RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2020/01/sound-an-alarm-gender-activism-is-about-to-silence-us/

The Victorian government intends to pass a law very soon that may see ordinary citizens imprisoned if they speak up against the chemical, psychological and physical mutilation of confused adolescents. Labor Attorney-General-Hennessey wants to outlaw conversion practices. They are defined in her discussion paper about the proposed Bill as

…any practice or treatment that seeks to change, suppress or eliminate an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to reduce or eliminate sexual and/or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same gender, or efforts to change gender expressions.

Queensland already has a similar bill before its parliament. It would authorise imprisonment for those who perform what is called conversion “therapy” in that state. Such therapy is defined as a treatment or other practice that attempts to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. That’s very broad. While it is directed to those who provide a health service it includes “alternative” ones, and  will very arguably capture pastors, concerned family members, or other lay people who attempt to dissuade a young person they know from embarking upon a “transition” from their natal sex to its opposite.

Transitioning, in the parlance of the new medico-legal commissariat who run the clinics that administer these treatments, means, firstly, a child taking a drug that blocks the release of testosterone (in boys) or oestrogen (in girls) and then, in the next phase, loading them up with doses of the other sex’s natural hormone; physical mutilation is only involved if it moves to a third phase. It often does.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15440/erdogan-islamic-campaign

Half the population of Turkey is under the age of 32 — a young population. Many of these young Turks are, it seems, pushing back against Erdoğan’s state-imposed Islamization.

The more Erdoğan uses the state’s police power to indoctrinate young Turks in favor of devout political Islam, the more they tend to put a distance between themselves and Erdoğan’s “devout generations” campaign.

Perhaps Erdoğan’s best service to his country is to show young Turks what it actually means to live under an Islamist regime.

Trust for Islamist politics in both the Middle East and North Africa has plummeted since the beginning of the Arab Spring. A survey for BBC Arabic found that since 2012-13, public trust in Islamist political parties in Egypt, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Sudan and Iraq has significantly declined, from nearly 40% to less than 20%. The survey also found a similar decline in trust for religious leaders in the same countries. In the Gaza Strip alone, public trust in Hamas fell from 45% to 24%. In Turkey, Islam does not appear to be appealing to masses as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan apparently hoped it would.

In 2012, Erdoğan described his political mission as “raising devout generations”, a remark for which Turkey’s main opposition called him “a merchant of religion”. In November 2019, Erdoğan repeated his quest for “devout generations” so that “we will not see alcoholics on the streets”. He boasts that since he came to power in 2002, the number of imam school students has risen from 60,000 to 1.3 million. No doubt, that is an impressive record for an Islamist strongman. But too premature to cheer about.

https://www.ap.org/en-us/

Nigel Farage, the self-declared “pantomime villain” of Brexit, is leaving his favorite theater — the European Union’s parliament in Strasbourg — this week with a sense of mission accomplished.

Ridiculed for years, and thriving on the abuse he got from, and dealt to, pro-EU legislators and politicians, he now feels he got the last laugh. On Jan. 31, the U.K. will be leaving the EU, in a historic loss for the bloc — and a historic gain for the likes of Farage.

“When I first came here, I started saying the U.K. would leave the European Union. Everyone thought it was hilarious,” Farage told The Associated Press in an interview, speaking about his early days in the EU legislature in the late 1990s.

The European Union was still thriving, expanding at the time, and could shrug off a loud and sometimes foul-mouthed British parliamentarian as just a nuisance about to be swatted aside by the force of history of closer integration.

Britain may have been a halfhearted member with rumbling about holding onto sovereignty and complaints about “unelected bureaucraats” from Brussels having too much say in their lives. But thoughts of actually leaving? No. Those were left to fringe politicians like Farage.