Thursday, January 2, 2025

Welcome to the New Normal


Perhaps the real message of last November’s election is not that Donald Trump won, but that woke progressivism lost. After all, though Trump has flaws, he at least lives in the real world and not in some ideological fantasy. It is also fairly likely that, in the four years since he left office, he has improved his presidential abilities. For example: He is less likely to be so easily goaded into overreacting to his critics… also known as taking the bait.

Meanwhile, the spoiled children of the Left are running around convinced that their hair is on fire. Some are digging foxholes while others are drifting towards the center. This is most obvious in the media, since they are in the business of being obvious.

Also, California’s Gavin (“Hair Gel”) Newsom is trying to morph into a crime fighter as he provokes the Oakland political establishment to start letting cops pursue and catch criminals. Really, why? People are fed up with the dangerously lawless status quo endemic to our urban centers. And perhaps Newsom has other ambitions, since he’s getting termed out from the governorship at the end of ’26. His record in California, however, is a serious albatross hanging around his neck. And the spate of successful recalls of mayors and district attorneys is no secret and can only inspire voters to put the fear of career death into officeholders everywhere.

A lot hinges on how the MAGA crowd does when in office -- and this applies to all levels of government, not just the presidency or even the Congress. In addition to recent recalls, the failure of some incumbents to survive the will of an angry electorate indicates a profound political sea-change. Some examples include apostate former Democrats such as Tulsi Gabbard, Joe Manchin, and even RFK, Jr. Add to this Trump’s significant rise in popularity in otherwise traditional deep blue parts of the nation.

It is actually good to see some early conflicts rising to the surface within the MAGA cohort such as Elon Musk’s support of the H-1B visa program. Excessively orthodox purists want to close the immigration door even to economically valuable foreigners. This would not be that much of an issue had the American edutocracy been doing its job and properly training new scientists and engineers -- rather than filling their young skulls with even more DEI mush. It’s obviously important to get this stuff out of the way early. Breaking news: Trump just took Musk’s side on this… now they must turn this around and stick it to the @#%&! teachers unions.

Looking at the January 20th inauguration, that Monday is also the third day of the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend. It’s not hard to guess that, due to Trump’s recent success among minorities, some eloquent demonstration of Dr. King’s importance for that day’s events might well be showcased.

What is being underreported is how the woke progs are hopelessly trapped by their own harmful dogma. Newsom is still striving to with a fair amount of support from the enablers within the Deep State. Various players are still trying to micromanage and ultimately thwart Israel’s struggle to avoid annihilation. Then, of course, there’s the plethora of obnoxious street bums plaguing much of the American landscape. The woke-progs continue to blame a lack of “affordable” housing… but “affordable” to a vagrant drug addict really means free.

Then there’s the enormously failed boondoggle: betting the farm on using the climate change hoax to manipulate the electorate. First off it started by damaging the most cherished of American possessions -- our standard of living. Second, it continues to be exposed to serious contradiction. Weather and climate are largely local phenomena and not uniformly global in their impact. Currently the Northwest is experiencing torrential rain, snow, and flooding while the Southwest remains in drought. The latest hysteria is over the emergence of vegetation in the frozen Antarctic, yet no mention is made of the discovery made years ago of dinosaur footprints found in frozen Antarctic mud. All those provocative statistics about “warmest year ever” and so on require careful selection of where and how the data is gathered.

Add to this some of the other ugly sacred cows of their agenda such as minimum wage, recycling, affirmative action, and fluid sexual identity among the underaged… and you have a politically toxic stew of harm gratuitously imposed on the same people needed for electoral success.

The lasting impression one may ultimately get from last November’s election is the horrible way the Harris-Walz campaign handled money. First off, they outspent Trump’s campaign by about three-to-one and still lost “bigly.” They also ran up a serious amount of debt in the process, causing a lot of discomfort among their deep-pockets donors. Some of that money was used to “encourage” endorsements and possibly pay people to attend rallies.

In a nutshell, this can be described as a toxic mixture of corruption and incompetence. Which also just so happens to be exactly how Democrats run the government when given the opportunity.



X22, On the Fringe, and more- Jan 2nd

 




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A timeline of Trudeau’s immigration failures, policy flip-flops and disasters

 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s immigration policies have been a rollercoaster of unrealistic promises, ideological commitments, and sudden flip-flops in recent years. 



While his government has touted itself as a champion of humanitarianism and inclusivity, many of its decisions have been criticized for contributing to housing shortages, strained public resources, and ending Canada’s consensus on immigration. 

True North has compiled a timeline of Trudeau’s key immigration moves, from sweeping reforms to recent retreats, exposing a government caught between lofty rhetoric and harsh realities.

2015: Opening the door to over 100,000 Syrian refugees

Soon after being elected, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government under then-immigration minister John McCallum began with the resettlement of what would become over 100,000 Syrian refugees.

Canada boasted one of the most generous Syrian resettlement programs in the developed world. Additionally, as the program went on, Trudeau made his infamous “Welcome to Canada” tweet in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration restrictionist policies, sparking the ongoing illegal immigration crisis along the U.S. border. 

2017: Massive upsurge in Canada’s immigration targets

In 2017, Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen announced that Canada would welcome nearly one million immigrants over three years, with targets rising to 340,000 annually by 2020. While touted as necessary for economic growth, the plan faced backlash for ignoring the country’s limited housing supply and infrastructure.


2017: Removed visa requirements for Mexico and 14 other countries

Hussen also removed visa requirements for Mexico and 14 other countries, introducing the less stringent electronic travel authorization program. The program would eventually be rescinded upon the request of US authorities years later. 

Applicants using eTAs only had to fill out a simple application online that took several minutes to complete and was low-cost as opposed to the traditional visa process. 

2017:  Relaxed medical inadmissibility rules

That same year, Hussen upended a 40-year policy that denied entry to immigrants who had high-cost health or social service needs. Under prior governments, those seeking to come to Canada had to prove their conditions would not cost Canadian taxpayers more than $7,000 per year – the amount that the average Canadian cost at the time.


The Liberals reversed this policy, tripling the maximum cost to taxpayers to $21,000 a year.

2020: Upped immigration targets to 1.2 million over 3 years

Under the leadership of Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino, the Liberal government made massive changes to Canada’s immigration targets.

The Liberals upped immigration to about 1% of the Canadian population annually for 2021 to 2023. They pledged at the time to let in 401,000 permanent residents in 2021, 411,000 in 2022 and 421,000 in 2023 – far above their previous commitments.

2020: Re-opened the border during COVID-19 to international students 

Despite ongoing travel restrictions for unvaccinated Canadians that lasted well into 2022, Mendicino said Canada would reopen its borders to international students in October 2020. 

2022: Highest population growth in G7 due to mass immigration targets

Under the Liberals, Canada’s population grew by over 1 million people in 2022, primarily due to immigration, marking the highest increase since 1957. 

However, with just 4.7 new homes built per 1,000 new residents, the population boom exacerbated the housing crisis and strained public services and the ongoing healthcare crisis.

2023: Fraser claims Canada’s new immigrants will fix housing shortages

Immigration Minister Sean Fraser claimed high immigration levels would help solve housing shortages by providing labor for construction projects. However, data showed population growth far outpaced housing completions, debunking his defense.

“I would urge caution to anyone who believes the answer to our housing challenges is to close the door on newcomers,” Fraser told CBC. 

“When I talked to developers, in my capacity as a minister of immigration before today, one of the chief obstacles to completing the projects that they want to get done is having access to the labour force to build the houses that they need.”

2023: Liberals admit nearly one million international students

In 2023, Immigration Minister Marc Miller admitted 900,000 international students, alongside half a million new residents and hundreds of thousands of temporary workers.

At the time, international students began to file asylum claims to try and stay in Canada longer than their prescribed visas. 

2024: Feds impose two-year cap on international students, reducing number by 35%

In a major policy reversal, Miller imposed a two-year cap on international student permits, reducing numbers by 35%. The decision followed mounting criticism over the impact of record-breaking admissions on housing and public services.

“In recent years, the integrity of the international student system has been threatened. Some institutions have significantly increased their intakes to drive revenues, and more students have been arriving in Canada without the proper supports they need to succeed. Rapid increases in the number of international students arriving in Canada also puts pressure on housing, health care and other services,” Miller said in a statement. 

2024: Liberals end visa-free travel from Mexico after U.S. pressure

After facing pressure from U.S. authorities, Miller said his government would end the Liberals’ nearly eight-year practice of not requiring visas for Mexican nationals. 

“We strive for balance between the movement of people between our two great countries, and the need to relieve pressure on our immigration system so we can provide protection to those who need it the most,” said Miller at the time. 

Miller admitted that the decision was in response to a record number of asylum claims in the US from Mexican citizens entering via Canada. 

2024: Liberals cut immigration targets by 135K over two years

After years of aggressively raising immigration levels, the Liberals announced a 20% reduction in permanent resident targets, scaling back to 365,000 annually by 2027. 

2024: Launch ad campaign to dissuade asylum seekers from coming to Canada

Most recently, in a sharp departure from its “welcoming” rhetoric, the Trudeau government launched a global ad campaign to warn asylum seekers about the difficulties of making claims in Canada. 

https://tnc.news/2025/01/01/trudeaus-immigration-failures-policy-flip-flops-and-disasters/

How My 2024 Predictions Went – And Some Predictions for 2025


In my January 1, 2024, column entitled “Top Twenty Terrible Predictions for 2024,” I noted that, “Every year, I offer you my predictions for the coming trip around the Sun, and every year, I’m mostly wrong.” Back then, I predicted that “I think [2024] will be a disaster.” Shows what I know. Personally, I had two houses flood from broken plumbing and practically became a general contractor. That sucked. But in the macro, it was a pretty good year for America.

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I predicted that “Trump is not going to be subject to any federal trials this year…. The state cases might, but they are idiotic too.” I also predicted that “the 14th Amendment nonsense is going to get shot down. I thought Hunter would plead out. As expected, Joe Biden was “not held accountable for his crimes.” 

Then there was this: “I really like Ron DeSantis, but there’s a significant chance that Donald Trump is going to be the nominee.” Oh, but then I ruined it by predicting that “if he is the nominee, he picks Nikki Haley and, for reasons I will set out in an upcoming Townhall column, that’s a good idea…from his perspective.” Boy, did that column stir the pot! I also correctly predicted that “she’ll continue to spew consultant-generated corporate-friendly cliches and hack talking points as she seeks to turn back the clock on Republicanism twenty years.” 

I predicted that “Israel is going to rout Hamas,” but also that “there will be some sort of talks to resolve the Ukraine open wound.” I was right that “the Houthis will continue to humiliate America and will be on the receiving end of a few puny airstrikes.” At home, I foresaw leftist riots. Those did not happen. I predicted that “the border crisis will continue unabated,” and Biden pretended to abate it a little bit. I also correctly saw that “the GOP squish caucus will enter into a compromise to solve it.” Senator Jim Amnesty Lankford makes an appearance in my “Biggest Idiots of 2024” column. 

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I was right that we would win the Senate but wrong when I predicted that “we will lose the House because we are Republicans and Republicans are stupid.” In fact, we won it, barely, because Republicans are stupid. I was wrong when I predicted a Supreme Court vacancy to be filled by “a pinko BIPOC differently-abled nonbinary two-spirit of heft.”

I was right when I predicted that wokeness would peak and begin to decline. I was right that “the women’s Olympic medals will all be won by men, proving that men are better than women at everything, including being women.” I was also right that “the Regime Media will suffer more layoffs and bankruptcies, and there will be much rejoicing.” I expected the football guy to dump Taylor Swift. I don’t know whether that happened or not. 

I was doing pretty well until I got here: “Joe Biden is not going to be replaced, and he will be on the ballot in November. I’m not sure if he’ll know it, though. Man, picking Kamala Harris was the greatest insurance policy anybody ever took out.” I further opined that “the Democrats will win in November.” In my defense, I said that hoping “my track record of being wrong about my predictions holds up.” It held up, thankfully.

Here’s what I think will happen in 2025: 

  1. The Senate will confirm almost all of Trump’s nominees because the Senate Republicans will, amazingly, choose not to be stupid. 

  2. The House Republicans will choose to be stupid, predictably. They will fight over the speakership and eventually settle on Speaker Johnson. He will then screw up the reconciliation process. Half of the GOP caucus will want the status quo and will not compromise, and half will not want the status quo and will not compromise. Also, random deaths, arrests, and betrayals will mean the majority is always precarious. I expect to barely keep it.

  3. The tech overlords will get past the visa fight but grow frustrated at the resistance to DOGE’s campaign. There is a chance they will depart from their temporary coalition with the GOP.

  4. The economy will boom under Trump, as in the eighties under Reagan. Sadly, our new music will not be similarly awesome.  

  5. The Houthis will learn about war the hard way when we stop taking guff from these desert dorks under President Trump.

  6. China will not invade Taiwan because they are scared of Trump. They will keep building up forces though.

  7. Trump will end the war in Ukraine, or at least stop the fighting and replace it with a Slavic mini-Cold War. That beats the current bloodbath. No one will be happy about it except those of us sick of the butchery.

  8. Israel will end the war in Gaza by killing all those semi-human terrorist slugs. But the hostages will be mostly murdered.

  9. Iran’s mullahs will behave or die. Personally, I prefer option two.

  10. Canada will not become our 51st state, but Castro’s dumb son will get tossed out. We won’t buy Greenland; frankly, we should just take it.

  11. SCOTUS will remind the lower courts that it means what it said about there being a right to keep and bear arms that shall not be infringed.

  12. Joni Ernst and/or Thom Tillis will face a serious primary. 

  13. A bunch of soft Republicans will try yet another amnesty ploy labeled as “comprehensive immigration reform.” This means they will try to screw over the American First people. They will fail.

  14. JD Vance will become Trump’s go-to Mr. Fix-it. He will not get Kamala’d into the background. The regime media will try to drive a wedge between him and Trump, who will compromise to get what he really wants. This will fail.

  15. Kamala Harris will not run for California governor. Her fellow Democrats will treat her like a herpetic incel.

  16. Joe Biden will disappear from public view. His decline will accelerate. There will be many tell-all books on his dementia and the regime media will decide that they need to make up for giving him a pass by lying about Trump twice as hard.

  17. Trump will pardon most every J6 defendant. The establishment will cry about it, but after Hunter, the murderers and the Chinese perverts Crusty pardoned, no one will care.

  18. Pete Hegseth will lead the military to much improved readiness and recruiting numbers, and his purge of the deadwood will be welcomed by all true patriots.

  19. Scott Jennings will ditch CNN for a primetime Fox show.

  20. There will be a “People’s Republic”/Kelly Turnbull graphic novel, and maybe even a movie/series deal after some right-wing billionaires figure out that winning in the pop culture arena has more impact than funding yet another white paper on regulatory reform written by a bow-tied nerd at the American Forum for Liberty, Eagles, Families, and Forums.

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Once again, see you in 12 months, assuming these idiots have not caused a nuclear and/or civil war in the meantime so that I can give you some more inevitably wrong predictions for 2026. 



Flagship Ukrainian brigade trained in France goes AWOL

 Mass desertion is a ‘crime’ of officials not troops, critics say, after 1,700 troops go missing  


About 1,700 soldiers from a Ukrainian unit equipped by the West and trained in France went AWOL before firing a shot.

At least 50 members of the new 155th mechanised brigade, one of the few to operate the Leopard 2 battle tank, disappeared while elements of the unit were being drilled in France.

By the time it entered battle for the first time, at least 1,700 of its troops went absent without leave at numerous points. Some 500 soldiers were still missing, it was reported as recently as November.

The exodus came before the brigade was deployed to Pokrovsk, the key logistics hub anchoring Ukraine’s defence against Russian advances in the eastern Donetsk region.  


Entering the battle in recent days, it suffered heavy losses, reportedly including some of its tanks and armoured vehicles.

It prompted the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigations to investigate the seemingly shambolic formation of the 155th.

The brigade, also known as Anne of Kyiv, was meant to have more than 5,800 troops and be equipped with some of the best equipment available, including Leopard tanks and French Caesar 155mm howitzers.

Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, and Emmanuel Macron, his French counterpart, announced the $900 billion (£747 billion) project to much fanfare at an event to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landing in June last year. 


The brigade had spent nine months training in western Ukraine, Poland and France as part of an effort by Mr Zelensky to establish 14 new brigades equipped and prepared by the West. 

Yuriy Butusov, a Ukrainian war correspondent, wrote: “This is indeed a crime, but the crime of not soldiers and officers – but the crime of the leaders of the supreme commander-in-chief, the Ministry of Defence and the general staff, who continue to waste their lives and public funds on new projects, instead of strengthening experienced and combat-capable brigades.” 


Analysts observing the conflict have questioned Kyiv’s strategy of using new recruits and equipment donations to build novice brigades rather than replenish the country’s existing, battle-stricken forces. 

In a report on the formation of the 155th, Mr Butusov observed that it had been riddled with problems from the offset. 


Recruitment for the brigade began in June last year but was hampered by some 2,500 recruits being plucked to replenish other units before training could begin. 


The 1,924 volunteers that remained were sent to France, but it emerged that only 51 of them had military experience of more than a year. 

The majority (1,414) had only enrolled in the Ukrainian military in the two months before they were sent for their overseas training. 


As the brigade trained in France, it continued to recruit, with more than 700 of those troops fleeing while remaining on Ukrainian territory between October and November. 

When the 155th was eventually deployed to Pokrovsk, it was not given any drones – the main method of battlefield reconnaissance – and electronic warfare jammers by the state. 


Serhii Sternenko, a Ukrainian social media influencer and military fundraiser, said he had recently sent kit to the brigade in the absence of government supplies. 


The brigade only received cash from Kyiv for drones 10 days after entering the fight. 


“As a result, the brand-new Leopard 2A4 tanks and VAB armoured vehicles suffered losses during the first attempts to use them on the front from enemy drones,” Mr Butusov wrote. 

Colonel Dmytro Ryumshin was sacked as the brigade’s commander within days of it being sent to the front line. 


Bohdan Krotevych, the chief of staff of Ukraine’s Azov Brigade, said: “Can it be idiocy to create new brigades and equip them with such equipment, having incomplete existing ones?  


Mr Butusov added: “The brigade’s servicemen became hostages of Zelensky’s PR project, which the authorities made no effort to actually implement competently.” 


The brigade has since been effectively disbanded, with its elements spread assigned to battle-hardened brigades already defending Pokrovsk. 


https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/01/02/ukrainian-soldiers-go-awol-before-shot-fired/

A Blossoming Romance


Ukraine’s Foreign Minister just visited Damascus to meet the leader of the new terrorist regime in charge, now that the U.S. has removed the $10 million bounty on his head.  It turns out Ukraine had long been assisting the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) fighters with intelligence and drones, presumably paid for by us.  We had also directly been sending aid to a terrorist network which over the years had variously been ascribed to al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, ISIS, or ISIL.

Once HTS triumphed over Assad, the terror killings commenced.  The Western press has ignored this because it conflicts with the narrative that Assad was the only mass murderer in that nation.  HTS founder and leader Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani (aka Jolani) fought Americans long ago under the al-Qaeda leader, Abu Musab Zarqawi in Iraq.

Ukraine achieved its objective in Syria, of pinning down Russian assets working to maintain Assad in power.  So it therefore no longer has any legitimate interests there.  You would think.  That the State Department sent our Ukraine proxy to Damascus tells us what could have been anticipated if Trump lost.  The chaos planned for that part of the world must be substantial.  As Trump recently declared, we have no interest in that quagmire, so we should exit.

After Assad’s fall, Ukraine shipped 500 tonnes of food aid to Syria.  Ukraine’s Foreign Minister declared: “Ukraine will remain a linchpin to food security in Syria, even if our country is engaged in a war.”  How much of the billions Biden keeps shipping to Ukraine will end up in Syria?  Why does the State Department use Ukraine as a U.S. cutout?  Because we can not overtly support a regime led by a man who fought Americans in Iraq and supported the 9/11 and October 7 attacks.

Once Assad fled Syria, the U.S. State Department wasted no time in removing al-Jawlani’s terrorist designation.  U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf met with him in Damascus on December 20 after the terror group seized control on December 8. Per Leaf:

He came across as pragmatic.  Of course, we are—we’ve been hearing this for some time, some very pragmatic and moderate statements on various issues from women’s rights to protection of equal rights for all communities, et cetera.

Got that?  Al-Jawlani has dropped his goal of imposing sharia law.  He is coming around on women’s rights.  Imagine that.  Which is worse: if Leaf actually believes this, or is too dense to know otherwise?

According to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, HTS is a good, old-fashioned Islamic terrorist organization:

HTS primarily focuses on attacks against the Assad regime and seeks to replace it with a government guided by a fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law.  HTS uses suicide attacks, guerilla tactics, and small-arms units to conduct attacks.  The group places a priority on anti-regime activities to enable its long-term survival in northwest Syria, although in 2014 Jawlani—as head of the Nusrah Front and before his break with al-Qa‘ida—called for retaliatory attacks against the US-led coalition in response to airstrikes in Syria.

A far more realistic appraisal of HTS than that from Leaf can be found in this Twitter thread.  The group endorsed the October 7 terror attack on Israel.  They are barbaric and have conducted summary executions (graphic warning) recently.  Christians have targets on their backs.  Most Christians in the ancient Aramaic-speaking community of Maaloula have already fled.  Beheadings have begun.

But Washington denizens are jubilant.  Washington Post columnist Josh Rogin confidently assures us the new regime will not be anti-Christian.  Rogin enthusiastically drones on in this podcast for 80 minutes.  If you make it through 20 minutes you are doing good.  Confirmation bias is alive and well in Washington.  A few years ago we were told that the Taliban 2.0 were also swell fellows who would treat their countrymen well.  Hundreds of our abandoned Afghani allies were subsequently murdered, others were tortured.  The lack of Western media interest in reporting on the great successes of Taliban rule in Afghanistan tells us a) there are no successes, and b) it’s probably far worse than anyone realizes.  How long would the NY Times remain welcome in Afghanistan if it honestly reported on the situation there?

Acting as PR flaks for terror regimes is a venerable tradition for that paper, extending back almost a century.  In Ukraine, no less, when Stalin starved four million to death.  The Times’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty played a starring role in the Holodomor concealment, including with his infamous article titled: “Russians Hungry but Not Starving.”  This was right up there with CNN’s 2020 Summer of Love chyron: “fiery but mostly peaceful protests” as Kenosha burned live behind the reporter on screen.  Honest reporters who attempted to report on the Holodomor had their careers destroyed.  Some things remain constant.

The question is if the HTS rebranding in recent weeks actually fools State Department types — or if there is tacit support for the group.   America has a long history of cavorting with various Muslim fundamentalist groups since the U.S. began down this path with support for Bin Laden in the 1980s in Afghanistan to act as a proxy against the Soviets.  Al-Qaida, literally “the database,” was the list of thousands of mujahideen from across the Near and Middle East recruited and trained with CIA expertise and arms and funded by the Saudis to defeat the Soviets.  Claims by both American and jihadi operatives that there was no direct U.S. involvement ring hollow.  At the very least, Saudi and Pakistani intelligence CIA cutouts did directly interface with al-Qaeda.   It is, unsurprisingly, murky whether the CIA supported HTS.  Ayatollah Khamenei thinks this is certain.

Bin Laden's associate Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman was given visas to enter the U.S. by the CIA.  Egyptian officials testified that the CIA actively assisted him.  Rahman plotted the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.  Rahman died in a North Carolina prison in 2017.  If the U.S. just created yet another monster in that region of the world, it would hardly be a first.

Jawlani (a nom de guerre) is making the talk show rounds under his actual name, Ahmad al-Sharaa.  He trimmed his beard and adopted Western business suits.  HTS has established a media operation to spin gullible journalists and UN types.  Terrorists are now “rebels.”  Mohammed al-Bashir, Syria’s caretaker prime minister until March 1, is advertised as an engineer.  What goes unmentioned is that he also holds a degree in Sharia law.  Syrian officials now take care to wear business suits, actors on a stage, in the hopes they can con the UN, World Bank, etc. into providing money.  This represents Jihad 2.0, a kinder, gentler facade adopted to fool the West into supplying the rope to hang itself.  Something the Biden administration seems happy to do.  Biden is the antithesis of Jimmy Carter.  Since Assad’s fall, Ukraine received an additional almost $6 billion.



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The People Carving Up Healthy ‘Trans’ Kids Have Literal ‘Blood On Their Hands’


Amid an epidemic of mutilated distraught youth who should have received real help, it’s obvious whose hands are dirty.



One of the most insidious assertions of the pro-trans left is that those who oppose puberty blockers, wrong-sex hormones, and other pseudo-scientific medical interventions for trans-identifying youth have “blood on their hands.” This is because, such ideologues claim, children deprived of this purported “medical care” are more likely to kill themselves.

The fallaciousness of such declarations, however, is becoming more evident in light of acknowledgments from some unlikely sources in the media and medical establishment.

The Inflammatory Ideology Regarding Youth

The “blood on the hands” slander of the pro-trans left has become predictably commonplace in recent years. NBC earlier this month covered pro-trans activists protesting outside the Supreme Court who alleged our nation’s highest court would have “blood on its hands” if it didn’t determine a Tennessee law limiting access to such interventions was discriminatory. A Missouri LGBT public policy and advocacy organization in November accused Circuit Judge Craig Carter of having “blood on his hands” for upholding a law that restricted transgender medical interventions on kids.

In one of the most inflammatory examples of this rhetoric, transgender-identifying Montana state legislator Zooey Zephyr in April 2023 described state restrictions on such experiments as “tantamount to torture.” Zephyr provocatively warned: “I hope the next time there’s an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.”

These charges were always based on flawed reasoning, even absent any reference to data related to youth suicide incidence rates. How would restricting medical professionals from giving irreversible drugs and surgeries to an otherwise healthy kid be responsible for the latter’s suicide, especially given that as recently as a couple of decades ago, these pharmaceutical interventions were unheard of? And why would large numbers of gender dysphoric youths, supposedly hiding in the shadows until the last decade, suddenly feel the need to kill themselves rather than simply wait until they are old enough to make medical decisions for themselves?

Obviously there must be a social component to the dramatic rise in children identifying as trans and an attendant social explanation for why they would think suicide is an appropriate antidote to their anxiety.

The Reality of Terrible Harms Performed on Kids

Then again, it’s also nice when the scientific establishment exhibits proficiency in professionalism and common sense. On Dec. 11, the British government, heeding the cautions of medical experts across its countryextended its ban on the prescription of puberty blockers for children under 18, citing an “unacceptable safety risk.” This decision followed the April release of the Cass Review, in which pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass determined that chemical interventions for children were based on “remarkably weak evidence” and that puberty blockers are “powerful drugs with unproven benefits and significant risks.”

The Brits are not alone in exercising caution in such “medical care” given both the lack of credible research on the long-term effects of puberty blockers and the demonstrable medical negligence in failing to pursue less invasive and less permanent treatment for gender dysphoria, such as counseling.

After a 1,500 percent increase in the number of female teenagers identifying as transgender in a 10-year-period, the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare assessed that the risks of puberty blockers and so-called gender-affirming treatment were likely to outweigh the expected benefits. Denmark, seeing an 8,700 percent increase in the number of documented pediatric cases requesting transgender surgery in less than a decade, also decided to sharply reduce transitions. Norway and Finland have also implemented measures to limit access to interventions for gender dysphoric youth.

Perhaps most amazingly, even The Washington Post’s editorial board on Dec. 15 censured “scientists’ failure to study these treatments slowly and systematically as they developed them.” The state of Tennessee, the Post admitted, had a “colorable claim” before the nation’s highest court in United States v. Skrmetti, a case involving the state’s attempts to limit youth access to these highly suspect interventions. The editors even noted, “In the absence of clear data — and with the possibility of significant publication bias or researchers massaging their results — parents might not have adequate information.”

But Whos Really to Blame Here?

As much as it’s nice to see some legacy media and members of the medical and scientific establishment expressing concern with the radical transformation of protocols for psychologically unstable youth over the last decade, it’s worth remembering who promoted this revolution. For years, The Washington Post has been championing medical interventions for “gender”-confused youth and simultaneously castigating state-level attempts to restrict such treatments. So has MSNBCCNNNPR, and the rest of Democrat legacy media.

The same goes for ideologically driven scientists and medical professionals. Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, director of America’s largest child “gender clinic” at Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, in October told The New York Times that she was withholding the results of her taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health study because she didn’t want its outcomes to be “weaponized” to argue puberty blockers are a bad way of treating transgender-identifying children. Court documents from a youth “gender medicine” case in Alabama also revealed the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) had attempted to interfere with a systematic review commissioned from Johns Hopkins University.

What Americans are discovering, and what unfairly maligned journalist Abigail Shrier warned about years ago, is that an alliance of media, scientists, medical professionals, and pharmaceutical companies pushed a pro-trans narrative on a generation of American youth. Some were driven by ideology. Others had a profit motive (the trans “medical” industry is worth more than $4.4 billion). All of them demonstrated condemnable irresponsibility regarding the health and well-being of children.

Then in an incredible act of hypocrisy, they sought to emotionally blackmail the nation with their “blood on your hands” rhetoric. But in the wake of a national epidemic of physically mutilated and psychologically distraught youth that should have been addressed with counseling and social media prohibitions, it’s obvious whose hands are dirty.