Getting to look like Mexico

Founder of African American museum found dead in car trunk

The 75-year-old founder of an African American history museum in Louisiana was found dead in the trunk of a car in what police are calling a “heinous act.”

The body of Sadie Roberts-Joseph — also a community activist who teamed up with police on an anti-drug and -violence program — was discovered Friday afternoon in the vehicle about 3 miles from her home, police said.

“Ms. Sadie was a tireless advocate of peace,” the Baton Rouge Police Department said in a statement. “Our detectives are working diligently to bring the person or persons responsible for this heinous act to justice.”

One of Roberts-Joseph’s 11 siblings, Beatrice Johnson, told The Advocate that her sister came over earlier Friday to bake some cornbread after her oven gave out.

“The bread is still there,” Johnson said. “She never came back to get it.”

According to The Advocate, Roberts-Joseph founded the Baton Rouge African American Museum in 2001 and was its curator.

She also organized an annual Juneteenth festival at the museum, marking the date June 19, 1865, when announcement of the abolition of slavery in the US state of Texas was made.

Louisiana state Rep. C. Denise Marcelle called Roberts-Joseph an “amazing woman” who loved history.

“My heart is empty … as I learned last night that Ms. Sadie Roberts Joseph was found murdered!” Marcelle said in a statement posted on Facebook. “She never bothered anyone, just wanted to expand her African American Museum downtown… loved working with her and am saddened by her death…. whoever knows what happened to her, please contact the authorities and say something.”

Police said an autopsy will be conducted to determine the exact cause of death.

Neither male nor female: Why some nonbinary people are 'microdosing' hormones

The goal is to appear "somewhere in the middle" on the gender spectrum, one nonbinary Los Angeles resident said.

July 13, 2019, 1:53 PM PDT

By Julie Compton

Marisa Rivas never felt comfortable living as a woman, but doesn’t identify as a man either.

Last year, Rivas, 30, a college admissions coordinator in Los Angeles, had a mastectomy. This year, Rivas started using gender-neutral “they” and “them” pronouns.

Then, at the end of June, Rivas went to the Los Angeles LGBT Center in West Hollywood to talk to a doctor about going on “low-dose” testosterone, known colloquially as “microdosing.” Rivas hopes to achieve a sharper jawline and a more androgynous physique without overtly masculine features like facial hair. The goal is an appearance that is not clearly male or female.

“I still want to be somewhere in the middle,” Rivas said.

Hormone microdosing is of growing interest to some nonbinary people like Rivas who want to masculinize or feminize their bodies in subtle ways. There is little research on the technique’s prevalence, but doctors who treat transgender and nonbinary people say the medical community should consider the needs of those who want to change their bodies without medically transitioning fully to the opposite gender.

“There’s this kind of assumption with transgender individuals that everyone should get surgery and everyone should get hormones to become as ‘male’ or ‘female’ as possible — and that’s simply not true,” said Dr. Tri Do, an internist and assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

Nonbinary advocates are calling for a broader definition of medical transition as more Americans identify outside the gender binary. Fifty-six percent of “Generation Zers” — those born between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s — report knowing someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns. And more than a third of almost 28,000 adult respondents to the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey, the largest survey devoted to the experiences of trans people, reported that they were nonbinary or genderqueer.

Not all nonbinary people seek medical transition, and it’s unclear how many do, since medical systems in the United States typically only track sex assigned at birth. But for those who want to move toward a more gender-neutral appearance, microdosing is an increasingly discussed option. Several YouTube videos describing the experience have received thousands of views.

Do, who has been treating transgender patients since 2001, said he starts all his patients on lower hormone dosages to give them time to adjust and to find a comfortable dose. Low doses have the same effects as higher ones, but it takes longer for those effects — bulky muscles and facial hair in the case of testosterone and increased body fat in the case of estrogen — to develop. The results of a particular dose can vary greatly by person due to genetics, he said, and patients often ask to switch to higher or lower doses as they see changes to their bodies — or, in rare cases, may choose to stop taking hormones entirely.

For Rivas, the appeal is simple: a sense of control.

“The thing about microdosing is that it’s such a little bit at a time that if it’s not something I like doing, I can always stop taking it,” said Rivas, who learned about microdosing through an essay published on Vice in April. “And if it’s something that I feel like at some point I may need more of, then that’s an option.”

Marisa Rivas has lunch with wife Candace Lopez at Casa La Dona in downtown Los Angeles.Jim Seida / NBC News

Doctors and surgeons are seeing more nonbinary patients

In 1979, when the first international transgender health care guidelines were published, trans people who sought treatment were under pressure to identify as either male or female to be taken seriously by providers, according to Dr. Asa Radix, senior director of research and education at the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, which provides health care to LGBTQ people in New York City.

Since then, attitudes about gender and sexuality have radically evolved. In the 1980s and the ’90s, words such as “nonbinary,” “genderqueer” and “genderfluid,” which describe identities outside “male” and “female,” started to appear in academic and activist discourse, and have since made their way into mainstream culture.

Over the past decade, some health professionals have shifted away from treating gender identity as a disorder and are focusing instead on dysphoria, which is the distress a person feels as a result of their gender not being recognized. This distress decreases or disappears for many people who take masculinizing or feminizing hormones, according to the American Psychiatric Association. Microdosing hormones is just the latest evolution of this treatment.

Doctors and therapists who specialize in transgender care say nonbinary people have been coming to them for years, though they’ve only recently had the language to explain it.

Dr. Leandro Mena, medical director of Open Arms Healthcare Center in Jackson, Mississippi, estimated that about 100 of his 250 transgender patients are nonbinary, a number that has increased since he opened the clinic in 2013, though the number who take hormones, and dosages, vary.

“In retrospect, if you ask me, I probably gave hormones to my first nonbinary patient probably about 10 years ago,” he said. “I just didn’t recognize it or I just didn’t ask the questions that I should have asked at that time to recognize that that person was nonbinary.”

continue

Peter Thiel says FBI, CIA should probe Google

Peter Thiel speaking at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Peter Thiel, billionaire investor and Facebook board member, on Sunday night said that Google should be federally investigated for allegedly aiding the Chinese military.

Why it matters: Thiel is the tech industry's highest-profile Trump supporter, and one of the most powerful players in Silicon Valley.

Thiel spoke at the National Conservatism Conference, a new event that bills itself as being focused on Trump-era nationalism, with part of his speech focusing on "three questions that should be asked" of Google:

"Number one, how many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated your Manhattan Project for AI? 

"Number two, does Google's senior management consider itself to have been thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese intelligence? 

"Number three, is it because they consider themselves to be so thoroughly infiltrated that they have engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the US military... because they are making the sort of bad, short-term rationalistic [decision] that if the technology doesn't go out the front door, it gets stolen out the backdoor anyway?"

He also added that those questions "need to be asked by the FBI, by the CIA, and I'm not sure quite how to put this, I would like them to be asked in a not excessively gentle manner."

Thiel did not specifically mention Facebook, but it likely will be mentioned by later speakers at the conference, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has agitated against big tech on the air, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who is seeking to strip major web platforms of certain legal protections.

Liberals create shortages for everyone's own good, of course. Rationing and government bureaucrats who will decide who gets what.

The green-created natural gas shortage just hit NYC

Shortages of gas for heating have hit the nation’s most important city: New York.

Following moves by Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy to nix a pipeline that could deliver vital gas supplies to the city and Long Island, National Grid can no longer offer new gas hookups or additional service for current customers.

“If you’re looking to expand your natural gas service in Brooklyn, Queens or Long Island, we will not be able to meet your request,” unless both states reverse their decisions and OK the pipeline, the utility warns. Con Ed may have to turn away customers, too.

The govs nixed the pipelines in a pander to climate-change radicals. Yet the shortage won’t only hit well-off developers and businesses: It’ll also threaten projects meant for low- and middle-income New Yorkers.

A local group called Heartshare, which assists New York’s needy with heating costs, is nervous. Its vice president for energy programs, Joe Guarinello, says it’s written local congressmen in support of the pipeline.

“Right now, gas is the most inexpensive and the cleanest for heating homes in our area,” he notes. “We’d like to make sure that the people we assist, both the disabled and the economically stressed,” can continue to benefit from it.

The nuttiest part: These shortages are by no means unintended; they’re exactly what climate-change radicals want — a cutoff in fossil fuel supplies, whatever the consequences. They don’t care that there’s no good substitute now, or who suffers.

Don’t give up yet. The pipeline builder refiled its applications for permits. Sanity can yet prevail — but only if Cuomo and Murphy care about New York’s future.

It seems not all military parades cause outrage

France: Bastille Day parade showcases European military cooperation

German Chancellor Merkel and other European leaders have highlighted their shared defense potential on Bastille Day amid rifts with the US. Troops from 10 countries participated in the annual Paris parade.

Armed 'anarchist and anti-fascist' attempted to firebomb ICE facility in Tacoma, killed in confrontation with police

A hashtag on Twitter is filled with praise for the "martyr."

(Image source: YouTube screenshot)

 CALEB HOWE

On Saturday, a man armed with a rifle and Molotov cocktails or flares, according to reports, and angered by "factually inaccurate portrayal" of the facility, according to the company operating the facility, attempted to set fire to an ICE detention center in Tacoma, Washington.

In a subsequent confrontation with police, the Antifa activist was killed. And some of his fellow activists called him a martyr for it.

Nevertheless, the media has not reported any connection with Antifa, nor are they speculating about what may have motivated this man, who made the attempt to set fire to the building amid protests against the building.

On the CNN and MSNBC websites, you'll need to hunt to find the story at all, in fact. CNN's on air report, in particular, is striking in its above-and-beyond effort to remove this bomber from anything even remotely related to objections to ICE facilities or, one can surmise, calling them "concentration camps."

The Seattle Times, however, reported extensively.

Willem Van Spronsen, who has been arrested before during immigration protests at this very facility, was shot and killed on Saturday. Police say the man threw his incendiary devices at the building, striking some vehicles and setting them ablaze, while armed with a rifle. He also attempted to ignite a propane tank.

Police reported "shots fired," although it is unclear who fired first. Emergency responders found Van Spronsen dead when they arrived.

Here's an early report from local station KING 5 News in Seattle.

A friend of the man spoke with the Seattle Times. She believes it was his intent that this end in his own death. And her description of him politically should raise the eyebrows of anyone living in the state of Washington. Because it is a familiar one.

Deb Bartley, a friend of Van Spronsen's for about 20 years, described him as an anarchist and anti-fascist, and she believes his attack on the detention center was intended to provoke a fatal conflict.

"He was ready to end it," Bartley said. "I think this was a suicide. But then he was able to kind of do it in a way that spoke to his political beliefs … I know he went down there knowing he was going to die."

She said he is an "anti-fascist." Yet the press refuses to use the word "antifa" here.

Nevertheless, as Sooper pointed out at The Right Scoop, fellow "anti-fascists" were quick to claim him. And praise him. Here is just one example. But there are more.

ⒶnarchoRaver2.0@Raver0

Replying to @Raver0

His name was Willem Van Spronsen of Vashon Island, Wash.
Age 69.

History will remember this hero! pic.twitter.com/4m6zBWVvdY

38

5:18 PM - Jul 13, 2019

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41 people are talking about this

In Colorado, protesters against ICE stormed the facility, tore down the American flag, and replaced it with a Mexican flag.

Perhaps their motives are equally unclear to the mainstream press. 

How very French: Macron’s ex-No. 2 spent public funds on gold hairdryer: reports

Macron’s ex-No. 2 spent public funds on gold hairdryer: reports

French President Emmanuel Macron is taking heat over a hairdryer of gold.

Macron, who presided over France’s Bastille Day parade Saturday in Paris, is facing fallout from the lavish spending of his environment minister, Francois de Rugy, 45, according to a report.

The Sunday Times of London reported that de Rugy, formally the second most senior member of the government, and his wife, Severine Servat, a gossip journalist dubbed Lady Gala, spent $563 of public money on a Dyson hairdryer coated with gold leaf.

On top of that, the couple blew big bucks on lavish parties, including giant lobsters and $500 bottles of wine, a weekend apartment and $866 for an exercise bike, according to reports.

De Rugy has denied all wrongdoing, claiming he was the victim of a “grotesque” smear campaign, and did a TV interview in which he declared himself “furious with all these lies.”

Macron hasn’t weighed in yet but is said to be standing by his minister.

What will the Yellow Vest protesters say?

Esteemed CUNY prof quits after allegations of cocaine binges and out-of-control parties

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A star Hunter College psychology professor and sex and drug researcher is accused of snorting cocaine at school events and throwing annual bashes that grew from low-key pizza parties into binge-drinking and go-go-boy bacchanals, according to sources and official documents.

Jeffrey Parsons — the youngest-ever “distinguished” professor at the public college and one of the CUNY system’s highest paid professors — quit July 3 following a school probe that substantiated May 2018 complaints by employees.

Parsons directed the Center for HIV Educational Studies and Training, known as CHEST, which oversaw research on unsafe sex and recreational drug use. He raked in $37 million in federal grant money from 1997 to 2016. His acolytes dubbed themselves “chesticles.”

Every year he’d host a party he claimed he paid for out of his expense account known as the CHEST fest, a former employee said. Last year’s bash is when his alleged bad behavior came to a head.

The May 4, 2018, soirée was held at the iconic Stonewall Inn in the West Village, where Parsons rented out the bar’s second floor. The theme: rebellion.

As he did at past events, Parsons encouraged attendees to imbibe.

“If felt like a hazing frat party sometimes,” a former employee said. “I almost always felt uncomfortable at the office parties by the coaxing to drink.”

The party included a lip-sync contest, and Parsons told two male employees to take off their shirts. He then approached “the sexier of one of the two” and undid the button on his pants, the ex-worker said.

“If felt like a hazing frat party sometimes,” a former employee said. “I almost always felt uncomfortable at the office parties by the coaxing to drink.”

The party included a lip-sync contest, and Parsons told two male employees to take off their shirts. He then approached “the sexier of one of the two” and undid the button on his pants, the ex-worker said.

But the evening really went off the rails when Parsons allegedly pressured two people to keep drinking and then lifted the shirt of a worker without permission, exposing the person’s chest and humiliating the employee.

“It was as if the host of a dinner party came down and had taken a pee on a pot roast,” the former worker said. “That’s how shocking it was.”

He said Parsons tried to apologize but to no avail.

Furious and fed up following the party, employees complained to the college which, along with the CUNY Research Foundation, hired a former federal Department of Education official to investigate, said Frank Sobrino, a CUNY spokesman.

The $539,312 probe included more than 70 witness interviews, he said.

Among the allegations raised was that “Parsons engaged in the use, and in the distribution, of illegal drugs (cocaine) at CHEST events,” according to the May 1 “final outcome letter” viewed by The Post.

The investigation concluded that Parsons “violated” CUNY’s policy on sexual misconduct and on “numerous occasions” engaged “in behavior that violated CUNY’s Drug and Alcohol Policy,” the letter said.

Parsons had been on paid leave during the probe, collecting his base salary of $240,000 a year. He could not be reached for comment.

In 2017, his pay came to $363,283 including a $85,817 CUNY grant and $39,200 in retroactive salary. His salary was the fifth highest in the entire CUNY system that year, records from The Empire Center show.

Hunter renamed CHEST and it is now PRIDE for Promoting Resilience, Intersectionality, Diversity and Equity.

The CUNY Board of Trustees last month hired law firm Covington & Burling, at a cost of $1.5 million, to gear up a “complex series of alleged violations of the University’s policy against Sexual Misconduct and other CUNY policies, which involve multiple potential plaintiffs.”

A source familiar with the matter said it was related to the Parsons allegations.

This is the second scandal in a year where taxpayer-funded CUNY professors were accused of misconduct and drug use. John Jay College is seeking to fire three professors over a sex and drugs scandal first revealed by The Post.

CUNY did not publicly acknowledge the latest scandal until Friday, after The Post asked about it. Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez sent a letter to the Hunter community saying a probe had “found multiple violations of CUNY policies by Dr. Parsons.”

JonBenét Ramsey’s former photographer indicted on child porn charges

An Oregon man who reportedly photographed JonBenét Ramsey just months before her unsolved 1996 murder — and was later arrested for walking down a street naked, muttering “I didn’t kill JonBenét” — was indicted this week on child porn charges.

Randall DeWitt Simons, 66, was arraigned Thursday following a year-long investigation by the Oakridge Police Department, according to The Register-Guard.

He had been taken into custody on July 2, with authorities executing a search warrant on his home just days earlier — which turned up four laptops, three camcorders, two bags of writable optical discs and six cameras.

Cops had been tipped off by workers at a local A&W Restaurant back in July 2018, who had noticed that someone was using their WiFi to download x-rated content, the Register-Guard reports.

Investigators traced the activity back to a computer identification address belonging to a man who lived near the restaurant. They reportedly learned that he sold the computer, along with several others, to Simons — who also lived nearby.

Using a special software program, authorities were able to see Simons log into the A&W WiFi system and tracked the activity back to his home. They executed their search warrant on June 27.LES FILES FOR DIVORCE FROM HUSBAND PETER 

GODWIN

Simons later told cops that he was a children’s photographer, and they promptly notified local parents to see if he possibly shot their kids or left them alone with him, the Register-Guard reports.

The alleged kiddie porn collector made headlines in 1998 when he was arrested for indecent exposure in Lincoln County, Colorado, for allegedly walking down a road naked.

“I didn’t kill JonBenét,” he told his arresting officer, according to the Associated Press.

The incident happened less than two years after the child beauty queen was murdered.

Simons, who was never declared a suspect, had also drawn attention to himself in 1997 — when he sold a portfolio of glamour shots that he took of JonBenét to a photo agency for over $7,000.  The shutterbug claimed that he was only trying to bring more attention to the case.

“My career is done,” he told reporters at the time. “I’ll probably never work again.”

Simons was held in jail after the indecent exposure incident and ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, though it’s unclear what happened with his case. Attempts to reach the sheriff’s office in Lincoln County, where he was arrested, were unsuccessful.