Genocide Enablers

Backing Hamas isn’t the first time the U.N. and ‘the international community’ have chosen the side of killers over their victims

BY

BEN POSER

MAY 05, 2024

Then-U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan walks by skulls at the Mwulire Genocide Memorial in Rwanda, May 8, 1998

ALEXANDER JOE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

April 7, 2024, marked six months since the largest genocidal mass murder of Jews this century; it also was the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the Rwandan genocide. Of the various similarities any rational person can discern between the two crimes, one stands out in its repulsiveness: Just as it was a generation ago, the United Nations is perhaps the greatest facilitator of genocide on Earth.

The U.N. was established in 1945 as a means of preventing two things: a “hot” world war on the numbing scale of the Second, and the extermination of any group of human beings based upon their identity. Innovations in nuclear weapons technology made the first too catastrophic to risk (thus moot), but the U.N.’s responsibility to stop genocide, codified the year of Israel’s rebirth, still stands. Unforgivably, since that time, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide has never influenced the United Nations to stop any of the genocides which have occurred since the Holocaust.

In those postwar years, the U.N. has devoted much of its money and moral authority to attacking not Cambodia, China, Sudan, or Zimbabwe, but Israel—a country created by the survivors of genocide in the hope of preventing another. It must never be forgotten that when the General Assembly’s Resolution 3379 declared Zionism a form of racism in 1975, two genocides which had nothing to do with Jews—those in Pol Pot’s Cambodia and Idi Amin’s Uganda—were occurring simultaneously, eventually killing approximately 3.3 million people combined. Similarly, post-2000, while issuing one defamatory resolution after another against Israel, genocide was occurring in Congo, Darfur, and, more recently, throughout Iraq and Syria at the hands of ISIS. But the latter took place during Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in 2014, so, naturally, a U.N. commission later issued a report accusing Israel of committing “war crimes.”

Even more damning, though, is how the U.N.’s actions concerning Rwanda parallel its current mistreatment of Israel as it fights for its survival against jihadi armies.

Perhaps the most stunning correlation between the U.N.’s abetment of genocide in Rwanda and in Israel 30 years later is its insistence upon ‘humanitarian’ support for mass murderers and their civilian accomplices.

Three months before the genocide began, on Jan. 11, 1994, General Roméo Dallaire, commander of the U.N.’s peacekeeping force in Kigali, urgently cabled U.N. headquarters with intelligence that the Hutu-dominated government was planning to exterminate all Tutsis in the country as part of its war against rebels of the same tribe in the north. A conscientious informant told the peacekeepers of his work training young men to kill Tutsis at the rate of 3,000 per hour and of crucial arms caches. Dallaire asked New York for permission to raid the caches, neutralizing the government’s ability to arm its Interahamwe killers. Peacekeeping headquarters responded, however, by demanding that Dallaire go nowhere near the weapons, share this critical intelligence with the very Hutu gangsters planning the murders, and avoid using force at all costs. Just as the U.N. knows today that its employees and agencies work directly with Hamas, and indoctrinate children to kill Jews, now as then, they do nothing and continue to fund the terrorists.

The man who ignored the information which arguably could have saved nearly a million lives was Kofi Annan, then U.N. under-secretary general for peacekeeping operations. Annan toldPBS in 2004 that he ordered Dallaire to share his intelligence with the genocide’s architects because “sometimes it is a very good deterrent” to inform rogue states that “we know what you are up to”—as if such a tactic has ever worked before or since. Not surprisingly, during Belgian government investigations into the Hutus’ murder of Belgian peacekeeping soldiers, Annan blocked Dallaire from testifying, and declined to testify himself.

Annan made another telling remark in the PBS interview. Pointing the finger at Security Council members, the former secretary general noted that, although these states had even better intelligence than his office, he knew the “mood in the council”: The members, Annan said, were not going to say, “We are going to send in the brigade” or “send reinforcements to General Dallaire.” While clearly self-serving, Annan’s remark is a reminder of the complicity of the so-called “international community,” including the U.S., which, at the time, did not wish to even utter the word “genocide.” “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing,” Susan Rice, then director for international organizations and peacekeeping at the National Security Council, said, “what will be the effect on the November [congressional] election?”

The author who later excoriated Rice for this comment was none other than Samantha Power, who, two decades later, would nevertheless join Rice in government as ambassador to the U.N., when the Obama administration was abetting the mass slaughter in Syria. In her current role as USAID administrator, Power, in order to advance the Biden administration’s obscene policy of “surging” aid to Gaza, has falsely claimed that Israel is causing a “famine.”

Annan’s boss during the genocide, then-Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, was the one responsible for covertly selling the Rwandan government much of their weapons stockpile in the first place. That $26 million worth of weapons, approved by Boutros-Ghali while still Egyptian foreign minister in 1990, made up a large part of the supplies the U.N. blocked Dallaire from seizing. Boutros-Ghali later dismissed Dallaire’s original fax as merely one among many “alarming reports from the field,” thus not worth serious consideration at the time. Once the genocide was in full flood, however, all Boutros-Ghali and Annan allowed Dallaire to do was attempt to negotiate an impossible cease-fire between the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front and the very government slaughtering their kin. Though he admitted to PBS in 2004 that “I failed in Rwanda,” he never truly took personal responsibility. When he traveled to Rwanda in 1995 and reluctantly visited the site of the barbaric Nyarubuyechurch massacre, he toured the untouched mounds of putrefied innocents for 18 minutes, told the living to be of good courage, and then left.

Current U.N. secretary general, Antonio Guterres, did something arguably worse 28 years later. Barely two weeks after Oct. 7, he appeared to give subtle justification to Hamas’ own Nyarubuye massacre of Jews, saying that it “did not happen in a vacuum.”

Still, perhaps the most stunning correlation between the U.N.’s abetment of genocide in Rwanda and in Israel 30 years later is its insistence upon “humanitarian” support for mass murderers and their civilian accomplices. A less-remembered side effect of the Rwandan civil war was the exodus of around a million Hutus into Tanzania and Zaire, whom the U.N. and international community aided lavishly. Many of these refugees were known at the time to have either supported the genocide’s aims or personally been part of the Interahamwe death squads, but they were given food, medicine, and shelter anyway. The thousands of killers among them became community leaders within the refugee camps and then, when the genocide was over, returned to their villages to live in sight of those few who had survived their butchery. 

Today, the U.N. demands that Israel supply food, medicine, and shelter to people who passionately support Hamas and their genocidal exploits. Under severe U.S. pressure—including threats of stopping arms supplies, sanctions, and support for ICC prosecution of Israeli officials and IDF soldiers—Israel has been forced to oblige, even though they know that Hamas will steal the aid for itself, as it habitually does. The Biden administration has even begun constructing a $320 million pier to supply the terror group’s enclave, and is demanding Israel protect the aid convoys replenishing its enemy.

Nevertheless, there is one difference between the U.N.’s perfidy in Rwanda and hostility toward Israel. In Rwanda, the U.N.—even while often refusing to use the word—did understand that Hutus were, in fact, committing genocide against Tutsis. Today, however, the same U.N. actually accuses the victims of an act of genocide of being the murderers, while blessing the act’s perpetrators as the true victims.

It is only fitting, then, that one U.N. official reportedly describedpointless cease-fire talks between the RPF and Hutu killers as “rather like wanting Hitler to reach a cease-fire with the Jews.” No observation could better encapsulate three decades of moral depravity dressed up as idealistic decency.

Ben Poser is executive editor of White Rose Magazine, executive director of the American Anti-Slavery Group, and research director for the Jewish Leadership Project. He holds a degree in Classical Archaeology and Ancient History from Brandeis University.

Source: Tablet Magazine

What You Aren’t Hearing About Marijuana’s Health Effects

Bertha Madras, a leading expert on weed, outlines the science linking it to psychiatric disorders, permanent brain damage, and other serious harms.

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By Allysia Finley

May 10, 2024 at 3:13 pm ET

Young people who smoked marijuana in the 1960s were seen as part of the counterculture. Now the cannabis culture is mainstream. A 2022 surveysponsored by the National Institutes of Health found that 28.8% of Americans age 19 to 30 had used marijuana in the preceding 30 days—more than three times as many as smoked cigarettes. Among those 35 to 50, 17.3% had used weed in the previous month, versus 12.2% for cigarettes.

While marijuana use remains a federal crime, 24 states have legalized it and another 14 permit it for medical purposes. Last week media outlets reported that the Biden administration is moving to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous Schedule III drug—on par with anabolic steroids and Tylenol with codeine—which would provide tax benefits and a financial boon to the pot industry. 

Bertha Madras thinks this would be a colossal mistake. Ms. Madras, 81, is a psychobiology professor at Harvard Medical School and one of the foremost experts on marijuana. “It’s a political decision, not a scientific one,” she says. “And it’s a tragic one.” In 2024, that is a countercultural view.

Ms. Madras has spent 60 years studying drugs, starting with LSD when she was a graduate student at Allan Memorial Institute of Psychiatry, an affiliate of Montreal’s McGill University, in the 1960s. “I was interested in psychoactive drugs because I thought they could not only give us some insight into how the brain works, but also on how the brain undergoes dysfunction and disease states,” she says. 

In 2015 the World Health Organization asked her to do a detailed review of cannabis and its medical uses. The 41-page report documented scant evidence of marijuana’s medicinal benefits and reams of research on its harms, from cognitive impairment and psychosis to car accidents.

She continued to study marijuana, including at the addiction neurobiology lab she directs at Mass General Brigham McLean Hospital. In a phone interview this week, she walked me through the scientific literature on marijuana, which runs counter to much of what Americans hear in the media.

For starters, she says, the “addiction potential of marijuana is as high or higher than some other drug,” especially for young people. About 30% of those who use cannabis have some degree of a use disorder. By comparison, only 13.5% of drinkers are estimated to be dependent on alcohol. Sure, alcohol can also cause harm if consumed in excess. But Ms. Madras sees several other distinctions. 

One or two drinks will cause only mild inebriation, while “most people who use marijuana are using it to become intoxicated and to get high.” Academic outcomes and college completion rates for young people are much worse for those who use marijuana than for those who drink, though there’s a caveat: “It’s still a chicken and egg whether or not these kids are more susceptible to the effects of marijuana or they’re using marijuana for self-medication or what have you.” 

Marijuana and alcohol both interfere with driving, but with the former there are no medical “cutoff points” to determine whether it’s safe to get behind the wheel. As a result, prohibitions against driving under the influence are less likely to be enforced for people who are high. States where marijuana is legal have seen increases in car accidents. 

One of the biggest differences between the two substances is how the body metabolizes them. A drink will clear your system within a couple of hours. “You may wake up after binge drinking in the morning with a headache, but the alcohol is gone.” By contrast, “marijuana just sits there and sits there and promotes brain adaptation.”

That’s worse than it sounds. “We always think of the brain as gray matter,” Ms. Madras says. “But the brain uses fat to insulate its electrical activity, so it has a massive amount of fat called white matter, which is fatty. And that’s where marijuana gets soaked up. . . . My lab showed unequivocally that blood levels and brain levels don’t correspond at all—that brain levels are much higher than blood levels. They’re two to three times higher, and they persist once blood levels go way down.” Even if people quit using pot, “it can persist in their brain for a while.” 

Thus marijuana does more lasting damage to the brain than alcohol, especially at the high potencies being consumed today. Levels of THC—the main psychoactive ingredient in pot—are four or more times as high as they were 30 years ago. That heightens the risks, which range from anxiety and depression to impaired memory and cannabis hyperemesis syndrome—cycles of severe vomiting caused by long-term use.

There’s mounting evidence that cannabis can cause schizophrenia. A large-scale study last year that examined health histories of some 6.9 million Danes between 1972 and 2021 estimated that up to 30% of young men’s schizophrenia diagnoses could have been prevented had they not become dependent on pot. Marijuana is worse in this regard than many drugs usually perceived as more dangerous. “Users of other potent recreational drugs develop chronic psychosis at much lower rates,” Ms. Madras says. When healthy volunteers in research experiments are given THC—as has been done in 15 studies—they develop transient symptoms of psychosis. “And if you treat them with an antipsychotic drug such as haloperidol, those symptoms will go away.”

Marijuana has also been associated with violent behavior, including in a study published this week in the International Journal of Drug Policy. Data from observational studies are inadequate to demonstrate causal relationships, but Ms. Madras says that the link between marijuana and schizophrenia fits all six criteria that scientists use to determine causality, including the strength of the association and its consistency. 

Ms. Madras says at the beginning of the interview that she was operating on three hours of sleep after crashing on scientific projects. Yet she is impressively lucid and energized. She peppers her explanations with citations of studies and is generous in crediting other researchers’ work.

Another cause for concern, she notes, is that more pregnant women are using pot, which has been linked to increased preterm deliveries, admissions of newborns into neonatal intensive care units, lower birth weights and smaller head circumferences. THC crosses the placenta and mimics molecules that our bodies naturally produce that regulate brain development.

“What happens when you examine kids who have been exposed during that critical period?” Ms. Madras asks. During adolescence, she answers, they show an increased incidence of aggressive behavior, cognitive dysfunction, and symptoms of ADHD and obsessive-compulsive disorders. They have reduced white and gray matter.

A drug that carries so many serious side effects would be required by the Food and Drug Administration to carry a black-box warning, the highest-level alert for drugs with severe safety risks. Marijuana doesn’t—but only because the FDA hasn’t cleared it. 

The agency has selectively approved cannabis compounds for the treatment of seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut or Dravet syndrome, nausea associated with chemotherapy for cancer, and anorexia associated with weight loss in AIDS patients. But these approved products are prescribed at significantly less potent doses than the pot being sold in dispensaries that are legal under state law.

What about medicinal benefits? Ms. Madras says she has reviewed “every single case of therapeutic indication for marijuana—and there are over 100 now that people have claimed—and I frankly found that the only one that came close to having some evidence from randomized controlled trials was the neuropathic pain studies.” That’s “a very specific type of pain, which involves damage to nerve endings like in diabetes or where there’s poor blood supply,” she explains. 

For other types of pain, and for all other conditions, there is no strong evidence from high-quality randomized trials to support its use. When researchers did a “challenge test on normal people where they induce pain and tried to see whether or not marijuana reduces the pain, it was ineffective.”

Ms. Madras sees parallels between the marketing of pot now and of opioids a few decades ago. “The benefits have been exaggerated, the risks have been minimized, and skeptics in the scientific community have been ignored,” she says. “The playbook is always to say it’s safe and effective and nonaddictive in people.”

Advocates of legalization assert that cannabis can’t be properly studied unless the federal government removes it from Schedule I. Bunk, Ms. Madras says: “I have been able to study THC in my research program.” It requires more paperwork, but “I did all the paperwork. . . . It’s not too difficult.”

Instead of bankrolling ballot initiatives to legalize pot, she says, George Sorosand other wealthy donors who “catalyzed this whole movement” should be funding rigorous research: “If these folks, these billionaires, had just taken that money and put it into clinical trials, I would have been at peace.”

It’s a travesty, Ms. Madras adds, that the “FDA has decided that they’re going to listen to that movement rather than to what the science says.” While the reclassification wouldn’t make recreational marijuana legal under federal law, dispensaries and growers would be able to deduct their business expenses on their taxes. The rescheduling would also send a cultural signal that marijuana use is normal. 

Ms. Madras worries that “it sets a precedent for the future.” She points to the movement in states to legalize psychedelic substances, for whose medicinal benefits there also isn’t strong scientific evidence. Meantime, she says it makes no sense that politicians continuously urge more spending on addiction treatment and harm reduction while weakening laws that prevent people from becoming addicted in the first place.

Her rejoinder to critics who say the war on drugs was a failure? “This is not a war on drugs. It’s a defense of the human brain at every possible age from in utero to old age.”

Ms. Finley is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.

Source: Wall Street Journal

Canada Open To Recognize Terrorists

Canada accelerates its decent down the immoral rabbit hole as it abstains in a vote at the corrupt UN  .

The EPOCH TIMES headline reads:

‘Canada Abstains on Palestine Recognition at UN, Open to Statehood Before Peace’

It gets easier to do such actions when one abandons the Supremacy of God provision in our Constitution and the theft of our rights and freedoms during the so called pandemic.

Of course, the Egyptians don’t want their brothers and sisters , neither does Jordan want any more or the rest of the ethic kin of the Palestinians . The Israeli Bedouin ( Arab) that I spoke to in the desert when I visited there did not want to leave Israel and go to Gaza or any of the other undemocratic Arab neighbours . 

They liked freedom too much .

That which we are losing in Canada.

Texas AG Responds to Austin City Council Passing Pro-Transgender Resolution

Austin City Hall in Austin, Texas., on November 6, 2018. (Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images)

By Mary Lou Lang

5/3/2024

The Austin City Council (ACC) in Texas voted on Thursday to pass a resolution in support of transgender individuals seeking “gender-affirming” care, which appears to be in direct violation of state law that prohibits such acts on minors.

In a 10–1 vote, the ACC passed the resolution directing city resources away from enforcement of state law SB 14 which prohibits “gender transitioning or gender reassignment procedure or treatment” for minors under the age of 18.

“On May 2, 2024, the Austin City Council passed a resolution that purportedly directs the city manager and city employees not to comply with Texas’s prohibition of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and invasive surgeries for children who believe their gender is different than their biological sex,” said Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in prepared remarks.

“Riddled with problems, the resolution starts with the falsehood that such prohibited treatments have ‘proven to be evidence-based, medically necessary, and lifesaving.’ In addition to a growing body of medical research rejecting such claims, Texas concluded that the proposed treatments for minors are dangerous, and banned the practices by passing SB 14,” Mr. Paxton said.

The attorney general said his office stands ready to ensure that Austin obeys state law.

“If the City of Austin refuses to follow the law and protect children, my office will consider every possible response to ensure compliance,” Mr. Paxton said. “Texas municipalities do not have the authority to pick and choose which state laws they will or will not abide by. The people of Texas have spoken, and the Austin City Council must listen.”

The resolution was introduced by Council Member Chito Vela, who represents District 4. It was co-sponsored by four other council members—Ryan Alter, Zo Qadri, José Velásquez, and Vanessa Fuentes.

The one no vote was Council Member Mackenzie Kelly of District 6.

“Except to the extent required by law, it is the policy of the City that no City personnel, funds, or resources shall be used to investigate, criminally prosecute, or impose administrative penalties upon: (1) a transgender or nonbinary individual for seeking healthcare, or (2) an individual or organization for providing or assisting with the provision of healthcare to a transgender or nonbinary individual,” the resolution states.

It also directs Austin police to make enforcement of SB 14 their lowest priority.

According to Mr. Paxton, the resolution is nothing more than an “empty political statement” citing that each clause in the resolution directs the city manager to defy SB 14 with the qualifying statement “except to the extent required by law.” He said the ACC would order the city manager and employees to follow the law while pretending to say the opposite.

“The vote by the Austin City Council today to support sex change operations for kids is infuriating but comes at no surprise. Repeatedly, Austin City Council has cared more about virtue signaling than the health and safety of its citizens,” Mary Elizabeth Castle, director of Government Relations for Texas Values, told The Epoch Times via email.

Ms. Castle said: “the resolution by its nature does not address the specific enforcement of law and instead directs entities like the local police department and the district attorney, who were not given enforcement power by SB 14, to ignore the law. The resolution is mostly a shell game to make it seem like Austin City Council will not comply with the law.”

In previous years, Ms. Castle said the ACC’s measures with pro-life laws and defunding the police have directed law enforcement to “either ignore complaints regarding laws on social issues they do not agree with or push them to the bottom of the stack.

“Today’s action signals to the larger Austin community that sex change operations for kids are no big deal, when in fact transitioning a child can be deadly and dangerous,” said Ms. Castle.

A new long-term study out of the Netherlands found many adolescents who have doubts about their identity and gender identity grow out of it. The study also found it is normal to have doubts about one’s identity and it is actually relatively common.

In 2023, Mr. Abbott signed SB 14 into law. The law prohibits any physician or health care provider from “transitioning a child’s biological sex as determined by the sex organs, chromosomes, and endogenous profiles of the child or affirming the child ’s perception of the child ’s sex if that perception is inconsistent with the child ’s biological sex.”

The law prohibits doctors from performing numerous procedures on minors as part of gender transitioning including castration, hysterectomy, metoidioplasty, orchiectomy, among others.

Prescription drugs associated with transitioning such as puberty blockers and supraphysiologic doses of testosterone to females or estrogen to males were also prohibited in Texas.

Mary Lou Lang

Author 

Mary Lou Lang is a freelance journalist and was a frequent contributor to Just The News, the Washington Free Beacon, and the Daily Caller. She also wrote for several local newspapers. Prior to freelancing, she worked in several editorial positions in finance, insurance and economic development magazines. 

May 6, 2024 › Big Tech › Censorship/Surveillance › News

CENSORSHIP/SURVEILLANCE

‘Despicable’: Facebook Censors RFK Jr. Campaign Video, Calls It a ‘Mistake’

The super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president said it plans to sue Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, for the company’s “blatant censorship” of a new film about Kennedy and his work challenging corporate corruption.

by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

MAY 6, 2024

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The super PAC supporting Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for president said it plans to sue Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, for the company’s “blatant censorship” of a new film about Kennedy and his work challenging corporate corruption.

Super PACs, or “political action committees,” can raise unlimited sums of money to advocate for or against political candidates, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Actor Woody Harrelson narrates the 30-minute biographical film, “Who is Bobby Kennedy?,” which details Kennedy’s life and why he’s running for president.

American Values 2024, the super PAC, bought the film after the creator of Apple TV+’s “The Morning Show” Jay Carson and director Mike Piscitelli produced it.

Kennedy, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) founder and chairman-on-leave, said in a press release, “If supporters of all candidates do not have equal access to the digital public square, then we have a democracy in name only.”

He added:

“This goes beyond restricting freedom of expression on issues and ideas. Meta is censoring a biographical film about a major candidate in an election year. How can voters make an informed choice if they are denied basic information about a candidate’s life?”

Kennedy said he and his team “are looking into the legal implications of Meta’s actions and whether we have grounds for a lawsuit.”

“But we are hoping that this egregious violation of the spirit — if not the letter — of the principle of free speech will meet with condemnation in the court of public opinion.”

Meta says it was a ‘mistake’

Meta spokesperson Andy Stone on May 5 told The New York Times that the video was inaccurately flagged as spam and “mistakenly blocked.” The issue “was corrected within a few hours,” he said.

The Defender asked Meta to clarify how or why it had mistakenly flagged the video as spam — “Was there an error in the spam-finding algorithm? Was there something in the film’s content that appeared to be spam?” — and whether the company had issued an official apology for the mistake.

Meta spokesperson Corey Chambliss told The Defender, “Thank you for reaching out. The link was mistakenly blocked and was quickly restored once the issue was discovered.”

Kennedy, CHD have faced censorship ‘for years’

CHD CEO Mary Holland called Meta’s censorship of the video “despicable.” She said it’s “the continuation of the censorship Children’s Health Defense has faced for years.”

The film includes footage of CHD President Emerita Lyn Redwood, describing how Kennedy stood up to Big Pharma after he listened to mothers who believed their children had been harmed by mercury in vaccines.

In the film, Redwood and Kennedy explain that top U.S. public health officials in 2000 withheld Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from public view — data that showed mercury-based thimerosal, a vaccine ingredient, could have been responsible for a dramatic increase in autism and other neurological disorders among children.

Holland told The Defender, “Health and democracy will not survive in the face of pervasive censorship. The truth, especially about vaccines, is critical.”

“CHD is proud to be at the forefront of the battle for freedom of the press,” she said, “and freedom of speech, indispensable constitutional principles for ensuring our children’s health and future.”

CHD General Counsel Kim Mack Rosenberg agreed, saying CHD is proud to be “taking a lead in courts around the country to stand up for free speech rights.”

CHD has a pending lawsuit against Facebook (Meta Platforms) in the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The suit alleges government officials colluded with the social media giant to censor CHD.

Facebook deplatformed CHD on Aug. 17, 2022, and disabled Kennedy’s personal Instagram accounton Feb. 10, 2021.

“In addition to Meta Platforms,” Holland said, “CHD is litigating against legacy media institutions, including The Associated Press, Reuters and The Washington Post, for violating antitrust laws.” The suit alleges members of the Trusted News Initiative violated antitrust laws and the U.S. Constitution when they collectively colluded with tech giants to censor online news.

Kennedy and CHD in March 2023 sued President Joe Biden, Dr. Anthony Fauci and other top administration officials and federal agencies, alleging they “waged a systematic, concerted campaign” to compel the nation’s three largest social media companies to censor constitutionally protected speech.

The case, Kennedy v. Biden, was consolidated in July 2023, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, with another censorship lawsuit, Murthy v. Missouri. The U.S. Supreme Court in March heard arguments on an injunction related to the case and is expected to rule early this summer.

Mack Rosenberg said that the plaintiffs in these cases — particularly Kennedy v. Biden — represent the interests of Americans who have a First Amendment right to receive information from a variety of sources.

“It is antithetical to democracy,” Mack Rosenberg said, “to allow the government and its proxies to dictate what we can read, hear, and see and, frankly, insults the intelligence of Americans by essentially suggesting Americans cannot weigh information from a variety of viewpoints in order to make independent decisions.”

Super PAC accuses Meta of ‘brazenly censoring speech’

After buying the film, American Values 2024 on May 3 launched it on YouTube.

American Values 2024 is a super PAC “committed to educating and mobilizing voters to elect candidates who will restore and protect the soul of democracy” in the U.S. The group endorses Kennedy for the presidency.

The super PAC today wrote on Substack that many viewers tried to share the film on Facebook and Instagram but couldn’t.

The reasons Meta gave users were inconsistent, according to a press release by Kennedy’s presidential campaign team. Some were told the video was spam. Others were told the link went to a malicious website or that it contained “graphic and violent content.”

Some viewers were told the video violated community standards, while others simply got an error message saying that the “upload failed.”

Kennedy’s campaign collected screenshots from users and released a sampling in its press release.

Carson said, “Silicon Valley companies blocking political ads with which they don’t agree, while giving shifting and dissembling answers as to why they’re doing it, strikes at the heart of our democracy.”

After Meta started allowing users to share the video, it continued algorithmically suppressing the video — “to the point where the video gets zero views even when posted by users with thousands of followers,” the Kennedy team’s press release said.

“Not only were users prevented from posting the video, but in many cases, Meta also suspended their accounts for two or six days,” the press release said.

Despite Meta’s censorship, the film is trending on X, formerly known as Twitter, where the video has been viewed more than 12 million times and shared by thousands, the super PAC said.

The super PAC said the film shows that the prevailing narrative about Kennedy — which portrays him as “crazy” and “dangerous” — doesn’t match “the reality of who he is and the work he’s done as a successful environmental attorney and corruption fighter.”

The Defender on occasion posts content related to Children’s Health Defense’s nonprofit mission that features Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s views on the issues CHD and The Defender regularly cover. In keeping with Federal Election Commission rules, this content does not represent an endorsement of Mr. Kennedy, who is on leave from CHD and is running as an independent for president of the U.S.

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa.

The H Stands For Hype

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The New York Times calls hydrogen a “renewable energy source” and other silliness about using an element that’s “a thermodynamic obscenity” 

MAY 9

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Detail from a photo published in the New York Times as part of an April 30 article on hydrogen. Photo: Felix Schmitt for the New York Times

The Sun is mainly made of hydrogen. But there is nothing new under the Sun, and that includes hydrogen.

That Old Testament reference — “what has been will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” — is appropriate here because the hype about hydrogen seems nearly as old as the Bible itself. 

On June 10, 1975, during the 94th Congress, the House of Representatives held the first of two “investigative hearings on the subject of hydrogen — its production, utilization, and potential effects on our energy economy of the future.” The hearing was chaired by Mike McCormack, a Democrat from Washington state, who claimed hydrogen “has the potential of playing the same kind of role in our energy system as electricity does today.” 

In 1996, the Chicago Sun-Times declared “The first steps toward what proponents call the hydrogen economy are being taken.” In 2003, Jeremy Rifkin, an “economic and social theorist,” published The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the Worldwide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth. In that book, Rifkin claimed that “Globalization represents the end stage of the fossil-fuel era.” Turning “toward hydrogen is a promissory note for a safer world,” he averred. 

President George W. Bush bought the hydrogen hype. In his 2003 State of the Union Address, he said, “With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles” to taking hydrogen-fueled automobiles “from laboratory to showroom so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free.” A few months after that speech, his administration announced a collaborative effort with the European Union for the “development of a hydrogen economy,” including the  technologies “needed for mass production of safe and affordable hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles.” The White House claimed in a 2003 press release that the effort would “improve America’s energy security by significantly reducing the need for imported oil.”

The history of the hype matters because we live in ahistorical times. Or, as author Jeff Minick explained in 2022, we are plagued by “presentism.” Presentism, Minick wrote, “is the reason so many young people can name the Kardashians but can’t tell you the importance of Abraham Lincoln or why we fought in World War II.”

Presentism helps explain why, on April 30, the New York Times published a piece headlined, “Hydrogen Offers Germany a Chance to Take a Lead in Green Energy,” which ignores the long history of hydrogen’s failure to live up to the forecasts. But blaming presentism can’t account for the vapidity of the article, which hinges on this nut graf:

The concept of hydrogen as a renewable energy source has been around for years, but only within the past decade has the idea of its potential to replace fossil fuels to power heavy industry taken off, leading to increased investment and advances in the technology. (Emphasis added.)

The idea of hydrogen may (or may not) be taking off, but hydrogen is not a “source” of energy, it’s an energy carrier. Calling hydrogen an energy “source” is like calling Stormy Daniels an “actress.” 

Hydrogen is abundant in the universe. But it’s not a source of energy. Instead, like electricity and gasoline, it must be manufactured. The most common ways are by splitting water through electrolysis, or via steam-methane reforming, which uses high-pressure steam to produce hydrogen from methane. 

There are other forehead-slapping statements in the Times article written by Stanley Reed and Melissa Eddy, who traveled to the German city of Duisburg to visit a factory that makes electrolyzers. “If adopted widely,” they wrote, “the devices could help clean up heavy industry such as steel-making, in Germany and elsewhere.” Well, yes, if “adopted widely.” But despite decades of frothy predictions from Rifkin and others, electrolyzers haven’t been adopted widely because making and using hydrogen on a large scale is — as my friend, Steve Brick, puts it — “a thermodynamic obscenity.”

The cover of Rifkin’s 2003 book.

Reed and Eddy ignore the energy intensity of making hydrogen, only offering that by using “electricity to split water” the electrolyzer “produces hydrogen, a carbon-free gas that could help power mills like the one in Duisburg.” That’s true. But how much electricity is needed? And where the heck is German industry, which is already being hammered by expensive gas and power, going to get the juice? At what cost? Those questions are not addressed.

To be clear, lots of other media outlets are hyping hydrogen. And the hype is surging because of fat government subsidies. Reed and Eddy explain that the German government has earmarked some $14.2 billion “for investment in about two dozen projects to develop hydrogen.” Here in the U.S., the 45V tax credit in the Inflation Reduction Act provides lucrative subsidies for hydrogen production. Big business is lining up to get those subsidies. In February, energy giant Exxon Mobil warned that it might cancel a proposed hydrogen project at its Baytown, Texas refinery depending on how the Treasury Department interpreted the “clean” hydrogen rules in the IRA.

Regardless of tax credits and subsidies, making and using hydrogen is a high-entropy, high-cost process. As a friend in the oil refining business told me last year, “If you like $6-per-gallon gasoline, you’re gonna love $14-to-$20-per-gallon hydrogen.”

As for Brick’s “thermodynamic obscenity” line, the numbers — which I’ll examine in a moment — are easy to understand. Hydrogen is insanely expensive, in energy terms, to manufacture. It takes about three units of energy, in the form of electricity, to produce two units of hydrogen energy. In other words, the hydrogen economy requires scads of electricity (a high quality form of energy) to make a tiny molecule that’s hard to handle, difficult to store, and expensive to use. 

Among the biggest challenges in handling and storing the gas is the problem of “hydrogen embrittlement,” which can occur when metals are exposed to hydrogen. That means we can’t use existing gas pipelines or tanks to move and store the gas. As for using the gas, yes, it can be blended with natural gas and put into turbines or reciprocating engines. However, the best way to use it is in a fuel cell. And from where will those devices come? I’m old enough to collect Social Security. I’ve been reporting about the energy sector for nearly four decades, and yet, in all that time, I’ve seen precisely three fuel cells.  

How much would the hydrogen economy cost? In 2020, Bloomberg NEF estimated that producing enough “green” hydrogen to meet 25% of global energy demand would require “more electricity than the world now generates from all sources and an investment of $11 trillion in production and storage.”

The obscene thermodynamics of hydrogen can be understood by looking at an announcement made last year by Constellation Energy. According to a March 10, 2023 article in Nuclear NewsWire, a new hydrogen production project at the company’s Nine Mile Point nuclear plant in New York, “is part of a $14.5 million cost-shared project between Constellation and the Department of Energy.” Of that sum, $5.8 million was coming from the DOE. The article explained that “Using 1.25 megawatts of zero-carbon energy per hour,” the plant’s electrolyzer will produce “560 kilograms of clean hydrogen per day.”

The math is simple. The plant uses 30 megawatt-hours of electricity to produce 560 kg of hydrogen per day. One MWh of electricity is equal to 3,600 megajoules of energy, and one kg of hydrogen contains about 130 MJ of energy. Therefore, Nine Mile Point uses 108,000 MJ of electricity to produce 72,800 MJ of hydrogen, or 1.5 MJ of electricity for 1 MJ of hydrogen.

Such a lousy EROEI (energy return on energy invested) should immediately disqualify hydrogen from serious energy policy discussions. But that, of course, hasn’t happened. It must also be noted that the EROEI is worse than what I stated above because the hydrogen, once produced, must be stored and fed back into another energy conversion device to make electricity or heat. In that process, more energy will be lost.

I’ll end with a bit more history. In 2004, the National Research Council and the National Academy of Engineering published a 267-page report called “The Hydrogen Economy: Opportunities, Costs, Barriers, and R&D Needs.” In the concluding section, the report said, “making hydrogen from renewable energy through the intermediate step of making electricity, a premium energy source, requires further breakthroughs in order to be competitive.” It continued:

There are major hurdles on the path to achieving the vision of the hydrogen economy; the path will not be simple or straightforward. Many of the committee’s observations generalize across the entire hydrogen economy: the hydrogen system must be cost-competitive, it must be safe and appealing to the consumer, and it would preferably offer advantages from the perspectives of energy security and CO₂emissions. Specifically for the transportation sector, dramatic progress in the development of fuel cells, storage devices, and distribution systems is especially critical. Widespread success is not certain.

Widespread success of the hydrogen economy wasn’t certain in 2004, and it’s not certain now. Or, to put it in ecclesiastical terms, there’s nothing new under the hydrogen sun.

Source: Robert Bryce, American Writer on Energy Issues

Rex Murphy , Canada’s Great Wit , Passes .

When a voter was asked many years ago why they did not vote for Rex in his losing attempt for a Party nomination in his native Newfoundland,  the answer to a local reporter was: I would vote for Rex if understood those big words. 

But later Canada understood him as an insightful , eloquent spokesman in his various media capacities. The CBC cross country check up program gave him the opportunity to converse with Canadians of every background and from every region. And I think Rex enjoyed that interaction. And likely Canada got to appreciate his talents more in such roles rather than be trapped with a Political Party Affiliation. Additionally, his later newspaper columns were keenly anticipated , enjoyed and appreciated by Canadians everywhere. 

Rex attended  Memorial University during my time there and we enjoyed English Literature both of us students in Dr. Pitt’s  Romantic Poets course . And I served on the Students Council when he was the President.

We have lost a great scribe , an independent thinker, both in short supply in today’s world.

And The Nightmare Continues In A Nursing Home In A Neighbourhood Of Calgary —The Manor Village At Rocky Ridge

“THE MANOR VILLAGE

LIFE CENTERS

May 7, 2024

Subject: ImportantCOVID-19

Guidelines For Residents and Staff 

Dear Residents, Staff, Families and Friends,

I hope this message finds you wel. I’m writing to inform you that we are currently facing a COVID-19 outbreak ni our community, as confirmed by the Alberta Health Services (AHS). 

Unfortunately, three residents have tested positive for COVID-19.

Considering this situation, it’s crucial that we al adhere to the following guidelines to ensure the safety and well-being of everyone in our community:

1. Wearing Masks in Common Areas: Residents are encouraged to wear a mask whenever you are in the common areas of our community. This includes hallways, lounges, and any other shared spaces.

2. Reporting Symptoms: fI you experience even mild symptoms of illness, please notify our wellness team immediately. Early detection si key to preventing the spread of COVID-19.

3. Activities Update:

Mask Requirement for Activities: 

Al residents participating ni activities must wear a mask. Unfortunately, for the time being, we wil not be serving food during activities unless the activity is in the dining room.

To minimize the risk of transmission, singing activities wil be suspended.

Mother’s Day social on May 10th is still happening but without the singer/ entertainment.

Please check the SIB regularly for updates on activities. Any changes, including cancellations or continuations with mask requirements, wil be communicated there.

We will only allow small group activities for now.

Exercise sessions wil continue, with the requirement to social distance as mask is not recommended during exercise.

Most activities wil continue with the exceptions of the following cancelled events in the next few days:

. Bridge-May7thand9 at7pm

• Bingo – May 8th at 1:30 pm

• Catholic Communion – May 9ht at 1 am > 

 . Sing along with Max – May 1 1 at 1 am

4. Café Services: Coffee ni the café wil now be served by our reception team to reduce contact and potential transmission.

5. Salon: The salon wil remain open, but masks must be worn by the salon operator.

6. Dining Room Operations: As of now, our dining room wil remain open with few precautions ni

place.

7. Visitors: Al visitors and contractors are required to wear a mask upon entering the community.

For our Staff Members:

1. Face Shield and Mask Requirement: Al staff members are required to wear both a face shield and

a mask upon entering the community.

2 Increased Cleaning Protocols: Our housekeeping team wil be implementing additional disinfecting measures in all common areas.

3 Staff Meals on Friday: The staff meal buffet, usually held every Friday, wil be discontinued until the outbreak is completely over.

By adhering to these guidelines diligently, we can work together to prevent the further spread of COVID-19 within our community. We wil continue to monitor the situation closely and provide updates as necessary based on guidance from AHS. We wil be reassessed on Friday, May 10th.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding during this challenging time. I wil give everyone an update after the reassessment.

Best Regards, 

Carmela Dixon

Executive Director

The Manor Village at Rocky Ridge”

‘We Get Paid to Vaccinate Your Children’: Pediatrician Reveals Details of Big Pharma Payola Scheme

In an interview on Children’s Health Defense’s “Vax-Unvax” bus, Dr. Paul Thomas exposed the financial incentives pediatricians receive for administering vaccines, including kickbacks of up to $240 per visit.

By 

John-Michael Dumais 

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Can pediatricians afford to run their medical practices without the generous kickbacks they receive for vaccinating every child?

Dr. Paul Thomas, a Dartmouth-trained pediatrician, discussed this dilemma during an April 16 interview with Polly Tommey on Children’s Health Defense’s “Vax-Unvax: The People’s Study” bus tour.

“You cannot stay in business if you’re not giving pretty close to the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] [childhood vaccine] schedule,” said Thomas, who ran a general pediatrics practice with 15,000 patients and 33 staff members.

Thomas also addressed the risks and harms of vaccines — including COVID-19mRNA vaccines — and the importance of boosting our immune systems naturally.

‘We were losing … over a million dollars’

Thomas, author of “The Vaccine-Friendly Plan: Dr. Paul’s Safe and Effective Approach to Immunity and Health-from Pregnancy Through Your Child’s Teen Year,” gave parents in his practice a choice: vaccinate their children on the CDC schedule, vaccinate more slowly by waiting for the child’s immune system to develop or not vaccinate at all.

As more patients refused vaccines, Thomas began to notice the financial impact on his practice.

He and his staff conducted a thorough analysis of their billing records, examining the income generated from vaccine administration fees, markups and quality bonuses tied to vaccination rates.

The results shocked him. “We were losing … over a million dollars in vaccines that were refused.”

He explained that pediatric practices heavily rely on vaccine income to stay afloat, with overhead costs running as high as 80%.

“It is very expensive to run a pediatric office,” he told Tommey. “You need multiple nurses, multiple receptionists, multiple billing people and medical records — it’s a huge operation.”

Three financial incentives for giving vaccines

Pediatricians receive several types of financial incentives for administering vaccines.

The first is the administration fee, which Thomas described as a “Thank you for giving the shot.” He estimated that pediatricians typically receive about $40 for the first antigen and $20 for each subsequent antigen.

“Let’s just say a two-month well-baby visit, there’s a DPT — that’s three shots, three antigens,” he told Tommey, plus “Hib [Haemophilus influenzae type b], Prevnar [pneumococcal], Hep B [hepatitis B], polio, rota [rotavirus] — [that’s] about $240.”

The second way pediatricians profit from vaccines is through a small markup on the cost of the vaccines themselves, though Thomas noted that this is not a significant source of income.

The third and most substantial financial incentive is quality bonuses tied to vaccination rates. Insurance companies offer pediatricians bonus payments for meeting certain benchmarks, typically around 80% of patients being fully vaccinated by age 2.

“I get dinged maybe 10-15% off of those RVUs — relative value units — that are ascribed,” he said, describing the points system used to calculate physician reimbursements.

With his practice’s vaccination rate a mere 1%, Thomas was at risk of losing up to 15% of his overall revenue.

“Really, it effectively means a pediatric practice cannot survive using insurance without doing most of the vaccines, if not all of them,” he said. “And I think that explains the blinders — [why doctors] just won’t go there and look at the fact that these vaccines are causing a lot of harm.”

Neurodevelopmental issues ‘clearly linked to vaccines’

Tommey asked about sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).

“When you hear the word syndrome, it means we don’t know what it is … [or] what causes it,” Thomas said. “But we actually have a pretty good clue.”

Thomas said six studies examined the correlation between SIDS cases and vaccines. “In one data set, 97% were in the first 10 days after the vaccine. Only 3% were in the subsequent 10 days,” he said.

Other studies showed similar patterns, with 75-90% of SIDS deaths occurring within the first week after vaccination, he said.

Thomas also highlighted the increased risk of neurodevelopmental disorders, allergies and autoimmune diseases in vaccinated children.

“We know without a doubt that things like neurodevelopmental concerns, learning disabilities, ADD, ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder], autism[are] clearly linked to vaccines,” he stated. “The more you vaccinate, the more likely you are to have these problems.”

Vaccinated children are more prone to infections and illness compared to their unvaccinated peers, according to Thomas, who published a study comparing the health outcomes of each group.

“It’s the vaccinated who get more ear infections, more sinus infections, more lung infections,” he said. “Any kind of infection you look at, the vaccinated get more.”

‘Healthy adults just “Boom!” — dropping dead’

The risks associated with vaccines extend beyond childhood. Thomas drew attention to the recent phenomenon of “Sudden Adult Death Syndrome” (SADS) following the COVID-19 vaccine rollout.

“We see it on the news, we see it on the ball fields: healthy adults just ‘Boom!’ — dropping dead,” he said. “And that’s all happened since the COVID jabs.”

Thomas expressed particular concern about the mRNA technology used in COVID-19 vaccine development. He pointed out that despite decades of research, mRNA vaccines have never been proven safe or effective.

He cited previous attempts to develop mRNA vaccines for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), which consistently failed in animal trials.

“When they got to the animal trials, they would vaccinate the rats,” he said. “When they re-exposed those rats, in one study, 100% of them died.”

The COVID-19 mRNA vaccines’ narrow focus on the spike protein is also problematic because it causes the immune system to become “focused on just one thing,” Thomas said.

“When the [viral] organism mutates, those who are vaccinated can’t recognize this new mutation,” he said, recalling how at a family gathering during the pandemic, it was mostly the vaccinated who contracted COVID-19.

Thomas shared a personal story about his mother’s experience with pulmonary fibrosis after receiving three COVID-19 vaccines.

“After her third COVID shot, she started really running out of energy and then getting short of breath,” he said. “Within a month, her lungs [had a] ground-glass appearance.”

Tommey asked about the risks of vaccine shedding.

“Shedding seems to be happening, and it’s been documented in studies,” he said, explaining that vaccinated individuals can expose others to spike proteins through body fluids and secretions.

‘We can no longer go to our doctors and say, “Fix me”’

Thomas discussed the likelihood of new pandemics being declared in the future, driven by the immense financial gains pharmaceutical companies reaped from the COVID-19 vaccines.

“They made too much money — Pfizer alone made over $100 billion,” he said. “So the power that the public health machinery got to themselves with COVID has to be intoxicating to them.”

In light of this, Thomas stressed the importance of personal health and natural immunity.

“We can no longer go to our doctors and say, ‘Fix me,’ after we’ve trashed our own health,” he said. “So we’ve got to take responsibility for eating right, avoiding stress, getting adequate sleep … [and] boosting our immune system naturally with organic produce.”

Thomas also encouraged people to question public health authorities and make informed decisions about their health.

“I can no longer trust the CDC, the FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration], the NIH [National Institutes of Health],” he said. “Some good people work in these institutions, but the institutions themselves are captured.”

Thomas said that when it comes to vaccines or a new pandemic illness, “They’re the last people you want to trust.”

‘Vax Facts’ book coming soon

Thomas shared information about his upcoming book, “Vax Facts,” co-authored with his partner DeeDee Hoover. He said the book provides an easy-to-read, comprehensive guide to understanding the vaccine issue, regardless of one’s current stance.

“This is going to … allow you to really understand it in an organized, reasonable way why it makes sense now to pause” taking vaccines, Thomas said.

Tommey reminded viewers of Thomas’ weekly show on CHD.TV, “Pediatric Perspectives,” where he interviews pediatricians and doctors who focus on children’s health.

Thomas encouraged viewers to visit his website, Kids First 4 Ever, to learn more about his work and to access coaching services for childhood vaccines and wellness.

Source: Children’s Health Defence

Does Conservatism Need to Be Upgraded for Relevance?

A couple takes in the view while sitting on a bench on the seawall in Vancouver on March 29, 2023. (The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck) 

By Janice Fiamengo

4/29/2024

Updated: 

4/30/2024PrintX 1

Commentary

The notion that what is old is no longer relevant is one of the many lies the left tells conservatives and that too many conservatives swallow.

When a newly elected Justin Trudeau had what some in media called his mic drop moment in 2015, telling reporters “Because it’s 2015” as justification for his decision to have a gender-balanced cabinet, that was Liberal cool at its most quintessentially vapid. “Because it’s 2015” was no real answer, and we knew that no real answer would be forthcoming. It was an appeal to progress and equality without argument. Equality of outcome trumped every other value, while merit, proportion, and experience were steamrolled over with a hollow platitude.

Pretending that the old must be surrendered to make way for the new is the classic leftist move. During the 1960s in China, the Communist Party explicitly called for the destruction of the Four Olds: the old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas that delayed the coming of a better, new society. How sadly familiar that idea is today in the West. Attacking the old is useful to the left because it cuts people off from their histories, their ancestors, and their cultural ways, leaving them uncertain, ignorant, weak, and demoralized.

One of the bedrocks of conservatism is that the most profound questions of human life have already been dealt with by serious minds before us: The old is our most precious resource, not baggage to be discarded or retrograde prejudice to be apologized for. It was Edmund Burke who said that the conservative understands society as a relationship, not only between the living but between the living, the dead, and the yet unborn. Expressing contempt for the people and ways that went before us—specifically the European, Christian peoples who built our country—is one of the most egregiously wrong of liberal-left postures today.

If there is one thing that isn’t cool, it’s a conservatism that adopts the values of the left, becoming progressive conservative or some other pale imitation. Conservatism is precisely about conserving what is good in nature, in human nature, in the family, in society, in law, and in customs.

The conservative is different from the liberal and different from the libertarian in not accepting that either equality or unfettered freedom are the greatest goods in society. The conservative accepts that inequality is natural and inevitable in a society with basic freedoms under law. Conservatism accepts that some social conduct is more worth valuing than others; that reproductive heterosexual marriage, for example, should be socially and morally privileged over all other human relationships.

Conservatism can never inhere in divisive identity politics. As soon as you have a debate between a conservative and a liberal over who is more feminist, or who more is more committed to a newly burnished group right, the conservative has lost because it is no longer conservatism that is being promoted.

Much of conservatism is driven by men, and the essence of conservatism appeals predominantly to men, though women, of course, play a central role, not least because women are attracted to conservative men and because conservatism benefits women by supporting family life, civil order, decency, sexual restraint, and male engagement. Polls today show that young women are increasingly liberal, young men increasingly not.

Conservatives neglect young men at their peril. Men are the ones who build civilization; men are driven to produce, to provide and protect, to amass resources, to create competence hierarchies—in contrast to women who seek the protection of powerful men, consensus with their fellow women, and security by harnessing the resources of the state.

Conservatism is the only remaining philosophy that puts the good of families at the centre of its value system. Left liberalism increasingly speaks of women—women’s desires and women’s needs—as if women are the primary autonomous unit of society, while men exist primarily to produce what women need for their independence and freedom. The good of children is barely considered at all or is paid lip service to only, as when conservatives sometimes join with liberals in affirming that the primary role of fathers is to pay child support so their children can be raised almost solely by the mothers who divorced the fathers.

Women cannot build and lead a successful conservatism; only men can do this, with women by their side. Conservatives should do far more for young men and should resist the lethal temptation to side with left-liberals in anti-male provisions that accept that men should be disadvantaged in order for women to lead.

Most especially in the social realm, conservatives should work to dismantle the conditions that disadvantage men in the workplace and the home: we’ve had 40 years of affirmative action hiring that discriminates against men, particularly white men, in the workplace; and we’ve 30 years of sexual harassment legislation in workplaces and schools that assumes men to be predators and women victims and is willing to abandon such legal bedrocks as equality before the law and the presumption of innocence to (allegedly) protect women. It is shocking that conservatives have sometimes cheered these on.

Most importantly, conservatives must dismantle the conditions that make marriage a financial and emotional hazard for men in which fathers’ most basic civil rights and parental duties have been outrageously trampled. If conservatives did nothing other than lobby to get lawyers, courts, psychiatrists, and social workers out of most families’ lives, they would be doing something of true value.

As conservatives, we must be willing to say what we are willing to conserve. If we are merely trying to put the brakes on some aspect or other of woke policies, whether it be the trans agenda or climate hysteria, we are not doing very much. Conservatism summons many virtues such as endurance, self-reliance, self-sacrifice, hope, and moral courage that are hardly mentioned today in other political and social traditions. It should be celebrated for these and for the eternal verities it was originally built around. If one is not interested in conserving what has come before, one should not claim to speak for conservatism.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Janice Fiamengo

Author 

Janice Fiamengo is retired professor of English at the University of Ottawa. Her latest book is “Sons of Feminism: Men Have Their Say.”