Constant hyping of make-believe demons and fake fears has spawned loose cannons, perhaps including a transgender school shooter
Police say Audrey Hale had “some resentment” about having been made to attend a Christian elementary school as a youngster growing up in Tennessee, which may have been the reason she returned nearly two decades later to shoot the place up, killing three children and three staffers.
Hale was a 28-year-old transgender person who, like millions of Americans, identified as being a victim, and Monday’s shooting at Covenant School in south Nashville’s tony Green Hills neighborhood was to be the first of multiple places to settle her grudges with the world. Her careful planning for the attack included other targets, such as a mall, according to police, who fatally shot Hale before she could kill any more people.
Hale, who had reportedly begun identifying as a male and going by the name ‘Aiden’, wrote a manifesto before her shooting spree, but police haven’t yet released the document. Note: Police have referred to Hale as a “she,” while legacy media outlets have largely done the same or avoided referring to her by pronouns. Transgender activists have argued that male pronouns should be used, as Hale allegedly preferred, but to keep things simpler, I’ll stick with ‘she’ and ‘her’ for the purpose of this discussion.
Besides writing her manifesto, Hale sent a social media message to a childhood friend shortly before setting off on Monday’s mission of murder, saying she was leaving behind more than enough evidence for people to make sense of what she was about to do. The public hasn’t yet seen that information, either, but advocates of transgender ideology have already tried to justify her killing of three nine-year-old children and three school employees.
Nashville shooter hid seven guns at home – police
“Hate has consequences,” an activist group called the Trans Resistance Network said in reaction to the shooting. The group speculated that Hale “had no other effective way to be seen than to lash out by taking the life of others and, by consequence, himself.” The network also claimed that conservative political figures have called for “nothing less than the genocidal eradication of trans people from society.”
This is a common theme among leftist groups that represent themselves as defenders of various categories of people whom they see as needing protection – from non-white racial segments to gays to women to transgenders. America has become like the victimhood Olympics, where millions of people in need of attention and sympathy compete to show which protectorate is most afflicted. Perhaps that’s why ‘intersectionality’ has become one of the buzzwords, because claiming just one source of victimhood isn’t enough for many people.
Our sick society rewards those who flock to the protection of their victim groups, providing them dopamine hits on social media, favoritism in hiring and college admissions, and special callouts from government officials touting how brave and mistreated they are. President Joe Biden went so far on Friday, in the wake of the Nashville massacre, as to say that transgender people “shape our nation’s soul.”
Those who don’t confess to needing such shelter from the haters – such as a black woman who works as a conservative commentator and a gay Asian journalist who exposes far-left political violence – are essentially excommunicated as members of their minority groups and condemned as far-right bigots.
The problem is, in the victimhood Olympics, there’s always pressure to set the bar higher. It’s like an arms race of grievances. Whereas it might have been good enough before to claim the haters were cheating your group out of career opportunities or stopping you from getting married, today’s victims are told that their enemies want them dead and won’t stop until they’re wiped from the face of the earth.
A viral TikTok video posted this week by a transgender activist illustrates the overwrought victim mentality. “Trans genocide is around the corner,” the activist shouts in call to action for transgender people in Tennessee. “Stop debating cis people on your existence . . . . We fu*king fight now or we die.” The activist advises transgender people to always carry a gun and gang up to fight anyone who tries to arrest them “for existing.” “We’re going to die anyway,” the person adds. “It’s time to fu*king resist.”
It’s not clear what basis such activists have for believing that someone plans to kill them or arrest them for being transgender. An advocacy group called Human Rights Campaign claims that 302 gender-nonconforming people were killed in the US in the past decade. A large portion of those murders involved transgender women working as prostitutes.
In any case, around 30 murders a year nationwide, or even 60 or 90, does not a genocide make. According to one study, there are an estimated 1.6 million transgender people over the age of 13 in the US, which means that about one in over 50,000 is killed in a given year. That equates to a homicide rate of less than two murders of transgender people per 100,000 transgender people in the population. The US homicide rate for the overall population is 7.8 per 100,000, according to CDC data. To put the transgender death toll of 30 in perspective, consider that around 200 Americans die each year from constipation.
Nevertheless, activist and advocacy groups would have us believe that transgender people are under siege. A coalition of groups called the Trans Radical Activist Network (TRAN) had planned to hold the ‘Trans Day of Vengeance’ on Saturday in Washington to “stop trans genocide” and raise money for weapons training. The event was canceled after TRAN reported receiving threatening messages following Monday’s school shooting, but transgender-rights demonstrations were held in other cities, including one that reportedly blocked traffic in Los Angeles.
Ironically, the Twitter accounts of Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and journalists who exposed the ‘Trans Day of Vengeance’ were suspended. “I’ve been locked out while the organizers and promoters of the event . . . is still on Twitter,” journalist Andy Ngo said.
Transgenderism is ‘natural enemy’ of Christianity – Fox host
Transgender activists have raised alarms about new legislation in multiple Republican-controlled states. For instance, earlier this month, Tennessee enacted a ban on sex-change surgeries and other “gender-affirming” medical interventions for children. Governor Bill Lee also signed into law a bill prohibiting adult drag queen shows for minors on public property. However, none of the bills denies the existence of transgender people or calls for the arrest of people based on their gender identity.
Not to be deterred by reality, pandering politicians and media outlets have continued to rail against the make-believe threats. Two days after the Nashville murders, Democrat congresswoman Katherine Clark gave a speech decrying a “vicious crusade” against transgender people by Republican elected officials. Incidentally, Clark’s nonbinary daughter, Jared ‘Riley’ Dowell, was arrested in January for allegedly assaulting a police officer while being arrested for vandalizing an historic monument in Boston.
Some observers took the victim mentality even further in the wake of the Covenant School attack. Josselyn Berry, press secretary for Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs, reacted the next day by posting a viral Twitter message showing a photo of a woman pointing two handguns. The caption said, “Us when we see transphobes.” She resigned under pressure on Wednesday.
Hale is hardly the first gender-dysphoric American to carry out or attempt a violent attack. Anderson Lee Aldrich, also known as ‘Mx. Aldrich’, the person charged with killing five people and injuring 18 at a Colorado LGBTQ nightclub last November, is nonbinary, according to court filings. Nicholas John Roske, the armed Californian arrested outside US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home last June, reportedly identifies as a transgender woman and goes by the name ‘Sophie’.
A 2022 study by researchers at two universities in Quebec found that college students who identify as transgender are at higher risk of “violent radicalization” than their cisgender peers. A T-shirt favored by transgender activists shows the words “Trans rights” at the top and “. . . or else” at the bottom. In between, there are five rifles.
America is becoming a factory producing dangerously aggrieved victims like Hale, and the increasing violence won’t be limited to transgender perpetrators. In a nation where power-seekers promote fear to turn armies of panicked followers against their enemies, resentment can quickly turn to carnage, leaving the real victims dead.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of TSFT.
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The former premier’s Taiwan trip is nothing but a provocation for Beijing to lash out at London, sinking any constructive dialogue
Liz Truss will always be remembered as a disastrous prime minister who spent only a month in office and was outlasted by a head of lettuce.
Her disastrous budget plans sent shudders through the UK economy, eliciting criticism from the British people, MPs and foreign leaders alike. Her ideology-driven political decisions found little sympathy with the public, which repaid her with abysmal approval ratings.
You’d think someone like that would have little credibility as a political adviser, but that apparently isn’t the case. Taiwan, which frequently pays washed-up Western right-wing fanatics to come and visit them as a political stunt, invited Liz Truss to Taipei on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Truss then gave a hawkish speech where she called for an end to all cooperation and dialogue with Beijing and the preparation of Russia-style sanctions in the event of a Taiwan conflict. She also repeated her suggestion of an “Economic NATO” – despite a track record that makes her the last person you’d want to listen to for economic advice.
‘Economic NATO’ needed to counter China – Truss
Since her brief stay in Downing Street, she has rebranded herself as a full-time anti-China hawk, and now uses her party position and credentials as a former prime minister to try to undermine her successor’s attempts to carefully edge back towards engagement with China. Truss was always a fantasist, a pro-Brexit zealot who embraced a confrontational stance during her time as foreign secretary.
However, as you can imagine, all you need to do to reinvent yourself these days is to become a China basher. It doesn’t matter how much of a joke you otherwise might be. Hence, the UK media made sure that her stay and words in Taiwan were given widespread coverage without the context of her political failures. The UK government has already distanced itself from her trip – a fact that Beijing should take careful notice of (and no doubt has).
The British Conservative Party has always been rife with that sort of factionalism. While the opposition Labour Party tends to hard-line suppress the more ideological wing of its MPs (hence the purge of the left-wing Corbynite faction), Tory ideologues have long held power as a “disruptive” force on the government itself, undermining its foreign policy. It’s a fracture which emerged during the Margaret Thatcher era, where following the breakdown of the “post-war consensus” of economic pragmatism, ideology gained ascendency in the party and soon manifested into Euroscepticism.
This tug of war lasted 30 years, making it harder for Conservative prime ministers to maintain a working relationship with the EU, and eventually culminating in Brexit itself. Once that was out of the way, these ideologues found a new target: China. While Truss has opportunistically jumped on this bandwagon, former arch-Brexiter Iain Duncan Smith had already made himself the UK’s Sinophobe-in-chief. Their common goal is simply to undermine stable ties with Beijing and provoke conflict by spurring on backbench rebellions, making them a challenge for the government to handle.
Taiwan predicts timeline for conflict with China
Consequently, while Truss may be a national laughingstock thanks to her disastrous tenure as prime minister, this new role she is taking on enables her to cause disruption on this issue. Taiwan, of course, knows this, because its entire foreign policy is premised on trying to undermine the ties of other countries’ relationships with Beijing by spending large amounts of money on inviting figures such as Truss. The timing of the trip was deliberate, coming immediately after the British foreign secretary’s engagement with a senior Chinese official following the coronation of King Charles III.
Taipei hopes that Beijing’s backlash over the Truss visit will target the UK government as a whole and punish the country. China has a record for being abrasive like this, having done so with the Czech Republic in the past and not winning any friends there as a result. If Truss is therefore allowed to dictate the flow of UK-China relations, she wins. Besides her, the UK has never been provocative on Taiwan at a senior level such as with former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit last year for the US.
Thus, rather than causing a crisis, China should wait until the upcoming Taiwan elections take place and hope that the more pro-China Kuomintang Party (KMT), which once governed the whole country, will take power and stabilize cross-strait ties again. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) thrives off creating crises, as does the US with its military deployments, and amidst it all there is no intention for cool heads to prevail. While Pelosi was a blatant violation and huge provocation of the One China policy and US commitment to it, the Truss trip is an opportunistic PR stunt by a washed-up has-been who almost ran her country into the ground in a month. Ignore, move on and forget.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of TSFT.
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The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is looking at ways to address the most pressing global issues without being a disruptive influence
The upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit promises to be a watershed moment in the bloc’s history, coming amid unprecedented global challenges and new, emergent tensions.
While the SCO Foreign Ministers meeting, which took place on May 4 and 5, was tasked with preparing the agenda for the July 3-4 summit in New Delhi, there is still much work to do to ensure that India’s chairmanship will be a success.
The West has broken virtually all links with Russia because of the Ukraine conflict. Western sanctions against Russia are unprecedented in scope, carrying significant ramifications also for the developing world, including the economic disruptions caused by the weaponization of the US dollar. The European security architecture is in tatters. For the West to seek Russia’s strategic defeat while the country possesses formidable military and material resources makes no sense. Risking a potential nuclear conflict in particular is totally irresponsible.
The European Union has lost its already limited capacity to play an independent role, especially with Germany losing clout and Brussels appropriating more power. The doors of dialogue and diplomacy are being kept closed as NATO seeks military advantage over Russia, and uses Ukraine as a proxy.
At the other end of Eurasia, US-China tensions are rising over Taiwan, regional maritime disputes, strengthening of US-centered regional alliances and NATO overtures to Japan and South Korea. The US and the EU are warning China against supplying lethal arms to Russia under pain of sanctions, even as they seek China’s support in persuading Russia to end its military intervention in Ukraine, and this in the background of the high-level dialogue between the US and China having virtually broken down.
Can Eurasia’s rising political bloc show a united front against the West’s encroachment?
Both Russia and China, the principal pillars of the SCO, are at loggerheads with the West to different degrees, and the summit agenda will inevitably reflect this reality. The SCO represents a building block of multipolarity within the global system at the political, economic and security levels, a goal reiterated at the Foreign Ministers’ meeting.
While the other SCO members have robust links to both Russia and China, their connections with India are not as strong, despite mutual goodwill and shared interests. This is largely due to a lack of contiguity and direct access to Central Asia. With Iran and Belarus joining as full members, the SCO will achieve greater Eurasian depth. Both of these countries have been politically and economically targeted by the West. The SCO Foreign Ministers meeting also agreed on May 5 to grant dialogue partner status to Kuwait, the Maldives, Myanmar and the UAE, in addition to the nine existing dialogue partners. The growing interest demonstrates the appeal of the SCO as a grouping of non-Western countries that provide an alternative platform for nations to pursue their interests outside the Western-dominated international system.
Association with the SCO increases their margin to maneuver, primarily at the political and economic levels. Diplomatic support, hedging against Western sanctions, access to non-Western development banks, benefits from connectivity projects and infrastructure development, cooperation against terrorism, extremism and separatism, are obvious advantages.
India has taken its current presidency of the SCO seriously, organizing and hosting more than 100 meetings and events, including 15 ministerial level meetings. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has also stressed the great importance for India of developing multifaceted cooperation. He introduced the term ‘SECURE’ SCO on the basis of Security, Economic Development, Connectivity, Unity, Respect of sovereignty and territorial integrity, and Environmental protection.
As SCO Chair, India initiated an unprecedented engagement with the organization’s Observers and Dialogue Partners by inviting them to participate in more than 14 socio-cultural events. Many of the events hosted by India occurred for the first time in the framework of the SCO, such as the Millet Food Festival, Film Festival, Cultural Festival, the Tourism Mart, and Conference on Shared Buddhist Heritage.
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Jaishankar noted that as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical upheavals, global supply chains had been disrupted, leading to a serious impact on delivering energy, food, and fertilizers to developing nations. He viewed these challenges as an opportunity for SCO members to address them collaboratively, noting that with more than 40% of the world’s population within the SCO, its collective decisions would surely have a global impact.
Additionally, Jaishankar highlighted the unabated menace of terrorism, and that combating it was one of the original mandates of the SCO. He drew attention to the unfolding situation in Afghanistan where the immediate priorities included providing humanitarian assistance, ensuring a truly inclusive and representative government, combating terrorism and drug trafficking and preserving the rights of women, children and minorities. This was echoed by the Chinese foreign minister.
India expressed its willingness to share its expertise and experience in the field of startups having helped cultivate over 70,000, more than 100 of which were ‘unicorns’. Last year, it proposed the creation of a Startups and Innovation working groups as well as one focused on traditional medicines, and the SCO meeting approved plans to operationalize these initiatives.
India believes that the SCO should look at reform and modernization to keep the organization relevant in a rapidly transforming world, and noted that discussions on these issues had already commenced. It also sought support for its long-standing demand to make English the SCO’s third official language, as this would enable a deeper engagement with English-speaking members and would take the SCO’s work to a global audience.
India also proposed the New Delhi Declaration as an SCO Summit Declaration at the meeting, as well as four other thematic joint statements on cooperation in de-radicalization strategies, promotion of millets, sustainable lifestyles to address climate change and digital transformation. India sought support for a timely finalization of these documents for approval at the SCO Summit.
Indian delegation wraps up successful business tour in Russia
According to Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, all participating parties considered the SCO as an important platform for joint combat against terrorism, separatism, drug trafficking, as well as cyber crimes. All favored more cooperation in such fields as transportation, energy, finance, investment, trade, the digital economy, regional connectivity, deeper cultural and people-to-people exchanges, environmental protection, climate change, sustainable development, and SCO’s strengthened cooperation with the United Nations and BRICS countries.
The meeting also offered the gathered foreign ministers an opportunity for intense bilateral meetings. For example, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov met his Chinese counterpart to discuss the implementation of agreements reached between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping in March.
The SCO continues to enlarge its footprint, widen its agenda, and carve out a non-Western space in the international system, but some key points of friction remain between members especially China and India. The two countries are currently embroiled in a border dispute that has yet to be settled. Additionally, India stands in opposition to China’s Belt and Road Initiative due to India’s concerns about connected sovereignty issues.
The other, less important fault line, is India-Pakistan relations. Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bhutto Zardari did not help matters by making indirect jibes at India during his speech at the SCO meeting and further criticism of New Delhi in his interviews to the media. His comments elicited a sharp response by the Indian Foreign Minister, but only after the SCO meeting was completed. Pakistan is currently in the throes of a major internal crisis, which may affect its participation in the SCO summit. However, India-Pakistan differences are not germane to the SCO’s growing stature. Far more important is the Russia-India-China triangle.
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of TSFT.
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Rome is considering leaving the Belt and Road Initiative in a move which will place virtue signaling to other Western states above its own interests
Italy’s membership of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is up for renewal at the end of this year, and Western media outlets are speculating that Rome may choose to leave the pact.
Italy became the first and only G7 nation to join China’s multi-billion-dollar infrastructure vision, signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) just before a tidal wave of anti-China sentiment was unleashed on the world. Indeed, the country’s leadership was in a very different place then, with Italy being led by Giuseppe Conte of the Five Star Movement, whose populism faulted the Euro-Atlantic establishment for decimating the Italian economy through the 2008 debt crisis and the brutal austerity measures which followed. It is little wonder that Italy had decided to look eastwards.
Even 15 years on from the events of 2008, Italy’s economy still has not fully recovered. It was worth $2.4 trillion at the end of that year, but is only at $2.1 trillion now, and barely growing at all. New and concurrent economic crises have taken a toll. Italy’s current leadership no longer believes all roads lead to Rome, let alone to China’s modern-day Silk Road – rather, they lead to Washington. As pressure on the country has grown, its successive leaders, Mario Draghi and Giorgia Meloni, have sought to reset its foreign policy back to transatlantic-oriented goals, ending its rebellion against the establishment and thus contemplating quitting China’s grand initiative.
Italy may exit ‘New Silk Road’ – FT
Oddly enough, the truth remains that it is the EU and US that stand as the biggest threat to Italy’s prosperity, not China. While dumping the BRI will receive plaudits from the US-dominated commentary circles in these countries, the reality is that they offer no alternative, no plans, and no incentives to make Italy a wealthier country. It is the “sick man” of the G7, an advanced economy that has increasingly lost its competitiveness, but also one that has been thrust into decline by being a southern EU country and a net loser of Eurozone policies.
It is precisely because of the economic upheavals that the country has faced over the past 15 years and widespread political dissatisfaction, that radical and populist politics have gained ground. China was rightfully seen as an alternative, a country that could rapidly expand Italy’s exports and invest in crumbling public infrastructure. However, this has quickly become politically incorrect. Italy’s leaders argue that BRI participation has been a waste of time. However, the reality is that when Eurocrat Mario Draghi came to office, he sought to reset Italy’s foreign policy and began using new “golden powers” to veto and cancel Chinese investments in Italy on a large scale. In 2021 alone, he blocked three Chinese takeovers, including a seed and vegetable producer.
Following Draghi, Giorgia Meloni, despite her outward populism, has been even more prone to pledging Rome’s loyalty to the transatlantic cause, having decided to become vocal in support of Ukraine in its conflict with Russia and even visit Kiev. At this stage, it is very little surprise that her country is contemplating canceling participation in the BRI, something which can score political points and help dispel doubts about her loyalty to Brussels and Washington. Predictably, the mainstream media narrative readily depicts the BRI in predatory and malign terms, ignoring the obvious empirical truth that it is the EU that has saddled Italy with a national debt larger than its GDP, and not China. Of course, there is no alternative scheme or plan for Italy on offer should it leave the BRI, meaning it is cutting its nose off to spite its face.
EU defenseless against China – Berlusconi
By forfeiting its BRI membership, Italy will undoubtedly lose the opportunity to massively enhance its trade competitiveness, namely by opting out of projects such as Chinese-owned ports and railway links. As an example of this, Greece, to the southeast, has positioned itself as a “gateway to Europe” through Chinese ownership of Pireaus port and its connecting railways, which allows cargo to go up through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean, into the port and then across Europe. Italy could have competed for a share of this, but it has chosen not to, and it’s not like it will be selling anything additional to the US with its protectionist “America first” policies, is it?
In doing so, Italy has chosen to stop being a leader pursuing its own path in the world to better strengthen its global clout, but instead to be a follower, to play second fiddle to the transatlantic establishment which doesn’t see it as a particularly prominent partner to begin with. Italy joined the BRI precisely because it was sick of being a “rule taker” from Brussels, in a similar vein to what Greece has experienced. Now it appears happy again to hold up the political orthodoxy of the elitist, US-led G7. In doing so, it can kiss goodbye any hopes of becoming a powerful and influential country again anytime soon. Italy is admired mostly for its past, as opposed to what it offers to the world presently, and if its current leadership has its way, that will likely remain the case.
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