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On the subject of "not our crimes", here's a Telegraph View – Labour must show it understands women’s rights:

We are only now discovering how much damage has been done in the name of gender ideology. Last month, a review led by Professor Alice Sullivan revealed that official records, ranging from those held by the NHS to the criminal justice system, have been “corrupted” for years, and on a large scale, by the usurpation of biological sex by self-declared gender.

Statistics on sex offences are being distorted by male offenders identifying as female. Defendants have been allowed to change their identities before trial, potentially affecting the verdict or sentence. Now, at last, the courts have been given notice to deny defendants this wish automatically….

The legal system retains, however, a systematic bias in favour of self-ID. For example, the Crown Prosecution Service still instructs prosecutors “to address trans victims, witnesses and defendants according to their affirmed gender and name”. It may be a while before courts revert to using objective rather than subjective criteria – a practice they should never have abandoned.

Fortunately there are courageous individuals in the public arena who are standing up against the tyranny of identity politics. Perhaps surprisingly, some of these intrepid spirits work at the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Last week, the commission submitted a 310-page revision of its Statutory Code of Practice. If fully implemented, this code would protect the sex-based rights of women and represent a welcome victory for campaigners such as Maya Forstater….

The new court guidelines and the proposal by the Equality Commission are both important steps towards a more rational approach to sex and gender. Public opinion has never supported the tiny minority of gender extremists who have sought not only to cast doubt on the facts of life, but also to criminalise common sense. Yet this arena of the culture wars is still fiercely contested. Why has the pushback taken so long? And when will the Prime Minister get off the fence?

Not she/her, not a woman, not our crimes.

H/t: @MugMana pic.twitter.com/AYcurYIEwh

— Billy Bragg (@Serena_Partrick) April 12, 2025

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The Independent report doesn't even bother with a picture so we can see we're being lied to:

A Detroit woman is facing animal torture charges after she stabbed her dog and posted footage of the wounded animal online, police say. Jordan Love, 29, of Detroit, was charged with the killing and torturing of animals in the second degree as well as abandoning and cruelty to four to ten animals when she was arrested almost 700 miles away from her home Monday afternoon…. 

…though they do manage a picture of the street corner where this stabbing was alleged to have occurred.

the “increasingly common” number of cases of violent or sexual offences where recognising a trans offender’s biological sex affects the outcome of the case.

Campaigners have expressed concern that transgender defendants who are biologically male and have committed sex attacks against women are being referred to as “she” in court.

It's not only "biased", it's also a massive insult to the women who've been raped. They know it's a man. Hell, everyone knows it's a man. So why this pussy-footing deference to the risible "trans identity" of the offender? 

Last September, Lexi Secker, a trans rapist who was sentenced to more than six years in a male prison, was referred to as “she” by police, a judge and barristers throughout a trial in Swindon.

Fiona McAnena, the director of campaigns for the charity Sex Matters, said at the time: “This person is a man. Why don’t the police say so? Do they think they have to pretend, because he now says he’s a woman, even though he has committed the ultimate male crime of rape?

“It is very concerning to see the police pandering to the feelings of trans-identifying males. It does not give confidence that they are policing without fear or favour.”

It suggests that they, and the court, have more concern for the feelings of the rapist than for the feelings of his victims.

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Only a full statutory national inquiry will do. https://t.co/aZ7N4DLW4e

— Kemi Badenoch (@KemiBadenoch) April 11, 2025

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Outside Harper Hospital, Detroit:

[Photo: Shorpy/DPC]

Cropped from a larger original.

The US and Iran opening pretend direct talks in Oman is an opportunity to recall some of the cautionary tales that Iran offers about:
1) Leftist alliance with Islamists
2) 'It's only about Israel and Zionism, we actually love Jews'
3) Sponsoring Palestinianism
More here:

1) The…

— Dr. Einat Wilf (@EinatWilf) April 11, 2025

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Full text:

1) The forward looking, secular, educated, progressive leftists of Iran allied themselves with the Islamists for the joint goal of bringing down the Shah of Iran. They believed the Islamists were their allies in birthing a new, more democratic Iran, that would finally represent the will of its people against Imperial interests. They did help birth a new Iran and promptly became its victims.

2) Up until the Islamic Revolution Iran could boast of one of the oldest and relatively prosperous and integrated Jewish community. The Jewish community of Iran could trace itself to the Babylonian Exile and the time of Cyrus the Great, and under the 20th century Shahs enjoyed a period of relative prosperity and integration, with dozens of synagogues in Tehran alone.

The Islamic Revolution claimed to protect the Jews, even recognizing them as a religion minority in the new constitution, but then proceeded promptly to persecute and execute Jew on suspicion of Zionism (and no Jews, despite JVP's best efforts, will ever be able to evade suspicions of Zionism, because heaven forbid, they just said 'Next Year in Jerusalem' at the Passover Seder), and confiscated many Jewish businesses. As in Iraq, and across the Arab world two decades earlier, the Jews got the message loud and clear and fled the country. A confident flourishing community of 100,000 dwindled to a tenth of that number, living under strict limits.

3) The Islamic Republic of Iran, like all antisemitic and antizionist powers before it – from the Nazis, to the pan-Arabists, to the Soviets – took upon itself to sponsor Palestinianism (the ideology singularly obsessed with the destruction of the Jewish state). Although given the track record, one would have to wonder why. Seeing that the Nazis, pan-Arabists and Soviets have all ended in the dustbin of history, one could venture an educated bet that the Islamic Republic of Iran will suffer a similar fate.

And finally, although the evidence is mostly anecdotal, it seems that just as the best way to get people to disavow Socialism was to live under it, it seems that living under Islamic rule is not exactly endearing Islam to the people of Iran.

Let the talks begin.

he discussion on the future of steel also didn’t last as long as the one on the parliamentarians’ treatment by Israel – just 39 minutes.

Tuesday’s statement on child sexual exploitation, and subsequent discussion on also had less time devoted to it. This one lasted 53 minutes.

It's a hopeless cause. Muslims in general have no specific loyalty to Labour, and the hard-core Islamists will never be satisfied. 

ft: 40px”>Annika Suchoski, 40, and Daniel “Anne” Crocket, believed to be 66, are entering their respective age categories for the women’s epee at the tournament, both of which are set to begin on April 11 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

News of Suchoski’s participation in the women’s category first came to light in September of last year when, after just six months of competing in the sport, he came second in the Fortune Fencing Regional Championships in Ontario – beating all but one of his female competitors.

Men, eh? They just pick up this kind of stuff so easily. Much better than the silly women!

Concerningly, Suchoski has posted multiple photos to his Instagram page where he has used filters to make himself appear child-like, a practice known as “affirming edits.” In one of the captions of the images, he claims he has been “doing a lot of work to heal [his] inner child.”

Well…maybe humiliating women is another way of healing his inner child. It's not uncommon.

Crocket, who has been calling himself “Anne” since at least 2022, currently serves on USA Fencing’s Domestic Assignment Committee for Referees, meaning he has control over the hiring for the referees of the eight national tournaments held each season by the organization, including the North American Cup this weekend. Crocket is also a member of the Rules and Examinations Committee, which is responsible for making decisions on fencing rules and maintaining the USA Fencing rulebook.

Useful.

Added:

HAPPENING NOW: You can tell who the male fencer is—“Annika” Suchocka—because he’s the only one who’s 6 ft tall, wearing PINK & a lot of make-up. pic.twitter.com/1IkH3OIUro

— Belissa Cohen #TERFultra (@BelissaCohen) April 11, 2025

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0px”>Thus, they banned employees from saying, teaching or often even thinking anything that contradicted the contested idea that gender identity prevails over biological sex as an organising category in society. That is, they prohibited the expression of gender-critical belief: the idea that sex is binary and immutable and (most importantly) that it sometimes matters.

These policies have now begun to disappear from university websites in the wake of the £585,000 fine imposed by the Office for Students (OfS) on the University of Sussex because of the potential of its Trans and Non-Binary Equality Policy Statement to stifle academic freedom and free speech. The fine follows a four-year investigation prompted by the treatment of Kathleen Stock. The gender-critical philosopher resigned from Sussex in 2021 in the face of a vicious campaign of targeted harassment triggered by her temperate, innocuous observations about the challenges posed by gender identity theory to women’s rights, lesbian and gay rights and academic freedom.

The fact that the vilification of Stock was permitted to escalate so shamefully must be due, in no small part, to a university culture that had been formalised and cemented by the adoption of the policy in 2018.

As well as finding that the policy breached academic freedom regulatory conditions, the OfS report also suggests that it might contravene the UK’s Equality Act 2010. That observation need not have been so tentatively expressed. A remarkable series of successful cases brought by gender-critical employees has shown clearly that policies replicating the Advance HE 2010 template and the Stonewall definitions cannot withstand the scrutiny of equality law.

By the time Stock resigned, Maya Forstater had already won her landmark employment appeal tribunal victory establishing that gender-critical beliefs are worthy of respect in a democratic society and so are protected philosophical beliefs under the Equality Act. Hence, contrary to popular mythology, it is incontrovertible that the expression of gender-critical belief cannot be banned outright in a higher education workplace. That includes “misgendering”, which in some circumstances can be an unobjectionable manifestation of gender-critical belief.

And that's not all.

It follows that trans people do not have a legal right to choose single-sex facilities matching their gender identity. An employer that allows this practice risks breaching both Equality Act prohibition on indirect sex discrimination and health and safety law.

Finally, with Sussex University deservedly leading the way, the trans dominoes in higher education are beginning to tumble.

The FA isn't reading the room. From the Telegraph:

The Football Association has quietly updated its transgender rules that stop short of preventing athletes born male playing in women’s matches.

If they're born male that means they are male. This absurd "born male" formulation just plays along with the trans delusion that people can change their sex. Which they can't.

Following a years-long review of its transgender policy, the FA has ignored calls from campaigners to follow the likes of the Rugby Football Union in permitting only those registered as female at birth to compete in women’s fixtures.

The amended rules instead lay out a formal process by which individual trans women could be excluded from such matches on the grounds of safety or fairness on a case-by-case basis….

The updated policy was denounced by Fiona McAnena, director of campaigns for Sex Matters, who said: “Female footballers will feel very let down by this revised policy, which does nothing to restore fairness and safety in the women’s game. By merely requiring male players to prove once a year that they have lowered their testosterone to a level that is still far above normal female levels, it’s unscientific, already out of date and not compliant with the Sports Councils’ guidance. No wonder the FA published this without announcing it.”