The ten masterpieces lost thanks to the Nazis - "Eighty years after the end of the Second World War, the international museums sector, commercial galleries and collectors are still grappling with the legacy of Nazi looting. Only last month, a portrait by the Italian Baroque painter Giuseppe Ghislandi, looted in Amsterdam in 1940 and bought by Friedrich Kadgien (aide to Hermann Göring) reappeared on an Argentinian estate agent’s website, hanging above a sofa."
‘Terrorist’ freed after being revealed as Danish spy - "Mr Samsam, a 35-year-old Danish citizen whose parents fled Syria’s dictatorship in the 1980s, was stunned when Spanish police arrested him during a beach holiday on the Costa del Sol in 2017. Ironically, it was a tip-off from Danish police – who did not know Mr Samsam had been working for the Danish government – that had alerted officers from Spain’s Guardia Civil to Mr Samsam’s connections with Syrian Islamist terrorists."
The B.C. shipbuilding controversy exposes Canada’s shortcomings as a country - The Globe and Mail - "The one person who has demonstrated some spine throughout this contretemps has been BC Ferries president Nicolas Jimenez. In private moments, he has surely quivered with rage at the duplicity and fake outrage and false equivalence he’s witnessed as the debate around the contract has raged on. Last week, Mr. Jimenez made an appearance at the Made in Canada: Ferries and Rail Summit in Hamilton, Ont. He reiterated that the ferry corporation received no bids from a Canadian shipyard for the four-vessel contract, and pointed out that, beyond the industry’s current obligations to the national shipbuilding strategy – which consists primarily of building coast guard and navy vessels – there simply isn’t the capacity to do much more. The folks screaming at the skies over this issue argue that the four BC Ferries vessels could easily have been built in Canada tomorrow. I mean, with “elbows up” and all that, shouldn’t this have been a priority? The answer: only if we could do the work at a competitive cost and within a reasonable time frame, and that capability does not exist in this country. According to Mr. Jimenez, it would take 10 to 15 years – and perhaps even longer. Canadian shipbuilding unions in Canada have complained that if cost is the number-one criteria for a bid to succeed, then it will always be impossible to compete with countries like China that pay far lower wages in manufacturing. Conveniently ignored is the fact that BC Ferries has, over the last many years, been getting its ships built in Europe, including in high-income countries such as Germany. Their yards are so huge, they have magnitudes of scale that smaller operations can’t match. They get deals with suppliers because of the volume of product they are ordering, which drives down costs. “In Canada we don’t have that kind of scale,” Mr. Jimenez said on the Jas Johal Show in Vancouver. “So, I think the Canadian industry is going to need to look at how they can partner more globally to bring scale into the country, if it can’t be done organically.” These are complex matters that require thoughtful consideration. All of the grotesque politicking that has taken place around this so-called scandal is the opposite of what is necessary if we are going to try and design an industrial strategy to become a consequential shipbuilding nation. Mr. Jimenez also points out that if Canada’s shipbuilders think they can become serious players in this area by just adding replacement ferries to their contract lists, they are deluding themselves. It still wouldn’t be enough work to sustain a legitimate, internationally competitive shipbuilding program. Politicians pounding their desks and making all sorts of noise about this matter have no idea what the true state of the industry is in Canada. All they see is an opportunity to bamboozle the public with bogus, jingoistic arguments. And I’m not just talking about opposition politicians: Virtually everyone who has spoken out on this issue has put political expediency over the harder, more honest path of explaining to people why this was the right call if the interests of the end users – ferry passengers – are going to be placed first. After all, who was going to pay for the billions more it might have cost to have these ferries built in Canada? Just add it to B.C.’s growing provincial debt? Make cash-strapped travelers pay even more for their ferry travel? Funny: that’s not something any of the politicians want to talk about."
Buy Canadian no matter what, and blame "Greedy Companies" when prices rise
Coddled Affluent Professional on X - "The collapse of the big political movements in the 60s was followed by an unraveling, a long trail of meaningless schizo violence and ideologically-inflected mental illness."
i/o on X - "Most people don't know that there was more political violence in America in the early 70s than there was in the 60s. For example, there were over 2,500 politically-motivated bombings in 1971-1972. Joan Didion picked up some of the first signals that something in the culture had gone wrong. It seemed to have started with the youth movements on the left. Then it moved into the general culture. In particular, crime became increasingly senseless. It was though an aperture had been opened, and then got stuck in its open position, and no one knew how to close it back to where it had been before."
Veteran, 102, makes first visit to RAF fiancé’s grave 81 years after his death - "Queenie Hall was 21 and engaged to Flight Sergeant Frank Vincent, of the Royal Air Force, when he and his Lancaster Bomber crew mates were killed on Aug 25 1944. Ms Hall, a Women’s Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) veteran, had never visited the grave because she had never known where her fiance was buried. Until she visited the Rheinberg War Cemetery in Germany on Sunday, she did not know she was mentioned on his tombstone. The tombstone in the cemetery, where 3,300 Second World War veterans are interred, reads: “To our darling Frank. Treasured memories. Mum, Dad, sister and Queenie.”"
Cathedral suspends its own choir over protest hymn - "It is the latest of a number of scandals to hit the cathedral, after an independent report earlier this year revealed incidents in the wider church community of inappropriate sexual behaviour and binge drinking."
‘I do nothing and it’s breaking me’: Civil Service forum reveals culture of idleness - "Posts range from complaints about having no work, to endless diversity training inside the corridors of Whitehall... A common theme among the online posts is workers being “shut down” by management when attempting to take on more... Ministers often claim that the Civil Service is overwhelmed, with Sir Keir Starmer calling Whitehall “overstretched” as he promised wholesale reform back in March. Yet these anonymous voices suggest the opposite: that at least some corners of Whitehall are riddled with mismanagement and staff who have nothing to do."
The problem with Harvard — and how it plans to survive Trump - "Harvard’s current woes didn’t start with Donald J Trump... “The lawsuit exposed the extent of racism at Harvard,” according to Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania. “One [Asian] application literally had the comment ‘Friday night will stay in and watch Netflix’ written across the top.” Affirmative action meant less able students were getting in instead of the most academically deserving. And then there are Harvard’s own – and it likes to look after them. The documents filed in the Supreme Court also proved that Harvard gives priority to ALDC candidates, that is the children and grandchildren of graduates, known as legacies, promising athletes, relatives of donors, and children of faculty staff. Only 5 per cent of applications to Harvard come from this group, yet they make up almost a third of acceptances. The SFFA lawsuit highlighted another scandal: the Z-list. This secret list allows up to 60 students, almost all white, legacy or extremely “politically” connected to attend the university despite missing out on the necessary grades... Then there’s the thorn in everyone’s side: Jeffrey Epstein. Despite having no scholastic connection to the university, the late sex offender donated a total of $9.1m to Harvard between 1998 and 2008 and kept an office on site. He even helped set up a research centre (I hate to think what for). Donations in exchange for a place at the university, known as “Hello conversations”, start at $10m, an education consultant tells me. The equivalent sum is $3m to $4m at Yale. More is always better... Simply admitting you went to Harvard riles people. This is because a current popular view is that to have been admitted there, either your parents donated a library (there are plenty of buildings at Harvard with family names that match those of current or former students), or you cracked the Pentagon code age six (or three), or you are from a country that ends with “stan”. A top educational consultant I spoke to now doesn’t bother even trying to get students into Harvard. “Basically, by the time they are done admitting all the athletes and all the legacies, there is very little space left,” she says. She thinks that the least likely to get in are poor white students, followed by rich white students whose parents didn’t attend themselves. “It is so rare for us to have a student admitted who does not have some kind of a hook,” she continues. “They are an incredible fundraising machine, and the best way to do that is with happy alumni. The brand is just so shiny and so Teflon – I can think of few examples of anything that has a bigger, more enduring brand name than Harvard does... Bill Ackman, a hedge-fund billionaire turned his followers on X against his alma mater after the October 7 Hamas attacks. “For nearly two decades, Harvard students have been taught that the world can only be understood as a battle between the oppressors and the oppressed, a dangerous anti-American, neo-Marxist ideology that emerged on campus, permeated the administration and the faculty, and one which has been promulgated and implemented by Harvard’s Orwellian-named Office of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging,” he wrote... Harvard graduates I spoke to blame diversity, equity and inclusion policies for the problems Harvard now faces”
Soft: A Brief History of Sentimentality by Ferdinand Mount
‘Mass psychogenic illness’ plausible cause of toxic substance alert at Heathrow, says scientist - "Police were called to Heathrow late on Monday afternoon when 21 people fell ill in Terminal 4. Initial reports suggested a hazardous material could be involved and part of the airport was evacuated. But when the emergency services conducted a thorough search, no trace of any adverse substance was found. A source within the Metropolitan police subsequently suggested the event could be something quite different – a case of mass hysteria. And some experts agree. “What happened at Heathrow is almost certainly an episode of mass psychogenic illness that is anxiety-based,” said Dr Robert Bartholomew, a University of Auckland sociologist who is an expert on the subject. While “mass hysteria” might bring to mind medieval reports of dancing plagues and epidemics of “possession”, such events are not unknown in the modern world... Among examples of the former was a case in 2011 at LeRoy high school in New York, where affected students displayed vocal and motor tics such as twitches and spasms. While some feared an environmental toxin was at play, experts diagnosed the situation as a case of mass psychogenic illness, aggravated by participation in social or traditional media... Bartholomew investigated a case at Melbourne airport in 2005 when 57 people fell ill after reporting a “gassy smell”. Bartholomew said a toxic agent could have caused some of the individuals to become unwell but all the signs strongly suggested mass psychogenic illness. Such events might not be uncommon. In a 2010 study, researchers randomly selected 280 of 747 reports of chemical incidents from the UK’s former health protection agency, finding 19 were probable episodes of mass psychogenic illness. Again, the researchers found odour was a robust predictor of such events, while schools and healthcare facilities were common settings. “A substantial minority of chemical incidents may be mass psychogenic illness,” they concluded."
I spent the evening watching the BBC’s Archive. It’s better than anything on TV today - "It reminded me of the pride we used to have in the BBC; the sense that Auntie was the sane centre of British life, a cold and high place that overlooked us all – but with benevolence and generosity. It was a very male world, yes, but male in a way that’s far removed from our current adolescent vision of masculinity: this is the sober judgment of the ideal Dad, not the pornified randiness of Andrew Tate. By contrast, the current BBC often gives the impression that it hates Britain, or pre-Blair Britain at least."
Footage shows police tackle boy in 'Resident Evil costume' after he appeared to be carrying a gun near Chelsea stadium - "Police footage shows officers tackling a teenager to the ground as he appeared to be carrying a gun near a Premier League football stadium - with the boy in full costume as he made his way to a comic convention. Unarmed officers were seen running towards the 16-year-old boy, who was wearing a ballistic helmet and tactical gear, near Chelsea FC's Stamford Bridge stadium in west London... In the footage, the officers are heard telling the boy to get on the floor before taking what appeared to be a handgun from a holster on his leg and a rifle from a bag he was wearing on his back. They were later found to be imitation firearms. Police said it emerged the guns had been brightly coloured when first bought but had since been sprayed black to make them look more realistic. The boy was arrested on suspicion of being in possession of imitation firearms and was taken into custody. He explained in a police interview that he had been attending a nearby comic convention that weekend and was in costume. Social media users on X have said the boy was wearing the same outfit as Hunk from the computer game series Resident Evil. The teenager admitted the offence of possession of imitation firearms and has since been referred to the youth offending team for "consideration of an appropriate out of court disposal", police said."
Damn USA and their gun culture! It's no wonder the police are so brutal there. When are they going to repeal the Second Amendment and ban firearms? They should learn from the UK, where this sort of thing would never happen!
What not eating carbs fruit or vegetables in 6 YEARS did to my body - "A former vegan has claimed to have 'healed' multiple health problems and lost a stone-and-a-half (21lbs) by eating nothing but meat and dairy products. Social media influencer Isabella 'Bella' Ma, 28, who shares videos under the Instagram alias 'steakandbuttergal', is said to have avoided all carbohydrates, fruit and vegetables for the past six years. The professional musician, who has 420,000 followers on Instagram, has credited her controversial eating plan for regulating her menstrual cycle, beating depression, and healing skin problems like acne, eczema, and psoriasis."
British folk artist speaks out after abandoning own concert because JD Vance was in attendance - "British folk-rocker Dolly Mavies has addressed the recent debacle that ensued after she walked out of her own gig last month due to the presence of U.S. Vice President JD Vance. The singer-songwriter, real name Molly Davies, was expected to play an event in Daylesford, a village in the Cotswolds. But, when she and her band arrived at the venue, they became “suspicious” when they saw a “lot of security around... and then a huge convoy of police motorbikes and very big cars”... after her walkout made headlines, she said she was inundated with “wonderful comments and support from people all across the world.” “Obviously there’s an overwhelming sense of support in America,” Mavies acknowledged. “I think for a lot of American people there’s a lot of uncertainty, and a lot of people are scared, and it was amazing to feel like they’d been heard.”"
The "love" and "coexist" crowd are remarkably hateful
Liberal intransigence threatens to pull Canada apart - "it is not generally recognized in Canada how politically vulnerable this country is and how vivid and well-founded are the public policy grievances of Alberta. Alberta was a conventional farming and ranching economy until the discovery of oil there in 1947. Today, mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction account for a quarter of Alberta’s GDP, and 70 per cent of exports, with ancillary benefits to the construction, manufacturing, transportation and other industries. For its first 30 years as an oil and gas producing jurisdiction, Alberta’s standard of living and per capita income naturally rose accordingly, especially after the steep rises in international oil prices following the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East in 1973 and the ensuing Arab oil boycott... the federal government produced the equalization program, in which the most wealthy provinces paid through Ottawa to assist the less prosperous ones... In legitimate response to the separatist threat, the federal government of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau expanded the equalization transfer payment program and Alberta and Ontario and British Columbia were effectively buying votes for federalism in Quebec. This was a successful strategy, but it became particularly onerous for Alberta when the Trudeau government also imposed its national energy program and seized a confiscatory share of the income from that industry, despite the fact that natural resources are constitutionally a provincial jurisdiction. Alberta’s talented premier, Peter Lougheed, strongly contested the federal government’s action and he was widely represented in Canada by the Liberal party propaganda apparatus that has long dominated most of our political media, as a ”blue-eyed Arab” greedily gathering in fortuitous oil revenue and overcharging his fellow Canadians. Lougheed and Trudeau jousted in the court of public opinion as well as the courts of constitutional law. Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney arranged a reasonable compromise with western and eastern offshore oil producers in 1985 and comparative peace reigned for a time. This was the ironic background of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s assault on Canada’s greatest income-earning industry, oil and gas, not to confiscate its proceeds as his father had attempted to do, but to shut it down, in the utterly spurious claimed interest of defending the planet against climate change. The Marxist left demonstrated a hitherto unsuspected talent for improvisation by spontaneously and almost universally clambering aboard what had been a somewhat tedious but honourable conservationist bandwagon of birdwatchers, butterfly collectors, champions of duck wetlands and Greenpeace zealots trying to climb up the anchor-chains of visiting American aircraft carriers, and transform the environmental movement into a battering ram against capitalism from this new unimpeachable angle of saving the ecosystem... The election of a climate change fanatic, Prime Minister Mark Carney, with a long record of demanding the most rapid possible shutdown of the oil and gas industry, has caused Albertans to think increasingly of the fact that if they seceded from Canada and made an agreement to sell their oil and gas either to the United States or through pipelines like Keystone XL through the United States to the world, they could probably abolish the income tax, would become a petrostate like Norway and become one of the per capita wealthiest countries in the world, which they could run themselves without hearing another word from Ottawa. In Alberta, as in Quebec, there are alternatives to Canada. And there is no public evidence that this federal government has given much original thought to how to keep Confederation going."
Apple blocks Daily Mail from news app - "Apple has refused to allow the Mail to feature its articles on Apple News, Britain’s most widely used news app, the news group has told the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). It claims Apple is concerned that allowing the Mail onto its app will harm other outlets and that the publisher’s size would “overwhelm Apple’s ecosystem”. The Mail says that Apple News’s growing influence means it has become as indispensable as Google search and calls for the CMA to tackle the company’s “arbitrary and discriminatory practices”."
Apple blocks EU from using AirPods’ new feature - "Apple has blocked people in the European Union from accessing its new live translation tool on AirPods as tech giants grapple with the bloc’s strict digital rules... Apple has argued the EU competition laws require it to provide detailed access to its systems and data to rivals, warning that this risks exposing sensitive user information, such as location data. Last year, Apple said the restrictions, which are intended to boost competition, could “force us to compromise the integrity of our products in ways that risk user privacy and data security”. Other tech giants have similarly criticised the byzantine technology regulations and withheld the launch of new AI tools in the EU. The rules come with the threat of billions of euros in fines for non-compliance. Last month, Apple warned that a crackdown by Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority on its business in the UK risked mirroring this “EU-style” crackdown."
North Koreans fight over feces as annual ‘compost battle’ begins - "North Koreans are once again fighting each other over human feces as they desperately try to fulfill the government’s impossibly high collection quotas to prepare fertilizer ahead of the spring planting season... In order to avoid punishment, adults have until Jan. 20 to donate 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds) of compost, which is a code word for feces. Elementary, middle, and high school students’ quota is 200 kilograms (440 pounds). That’s way more than the 142 kilograms (312 pounds) the average person poops in an entire year, so merchants can make a fortune buying and selling it on the black market, and people resort to stealing it from public bathrooms and each other’s houses. But that’s often when things turn violent"
Kim Jong Un bans words like ‘hamburgers’, ‘ice-cream’ in North Korea. Here’s why - "North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has banned the words like ice-cream, hamburger and karaoke for being “too Western,” along with several other anglicised terms, as part of a broader cultural crackdown in his country. According to reports from Daily NK, tour guides working at the country’s newly opened Wonsan beach-side resort have been ordered to avoid foreign and South Korean vocabulary when interacting with visitors. Guides are undergoing a state-run training programme where they must memorise officially approved slogans and expressions... The directive, officials said, is meant to “consciously promote North Korean vocabulary” and avoid cultural infiltration through language."
Kim Jong-un executes North Korean citizens for watching foreign films - "Many of the experiences shared in the report contradict leader Kim Jong-un’s comments, who declared that the country’s quality of life would improve when he came into power in 2011. Kim pledged to invest in the country’s nuclear weapons programme and strengthen the economy. He also promised the population that they would no longer have to “tighten their belts” – meaning that they would no longer suffer from food shortages. But the report said the majority of those interviewed did not have enough to eat when living in North Korea and that eating three meals a day was “a luxury”."
Meme - "Just think about it... We could have been exploring the galaxy by now..."
*Chart showing scientific advancement with time, with a dropoff during the Christian Dark Ages, and extrapolation claiming that without "the hole left by the Christian Dark Ages", scientific advancement in 1000 AD would be the same as in 2000 AD*
*Spongebob angry at Patrick*
"Horse-drawn plows, crop rotation, and other agricultural developments. European arms and armor advanced from spears and chainmail hauberks to sophisticated polearms and full plate in just 500 years. Multiple innovations in music, not only inventions of musical instruments but also in notation and theory (Music was considered a type of Math in Medieval Europe!) Multiple innovations in clothing and textiles, such as tight-fitting dresses, spinning wheels, multi-color dying, and the invention of trousers. Gothic Architecture, Stone Castles, treadmill cranes, and other architectural breakthroughs. And since it's wrong to judge a solely by materialistic and utilitarian criteria like technological development...
The called "Dark Ages" were the political, cultural, and artistic Golden Ages of the Franks, Anglo-Saxons, Visigoths, Lombards, Danes, Norse, and other Germanic peoples. It's only a "Dark Ages" for snooty pseudo-intellectuals who are still butthurt about the breakup of the Roman Empire, and/or look down on Medieval Europe for being so decentralized and "backwards"."
Meme - "THE HOLE LEFT BY HITLER LOSING"
*counterfactual progress chart*
"TND, state mandated girlfriends, space colonization, humans developing psychic powers, anime becomes real"
Reality: "gay race communism"
