P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Having a ‘mangina’ is not a human right A ‘nonbinary’ Canadian wants the state to pay for him to have both male and female genitals. Jo Bartosch

Posted By on April 5th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/04/04/having-a-mangina-is-not-a-human-right/

Most men are quite attached to their penises. Even the fellas who tuck theirs into silky ladies’ knickers and ‘identify as women’ rarely actually part with their meat and two veg. So it should come as no surprise that a 33-year-old ‘nonbinary’ man in Ontario, Canada is suing for the right to keep his willy.

No, he is not at risk of some cruel and unusual punishment from the state. KS, as he is referred to in court documents, is actually demanding to undergo a ‘penile-sparing vaginoplasty’. This costly procedure would leave him with intact male genitals alongside a faux vagina. This is apparently so his body can better align with his nonbinary ‘gender identity’.

The Canadian health service has, quite sensibly, refused to pay for KS’s mix-and-match surgery out of the public purse. So he is now suing the government. Bizarrely, this self-absorbed man has not been laughed out of court. Instead, his case is being considered as a matter of human rights.

KS is demanding that the Canadian state pay for him to travel over one thousand miles to a specialist clinic in Austin, Texas where the surgery he wants can be performed. Ontario’s Health Insurance Plan (OHIP) initially denied his request back in 2022, on the grounds that the procedure is experimental and not performed in Canada. Following an appeal from KS, and a counter-appeal from his insurance provider, the decision has landed with Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice, where the case was heard in late February.

Why is KS so persistent? Supposedly, this is a vital treatment. ‘It is very important for [KS] to have a vagina for her [sic] personal interpretation of her gender expression, but she also wishes to maintain her penis’, his doctor wrote in a letter to OHIP. Apparently, this is because KS ‘is transfeminine but not completely on the “feminine” end of the spectrum’. KS himself has gone further by claiming that denying this request amounts to an act of conversion therapy.

It would be easy to laugh off KS’s ludicrous demands for a surgically constructed mangina. But he has good reason to think that his special request might actually be granted. This is the wacky world into which Canada has been led by the trans ideology.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Confronting the Anti-Israel Narrative-Industrial Complex The growing demonization of Israel is not unstoppable. by Lawrence J. Haas

Posted By on April 5th, 2024

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/confronting-anti-israel-narrative-industrial-complex-210394

“Israel has become so demonized” in human rights organizations, says Danielle Haas, former senior editor at Human Rights Watch (HRW), that there’s “no space to see Israelis as victims, or to absorb nuance or voices that challenge their orthodoxies. In a conceptual universe where Israel is an occupier-colonizer-apartheid state, it is a priori the aggressor, regardless of the brutal human-rights abuses it suffers.”

Haas (no relation to me) edited HRW’s annual review of human rights around the world from 2010 to 2023. In a blistering piece for the journal SAPIR, she writes that in human rights organizations, “Israel has become their watchword of outrage, the focus of disproportionate attention, and the note to sound for signaling fealty to a human-rights movement that is increasingly hijacked by politics and dominated by groupthink.”

That’s why, she writes, these organizations have been so anodyne in their response to Hamas’ brutality of October 7, so disinterested in the tunnels it has built “beneath children’s beds,” so skeptical of the proven ties between Hamas and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, so eager to parrot false claims of Israeli brutality in response to October 7, and so reluctant to correct the record later.

From their perch as self-appointed human rights arbiters, these groups play a huge role in shaping public views of the Jewish state. Their reports, tweets, and other utterances are echoed at the United Nations and other global bodies, in leading capitals, through media, on campuses, and in Hollywood—all of it contributing to what one might call a “narrative-industrial complex” that sets and reinforces a narrative about Israel that’s driven by ideology, biased in its conclusions, and disproportionate in its focus.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

European Conservatives: How Has Fossil Fuel Suppression Worked Out For You? Francis Menton

Posted By on April 5th, 2024

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=aba8486254

Throughout the West, the cult of fossil fuel suppression presents itself as an orthodoxy from which no dissent is permitted.

In the U.S., there has been substantial and growing resistance to the enforcement of that orthodoxy, among Republicans in general and particularly from red and energy-producing states. By contrast, in Europe, there has been little push-back. Somewhere along the line, in country after country, the drive for Net Zero carbon emissions got the backing of an effective all-political-party consensus. In a gigantic political miscalculation, many mainstream center-right conservative parties got fully on board. That mistake now looks to destroy several of these parties in the major countries.

From when it was first proposed, Net Zero was something with which no rational right-of-center party should ever have associated itself. Whatever you think about whether carbon emissions from fossil fuels are “warming the planet,” or even causing a “climate crisis,” the proposed solution of building lots of intermittent electricity generation never had any chance of working at reasonable cost. This was always an unproven socialist central-planning scheme that could only succeed in driving up energy costs and impoverishing the population. Such utopian socialist schemes are the business of the left. If center-right political parties have any purpose, it ought to be to stand up against these kinds of schemes, and for the working and middle-class people who stand to be harmed by them.

But that’s not how it has played out. Consider just two of the leading countries, the UK and Germany.

In the UK, the Conservative Party jumped in with both feet to champion the Net Zero agenda. Although the first Climate Act got passed during a Labor government in 2008, in 2019 the Conservatives took the lead to amend that Act to set legally binding targets, and then doubled and tripled down with new targets and mandates. From a January 2023 House of Lords Report:

In 2021, the [Conservative] government set two additional interim targets to run a net zero power system and reduce emissions by 78% by 2035. . . . In the UK, the policy pathway to achieve net zero was launched in the ‘Net zero strategy’, published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in October 2021. Some of the key policies include:

ending the sale of new petrol and diesel cars

promoting the use of sustainable aviation fuel

investing in clean electricity and hydrogen production

providing funding for households to switch to low-carbon heating systems

incentivising farmers to use low-carbon farming methods

planning to triple the rate of woodlands creation in England

To the surprise of no one who pays attention, the price of energy for UK consumers has soared.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Gaza War at Six Months: Israel Increasingly Isolated But Resilient The Israel-Hamas War is in a very different phase than it was when it began six months ago. By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on April 5th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/05/the-gaza-war-at-six-months-israel-increasingly-isolated-but-resilient/

In the aftermath of the horrific October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, the world united behind Israel. President Joe Biden pledged America’s rock-solid support, sent two aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean, and visited Israel to express America’s support for the Israeli people. There was remarkable political unity in Israel as an Israeli war cabinet was formed on October 11, 2023, and divisive domestic political issues, such as reforming Israel’s Supreme Court, were set aside.

Six months later, Israel’s situation is very different. War fatigue has undermined support for Israel’s efforts to destroy Hamas, especially in Western countries. Although most Israelis reportedly support the war, there have been growing protests to end it so the hostages taken by Hamas can be freed. There also have been efforts to undermine the Israeli government and how it has conducted the war in the United States and Israel.

The Israeli army has made significant progress in the war in Gaza, destroying 20 of Hamas’s original 24 battalions. It plans to soon destroy Hamas’s remaining battalions in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. However, there is strong pressure from the West to end the war because Western leaders and audiences have succumbed to constant scenes of destroyed cities in Gaza, women and children digging themselves out of rubble, and reports of famine. Hamas and their supporters in the West have expertly manipulated press coverage of the war to blame this humanitarian catastrophe on Israel. Few mainstream media reports mention that Hamas started and is sustaining this conflict. The media will also not report that the reason Gazans are hungry is because heavily armed Hamas terrorists are stealing the aid sent into the enclave.

Growing demonstrations in Israel to end the war so hostages can be freed were part of Hamas’s original plan. Hamas knew Israelis value the lives of their citizens and that many would press to end the war early to secure the release of Israeli hostages, even if this meant not destroying Hamas or holding it accountable for the October 7 terrorist attacks.

Western nations and the United Nations condemning Israeli actions to defend themselves against Palestinian terrorists are not new. The UN has established itself as a stridently anti-Israel organization and has passed hundreds of resolutions in the UN Security Council and other UN bodies condemning Israel and questioning its right to exist. For decades, the United States used its veto power in the UN Security Council to block resolutions critical of Israel and its actions to defend itself. That changed on March 25, 2023, when the Biden administration abstained on a UN Security Council resolution demanding a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war without requiring Hamas to release any hostages.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Harvard University to Offer Segregated Graduation Ceremonies Based on Race, Class, Sexuality By Zach Kessel

Posted By on April 5th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/harvard-university-to-offer-segregated-graduation-ceremonies-based-on-race-class-sexuality/

Harvard University’s Office for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging will once again host “affinity celebrations” at its 2024 commencement, according to documents obtained by National Review.

Harvard plans to hold a “Disability Celebration,” a “Global Indigenous Celebration,” an “Asian American, Pacific Islander, Desi-American (APIDA) Celebration,” a “First Generation-Low Income Celebration,” a “Jewish Celebration,” a “Latinx Celebration,” a “Lavender Celebration” — which refers to LGBT students — a “Black Celebration,” a “Veterans Celebration,” and an “Arab Celebration.” The university will also hold a central commencement ceremony for students of all backgrounds.

A note on the sign-up form shared with NR by a current student informs registrants that the “Celebration Recognizing Arab Graduates, the Celebration Recognizing Jewish Graduates, and the Celebration Recognizing Veteran Graduates are being planned in collaboration with student groups and campus partners.”

The only publicly available mention of affinity celebrations on any Harvard website is published on the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences’ page. The note does not mention the specific events or groups recognized, simply describing them as “student-led, staff-supported events that recognize and celebrate the accomplishments of graduates from marginalized and underrepresented communities.”

Harvard’s affinity-group celebrations came under fire in 2023 after the Manhattan Institute’s Christopher Rufo posted the schedule on his X account and noted that the university had deleted the page from its website. He also mentioned in his post that white and Jewish students were the only two groups without their own events, though Harvard has now added Jews to the list.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

This Is Biden’s Reelection Pitch?!?!

Posted By on April 5th, 2024

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/04/05/bidens-reelection-pitch-lies-deception-and-false-promises/

We recently received a Biden-Harris campaign fundraising email, and if this is the best pitch they can make, then Joe Biden deserves to lose, bigly. It’s full of lies. It’s completely disconnected from reality. Biden takes no responsibility for the nation’s current troubles, and offers absolutely no solutions.

The email begins “I know this message is long.” Except it’s not – it’s less than 430 words, which isn’t much for an email that promises to remind readers “of all the things we have been able to accomplish because of our victory in 2020.”

The next sentence is a flat-out lie. “When Kamala and I were sworn in over two years ago, the economy was on its back.”

The truth is that when Joe and Kamala were sworn in, the economy was roaring back. Gross domestic product had regained the ground it lost in COVID-19 recession – a recession that lasted only two months, making it the shortest in recorded U.S. history. Half of the people who lost jobs were back at work. The stock market had climbed above its pre-COVID peak.

Biden goes on to lament the fact that, when he took office, “schools and businesses were closed,” without mentioning that Democrats were largely to blame for both. (Remember that Republican governors who refused to keep their economies locked down and their schools closed were accused of being murderers.)

Then comes the kicker. “Kamala and I agreed that we couldn’t just rebuild the economy as it was before: we needed to build an economy from the bottom up and the middle out, not the top down. So we got right to work and passed the American Rescue Plan.”

That $2 trillion spending spree failed to deliver on any of those promises.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A paradigm for peace: Jordan as Palestine – Moshe Dann

Posted By on April 5th, 2024

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-795247

Recognizing Jordan as a Palestinian state, while maintaining its status as a monarchy, reflects the national identity of a majority of its population.

The two-state solution calls for the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state in all or most of what is called “the West Bank” (Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem) as well as the Gaza Strip. It would be controlled by terrorist organizations, however, so promoting it is a recipe for disaster.

This solution will also not solve the issue of self-determination for Palestinians and it will empower Israel’s enemies. Moreover, it makes no sense since a Palestinian state already exists: the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which was created in the eastern area of British Mandate Palestine and of which two-thirds of the population consider themselves Palestinians.

A new two-state solution – Jordan/Palestine and Israel – is more viable, reasonable, practical and realistic. It would save lives and offer Palestinians the opportunity of becoming productive and constructive, instead of living under the control of despotic terrorist organizations. That is the real “two-state solution.”

This plan would not require transferring all Arab Palestinians from the West Bank to Jordan, but would offer them a choice. Those who want to live under Israeli sovereignty and abide by its laws and ethos as a Jewish state should be allowed to remain, either as citizens or residents. Those who do not and present a security threat would have to move to Jordan/Palestine, or another country. The Palestinian Authority/PLO, Hamas, and other terrorist organizations would also no longer be tolerated or accepted.

All UNRWA facilities would be closed, and international organizations would be required to accept Israeli sovereignty.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Israeli-Palestinian ‘Two State Solution’ by Michel Calvo

Posted By on April 5th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20544/israel-palestine-two-state-solution

Curiously, like President Joe Biden and his top national security officials, the ambassador [Martin Indyk] ignores a crucial element: radical Islam does not tolerate the existence of a sovereign non-Islamic entity (such as Israel) on land that once was conquered by Muslims (dar al-Islam, “abode of Islam”). As most Palestinians have been creditably straightforward about, there is no place for an Israeli state.

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism.” — Zuheir Mohsen, PLO official, Trouw, March 31, 1977.

Tangible land for intangible peace and billions of dollars will not change them — just buy them bigger weapons. Only re-education can hope to do that, if it would work…

“What is a ‘technocratic government’? It’s a front for the terrorists and composed of nonprofit executives, academics, economists and others… and extracting foreign aid from them. Hamas will not officially be part of the puppet regime, but will control the puppets…. [B]ut while Qatar is helping assemble a new ‘technocratic’ front for the terrorists, the Moscow summit made it clear that the real agenda of the new government would be terror against Israel and the U.S.” — Daniel Greenfield, Gatestone Institute, March 13, 2024.

“The ‘technocratic government’ will provide the Biden administration and other governments with the plausible deniability needed to go on funding terrorists. The Moscow summit revealed that a technocratic government will not end terrorism; it will disguise it, and it will not end the conflict, it will escalate it.” — Daniel Greenfield, Gatestone Institute, March 13, 2024.

How can Israeli Jews believe that the recognition of a Palestinian state by the United States and other countries… will bring peace? These countries have no means of enforcing any commitments undertaken by “Palestine” in a potential peace treaty, and even less will to do so.

Recognition of “Palestine” as a state, even if it were supposedly “demilitarized,” would enable it to enter into military alliances and “defense agreements” with whomever they chose — China, Russia, Iran, all of them? Why would such a state not be used as a base, as in the PLO’s 1974 “Ten Point Plan” of phases, from which to try to take “the rest”?

Equally alarmingly, the US has reportedly asked Qatar, Hamas’s main patron since 2007, to operate a supposedly temporary pier in Gaza, currently being planned, to deliver supposedly “humanitarian aid”… one has to ask: What else will come in with the humanitarian aid? With Qatar in charge, “demilitarization” will likely last less than a week.

Those who want to recognize or impose a Palestinian state, knowingly or unconsciously, aim at Israel’s destruction.

Peace will come when the Jews, the Americans and the Europeans support those fighting to preserve civilization, not to preserve terrorism.

ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Interfaith or Bad Faith? Dialogue with Jews Rachael Kohn

Posted By on April 4th, 2024

“..That would explain why there is currently no basis for Jewish–Muslim relations in Australia, for without acknowledging that Israel is legitimate, sovereign and Jewish, and that its right to exist will be defended against any threat to its existence and its people, then interfaith dialogue is nothing more than a pious lie.”

The resignation of the current and past presidents of the Jewish, Christian and Muslim Association (JCMA), both rabbis, and the suspension of participation by the Jewish Community Council of Victoria, speaks volumes about the nature of Muslim–Jewish relations in Australia. The stated reason given was Muslim leaders’ “failure to recognise the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas”.

Speaking at a pro-Palestinian rally in Broadmeadows, Victoria, the President of the Islamic Council of Victoria, Adel Salman, defended as “legitimate acts of resistance” the October 7 attacks in which 1200 Israeli men, women and children were tortured, slaughtered and raped and more than 253 civilians at a music festival were taken hostage. Clearly, nothing has changed in the six months since the Australian Muslim Times jubilantly reported news of the attack, which was followed soon after by footage of rallies in Lakemba where Muslim sheiks were in celebration mode. Sheik Dadoun (see the video below) punched the sky with his fists as he cheered, calling it “a day of courage, it’s a day of happiness, it’s a day of pride, it’s a day of victory. This is the day we’ve been waiting for.” The failure of the Muslim leadership to denounce and remove preachers who had a reputation for calling on Muslims to kill Jews, such as Wassam Hadad (also known as Abu Ousayd) of the Madina Dawah Centre in Blacktown, Western Sydney, has underlined how artificial the Jewish–Muslim interfaith relationship has been.

In striking contrast, leaders of the Christian community including Rev Sandy Grant from St Andrew’s Cathedral, Michelle Pearse, Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, and Anglican Senior Minister Mark Leach led a rally in Sydney’s Domain on Sunday, February 18, under the banner “Never Again Is Now” (NAIN), attracting an estimated 10,000 people over two and a half hours. They responded to the 738 per cent surge in anti-Semitic incidents since the Hamas attack on Israel, including the recent “doxing” of over 600 Jewish Australians—writers, professionals, business people and academics—by anti-Israel activists.

The speakers at NAIN started with the Christian former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who addressed the crowd saying, “Instead of support, we have seen those living under the freedom of democracy in this country calling for the extinction of the State of Israel from the river to the sea.” He said, “people were ignorant of the real meaning of the words” and the “violent and anti-Semitic nature of those statements”. Former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson also spoke at the event, along with senators Jacquie Lambie and Hollie Hughes, as well as indigenous affairs activist and devout Catholic Warren Mundine.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Murder of a NYC Cop Reflects a National Tragedy of Lawlessness by Lawrence Kadish

Posted By on April 4th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20545/lawlessness

On the eve of Easter Sunday, for as far as the eye could see, thousands of police officers lined a quiet suburban Long Island street to offer their solemn final salute to a fellow officer, who was shot to death during a traffic stop in New York City. They came from all over the nation to pay tribute to one of their own, yet another victim in the absence of a war against crime, a situation that has been made far more violent, far more dangerous in the wake of legislation such as so-called “bail reform” — now basically a catch-and-release, in which criminals are regarded as victims and victims are regarded as criminals — and similar progressive initiatives that are unraveling our society.

Detective First Grade Jonathan Diller was married to a nurse named Stephanie; they had a toddler named Ryan.

In her eulogy to her murdered husband, Stephanie told a packed church: “He was excited that Ryan’s first word was ‘Dada,’ and I remember I would playfully try to get him to say ‘Mama’ instead. But now I never want to stop hearing Ryan say ‘Dada’ to me.”

“Our lives were pretty much perfect until five days ago when everything changed forever…. He wasn’t the type to sugarcoat anything, so I won’t sugarcoat this: This is devastating; it’s a devastating, senseless and tragic loss for so many — our family, our friends, and the entire city of New York,” this courageous widow continued.

She asked, “How many more police officers and their families will have to make the ultimate sacrifice before the city protects them?”

Media reports that when she finished her tribute, “thunderous applause rose from the thousands of mourners inside and outside the church.”

Regardless of where you live, or what you have experienced in your communities, this tragedy speaks to a nation in turmoil. Entire urban downtowns have become wastelands. Legislation has been passed that harms the ability of police to perform their duties.

With blue flags flying throughout Diller’s community, they reflect the lasting support from neighbors seeking to stand in solidarity with a family shattered by a murderous felon. Those flags, however, cannot begin to reflect the seething anger and heartfelt grief that is a legacy of Diller’s death. There are those, including this author, who will ask why the murderer will likely be sentenced to life imprisonment. Why aren’t we prepared to bring back capital punishment for those who take the lives of those brave men who daily risk their own lives to protect our families, our communities, and our society? Why indeed?