News Round-Up
- “Israel claims Hamas fighters are surrendering in northern Gaza” – Israel claims that Hamas fighters have begun to surrender in northern Gaza, according to the Telegraph.
- “Aiding terror: How terrorists exploit humanitarian organisations” – Aid has become a lifeline for terrorist groups, enabling them to carry out deadly attacks, write Ari Heistein and Nathaniel Rabkin in Quillette.
- “The UN’s anti-Israel bias must be addressed for the sake of humanity” – In choosing to overlook the crimes of Hamas, the UN is betraying its most basic purpose, argues Tzipi Hotovely, the Ambassador of Israel to the United Kingdom, in the Telegraph.
- “More than one in eight African-Americans deny the Holocaust” – UnHerd’s Ralph Leonard reacts to a new poll showing that 20% of young Americans believe that “the Holocaust is a myth”.
- “UPenn President’s resignation could be a turning point” – The resignations of University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill and Scott Bok could herald a new era of donor interference in campus politics, writes Neetu Arnold in UnHerd.
- “Gove defends Sunak over ‘Eat Out to Help Out’” – Michael Gove has defended Rishi Sunak’s ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme as the Prime Minister prepares for his appearance at the Covid Inquiry today, reports the Telegraph.
- “Boris Johnson teaches William Farr to Hugo Keith” – Dr. Tom Jefferson and Prof. Carl Heneghan connect Boris’s lockdown testimony to Farr’s law on the rise and fall of epidemics in the Covid Inquiry.
- “The unvaccinated were scapegoated for failure of Covid vaccines, study finds” – On Substack, Igor Chudov reacts to a new study that found unvaccinated people were unfairly scapegoated during the pandemic.
- “The Covid catastrophe” – City Journal’s John Tierney reviews The Big Fail, a new book that holds elected leaders and public health officials accountable for their mismanagement of the pandemic.
- “Proposed amendments to international health regulations would set in motion a dangerous WHO-led global health bureaucracy” – The WHO has been pushing hard to consolidate and expand its power to declare and manage public health emergencies on a global scale, writes David Thunder on Substack.
- “Florida’s Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo confirms detection of DNA fragments in Covid mRNA vaccines” – The Florida Surgeon General is demanding answers from the FDA regarding the detection of host cell DNA fragments in mRNA COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna, reports the Epoch Times.
- “The known unknowns” – Mark Steyn discusses unusual post-vaccination death patterns in the EU, declining fertility rates in Scandinavia and a whistleblower’s data in New Zealand.
- “Sunak risks Commons revolt unless he toughens up Rwanda Bill” – Rishi Sunak will come under pressure to toughen up his Rwanda Bill or face the prospect of it being killed off in a Commons revolt, says the Telegraph.
- “Back the Rwanda Bill or risk the sovereignty of Parliament, say KCs” – Four leading barristers have opined that the emergency Rwanda legislation cannot go any further, reports the Telegraph.
- “From take-off to crash landing: The six possible outcomes for Rishi Sunak’s Rwanda Bill” – The Prime Minister is facing the biggest test of his premiership as Parliament votes on his immigration legislation, writes Dominic Penna in the Telegraph.
- “I’m A Celeb fans fume ‘it’s a fix’ as Nigel Farage is eliminated” – Nigel Farage has come third in I’m A Celeb, leading some viewers to claim it was a “fix”, reports the Express.
- “Nigel Farage can put this pointless Conservative Party out of its misery” – The Tories warned that Labour would open the borders and raise taxes, then did it themselves. They deserve to go, says Tim Stanley in the Telegraph.
- “Reform U.K. to capitalise on Sunak chaos in plan to take 35 seats from Tories” – Support for Richard Tice’s party could give Labour a majority in the next General Election, according to the Express.
- “Western elites loathe their voters. Their contempt is palpable” – Politicians can barely hide their true views for long enough to beg for your vote. It’s no wonder populism is surging, says Janet Daley in the Telegraph.
- “Interactive map reveals how many ‘economically inactive’ live near you” – More than seven million people in Great Britain have no interest in finding a job, reveals the MailOnline.
- “The French elite have realised that Marine Le Pen might win” – You can tell that French elections are in the air because legal proceedings are being brought against a leading figure of the French Right, says John Keiger in the Spectator.
- “It isn’t free speech that causes violence – it’s censorship” – Denmark’s ban on burning the Koran will embolden some of the most regressive elements in Europe, warns Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
- “Government pushes ahead with plans for the U.K.’s first hydrogen towns” – Hydrogen could replace natural gas in thousands of U.K. homes under controversial plans to decarbonise entire towns, reports the Mail.
- “Is Britain facing an electric car finance bombshell?” – The collapsing value of electric vehicles is prompting concern among financial experts, according to the Mail.
- “German EV sales crash and burn after subsidies dry up” – Sales of new cars in Germany have declined, influenced by a sharp drop in demand for EVs following the end of taxpayer subsidies, reports the Climate Change Dispatch.
- “Net Zero has doomed Europe’s car industry” – It is Net Zero targets, not Brexit, which are condemning mass-market car production in Europe to possible extinction, warns Ross Clark in the Spectator.
- “Drax will keep burning a hole in all our pockets” – In the Sunday Times, Dominic Lawson slams the U.K.’s plan to extend subsidies for the wood-burning Drax power station at the expense of reliable nuclear power.
- “John Kerry and the reality of CO2 emissions” – Biden’s flatulent climate envoy keeps demanding the end of fossil fuels while the world blows through his apocalyptic warnings, says the Climate Change Dispatch.
- “Schools admit white working-class pupils are rapidly being left behind” – According to a new Government report, white working-class pupils are rapidly falling behind other children and are the group that top school leaders are the “most concerned” about, reports the Mail.
- “Nicola Sturgeon’s latest humiliation” – UnHerd’s Julie Bindel celebrates the defeat of Nicola Sturgeon’s Gender Recognition Reform Bill.
- “Now police cancel their own Chief Constables!” – A collection of portraits of former Chief Constables has been officially ‘cancelled’ by Police Scotland as an example of unacceptable ‘misogyny’, according to the Mail.
- “Australian councillor facing tribunal inquiry and ‘inciting hatred’ charges for stating ‘trans women are men’” – A Hobart City Council member is under investigation by the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner down under for “inciting hatred” after declaring “trans women are men”, reports Reduxx.
- “In the name of ‘fake news’, NewsGuard extorts sites to follow the Government narrative” – NewsGuard’s ‘trust ratings’ are not just a scarlet letter to news websites, but a cudgel to coerce conformity, says Lee Fang in the New York Post. Daily Sceptic gets a mention.
- “Get the message?” – In Taki’s Magazine, Theodore Dalrymple explores the influence of political public messaging in shaping opinions in the West.
- “The derangement of James O’Brien” – James O’Brien’s How They Broke Britain is a liberal-elite conspiracy theory, stretched over 350 pages of pompous, smug prose, writes Tim Black in Spiked.
- “Progressive Democrat calls for defunding police in San Francisco” – Public’s Michael Shellenberger reacts to a San Francisco City Supervisor’s proposal to reduce the police budget by $100 million, despite the city facing a shortage of 540 officers.
- “Elon Musk tells Jack Posobiec he’s willing to go to jail rather than illegally censor X users on behalf of U.S. Government” – Elon Musk has said he’d rather lose his own freedoms than strip it away from others at the behest of the U.S. Government, according to the Post Millennial.
- “Elon Musk reinstates the X account of Alex Jones” – Elon Musk has restored the account of Alex Jones after holding a public vote, reports the Mail.
- “Tucker Carlson launches new streaming service” – Journalist Tucker Carlson is launching his own video subscription streaming service after being fired from Fox News, says the Post Millennial.
- “The American public has been losing faith in universities for good reason” – CNN’s Fareed Zakaria gives his take on the parlous state of American universities, advising them to abandon their long drift into politics and rebuild their reputations as centres of research and learning.
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CULTURING CORNER Ok. Just watched the latest offering on Netflix. For those tired or past the Left-Right divide thing, this looks like predictive programming at its best. Tell me what you think skeptics. Leave the (Old) World (Order) Behind What is this bit of drama? Truths interlaced with lies, the basic definition of effective propaganda (and good drama) all nestled inside a predictive programming immersive drama. Whether one is deeply leftist, or deeply rightist, this engineered narrative seeks to prepare and amplify the next destabilisation event. Or so it seems to me. You would know it, if you stayed awake during the Covid operation as cyber polygon. (Which will combine with 5G attack quite easily as hinted here). If you thought death by vax or other man made bioweapon poison, or the nuclear conflict with Russia over Ukraine, or the destruction of global supply networks, or the collapse of the Global credit markets and dollar system, or the biblical apocalyptic wars in the Middle East, was IT, think again. In what era does a button push have the most power to control an interconnected world with controlled and uncontrolled information networks? The surveillance State with its trillions of dollars worth of intelligence and… Read more »
Interesting, thanks. It’s not surprising the Obamas would be exec producers to push this content (at the risk of mentioning the Left).
As for the eternal black void: the worlds biggest ‘conspiracy-theory’ to control the masses, keep them compliant, grateful for their lot and grounded in materiality.
If someone genuinely believes in life beyond physical death, would they fear the government, be manipulated into conflict to enrich the few or feel the need to have their body radically altered to try and be something they are not?
Thanks DHJ.
Yes that’s exactly right. It’s the fear of death that allows us to be tempted into dreams of uploading our consciousness into a super computer or genetically modifying our bodies to defy aging.
When it has become far more difficult in this age for people to embrace a 2 millennia old saviour.
Tyranny – Travel Restricted by Carbon Allowances
latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, media, friends online.
Is the UK covid enquiry perfectly timed to present its predetermined conclusion that everything was done perfectly,but not quickly enough, just in time for when the new WHO pandemic treaty is due to be voted in?
It all seems so completely fixed and predetermined.
Interesting picture of Beaumaris castles that showed the tidal dock at the the gate of the castle. Ships sailed up to this in medieval times:
https://www.alamy.com/the-gate-next-the-sea-entrance-and-tidal-dock-beaumaris-castle-from-outside-the-grounds-beaumaris-isle-of-anglesey-ynys-mon-north-wales-uk-image480573476.html?imageid=A1FB290C-3C7C-4D59-B2DD-6FAC7388F8AA&p=18962&pn=1&searchId=ba71abef040575fb4affc23bb7da93e4&searchtype=0
https://resources.hwb.gov.wales/VTC/ngfl/history/castles_in_wales/english/Beaumaris%20Castle.html
https://medievalheritage.eu/en/main-page/heritage/wales/beaumaris-castle/
Now the castle is not that close to the sea and higher up. Hence the sea level was higher in the medieval times. Similar thing for Harlech castle, although maybe not as ovbvious. Lots of other little bits of evidence like this apparently. Nice evidence for a warm period?
Holcene raised beaches in the Western Isles indicate the same as well. There have been multiple warm periods in the Holocene, each succeeding one cooler than the previous. Which is why Hannibal was able to get (most) of his Elephants over the Alps, Vikings able to farm more of Greenland than is now possible, and the Romans grow red grapes in York and the North of England.
Real world data shows the models to be useless…
I think it’s more evidence for post-glacial rise of the land, and in the case of Harlech, of silting up. Further south, Goodwin Sands was good agricultural land for the Earls Godwin, but is now only good for a short cricket match on a low spring tide.
Hydrogen – Where does it come from?
“Government pushes ahead with plans for the U.K.’s first hydrogen towns”
The article mentions people’s very sensible concerns about safety. However, it seems to me that of equal concern is where is this hydrogen going to come from? The article talks about low carbon hydrogen, does that mean they are going to use wind turbines to power the plants to make hydrogen? If so, then what is the energy efficiency equation of producing hydrogen in this way?
Certainly if we were being told to switch to Hydrogen, I would not just be concerned about the safety but I would also be concerned about the resilience of the supply, how dependable and reliable is the manufacturing and distribution process? All of that is of course before you discuss the economics of domestic heating by hydrogen but of course when it comes to net-zero the magic money seems to go on for ever and the virtue signalling party never ends!
Low carbon hydrogen looks a bit oxymoronic, but the term “Low Carbon Hydrogen” now appears to be an official term, if you look it up. A large amount of H gas is actually made by reforming methane; it’s a common industrial method of producing H used in some processes, notably in steel manufacture.
Even if H is extracted from water, the process might yield more CO2, depending on the power source. Here is a description of it all: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/643face58b86bb000cf1b4c8/uk-low-carbon-hydrogen-standard-v2-annexes-to-guidance.pdf So the term “Low carbon” is a ‘get-out’ clause to make it look good, while they ignore the thermal efficiency of the process overall.
Interesting insight into life in Gaza from a Syrian lady who spent time there;
”Manar al-Sharif was born in Damascus to a devout Muslim family that embraced the Palestinian cause and supported Hamas. But her views on the terror group changed dramatically after she spent three years in Gaza, including months behind bars in a Hamas jail.
Today, she is out of the Strip but still lives in a Middle Eastern country and works as a journalist. At 26, she is one of a handful of people persecuted by Hamas who managed to leave Gaza to tell their tales.
When she first moved to Gaza, al-Sharif was taken aback at how pervasive Hamas’s radical Islamist ideology was. “It’s literally like ISIS – after they took over Gaza by force [in 2007], Hamas started to impose the hijab on women, and force men to change how they shave and dress,” she told The Times of Israel in an interview over Zoom.
“They have tried to make Gaza look like a totally Islamic place. You can notice it immediately. You can see everywhere on the walls posters of al-Qassam martyrs,” al-Sharif said, referring to the military wing of the terror group.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/life-under-hamas-is-like-under-isis-says-syria-born-journalist-deported-from-gaza/
Wasn’t a justification made in some of the comments that attacking the population of Gaza was justifiable because they voted for Hamas and are therefore supporters of terrorism?
This statement is telling a different story but the one consistent factor seems to be that the actions of Hamas only seem to benefit the interests of the Israeli regime.
And the hugely wealthy leaders of Hamas, living elsewhere…
Worth noting that none of the surrounding Muslim countries want anything to do with the “Palestinians”.
Why would wealthy leaders live in a warzone when they can be safe in a country friendly with Israel’s allies?
Nothing notable about the neighbourhood response. Governments use populations when it suits them and discard them when it doesn’t.
We should be careful not to extrapolate the entire populations views and level of support for Hamas from one persons experiences.
A short one we can surely all agree on; ”Autumn 2023 may be remembered as a benchmark for a more explicit split between the political class and popular feeling in Western Europe than had previously been the case, bringing with it, at least in the short term, the normalisation of repression and violence. With the rise of ‘populist’ right-wing parties, we are also seeing a rise in political violence and threats. We should remember, however, that the media’s relaxed posture towards violence or the threat of it against politicians on the Right is just one instance of a more insidious complacency. The mainstream Western press has long underreported violence against politicised subjects, not just political actors. What is a politicised subject in Europe? To be blunt: an indigenous person, so long as the attacker isn’t one. If a migrant or child of migrants from outside Europe commits violence against a person of European descent, the media struggles to report the story straightforwardly (particularly because this constitutes a general trend of migrants being overrepresented among perpetrators of violent crime in Europe). How are we to explain this? Why should belonging to the majority ethnic group of a given place constitute a disadvantage? The kind… Read more »
Is this a Muslim-controlled mainstream media that has a relaxed posture? If not, how are we to explain this unreported supposed Islamic invasion?
If we’re led to be justifiably concerned about a “colonising project” on our own doorstep, we might be distracted from equally objectionable colonising projects being undertaken elsewhere.
Never let a crisis go to waste, good day to bury bad news etc.
NGOs in general are now a menace. Unaccountable, and bent.
The Russian regime had much the same opinion many years ago about NGO’s as I remember. If nothing is being done to address it, consider it policy.
I’ve been following the increasing in-fighting on this side of the argument and left feeling very worried. Is anyone else getting the horrible feeling that they’ve implemented the perfect game of divide and conquer? Are the ‘trust nobody/nothing’ people (of which there is now possibly a majority) really our true allies? I know the irony in that, but I can’t be the only one thinking some of us have gone down one rabbit hole too many?
People can make their own decisions on whether a person, group or anything else is trustworthy. The best you can do is aim to set a standard you would like to see in others.
Sure, I’m just looking at how we win this thing when there’s so much we disagree on. I’ve had some quite abusive replies to posts (not on here) for simply pointing out that being sceptical about being sceptical is healthy – that perhaps not everything we know is a lie, but if it is then we ourselves must be a lie i.e. reality as we understand is incorrect (something I actually believe likely to be true).
I used to think that this side of the argument had a better moral compass, but some of the abuse I’ve had shows that to not be true. I even disappoint myself sometimes tbh. Anyway, was just curious to what others thought.
My thoughts are that the only thing we need to agree on is freedom of speech. Our enemies are those who want to censor us, shut down debate and control the narrative. Just because someone has a different opinion and is abusive in stating it doesn’t necessarily make them an enemy. Maybe they are just angry, confused and blinded by the brainwashing. If they insist they are right and will tolerate questions or other views then they are suspect. Ignore the abuse and support open-minded debate. Stay strong.
Typo – If they insist they are right and will NOT tolerate questions or other views…
Knew what you meant :-). Yeah, I think you make a good point. Free speech is the thing that should bind us, and with that everything else should naturally fall into place.
Making a profit out of stupid questions? https://www.gbnews.com/news/covid-lockdown-measures-uk-latest-polling
Indeed. Just another distraction.
BTW. Did anyone here watch the Alex Jones love-in with Tucker Carlson?
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1732897835572461582?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1732897835572461582%7Ctwgr%5E382f725adef669426ffb8fdf12e0f589783ceafe%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativewoman.co.uk%2Fconspiracy-theorist-or-prophet-tucker-carlsons-change-of-mind-on-alex-jones%2F
I’m not a fan of shouty people but have to admit that Tucker Carlson’s laugh is infectious and Alex Jones is a very intelligent man despite his rough persona. Doesn’t mean that everything he says is correct but he makes some important observations for those who can cope with blue pill living (or perhaps taken the white pill a la Delingpole – hear him on recent Tom Woods podcast)