Don Lemon squeezed! CNN host is stunned into silence when royal commentator says African kings - not British royals - should pay reparations for slavery
CNN anchor Don Lemon was at a loss for words after a royal commentator told him slavery reparations are necessary - but said they should be paid by the descendants of 'African kings' who sold their own people into slavery.
Lemon interviewed Hilary Fordwich on September 13, following Queen Elizabeth II's death, and suggested the British royal family should pay reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
In the interview, which went viral on Twitter this week, Fordwich responded by arguing that African leaders were responsible for supplying millions of enslaved people to European slave traders, saying that reparations should come from African nations.
A stunned Lemon responded that it was an 'interesting discussion' and quickly concluded the interview.
From the 16th to the late 19th century, at least 12 million African men, women and children were enslaved and transported to the Americas, where they were traded as chattel property primarily by Europeans and Euro-Americans.
While many Africans resisted the slave trade, others did actively participate in it by capturing and enslaving other Africans and bringing them to slave castles on the West and Central African coast to sell to European traders.
In in interview, Lemon had asked Fordwich: 'Well, this is coming when... all of this wealth, and you hear about it, comes as England is facing rising costs of living, a living crisis, austerity budget cuts, and so on.
'And then you have those who are asking for reparations for colonialism, and they're wondering, you know, $100 billion, $24 billion here and there, $500 million there.
'Some people want to be paid back and members of the public are wondering, why are we suffering when you have all of this vast wealth? Those are legitimate concerns.'
Fordwich answered: 'Well, I think you're right about reparations in terms of if people want it though. What they need to do - is you always need to go back to the beginning of a supply chain, where was the beginning of the supply chain?
'That was in Africa, and when it crossed the entire world, when slavery was taking place. Which was the first nation in the world that abolished slavery? The first nation in the world to abolish it, it was started by William Wilberforce, was the British,' she said.
In fact, Haiti was the first country to legally abolish slavery, which was banned there from the country's foundation in 1804, following a revolt against the French colonial government.
But despite the legal prohibition, slavery and human trafficking by criminal organizations remain prevalent in Haiti today, with an estimate 59,000 people there still living in modern slavery, according to the Global Slavery Index.
Britain in 1833 passed the Abolition of Slavery Act, ordering gradual abolition of slavery in all British colonies.
Fordwich continued: 'In Great Britain, they abolished slavery. Two thousand Naval men died on the high seas trying to stop slavery. Why? Because the African kings were rounding up their own people, they had them on cages waiting in the beaches, no one was running into Africa to get them.
'And I think you’re totally right. If reparations needs to be paid, we need to go right back to the beginning of that supply chain and say, ‘who was rounding up their own people and having them handcuffed in cages? Absolutely. That’s where they should start.
'And maybe, I don’t know, the descendants of those families where they died at the in the high seas trying to stop the slavery, that those families should receive something too I think at the same time.'
The trans-Atlantic slave trade was the largest forced migration of people in human history, involving human suffering on an unimaginable scale.
Some African leaders and traders did play a role in enslaving other Africans, usually from other ethnic groups, and selling them to European traders.
Because Europeans were often unable to penetrate very deeply into the African continent, they instead built a network of slave castles on the coastline, and engaged local middlemen to bring them new victims.
Historians say that many of enslaved victims were captured during warfare between rival African groups, though some of them were kidnapped and sold purely for profit, according to an article from the College of Charleston.
In 2019, Nigerian novelist Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani wrote a thought-provoking guest essay in the Wall Street Journal about the issue of African complicity in the slave trade.
'Europeans oversaw this brutal traffic in human cargo, but they had many local collaborators,' she wrote.
'The anguished debate over slavery in the U.S. is often silent on the role that Africans played,' the author added. 'That silence is echoed in many African countries, where there is hardly any national discussion or acknowledgment of the issue.'
Royal commenter Fordwich is a global business consultant and a regular media contributor, according to her Women's Media Center profile.
Fordwich is 'a national Royal Watcher' for networks, including Sunday Morning, CNN and CBS. She has covered every royal wedding since William and Kate.
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Feminist academics at universities tell how their views on trans issues have led to them being overlooked for jobs, physically removed from events and facing 'continuum of hell' from online abuse
Feminist academics have told how they are self-censoring because their views on trans issue have led them to being overlooked for jobs, physically barred or even removed from events, and facing a 'continuum of hell' from online trolls who have made death and rape threats.
Laura Favaro, a researcher in gender issues at City, University of London, interviewed 14 feminists who believe that men and women have biological differences which are 'binary and immutable'.
The so-called 'gender critical' feminists claimed that they have been the targets of abuse, intimidation, no-platforming, smears and 'lost career progression opportunities, including being blocked from jobs' in the world of academia for their views on sex and gender.
Some described being physically removed from events and even being the recipients of incitement to murder online.
One criminology scholar described her experience as 'a continuum of hell' while others in the early stages of their careers admitted 'it would just be too terrifying' to make their views public because of the fear of being 'ostracised' - and instead choosing to 'hide in the shadows'.
Writing for The Times Higher Education, Miss Favaro said the interviewees warned of the near-total control of academic freedom - deciding what can be discussed in departments or included in scholarly journals - by supporters of 'trans-inclusive feminism'.
One academic said: 'It feels so alienating because academia should be about discussing and exchanging ideas, and it's not. It's not in our context.
'It's also incredibly anxiety-provoking because I don't want to lose my job and I don't want to put my kids at risk - I know they could be put at risk.'
Miss Favaro wrote: 'Of course, I fear harms to my career and more for instigating, as interviewees repeatedly put it, ''difficult conversations'' - not least as an immigrant early career scholar with a family to support.
'But, at the same time, why would I want to work in academia if I cannot do academic work? Much more terrifying than being hated is being gagged.'
It comes after a barrister who won a tribunal against her chambers after they discriminated against her for her beliefs on gender rights has resumed her battle with a controversial LGBT charity.
Allison Bailey, who is friends with Harry Potter author JK Rowling - herself the target of hatred for her views - had accused Garden Court Chambers of withholding work from her and trying to crush her spirit.
She said it happened after she criticised Stonewall's trans policies including recommendations to change pronouns from 'she and he' to 'they and their'.
Ms Bailey - who is a lesbian - believes sex is biological and cannot change, and that the word 'woman' is defined as 'adult human female'. She won £22,000 in damages from GCC after winning part of the discrimination case. But she lost part of her case in her claim that Stonewall had instructed or induced the treatment by the chambers.
Today she announced she had appealed against part of the tribunal's ruling.
Within minutes of the ruling, the Harry Potter writer tweeted: 'Allison Bailey is a heroine to me and innumerable other feminists for refusing to abandon her beliefs and principles in the fact of intimidation and discrimination. Congratulations', adding: 'And I couldn't be prouder of my friend'.
In December 2018 Ms Bailey complained to her colleagues about the chambers becoming a Stonewall Diversity Champion, saying that Stonewall advocated 'trans extremism' and was complicit in a campaign of intimidation of those who questioned gender self-identity.
She founded the LGB Alliance group, which argues there is a conflict between the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people, and transgender people - and opposes many of Stonewall's policies, including the assertion that 'trans women are women'.
The tribunal found that GCC discriminated against Ms Bailey by publishing a tweet saying it was investigating her and by upholding a claim by Stonewall arguing that two of her tweets 'were likely to breach (The Bar Standards Board's) core duties'.
But allegations that it discriminated against and victimised her through withholding of instructions and work in 2019, causing the claimant financial loss, a claim of indirect discrimination by GCC, and a claim that Stonewall instructed, caused or induced GCC to discriminate against her, were dismissed.
In December 2018, Ms Bailey complained to her colleagues about GCC becoming a Stonewall Diversity Champion, claiming the group advocated 'trans extremism' and was complicit in a campaign of intimidation of those who questioned gender self-identity.
In October 2019 she was involved in setting up the LGB Alliance advocacy group to resist 'gender extremism'.
Her tweets opposing trans rights campaigns led to tweets and complaints being sent to GCC, alleging her opinions were transphobic and damaged GCC's reputation.
The tribunal held that her gender-critical belief that Stonewall wanted to replace sex with gender identity, that the absolutist tone of its advocacy of gender self-identity made it complicit in threats against women, and that it eroded women's rights and lesbian same-sex orientation, were beliefs protected under the Equality Act.
A reserved judgment handed down upheld her claim that GCC discriminated against her because of her belief, when it tweeted that the complaints would be investigated under a complaints procedure, and when it found in December 2019 that two of her tweets were likely to breach barristers' core duties.
GCC was ordered to pay her £22,000 compensation for injury to feelings, plus interest of £4,693.33.
At the time the chambers said it was 'reviewing the judgment carefully with our legal team with a view to appeal' but has not done so.
A Spokesperson for Stonewall said 'The recent decision by the Employment Tribunal found that Stonewall had NOT instructed, caused or induced Garden Court Chambers to discriminate against Allison Bailey.
'We have not been notified by the Employment Appeal Tribunal of any appeal by Allison Bailey, but should we receive this, we will defend ourselves robustly.'
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Progressives push to capture New York Court of Appeals
Radical progressives are looking to turn the state’s highest court into a rubber stamp for their agenda. The nakedly ideological drive is an assault on the independent judiciary, a bulwark of democracy.
On Wednesday, City & State reported that a top gay Democratic club wrote Gov. Kathy Hochul to condemn the openly gay judge who now serves as acting chief on the Court of Appeals. It’s just part of the unseemly effort to muscle Hochul into nominating a lefty to replace departing Chief Judge Janet DiFiore.
“Although Judge [Anthony] Cannataro is openly gay, he does not represent our values,” wrote Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club prez and LGBTQ activist Allen Roskoff. That clearly means he’s not guaranteed to ram the entire lefty agenda, from handcuffing cops to mandating children’s “right” to gender-transition surgery to protecting the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, down the public’s throat.
From the moment DiFiore announced her retirement, progressives rushed to denounce her and the high court’s so-called “conservative” majority, which quite rightly stood by the trial-court judge who struck down state Democrats’ blatantly unconstitutional gerrymander. Their gripes extend to other cases where the court didn’t make the “right” decision in cases involving tenants, immigrants, criminal defendants and the green agenda.
The chief judge leads the seven-member appeals court and oversees the operation of the entire state court system. It’s expected that Hochul will nominate a permanent replacement for DiFiore this year, once the Commission on Judicial Nominations submits its list of seven candidates.
It’s not just advocates like Roskoff attacking Cannataro as the “wrong” kind of gay. (That’s a habit for the Owles club, which is also pushing to get Ed Koch’s name off the Queensboro Bridge.)
For example, 20 state Senate Democrats, led by Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris, recently wrote the judicial commission urging it to recommend progressive and culturally diverse nominees with a background in “advocacy” work (e.g., criminal-defense attorneys, tenant lawyers, etc.) That’s an implicit threat to shoot down Cannatoro if Hochul nominates him for the job.
The high court is already utterly dominated by Democrats, by the way. But the party’s growing far-left isn’t satisfied. It wants a judiciary that will smile on even blatantly unconstitutional laws, and indeed impose its agenda without the need to pass legislation.
Indeed, progressives see a chance to translate their current power in Albany into a force that will last even if (when, we hope) the voters reject their agenda.
The New York County Lawyers Association issued a statement denouncing the effort to turn the selection process into “a brazenly political one” to fit the “result-oriented political views” of “Senator Gianaris and others.”
Judges are supposed to be independent of politicians. They’re charged with deciding on the substance of a case under the laws and Constitution of New York State.
For once, instead of stalling with her finger to the political winds, Hochul ought to show some spine and publicly reject this ugly effort to politicize New York’s highest court. .
https://nypost.com/2022/09/18/progs-hateful-push-for-hard-left-new-york-court-of-appeals/
****************************************************Europe detransitions: Australia left behind as Europe distances itself from extreme gender affirmation
An Australian obstetrician first warned the world of the dangers posed to unborn babies by the (then) widely prescribed maternal anti-nausea drug Thalidomide. Australia was relatively slow to halt its use – with devastating consequences still being felt decades on.
Today, despite warnings from clinicians in Australia and abroad, Australia risks repeating the same mistake over the medical treatment of children questioning their gender identity or suffering from gender dysphoria.
NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard, John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle, and Maple Leaf House Transgender and Gender Diversity Clinic for children were all scrutinised by committee chair Greg Donnelly in the Budget Estimates Hearing for Health last week.
Donnelly rang the alarm: ‘What we have in plain sight is an absolutely scandalous situation playing out in real time.’
Such warnings are not new. In 2019, the National Association of Practising Psychiatrists backed a call by paediatrician Professor John Whitehall and 257 other doctors for then federal Health Minister Greg Hunt to hold an inquiry into paediatric clinical interventions for gender dysphoria.
Since that unheeded call, the UK’s Cass Review into gender identity treatments for children, led by eminent paediatrician Dr Hillary Cass OBE, found puberty blockers have ‘unknown impacts on development, maturation, and cognition if a child or young person is not exposed to the physical, psychological, physiological, neurochemical, and sexual changes that accompany adolescent hormone surges’.
The UK’s Tavistock children gender clinic is now facing imminent closure as its service model was found by Dr. Cass to be fundamentally failing to provide appropriate care. Finland, France, and Sweden are urging extreme caution, with the renowned Karolinska Institute so alarmed by serious adverse effects and physical deformities in youth three to four years after the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones that they have discontinued their use outside of strict clinical studies.
UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid strongly reacted to the revelations of the Cass Review: ‘I’m deeply concerned about the approach to gender identity services for children.’
‘It’s already clear to me from her interim findings and from the other evidence that I’ve seen that the NHS services in this area are too narrow, they are overly affirmative, and in fact they’re bordering on ideological.’
‘As Health Secretary, I was determined to protect vulnerable children from being failed by gender identity services at the Tavistock. This is welcome news and absolutely the right decision based on the independent evidence gathered by Dr Hilary Cass.’
Last week, Minister Hazzard responded by simply dismissing bilateral radical mastectomies being performed on young girls in NSW as ‘complex’, quibbling over party politics and belligerently jousting with Committee member Mark Latham.
Hazzard is typical of those supporting or taking a path of least resistance to the transgender narrative – signalling Woke credentials to avoid the ire of gender ideologues and the rabid left media. Raising concerns about these experimental interventions attracts narcissistic projection from trans-activists who demonise, deplatform, and destroy. I should know, I have first-hand experience.
Both here and overseas, the absence of evidence of the long-term safety or efficacy for these experimental treatments, along with the mounting body count of detransitioners, is alarming. Australian gender clinics, modelled on the Tavistock, are continuing to persist with the ‘affirmation pathway’ to permanently alter the minds, bodies, and genitals of children and young people.
Active Watchful Waiting, a new network of Australian health care practitioners formed to share information on the harms being done to minors from so-called ‘gender-affirming care’, said normal scientific protocols have been overridden due to ideological pressure, and that young people with gender dysphoria or confusion should be helped with active, compassionate, respectful, and exploratory therapy.
Despite a serious three-year mental health history, Jude Hunter’s child was denied this approach by NSW Health. Jude says she declined a referral from John Hunter Hospital for her 17-year-old mentally unwell daughter to the ‘multi-disciplinary team’ for testosterone treatment. But, she has claimed, that the discharge summary from John Hunter Hospital falsely recorded that she had consented. Jude’s daughter was prescribed testosterone after two appointments, and has recently returned home after a three-year estrangement from her family, suicidal with regret over irreversible changes to her body.
Jude and her husband desperately pleaded for help from the multi-disciplinary team now located at Maple Leaf House, but says they were turned away after being told it was not a crisis service. Jude now funds her daughter’s therapy. ‘This is a medical scandal, my daughter should never have been prescribed testosterone as a mentally unwell teenager.’
Maple Leaf House continues to claim puberty blockers are reversible and should be started young. They fail to disclose puberty blockers are contested, experimental, and have not been tested on humans for adolescent gender dysphoria. The three animal studies conducted found harmful impacts including increased anxiety and despair-like behaviour.
During questioning, Minister Hazzard championed the pro-trans charity ACON saying ‘they are doing a very good job’, and ‘I am certainly not going to insert myself into the most complex of complex issues for youngsters who might be suffering from gender dysphoria’. ACON receives an annual special grant of $12 million directly from the NSW Minister for Health with a further $8 million announced this year, partially for establishing a new gender clinic for children at Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst.
ACON runs a website, Transhub, targeting minors and parents for social, medical, and surgical interventions. It claims puberty blockers are an ‘effective and safe part of the hormone therapy toolkit for young trans people’. Several pharmaceutical companies are ACON sponsors, including AstraZeneca Pty Ltd, manufacturer of Goserelin sold as Zoladex, used for puberty suppression in male children, and promoted on Transhub.
Given that medical negligence litigation is being prepared both here and overseas, political apathy and the influence of a taxpayer-funded charity should not be the reason we continue to sacrifice children on the altar of an ideology that sells a false panacea of affirmation, pharmaceuticals, and surgery as a cure for distress.
Donnelly urged a more careful, considered, and multi-disciplinary approach, ‘It will remain to be seen what detailed responses will be forthcoming.’ Let’s not wait until Hazzard is enjoying his taxpayer-funded parliamentary pension in retirement before we get an answer.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/09/europe-detransitions
****************************************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)
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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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