100% of DSA members, certainly, but what percentage of “regular” Democrats would also cheer this result? 75%? 95?

/

…. [In] Australia, calling the wrong person with a penis a man is apparently so hurtful as to cause unbearable damage. (By the way, click on the link. Like most publications, they get paid by advertisers these days.)

The Supreme Court of New South Wales has ruled on appeal that a woman convicted of ‘vilification’ for referring to two trans-identified male athletes as men must pay a collective $95,000 to them, in addition to court costs, despite documented evidence of one player having injured at least one female athlete on the pitch.

The decision, handed down today, argues that by referring to the trans-identified males by their sex constitutes “serious contempt” and “severe ridicule,” and orders women’s rights campaigner Kirralie Smith and the publication Binary Australia to publish a statement provided by the court, to remain as a pinned and featured post on her social media for a period of three months.

In November 2023, Justin “Riley” Dennis and Nicholas “Stephanie” Blanch lodged criminal complaints against Smith for raising public awareness of their inclusion in women’s football. Smith, a spokeswoman with Binary Australia, a campaign group dedicated to advocating for single-sex sports in Australia, had been raising public awareness of their inclusion in women’s sports after learning of injuries sustained by female players.

The legal complaint accused Smith and Binary Australia of discrimination for a series of social media posts, made from January to March 2023, identifying the male players by using information and photographs that were obtained from public websites and posts made by Australian football associations.

For referring to them as men in social media posts, Smith has been ordered to hand over $55,000 to Blanch and another $40,000 to Dennis within the next 28 days.

…. 

Strom: As horrific as that is in itself, consider the secondary context: Kirralie Smith is a campaigner for a political cause, that of getting persons born with penises out of a sport where only people with wombs are supposed to compete. Not only is this a widely shared and perfectly normal thing to argue for, but the issue is political and contested, and the Supreme Court of New South Wales is telling her to shut up about it. 

In addition to punitive damages, Smith and Binary Australia have been ordered to publish a public statement “on all social media pages and websites over which they have control,” stating that they violated the Non-Discrimination Act. The statement, according to the ruling, must be “designated as a feature post,” “pinned to the top of the Defendants’ profiles,” and “published prominently on the front page” of the Binary Australia website.

Labeled as Annexure A in court documents, the statement forces Smith and Binary Australia to publicly announce that, by opposing male athletes in women’s sports, they have “contravened section 38S of the Anti-Discrimination Act,” and have “incited hatreds towards, serious contempt for, or severe ridicule of” the two trans-identified male players in posts they made identifying them as men. If the announcement is not made public, Smith risks a $40,000 penalty.

Annexure A also declares that the court has imposed a state of censorship on them, having ordered them “not to repeat or continue the offending behavior” of “inciting hated” towards trans-identified males. The ruling appears to include referring to any trans-identified males as “men.”

Except...not quite. She actually has to become campaigners FOR the very issue she opposes, by telling everybody that her deeply held beliefs are wrong and illegal. 

[Just] another day in the Anglosphere, which is becoming dystopian for anybody who dissents from The Narrative™.

California Dreaming

/

Feds slam LA’s latest homeless figures as Mayor Karen Bass ducks blame

Los Angeles politicos are in turmoil over Friday’s latest figures showing an increase in homelessness from last year — and the Trump administration’s top prosecutor in the city is laying the blame on reckless spending over drugs.

The new numbers show 45,194 people are now experiencing homelessness in the City of Los Angeles, a 3.4% increase from last year, despite officials pouring nearly $3 billion a year into shelters, housing and homeless programs.

Even more alarming, the number of people living unsheltered on streets, sidewalks, in parks and in vehicles jumped 7.9%, reversing two straight years of declines.

Bill Essayli, First Assistant US Attorney for the Central District of California, suggested on social media Saturday that he knew where to point the finger.

“Based on what we’re seeing on the ground, the millions Los Angeles City and County are spending on ‘harm reduction’ (aka handing out Narcan and clean needles) are only fueling the crisis,” he wrote.

“The money needs to go to building shelters and residential treatment beds,” he added.

The city has redirected money, around $250,000, into needle distribution and safer-smoking kits in the MacArthur Park area, The Post previously reported.

Overall, since 2020 Los Angeles County has invested more than $25 million in harm reduction to prevent overdose deaths — a move critics say enables addiction.

…. Many critics say drug addiction, alongside mental health problems, are the real reason why many stay on the streets.

Mayor Karen Bass has decided to blame President Donald Trump for the increase in homelessness in her city.

“The Trump Administration has driven up the cost of gas, groceries, and rent — pushing more families to the edge — and slashed critical safety net funding,” Bass’s office said in a statement.

Yeah, that’s the ticket: these drug-addled maniacs you see defecating on the streets and shooting up in parks were all middle class model citizens before Trump arrived.

I suspect the story below is related; if so, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving crowd:

American Horror Story LA’s burglary epidemic has Hollywood stars on edge: ‘Everyone I know has gotten robbed’

"I don't think I said anything hateful" and neither does Cornell, of course.

/

austin franco relaxes on the cornell campus

Ivy League student who’s ‘not interested in working for a Black’ says Cornell is welcoming him back

The Cornell University student who went viral for declining an interview with an NYC startup because he said he didn’t want to be “working for a Black,” claims he’s returning the upstate Ivy league campus in the fall.

Austin Franco, 19, the rising junior who delivered the message to VrfID’s Black co-founders Gabe and Aiden Einhorn via job board site Handshake in June, told conservative nonprofit Accuracy in Media that he hardly got a slap on the wrist from Cornell.

“As of now, they said there’s not anything going on on their back end. I think it’s because I didn’t say anything that could be classified as hateful,” Franco unknowingly confided to an “undercover investigator” for the organization, who lured him to a meet-up pretending to be a fellow antisemite.

It will not surprise you to learn that young, hateful Austin didn’t say “black” — a howling mob of students and professors would have dragged him off campus by his heels and stoned him if he had — he said “Jew”, and that makes all the difference because ,… reasons. Here’s the original, June 13th story:

A Cornell University student who applied for a summer internship with a Jewish-owned NYC startup rejected the opportunity with a hateful message: ‘Not interested in working for a Jew,” the shocked CEO posted on X.

Austin Franco put his antisemitism on full display when he passed up an interview with VryfID because its co-founders Gabe and Aiden Einhorn are proudly Jewish. 

Franco, 19, delivered the message to both brothers via job board site Handshake after applying for a summer role at the company, which pairs renters with landlords and verifies their identities to prevent fraud. 

…. “Sad world,” Gabe, 24, wrote on X Monday along with a screenshot of Franco’s jaw-dropping eight-word response to trying to schedule a Zoom call: “Not interested in working for a Jew. Thanks.” 

Gabe Einhorn told The Post he felt obligated to share the message to raise awareness of growing antisemitism. He blacked out Franco’s name out of graciousness, but commenters quickly revealed his identity. 

“I felt bad exposing him because I thought he could have made a mistake and he really doesn’t believe this wholeheartedly,” Gabe said. 

But the Ivy Leaguer soon made it clear that he meant every word of what he wrote. 

The student who hails from Virginia doubled down in an X post shared the next day.

“My experiences with Jews have not been pleasant, both in person and online. This is not to say I haven’t had positive experiences, but on the aggregate that is not the case,” Franco wrote:

(cont.)

…. but on the aggregate that is not the case. Obviously, the reactions by your community only serves to further prove my point and indicate your post on X was not done in good faith.

I am sure that if you indicated you didn't want to work for someone who was white or Christian this would not have blown up to the capacity it has here today nor would you have been intimated (did they fondle him? No wonder he was upset) as I have been.

Additionally, even supposing none of this were to happen your actions here today clearly demonstrate a level of immaturity and possibly insecurity, which I wouldn't expect of a 24 year old self proclaimed entrepreneur.

Given that I have been doxed and intimated by your community including having my personal life investigated for no other reason than a single comment I cant imagine any reasonable person not coming to a similar conclusion, per the post above.

George Floyd's attorney, "Black America's Attorney General" eloquently argues against law school affirmative action admissions

/

We took it, just as your ancestors did, so screw you

/

why have the Franciscan Sisters teamed up with aging white nazis? Don’t know, but it’s no more ridiculous than the postering land acknowledgement they’re engaged in

Nothing here that we haven’t pointed out on FWIW for years, but a good read nonetheless

NYT Opinion: 'Land Acknowledgements Are Infuriating'

John Sexton, HotAir:

Yes, yes they are. But in this case the author is a Native American woman coming from a slightly different perspective. She recounts a land acknowledgement given at a church in upstate New York.

The guide acknowledged that we were standing on the ancestral homelands of the Munsee Lenape. He was a careful man in a careful place: the Union Church of Pocantico Hills, the Rockefeller family’s church at the edge of their Kykuit estate in the Hudson Valley of New York. The morning light on the pews streamed in through stained-glass windows by Matisse and Chagall. A few people in the group glanced at me, the Native person in the room, as if to gauge whether what we’d just heard was acceptable.

“We’d like to think they are looking down on us, pleased with what we have done with the land,” the guide concluded his acknowledgment.

I thought about pulling him aside afterward, but my patience was low and I didn’t want to get into it on the first day of a multiday art tour.

In my view, land acknowledgements are a useless waste of time unless the people making them are seriously thinking about giving the land back. And does that ever happen? Not for the most part. The author of this piece sort of agrees, though her view is that Native Americans didn't "own" the land in the first place.

In 2021, Indigenous anthropologists formally asked the American Anthropological Association to pause the practice. There was no evidence, they argued, that acknowledgments produce measurable change.

Because the ritual still treats land as something that can be owned, it names the theft while leaving the idea of ownership untouched. Indigenous relationships to land were not about possession or title. They were about reciprocity, care, responsibility.

Again, that's not my view, but if it were your view then land acknowledgements seem doubly useless. Not only are you not getting the land back or returned to the collective (or whatever) but you're also not touching on a core difference between their world and ours.

The author even gave some grudging respect to conservative critics of the practice. They're acting in bad faith she says (of course), but they have a point.

When the Barack Obama Presidential Center opened last month, its acknowledgment was thorough. The dedication honored the Anishinaabe and the Council of Three Fires. A permanent display on the campus names nine nations beyond them, refuses the past tense and quotes Mr. Obama on broken treaties and promises. The criticism came anyway, most of it from conservatives who would ridicule any acknowledgment at all. The center cost $850 million to construct; its museum charges $30 to enter. If you mean it, give it back, the conservatives said. They are not asking in good faith, but they are asking for the right thing. It names the gap between the words and anything the institution is willing to surrender. 

She's right that conservatives don't really believe in the idea of returning the land, but also that the critics of land acknowledgements are just pointing out that progressives don't believe in it either. They believe in a kind of empty ritual that makes them feel superior while changing absolutely nothing.

The comments are interesting. Here's the top one.

The first time I heard an land acknowledgement, it caught my attention... it was novel and thought provoking. Eventually the practice  became so commonplace that I realized it was simply performative progressive virtue-signalling that was creedal in nature. Now I just roll my eyes and tune out.

Yes, I think we all do. Some of us just pretend not to. But the #2 answer is even better.

Land changes hands all over the world. There is no original owner. What also is never mentioned is that different indigenous nations fought each other on the land, too. It’s not a question of giving anything back. The solution is for everyone who is on the land to treat it with respect and be welcoming to all who cross it. We have a hard time with this. 

Land acknowledgments don’t help much with that, either. They are more about white guilt than anything. Which in itself is stupid: never in my life have I displaced anyone. Guilt is for the long dead. Feeling guilty about where you were born and the colour of your skin makes no sense. Focus on the positive, on the now and the future.

Exactly right. Land acknowledgements are about shaming the dead while you sit on and use the property you shame them for having stolen. Only a progressive could think this is good.

Thank you for this piece, Mr. Walker. 

Land acknowledgments are nothing more than virtue signaling.  I’ve always felt a deep discomfort after such pronouncements. Using the term, ‘stolen land’ and then proceeding with the program is meaningless to the people who were irreparably harmed. 

….

It's warfare and fighting over land all the way down.

I have yet to hear a statement saying the Apaches owned this territory, which they stole from the Pueblo, who stole it from...., who stole it from the original natives who inhabited this land 22,000 years ago before the current crop of Native Americans came along and replaced them roughly 14,000 years ago.

One more that extends this point.

The native people of North America absolutely had concepts of territory. They engaged in conquest. They maintained enclosed villages and hunting grounds from which they extracted resources and would defend that territory from outsiders. A more accurate statement was that they did not necessarily have a concept of personal land ownership in fee simple. Land ownership was more similar to a collective trust for their defined community. 

However, they did have other forms of personal property. Tools, weapons, clothing, sleeping mats, an area in shared lodging or a small dwelling all were possessed by individuals. 

The romantic mythology expressed here is incorrect, kind of ridiculous, and a little offensive.

Land acknowledgements are dumb. It would be more honest for a spokesman to get up and praise his forbearers who seized the land so he could be the one welcoming other people to it many years later. Would it be offensive? Yes. But it would be more honest.

A podcast very much worth watching

/

I rarely read or watch podcasts because I read quickly, and I grow irritated listening to a 10 minute, let alone 60 minute discussion of an issue when I could read a transcript of the thing in 5 or less. But I do listen to Victor Davis Hanson’s own show from time to time because he always has something interesting and thought-provoking to say. So when I saw this one recommended by Scott Johnson @ PowerLine, I paid attention. Excellent take, in my opinion, on Trump’s possible mistake in Iran, confusing a theocracy ‘s openness to making a deal — none — vs ordinary dictatorships like Russia and North Korea. Begins about 12 minutes in.

Around the world with VDH

Our friend Victor Davis Hanson sat for an interview with the Washinton Post’s Kate Andrews. Andrews is one of the rotating hosts for the Post’s Make It Make Sense podcast. I hadn’t heard of the podcasat and haven’t seen anything about this episode. It is available at the Washington Post here, but also on podcast platforms including YouTube (below).

In its 35 minutes they cover the California dystopia (12 minutes), Homer’s Odyssey (three minutes), deals with Iran (six minutes), and The Counter Revolution: The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA Movement. The last is his forthcoming book, to be published by Basic on September 8. There the podcast ends abruptly and leaves you wanting more. I thought some readers might enjoy it as weekend viewing.