Shared posts

07 Mar 22:40

House offices say kids are calling with suicide threats over bill regulating TikTok

by Madeleine Hubbard
Congressional staffers are reporting non-stop calls from constituents opposed to the bill, and some have even said that they are being forced to make the call before they can use the app.
07 Mar 19:42

Kentucky resolution would defy EPA fossil fuel regs like ‘sanctuary cities’ do for immigration

by Kevin Killough
If passed, the resolution would have permitting for coal and natural gas facilities done by the state, and Kentucky agencies would be prohibited from collecting fines or penalties for violations of federal regulations related to fossil fuel-fired power plants.
07 Mar 19:39

“What About My Freedom of Speech?” UNLV Shuts Down Israeli Professor’s Lecture Rather Than Remove Anti-Israel Protesters

by jonathanturley

According to The Jerusalem Post and other sites, an Israeli physics professor’s lecture at the University  of Nevada (Las Vegas) was shutdown by anti-Israel protesters because campus police insisted that they had a free speech right to prevent him from speaking. It is a common claim made by anti-free speech faculty and students that is perfectly nonsensical. It is a rationalization to yield to the heckler’s veto.

Dr. Asaf Peer is a physics professor who was on campus to discuss black holes.  However, he happens to be an Israeli, so his lecture became the target for anti-Israel protesters who stormed the event and began to shout him down. It is a common technique of “deplatforming” used by radical groups like Antifa.

The protesters accused him of studying and teaching on “occupied territory” and “spreading violent rhetoric” on his Facebook account.

There is no question that these students and groups have a right to protest. What they do not have a right to do is to shut down events to prevent others from hearing from a speaker.

Yet, the police intervened to end the lecture and escort Peer off campus. In other words, the protesters won.

The police were wrong on free speech and wrong on their own campus rules. Under UNLV’s Policy on Speech and Advocacy in Public Areas, the school maintains:

[Free speech] activities must not, however, unreasonably interfere with the right of the University to conduct its affairs in an orderly manner and to maintain its property, nor may they interfere with the University’s obligation to protect rights of all to teach, study, and fully exchange ideas. Physical force, the threat of force, or other coercive actions used to subject anyone to a speech of any kind is expressly forbidden.

I discuss this rationalization for shutting down free speech in my forthcoming book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.

It is now routine for protesters to prevent others from hearing opposing views and there are often allegations that some schools quietly allow the use of the heckler’s veto.

This has been an issue of contention with some academics who believe that free speech includes the right to silence others.  Berkeley has been the focus of much concern over the use of a heckler’s veto on our campuses as violent protesters have succeeded in silencing speakers, including a speaker from the ACLU discussing free speech.  Both students and some faculty have maintained the position that they have a right to silence those with whom they disagree and even student newspapers have declared opposing speech to be outside of the protections of free speech.  At another University of California campus, professors actually rallied around a professor who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display.

In the meantime, academics and deans have said that there is no free speech protection for offensive or “disingenuous” speech.  CUNY Law Dean Mary Lu Bilek showed how far this trend has gone. When conservative law professor Josh Blackman was stopped from speaking about “the importance of free speech,”  Bilek insisted that disrupting the speech on free speech was free speech. (Bilek later cancelled herself and resigned after she made a single analogy to acting like a “slaveholder” as a self-criticism for failing to achieve equity and reparations for black faculty and students).

A few years ago, I debated NYU Professor Jeremy Waldron who is a leading voice for speech codes. Waldron insisted that shutting down speakers through heckling is a form of free speech. I disagree. It is the antithesis of free speech and the failure of schools to protect the exercise of free speech is the antithesis of higher education. In most schools, people are not allowed to disrupt events. They are escorted out of such events and told that they can protest outside of the events since others have a right to listen to opposing views. These disruptions, however, are often planned to continually interrupt speakers until the school authorities step in to cancel the event.

UNLV has to make a choice on protecting this academic space for free discourse or yielding to the mob. The protesters can demonstrate outside of a room or a hall to express their opposition to a speaker. What they cannot do is prevent others from speaking or hearing opposing views. Those responsible for such disruptions should be suspended or, for repeat offenders, expelled.

07 Mar 19:35

UKHSA Provides Mortality Data to Big Pharma But Not to the General Public for ‘Commercial Sensitivity Reasons’

by Naked Emperor

On Monday, UKHSA head Jenny Harries told MPs the agency had supplied detailed deaths data to vaccine companies but couldn't release it to the public for 'commercial sensitivity reasons'. Something to hide?

The post UKHSA Provides Mortality Data to Big Pharma But Not to the General Public for ‘Commercial Sensitivity Reasons’ appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

07 Mar 18:19

EV Malfunctions at 100mph and Won’t Stop – Forcing Police to Ram it Off the Road

by Will Jones

An electric car driver whose EV "went rogue" on the M62 has told of his terror as he swerved through traffic at speeds of up to 100mph before police managed to ram his car off the road.

The post EV Malfunctions at 100mph and Won’t Stop – Forcing Police to Ram it Off the Road appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

07 Mar 13:41

ENVIRONMENTALISTS AGAINST ELECTRIC CARS: Elon Musk’s German Tesla plant suffers close to $1 billi

by Glenn Reynolds
Jts5665

It will be interesting to see if Germany does anything about this.

ENVIRONMENTALISTS AGAINST ELECTRIC CARS: Elon Musk’s German Tesla plant suffers close to $1 billion in damages after attack by the ‘dumbest eco-terrorists on Earth.’ Elon should sue them — and their funders — for the full cost.

07 Mar 13:39

SHE’S RIGHT, YOU KNOW?   Villainous Monologues: They May Be More Common than You Think.

by Sarah Hoyt
Jts5665

Exterminationists are very open about wanting most of humanity dead.

07 Mar 13:35

GREAT MOMENTS IN PRIORITIES: https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1765464678468034766 Funny,

by Ed Driscoll
Jts5665

We live in satire.

GREAT MOMENTS IN PRIORITIES:

Funny, I don’t recall reading about FDR, Truman, or their cabinet heads decrying the pollution output of the Nazis or imperial Japan during WWII, which I suppose shows just how blinkered their administrations’ focus was back then.

07 Mar 13:27

IT’S HARD TO BLAME THEM, THOUGH: South Koreans want their own nukes. That could roil one of the wor

by Glenn Reynolds

IT’S HARD TO BLAME THEM, THOUGH: South Koreans want their own nukes. That could roil one of the world’s most dangerous regions. And post-Afghanistan it’s hard to trust the United States’ security guarantees.

06 Mar 21:09

It is WILD that we live in a time where this needs to be said

by Not the Bee
Jts5665

Trying to square this with the germophobic masking of the prior 4 years.

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE.

06 Mar 21:07

Woman forced to give birth on side of the road because climate activists blocked a bridge

by Not the Bee

The climate cultists are the worst.

06 Mar 21:06

YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TRACK F: That’s the NSF bureaucratese for $39 million worth of federal grants

by Mark Tapscott

YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TRACK F: That’s the NSF bureaucratese for $39 million worth of federal grants that went to academic teams and private firms to develop digital censorship tools capable of monitoring and cancelling every word you put on the Internet. The details are in my Epoch Times Premium Report. I put this link up here several days ago but I’m reposting it today for those who missed it previously. This is important.

06 Mar 17:10

The WPATH Files

by Michael Shellenberger

Advocates of gender-affirming care say it’s evidence-based.

But now, newly released internal files from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) prove that the practice of transgender medicine is neither scientific nor medical.

American Medical Association, The Endocrine Society, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and thousands of doctors worldwide rely on WPATH. It is considered the leading global authority on “gender medicine.”

And yet WPATH’s internal files, which include written discussions and a video, reveal that its members know they are creating victims and not getting “informed consent.”

Victims include a 10-year-old girl, a 13-year-old developmentally delayed adolescent, and individuals suffering from schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses.

The injuries described in the Files include sterilization, loss of sexual function, liver tumors, and death.

WPATH members indicate repeatedly that they know that many children and their parents don’t understand the effects that puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries will have on their bodies. And yet, they continue to perform and advocate for gender medicine.

The WPATH Files prove that gender medicine is comprised of unregulated and pseudoscientific experiments on children, adolescents, and vulnerable adults and will go down as one of the worst medical scandals in history.

Final Wpath Report
18.1MB ∙ PDF file
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Wpath Excerpts
148KB ∙ PDF file
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Why I Am Publishing The WPATH Files

The written WPATH Files come from WPATH’s member discussion forum, which runs on software provided by DocMatter.

Ninety seconds of the 82-minute video was made public last year. We are making the full video available for download for the first time.

One or more people gave me the WPATH Files, and my colleagues and I attempted to summarize them as a series of articles. We quickly realized the topic was too sensitive, complex, and large to be dealt with as a work of journalism, and we moved the project to the research institute I founded seven years ago, Environmental Progress (EP).

The Files are authentic. We redacted most names and left only those individuals who are leading gender medicine practitioners to whom we sent “right-of-reply” emails. We know WPATH members discussed our emails internally. No WPATH leader or member has denied that the Files are anything other than what they appear to be.

EP is publishing a 70-page report to provide context for the 170 pages of WPATH Files. Mia Hughes is the author of the report. It and accompanying summary materials can be downloaded at this link. That link also provides a link to the full WPATH video.

What follows are simply a few highlights from the written files and the video. All video selections are also included in the video above.

People with a serious interest in the topic should read the report and all the files.

Part I: Children and Adolescents

“We're explaining things to people who haven't even had biology in high school…”

“I think the thing you have to remember about kids is that we're often explaining these sorts of things to people who haven't even had biology in high school yet,” says Dan Metzger, an endocrinologist.

“The 14-year-olds, you just... It's like talking [about] diabetic complications with a 14-year-old. They don't care. They're not going to die. They're going to live forever, right? So I think when we're doing informed consent, that's still a big lacuna.”

“14 year old trans female who started transition since she was 4… wants to have Gender Affirming Surgery”

There are other discussions of the challenge of getting informed consent from 14-year-olds in the written files.

“I’ve recently received questions from an [‘Assigned Female At Birth’] pre-menarche 10 y/o patient about whether blockers will ‘stunt’ his growth…”

“It is very difficult to ask that they wait until age 16”

WPATH members resist efforts to make children and adolescents wait to have drugs and surgery.

A “16 y/o patient…found to have two liver masses… the likely offending agents were the hormones…”

The problem is that drugs can cause tumors, even, apparently, in people as young as 16 years old.

“To what degree… providers discuss actual rates of surgical complications… (e.g., pain…additional surgeries, necrotic tissue, infection, hematomas…”

Many young patients experiencing gender distress do not appear to understand that they may suffer serious consequences from long-term hormone use and genital surgery.

“I feel the best time for surgery in the U.S. is the summer before their last year of high school.”

Despite the widespread and growing expression of concern within the WPATH Files over the negative side effects of gender medicine, WPATH members urge that irreversible surgeries take place when adolescents are just 16 or 17 years old.

“Most of the kids are nowhere in any kind of brain space to really talk about it seriously.”

One WPATH member says, in the video above, that “It's out of their developmental range sometimes to understand the extent to which some of these medical interventions are impacting them.“

Says another, “We try to talk about it, but most of the kids are nowhere in any kind of a brain space to really, really, really talk about it seriously.”

Many Parents Don’t Understand What’s Happening To Their Children

“I try to kind of do whatever I can to help them understand best they, best I can,” says a therapist in the video. “But what really disturbs me is when the parents can't tell me what they need to know about a medical intervention that apparently they signed off for.

“In a developmentally delayed 13yo… what is the ethical approach?”

The situation of obtaining informed consent is complicated further when the adolescents are also developmentally delayed and, in the case below, “may not reach the emotional and cognitive developmental bar set” by WPATH’s already very low standards of care.

“Oh, the dog isn’t doing it for you?”

Many gender medicine victims are filled with regret that they were sterilized. Nobody knows this more than the doctors who mistreated them. Their response to such regret is often rather callous.

In the video above, one of them says, “I follow a lot of kids into their mid twenties, I'm always like, ‘Oh, the dog isn't doing it for you, right?’ They're like, ‘No, I just found this wonderful partner and now we want kids. So you know, it doesn't surprise me.”

“I’m unaware of an individual claiming ability to orgasm when they were blocked at Tanner 2.”

Many gender medicine patients lose sexual function, including experiencing orgasm. As such, they are not only deprived of sexual pleasure, they are significantly undermining their ability to form long-lasting romantic relationships.

It’s clear from the Files that even many people within gender medicine do not understand this.

On January 14, 2022, the surgeon and President of WPATH, Marci Bowers, explained this reality in a low-key way.

Seven days later, a WPATH member asked Bowers to clarify.

“After 8-10 years of [testosterone, they] developed hepatocarcinomas…linked to hormonal treatment. He was in his midlife…died a couple of months after.”

For some gender medicine patients, there are fates worse than both sterility and loss of sexual function.

Part II: Mental Illness

“A Patient Who Became Dangerous”

On an unknown date, a San Francisco-based surgeon named Thomas Satterwhite posts an urgent new message to WPATH’s internal message board. “I had a patient who became dangerous/threatening to our care team post-op,” he wrote, “which ultimately ended in a restraining order.”

Satterwhite explained that “This patient had undiagnosed mood disorders that did not surface until post-op, after which, she travelled around the country to find other surgeons to provide care.”

It’s a chilling story and one that raises many questions about the ethics and legality of gender-affirming medicine. At the top of that list is how in the world did Satterwhite and his colleagues miss the fact that the person they operated upon had a serious psychiatric condition?

But Satterwhite had a more prosaic question. What was the best “medicolegal” way that he could warn other doctors and health care providers that his former patient was “potentially dangerous”?

There is no evidence in the WPATH Files, nor elsewhere, that the experience shook Satterwhite enough to question whether gender-affirming care is, in reality, medicine, a profession that begins with the promise to “First, do no harm.”

The History Of Mistreating Mental Illness

Nations have struggled to care properly for people with mental illness and psychiatric disorders for centuries.

After every past scandal, we pledge to do better next time, relying more on science than ideology.

Readers of the WPATH Files may walk away with the sense that we have learned nothing.

Repeatedly throughout the WPATH Files, we see gender medicine practitioners waive away evidence that mental illnesses and psychiatric disorders have been misdiagnosed as gender dysphoria.

The WPATH Files are a picture of people single-mindedly committed to the hammer of gender medicine and thus seeing every patient who comes to them as a nail.

“Disordered eating,” “purposeful malnutrition,” and a “high prevalence of eating disorders”

A therapist raises concerns in a message about the age of a patient. “I have an incoming 13yo (soon to be 14 yo)... I was under the impression that is more the exception to start for kids under 16, not the norm…”

But the person has another piece of troubling information.

“A possible complication,” the therapist warns, is that it “sounds like there is some purposeful malnutrition and restrictive eating for ‘a more non-binary appearance.’”

The chief medical officer of a health center in Texas chimed in that the therapist had best hurry the 13-year-old teenager along the gender-affirming path because “waiting appears to increase the rate of suicide.”

“Something is off… I am wondering if they might have schizoaffective disorder or schizophrenia”

“Several of my clients met criteria for dissociative disorders.”

“Someone can have schizophrenia and be ready for surgery…”

“I have noted a high incidence of dissociative disorders”

“I have operated on three DID [Dissociative Identity Disorder]... All three did okay out to the six month mark.”

“In the last 15 years I had to regrettably decline writing only one letter, mainly b/c the person evaluated was in active psychosis...”

“They had alters who were both male and female gender and it was imperative to get all alters who would be effected by [Hormone Replacement Therapy]... to consent…”

Part III: Ethics

06 Mar 17:07

WHY IS HIGHER EDUCTION SUCH A CESSPIT OF ANTISEMITISM? UCSB Black Studies faculty plan ‘day of in

by Glenn Reynolds
06 Mar 14:06

GREAT NEWS – NOW GET CRACKING ON TREATMENTS:  Scientists discover sources of Parkinson’s disease,

by Sarah Hoyt
06 Mar 14:05

OUR ELITES ARE MORONS: BBC tried to discipline journalist for claiming men cannot scientifically be

by Glenn Reynolds

OUR ELITES ARE MORONS: BBC tried to discipline journalist for claiming men cannot scientifically be women.

A former BBC journalist was subjected to a disciplinary process for tweeting that there was no scientific support for the idea that “males can be women”.

Cath Walton revealed that she was called before an internal BBC hearing after she also said that the issue of gender identity was “contested”.

Reflecting on her treatment by the BBC, she said that in discussing issues around people who change gender, “truth has become an emblem of defiance rather than clarity”.

She spoke out after Justin Webb, the Radio 4 Today programme presenter, was found to have breached the BBC’s impartiality rules by saying “trans women, in other words males”.

The corporation’s executive complaints unit (ECU) upheld a complaint from a listener who said that Mr Webb had been giving his personal view on a controversial matter.

His supporters say he was simply stating a fact and clarifying the definition of a trans woman as a biological male living as a woman.

Well, he was.

06 Mar 14:04

Biden projected to lose American Samoa to entrepreneur Jason Palmer

by Ben Whedon
Prior to Super Tuesday, Biden won every Democratic nominating contest.
05 Mar 20:58

EXERCISE IS GOOD: Researchers show that just 5 months of exercise can reduce cardiovascular risk in

by Glenn Reynolds
05 Mar 16:45

STORY OF THE DAY: Leaked files from top gender-medicine organization expose serious ethics violations, deaths from "treatments," other horrors

by Not the Bee

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) is the professional organization that leads the way in forming gender-identity policy for governments, hospitals, and organizations, particularly when it comes to kids.

05 Mar 14:47

GOOGLE SITS ON A THRONE OF LIES: https://twitter.com/micsolana/status/1760180595571999050

by Glenn Reynolds

GOOGLE SITS ON A THRONE OF LIES:

05 Mar 14:44

THOU SHALT NOT CONTRADICT THE NARRATIVE: Prof says ‘all hell broke loose’ at Harvard after his stud

by Glenn Reynolds

THOU SHALT NOT CONTRADICT THE NARRATIVE: Prof says ‘all hell broke loose’ at Harvard after his study found no racial bias in police shootings: Roland Fryer recently detailed the extreme backlash he says he faced for releasing findings that contradict popular left-wing narratives on policing. “Fryer says that colleagues told him ‘Don’t publish this,’ warning that ‘You’ll ruin your career.'”

I remember when we were told that higher education was about the quest for truth.

05 Mar 14:41

COMMIES GOTTA COMMIE: China’s Roving Death Vans. “They used to have public executions in arenas. T

by Stephen Green

COMMIES GOTTA COMMIE: China’s Roving Death Vans. “They used to have public executions in arenas. They haven’t done away with that (or shooting you on the side of the road and burying you in a ditch), but the death vans are considered more ‘efficient.'”

02 Mar 15:34

BANANA REPUBLIC: https://twitter.com/greg_price11/status/1763582622410617131 Related: https

by Glenn Reynolds

BANANA REPUBLIC:

Related:

He’s not the one losing dignity here.

01 Mar 19:57

Death of McConnell sister-in-law Angela Chao now 'criminal investigation'

by Joseph Weber
Chao, the CEO of the Foremost Group was found dead shortly after midnight on Feb. 11
01 Mar 19:41

Elon Musk says Grok will soon be able to read the omnibus bills Congress likes to make and summarize them so politicians can't hide stuff from us

by Not the Bee

Guys, we're almost there! We're this close to finally replacing journalists with machines!

01 Mar 19:10

BRYAN CAPLAN ON GEORGE MASON’S ORWELLIAN ‘JUST SOCIETIES’ COURSE REQUIREMENT. “This is quixotic, I k

by Robert Shibley

BRYAN CAPLAN ON GEORGE MASON’S ORWELLIAN ‘JUST SOCIETIES’ COURSE REQUIREMENT. “This is quixotic, I know, but let me try to break through the woke academic echo chamber with some harsh truths. If you promote DEI for a living, the reality is that normal, apolitical people see you as a racist, sexist, censorious fanatic. They don’t say so publicly … because they are afraid of you. They don’t tell you privately … because they are afraid of you. But when they’re speaking to people they trust, they vehemently disagree with you—and yearn to see you all fired.”

01 Mar 16:38

Watch: Biden's FBI leads investigative journalist away in cuffs after he exposed J6 lies

by Not the Bee

What they told you:

01 Mar 13:28

MATT TAIBBI: I Wrote What? Google’s AI-Powered Libel Machine. It spat out a list. “Matt Taibbi, a

by Ed Driscoll

MATT TAIBBI: I Wrote What? Google’s AI-Powered Libel Machine.

It spat out a list. “Matt Taibbi, a journalist and author known for his investigative reporting and often critical views of power structures, has been involved in several controversies throughout his career,” the bot wrote. Amid accusations of bias and “use of inflammatory language,” this passage woke me up:

Accuracy and Sourcing: There have been instances where Taibbi’s reporting has been challenged for accuracy or questioned for its source. For example, in 2010, he received criticism for an article suggesting a connection between a conservative donor and a left-wing activist group, which later turned out to be inaccurate.

I scratched my head, not remembering this. “When was Matt Taibbi accused of inaccuracy in 2010?” I asked. Gemini’s answer:

In June 2010, Matt Taibbi faced criticism for an article he wrote for Rolling Stone magazine titled “The Great California Water Heist.” The article alleged a connection between conservative donor Charles Koch and a left-wing activist group called the “Compton Pledge.”

However, investigations by other journalists and fact-checkers later revealed that this connection was inaccurate…Following the controversy, Taibbi acknowledged the error and issued a correction on his personal website.

None of this happened! Though it sounds vaguely like a headline for an article I might have written, there was never a Rolling Stone piece called “The Great California Water Heist,” and I’d never heard of the “Compton Pledge.”

More questions produced more fake tales of error-ridden articles. One entry claimed I got in trouble for a piece called “Glenn Beck’s War on Comedy,” after suggesting “a connection between a conservative donor, Foster Friess, and a left-wing activist group, the Ruckus Society.”

With each successive answer, Gemini didn’t “learn,” but instead began mixing up the fictional factoids from previous results and upping the ante, adding accusations of racism or bigotry. “The Great California Water Heist” turned into “The Great California Water Purge: How Nestle Bottled Its Way to a Billion-Dollar Empire—and Lied About It.” The “article” apparently featured this passage:

Look, if Nestle wants to avoid future public-relations problems, it should probably start by hiring executives whose noses aren’t shaped like giant penises.

I wouldn’t call that a good impersonation of my writing style, but it’s close enough that some would be fooled, which seems to be the idea.

An amazing follow-up passage explained that “some raised concerns that the comment could be interpreted as antisemitic, as negative stereotypes about Jewish people have historically included references to large noses.”

I stared at the image, amazed. Google’s AI created both scandal and outraged reaction, a fully faked news cycle:

Hollywood owes us all a serious apology — Sure, Colossus, Skynet, Roy Batty, and Hal were evil murderous paranoids, but they appeared far more competent than the current state of AI in 2024.

29 Feb 19:50

This Oklahoma woman turned 100 today on her 25th birthday

by Not the Bee

Mary Lea Forsythe of Sand Springs, Oklahoma, will be turning 100 years old this February 29, but it's only her 25th birthday.

29 Feb 18:38

Panera Bread is now exempt from California's new fast-food minimum wage law. You'll never guess how much money Panera's CEO donated to the Newsom campaign!

by Not the Bee

Never expected a scandal like this out of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.