{"id":79099,"date":"2024-12-16T06:00:12","date_gmt":"2024-12-16T11:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=79099"},"modified":"2024-12-13T15:05:29","modified_gmt":"2024-12-13T20:05:29","slug":"monday-miscellany-12-16-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2024\/12\/monday-miscellany-12-16-24\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Miscellany, 12\/16\/24"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bad times for dictators.\u00a0 Hallucinating the news.\u00a0 And the UK completely bans puberty blockers for minors.<\/p>\n

Bad Times for Dictators<\/h4>\n

After an 11-year civil war, Syrian dictator\u00a0Bashar al-Assad was ousted<\/a> in a week-long rebel surge that toppled his whole regime.\u00a0 The war, which was a major reason for the surge of immigrants<\/a> into Europe, put an end to 50 years of a brutal rule, counting the reigns of both Bashar and his father.\u00a0 Among other atrocities, Assad is said to have used poison gas against his own citizens.<\/p>\n

\n

This is not a victory of freedom, though, as some outlets are portraying it.\u00a0 The victorious rebels are radical Islamists on the U.S. terror watchlist.\u00a0 Assad, like Sadaam Hussein, is a Ba\u2019athist<\/a>, a blend of nationalism, socialism, and an authoritarian leader that is essentially Arab Fascism.\u00a0 An enemy of the U.S. for non-Islamic reasons, he was part of the new \u201cAxis\u201d of America\u2019s adversaries with Iran, Russia, China, and North Korea.<\/p>\n

Overthrowing Assad is good news in part because it is also a defeat for Iran and Russia.\u00a0 A big reason that Assad could not defeat the rebels this time is that those nations could no longer keep him in power as they have for years.\u00a0 Israel absolutely destroyed Hezbollah, assassinating its leadership with those exploding pagers among other tactics and wiping out its ability to conduct warfare.\u00a0 Hezbollah is Iran\u2019s proxy that helped keep Assad in power.\u00a0 So\u00a0Israel<\/a>\u2018s victory over that army of terrorists also knocked out the threat of Syria and Iran.<\/p>\n

Russia was Assad\u2019s other major supporter, but was unable to help much because its own military debacle with Ukraine prevented it from being able to help Syria.\u00a0 In fact, Russia is said to have had its own \u201cSaigon moment<\/a>\u201c\u2013or, we might say, its Kabul moment\u2013as its forces, primarily aircraft, hightailed it out of there to get away before the rebels got there.\u00a0 Assad reportedly begged Russia for help, but all it could do was offer Assad asylum.<\/p>\n

There is now a power vacuum<\/a> in Syria and, indeed, in the whole Middle East.\u00a0 Turkey is already trying to rush into the vacuum and rival terrorist groups, including a revived ISIS, will likely battle each other for power.\u00a0 \u00a0The Syrian people, including Syrian Christians, are mostly glad Assad is gone, but they likely face a period of chaos and more violence.<\/p>\n

Israel is currently bombing the weapons the Syrian army and the Russians have left behind, as opposed to what President Biden did in presiding over the fall of Afghanistan and leaving behind $7 billion worth of military equipment<\/a> that the Taliban is now selling to other terrorists<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hallucinating the News<\/h4>\n

After President Biden faced criticism for pardoning his son Hunter, some members of the media rushed to his defense.\u00a0 Ana Navarro, CBS political commentator and co-host of The<\/em> View<\/em>, denied that what Biden did was unprecedented.<\/p>\n

She posted<\/a> on X:\u00a0 \u201cWoodrow Wilson pardoned his brother-in-law, Hunter deButts.\u201d\u00a0 After listing Clinton\u2019s pardon of his brother and Trump\u2019s pardon of his daughter\u2019s father-in-law, she concluded: \u201cBut tell me again how Joe Biden \u2018is setting precedent\u2019?\u201d<\/p>\n

Another Hunter!\u00a0 But it turns out, Woodrow Wilson did no such thing and had no such brother-in-law.\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cHunter deButts\u201d was an AI hallucination!<\/p>\n

Navarro asked ChatGPT for a list of presidential pardons of relatives and it made one up!\u00a0 Again, as I keep saying, you can\u2019t trust \u201cfacts\u201d generated by Artificial Intelligence.\u00a0 The technology is helpful in gathering and sorting through general information, but it is subject to \u201challucinations<\/a>,\u201d in which it makes stuff up.<\/p>\n

Always check an AI answer by using traditional sources before using it, which of course defeats the purpose.<\/p>\n

The UK Completely Bans Puberty Blockers for Minors<\/h4>\n

Great Britain has completely banned the prescribing of puberty blockers for children under 18 who suffer from gender dysphoria.<\/p>\n

In the words of a government press release<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Existing emergency measures banning the sale and supply of puberty-suppressing hormones will be made indefinite, following official advice from medical experts.<\/p>\n

The Commission on Human Medicines (CHM<\/abbr>) has provided independent expert advice that there is currently an unacceptable safety risk in the continued prescription of puberty blockers to children. It recommends indefinite restrictions while work is done to ensure the safety of children and young people.<\/p>\n

The NHS stopped the routine prescription of puberty blocker treatments to under 18s in March 2024,\u00a0following the\u00a0Cass Review into gender identity services<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Puberty blockers for the treatment of gender incongruence and\/or gender dysphoria in under 18s were banned temporarily in May 2024 after the Cass Review found there was insufficient evidence to show they were safe. Legislation will be updated today to make the order indefinite and will be reviewed in 2027.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The United Kingdom is far more liberal than the United States, and its government is in the hands of the left-leaning Labour Party.\u00a0 But there is a consensus in Great Britain across both the Labour Party and the Conservatives that children should not be harmed just to signal support for transgenderism. There is nothing \u201cliberal,\u201d per se, about sterilizing children.<\/p>\n

Would that American liberals and our medical establishment would emulate Great Britain, the even more liberal Scandinavian countries, and most of the rest of the world in stopping this medical child abuse.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Illustration:\u00a0 Lucas Cranach\u2019s Seal, Public Domain<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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