Blog

  • Gaza elected Hamas

    Shabbos: “That was literally the rationale for Gaza withdrawal in 2005 when they gave Gaza to the Palestinians and Gaza elected Hamas. The results? October 7th.”

    An old, pie-in-the-sky idealist vs. a young Jew with both feet in reality. And reality won.

  • Criminal harassment

    A thread from Kellie-Jay Keen:

    For seven years I’ve been subjected to harassment, stalking, threats, and terror. The abuse has taken many forms:

    Graphic text messages about my children dying.

    Descriptions of my daughter’s bedroom.

    Dozens of calls in the early hours, including seven times on Christmas Day.

    Photos of my children being shared.

    Men turning up at my events to scream abuse at me.

    Threats that I would be attacked, terrified, and made to pay.

    A wish that I had been attacked with acid.

    This is not online trolling. This is calculated harassment, designed to frighten me and to reach into my family life. It has gone on so long and so relentlessly that I no longer even answer the phone normally, I pick it up and wait in silence until I hear a voice, because so many of the calls are him.

    Him? Yes, him. One man.

    The police have taken my statements. They have seen the calls with their own eyes. They have confirmed his address. And yet, instead of arresting him, they have passed my case back and forth between Wiltshire Police, Avon & Somerset, and now possibly the Metropolitan Police. Each force shrugs, says it belongs elsewhere, and in the meantime the harassment continues.

    And here is the bitter truth: when this same individual accused Graham Linehan, the system acted with speed and force. Linehan was arrested, hauled into court, and even met by five armed officers at the airport. So why is it that when women come forward with years of evidence, we are told to wait? Why is our terror treated as less urgent?

    And why are the police so determined to do the bidding of a deranged trans activist, while ignoring the people he targets?

  • Erie docks

    Erie, Pennsylvania, ca. 1900. "Anchor Line docks and Penna. R.R. coal & ore docks."

    image from www.shorpy.com
    [Photo: Shorpy/Detroit Photographic Company]

  • Santa Rosa Junior College’s volleyball team

    Can you spot the trans one?

    Ximena-Gomez-Santa-Rosa-Trans-Volleyball-2

    From Reduxx:

    Three women from Santa Rosa Junior College’s volleyball team have filed a federal Title IX complaint demanding the removal of a male player from their women’s squad. Sophomore Madison Shaw and freshmen Gracie Shaw and Brielle Galli allege that they were penalized for protesting the inclusion of Ximena Gomez on the team.

    He's a man, you see. Even though he has long hair and appears in the photo to be wearing make-up.

    By spring of 2025, Head Coach Sather integrated Gomez more fully into team practices. When the 2025 season began, Gomez was retained on the official roster and moved into active competition, playing as an outside hitter, the same position as sophomore starter Madison Shaw.

    Gomez is described in the filing as having been stronger, faster, and hitting harder than any female player the complainants had ever played with or against. One teammate compared Gomez’s power to levels “beyond anything seen even in NAIA competition.”

    Well, we know how this goes.

    Due to her vocal opposition to Gomez’s inclusion on the team, Madison says she was benched outright, despite being one of the most experienced players on the roster. Gracie and Brielle saw their positions reassigned, and their opportunities to develop as freshmen undercut. By August 22 and 23, when the season opened, they were reduced to staging a symbolic sit-down protest from the bench while Gomez played in their place.

    The women say they felt isolated by their coaches, alienated from teammates, and constantly under surveillance. Madison in particular reported that the stress left her drained, forcing her to quit the team altogether on September 2.

    Perhaps Malcolm Gladwell could be persuaded to say a few words.

  • The BBC contributor

    From the JC:

    The BBC has continued to use a contributor even after it emerged he had repeatedly incited violence against Jews, including saying he would burn them “as Hitler did”.

    Samer Elzaenen, who has appeared on the BBC’s Arabic channel more than a dozen times since the October 7 atrocities, was most recently used in July as an eyewitness to describe the hunger in Gaza, under the headline “Starvation as a ‘weapon of war’: What does it mean and when was it used in history?”

    His July appearance came despite several reports in April – including in the JC – that he had posted extremist slogans including “#WeAreAllHamas You Son of a Jewess”.

    In July 2022, a post on his Facebook read: “When things go awry for us, shoot the Jews, it fixes everything,” the Telegraph reported.

    Are we surprised? No, we are not surprised.

     

  • Not for succession

    After Kim Jong-un was seen strutting his stuff in Beijing alongside Xi and Putin, there's been talk of his daughter Kim Ju Ae, who accompanied him, as being heir-apparent. I've posted before on the Daily NK's dismissal of this interpretation. Now here's another Daily NK piece on the same theme:

    It would be no exaggeration to say that Kim Jong Un was the star of the military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of Victory Day held in China on Sept. 3. He showed off the status of the North Korea-China-Russia triangular alliance, strutting with his hands clasped behind his back between Xi Jinping and Putin. He stood shoulder-to-shoulder with China and Russia on the Tiananmen rostrum, watched by the entire world. In bilateral talks with Russia, he received Putin’s highest expressions of gratitude for the recent troop deployment.

    Kim Jong-un sent tens of thousands of North Korean troops to be cannon fodder in the war against Ukraine. Of course Putin's grateful. What other country would be so casual with the despatch of a generation of its young men to be slaughtered, just so that its Beloved Leader could bask in the spotlight at military parades with other leading autocrats?

    Media outlets across China competed to capture footage of the special train departing from Pyongyang, and as if enjoying this attention, North Korea even disclosed through Rodong Sinmun the exact time the train crossed the border. When the train arrived in Beijing, another point of interest was the sight of Kim Ju Ae standing behind Kim Jong Un. Notably absent was Kim Jong Un’s wife Ri Sol Ju, with Kim Ju Ae taking her place. This led South Korean and international media to describe it as Kim Ju Ae’s “successor initiation ceremony.”

    To conclude from the outset, I believe it is premature to judge Kim Ju Ae’s visit to China with Kim Jong Un as a successor initiation ceremony. In North Korea, where patriarchal thinking still prevails, it would be extremely difficult for a woman to assume the position of supreme leader. I have consistently emphasized that Kim Ju Ae serves as a prop for Kim Jong Un’s image politics. This is why we should focus more on “Kim Jong Un standing next to Kim Ju Ae” rather than on Kim Ju Ae herself.

    The author here, one Kang Dong Wan, goes on to list five points to back his case. The main issue, though, is the one he's already raised: the extreme patriarchy of the Kim dynastic system. From my earlier post:

    Upon being told that some analysts in South Korea believe that Kim Ju Ae will be the successor to her father, a high-ranking source in North Korea told Daily NK on Nov. 11 that “I don’t understand why they say that. If you let a woman take power in the fourth generation, the last name of the fifth-generation leader will be different. That doesn’t make sense. When you name a successor, you think of the future. Succession is establishing the fourth generation to serve as a basis for the fifth generation.”

    In short, the source argued that Kim Ju Ae’s descendants would have a family name other than Kim, a family name associated with the country’s so-called Paekdu Bloodline, and that this would make a fifth generation succession impossible to achieve. The source’s argument puts on display the power of patriarchal beliefs in North Korean society; namely, that children must take their father’s last name and only sons may become successors to keep familial lines going.

    Related to this is the question of mystique. Exposing his daughter so frequently to the public eye is largely about showing her as a symbol of the next generation, of which he's the father. But she's just a side-show. She just stands in the background: no power of her own, no mystique. There are rumoured to be three children, with an older brother and a younger brother. These – presumably the older, at least – will be kept hidden: only revealed when the time is right, as next in line in the sacred Paekdu Bloodline, and firmly in the context of power and authority – perhaps even, like his father before him, ascending holy Mt Paektu on a white horse

  • The Palestinian state fantasy

    Recognition of a Palestinian state is now the position of almost all Western countries bar America. It is, of course, an entirely cynical position, designed to blame Israel and appease domestic opposition while rewarding Hamas for its uncompromising dedication to violence. In reality though Palestinians have never wanted a two-state solution – just the disappearance of Israel along with every single Jew. That's after all what they've been taught by generations of UNRWA teachers, well-versed in jihad and the glories of martyrdom.

    Elliott Abrams has a long article on the subject at Mosaic – There Never Will Be a Palestinian State. So What’s Next?. Needs to be read in full, but here's his conclusion:

    A Palestinian state living in peace and security side by side with Israel is a mirage: despite all the claims that we are getting closer to it, it always recedes. Perhaps someday the Islamic Republic of Iran will fall, and a new government there will stop supporting every terrorist group that wishes to destroy Israel. Perhaps someday leaders of the major democracies will treat Israel with fairness and justice, and will demand and enforce fundamental changes in Palestinian society that root out the disastrous effects of a century of murderous anti-Semitism and efforts to destroy Israel. Perhaps Palestinians will someday find and support a national leader who, unlike Husseini or Arafat, truly wishes to build a decent society rather than attacking the one next door. But until such things happen, Palestinian statehood must remain an impossibility.

    The most apt metaphor for Palestinian life today is the Gaza cityscape as it existed on October 6: behind and beneath the facades of homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques lay a vast network of terror tunnels and weapons storehouses. And underlying that physical network lay, and lies still, an intellectual and ideological network of beliefs—beliefs that lead to such widespread support for Hamas even today, and that lead the Palestinian Authority to name schools and plazas after the terrorist murderers of children, and to pay salaries and bounties to terrorists in Israeli prisons.

    Israel has done a great deal toward eliminating the physical infrastructure of terror, but there cannot be a Palestinian state unless and until the intellectual network that prizes “armed struggle” against the Jewish state above building a normal life for Palestinians ends as well. That is a task for Palestinians, not Israelis, and it is a task that Palestinians will not take up while international organizations and leaders of important nations assure them that statehood will come to them soon and without conditions.

  • Double standards

    More on the Linehan arrest in the Sunday Times this morning:

    The decision to detain Linehan at Heathrow is understood to have been made by an officer below superintendent level and went no further up the Met chain of command. The arrest was enforced by aviation police at the airport who are routinely armed and, the Met claims, work in teams of five.

    Sources said this weekend that Rowley and other senior figures at the force were “very much unaware” about what had happened until Linehan went public on his blog — despite the writer’s relatively high profile.

    The commissioner’s suggestion that officers’ hands are in effect tied by the law has, however, raised some eyebrows — particularly at a time when shoplifting is at a record high and the public believes that police are routinely choosing not to investigate car break-ins, burglaries and other offences.

    And, most significantly here – the part these reports always seem to miss out – violent threats against women by trans activists are routinely ignored by police. 

    It's left for the comments to point this out:

    Lineham offered basic self defence advice to women that feel threatened by men in their single sex spaces, the same advice that generations of parents have given to their daughters.

    Rowley is being disingenuous, plenty of threats of rape, death, burning, decapitating, hanging and throat punching have been made against women by transactivists yet no action has ever been taken against those making these threats and calling for this violence against women.

    and:

    There is a much bigger story here about a small group of trans-identified men who have targeted gender critical campaigners repeatedly- releasing details of their addresses, their children, and making malicious reports about them to the Police. It is very concerning that the Police seem to take these activists' reports seriously.

    As for whether the Police have discretion, I have attended meetings of gender critical people that have been targeted by trans rights activists (including one where they entered the building and refused to leave or to let us in). There have been cases where activists have repeatedly made disruptive noise outside, banged on windows, let off smoke bombs, released insects inside the building, and followed women to a pub and surrounded the building etc. As far as I know, no arrests were made. You just have to look at how the Police in Scotland failed to stop a trans activist with a sound system from drowning out the speeches made by women outside the Scottish Parliament last week. Huge double standards. I've certainly lost much trust in the Police.

  • The crime of deadnaming

    Graham Linehan's arrest was by no means a one-off. From the Telegraph – Retired police officer questioned after using trans woman’s male name:

    A retired police officer was visited by her former force over social media posts “deadnaming” a transgender activist, The Telegraph can reveal.

    Cathy Larkman, who served with South Wales Police for more than three decades, was shocked when former colleagues turned up at her door near Port Talbot on Sept 4.

    The former superintendent said police informed her that the home visit was related to a handful of social media posts about a transgender activist named Freda Wallace.

    Ms Larkam had called the activist Fred, using the “dead” male name of the now transgender woman, and this act had been reported to the police.

    Not even the fig-leaf of threatening violence. Just "deadnaming".

    It is believed that Ms Larkman was reported by a disgraced transgender police officer named Lynsay Watson – a figure with a history of urging the authorities to pursue criminal investigations of people who are critical of gender ideology.

    The same trans activist who supposedly reported Linehan to the Met. What's going on? Why are the police so keen to act on this man's behalf?

    Larkman has raised concerns about the apparent ease with which police forces can be used by activists.

    She told the Telegraph: “The police service keeps demonstrating that it is ideologically captured from the top down. It is failing the public.

    “It is also failing the brave officers who sign up, intending to serve that public – not to police their thoughts and words. They deserve a leadership that gives them the confidence and support to say a firm no to these extremists, not to capitulate to them….

    Helen Joyce, a gender-critical writer and women’s rights campaigner, said she was also reported to the authorities, and now has a police investigation for “harassment” on her record. Court documents stated that Watson was behind reports to the police.

    Watson also reported Stuart Campbell, a Scottish gender-critical campaigner, to Greater Manchester Police in 2023 over a series of social media posts.

    The force decided not to take further action, and Watson launched a judicial review to challenge the decision. This was dismissed by the High Court this year…..

    A spokesman for South Wales Police said: “Officers received a report of an alleged hate crime/malicious communications incident on Nov 26, 2024.

    “As part of their investigation into the report, officers visited an address in Margam, Neath Port Talbot on Thursday, Sept 4. The threshold for a crime has not been met, and the investigation has been closed with no suspect or subject identified.”

    Well good – but couldn't they have worked that out before making the visit? Or was intimidation, in fact, the point?

  • The Pritzkers

    David Charter in the Times sees JB Pritzker, the billionaire Illinois governor, as the Democrats' best hope against Trump. He's certainly smart, and seems to relish the verbal sparring with the president:

    President Trump has spent weeks bombarding Pritzker and Chicago, the biggest city in Illinois, with threats to send in the National Guard to combat crime. Trump has attacked the “panic stricken” and “weak and pathetic” governor but the insults may actually be helping to elevate the sharp-tongued Democrat by giving him a national stage to deliver withering counterattacks against the “unhinged” president, to the delight of his party….

    “Trump is talking about Pritzker all the time, I don’t think there’s any other elected official that he’s talked about more recently,” said Laura Washington, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune. “Every Democrat of whatever stripe wants to see someone who’s going to be a fighter and is going to go after Trump tooth-and-nail and I think Pritzker is trying to do that,” she said.

    “When he ran the first time for governor his motto was ‘think big’, so he was really throwing right in your face the fact that he was a big guy and getting that off the table. But he also used that as a strategy to put himself out there as somebody who was thinking outside the box and he’s been very good at building that image.”

    The Pritzker name was already huge in Chicago, where his grandfather was one of three brothers — the sons of Ukrainian immigrants — who built a property empire that would include Hyatt hotels. There is a Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago and a Pritzker School of Law at Northwestern University (thanks to a $100 million donation from JB Pritzker and his wife, MK Pritzker), as well as the annual prestigious Pritzker Architecture prize worth $100,000.

    So very wealthy, and very powerful. What doesn't get mentioned is that JB's cousin is Jennifer Pritzker, Jennifer (born James) Pritzker "the first and only openly transgender billionaire", and a leading advocate of transgenderism. 

    Jennifer Bilek at Tablet in June 2022:

    One of the most powerful yet unremarked-upon drivers of our current wars over definitions of gender is a concerted push by members of one of the richest families in the United States to transition Americans from a dimorphic definition of sex to the broad acceptance and propagation of synthetic sex identities (SSI). Over the past decade, the Pritzkers of Illinois, who helped put Barack Obama in the White House and include among their number former U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker, current Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, and philanthropist Jennifer Pritzker, appear to have used a family philanthropic apparatus to drive an ideology and practice of disembodiment into our medical, legal, cultural, and educational institutions….

    And Illinois became, last month, the first state in the US to require mental health screenings in its public schools.

    Abigail Shrier:

    I want to be on-the-record and crystal clear. This is a disastrous policy that will do vastly more harm than good. Watch as tens of thousands of Illinois kids get shoved into the mental health funnel and convinced they are sick. Many or most of which will be false positives.

    Colin Wright:

    This terrible law will be used to ask every child attending a public school pseudoscientific questions about their "gender identity" that's going to confuse a lot of otherwise normal children and flag them to visit with a "gender specialist."

    Worth bearing in mind amid the Pritzker cheerleading…