose Hannon' - which used she/her pronouns.
'I thought they had mailed it to the wrong address,' he said. 'I was the last to know [about the transition]. He was on the fast track to puberty blockers.'
No official diagnosis of gender dysphoria was ever made by medical professionals.
This is the condition experts refer to when person expresses a sense of unease because of a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity. This distress or dissatisfaction may be so intense it can lead to depression and anxiety and have a harmful impact on daily life.
Now, following last year's court ruling, Mr Hannon has only visitation rights, no joint custody or medical authority, meaning he has no say in any medical decisions. He gets his son every other weekend and for a few hours in the week.
By age nine, Matthew was no longer identifying or dressing as a girl.
Gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors is available in New York, unlike other states.
What's more, the city enables those travelling from other states where it is banned to access it.
Social transitioning, such as changing a child's name and appearance, remains a gray area of the law.
In 2020, a court order was issued for Matthew to be enrolled in counselling with a mental health counsellor in Buffalo, New York.
'Even though he never had a diagnosis, I was court ordered to take him to a gender therapist that didn't accept insurance. It was $145 out of pocket every week,' Mr Hannon said.
'He went there for a year and a half. And there was still no diagnosis of gender dysphoria... If I refused, they would say that I was interfering with essential medical treatment, and they would remove my custody.'
Mr Hannon decided he had had enough, and terminated the child's counselling.
When Mr Hannon requested his son be discharged, the therapist wrote to the courts, and he lost medical authority of Matthew.
His ex-partner then sought treatment for Matthew with Ms Andrea Binner, a self-described 'transgender affirming' therapist.
Ms Binner had also referred Matthew to a pediatrician called Dr Tran Ngoc.
'Over a 45 minute phone call with the mother only, Dr Ngoc said my son sounded like he persisted with gender dysphoria and they recommended the potential for puberty blockers when he was nine,' Mr Hannon said.
In February 2020, Mr Hannon's ex partner filed an Enforcement of Custody Petition, used when a co-parent is not following a custody order. The petition referred to Matthew using 'they/their' pronouns.
'Since approximately Matthew's third birthday... They have expressed, unprovoked, that They are a girl,' it said.
'Over the past four years, Matthew has been insistent, consistent and persistent that They are a girl.'
In Mr Hannon's response, he said this was 'a delusion that the defendant is trying to force on our son.'
Over the seven years, the court process has cost Mr Hannon $150,000. 'I spent every dime of my retirement,' he said. He was also ordered to pay his ex-wife's attorney fees.
Mr Hannon said while he is desperate to regain custody of his son, he cannot afford the appeals process.
As for the effect on Matthew, 'it's been awful,' Mr Hannon said.
'He uses a Chromebook for school and he has access to his previous grades, and there are things that pop up with the name Ruby on it still... that's something he's going to have to live with. It's been hard on him.'
Mr Hannon said: 'It's very clear to me that it was all about pushing a narrative. Nobody wanted to question the agenda, or even question whether or not somebody actually had gender dysphoria, it was just, because she said that he was confused about his gender, it must be true.'
When looking for therapists for Matthew, Mr Hannon said his ex-wife 'would get an answer that she didn't want to hear from one therapist, and she shopped around until she found the answer that she wanted to hear - somebody that would work with her to socially transition and ultimately, physically transition my son.'
Now, Mr Hannon said: 'My son is a regular little boy, he goes by Matthew. His mother still tries to influence him by using they/them pronouns, and still calls him B, which is short for Ruby.'
'It was very difficult for him in school because... one year he was a girl named Ruby, wearing dresses and makeup and the hair.
'Then the next year, he's a boy named Matthew. Kids in school will ask him, "Weren't you a girl?" That's hard for a child.
'At three years old, how can he identify as a girl? He never showed any indication to me at all.
'I was looked at as just a conservative who didn't want to accept my son's gender.
'I could very easily be passed off as a bigot for wanting to simply question why and understand how they came to this conclusion or how they could. It was totally weaponized against me.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13030699/gender-transition-custody-battle.html
****************************************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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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See
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