Links - 12th May 2024 (2 - Left Wing Economics)

Meme - Jeremiah Johnson @JeremiahDJohns: "A thread of DoorDash takes: "l am entitled to DoorDash and can't eat a frozen dinner, because I am disabled and frozen food has 'histamines' in it."
Avery Edison @aedison: ""why are people so weird about doordash?" because it is exploitation. the business model does not function without massively underpaying workers, most of whom live in poverty. habituating yourself to using doordash is a moral sickness."
Sofi @resinthunder: "Restaurant employees are never exploited? Lol. Leave disabled people alone. People are trying to survive the best way they can and you're relegating us to frozen dinners. As if everyone's diet can tolerate them. As if histamines in frozen food don't trigger autoimmune responses."
Jeremiah Johnson @JeremiahDJohns: "I am upset that you call hand-delivery of restaurant quality meals to my home a luxury service"
Violet Carter: "Does anyone else think it's upsetting that food is currently considered a luxury item? That we are being told to just eat cereal and frozen dinners? I'm feeling a type of way about it."
@JeremiahDJohns Jeremiah Johnson: "Frozen meals are a gendered capitalist scheme"
auntie cistamine @laurenanc: "they hate disabled people so much they're out here defending frozen food. a meal format that gained mainstream popularity as white women entered the workforce, while at the same time it became harder to support a family on one salary, so not having to cook meant more time for doing capitalism!"
Jeremiah Johnson @JeremiahDJohns: "l am too anxious and depressed to take a meal out of the freezer and microwave it. I need communal cooks to feed me"
"substitute for frozen meals, despite being less convenient and radically more expensive. And a lot of frozen meals taste fine, plenty of chain restaurants are actually serving that."
KD$ign @KnoxEndemic: "Umm, people have depression and anxiety? Not everyone can just go to the grocery store and plan meals like this"
cai @AnneNotation: "It's not a planned meal. It's a meal you take out of the freezer. It is perfect for people who are not coping with their depression or anxiety."
KD$ign: "I wonder if we could build a system within a local community where we take shifts cooking the frozen food and sharing it? This might mitigate some of the distress it"
Jeremiah Johnson: "Why don't they sell individual slices of cheese, lettuce, bacon and tomato?"

Meme - "I regret to inform you the DoorDash takes are still going: "I have a human right to literally all food items""
Violet Carter @ThatEffinFlower: "Does anyone else think it's upsetting that food is currently considered a luxury item? That we are being told to just eat cereal and frozen dinners? I'm feeling a type of way about it."
Retroscopic @Retroscopic1: "Some types of food are basic staples - see rice, pasta, veg, fruit etc Some types of food are more luxury items. Both can exist, no-one has an automatic human right to be able to shop at Waitrose."
acorn @ironspidergwen: "It's a basic human right to afford ALL food, you can't pick and choose what people deserve. The fuck is wrong with you?"
This is why left wingers are poor, and why they want to destroy capitalism, since they can't take responsibility for their failures, and why their proposed solution: more and more free money, will never work, since wants are unlimited, even if they are framed as needs

Meme - Jeremiah Johnson @JeremiahDJohns: "The mean streets of SoHo are too frightening for me to get a burrito"
Senior PowerPoint Engineer @ryxcommar: "who the fuck are all these people overpaying for fast food delivery. leave your fucking houses. good god. half the people at one of my favorite spots are some salaried fake email job person's food delivery slave."
Marcus Sinclair @MarcusSinclair2: "Let's see you leave your house after 10pm in NYC tough guy."
@JeremiahOJohns "As a disabled person, eating the same meal multiple times is torture"
"You clearly don't suffer from executive functioning issues or you'd understand why some of us see that as torture."
Johan Mullet @JohanMullet: "Waterboarding is torture. This isn't torture."
Lipton @liptonTCat: "It is when you have executive functioning issues. Those of us with ADHD have different brains than the average person."
Of course, this reliance on food delivery clashes with their demands to pay everyone a living wage. But they think the company CEOs making a lot of money means the companies are profitable, so of course they won't understand that

Meme - Armand Domalewski @ArmandDoma: "If you find microwaving a meal this difficult you genuinely need to be under some form of supervised care"
Kelly @broadwaybabyto: "I see people saying things like "can't cook a meal but can answer the door to get delivery" I want to scream. Only someone who's had good health their whole life would make a comment like..."
Max Bedroom @sextoyspo...: "There's getting the box open, firstly, which is often harder than it should be, & someone with hand pain or dexterity issues may not be able to get past that step. Then there's reading & understanding the directions, which, especially when I'm tired, is difficult enough for me."

Meme - Armand Domalewski: "This is what someone sent me because I pointed out that someone who is so disabled they are incapable of microwaving a meal needs hands-on medical care and not DoorDash"
Zack the Zorua(He/They): "Imagine spending your time attacking people feeding themselves instead of spending your energy going after the people who make it harder for disabled people to even go outside. You're spineless. Oh by the way I doordash because my family is food insecure but I have partners who help me order lunch. I can't cook and I shouldn't have to ask your permission to be able to feed myself in a way that works for me. If you actually cared about disabled people you would advocate for proper meal delivery services that listen to dietary restrictions and aren't only for 60+ physically disabled people. But you'll spend your time attacking people you've never met instead of lifting a finger to help the most vulnerable in your community because you don't actually care if we starve. One less useless mouth to feed right?"
If you're food insecure and spend your money on food delivery and you're poor, it's proof that capitalism has failed

Meme - Tony @tonyzentelis: "The economics of groceries is what frustrates me. If I want a burger, I must buy an entire pack of buns, a head of lettuce, and tomato, hoping my mustard hasn't expired. I want a proportionally priced "kit" to make 1-2 burgers, as I end up throwing out so many ingredients."
KD$ign @KnoxEndemic: "Just make all of them at once and freeze what you don't eat"
Tony @tonyzentelis: "Umm some of us don't have unlimited freezer space? My 17 year old child has severe bipolar depression and anxiety and needs 50-250 popsicles per day to cope with it. Because of their condition my entire freezer is filled with boxes of popsicles. It's called sacrifice!"

Meme - Anna Harren @garblefart: "why are you so scared of the idea that someone who can't, hasn't, or doesn't want to work a day in their life would be able to live comfortably
someone who refuses to work, someone who wants to spend their entire life doing absolutely nothing, deserves stable food, shelter, water, security, and privacy. this is not debatable. human rights don't come with requirements. they're human rights. and hey, let's pretend for a moment that people commit crimes for no reason, and it isn't because they're lacking in basic human rights: THEY STILL DESERVE TO LIVE COMFORTABLY. the idea that criminality is an innate trait is an intrinsically racist, eugenicist, genocidal concept. crime happens out of necessity. it's a symptom of inequality. to be clear: in these tweets i am deliberately playing into the myth that people require tangible reward to motivate work. this is bullshit. people will create because they can, and they always have. cave paintings didn't happen because a caveman wanted two more acorns than he had before"
This ticks so many left wing boxes and displays the usual ignorance of reality (e.g. trying to claim that it's literally impossible to reasonably disagree, and not knowing that one theory about cave paintings is for luck in hunting, i.e. getting two more deer than you had before)

Selling Butter At 54% Profit: Leaked Docs Show Loblaws' Exorbitant Markups : r/ontario - "That before any costs come out. Ya all need some accounting classes. Wages utilities etc etc. Some things will have higher margins some have less, that's kinda the way business works. Fuck loblaws, I'm a costco shopper bit this info is just clickbait bullshit to rile people up. Show me the final profit or don't fucking bother. "
"The store also has to figure in the cost of the fridges and electricity to keep these products cold. Also the labour cost of unpacking and putting it one the shelf and the amount of spoilage there is on this type of product."
Why left wingers are poor.

Selling Butter At 54% Profit: Leaked Docs Show Loblaws' Exorbitant Markups : r/ontario - "The "final profit" is a made up number that excludes rent paid to a real estate investment trust owned by a Loblaws holding company. That final profit is also purposefully made thin because Loblaws pays its suppliers for those goods - many of which are also shell companies owned and operated by Loblaws. They can charge themselves for those goods as much as they desire to reduce their tax burden, same with rent. What I'm trying to say is the final number you wish to see is totally made up and untrustworthy.  If I start a business in my home, as the home owner I set the cost of goods and rent to 100% of my business profit. So I pay almost zero tax, is that an accurate final number for my profit?"
"Except they don't own the manufacturing and suppliers, so it's just the distribution and retail, which all roll up to the same company. The rent is paid to another publicly traded company that doesn't have the exact same shareholders (so if you're a shareholder of Choice REIT you'd be getting screwed over)"
"If you are renting out your house, the rent collected will be part of your profits and you will need to pay tax on it.  Loblaws is a public company. The "final profit" they are legally obliged to report will include the income and expenses from all of their subsidiaries"
"It’s not made up, it’s all in accordance with IFRS, they are a publicly traded company"
Selling Butter At 54% Profit: Leaked Docs Show Loblaws' Exorbitant Markups : r/ontario - "Lol. Every post is the same. A bunch of people make claims against Loblaws of questionable validity; people who care to ... do basic math? ... correct them; initial people accuse basic math do-oers of being corporate bootlickers. Gets kind old."

Selling Butter At 54% Profit: Leaked Docs Show Loblaws' Exorbitant Markups : r/ontario - "This sounds ridiculous, but these are standard margins in the grocery business in North America. Kroger reports similar margins on individual products.  The actual margin is actually much lower. A shocking amount of food is thrown out or never sold. People are extremely picky when they buy food from the grocery store, and so products that are expired, blemished, or otherwise anything less than perfect, becomes unsellable. And if enough of such products accumulate it looks bad on the store. When people pick apples, ones that are cosmetically blemished but perfectly edible, gets left behind until all the blemished ones are left. Loblaws has to throw these out because if people saw displays of blemished foods it degrades the quality of the store in their mind (Loblaws wants people to think of well stocked shelves with fresh food when they think of their store).  Another interesting thing about retail is it's actually very important to keep shelves looking stocked, and to ensure that you have a large variety of products, even if some of those products don't sell. When stores run into supply shortages, they will often block off parts of the store to prevent it from looking like they have empty shelves. Having well stocked shelves makes food appear more plentiful and less expensive to customers. If one product in running short, it's important that stores fill it with something, anything, to avoid the shelves looking like they're empty. This is a well know strategy in retail. This is another reason that increases the amount of food spoilage.  Did you know, a study from Queen's university shows that about 60% of all food produced in Canada is wasted? some of this happens at the indvidual household level, but a very large amount of it happens at the grocery store or distribution level: See Smith Business Insight - To Fight Food Waste, Grocers Turn to Analytics (queensu.ca). These products purchased by grocers, that are never sold, factors into the gross margin.  Anyone who's ever worked at a grocery store will tell you the astonishing amount of perfectly edible food they throw out as a result. Things like expired food, cracked eggs, slightly browned or shriveled produce, imperfect apples, returned products, products that have cosmetic damage to their boxes, etc. It's literally dumpsters full of food on a daily basis.  The cost of throwing away food is counted as "cost of goods sold" and actually will decrease margin. The combination of such things
loss leaders
shrinkage (i.e food that goes missing or is stolen)
cosmetically blemished food
food that is damaged or spoiled in transport or storage (a surprisingly large amount) or was infested with pests
expired food
returned food
These all weigh on margins. The gross margin was about 30% (reported in Loblaws financial statement). This is on the higher end of the industry standard. Grocers in the USA, like Kroger's report a gross margin of around 25%. Loblaws has somewhat higher margins because of their drugstore business, which they mention in their annual report and shareholders filings.  Then the company has to pay rent, insurance, salary, utilities etc. After all this, the net profit is only about 2-3%.  So yeah, grocers are expensive businesses to operate."
"And yet they are earning record profits in a time when consumers and many other businesses are suffering due to rising input costs."
"Context is everything. 1 billion in profits is a lot for a corner store, but is not an unreasonable amount for a company the sizes of loblaws to make on 60 billion in revenue  To compare to a grocer in the United States, Kroger made 2.7 billion in net profit on a gross sales of 150 billion in 2024. So comparable.  Most retailers are making record profits. This is because most of them have maintained their (relatively thin and competitive) margins in context of inflation. Higher prices with same margins equals more profit.  3% net margin is really tight. Occasionally negative business circumstances like recession, drought or war can damage those margins. Also these companies have debts to service with that money. No reasonable company could be competitive long term with narrowing margins, even in more developed markets like the US.  Loblaws isn’t perfect. They can certainly be more efficient if there was more competition. But I honestly in my heart of hearts don’t believe grocery price gouging is a major contributor to inflation, which is a global phenomenon."

If you see someone stealing food... No you didn't. : r/antiwork
Retail Workers Increasingly Fear for Their Safety - The New York Times - "“If an employee gets caught stealing a candy bar, they get fired,” said Mr. Settles, who has worked in the grocery industry for 40 years. “But you have shoplifters who come in here and steal a whole buggy full of Tide. They leave, and we tell them not to come back. But they come back a few days later.”... She thinks the hands-off approach to shoplifting is leading to a broader breakdown. Ms. Barry, 59, who has been working in the grocery industry for more than 20 years and is a member of U.F.C.W. Local 3000, said she had recently noticed that regular customers were walking out the door without paying for items.  “It’s like a disease,” she said. “When there are no consequences, some people think: Why should I pay if others are not?”... Punishments for retail theft have been eased over the past few decades in part to reduce incarceration rates. Many states now have a felony theft threshold of $1,000 or more, so even if a store reported a shoplifting case, some police departments wouldn’t be likely to make it a priority.  Retailers have tried imposing civil penalties on shoplifters, essentially threatening to sue them to cover the value of the stolen merchandise. But large companies like Walmart discontinued that practice after it was revealed that the retailers were hounding falsely accused customers.  The industry says it is putting much of its focus on stopping organized rings of thieves who resell stolen items online or on the street. They point to big cases like the recent indictment of dozens of people who are accused of stealing millions of dollars in merchandise from stores like Sephora, Bloomingdale’s and CVS. But it’s not clear how much of the crime is organized. Matthew Fernandez, 49, who works at a King Soopers in Broomfield, Colo., said he was stunned when he watched a thief walk out with a cart full of makeup, laundry detergent and meat and drive off in a Mercedes-Benz S.U.V... When people steal, she said, the company can write off the loss. But those losses mean less money for workers.  “That is part of my raise and benefits that is walking out the door,” she said. “That is money we deserve.”"

Richard Hanania on X - "Many people want their children to be smarter and healthier, but many ethicists are concerned because they think people should be sick and dumb. Note there’s not even a poll of ethicists here, just a journalist with an agenda. Evil and sick."
Americans are ready to test embryos for future college chances, survey shows | MIT Technology Review

for good things, against bad 🏳️‍🌈🌐🇺🇦 on X - "As the children who received Child Tax Credit payments grow older, we’re going to see studies measuring the effect of receiving transfers. These are the first — does it improve infant health? Absolutely not. There’s no effect on anything."
Effects of Income on Infant Health: Evidence from the Expanded Child Tax Credit and Pandemic Stimulus Checks
Clearly, even more money is needed

Yes, that Big Mac meal may cost $18 — but there’s one good reason for it - "Several months ago, the most significant factor pushing fast-food prices upward was the rising cost of food itself. Now, the No. 1 driver is the cost of labor, said Eric Gonzalez, a senior analyst covering the restaurant industry for KeyBanc Capital Markets. In other words, McDonald’s workers are making more money than they used to."
The same left wingers who demand higher wages get upset at higher prices. But they don't even understand that franchise CEOs have separate balance sheets from franchisees, which is why McDonald's CEO earning a lot isn't linked to McDonald's workers earning little, so good luck getting them to understand that

Jeff Bezos's $150 Billion Fortune Is a Policy Failure - The Atlantic - "Amazon is a marvel that has changed everything from how we read, to how we shop, to how we structure our neighborhoods, to how our postal system works. But his fortune is also a policy failure, an indictment of a tax and transfer system and a business and regulatory environment designed to supercharging the earnings of and encouraging wealth accumulation among the few. Bezos did not just make his $150 billion. In some ways, we gave it to him, perhaps to the detriment of all of us."
From 2018. This article keeps going on about inequality and exploitation, but doesn't consider the effects of left wing economic policies, just their intentions, which is typical. Alternatively, the left are happy to impoverish everybody if it reduces inequality (some of them certainly do think that way)

10 Hilarious Ways Star Trek's Economy Makes No Sense - "One of the most inspiring aspects of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek franchise is that in the 24th century, the galactic economy will no longer be rooted in democratic capitalism. It will exist on a meritocratic system, where instead of remuneration for services rendered, Federation citizens will go into fields for the betterment of their species. The invention of the replicator ensured no Federation citizen would go without their basic needs, thereby eliminating the need for currency to acquire material goods. That being the case, we still see Kirk talking about paying miners for lithium, and Doc McCoy trying to pay some sort of currency for a ship in Star Trek III. So how exactly does the Star Trek economy work? Star Trek: The Next Generation stated that Earth had long since done away with money, yet features Picard offering to "buy" dinner. Set phasers for skeptical, and read on for 10 ways that the Star Trek economy makes no sense."
No wonder left wingers like it so much

Curt Doolittle on X - "@Culture_Crit --"Q: What exactly is preventing you from moving to France?"--
Promoting the common illusion that the nice parts of Paris where the millionaires live, and the tourists spend their drachmas, is anything to do with the absolute slums that surround the isle de france like an encampment, and the absolutely depressing, poor, and unsafe disasters of the big cities (without even touching the smaller ones): Toulouse, Rennes, Lille, Lyon, Grenoble, Nice (OMG), Nantes, Marseille (Marseille has a crime rate five times higher than most other cities in France including a gun-related fatality approximately every four days (2.83 gun deaths per 100,000 residents). The city has around 30 homicides per year and 40% youth unemployment, which results in high levels of property and petty thefts.
(a) Islamization, political unrest, and an oblivious government.
(b) Riots, Strikes, Blockades, and "everything on fire" nights.
(c) multiple cities with no go zones
(d) relative hostility to entrepreneurship.
(e) unbearable business regulations.
(f) intolerable taxes.
(g) the offensive authoritarian arrogance of the bureaucracy.
If you're a commoner france is great. If you're competent and ambitious then there is no alternative to the anglosphere, with the american system simply unparalleled.  When the French government approached me about opening a location in france they acknowledged all their issues - they didn't even deny it - but they stated that they still needed to work on bringing business and particularly technology entrepreneurship to france. To which I responded - you cannot create a technology company that cannot turnover highly paid employees at will. The technolgoy marketplace requries continuous talent rotation that mirrors that "noise" of tech moving through the businesses and institutions in the economy.
I'm met with Glazed eyes. :)
So yeah."

Meme - Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren: "This week I reintroduced my Ultra-Millionaire Tax. It's time for millionaires and billionaires to start paying their fair share."
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "In 2020 the top 1% paid 42% of all income tax."
When the left say the "rich" need to pay their "fair share", they mean they need to pay so much they're no longer rich

Meme - Paul Graham: "Elizabeth Warren says her wealth tax will "rebuild America's middle class." Amusingly enough, that's true! The reason the middle class has been shrinking is not because more people are becoming poor, but because more are becoming rich. Her tax will reverse that trend.
Percent Shares of US Households by Total Money Income in Constant 2019 Dollars, 1967 to 2019"

Assessing Claims That U.S. Billionaires Get a Free Ride on Taxes
Occupy Democrats got upset at being fact checked, and failed to refute the facts. Ironic

Meme - Alec Stapp @AlecStapp: "Austin built a shit ton of new housing and now rent is falling 7% year-over-year"
"This is so crazy. I wonder what caused landlords here to become so much less greedy?"

Meme - "Stop Using Anti-Landlord Language
Instead of: Say:
Landlord - Person of Land
Security Deposit - Moving Out Tip
Eviction - Relocation
"It was like that when we moved in." "I'm sorry for not improving the property."
"This rent increase is excessive!" "Thank you for not evicting me :)"

Meme - "How to use PoL friendly Language
People of Land (Landlords) have experienced much oppression in recent years. Landphobic language is at an all time high. In an effort to combat such language, I will be providing PoL friendly alternatives. Kings, I will be using the landphobic slur without censor. Keep in mind, this is strictly for educational purposes. This is your trigger warning Kings. No one will blame you if you do not want to read further.
Landlord -> Person of Land, King, Housing Provider
Security Deposit -> Reparations, Gift, Moving out Tip
Eviction -> Contract Violation, Relocation, Public Shaming
Landphobic Slurs to NEVER use: Some Landphobic slurs are reprehensible : NEVER use these words, especially around PoL
Slumlord Guillotine Parasite Leech Mao "Real Job""

Meme - "Rich black kids are more likely to go to prison than poor white kids
Share of people born between 1957 and 1965 who eventually went to prison or jail, by how much wealth they had as of 1985, when they were between 20 and 28 years old"
Clearly, since this shows that poverty is not the reason for crime, as we keep being told, it must be racism

Back scratching / Holding a man's heart / Cucumber

"When someone scratches your back *woman in ecstasy*"

"The correct way to hold a man's heart *handjob*"

"I AM A CUCUMBER. I HAVE BEEN CHOSEN! I WILL BE CHOPPED FOR SALAD! THERE HAS BEEN NO CHOPPING ... *cucumber held between legs*"

Links - 12th May 2024 (1)

Viewpoint: Uncomfortable realities of big game hunting - "Following Cecil's death, many have called for a blanket ban on trophy hunting. Calls for a ban come from a number of different directions.  For some, there is a moral objection to the killing of animals for pleasure, for others an understandable emotional response to images of hunters posing with their kills or concerns over conservation.  But calls for a blanket ban on trophy hunting fail to take into account the complex relationship between hunting and conservation. Some trophy kills are hard to justify no matter which side of the fence you sit on. Leopard for example are a CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) Appendix I species. Such species are threatened with extinction and the commercial trade in wild-caught specimens is illegal. Despite this, it is still possible to hunt one "on trophy" (subject to quotas) for personal, non -commercial purposes.  Another hunting practice that has come under the spotlight is "canned hunting" of lions. There is considerable confusion between, and conflation of, trophy hunting and canned hunting. Canned hunting, where captive bred lions are released into small enclosures to be hunted in a "no kill no fee" arrangement, "hits the bottom of the barrel" according to Will Travers, President of wildlife charity the Born Free Foundation. Largely based in South Africa, the welfare issues involved in canned hunting, which include severe over-crowding and inadequate access to food and water, have recently been exposed by environmental film maker Ian Michler in his film Blood Lions.  However, as lion conservation expert and author of Lions in the Balance: Man-eaters, Manes and Men with Guns, Professor Craig Packer, says: "These animals are not part of the wild population and so, there's no real immediate impact on conservation… I view canned hunting mostly as an animal welfare issue."  Many sought-after trophy animals, such as kudu and impala, are maintained in large numbers across Southern Africa, especially South Africa, within large, fenced, privately-owned reserves. Animal numbers need to be controlled to prevent over-stocking and over-grazing. Surplus animals are harvested for meat but larger males can generate far more revenue if they're taken by a trophy hunter.  The taking of trophy animals in such reserves is of limited conservation concern and the money generated helps to pay for the management that is required to keep reserves in good condition.  In fact, the impact of trophy hunting depends on the species and the region being considered. So the past few decades in South Africa have seen a landscape-level replacement of cattle farming with wildlife farming. As a consequence: "Southern Africa's seen large scale recoveries of wildlife in the 20th century, built around hunting," says Rosie Cooney, who heads the IUCN Sustainable Use and Livelihoods Specialist Group.  Trophy hunting of many species was, and continues to be, vital in funding this reversal and a blanket ban there is neither needed nor desirable. This "consumptive utilisation of wildlife" model ("it pays it stays") also works well in some other regions. The Bubye Valley Conservancy in Zimbabwe for example has more than 400 lions and one of the most important populations of rhino still in existence.  The Conservancy is funded entirely by hunting and, according to the reserve manager Blondie Leathem, a ban would be "devastating".  However, trophy hunting is not always beneficial for wildlife. Over-harvesting can clearly have a detrimental effect on numbers.  Also, trophy hunters select large males and this can have more profound effects on the breeding dynamics of animals in that region. These problems are greatest when land is not stably owned and a "tragedy of the commons" (when everyone harvests as much as they can for short-term gain) can result. It is tempting to suggest that hunting could be replaced by tourism and in some places this is indeed the case. However, as Rosie Cooney points out, tourism is only possible in regions that "are accessible…a few hours generally from a major hub…with good roads".  They also need to be safe, "lacking in dangerous diseases….and politically stable". There needs to be the infrastructure to look after tourists and you need capital to invest in it. Many hunting concessions operate successfully in areas where none of these conditions are in place, at least for now. The pro-hunting argument is simple. Hunting provides revenue that directly funds conservation. Anti-hunters often claim that this hunting-conservation link doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The problem in deciding whether hunting is beneficial or not is that both sides are right.  How can both sides be right? The answer to that lies in the fact that Africa is not a single entity...  In some regions hunting is vital for conservation. In such regions "it pays it stays" works and a ban would be detrimental to wildlife... It is interesting that the killing of a single lion by a wealthy, white, American attracted so much attention.  As Will Travers explains: "I don't think we should fool ourselves that it's all about trophy hunting. Lions are threatened by habitat loss, habitat fragmentation…human activities that disperse and displace lions [and] the loss of prey species." There are few true wildernesses left, and as the human population in Africa expands, conflict between humans and wildlife gets ever greater. Far more lions are killed by cattle herders defending their livestock and their families than by trophy hunters. Don't forget, in the UK, we long ago killed our apex predators so that we could sleep soundly."
When charismatic megafauna meet the racist hatred of white people

Three men rescued off island due to beach 'HELP' sign - "Three men were rescued by the US Coast Guard off an island in Micronesia after they sent out a plea for "HELP" using palm tree leaves.  They spelled out "HELP" with the leaves, which led to the rescue nine days after they left on a sailing trip.  They had been reported missing after failing to return from a journey to Pikelot Atoll - an uninhabited coral island about 415 miles from Guam.  It is the second time in four years people were rescued from the island. The Coast Guard said in a statement that the three experienced mariners, all unnamed men in their 40s, had embarked on their sailing trip from Polowat Atoll - an island that is a part of the Federated States of Micronesia... Though uninhabited, Pikelot Atoll is often temporarily visited by hunters and fishermen. It has also been the site of another rescue in recent years.  In 2020, three Micronesian mariners were saved - by the Australian Defence Force - after spelling out "SOS" on the beach"

Tharman Shanmugaratnam: Singapore picks a president who could've been much more - "Ironically he has also blown apart the argument for a key PAP racial policy.  Prior to the presidential election in 2017, the government passed laws ensuring some polls would be restricted to minority race candidates. They argued the rules were needed to ensure better representation of minorities in Singapore, which include Malays, Indians, and Eurasians.  Those rules did not apply this time, so Mr Tharman has proven that a minority race candidate can win under their own steam - and resoundingly so."

Meme - "Watching Tom and Jerry as a kid: Haha! This is so funny. Teach Tom a lesson, Jerry.
Watching it now: Leave poor Tom alone. He did nothing to deserve this, YOU RAT."

Meme - "God can't exist because of Eric The God-Eating Magic Penguin. Since Eric is God-Eating by definition, he has no choice but to eat God. So, if God exists, He automatically ceases to exist as a result of being eaten. Unless you can prove that Eric doesn't exist, God doesn't exist. Even if you can prove that Eric doesn't exist, that same proof will also be applicable to God. There are only two possibilities: either you can prove that Eric doesn't exist or you can't. In both cases it logically follows that God doesn't exist."
A parody of the usual "proofs" for the Christian god, which rely on stacking the deck

Wisconsin man who killed son, 5, over cheesecake gets 20 years - "Travis Stackhouse, 30, was sentenced Tuesday for the 2019 death of 5-year-old Sir Ameer, who reportedly died from a ruptured stomach and other injuries after his father got violent with him for having one piece of cake Stackhouse received on Father’s Day"

Girl, 14, was 'groomed, murdered and ground into kebab meat' - but her family's nightmare isn't over - "HEARTBROKEN Karen Downes' head span as she struggled to cope with the enormity of the words spoken in the crowded courtroom.   Moments after hearing her 14-year-old daughter Charlene had most likely been murdered, cut up and ground into kebab meat, Karen fled, throwing up in a nearby toilet... Charlene disappeared into the bright lights of Blackpool on November 1, 2003, never to be seen again.   Cops believe the teenager was the victim of sexual exploitation, swapping sex for bags of chips after being groomed by a gang of mainly Asian men.  She made 13 visits to a sexual health clinic in the two years before she vanished... Cops believe Charlene was murdered within hours of disappearing in Blackpool city centre.   Her murder uncovered a dark side of the faded seaside town after a police report revealed Charlene was one of 60 girls - some as young as eleven - who had been groomed by takeaway workers. The girls were given food and cigarettes in exchange for sex acts. Detectives allege that Charlene has been strangled and dismembered, and that her killers joked about having turned her flesh into kebab meat and her bones into tiling grout - after she threatened to blow the whistle on them.  In 2007, Iyad Albattikhi, then 27, who ran the Funny Boyz takeaway in Blackpool, was charged with Charlene’s murder. His landlord and business partner Mohammed Reveshi was charged with helping him dispose of her body.  They went on trial in May 2007 when the jury was played taped conversations in which it was alleged Iyad had joked that he killed the girl, that she was ‘chopped up’ and her body had ‘gone into the kebabs’.  The jury failed to reach a verdict and a retrial was also dropped after a police watchdog found the investigation by Lancashire Constabulary was ‘handled unprofessionally’ and plagued by a ‘catalogue of errors’."

Meme - Your Dasher: "Your chat with *** has ended because your order was reassigned. You can now chat with your new Dasher
your food was destroyed by an altercation between your first dasher and BJ's staff. they are refusing to remake the order."

Lo-fi Republican on X - "Feel like the endless DoorDash discourse on here often fails to note how extremely unpleasant delivery drivers are now. Most are either stoned and extremely slovenly burnouts or fresh off the boat immigrants, both typically drive a beater car filled with trash. It's mentally ill to pay premium costs to have your food transported like that"
SW on X - "DoorDash created jobs for the most unemployable members of society. It’s no surprise it’s a complete shit show. “Make money on your own time with no boss” is bound to attract the lowest members of society."

Meme - SIMPLICIUS Ѱ @simpatico771: "⚡️Battlefield science has been advanced in the SMO. It was discovered that soldiers with big a gut have far higher survivability rate due to the slanted nature of the armor. Just like in WW2 when the T-34 pioneered angled armor to deflect shells.  Major achievement of technology."

Meme - Victor Edet: "IF you allow your male child to dress like a Crim!nal he may grow up and become one. If you allow your daughter to dress like a harlOt she may grow up and become a prost!tute. You reap what you sow."
Keywords: criminal, harlot, prostitute

Yann LeCun on X - "WhatsApp vs iMessage is the new metric vs imperial. The entire world uses WhatsApp, save a few people who  are iPhone-clutching Americans or from a country where WhatsApp is banned (like China). Yet iMessage users will actually claim it's objectively better, just like they will claim that Farenheit is intrinsically better than Celsius and inch better than cm, whereas it's just that they grew up with it."

Meme - "Doritos winerie chip $1,000
Making nachos, found weird wiener chip. Don't low ball me, I know what I got. $1,000 obo"

Meme - "IS YOUR CHILD TEXTING ABOUT BOOBS?
brb = big round boobsicles
lol = lactate on, losers!
smh = super mega honkers
tbh = those boobles humongous!
tfw = tiddies, fucking wonderful
stfu = shawty, those funbags unforgettable"

Meme - "Cops beat Chinese man after asking for his name
"I've lost all faith in our police" says Fuk Yu"

Meme - wanye @wanyeburkett: "Maybe the most important thing you learn by attending public school is that we are all at the mercy of the bottom quintile. The rules you follow in life will be based on the behavior of the bottom quintile, the taxes you pay are to support the bottom quintile, the greatest risks to your life and property will come from the bottom quintile, the dearth of comfortable public spaces is because you have to allow the bottom quintile to be there, our zoning laws are developed for fear of the bottom quintile. Probably best to learn and accept this early."

Lunchables have concerning levels of lead and sodium, Consumer Reports finds - CBS News - "None of the kits exceeded legal or regulatory limits, but five of 12 tested products would expose someone to 50% or more of California's maximum allowable amount of lead, or cadmium heavy metals that can cause developmental and other problems in kids, CR found... "The kits provide only about 15% of the 1,600 daily calories that a typical 8-year-old requires, but that small amount of food puts them fairly close to the daily maximum limit for lead," stated Eric Boring, a CR chemist who led the testing. "So if a child gets more than half of the daily limit for lead from so few calories, there's little room for potential exposure from other foods, drinking water or the environment.""

Meme - "I have 5 more players to unlock *black basketball players with indistinct faces*"

The Ordeal of Guillaume Le Gentil - "In 1760, Le Gentil was commissioned by the French Academy of Sciences to observe the 1761 transit of Venus from Pondicherry, India. Sailing from France in March 1760, he arrived on the Isle de France (Mauritius) in July where he learned that war had broken out between France and Britain preventing further passage east. In February 1761, he was finally able to secure passage. Despite the upcoming monsoon season, he was assured that he could reach Pondicherry by mid-April in plenty of time for the transit on June 6. Unfavorable winds blew his ship off course, so it spent five weeks wandering around the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Upon nearing Mahé on the west coast of India, the captain learned that Pondicherry had been captured by the British so he decided to return to Isle de France. Le Gentil had no choice but to remain on board for the return trip. On the day of transit, Le Gentil was on board ship and unable to make accurate observations on the rolling deck.  Rather than return to France, Le Gentil decided to stay in the Indian Ocean until the next transit in 1769 and “to make all observations I could on geography, natural history, physics, astronomy, navigation, winds and tides.” This he did for a few years. In 1766, he decided that Manila in the Philippines would be the ideal spot to observe the transit so on May 1, he sailed for Manila and arrived in August. The Spanish governor of Manila was suspicious and antagonistic towards Le Gentil. Learning that Pondicherry was in French hands again, Le Gentil escaped on a Portuguese ship. On his arrival in Pondicherry on March 27, 1768, the governor welcomed him with a feast, and the next day invited him to select a location for his observatory. Le Gentil selected a palace that has been partially destroyed by the British and was now used as a powder magazine. While waiting for the June 4, 1769 transit, he prepared his observatory and studied Indian astronomy.  On the eve of the transit, the sky was perfectly clear and Le Gentil entertained the governor with views of Jupiter’s satellites. Everything appeared favorable for observing the transit the next day. Awakening during the night, Le Gentil was dismayed that the sky was overcast. He wrote “… I felt doomed, I threw myself on the bed, without being able to close my eyes.” Instead of clearing, a storm blew in bringing thicker clouds completely obscuring the Sun for the duration of the transit. Immediately after, the skies cleared and the Sun shone for the rest of the day...   And to add insult to injury, the skies were clear in Manila that day!  Le Gentil fell into a funk for several weeks and contracted dysentery, which delayed his return to France. Still sick, he embarked in March 1770 for home, but was forced to convalesce at the Isle de France. By July he was ready to continue his journey, but could not obtain passage until November. A hurricane damaged his ship and Le Gentil was forced to return to Isle de France again, where he received news that his heirs presumed him dead and were trying to divide his estate. On March 31, 1771, he left Isle de France for the last time and endured a stormy trip to Cadiz in Spain. Traveling overland, he reached French soil on October 8, 1771; eleven years, six months and thirteen days after setting out.  But that is not all! Upon returning home, he found his heirs fighting over his estate, funds entrusted to his agent missing, eight crates of specimens collected on his journey missing, and his seat in the Academy lost. His seat was eventually restored, but he could not recoup the lost funds or locate the missing specimens"

Meme - Ryan George: "If a movie character gets shot HERE, they're required to keep it to themselves for a while. Later in the movie, they must open their shirt/jacket revealing an alarming amount of blood-- followed by another character saying "you're hurt!" This is law. *stomach*"

Left Bank by Agnès Poirier – existentialism, jazz and the miracle of Paris in the 1940s - "In August 1943, the sales team at Gallimard noticed something odd. The publisher’s new 700-page philosophical tome was selling unexpectedly well. Was it because Jean-Paul Sartre’s thoughts on freedom and responsibility in Being and Nothingness resonated with Parisians enduring Nazi occupation? Not quite. It was because the book weighed exactly one kilogram and so was a perfect substitute for copper weights, which had been sold on the black market or melted down for ammunition... In one of my favourite moments Simone de Beauvoir pauses on the Pont Neuf after a nuit blanche of drinking with Sartre, Arthur Koestler and Albert Camus. Looking sadly into the Seine, she sobs over the tragedy of the human condition. “I do not understand why we do not throw ourselves into the water!” she wails to Sartre who, also crying, replies: “Well, let’s do it!” It would take a heart of stone not to laugh.  But what is the human condition? Sartre defined it shortly after the liberation. “We were never freer,” he wrote, “than during the German occupation. Since the Nazi venom was poisoning our very own thinking, our every free thought was a victory. The circumstances, often atrocious, of our fight allowed us to live openly this torn and unbearable situation one calls the Human Condition.” But, Poirier points out, that freedom was dubiously won. De Beauvoir signed a form denying she was Jewish so she could continue teaching in occupied Paris. While she and Sartre were never freer, Parisian Jews were being rounded up by Parisian cops and murdered in Nazi death camps... Celebrity collaborators, too, in on-trend if unwitting existentialist fashion, defined their moral characters through what they did rather than what they thought – and later came up with shameless rationalisations. Arletty, star of Marcel Carné’s film Les Enfants du Paradis, justified sleeping with the enemy by mapping her body as semi-autonomous regions. “My heart is French, but my arse is international,” she said. During interrogation by the resistance, actor and playwright Sacha Guitry was asked: “Why did you have dinner with Hermann Göring?” “Out of curiosity,” he witlessly replied. Poirier, though, risks soft pedalling these evasions and self-delusions since, ardent Parisienne that she is, she wants to tell a love story. In her narrative, everyone who is creatively or intellectually anyone is seduced by Paris. Her enviable cast of characters – not just existentialist philosophers but Samuel Beckett, Alberto Giacometti, Juliette Greco, Jean Cocteau, Simone Signoret, and wave after wave of oversexed, overpaid Americans – are libidinous multi-taskers, overturning bourgeois norms while philosophising, be-bopping, pill-popping and bed-hopping... Mailer was one of many Americans bankrolled by the fabulous-sounding GI Bill. That legislation, so far as I understand it, paid for veterans to return to Paris, learn French and get laid.

Uri Kurlianchik on X - "According to the New Testament, the Jews didn't crucify Jesus. The Romans did. If you want to harass someone about it, go ask a random Italian why he killed Jesus."
Giovanni on X - "I'm Italian... Where do you think a religion based on guilt came from...."

John Arnold on X - "Houston has bad weather, no natural beauty, and little history. But that’s a feature, not a bug. It means government has to be responsive to the people to create a place people and businesses want to locate. It must be efficient with taxpayer money and consider tradeoffs. It must create an ecosystem that leads to a high quality of life for its residents. Lose this focus and the city fails. There is no presumption that residents must acquiesce to the city; the city must work for the residents. Turns out there’s great demand for this concept: the city has gone from the from the 45th largest in the US to the 4th largest in 100 years. It's a simple concept but one I find wanting in many legacy cities with more natural advantages."

Brooks Otterlake on X - "Just learned that in the French-Canadian dub of this scene the policeman can't understand a word Bart is saying because of his Québécois accent"

The Suffering Behind ‘Humane,’ Organic Milk - The Atlantic - "Former employees said that sick cows were regularly denied antibiotics for mastitis and hoof infections, at least in part to maintain their milk as organic—a charge corroborated by an Alexandre farm worker not involved in the report. (Once a cow is given antibiotics, her milk must be sold as conventional for the duration of her life.) The farm has “natural” treatments that “allow us to not need synthetic antibiotics,” Vanessa Nunes, Blake and Stephanie’s daughter and a dairy manager at the operation, told me. “We don’t need to give an antibiotic for mastitis. We have a tincture that we’ll use.” (Mastitis can be debilitating when not treated with antibiotics.)  Whistleblowers also said cows with infections had their eyes packed with salt and had denim patches glued to their skulls. The farm responded that cows with pink eye were treated using a saline solution with cod-liver oil, and sometimes with apple cider vinegar. The farm said that the denim patch was a “gold standard” method to cure pink eye. Jim Reynolds, a large-animal veterinarian, told me that salt would be “horrible” to use in any animal’s eye and that patches had no medical benefit, and could worsen an infection by trapping dirt and irritating the eye. “I don’t know that it’s been recommended since the 1980s,” he said. He told me that the farm’s treatment for eye infections was “nonsense.”"
Clearly, organic is superior and the environment must be "protected" (even though the yield is lower, so it needs more land)

How A Georgia Teacher Won $10,000 By Reading The Fine Print - "Donelan Andrews is a high school teacher from Georgia. And she won $10,000 when she found a few words hidden in the text of a travel insurance policy. That section of the fine print was part of a contest run by the Florida-based insurance company Squaremouth... When I got the contract, I printed it off and decided, certainly, to read the contract because I always read contracts and noticed this fabulous paragraph on the seventh page. In bold letters, it said, Pays to Read. And then the paragraph began to explain that they have a contest going on and that if I had actually read that far in the contract, I was one of maybe 1 percent - I think it said - of people who actually read contracts. And they wanted to change that. And so they were running a contest to actually win $10,000. And it certainly got my attention...  I didn't think it was a hoax because, frankly, it reminded me of when I was a classroom teacher and would prepare tests for my students. I would always have directions on the first page of the tests, and I would usually hide something similar - not that they'd win money, but maybe they could get 10 bonus points if they circled the number 10 on Page 2 of the test or something... Part of the Squaremouth campaign was that they were going to donate $10,000 to the Reading is Fundamental company, which is a nonprofit that donates books to elementary and primary schools.  And in addition to that, once they found out I was a teacher and very passionate about my job, they added another $10,000 - $5,000 to each of the high schools where I teach - donating that directly to the libraries at the schools. And you better believe those media specialists are my new best friends."

wanye on X - "Regular people mostly conceive of "science" as an authoritative body of experts who make rulings like in a court of law. You can *really* see this in the way they reference studies. A study is to normal people a *ruling* on a matter. They aren't interested in thinking through the logic of the argument, or weighing the finding against anything like bayesian priors, or considering study design. What they know is that a decision has been reached.  To somebody who is *actually* science-minded a study is an argument to be evaluated and discussed. To the public a study is a ruling. To me the replication crisis is the most easily-explained thing in the world. Science is really hard, almost nobody is actually good at it, and the vast majority of even-genuinely-smart people are not capable of designing a study that reveals anything novel."
Aaron Krol on X - "scientists are the modern priestly caste. Treated as an authority figure rather than "guy who ran an experiment""
whalebiologist1 on X - "It's been a great amusement to me that we've replaced "absolute trust of people in robes" with "absolute trust of people in lab coats" and are convinced this is a great advancement."
The scientismists are going to be very upset, because they fucking love science

Kevin Bass PhD MS on X - "Throughout my childhood and early adulthood it always felt like the liberals were better informed, smarter, and more knowledgeable, while the conservatives were just fuddy duddy defenders of the status quo. Now it feels the exact opposite. Did I change or did America change?"
Deep Squats, Shallow Thoughts on X - "The avg liberal is still smarter than the avg conservative, but almost no one comes to beliefs based on thorough research, they rely on sensemaking institutions. Liberals slightly higher avg IQ is no match for the feelings of moral superiority and tribal cohesion they get from continuing to use the captured and deranged institutions like the NYT, CDC, etc to get their sensemaking."

Links - 11th May 2024 (2 - Trans Mania)

Meme - "Come on, guys. It's like you're not even tryn...
*Rachel Levine, Dylan Mulvaney, Sam Brinton*
American trans Vs Asian trans"

Do all human fetuses begin as female? - "By Andrea Rodrigo B.Sc., M.Sc. (embryologist). Last Update: 02/02/2017
No, that is not true. The sex of humans is determined from fertilization, that is, as soon as it becomes a zygote: if it is XX, it will be a female, while, if it is XY, a male. However, at the beginning, human embryos have the precursors of both female and male gonads."
So much for all men being trans

Meme *she/her*
Woman: "i CAN ACCOMIDATE THis , iT's NO BiG DEAL!"
MTF: "OH, WELL IN THAT CASE..."
*MTF vomits out "Lesbians must have sex with me", "admit me in sex specific support groups", "elect me to women's positions", "let me play women's sport", "give me women's awards", "make me a moderator for your online group", "let me on WLW apps", "put me in women's prisons", "give me rights to women's change rooms"*
When people say that there's no harm using preferred pronouns and it's all about respect. Of course, though we've seen the "myth" of the slippery slope in action, this will be denied

The Heretical Liberal 🇨🇦🏳️‍🌈 on X - "One of my favorite stories under the 'Things That Make You Go Hmmmm' banner is that time back in 2018 when UCLA researchers discovered that there may be brain scans to diagnose ACTUAL gender dysphoria. At the time it was hailed as a godsend to the trans community, b/c now we could easily diagnose true dysphoria and show who is (and crucially, who isn't) actually dysphoric. Problem solved!......right?!  But the huge study UCLA planned was shelved due to explosive and unexpected pushback from the trans community.  Now why would THAT be the case?🤔  Can you imagine cancer-advocacy groups aggressively pushing back on a much more effective way to diagnose cancer?  What could POSSIBLY be the reason they would find this so offensive that it had to be stopped before it could even be studied? 🙄"
The Heretical Liberal 🇨🇦🏳️‍🌈 on X - "🙋🏼‍♂️I'll take "It's the AGP's for $800 Alex""
FEMALIST on X - "From the little I’ve seen from poking around on reddit theres loads of them that will happily admit they’re woman simply because they want to be, no dysphoria, nothing. Pure male entitlement."
Anything that threatens the TRA agenda is a threat to trans people's "mental health"

Meme - "Christians saying you can't change your gender because biology is a fact."
"Christians when you tell them virgin birth in humans isn't real because biology is a fact."
TRAs keep admitting that trans logic / gender ideology is magical irrationality like religion

Montana 14-year-old moved to Canada after gender identity custody dispute, parents say - "A 14-year-old staying in Wyoming for gender transitioning treatment has allegedly been relocated to Canada without their parents’ consent, the parents told The National Desk (TND).  Krista and Todd Kolstad say they lost custody of their child this month after a trip to the hospital for suicidal thoughts revealed the teen had the desire to change genders. The child was later taken from the parents by Montana Child and Family Services (CFS) and relocated to a residential treatment facility in Wyoming specializing in gender therapy... The parents say they have only been given small details about their child’s treatment and that their teen is continuing to be transitioned and referred to by a different name and pronouns.  “They’ve had since August until now to completely brainwash and transition our child. She’s not the same now,” Todd said."
I remember when left wingers were claiming it was a far right conspiracy theory to say the state could seize your kids if you did not support them mutilating their bodies ("misinformation" was not a left wing buzzword at the time)

'Framed as a bigot': NY father loses custody of son after questioning gender transition - "A New York father says a court stripped him of custody of his child after he objected to their gender transition.  Software engineer Dennis Hannon, 32, told The National Desk (TND) Monday the Erie County Supreme Court stripped him of all but visitation rights to his nine-year-old son, who had been living as a girl on days he stayed with Hannon’s ex-wife.  While the transition has allegedly been occurring since the child was two, Hannon said he wasn’t informed until the time his son was five when he received a letter from their kindergarten classroom... “I was shocked. I was just floored when I read that they had assigned my son a new name,” Hannon said. “I was essentially the last to know.” Hannon said he later found out his son had been seeing a gender therapist specializing in adolescents who kept no notes of their sessions together. This therapist had referred Hannon’s son to an endocrinologist, who recommended him as a candidate for puberty blocking drugs.     We had a treatment plan before diagnosis. He was never formally diagnosed,” Hannon said. “They had fast tracked my son to puberty blockers without me even knowing.”  Hannon said he then stepped in with legal counsel to prevent his son from using puberty blockers. While the move worked, he said the repercussions were immense.  “I was framed as a bigot. I was framed as I was intolerant and I wouldn't accept my son for his gender identity and that was not the case,” Hannon said. “I simply questioned it and what it seemed like what they wanted me to do was not question it, but just accept it blindly.” Hannon says the court went on to rule against him in later proceedings, demanding he pay for the child’s $145-per-session gender therapy. When these sessions still did not yield a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, Hannon requested his child be discharged.  When the court responded by removing his medical authority, Hannon says he appealed the decision, first to a family court, then to two county courts and finally to the Erie County Supreme Court. Hannon says the three-day trial resulted in him losing custody of his son, being only allowed to see him occasionally during the week and on alternating weekends."

James Esses on X - "Wow. Internal job applicants at @stjohnambulance are asked to share their pronouns. If they refuse, text pops up chastising them and pressuring them to “reconsider”. If they still refuse, they are told to explain why they won’t share them. This is ideological harassment"

Meme - Gimli: "The trans women want to be accepted as women, but they look so much like men, it's nearly impossible"
Aragorn: "It's the beards"
Eowyn: *laughs*

Meme - "1990s Comedy *Jim Carrey Female bodybuilder (Vera de Milo)*
2020s Reality *Lia Thomas*"

Meme - *Women's toilet*
Woman with broom: "GO ON, GIT, SHOO!"
MTFs and soyjaks at Men's toilet: "OH MY SCIENCE! A G-G-GENOCIDE!"

Meme - Shark with hammer strapped to head: "How could you tell I'm trans?"
Hammerhead shark: *annoyed*

Meme - Genevieve Gluck @WomenReadWomen: "There is a disturbing trend among middle-aged men who decide to take estrogen wherein they seem to fetishize age regression, claim to be younger, and escalate their public display of paraphilias"
"One year in, 9mos HRT, was 52 a year ago, now turning 33!"

British Museum Claims Some Birds, Dinosaurs May Have Been Queer In New Exhibit - "A museum in the United Kingdom is facing mockery after claiming that some dinosaurs may have been queer. In its latest exhibition celebrating LGBT history, a pamphlet handed out to guests speculates on the sexuality of dinosaurs.  The LGBTQI+ History exhibit was founded in 2021 by the Hastings Queer History Collective, which consists of members of the gay and transgender community interested in Queer History and demanding representation in museum collections... In addition to theorizing the sexuality and gender identity of dinosaurs, the pamphlet also claims that pheasants are queer because female pheasants change their sex when they stop laying eggs.   “Despite Queer behavior in the animal kingdom being observed as far back as the 18th century, it is often ignored or hidden from the public. One example is of female pheasants changing their sex when they stop laying eggs and turn their brown feathers into the brightly colored feathering typical of males.”  “Pheasants feature some of the earliest European studies of Queer behavior in animals,” continues the pamphlet. “In 1780, naturalist John Hunter (1728-1793) shared his observations of ‘sex changing pheasants’ in an Account of an Extraordinary Pheasant.”  Concluding, the excerpt on pheasants adds: “With queerness visible in the natural world, the argument that it is somehow unnatural begins to unravel.”   Despite the museum’s bold claims, Dr Emma Hilton, a biologist and board director of the gender-critical campaign group Sex Matters, decried its statements about pheasants as “nonsense”  “The only vertebrates that change sex are all fish. Birds do not change sex,” she said. “Often in the process of aging, female animals can produce male features as a result of hormonal changes, we can also see this in humans following the menopause, but we would not say that older women had changed sex if they have a bit of a mustache. These kinds of claims can be very wearying.”  In addition to the exhibit highlighting several other gay historical figures, the pamphlet also asserts under its description of a Samurai Suit of Armor that 18th-century colonialism is to blame for “the destruction of many ancient gender systems in countries around the world.”"

Meme - Trans Woman Support: "It's in my DNA"
This is not a parody page

Bernard Lane on X - "In the week that brought the Cass review's verdict on the experimental treatment of children with puberty blockers, Australia's human rights commission was arguing in the court case of Tickle v Giggle that sex is "not a biological concept", that it is not binary and that it can change. https://fedcourt.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0006/112299/Submission-of-the-Australian-Human-Rights-Commission.pdf  @AusHumanRights  @RCHMelbourne  @salltweets   #TicklevGiggle #CassReview #AusPol  In the 2013 Family Court case re Jamie, involving a 10-year-old seeking puberty blockers at the gender clinic of the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne (RCH), the commission argued that blockers were "reversible", the risk of a wrong decision to give a child blockers was "low" and the outcome of a wrong decision would not be "grave". https://austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/FamCAFC/2013/110.html  There is no good evidence that puberty blockers are reversible--for one thing, even the RCH gender-afirming clinic has (belatedly) acknowledged that the effect of blockers on the still-developing brain of an adolescent is simply unknown. https://genderclinicnews.com/p/cognitive-challenge  In the 2017 case re Kelvin, involving a teenage girl seeking testosterone drugs to masculinise her body, the commission supported the successful argument of the RCH gender clinic that "advances in medical science" on gender dysphoria meant that minors should have easier access to irreversible cross-sex hormones. This outcome was hailed as a victory for human rights. https://austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/FamCAFC/2017/258.html  The Family Court judges relied on a draft version of the 2018 gender-affirming treatment guideline from RCH for their conclusion that hormonal treatment of distressed minors represented a great leap forward in science--and that there were not any alternative treatments for gender dysphoria. https://rch.org.au/uploadedFiles/Main/Content/adolescent-medicine/230242%20RCH%20Gender%20Standards%20Booklet%201.4_Nov%202023_WEB.pdf  But there was no such scientific advance and no good basis for the claims made by RCH and the human rights commission, judging by the results of several independent systematic reviews (one of them involving Ken Pang, head of research at the RCH gender clinic).  https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29514975/  In 2015, only two years before this supposed advance in science was welcomed, a landmark Dutch study surveyed the world's leading gender clinicians and concluded there would be no consensus on puberty blockers because there was so much disagreement about their use and so little long-term data on their effects. That conclusion still looks right. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26119518/  This week Cass confirmed that the evidence for puberty blockers is so poor that they should be confined to ethically controlled clinical trials & cross-sex hormones for minors should be used only with "extreme caution". https://cass.independent-review.uk/home/publications/final-report/  Cass also had the RCH treatment guideline independently evaluated. It scored 19/100 on the key measure of the rigour with which the guideline was developed. The only treatment guidelines approved by Cass were from Finland (51/100) and Sweden (71/100), both of which recognise the experimental nature of puberty blockers.   The RCH guideline is used by major gender clinics across Australia's public children's hospitals. At the Queensland Children's Hospital, Jillian Spencer, a senior psychiatrist with an unblemished record, raised concerns about the evidence and safety for puberty blockers and hormones given to minors in line with the advice of the RCH guideline.  https://genderclinicnews.com/p/watch-out  Queensland's health authorities responded by suspending Dr Spencer (a troubled teenage patient had complained of "transphobia") and quietly began a review--not into Dr Spencer's concerns about the gender-affirming model, but rather into whether or not the gender-affirming clinic gives treatment according to the gender-affirming RCH guideline. https://genderclinicnews.com/p/politicians-promise. The government brief says the review will also "consider international practice relevant to Queensland services", which might mean only mean "consider what overseas gender-affirming clinics do".   That would be very different from a review considering the best recent international evidence--which would be the systematic reviews since 2019 by Finland, Sweden and Cass showing that the evidence for the gender-affirming treatments promoted by RCH is very weak and very uncertain.   The RCH guideline, which is presented as the 2023 "updated" version, has a reference list of 70 studies--and not a single new study since 2018 among them.  The Queensland review is supposed to report this month. What will guide its findings--the best recent international research (the systematic reviews in Europe) or the RCH guideline?
Meanwhile, what is to be said about the conduct of Australia's human rights commission?   For years now, it has been a partisan advocate for fringe gender ideology and the gender medicalisation of minors. The commission burns public money making absurd or inaccurate claims about matters of science and medicine, where its only interest appears to be to impose an activist interpretation.   When its record becomes more widely known, it may suffer a heavy blow to its reputation and credibility. Is it already beyond reform?  Meanwhile, the commission has the gall to set itself up as the arbiter of "anti-trans misinformation", including in the fields of healthcare and the law.  https://humanrights.gov.au/have-your-say/"

Ontario resident wins public funding for unusual genital surgery - "Ontario has been ordered to pay for surgery for a resident who is seeking to have a vagina constructed while leaving their penis intact.  Denying the procedure would infringe on the person’s Charter-protected right to security of the person, an Ontario court said in its ruling.  The unanimous decision by a three-member panel of judges of Ontario’s Divisional Court could expand access to a novel “bottom surgery” for people who identify as non-binary, meaning neither fully male nor fully female. The Ontario resident, identified in court documents as K.S., has been locked in a legal battle with the Ontario Health Insurance Plan since 2022, when OHIP denied a funding request to have a penile preserving vaginoplasty performed at a clinic in Austin, Texas.  The surgery, which is not available anywhere in Canada, involves creating a vaginal canal, or opening, without removing the penis... OHIP denied her request for funding, arguing that the procedure is not included on its list of sex-reassignment procedures, and is therefore not an insured service.  K.S. appealed OHIP’s decision to Ontario’s Health Services Appeal and Review Board, arguing that forcing her to have her penis removed would invalidate her identity and be akin to an illegal act of conversion therapy... The court said the appeal board’s conclusion was also consistent with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) standards of care — influential guidelines that received a scathing review this week by a massive British report into gender-affirming care."

Coddled affluent professional on X - "My meta take on the trans issue is that a lot of libs ended up in a bad place because they relied on well-worn heuristics without taking the time to carefully think through the evidence and logic.  To reverse course now they would have to admit their heuristics (which they mistake for ‘values’) failed them.  However, they are loathe to do this given both their self regard and how invested they are in their heuristics (which is way more than they are invested in the actual trans issue)."

Thread by @Artofhunger75 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "While researching I found this study on the TRANSITION between juvenile crime, it’s DESISTANCE factors and it’s BINARY relationship with regard to the TWO SEXES. Mini thread 🧵 This sounded VERY familiar to me. “Most juvenile offenders desist from offending as they become adults.” You mean to tell me there is some psychosocial and physiological reasons why teenagers/pubescent humans act differently than adults and it’s not permanent? Shocking! Not only that but science doesn’t know all the variables of why teenagers behaviors desist for most but persist for others? And they especially have no idea what these factors are for women! Why don’t they just make up a treatment and try it for a decade? Duh... What they found was juvenile referrals, especially for serious crimes were predictors of adult recidivism in the MEN. But not for the WOMEN where they found the predictors were Adverse Childhood Experiences, family violence, trauma, abuse and parental divorce. Sound familiar? The severity of male criminality seems to be a predictor in and of itself, though I suspect there is unknown traumas and factors such as developmental issues, IQ and endochrine issues. Acting out in teenhood for girls seems to be socialized from ACE inclusion. Now take these young girls, add in things like autism spectrum disorder, and body issues, and block their natural hormones and mega dose them with testosterone. A direct binary mirror treatment to what they do for confused boys. Sound reasonable from what all other studies say? It seems in criminal studies the conclusion is to treat girls/young women differently from boys/young men. Sex matters in law, policy and healthcare so why do gender clinics treat these two demographics the same? Affirmation, block natural indigenous hormones add endogenous drugs. Lacking evidence based analysis/quantitative syntheses, lacking data, no follow-ups (68% of the gender clinic services users’ outcomes were unknown/ refused to be given to the Cass Review) didn’t seem to slow the Gender Borg rollingvover the globe as best practice healthcare. Fin"

Thread by @Artofhunger75 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The Curious Case Of Carly Gregg and HARM-aceuticals 🧵 Another teen girl who identifies as she/they and was on pharmaceutical medication went on a shooting rampage. Her trial started this week past.  What we know so far is Carly, 14, was upset with her mother, who was also a teacher at her school, for taking items out of her bedroom. She grabbed a gun that was present in the house and killed her mother.  She then took her mother’s phone and texted her stepfather asking when he would be home. He replied “in about 45 minutes.” In the interim Carly invited a friend over asking “ever seen a dead body?” She showed her friend her mom’s body and the gun. When her stepfather came home she shot him, while her friend hid in the backyard, but only hit his arm. The man was able to wrestle the gun away from his stepdaughter. She screamed and ran away. The stepfather called police and Carly was picked up a mile from her home. So far the only indication, beyond mom removing items from her bedroom, for the extreme violence was that the young girl, who went by she/they pronouns, just changed her SSRIs and other unnamed meds.  There is a youth mental health crisis in the post-industrial world. The correlation between these rapid onset gun deaths and SSRIs has been dismissed by many, including Pharma companies and anti-second amendment lobbyists. Also ignored is the sudden uptick of female perpetrators. Many disturbed or chronically depressed female children today are also being prescribed massive doses of testosterone, a controlled substance, either instead of therapy or on top of SSRIs and other medications. This seems like a dangerous cocktail.  We already know that the majority of crime is done by males. Testosterone seems to be a factor even in those men who suppress it through hormone treatments, and there’s rising evidence exogenous hormones impact female aggression and impulse control issues.  The current studies on TiFs are self described as having a bias, no control groups, reliant on self assessments and that “further research is needed.” They found an increase in aggression in 57% of the studies. Even if these effects diminish over time/age after what damage done? The problem w/ self assessment surveys is that of course young depressed girls feel good if you shoot them up with T. They call it gender euphoria I call it being high. Do we treat depressed women with cocaine? “97% of CokeWomen say they feel better than before! Listen to them!”  While male criminality and possible links to increased female crimes may be influenced by testosterone, see one of the many exceptions who continue male violence despite “transitioning out of manhood” below, I found an interesting study that reminded me of the sex binary...  There is no current proof that just bc Carly had adopted she/they pronouns that she was using any hormone treatments. It seemed the abrupt change in SRRIs might’ve been enough to turn a 14 yr old girl into a violent matricidal maniac. Anyone think Testosterone would’ve helped? We can guess “No.” but don’t know by scientific study. They didn’t think to study any of this stuff before they started giving it out like candy in the US and to autistic kids in the UK (see Cass)... Here’s a longer thread linked to another thread by Leor Sapir on Jack Turban and access to synthetics and GnRHa. Testosterone is harder to get bc it’s a controlled substance (they give teens) but not impossible. REMEMBER many TRAs want all of it over the counter, no restrictions. Affirmation only treatment and the OTC cure-all of the “gender healthcare” band aid seems to be interfering w/ exploratory holistic therapies for children w/ many co-occurring disorders. Those that are slipping through the cracks are harming themselves and others. Dangy “Nex” Benedict, a troubled young girl who was abused by her own father, who had just been re-arrested, was on medications as well before she died of an overdose. Ideologues want us to think it was ONLY bc of transphobia that never was proven to havevoccurred. Every single clinic that performs these interventions would have heard Benedict’s uncomfortableness w/ her own body and would absolutely have ignored her trauma of abuse from her own father and gave her testosterone on top of her SSRIs for depression and anxiety. Every one!   That is what the “conversion therapy ban” legislation wrought all over vulnerable children’s healthcare options. Exploratory therapy is transphobic. You don’t hate your body bc your dad was an inhuman demon, no it’s a boy inside your body. You need boy hormones! This is madness. We are seeing the results of this madness in real time. Let’s end this institutional rot. We are affirming the socially and mentally infirm. Affirming their delusions, their narcissism, ignoring the sources of trauma and pathology. We’ve become mad ourselves. End this.

Police: Rockville student had manifesto to 'shoot up school' - "In a joint investigation with the FBI, Montgomery County police said they discovered a manifesto written by Andrea Ye, 18, of Rockville, whose preferred name is Alex Ye.  Authorities said the writing was about committing mass shootings at two Rockville schools: Wootton High School, which Ye had attended online, and Lakewood Elementary School, which Ye attended.  During a bail review Friday afternoon, prosecutors declared there is no greater threat to community safety than Ye, and the judge agreed, denying bail."
The more trans shooters there are, the more the TRAs need to gaslight

Meme - "Gender is so much more than XX and XY. There are rare genetic disorders with other combinations, and that's why I, a man without those disorders, am a woman. *Lia Thomas*"

gender is harmful on X - "Someone just asked me for some examples of extremism from within the pro-gender camp... apparently, she knew of a few who were claiming it never happens. Of course, I passed some examples on to her to use. Here is a reminder of their violence. 1/8"
Why are TRAs so violent?

Elizabeth I may have been non-binary, claims Shakespeare’s Globe - "“I know I have the body but of a weak and feeble woman,” Elizabeth I once said to rally her troops to face the Spanish Armada, “but I have the heart and stomach of a king”.  And was a non-binary person too, according to academics working for Shakespeare’s Globe, who have cast doubt on the gender identity of one of England’s greatest queens. Elizabeth I has been presented as possibly non-binary in an essay published by the theatre, which refers to the female monarch with the gender-neutral “they/them” pronouns.  The essay was written by a “transgender awareness trainer” in defence of the Globe’s decision to stage a new play featuring a non-binary Joan of Arc, but both the play and the essay have raised concerns that famous females are being written out of history... The essay defends Shakespeare’s Globe announcing a new play titled I, Joan, in which Joan of Arc is represented as non-binary. The teenage warrior, famed for leading the French against the English in the 100 Years War despite being a woman in a patriarchal society, has been given the pronouns “they/them” in Globe promotional material for the production. Dr Hayem’s essay for the theatre argues that while historians have stated that Joan wore male armour out of “practicality” during her campings, “they” may have had “deeper motivations” related to “their” identity.  Author JK Rowling signalled her bemusement that Shakespeare’s Globe would be portraying Joan of Arc as non-binary by liking a Twitter post which read: “Coming next: Napoleon was a woman because he was defeated at Waterloo.” Feminist thinkers have raised concerns that casting doubts on the womanhood of prominent women because they defied gender norms, and did supposedly “manly” things, will effectively write many famous females out of history.  Philosopher Dr Jane Clare Jones said: “This is a really great example of the inherent gender conservatism in gender identity ideology. Traditional gender conservatism says that men must do ‘manly’ things, and women must do ‘womanly’ things."
Misogyny is progressive

The People Setting America on Fire

The People Setting America on Fire

"Over the past several weeks, Americans have witnessed what has seemed like a mass outpouring of support for terror on elite college campuses. At Columbia, Yale, Princeton, NYU, UCLA, Northwestern, Texas, and elsewhere, masked mobs have occupied schools with tent encampments, established self-proclaimed “autonomous zones,” clashed with police, harassed and threatened visibly Jewish students, and issued demands for their universities to divest from Israeli “genocide.” Politically, moreover, the protests have displayed an incoherent mix of campus progressivism, hardcore Islamism and Arab nationalism, and revolutionary anarchism and communism, including open praise for North Korea. The only unifying thread would appear to be opposition to Israel and its alleged imperial patron, the United States...

But students are not the only, and perhaps not even the most important, faction active in the campus protests. As in the “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter protests of the summer of 2020, “outside agitators”—professional radicals and organizers, black bloc antifa thugs, Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries, and Palestinian and Islamist radicals—have played a central role in organizing and escalating the campus protests, just as they have organized and escalated the wider anti-Israel protest campaign that began almost immediately after Oct. 7. This largely decentralized network of agitators is, in turn, politically and financially supported by a vast web of progressive nonprofits, NGOs, foundations, and dark-money groups ultimately backed by big-money donors aligned with the Democratic Party.

The first hint that the protests are not entirely organic is their striking resemblance to previous rounds of organized far-left agitation, from the “uprising” of summer 2020 to the rolling antifa vs. Proud Boys brawls of 2016-17. The creation of “liberated” or “autonomous” zones on campus, for instance, is a hallmark of anarchist organizing familiar from Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone and New York’s City Hall Autonomous Zone four summers ago. Familiar, too, is the governance of these zones, with masked security details prohibiting filming from outsiders and directing reporters to trained media representatives. During clashes with police or with counterprotesters, students and their allies have deployed classic “bloc” tactics, covering their faces and dressing in matching outfits to promote anonymity, linking arms to interfere with police attempts to conduct arrests, and attempting “de-arrests”—i.e., the coordinated swarming of police officers—to rescue apprehended comrades. At Yale, student activists doxxed the police officers sent to clear them out of the encampment—another harassment tactic frequently deployed by antifa.

These resemblances are no accident. All of these tactics require a degree of instruction and training. Footage from Columbia showed the professional “protest consultant” Lisa Fithian, a veteran of Occupy, BLM, Standing Rock, and Stop Cop City, teaching students at Columbia how to barricade themselves into Hamilton Hall. Recent video from inside the protest encampment at UCLA, meanwhile, showed masked men leading a hand-to-hand combat training. When police cleared out encampments at the University of Texas-Austin and Columbia and the City University of New York last week, roughly half of those arrested—45 of the 79 in Texas, 134 of the 282 in New York—had no connection with the university at which they were arrested. Some, like the 40-year-old anarchist heir James Carlson, arrested at Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, had protest related rap sheets going back two decades.

“What you’re seeing is a real witches’ brew of revolutionary content interacting on campuses,” says Kyle Shideler, the director for homeland security and counterterrorism at the Center for Security Policy in Washington, D.C., and an expert on far-left domestic extremism. “On the left-wing side, you have a broad variety of revolutionary leftists, who serve as rent-a-mobs, providing the warm bodies for whatever the leftist cause of the day is. And on the other side you have the Islamist and Palestinian networks: American Muslims for Palestine and their subsidiary Students for Justice in Palestine, CAIR, the Palestinian Youth Movement. We’re seeing a real mixture of different kinds of radical foment, and it’s all being activated at the same time.”

The far-left groups active in the protests include antifa and other anarchists: Anarchist literature has been distributed in the encampments, and antifa websites have published dispatches from “comrades” on the inside. They also include various communist and Marxist-Leninist groups, including the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), and the International ANSWER coalition, a PSL front group that worked with several Muslim groups to organize the Jan. 13 March on Washington for Gaza, at which protesters flew the black jihadist flag. On April 29, for instance, shortly before masked assailants stormed Columbia’s Hamilton Hall and barricaded themselves inside, The People’s Forum—a Manhattan event space affiliated with the PSL and funded by Neville Roy Singham, a wealthy businessman who “works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide,” according to an August profile in The New York Times—urged its activists to rush up to Columbia to “support our students.” Similar calls for an “emergency action” were distributed throughout radical networks in New York City. 

These groups, Shideler says, typically operate in a decentralized manner, using successful tactics drawn from decades of anarchist organizing and spread through left-wing activist networks via word-of-mouth, as well as through formal trainings by professionals such as Fithian or the nonprofit “movement incubator” Momentum Strategies...

In fact, it is a mistake both to view the campus protests as a “student” movement and to regard the outsiders as “infiltrators” or somehow separate from the movement. Rather, student activists have been working together with outsiders, with whom they are linked via overlapping activist networks and nationwide organizations. The “student” revolts, in turn, exist on a continuum with the broader anti-Israel protest movement... Calls to participate in the “A15 Action” were disseminated widely in anarchist and far-left networks, while Palestinian and Islamist groups—SJP, AMP, CAIR, and Within Our Lifetime—simultaneously called for an April 15 “Strike 4 Gaza.” Given reporting that nationwide campus “liberation zones” and “encampments” were planned as early as November 2023, it seems likely that the timing of the university protests was decided by “the movement” well in advance.

The “movement,” in turn, while it recruits from among students and other self-motivated radicals willing to put their bodies on the line, relies heavily on the funding of progressive donors and nonprofits connected to the upper reaches of the Democratic Party. Take the epicenter of the nationwide protest movement, Columbia University. According to reporting in the New York Post, the Columbia encampment was principally organized by three groups: Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and Within Our Lifetime (WOL)...

JVP is, in essence, the “Jewish”-branch of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, backed by the usual big-money progressive donors—including some, like the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, that were instrumental in selling Obama’s Iran Deal to the public. JVP and its affiliated political action arm, JVP Action, have received at least $650,000 from various branches of George Soros’ philanthropic empire since 2017, $441,510 from the Kaphan Foundation (founded by early Amazon employee Sheldon Kaphan), $340,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and smaller amounts from progressive donors such as the Quitiplas Foundation, according to reporting from the New York Post and NGO Monitor, a pro-Israel research institute. JVP has also received nearly $1.5 million from various donor-advised funds—which allow wealthy clients to give anonymously through their financial institutions—run through the charitable giving arms of Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab, Morgan Stanley, Vanguard, and TIAA, according to NGO Monitor’s review of those institutions’ tax documents.

SJP, by contrast, is an outgrowth of the Islamist networks dissolved during the U.S. government’s prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and related charities for fundraising for Hamas... Both AMP and SJP were founded by the same man, Hatem Bazian, a Palestinian academic who formerly fundraised for KindHearts, an Islamic charity dissolved in 2012 pursuant to a settlement with the U.S. Treasury, which froze the group’s assets for fundraising for Hamas... several of AMP’s senior leaders are former fundraisers for HLF and related charities, according to November congressional testimony from former U.S. Treasury official Jonathan Schanzer. An ongoing federal lawsuit by the family of David Boim, an American teenager killed in a Hamas terrorist attack in 1996, goes so far as to allege that AMP is a “disguised continuance” and “legal alter-ego” of the Islamic Association for Palestine, was founded with startup money from current Hamas official Musa Abu Marzook and dissolved alongside HLF...

Today, however, National SJP is legally a “fiscal sponsorship” of another nonprofit: a White Plains, New York, 501(c)(3) called the WESPAC Foundation...  fiscal sponsorships [is] a “convenient way to mask links between donors and controversial causes,” according to the Capital Research Center. Donors, in other words, can effectively use nonprofits such as WESPAC to obscure their direct connections to controversial causes...

Within Our Lifetime (WOL), formerly known as New York City SJP. Founded by the Palestinian American lawyer Nerdeen Kiswani, a former activist with the Hunter College and CUNY chapters of SJP, WOL has emerged over the past seven months as perhaps the most notorious antisemitic group in the country, and has been banned from Facebook and Instagram for glorifying Hamas. A full list of the group’s provocations would take thousands of words, but it has been the central organizing force in the series of “Flood”-themed protests in New York City since Oct. 7, including multiple bridge and highway blockades, a November riot at Grand Central Station, the vandalism of the New York Public Library, and protests at the Rockefeller Center Christmas-tree lighting. In addition to their confrontational tactics, WOL-led protests tend to have a few other hallmarks. These include eliminationist rhetoric directed at the Jewish state—such as Arabic chants of “strike, strike, Tel Aviv”; the prominent display of Hezbollah flags and other insignia of explicitly Islamist resistance; the presence of masked Arab street muscle; and the antisemitic intimidation of counterprotesters by said masked Arab street muscle.

WOL’s role appears to be that of shock troops, akin to the role played by black block militants on the anarchist side of the ledger. WOL is, however, connected to more seemingly “mainstream” elements of the anti-Israel movement. Abdullah Akl, a prominent WOL leader—indeed, the man leading the “strike Tel Aviv” chants in the video linked above—is also listed as a “field organizer” on the website of MPower Change, the “advocacy project” led by Linda Sarsour. MPower Change, in turn, is a fiscal sponsorship of NEO Philanthropy, another large progressive clearinghouse. NEO Philanthropy and its 501(c)(4) “sister,” NEO Philanthropy Action Fund, have received more than $37 million from Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2021 alone, as well as substantial funding from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the Tides Foundation.

Tides, you might have noticed, is a name that keeps coming up again and again. The Tides Nexus, of which the Tides Foundation is a part, is one of largest progressive dark-money networks in the country, controlling upward of a billion in assets; its list of major donors is an all-star cast of left-wing billionaires and foundations, including Soros, Peter Buffett and his NoVo Foundation, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Ford Foundation, and the New Venture Fund, controlled by another Democratic dark-money powerhouse, Eric Kessler’s Arabella Advisors. A pioneer of what critics have called “charitable money-laundering” through the use of fiscal sponsorships to obscure money trails through multiple layers of bureaucracy, Tides, through its donations and fiscal sponsorships, has emerged as a major backer of the anti-Israel protest movement across the country.

Indeed, scratch a pro-Palestinian radical organization, and you are likely to find Tides’ involvement somewhere...

Whether Tides itself is selecting these organizations for donations, or whether it is merely acting as a pass-through for large donors who would prefer to avoid the spotlight, is difficult to know—which, one might say, is the entire purpose of Tides’ byzantine corporate structure. But we are left with the fact that wealthy donors have been subsidizing months of rolling disruptive street protests by a grab bag of revolutionary and anti-Israel radicals. That leads naturally to a question: To what end?

“The way I typically see it,” says Shideler, “is that these foundations, nonprofits, slush funds, fiscal sponsors—I think of them as the gas pedal and the brake. They don’t necessarily control the content, but they can control the size and scope and the amount, just by controlling the amount of money that flows. When they want things to speed up they can increase the amount of money they contribute to all of these different revolutionary elements, and when they want to slow it down they can decrease the amount of money. They don’t really steer the ship; these guys are committed revolutionaries, they believe what they’re saying and they’re taking the money because it’s helpful to them. In that sense they’re not controlled. But, obviously, you can determine when and where they do things based on how much money you give them.”

This is not the first time that elements of the progressive establishment have sided with—and lent financial support and political cover to—similar networks of radicals. Many of the same philanthropic organizations have heavily funded disruptive “direct action” climate protesters, including Just Stop Oil! and the Sunrise Movement—leading directly to concessions from the Biden administration such as the creation of the American Climate Corps. Big-money progressive donors, including Tides and Soros, poured money into Black Lives Matter and various associated bail funds during the violent summer of 2020, and sympathetic federal prosecutors dropped charges or sought reduced sentences for far-left radicals who committed violence during the BLM riots, even as they threw the book at every two-bit shaman who wandered into the Capitol. In 2022, Democrats again leaned on radicals to organize street protests against the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision.

But this is the first time that these donor-funded radical networks have gone to war with a Democratic president. Shideler speculates that whatever the ultimate goal of funding the anti-Israel protests, it is to be found closer to home than Gaza. “It has more to do with domestic politics, and we can see this by the language targeting Joe Biden explicitly, even though he and his administration have already handled the conflict in an exceedingly anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian way.” One reason to target Biden is that it provides his administration cover to ignore a weakened but still influential block of pro-Israel Democrats—allowing the president to claim, in essence, that his hands are tied. But it may also reflect a power struggle within the party, between what was formerly an insurgent progressive fringe—now backed by a murderer’s row of billionaire donors and energized by young cadres rising through the professional-managerial cursus honorum—and what remains of the teetering old Clintonian establishment. Or, rather, it is a display of force by the faction that has already won, complete with a message for the losers: This is who we are now. Get in line or be destroyed.

It is here that the outsize role of Tides in funding the protests may be especially significant. More than any of the dark-money giants on the left, Tides has become tightly integrated with the ascendant Obama faction of the Democratic Party...

Maybe it is a coincidence that a dark-money philanthropy empire tied to Obama would be bankrolling a protest movement designed to undercut American support for Israel’s war on Hamas—which just happened to be the White House nickname of one Ben Rhodes, the man responsible for building the media-NGO echo chamber that would initially sell the Iran deal and later be repurposed for domestic political warfare during the Trump years. Perhaps it is a coincidence that an Israeli victory in this war, which started with a grisly terrorist attack planned and sponsored by Iran, would deal a crushing blow to the Obama-Biden project of realignment with Iran, which remains the current administration’s real but unacknowledged policy in the Middle East. That realignment has in turn required seeding the generally pro-Israel and anti-terror American public with the idea that Israel isn’t actually a friend but rather a sectarian ethnostate with a pushy domestic lobby bent on dragging American boys into another pointless Mideast war, all so the Jews can continue kicking around the poor Palestinians—just like those bitter whites in flyover country who vote Trump because they want to kick around the Blacks and Mexicans. Which seems, in what is no doubt another coincidence, to be precisely the message of the protesters, who explicitly liken Zionism to domestic white supremacy. 

Thus do we find ourselves in a regular lattice of coincidence.

There remains, after all this speculation, another basic question. Is all of this really legal?

Judging by the laws on the books, the answer would seem to be “no.” As Joseph Simonson of The Washington Free Beacon has reported on multiple occasions, the rules of the Internal Revenue Service explicitly prohibit 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofits from engaging in “planned activities that violate laws” or “induce the commission of a crime.” IRS Rev. Rul. 75-384 states explicitly that even an “antiwar protest organization” committed to “world peace,” if it sponsors “demonstrations in which demonstrators are urged to commit violations of local ordinances and breaches of public order,” would not qualify for tax-exempt status.

When I asked Shideler for his opinion on why not only the IRS, but federal and local law enforcement, seemed reluctant to act against what seemed to be clear violations of the law, he offered me a quote from The Wire: “If you follow drugs, you get drugs and drug dealers. If you follow the money, you don’t know what you’re going to get.” Many of the professional agitators involved in lawbreaking are quite literally on the payroll of big-city political machines, or provide important services such as get-out-the-vote organizing and phone banking during low-turnout Democratic primaries. As mentioned above, Abdullah Akl, the WOL organizer popping up across New York calling on “Abu Obeida” to “strike Tel Aviv,” is also an employee of Linda Sarsour’s MPower Change, and Sarsour herself has appeared at various protest encampments and New York City direct actions. But her Arab American Association of New York, which co-organized an Oct. 21 “Flood Brooklyn for Palestine Protest” with WOL, has received $6.8 million in New York City taxpayer funds since 2010, according to a review of records by the New York Post.

A sense of the uncomfortable questions that might be raised by any serious attempt to go after these groups can be gleaned from a 2023 grand jury indictment in Georgia, where prosecutors brought state RICO charges against several dozen anarchists and revolutionaries involved in the “Stop Cop City” protests against the planned construction of a police training facility in Atlanta. The indictment identified a network of fraudulent nonprofits, fiscal sponsors, and bail funds that were, in reality, front groups controlled by three anarchist roommates, who used millions in tax-exempt funds raised for ostensibly charitable purposes to further what prosecutors allege was a violent criminal conspiracy involving the illegal occupation of public land, planned confrontations with police, and organized doxxing and harassment campaigns targeting police and private citizens working at construction companies contracted to build the facility. The “Atlanta Solidarity Fund,” for instance, was a bail fund used to support arrested Stop Cop City protesters, while the “Forest Justice Defense Fund” reimbursed “Forest Defenders”—i.e., the group’s officers and their antifa comrades—for the purchase of tents, camping supplies, surveillance equipment, shortwave radios, drones, and ammunition.

Where did the money come from? From donations solicited through left-wing fundraising and organizing networks. One of those networks was the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), an umbrella group for more than 80 “community organizations,” including the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, which organized an illegal anti-Israel protest in the Capitol Rotunda in December at which more than 50 activists were arrested. CJA’s website promotes a grab bag of far-left causes, and includes a “Free Palestine” page proclaiming that “the path to climate justice travels through a free Palestine.” To this day—eight months after the Georgia RICO indictment alleged that the Forest Justice Defense Fund was a fraudulent charity paying for ammunition purchases in furtherance of a criminal conspiracy—CJA maintains a Stop Cop City page urging readers to donate to the Forest Justice Defense Fund and the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. CJA also endorsed a “statement of solidarity” with Stop Cop City, which claimed, by the inexorable logic of intersectionality, the fight against “gentrification and police violence” in Atlanta as part of the fight against climate change.

CJA is a subsidiary of the Movement Strategy Center, a California-based 501(c)(3) that has received funding from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and various branches of the Open Society network. But it has another financial supporter, one that may come as a surprise: You, the American taxpayer. In November, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it was entrusting $50 million in federal grant money under the Inflation Reduction Act to the CJA, to be distributed in sub-grants to fund “environmental justice” projects by “community-based nonprofit organizations.”...

[Harris] says her administration is “ensuring critical resources to fund environmental justice projects across the country reach the organizations that know their communities best.” What she means is that the federal government is funneling tens of millions of dollars of public money to a group that understands “environmental justice” to imply the abolition of policing, the perpetual struggle against “white supremacy,” and the liberation of Palestine.

It’s remarkable what one can find from pulling on such threads. Which may be why, to date, there has been very little political will to pull on them."

 

Weird. Everyone knows that antifa is only an idea, because Biden said so.

Neville Roy Singham is Sri Lankan-Cuban. Does "every single time" apply if left wingers are bashing Israel and terrorising Jews?

The terrorism supporters still condemn Biden for supporting "genocide". You'd think he'd wise up and realise that they will never be mollified by anything short of Israel's destruction. But maybe he knows he'll lose the election anyway so he might as well push the left wing agenda as much as he can first.

Strange how "the resistance" seems to be part of the Democratic establishment. Looks like the "disinformation" squad is going to try to shut down Tablet Magazine now.