The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

‘Outdated Ideas of Biology’

Posted on | April 5, 2018 | 2 Comments

A left-wing Welsh politician, Leanne Wood, last month declared her party’s support for “trans equality”:

I want to see an inclusive feminism which brings women together rather than dividing us. . . . A feminism that understands that gender is a complex and deeply personal thing, and is about so much more than outdated ideas of biology.

“Outdated ideas of biology,” otherwise known as facts.

 

Ms. Wood’s comments were cited in a Guardian column by feminist Hadley Freeman, who is tired of being lectured about transgenderism:

Intriguingly, some of the most passionate arguments I’ve had about this have not been with trans people, but with liberal men. I surely speak for all of us ladies when I say I love nothing more than when a man explains to me, at some length, what a woman now is. I only have 40 years’ experience but, as we all know, experience is old hat now. There is something, shall we say, revealing about the way these “woke bros” take such glee in calling women (older ones, especially) who talk about their rights and bodies “terfs” — trans-exclusionary radical feminists — and insist they shut up or risk ostracism.

These left-wing “woke bros” evidently have no interest in women like Ms. Freeman, and care only about transgender activists like Ana Valens:

If Freeman’s opinion sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the same faux-feminist take pitting cis women against trans women that has been used again and again by transgender-exclusionary radical feminists (TERFs), such as Feminist Current founder Meghan Murphy, who repeatedly depicts TERFs as “leftists” being “silenced” by trans women. . . .
In reality, a true feminist take would never attack trans women because trans women are women, and attacking women for being women is fundamentally misogynistic. . . .
It’s true that accepting trans women means challenging how we’ve long defined womanhood and expanding that definition. But this isn’t anything new; this is how progress works. Queer theory has long challenged straight people to see sexuality beyond treating straightness as the “default,” and trans theory challenges cis people to see gender beyond treating cis people as “normal.”

Ana Valens is the commissar of ‘true feminism.’

Thus, Ana Valens — a 2016 graduate of Rutgers University — declares himself/“herself” an arbiter of “true feminism,” a sort of ideological commissar with the authority to anathematize as a “faux feminist” any woman who disagrees, because “this is how progress works.”

Darleen Click observes that such attacks on “TERFs” have the effect of making “males-who-identify-as-women . . . the ultimate authority on what it means to be a woman.” By asserting that biology is “outdated,” and that “progress” requires us to pretend that Ana Valens is female in every sense of the word, the Left seeks to make political power the source of definition and meaning, without regard to scientific facts.

 

Category: The Transgender Cult

‘A Totalitarian Misery Cult’

Posted on | April 5, 2018 | 2 Comments

Ace of Spades tells the story of Lindsay Shepherd, the Canadian graduate student and teaching assistant “who was summoned before a Diversity Kangaroo Court to explain why, as part of an issues-in-media class, she had played a debate . . . about the use of made-up trans pronouns”:

She used to consider herself a leftist, but she says she now knows what leftism actually is, and she’s not that, any longer.
Interestingly, she exposes, accidentally, the syndrome of Default Leftism. Leftists have struggled hard, and achieved great success, at making Leftism the default politics of anyone who actually doesn’t think about politics. She thought she was a leftist, she says, because she cared about being nice to people and rode a bicycle instead of driving a car.
That, in her mind, was “leftist.” And the leftists put a lot of effort into making people think they were leftists or aligned with the left if they merely thought you should be nice to people and also liked trees.
But now she knows what it really is — a totalitarian misery cult.

Video at the link. (Hat-tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

Speaking of Russian collusion (this is what we Professional Writers call a “transition”), for the past few weeks I’ve been reading several books on the history of Communism and the Cold War. The Soviet World of American Communism by Harvey Klehr, et al., provides documentary proof from Soviet archives that American Communists (CPUSA) were at all times under the control of Moscow. The CPUSA actually persecuted people in the United States who were believed (correctly or not) to be allies of Stalin’s enemies in the U.S.S.R. Thus, the purges and “show trials” of the 1930s (an era chronicled by Robert Conquest in The Great Terror) were mirrored in America by the CPUSA’s own paranoid crusade against Trotskyists and other “deviationists.”

This is relevant to Ms. Shepherd’s experience in Canada. She thought of herself as a leftist “because she cared about being nice to people,” as Ace says, but she hadn’t gotten the memo that the Left’s goon squads have decided that no criticism of transgender ideology is permissible. Radical feminists have been complaining for years about the totalitarian tactics of the transgender cult; eminent feminists have been “no-platformed” for dissenting against transgender ideology. In a sense, feminists are like Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev and other Bolsheviks who, after Lenin’s death, were purged and murdered to satisfy Stalin’s sadistic whims.

Recall that James Damore’s internal critique of Google’s “diversity” policy included multiple avowals of his agreement with the concepts of equality and inclusion; he merely intended to raise questions about whether Google’s policy as implemented had harmful unintended consequences. His avowals of good intentions were ignored; he was demonized as a “misogynist” and fired. And so it was with Lindsay Shepherd — she meant no harm by showing the video debate in class, but her good intentions counted for nothing. She was demonized and purged.

Like I keep saying, people need to wake the hell up.



 

 

Category: The Transgender Cult

In The Mailbox: 04.04.18

Posted on | April 4, 2018 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 04.04.18

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Going to Minnesota tomorrow for a long weekend with friends, family, furries, and other otaku. Posting may be intermittent, and both the FMJRA and Rule 5 Sunday may be delayed.

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #215
EBL: The Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
Twitchy: Cops’ Colossal YouTube Shooter Screwup Actually Gets Worse
Louder With Crowder: UK Man Defends Himself From Burglars, Kills One – Is Charged With Murder

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Podcast #79 – The Magical Days Episode
American Power: Orange County Faces Legal Threat Over Anti-Camping Laws, also, Michael Walsh, The Fiery Angel
American Thinker: Why a 53-Year-Old Big City Lawyer Who’s Never Shot A Gun Joined The NRA
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News
BattleSwarm: Trump Tells Democrats “You Didn’t Clap Loud Enough! DACA Is Dead!”
Da Tech Guy: Voices At CPAC 2018 – Byron York Of The Washington Examiner
Don Surber: I Ordered Four My Pillows. Maybe You Should Too.
Dustbury: Please Don’t Think Ill Of Me
Fausta: [Fausta Wertz is recovering from an appendectomy and would appreciate your thoughts and prayers. – Wombat-socho]
The Geller Report: Canadian Muslim Family Conference To Feature Pro-Jihad Speaker, also, Mark Zuckerberg Explains How Facebook Will Try To Kill Alternative Media
Hogewash: An Anniversary, also, A Cosmic Cold Front
Joe For America: Being A Police Officer In California Is Going To Be More Dangerous
Legal Insurrection: After YouTube Shooting, We Need Better Vegan Activist Control, also, Merkel Under Pressure Over Germany’s Imported Stabbing Epidemic
Michelle Malkin: Open-Borders Churches, Caravans, And Sanctuaries
Power Line: Mulvaney Responds To Warren, also, Chappaquiddick Revisited
Shark Tank: Graham Attacks Trump In New Ad
Shot In The Dark: Ganders
STUMP: Kentucky Meltdown – Teachers In Revolt, Bill In The Sewers, & Nothing Actually Solved
The Jawa Report: Nonviolent Iranian Feminist Vegan Animal Activist Attacks YouTube
The Political Hat: Obama’s Assault On Urban, Suburban & Rural Communities On Its Last Breath?
This Ain’t Hell: Four Marines Feared Dead In Helicopter Crash, also, Trump To Send Troops To The Border
Victory Girls: Wu, Black, And The YouTube Shooter
Weasel Zippers: Dem Rep Debbie Dingell To Introduce Gun Confiscation Legislation, also, Clinton Admits He Tried To Help Peres Beat Netanyahu In 1996 Israeli Elections


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Category: Linkagery

The ‘David Jewberg’ Hoax

Posted on | April 4, 2018 | Comments Off on The ‘David Jewberg’ Hoax

 

Oleksiy Kuzmenko has a fascinating report at Bellingcat about how Dan Rapoport created an online persona, “David Jewberg,” who claimed to be an Army lieutenant-colonel, a Pentagon “senior analyst” specializing in Russia policy. “Jewberg” amassed a substantial following on Facebook and was interviewed via email by a Ukrainian reporter:

Although “Jewberg” has often been quoted as being a Pentagon insider by Ukrainian and Russian media, he is evidently a fake composite character and “the U.S. Department of Defense and State Department have disavowed [his existence], stating that they have never employed a person by this name,” Bellingcat writes. . . .
“Jewberg” is best known for running a popular Facebook page used to post anti-Kremlin, anti-Trump sentiments in the Russian language. Jewberg also posted photos and identification cards in an attempt to attest that he was real, although all such evidence actually featured the photograph of a Texan man named Steve Farro — a college friend of Rapoport’s.

In 2013, Rapoport was fined nearly $70,000 by the Security and Exchange Commission for violations regarding his solicitation of U.S. investors in Russian companies. “Rapoport also claimed on numerous occasions to have worked for Romney and Jeb Bush presidential campaigns,” according to Kuzmenko. The “Jewberg” persona was promoted by various people associated with the Free Russia Foundation, an anti-Putin group. Rapoport relocated to Ukraine in 2016, Kuzmenko reports, but the “Jewberg” hoax — which involved the posting of fake military identification — could expose Rapoport to charges of impersonating a federal employee in violation of 18 U.S.C § 912.

Doveryai, no proveryai — “Trust, but verify,” as Reagan said.

 

Category: Russia

‘Emotional Abuse and Cruel Punishment’: Woman Reported Lesbian Couple in 2013

Posted on | April 4, 2018 | 1 Comment

 

More background on the story of Jennifer and Sarah Hart, the lesbian couple who adopted six black children and died when they drove their SUV off an oceanside cliff in California last week:

A woman said Tuesday that she told Oregon child welfare officials in 2013 that Jennifer and Sarah Hart — who plunged off a California cliff with their children last month in an SUV — had been depriving the kids of food as punishment.
In a statement provided to the Associated Press, Alexandra Argyropoulos, a former friend of the Harts, said she “witnessed what I felt to be controlling emotional abuse and cruel punishment” toward the six children.
Argyropoulos said she was told the children had been interviewed by officials but there was nothing more the Oregon Department of Human Services could do because there was not enough evidence to make a case. . . .
Authorities have said social service officials in Oregon contacted the West Linn Police Department about the family in 2013 while they were living in the area. Police referred media questions to the Oregon Department of Human Services, which cited privacy laws in refusing to say whether the agency was involved.
After reporting her concerns in 2013, Argyropoulos said, she was told the Hart children had been interviewed by officials from the Oregon department; it was apparent that each child had been coached by their mothers on what to say; and nothing more could be done.
Argyropoulos said she was unaware of a 2011 domestic assault conviction against Sarah Hart. She said the couple broke off contact with her after she went to Oregon officials.
“My heart is completely broken. The current system failed to protect these children from their abusers,” Argyropoulos said. . . .
On Sunday, authorities disclosed that data from the vehicle’s software suggested the crash was deliberate. They said the SUV had stopped at a pull-off area before speeding straight off the cliff.

All six children were adopted from Texas. Three were found near the crash site, and the other three are missing and presumed dead. Jennifer and Sarah Hart had a history of abuse complaints:

The parents of Devonte Hart removed him and his five siblings from public schools in Minnesota the day after one of his mothers resolved a child-abuse court case, The Oregonian/OregonLive has learned.
Sarah Hart reached a probation agreement April 14, 2011, a week after she pleaded guilty to physically abusing one of her daughters, who was then 6 years old.
The next day, all six of their adopted children were taken out of public schools in Alexandria, where the family lived before moving to Oregon. They would never attend public school again. . . .
An Alexandria police report obtained Tuesday also shows a different daughter told authorities in 2008 one of her mothers bruised her with a belt.
Asked by police about the beating, Jennifer and Sarah Hart said the girl had fallen down the stairs days before, the report shows. . . .
All eight Harts left their home in Woodland, Washington, sometime after no one answered the door March 23 for a visit by child protective services, according to neighbors and the Clark County Sheriff’s Office. . . .
Court records in Minnesota show Sarah Hart in 2011 received a 90-day suspended jail sentence and a year of probation after daughter Abigail arrived at Woodland Elementary School with bruises on her stomach and back.
The girl’s teacher contacted social services and police.
Abigail told authorities her mother struck her repeatedly with a closed fist, submerged her head under cold water and withheld meals from her for misbehaving, according to report by police in Alexandria, a small town northwest of Minneapolis where the family lived.
Though the girl said Jennifer Hart was the one who hit her, Sarah Hart pleaded guilty April 7, 2011, to misdemeanor domestic assault.
Previously, Abigail’s older sister Hannah said in September 2008 it was her mother Jennifer who struck her with a belt, causing a bruise on her arm that attracted notice — and a call to authorities, according to the newly obtained Alexandria police report.
In an interview, both mothers told a police sergeant and social worker they had no idea how Hannah, who was 6 at the time, got the bruise but said she had recently fallen down the stairs in their home. . . .
Records show the Hart children enrolled in Alexandria public schools Sept. 8, 2009 — seven months after Jennifer and Sarah finalized their adoption of siblings Devonte, Jeremiah and Sierra in Harris County, Texas. The women had previously adopted siblings Markis, Abigail and Hannah from Colorado County, Texas, in September 2006. . . .
Bruce and Dana DeKalb, who lived next door in Washington, said Devonte had come to their home a dozen times to ask for food, saying his parents had withheld it as a form of punishment.
The DeKalbs also recounted that three months after the family moved into a home on 2 acres last May, one of the girls rang their doorbell in the middle of the night.
The girl, who they later learned was Hannah, “was at our door in a blanket saying we needed to protect her,” Bruce DeKalb said. “She said that they were abusing her.”

This was an avoidable tragedy. Did political correctness discourage authorities from intervening to save the lives of these children?




 

Category: Crime, Gays, Minnesota, Oregon, Washington State

Animal Rights Activist Nasim Aghdam Identified as YouTube Shooter

Posted on | April 4, 2018 | 1 Comment

 

Tuesday’s shootings at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno were committed by an animal rights activist apparently angry because she felt the company had censored her videos. On her website, Nasim Aghdam said YouTube “filtered my channels to keep them from getting views.” Her family confirmed that she was angry at the company:

The woman who allegedly shot three people at YouTube’s headquarters in California on Tuesday, before apparently taking her own life with a firearm used in the assault, may have held a grudge against the video-sharing company, according to her family.
Authorities identified the suspect who wounded a man and two women at YouTube’s office complex in San Bruno as Nasim Aghdam, a 39-year-old resident of San Diego.
Police said a motive for the attack has not been identified and no evidence has emerged to suggest the shooter knew the victims or that individuals were specifically targeted.
However, Aghdam’s father, Ismail Aghdam, said his daughter told her family just a few weeks ago that she was “angry with the company” because she believed it was censoring her YouTube videos and stopped paying her for her content. Ismail Aghdam made the comments in an interview Tuesday night with the Bay Area News Group.

Aghdam’s family tried to warn police she was dangerous:

The night before Nasim Aghdam opened fire in a courtyard at YouTube’s headquarters Tuesday afternoon, Mountain View police found the San Diego woman sleeping in her car.
She had been reported missing by her family in Southern California, and her father Ismail Aghdam told police she might be going to YouTube because she “hated” the company. Police called the family at 2 a.m. Tuesday to say she’d been found and that everything was “under control,” her father said.
But hours later, his daughter was dead of a self-inflicted gunshot after shooting three people and causing an afternoon of terror at YouTube’s headquarters.

After all that YouTube has done to suppress conservative videos, how ironic is it that an Iranian-American animal-rights activist resorted to terroristic violence against the company?

UPDATE: Reuters adds more details:

The woman approached an outdoor patio and dining courtyard on the campus around lunchtime and began to fire before entering the building, police said. . . .
The website NasimeSabz.com, which media said was linked to the attacker, had several posts about Persian culture and veganism, interspersed with screeds against YouTube. Those complaints included claims the company was not sharing enough revenue with people who create videos for the platform.
“There is no equal growth opportunity on YouTube, or any other video-sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to,” read one posting on the site. A YouTube account in the name of Nasime Sabz was deleted in the evening on 3 April. . . .
Last month, YouTube announced it would ban content promoting the sale of guns and gun accessories, as well as videos that teach how to make guns.
Female mass shooters are rare. A recent Washington Post analysis shows only three of 150 US shootings with more than four victims since 1966 were carried out by women.

 

Category: Crime

Late Night With In The Mailbox: 04.03.18

Posted on | April 4, 2018 | Comments Off on Late Night With In The Mailbox: 04.03.18

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Trashtown: David Hogg, Gun Salesman
EBL: Vanity Fair‘s Kurt Eichenwald Is Attacking Parkland Survivors
Twitchy: Lefties Triggered By Black Conservative Woman’s Open Letter To Illegal Immigrants
Louder With Crowder: Ben Shapiro, Piers Morgan Have Twitter Beef Over Gun Control

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Thinker: The Natural Right Of Self-Preservation And The Second Amendment
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Daily Savage News
BattleSwarm: YouTube Shooter A Vegan Animal Rights Activist
BLACKFIVE: C.J. Box, The Disappeared
CDR Salamander: LCS – An Unending, Floating PSYOPS Own Goal
Da Tech Guy: You Say You Want Independent Journalism, also, The FBI’s Long List Of Failures
Don Surber: “Because It Can’t Be That He’s Doing A Great Job, Right?”
Dustbury: The Scourge Of The Maryland ‘Burbs
The Geller Report: Nasim Aghdam Named As YouTube Shooter, Railed Against Company, also, Small Muslim Child Waves Knife At Israeli Security Officer As Mother Looks On
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, How Old Is Your OS?
Joe For America: Ten “Anonymous” Donors Behind March For Our Lives Exposed
JustOneMinute: YouTube Shooting
Legal Insurrection: Rosenstein Memo Confirming Mueller Could Investigate Manafort Came One Week After Raid On Manafort’s House, also, “My Pillow” Guy – “We’re Not Pulling Ads From Ingraham”
Power Line: Mueller’s (Secret) Mandate, also, Is Our Culture Dead?
Shark Tank: It’s Official – Manjarres Running Against Deutch For Congress
Shot In The Dark: Open Letter To Fleet Farm
STUMP:  Taxing Tuesday – Idea For Progressive Income Tax In IL, Adding Dependents To Tax Change Analysis
The Jawa Report: Introducing New Facebook Feature – Facebook Brain Dead, also, Twitter Says Hamas Violating TOS, Yet Hamas Remains
This Ain’t Hell: Air Force Affirms Colonel’s Religious Beliefs, also, USS Little Rock Comes Home
Victory Girls: Are Real Men Out There?
Weasel Zippers: “My Pillow” CEO Says He Won’t Be Bullied By Hogg’s Boycott, also, Saudi Crown Prince Says Israel Has A Right To Exist
Megan McArdle: What Caused The 1968 Riots?
Mark Steyn: Open Borders For Thee, Orange Alert For Me, also, Of Necklaces And Caravans


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Category: Linkagery

WOMAN SHOOTS PEOPLE, KILLS HERSELF AT YOUTUBE OFFICE

Posted on | April 3, 2018 | 2 Comments

The California offices of the YouTube online video service were the site of a shooting today. According to some early accounts, a woman shot her boyfriend and then shot several other people.

UPDATE: From the San Francisco Chronicle:

San Bruno police and San Mateo County sheriff’s deputies rushed to YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno Tuesday afternoon in response to an active shooter inside the building.
Several YouTube employees reported on social media hearing gunfire and running for their lives.
“Heard shots and saw people running while at my desk,” one employee, Vadim Lavrusik, wrote on Twitter just before 1 p.m. “Now barricaded inside a room with coworkers.”
There were no immediate details from authorities other than to confirm that there was an active shooter inside the building at 901 Cherry Avenue.
“We are responding to an active shooter,” San Bruno police tweeted at 1:28 p.m. “Please stay away from Cherry Ave & Bay Hill Drive.”

UPDATE II: Fox News just carried a live report from a KTVU-TV reporter on the scene, who said witnesses told him that a woman shot her boyfriend and then shot herself. In an update from a local hospital, it was reported that two women and one man were being treated, the man being in critical condition.

UPDATE III: At a press conference, San Bruno Police Chief Ed Barberini reported that there are three injured, and one dead — the apparent shooter, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

UPDATE IV: There seems to be some confusion as to whether three or four people were injured. The local ABC affiliate reports a 36-year-old male (apparently the target of the shooting) is in critical condition at San Francisco General Hospital, while two women — ages 32 and 27 — are hospitalized in serious and fair condition, respectively.

UPDATE V: The identity of the shooter is unknown and, although it can be surmised that she was enraged at her boyfriend, police at this point are saying nothing about her motive.

UPDATE VI: Animal Rights Activist Nasim Aghdam Identified as YouTube Shooter

 

Category: Crime
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