EDUCATION Comments turned off

Parents Revolt Against Trans-Missionaries The destructive fad is off the rails, and every parent must be ready to act By Larry Sand

Posted By on August 31st, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/30/parents-revolt-against-trans-missionaries/

As I noted recently, fads aren’t always harmful things. Nehru jackets, lava lamps, and mood rings may have set you back a few bucks, but that was the extent of it. Some fads, like the various eating disorders that were with us in the 1970s, were recognized as dangerous and treated as mental health problems. Today, though, becoming transsexual is treated simply as a lifestyle decision.

But as Jordan Peterson, a clinical psychologist, points out, “Trans is clearly identifiable as a fad, comparable to preceding fads, or ‘transmissible psychological diseases,’ like outbreaks of alleged multiple personality disorder, hysteria, self-mutilation, and anorexia. The typical victim is a young female with an underlying neurosis that seeks a socially acceptable form of expression. These forms of expression vary with the times.” Peterson goes on to say that the current trans fad will be viewed as we now view lobotomies. 

These days, 5.1% of adults younger than 30 claim to be trans or nonbinary, and this is being used as a political cudgel by many with a nefarious agenda. In reality, a staggering 99.4% of the population does not have the physical traits that cause someone to become transgender, according to UCLA’s Williams Institute, an LGBTQ advocacy group. The 0.6% of the adult population who are truly gender dysphoric – a condition that causes extreme distress – certainly deserve empathy and respect.

Unlike most fads, the trans variety is being promoted in our government schools, and many of them try to conceal the student’s condition from parents. In fact, as of now, 1,040 school districts across the country have adopted policies instructing or encouraging faculty and staff to keep students’ gender identities a secret from parents, according to Parents Defending Education. Those 1,040 districts include 18,335 schools and a whopping 10,712,558 students. It should come as no surprise that 593 of the districts are in California.

To put it bluntly, California is predominantly run by power-hungry extremist individuals who don’t give a rip about parents or the sanctity of the family unit, and it is very difficult for traditional moms and dads to exert power on the state level. Hence, the local school board is the place where parents can find allies in their quest to stave off the trans-missionaries. And in July, Chino Valley Unified School District (CVUSD) in San Bernardino County, with 32,000 K-12 students, got the ball rolling. The district banned Pride flags in the classroom and requires that staff tell parents when a child is using a name or pronouns that don’t match the sex determined at birth.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Here’s This Month’s Trove of Censored COVID Articles By Paula Bolyard

Posted By on August 31st, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/paula-bolyard/2023/08/30/the-covid-19-alarmists-want-you-ignorant-and-obedient-how-will-you-respond-n1722957

As we at PJ Media have been warning for some months, the medical alarmists are warming up their scare machines just as children return to school and the weather is beginning to turn cooler—conveniently, just in time for the 2024 primaries, which are just a few months away. Joe Biden is asking Congress for more money for a new vaccine that will be “necessary,” whatever that means. [Narrator: We know what that means.]

The supercilious mask patrols are dusting off their badges and rattling their swords, eager to lord it over their fellow Americans who refuse to go through life terrified, beaten down, and forced into compliance with draconian COVID-19 measures.

One of the “tells” of the coming lockdowns and vax mandates is that the fact-checkers are escalating their attacks on the free flow of information. They are beginning to enforce The Narrative again to ensure you only get information from Approved Government Agencies. In August alone, PJ Media has had nearly a dozen articles demonetized by Google Ads, meaning that we can’t make any money from the articles, even though we still have to pay the writers for their work.

And not only that, but every time we get demonetized, it goes against our Quality Score, which can mean the difference between decent ads for products you might be interested in and an endless parade of ads for toe fungus or intestinal worm remedies (please, anything but those!).

What kinds of articles are they demonetizing? Here are just a few, with all of them being flagged for “unreliable and harmful claims”:

First up is this article from Robert Spencer calling out California congressional candidate Steve Cox, who said this about anti-vaxxers:

Whenever anyone says “we all die from something” (or a variation thereof) to justify not taking precautions to help protect others in this pandemic, we should be allowed to shoot them. “Why are you crying? We all die from something.” For you, it’s that bullet in your gut. [Emphasis added]

But we’re the bad guys for calling out this thug.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hunter Biden Special Counsel Appointment: A Blatant Act of Corruption Meet David Weiss – a walking conflict of interest. by David Harsanyi

Posted By on August 31st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/hunter-biden-special-counsel-appointment-a-blatant-act-of-corruption/

There’s simply no rational or legal explanation for Attorney General Merrick Garland naming David Weiss a special counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation. Other than the most obvious one, of course.

Garland contends that he’s “confident” the Delaware federal prosecutor “will carry out his responsibility in an evenhanded and urgent manner and in accordance with the highest traditions of this department,” evidence strongly suggests something corrupt. But would anyone genuinely seeking an “evenhanded” inquiry hand the job to a prosecutor who’s already attempted to shower the target of the investigation with an extraordinarily favorable immunity deal? It defies credulity.

And not only was Weiss ready to bequeath Biden with a hall pass on the felony gun and tax charges but also blanket immunity on a slew of serious potential offenses, including failure to register as a foreign agent, evasion, bribery and corruption — and any other entanglements of the Biden family.

That reason alone should be disqualifying.

On more than one occasion during the plea agreement hearing, the incredulous judge, Maryellen Noreika, asked the government if they could provide a single precedent in which immunity was offered for “crimes in a different case.” They could not. One imagines that the prosecutor who signed off an unprecedented sweetheart deal rejected out of hand by a court isn’t in an ideal position to lead a case, much less uphold “the highest traditions” of justice.

Biden’s immunity deal, one Justice Department lawyer explained at the time, was “crafted to suit the facts and circumstances.” Indeed, those circumstances are “Joe” and “Biden.” Any investigation leads to the president answering awkward queries about his role in influence peddling to disreputable players in corrupt regimes. There is no Hunter Biden case without Joe.

Now, on top of this, we learn that the sweetheart plea deal was actually Weiss getting tough on Hunter Biden.

In emails obtained by The New York Times between the (alleged) prosecutors and the Hunter Biden camp, we learn that Weiss was “willing to forgo any prosecution of Mr. Biden at all, and his office came close to agreeing to end the investigation without requiring a guilty plea on any charges.”

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Biden Boosts New Vaccines for ‘Everybody’ Are you ready for Round 2? by Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on August 31st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-boosts-new-vaccines-for-everybody/

“I signed off this morning on a proposal we have to present to Congress a request for additional funding for a new vaccine that is necessary, that works,” said Joe Biden in Lake Tahoe last Friday, August 25. “Tentatively it is recommended that it will likely be recommended everybody get it no matter whether they’ve gotten it before or not.”

The Delaware Democrat, 80, did not reveal why a new vaccine is “necessary,” though the news report cited a new version of the Omicron strain called XBB.1.5. The new vaccine allegedly “works” and Biden was more certain that “everybody get it,”  whatever they had done before. Pfizer, Moderna and Novavax are “working on doses of the XBB update,” but there’s more to it.

On Monday, August 20, an unnamed “White House official” told reporters the Biden administration urges all Americans to get booster shots to counter a new wave of infections. The announcement came days after the Centers for Disease Control announced that it is tracking a new COVID-19 strain, BA.2.86, discovered in Michigan, Denmark, Israel, and the United Kingdom.

No word where BA.2.86 first appeared and how it arrived in Michigan if the point of origin was Israel, Denmark or the UK. Virologists and evolutionary biologists claim that the BA.2.86 variant will have equal or greater “escape” that the Omicron variants.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is tracking the new variants and the White House, according to the unnamed official, will be “encouraging all Americans to get those boosters in addition to flu shots and RSV shots.” If this leaves people confused, they might dial back to Biden’s top medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Dr. Fauci’s bio shows no advanced degrees in biochemistry or molecular biology. Nobel laureate Kary Mullis, inventor of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), was on record that Fauci “doesn’t understand electronic microscopy and he doesn’t understand medicine. He should not be in a position like he’s in.” But he was, heading the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2023.

Dr. Fauci funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to perform gain-of-function research that makes viruses more lethal and transmissible. The WIV, in turn, received shipments of deadly pathogens courtesy of Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, the Chinese national who headed the special pathogens unit at Canada’s National Microbiology Lab. In 2017-2018 alone, Dr. Qiu made at least five trips to the WIV.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Over 1,600 Scientists Sign ‘No Climate Emergency’ Declaration By Naveen Athrappully

Posted By on August 31st, 2023

https://www.theepochtimes.com/science/over-1600-scientists-sign-no-climate-emergency-declaration-5482554?utm_

International scientists have jointly signed a declaration dismissing the existence of a climate crisis and insisting that carbon dioxide is beneficial to Earth, contrary to the popular alarmist narrative.

“There is no climate emergency,” the Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL) said in its World Climate Declaration (pdf), made public in August. “Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.”

A total of 1,609 scientists and professionals from around the world have signed the declaration, including 321 from the United States.The coalition pointed out that Earth’s climate has varied as long as it has existed, with the planet experiencing several cold and warm phases. The Little Ice Age only ended as recently as 1850, they said.

“Therefore, it is no surprise that we now are experiencing a period of warming,” the declaration said.

Warming is happening “far slower” than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The Real Reason Behind the ‘Climate Emergency’ Push

“Climate models have many shortcomings and are not remotely plausible as policy tools,” the coalition said, adding that these models “exaggerate the effect of greenhouse gases” and “ignore the fact that enriching the atmosphere with CO2 is beneficial.” For instance, even though climate alarmists characterize CO2 as environmentally-damaging, the coalition pointed out that the gas is “not a pollutant.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

What if Biden Backs Out of the Race? By Charles Lipson

Posted By on August 31st, 2023

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/08/30/what_if_biden_backs_out_of_the_race_149692.html

President Biden has declared he’s running for a second term, but it’s far from certain he actually will. His infirmity and low poll numbers raise serious doubts. His physical decline shows when he walks or climbs the stairs of Air Force One. His cognitive decline shows when he refuses to hold press conferences or answer even the simplest questions, like how he feels about the devastating fires in Maui. His decline in the public’s estimation shows when pollsters ask Americans how they’re doing. Four out of five answer, “Not good. Not good at all.”

Voters also say they don’t want another general election choice like the last one. So many votes in 2020 were negative ones “against the worse candidate,” not in favor of the better one. They don’t want another grudge match between two unpopular candidates.

Biden’s dismal poll numbers form a somber backdrop for his reelection campaign. That backdrop is even darker now that his health problems are so visible. These mounting problems may not prevent him from running, but they do lessen the chances. True, he keeps saying he is running. But, like all politicians, he may be deceiving the public or himself. The biggest “tell” is that Biden is avoiding the very things active candidates do. He’s not campaigning. He’s not attending a lot of small events with big donors. He’s not running ads. He’s not using the White House’s bully pulpit to address the nation on our challenges and his response to them.

Still, those signs are not definitive. Biden might be lying low because the Republicans are fighting among themselves. Why get in their way? Better to wait until late autumn to ramp up his campaign.

He might be unsure if he really is running, uncertain if he is up to the arduous task, physically and mentally.

Or he might have already decided, privately, that he will not run but is delaying the announcement since it would immediately turn him into a powerless lame duck.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

We Urgently Need New Approaches To Obtain Organs For Transplantation — One Is Available Immediately Henry I. Miller and Sally L. Satel

Posted By on August 31st, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/31/we-urgently-need-new-approaches-to-obtain-organs-for-transplantation-one-is-available-immediately/

Modern medicine has produced many high-tech miracles, among them gene therapy, electrical stimulation devices that restore significant function after traumatic spinal cord injury, and robot-performed surgery.

Another sector of medicine that needs a breakthrough is transplantation of solid organs. More than 100,000 Americans are waiting for transplants, and due to a shortage of hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys, at least 17 die each day. Currently, donor organs – from a living person or a cadaver – must match the recipient’s tissue type and size, and often, the match is not perfect. By one estimate, approximately half of transplanted organs are rejected by recipients’ bodies within 10-12 years. Compounding the shortage, the organ procurement system in the U.S. is inefficient, inconsistent, and unaccountable – in short, a mess that causes preventable deaths.

A high-tech approach that uses organs from genetically engineered pigs for transplantation, xenotransplantation, might both eliminate the need for human organ donors and reduce the risk of tissue rejection.

Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham reported in JAMA Surgery earlier this month that they had transplanted a pig kidney with 10 gene edits into a brain-dead man, where it functioned normally – producing urine and evading rejection – during a seven-day study.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘How to Serve White Victims’ Oakland, Calif., is plagued by crime—and by a district attorney, Pamela Price, determined to divide people by race. By Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on August 31st, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-serve-white-victims-discriminatory-social-workers-training-crime-racism-california-f7fb7502?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

After “antiracist” consultant Karen Fleshman finished a training in Oakland, Calif., she took to Facebook to express pride in her work: “Great afternoon training Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price’s Victim Services team in ‘How to Serve White Victims.’ Madam DA Pamela Price is my shero [sic] and mentor. She is a lifelong warrior for justice with compassion.” A few days later, Ms. Price thanked Ms. Fleshman for her “wisdom and support.”

But when I started asking questions about the June 26 training, suddenly trainer and trainee didn’t want to talk about it. Ms. Fleshman didn’t respond to my queries. Neither did the head of the district attorney’s Victim Services Division, Kristina Molina. Ms. Price’s press officer, Patti Lee, told me that she deals with the press, whereas I, as a think-tank employee, have a “specific point of view.”

The Victim Services Division consists of social workers who help crime victims obtain psychological and financial support. Ms. Fleshman’s PowerPoint slides reinforce the idea of dividing victims by race. (Photos of those slides circulated among Oakland’s law-enforcement community, one of whose members forwarded them to me.)

One PowerPoint panel lists the session’s “Key Takeaways.” Among them: “White people are not entitled to harm you”; “When interacting with white victims, speak up for yourself or for your coworkers”; and “If a white victim continues to harm you, ask that they be transferred.” The slide also asserts that “white victims are entitled to the same compassion and practices as all victims,” but the rest of the slide is at odds with that message. It’s unclear how white crime victims “harm” government employees. Another panel from the training asserts that “White Supremacy Culture” is characterized by “Perfectionism,” “Objectivity,” “Sense of Urgency” and “Individualism.” Perhaps it’s harmful to expect government employees to respond to crimes objectively and urgently.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Human Rights Watch’s Jihad Against Israel by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on August 31st, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19938/human-rights-watch-israel

[T]he report fails to mention that during this period Israel has faced a massive wave of terrorism sponsored and funded by the Iranian regime and its Palestinian terror proxies, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

One of the cases “investigated” by HRW is that of Mahmoud al-Sadi, 17, reportedly killed by Israeli security forces as he walked to school near the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank on November 21, 2022. Notably, the HRW report does not mention why Israeli troops had entered the refugee camp.

The Jenin Battalion terrorists, who are heavily armed, are mostly affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an extremist Islamist organization responsible for countless terrorist attacks that have killed and injured hundreds of Israelis in the past few decades. There is no mention of this militia or its activities in the HRW report. Evidently, HRW does not want to the facts to spoil its effort to slander Israelis by depicting them as child-killers.

While HRW presents al-Sadi as an unarmed teenage boy, Palestinians posted a photo of him carrying a M-16 rifle. Apparently, for HRW such photos, where Palestinian teenagers are featured brandishing weapons and dressed in military outfits, are irrelevant because they do not serve its anti-Israeli propaganda.

Bizarrely, HRW does admit that the remaining three “children” allegedly killed by Israel were involved in terrorist attacks. Yet, as far as HRW is concerned, Israeli soldiers or police have no right to defend themselves when they are attacked with stones, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks. Why? According to the logic of HRW, the perpetrators are “only” teenagers.

Does HRW really expect Israeli soldiers and policemen to ask someone who shoots or throws a Molotov cocktail at them how old they are before firing back to defend themselves?

Instead of denouncing the Palestinians for using children as combatants, HRW is condemning Israel for defending itself against terrorism.

“Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” — The late Robert L. Bernstein, founder and longtime chairman of Human Rights Watch, New York Times, October 19, 2009.

“Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel.” — Robert L. Bernstein, New York Times, October 19, 2009.

“Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” — Robert L. Bernstein, New York Times, October 19, 2009.

“Leaders of Human Rights Watch know that Hamas and Hezbollah chose to wage war from densely populated areas, deliberately transforming neighborhoods into battlefields. They know that more and better arms are flowing into both Gaza and Lebanon and are poised to strike again. And they know that this militancy continues to deprive Palestinians of any chance for the peaceful and productive life they deserve. Yet Israel, the repeated victim of aggression, faces the brunt of Human Rights Watch’s criticism.” — Robert L. Bernstein, New York Times, October 19, 2009.

HRW’s ongoing obsession with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, serves as a reminder that the organization is on the side of the terrorists who appear as committed to killing Americans and other Westerners, as to destroying Israel and killing Jews

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Slavery: The Ostentatious Hypocrisy of BRICS towards Black Africans by Paul Trewhela

Posted By on August 30th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19926/slavery-brics-black-africans

In a garish example of anti-democratic, anti-West, collective state hypocrisy, leaders from the BRICS bloc — representing Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — meeting in South Africa over three days last week invited four Muslim states and two others to join the bloc, while keeping total silence over the racist and Islamist massacre by heavily armed Arab militias of black African civilians being carried out in West Darfur in Sudan over the preceding weeks.

“[A]trocities pile up in Darfur after 100 days of Sudan fighting”, in which “Arab militias are accused of killing lawyers, human rights monitors, doctors and non-Arab tribal leaders”. — Al Jazeera, July 24, 2023.

” [The city of Al-Geneina in West Darfur] has been ethnically cleansed.” — Humanitarian worker, Sky News, broadcasting scenes of thousands of desperate Sudanese refugees displaced in neighbouring Chad, August 17, 2023.

The Africa Defense Forum disclosed on May 16 that Russia’s Wagner group was supervising gold-mining in Darfur, and smuggling nearly $2 billion in gold out of the country.

Yet the “great and the good” — China’s President Xi Jinping, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, with Russian President Vladimir Putin addressing the congregation by video to endorse Russia’s war in Ukraine — made no mention of this genocidal massacre.

Instead, the BRICS leaders invited states with the world’s longest history of enslaving black Africans to join them.

China’s Xinhua news agency reported how Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, who attended the BRICS conference, hailed it as a “commendable step that will facilitate worldwide development while upholding principles of justice.”

Justice? Raisi was deputy prosecutor general in a four-member committee codenamed the “death commission” in Iran in 1988, which was responsible for the executions of thousands of political prisoners who were loyal to a banned opposition movement, “on orders issued by Raisi and his three colleagues.”

Worse, although slavery continued legally in Iran until 1929, “It never went away”. — iranwire.com, April 30, 2020.

The article showed a series of photos of black African slaves in Iran, such as this one from the 1880s. — Denise Hassanzade Ajiri, “The face of African slavery in Qajar Iran – in pictures,” The Guardian, January 14, 2016.

The issue of the enslavement and oppression of black Africans — continuing to this day in Darfur and elsewhere — is an issue suppressed by BRICS.