See below Michael Shellenberger on “The end of the transgender craze”, and Canada’s former chair of the Human Rights Commission on the threat to free speech from Justin Trudeau’s “Online Harms” bill.
This site probes the critical issue of how we maintain our humanity in the face of evil, when enduring hell on earth. Wendell Krossa
There are two sides to this ongoing horror: What Hamas terrorists did Oct.7 and are committed to doing “again and again”- exterminate Israelis. And on the other side, the suffering that Gazans are now undergoing due to the obligation of the Israeli military to rid that area of any further threat from Hamas. That must be done. When people commit themselves to violently exterminate others and will not embrace peaceful solutions or surrender peacefully, then there is no option but to, unfortunately, use force to stop them.
Add that the Gazan population will need to engage some profound changes in their understanding and attitude toward their neighbors as far too many of them have been indoctrinated into supporting Hamas. And there is hope that even though the human spirit can be deformed and suppressed by bad ideas and indoctrination, people, when offered the opportunity, can change their minds and come to their senses again. Some of the young Hamas men captured Oct.7 and interrogated by Israeli military admitted that they “had become animals… doing things no human would do”. They realized that their Hamas leaders had seriously misled them. They evidenced some residual and re-emerging shreds of humanity.
Quote from above link:
“The terrorist said, “We became animals. Things that humans do not do.”
“They were explicitly told to “step on the heads of civilians” to “behead them and do whatever they felt like”.” (Others said they were told to slaughter even babies. See for yourself the interviews of these terrorists on YouTube.)
Let’s not avert our eyes from the suffering on all sides. But due to the insane eruption of antisemitism across Western societies and accompanying denial of what happened Oct. 7, more needs to be said about the horrors that were inflicted on young Israeli woman on that day and since. Click the links below and look at these young women’s faces and into their eyes.
Many Jews, during the Holocaust, caught in that eruption of hell on earth, wailed their version of Protest theology- “Where is God?”
The Oct. 7 horror again reminds us of the destructive outcomes of the tribal mentality that denies the fact of human oneness, that all of us are equal members of the same one human family and obligated, most primarily, to love one another. These eruptions of savagery against one another ought to raise questions concerning the ideas that feed such hatred and incite brutality toward differing others, that render people more animal than human.
In the mix of resolving these issues for the long-term future we have to set aside the defensive blaming of “they started it” and begin to probe and understand the deeper roots of such hatred and lust for never-ending vengeance. This has to be done if we are to escape these historically endless cycles of “eye for eye” that blind everyone.
True heroism will arise in those willing to grapple with history’s hardest saying to “Love your enemy” and then courageously initiate breaks in the cycles of eye for eye retaliatory response in order to then take degenerating situations in new directions. That will require those who are willing to tower in stature as maturely human, just as Nelson Mandela exhibited for us recently. People who understand that the real enemy is inside each of us. And the real battle against evil takes place inside us, the war against our inherited animal drives to tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction of others.
This from the mother of hostage Naama Levy:
“Mother of Naama Levy, from harrowing Gaza video: ‘Each minute is an eternity in hell’: Ayelet Levy Shachar urges release of 19-year old daughter, expresses fear over treatment of 17 women held captive amid growing evidence of rapes on Oct. 7” Dec. 9, 2024 Times of Israel
Quotes:
“The mother of a 19-year-old women held hostage in Gaza published a heartfelt plea Friday for her daughter’s release and warned time was running out.
“Naama Levy was seen in a video from Gaza on October 7 following her kidnapping with her hands tied and bloodied sweatpants, giving rise to widespread speculation that she had been sexually abused by her abductors.
““You have seen the video of my daughter Naama Levy,” Ayelet Levy Shachar wrote on the Free Press website. “Everyone has. You have seen her dragged by her long brown hair from the back of a Jeep at gunpoint, somewhere in Gaza, her gray sweatpants covered in blood.
““You may have perhaps noticed that her ankles are cut, that she’s barefoot and limping. She is seriously injured. She is frightened. And I, her mother, am helpless in these moments of horror.”
“Levy Shahar underlined fears that Hamas terrorists are continuing to abuse her and other women in captivity, as mounting evidence points to multiple instances in which terrorists on October 7 raped and sexually assaulted women before executing them.
““There are seventeen young women still in captivity. They range in age from 18 to 26. I think of what they, and my Naama, could be subjected to at every moment of the day. Each minute is an eternity in hell,” she wrote.
““On Monday, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that one of the reasons Hamas doesn’t want to release the young female hostages is they don’t want these women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody. Everyone knows exactly what he means,” Levy Shahar continued.
““What would you do if your daughter was being held hostage by violent rapists and murderers for two months? Perhaps the better question is: What wouldn’t you do?” she asked.
“Levy was taken captive by Hamas terrorists on Saturday morning, October 7.”
Next:
“Hamas kidnapped my daughter: I don’t know how much longer she can go on: Its been more than 219,150 minutes of sheer terror, utter distress and excruciating dread since I last spoke with Agam”, Mar. 8, 2024, Meirav Berger.
Quotes:
“It has been more than two hundred and nineteen thousand, one hundred and fifty minutes since I last spoke with my daughter Agam.
“Yes, I’m counting the minutes. Not the hours, not the days, not the weeks or months. Minute-by-minute, my mind and body are in constant, excruciating pain as I wait for Agam, who was brutally kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, to come back home.
“The last I heard from the brave hostages who returned from the depths of the Gaza underground, she was in a dark, damp tunnel. They told me she, too, might be a victim of sexual violence.
“It’s been 219,150 minutes of sheer terror, a nightmare really, of loneliness, and so much pain.
“219,150 minutes of agony. Of utter distress and excruciating dread. Of what we know Agam has endured, and what she is enduring right now, as I write these words. I shudder to think of what I know, but also from what I don’t know, and how much longer she can go on like this.
“It may sound insane to count these minutes, but if it was your daughter, or sister, you would be watching the seconds go by, too. Tick, tick, tick, while praying for her safety and quick return, and then mustering up every iota of strength to make sure the world knows that innocent daughters, sisters, sons, brothers and fathers are being held against their will by merciless terrorists….
“She’s just 19 years old.
“219,150 minutes. Tick, tick, tick. Time goes by but the world must not allow this atrocity, this blatant human rights violation, to continue one minute longer.
“As the minutes go by, I imagine how hard I will hug my daughter when she’s back in my arms. How I’ll cuddle her, soothe her, and tell her how much I love her. How she’ll pick up her violin and play beautiful music, the talented musician that she is. I hum to myself Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, one of her favourite works of art. I dream about how she’ll celebrate with us at her brother Ilay’s upcoming bar mitzvah, and how we’ll all celebrate our freedom….
“Meirav Berger is the mother of 19-year-old Israeli hostage Agam Berger, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz on Oct. 7. Agam is one of the 134 hostages remaining in Hamas captivity and one of the 19 females still held hostage.”
See the full article at link above.
And this on the widespread denial of the brutalities of Hamas, and the unconscionable defense of such savagery…
“Grim fears for Israeli women who remain as hostages as Oct. 7 sexual brutalities by Hamas uncovered: ‘Usually a woman faces she-said, he-said. What Israel is now facing is people saying it never happened’”, Mar. 8, 2024, Adrian Humphreys
Quotes:
“In normal times, said Orit Sulitzeanu, the work she does as executive director of the Association of Rape Crises Centers in Israel means fighting frustrating silence about sexual violence.
““When you work in rape crisis centres your job is to see and acknowledge horrific things done to people and, without acknowledgement, these people live and suffer horribly because society around them prefers to close their eyes and not see these horrific things.
““To break the code of silence, you must say yes, it happened, and you acknowledge and help the survivors, you put the blame on the perpetrators. This is the regular work when you work in the field of sexual violence.
““But since the 7th of October, we found ourselves in another world.”
“In the aftermath of the deadly Hamas terror attacks in southern Israel, Sulitzeanu said, she unexpectedly sees that struggle against silence reflected on the world stage, with people ignoring or denying that sexual violence was an integral part of the attacks.
““What Israel is now facing is what a woman usually is facing,” Sulitzeanu said. “Usually a woman faces she-said, he-said. What Israel is now facing is people saying it never happened.”….
“The crisis is hardly over. There are 19 women missing after Hamas took hostages back into Gaza, 14 of them are believed to still be alive in captivity. There are grim fears about what they are facing. Some of their families, the Israeli government, and others make clear they fear the worst. Evidence suggests it might be….
““When you see the big picture,” Sulitzeanu said of the attacks, “you see it was intended, planned, directed sexual abuse. It was not sporadic….
““I believe the world has not given enough attention … to this part of the Hamas attack and the atrocities and the crimes against humanity that were committed against Israel,” she said…
“There were patterns to the violence in multiple locations that were attacked by Hamas and other fighters, she said, which dismiss the idea that sexual abuse was isolated or incidental to the attack….
““You could see, you could see what had happened there, even after the bodies were removed and you know it was horrific. They were in situations where it was impossible for your mind to get around the cruelty. It was terrible. I’ve seen heads. I’ve seen a leg, an arm. I found in one of the cars some front teeth. I found a piece of a skull.”
Full article at link above.
From Climate Realism: “The Guardian should know that one mild winter is not climate change, nor is it alarming”, Linnea Luekan, Mar. 4, 2024
Quotes:
“A recent article in The Guardian, “Vanishing ice and snow: record warm winter wreaks havoc across US Midwest” describes the very mild winter much of the American Midwest has experienced this year, claiming that it is due to climate change. While a declining trend towards less-severe winters may in part reflect modest warming, the intensity of this winter’s warmth is more likely explained by El Niño….
“Regarding El Niño, weather.com says “warmer winters are typical across the northern tier of states during a strong El Niño.”….
“The Guardian also says that a report published in January found that the number of -35F (-37.2C) readings in northern Minnesota have fallen by up to 90%,” they point out that low temperatures play a role in weed and pest control, which is true enough, however they neglect to mention that extreme cold kills human beings as well, and at much higher rates than extreme heat does. They also fail to mention that longer, colder winters result in fewer crop rotations and production.
“In “Climate at a glance: Temperature related deaths”, multiple studies back up the fact that cold is deadlier than heat all around the world. One study, published in the Lancet in 2021, found that while 600,000 people die globally from heat, over 6 million die from cold. (see the figure, below) Further, cold related deaths have declined at more than double the rate that heat related deaths have increased….
“The number of severely cold winters may be modestly trending downwards around the Great Lakes and across portions of the American Midwest, but almost everyone would agree that fewer -35℉ days is a blessing not a curse. This year’s winter is particularly mild not because of climate change but because of natural weather patterns, and a long-term trend in declining extreme cold is actually better for human survival. Contrary to The Guardian’s reporting, climate doomsaying is not an appropriate response to the available data.”
Another good one from Joe Rogan (guest Christopher Rufo on “Joe Rogan Experience” episode 2113 on Spotify) Wendell Krossa
Rogan and Rufo discuss the Democrats now using trials to criminalize their opponents and the precedent this sets. Rogan says that no matter what you think of Trump the person, this is not good, what is being done to political opponents. He notes how Kevin O’Leary of Shark Tank explained that all real estate people do what Trump is charged with, and it is normal real estate practice, not illegal to set the valuation of your property higher and then bargain with banks to an agreed amount. Others note there was no crime because the banks eventually arrived at an agreed on value with Trump and even wanted to do further business with him.
Good comment from his guest Rufo who asks- “Who actually rules in this country? The people who get to decide by their vote? Or is it the permanent bureaucracy that has accumulated so much power? Their message is that we can take out anyone who is a threat to the system that we have built up”. Rufo says- “This is about how we think of our democratic system”. He is of the mind that the people should decide, not the bureaucracy.
He nails what Democrats are doing. They have taken the position of “We have to destroy democracy in order to ‘save democracy’”. “Save democracy” in the sense of maintaining left-wing hegemony, he says. Left wing domination over institutions.
Rufo says this goes bad for all of us. Dissent then becomes a crime. This has already happened with gender ideology in schools where parents were put on the FBI watch list as terrorists for wanting input to their children’s education. The Democratic party message is that if you participate in the democratic process, we will turn you into a criminal.
He adds that this is a time for courage in defense of freedom.
Rogan says further that when you frame your opponent as “Hitler” then you must stop Hitler by any means. He then notes Whoopi Goldberg’s recent statement that Biden could arrest all the Republicans and jail them. That is how unhinged this thinking now is, he notes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-5M5PS3mYo
Who said that the defense of freedom was a never-ending battle? But who would have thought that the struggle would be against those who, not long ago, we viewed as true fellow liberals who stood for freedom for all, for inclusion of all, for true equality and varied other classic liberal values. Many of us are now adjusting to the new reality that these former liberals have now become advocates for authoritarian censorship, banning of dissent, and themselves now pose the great threat to democracy that they endlessly project onto their opponents.
And today’s Progressive “liberals” appear quite entirely unaware of how profoundly they have abandoned Classic liberal principles. That illustrates how a narrative can deform human consciousness and life. If you convince yourself that your opponents are “Nazis, fascists, White Supremacists, racists, terrorists, etc.”, then you have deluded yourself that you are just like the Allies, on the good side of a righteous battle against a demonized evil enemy that must be stopped by any means, even by destroying democracy to “save democracy”. Today’s Progressives have shifted dangerously toward what Richard Landes (Heaven On Earth) calls the madness and desperation of “exterminate or be exterminated” mentality. This is an unsettling thing.
“The Holocene Climatic Optimum and the “pre-industrial””
By Andy May, Mar. 15, 2024
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/03/15/the-holocene-climatic-optimum-and-the-pre-industrial/
“The “pre-industrial” according to the IPCC in a footnote on page 43 of AR6 WGI is prior to 1750 for radiative forcings and before 1850 for temperature. Both dates are within the period commonly described as the Little Ice Age.
“The Little Ice Age was a brutal and a miserable time for humanity, but none-the-less the IPCC has chosen to measure and define “climate change” using the global average surface temperature change from that period. They talk about dangers if we exceed 1.5 to 2 degrees above the “pre-industrial” period. These numerical limits have no scientific basis, but they set them anyway.
“Then they have the problem of the Holocene Climatic Optimum. This period from roughly 8,000BC to 4,200BC (see figure 1) is widely thought to have been warmer than today based on glacial advance and retreat data, and insolation models of temperatures around the world (figure 2)….
Fig. 1 Graph refered to here is available at link above…
“Figure 1. This compares two temperature proxy reconstructions. The orange reconstruction is the Vinther (2009) elevation corrected Greenland temperature reconstruction from ice cores. The black reconstruction is from Rosenthal (2013) and is his 500-meter depth temperature reconstruction in the Makassar Strait, Indonesia….
“We can see in figure 1 that two high-quality temperature proxies, one from Greenland and one from tropical Indonesia, 9,500 miles away match surprisingly well, both show roughly 3.5 to 4°C of cooling from their peaks in the Holocene Climatic Optimum to their coldest points in the Little Ice Age (“pre-industrial”). Even though, or perhaps because of this warmth, human civilization developed during the Holocene Climatic Optimum. This was when Neolithic agriculture and settlements blossomed, became widespread, and well established in the Middle East. So, we can see 3.5 to 4°C of warming over the “pre-industrial” was not a problem for humans in the Middle East….
“Summary
“While figure 1 only shows two temperature proxy records over the Holocene, and both are for the Northern Hemisphere, they are 9,500 miles apart and both show the Holocene Climatic Optimum peaked in the Northern Hemisphere at about four degrees warmer than the Little Ice Age/pre-industrial. The peak warmth coincided with the development of a modern agrarian civilization. It is also consistent with Renssen’s insolation model for the period, which modeled a Holocene Climatic Optimum that was five degrees warmer than the Little Ice Age in the higher Northern Hemisphere latitudes.
“Renssen’s results are very consistent with global glacier advance data collected by Solomina. In fact, they both found an early Holocene retreat of glaciers in both the Southern and Northern Hemispheres, although the modeled warming was larger in the Northern Hemisphere….
“In short, it seems very likely that the Holocene Climatic Optimum was warmer than the Little Ice Age and warmer than today, the evidence is most compelling in the Northern Hemisphere.”
This on Justin Trudeau’s Online Harms bill that endangers free speech
“I chaired the Human Rights Tribunal. It has no business policing ‘hate speech’: Liberal online harms bill will put an end to robust political discourse”, David Thomas, Mar. 13, 2024
Quotes:
“The Liberal government’s proposed Bill C-63, the online harms act, is terrible law that will unduly impose restrictions on Canadians’ sacred Charter right to freedom of expression. That is what the Liberals intend. By drafting a vague law creating a draconian regime to address online “harms,” they will win their wars without firing a bullet.
“The consequences for violating the law are so severe that it should be expected that hardly anyone would risk violating it. Even news media organizations and big tech companies should be expected to avoid the risk. In this moment when we need it the most, robust political discourse in Canada could disappear with a whimper….
“Of course, the Canadian public wants to protect children from online exploitation. Of course, Canadians are concerned about child pornography and insidious practices like “deep fakes” and “revenge porn.” Much of that is already addressed in the Criminal Code.
“Unfortunately, these good intentions in the bill are just the lipstick on the pig. The terrible part of this proposed legislation is bringing hate speech back into the Canadian Human Rights Act. Hate speech was removed from the act more than a decade ago for a simple reason: It was a bad idea. It was unworkable and created far more problems than it solved….
“Because the definition of “hate speech” in Bill C-63 closely tracks the Supreme Court of Canada’s language in the 2013 Whatcott decision, you will hear the argument that this clears everything up, that the problems of the past will not prevail in the future.
“The problem is, with all due respect to the court, Whatcott is a lousy decision. It does very little to explain where the fine line of hate speech begins and where honest but uncomfortable debate ends….
“Another dangerous change involves allowing complaints to be made anonymously….
“All of this tinkering to create a big stick for enforcement, just for hate speech cases, makes it clear that the intention of the bill is to stifle free speech and needed political discourse….
“And there will be many, many new hate speech complaints lodged. Why not? You might get $20,000, you might get a lawyer to take your case at no cost to you, and you might get to do it anonymously. It will cost you nothing….
“Criticism of government policies, like immigration policy for example, might suddenly become dangerous.
“Welcome to a new era of self-censorship.
“Free speech in Canada is about to be stifled. Don’t be fooled by the lipstick. This is terrible legislation.
“David L. Thomas is a lawyer and mediator in British Columbia. From 2014-2021, he served as the Chairperson of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal in Ottawa.”
Michael Shellenberger on “The End Of The Transgender Craze Is Near: The backlash against ‘gender-affirming care’ and trans-identified males in women’s sports and prisons is accelerating” Mar. 13, 2024
https://public.substack.com/p/the-end-of-the-transgender-craze
“To support “gender-affirming care” is to be on the right side of history, millions believe. To be pro-transition is basically the same as being pro-gay, they believe. Whether one is attracted to people of the same sex or believes oneself to be of the opposite sex, it’s just how people are born. Trans people, including children and vulnerable adults, deserve medical care so they can assume their correct gender and deserve to compete in the sports competitions of their preferred sex.
“But it’s quickly becoming apparent that “gender medicine” is on the wrong side of history.
“Last week, millions of people read stories at X, the Washington Post, the Economist, the Telegraph, and even the Guardian about internal files of the leading transgender health organization, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), showing widespread medical mistreatment of children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults.
“And yesterday, the UK government’s National Health Service England (NHSE) announced that it was halting the prescription of puberty blockers in government hospitals….
“As such, the decision by the UK government to issue far more sweeping restrictions suggests the existence of a stronger cross-party consensus within the UK government than the glitzy pro-transition PR of recent years had suggested. There is a sense in which, after years of irresponsible healthcare teenagers having a wild party, drugging kids, and experimenting on their bodies, the adults have come home and started to impose order.
“Before the backlash against gender medicine was the backlash against putting transwomen/natal males in women’s prisons. Around the world, men who are caught committing crimes, including violent and sexual ones, are using “gender self-identification” to claim that they are actually women and demand to be put in women’s prisons. Many Americans are unaware that this is even occurring, much less that it brought down the Scottish government in mid-February of last year, just two weeks after its Prime Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said she had nothing to apologize for.
“In terms of trans policies that cause real-world harm, women’s sports are also still an issue. Yet here, too, the backlash against natal males in female sports is gaining momentum. Former college swimming champion Riley Gaines has a new book out and is on the warpath. On Joe Rogan, Gaines told the story of how, despite having tied transwoman/natal male swimmer, Lia Thomas, the NCAA decided, on the stop, to give the one trophy to Thomas.
“And the leader of the British Labour Party, Keir Starmer, said on Monday that “common sense has to prevail in terms of safety and integrity of sport” and that biological males should thus not be allowed to participate in women’s sports…
“What, ultimately, set off the chain of events leading to the end of the trans craze?
“Gender Pseudoscience
“A big part of the reason for the end of the trans craze is the accumulation of scientific studies, patient testimonies, and the testimonies of gender clinicians themselves.
“The WPATH Files themselves should be seen in a broader context of revelations and confessions from the whistleblowers and employees of the gender medicine industry itself. The UK government shut down its leading gender clinic at Tavistock Hospital after its own employees blew the whistle. A St. Louis gender clinician last year similarly blew the whistle. One of the founders of gender-affirming care in Europe recently denounced the overuse of drugs and surgeries. Dr. Erica Anderson has argued for years that too few guardrails protect children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults.
“Meanwhile, medical journals are publishing a growing number of scientific articles debunking the leading trans myths. A major Finland study found gender medicine to offer no benefits in terms of reducing suicide and suicidal feelings among people with gender dysphoria. And earlier this week, journalist Ben Ryan resurfaced a 2021 study that found that trans women who underwent genital surgery had twice as many suicide attempts after the surgery than before….
“One of the main reasons the trans craze is coming to an end is because of the coalition of feminists, conservatives, liberals, and non-ideological professionals, intellectuals, and activists who fought for years against it…. Trans activists destroyed the careers of journalists, academics, administrators, and anyone else who stood in the way of their agenda to transform medicine, sports, prisons, and much else. People lost their jobs in universities worldwide, particularly in North America and Europe. And many of those same people fought heroically.
“While there are medical and political reasons why transgenderism is coming to an end, the underlying reason is that gender-affirming care has no basis in science. The idea that someone can change their biological sex is ungrounded from reality.
“Trans activists attempted to hoist their wagon to broad public acceptance of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals. Still, homosexuality is a genuine phenomenon of same-sex physical attraction. In contrast, transgenderism is an ideological movement based on the false belief that one can transform bodies, either one’s own or other people’s, into the opposite sex, or some new sex entirely.
“What we are left with are people of various sexual preferences who genuinely believe, or at least partly believe, that they are the opposite sex. The desire to impose this belief on the wider society, with the help of major medical and political institutions, resulted in a spiritual cult known as “the trans movement.” Its gods are humans and our ability to perform miraculous transformations of bodies through some combination of thinking, drugs, and surgery….
“We similarly allow people to believe they are the opposite gender and to dress and live how they like, but societies will soon stop, or severely restrict, the ability of people to impose this view on others and to permanently harm the bodies of children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults. And we will soon prevent people claiming to have changed their sex from entering women’s prisons and sporting competitions.
“After The Craze
“It is likely that some combination of lawsuits by regretful “de-transitioners” and attorney generals, state and federal legislation, executive branch regulations, and decisions by health insurers and health care providers will all contribute to halting gender medicine and the attack on girls and women’s sports….
“To be sure, there will likely always be people who claim to be transgender. But the mass cultural phenomenon of transgenderism, including the craze of young people claiming to be the opposite sex, and demanding drugs and surgery to change their bodies, along with the right to compete in girls’ and women’s sports, or go to women’s prisons, is coming to an end. As such, those who continue to defend it are on the wrong side of history.”