PETRONELLA WYATT: I'm single, childless and alone. Feminism has failed me and my generation

She has had a most privileged life so if she feels she has missed out it is a lesson on what an important part of life relationships are. She once had a pregnancy to which Boris Johnson was the father. Had she had saner values then and not aborted it, that baby would now be a undoubtedly talented adult who would be the joy of her life.

I cannot talk. In my youth (late '60s) I too was betrayed by the values of my life in an academic environment and arranged an abortion attributed to me by a very bright and blonde girl. That may have been the daughter I have always wanted and never had. I have had better luck than Petronella with relationships, however and I do have a high-achieving son

Every Monday I meet with a group of female friends in a London restaurant. We sit at a table near the window and discuss our lives.

We have many things in common. We are all in our mid-50s and highly educated career women. But there is a vacuum in our lives. We are all single and childless.

I increasingly feel, as do many of my intimates, that feminism has failed our generation. I grew up with its beliefs. No, strike that. I was force-fed them.

By the age of 13, Christmas presents from my Women's Lib aunt were books by Gloria Steinem and Simone de Beauvoir, considered the mother of modern feminism. (My aunt was one of those militants who had famously disrupted the 1970 Miss World contest).

My peers and I watched Mary Poppins, idolising the determinedly single nanny (never noticing the occasional sadness behind her eyes), and sympathising with suffragette Mrs Banks, while wondering why she didn't leave her dullard of a husband.

Our heroine was Margaret Thatcher, who, though she would have denied it, was a feminist de facto. In one of those encounters that make life instructive, I met Lady Thatcher at my late father's house (my father was the politician Woodrow Wyatt) when I was 15. She was our first woman prime minister and, after our introduction, she began to address me on the subject of life.

The gist of her address would have been greeted with hosannas by every feminist of the age: in summation, a woman's career superseded by far her relations with the opposite sex. (Her own union might well have been to a cipher as opposed to a husband. Indeed, when the Thatchers dined with us, Denis withdrew to the drawing room with the women).

At my private school, St Paul's, we children of Thatcher were similarly educated out of marriage and femininity.

One of my unmarried school friends recalls: 'My teachers made me feel as if marriage was shameful. My English mistress once teased me for looking at a bridal magazine, but then she was an arch feminist who demonised men.'

We both recall being told that 'Paulinas do not cook, they think'. This is all very well when you are young and aspire to greatness, but not all girls grow up to be executives or high court judges, something that feminism perilously forgot to tell us.

Historically, the feminist argument had its points. In the old days, when members of my sex were bound first to their fathers and then to their husbands, they led unenviable lives. If a woman had a good education, however, she could make a comfortable living and remain independent of male approbation. When the desire for marriage and children overwhelmed her, she would almost certainly lose her job.

The world has now changed in a way the early feminists would find incomprehensible. I sometimes think, and so do my friends, that the West has outgrown the feminist philosophy, and that it has become pernicious.

Where, for instance, does it leave women like us, when we have reached our mid-50s, and find ourselves alone?

One of the chief causes of unhappiness is the feeling that one is unloved, whereas companionship and the feeling of being loved promotes happiness more than anything else.

One in ten British women in their 50s has never married and lives alone, which is neither pleasant nor healthy.

My friend Sally, a lovely 55-year-old with eyes the colour of Eau de Nil, once said to me: 'I constantly feel unwanted as a woman because feminism taught us that the traditional female was a stereotype invented by men to keep us down. Accordingly, I was anti-men to the point of driving them away. Now, I'm paying for this.'

According to a recent study by an American medical institute, loneliness is the leading cause of depression among middle-aged females. I should know, as I recently fell prey to the unforgiving maw of mental illness.

Many of my single friends suffer from depression, springing from a solitary existence that would be eschewed by a race of alley cats.

Moreover, there are the economic factors involved. It is a truism that two incomes are better than one, and many of the unattached women I know work in low to middle-paid professions.

A university professor chum bemoans 'as a single woman, it has been increasingly difficult to pay the bills with no assistance from a partner. For every J K Rowling, there are millions of women who get by on a pittance.

'Feminism kept drumming into my head that financial independence was the ideal, but in practice it doesn't happen unless you are managing a hedge fund or are able to write best-selling novels.'

Equally depressingly, many single women feel they have failed at life. Far from empowering us, feminism has made us insecure. 'My career has stalled, I've never married and I feel worthless as a person,' observes my pretty 53-year-old friend Rachel.

General self-confidence comes more than anything else from being accustomed to receiving love, particularly from the opposite sex. The woman with a husband and children accepts their affection as a law of nature, but it is of great importance to her mental health and success.

Yet of all the institutions that have come down to us from the past, none is so derailed by feminism as the family. Many women with feminist ideals feel parenthood is a far heavier burden than their grandmothers did, due to long working hours and the vilification of the housewife. Is it any wonder that the birth rate has declined?

Says another of my Monday group: 'I was conditioned to have no encumbrances, particularly children. Or at least to wait until I was established in my career, but now I'm too old and that boat has sailed.'

Recently, after my depression became debilitating, I had a 20-year-old student living in my home. After a week of acquaintanceship, it dawned on me that the notion of not marrying and giving birth before the age of 30 was anathema to her, and she rejected it completely.

In short, she wanted to conduct her life like a woman.

'Yes, I believe in women's rights,' she ruminated, 'but I don't believe in the militant feminism my mother grew up with. It went too far.' Out of the mouths of babes.

The feminism I was spoon-fed in my youth made the error of telling members of my sex to behave and think like men. This error was a grave one, and women like me are paying for it, like gamblers in a casino that has been fixed.

It's time for a cultural reset. It may be too late for me and my friends, but feminism should not be allowed to ruin the lives of future generations as well.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-13435575/PETRONELLA-WYATT-single-childless-Feminism-failed-generation.html

******************************************************

A Signal That Oakland Is Slipping Further Into a Doom Loop

This is such an Oakland story. The city of Oakland, California, known for its extreme leftism, is replacing some traffic lights in the city with a four-way stop sign, according to CBS News

The city isn’t taking this step to improve the flow of traffic or anything like that.

Instead, city officials decided to remove the traffic signal because copper theft has become rampant, and thieves keep tampering with the electrical boxes that control the lights.

Amusingly, the city put up a stop sign to replace the traffic light at the E. 12th St. and 16th Ave. intersection. Locals say that even though it looks strange it’s a huge improvement because usually the traffic light is broken and is causing accidents.

However, as with many cases of dysfunctional blue city governance, the deeper problem is that the city won’t address the most fundamental issues: repeat criminality and general lawlessness.

According to the locals CBS interviewed in the story, most of the people tampering with the traffic signals are coming from a nearby homeless encampment.

Tam Le, owner of an auto repair shop at the corner of the intersection, said of the city’s “solution” in an interview with CBS: “It’s just telling us that the city is giving up on us.”

Pretty much, yes.

City officials said that the stop signs are temporary and that the traffic lights will come back. But they put no timeline on when that will happen so good luck.

Maybe, just maybe, the issue isn’t with the traffic signal or even with the thieves.

“If you really want to fix the stop sign, I think you really have to clean up this homeless encampment,” Le said, delivering the kind of commonsense solution to the problem that has apparently escaped the people who run the city.

And therein lies the problem.

For those who haven’t traveled to a West Coast city recently, homeless encampments have taken over urban landscapes. Oakland is particularly bad. It’s become so bad that the city requested help from the state to start clearing the encampments out.

Plenty of other cities have found solutions a lot quicker, but places like Portland and Oakland are slow on the uptake. This is mostly due to the ideology of government officials and the activist organizations who pressure them. They really think that the problem with homelessness is just a “housing” issue and that pushing people off the streets and into shelters is oppressive.

Cities like Oakland have only begun to act when it’s become obvious that large, perpetual homeless encampments and open-air drug markets create a climate of criminality and disorder.

And even when the city does eventually do something there is typically no follow-up enforcement to ensure that the problem doesn’t simply manifest itself again once the coast is clear.

Le, whose auto business has been affected by the homeless encampment, said in the CBS story that the city has moved some of it in the past, but it keeps coming back and getting bigger.

He then said if it continues to grow, he will shutter his business like many other people have in the area.

So, the city will keep the encampment and lose the dutiful business owner. Sounds like a recipe for success, right?

It’s this sort of governance that contributed to the so-called doom loop that places like Oakland and downtown San Francisco are stuck in. It should be no surprise that the In-N-Out fast-food restaurant that closed in Oakland—the first In-N-Out to close, ever—was close to where the problematic intersection is.

In almost all these cases of urban decay we see a similar pattern. Lax enforcement of laws—or predictably terrible laws, a retreat from proactive policing, and mind-boggling recidivism.

A man apprehended by Oakland police for robbing an ATM in Oakland in January had 25 arrests since 2014.

According to Crime Voice, a California crime journalism media outlet, the 39-year-old repeat offender had “previous arrests for kidnappings, robberies, motor vehicle thefts, possession of a controlled substance, and for shootings.”

Is it any wonder crime is out of control?

In July of last year, the Oakland chapter of the NAACP called on the authorities in the city to start taking its crime problem seriously.

“Oakland residents are sick and tired of our intolerable public safety crisis that overwhelmingly impacts minority communities,” the NAACP wrote in a letter. “There is nothing compassionate or progressive about allowing criminal behavior to fester and rob Oakland residents of their basic rights to public safety. It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime.”

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price responded insultingly, “We are disappointed that a great African-American pastor and a great African-American organization would take a false narrative on such an important matter. We would expect more from Bishop Bob Jackson and the Oakland Chapter of the NAACP.”

What cities like Oakland have done is create a situation where the burden of disorder has been placed on innocent, helpless citizens who have little recourse other than to leave—if that’s even possible.

Even when these cities have begrudgingly rediscovered the value of the police post-George Floyd riot crime boom, they haven’t exactly recovered.

Restoring order and creating a healthy, thriving city environment is difficult once anarchy becomes the norm. For some places like Oakland the road back is a long one. Maybe a combination of failure and outraged citizens will get city leaders to wake up to reality.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/20/a-signal-that-oakland-is-slipping-further-into-the-doom-loop/

********************************************

The miserable death of multiculturalism

We see the experiment of multiculturalism completely falling apart in the UK and many European countries. The US is awash with illegal migrants and the notion of one big happy family pursuing the great American dream is completely dead, having been on life support for many years. The idea of one big (and growing) diverse family in Canada is also now an open joke.

Most Asian countries are explicitly racist in their governance – Malaysia, Japan, China and India being stand-out examples. The very idea of multiculturalism makes no sense to them.

I could go on, but while everything might be relative, Malcolm’s boast about Australia being the most successful multicultural country was still misleading even when he started saying it. There are vastly more examples of warring tribes living here, constantly at each other under the surface, than the fairytale dreamt up by the gazillionaire from Point Piper.

Let’s face it, multiculturalism was always a device to ramp up migration while securing the votes of particular ethnic groups. In Australia, it goes back to the days of Petro Georgiou, who became the Liberal member for Kooyong at some stage. He persuaded both Andrew Peacock and John Howard to jump on board.

Arguably, that rogue, Al Grassby, Labor member for Riverina and immigration minister in the Whitlam government, set the ball rolling. It has to be said that Gough himself was no fan of the idea.

He never denied saying, ‘I’m not having these f–king Vietnamese Balts coming into the country with their religious and political prejudices against us.’ In that sense, Whitlam was more a traditionalist – you know the thing, we’re all Australians with a common set of values.

But multiculturalism always required bipartisan support and, of course, government funding. All sorts of ethnic-based groups popped up, supported by the taxpayer. We even had the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs and then the Office of Multicultural Affairs.

Compared with today, however, the policy of multiculturalism last century looks fairly tame. This was prior to the widespread uptake of post-modernism and cultural race theory. Nowadays, it’s all about oppressor versus the oppressed, white supremacy and the pernicious impact of colonialism.

New migrants are not expected to leave their ancient grievances behind; they are encouraged to prosecute their cases here, often with taxpayer funding, and to enlist their children and grandchildren in their causes. Gone are the days when the leaders of the day might draw lines in the sand – the edge of Australians’ tolerance.

Now migrants can suit themselves. They pick up the benefits of living in a high-income country – copious government payments, close to free education and health and the like – while clustering with members of their tribe and demanding more.

It’s worthwhile at this point recounting a personal story to illustrate how much has changed. One of my mother’s best friends was born in Germany. She met her Australian businessman husband – he had actually been born in Austria – in Europe in the early 1960s and she happily moved to Melbourne to be with him.

They had four children and lived a regular suburban life, interrupted by the usual stresses and strains. They always spoke English at home and became fully integrated into the communities in which they were involved. Her adult children were subsequently very annoyed that they could not speak German.

I’m sure Speccie readers can recount numerous examples of migrant families in the past doing their darndest to fit in while working hard and doing their best for their children. Of course, they retained some of their traditions, but the accepted rule was that we were all Aussies first. Learning English was generally seen as a high priority. It now seems like a different world.

It is estimated, for instance, that over one million people living in Australia do not speak English. The proportion of the population who speak no or little English has been rising rapidly.

If you want a driver’s licence, you can take the test in the language of your choice. Migrants can demand translators for a range of government-provided services. It’s not one rule for all, but a splintering of rules for different ethnic groups.

Australia has one of the highest proportions of the population born overseas – around 30 per cent. It has been growing strongly this century as the floodgates have been opened to temporary migrants, in particular. If we add to those born overseas those with at least one parent born overseas, we are over 50 per cent.

Of course, there is nothing right or wrong about these figures, although the rate of change makes a difference. It’s how migrants are absorbed into the population and how they then seek to fit in. We have seen a marked concentration in the destinations of recent migrants, to Melbourne and Sydney and to parts of these cities as well. This makes a difference.

It is no surprise that recently arrived migrants stick together; they did in the past but quickly became part of the wider community. The evidence now points to persistent clustering, in part because of the much larger flow of migrants leading to critical masses of ethnic groups.

This in turn potentially leads to voting blocs that can influence the substance of government policy, including foreign affairs. We see this in the disproportionate number of people of the Muslim faith in several seats in western Sydney and the weak response of the Labor parliamentarians to rising anti-Semitic behaviour that has been clearly on display. This development is the antithesis of constructive multiculturalism.

When the Department of Home Affairs can describe the migration program as recognising ‘the strong contribution all migrants make to social cohesion… by focusing on strengthening family and community bonds in Australia’, we know we are trouble.

Leaving aside the possibility of sloppy drafting, does anyone in their right mind believe that all migrants contribute to social cohesion? Only in the dreams of Canberra’s bureaucrats. It would be better to acknowledge that multiculturalism has died here and to get on with a more cohesive model in which the same standards are expected of us all.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/05/the-miserable-death-of-multiculturalism/

*********************************************

Australia: Teen had been previously convicted of 84 offences but had not spent a day in custody until he killed someone

The grieving husband of a mum-of-two stabbed to death during a home invasion has recalled the haunting moment his life changed forever.

Emma Lovell, 41, and her husband Lee spent Boxing Day 2022 baking treats and playing games with their young daughters Scarlett and Kassie before the North Lakes couple enjoyed a few cocktails and went to bed early.

Several hours later, she was fatally stabbed in the heart after two teens, then both 17, broke into her home north of Brisbane at about 11.30pm.

Her partner of 22 years was also stabbed in front of their horrified daughters.

The teen, now 19, who killed Ms Lovell had been previously convicted of 84 offences but had not spent a day in custody until that night.

Mr Lovell has opened up about being attacked in his own home - and how he didn't realise his wife was gravely injured until his daughter saw she was bleeding.

'By the time I looked back at Emma, she was, like, just, like, passed out on the floor,' he told A Current Affair on Monday night.

'And when Kassie came back, she was like, 'Mum's bleeding', I'm like, 'what do you mean?'

'She's bleeding and looked at her left side and I know it was just, like, soaked with blood, you know, and then that, like, panic sets in.'

As he was rushed to hospital, other paramedics performed open heart surgery on his wife on their front lawn.

'To be at the hospital and be told that she hadn't survived was a major shock,' he recalled.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13437509/Emma-Lovell-stabbing-death-Lee-Lovell-opens-wifes-death-North-Lakes-home-two-words-changed-familys-lives-forever.html

****************************************

My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

***************************************

‘Love or lust’: Travelling chastity preacher at schools sparks parent backlash

I would once long ago have agreed with this and I do at least agree that marriage is the ideal relationship. I have been married 4 times so I do put my money where my mouth is on that matter!

But the times now are definitely ones of of sexual libertarianism, so much so that abstention from sex seems unrealistic. Among young people (and some not so young people) everybody is doing it. To opt out of premarital sex is to opt out of modern life.

I have always been pretty fussy about whom I slept with and I have always looked for long-term relationships but I think that is the most one can hope for today

I note that Catholics have never been very faithful to church teachings on sex anyhow. From what I see and know, Catholic women who do NOT use contraception are rare

And there is a sense in which the church teachings are futile. Nature continues to assert itself -- to the point where even celibate priests often transgress -- often in regrettable circumstances

A planned lecture on the virtues of virginity, chastity and modesty to be delivered to Catholic high school students next week has prompted a backlash from some parents who do not want “outdated” views pushed on their daughters.

The Chastity Project founder Jason Evert is set to deliver his talk entitled “love or lust” next week at St Leo’s in Wahroonga, St Joseph’s in East Gosford as well as MacKillop Catholic College in Warnervale.

Parents were told Evert, who is based in Arizona but travels the world telling teenagers about the dangers and consequences sex before marriage, would also tell stories about the negative effects of pornography.

“Importantly, Jason discusses relationships in a non-judgemental way and encourages young people not to feel pressured into a sexual relationship,” a letter to parents at the three schools said.

But when some parents researched Evert online, they did not like what they found: one of his books from 2006 said homosexual acts were disordered (Evert has said he removed that quote from the book over a decade ago); online videos show him saying “most women do not want” to take the contraceptive pill.

The Sydney Catholic Diocese’s Centre of Evangelisation last year hosted a talk by Evert with the same title as the one to be delivered next week, in which he cited statistics which said those who abstain from sex before marriage had much lower divorce rates. He also outlined how a lack of modesty can lead to objectification and disrespect. “I didn’t even know how to treat a girl until I dated one in college who dressed modestly,” he said.

In another anecdote, he recounted how a basketball player had asked him: “‘When you’re with a girl and she says she’s ready for sex, how do you say no to that?’ I said: ‘If she thinks she’s ready for sex, and she’s not ready to be a mother, then she has no clue what she’s talking about.’”

St Joseph’s mother Alison Read said: “I sent my daughter to the school to help her become a strong, independent and capable woman, not to have her taught out-of-date views about keeping herself ‘pure’.”

In response to questions from the Herald, Evert said parents have the right to choose what kind of information their children receive on the topic of sexuality, and that was one reason why many choose a Catholic education for their children.

“To any concerned parents, I would say that I have spoken to tens of thousands of young people in Australia, and the only reason why I am being invited back now for the seventh time is because the presentation is not about hate, bigotry, or medical misinformation,” he said.

“It’s a positive message that focuses on chastity as a virtue that frees us to love, regardless of what has happened in the past.

“And in terms of the subject of modesty, I think it’s a virtue that men as well as women would do well to rediscover. ”

Another parent at St Joseph’s, Sarah Greenaway, said she believed Evert’s views did not “align with many of the teachings of modern Catholicism”.

“He has also described homosexuality as ‘disordered’. These perspectives can be harmful and alienating to students, particularly those who may already feel marginalised,” Greenaway said in a letter to the Catholic Diocese of Broken Bay.

A group of year 10 students have also written to the school to voice their concerns.

“We are concerned about the topics he is passionate about and therefore may present to us,” they wrote.

“Healthy and respectful relationships are obviously very important in our lives as young women. We strongly believe that to bring in a speaker who encourages this is a great way to motivate us to value positive relationships,” the students said. “We believe that Jason Evert’s specific messages, approaches and morals, are backwards.”

A spokeswoman for Catholic Schools Broken Bay said it had multiple initiatives in place including opportunities to invite guest speakers, especially those aligned with Catholic Church teachings.

“Given the many mixed messages our young people are faced with today, we are seeking to provide some reassurance and certainty in a challenging and complex world about relationships and sexuality,” she said.

She said they were conscious of ensuring the safety and wellbeing of all. “For this reason, while
students are encouraged to participate, the session will not be compulsory,” she said.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/love-or-lust-travelling-chastity-preacher-at-schools-sparks-parent-backlash-20240517-p5jek5.html

******************************************************

Argentina’s Trump Card?

All eyes are on Argentina since the election of an eccentric libertarian as the beleaguered nation’s President, writes economics consultant Andrew Russell.

For libertarians, endlessly frustrated at how rarely people of their ideological inclination actually get elected, Javier Milei’s recent victory in Argentina’s Presidential election has given them a chance to finally see what having one of their own with substantial political power might be like. For the rest of us, who may not be card-carrying libertarian pundits, what are we to make of this chainsaw-wielding seemingly radical figure? Who is Javier Milei? What kind of libertarian is he? What has been made of him so far? And crucially, what are his real-world chances of combatting the ‘new socialism’ that Milei has deemed the biggest threat to the West?

A 53-year-old economics professor, author, and political commentator, Milei has described himself as a Hayekian ‘in the short term’ but is noted for advocating free-market anarchism and can be more accurately understood as a Rothbardian libertarian. Rothbardians are followers of the economist Murray Rothbard, the most famous theorist of anarcho-capitalism or Austrian School free-market anarchism, and argue that the State’s core functions of defence, courts, and law enforcement could be replaced by private security and arbitration agencies. In this way Rothbardians are distinct from anti-capitalist anarchists, in that they reject the Labour Theory of Value and, consequently, do not believe profit is inherently expropriative. Hayekians are followers of the economist Friedrich Hayek, who was not an anarchist and took a more conventional (yet still radical relative to real-world governments) minimal-government position. So far, the policy reforms Milei is seeking are substantially more modest than what a Hayekian would desire, and far from what a Rothbardian free-market anarchist would ultimately consider ideal. However, the fact such a radical figure was elected Argentina’s President is remarkable in itself, and when taken with his messy hair, penchant for dressing up as a superhero named ‘Captain Ancap’ (short for ‘anarcho-capitalist’), and proclamations of his enthusiasm for threesomes, one is somewhat taken aback when outlets in the liar press insist on referring to him as an “extreme social conservative”.

Indeed, Milei’s anarcho-capitalism, while radical, has been somewhat sidelined and confused by his unorthodox character, and across the board, and a bit like the man himself, the reactions to Javier Milei’s ascension to the Argentine Presidency have been theatrical. They have ranged from hysterical conniptions and prophecies of the apocalypse to joyous celebrations and loud chants of ‘¡Afuera!’, which is Spanish for ‘Out!’ (in the sense of ‘cast out’ or ‘get rid of’) and used in this context to refer to Milei’s theatrical slashing of ministerial bureaucracy on his first day in office. Unsurprisingly, most of these reactions map neatly onto left-right political positioning, with persons-on-the-left broadcasting their psychological meltdowns on social media and persons-on-the-right triumphantly cheering that Milei will Make Argentina Great Again.

Politics is not just about policy but also about personality.

In a world of mass media, broadcasted campaigns, and voters who can be moved by charisma just as much as tax cuts, politics is not just about policy but also about personality. Milei’s personality, at least on the campaign trail, has been consistently passionate, bombastic, and iconoclastic. Despite being from a nation where the majority are Roman Catholics, Pope Francis is one of Milei’s favourite targets. Milei has described his fellow Argentine as a “son of a bitch”, a “filthy leftist”, a “communist turd”, and an “imbecile”, alongside further criticisms that are probably too harshly worded to print in the IPA Review.

Predictably, Milei’s bluntness and bombast have invited comparisons to Trump, who unfortunately functions as the elephant in the room in discussions such as these. Trump is no one’s idea of a free-market anarchist and, consequently, it can be fairly argued that the only valid comparisons are on the basis of style. But the grievances aired by Milei often echo those aired by The Donald and other ‘right-wing nationalist populists’, and while his response to these issues identified by other prominent figures on the right is distinctively libertarian, Milei’s popularity—indeed his election as President of Argentina—speaks to just how loud the pushback against the ‘status quo’ has become.

Like Trump in the US, Nigel Farage in the UK, Giorgia Meloni in Italy, and Pauline Hanson in Australia, Milei has been outspoken on issues of immigration, climate change policy, the public service, education, and the mainstream media. That is why it is useful to summarise these larger, more general complaints about the state of the West, before looking at the Argentine context and Milei’s policy proposals.

The first charge that Milei and other ‘right-wing populists’ level at the establishment is that immigration policy is being used as a kind of gerrymandering whereby the politicians of the centre-left import constituents that will vote for them, as opposed to immigration policy based on the interests of the nation as a whole. Climate change policy is likewise called out for what it is really doing: degrading living standards and social mobility. In both cases reasonable criticism of policy is silenced, with any dissenters from the orthodoxy being deemed ‘racists’ or ‘science deniers’.

When we turn to the question of those who enforce the orthodoxy—the civil or public service and the educated elite—the former are revealed as a self-interested special interest group that has become increasingly metropolitan, authoritarian, and partisan-left, while the latter are accused of turning credentialism into the new classism. Further, the vast majority of the mainstream press has become a megaphone for that same trendy woke or social justice orthodoxy and is complicit in the active persecution of dissenters. Together, these charges combine and reveal that society is becoming further dominated by an increasingly unaccountable woke credentialist bureaucrat-academic-managerial class that exists primarily due to government largesse yet believes itself to be morally and intellectually superior to those it governs. Milei gives the loudest voice to this charge.

https://ipa.org.au/ipa-review-articles/argentinas-trump-card

***************************************************

Will therebe a repeat of the 1968 Democrat Convention?

Given that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is a big mouth in an empty head, there will likely be no restraint on huge clashes over Israel etc

Will we see a repeat this summer of the infamous 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention that devolved into chaos and anarchy? This year’s convention is, like 1968, set to take place in Chicago and social unrest is percolating on the Left, to say the least.

In a recent interview on Fox News, Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn.—who challenged President Joe Biden in the Democratic Party presidential primary—said that given our current course of events, history is likely to repeat itself.

“I’m afraid this is looking awfully like 1968 with a lot of anger and angst and disenfranchisement that I think are going to play out on TV this summer, and it’s going to be awfully contentious,” Phillips said on Wednesday.

In 1968, anti-Vietnam War and various other far-left protesters descended on the Windy City to protest the party’s presidential nominating convention.

The situation escalated when then-Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, a Democrat, had enough and unleashed the Chicago Police Department on the protesters.

The media at the time strongly criticized the Chicago Police Department, but many Americans strongly sympathized with the authorities, who desperately sought to restore order. The events of the convention likely swayed a lot of voters concerned about violent radicals taking over their cities. Many in the media sided with the protesters, while the American people largely sided with the police.

The chaos was likely one of the reasons Republican Richard Nixon defeated Democrat Hubert Humphrey in November 1968. Preelection chaos created by the Left led to the “silent majority” delivering Nixon a resounding victory.

Given the protests we’ve seen across the country in recent months and the pressure the Left is putting on Democrats over Israel’s war in Gaza, it’s hard not to think that this year’s Democratic convention could see similar protests.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has said that safety is a “top priority” for the convention, but he’s hardly the law-and-order mayor that Daley was. In fact, Johnson has supported defunding the police, has openly sympathized with the anti-Israel protesters, and even made it clear that he’s nothing like Daley.

As my colleague Tony Kinnett noted, Johnson has said he’s a different kind of Democrat. In a certain sense, Johnson’s attitude is a sign that in the long-term, the New Left factions that protested in Chicago in 1968 “won.” (More on that later.)

While prominent Democrats and members of the media insist that 2024 won’t be like 1968, it’s difficult not to see that a storm is potentially brewing.

There have already been significant protests at Chicago universities, pro-Palestine groups have sprung up around the city (some spouting chants like “Death to America!”), and a large group of anti-Israel protesters raised a Palestinian flag near where the Democratic convention is set to take place Aug. 19-22.

There’s no question that Democrats are already getting nervous about what might happen.

The 1968 convention was a seminal moment in both the history of the Democratic Party and the United States. It signaled a long-term takeover of the party and various other institutions by the New Left.

Given that the comparisons will continue to be made, it’s worth looking back at what happened 56 years ago.

New Left Organizes to Sow Chaos

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson had elected not to seek a second term despite winning a landslide in 1964. Even though the Vietnam War had been conducted by Democratic presidents, the party had turned in an antiwar direction. This became a flashpoint for a party that had become increasingly divided.

The common narrative of the Chicago Democratic National Convention in the years that followed was that it was a “mostly peaceful” protest of the Vietnam War, broken up by a brutish and out-of-control Chicago police force.

That’s not exactly accurate.

The reality is that the well-organized protesters were looking to pick a fight to bolster their cause, as historian Stephen F. Hayward described in his book, “The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order, 1964-1980.”

“The Chicago police reacted to a calculated provocation,” Hayward wrote. “And, like the case of fighting schoolchildren, where the second child to strike a blow is the one usually caught by the teacher, the media caught the police reaction and attributed it as the cause of the violence.”

Hayward explained how plans to disrupt the convention began as early as December 1967 and were the product of three main groups.

Those groups were the Youth International Party, or the “Yippies”; the National Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, or “Mobe”; and the Students for a Democratic Society, the SDS. The factions had slightly different agendas for what they wanted to pull off in Chicago.

The Mobe generally wanted a peaceful protest to take place, though it wasn’t exactly averse to causing mayhem—and potentially, violence.

“It would be a mistake to think that the fight against the war can be won in the ballot box,” said Mobe leader David Dellinger. “It still has to be won on the streets.”

The Yippies wanted something more like a giant street festival. They announced a plan to put LSD in the Chicago water supply. Chlorine treatment of the water would have neutralized any threat to the Chicago population, but the Chicago police took the threat seriously enough to put officers in front of the city’s filtration plants.

The Students for a Democratic Society were looking for a fight. Hayward noted that the reasons the SDS was looking to ratchet up violence is that they saw liberal antiwar presidential candidates like Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy as a threat.

For leaders of this movement and others on the far Left, the entire American system needed to be overthrown. They weren’t looking for peace in Vietnam; they were looking to overturn the American way of life and government.

While the three factions plotted different tactics to achieve their goals, they were nevertheless united behind a larger agenda.

They wanted to sow chaos as much as possible so that they could eventually shove their more moderate cohorts on the Left aside and take the reins of power. They wanted to agitate, disrupt, and put the most pressure possible on Democrats to bend to their will.

Humphrey frequently mentioned on the campaign trail that he wanted to bring the “politics of joy” to the country. The activists were having none of it.

“We are coming to Chicago to vomit on the ‘politics of joy,’” SDS leader Tom Hayden wrote before the convention, “to expose the secret decisions, upset the nightclub orgies, and face the Democratic Party with its illegitimacy and criminality.”

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/19/days-rage-chicago-brief-history-1968-democratic-national-convention/

************************************************

Australia: A long stint in prison for an innocent woman

I was one of those who from an early stage saw the conviction of Kathleen Folbigg as a gross miscarriage of justice.

The law failed her so often that it is the justice system that has ultimately been convicted as not fit for purpose. It has not only been Kathleen Folbigg that has been failed in this case. It is the whole commmuity that as been failed. For an innocent person to have been REPEATEDLY been found guilty is deeply destructive to any faith in the system.

And, as in the Bruce Lehrmann case, it is a rogue official who ignored informed advice on the matter to set in train a huge and regrettable series of events. At least Shane Drumgold has suffered heavy consequences for his actions as a prosecutor in the Lehrman case. But I suppose there is no hope that the official in this case will suffer in any way.

As Lenin once asked: "What Is To Be Done?". I am afraid I have no good answers to that, any more than Lenin did. All I know is that if anybody close to me got into trouble with the law, I would use all my resources to get them from the outset the best possible legal representation. That initial conviction is the dangerous one


When Kathleen Folbigg had her long-standing convictions for the deaths of her four infant children quashed last year, Rhanee Rego was right by her side. The young lawyer had started working on her case while still at uni – and never stopped.

In June 2017, at the age of 24, when most young people are drinking too much, dating the wrong people and otherwise avoiding adulthood, Rhanee Rego, a fourth-year law student at the University of Newcastle, took up a part-time placement with a barrister named Robert Cavanagh. Tall and lanky, with the lugubrious manner of a country undertaker, Cavanagh is well known for campaigning against wrongful convictions. One of the cases he was looking into at the time was that of a convicted child killer named Kathleen Folbigg.

Folbigg, who was also from Newcastle, had been found guilty, in 2003, of murdering three of her young children and the manslaughter of a fourth, and sentenced to 40 years in prison (later reduced to 30). She had become known as the country’s worst female serial killer and was widely reviled. She had been bashed in jail and placed, for her own safety, in solitary confinement. There seemed little doubt about her guilt. Her former husband, Craig, had given evidence against her, as had her foster sister. But Cavanagh believed Folbigg was innocent and set Rego to work reviewing the case.

“I had no idea what I was signing up for,” says Rego, who I met in Newcastle recently. “I knew almost nothing of Folbigg’s case growing up. I was just 11 when she was convicted.”

By the time Rego became involved, Folbigg had already been the subject of a trial, two appeals and a petition for review, initiated by Cavanagh and fellow barristers Isabel Reed and Nicolas Moir, not to mention investigations by journalists and justice advocates. But Rego came to the case with voracious intent. For the next two months, whenever she had time, she would drive from Swansea, just south of Newcastle, where she was living with her grandmother, to Cavanagh’s chambers in the city, and read everything about the case that she could get her hands on – the trial transcripts, witness statements, police and expert reports, formal submissions and Folbigg’s diaries. “The diaries were possibly the hardest part,” Rego says. “Kathleen’s handwriting is terrible.”

Cavanagh believed Folbigg was innocent, but Rego was determined to come to her own conclusion. “I didn’t want to help a woman who’d potentially killed four of her kids, especially pro bono,” she explains. But as she made her way through the material, she became increasingly alarmed. “There was simply no direct evidence anywhere to say Folbigg was guilty,” she says. “The case was entirely circumstantial. It was like clouds. You could see them, their shape and formation, but when you went to grab them, there was nothing there.”

When she mentioned her concerns to friends, they warned her against getting too involved; Folbigg was a figure of hate. But as a novice lawyer, it seemed clear to Rego that Folbigg’s convictions had been a mistake, and that, once the facts were re-examined, she would be released. “Surely the judges wanted to correct this?” she thought. “Surely politicians were worried they had put an innocent woman in prison?”

But that’s not the way it worked out. Folbigg would remain in jail for another six years. Rego, meanwhile, still wet behind the ears, would become her most unlikely advocate, a key player in reversing the worst miscarriage of justice in recent times. Now she’s working to secure what is expected to be one of the biggest compensation payouts in Australian legal history.

Much more below:

https://www.smh.com.au/national/you-re-not-going-to-believe-what-i-ve-found-inside-the-fight-to-free-folbigg-20240304-p5f9mh.html

****************************************

My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

***************************************

More censorship from Google

They have deleted my post here that I put up on May 7th

I am at a bit of a loss to see what they were so bothered about but I suspect it was an article from a mainstream source that I reproduced. The original is as under

https://nypost.com/2024/05/05/opinion/frat-boy-summer-is-this-years-backlash-against-an-epidemic-of-arrogant-entitled-women/

****************************************

In the 'Nordic paradox', high rates of gender equality does not equal safety for women

I don't think there is much of a mystery about this. I suspect that the alleged low "gender gap" is a product of a lot of feminist legislation. And a high prevalence of feminist thinking in the society is the obvious precursor to heavy feminist legislation. And feminism is often anti-man. If you are constantly being put down and called "toxic" just for being a man you could feel pretty angry about that -- and anger does predict violence. And that violence could well turn against those who are promoted as superior beings

As ever, the real problem is the Leftist compulsion to see everyone as members of a class -- racial, economic, sexual etc. And when they do that they want to wipe out the group differences concerned. They replace the conservative ideal of equality of opportunity with an aim for equality of results. But people are different so pushing for equality of results will always be oppressive of someone

And the concept of any form of overall equality is rubbish anyway. What are we to make of the great female advantage in lifespan? Should we euthanize a lot of old ladies to equalize the sexes? Obviously not. We counterweight that advantage against female disadvantage in some other sphere. But the weight we assign to each of the different factors is purely a matter of opinion with no objective basis. The "gender gap" is an arbitrary statistical creation only but a lot of effort goes into reproducing it in the real world

It's supposed to be the world's "most gender-equal" country. But behind that title a devastating problem remains.

For 14 years, the small Nordic nation of Iceland has topped the World Economic Forum gender-gap rankings, considered to have closed 91.2 per cent of the male-female divide.

The survey considers the gender gap on four metrics: health, education and political empowerment and economic participation.

But statistics on violence in the country, paint a vastly different portrait of the nation's treatment of women.

About 40 per cent of Icelandic women experience gender-based and sexual violence in their lifetime, according to a landmark 2018 study by the University of Iceland.

"It doesn't matter even here in the one of safest countries in the world, your life is threatened for only being a woman," gender-based violence survivor Ólöf Tara Harðardóttir said.

"If 40 per cent of all women in Iceland are survivors of physical and or sexual abuse, that's no feminist paradise."

This phenomenon has been labelled the "Nordic paradox", where equality-focused Scandinavian countries experience higher-than-expected rates of violence.

Possible theories range from female advancement leading to male backlash to problematic alcohol consumption patterns and a lack of public discussion around family violence.

Many in the field accept there are challenges with comparing and collecting data, but repeated studies have shown rates of violence are higher than other European countries.

Ms Harðardóttir now co-leads a not-for-profit organisation, Ofgar, which campaigns for legal and social reform for women in Iceland.

"I decided that I needed to speak up … because I felt for too long our country silences victims," she said.

Last year, tens of thousands of Icelandic women — including the country's female prime minister — took part in a 24-hour stop-work demonstration using the slogan "you call this equality".

The strike intended to highlight the persistent gaps in women's pay, domestic workload and rates of gender-based violence.

"People say we are an equal country, but I say equal for who?" Ms Harðardóttir said.

Tanja Mjöll Ísfjörð Magnúsdóttir, another survivor who also co-leads Ofgar, said she felt let down by Iceland's legal system.

"I did everything by the book, I pressed charges, I went to the police and everything," she said.

"[But] my case got dismissed and my family, my home town they turned their back on me and and I had to look elsewhere to find help.

"I realise this happens to many survivors of abuse in Iceland."

Along with many others involved with Ofgar, she is campaigning for changes to Iceland's age of sexual consent, sentencing laws and treatment of survivors of sexual assault.

"Despite the female politicians, I still do not feel we get the answers we want," Ms Magnúsdóttir said.

The Scandinavian countries of Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Finland all rank in the top five of the World Economic Forum's gender-equality rankings, with scores of 81-91 per cent.

The gender gap is not closed in any of these countries but, based on these statistics, these nations have come closer to levelling the disparities than many others.

Yet, Nordic countries with strong legal and social empowerment frameworks for women appear to have rates of gendered violence above the European Union (EU) average.

"The work with gender equality doesn't fix the problem with violence," said Anneli Häyrén, a researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden.

"The Nordic paradox is hard to explain … but I would say that we do not have gender equality, and we clearly still have a problem with the balance of power between men and women.

"We have a problem with violence, men's violence against women and children and men's violence against other men as well."

In Sweden, 46 per cent of women have experienced violence, which is 13 per cent higher than in the EU overall, according to a major 2014 study by the European Centre of Gender Equality.

These figures are 10 years old, but a 2019 European Agency for Fundamental Rights survey also showed the prevalence of physical and sexual-partner violence against women in the EU was substantially higher in the Nordic countries than the continent's average.

It was about 30 per cent in Finland and 29 per cent in Sweden.

Dr Häyrén said the problem had for too long been framed as a "women's issue".

"The good guys are very silent in Sweden and I would say, and we would need them to be a lot more active," she said.

What to say to a victim of intimate partner violence
I fled intimate partner violence. Here's my advice for what to say to support someone going through the same thing.

The EU's main data collection agency says more work is needed to accurately capture information on violence against women, and that it is difficult compare data from different countries.

The EU does track a series of "gender equality" indexes — including statistics on work, money, knowledge, time, power and health — and has identified violence as a future metric.

"People really think that, men and women are equal and we don't need this kind of discussion," said Dr Juha Holma, from the University of Jyväskylä in Finland.

"We don't think that men or other professionals need to help women because they are strong …

"It's a cultural image about how Finnish women manage by themselves."

Despite women experiencing levels of empowerment and advancement in the workplace and society, many Finnish households may operate with different attitudes, Dr Holma suggests.

"We have been looking also at how people who have been violent in their close relationship, with their intimate partner, and it seems that there still are quite traditional gender roles in those families," he said.

"Women and men are still playing very old-fashioned roles sometimes at home."

A lack of public discussion around violence has led to a poor understanding of the issue, which is preventing a pursuit of solutions, Dr Holma said.

"In Finland, [violence against women] it's not topic, a theme in public, in media and so on.

Hulda Hrund Guðrúnar Sigmundsdóttir, another co-lead of the organisation, said she was assaulted by a close family member as a child.

She said growing up felt she could not disclose it as this would bring "shame to her family".

"We are trying to pave the way for our future so that our daughters and our sisters, can be safer than we were because when we were growing up," she said.

"We understand that many countries have it worse than us, but that does not mean that we have to settle."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-19/why-nordic-paradox-means-womens-equality-doesnt-equal-safety/103842754

**************************************

Sunsetting Section 230 is an attack on free speech and will end the free and open internet as we know it

Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement urging Congress to reject legislation by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) that would sunset Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act:

“Congress is treading into dangerous territory with the announced sunset of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act being considered. Section 230 guarantees free speech on the internet. Without it, old-style bulletin boards like Free Republic and other alternative voices would have never been allowed to exist in the first place.

“Section 230 allows interactive computer services including e-commerce stores and other small businesses to operate without fear of liability from their user networks collectively consisting of millions of individuals, who also can freely post content, products and communicate with their peers. This is essential infrastructure for interstate commerce and for the free and open internet that the bill fails to offer any alternative for consideration.

“Before Congress acts, they need to understand that neither Truth Social, X nor Rumble would survive in their current forms if this bill passes. Passage of this legislation would have a chilling effect on free speech by demanding censorship of all non-government-sanctioned points of view.”

https://getliberty.org/2024/05/sunsetting-section-230-is-an-attack-on-free-speech-and-will-end-the-free-and-open-internet-as-we-know-it/

***************************************************

Nakba, where Palestinian victim mythology began

On Wednesday, “Nakba Day” was commemorated around the world with even more vehemence than usual as outpourings of hatred against Israel, sprinkled with ample doses of anti-Semitism, issued from screaming crowds.

What was entirely missing was any historical perspective on the Nakba – that is, the displacement, mainly through voluntary flight, of Palestinians from mandatory Palestine. Stripped out of its broader context, the event was invested with a uniqueness that distorts the processes that caused it and its contemporary significance.

It is, to begin with, important to understand that the displacement of Palestinians was only one facet of the sweeping population movements caused by the collapse of the great European land empires. At the heart of that process was the unravelling of the Ottoman Empire, which started with the Greek war of independence in 1821 and accelerated during subsequent decades.

As the empire teetered, religious conflicts exploded, forcing entire communities to leave. Following the Crimean War of 1854-56, earlier flows of Muslims out of Russia and its border territories became a flood, with as many as 900,000 people fleeing the Caucasus and Crimea regions for Ottoman territory. The successive Balkan wars and then World War I gave that flood torrential force as more than two million people left or were expelled from their ancestral homes and sought refuge among their co-religionists.

The transfers reshaped the population geography of the entire Middle East, with domino effects that affected virtually every one of the region’s ethnic and religious groups.

The formation of new nation-states out of what had been the Ottoman Empire then led to further rearrangements, with many of those states passing highly restrictive nationality laws in an attempt to secure ethnic and religious homogeneity.

Nothing more starkly symbolised that quest for homogeneity than the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations signed on January 30, 1923. This was the first agreement that made movement mandatory: with only a few exceptions, all the Christians living in the newly established Turkish state were to be deported to Greece, while all of Greece’s Muslims were to be deported to Turkey. The agreement, reached under the auspices of the League of Nations, also specified that the populations being transferred would lose their original nationality along with any right to return, instead being resettled in the new homeland.

Underlying the transfer was the conviction, articulated by French prime minister (and foreign minister) Raymond Poincare, that “the mixture of populations of different races and religions has been the main cause of troubles and of war”, and that the “unmixing of peoples” would “remove one of the greatest menaces to peace”.

That the forced population transfers, which affected about 1.5 million people, imposed enormous suffering is beyond doubt. But they were generally viewed as a success. Despite considerable difficulties, the transferred populations became integrated into the fabric of the recipient communities – at least partly because they had no other option. At the same time, relations between Turkey and Greece improved immensely, with the Ankara Agreements of 1930 inaugurating a long period of relative stability.

The result was to give large-scale, permanent population movements, planned or unplanned, a marked degree of legitimacy.

Thus, the formation of what became the Irish Republic was accompanied by the flight of Protestants to England and Northern Ireland, eventually more than halving, into an insignificant minority, the Protestant share of the Irish state’s population; that was viewed as easing the tensions that had so embittered the Irish civil war.

It is therefore unsurprising that further “unmixing” was seen by the allies in World War II as vital to ensuring peace in the post-war world. In a statement later echoed by Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill made this explicit in 1944, telling the House of Commons he was “not alarmed by the prospect of the disentanglement of populations, nor even by these large transferences, which are more possible in modern conditions than they ever were before”.

The immediate effect, endorsed as part of the Potsdam Agreements and implemented as soon as the war ended, was the brutal expulsion from central and eastern Europe of 12 million ethnic Germans whose families had lived in those regions for centuries. Stripped of their nationality and possessions, then forcibly deported to a war-devastated Germany, the refugees – who received very little by way of assistance – gradually merged into German society, though the scars took decades to heal.

Even more traumatic was the movement in 1947 of 18 million people between India and the newly formed state of Pakistan.

As Indian novelist Alok Bhalla put it, India’s declaration of independence triggered the subcontinent’s sudden descent into “a bestial world of hatred, rage, self-interest and frenzy”, with Lord Ismay, who witnessed the process, later writing that “the frontier between India and Pakistan was to see more tragedy than any frontier conceived before or since”. Yet in the subcontinent too, and especially in India, the integration of refugees proceeded to the point where little now separates their descendants from those of the native born.

All that formed the context in which the planned partition of Palestine was to occur. The 1937 Peel Commission, which initially proposed partition, had recommended a mandatory population exchange but the entire issue was ignored in UN Resolution 181 that was supposed to govern the creation of the two new states.

When a majority of the UN General Assembly endorsed that resolution on November 29, 1947, the major Zionist forces reluctantly accepted the proposed partition, despite it being vastly unfavourable to them. But the Arab states not only rejected the plan, they launched what the Arab League described as “a war of extermination” whose aim was to “erase (Palestine’s Jewish population) from the face of the earth”. Nor did the fighting give any reason to doubt that was the Arabs’ goal.

At least until late May 1948, Jewish prisoners were invariably slaughtered. In one instance, 77 Jewish civilians were burned alive after a medical convey was captured; in another, soldiers who had surrendered were castrated before being shot; in yet another, death came by public decapitation. And even after the Arab armies declared they would abide by the Geneva Convention, Jewish prisoners were regularly murdered on the spot.

While those atrocities continued a longstanding pattern of barbarism, they also reflected the conviction that unrestrained terror would “push the Jews into the sea”, as Izzedin Shawa, who represented the Arab High Committee, put it.

A crucial element of that strategy was to use civilian militias in the territory’s 450 Arab villages to ambush, encircle and destroy Jewish forces, as they did in the conflict’s first three months.

It was to reduce that risk that the Haganah – the predecessor of the Israel Defence Force – adopted the Dalet plan in March 1948 that ordered the evacuation of those “hostile” Arab villages, notably in the surrounds of Jerusalem, that posed a direct threat of encirclement. The implementation of its criteria for clearing villages was inevitably imperfect, but the Dalet plan neither sought nor was the primary cause of the massive outflow of Arab refugees that was well under way before it came into effect.

Nor was the scale of the outflow much influenced by the massacres committed by Irgun and Lehi – small Jewish militias that had broken away from the Haganah – which did not loom large in a prolonged, extremely violent, conflict that also displaced a very high proportion of the Jewish population.

Rather, three factors were mainly involved. First, the Muslim authorities, led by the rector of Cairo’s Al Azhar Mosque, instructed the faithful to “temporarily leave the territory, so that our warriors can freely undertake their task of extermination”.

Second, believing that the war would be short-lived and that they could soon return without having to incur its risks, the Arab elites fled immediately, leaving the Arab population leaderless, disoriented and demoralised, especially once the Jewish forces gained the upper hand.

Third and last, as Benny Morris, a harsh critic of Israel, stresses in his widely cited study of the Palestinian exodus, “knowing what the Arabs had done to the Jews, the Arabs were terrified the Jews would, once they could, do it to them”.

Seen in that perspective, the exodus was little different from the fear-ridden flights of civilians discussed above. There was, however, one immensely significant difference: having precipitated the creation of a pool of 700,000 Palestinian refugees, the Arab states refused to absorb them.

Rather, they used their clout in the UN to establish the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, which became a bloated, grant-funded bureaucracy whose survival depended on endlessly perpetuating the Palestinians’ refugee status.

In entrenching the problem, the UN was merely doing the bidding of the Arab states, which increasingly relied on the issue of Palestine to convert popular anger at their abject failures into rage against Israel and the West. Terminally corrupt, manifestly incapable of economic and social development, the Arab kleptocracies elevated Jew-hatred into the opium of the people – and empowered the Islamist fanaticism that has wreaked so much harm worldwide.

Nor did it end there. Fanning the flames of anti-Semitism, the Arab states proceeded to expel, or force the departure of, 800,000 Jews who had lived in the Arab lands for millennia, taking away their nationality, expropriating their assets and forbidding them from ever returning to the place of their birth. Those Jews were, however painfully, integrated into Israel; the Palestinian refugees, in contrast, remained isolated, subsisting mainly on welfare, rejected by countries that claimed to be their greatest friends. Thus was born the myth of the Nakba.

That vast population movements have inflicted enormous costs on those who have been ousted from their homes is undeniable. Nor have the tragedies ended: without a murmur from the Arab states, 400,000 Palestinians were expelled from Kuwait after the first Gulf War, in retaliation for the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s support of Saddam Hussein. More recently, Myanmar has expelled 1.2 million Rohingya.

But the greatest tragedy associated with the plight of the Palestinians is not the loss of a homeland; over the past century, that has been the fate of tens of millions. Rather, it is the refusal to look forward rather than always looking back, an attitude encapsulated in the slogan “from the river to the sea”.

That has suited the Arab leaders, but it has condemned ordinary Palestinians to endless misery and perpetual war. Until that changes, the future will be a constant repetition of a blood-soaked past.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/nakba-where-palestinian-victim-mythology-began/news-story/0cc23749567bd1dcbfa236600e0482b2

******************************************************

DEI Hits the VA: Biden's Veterans Affairs Department Offers Race-Based Training Programs That Exclude White Vets

The programs are taking place in at least four states, a Washington Free Beacon review of online offerings found.

In Battle Creek, Mich., for example, the VA offers a "BIPOC Support Group," an "8-week curriculum designed to provide support for Veterans that identify as people of color/BIPOC, or as multiracial or biracial," according to a program description. The Battle Creek VA also offers a "Race-Based Stress/Trauma and Empowerment" program, a "weekly group, tailored to our Veterans of color, to address race-based stress and trauma in a safe and validating environment."

In Long Beach, Calif., the VA also offers a "Race-Based Stress/Trauma Empowerment Group," which it says is for "Veterans who identify as BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and who are interested in addressing issues of race-based stress, trauma, resilience, and empowerment." A similar program in Palo Alto, Calif., invites "Women Veterans of color" to join a "10-week group to explore [the] impact of racism on your well-being."

In Minneapolis, meanwhile, a VA-sponsored "Black Veterans peer support group" welcomes "all Veterans who self-identify as Black" to learn "skills that help protect against the negative impact of racial stress and trauma by increasing feelings of belongingness, connectedness to racial/ethnic identity and empowerment." And the VA's Central Ohio Health Care System advertises a "Minority Stress & Empowerment" group, an eight-week series "open to Black, Indigenous and all Veterans of color who are interested in addressing race-based stress and trauma."

Under Biden, the federal government has made "equity" a guiding principle thanks to a June 2021 executive order instructing agencies to beef up their diversity programming. "Such training programs," the order said, "should enable Federal employees, managers, and leaders to have knowledge of systemic and institutional racism and bias" as well as an "increased understanding of implicit and unconscious bias."

In other settings, however, race-based offerings have landed private entities in hot water. Last year, amid legal scrutiny, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer quietly amended a fellowship program to remove a provision that barred whites and Asians from applying. Now, University of San Diego law professor and U.S. Commission on Civil Rights member Gail Heriot is expressing similar concern over the VA's programs.

"It seems like every time you turn around there's another race-exclusive government program of dubious constitutionality and legality," Heriot told the Free Beacon. "Race exclusivity should raise red flags. Yet for the past four years, we've been seeing more and more of this kind of thing."

The VA did not respond to a request for comment.

Agency officials have discussed their "equity" offerings on the VA's Ending Veteran Homelessness podcast. Communications official Shawn Liu said the department began "a lot of our racial equity work" in the spring of 2021, around when Biden issued his executive order on diversity. He said the race-based offerings prompted internal pushback, which he dismissed, arguing that "treating everybody the same might not be enough."

"I remember early on, I want to say spring 2021, especially when we were starting to launch a lot of our racial equity work within the Homeless Programs Office, that was a pretty common bit of feedback," Liu said during a February podcast episode. "I would probably also categorize it as a little bit of criticism, right? Which was very well meaning, you know, dedicated staff who were grappling with this idea that the values that were instilled in them were you treat everybody the same, right? That discrimination is bad and you treat everybody the same. And if you treat everybody the same, that's the morally righteous thing to do."

"And those folks who had that feedback … you could see in like real time," Liu went on, "they were kind of grappling with that concept because in many ways what we're talking about today is, number one, providing tailored different solutions for different things, but also this understanding that because people are situated in society differently, they come from different barriers, they come from different challenges."

VA Veteran Justice Programs national training director Matthew Stimmel, who was also on the podcast, agreed.

"I think we can treat all veterans the same, and we should in terms of the amount of respect and dignity and compassion that we show them," he said. "But that doesn't mean we have to just blanketly offer the same exact services in the same exact way to everyone, as a matter of fairness."

Stimmel also serves as an assistant professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Both Liu and Stimmel forwarded Free Beacon requests for comment to the VA's public affairs office, which didn't respond.

The VA has a history of implementing left-wing cultural initiatives under Biden.

In 2021, internal agency training included the "genderbread" diagram, which is also featured in some elementary school curricula. The diagram points to the brain, heart, and pelvic area of a gingerbread "person" to distinguish "gender identity," "sexual orientation," and "biological sex," respectively. The full body of the gingerbread "person" represents its "gender expression," the diagram says.

https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/dei-hits-the-va-bidens-veterans-affairs-department-offers-race-based-training-programs-that-exclude-white-vets

******************************************************

Homelessness Surging in Blue City Despite Doling Out Hundreds of Millions

The number of homeless people in San Francisco jumped compared to two years ago, despite the city spending hundreds of millions of dollars to address the issue, city data shows.

The total number of homeless people in San Francisco rose 7% to 8,328 in a one-night measurement in January 2024 compared to the same in 2022, reversing the 3.5% decline recorded from 2019 to 2022, according to the city’s Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. Funding for homelessness from the city increased to $676 million in the 2022-23 fiscal year, up from $284 million in 2018-19, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Despite the total number of homeless people rising, the number of unsheltered people fell 1% in January compared to the same time in 2022 as the city prioritizes providing housing, increasing the number of beds available by 28% since 2019, according to the department. The number of people living in their vehicles in January has jumped 37% since 2022, and the number of people living in shelters has spiked 39%.

“We are working every day to move people off our streets and into shelter, housing, and care,” San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in a press release following the survey. “This is safer and healthier for people on our streets, and it is better for all of us that want a cleaner and safer San Francisco. Our City workforce is dedicated to making a difference, and we will keep working to get tents off our streets, bring people indoors, and change the conditions in our neighborhoods.”

Breed is facing a tough reelection bid coming up in November later this year, holding just a slim lead over her more moderate opponents, according to The San Francisco Standard. The mayor’s unfavorability numbers are currently high and could rise higher if homelessness remains an issue.

San Francisco had a smaller jump in homelessness than the state of California as a whole, which had a 20% increase in the total number of homeless people compared to 2019, according to the department. California voters narrowly approved $6.4 billion in funding across the state for the construction of housing and treatment beds to accommodate homeless people with mental illnesses.

The increase in funding for homelessness follows a new business tax that was approved by San Francisco voters in 2018 and is specifically designed to provide funding for new housing units, rental subsidies, and mental health services, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. An individual or family needs to earn $51.25 per hour to afford a one-bedroom apartment in the city.

To address low housing availability and high costs, Breed has launched an initiative called “Housing for All” that aims to build 82,000 new homes over the next eight years through expediting housing approvals, reforming housing regulations and more. The city approved just seven new housing permits in the first two months of 2024, well behind what it would need to reach its goal.

There were just 2,024 new housing units built in all of 2024 in the city, the worst gain in a decade and a 30% drop from the year before, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. High interest rates and elevated construction costs are among the reasons for the slow growth.

San Francisco has relied heavily on nonprofits to combat homelessness despite concerns about how effectively the funding is being used, with the city’s attorney in early May accusing one nonprofit, the Providence Foundation, of stealing $100,000 of public money meant to address the issue. The Providence Foundation has received around $100 million in contracts from the city.

The city has faced recent criticism for piloting a “Managed Alcohol Program” costing $5 million that gives free beer, wine, and vodka to the homeless to help recovering alcoholics.

Breed’s office deferred the Daily Caller News Foundation to previous statements.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/18/homelessness-surging-in-blue-city-despite-doling-out-hundreds-of-millions/

****************************************

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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

***************************************

Should You Believe Faulty U.S. Crime Stats or Your Own Lying Eyes? It's a Tough Call

Americans can be forgiven for suffering from whiplash regarding law and order.

In recent weeks the Biden administration and many news outlets, including USA Today and The Hill, have touted declines in violent crime statistics to argue that America is becoming a safer place.

“Right now, with 2023 figures and early 2024, the trends are all pointing down, in a positive direction,” Jeff Asher, whose New Orleans-based AH Datalytics is developing his own “Real-Time Crime Index,” told RealClearInvestigations.

Conservative outlets, including City Journal and the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, assert that minor declines in headline grabbers like homicides fail to capture what is really happening in the U.S.

From 2017 to 2019, the U.S. had an average of 16,641 homicides a year. In 2021 and 2022, however, the country saw considerably more bloodshed, with an average of more than 22,000 annual homicides. Even if the 2023 number drops slightly, it will still represent a large increase over the recent past, before the pandemic and racial upheaval set in motion in 2020.

Many criminologists say this illlustrates one of the problems with the official numbers that are at the center of public debate: They give a distorted impression of true levels of crime. They note that crime stats have become notoriously incomplete in recent years. In some years many big cities did not report their numbers to the FBI, and there are such wide discrepancies in these tallies that the picture they provide has more blur than clarity.

Declining arrest rates and slowing police response times to 911 calls also help explain why polls show Americans believe crime is rising. The experts say the numbers only give some sense of lawbreaking, while most Americans – the vast majority of whom are not crime victims in a given year – are influenced by their largely media-driven perception of whether society feels orderly.

“There are social media videos of people walking into a CVS and walking out with a shopping cart full and there seems to be no consequences – that’s part of the problem,” said Jay Town, former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. “And then you have people arrested a dozen times and they’re out with no bail. There are no consequences, and thus there are more criminals in the street.”

Americans may fall back on such perceptions in part because the official reports are incomplete and rife with error. “I don’t think with any crime statistics we can ever be precise,” said Asher.

For decades, the traditional gold standard for criminologists was the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, annual compilations by the Bureau of stats provided to it by state and local law enforcement agencies. The FBI’s data, which currently show declines in several criminal categories, especially homicide, provide the basis for many of the stories arguing that, in terms of crime, the U.S. situation is improving.

But the FBI statistics aren't what they used to be, according to several criminologists who pointed to gaps in coverage and apparent errors. The problem began in 1988 when the bureau began to move toward a complex new system of reporting – the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). It promised to provide more comprehensive detail and enable authorities to pinpoint high-crime areas, criminals, and victims more accurately.

But the transition proved to be a herculean task, so much so that the FBI allowed departments to delay their full adherence to the program even after the feds doled out $120 million to agencies to assist with compliance. Still, in 2020, 2021 and 2022, either all or some of the biggest police forces in the U.S. -- New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles -- did not provide data.

There have also been problems with the data that was submitted, including the news in 2022 of major problems with the St. Louis Police Department data, and more recent revelations that figures for sexual crimes provided by the New Orleans Police Department were wrong.

In Baltimore, the Police Department and various news reports put the total for 2022 homicides between 332 and 336, but the FBI’s dataset puts the number at 272. Baltimore police officials did not reply to RCI’s inquiries about the wide spread in the reported numbers, and if anyone in the city’s police department had brought the matter to the FBI’s attention.

The Baltimore department acknowledges its numbers may not be the same as those it submits to the FBI, but states on its website that “any comparisons are strictly prohibited.”

Similarly, the police departments in Milwaukee and Nashville did not respond to questions about divergences between their stats on robberies and those from the federal bureau. Milwaukee police reported a 7 percent increase in robberies in 2023, but the FBI recorded a 13 percent decline.

An FBI spokesperson told RCI, “It is the responsibility of each state UCR [Uniform Crime Reports] program or contributing law enforcement agency to submit accurate statistics and correct existing data that are in error.”

Criminologists cite other discrepancies in the official measurements they use to assess the situation. While FBI stats show declines in violent categories, the Department of Justice’s survey reports more people saying they have been victims of such crimes. The Centers for Disease Control figures for homicides, which have long moved in the same direction as the FBI’s, started exceeding the FBI’s in 2020 and the gap has widened since then.

“I wouldn’t say the FBI is cooking the books, but that the data they are putting out is half-baked,” said Sean Kennedy, the executive director of the Coalition for Law, Order and Security, which has pushed back against recent media reports that crime is falling noticeably in the U.S.

“So it’s not a conspiracy but a rush job, and it’s giving people a false picture,” he told RCI. “They infer something is true, and then because it’s politically expedient they don’t bother correcting it.”

A Sharp Decline in Arrests

Some criminologists say there is another, hidden dynamic within the crime statistics that helps explain why most Americans think crime is on the rise – the dramatic decline in arrests. Scouring FBI data, John Lott, the founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center, found that arrests for reported violent crimes in major cities fell 20 percent in 2022, from 42.5 percent in 2019 – the year before the COVID pandemic and BLM protests in response to George Floyd’s death while in police custody.

The percentage of murder and rapes cleared by arrests fell to 40.6 percent from 67.3 percent in those years; for rapes from 33.8 percent to 17.4 percent, and arrests for reported property crimes in major cities dropped to 4.5 percent in 2022 from 11.6 percent in 2019.

It is not clear how much of this decline is due to reductions in the size of many departments – New Orleans, for example, reportedly lost 20% of its force between 2020 and 2022.

“There are lots of issues here, and I’m in disbelief about some of them,” said Lott. “It’s mind-boggling to me – we already know many crimes have always been underreported and now it seems to be, ‘Why bother reporting a property crime’ to the police? The bottom line is our law enforcement system seems in some ways to be falling apart, especially in the big cities.”

The plummeting arrest rates contribute to the general sense of lawlessness, a feeling compounded by surging increases in response times to calls. Comparing data for 15 law enforcement agencies from 2019-2022, Asher found only one city – Cincinnati – that reduced its response time, and that by 0.7 minutes. In New Orleans, the average response time nearly doubled, from 50.8 to 145.8 minutes, while Nashville saw a rise from 44.2 minutes to 73.8 minutes and New York City a 33-minute increase.

Some cities are even worse.

“If it’s not a shooting or a stabbing we’re up to about two hours for responding to property calls,” Jared Wilson, president of the San Diego Police Officers Association, told RCI. “As a result, we’ve seen a significant problem with reporting of crime right now.”

Wilson said auto thefts better capture the state of crime and perceptions of it: As thefts of essential registered property, they tend to be reported. In San Diego, Wilson said, those have risen year-to-year, with a whopping 27% jump in 2021, all of which contribute to people’s perception of increased criminal activity.

Betsy Branter Smith, a retired cop and spokeswoman for the National Police Association, said such issues contribute to a deteriorating relationship between citizens and the police. That unraveling, along with increasing hostility between police departments and district attorneys in some big cities like Philadelphia and Los Angeles, has made some cops less pro-active on the job.

“It’s not so much hostility’’ toward cops, but frustration and resignation,” she said. “It’s time-consuming to be a crime victim, and if prosecutors aren’t going to do anything, why report it?”

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/05/14/should_you_believe_faulty_us_crime_stats_or_your_own_lying_eyes_its_a_tough_call_1031187.html?mc_cid=08e2e7db94&mc_eid=012a6b3e32

**********************************************

Behind-Scenes Recordings Reveal What Top Gender Doctors Really Think About Sex-Change Procedures

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, or WPATH, is the leading authority in the field of gender medicine. Its guidance is routinely used by top medical associations in the U.S. and abroad, while its standards of care inform insurance companies’ approach to coverage policies.

But behind closed doors, top WPATH doctors discussed, and at times seemed to challenge, the organization’s own published guidelines for sex-change procedures and acknowledged pushing experimental medical interventions that can have devastating and irreversible complications, according to exclusive footage obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

WPATH published highly influential clinical guidance called “Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8,” or SOC 8, which recommends the use of invasive medical interventions such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and sex change surgeries, calling them “safe and effective.”

The Daily Caller News Foundation filed a series of public records requests to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s SOC 8 co-authors who are employed at taxpayer-funded institutions, making their emails subject to open records laws.

Buried in more than 100 pages of responsive records from the University of Nevada was a series of emails sent in 2022 among prominent WPATH members and leaders, including WPATH Global Education Institute Co-Chair Gail Knudson.

In one email, Knudson sent a colleague the link to a folder containing nearly 30 hours of recordings from WPATH’s Global Education Institute summit in September 2022 in Montreal, Canada, which included sessions on mental health, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-change surgery.

These sessions provided WPATH members with in-depth education on the clinical application of topics addressed in the SOC 8 treatment guidelines. However, the footage reveals WPATH-affiliated doctors advocating that children undergo risky sex-change procedures and even pushing for these treatments for patients struggling with severe mental health issues.

Several sessions were dedicated exclusively to treating children and included recommendations for minors to receive puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.

For instance, WPATH guidance recommends addressing a patient’s mental health issues before giving him or her sex-change medical interventions. However, in one recorded session, a WPATH faculty member and gender doctor claimed that mental health issues don’t necessarily affect a patient’s ability to receive cross-sex hormones.

In another video, a doctor told attendees that children should be informed that cross-sex hormones will likely make them infertile. but admitted that he would prescribe them anyway if a child says he or she wants the treatment, regardless of future consequences.

A surgeon euphemistically referred to a phalloplasty procedure, a surgical series that includes obliterating the vaginal cavity and creating a fake penis with harvested tissue, as an “adventure” for young people. He did this despite later admitting that those same procedures “definitely” will have “complications,” such as permanent issues with bladder function and tissue death.

One physician called the entire field of cross-sex hormones “off-label,” referring to the concept of drugs being used for alternative purposes than what they were approved for. The doctor went on to say that female patients might actually appreciate drug side effects that cause them to lose hair, because they’d look “more like men.”

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says that when it approves a drug, health care providers generally may prescribe that drug for an unapproved use, or off-label, when “they judge that it is medically appropriate for their patient.”

In several other videos, doctors argued in favor of transitioning patients who experience psychotic episodes. One admitted that some of his patients with schizophrenia have to be careful how much cross-sex hormones they take or they can’t “keep the voices down.”

The Daily Caller News Foundation consulted medical professionals from respected organizations, such as Do No Harm, who all argued that the comments from WPATH-affiliated doctors show that the transgender medical industry doesn’t have patients’ best interests at heart.

While the average person, nationally and internationally, likely never has heard of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the modern medical industry is deeply tied to the organization and relies on it to dictate the standards of care for transgender medicine.

WPATH’s guidelines are cited as criteria for obtaining insurance coverage by both private insurance companies and tax-funded insurance plans, positioning them as a lynchpin of the sex reassignment industry.

Additionally, WPATH’s guidelines help inform policy statements from major medical and professional organizations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the Endocrine Society.

The American Academy of Pediatrics is being sued by Isabelle Ayala, a former patient who was medically transitioned as a child and claims she was rushed through sex-change medical procedures.

There’s been an explosion in the number of young people, including children, being put on hormones and puberty blockers and getting sex-change surgeries, according to a study published in August 2023 by the JAMA Network.

This surge has been fueled, in part, by groups such as Planned Parenthood, which distributes cross-sex hormones to patients as young as 16. Planned Parenthood saw a roughly 125% jump in the number of transgender services it provided between 2020 and 2022.

Twenty-three states, however, have enacted legislation preventing doctors from performing sex-change surgeries on minors amid backlash from concerned parents and doctors who don’t subscribe to the WPATH-endorsed “gender-affirming care” model. Gender-affirming care is another euphemism used by medical professionals to describe the idea that doctors should affirm a patient’s wish to live as the opposite biological sex through social transitioning, hormone therapy, and even surgery.

The SOC 8 was released just days ahead of the 2022 symposium and contained several significant changes to how doctors and medical institutions implemented transgender medical treatment. For instance, WPATH removed minimum age requirements that established when a child can or should receive transgender medical services such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and sex-reassignment surgeries.

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s previous guidelines recommended that hormone therapy be given once a patient was over the age of 16, but the updated version removed this barrier and suggests hormone therapy begin at the first signs of sexual maturity.

The videos obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation give the first glimpse at how doctors and mental health professionals discussed implementing the new guidelines. To highlight the most significant portions of the content obtained in the records requests, the foundation has decided to publish a series of articles collectively called “The WPATH Tapes.”

Following this release, the Daily Caller News Foundation intends to publish all of the videos in their entirety to provide the public with necessary information about WPATH’s approach to medical care and shine a light on an influential organization that has largely remained anonymous until now.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/15/the-wpath-tapes-behind-scenes-recordings-reveal-what-top-gender-doctors-really-think-about-sex-change-procedures/

***********************************************

Biden DOJ ‘Unjustly’ Persecuting Pro-Lifers, ‘Turning a Blind Eye’ to Leftist Crime

Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee accused President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice on Tuesday of “unjustly” persecuting pro-life activists exposing the “horrors of abortion.”

“The Biden administration is using the FACE Act to give pro-life activists and senior citizens lengthy prison terms for non-violent offenses and protests—all while turning a blind eye to the violence, arson, and riots conducted on behalf of ‘approved’ leftist causes,” Lee told The Daily Signal in a Tuesday statement.

The senator added: “Unequal enforcement of the law is a violation of the law, and men and women who try to expose the horrors of abortion are being unjustly persecuted for their motivations.”

Lee’s comments come after news that pro-life activist Lauren Handy has been sentenced on DOJ charges to almost five years in prison for attempting to stop abortions of unborn babies from taking place at a Washington, D.C., abortion clinic.

Handy will spend 57 months in prison and is the first person sentenced for violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a 1994 law that supposedly protects both abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers, but has been heavily enforced by Biden’s DOJ against pro-lifers since the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.

Those efforts are led by Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, who recently admitted following a report from The Daily Signal that she hid an arrest and its subsequent expungement from investigators when she was confirmed to her Justice Department post.

The president’s critics have accused Biden and the DOJ of weaponizing the FACE Act against pro-lifers while failing to charge pro-abortion criminals for the hundreds of attacks on pregnancy resource centers since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating Roe would soon be overturned.

Some, among them Lee and Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, have called for the repeal of the FACE Act.

“Today’s outrageous 57-month sentence for a progressive pro-life activist is a stark reminder: Biden’s DOJ is fully weaponized against pro-life American citizens, and they are using the FACE Act to do it,” said Roy in a statement following Handy’s sentence. “House Republicans should defund the DOJ weaponization, repeal the FACE Act, and stand up for the freedoms that we campaign on.”

Handy is being represented by lawyers with the Thomas More Society, which said Tuesday that it is preparing to proceed with an appeal seeking to overturn her conviction and challenge the constitutionality of the FACE Act.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/14/mike-lee-biden-doj-unjustly-persecuting-pro-lifers-turning-a-blind-eye-to-leftist-crime/

************************************************

Australian Leftist PM says Leftist senator Fatima Payman’s use of Israel ‘genocide’, ‘river to the sea’ was inappropriate

Another Muslim bigot

Anthony Albanese says it’s “not appropriate” a WA Labor senator used a controversial chant when she broke ranks with the government’s position on Palestine, as the Coalition heaps on pressure on him to “take action” against her.

Fatima Payman on Wednesday accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, and questioned how many more deaths would be needed before the Prime Minister declared “enough”.

In a significant split from the Labor Party’s position, the Muslim senator called for sanctions and divestment from Israel, and declared “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – a phrase Mr Albanese has previously condemned as a violent opposition to a two-state solution.

She said the phrase was a call for “freedom from the occupation, freedom from the violence, and freedom from the inequality”.

Senator Payman criticised Mr Albanese and her Labor colleagues for failing to condemn Israel and “stand up for what is right”, accusing her government’s leaders of making “performative gestures” while defending the ­“oppressor’s right to oppress”.

Mr Albanese on Thursday morning was asked if he had spoken to Senator Payman since she made the comments, to which he gave an emphatic “no”.

He said he did speak to her regularly, as he does all his Labor Party colleagues, and their last conversation was “very pleasant”.

But he said her use of the politically charged phrase was “not appropriate” and did not reflect the Labor Party’s position.

“What is appropriate is a two-state solution, where both Israelis and Palestinians have the right to live in security and peace and prosperity,” he told ABC Radio.

“It is not in the interests of either Israelis or Palestinians to advocate there just be one state. That is a forerunner of enormous conflict and grief.”

Coalition home affairs spokesman James Paterson said the Prime Minister “has to take action”, noting Senator Payman had “laid down the gauntlet” to Mr Albanese.

“She’s used a phrase the Prime Minister himself has agreed is a violent statement. She’d endorsed the phrase, and in the Prime Minister’s own analysis, people who make this statement are in opposition to a two-state solution,” Senator Paterson told Sky.

“She’s not just undermined decades of bipartisan foreign policy, she’s undermined decades of Labor Party policy.

“The Prime Minister has said this phrase has no place in Australia. Surely he cannot (have) a member of his caucus saying this.”

Senator Payman gave a statement to a small selection of media on Wednesday on Nakba day – the anniversary of Israel’s 1948 establishment – where she acknowledged there was “disillusionment” in the community with the political parties.

“Today, more than ever, is the time to speak the truth – the whole truth – with courage and clarity,” she told SBS News and Capital Brief.

“My conscience has been uneasy for far too long. And I must call this out for what it is. This is a genocide and we need to stop pretending otherwise.”

Mr Albanese said the scenes coming out of Gaza were “very traumatic”, but said Jewish Australians were also experiencing “a lot of trauma” due to rising anti-Semitism.

“People who happen to be Jewish are being held responsible here for the actions of the Netanyahu government. I don’t believe that is appropriate,” he said.

Senator Paterson said Senator Payman’s call for Australia to end trade with Israel especially at a time of rising anti-Semitism would “further undermine and test social cohesion”.

Former Labor minister and ALP Friends of Israel co-convener Mike Kelly labelled Senator Payman’s comments “disappointing” and “completely wrong”, while opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham said the slogan had “no place” being ­uttered by members of the ­government.

Jewish leaders have repeatedly sounded the alarm about the “river to the sea” chant, which they argue calls for the destruction of Israel.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/labor-senator-breaks-ranks-over-israels-genocide/news-story/cf597ea6581533f513a8fca0be0bbc5e

****************************************

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)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

***************************************