Ann Menasche, a civil rights attorney, discusses the legal complaint she lodged against Disability Rights California earlier this year in response to her being fired from her job of twenty years. Her employer, Disability Rights California, issued a statement in May 2022 that opposed the reversal of Roe vs. Wade while also erasing females completely from the picture by replacing the word “women” in the context of pregnancy and abortion, with “people.” Menasche responded to this listserv statement writing: “So glad DRC came up with a statement in defense of Roe! Thank you! Access to safe, legal abortion is a life and death necessity for women as a biological sex across the board, regardless of race, economic class, gender identity, sexual orientation (even lesbians can be raped) or anything else, and an absolute prerequisite for equal female participation in our society. Of course, the most vulnerable females, especially poor women, women of color, women with disabilities, young girls, unhoused women and girls, women and girls in prison, etc. will suffer the most under draconian anti-abortion laws. Wealthy white women have often managed to get abortions, even before Roe. As a veteran of the feminist struggle for abortion rights that preceded Roe, I never thought it would come to this. Yet, it is good to remember that women won this right primarily through grassroots organizing and peaceful mass protests in the streets, and that is the way we are going to protect it. Thanks again, DRC, for taking a stand!” Menasche lost her employment for this statement and details the entire political wave of wokery within her sector and the fear driving the neoliberal managerial class that makes women participants in the erasure of their own sex class. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Kit Klarenberg, investigative journalist and editor-in-chief of The Grayzone UK, discusses his detainment by UK counter-terrorism police on 17 May at Luton Airport when he arrived from Belgrade, Serbia. With the threat of arrest held over him if he didn’t comply, Klarenberg was interrogated, had his bank cards, electronic devices and SD cards seized, his fingerprints and photo taken, his shoes removed, his DNA taken and he was subjected to a five-hour interrogation. While all this was ostensibly conducted under Schedule 3 to the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019, Klarenberg observes how this law gives British law enforcement wide latitude to detain and harass individuals deemed to be taking part in a “hostile activity” whereby according to this Act an individual “can pose a state threat on behalf of a hostile foreign power without them intending to or the foreign power whose interest they are serving knowing.” Klarenberg contextualises what happened to him in May, elaborating on the bizarre interrogation through which he was subject, placing his experience within the context of recent draconian EU sanctions against state-owned Russian media outlets (RT and Sputnik) and the crackdown on legitimate speech under the aegis of "Russian disinformation."  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Simon Ateba, Chief White House Correspondent for Today News Africa in Washington, discusses the challenges he has faced at the White House under former Press Secretary Jen Psaki after challenging her over the ban on eight African nations over the Omicron variant of COVID-19 and then more recently with Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House Press Secretary, having ignored Ateba’s quesitons for seven months. Ateba also covers the remarkable story of how on 20 March when at the White House for a press briefing, instead of being allowed to ask questions, Ateba and other members of the press found themselves thrown into a political theatre where the cast of Ted Lasso was brought in to derail the White House press briefing (to discuss mental health). Ateba, ready to do his job to ask questions about the news of the day, attempted to ask questions as Jean-Pierre scolded him for engaging in his job as a journalist. Ateba addresses how the role of the White House press secretary has become politicised whereby this role has become a position of curating the news emanating from the White House by answering light-weight questions from legacy media representatives while ignoring the harder questions posed by journalists representing smaller, independent and/or non-western media. These practices, Ateba notes, have become so entrenched within institutions and power centres today that they represent the ethos of what is now known as the “Censorship Industrial Complex.” Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Paul Kingsnorth discusses the current debate within western culture where the postmodern and classical views of the world are at odds—those who believe in objective truth are pit against those who believe reality is a social construction. Discussing the west’s embrace of gender ideology, Kingsnorth notes the resistance to material reality conterminous to the embrace of technology while criticising the crisis of modernity where many believe humans can “remake” themselves while contending that any critique of this pretence over nature is itself a form of oppression. Examining the transgender movement on a wider spectrum where transhumanism and artificial intelligence also coexist, Kingsnorth observes how all these movements challenge biology, nature, and objective truth while positioning modern humanity in a “godlike way” that pretends we are can all be genderless, posthuman, and permeant, seizing the postmodern claim that “we can effectively become gods.” Kingsnorth criticises how the discourses around technology today attempt to view embodiment as a form of oppression, while noting that those who defend nature or objective truth are viewed as oppressors. Analysing the scale of institutional capture, Kingsnorth discerns how in addition to gender ideology, the language of race and white supremacy, all transplants from the United States, are being weaponised today across Europe to divide people into racial groups, setting people against each other while creating a war against the human body, human relationships, and the family. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Nick Cruse, citizen journalist and cofounder of Revolutionary Blackout Network, discusses the political terrain in the United States today and how legacy media participated in the political framing and exaggeration of the events of the 6 January 2021 protests at the Capitol in Washington, DC. Vituperating the “frauds that cosplay as Socialists and leftists” like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cruse elaborates how this neoliberal class has made a mockery of itself pretending that the unarmed protestors at the Capitol formed an insurgency, while in reality these same actors supported US government-back insurgencies in other countries such as the 2018 assassination attempt on the life of Nicolas Maduro whom they labelled a “tyrant and a thug.” Noting how Bernie Sanders shifted the left radically to the right by siphoning leftists to the Democratic Party, Cruse criticises how legacy media has abetted politics through disinformation to include the attempt to bury the Hunter Biden laptop story as “Russian disinformation” asking: “What are the chances that our media always had the same exact narrative?” Cruse demonstrates how journalism is failing the public remarking how media today collaborates with the state by creating fake news to divert the public from current events as journalists are censorsed or killed. Analysing the Biden administration’s collaboration with the Israeli government in covering up the murder of veteran Al Jazeera journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, Cruse scrutinises how White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refuses to take media questions regarding her murder or the torture and imprisonment of journalist and publisher, Julian Assange. Cruse observes that even if Assange were to be freed today, the lesson of terrorising journalists into compliance, into silence, has already been learned. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Exulansic discusses her series, I am Jazz’s Waking Nightmare, wherein she offers social and political commentary on Jazz Jennings’ reality TV show, I am Jazz. Analysing gender ideology’s infiltration in mainstream media, Exulansic delves into the postmodern condition of the Jennings family’s pathological grooming of Jazz Jennings. Analysing the production of I am Jazz, Exulansic examines the reality show and how all reality has been edited out or caught accidentally on camera while Jazz’s persona, crafted for television audiences as he is coached to demonstrate the happy “transgender” subject, morphs between the scripted lines and unscripted moments that allow for the reality and horror of his life to materialise. Historicising how the audience witnesses Jazz being coached for the show’s production and by his own family, Exulansic ironises how despite his ad-libbed performances we still get glimpses of Jazz’s real self through accidental admissions that are not edited out. Demystifying the rhetoric throughout this show’s history—how sic “transgender” people will always be oppressed, Exulansic studies how this show has become a marketing platform for ideological dissemination while locating the mother, Jeanette Jennings, as the primary perpetrator of her son whom she sexually abuses and shatters his psychological development through the pseudo-medical hokum and dangerous medical experimentation, all executed in the name of transgender ideology.  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Dr David Bell, a former staff governor at the Tavistock & Portman NHS Trust, discusses the fallout from the circumstances of his 2018 report, highly critical of the Tavistock Gender Development Service (GIDS), along with the criticisms by his colleagues from the Tavistock, that led to the growing public concern about GIDS, the Judicial Review, and the decision by NHS England, following the Cass Review, to close the service. Bell explores the complex terrain where the pro-medicalisation push within this demographic is at odds with the anti-pathology proponents, describing the paradox of a peculiar “double narrative” around gender dysphoria: those who claim they have a psychiatric disorder in order to covered by the NHS or by private insurance to be treated quickly and then the second group that claims they don’t have an illness, so they don’t need treatment. Bell also queries the politicisation of the treatments around gender dysphoria, stating, “Gender disorder…is a kind of ticket” where its adherents claim “that they know what the treatment is that they need.” Analysing the changes in the cultural context of gender dysphoria such as the co-morbidities associated with girls who identify as having “gender dysphoria” (eg. autism), Bell observes how current data on the decline of anorexia and bulemia cases suggests that girls who identify as transgender have much in common with the previous generations of anorexia and bulemia. Highlighting the complex and difficult relationship these girls have with their sexual body, Bell maps out the various ways these sorts of manifestations have changed according to cultural shifts: in Freud’s day it was “hysteria” to anorexia and bulemia in the twentieth century to this century’s manifestation of gender dysphoria. Noting how among young people in the UK presenting with gender dysphoria that 80% are girls, Bell ascribes this condition’s undercurrent as stemming from neoliberalism and misogyny. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Kevin Gosztola, journalist and editor of Shadowproof, discusses his latest book, Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange (2023) detailing the profound injustice of the case against Julian Assange. Historicising the political background to the case against Assange, Gosztola covers the fundamentally undemocratic nature of the Espionage Act (1918) which works against free speech principles and freedom of the press while this act also protects entrenched corruption. Gosztola elaborates the abuses the US government has enacted upon journalists and whistleblowers who have told the truth while public officials have gotten away, unpunished, for their criminal acts and policies such that Assange has been held accountable as a publisher of war crimes while those who have enacted these war crimes have not faced justice. Gosztola analyses how both Democratic and Republican administrations, mainstream news outlets, the CIA, the FBI, the Justice Department, and other powerful forces have all conspired to condemn Assange in retaliation for exposing the extent of US torture, rendition, and war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan while evidencing how Assange was intentially made to “look like a bum” by major media as Assange was marched in front of the cameras in a dishevelled state in order to posture him as looking like he belongs in prison. Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Lexi Ellingsworth, co-founder of Stop Surrogacy Now UK, discusses the state of surrogacy within Britain in the run-up to this week’s report jointly published by the Law Commission of England and Wales and the Scottish Law Commission that outlines recommendations for law reform around surrogacy. Ellingsworth outlines the finer points of commercial surrogacy, currently illegal in the UK that are being subtly eroded through “altruistic surrogacy,” demonstrating how this system is a fudge on the commercial model because there are hidden aspects of remuneration in addition to powerful social returns. Ellingsworth vituperates how altruistic surrogacy, in some ways similar to the “sex work” model, is largely based on neoliberal notions of “choice” where pregnancy is a service and a baby the product all under the auspices of helping others create a family. Discussing how the ethical lines that are quickly creating a breeder class of woman to service the elite—be they infertile couples of the professional class or gay men—Ellingsworth outlines how the pro-surrogacy lobby is astroturfed to influence democratic debate while pushing the commercial model even to the exclusion of women’s voices up until the public consultation. Ellingsworth frames all forms of surrogacy within the larger legal spectrum of human trafficking noting that while we accept that women can do what they like with their bodies, “Do we also say that she can do what she likes with her children and if she wants to sell them, she can?” noting that laws which currently prohibit the sale of children who are two-years old, paradoxically in many countries uphold the sale of “brand new” children.  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe

Toby Green and Thomas Fazi discuss their recent book, The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (2023) and the wider landscape of the regressive effects of lockdown policies. Historicising the pandemic response to the anti-democratic push of neoliberalism, Fazi observes how during the financial crisis, a new class of economists was ushered forth to justify devastating economic policies, falsely claiming the inevitability of austerity in order to save the planet from another financial collapse. Fazi notes how this same model of “econocracy” was brought in and used during the pandemic as hand-picked scientists played a similar role of the economists during the financial crisis in order to side-step democratic debate. Elaborating how the Trusted News Initiative (TNI), formed in 2019, brought together the most powerful media organisations in the world to include the BBC, Reuters, The Hindu, and The Guardian, among many other media outlets, Green analyses how by 2020 the TNI became a type of clearinghouse for received opinion on COVID-19 as it curated the media landscape around the pandemic creating long-lasting implications for democracy as accuracy was sacrificed for misinformation. Green and Fazi characterise the political and biomedical response to COVID-19 lockdowns as criminal, as they map out the negative effects on education, mental health, child protection, suicides, obesity, alcohol consumption, gun violence, and an increase in the marriages of adolescent girls by families desperate for economice relief in India.  Get full access to Savage Minds at savageminds.substack.com/subscribe