Thursday, March 30, 2023



Muslim antisemitism again

There are brisk sales for "Mein Kampf" in Muslim countries

Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim-majority nation, has been stripped of the right to host its first major football event amid opposition to the participation of Israel.

The football-mad nation was scheduled to stage the men’s Under-20 FIFA World Cup from May 20 to June 11 and hoped the 24-team tournament would begin to repair its battered reputation after last year’s stadium tragedy in East Java.

Controversy over the qualification of Israel, however, has resulted in the event being removed from the South-East Asia’s largest nation by the game’s world governing body FIFA, which indicated it may also consider sanctions against the Football Association of Indonesia (PSSI).

“FIFA has decided, due to the current circumstances, to remove Indonesia as the host of the FIFA U-20 World Cup 2023,” FIFA said in a statement.

“A new host will be announced as soon as possible, with the dates of the tournament currently remaining unchanged. Potential sanctions against the PSSI may also be decided at a later stage.”

Indonesia was awarded the hosting rights in 2019 well before it was known which national teams would make it through the qualifying stages.

But the eventual presence in the draw of Israel – with which it has no formal diplomatic ties – threw a spanner in the works for a government that supports the cause of the Palestinians.

The issue escalated last week when conservative Muslims took to the streets of Jakarta to protest Israel’s involvement.

Bali Governor Wayan Koster then said he would refuse to host the Israeli team on the Hindu-majority island, as the organisers had planned. Koster cited Indonesia’s foreign policy amid the concerns raised about the event’s security.

The debate was ratcheted up further as Central Java Governor Ganjar Pranowo, the frontrunner for next year’s presidential election, also called for the Israeli team to be excluded from the tournament.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo attempted to salvage the cup, urging that sport and politics should not be mixed. Erick Thohir, one of his ministers and the new head of the PSSI, was dispatched to Doha to meet FIFA president Gianni Infantino.

FIFA, however, decided the domestic furore over Israel had made a tournament in Indonesia untenable. Argentina has been suggested in Indonesian media as a possible alternative host.

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Rand Paul Makes Chilling But True Point on Crime in "Third World" D.C.

Crime is rampant in Washington, D.C., to the point where congressional staffers are being attacked in broad daylight. As Matt covered, a staffer for Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), who himself has been the victim of violent assaults, was stabbed. He survived but was taken to the hospital in "a life-threatening condition," though is expected to make a full recovery. The office is asking "for privacy so everyone can focus on healing and recovery," but Paul has still made brief remarks, and they're quite telling when it comes to warning about what our nation's capital has become.

"It makes me think we're in the third world," he said, adding "I wonder whether Washington, DC should be listed on dangerous places to travel," mentioning such is the case when it comes to certain foreign countries designated by the State Department as dangerous places to travel to.

Paul's tweet highlighted the dangers of America's cities, as he also lamented "Many of our major cities are really gone." The senator was not only attacked at his home in Kentucky in 2017, but was harassed by crowds, along with his wife, Kelley Paul, upon leaving the 2020 Republican National Convention in August of that year. He also addressed the dangers of recidivism, as the suspect in this violent stabbing, Glynn Neal, had just been released from prison on Friday, with the stabbing occurring on Saturday.

Not only is crime rampant in D.C., but the city council somehow thought it made sense to put forth a soft-on-crime policy that would eliminate most mandatory minimum sentences, allows for jury trials in almost all misdemeanors, and has lesser penalties for burglary, robbery, carjacking, sexual assault, and illegally carrying a gun.

While Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) vetoed that crime bill, the council overrode her with a vote of 12-1 in January. Thankfully, since Congress has jurisdiction over D.C., there were still options. Republicans and Democrats came together to nix it, after the White House alerted that the president wouldn't veto it if it came before him, which it did, becoming law earlier this month.

Not only did the council put forth such a crime bill, they then tried to get away with pulling it back. Congress still overturned it earlier this month though, with a vote of 250-173 in the House and 81-14 in the Senate. While before the House Oversight Committee for a Wednesday hearing, Chairman of the Council of the District of Columbia Phil Mendelson claimed he wasn't looking to cover up anything.

Even the mainstream media is concerned with crime in D.C., as Spencer highlighted earlier on Wednesday, pointing to a piece from The Washington Post that noted how "startling" it is that more crimes aren't prosecuted in the district.

While many of them voted to overturn the soft-on-crime bill, we can't expect too much from Democrats. Many of them still want to grant D.C. statehood, which is absurd on constitutional grounds—though that hasn't stopped them from trying when they controlled the House—but even more so in the light of crime that is out of control

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Proposed S.686 law could be used to censor any website in America, foreign or domestic, not just TikTok

S.686, the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act or the appropriately titled “RESTRICT Act” could be used to censor any website in America, not just TikTok.

The legislation would authorize the Secretary of Commerce to “identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate, including by negotiating, entering into, or imposing, and enforcing any mitigation measure to address any risk arising from any covered transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States that the Secretary determines… poses an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States…”

Read that again. It says “by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States…” That could be anything.

Or any website that is determined to be “interfering in, or altering the result or reported result of a Federal election, as determined in coordination with the Attorney General, the Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of Treasury, and the Federal Election Commission…”

Meaning, it would potentially become illegal to question the “reported result” of any federal election, since questioning the results could potentially “interfere” with public acceptance of the result. How else does one “interfere” with the “reported result” of a federal election?

Or any website that opposes a war with a foreign adversary by “steer[ing] policy and regulatory decisions in favor of the strategic objectives of a foreign adversary to the detriment of the national security of the United States…” since merely advocating against the war would “favor” the foreign adversary’s objectives.

By definition, this would prohibit anti-war activities on the internet

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Tory right wing ‘very optimistic’ Home Secretary will toughen asylum bill to block European judges

Right-wing Tory MPs are increasingly confident home secretary Suella Braverman will further toughen controversial legislation aimed at cracking down on migrants arriving in small boats.

The home secretary is considering changes to head off a rebellion by up to 60 Tory MPs on the right who want to stop British judges from following decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on deportations.

One senior Tory MP involved in the amendments told The Independent that the group was encouraged by talks with ministers that the bill could soon be tightened to allow British judges to ignore the Strasbourg court’s injunctions.

“We’re working closely together on reaching a position,” they said. “I’m very optimistic. We want the bill galvanised against challenge [by the ECHR]. There is room for compromise here.”

The MP added: “We could have pushed to end all involvement with the European courts and leave the convention. But that’s not a battle anyone wants at the moment.”

Tory MP Martin Vickers, who has backed the amendments, told The Independent: “We’ve got to have much more rigorous control over our immigration. So we’re trying to limit the power [of] European court judges intervening on these matters.”

Sir Bill Cash told the Commons on Monday that he expected ministers to consider a series of amendments so that judges “cannot prevent removal”, adding: “We do not want or need lawyers and judges to invent new blocks on removal with judicial activism.”

Rebel Tory MP Danny Kruger – another leading figure behind the amendments – told BBC Radio 4’s Today earlier that talks with ministers were ongoing. He later told the Commons he hoped there would be no more “pyjama injunctions in the middle of the night” from Strasbourg judges opposing orders.

Senior government figures reportedly believe the home secretary supports the rebel push to stop British judges using legal precedent from Strasbourg when considering deportation cases.

“She wants to use it to spook us to offer concessions to get them to drop their amendments because a big rebellion would be embarrassing,” one told The Times. “She has basically become a sock puppet for the right.”

But a source close to Ms Braverman said the claim was “totally untrue”, adding: “The people spreading scurrilous rumours like this about the home secretary should reconsider and refrain.”

In 2022, the ECHR granted an injunction – via its rule 39 – that effectively grounded a flight sending asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda. Ms Braverman said on her recent trip to Rwanda that she was “encouraged” by “constructive” talks with Strasbourg.

The government has requested a higher threshold for any rule 39 injunction on attempted deportation flights. But Ms Braverman is thought to be considering inserting a new clause into the bill banning rule 39 orders from applying in the UK if exemptions can’t be negotiated with the Strasbourg court.

However, Tory moderates and legal experts fear the Strasbourg court cannot be defied without breaching the UK’s obligation to uphold the ECHR.

Senior Tory MP Tobias Ellwood told The Independent that Ms Braverman should ignore the push from the right. “There is simply no way this bill will secure parliamentary support unless it’s fully compliant with international laws, including our commitments to the ECHR.”

Asked about speaking to Tory MPs seeking to toughen the bill, Mr Sunak’s official spokesperson said: “We will keep seeking to speak constructively with MPs ... We do want MPs to be involved in the process of creating legislation.”

Others on the liberal wing want to see Rishi Sunak and Ms Braverman commit to establishing new, authorised safe routes via which asylum seekers can come to Britain.

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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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Wednesday, March 29, 2023




A transgender shooter! How inconvenient! Hush it up!

How to describe the gender of the now-deceased Nashville school shooter has quickly emerged as the latest controversy regarding transgender issues, with major media sources tiptoeing around the issue, often in tortured fashion, by avoiding gender pronouns as much as possible.

At the same time, trans activists are calling out what they say is bias against the trans community while prominent conservatives such as Donald Trump, Jr. and Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene are invoking the tragic shooting as they denounce some positions of the trans rights movement.

At a press conference on Monday, the chief of the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, John Drake, announced that the shooter did “identify as transgender.” Despite the disclosure, many media outlets continued to refer to Audrey Hale, the shooter, as a woman, leading some corners of social media to denounce the mainstream media for “deadnaming,”

In a statement, the Trans Resistance Network called the Nashville shooting “not one tragedy, but two.” After a short statement offering condolences to the family and friends of the six victims, the statement calls on the media to stop “pandering to the Right.”

“We remind the news media to respect the self-identified pronouns of transgender individuals that come across your desk,” the statement reads. “We also urge you to avoid pandering to those individuals on the Right who will use this double tragedy to foment fear and terror of transgender people.”

Many media outlets continue to refer to the shooter as “Audrey,” the shooter’s given name, which the trans community decries as “deadnaming” — wherein one refers to a transgender person by the name chosen by their parents rather than the name the person chooses for themselves.

Some conservative social media influencers, journalists, and podcast hosts have used the tragedy to denounce the mainstream media and some trans activists for their stances on trans issues.

Ms. Greene also weighed in on the shooting and coverage of the killer’s gender. She implied that hormone treatment could be responsible for the shooting.

News outlets have also seemed to be dancing around the subject of the shooter’s gender. The New York Times, in an addendum to their reporting on the rarity of female mass shooters, pointed out that officials used the pronouns “she” and “her” to refer to Hale.

Newsweek seemed to blame the state of Tennessee for banning drag shows and “gender-affirming care,” suggesting the possibility that politicians in the state had brought this on themselves. One CNN analyst believed the shooter’s gender to be irrelevant in this case, despite the fact it appears the shooter could have harbored some resentment against the school. “Pronouns do not kill children, people with guns kill children,” CNN’s Juliette Kayyem said on Monday.

ABC News anchor Terry Moran also seemed to imply that the shooting was an almost logical outgrowth of Tennessee’s prohibition on drag shows that cater to minors and surgery or hormone therapies for minors who seek to change their gender, despite the fact that the shooter was 28 years old.

“The shooter identified herself as a transgender person,” Mr. Moran said on Monday. “The state of Tennessee earlier this month passed and the governor signed a bill that banned transgender medical care for minors as well as a law that prohibited adult entertainment as well as male and female impersonators after a series of drag show controversies in that state.”

On Tuesday morning, CBS Detroit said it was still “attempting” to determine whether or not the shooter was transgender, despite the announcement from Nashville police. USA Today wrote that the police had “misidentified” the shooter’s transgender status.

The way in which legacy media outlets cover transgender issues has come under fire from the left in recent months, highlighted by a recent letter published by contributors to the New York Times.

In February, hundreds of contributors penned a letter to the Times’ associate managing editor for standards, Philip Corbett, about “editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non⁠-⁠binary, and gender nonconforming people.”

“The Times has in recent years treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language, while publishing reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources,” they wrote.

The paper’s executive editor, Joseph Kahn, promptly responded in defense of his reporters, their research, and their professionalism. “It is not unusual for outside groups to critique our coverage or rally supporters to seek to influence our journalism,” Mr. Kahn wrote in a memo to staff. “In this case, however, members of our staff and contributors to The Times joined the effort.”

“We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.”

On Monday, the Daily Beast reported that staff reporters who signed the letter are being called into meetings with top editors where they are being reprimanded.

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Humza Yousaf’s election a bad day for Scotland

Scotland has been deprived of the opportunity for a fresh start. Humza Yousaf has been elected leader of the Scottish National party, and he is set to be confirmed as first minister today in the Scottish parliament.

In the end he defeated runner-up Kate Forbes by 52 to 48 per cent on second preference votes, which is ironic considering that when the UK voted to leave the European Union by the same ratio, the SNP argued this was not a sufficient mandate and there should be another vote.

Despite this, Scotland will now have to prepare for life under a new first minister. And Yousaf’s election should concern us all.

Yousaf has stated throughout the election campaign that he wants to push social justice and progressive values as first minister. He has disturbing form for engaging in personal attacks against those he disagrees with, accusing rivals who have raised serious and legitimate concerns about the impact his ideology will have on society as ‘lurching to the right’.

In the Q&A following his victory speech he made a point of accusing the UK government of engaging in a ‘power grab’ regarding their use of Section 35 of the Scotland Act 1998 to block the SNP’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill. He went on to say that he will launch a legal challenge against the UK government to allow the Bill to go ahead.

It has been clear for some time that the Bill poses significant threats to safeguarding across the entirety of the UK. It would lower the age at which someone can legally change their sex in Scotland from 18 to 16; reduce the required period of time someone must have lived in their acquired ‘gender’ from two years to just three months; and would remove the requirement for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. In essence, it would introduce self-ID, watering down existing checks and balances designed to ensure that those who wish to ‘transition’ are genuine. All polling has demonstrated that it is opposed by most Scots. Yet Yousaf has now committed to championing the legislation, even if it throws women and child safeguarding under the bus.

For an individual who claims to oppose the ‘culture wars’, Yousaf has shown himself more than happy to stoke its flames

The ramifications of this ideological policy were made clear when the convicted male rapist Isla Bryson (formerly Adam Graham), was initially placed in a female-only prison. On this, Yousaf’s response was completely nonsensical. Despite supporting the Gender Bill, which would make it easier for biological men to be housed in female prisons, he also accused Bryson of not being a ‘genuine transwoman’.This, in and of itself, demonstrates the problem with self-ID. Who exactly is to judge whether someone is ‘genuine’ or not?

Yousaf has held senior cabinet positions (including health minister) in a government that has aggressively pushed gender ideology. In Glasgow, the Sandyford gender identity clinic has continued to operate without proper political or clinical scrutiny, despite recent shocking admissions within the clinic regarding child safeguarding. When treating those with gender dysphoria, the Scottish NHS continues to openly rely on guidelines from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, a trans-activist organisation. Last year, the Scottish government even published educational guidance that purports to support schools keeping pupils’ gender transition secret from their parents.

It’s not just on gender ideology that Yousaf has a disturbing record. Equally worrying is his approach to free speech. He has committed to pushing forward with legislation to ban ‘conversion therapy’ in Scotland, notwithstanding the significant concerns many have about the chilling effect it could have on therapists, potentially forcing them to affirm a child who says they are trans into going through medical transition. This flies in the face of ethical therapy, which should be explorative in nature. We have already seen the serious ramifications of this type of legislation. In Victoria, Australia, where ‘conversion therapy’ was recently banned, it is now potentially a criminal offence if a parent does not affirm their child into taking puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.

As justice minister he introduced the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill. This included provisions on ‘stirring up hatred’, which pose a significant risk to free speech, and may even criminalise private conversations in Scots’ own homes. Thankfully, the Bill was at least amended during its passage through the Scottish parliament to remove prosecution for cases of unintentionally stirring up hate, which could have criminalised libraries for stocking contentious books. It’s lucky for Yousaf as well that the legislation is not yet in force. He was reportedly referred to the police for ‘misgendering’ the rapist Bryson, which would arguably have fallen foul of his Hate Crime Bill if it had been law.

For an individual who claims to oppose the ‘culture wars’, Yousaf has shown himself more than happy to stoke its flames. In a speech in the Scottish parliament, he recently engaged in what can only be described as a rant, listing senior public positions in Scotland held by people who are white, seemingly forgetting the fact that 96 per cent of the Scottish population are white as well.

He has also been happy to cosy-up to the Scottish Greens, whose co-convenor, Maggie Chapman, has previously said that eight-year-olds should be able to change sex and that ‘sex is not binary or immutable.’

There are some silver linings to Yousaf’s leadership, at least. He is gaffe prone. Just six months into his brief as transport minister, he received a fine of £300 and six penalty points after he was stopped by the police while driving a friend’s car without holding the proper insurance. And just a few weeks ago, during the election campaign, he jokingly asked a group of Ukrainian women in Edinburgh ‘where are all the men?’before it had to be pointed out to him that their partners were in Ukraine fighting the war.

If Scotland is lucky, this could be a very short-lived premiership. Many are already calling for a general election. A significant proportion of both the SNP membership and the country as a whole are opposed to his leadership. Many prominent voices, including JK Rowling, have his card firmly marked, while those rushing to his support include organisations engulfed in controversy, such as Mermaids.

Last year, a clip of Yousaf went viral after he fell off a scooter he was riding through the Scottish parliament. For the sake of free speech and sanity in Scotland, it is hopefully only a matter of time before Yousaf and the SNP come tumbling down in the same way.

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Do Conservatives Oppose Change?

If you Google "what is conservatism?" this is the definition you will receive: "Commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change or innovation."

This is but one more illustration of the lack of objectivity wherever the Left is in control.

The idea that conservatism means, by definition, "opposition to change or innovation" is nothing more than how liberals and leftists see conservatism. Why? Because the farther left you go, the greater the commitment to change and innovation. "Change" and "Innovation" are left-wing gods. That is why, for example, the mantra of the Barack Obama campaign and presidency was "hope and change."

Because the Left is so committed to change (for its own sake), people on the Left assume that anyone who opposes leftism opposes all "change and innovation."

Unfortunately, the Left's misapprehension of conservatism is almost equaled by conservatives' inability to define the term. For that reason, just as I recently defined another widely used term -- "Judeo-Christian values" -- I think it important to do the same for conservatism.

Conservatives conserve.

If you want a good definition of conservatism, don't Google "conservatism." Google "conserve." You will then find this definition: "To protect from loss or harm; preserve."

The first and most important characteristic of conservatism is that it conserves what is best from the past.

Conservatives have no issue with change or innovation -- when warranted or harmless. The American Revolution, which conservatives seek to preserve, ushered in a radically innovative blueprint for liberty and self-government. Our problem is with jettisoning past greatness and replacing it with mediocrity -- which is precisely what has been done for at least a century.

What could be more noble, uplifting, beneficial or altruistic than giving every generation the best that humans have ever created? A generation that deprives the next generation of Beethoven, Shakespeare and Da Vinci is committing a combination of child neglect and civilizational suicide.

Why, then, isn't everyone -- at least as regards conserving the best of the past -- a conservative?

Here is why:

Since so few people in any generation can equal, let alone excel, the greatest of the past, conserving the past does not allow almost anyone living at the present time to shine.

Therefore, if I can't compose great tonal music, I won't even bother trying. I might shine, however, if I write "atonal" music.

If I can't paint like a great classical artist, I will jettison all rules of art. I'll throw paint onto a canvas or place a crucifix in a jar of my urine and call such things "art" -- and demand that you, too, jettison all standards.

If I can't hope to match Shakespeare, I will dismiss Shakespeare as just another Dead White Male and replace him with living nonwhite females who possess exponentially less talent.

The same holds true for teachers. Many of them are bored at the thought of teaching Shakespeare every year. So, they, too, opt for "change" and "innovation" over excellence -- but thereby deprive their students of the best.

Likewise in the moral sphere. Why would I teach the moral roots of our society -- the Bible, the Ten Commandments, Aristotle, the American Constitution, the Founders? That would mean I have nothing particularly important to say regarding morality and society. Again, I won't shine. So, I will ignore or even reject those moral codes and devise a new moral system.

That's what Karl Marx did, quite consciously -- which is why he hated Christianity and Judaism. Only if he could overthrow Bible- and God-based morality could his new morality be taken seriously. So, he replaced God with man, and he replaced good and evil with rich and poor, oppressor and oppressed. Today we are witnessing another rejection of God- and Bible-based morality, replacing the moral categories of good and evil with racial categories -- white and black.

And talk about innovation. What could be more innovative than "men give birth"? While conservatives are boringly conserving the fact that men are men, women are women, and one cannot become the other, the believers in change and innovation insist that sex/gender is completely subjective.

A couple of weeks ago, Time Magazine inadvertently gave the game away.

In the introduction to its hundredth anniversary edition, the CEO and editor of Time described the purpose of the magazine.

You probably think they would write something like, "to report the news as truthfully as possible." But you would be completely wrong.

Here is what the CEO and editor wrote: "As we begin our second century, that spirit of innovation and disruption inspires us every day."

"Innovation and disruption." There you have it.

Reporting news as truthfully as possible is not just boring. It is worse than that. It is conservative.

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40 State Legislatures Have Passed or Introduced Legislation to Restrict Transgender Child Abuse

We undoubtedly are in the middle of one of the largest legislative pushes against child abuse in our nation’s history. This child abuse, masquerading as “gender-affirming care,” has been taken up as a banner of humanity by progressives over the past five years—and they encourage children to mutilate their own bodies if the kids feel they’ve been born in the wrong one.

In many cases, public schools have begun hiding gender transition information from students’ parents, with activist groups claiming that a child’s transition must be protected at all costs and demonizing disagreeing parents as “abusive.”

Hundreds of thousands of Americans have been outraged at shocking videos and other images of permanently scarred children who have undergone “transgender treatments” as adults encouraged those children to abandon all reason in the pursuit of affirmation.

In response, 40 state legislatures have passed or introduced legislation to restrict the practice of transgender child abuse.

Although 10 states currently ban transgender experiments on minors, 21 others are considering legislation that would ban minors from receiving transgender hormonal “treatments” or surgery.

The American Civil Liberties Union has attempted to rally national support against these bills as attacks against all LGBTQ+ individuals, but the bills have gained incredible traction as the gruesome nature of the procedures has been exposed to the public.

“Treatments” include:

—Phalloplasty, in which girls’ forearms are stripped of muscle and skin to create a fake penis that doesn’t function. Videos of this procedure being used on minors played a major role in Tennessee’s outlawing the practice for minors.

—Castration and “Penile Inversion Vaginoplasty,” in which boys’ penises are cut off and a wound is created to simulate a vagina. These wounds must be kept forcibly open as the body attempts to close the hole—a serious risk for infection and cancer.

—Mastectomy and “Top Surgery,” in which incisions are made below the breasts and muscle, fat, and glands are removed. Before Florida banned the practice on minors, one surgeon, Dr. Sidhbh Gallagher, provided “top surgeries” to multiple children around age 15 every month—claiming to have operated on about 40 children a month.

—Feminizing/Masculinizing Hormone Therapies, in which teenagers are given heavy doses of estrogen and testosterone as well as experimental doses of other hormones to simulate levels of reproductive and stabilization hormones normally present in the opposite sex. Hormonal treatments pose a serious threat to several glands in the endocrine system, which can result in permanent sterilization, cancer, and gland failure in adults. No long-term studies have been done yet to show the impact of this “treatment” on minors with developing glands.

Additionally, the testimonies of several individuals who deeply regret their “gender transitions” have resonated with legislators and voters alike. They have begged Americans to stop allowing such a heinous practice.

The ACLU has tried flooding statehouses around the country with its own protesters to demand minors be given unfettered and private access to these medical experiments. These protesters often make false claims about what legislation does and doesn’t do to stoke emotional responses.

Hundreds of LGBTQ+ activists traveled to their state capitol buildings to protest, scream, and curse at legislators during public testimonies. If the ACLU and other LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations were attempting to persuade legislators to encourage children to be like those that showed up, they failed miserably.

Many legislators walked out of committee hearings on proposed bans of these experiments on minors convinced that many of the LGBTQ+ activists were mentally unstable. They witnessed yet another reason that minors should be protected from this abomination.

Certain state legislators have been making fools of themselves.

Nebraska state Sen. Megan Hunt, D-Omaha, threatened Friday to filibuster every future piece of legislation if the Nebraska Legislature were to pass a ban on transgender treatments for children.

“No one in the world holds a grudge like me,” Hunt told Republicans in the Nebraska Senate. “And no one in the world cares less about being petty than me. I don’t care. I don’t like you.”

Legacy media have attempted to classify these medical experiments as “gender-affirming youth care,” and consistently have painted the debate as a battle for freedom between young children wearing capes made of transgender flags and mean, old, religious bigots. These media outlets often obscure or ignore children and teens who detransition or heal from their gender dysphoria.

Such methods of news coverage have backfired, as social media posts by legacy media subtly praising transgender care find their comment sections flooded with images of double mastectomies, forearm lacerations, and other unhealthy examples of surgical “transgender affirmation.”

The matter hasn’t been settled yet, and Tennessee, Arkansas, Idaho, and Florida have encountered lawsuits from desperate activists attempting to hold the door open for child abuse.

As more evidence of the barbarism found in transgender “treatments” is presented, more legislation will follow to protect children from making a lifelong mistake.

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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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Tuesday, March 28, 2023


National Geographic Permanently Canceled Geography Bee Over 'Equity' Concerns

Too many Indians and not enough blacks were winning

Had you heard about this? I had not, until writer Zaid Jilani highlighted it. It seems as though National Geographic's annual geography bee had been canceled in 2020 due to COVID -- and then permanently discontinued after "many conversations" about 'equity,' amid the identity-driven madness that consumed much of the country's elite institutions during that time frame.

Jilani clearly suggests that the 'equity' concern was about the (apparently) problematic nature of the winners' ethnic composition:

Here's how National Geographic announced the cessation of the bee in 2021:

The National Geographic Society is deeply proud of the 33-year legacy of the GeoBee and the millions of students, educators, parents, schools, and others who have participated in this iconic competition. In 2020, recognizing the difficult circumstances school communities found themselves in to safely educate students during the COVID-19 pandemic, we made the difficult decision to cancel the 2020-2021 GeoBee and instead focus on reimagining what a global geography experience for young people could look like entirely. After many conversations and reflections with students, educators, and community members, we’ve made the decision to permanently discontinue the National Geographic GeoBee to make way for new, transformative, and innovative geography education opportunities in which students around the globe can more equitably participate.

In the 'FAQ' section of the announcement page, we get further confirmation that this decision was fueled by (or at least publicly justified by) woke identity politics:

Why did the National Geographic Society choose to permanently discontinue the GeoBee?

While we are proud of the National Geographic GeoBee’s 33-year legacy, we believe that this moment presents an opportunity to reimagine geography education and empower young people around the world as solution-seekers to confront our century’s most pressing challenges. In addition to the drop in GeoBee registration in 2020, important shifts—from the COVID-19 pandemic to *an increased focus on racial injustice* —challenge us to find new, transformative, meaningful ways to engage young people globally in geography.

They claimed that they were "deeply proud" of the bee's decades-long history and legacy, but they had to permanently end it to help enable "an increased focus on racial injustice." They dutifully used the buzz word "reimagine," which has also been a favorite of the 'defund the police' crowd, which expresses vague desires to "reimagine" policing and criminal justice. And the National Geographic statement claimed a desire to "make way for" new forms of geography educational experiences in which students "can more equitably participate." It's not at all a stretch for Jilani to translate this into "too many kids with the wrong sorts of skin colors were winning this competition, so we're getting rid of it." Can you feel the progress? These are adults effectively telling children, "sorry kids, we've gotta 'equity' away this thing that you’re good at and work hard on! Your racial and ethnic backgrounds are kind of a problem. Something-something-representation. Thanks for the memories, though."

Relatedly, do Asians 'count' as 'people of color'? It's a complicated and uncomfortable question for the wokest in our society, with a few wild examples that come to mind. Are these expressions of frustration and concern legitimate? Or are they white supremacy adjacent, or whatever?

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In Brief: 42% of America’s Murders Occur in 1% of Democrat Counties

America doesn’t have a crime problem; it has a Democrat problem.

Most Americans know that crime isn’t epidemic in all of our nation’s counties. Journalist Daniel Greenfield makes a compelling case that the real problem is Democrats.

He begins by highlighting the Democrat effort to “spin high crime rates caused by their pro-crime policies” as being “a Republican problem.” Their lackeys in the media are all too happy to run interference. The truth, however, refutes this lie.

Take Oklahoma, for example, as New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently did. He claimed, “Oklahoma’s murder rate was almost 50 percent higher than California’s, almost double New York’s.”

Krugman, who somehow has a Nobel Prize, failed to note that most of the murders were coming out of Oklahoma City and Tulsa. In last year’s gubernatorial election, Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt won most of the state while Oklahoma, Tulsa and Cleveland counties however went to leftist Democrat Joy Hofmeister. The ‘blue’ parts of Oklahoma are also red with blood.

“The fact is the rates of violent crime are higher in Oklahoma under your watch,” Hoffmeister had claimed in a viral gubernatorial debate attack. Oklahoma had 287 murders in 2020: 166 came out of Oklahoma County and Tulsa County, the two counties that supported Hoffmeister.

Oklahoma County and Tulsa are two of the 62 counties that were responsible for 56% of America’s murders in 2020. A groundbreaking study by John R. Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center, revealed that “1% of counties have 21% of the population and 42% of the murders” and “2% of counties contain 31% of the population and 56% of the murders.”

The 1% of bloody red counties include such Democrat strongholds as Philadelphia, New York City, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Dallas, D.C., Miami-Dade, Milwaukee, San Diego, St. Louis, Chicago’s Cook County, Houston’s Harris County, Detroit’s Wayne County, Memphis’ Shelby County, Phoenix’s Maricopa County, Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, and many others.

Joe Biden easily won all of those counties, which account for huge percentages of their states’ murders. “There isn’t a red state murder problem,” Greenfield says, “red states have a Democrat crime problem.”

The CPRC study showed that while 2% of counties populated by Democrats were responsible for 56% of the country’s murders, 52% of counties had no murders and 68% of counties had at most one murder.

These numbers clearly show that America is not a violent country, that we do not have a crime problem and that gun culture is not the issue: crime culture in Democrat cities is the issue.

Why is this? Several reasons: Democrat politicians create more criminals by destroying families with government policy. They then cater to the criminals overrunning their cities by either going easy on them or by criticizing and defunding police — problems that got exponentially worse as they fomented division based on racial grievances after the death of George Floyd. This isn’t, contra Krugman, a mystery.

Greenfield concludes:

America could be a safe and pleasant place to live. And the majority of its counties, which are mostly Republican, are. Unfortunately many of its Democrat counties are broken places, packed with broken families, criminal cultures and leftist politicians who pander to the criminals.

And the party and its media cover it up with lies about systemic racism.

As David Horowitz warned in, ‘I Can’t Breathe: How a Racial Hoax Is Killing America’, the consequences of these lies is more of the same misery, more crime and more death.

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Did New Yorkers Die, So a DA Could Target Trump?

Than Htwe, a 58-Year-Old Asian American woman, was walking with her son up the stairs of a Chinatown subway station when they were violently assaulted by a violent thug. Than, who had been on her way to a Buddhist temple, had her head smashed into the ground and died. The thug responsible got a mere 1-3 years in prison which effectively amounted to time served.

This has become typical under Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.

Bragg’s office let a man accusing of raping a teenage girl go with 30 days and probation. A week before sentencing he went on a “sex-crime spree” attacking four different women. One woman stopped his attempt to rape her by hitting him on the head with a hammer: doing the job that the DA wouldn’t.

A gang member facing four grand larceny charges was set loose by Bragg’s pro-crime people before he mugged a 14-year-old boy.

A Muslim thug who took part in a brutal assault on a Jewish man near a pro-Israel rally boasted, “If I could do it again, I would do it again.” Despite that, Bragg’s office offered him a plea deal of six months.

When Bragg took office, he released a Day One memo which told prosecutors not to pursue prison sentences for many crimes including armed robberies and not to ask for life sentences.

As a result of his pro-crime guidelines, more than half of felony cases were downgraded to misdemeanors. Felony convictions fell from 68% to 51%, misdemeanor convictions from 53% to 29% and very few of those ever saw prison. Bragg’s pro-crime prosecutorial pipeline turned felonies into misdemeanors and then the offenders never served a day in prison.

Murders rose 10%, aggravated assaults were up 11% and robberies shot up 25%

Bragg justified his pro-crime policies by arguing that he was trying to use resources more efficiently. He claimed that his Day One memo refusing to prosecute many crimes was about freeing up “prosecutorial resources”. When Bragg’s office dropped most of the charges against a serial shoplifter, they claimed it would have been a “waste of resources” to go forward.

What was Bragg really focusing on?

In 2022, even as violent crimes shot up and the Manhattan DA’s office claimed that it wasn’t prosecuting criminals because it was shorthanded, it hired Matthew Colangelo, a former Biden DOJ appointee and Sotomayor clerk who had headed over to the New York State Attorney General’s office to go after Trump. Colangelo’s current salary isn’t listed, but he was earning $203,000 at the federal level and isn’t likely to have taken a pay cut to work for Bragg.

“Matthew Colangelo brings a wealth of economic justice experience combined with complex white-collar investigations, and he has the sound judgment and integrity needed to pursue justice against powerful people,” Bragg bragged. It was no secret whom Bragg had in mind.

While Bragg hired a legal hit man to go after Trump, crime victims were mourning as their attackers were cut loose because the Manhattan DA’s office claimed not to have the resources.

The investigation of Trump had been led by Susan Hoffinger, the head of the Manhattan DA’s office of investigations, at a salary of $208,600, along with a team of three others. The full cost of the pursuit of Trump and his associates on petty charges likely run well into the millions.

The Mueller investigation’s obscene $32 million price tag was bad enough, but at the federal level, millions and even billions come out of the petty cash drawer. DA Alvin Bragg however told crime victims that he had to free criminals because his office didn’t have enough resources.

Bragg didn’t have enough resources to help crime victims, but plenty to go after Trump.

How many people were killed, how many were robbed, beaten and raped because Bragg made targeting Trump into his priority? Most crimes are committed by career criminals who go in and out of the system until they’re finally prosecuted and locked up for good. Taking one criminal out of circulation for even a few years can save lives. The failure to prosecute however costs lives.

An extra 50 people were killed in Manhattan on Bragg’s watch. How many of those people really had to die?

An extra 159 women were raped.

An extra 3,524 people were robbed.

An extra 4,197 people were assaulted.

How much of that could have been prevented if Bragg had focused his “prosecutorial resources” on pursuing criminals, instead of giving perps a pass, while focusing on political crimes?

Bragg’s war against former President Trump is fully consistent with his attitude.

When Jose Alba, a bodega store worker, was assaulted and defended his life by stabbing the thug, Bragg hit him with the highest possible murder charges and $250,000 bail. Those charges were later dropped. A similar case involving fishmarket workers also played out more recently.

Soros DAs consider criminals to be victims and those who defend themselves to be criminals.

It would be a mistake to imagine that Bragg, like Soros DAs around the country, is reluctant to use the powers of his office. Despite all the chatter about “restorative justice” and “diversion programs”, they gleefully unleash ruthless force against their political opponents. That’s why St Louis’ Kim Gardner came after Mark and Patricia McCloskey who displayed firearms in order to deter an invasion by members of a BLM hate mob. It’s why Bragg is going after Trump.

Progressive prosecutors are really political prosecutors and Bragg is one of the worst of the lot.

Before Bragg, New York State Attorney General Letitia James calmly watched exploding crime rates while going after the NRA and then Trump with a view to running for governor. The Manhattan DA is just following in her footsteps by prosecuting political crimes instead of crimes.

Bragg hopes that maddened Manhattanites hate Trump enough to ignore the fact that he has allowed criminals to run free. And he expects to use the case to run for higher office.

For Manhattanites the question is whether they want public safety or a Trump prosecution.

DA Alvin Bragg is out to redeem a year of criminal terror with a Trump arrest. And if New Yorkers had to die, be beaten, robbed and raped to make it happen, that’s a small price to pay.

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Australia: Developers thrown huge tax incentives to fix housing crisis: Property developers who build affordable homes will receive a slew of tax concessions

The tax concessions are attractive so developers may grab them. The fact that only one out of 10 homes has to be "affordable" is a racket. The developer will provide minimal facilities in one propery and build the rest to an attractive standard. So the poor will still get only the most basic accommodation

Property developers who build affordable homes will received a slew of tax concessions including land tax slashed in half Treasurer Cameron Dick has revealed.

Owners of build-to-rent projects will have their land tax bill slashed in half for 20 years if they make one in every 10 units an “affordable home”.

Other available tax concessions include a full exemption on the 2 per cent foreign investor land tax surcharge also for 20 years.

A full exemption from the additional foreign acquirer duty for the future transfer of a build-to-rent site will also be available.

The concessions will come in on July 1, 2023.

Mr Dick said the private construction sector was “at capacity” across Australia, and the government was “working with industry to identify innovative ideas that create new pipelines of housing”.

It comes as Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced hundreds more emergency hotel rooms across Queensland will be funded under a $28m boost to the state government’s housing response package for another year.

The announcement comes as the state government prepares to focus the parliamentary sitting week on housing, including the push to limit rent increases in Queensland to once a year.

The government will unveil the rent shake up as housing stakeholders gather on Tuesday to look at progress from last year’s housing summit, which the Premier called following The Courier-Mail’s Hitting Home series.

Under the changes, it is understood property owners and landlords will only be allowed to lift the rent on their property once every 12 months.

The move would bring Queensland in line with other states, such as Victoria and South Australia – where the rental price on a property can generally only be changed once a year.

Ms Palaszczuk on Tuesday morning also confirmed the state government would fund its immediate housing response package for an extra year to the tune of $28m.

The support would help “our most vulnerable Queenslanders facing homelessness and housing stress” and including funding more than 600 emergency hotel room spots, and help pay bond payments.

“Through our immediate housing response for families package we've supported more than 4000 families with over 44,000 nights of accommodation,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

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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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Monday, March 27, 2023



Why So Much Anti-Jewish Hatred?

The article below asks the question but provides no real answer to it. Yet the answer is as old as the hills: Envy of Jewish success and dislike of Jewish supremacism. I have been studying antisemitism since the 1970s and published my findings mainly in Jewish journals. My comprehensive paper on the subject is here

In
Zur Judentum, even Karl Marx despised Jewish success in business and after Prussia emancipated the Jews in 1812, Jewish success spread into many other fields. In prewar Germany, Jews sat at the pinnacle of most endeavours in society, as they do to this day in the USA. It is a little less obvious in the USA today as few Americans recognize Askenazi names when they see them. The mames concerned are of German origin and they stand out if you know German, as I do: Fink, Blum, Bankman-Fried etc. So even to me it is slightly irritating to see the surnames of most of the prominent people that I read about. The names are overwhelmingly of Jewish origin and their frequency leaves the impression that you have to be Jewish to get anywhere these days. Hitler drew that conclusion.

So people have learned from Hitler what not to do but what irritated him still exists. Both blacks and many whites resent Jewish success and such resentment will almost certainly always be with us


In the words of New York City Jewish leader Eric Dinowitz, “hate is on the rise—and the high-profile cases on the news are often the endpoint of hate.” He continued, “We see the assaults in Hell’s Kitchen and Times Square. We see mass murders at synagogues and supermarkets. And what this report card shows us are those seeds of hate are the precursors to physical violence.”

Dinowitz was responding to a new report from the Simon Wiesenthal Center on Digital Terrorism and Hate. And he was speaking in particular about hatred and violence against Jewish people.

According to JNS, “The report warns of increased antisemitic, racist, anti-LGBTQ messaging and calls for violence against black, immigrant and Jewish residents.”

What motivates such attitudes and actions? Why is that, “Among all racial and religious groups, Jews remain the greatest hate crime target”? And why is it that Jews are targeted by both White Supremacists and Black Supremacists? (I began documenting this more than 30 years ago. It is even worse today.)

One group that received attention in the report was the Black Hebrew Israelites (or, just Hebrew Israelites as they call themselves today), whose views have been popularized by high-profile figures like Kanye West and Kyrie Irving.

Not only do they claim to be the true Israelites, they even supply a chart that purports to connect the 12 Tribes of Israel to various people groups in North and South America (seriously!). But they also deny that the Jewish people (which would include me) are true Jews.

In their eyes, we are the “synagogue of Satan” (based on a misinterpretation of Revelation 2:9 and 3:9) and “white Edomite devils.” (Yes, according to this cult, Jacob’s son Esau, also called Edom, was white, and White Jews today are actually his devilish descendants.)

On a regular basis, we receive comments like this on our YouTube channel: “Hitler is an Idumean [= Edomite] devil like yourself Dr. Brown. The holocaust never happened. So stop lying to the world.” And it was posted by – get this – “The Tribe of Levi”!

If that’s not enough, consider that, according to the Hebrew Israelite chart used by the Sicarii, which is the most militant sect among them, the people of Haiti today are the tribe of Levi. I bet you didn’t know that before!

I recently debated the leader of the Sicarii on the subject of “Who Are the Legitimate Children of Israel? Ashkenazi Jews or the 12 Tribe Chart?” (You can watch the debate here.)

And while we have interacted cordially since the debate, I did challenge him on his rhetoric, including lines like this from February 2022: “That's how this movie ends man all right. That's the future of this world. Black and Latino people ruling the world.

“[Jesus Christ] is a big angry black man, a black man whose eyes are red and he's ready to come and kill. He wants to stomp people’s brains out of their cranium. He wants to step on you people’s heads until your brains come out.

“Remember when 50 Cent [said], ‘and his brain came out the top like jack-in-the-box’? Remember? That’s one of my favorite lines, right? That's what Christ is coming back to do.”

You can be assured that “you people” includes those of us who are not people of color, especially White Jews.

Yet my quotation of these words at the end of the debate only brought a smile to his face, along with lots of affirmation from his followers in the large chat. (There were as many as 4,500 people watching at once on the host’s channel. And moments ago, when I went to the channel while writing this article, they were playing a clip from my recent YouTube video discussing the debate. A comment posted on the screen read: “Who is this pink devil?” So, I graduated from white to pink!)

In reality, though, this is nothing to joke about. It was reported one year ago that, “Antisemitic hate crimes were up 400% last month, according to new data released by the New York Police Department.”

Specifically, “Many of these incidents targeted Orthodox people dressed in distinctive clothing, like the Jewish man who was punched in Bed-Stuy on Feb. 7 while walking on Shabbat.”

And what is a typical, Hebrew Israelite response to such things, “This edomite [meaning me, when I referenced such crimes during the debate] showed himself to be a devil. He said *fake*Jews are being attacked by African Americans.”

The reality is that words have consequences, and attitudes of hatred will leads to acts of hatred. But the question still remains: Why? Why the Jews?

When I debunk the nonsense of the 12 Tribes Chart, I feel no animosity towards any of the peoples on the chart, including Mexicans (who are supposed to be the lost tribe of Issachar!) or the Seminole Indians (who are supposed to be the lost tribe of Reuben!) or African Americans (who are supposed to be the tribe of Judah!). And, based on the comments I see when I address these things, no one who agrees with me feels animosity as a result of these people being fake Israelites. (To be clear, there are Black and Hispanic Jews. No one is questioning that. What is being utterly rejected is the information on the chart.)

Yet when the Hebrew Israelites call Ashkenazi Jews (and other Jews) “fake Jews,” it triggers visceral hatred and anger towards us. Why?

I can only offer two suggestions. First, these Black Americans, who have historically suffered so greatly at the hands of White Americans in the past, have fastened their resentment and anger on White Americans today, in particular White Jews.

Second, antisemitism is demonic and needs no rational explanation. As Sigmund Freud commented in 1927, “With regard to anti-Semitism, I don’t really want to search for explanations; I feel a strong inclination to surrender my effects in this matter and find myself confirmed in my wholly nonscientific belief that mankind on the average and taken by and large are a wretched lot.”

What we can say with assurance is that we must confront these hateful attitudes and ideologies wherever we find them, since they will not go away on their own. And we must be determined to overcome hatred with love and lies with truth. It’s a long battle, but it’s a winning strategy.

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Understanding the uproar in France

The demonstrators at Place de la République in Paris were chanting, weirdly, in Italian: “Siamo tutti antifascisti,” — “We are all antifascists.” In French, they targeted their chief enemy, the president: “We are here, even if Macron doesn’t want it.”

Watching them were ranks of massed riot police, who, in the French policing tradition, made no effort to mingle with the crowd and defuse trouble, but instead stood waiting for the moment to unleash their tear gas and batons. The crowd were waiting for it, too. “ACAB,” they chanted, the English abbreviation for “All Cops Are Bastards”. “A-ca-buh”, it came out in French.

Then someone set a dustbin on fire — the perfect Instagram image — and other demonstrators began filming it. They knew they were taking their places in a glamorous Parisian tradition, stretching from 1789 through 1944 and 1968. At last the police advanced, and people began chucking bottles.

France was in turmoil even before Emmanuel Macron’s unilateral decision last week to raise the minimum general retirement age from 62 to 64, after he couldn’t get it voted through parliament. In Paris, following a winter of rolling strikes, the metro is becoming a theoretical concept, while rats pick through heaps of uncollected garbage. Peak Paris was arguably reached last Saturday, with a demonstration for the rats. “NO, rats are not responsible for all that’s wrong with France!” said the organising group, Paris Animaux Zoopolis.

French anger transcends pensions and Macron’s high-handedness. There’s a generalised, long-term rage against the state and its embodiment, the president. After 20 years living here, I’ve become used to the French presumption that whoever they elected president is a moronic villain, and that the state, instead of being their collective emanation, is their oppressor. But Macron’s unpopular ramming through of a higher retirement age without a vote increases the risk that the French will follow Americans, Britons and Italians and vote populist: President Marine Le Pen in 2027. The far-right’s vote in presidential run-offs has gradually risen this century, to 41 per cent last year.

France can’t go on like this. It’s time to end the Fifth Republic, with its all-powerful presidency — the closest thing in the developed world to an elected dictator — and inaugurate a less autocratic Sixth Republic. Macron might just be the person to do it.

The Fifth Republic was declared in 1958, amid the chaos of the Algerian war and fears of a military coup. The constitution was written for and partly by Charles de Gaulle, the 6ft 5in tall war hero, the “man of providence” whose very name made him the embodiment of ancient France. He consented to return as leader if France muzzled political parties and parliamentarians. (He even disliked his own party, the RPF, the Rassemblement du peuple français.)

So the constitution created a strong executive, albeit not centred on the president. Clause 49.3 allowed the executive to over-rule parliament, and pass laws without a vote. Triggering the 49.3 allows opposition parties to file a no-confidence motion. If the motion fails, the law is considered passed. The pensions manoeuvre was the 11th time that Élisabeth Borne, Macron’s prime minister, had invoked 49.3 in 10 months in power.

In the 1958 constitution, the president was still a relatively modest figure, elected by about 80,000 officials. But in 1962, de Gaulle enhanced the president’s status: he would be elected by universal suffrage. As de Gaulle later explained: “The indivisible authority of the state is entrusted entirely to the president.”

The Fifth Republic’s governing philosophy became a sort of French-Confucian rule by the cleverest boys in the class, plucked from all ranks of the population. Prime Minister Pierre Mendès France’s father sold affordable ladieswear, President Georges Pompidou’s was a small-town schoolteacher, and President François Mitterrand’s the stationmaster of Angoulême. Typically at G7 summits, the leader with the highest IQ and broadest hinterland beyond politics is the French president.

The republic’s technocrats gradually extended their writ to the most isolated villages. Almost everything that moved in western Europe’s largest country was administered from a few square kilometres in Paris. The various waves of “decentralisation” since 1982 never got far. The guiding belief of Parisian technocrats, says the liberal writer Gaspard Koenig, is “étatisme”, statism. He notes that they are typically described as “servants of the state”, rather than of the people.

The deal became that the French would hand over a big chunk of their income to the state, and navigate an often nightmarish bureaucracy, in exchange for free education, healthcare, pensions and often even subsidised holidays.

Into the 1990s, the system more or less worked. France experienced its “Trente Glorieuses” — 30 glorious years of economic growth, from 1945 until 1975. It built Europe’s fastest trains, the TGVs; co-created the world’s fastest passenger plane, Concorde; it went on to invent the proto-internet, Minitel, which French people used to book tennis courts and have phone sex; it pushed Germany into creating the euro; and became an independent actor in world affairs. The all-powerful presidency enhanced France’s international standing: the administration spoke with one man’s voice, and foreign leaders always knew which French number to call.

The moment when the Fifth Republic lost its sheen was possibly the oil shock of 1973, since when the economy has mostly stagnated. Or perhaps it was April 21 2002, when far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen reached the run-off of the presidential elections. He lost to Jacques Chirac, but from then on, spurred by French disquiet over immigration and unemployment, there was a credible threat to the republic.

The disenchantment with the president showed in approval ratings. Mitterrand (president from 1981 to 1995) and Chirac (1995-2007) generally had ratings between 40 and 60 per cent, according to pollsters Kantar Sofres. But the last three presidents, Nicolas Sarkozy, François Hollande and Macron, have usually ranged between 20 and 40 per cent. Hollande’s rating in one poll hit 4 per cent (not a typo). These figures from the post-heroic age were too small for de Gaulle’s job. Few voters now even expect that the next president will be the national saviour. Although Marine Le Pen may become president, she too has lost her magic after years of scandals. It’s hard to attach fantasies to her today.

But the technocrats look tarnished too, especially since they have congealed into a self-perpetuating caste. Today’s ruling class consists disproportionately of white sons of the book-owning high bourgeoisie, who travelled together from Parisian Left Bank nursery school to Left Bank école préparatoire, where they crammed for exams for the grandes écoles, before acquiring their own Left Bank apartment. If they didn’t come from Paris, they generally moved there as teenagers, like Hollande, a rich doctor’s son from Normandy, or Macron, a neurologist’s son from Picardy.

It was as the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, a south-western postman’s son, had warned decades earlier: the French elite was reproducing itself. (And nobody mastered elite self-reproduction better than Bourdieu himself: all his three sons followed him to the most intellectual grande école, the École Normale Supérieure on the Left Bank, which trains social scientists.)

French technocrats spend their working lives in a few arrondissements inside the Périphérique, the ring road that encircles the Parisian court like a moat. They treat the rest of France almost like a colony, inhabited by smelly peasants who failed to absorb the Parisian culture they had been taught at school, and who vote far right or far left.

The fundamental facts of life outside Paris escape many decision makers. Jean-Pierre Jouyet, an École Nationale d’ Administration (ENA) classmate and right-hand man of Hollande, realised that large swaths of the countryside had no broadband internet only because he suffered the experience in his second home (his parents’ old house) in Normandy. He never got around to alerting Hollande. “In my defence,” he notes in his memoir L’Envers du décor, “nobody in government was interested in the subject.” When Macron decided to add a few cents to the fuel tax in 2018, he had no idea it would spark a months-long nationwide uprising by the gilets jaunes, the “yellow vests”, because he and the technocrats around him hadn’t grasped how much people beyond the Périphérique relied on their cars.

When things go wrong, the French blame the technocrats — and above all the president, who decides without consulting them. Ordinary people’s lives feel determined, down to the day they can retire, by a Parisian pretend meritocracy from which they were excluded at birth. Three-quarters of people who identify as belonging to “popular classes” say they feel the object of social contempt and lack of recognition, reports Luc Rouban, an expert on politics at Sciences Po, an elite Paris university. This is particularly galling, given the country’s promise, proclaimed from the facades of every post office and primary school: “Liberté, égalité, fraternité”. France isn’t the UK or US, where the power of social class or money is frank.

While the French population defy the technocrats, so the technocrats defy the population, diagnoses Chantal Jouanno, who has just served five years as head of the National Commission for Public Debate. French “deciders” often describe society as “conflictual, uncontrollable, irreformable”, she told Le Monde. Perhaps she was thinking of Macron’s jibe about “refractory Gauls”. On Wednesday he lamented, “We have not succeeded in sharing . . . the necessity of doing this reform,” as if the problem were the public’s inability to understand reality.

Since Macron became president in 2017, popular anger has targeted him. It was said of US President George HW Bush that he reminded every woman of her first husband. Macron reminds every French person of their boss: an educated know-it-all who looks down on his staff. He understood that Hollande had lacked presidential grandeur, and cast himself as “Jupiterian”; but most voters just saw a jumped-up little ex-banker dressing up as king. Even many who voted for him never liked him, nor felt that they were endorsing his platform, with its pledge to raise retirement ages. In both the 2017 and 2022 run-offs, the other choice was Marine Le Pen. The French president has gone in 60 years from “man of providence” to “not the devil”.

Macron’s brief employment at Rothschild inevitably generated antisemitic conspiracy theories among people who confuse today’s boutique Parisian investment bank with the Europe-straddling behemoth of the 19th century. A common jibe is that Macron is “neoliberal” or worse, “ultraliberal”: busy dismantling the French social safety net to benefit the shady forces of global capital.

The charge is ludicrous: France remains about the least neoliberal place on Earth. Government spending in 2021 was 59 per cent of GDP, the highest in the OECD, the club of rich countries. The perennial French fear of losing entitlements — above all, their 25-year retirements — betrays how good their lives are. On the downside, people pay so much to the state that many run out of money at the proverbial “end of the month”. The French net median income — €22,732 in 2021 — is lower than in the northern European countries that France likes to see as its peers.

Especially after the gilets jaunes, Macron has tried to rein in the elite’s privileges. Sarkozy and his former prime minister François Fillon have both been sentenced for corruption, though neither has gone to jail yet and both are appealing. A new sobriety has been imposed on parliament: gone are the days of deputies taking pretty interns for Château Lafite-fuelled lunches on unregulated expenses.

Macron’s ministers have been taken off dossiers where they have conflicts of interest — though that has highlighted the sheer number of these conflicts within the tiny Parisian ruling caste: Marlène Schiappa, minister of state for the social economy, had to hand in much of her portfolio after shacking up with the boss of a big mutual health insurance provider. The minister for energy transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, cannot touch matters involving petrol company Perenco, which her dad used to run, nor deal with the energy company Engie, where her ex-husband is a senior director. And Jean-Noël Barrot, minister delegate for the digital economy, cannot handle matters involving Uber, where his sister is a communications chief.

These concessions haven’t appeased the population. Nor has the melting-away of the longstanding French scourge of unemployment. It’s now at 7.2 per cent, its lowest since 2008, without Macron getting any thanks. Such is the anger over ramming through the new pensionable age without a vote that he might struggle to pass any laws these next four years, unless he dares to resort to ramming them through without votes again.

The fruits of the Fifth Republic aren’t so bad. But the system itself has gone out of date, says Catherine Fieschi, founder of the think-tank Counterpoint. The state’s autocratic nature helps explain why the French are so angry despite living relatively well. You could describe the republic’s workings without mentioning the almost irrelevant parliament. France today has three branches of government: the presidency, the judiciary and the street. If the president decides to do something, only the street can stop him — by stopping the country through protests and strikes. Street and president rarely seek compromise. One wins, one loses.

Historically, the trade unions control the street. But as they too lose relevance — Macron barely consulted them over pensions — the street has become increasingly violent and undirected, from the leaderless gilets jaunes to today’s burning dustbins. My daughter’s lycée is intermittently blockaded by pupils waving banners with slogans such as “Against Capital”. At a neighbouring school, a group of pupils and teachers are conspiring to turn their own blockade into a week-long occupation, a sleepover with fun activities including designing banners and repainting buildings. My daughter’s friend there plans to participate till Saturday: “Then I’ll take my weekend.”

This is no way to run a country. In last year’s presidential elections, far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon campaigned on a promise of a “Sixth Republic”. He wanted a new constitution that shrank the powers of the “monarch president”.

But the person best-placed to usher in the Sixth Republic is Macron himself. He’s a politician who hunts big game, notes Fieschi. He has already variously tried to charm Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, and to remake the French labour market, European defence and the EU. His schemes usually founder, but at least he aims high. A Sixth Republic is an idea on a Macronian scale. It could be his legacy, suggests Fieschi. It might just get the French train back on the rails.

On Monday his party, currently called Renaissance, sent an email to members headlined, “On the Reform of Institutions”. Members were invited to give their views on elections to parliament, the use or otherwise of referendums, and local powers. There was an open-ended question: “In a few words, on which subject(s) do you think it would be useful to organise a citizen’s convention?”

It’s a strength of France that it can update itself by revising its constitution — as it has done 24 times in the Fifth Republic. What might a Sixth Republic, or at least a reformed Fifth one, look like? Koenig recommends scrapping de Gaulle’s innovation of an elected president. That would deflate the role, and boost parliament’s status. Koenig also favours devolving powers to France’s 35,000 communes: in effect, local authorities. Surveys repeatedly show that the French have much more trust in their local representatives than in national ones.

Koenig made a symbolic run for president last year on a liberal platform of a shrunken presidency. Travelling around the country, he was enthused: many French people live in beautiful places, near mountains or beaches or sheep meadows. They are reasonably well off, eat well, and have the time to develop passions outside work.

They might function even better without some guy in Paris micromanaging their lives.

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Barbie Kardashian and Ireland’s trans madness

Why are politicians so incapable of answering basic questions about biology? Yesterday it was Taoiseach Leo Varadkar’s turn. A journalist asked him a yes or no question: ‘Do you believe that Barbie Kardashian is a woman?’ Barbie Kardashian, whose birth name was Gabrielle Alejandro Gentile, is a violent man who identifies as a woman. Last week he was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in jail – a women’s jail – for threatening to torture, rape and murder his own mother. He is, as the journalist who cornered Varadkar put it, ‘a violent biological male with a penis’.

So what was Varadkar’s answer to this easiest of questions? This was a straightforward query as to whether a person who was born male and has male genitalia and who issues violent threats against women is, as he claims, a woman. It wasn’t ‘No’. It wasn’t ‘Yes’, either. The questions seems to have stumped Ireland’s leader, which is bizarre given he studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin. Varadkar answered with a short, awkward silence followed by this statement: ‘Well, look, I, I, I, I don’t, I actually don’t know anything about the case yet, I saw, I first saw it reported at the weekend, erm, and, and, I’m going to have look into it.’

Look into it? All the facts were right there in front of him. The journalist laid them out. What’s more, if Varadkar had already heard about the case, at the weekend, that means he had plenty of time to come to the same conclusion that every other rational person in Ireland has come to: that this man is a man. That this biological male, who made vile threats against his own mum, is a bloke. And, furthermore, that he has absolutely no place in a women’s prison. Varadkar’s shirking of reason – presumably because he’s terrified of being targeted by hardline trans activists – was an embarrassment. He let down the women of Ireland. This is his Sturgeon moment.

To be fair to Varadkar, he did respond more sensibly to the follow-up question on whether he thinks violent biological men should be put in women’s prisons. ‘No, I don’t, quite frankly,’ he said. ‘If a situation that arose in Scotland has now arisen in Ireland,’ he said (referencing the notorious case of the female-identifying Scottish rapist Isla Bryson, who was initially put in a women’s prison before being moved to a male jail), ‘then we’re going to have to deal with it in a similar way.’ That’s promising. But huge questions still lurk. Including the question of why a clever, well-educated Taoiseach cannot say that an individual who threatened to use his penis to rape a woman is a man.

A man whose crime was to plot the atrocious torture and murder of a woman is being housed with women

The Barbie Kardashian case is deeply disturbing. Kardashian was convicted of seven counts of threatening to kill or cause serious harm to his mother. He hatched a plan to go to his mother’s house and overpower her with a knife, a screwdriver and boiling water. The judge described him as ‘unrepentant’ about his vile matricidal ideations. Perversely, Kardashian has been placed in the women’s section of Limerick prison. A man whose crime was to plot the atrocious torture and murder of a woman is being housed with women. This is a new low in the Irish state’s embrace of the transgender ideology.

It is nothing short of psychotic that someone like Kardashian has been put in a jail that will have many inmates who have experienced male violence. Gardai told Limerick Circuit Court that Kardashian poses a ‘significant threat’ to ‘the wider public’. One source told the Irish Mirror that Kardashian is considered ‘one of the most dangerous inmates in the system’. Prison authorities believe he is ‘far too dangerous’ to be allowed out to ‘interact with anyone else’, so he is currently in isolation. Apparently he’s taken out for one hour of exercise a day, during which he has to be ‘unlocked by several staff, as she [sic] poses that much of a threat’.

What madness is this? It’s like putting a fox in a henhouse and keeping a close eye on it to make sure it doesn’t attack the hens. Let’s be clear about what is happening here: the emotional and physical safety of female prisoners is being sacrificed to the narcissistic needs of a man who thinks he’s a woman. Kardashian’s desire to be treated as a woman is being elevated above the right of actual women not to be locked up with a violent man. The validation of this man’s gender identity is considered more important than the security of the women in Limerick’s prison estate. The reorganisation of the prison around flattering the identity of a dangerous man is a disgrace. It is state-endorsed misogyny.

Indeed, it is striking how much New Ireland – post-Catholic, politically correct – resembles Old Ireland. The religion might have changed – back then the state was beholden to old-world Catholicism, now it’s enamoured with the new religion of identity politics – but it is still women who lose out. In the past, the ruling ideology dictated that women should be incarcerated, in so-called laundries, if they committed sins of the flesh. Now the new ruling ideology, the furious insistence that every gender identity be respected and validated, dictates that women will sometimes have to be incarcerated with violent males, whether they like it or not. Then and now, ideological zealotry overpowers reason and subjugates the rights of women to the whims of men.

The Irish state and the Irish media need to get a grip. It is surely a type of delirium that media outlets are running with headlines like ‘Woman jailed for… threats to murder her mother’, and that so many in the Irish elite accept that Kardashian is literally a woman. Let us hope Kardashian is removed from Limerick Women’s prison with extreme urgency. But even then, Varadkar will have to answer the question that was put to him yesterday. Is Barbie Kardashian a woman: yes or no?

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Woman Finds Out the Truth About Free Health Care the Hard Way: 'I Was in Excruciating Pain'

Leftists are often talking about how cruel it is that the United States does not have a free public health care system.

They say America should ditch its health care system in favor of the socialist universal health care provided in several European countries.

With that said, it would be interesting to hear what a European has to say when it comes to the benefits of free health care.

Now, we have a video that does just that, and it would be helpful for every American socialist to see it.

British model and reality TV star Chloe Veitch recently posted a video on TikTok in which she compared her experience at a U.K. dentist with her experience at an American dentist.

The beginning of the video left no doubt about where she was going.

“Health care in the U.K. is free,” she said, “but it’s rubbish.”

Veitch then described how she went to a dentist in the United Kingdom a few months ago as she was in “excruciating pain” because of a tooth problem. There, she said, the dentist told her nothing was wrong with her tooth.

“They didn’t do an X-ray. They didn’t do any checks,” she said in the social media post.

She then traveled to the United States, where she paid $700 for a visit to the dentist. Veitch said she was told her tooth was “rotten” and required a major procedure if she wanted any relief from the pain. She had it done, of course.

Obviously, this experience was very frustrating for Veitch, who ended the video by making an obscene gesture and saying, “F*** free health care.”

Many people on Twitter responded to the video saying it was unsurprising that a socialist health care system, which looks good in theory, would not work in practice.

Of course, Veitch is not the only one to notice the problems with the U.K.’s health care system. In December, amid a massive strike by nurses in the country, a 93-year-old woman in Wales was left on the floor with a broken hip for 25 hours waiting for paramedics to arrive.

Despite all the evidence of the failings of “universal health care” in other countries, there are still many in this country, such as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who want to see a similar system in place in the United States.

Why does the left keep insisting on a system that has proven time and again to provide patients with poor care?

Veitch has the means to travel to see an American dentist, but what about the millions of people who cannot afford to do so? Don’t they deserve to have a good health service in their country?

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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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Sunday, March 26, 2023



It's not hate to allow women to have their own spaces and their own events

The desperation of the elites to look good lies behind this suddenly invented "trans" war. The elite are aware that others envy and dislike them so grab at anything that will make them look good and wise and noble. So the poor old trannies have suddenly been elevated to an important group requiring support at all costs

For a while "women" were a big cause to the elites but women were just a convenient group for them to use to show that they cared. The fact that they all along did not care about women at all is now so clearly revealed that they are not even prepared to name them. It must be quite a shock to genuine advocates for women to find that they have gone overnight from friend to enemy in the minds of the insecure Leftist elites

And once the elites have set the ball rolling and given the latest issue big support, lots of other attention seekers climb on board in support of the issue in the hope of also becoming seen as good and wise and noble. They too seize the chance to be seen as virtuous


There are two issues at stake in the transwars that are again finding their way to our shores with ‘Posie Parker’s’ (aka Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull’s) Australian Let Women Speak tour. These are: children’s bodily integrity, and women’s rights including the need for single-sex spaces. These issues have very different histories, politics, and ontologies but they coalesce around transgenderism because this is the point at which the conflict of interest arises.

On social media and in the legacy media this week, this critique has been presented as tantamount to Nazi ideology. What we have is a classic case of reductio ad Hitlerum, defined by Leo Strauss as a type of ad hominem used to derail arguments by creating a ‘guilt by association’. In other words, ‘playing the Nazi card’.

This means if neo-Nazis are on the steps of the Victorian Parliament, ushered around by police and with excellent camera crews capturing their Sieg Heil, and you happen to be in the vicinity, you’re ‘guilty by association’.

If you’ve been so propagandised as to assume that there is no legitimate discussion to be had around these issues, then you’re a victim of a corrupt media that has ceased to do its job. The Third Estate has well and truly died if a smallish group of women, including MPs, teachers, doctors, and philosophy professors, can’t gather in a public place to discuss matters of cultural and political importance to women.

When Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and progressive party leaders such as the Greens’ Adam Bandt define these women (or their protest) as associating with ‘neo-Nazis’, we have a gross misrepresentation at play and one that anyone participating in this charade should be ashamed of.

This whole mess is an orchestrated misrepresentation that amounts to propaganda.

It is obliterating the legitimate concerns of women regarding the safety and privacy of women and girls in rape crisis centres, women’s shelters, women’s prisons, women’s changerooms, and toilets. It is sabotaging the discussion around how women can possibly compete against natal males in sport, and of the gross inequality of quotas, prizes, or shortlists for women being filled by trans-identifying males.

It is also about the loss of meaningful language for motherhood, including the removal and replacement of words such as pregnant woman, mother, and breastfeeding (with abominations such as ‘vulva owner’, ‘birthing people’, and ‘chest feeder’). These are important conversations, nothing more, but also nothing less. It is not and never has been about the violation of trans people’s legal, civil, or social rights. It is about the recognition of women’s rights.

Sure, feel free to disagree but don’t engage in this false and indeed defamatory characterisation of the gender-critical feminist voice. There are two sides to this discussion; not one legitimate side (trans) and a motley assortment of neo-Nazi bigots. Moreover, we have seen misogynist overtones from male leaders who appear to dismiss women speaking about issues of fundamental importance like equality, privacy, safety, and the well-being of children.

The neo-Nazi optics are undoubtedly appalling, and one can’t help but wonder how this came about. At the very least, this alignment serves the status quo very well, as every polite mainstream-media-reading centre-Left, small ‘l’ liberal who, having never left their media ecosystem, assumes that ‘Terfs’ are a bunch of scary bigots with radical ‘far Right’ views. Political goal achieved.

A quick lesson in protests: not all who attend a protest are in agreement. Some are widely divergent politically. Moreover, ‘outside agitators’ can and are planted to stir up trouble and/or to alter the public’s perception. A quick lesson in propaganda: the truth doesn’t matter if the lie has been accepted. Certainly, in the public’s mind, ‘gender critical feminism’ and the important political issues this argument represents, have been thoroughly besmirched.

In the public’s mind, Kellie-Jay has a kitsch Norma Jean aesthetic going on and seems to be showcasing more star-spangled nylon and sequins as her social media following grows (and concomitantly, as we descend into the ‘bread and circuses’ era of the culture wars). Moreover, in my opinion she has failed to overtly distance herself from the far Right, as some local feminist groups have rightly pointed out.

Nonetheless, her message is direct and simple, delivered in a working-class idiom: ‘men can’t have vaginas’, ‘men can’t give birth’, ‘men can’t be women’, ‘men shouldn’t be in vulnerable women’s spaces’, ‘men can’t (or shouldn’t) compete in women’s sports’, and ‘children aren’t old enough to surgically remove their primary and secondary sex organs, or make decisions about adult sexuality or fertility’.

These were all uncontroversial statements not long ago. Indeed, the first three statements were common knowledge in all cultures, in all places, and across all time until maybe five years ago (that’s a pretty big sample!). At this point, inner-urban, educated progressives extrapolated an obscure set of gender ideologies localised to arcane corners of university Arts departments and gaslit or bullied anyone who disagreed.

Magically, and in lockstep, governments the world over introduced legislation and policy to allow self ID, to outlaw ‘conversion therapy’ (i.e., newspeak for adopting an exploratory approach to gender dysphoria rather than uncritical affirmation), to update the protected category of sex in law, and to revise statutes regarding sex discrimination so that sex-category was replaced with gender identity.

This effectively created a mandate around the acceptance of transgenderism with no capacity – politically or socially – to disagree. If the ‘choice’ is to agree or be an incorrigible bigot with few job prospects, except perhaps as Mark Latham’s cleaning lady, then most people are going to shut up and go along with this agenda. This is the coward’s bargain; it is not agreement.

Let’s stop pretending this doesn’t have the full force of the corporate-state and captured media and academia behind it. Let’s stop pretending that there are two sides to this ‘debate’: there is one side and a maligned minority of women bravely fighting for the right to have a conversation. As I have said before, what we are owed is more and better disagreement, not slogans and abuse.

Until a moment ago we all understood what a woman was, and we understood that men were physically stronger than women. Most also understood that women had been historically excluded from political rights with ongoing ramifications for their civil standing in liberal democracies. Feminism was the movement for women’s rights that began with married women’s property rights and culminated in suffrage and access to education and the professions. It was the movement to end women’s legal and political subjection. From second-wave feminism onwards, larger questions were asked concerning women’s role in society, the family, sexuality, and psyche as women entered into paid work en masse and redefined what it meant to be women.

That the ‘category of woman’ is now being jettisoned (or revised beyond all recognition) at the precise historical hour that women in the West have gained a political and cultural voice is disturbing. Moreover, in redefining women’s rights almost entirely in terms of queer identity politics, crucial issues such as women’s poverty and homelessness, sexual and domestic violence, and mothering and care work, fade from view. These issues barely raise a mention as sex-class transmogrifies into gender ID.

Assuming this debate is like other debates between say, liberals, and conservatives, or between opposing philosophical paradigms like positivism and hermeneutics, is sadly mistaken. This debate, like so many in the contemporary culture wars, is on an entirely new epistemological terrain: what is at stake here is nothing short of reality itself!

The ‘priors’ therefore of either side are no longer shared; we need rather to understand this issue (as with several other contested political issues) as a disagreement, not on a shared understanding of reality, but rather a disagreement about the nature of reality itself. The question pivots, interestingly enough, on what it means to be a woman.

A poignant example to illustrate this point can be seen in the nomenclature used: one party refers to themselves as ‘gender critical feminists’ and sympathetic media outlets adopt this terminology, sometimes situating it in the longer history of feminism. This side suggests that ‘transwomen’ are better understood as ‘trans-identifying males’ to locate both the person’s natal or biological gender and their preferred identification.

However, the other side, the trans activists and their allies, refer to gender-critical feminists as ‘transphobic’ and as committing dangerous ‘hate speech’. These are such egregious accusations that, if true, require punitive action and redress. Thus, a position itself is defined by one side as ‘gender critical’ and based on women’s ‘sex-based rights’ and by the other as ‘hate speech’. The issue pivots on the ‘category of woman’ which is defined by one side (the gender criticals) as a political class – a ‘sex class’ – founded in biology and given its contemporary meaning in society.

That is, from a classical feminist perspective, the category of woman is a biological category with political implications, namely subjection within a patriarchal society. The newer definition replaces gender with sex and defines the category of woman (or man) as one that can be opted into, it is a subjective state or a feeling. Thus, we haven’t even made it out of the paradigmatic gate before we find ourselves fighting over the nature of reality itself. The category of sex is the site of the struggle. If we cannot agree that sex exists or is materially, politically, and linguistically distinct from gender, then we are not arguing about the same thing. To invoke Smith’s famous aphorism regarding the two women arguing from their respective balconies: they were arguing from different premises!

To suggest that any discussion which assumes natal women have a claim on the sex category woman is a priori an act of discrimination is effectively to quash the discussion. It is to define it as an abominable act of hate speech before it is even out of the gate. How is this a fair discussion? To suggest that gender-critical feminists are neo-Nazis is transparent bullying and it’s coming from the top – literally the leader of the Victorian government – not from minorities as we’re being told. It has the sanction of the mainstream media who are hacks failing in their duty to the electorate to fairly represent the issues from all sides.

Parker’s Let Women Speak Tour gives women an opportunity to speak about their experience of this inflamed political and cultural conflict without being silenced.

In the sinkhole of partisan politics and propaganda this act of discursive generosity is defined as ‘far Right’. In the real world of heterodox politics and culture, Posie Parker’s message cuts across the increasingly defunct Right/Left divide and indeed speaks to women and men across the political spectrum.

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The Grotesque Motives Behind Transgenderism

Concerned parents and politicians, as well as the rapidly growing group of outspoken detransitioners, have actively engaged in bringing to light the troubling practices behind the progressive version of “gender identity.” The reality is that, behind the curtain, this trend of abandoning binary gender labels is not about the love and tolerance claimed in the marketing.

Your child’s first grade classroom is decorated as a rainbow-flooded utopia, there are tampons in your son’s middle school bathroom, and there’s a boy in a dress who is now allowed to undress in your high school daughter’s locker room. Parents are being forced to battle between what their child says they want and being afraid to reel them back in by questioning it, not wanting to appear as the hateful presence in their lives that their activist teachers have told kids they are.

Parents have given in to what seemed to be a new trend of self-discovery, wanting to ensure that their child is learning about different lifestyles, believing that this exposure will contribute to a well-rounded generation of young adults who understand love and tolerance at a level that society had never previously achieved.

However, the brazen rantings of unhinged left-wing activist teachers, the recommendations by medical and psychological experts to introduce material beyond just the exposure of different identities to young children, and the aggressive agenda to influence every child’s sexuality before they’re old enough to grasp these concepts has mobilized numerous parents and investigators to expose the true intentions behind the slogans and flags.

The background of some of the “experts” who are at the center of the policies surrounding sex-change surgeries and puberty blockers for children has been exposed — and it is nothing short of grotesque. The organization that they convene under to form these guidelines is known as the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH.

In September 2022, WPATH released new guidelines under “The Standards of Care” (or SOC8) for children seeking potent, life-altering drugs and surgeries. The guidelines changed the suggested ages for hormones from 14 to nine, and when it comes to procedures like mastectomies or the construction of a non-functioning penis on a biological woman, the guidelines reduce the recommended ages from 15-17 for the former and 18 for the latter to basically no recommendation or restriction at all.

As disturbing as the new SOC8 updates are, the motives that drove these supposed authorities to make such drastic changes should stop any parent in their tracks before they consider sacrificing their child to this mutilation campaign disguised as scientific proof that the youth of today just need us to “support” them in living as their “true selves.”

Several of the WPATH panel members reportedly have a decades-long involvement in a fetish site called The Eunuch Archive, a forum that holds over 10,000 pornographic stories, surrounding sadomasochistic themes such as child rape, castration, and torture.

To those of us who have been following the history of gender ideology, it should come as no shock that the movement of the last few years is just as motivated by the pedophilic fantasies of twisted adults now as it was at its inception.

Dr. John Money was a prominent and well-known figure in the sphere of gender identity. As a doctor in the 1960s, he became a leading voice pushing the idea that binary gender expression is a social construct, and that it’s possible to socially construct gender stereotypes out of human beings simply by nurturing them otherwise.

In 1965, Janet and Ronald Reimer brought their seven-month-old twin boys to be seen by Money after a botched circumcision left one of the boys with irreversible damage to his penis. Money’s “expert” solution to the issue was to have the parents raise the injured twin, Bruce, as a girl — insisting that doing so would eliminate any notion of the boy’s biological sex within himself.

The “care” provided throughout the twins’ childhood included annual checkups with Dr. Money to monitor the progress of each child; sexual experiments beginning at age seven, wherein Money had the boys role-play sexual activities that might be carried out between a husband and wife; and taking nude photographs of the children, for which they were provided very specific instructions by Money on how to pose.

The parents believed that this “expert” had their children’s best interests in mind. They trusted that the “care” he was administering was to achieve the objective of feminizing their biologically male son and to lead him to be content with who he was. However, it is unclear if these parents understood that Money was truly conducting his own social experiment to prove his theories about gender identity, with no compelling proof that what he was doing would result in the intended outcome, and to also act out his own fantasies of child sexualization under the guise of healthcare.

(Some might have called this “gender-affirming healthcare.”)

Later in life, when both boys were informed of the truth behind their life experiences, the unaltered boy developed schizophrenia from the trauma, eventually ending his own life — and the twin who had started life as Bruce, then renamed as Brenda, returned to his male identity and was able to live in true contentment for a time, knowing who he really was. But due to trouble stemming from the lies spread by Money of the experiment on his identity being a success; the suicide of his brother; instability in his marriage; and the underlying struggles of his childhood, he too ended his life at age 38.

The foundation of this ideology set 60 years ago, the experiences of the Reimer brothers and the motivations behind their “care” are eerily similar to the mindset of today’s current policymakers and the numerous stories of detransitioners that are flooding social media every day.

Most people who buy into the “love and tolerance” slogan have honest intentions for just that. But the love and tolerance the activists are trying to create is not for children as they’re trying to figure out who they are. The love and tolerance being sought after is for those who wish to indulge their own desires with the most vulnerable among us, to be carried out without restriction or judgment.

What John Money hoped to accomplish almost 60 years ago is being played out before our eyes: Pedophiles granted access to children in the masses, with their parents being the prime enthusiasts for handing them over.

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The Left’s Long March Into Despotism

Author and Christian apologist C. S. Lewis once wrote: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own consciences.”

We are witnessing the consequences of this insufferable and pernicious ideology, primarily on the political and cultural left. The American right and left have often disagreed about societal objectives, or the best method by which to achieve those objectives, but they at least shared a commitment to certain principles: the sanctity of life and of the nuclear family, the protection of children, the primacy of truth, the importance of the rule of law and due process, the punishment of criminals, freedom of speech, religion and other civil liberties, the dignity of work, and a free press charged with the responsibility for holding the powerful accountable.

Over time, however, the Left has become so certain of its moral superiority that those previously sacrosanct principles have been sacrificed, one by one, on the altar of whatever utopic visions Leftists have for perfecting society. The hills Leftists have decided to die on now include abortion and infanticide, pornography and gender confusion in schools, exploiting children in dangerous and irreversible medical experimentation, homeless encampments and drug use in our cities, incentivized theft and other unpunished crime, open borders and unlimited illegal immigration, lack of election integrity, censorship of medical professionals, scientists and journalists who dare to question the prevailing government narrative, the politicization of law enforcement, and political persecution.

An overly powerful government is eventually populated with arrogant, greedy and unprincipled people who will stop at nothing to get what they want. The Founders understood this, which is why they drafted the Constitution to leave most power within the state governments (and thus more accountable to the people), and to further diffuse federal power by dividing it between three more or less co-equal branches.

The moral busybodies on the Left, to their chagrin, are not omnipotent; they resent that their objectives for a perfected society are continually thwarted by the limitations imposed by the Constitution; therefore they seek to undermine the Constitution wherever possible: by eliminating the Electoral College, changing the composition of the United States Senate, “packing” the U.S. Supreme Court, federalizing elections and removing laws that protect election integrity, permitting illegal immigrants to vote, bypassing Congress and having a president issue countless executive orders.

The country’s descent into destruction and depravity is being facilitated by leftists in media who defend the crooks and malfeasors, even as they grab power and engage in oppressive and unlawful practices without fear of legal sanction or citizen pushback. Millions of law-abiding Americans who oppose the Left’s takeover nevertheless do not realize the risks of our current trajectory; ordinary people never think things will get that bad — until they do.

In fact, American media has a long history of cheering for leftist movements and ignoring or justifying their grievous human rights abuses. They supported Lenin and then Stalin in the former Soviet Union, covering for their political purges, mass imprisonment and murder, the starvation of their own people. (Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist Walter Duranty infamously defended Stalin’s actions, saying, “To put it brutally — you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”) They cheered for Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution in China that cost tens of millions of Chinese people their lives. They celebrated Fidel Castro’s Communist regime in Cuba. They praised the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia — at least until that army of university-educated malcontents and barely post-pubescent adolescents armed with Kalashnikovs drove millions of their countrymen into rice paddies and Phnom Penh prisons, where they were starved, tortured and shot to death, their bodies left to rot in piles in the “killing fields.” They praise Venezuelan dictators Hugo Chavez and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, despite their socialist policies having driven the country into abject poverty.

So we should be suspicious when today’s Left — including and especially the media — demands support for movements dressed up in lofty language and pithy phrases like “antiracist,” “Black Lives Matter,” “diversity, equity and inclusion” and the big kahuna, “climate change.” These ideologies share a number of disturbing traits with their Marxist predecessors:

No. 1: Their adherents insist that implementation of these policies requires the dismantling of our constitutional order, including the elimination of freedom, individual liberties, private property and the rule of law.

No. 2: Their leaders do not live by the standards they demand of everyone else; instead, they grow rich on guilt-driven donations, corporate sponsorships, and book deals; they purchase expensive real estate, travel around the world on private jets and enjoy first-class accommodations.

No. 3: Argument, disagreement and proof of the failure of the proffered policies is never permitted; the theories are treated as religious dogma, and the authors are viewed as prophets.

C. S. Lewis was right — the moral busybodies never sleep. They already have too much power; history shows us what can take place if they acquire more.

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/95969 ?

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Progressives’ ‘good cause eviction’ bill spells doom for NYC housing

It’s hard to imagine making New York City’s housing market even worse, but the progressives in charge of the Legislature aim to do just that.

The city has more public and subsidized “affordable” housing (both in total and per capita) than any other — yet it’s in a perennial housing crisis. Nearly a million apartments are “rent-stabilized” — under a regime so onerous and discouraging of investment that some 60,000 are just being left vacant by their owners, rather than lose money on them.

Nor is there a way up and out for squeezed tenants: Thanks to zoning and NIMBY-ism, New York state as a whole has built less new housing than even other Northeastern states, let alone Texas and Florida.

Now the progressives want to distort this housing “market” even more.

Their “good cause eviction” proposal threatens to discourage new housing and drive existing landlords out of the business altogether.

That would probably please the bill’s sponsor, state Sen. Julia Salazar of Brooklyn, a proud Democratic Socialist.

But she’s far from alone: Both the Assembly and state Senate proposed budgets include the idea.

Obvious good causes for eviction include not paying the rent, or causing disturbances.

But that’s not what the “good cause” bill has in mind. It would prohibit evictions if rents become “unreasonable” — specifically, raised by more than 3% or 1.5% above the Consumer Price Index, as determined once a year.

This is statewide rent control by another name — with all the distortions it brings with it.

Beware NY progressives’ push for universal rent control
In a period of raging inflation, a snapshot of the Consumer Price Index may well not reflect a property owner’s rising costs over the course of the year. Not that progressives are concerned about the costs of the numerous small, “mom and pop” landlords, many of whom are new immigrants using property ownership to aid their upward mobility.

A 2019 law barred rent increases in regulated units even if owners have to make major capital repairs.

The cost of a new roof must come out of their profits — even if they have none.

That’s why units are being left vacant.

More broadly, controlling rents suppresses price signals, the means through which supply and demand are balanced.

It encourages tenants to stay longer in apartments larger than what they might need — limiting the turnover that a healthy market needs.

That’s why you can find aging Baby Boomers knocking around in Upper West Side apartments with empty bedrooms, while young New Yorkers are doubled up in shoeboxes.

New York University’s Furman Center has found that rent-regulated tenants remain in their units three times as long as those in non-regulated units — and are better off, as well.

Rent limits are also why there are long waiting lists for public housing units; more than a quarter of current tenants are “overhoused”— meaning they, too, have more bedrooms than they need.

Housing “advocates” believe we should effectively transfer property rights from owners to tenants and let the latter stay put as long as they’d like — and even pass along their apartment to younger family members.

Their model is the city’s dilapidated public-housing system, where tens of thousands of residents have lived in their units for more than 40 years.

Salazar and her fellow travelers have a dread of gentrification — the wealthier driving out the poor from the Brooklyn neighborhoods she represents.

Reality check: There are a limited number of hedge fund managers even in New York, and lots of them are following Citadel’s Ken Griffin to Miami, as New York has apparently made “tax the rich” its official state slogan.

Moreover, property owners in many parts of the state — think depressed Syracuse, Rochester or Utica — are not likely to be keen to evict a tenant having trouble paying the rent; there may not be another one ready to move in.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, to her credit, has promoted the idea of new housing construction in New York’s suburbs — a good way to lower prices when so many state residents are fleeing and the population has fallen.

But she pushed an idea guaranteed to inspire maximum resistance — a state super-zoning board that could override local decisions.

That’s predictably inspired pushback. She needs to find the right mix of incentives to persuade, rather than coerce — a challenge for tight housing markets across the country.

To her discredit, Hochul might cave to the Legislature and sign a budget that includes “good cause eviction” regulation to get the rest of her plan passed, too.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will seek the presidency on the basis of what he’s done to make his state a magnet for newcomers.

Meanwhile, Empire State lawmakers are doing all they can to make their state ever less attractive.

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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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