Displaying posts published in

March 2019

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Trans ballet dancer Nora Monsecour on Girl: ‘There was always a fascination with what was between my legs’ Eleanor Halls

By on March 18th, 2019

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/trans-ballet-dancer-nora-monsecour-girl-always-fascination-legs/

When Nora Monsecour was 15 and training as a transgender ballerina in Belgium, she decided to join the womens’ pointe class. But her school wouldn’t let her.

Monsecour was transitioning. Having taken puberty blockers at the age of 11, she was halfway through her female hormone replacements, with her sights set on gender reassignment surgery.

And yet, her school principal told Monsecour that she was “going through a phase”. Worse still, the principal blamed Monsecour’s mother, saying she was giving her daughter medication because she’d always wanted a daughter over a son.

Later that year, in 2009, Monsecour left the school. Her story made headlines, prompting aspiring Flemish film director Lukas Dhont, who was only 18, to send her a Facebook message. He wanted to make a documentary about Monsecour’s life. She said no.

A few years later, Dhont asked again, and this time Monsecour reconsidered. If the film was a fictionalised account of her life, rather than a documentary, she would do it. The result was Girl, out now in cinemas, starring 27-year-old breakout actor Victor Polster, a student at the Royal Ballet School of Antwerp, as 15-year-old transgender ballerina Lara.

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

KIA ORA GAZA-AN ANTI-ISRAEL GROUP IN NEW ZEALAND BY DAPHNE ANSON

By on March 18th, 2019

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2019/03/kia-ora-gaza-z-word.html

Kia Ora Gaza Mission is an anti-Israel group in New Zealand led, for want of a better word, by veteran leftwing activist Roger Fowler, an Auckland resident and ‘Freedom Flotilla’ alumnus.

Last year, Dr David Cumin, director of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, reportedly criticised Mr Fowler thus:

‘In April an article about Roger Fowler sought volunteers to violate international law by joining a “flotilla… to break the siege and blockade of Gaza”.

The article failed to mention the United Nations report authored by Sir Geoffrey Palmer that determined the Israeli and Egyptian blockades on Gaza are a “legitimate security measure” due to security threats Israel faces from Gaza and recommended “All humanitarian missions… should do so through established procedures and the designated land crossings”.

Aid is easily distributed to Gaza — there are thousands of truckloads of goods that move from Israel to Gaza each week. Yet a “veteran human rights campaigner” is actively encouraging the exact activity Palmer recommended against.

Hamas has ruled Gaza since just after Israel unilaterally withdrew and forcibly removed all Jews in 2005.

Hamas executes homosexuals and political dissidents, doesn’t allow a free press, and misuses aid for terror.

Yet in a Māori TV interview, Mr Fowler compared Israel — where women and minorities have equal rights and political representation, there is a free press, and world-leading innovation — to Islamic State. He has not condemned Hamas.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Poll: 50 Percent Say Mueller Investigation Is ‘Witch Hunt’ By Mairead McArdle

By on March 18th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/poll-50-percent-say-mueller-investigation-is-witch-hunt/

50 percent of adults surveyed in an astonishing new USA Today/Suffolk University poll say that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation is a “witch hunt” and believe that President Trump has been the target of more investigative scrutiny than other presidents because of his politics.

The poll shows that trust in the president has increased as well. A majority of 52 percent still say they have little or no trust in Trump’s insistence that his campaign did not collude with Russia during the 2016 campaign season, but that number is down from 59 percent in December.
1

Support for impeachment has faltered as well, with 62 percent saying the House should not impeach Trump compared to just 28 percent who want the lower chamber to seriously consider doing so. Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi came out against the idea last week, telling the Washington Post, “Impeachment is so divisive to the country that unless there’s something so compelling and overwhelming and bipartisan, I don’t think we should go down that path, because it divides the country.”

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Manchin Opposes Dem. Bill Prohibiting Transgender Discrimination By Jack Crowe see note please

By on March 18th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/manchin-opposes-dem-bill-prohibiting-transgender-discrimination/

I don’t really get the hoopla about genderalization, but I do admire Joe Manchin who broke with the herd to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh which ensured his nomination….rsk

Senator Joe Manchin (D., W.V.) announced Monday that he will not support the recently introduced Equality Act as it is currently written, breaking from the rest of his caucus in arguing that the legislation, which would prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, will be too difficult to implement.

Senate Democrats on Wednesday re-introduced the bill, which was first introduced in 1974 and would prohibit employers, landlords, school administrators, and others from discriminating against transgender and homosexual Americans. In a statement, Manchin said that he would be open to supporting the bill with some unspecified changes, but could not support it as it stands now.

“I strongly support equality for all people and do not tolerate discrimination of any kind,” the statement read. “No one should be afraid of losing their job or losing their housing because of their sexual orientation. After speaking with local education officials in West Virginia, I am not convinced that the Equality Act as written provides sufficient guidance to the local officials who will be responsible for implementing it, particularly with respect to students transitioning between genders in public schools. I will continue working with the sponsors of the bill to build broad bipartisan support and find a viable path forward for these critical protections so that I can vote in support of this bill.”

Continue reading →
P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Radical Feminist Debunks Transgenderism — Listen Here By Madeleine Kearns

By on March 18th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/sheila-jeffreys-radical-feminist-debunks-transgenderism/

Sheila Jeffreys, an English radical feminist and author, has spent more than forty years fighting for women and girls’ sex-based rights. In 2014 she wrote a book Gender Hurts which controversially rejects the politics of transgenderism. Last week she was in New York with the Women’s Human Rights Campaign helping to launch the Declaration on Women’s Sex-Based rights. Here is a quote from an interview she gave with National Review. You can listen to the full audio of the interview below.

If you look at WPATH [World Psychological Association of Transgender Health] for instance, which is putting out a lot of the ideas and theories about transgenderism, purporting to be a medical organization, you need to look at who the funders are. And of course, it’s drug companies. It’s all the major drug companies. All the major names you’d expect to be there. Because the situation with children is that it’s very, very profitable for drug companies. If the children come in at quite young ages then the drug companies are able to delay puberty with drugs like Lupron… it’s off label. It is not approved for these purposes.

Jeffreys’s insights on transgender politics are fascinating, especially on medical harms for children. Listen here.

Continue reading →
MEDIA Comments turned off

Lacking crowds to protest Tucker Carlson, the left compensates by dressing up as bananas ???By Monica Showalter

By on March 18th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/03/lacking_crowds_to_protest_tucker_carlson_the_left_compensates_by_dressing_up_as_bananas.html

Fox News top host Tucker Carlson has been under fire by far leftists and their media allies for a string of dredged up comments made to some shock-jock dating from before his days at Fox, with big calls for protests and advertiser boycotts. Leading the charge has been the world’s premier slime machine, Media Matters, described in all its glory by Sharyl Attkisson in her book, The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote.

The Soros-bankrolled outfit has made a cacophony about Carlson, amplifying its calls for boycotts and for Fox ending the show through the bullhorns of Carlson’s less successful media rivals.

But something interesting is going on. An initial protest called by Media Matters at Fox News headquarters five days ago drew…”dozens” of protesters. Columbia Journalism Review has an embarrassingly adoring report here.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Va. Public School Indoctrinates 5-Year-Olds About Transgenderism Without Telling Parents Parents were not informed by their public school that their kindergarteners would be read a factually false transgender picture book by a cross-dressing male LGBT activist who calls himself ‘Sarah.’By Casey Chalk

By on March 18th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/18/va-public-school-indoctrinates-5-year-olds-transgenderism-without-telling-parents/

In Arlington County, Virginia, not even kindergarteners are exempt from pro-transgender messaging. So reports The Washington Post, which, earlier this month, featured an article about Ashlawn Elementary School, which honored National “Read Across America Day” by hosting a transgender spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). The spokesperson read a story about a transgender child for a room full of kindergarten children.

Prominent media outlets claimed parents were notified beforehand and allowed opt their children out of the event. But those outlets got the story wrong. The letter, written solely in English despite the school’s sizable non-English-fluent population, nowhere mentions “opting out.”
Media, District Lie About Pro-Transgender Event

“Dozens of kindergarten students” sat cross-legged in openly homosexual teacher Jaim Foster’s classroom at Ashlawn Elementary School on February 28 while HRC representative and ‘“transgender rights advocate” Sarah McBride read them a picture book about a transgender girl. The book was “I Am Jazz” by Jazz Jennings, who talked about being a transgender teen on a TLC show.

Also in attendance was Lily Eskelsen García, president of the National Education Association (NEA), an organization that welcomed LGBT groups to serve as official sponsors of this year’s national reading event.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The FBI Shouldn’t Be Prosecuting College Fraud, It Should Be Rooting Out Its Own Corruption The FBI throwing the book at a bunch of the country’s rich and famous has the added benefit to being a surefire distraction from the ethical hole the FBI has dug itself. By William F. Marshall

By on March 18th, 2019

http://thefederalist.com/2019/03/18/fbi-shouldnt-prosecuting-college-fraud-rooting-corruption/

As we watch the FBI investigate and help bring criminal charges against scores of wealthy individuals for fraud because they paid some middleman to alter their kids’ college entrance exams or bribe college officials to claim their kids were recruited athletes, I can only think: What chutzpah!

The FBI may have committed the grossest fraud in the history of our country by trying to throw a presidential election through a fraudulent counterintelligence investigation of “Trump-Russia collusion,” using the massive legal and technological authorities at their disposal. And we’re supposed to get worked up by The Greatest College Admissions Fraud Scandal of All Time.

Now, let me be clear (to channel my inner Barack Obama). I am not condoning the payment of enormous sums of money by some rich, pompous parents so some guy can pay some obviously ethically challenged university employees to lie about those parents’ kids having athletic talent so they can be admitted to overpriced, overrated colleges. Or paying a guy to have some minions alter answers on college entrance exams.

Ethically, that is clearly wrong. But should it be criminal? I highly doubt it. Very wealthy parents routinely donate huge sums of money to colleges to fund an endowed chair or to construct a new building, often with the expectation that it will improve the chances of their academically mediocre children being admitted to that university. That’s what the alleged scammer-in-chief in this tale, Rick Singer, called the “back door” to admission to elite universities.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

McCain and Trump The late Vietnam War hero made enormous sacrifices for our country. His handling of rumors about the President wasn’t one of them. By James Freeman

By on March 18th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mccain-and-trump-11552939031

President Donald Trump is receiving the usual media condemnation for his weekend tweeting, including for his inaccurate commentary about the late Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) But reporters should acknowledge that an accurate recounting of the facts also shows ample grounds to criticize McCain’s actions during his final years in office.

On Twitter, Mr. Trump criticized McCain for the 2017 breaking of his promise to support repeal of the Affordable Care Act and also for McCain’s role in circulating the unverified Steele dossier with its claims of Trump-Russia collusion.

Mr. Trump tweeted that McCain embraced the dossier before the 2016 election when recent testimony suggests it was just after the election. Also, Mr. Trump claimed on Twitter that McCain finished last in his class at the U.S. Naval Academy when most reports indicate McCain actually finished fifth from the bottom.

Let’s hope for more accuracy from the President in the future, but he and many other Americans seem to have every right to be angry. On Thursday Rowan Scarborough reported for the Washington Times:

Continue reading →
WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Dutch shooting: Utrecht police arrest suspect after three killed

By on March 18th, 2019

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47615231
“Mr Tanis was known to Dutch police, the prosecutor added.A local businessman told BBC Turkish that Gokmen Tanis had previously fought in Russia’s republic of Chechnya.Jihadist groups, including those aligned with the Islamic State (IS) group, have long operated in the region.”He was arrested because of his connections with [IS] but released later,” the businessman told the BBC.”

A man has been arrested following a shooting on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht which left three people dead, police say.

Five others were injured in the incident, and authorities say the attacker’s motive remains unclear.

Gokmen Tanis, a 37-year-old Turkish man, was detained several hours after the attack. It is not yet clear where he was arrested.

The incident sparked a city-wide manhunt and the closure of schools.

What happened on Monday?

At about 10:45 local time (09:45 GMT), police were called to reports of a shooting on board one of the city’s trams at the 24 Oktoberplein junction.

One witness told local media that “a man started shooting wildly”.

Several of the injured are in a critical condition.

Another witness told Dutch public broadcaster NOS that he had helped an injured woman when the tram came to an emergency stop.

Continue reading →