Catholic News Agency:

Josh Alexander, a 16-year-old student in the 11th grade at St. Joseph’s Catholic High School in Canada, was suspended this month for expressing his religious and moral objections to the school’s transgender bathroom policy.

St. Joseph’s Catholic High School in Renfrew, Ontario, allows males identifying as transgender girls to use bathrooms designated for females.

Alexander was first suspended for protesting the school’s transgender policy in November, on the grounds he was “bullying.”

When he tried attending class on Feb. 6, he was subsequently suspended again and arrested for trespassing.

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Jonathan Van Maren:

[I]n case you were wondering just how bad things have gotten in Canada, on to today’s main story.

Catholic student arrested at Canadian Catholic school—for saying that there are only two genders

Defend Josh Alexander, Student arrested after opposing Gender Ideology

In November of 2021, Josh Alexander was suspended from St. Joseph’s Catholic High School in Renfrew, Ontario. Alexander is in the 11th grade, and he had stated the fact that there are only two genders. He didn’t bring up the subject randomly. The class was discussing gender.

“It was about male students using female washrooms, gender dysphoria and male breastfeeding,” Alexander said. “Everyone was sharing their opinions on it, any student who wanted to was participating, including the teacher. I said there were only two genders, and you were born either a male or a female, and that got me into trouble. And then I said that gender doesn’t trump biology.”

Josh Alexander was kicked out and told that he couldn’t return until he changed his mind. St. Joseph’s stated that he couldn’t attend classes until he affirmed that he would not “use the ‘dead name’ of any transgender student and agree to exclude himself from his two afternoon classes because those classes are attended by two transgender students who disapprove of Josh’s religious beliefs.” A “dead name” is transgender lingo for the name given to students at birth; Alexander says this has never come up.

On February 6, Alexander arrived at school to attend classes anyways. The school called the police, and the 11th grader was arrested—for saying that there are two genders at a Catholic school. “They definitely quote Scripture,” Alexander noted. “But at the same time, for every crucifix on the wall, there’s also a Pride flag. And there’s a lot of gender ideology and encouragement of gender dysphoria.”

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If you need proof that men and women are not the same.

The science is settled.

pic.twitter.com/DmGfeGKA3t

— It’s Ma’am, PhDelightful (@ItsGoneAwry) February 9, 2023

Here's an idea: instead of making sure old books are "suitable for modern readers," how about making sure modern readers are suitable for old books

— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) February 24, 2023

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand, is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
– Galileo Galilei

Ukrainian girl inspects destroyed Russian tank last October.

Anatol Lieven

A year ago, all but one of Russia’s chief aims in Ukraine were defeated in the first three weeks of the war, before the arrival of Western heavy weaponry. The reasons for this comprehensive Russian reverse — which no Western observer, including myself, predicted — are of great interest to military analysts, even if some of the lessons they teach are very old ones.

Between the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, and the middle of March, Russian forces failed to take the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv; failed to take Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, though it is less than 20 miles from the Russian frontier; failed to occupy the whole of the Donbas; and failed to capture Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. The only Russian bridgehead established west of the Dnieper River, at Kherson, was so limited that it ultimately proved untenable.

The only major objective that the Russians did achieve was to capture the “land bridge” between Russia and Crimea. Even so, the capture of Mariupol took another two months and involved the complete destruction of the city. The diversion of troops necessary for the siege of Mariupol made it impossible to sustain offensives elsewhere.

The errors in initial Russian planning and strategy are now glaringly obvious. Russian intelligence completely underestimated the strength of Ukrainian resistance — or if any of their predictions were accurate, they either never reached Putin or were ignored by him. In addition, it seems likely that it was fear of the domestic political reaction that led Putin not to call up additional reservists for the “Special Military Operation.”

As a result, Russia invaded Ukraine (a country of 230,000 square miles and 41 million people) with barely 200,000 troops and seven different objectives. So while the Russian armed forces as a whole were much larger than those of Ukraine, in practice Russian troops were often outnumbered by the Ukrainians they were facing. This disparity grew as Ukraine called up every man that it could during the summer, while Putin hesitated for seven months to carry out even a partial mobilization in Russia.

Until October 2022 no supreme commander was appointed for the operation — perhaps because Putin feared the emergence of a victorious general who might challenge his own power. So there were serious problems of coordination between the different Russian fronts. This may have contributed to some appalling failures of staff work and logistics, such as the 40-mile-long traffic jam of Russian vehicles that built up on a single road north of Kyiv.

Russian command-and-control problems must have been worsened significantly by the number of senior officers killed by Ukrainian missile and artillery strikes in the first months of the war. U.S. technical intelligence was largely responsible for identifying local Russian headquarters. Like the strike on Makiivka over the New Year that killed dozens (or possibly hundreds) of Russian troops, these successes may also have been enabled by poor communications security on the Russian side.

U.S. satellite intelligence spotted Russian military build-ups and allowed the Ukrainians to anticipate Russian attacks. Ukrainian civilians in Russian-held areas were also able to simply call Ukrainian forces on their cell phones and tell them where Russian convoys were to be found. This in turn partly contributed to the atrocities against civilians committed by Russian soldiers, which have done so much to tarnish the image of the Russian army.

Despite all this, and despite longstanding and well-known problems with the poor quality of NCOs and lack of initiative on the part of junior officers, the Russian army might have been expected to do better. This was because of the colossal Russian superiority in the two weapons of the classical “Blitzkrieg,” as practiced by Germany in 1939-42, the Soviet Union in 1942-45, and Israel in most of its wars: armor and airpower. The failure of these two arms is perhaps the most striking lesson of the war in Ukraine so far, and indicates that Ukrainian hopes that Western tanks and warplanes will allow them to break through may also be misplaced. Their failure has also led to immense casualties among Russia’s best infantry units.

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Counter Terrorism Policing \ What We Do \ Prevent

Be thankful every day that you don’t live in California or in Britain where the newest, craziest, and most extreme forms of contemporary insanity flourish, multiply, and metastasize in more outrageous and virulent forms every week.

Douglas Murray, in The Spectator, recently noted in an editorial that British Counter Terrorism’s Prevent’s “Research Information and Communications Unit” (RICU) identified some potential sources of indoctrination in right-wing extremism.

[A]ccording to RICU there were warning signs if people absorbed information or opinions from ‘pro-Brexit and centre-right commentators’. These included Jacob Rees-Mogg, Melanie Phillips, Rod Liddle and yours truly. So everybody reading this column is at as much risk of being ‘radicalised’ as some young Muslim settling down with a tape recording of Ayman al-Zawahiri or Osama bin Laden, and Rees-Mogg becomes the equivalent of a finger–waving imam sending the young off to become martyrs in the cause of Allah. Which is strange because he never came across that way to me when we crossed paths at Conservative Philosophy Group meetings.

I have since been able to look over some of this pathetic material provided at public expense and can confirm that it gets worse. In one RICU document a number of books are singled out, the possession or reading of which could point to severe wrongthink and therefore potential radicalisation. These include a book on the Rotherham rape gangs, books by Peter Hitchens, Melanie Phillips and – once again – me. Without wanting to beat my own drum, the book of mine that is singled out for this sinister treatment is my 2017 work The Strange Death of Europe. This book spent almost 20 weeks in the Sunday Times bestseller lists, has been translated into dozens of languages and was for some time the bestselling non-fiction book in the UK. So that is an awful lot of potential radicals just there. …

When I first saw these documents I felt a sort of white-hot anger. But then I read on and saw that these same taxpayer-funded fools provide lists of other books shared by people who have sympathies with the ‘far-right and Brexit’. Key signs that people have fallen into this abyss include watching the Kenneth Clark TV series Civilisation, The Thick of It and Great British Railway Journeys. I need to stress again that I am not making this up. This has all been done on your dime and mine in order to stop ‘extremism’ in these islands.

[Emphasis added.]

These include Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government and Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France, as well as works by Thomas Carlyle and Adam Smith. Elsewhere RICU warns that radicalisation could occur from books by authors including C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Aldous Huxley and Joseph Conrad. I kid you not, though it seems that all satire is dead, but the list of suspect books also includes 1984 by George Orwell.

So in general, I begin to feel in good company. If government agencies are going to compile lists of suspect books, then I am very happy to stand condemned alongside these fine people, both living and dead.

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Los Angeles Police Chief Michael Moore.

The Los Angeles Daily News reports the city’s Chief of Police advising citizens that, despite an $11.8 billion budget and 9,974 officers and 3,000 civilian staff, the third largest police department in the united States cannot protect you. Don’t wear valuable stuff, don’t drive expensive cars. The criminals rule the city.

People move to Los Angeles from all over the world for the weather, glitz, glamour and a Hollywood lifestyle that only the City of Angels can offer.

However, our crime problem is now so out of control that we are now being told to leave our watches, expensive cars and wallets at home in order to protect ourselves from emboldened criminals.

We have essentially collectively thrown in the towel on trying to do something to catch and punish the criminals and instead just resorted to hiding everything that they might want to steal from us.

On March 24 of last year, LAPD Chief Michel Moore told Angelenos to leave their flashy jewelry and cars at home.

“What we’re asking the public to do with these crime increases is if they’re going to wear expensive jewelry or drive high-end cars, when leaving restaurants, taverns and other locations, they need to be mindful of their surroundings, and be in well lit areas. [We ask that] they recognize there are opportunists that are willing to take advantage of them and many times, these individuals are armed with firearms,” said Moore.

Moore said the LAPD is “tracking the increase in armed robberies.” Armed robberies are up 44% since last year, the police department reported.

So, let me get this straight — With armed robberies at an all-time high, Los Angeles residents are being warned by LAPD not to go out in public while prominently displaying lots of expensive jewelry.

So … what? Mr. T isn’t supposed to leave his house for months?

We’re also being advised not to drive expensive-looking cars, which would explain the uptick in Prius sales.

Remember those bumper stickers that read, “My Other Car Is A Mercedes”? Who knew those people were just trying to not get carjacked?

Even wearing well-fitting, stylish, expensive-looking clothes can get you robbed. So I guess Rihanna has nothing to worry about.

At an LAPD press conference on Jan. 12 of this year, the public was told to leave literally nothing visible in the car.

The LAPD’s campaign to get law-abiding citizens to hide their valuables is known as “Stash It Don’t Flash It,” which is better than the more accurate name, “We Give Up.”

“It could be anything from a phone charger to change in the cup holder, that they’re gonna break the window out and take,” said Sgt. Gordon Helper, leader of the campaign.

“Absolutely, they’ll even break a window to get a bottle of water so they can recycle its container, whether it’s aluminum or plastic,” added Capt. Elaine Morales.

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Of course, in reality, those nearly ten thousand cops certainly could stop crime in Los Angeles. Their government won’t let them. City government is controlled by a machine that stays in office by relying on a voting base whose foundation is the criminal/welfare class. That base is allied –of course– to precisely the same ideologically-deluded wet liberals who are the former predator’s natural prey. In US cities today, it’s as if the wildebeast and gazelles could be counted to vote against hunters harvesting lions and leopards.

Todd Field’s Tár starring the inimitable Cate Blanchett is unquestionably the top film of 2022 and will undoubtedly soon be sweeping up a very large bagful of awards.

A hyper-reactionary Baby Boomer like myself will find a lot to admire and enjoy in Tár, despite being (as those younger generations say) “triggered” by its acceptance of sexual deviance as conventional and mainstream, of a “BIPOC pangender” identity implicitly conferring a special status, and of life under the tyrannical “sexual grievance” regime as normal.

Lydia Tár may be an arch member of the disgusting Community of Fashion elite, but she is also a highly talented professional and a staunch defender of high culture. We conservatives will appreciate the irony of her ultimate victimhood and pity her tragic end.

Zadie Smith, in the NYRB, published a distinctly brilliant review, appreciation, and analysis of the film whose take on generational differences and cultural change is quite illuminating, even across a partisan differences divide:

“To paraphrase Schopenhauer—who gets several shout-outs in Tár—every generation mistakes the limits of its own field of vision for the limits of the world. But what happens when generational visions collide? How should we respond?”

Cultural Luminaries make a lot of money. Their imperious attitudes and witty bons mots are in demand everywhere—until they aren’t. As Tár discovers the very next morning, while guest teaching at Juilliard. Here her charismatic lone-genius shtick—which so delighted the gray-haired festivalgoers—falls on stonier ground. Tár is now speaking to a different generation. The generation that says things like I’m not really into Bach. Such statements are calculated to bring out the hysteric in a middle-aged Cultural Luminary, and Tár immediately takes the bait, launching into an aggressive defense laced with high-handed pity (for the young man who dares say it) and a more generalized contempt for his cohort. Read the rest of this entry »

New York and Washington have very different local industries, career opportunities, and local cultures. Their mores are naturally also distinctly different. Cultures, too, change dramatically over time and the world of today’s Zoomers is nothing like my generation’s or my parent’s generations.

New York Magazine illustrates the point with this rather elaborate, and decidedly Woke, guide to the rules of proper conduct in today’s Gotham. It’s apparently perfectly proper to ghost someone after one date.

45. White people should always clearly pronounce 50 Cent.

He’s not “Fiddy” for you.

46. Being an ally doesn’t mean debasing yourself.

Oh, look, you’re the center of attention again!

In a bit from 2022, the stand-up comedian Sureni Weerasekera describes a common interaction she had while living in Oakland. “White people meet me there and they’ll crumble like feta,” she says. “They’ll be like, ‘You’re a woman of color? How do I take up less space?’” — like their back goes bad, they get scoliosis, they go into fight-or-flight mode. I’m like, ‘Me and my girlfriend, like, we’re cool, like you don’t gotta be weird about it,’ and they’re like, ‘AND YOU’RE A QUEER? HOW DO I STOP EXISITING? HOW DO I CEASE TO EXIST? I’M SO SORRY.’”

We get it: You’ve Done the Work, you’ve Listened and Learned, you’ve purchased a copy of How to Be an Ally, and maybe you’ve even read it. But constantly reminding others that you understand how much more privilege you have than they do is — in addition to being an example of the dreaded “virtue signaling” — just condescending. … Read the rest of this entry »

The people who are going to rule the world and know everything so they are qualified tell the public what to do are totally broke and want to borrow more money.

— wretchardthecat (@wretchardthecat) February 16, 2023

Atlas Obscura has a feature article celebrating an amusing new regional ethnic art form.

PEDESTRIANS IN NEW ORLEANS’ TREMÉ neighborhood might notice a collection of beautiful, patchwork wooden doors. Known as “wooden quilts,” the colorful interwoven entryways showcase one artist’s incredible craftsmanship and history.

Jean-Marcel St. Jacques is a self-taught folk artist with deep roots in the Louisiana soil. A 12th-generation Afro-Creole, he left the state in the 1970s, but returned 16 years ago to reconnect with the land of his ancestors. St. Jacques says he takes his inspiration from his great-grandmother, who made patchwork quilts, and his great-grandfather, who collected junk and upcycled materials in the early 1900s. Like his great-grandfather, St. Jacques transforms what has been destroyed or discarded into art. The materials used in his “wooden quilt” doors were salvaged from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the damage to his home. He considers this practice a way to find higher purpose from the disaster.

Just paint the underside of your porch roof haint blue, and you’re all set!

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