Links - 3rd June 2026 (3 [including Vegans])

Vegan diet made Essex woman delusional, says coroner - "A university student took her own life while suffering delusional beliefs caused by her strict vegan diet, an inquest has concluded. Georgina Owen had developed a vitamin B12 deficiency due to the diet she began in 2016 "stemming from her environmental concerns", the coroner said... an expert report concluded Owen was also showing vague signs of cognitive impairment, anxiety, fatigue and difficulty with simple decision making."

Harvard doctor says animal products are essential for mental health - in blow to veganism: 'The brain needs meat' - "Meat is essential for warding off depression and anxiety, a top nutrition expert has revealed, sending a blow to veganism. Dr Georgia Ede, a Harvard-trained nutritional and metabolic psychiatrist and author of Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind, studies the relationship between what we eat and our mental and physical health. And despite the health halo that vegan diets have been given over the last few years, she claims that giving up meat could be detrimental for mental health... Dr Ede said that while getting enough protein has long been a concern surrounding vegan diets, eating meat is about more than protein. 'It's actually less about protein and more about all of the other nutrients that are inside meat,' she said. 'You can get your protein needs met through a vegan and vegetarian diet if you plan it carefully.'... While animal products like eggs, meat, cheese, and Greek yogurt are high in protein, it can also be found in vegan options like lentils and broccoli. 'But many of the other essential nutrients are much more difficult if not in some cases impossible to obtain from plants,' Dr Ede said. She noted that meat is 'the only food that contains every nutrient we need in its proper form and is also the safest food for our blood sugar and insulin levels.' These nutrients include vitamin B12, omega-3 fatty acids, zinc, choline, iron, and iodine. Vitamin B12, for example, helps with the formation of oxygen-rich red blood cells and DNA. However, it has also been linked to regulating mood-boosting serotonin, and low levels of serotonin have been linked to increased risks of depression and anxiety. Additionally, a review in the journal Frontiers in Pharmacology found that lower levels of zinc were associated with depression, as zinc can reduce inflammation in the brain. Several studies have suggested that meat eaters have better mental health. A 2021 systematic review of 18 studies compared those who do and don't eat meat. The research included 160,257 participants ages 11 to 96 (53 percent of whom were female), including 149,559 meat eaters and 8,584 meat avoiders. Of those, 11 studies found that meat-free diets were linked to worse mental health outcomes. One of those studies found that vegetarians had a 35.2 percent chance of developing major depression, compared to 19.1 percent for meat eaters. Additionally, vegetarians had a 31.5 percent chance of developing an anxiety disorder, compared to 18.4 percent for meat eaters. One study published in 2022 surveyed 14,000 Brazilians between 35 and 74 years old and found those who followed a vegan diet were twice as likely to be depressed — even if they had similar nutrient intakes to carnivores. And a meta-analysis published in 2020 and including 160,000 meat-eaters and 8,500 meat-abstainers also found those who cut meat from their diet were significantly more likely to be depressed. Despite gaining a health halo over the years, emerging research suggests that vegan diets could have other lasting health consequences. A 2023 report from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), for example, looked at more than 500 studies and concluded that animal sources of food offer 'crucial sources of much-needed nutrients.' The agency noted that these macro and micro nutrients are hard to find 'in the required quality and quantity' if following a vegan diet. Additionally, meat, eggs, and milk are 'particularly vital' for children, young people, and the elderly, as well as pregnant and breastfeeding women. A 2019 paper also noted that a deficiency of vitamin B12, which is more common in vegans, could raise the risk of stroke. This was because its absence inhibits the clearance of proteins from the blood stream, leading to inflammation — which in turn raised the probability of blood vessels being damaged. This is a key risk factor for stroke."

New data shows plant-based mince is now 33% cheaper than beef - "Plant-based food prices have widely been considered high, leading to the concept of the ‘vegan tax’, by which vegan products often appear subject to ‘price hikes’ compared to their non-vegan counterparts. But now, that seems set to change as recent data has shown that plant-based meat prices have dropped below animal meat prices, and the gap is widening. Recent fluctuations in global supply chains have put immense pressure on traditional livestock farming, leading to a noticeable spike in the cost of beef, lamb, and pork. Amidst this volatility, new research from the Good Food Institute (GFI) Europe has found that plant-based mince and meatballs at Tesco are now, on average, 33 per cent less expensive than their conventional counterparts... While mince and meatballs are leading the charge for affordability, the GFI report noted that the trend hasn’t reached every corner of the supermarket just yet. Beef burgers, for instance, remain 9 per cent cheaper than plant-based patties. However, with chicken prices expected to climb further due to the rising costs of fertiliser and energy for heating sheds the overall outlook for meat-free affordability remains strong."

Red meat is not a health risk. New study slams shoddy research - "In a new, unprecedented effort, scientists at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) scrutinized decades of research on red meat consumption and its links to various health outcomes, formulating a new rating system to communicate health risks in the process. Their findings mostly dispel any concerns about eating red meat. “We found weak evidence of association between unprocessed red meat consumption and colorectal cancer, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes and ischemic heart disease. Moreover, we found no evidence of an association between unprocessed red meat and ischemic stroke or hemorrhagic stroke,” they summarized. The IHME scientists had been observing the shoddy nature of health science for decades. Each year, hundreds of frankly lazy studies are published that simply attempt to find an observational link between some action — eating a food for example — and a health outcome, like death or disease. In the end, owing to sloppy methods, varying subject populations, and inconsistent statistical measures, everything, especially different foods, seems to be both associated and not associated with cancer. How is the lay public supposed to interpret this mess?... “The evidence for a direct vascular or heath risk from eating meat regularly is very low, to the point that there is probably no risk,” commented Dr. Steven Novella, a Yale neurologist and president of the New England Skeptical Society. “There is, however, more evidence for a health risk from eating too few vegetables. That is really the risk of a high-meat diet, those meat calories are displacing vegetable calories.”"

How do Britons feel about nuclear energy?
Tom Chivers on X - "This seems really bad and I don't know what to do about it: not so much the differences in political attitudes, that's fine, but there's a strong gender divide in belief on straightforward factual questions like "is nuclear energy low-carbon?""

Swedish government plans to take majority stake in nuclear power development firm Videberg Kraft - "The Swedish government said on Friday it plans to take a 60% stake in nuclear development company Videberg Kraft as it looks to kick start the construction of a new generation of reactors ‌to replace its aging atomic power plants. The government has said nuclear power is vital to meet an expected surge in demand for electricity as industry and the transport sector shift away from fossil fuels... "Sweden is a nuclear nation. We are now taking the next step to clarify the state's role and responsibility ⁠in the further development of nuclear power," Deputy Prime Minister Ebba Busch said in a statement... The government has said it wants Sweden to build the equivalent of ‌around 10 ⁠new, full-size reactors by 2045 to complement the six currently in operation."
This climate change hystericist claimed that Sweden was shutting down its nuclear plants and switching to renewables

Meme - Project Liberal: Crying Soyjak Germany: "Stop using nuclear it's dangerous and bad for the environment 349g CO2/kWh"
Normal person France: "No. 52g CO2/kWh"
Mew @GermanAgnos: "I don't take opinions from surrender countries"
Mr_Liberal @MrLiberalCa: "Didn't you guys surrender twice?"

‘Fish disco’ not enough to protect nature at nuclear plant, says green quango - "The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station is facing fresh delays as a green quango demands extra nature protections on top of a controversial “fish disco”. Natural England has told developer EDF that existing plans to stop aquatic life in the Severn Estuary from being sucked into the Somerset plant’s cooling pipes will not be enough to satisfy environmental rules. The company had proposed using £700m of special equipment to ward off fish, including a bespoke underwater loudspeaker system which campaigners have called the “fish disco”. EDF provided new research data to regulators in February following promising trials of the technology, formally known as the acoustic fish deterrent, by university scientists. But in recent weeks, Natural England is understood to have claimed that further protections are necessary, such as the creation of new salt marshes to boost fish populations in the area. The quango is refusing to sign off the plant until new plans are set out and approved. It has prompted concern that Hinkley’s targeted 2030 opening date is now effectively impossible to deliver, owing to the time it will take to win approval for and build the new salt marshes. Sam Richards, the chief executive of Britain Remade, a Right-leaning think tank, said: “Hinkley Point C is already the most expensive nuclear power station ever built. “It also has more fish protection measures than any reactor built anywhere in the world. “For Natural England to now demand even more mitigation – regardless of the wider impact on the project and for minimal added benefit to nature – shows just how out of touch with reality they really are. “This out of control quango has become a direct threat to Britain’s energy security.” From the start of consultation to the end of construction, other artificially created salt marshes in the UK have taken as much as eight years to complete. If the same timescales were replicated at Hinkley, the plant would not open until 2034 at the earliest – almost a decade later than originally planned. There is also strong opposition among locals to the salt marshes proposal, including from farmers whose land would have to be compulsorily purchased, meaning any new scheme is likely to become ensnared by fresh legal challenges. Natural England’s ultimatum will be seen as a direct challenge to reforms confirmed by ministers just weeks ago, aimed at speeding up the construction of nuclear power stations."
Proof that nuclear power is too expensive and that's why we should stop using it!

Post by @did:plc:62gdkmpwa7xme36getyqnem3 — Bluesky - "When Einstein developed general relativity the closest thing to a practical application that could even be imagined at the time was a slightly more precise description of where to look for the planet Mercury in the sky, and yet now we’d all be literally lost without it. Anyway: fund basic research."

Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb: A Disastrous Legacy | National Review - "“I was a college student when I read Mr. Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb,” wrote Wall Street Journal reader Kenneth Emde of “population scientist” Paul Ehrlich’s most famous work in a 2023 letter. “I took it to heart and now have no grandchildren, but 50 years later, the population has increased to eight billion without dire consequences. I was gullible and stupid.” It’s cold comfort, but Emde was hardly alone in deferring to Ehrlich’s supposed expertise. The longtime professor of biology at Stanford University and advocate of an apocalyptic theory of human overpopulation, who passed away on Friday at the age of 93, was said by the New York Times to have been merely “premature” in his predictions. Maybe someday, Ehrlich’s catastrophism will seem prescient. Today, however, it would be more accurate to say that Ehrlich was just wrong. Central to Ehrlich’s thesis in The Population Bomb was his contention that the Earth had a finite “carrying capacity,” and its limits were already being tested by the mid-20th century. Humanity would soon have to ration its resources and consign those for whom it could no longer care to triage. Ehrlich’s modern Malthusianism fired the imaginations of the international environmental left, but he seemed compelled to forever up the ante on his dire predictions. He subsequently anticipated that, by 1980, the average American lifespan would decline to just 42. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” Ehrlich wrote in 1969. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years,” he declared the following year. By 1971, Ehrlich was willing to “take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” Roughly 100 to 200 million people, he assumed, would die of starvation between 1980 and 1989 in what he deemed “the Great Die-Off.” Sure, he got some of the “details and timing” of the events he predicted wrong, his allies will concede. But, to them, the eschatological gist of his work still rang true. “Population growth, along with over-consumption per capita, is driving civilization over the edge,” Ehrlich told The Guardian as recently as 2018, “billions of people are now hungry or micronutrient malnourished, and climate disruption is killing people.” With the confidence of a Marxian economist, Ehrlich never questioned his faith in where humanity’s addiction to prosperity was taking it. “As I’ve said many times, ‘perpetual growth is the creed of the cancer cell,’” he said. Ehrlich’s work left much misery in its wake. As even Ehrlich’s supporters will admit, his theories “lent support to racist attitudes to population control.” Population bombers encouraged the promotion of abortion in places like Sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Overpopulation as a theory justified some of the worst eugenicist abuses of the human species since World War II — abuses in which the United States was very much a participant. “The large number of sterilizations began in earnest in 1966, when Medicaid came into existence and funded the operation for low-income people,” the author Angela Franks wrote. Indeed, by 1977, “up to one-quarter” of Native American women had undergone sterilization, she wrote. A program of “voluntary” sterilization of Puerto Rican women in the 1960s unfolded similarly. By 1965, about one-third of Puerto Rican women surveyed admitted to undergoing a sterilization procedure amid the efforts of the U.S. government and the International Planned Parenthood Federation to promote the practice. Ehrlich’s primary contention — that the human race is, more or less, doomed — continues to inform the work of today’s Malthusians. The various United Nations appendages that routinely warn us of our species’ imminent collapse a decade or so on from whenever the last report was published lean on Ehrlich’s theories. The professor’s legacy inspired a 2018 initiative by a collection of bioethicists to rehabilitate The Population Bomb in the pages of the Washington Post. As recently as 2023, CBS’s 60 Minutes lent its platform to Ehrlich to promote groundless apocalypticism. “The next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to,” he told a credulous Scott Pelley. Ehrlich never questioned his conclusions and refused to repent for the suffering they produced. “For a species that named itself homo sapiens, the wise man, we’re being incredibly stupid,” Ehrlich told CNN at the end of the last decade. That seems to have been Ehrlich’s primary conceit — one that fatally undermined his work. Ehrlich and those who bought into the theory of overpopulation regularly underestimated mankind’s ability to engineer itself out of a challenge. Those who subscribed to that flawed outlook did what they could in their own ways to meet what they were told was the measure of a responsible citizen of the world: In CNN reporter Clint Watts’s summary, “consuming less, polluting less,” and “having fewer children.” Kenneth Emde took Ehrlich’s advocacy to heart, and he regrets it. Emde was asked to make what he thought was a noble sacrifice to future generations, but he only deprived himself of one of life’s foremost joys. Millions more similarly immiserated themselves for what they were told was the greater good. They deserved, if not an apology, at least the truth. But Paul Ehrlich couldn’t bring himself to provide them with either."
As Richard Dawkins observed, the retreat of Christianity has been replaced by worse things
Ehrlich is probably the best example of the core misanthropy of environmentalism

Queen guitarist Brian May blocked from planting daffodils - "Legendary rocker Brian May became a local hero in the quiet English village where he lives when he donated thousands of daffodil bulbs to brighten up the green outside the church last year. But plans to extend his floral donations for next year have bitten the dust after local authorities intervened and blocked the move."

The sad death of the sub machine gun - "The sub-machine gun was never meant to be universal. It was a solution, an elegant, ruthless solution to a specific problem. And for a time, in the hands of tank crews, resistance fighters, gangsters and elite soldiers alike, it performed that role with remarkable fidelity."

Another progressive myth about children’s education has been punctured - "For decades we have been told that streaming or setting (the grouping of children of similar ability in one class) was ineffective, damaging or even, in words that have peppered academic commentary, “symbolic violence” against less-able children. We were told that teaching in mixed-ability classes was fairer and enabled children of all abilities to shine. At long last, authoritative evidence has shown what many of us instinctively knew: streaming works... a report has been published which firmly disproves any notion that setting by ability negatively impacts children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The report – produced by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), which evaluated groundbreaking research by the Institute of Education, the well-respected teacher training arm of University College London – was based on observations and data from 28 secondary schools that teach maths in mixed-ability classes and 69 similar secondary schools that teach maths in classes set by the prior attainment of their pupils. The research found no negative impact on the attainment of children eligible for free school meals in being taught in a class of children of similar ability compared to being taught in a mixed-ability class. Most significantly, the research found that high-attaining pupils in mixed-ability classes showed two months less progress than those in classes set by ability. And, of course, amongst those high-attaining pupils will be children from disadvantaged backgrounds... The latest EEF research found that lessons in mixed-ability classes teach at a similar level to the bottom sets in schools that group children by ability. Inevitably, therefore, high-ability children in those mixed-ability classes learn less than if they had been in a class of similarly able pupils. This is a tragic waste of talent at a time when our economy needs the brightest maths graduates to drive innovation in science and computing... children who are taught in mixed-ability classes suffer higher negative effects on their self-confidence in maths compared to those in classes set by ability. This work, which follows very strict criteria about research methods – in this case using a “naturalistic” randomised controlled trial, is exactly what the EEF was established to do. Its work has significantly improved the quality of educational research in this country. It has exposed many orthodoxies that lacked an evidence base, such as the notion of “learning styles”, a widely held belief that has no research to support it. The success of the EEF is one of Michael Gove’s greatest legacies and its research this week, if implemented in schools, will transform the life-chances of future generations."
Left wingers hate success, so they want to penalise high-attaining pupils

Margot Cleveland on X - "The fact that you who are reading this care as much as you do about prospective SCOTUS vacancies is an indictment of how far afield our Constitutional system has strayed. There was a time when the Republic did not wait with bated breath every summer to learn whether a justice would retire, or ghoulishly check the actuarial tables against the justices’ ages. That was when the Court restricted itself to the proper (if somewhat dull) task of applying the law made by others. But somewhere along the way justices (Thomas and Alito are notable exceptions) discovered that it is far more exciting to make up your own laws. You can even remake society in your own image! So the next time you check SCOTUS retirement rumors, take a moment to remember WHY you are checking — whereas finding out the identity of the next justice as contemplated by the Founders might be interesting, finding out your next tyrant-in-robes is life-changing."

reason on X - ""Our nation is not founded on a religion. It's not based on a common culture, even, or heritage. ... We're a creedal nation," Justice Neil Gorsuch tells @nickgillespie on The Reason Interview podcast."
Boris Ryvkin on X - "This is simply wrong. It’s the common religion, culture, and heritage that yielded this supposed creed and the constitutional, rule of law, free republic that followed. Specifically, the Anglo-Dutch religious, political, cultural, and economic model is the foundation on which the U.S. was built. The Founding Fathers weren’t a bunch of randos thrown together from disparate cultures who signed on to a collection of ideals. They came from basically the same place ancestrally and culturally - and influenced by overlapping intellectual currents or forces when forming the new country. That’s why what worked in America has not worked in so many other parts of the world."
The Liberian constitution is based on the American one, so clearly the country is a failure because the American creed sucks. Also see Douglass North on Hispanic countries copying US institutions

Meme - "1) "You cannot challenge what we said today" - the Science
2) "You cannot hold us accountable for what we said yesterday because the science changed" - the Science
*Back to 1)*"
The cope is that Science is done by Scientists, so laymen have no right to talk about it. But of course, this pretends that scientists who go against the establishment don't get censored and deplatformed too (a further cope is that Science can only be done in peer reviewed journals)

David Juurlink on X - "The official journal of the Canadian Paediatric Society has just acknowledged that more than 100 of its case reports are fabricated. Incredible reporting from @RetractionWatch:"
Jonathan Shedler on X - "“The ultimate lesson is that science isn’t special—at least not anymore. Maybe back when Einstein talked to Niels Bohr, and there were only a few dozen important workers in every field. But there are now three million researchers in America. It’s no longer a calling, it’s a career. Science is as corruptible a human activity as any other. Its practitioners aren’t saints, they’re human beings, and they do what human beings do—lie, cheat, steal from one another, sue, hide data, fake data, overstate their own importance, and denigrate opposing views unfairly. That’s human nature. It isn’t going to change.” —Michael Crichton, in “Next”"
If you don't Trust the Science, you're a Science Denier

Peter Boghossian on X - "Prediction: The replication crisis will unfold like #MeToo. Everyone in science knows how bad it is, but nobody wants to speak first. Then it all comes crashing down."
John Carter on X - "The thin end of the wedge was the culture of polite lies surrounding race, sex, religion, and sexuality that began to permeate academia in the postwar era. This led directly to massively increased female participation, which then reinforced the trend due to women prioritizing social harmony over verity, thereby establishing a positive feedback loop that eroded the epistemic integrity of academic culture. As academics became accustomed to averting their gaze from polite fictions, it became much easier for them to accept other deceptions. The old collegial culture of courteous but vigorous disputation was replaced with the new collegial culture of vicious enforcement of orthodoxy. This rendered academics much more ideologically pliable, which perfectly suited the goals of government bureaucrats and corporate marketing departments, who did not want truth but plausible-looking justifications for predetermined social engineering goals."

Simon Maechling on X - "The collapse of trust in science is going to go down in history as one of the most sad, bizarre, and destructive social contagions of modern times. We fed billions, cured diseases and powered nations - yet people ran toward conspiracies instead."
Roman Helmet Guy on X - "People haven’t lost trust in “science,” they’ve lost trust in a self-selected self-perpetuating academic priest class who rely on constant alarmism or revisionism to secure funding and who look upon dissent as heretical to an extent that would make the medieval church blush."
Yuri Bezmenov's Ghost on X - "Science is good The Science™ not so much"
Possum Reviews on X - "The replication crisis is not a conspiracy theory."

Joscha Bach on X - "Yes, it's mindblowing how the sciences squandered trust and status by needlessly giving up their neutrality, objectivity and truth seeking, while recklessly embracing capture by partisan ideologies. No authoritarian government forced them to do this."
nic carter on X - "shouldn't have tried to convince us that men can be women, children can change gender if you sterilize them, the vaccine is safe and effective, and covid was zoonotic in origin. 0/10 do better next time"
Armed Liberal on X - "When science explained there were 16 genders, and that assembling for grandma’s funeral was going to kill us all but thousands gathering in the streets for George Floyd was healthy…science may have had something to do with that."
ralphellis on X - "@simonmaechling What do you expect? If you lie about the climate. If you lie about the environment. If you lie about CO2. If you lie about the origins of covid. If you lie about masks. If you lie about lockdowns. If you lie about myocarditis. If you lie about ivermectin. If you lie about excess deaths. If you lie about Unreliables for electricity. If you lie about their cost. If you lie about stored backup. NOBODY WILL BELIEVE YOU ANYMORE. Ralph"

3 sentenced after bear costume used in $142K luxury car insurance scam - "Three people in California have been sentenced for insurance fraud in a bizarre scam that involved someone dressed in a bear costume damaging luxury cars. The California Insurance Department said the three used a person in a bear suit to stage fake attacks inside a Rolls-Royce and two Mercedes in 2024, then submitted fraudulent claims seeking nearly $142,000 in payouts from insurance companies. The department called it “Operation Bear Claw.”"

Employees: Too Ugly to Hire, or a Must Fire? - "Maybe ugliness is considered intentional by way of excessive tattoos, facial piercings and those big corks people put in their ears. Perhaps ugliness is unintentional. In any event, if a prospective employer does not hire you and states that it’s because you are ugly, is that a form of discrimination? The short answer is “no.” In Canada and British Columbia, there is no legislative prohibition against not hiring a person based on appearance alone. Moreover, potential legal action on behalf of the unattractive could be very complicated. One complication is that ugly people usually do not identify as such. There are no, or perhaps very few, ugly people groups, associations or clubs. Unlike other groups of people such as men, women or Catholics, ugly people have a problem identifying as ugly. Another complication is that people, being diverse and unique individuals, perceive beauty and ugliness differently. Our society places an undeniable emphasis on the value of physical beauty. We commonly associate physical traits with perceived correlating qualities or characteristics. Attractiveness is perceived to correspond with attributes such as virtue, integrity, intelligence, sensitivity, kindness, and honesty, whereas ugliness or obesity corresponds with perceptions of laziness, lack of discipline, incompetence, lack of productivity, and slovenliness. This attribution process is legally and socially acceptable. Employers use appearance traits as indicators of employee worth or qualification. In fact, from an economic perspective, some argue appearance is a valid indicator of productivity, to the extent that productivity is measured by personal, customer, or co-worker satisfaction. Employers generally retain discretion to consider whatever factors they deem important in their employment decisions. Employers routinely acknowledge the importance of an attractive appearance in employee selection. Given the immediate visibility of physical attributes, grooming, and attire, one’s appearance often constitutes an employer’s first impression of an applicant’s employability. Further, an employer can regulate and/or prohibit, as a term of the employment, dress codes, grooming standards, hair length, hairstyle, uniforms, jewellery, and visibility of body piercings and tattoos, and an employer can regulate other appearance-based requirements, unless such regulation is in contravention of the BC Human Rights Code and is based on one of the prohibited discriminatory grounds. In sum, unless you can connect your looks with your race, colour, ancestry, place of origin, political belief, religion, marital status, family status, physical or mental disability, sex, sexual orientation, age, or a criminal conviction that is unrelated to the employment as a basis of the discrimination, then you may be discriminated against based on your looks. Often, people who are overweight will commence a claim regarding a breach of the Human Rights Code based on “disability.” Perhaps one could even argue that ugliness is a physical disability; however, you would then have to admit you’re ugly, which no one wants to do."

Meme - "The people employed to get rid of a problem will always try to preserve that problem"
This explains homelessness non-profits and the rest of the homeless-industrial complex etc

Why Higher Ed Won’t Look Itself in the Mirror

When left wingers use the term "Critical", they mean "Critical Theory", not "Critical Thinking":

Opinion | Why Higher Ed Won’t Look Itself in the Mirror

"I traveled to Washington for a meeting of American education scholars. The opening panel focused — appropriately enough — on Trump’s threats to university funding, free speech on campus, and more. Then it was time for questions, and I raised my hand. I said that I agreed with all the critiques of Trump, but I also wondered what those of us who work in higher education might have done — or not done — to bring about this awful moment. Could we use it to look in the mirror, I asked, and not just to circle the wagons?

Dead silence. Then another member of the audience spoke up. “I just wanted to say that I was deeply offended by Professor Zimmerman’s use of the term ‘circle the wagons,’ which connotes a hateful history of Native American displacement and genocide,” she said, as I remember it. More awkward silence. Finally, the moderator of the panel interjected with something along the lines of: “Thank you for reminding us that we need to be careful in the language that we use to describe others.” So the panel began with a diatribe about Donald Trump’s assault on free speech and it concluded with a warning to watch our words.

For the past 75 years, academics have been telling a story about how we enhance democratic dialogue and understanding. Yet we don’t really believe it. If we did, the moderator would have asked the objecting scholar to say more about why she bridled at my phraseology. Then the moderator would have asked me to reply, and eventually we might have gotten around to the substance of my question, which concerned the delicate matter of what degree of introspection, what sort of critical self-examination, might be required of professors and teachers amid the current crisis. None of that happened, of course. The moderator drew the panel to a moralistic and satisfyingly evasive close, and we all went out to lunch. 

“Out to lunch” is where much of higher education is — oblivious about how we got here and how we might change course. Yes, Trump represents a dagger at our heart; and yes, we must join hands to resist him. But long before he came to power, growing numbers of Americans — and not just Republicans — were starting to see higher education as something of a scam. We charge ever-higher sticker prices for degrees of increasingly dubious worth, even as we proclaim our commitment to the public good. To make good on that ideal, we cannot simply circle the wagons. We need to look in the mirror...

Truman received a pair of high-profile reports that defined the contours of American higher education for the next half a century. The first, Science: The Endless Frontier, called on the federal government to subsidize university research that would improve Americans’ health, national security, and standard of living. The second, Higher Education for American Democracy, urged the government to help people attend college. That would create a more equal society, as well as a more virtuous one: Bringing greater numbers of students into higher education, it would also foster the skills and the understanding that good citizenship demanded.

Universities would receive considerable autonomy in deciding how to use federal dollars and in exchange they would provide the technical know-how and the democratic spirit to sustain the nation. Education scholars call this the “academic social contract.”...

When did the contract start to unravel? One common story links it to the student demonstrations and social upheavals of the 1960s, which soured taxpayers — especially those on the right — against higher education. Ronald Reagan won the governorship of California in 1966 by pledging to “clean up the mess at Berkeley,” which had exploded in protest two years earlier. (He also railed against campus “hippies,” whom Reagan famously described as “someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane, and smells like Cheetah.”) Yet tuition remained free for in-state students until 1970, when California instituted a nominal $150 fee. The big nationwide tuition increases did not kick in until the 1980s, as state legislatures started to slash their higher-education budgets. After Reagan ascended to the White House, the federal government reduced student aid by 25 percent over five years.

Yet the universities were backtracking on their side of the bargain, too. Despite the Truman-era promise to educate young people for democracy, universities eliminated core courses designed to introduce students to the liberal traditions of Western thought; in some quarters the West itself was imagined as a source of oppression rather than liberation. Colleges also cut back on distribution requirements, which had forced students to take classes in a wide range of disciplines in what used to be described as “Gen Ed.” Now each student would choose their curricular adventure: They were paying their own way, so they also got to select their own courses. 

At the same time, higher education created systems that rewarded faculty research and downgraded undergraduate instruction. Any professorial effort in the classroom meant less time in the laboratory or the library, where careers were won or lost. That was already apparent in 1947, when the Higher Education for American Democracy report called on professors across the disciplines to teach and model the habits of democracy...

The report also demanded that every professor receive rigorous training in how to teach... most professors still receive almost no formal preparation for these tasks. To get a Ph.D., you must spend six to eight years mastering a field and making an original contribution to it. But at the University of Pennsylvania, where I work, teaching assistants receive three days of training before they are thrown to the undergraduate wolves.

Professors cannot fulfill their obligations to their students — and to our democracy — if they are not deeply committed to educating them. That means exposing them to a wide range of ideas, which was once the heart of the liberal ideal. But no longer. In a recent study, the political scientist Jon A. Shields and two colleagues surveyed course syllabi to see if professors who assigned Edward Said’s Orientalism also asked students to read Ian Buruma’s and Avishai Margalit’s Occidentalism or other critiques of Said. They also looked to see whether teachers teaching The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander’s now-canonical account of racism in criminal justice, also assigned scholars who took issue with Alexander, such as the Yale Law School professor James Forman Jr. or the Princeton sociologist Patrick Sharkey. Shields’ conclusion was sad and altogether predictable: These kinds of pairings, these efforts at fairness and complication, are extremely rare.

Despite our rhetorical commitment to “critical thinking,” we typically present one side of an issue — the left-wing side, almost always — and call it a day. Such a practice is not simply a reflection of political bias, although it is surely that. It is also a mark of bad teaching.

Professors generally refuse to admit any of this, which compounds the problem. We are like little children who close their eyes in the hopes that nobody can see them. That was apparent during the fateful testimony by three college presidents in December 2023 before a congressional committee investigating antisemitism on campuses following the Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza. Asked whether calls for genocide would be protected speech, the presidents answered — correctly — that it depends on the context.

But here is what they did not say: Universities have not defended this principle consistently. At Harvard, for example, the eminent evolutionary biologist Carole Hooven was effectively pushed out for saying that there are a multiplicity of genders but only two sexes: male and female. “In what world is a call for violence against Jews protected speech, but a belief that sex is biological and binary isn’t?” Harvard president Claudine Gay was asked. She replied that Harvard supports “constructive dialogue, even on the most complex and divisive issues.” The Hooven episode proved the opposite, of course.

When Gay was asked whether Harvard prepared its professors to engage students in that dialogue, she dissembled still further. “We devote significant resources to training our faculty in that pedagogical skill and prioritizing that in our recruiting and hiring,” she said. Really? I have been a professor for three decades, and I have never seen a hiring decision or a tenure decision that hinged on teaching ability or accomplishments. Nor have I witnessed any required pedagogical training for faculty.

We all have Centers on Teaching and Learning, which began in the 1960s in response to student protests about poor instruction. But the centers cannot force anyone to participate in their programming, and they certainly cannot reward good teachers or penalize bad ones. If we truly valued teaching, we wouldn’t need a separate unit of the university that was devoted to it. Designed to elevate instruction, the centers demonstrate our low estimation of it. Ditto for teaching awards, another legacy of the 1960s: Everyone knows you can make more money by finishing your book — and getting promoted to the next salary rung — than you can via a one-off prize...

I am also mortified that our own institutions have done such a poor job in upholding the values that Trump is undermining. The big question is whether we can rediscover them, and how.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, the first step to recovery is admitting that you have a problem. Most of my colleagues aren’t there yet. The trauma of Trump is too fresh, too raw, too painful. When a group is under attack, its initial impulse will be to defend itself. Thus, everything our team says is right and everything the other team says is wrong. Mocking the idea that universities are biased against conservatives, the American Association of University Professors — our most august academic organization — recently posted that “fascism generally doesn’t do great under peer review.” In other words: The reason we have so few Republican professors is because they are brownshirts in disguise. We do not have to engage or debate them; indeed, we must not engage or debate them.

As an analysis of the views of people with whom liberals disagree, this is shameful. Our interlocutors may be wrong, but that does not make them evil. And this kind of condescending dismissal is also a terrific way to avoid the hard questions about our own complicity in the degradation of the university...

We know that growing numbers of Americans have lost faith in us. And so we tell ourselves that they are racist, or anti-intellectual, or so blinded by the Trump cult that they cannot see how good we really are. And we imagine that anyone who doubts us must be on his side. This is what conservatives mean when they talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome: It prevents us from thinking straight. It is a cognitive impairment nearly as obscene as Trump himself. But surely we can circle the wagons against him while continuing to look at ourselves in the mirror. Or maybe not so surely — but we must try...

The big problem in higher education is not our scientific-research apparatus, which was the envy of the world before Trump took a sledgehammer to it. It is our abandonment of the ideal that propelled us to build up universities in the first place: the cultivation of citizens. Students come to college for all kinds of reasons: to have fun, to get a job, to find a mate. But they generally do not come here to become better citizens in a democracy, as the report to Truman envisioned they would. 

What would it mean to reconstitute our universities around that goal? Several universities — including my own — are developing new core courses for first-year students that explore the history and the challenges of democratic government, alongside other fundamental themes in the humanities. Other institutions have established programs around civic engagement and “dialogue across difference,” which has become something of a cliché at the Trump-era university. And over 100 academic leaders — calling themselves College Presidents for Civic Preparedness — have partnered with the Institute for Citizens & Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation) to create new classes and other campus initiatives to “prepare the next generation of well-informed, productively engaged, and committed citizens.” This is all fine and good — indeed, it is great — but it also feels a bit like our Centers for Teaching and Learning: If we embraced our civic purpose fully and honestly, we would not need to create special courses and initiatives to enhance it.

Nor would we need separate schools of civic thought...

There is no organization called College Presidents for Teaching Preparedness, because we do not prepare people to teach in our colleges. That needs to change if we want to make good on our democratic charge. Every department that produces new faculty members should have a set of required courses devoted to the instruction of that discipline. And every professor’s teaching — like their research — should be judged by their peers. Student evaluations are important, but they are not enough. I have taught at Penn for nine years, and nobody has observed me in the classroom. I could be doing anything — or nothing.

We also need a set of institutional rankings around teaching, so that students and their families can make informed choices about where to go to college. When we survey Americans and ask them what makes for a good university, they’ll often point to teaching quality. But there is no way for them to know which institutions promote teaching excellence in their classrooms. It is wonderful that many colleges are reviving their curricula to address citizenship and democracy, but without skilled and informed teachers, curricula alone are unlikely to make much of a difference. 

Effective teaching resembles a workable democracy in that it is premised on free and open exchange. And if you think we have protected and nourished that value at our colleges and universities, you haven’t been paying attention. The current academic culture of fear, timidity, and conformity is inimical to both education and democracy. Trump has ramped up that fear, but he certainly did not create it. We created it. It is up to us, therefore, to undo it."  

Links - 3rd June 2026 (2 - 2024 & 2026 Olympics)

Meme - Christian Heiens 🏛 @ChristianHeiens: "Truly incredible things are happening on Reddit. Generational crashout.  The plucky rebels were supposed to defeat the evil empire, and now they don’t know what to do."
Melissa C... @MsMel...: "Feel like bringing up Epstein is the only way for them to feel better about themselves"
"USA winning the sports ball competition is just the thing to make the drones forget about that whole zero arrests being made regarding the Epstein clients."
Rick Fox @rickhfox: "Losing game makes me want to drink blood from a skull.""
hoser1: "Well, at least our prime minister isn't a pedophile"
Neuraxis: "small massive victories"
Full_Hunt_3087: "A win for a unifying democratic country Canada would have been like finding an extra chicken nugget as a kid, a nice but deserved extra surprise. A win for the United States, a country run by pedophiles, is more like giving a participation medal to a kid who will brag about it to all of his friends and pretend he's the best in the world. Giving them way more satisfaction proportionately than it should, because they need that superficial satisfaction."
PauseJazzlike6819: *laughs* *showing the finger* *medals* *Eagle* *US flags* (-11 karma)
Full_Hunt_3087: "Good for you, champ. Have a cookie!"
Meme - usernamedmannequin: "I cannot fathom how bad of a mood I'm in right now and I can't even process my emotions right now. I feel ready to die in fight to the death for my country like never before and I don't understand how a fucking hockey game did this to me."
Lampadaire345: "That's because that game was symbolic of our National Unity and struggle to be seperate from those fascists down South. Winning would have been a show that we stand together and that we are not backing down or getting pushed aside by their bloodthirsty empire, and that we strike back against bullies. Although symbolic, it was much more important to us than most people in the USA who are ignorant enough to actually support their war seeking president."
usernamedmannequin: "The men's and women's both lost to the USA and I swear if Trump says a fucking word about it (which he will) nothing will satisfy me besides drinking the blood of my enemies from the skull of my fallen enemies. (I'm a tad bit fired up bud)"
Left wingers have awful sportsmanship

🖤 Christine on X - "To be clear, I don’t hate Eileen Gu. She was born and raised in America. Her Chinese mom embraced capitalism when her daughter was 15 and set her up for a comfortable life. This is actually a version of the American dream too. Even if people feel a certain way about it.   As an adult with full agency, Eileen continues to choose China because it remains financially lucrative. That’s fine.    But choices have consequences. She's smart. She has a script. But that script isn't working anymore. The willful ignorance and “weight of two countries” “build my own pond” act worked better when she was a naive teenager. As an international relations major at Stanford, come on. This coming from a former international relations major from BU.   The reality is, she has taken money from the Chinese government and the brand sponsorship benefits that come with it. That comes with strings attached. One of them is not being able to openly criticize China.    She can criticize her own country (she’s likely still a U.S. citizen). But she can’t criticize China for the same reason anyone with family or financial ties to China can’t. If you do your access to China gets cut off and the risk and retaliation is real.   Eileen can’t comment on human rights issues in China. She can’t comment on her Chinese citizenship status even though China doesn’t allow dual citizenship.    She can’t comment on transnational repression of Chinese dissidents overseas. She has to pretend that doesn’t exist.   Don’t ask her about why her mom was able to cheer her on at the Beijing Olympics in 2022 while Alysa Liu’s dad wasn’t able to because he’s a Chinese dissident. She has to pretend she knows nothing about any of that.   Don’t ask her what she thinks of a fellow Bay Area gold medalist being targeted by the same government that made her a multimillionaire.    Don’t expect the China experts to weigh in on any of this either. There are conditions to keeping their visa valid and their access to China open. Being openly critical of the U.S. is encouraged and so is gaslighting everyone who is critical of China.   It is what it is."

Eileen Gu and Chinese nationality law - "Let’s establish two factual premises first.
(1) Eileen Gu has not renounced her US citizenship and remains one. Does anyone seriously believe that Eileen Gu has renounced her US citizenship? Not only is it virtually inconceivable even in the abstract, but are we supposed to think she’s at Stanford on a student visa? That would severely limit her ability to earn money in the US; she would only be allowed to take on-campus jobs. Nor has her name shown up on the State Department’s periodic lists of people who have renounced their citizenship. (See immigration lawyer Gary Chodorow’s blog post on this.)
(2) Eileen Gu has been given Chinese citizenship by the Chinese government, and possesses a Chinese passport. The International Olympic Committee said that Gu acquired Chinese nationality in 2019 and confirmed that they had seen her Chinese passport both to Emily Feng of NPR and to Lizzi Lee...
the Chinese authorities have clearly decided that they are not bound by the rules of the Nationality Law, and can therefore issue a passport to whomever they please if they deem it expedient to do so. And they have the actual, unchallengeable power to do so. It is important to remember this important feature of China’s legal system when evaluating claims about what the Chinese government can and cannot do under its own law.

Meme - "What people think Nietzsche's idea of Ubermensch is: *Gigachad*
What it actually is: *Alysa Liu happily skating*"

Often unseen, flower kids help keep the Olympic figure skating flowing - The Globe and Mail - "Their official title is ‘flower kid’ and their moment starts as soon as the music ends.  In figure skating, it is customary for fans to throw gifts on the ice for skaters after a performance, but this show of appreciation can slow down the whole event and cause tripping hazards if anything is missed. That’s where the flower kids come in and you’ll see them in the background each night here in Milan.  At the end of a skate, as stuffed animals and the occasional wrapped bouquet rain down from the stands, half-a-dozen little kids in matching blue-and-pink zip-ups bolt onto the ice, grab the goods, and get off again before the marks are announced and the next performance is set to start.  When a new teddy bear hits the surface, another one sprint-skates into the rotation... Capasso is from Turin. She is one of 30 young figure skaters – aged 8 through 12 – from across Italy who were selected to be the flower kids during the Milan Cortina Olympic figure-skating events. For any skating competition, they’re an integral part of the event as they keep the program going and the skaters safe from debris on the ice. And for the dozens of kids chosen, it’s the chance of a lifetime to have front-row seats to the best skating in the world... And this isn’t the flower kids’ only job. They can also be spotted during the ice resurfacing, performing seated choreography to the intermission music."

How Israel’s strategy made seven Olympic medals normal - "Israel understood that to improve its Olympic achievements it needed to consider its size and relative strength. To that end, five sports were chosen to receive excess funding: athletics, gymnastics, swimming, sailing, and, of course, judo. The Olympic Committee of Israel understood that the state budget alone couldn’t provide for the professional development needed to compete with leading teams, so partnerships were developed with 11 businesses, including Bank Hapoalim, Arkia, and Shufersal.  A scientific-medical support system – employing 110 people – was developed to provide athletes full support in nutrition, medicine, therapy, and data analysis. It was also decided to offer significant financial rewards to winning athletes: NIS500,000 for a bronze medal, NIS750,000 for a silver, and NIS 1 million for a gold – all tax-free. This has positioned Israel as a world leader in rewarding its athletes. However, pouring money into the Olympic effort isn’t the only solution. Singapore, for example, tops the list of rewarding countries with a grant of NIS 2.7 million for gold medalists but had to settle for a single bronze medal in Paris. The real difference lies in a combination of professional leadership, long-term planning ability, early investment in talents, significant development budgets, and a population large enough to supply the best athletes...  if we zoom out, it’s evident that Israel’s achievement in Paris was statistically normal and reflected a result that matches its population, size, and resources. When Israel won a silver and a bronze medal in 1992, it had only half its current population (5.1 million), and its GDP per capita was significantly lower. Those medals were a huge achievement. Seven medals for Israel 2024 were what is now expected.  However, looking at other countries with similar population sizes, it’s clear there’s still room for improvement"

Meme *Sad guy Happy guy bus*
"ASS-MEN DURING OLYMPICS
TITS-MEN DURING OLYMPICS"

Noah Lyles was selfish to run Olympic 200m with COVID. But he's not alone - "they all look for an edge, the proprietary one or two per cent they believe makes the difference between contender and also-ran. In Lyles’ case, it meant staying mum for two days about a positive test for COVID, lest he let his competitors in Thursday’s 200-metre final know about the condition his condition was in... Tebogo, incidentally, was asked if he was ready to be the face of track and field.  “I can’t be the face of athletics because I’m not an arrogant or a loud person like Noah Lyles, so I believe Noah is the face of athletics.”"

TracingWoodgrains on X - "It's incredibly dumb that I've wound up so fixated on this example, but this story has driven me mad from the first moment I saw it and the madness compels me to write. I call it "The story of Imane Khelif and the lying liars who lie." Let's start with a bare-bones rendition of the facts:
1. At the 2024 olympics, Imane Khelif won gold in women's boxing.
2. She was raised as a woman.
3. After challenges, she took several tests, one of which led to her disqualification from the 2023 women's world boxing championships
4. The IBA maintains she has XY chromosomes; her trainer said she had a problem with her hormones and chromosomes; independent journalists report seeing multiple independent tests that indicate XY chromosomes.
5. The IOC president, when addressing calls for her disqualification, explicitly walked back remarks that it "was not a DSD issue" to clarify that he meant it "was not a trans issue."
6. One journalist has leaked alleged lab results indicating an intersex condition.
All of these point in one extremely clear Occam's Razor direction: she has an intersex condition involving XY chromosomes and elevated levels of testosterone as a result. She is genotypically male, phenotypically androgenous/female, and was raised as a woman. All of that should be reasonably straightforward. But because it's a culture war issue, a thousand lying liars who lie have descended and stripped any semblance of sanity from the conversation around her. Here's the problem: there are a lot of nasty, aggressive arguments around trans issues with a lot of people who bitterly hate each other. This is tangentially related to trans issues. So if one side says something, for the other side, they have to be wrong. And lying liars who lie will find any possible way to make it so.  Snopes is the best example, because it is at least facially honest. You can get the full story from it, which is more than you can say for other sources. But watch what it does: while none of the facts are in dispute, it fixates on specific wording choices to create a sense that Something Is Wrong. Watch as it confirms the core details of the story, then immediately pivots into "not necessarily":
"According to the alleged medical files produced by Ait Aoudia, Khelif had testosterone levels that well exceeded that of a typical female and, upon examination, lacked ovaries and had internal gonads. Such a person might be considered chromosomally male, but that does not necessarily mean they are accurately or conclusively described as biologically male."
Snopes highlights wording from the reporting it wants to dispute:
"Results? The pelvic MRI shows "an absence of a uterus," the presence of  "gonads in the inguinal canals" (testicles in her abdomen, editor's note), "a blind vagina" and a micro-penis in the form of "clitoral hypertrophy"."
How does Snopes dispute this wording? Again, "not necessarily:"
"Describing undeveloped internal gonads as testes is a scientific conclusion inserted by Ait Aoudia. DSDs can sometimes cause ambiguous gonads with both ovarian and testicular tissues. Clitoral hypertrophy — an enlarged clitoris — is not necessarily the same thing as having a micropenis."
It's not arguing the facts. It's not disputing anything concrete. It's playing definition games, quibbling over the edges. The whole dispute is like this. Some people falsely said Khelif is trans, so rather than focusing on the intersex claim, lying liars who lie clamor to Debunk the trans claim. The journalists who reported the details and noted having seen the report were from relatively small organizations, so lying liars who lie clamor to emphasize Unverified without substantive counters. The athletic association who disqualified Khelif had a falling out with the IOC, so lying liars who lie emphasize that it has ties to Russia and claim (falsely) that the disqualification came after Khelif defeated a previously undefeated Russian boxer. Khelif was raised as a woman, so when people who use chromosomes as their definition for "man" call her a man, lying liars who lie act like those people are fundamentally confused instead of operating from a different definition.  Everybody who has paid attention knows the facts I outline at the head of this. There is no serious dispute around them. But lying liars who lie insist, on Wikipedia, around Twitter, and anywhere this conversation is brought up, on litigating every minor detail they can find, anything not conclusively and unambiguously admitted by parties they have no choice but to trust. They don't have serious counterpoints. They don't have serious counterevidence. They don't have, really, any reason at all to think she is anything other than the intersex athlete all signs point towards her being, but lying liars who lie are paying attention and arguing only to the extent they can use arguments as a weapon to ensure The Other Side doesn't score points, and as far as they are concerned they will go to their graves lying about it.
Anyway. I was reminded of all of this because @jimmy_wales  wanted examples of Wikipedia pages that have been protected for bad reasons, and this page was protected because lying liars who lie are dead-set on ensuring that everyone who reads Khelif's Wikipedia page comes away thinking she's very likely not intersex and all attention on her was baseless.   It's stupid that I know about this story. It's stupid that I think about it. It is stupid that thousands of lying liars who lie have become so invested in promoting a stupid lie at all costs that they will only acknowledge the facts of the case under extreme duress, and will instead spend countless hours quibbling over absolute nonsense.  I have nothing against Khelif, and on a personal level I have sympathy for what it's like to be at the middle of a firestorm of attention. I don't think people should attack her or make anything personal, and I absolutely understand impulses to defend against anti-trans sentiment or to stand up for someone in the middle of a firestorm.   But I am beyond sick of lying liars who lie creating fake, pedantic, quibbling arguments with purely instrumental standards that adapt on the fly to whatever points they think they might be able to turn into contested territory, just because they would rather kick and scream and lie than admit that their opponents were ever right about any factual claim, ever, at all, ever.  ...ok, I think that's it. Blech."

Honest Sabe on X - "The gait really says it all."
Billy Bragg on X - "Trying very hard not to judge Imane Khelif on looks, walk, or the fact that he's the only "woman" not wearing hijab....trying very, very hard...."

'Khelif is a man': Former sparring partner's shocking claims on Olympic champion boxer, says ‘has some kind of…' - "Joana Nwamerue, who fought against Imane Khelif during a sparring match in Bulgaria, has made shocking claims about the Olympic champion boxer who faced intense scrutiny over her biological sex and gender identity.  Nwamerue, Bulgarian-Nigerian woman boxer, has claimed that (Khelif) has some kind of internal issues, but he is a man.  “I will stay [by] my words until he/she does a test to prove to the world that he/she is a woman. But we all know that won’t happen,” reported Reduxx quoting Nwamerue.  Stating that she played 3-4 sparring sessions, Nwamerue said, "(I) can confirm that this (Khelif) is a man to her. ‘Male power. Men’s techniques, everything’.”   The Bulgarian-Nigerian boxer also claimed that [Khelif’s] teammates came to her and told her “Imane is not a man. She is a woman and just lives high in the mountains with her relatives and parents and so there may be a change in her testosterone or chromosomes and the like.”"

Huge row after Imane Khelif, Paris Olympics gold medalist, confirmed as man in leaked medical report - "In a surprising turn of events, the gender identification of Imane Khelif, the Algerian boxer who just won gold in women's boxing at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, has come under scrutiny due to a leaked medical report. According to the document, which French journalist Djaffar Ait Aoudia was able to secure, Khelif has internal testicles and XY chromosomes, hinting at a disorder called 5-alpha reductase insufficiency. Experts from the Kremlin-Bicêtre Hospital in Paris and the Mohamed Lamine Debaghine Hospital in Algiers drafted the report in June 2023. The report describes Khelif's biological traits, such as the existence of internal testicles and the lack of a uterus. Additionally, an MRI revealed the presence of a micropenis... A chromosomal test reportedly confirmed that Khelif has an XY karyotype and a hormone test revealed Khelif's level to be that typical of males.   Khelif's reported sexual development deficiency causes babies to be incorrectly assigned female due to the presence of deformed genitalia, according to Reduxx. The disorder typically becomes apparent by puberty.  The report of an XY karyotype aligns with not only the IBA's findings before disqualifying Khelif from the 2023 Women's World Boxing Championships, but also that of Alan Abrahamson, an associate professor at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism who said that he had viewed the results from tests administered by the IBA."
Weird. We kept being told that it had been proven that she was a woman and claims to the contrary were "Russia disinformation", even though even her coach admitted she had been found to be a man
Time for the left wing gaslighting to start again
One of the strangest original copes was that she couldn't be a man because it was illegal to be trans in Algeria. By that logic, crime doesn't exist anywhere in the world because crime is illegal everywhere

Blinded by ideology: Inside boxing row that tarnished Olympics - "It was a telephone call to Dr Emma Hilton, the developmental biologist whose work illuminates why sex matters in sport, that gave a first inkling as to the freight train hurtling down the tracks. Given her research had illustrated the average man could punch 162 per cent harder than a woman, I had wanted to establish what, to put it bluntly, the International Olympic Committee was playing at by allowing two biologically male boxers into the female category. “They are trying to balance fairness, inclusion and safety,” she said. “But safety isn’t about balance. Safety is a cut-off. If it’s not safe, nobody cares if it’s fair or inclusive. You can’t do it.”... Dr Hilton’s warning of the danger came on Monday, July 29. But far from heeding it, the IOC did nothing. Almost two weeks on, its inertia and flat denial of science has enabled both Khelif and Lin to sweep to Olympic titles, each achieved with four lopsided victories. Mired in politics and blinded by ideology, it has presided over the perfect storm of a scandal. “They are women”: this, all along, was president Thomas Bach’s incantation about Khelif and Lin, which is what they consider themselves to be. And yet he still cannot even present a persuasive definition of what a woman is.  To Bach and his IOC acolytes, in hock to a belief that your sex is whatever you say it is, womanhood can be determined by passport status. Except athletes do not compete at the Olympics using legal documents or self-declared gender identities. They compete using their bodies, with their capabilities governed by the immutable laws of human biology... The major sports are all controlled here by federations that have seen sense, prioritising fairness by ring-fencing the female category for biological women. Athletics acted in response to seeing three athletes with differences in sexual development on the women’s 800 metres podium at Rio 2016. Swimming understood it had a problem when Lia Thomas went from being the 554th-ranked male in the United States to winning a national collegiate title as a female. Cycling was forced to draw a line when Austin Killips, a post-puberty male, won a UCI stage race for women. But boxing, the most perilous sport at the Olympics, has been left at the mercy of the IOC, the most ideologically captured body of all. It saw no issue in sending Angela Carini into the ring to face Khelif, only for the Italian to be dismantled inside 46 seconds by punches so hard she said she feared for her life. It was not just because it disputed the IBA’s findings, but because it believed the Algerian should never have been tested at all. Its much-vaunted eligibility “framework” is rights-led rather than scientific. This means, in essence, that it is prepared to ignore anything to do with Khelif’s chromosomes. All that matters is being perceived not to discriminate...   It is worth studying the precise details of the IBA letter describing the tests carried out on the boxers. Summarising the results as “abnormal”, it declares: “Chromosome analysis reveals male karyotype.” It also includes imaging, for each athlete, of an X and a Y chromosome, highlighting that the tests were conducted at a Delhi laboratory certified by the Swiss-based International Organisation for Standardisation. But still the IOC maintains that the results are “arbitary”, not worth the paper they are written on.  The only possible conclusion is that the IOC simply does not want to listen, that it is more interested in burnishing its credentials as “inclusive” than in upholding what is fair. It is no wonder that Bach wanted to be nowhere near the boxers’ gold-medal presentations, instead delegating Khelif’s victory ceremony to Mustapha Berraf of Algeria, one of his arch-loyalists. He has, frankly, made himself foolish on this issue. He had been warned for six years that a story such as this could explode if the IOC did not draw clearer boundaries, but still he refused to react. Despite the IBA claiming that the fighters have been tested twice and that they are male, Bach insists there is no scientific means of discovering who is female. Now, not before time, he has agreed to step aside next year, his credibility severely damaged by his handling of the controversy. It marks the dramatic culmination of a quite extraordinary episode. In the space of a single Games, the IOC has done nothing less than distort biological truth in a sport fraught with physical risk. In the eyes of many women, there could scarcely be a greater dereliction."

The IOC's shameful worship at the altar of trans virtue-signaling will get women killed - "any confusion about Khelif’s biology was clarified by this report, a full year before the Paris Olympics.  And the IOC knew it.  So why did it still permit Khelif to compete against, and beat — in every sense — women?  The answer is cowardice.  It was terrified of offending the woke mob, who viciously mobilize against anyone who dares to stand up to this transgender athlete nonsense.  Indeed, such was its fear that the IOC hasn’t submitted athletes to chromosomal testing since 1999 and its only requirement for participation at the Paris Olympics in women’s boxing was to have a female sex marker on legal documents.   In other words, you just say you’re a woman on a form and bingo, you’re fighting against women — even if, like Khelif, you’re a man... The one thing that never happens in this debate is accountability, despite the mounting evidence that it’s rapidly destroying the integrity of women’s sports.  The United Nations recently revealed that a staggering 900 medals have been robbed from women by trans athletes around the world, in 29 different sports.  This is a disgusting, systematic global abuse of women’s rights...   In boxing, separating the sexes is even more important because lives may be at stake.   Kamala Harris has no problem with any of this, which makes a mockery of her claim to be the only presidential candidate who stands up for women’s rights.  In fact, it’s Donald Trump who got it right when he said all trans women athletes should be banned from competing in women’s sports."

i/o on X - "I've noticed that certain events at the Olympics tend to contain a distribution of physical attractiveness among participants that's more favorable than what you'd expect to see in the general population. (The men's decathlon and women' high jump come to mind). Does anyone know if this sort of phenomenon has ever been studied? (I vaguely recall that the attractiveness of NFL quarterbacks may have once been the subject of a scientific paper.)"

A CNN reporter, a BBC reporter, and an Israeli commando

Hank Campbell on X

A CNN reporter, a BBC reporter, and an Israeli commando are captured by Hamas in Gaza. The leader of the terrorists said he'd grant them each one last request before they were beheaded. The CNN Reporter said, "I’d like one last hamburger with fries.” The leader nodded and said it would be done. The BBC Reporter said, "I want to describe the scene here and what’s about to happen so my government knows I did the job until the end.” The leader nodded and said it would be done. Then he turned to the Israeli commando and said, “And what is your final wish?” “Kick me in the butt,” said the soldier. “Do not mock me, Jew.” “I’m not kidding. I want you to kick me in the butt.” So the terrorist leader shoved him into the open and kicked him in the behind. The soldier went sprawling but rolled to his knees, pulled a pistol they hadn't found, and shot the leader dead. Then he grabbed a rifle from another terrorist and suddenly they were all dead or fleeing. "You could've done that all along?" asked the Brit. "Yeah, why did you want to be kicked in the butt?" asked the American. “If I hadn't," replied the Israeli, “You two would have reported that I was the aggressor." 

 

Related (in comments):

A man in France sees a dog attacking a child so he runs to help and kills the dog to save the child. People surround him to shake his hand and the media goes to interview him.

Reporter: I can see the headline now, French man saves child from vicious dog.

Man: That's nice but I'm not French.

Reporter: ok so European man saves child from vicious dog.

Man: I'm not European either.

Reporter: So where are you from?

Man: Israel

Next days headline: Vicious Jew kills family pet. 

Links - 3rd June 2026 (1 - Palestine/Middle East Peace)

Palestinian prisoners emerge wealthy men thanks to Palestinian Authority payments | The Australian - "A five-star Cairo hotel has removed 150 Palestinian guests after it was revealed they had been released from Israeli jails in exchange for Hamas hostages, and included members of the militant organisation... BA crew were shocked to learn of their fellow guests’ identities, with some considering barricading their doors for safety. The militants were removed to a remote, secure facility an hour from the city with strict limitations on excursions into the city.  The furore came as it was also revealed more than half the Palestinian prisoners freed in exchange for Israeli hostages have become instant millionaires, thanks to years of payments from the Palestinian Authority.  Lieutenant Colonel Maurice Hirsch, a former military prosecutor and a researcher at the Jerusalem Centre for Security and Foreign Affairs think tank, told Israeli media 160 of the 250 terrorists released in the deal – including Hamas militants – are rich men thanks to monthly payments of roughly 8,000 shekels (AUD$3450) over many years.  “The Palestinian Authority rewards our child murderers with hundreds of millions of shekels annually, exactly as a prize for their participation in terror,” Lieutenant Colonel Hirsch told the Israel Hayom newspaper. “The payments accumulate to millions and they leave prison for a life of prosperity – not remorse.”  Israel’s Foreign Minister, Gideon Sa’ar, accused the Palestinian Authority of continuing to pay salaries to prisoners, despite claiming to have ended the controversial “pay to slay” program that critics said incentivised terror attacks against Israel... Mr Sa’ar said the Palestinian Authority had not stopped paying Palestinian prisoners and Hamas operatives but had only changed its payment methods so the operatives did not receive the money directly.  Speaking in Hungary, Mr Sa’ar told reporters: “Contrary to the Palestinian Authority’s promises in English, the PA continues its policy of paying salaries to terrorists.  “The PA pays salaries to terrorists and their family members for murdering Jews and Israelis according to their law from 2004 until this very day. The PA rewards Palestinian terrorists, including Hamas operatives, who have Jewish blood on their hands – both those sitting in prison and those released in the latest deal.  “The PA never stopped paying salaries to terrorists – the PA only changed its method. Terrorists now receive the money from Palestinian postal branches. The PA even makes additional payments to terrorists released under the agreement.”  Mr Sa’ar accused the European Union of encouraging terrorism by ignoring the payments... Lieutenant Colonel Hirsch, who is also an adviser to Israel’s Ministry of Defence, said Israel was partly responsible for the large payments due to agreements under the Oslo Accords.  “Out of every 100 shekels the PA pays terrorists, 65 come from us – from the VAT and income taxes we transfer to the PA under the Oslo Accords. We are literally funding the murder of our children,” he said. “A terrorist murderer knows he won’t die in prison, but will exit to a good life with an inflated bank account. The time has come to cut off this money pipeline once and for all.”  A former Israeli intelligence officer told the Mail some of the men staying in Egypt would be free to move on to Qatar, Turkey and Tunisia.  “There are no restrictions on their movements in these countries,” he said.  “The first thing these terrorists will do when they reach Turkey or Qatar is contact their associates in Gaza and the West Bank to send money and re-establish their networks. They will quickly regroup and form new terror cells.”"

Meme - Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby: "Dave Smith is reaping what he has sowed for over 2 years."
Dan Bilzerian @DanBilzerian: "No I said you're ducking a good faith convo, because you told multiple people that you were scared to talk to me, which is odd because we agree on many things, anyway..."
Dave Smith @ComicDaveSmith: "You're actually a fucking liar. I've never told a single human being that I'm scared of you. I've told several that I think you're dumb."
Dan Bitzerian @DanBilzerian: "You are a subversive lying jew. @jakeshieldsaijj said you were scared. Everything I I said was a fact, you ducked the convo and then lied about doing so."
The cope is that solidarity is not contingent, and that decent human beings stand up for what is right regardless of whether they are personally hurt by it. Of course, leopards eating people's faces is only for people who defy the left wing agenda

Meme - The Misfit Patriot @misfitpatriot_: "Dave Smith might finally understand the meaning behind the famous poem “first they came for the socialists”.   Being a useful idiot for Jew hating scum only protects you while you’re useful. Once that use runs out, they know you’re an easy target. They know the people you helped them attack won’t come to your defense, and all that bullshit about how “you can’t be antisemitic because you’re a Jew” is all they need to treat you like one.   “Don’t shoot, I’m on your side” are the famous last words of the useful idiot, and it’s a hard lesson to learn."
Dave Smith @ComicDaveSm...: "Weren't you profusely apologizing to me last time you saw Rob? Weren't you an open communist into your 50s? Shut the fuck up about opposition. I regret supporting you substantially more than I regret supporting Trump. Go take another gummy, clown."
Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D.: "That's the Chomsky view--the U.S. empire is in charge. LOL. Classic liberal zionist hasbara. Dave Smith is controlled opposition-if he's even opposition at all."
Left wingers like to claim that not all Trump supporters/Republicans are bigots, but all bigots are Trump supporters/Republicans. So since all anti-Semites are "anti-Zionists"...

Meme - Uri Kurlianchik @VerminusM: "The far left and the far right have an excellent division of labor: the far right wants to drive all the world's Jews into Israel and the far left wants to destroy all the Jews in Israel."
Man painting graffiti slogan: "JEWS OUT"
"He's A RIGHT WING ANTISEMITE !"
Man painting graffiti slogan: "JEWS OUT OF PALESTINE."
"OH! SORRY COMRADE!"

Julie Kahan on X - "The left is also doing a great job driving Jews toward Israel, by encouraging the immigration into western countries of Muslims who hate Jews."

Meme - *Daily Struggle*
"Free Palestine" "Kill Nazis"
*Hitler2 shop*
Hijaz Abu Shanab. Gaza City Resident: The name of the shop is 'Hitler' and I like him because he was the the most anti Jewish person
Description: Gaza: Hitler 2 clothing store puts Palestinian knife-wielding mannequins on display
We asked Hitler why he left some of you alive.
إسلامي: لقد أثبت انتصار القيادى الشيخ خهر عدنان مجددا أن إرادة الحق أقوى من جبزوت البادها
He did so in order to show us how wicked you are.
ميادي الشيخ خضر عدنان مجددا أن إرادة الحق أقوى من جبروت الباطل وأن عزيمته الصلبة نموذج
Description: Inside the Gaza Summer Camps Training Children to be the Next Generation of Terrorists"

Meme - Bouken Kabuto: "Can someone explain how a country that's only 71% jewish is considered an ethnostate but none of 17 other countries that are 99% arab are not ethnostates? Explain how that works"

Palestinian shunned for selling land to Jews to be buried in Jewish cemetery - "A chief rabbi of Jerusalem allowed a Palestinian man to be buried in a Jewish cemetery following his body’s exclusion by imams over his sale of real estate to Jews.  Aryeh Stern, the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel’s capital, this week ruled that Alah Kirsh may be buried at a Jewish cemetery as an exception because he was a “righteous gentile,” the Ynet new site reported Friday.  Kirsh was killed along with five other people in a traffic accident on November 4. His family sought to bury his body at a Muslim cemetery in East Jerusalem but the imams there turned them away because he had been accused of selling real estate in that part of the capital to Jews several years ago. Family members were not allowed to bring Kirsh’s body to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and were forbidden to pitch a mourner’s tent and receive guests there, as is the Muslim custom.  Ekrima Sa’id Sabri, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, cited a 1935 fatwa, or religious Muslim edict, issued by his predecessor, Amin al-Husseini.  A publicly anti-Semitic leader of Arab Israelis and ally of Nazi Germany, al-Husseini wrote that year that “anyone who sells a home or land to Jews will not receive a Muslim burial.” Basing a new fatwa on the old one, Sabri wrote: “Whoever sells to the Jews in Jerusalem is not a member of the Muslim nation. We will not accept his repentance and he will not be buried in the Muslim cemetery.”"
Damn Zionists! Clearly, as Israel is the source of all problems in the Middle East (not to mention the world), its founding in 1948 is why Amin al-Husseini ruled in 1935 that Muslims cannot sell land to Jews

Hajj Amin al-Husayni: Arab Nationalist and Muslim Leader - "Al-Husayni cultivated the perception that the demand of the Jews for free access to the wall (the holiest place for Jews) had threatened the very existence of the al-Aqsa and Dome of the Rock shrines (one of the holiest sites in Islam). He thus had exacerbated religious tension, infused the secular issues of Jewish immigration and land purchases with religious fervor, internationalized the political dispute by equating the Jewish presence in Palestine with an existential threat to the Muslim faith, and enhanced his own political position among the Palestinian Arab leaders. That al-Husayni explicitly encouraged or incited the violence is not documented; yet he did not do much to prevent it. After the riots, he presented himself as a preeminent defender of Islam and of Muslim rights in Palestine...   The British authorities sent the Peel Commission to Palestine to investigate and propose a political settlement. Al-Husayni's testimony before the commission implied that the safety of the Jews residing in an independent Palestine could not be guaranteed... When the commission report recommended partition on July 7, 1937, radicals escalated a new wave of violence... After insurgents murdered the District Commissioner for the Galilee on September 26, the British dissolved the Arab Higher Committee and arrested its members... n mid-October 1937, al-Husayni, now fully committed to violent rebellion, fled to Lebanon. The British crushed the Arab Revolt in the autumn of 1938. The violence left 206 Jewish civilians, 454 Arab civilians, and 175 Mandate authority employees dead. In addition, British troops killed 1,138 armed Arab insurgents.   The British never unequivocally linked al-Husayni with the insurgency in 1936-1937. There can be little doubt, however, that the Mufti maintained contacts with the radicals, whom he clandestinely encouraged when he thought it opportune... Before the arrival of British troops, Iraqi civilians mounted a pogrom, known as the Farhud, against the Jewish population of Baghdad on June 1-2, 1941, that claimed the lives of 128 Jews and the destruction of almost 1,500 businesses and homes"
Damn Zionist terrorists!

Mark Gist's answer to Why is it so hard for Israelis to share land with Palestinians, who have been living on that same land for many centuries? - Quora - "That word “share” is the problem and it’s because of this guy. That’s Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He was an antisemite, and anti-zionist, and a Nazi collaborator. He ruled that it was unacceptable for Jews to rule any land, no matter how small, that had once been ruled by Muslims. Because of him and his protege, Yasser Arafat, the Palestinians will not sign any agreement that allows the existence of Israel. Because of him, Israel has been under constant attack since it first declared its independence from Jordan.  Israel has tried to trade land for peace multiple times. It appeared that a peace agreement was possible in 2000 in an agreement negotiated by Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeline Albright. But Arafat ended up walking out on it.  You can’t share land with people who want it all."

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour on X - "Anyone who's familiar with Arab politics knows that anti-Zionism is a cognitive trap that collapses all political analysis into a single explanatory theory. Why no democracy? America protects Israel. Why poverty? The regime serves American-Israeli interests. Why corruption? The rulers are traitors working for Israel. Every domestic failure gets routed through this singularity, which means the actual causes of the failure become literally unthinkable, genuinely unavailable as categories of analysis because the entire space of political reasoning has been totally consumed. The political decisions that flow from this captured consciousness are then what actually produce the conditions of poverty and unfreedom that the theory pretends to explain.   This is, without doubt, what the rise of anti-Zionism threatens will do in Western societies and you can already see it. The American opposition that forces everything through Palestine/Israel isn't just wrong about chains of causality; it's actively generating the dysfunction it attributes to the Zionist-American conspiracy or empire or whatever. The singular theory is not merely a misdiagnosis but the very pathogen that produces the disease it claims to name.  Every population whose political cognition has been captured by the Palestine/Israel symbol ultimately and inevitably becomes an open field of exploitation because they become incapable of seeing the causes of their own immiseration, and thereby unwittingly but actively reproducing the conditions of their immiseration, often through the very act of trying to resist it."
It's not just Arab politics. Other Muslims also blame "Zionists" for everything wrong in the world Conspiracy theories are comforting but prevent you from actually solving problems

Meme - "'Palestinian identity only an anti-Zionist tactic'
LONDON (JCNS) - Golda Meir's assertion that the Palestinians are not really a separate people, has received the surprising endorsement from the most unexpected quarter, reports the JCNS diplomatic correspondent. It came from Zuher Mohsin, leader of Saiqa, the Syrian-sponsored Palestinian units, and head of the military depart- ment of the Palestine Liberation Organization. In an interview for the Dutch newspaper "Trouw," he said: "There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are all one people. It is for political reasons only that we carefully emphasize our Palestinian identity. For it is in the national interest of the Arabs to en- courage the existence of Palestinians against Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity is there only for tactical reasons.""

Melissa Steinberg Brodsky | Facebook - "In 1977, the head of the PLO's military department gave an interview to a Dutch newspaper and said something that should have changed everything. He said Palestinian identity is emphasized for political reasons only. That a separate Palestinian identity exists for tactical reasons. That there are no real differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese. His name was Zuher Mohsin. He wasn't a dissident. He wasn't breaking ranks. He was one of the architects of the movement and he said the quiet part out loud. Eight years earlier, Golda Meir had said the same thing and been destroyed for it. But that's not even the beginning of the story. The PLO was founded in 1964. Three years before Israel controlled the West Bank or Gaza. Whatever it was built to liberate, it wasn't land Israel acquired in 1967. Before Arafat, there was no Palestinian national identity. Not because the people weren't real. Because the identity hadn't been built yet. And Arafat built it the same way you build a city — founding story first, then institutions, symbols, a flag, a claim of ancient dispossession, and enough foreign funding to make it stick."

Textbook row triggers vote to suspend EU funds to Palestinians - "MEPs will vote on Wednesday on a resolution to freeze EU funding to the Palestinian Authority amid allegations that its school textbooks promote violence, including by encouraging students to take up arms to ‘liberate’ Palestine from Israel.  Investigations by advocacy groups and independent researchers, such as the Germany-based Georg Eckert Institute, have repeatedly found in recent years that PA textbooks promote violence and antisemitism. Although the PA has promised changes, the revisions have fallen short, according to a new study.  While the European Commission claimed that “tangible progress has been observed” and the PA textbooks were being aligned with UNESCO standards, researchers from Impact-se, a UK-Israel-based institute that examines school materials from around the world, found that changes in textbooks used in the 2025-2026 school year were “very limited, partial, and cosmetic”.  Hours before the vote on funding in Brussels, the US State Department released a report to Congress, citing Impact-se’s findings that textbooks used by the PA Ministry of Education “continue to glorify jihad and incitement to violence.”...   Since 2008, the EU has funnelled  about €3.8 billion to the PA through its PEGASE fund, which finances the salaries of civil servants, teachers, and education systems, responsible for drafting, approving, and delivering the curriculum.
Grade 12 Arabic Language textbook printed for 2025–26 includes a poem that urges students to “return” to Israeli cities “with a weapon in your hand”
In fact, most of the content remained unchanged, a review by Euractiv found, often reproducing earlier editions verbatim. Revisions frequently removed neutral material, while leaving problematic content intact.   Researchers also found a revised textbook stating that “jihad is a contemporary religious duty to ‘liberate’ Palestine from the Zionist Occupation,” effectively encouraging students to pursue armed struggle. Another allegedly revised Grade 12 Arabic textbook urges students to “return” to Israeli cities “with a weapon in your hand,” using what Impact-se called “vivid, emotional verse to romanticise armed invasion “in a way disturbingly reminiscent of the violence witnessed on 7 October 2023.”  An Islamic Education textbook also marked as revised portrays “the Jews” as liars and associates them with Satan.   Even some cosmetic revisions may not have been implemented. In an internal document issued by the PA ministry of education and seen by Euractiv, school principals were instructed to reinstate previously removed Grade 12 lessons “omitted in error”, including a lesson on jihad."
Time to condemn Israel for "genocide" by defending itself from Palestinian terrorists and to excoriate Japan for having one or two textbooks that are not mandated nationwide which gloss over what happened during World War II. Celebrating war and genocide and spreading racism is okay when "minorities" do it
Clearly the textbooks meant "Zionists", not Jews

Troubling News for Jews from the Michigan Democratic Party - "There have been troubling developments in both parties regarding antisemitism in the last few years, but I found this one especially perverse and disturbing. And of course, it shouldn't be just Jews who are worried about it, not only because everyone should oppose antisemitism, but because antisemitism on both left and right is based within the growing illiberal constituencies in both parties. In short, you don't have to be worried about antisemitism to wonder what the heck's going on when the Democrats nominate a supporter of a radical Islamist, Iran-allied anti-American terrorist group that has murdered hundreds of Americans, weeks after an immigrant tied to that group tried to murder dozens of American schoolchildren."
Jewish Insider April 20th, 2026 - "Michigan Democratic delegates, at their statewide convention Sunday, nominated a Hezbollah supporter, Amir Makled, to the University of Michigan Board of Regents, choosing to oust a Jewish member, Jordan Acker, whose home and car were repeatedly vandalized with antisemitic graffiti and his family threatened.  Acker’s offenses? He backed efforts to hold anti-Israel campus protesters at the University of Michigan accountable for assaulting police and engaging in intimidation of Jewish students, among other instances of student misconduct. He declined to support efforts to divest university funds from Israel, along with other members of the Board of Regents, as a radical faction of students had demanded.   Acker’s non-Jewish Democratic ticketmate, Paul Brown, who also supported discipline against anti-Israel students, wasn’t targeted and was renominated for election. But the Democratic delegates ousted Acker in exchange for Makled, who has posted on social media with comments praising Hezbollah’s leaders and retweeted antisemitic messages from the conspiracy-theorizing influencer Candace Owens.   The results mark a new low for Michigan Democrats. Also over the weekend, Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed told CNN that he believes the Israeli government is just as evil as Hamas"
Time to jail the "far right" to keep Jews safe

Rep. Mike Levin on X - "This should be on the front page of every newspaper in America.  A Syrian billionaire needed U.S. sanctions lifted so he could cash in on $12 billion in reconstruction contracts.  In an attempt to influence American foreign policy, he proposed a Trump-branded golf course, cut Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump into a multibillion-dollar real estate deal for a resort in Albania, and had someone physically deliver a stone engraved with the Trump family crest to a Republican Member of Congress with instructions to take it to the White House to get the President's attention.  Trump threw his weight behind repealing the sanctions. They were lifted. The contracts are moving, the Trump family’s deals are expanding, and not a single Washington Republican is willing to say a word about any of it.  This is a corruption of everything the office of the presidency is supposed to stand for, and the American people deserve to know about it."
Daniel Friedman on X - "This is a wildly misleading framing. The US imposed sanctions on Syria in the 1970s for being a state sponsor of terrorism and added new ones in the 2010s as the regime of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad,  with the backing of Iran and Hezbollah, devastated his country and slaughtered nearly a million of his own people during a decade-long civil war.  After Israel destroyed Hezbollah and weakened Iran,  Assad was left defenseless and was overthrown by the rebels.  Al-Sharaa, the rebel leader who deposed Assad and replaced him has a terrorist past but has signaled openness to engaging and allying with the West.   After Assad was overthrown, Syrian businessmen came to lobby the US to lift sanctions that had been imposed on the country under the Assad regime.  Lifting sanctions is something that is likely to happen when a sanctioned regime has been overthrown by its friendlier enemies.    Assad was sanctioned because he used chemical weapons on his own people and was aligned with Hezbollah and Iran. Al-Sharaa fought Assad and is an enemy of Hezbollah and Iran. Lifting sanctions is a totally reasonable olive branch to show him the kind of opportunities that are available to Syria if Al-Sharaa decides to be a peaceful member of the international community.  I think any administration likely would have lifted sanctions on Syria after the sanctioned regime was overthrown by its opposition."

Cambridge college’s response ‘wholly inadequate’ after students accused of making death threats over Israel visit - "A Cambridge college has been accused of failing to suspend students who made death threats against an undergraduate who visited Israel.  Bradley Smart, a 21-year-old third-year student, told The Telegraph he was targeted with threats after returning to Homerton College.   Smart took part in a trip to Israel organised by the Pinsker Centre think tank, which invited students from Oxford and Cambridge to meet both Israelis and Palestinians and to better understand the conflict. Smart, who is not Jewish, alleged that upon his return, fellow students posted messages in a college group chat, including “I’m going to kill him”, “kill him”, and “he needs to die”."
More disgusting censorship of pro-Palestine speech!

Iranian propagandists ‘given platform by British charities’ - "The charities watchdog is investigating claims that British charities could be providing a platform for supporters of the Iranian regime, The Telegraph has learnt.  Two London-based charities have been accused of backing supporters of the Islamic Republic and the banned terror group Hamas.  One of the charities, the Dar Alhekma Trust (DAT), stands accused of promoting a backer of the hardline regime in Tehran who appeared in videos praising Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, who was killed in an Israeli air strike at the start of the current conflict with the US.  Another charity, the Abrar Islamic Foundation (AIF), is accused of platforming an alleged supporter of the Iranian-founded Al Quds Day and the Oct 7 attacks on Israel."