Links - 19th April 2025 (3 - Mark Carney)

Carney attacked for wanting 'free ride,' 'hiding' from public amid latest campaign break - "Two federal party leaders took aim Saturday at Mark Carney, who polls suggest is the front-runner in the April 28 election, for once again skipping the campaign trail.  Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet accused the Liberal leader of trying to capitalize on his early momentum by coasting through the opening three weeks of the campaign.  "I believe that Mr. Carney is trying to get a free ride," he said at an announcement in Trois-Rivières, Que., alleging the Liberals are trying to "hide him as much as possible."  Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, speaking in his own Ottawa riding of Carleton, also accused Carney of "hiding again."  On Thursday, Carney paused his campaign for the third time to tend to his prime ministerial duties in response to the trade-war turbulence... Carney then left without taking questions from reporters... Blanchet said the limiting of the Liberal leader's public appearances — combined with the short five-week campaign —means Carney is "as seldom seen as possible, saying as little as possible, and hiding as much as possible."... Before this week, Carney had interrupted his campaign twice in order to respond to Trump's tariff threats...  Blanchet argued Carney was overusing his mantle as prime minister by suspending his campaign more than necessary.  Blanchet was hinting at the caretaker convention, a principle in which a government in a pre-election period is directed to avoid making big decisions that cannot be easily overturned."

Carney promises free national parks this summer, as Canadians ditch U.S. travel plans - "The Liberal party has not said how long the government would offer free park admission or what it would cost taxpayers... Carney said a federal government led by him would establish at least 10 new national parks and marine conservation areas, along with 15 more urban parks.  He also said he would create a $100 million "strategic water security technology fund" and introduce legislation that would protect First Nations communities' right to clean water... The Liberals say they plan to create a Canadian Nature Protection Fund to subsidize "eligible nature restoration and conservation initiatives." The party says the federal government would match private donations to the fund, up to a cap of $250 million."

Jason Kenney 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇮🇱 on X - "C-69 is *unconstitutional.*  This is not optional, Mr. Carney.  I challenged the constitutionality of C-69 (which I labelled the ‘No More Pipelines Law’) as a violation of provincial jurisdiction.  The Alberta Court of Appealed agreed on a 4 to 1 judgement, ruling that C-69 was a “constitutional Trojan horse” that “tears apart the constitutional division of powers.”   Then the Supreme Court of Canada agreed, ruling on a 5 to 2 judgement that “the balance of (C—69) is ultra vires Parliament and thus unconstitutional.”  This was perhaps the most important judicial decision on the division of powers since the adoption of the 1982 Constitution Act. Alberta’s case was supported by 8 of the 9 other provinces.  Outrageously, the government has ragged the puck in refusing to repeal or overhaul the Act to bring it into compliance with the decisions of the highest courts in the land.  Now Mr. Carney appears to be thumbing his nose at the courts, and the Constitution.  The Liberal Party can’t claim to be defenders of the Constitution while flagrantly ignoring the Constitution.  You can’t criticize the Trump Administration for threatening to ignore court rulings if you support the Government of Canada in doing the same here.  This is not just about the rule of law.   I challenged C-69 not just to defend the Constitution, but to defend jobs and economic growth.  As I predicted, not a single major project has been approved since C-69 was adopted in 2019. An endless, uncertain, politicized regulatory process is one of the primary reasons for the flight of investment, our failure to develop our massive natural resources (including critical minerals,) and the weakness of the Canadian economy that has made us a target for foreign aggression.  Complying with the Constitution isn’t partisan. It’s not ideological. It’s not optional. It’s mandatory."

Brookfield used Cayman Islands to register 3rd fund managed by Carney - "A $5-billion investment fund created under Mark Carney's leadership at Brookfield Asset Management was registered in the Cayman Islands tax haven, according to records obtained by Radio-Canada.  That's in addition to two other funds totalling $25 billion that were registered in Bermuda, another offshore tax haven, when the Liberal leader was on the firm's board of directors from 2020 to 2025... the leader of the NDP promised to put an end to tax agreements between Canada and jurisdictions like Bermuda.   "We lose tens of billions of dollars every year because of tax havens, because of big companies avoiding countries their fair share," said Jagmeet Singh.   Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet called on the Liberal leader to "reveal his foreign assets."  "Mr. Carney thinks that taxes are simply for normal people, and not for millionaires or billionaires like him," the Bloc leader said."

Ryan Gerritsen🇨🇦🇳🇱 on X - "Mark Carney will determine what Canadians can or can’t see online. I’m so tired of these people."
Something concerning people have missed in Carney's speech : r/CanadianConservative - "Mark Carney has announced his intention to crack down on online crime. And yes, that includes so-called conspiracy theories**.** Sound familiar? Just look to Europe, the home turf of the World Economic Forum, where freedom of speech is far from guaranteed for everyday citizens.  This is the beginning of a digital "truth police", a state-backed force deciding what’s acceptable to say online, and what must be silenced.  Ring any bells? It should. Carney's playbook seems straight out of the Chinese Communist Party’s approach to information control.  Welcome to 1984, Canada edition. What’s already happening in an increasingly authoritarian Europe is now creeping in here, ushered in by Carney, the Liberals, and their fellow WEF elites.  WAKE UP BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!"
"I have family is in the UK and I have been paying close attention to the online safety act which has been going into place this year. Mark seems to be referring to something similar. This is NOT what we want here. If you don't know about it, look it up. Small benign forums are being forced to close because the requirements to function are so ridiculous or they can risk being fined millions of pounds if they don't meet them."
"  There are other European countries in the same situation.  It’s simple, if the leader has ties with the WEF, trouble is coming. We already have our own lot, Trudeau, Carney, Joly, champagne, Gould, Freeland, Legault, Fitzgibbon… all WEF."

Carney says he 'never heard of' pro-Beijing group that claimed they had 'in-depth meeting' - "Mark Carney has refuted claims that he met with the Jiangsu Commerce Council of Canada.  The pro-Beijing group has since, at the behest of the Liberal Party, deleted its post claiming high-ranking representatives had an "in-depth meeting" with him."

Chinese government behind Carney posts on WeChat - "Youli-Youmian, the most popular news account on the Chinese social media platform WeChat, shared posts about Carney that cast him in a generally positive light. Both posts on the Youli-Youmian account soon caught fire at a suspiciously fast pace, garnering between 85,000 and 130,000 interactions and an estimated one to three million views. The posts got so much attention so quickly on the Chinese platform that they caught the eye of Canada’s Security and Intelligence Threats to Elections (SITE) Task Force, which discovered that the Youli-Youmian posts were part of an information campaign by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The content had received an unusually high amount of engagement (via comments or shares, for example) from a group of 30 smaller WeChat accounts that boosted the posts’ visibility well beyond the norm and for at least four days... She theorized that the campaign may be the Chinese government testing new algorithm-manipulation techniques that it could later deploy on a larger scale."

LILLEY: China launches interference campaign to help Carney - "“I read the WeChat document in question. It is not ‘targeting Mr. Carney.’ It is strongly supporting him ‘The only adult in the room’, ‘Rock star economist,’” wrote Charles Burton in a post on X. Burton is a Canadian diplomat and academic who spent years in China and has written extensively on Canada-China relations. Carney has had extensive business ties with China over the years. When he was governor of the Bank of England, Carney oversaw the move to work more closely with China and Chinese banks. In 2016, Carney worked with Zhou Xiaochuan, then governor of the People’s Bank of China on green finance initiatives. That was a theme he picked up on when he moved to the private sector at Brookfield Asset Management. Carney helped Brookfield dramatically increase their investments in China and just last October, during a visit to Beijing, Carney helped the company secure a $276 million loan from a state-owned bank. Carney’s ties to China are deep, of course President Xi Jinping would want him to be elected to lead Canada. The question is will Canadians decide to elect someone favoured not only by Xi in Beijing, but also by President Donald Trump in Washington."
Of course, other media sources try to give the impression it's trying to hurt him. Criticising China is racist, so everyone should just hate Trump and the US

LILLEY: The Liberals put Canada in this mess, not Trump - "after nearly a decade of the same party in power, a party that was quite unpopular until recently due to their policies, we could very well re-elect the Liberals – not because of them or their leader but because of Trump. I was speaking with a friend in the United States recently who said he could never imagine voting for a particular politician or party, effectively deciding an American election based on the actions of a foreign leader. But, in Canada, that is what a significant portion of the electorate seems to want to do – reward the Liberals with a fourth term because of who is in the White House. While the Liberals have changed leaders from Justin Trudeau to Mark Carney, the team around Carney is the same. The thinking that Carney is putting forward is mostly the same as we saw under Justin Trudeau. So, why reward them by giving them another mandate just because of Trump. It wasn’t Donald Trump who gave us rising unemployment, it was the Liberals. The unemployment rate rose to 6.7% in the report released Friday compared to 5% two years ago. A big reason for the change, the out-of-control immigration that the Liberals allowed to happen... The Liberals brought this on and more than a year ago said we were bringing in people faster than we can absorb them. They haven’t fixed the system; they’ve allowed the abuse to continue, which puts further stress on health care and housing... as the Liberals have pledged billions in new government money for housing, housing starts have fallen. The Liberal policies simply don’t work, even if you put a slim and sleek looking banker at the front to lead the party. Before the Liberals took power in 2015, the Canadian dollar was trading at 80 cents U.S. It’s now hovering between 69 and 70 cents. This doesn’t just mean trips to Florida or Arizona are more expensive in the winter, it means we have less buying power, including for goods that may not come from the United States but are priced in U.S. dollars. Trump didn’t give us a 69-cent dollar. The Liberals did by showing the world that doing business in our most lucrative industries, like mining or oil and gas, was more expensive and more cumbersome with the Liberals in Ottawa. When the Harper government was in power and supporting those industries, the dollar was often near or at par, and a few times even more valuable than the U.S. dollar. The low dollar won’t change under a Carney-led Liberal government that believes in net zero and leaving oil and gas in the ground. Over the last decade the Liberals have weakened our economy, decimated our armed forces, broken our immigration system, shattered national unity and now some people think the thing to do is give them another shot."

LILLEY: Carney makes another false claim to boost his resume - "Carney has a habit of taking credit for things he didn’t do like the big decisions of the 2008-09 financial crisis or claiming to have helped Paul Martin balance the budget. He’s also denied responsibility for things he has done, such as moving the headquarters of Brookfield Asset Management, the company he oversaw, from Toronto to New York City. He even tried to claim that he set up $25 billion USD worth of green funds in Bermuda on behalf of Brookfield to save Canadian seniors taxes. No, he was saving his company on taxes by using offshore tax havens, something not available to the average Canadian. Back to the idea that Carney is an economist and therefore must know what he is talking about and should be listened to on these matters. The people around Donald Trump advocating for tariffs are economists as well, but it doesn’t mean they have good policies. Peter Navarro has a PhD in economics from Harvard University, surely that is on par with Carney’s PhD from Oxford, but we don’t hear people claiming we must listen to Navarro because of his credentials. Kevin Hassett, another Trump advisor and tariff advocate, has a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, a well-respected business school, but Canadians don’t say we should listen to him. There are two main problems with Carney at the moment. He keeps lying about the past, like claiming we had no recession in 2008-09, and he has bad policies for going forward. As Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said the other day, a resume is not a plan, and Carney only has a resume – and bad ideas."

Carney should show the West some respect - "Liberal Leader Mark Carney should feel right at home in Alberta: after all, he was raised there. But his trip there this week feels more like a political minefield than a homecoming. That’s largely due to his recent quip that while he’s happy to dispatch Ontario Premier Doug Ford to advocate for Canada in Washington, he wouldn’t send Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. Since Smith has openly plumped for the election of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, the line got a lot of laughs. But unsurprisingly, she didn’t think it was funny, accusing Carney of dissing a “strong Conservative woman.” While playing the feminist card is a little over the top, Smith’s underlying message — that the federal Liberals disrespect Alberta — has a longstanding history. During the 2000 election, while campaigning in New Brunswick, Liberal Leader Jean Chrétien remarked that, “I like to do politics with people from the east. Joe Clark and Stockwell Day are from Alberta. They are a different type.” He quickly added, “I’m joking,” before saying, “I’m serious.” The next day, he somewhat apologized, noting that he had friends in Alberta, including cabinet minister David Kilgour, whose office received so many angry calls, he arranged a press conference to say that Chrétien was “obviously joking.” In 2010, Justin Trudeau told a Quebec TV host that, “Canada isn’t doing well right now because it’s Albertans who control our community and socio-democratic agenda.” When asked whether Canada was “better served when there are more Quebecers in charge than Albertans,” he replied, “I’m a Liberal, so of course I think so, yes,” adding that Canada’s greatest prime ministers were all from Quebec and that, “This country, Canada, it belongs to us.” The comments resurfaced during Trudeau’s leadership campaign in 2012, outraging westerners, including then-immigration minister Jason Kenney, who dubbed them “the worst kind of arrogance of the Liberal party,” reminiscent of the national energy program, which decimated the Alberta economy in the 1970s. After Justin Trudeau became prime minister, he imposed a national carbon tax and co-led an international proposal to end public financing of fossil-fuel projects. Carney has long been an advocate of climate finance... As the Liberal leader is quick to remind us, Canada’s biggest challenge is how to deal with the threat posed by a belligerent U.S. administration. This makes any additional internal strain highly unhealthy... Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe also warned this week that western alienation is an issue in his province."

Terry Newman: CBC unfairly attacks Carney’s father
Left wingers love to bash the National Post, but here they are arguing against left wing logic that would vilify Carney. Ironic

Terry Newman: Mark Carney, put your elbows down - "Besides now being head of the party for whom he formerly served as economic advisor, the party responsible for over-regulating the process of building energy projects which helped drive away investors in the first place, Carney may be even more focused on clean rather than conventional energy than climate activist former environment minister Steven Guilbeault... instead of seizing on the fact that CUSMA is still, mostly, being honoured, and reassuring Canadians that he’s the man to renegotiate a new trade agreement with the U.S., Carney continued with the war language that’s been working for himself and the Liberal party thus far, telling reporters that he’s going to “fight these tariffs with countermeasures.” It’s not yet clear whether that’s necessary or wise. And there’s evidence that seeking exemptions through negotiations, rather than aggressive language and counter-tariffs, might be more a useful approach. At least until we wait out the effects Trump’s tariffs may have on his own voters."

Kat Kanada 🍁 on X - "Mark Carney says Canada failed on its "promise" to provide housing and education that newcomers and foreign students "deserve.""

Amy Hamm: The Liberal party is rotten. Mark Carney is the new core - "Carney marched in, unelected — behaving as though he was, it should be noted — demanding the highest praise for reversing the carbon tax that his party has used to economically crush Canada since 2019. The party has since been manically posting about the move across social media... The Liberal party, under Trudeau, was so deeply unpopular that polls at one time showed that they risked losing official party status if an immediate election were held. The Poilievre-led Conservative party, at the same time, would have won a majority. Poilievre’s “empty slogan” that he would “axe the tax” can only now be considered empty insofar as Canada was robbed of the election that would have seen to it that Poilievre could follow through. Instead, our former prime minister self-servingly prorogued parliament , to hold a party leadership race while we sat on the precipice of a trade war with the U.S. He was then replaced with a leader that did what Poilievre promised to do — and is now pretending that Poilievre’s promise was “empty.” The term “gaslighting” is overused in today’s popular culture, but certainly applies here. There is nothing quite so obvious as the fact that Carney is in a desperate bid to cling to power by attenuating or, in some cases, abandoning the principles and mandates that defined his party’s decade-long rule. Believing Carney is an insult to our collective intelligence. So why this doesn’t inspire all Canadians to outright reject Carney and the Liberals is astounding. Somehow, Carney’s party is now, at least according to one poll , in the lead. Are Canadians really that naïve? The manipulations don’t end with Carney’s move to “save” us from the divisive tax that his own cronies imposed on us in the first place — there are plenty of reasons to reject the “new” Liberal government. The scandals of the Liberal party over the past decade did not start or end with Justin Trudeau. How can we forget Randy Boissonault’s lies , or the repeated ethics violations by several members of Trudeau’s cabinet? And then there are the harmful Liberal policies, including its “green” agenda that has crippled the economy, restrictive COVID-19 rules that could have been the envy of any dictator, an obsession with falsely labelling Canada a “genocide” state, and, of course, immigration. Carney has hinted at a temporary cap on immigration levels, rather than overhauling the system entirely, as it should be. One of the most egregious and damaging things the Liberals have done to Canada over the past decade is embrace the pseudo-progressive and harmful “diversity, equity, and inclusion” doctrine. Or, in other words: wokeness. I place blame squarely upon the Liberals for the current and extreme political polarization seen and felt across Canada. The party normalized and mainstreamed extreme, and previously fringe, identity politics. Carney’s curious move to drop the “women, gender equality, and youth” portfolio from his cabinet last week should be interpreted either as happenstance, or a further attempt at manipulation. His lack of public comment on the matter suggests the latter; he has left those open to forgiving his party, sans Trudeau, wondering if the Liberals might moderate their wokeness under Carney. Don’t fall for it. The Liberal party is rotten. Further, there is something deficient about Canadians’ reasoning if enough of us believe that the problem with Justin Trudeau’s reign was Justin Trudeau, rather than the Liberal brand. If we do in fact vote for another Liberal term, well, then we truly deserve the hellish fever state we will have inflicted upon ourselves."

Adam Pankratz: Of course the Liberals would brag about cancelling their own carbon tax - "Trumpeting the carbon tax reversal for a party which, until recently, admonished anyone opposed to the carbon tax as climate denialists set on polar bear cub genocide is an about-face which would make the most hardline Pravda editor blush. It is breathtaking in its total disregard for the intelligence of Canadians and voters. The speed of the reversal is such that as of Sunday afternoon, the day after the signing of the declaration to remove the tax, the Liberal Party’s own website is still promoting their plan for a price on carbon. For around a year now, Pierre Poilievre and the Conservative Party have shouted “Axe the Tax” at any and every opportunity they could. There was, it is fair to say, no one slogan which more encapsulated the Conservative momentum over the past 12 months than this. Justin Trudeau and the Liberals fought this message tooth and nail. Poilievre was a climate change denier, intent on making Canadians poorer by removing their carbon tax rebate. And now, suddenly, poof. Gone. Carbon tax consigned to the political dustbin. Meaning, surely, that Carney and the Liberals are now guilty of the same crimes ascribed to Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives not six months ago. Is it perhaps tempting to paint all this as a change in leadership which necessarily comes with a change in policy direction. That would all be fair enough if we had not had to endure the last five years of being told that anyone who disagreed with the Liberals was, depending on the month, an anti-vaxxer, a racist, a misogynist or a climate-change denialist. These are not words which one can consider the norm for political discourse, though they have become all too common."

Laryssa Waler 🌻 Лариса Валєр on X - "Mark Carney didn’t cancel the carbon tax. He set the rate at zero. It matters because he can increase it anytime he wants, without a vote, should he win.   It also matters because he’s spent the last decade evangelizing about the importance of a carbon price for the world. He’s never said it’s bad public policy. He’s said it’s bad politics right now.   He hasn’t said he will repeal the legislation should he win.   He hasn’t even said he won’t raise the rates.   Read his book.   He’s told us what his plans are. I can’t believe how few people are holding him to account for this."

Mark Carney Unleashes Savage Attack On… Mark Carney - "“Tonight, Carbon Tax Carney once again tried to sneakily trick Canadians by attacking his own disastrous economic record under Justin Trudeau. But Carney sneakily failed to mention something important. Namely, that he has served as Justin Trudeau’s top economic advisor for the past five years. “Speaking at the Liberal leadership debate, Carney said ‘our economy over the last five years, has been driven by the big increase in the labour force which was largely because of the surge in immigration … and by government spending that grew over 9 percent year-after-year after year, twice the rate of growth of our economy. So our economy was weak before we got to the point of these threats from president Trump.’ “Carbon Tax Carney has had a direct role in the Liberals’ mess, advising Trudeau to hike taxes on the backs of working Canadians, while encouraging the massive spending that drove up inflation and interest rates. “Yet instead of admitting his direct responsibility for the cost of living crisis, Carney tried to blame Canadians for the hurt he has caused. When asked why groceries are so expensive, Carney said the reason ‘families have a hard time to afford their groceries is because we haven’t had productivity. That’s the issue.’ “Mark Carney doesn’t understand that Canadian workers are working harder than ever. But unfortunately, the Liberal Government – which he directly advised – fuelled inflation with high taxes and spending. But this shouldn’t be surprising. Just yesterday, Mark Carney couldn’t say how much everyday families have to spend on groceries every week. “On top of this, sneaky Carney continued to say one thing in French and another thing in English. Yesterday, Carney promised at the French-language debate that supply management was off the table with negotiations with the U.S. administration. But today, in English, Mark Carney didn’t even mention supply management – hoping no one would notice. “Carney also refused to disclose his financial interests or file an ethics disclosure before becoming Prime Minister. This means he could become Prime Minister and run in an election before Canadians ever are able to understand his massive conflicts of interest. He also did not bring up the 50 percent increase in violent crime under the Carney-Trudeau Liberals or the opioid crisis that has killed nearly 50,000 Canadians since 2016. But that’s because Mark Carney doesn’t even think fentanyl represents a crisis in Canada."
I saw a lot of interesting copes for Canada having very poor GDP per capita growth under the Liberals, including total GDP growth being high, Canada still being a wealthy country and it being better than being America. Diehard Liberal voters know that you don't need a growing economy - you just need to "tax the 'rich'"

GOLDSTEIN: The nightmare prospect of another Liberal majority - "If the Liberals win a majority government based solely on the faint hope Prime Minister Mark Carney will be a better tariff negotiator with U.S. President Donald Trump than Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, then we’re going to get everything we deserve. That is, four more years of Liberal scandals, wasting taxpayers’ money, idiotic decisions on issues such as carbon taxes and more woke politics reminiscent of Justin Trudeau’s almost 10 years as prime minister. The idea that a political neophyte like Carney, surrounded by former Trudeau advisers and Trudeau-era cabinet ministers who wouldn’t know a conflict of interest if it hit them in the face, is going to be able to navigate the Liberal Titanic toward anything but hitting the iceberg all over again, is a farce. All governments have a best-before date and it’s roughly 10 years in power... Of all of Trudeau’s tweets that haven’t aged well, his observation on Oct. 17, 2013 — “It’s hard not to feel disappointed in your government when every day there is a new scandal” — has aged the worst. The promises Trudeau made in his 2015 election platform that brought him to power are only good for a laugh today. Remember when Trudeau and the Liberals said a decade ago that they despised government secrecy as the default position of the Harper regime and promised they would deliver “open and transparent government?” “It is time to shine more light on government and ensure it remains focused on the people it is meant to serve,” they told us in 2015. “Government and its information should be open by default. Data paid for by Canadians belongs to Canadians. We will restore trust in our democracy, and that begins with trusting Canadians.” The Aga Khan, SNC-Lavalin, WE Charity and foreign interference scandals alone rendered those early claims absurd. So do years of the Liberals hysterically proclaiming Canada would burn without Trudeau’s consumer carbon tax, which is no longer operative, they say, now that they’ve killed it. Carney is running on pretty much everything Poilievre promised first — a middle-class tax cut, killing a planned Liberal corporate tax hike, reducing government spending, deficits and debt, capping immigration, cutting the size of the public service and on and on and on. Remember when former finance minister Chrystia Freeland, now transport minister, argued that failing to raise corporate taxes would result in a dystopian nightmare for Canada? A nightmare where, she claimed, “Those at the very top live lives of luxury, but must do so in gated communities, behind ever-higher fences, using private health care and airplanes because the public sphere is so degraded and the wrath of the vast majority of their less privileged compatriots burns so hot.” What happened to that? This is what the federal Liberals always do — steal ideas from the other parties leading up to an election, offer them up as their own and then fail to implement them once elected because they don’t really believe in anything they’re promising now."

Hell for TERFs / Gun Toting MTF Commie / Trans Spartans

Devin Lytle (she/her) @devdev...: "There is a special place in hell reserved for cis women who terrorize trans women."
Dan T. Copeland @Self_Made_Dan: "If there was such a place, transwomen would demand access, so it wouldn't be reserved for long."

Wilfred Reilly @wil_da_beast630: "We let literal mental patients - like classic male autogynephiles with other visible paraphilias - write laws.   This was one of the greatest suspensions of common sense and clear reason in history."
Nate Hochman @njhochman: "The fact that we spent the last decade pretending this person wasn't severely mentally ill was one of the most insane exercises in collective self-delusion in modern history"
Doughy Marie G-Spot Dougydough updated her profile picture.: "Trans women can and will defend themselves. Today I became a gun owner. *wild looking MTF with blue hair and vacant eyes with Free Palestine baseball cap, Cornell West 2024 sign and USSR Communist Flag*"

Clearly, anyone who criticises communists or commies is ignorant and doesn't know what communism is

Mack @kenzietuff: "We are Spartans in the fight for life" is something a man would say, they can't escape their biology. Genuinely funny.
Abby - Agent 17213: "Troon states that he and his fellow troons are Spartans. And yet, these are the men who cry if they are denied access to the women's bathrooms"

Links - 19th April 2025 (2)

Meme - Damon Linker @DamonLinker: "I wish there were more liberals left on here to read what I have to say: This below, from a world-renowned historian at Yale, is completely unhinged. There are so many reasons to oppose Hegseth's nomination, but this paranoid outburst isn't one of them. People are going insane."
Timothy Snyder: "13. Hegseth thus represents a policy of regime change. Trump's nomination of Hegseth is best understood as part of a decapitation strike against the republic. A Christian Reconstructionist war on Americans led from the Department of Defense is likely to break the United States."
How much more batshit insane can left wingers get?

Charlie Kirk on X - "Pete Hegseth describes how he was banned from serving with his National Guard unit for a tattoo of the Jerusalem Cross, the same Christian symbol that was on the floor of the National Cathedral during Jimmy Carter's funeral."

Meme - Arthur Schwartz @ArthurSchwartz: "Who put Pete Hegseth’s Nazi tattoo on the cover of Jimmy Carter’s funeral program?"
Matt Oroak @MattOroak: "For those that don't understand the satire...  Senator @SenWarren  wrote a 33 page letter to @PeteHegseth  regarding his nomination to be the Secretary of Defense.  In that letter the following is on page 24:  "You were also removed from President Biden’s inauguration because of concerns that you were an insider threat after reports that your “Deus Vult” tattoo “was a Christian expression associated with right-wing extremism.”  We cannot have a Defense Secretary whose fellow servicemembers feel concerned enough about to report as a potential insider threat."  Complete Letter is here:  https://warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/"

Cynical Publius on X - "Understand what happened with Pete Hegseth's nomination and confirmation.  Pete was overwhelmingly supported by the veterans' community.  We know he is a dirty boots warrior who has the gumption to straighten out the mess that is the DoD, and collectively we have been his greatest voice of support.  Who vehemently opposed his nomination?
-The senior generals, the senior admirals and the SESers in the Pentagon.
-The entire defense lobbyist community.
-The entire defense industry.
-The entire Democrat Party.
-Three "Republican" senators who receive massive campaign contributions from the defense industry.
And in a fitting end to this saga of veteran warriors vs. the Military/Industrial Complex, it finally took a USMC Lance Corporal to vote him into office."

M'sian Gets Her Money Back After Spamming Scammer's Bank Account With 1 Sen Transactions - "@amuse_gueule shared that she was scammed after not receiving a RM53 product she ordered on Instagram.  The woman, nicknamed Mom of KL, realised she was not the only victim after reading Facebook reviews recounting similar situations.  "So, I did 20 transactions of 1 sen to the scammer's account late last night. They texted me and promised a refund.  "I got my money back this morning!" she wrote."

Parents Are Paying Food Delivery Riders to Send Their Kids to School So They Can Sleep In - "To those who dread waking up early and wish someone would help send your kids to school, this is possible… in China"

M'sian E-Hailing Driver Charges Extra RM20 for Air Con in the Backseat, Price Increases With Fan Speed - "A Nasi Lemak restaurant recently went viral after charging its customers RM1 per head for air con usage. This time, an e-hailing driver is being criticised for charging customers a ridiculous amount for air con usage in his backseat.  In a viral post circulating on X(formerly Twitter) shared by MALAYSIAVIRALLL, the passenger of an e-hailing ride shared a photo from the backseat, revealing the additional charges that passengers are expected to pay if they need to use the air con.  Passengers need to pay AT LEAST RM20 if they want air con in the backseat"

Consumers' Assoc Penang Says F&B Operators Should Not Impose Extra Fee for Not Ordering Drinks - "A coffee shop in Penang recently made headlines for the wrong reasons after they publicly shamed a customer for not ordering drinks. The owner of the coffee house, Lim clarified that he has since apologised to the old man before deactivating the shop’s official Facebook account following the massive criticisms online."

'Mountain Lion' That Made School Go Into Lockdown Turned Out to Be a Fat Cat Eating a Rat - "Goff Elementary School in Moses Lake, Washington, went viral when, one random Tuesday morning, the school received reports of a mountain lion in the area."

LignoSat: First wood-panelled satellite launched into space - "Named LignoSat, after the Latin word for wood, its panels have been built from a type of magnolia tree, using a traditional technique without screws or glue.  Researchers at Kyoto University who developed it hope it may be possible in the future to replace some metals used in space exploration with wood.  "Wood is more durable in space than on Earth because there's no water or oxygen that would rot or inflame it," Kyoto University forest science professor Koji Murata told Reuters news agency.  "Early 1900s airplanes were made of wood," Prof Murata said. "A wooden satellite should be feasible, too."  If trees could one day be planted on the Moon or Mars, wood might also provide material for colonies in space in the future, the researchers hope."

Thread by @itsolelehmann on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "2 years ago, I moved my entire life to Cyprus to escape Germany's 50% tax rate.  It was the most expensive "money-saving" decision I've ever made.  Here's 21 brutal realities of tax haven living (that nobody warns you about):
1. i was the spreadsheet guy in berlin obsessing over cyprus's 12.5% vs germany's 50% tax rate. it felt like i'd cracked some secret code.  plot twist: i was solving the wrong equation entirely...
2. when you organize your entire life around tax optimization, you end up dividing yourself as a person.  moving to cyprus for tax benefits taught me that you can't spreadsheet your way to a fulfilling life. the numbers looked perfect, but reality hit different...
3. i built a technically perfect life that was practically impossible to live in.  perfect example: a simple squat rack took 3 weeks to arrive because of EU + island logistics.  that's when it hit me - i'd optimized for numbers, not actual livability.
4. cyprus's 60-day residency requirement sounds simple until it starts controlling your entire life.  every family visit, business trip, or spontaneous opportunity becomes a complex calculation of residency risk.  i traded one "prison" (high taxes) for another (day counting).
5. being far from real innovation hubs costs more than any tax break saves you.  the energy and opportunities flowing through places like SF, NYC, and Singapore can't be replicated in a tax haven.  you save money but lose access to the growth engines of business.
6. your identity crisis sneaks up on you slowly, then hits all at once.  in berlin, i was a proud local entrepreneur building something meaningful. in cyprus? just another expat chasing tax benefits. that psychological shift impacts you more than you think
7. living in a tax haven infects everything with a temporary mindset. i never bought my dream desk setup or invested in proper home furnishings.  why?  because when you choose a place purely for tax reasons, your subconscious knows it's not really home.
8. you end up living perpetually at 70% commitment. not fully moved in, not fully invested in the community, not fully building a life.  everything stays in this strange limbo state because deep down, you know this is just a tax strategy masquerading as a life decision.
9. tax havens attract people focused on wealth protection, not wealth creation.  the conversations here never revolve around building or growing something meaningful. instead, it's all about tax schemes and protection strategies. that scarcity mindset becomes contagious faster than you'd expect.
10. maintaining basic life connections becomes a 2nd full-time job.  between quarterly family visits, monthly business trips, and regular escapes to places with actual energy, your life transforms into a complex travel schedule just to feel somewhat normal.
11. living in a tax haven creates a sense of rootlessness that nobody warns you about. you can't truly identify with your new home because you chose it for its tax code, not its culture.  meanwhile your connection to your old home slowly fades, leaving you in a strange limbo.
12. building real, lasting in-person relationships becomes nearly impossible  i've watched friends disappear for months at a time, returning briefly to maintain residency status before vanishing again.  the community never solidifies because it's in constant flux.
13. my real problem with germany wasn't just the 50% tax rate - i realize now it was the fundamental anti-entrepreneurship sentiment that pervades society.  but trading that for a place that values nothing except low taxes? it really wasn't an improvement
14. those impressive tax savings vanish faster than you'd expect.  between emergency flights home, higher shipping costs for basic business needs, maintaining multiple living spaces, and the constant travel required to feel connected - the financial benefits thin.
15. your professional network slowly evaporates when you're far from actual innovation hubs.  no amount of zoom calls can replace the serendipity of being where things actually happen.
16. the infrastructure challenges wear you down over time. simple tasks become multi-step challenges, and your home office setup remains perpetually "almost there" because the effort required to make it perfect feels pointless when you're mentally ready to leave.
17. this place doesn't encourage building anything meaningful - because everyone's just passing through.  when was the last time you heard of someone opening a community space or starting a local business initiative in a tax haven? exactly.
18. your business grows slower in tax-efficient zones, no matter how much you save on paper.  being near actual markets, customers, and innovation hubs matters more than your tax rate. i learned this lesson the expensive way.
19. the psychological weight of being a tax optimizer compounds over time. missing family events, watching your home network fade, living in permanent transit mode - no spreadsheet can calculate these costs to your wellbeing.
20. that perfect tax setup comes at the cost of an imperfect life setup. i traded one form of constraint for another and somehow convinced myself this was optimization.  turns out, life optimization and tax optimization are usually opposing goals.
21. here's the hardest truth that took me 2 years to learn:  if you wouldn't live there without the tax advantage, don't live there for the tax advantage. life's too short to treat it like an accounting exercise.
note to future tax optimizers:  i'm leaving Cyprus next year. not because it's a bad place – its really beautiful tbh.  but i've learned that the true cost of tax optimization is paid in much more valuable currencies:"

FischerKing on X - "The most disturbing aspect of Gordon Ramsay’s ‘Kitchen Nightmares’ is the revelation that so many restaurants (even ‘good’ ones) are just microwaving your meal. I had no idea. And I’ve been a lot more reticent about going to restaurants since, cooking at home much more."

John Kennedy on X - "This week, left wingers in Britain are rushing to give away a strategic U.S. military base in the Indian Ocean before Pres. Trump takes office and could stop the deal. Pres. Biden is going along. Ignoring the potential of war increases its likelihood."

Thread by @BrandonWarmke on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "One symptom of what’s wrong with American higher education is how bad *people with PhDs* are at thinking and talking about the political Right.  They might have a PhD, but they haven’t learned much about the political ideas they don’t like.  Three thoughts:
1. Many academics will simply admit they have no idea what conservatism is. “What even is conservatism? You mean Rush Limbaugh/Donald Trump? Why would students need to learn that?”  Imagine a crowd of PhDs asking “What even is liberalism, you mean like Rachel Maddow? Who needs to learn that?”
2. Many just think of everyone on the “right” as just one big undifferentiated blob: Burke, Oakeshott, Maistre, and Scruton (if these names are known at all) are all of a piece with Ayn Rand, Nozick, Hayek, Margaret Thatcher, Donald Trump, Joseph McCarthy, Franco, and Fox News. It’s one bad team, connected via one shadowy network.  Understanding politics on Left requires careful distinctions and nuance: it’s important to distinguish the 8 varieties of Marxism and 13 shades of democratic socialism. The Right? Just a blob.
3. Many have just two categories to associate with conservatives: reactionary and fascist.  “Reactionary” is typically just used to refer to people who don’t like whatever the Left happens to be on about at the moment.  “Fascist” is typically just used to refer to anyone who values patriotism and feels attached to a place and way of life.
I don’t know how to fix this. I’ve seen lots of syllabi from faculty and grad students over the years, from all kinds of institutions. There’s little interest in exposing students to “bad ideas,” at least with much charity.  Instructors don’t want to “platform” these ideas. And they certainly don’t want to risk students coming to believe them. One final point: “Democrats’ understanding of Republicans actually gets worse with every additional degree they earn.”  Democrats *without* high school diplomas do much better than PhDs. The current education system simply isn’t helping."
Whatever the more educated believe in automatically correct!

Meme - "AITAH for telling my girlfriend she was the perpetrator, not the victim, in her "trauma"?
 My [25m] girlfriend [24f] and I have been dating for about a year. I'll call her Casey here. We have lived together for two months.  A few hours ago, Casey approached me saying that she wanted to talk about something "serious." At first, I didn’t know what to expect, but she wanted to share something traumatic that had happened to her before we met, and she asked if I would be willing to listen. I of course said yes, I would, if she’d be willing to share.  Casey hesitated for a second, like she wasn’t sure about telling me, but then gave me the full story. What happened was when she was a university student, she had a crush on a pizza guy. He worked at a small shop near her apartment, and he would often deliver to her. She wanted to ask him out, but she wasn’t sure how, so she consulted her friends.  Her friend group talked over it, and then one brought up the suggestion of answering the door in lingerie. The others jumped onto the idea quickly, and while Casey had doubts, they quickly convinced her to try it. They apparently even went shopping for the lingerie together.  Casey put on makeup, did her hair, and ordered a pizza. When the guy came, she did exactly as her friends suggested: she opened the door in skimpy lingerie. The pizza guy initially didn't address it, but Casey, "desperate," pushed the topic. She asked him, "What do you think about my outfit?"  He responded, "Dude, please don’t do that," and then left. At this point in the story, Casey was near tears, and she told me how embarrassed and sick she felt.  I almost expected more from the story, but she was finished. I then said, "Uh … you do realize that you weren’t the victim, but the perpetrator, right?" She literally recoiled at this comment. She elaborated by blaming everybody else: her friends for "tricking" her, society in general, and even the pizza guy that she sexually harassed.  To this I responded that she’s like those guys who touch themselves in hotels, intentionally getting the maids to walk in on them. She insisted it was completely different, and a full-blown argument ensued. She finished the argument with "I came to you to feel better and now I feel WORSE!" and stormed away.  I don’t even know. I feel so disgusted with her right now. Was I the asshole for my comments when she felt vulnerable?"
Nowadays "trauma" is anything someone doesn't like, and perpetrators are victims, because victimhood is power. If you think a woman can be guilty of sexual harassment, that is literally misogyny and structural sexism

Meme - Colin Wright @SwipeWright: ""Consilience" is the idea that all knowledge should eventually interlock, producing a unified understanding of reality. Below is a network showing this unity, as measured by co-citations.  It appears the humanities never received this memo, and have now reached escape velocity! *Disciplines citing each other, except the Humanities which are in their own world*"

Meme - "c'est quand la dernière fois que tu as pleuré ?"
"hier"
"les gens pleurent
pas parce qu'ils sont faibles, mais parce qu'ils ont été forts trop longtemps
ils sont de quelle couleur tes tétons ?"

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "Step 1: Post a lie.
Step 2: Immediately turn off your replies so people won't call you out on your lie.
Step 3: Forget that Community Notes exists and get embarrassed."
"Bank of America serves more than 70 million clients and we welcome conservatives. We would never close accounts for political reasons and don't have a political litmus test."
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "BoA has been placed on notice by 15 state AGs for debanking Conservatives "Your discriminatory behavior is a serious threat to free speech and religious freedom, is potentially illegal, and is causing political and regulatory backlash," Kansas AG Kris Kobach wrote."

The Brazen Head of Everso II on X - "One of my favorite bits of lore is that Justice Thomas was originally a staunch black nationalist and devotee of Malcom X. His shift to the right began when at Yale he lost his wallet and too his surprise, a white student found it and actually brought it back to him. He couldn’t believe a white person would show him that kindness. That white student was John Bolton"

Sulla on X - "You know something weird ? The number of people reporting going to dinner parties at least once per week has fallen 90% since 1950. Actually it fell 90% by the 1990s. Just weird, since there’s no law against dinner parties. You can just ask your friends to come over for dinner... I got my facts wrong. It wasn’t 90% by 1990. And it was once a month or more and it wasn’t just dinner parties"
Larissa Phillips on X - "Years ago I read a cute memoir by an Aussie who married a Frenchman and moved to Paris. It was like a survival guide. There was a chapter on dinner parties.   She said that in Paris, at a dinner party, you must have an opinion. It didn't matter what your opinion on a topic was; you must have one and you must be prepared to argue it. It was better to have a crazy or terrible opinion than none. Only a boring guest would have no opinion.   Maybe there's no dinner parties because we're not allowed to disagree with friends, and then what's the point."

Neil Stone on X - "Name one human invention that has saved more lives than vaccines"
vittorio on X - "haber-bosch process. 3-4 billion lives and counting"

pagliacci the hated 🌝 on X - "a Chinese man on xiaohongchu made a video telling American TikTok refugees to keep their sexuality and transgender shit to themselves and they’re getting mad at him"

Sardar Khan on X - "Every Minute in America there are 1.3 forcible rapes.  Every Minute.  Do we blame any religion for that?   People commit crimes not religions.  If you have some lowlife from Muslim background in UK who were involved in that heinous crime against humanity, that is their crime not the individuals.  Even Hitler’s religion wasn’t blamed for his crimes. Today’s ongoing televised genocides are not the crimes to blame any religion but a person from Muslim background commits any crime its a crime by Islam. Isn’t it ironic!"
Robert Spencer on X - "In France, a Muslim quoted Qur’an while raping his victim. A survivor of a Muslim rape gang in the UK has said that her rapists would quote the Qur’an to her, and believed their actions justified by Islam. Thus it came as no surprise when Muslim migrants in France raped a girl and videoed the rape while praising Allah and invoking the Qur’an.   In India, a Muslim gave a Qur’an and a prayer rug to the woman he was holding captive and repeatedly raping. Also in India, a Muslim kidnapped and raped a 14-year-old Hindu girl, and forced her to read the Qur’an and Islamic prayers.   And the victim of an Islamic State jihadi rapist recalled: “He told me that according to Islam he is allowed to rape an unbeliever. He said that by raping me, he is drawing closer to God…He said that raping me is his prayer to God.”   In Pakistan, another Christian woman recounted that her rapist was also religious: “He threw me on the bed and started to rape me. He demanded I marry him and convert to Islam. I refused. I am not willing to deny Jesus and he said that if I would not agree he would kill me.” Rapists demanded that another girl’s family turn her over to them, claiming that she had recited the Islamic profession of faith during the rape and thus could not live among infidels.  Links to news articles substantiating all of the above here: https://jihadwatch.org/2024/12/france"

Austen Allred on X - "They looked at the data and saw that college graduates, on average, did better in life. Failing to account for selection bias it was assumed that college was the solution to all of our problems. And, expensively, we learned that most of what mattered was the selection bias."
Constance Underfoot on X - "A great example in pursuit of that assumption.
- SAT standards were lowered to let in more students to achieve the aforementioned better life.
- But only 34% of those with a 800-900 SAT score graduate, now saddling 66% with debt they can't repay that also bars them from jobs.
- Brilliant!"
Zain Hoda on X - "This is similar to what happened with ESG research that shows that ESG portfolios outperform.   Companies that were successful could afford to implement ESG policies not that ESG led to companies being successful.  If you get the causality backwards, it takes a long natural experiment to disprove.   In the meantime, if you question the new orthodoxy, people will point back to the old data so you just have to wait for the natural experiment to play out."
Niels Hoven 🐮 on X  "They also noticed that kids in honors classes did better in life, but in this case the response was to get rid of honors classes in order to reduce inequality"

Thread by @cremieuxrecueil on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "'The patient always lies.'  A major problem with the healthcare system is that patients lie to their doctor.  Most patients will even privately admit that they lied when they were informing their doctors about their issues. Their reasons for doing this often aren't very good:
Patients want to avoid getting lectured, they don't want their doctor to call them fat or tell them their snacking habits are unhealthy. They're afraid the doctor will judge them or think they're stupid or immoral, and they don't want the doctor to tell their family. But because people want to preserve their privacy even in the private setting of a doctor's office, they end up making doctors' jobs harder.  They make it harder to diagnose conditions and to prescribe the right drugs. People insist they can't have STDs because they don't want the doctor to know they're having sex.  People don't disclose drug habits.  People lie about exposures they might've had at home because they don't want to appear disheveled and poor. Whatever the reasons, it's bad!  But doctors have a role to play here. Even offering a simple reassurance might go a long way to getting a patient to fess up to the real causes of their problems."

planefag on X - "So. I have a four year degree. I watched my chosen field implode like a supermassive star undergoing direct collapse. I went and hauled I-beams around and learned to weld - after hauling 2x4s around and learning carpentry. I didn't consider myself "too good" for it.   But if you tell someone who's already invested his college education and his youth into a particular career field; one he's intellectually well suited for, one he's already spent his college fund and irreplaceable youth to gain, that he should re-start his life at age 28 without complaint; start learning and earning his way up from the bottom all over again, in a career field where he'll be competing with Mexicans (and make no mistake, it's SKILLED labor coming across that border, not just fruit pickers - I should know,) for work because competition with Indians locked him out of his last career field - buddy, they're going to be fucking pissed off.   Dude, this guy literally "learned to code." And now you're saying "sorry that fell through. Learn to wrap sandwiches."   Where exactly does this elevator stop? "Learn to suck dicks under a highway overpass?""

ib on X - "Maybe young men aren’t owed any kind of material help or status from society at all, ever. But young women, old women, and old men - the rest of society - should think very, very hard before they make a world where their young men have nothing to lose."

Meme - Vince Langman @LangmanVince: "Pam bondi is older than Kirsten Gillibrand.  How is that possible?"

pagliacci the hated 🌝 on X - "Super Size Me really is a masterclass in propaganda because it fully cemented in the public consciousness that McDonald’s was unhealthy and evil meanwhile the dude who made the documentary was an alcoholic who neglected to mention he’d been binge drinking the entire “experiment”"
Grimm Bastard ☣ on X - "I lost over 20 pounds, and my elevated bloodwork dropped to normal levels after I went on a (mostly) daily McDonald's diet for a few months for lunch at work. It was of course in moderation. 2 x Regular Hamburgers, no cheese. 1 x Large Fries. 1 x Large Diet Coke. That's it."

The Lies of the Stanford Prison Experiment

Russell T. Warne 🇺🇸🇨🇱🇮🇱 on X

🧵
I finished reading Thibault Le Texier's book, Investigating the Stanford Prison Experiment: History of a Lie. This is the most thorough treatment of the real history behind the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Buckle up for a doozy of a thread! ⬇️👇

After reading the book, it's hard to deny that Zimbardo lied about almost every aspect of the study at some point in the 53 years he lived after conducting it. Some of the most inexcusable lies include:

➡️Saying that 5 "prisoners" left the experiment early for mental health reasons. In reality, only 2-3 did. In fact, one left because the dry air and denial of access to his medication was causing problems with his eczema.
➡️Zimbardo's then-girlfriend (later wife) was NOT the cause of the study ending. In Zimbardo's telling, she visits on Day 6 and is horrified about what's happening and convinces him to stop the study. In reality, she had visited earlier, participated in a fake parole board, and was aware of what was happening in the study before it ended.
➡️No, the "guards" did not all turn sadistic. In fact, most were reluctant about embracing their role, and the day shift guards were actually pretty lenient about rules.
➡️The experiment did not get increasingly intense with each passing day.
➡️The guards' behavior was not spontaneous. They were coached, multiple times, about how to behave. They were given suggestions for punishments, and they did not invent the prison rules.

 

There are also lies of omissions, in which Zimbardo never or rarely mentions important aspects of the study which undermined his narrative:

➡️Zimbardo did not come up with the experiment himself. Some of his undergraduate students did a smaller version of it a few months early as a class project. He almost never credited them.
➡️The guards were misled into believing that they were part of the experimental team. They thought the study was only about prisoner behavior. As a result, the guards did not "lose themselves" in a role by being placed in a fake prison. They never thought of themselves as real guards.
➡️The participants were not all "good" or "normal" young men with no history of misconduct. Some had a history of a petty crime, drug use, social dysfunction, etc.
➡️Contrary to claims that participants treated the experiment as if it were real, both prisoners and guards were constantly aware that they were in an experiment and that they were not REALLY prisoners and guards. No one consistently "lost himself" in his "role."
➡️Variability was the rule in the SPE, not the exception. For decades, Zimbardo portrayed all the prisoners as becoming rebellious and then broken as the guards become authoritarian and cruel. In reality, some prisoners had good relationships with some guards. The day shift was "businesslike," and some prisoners or guards were saw the situation as a weird temporary job, whereas others desperately wanted out. 

 

The Stanford Prison Experiment was simply bad science. There are so many flaws that it cannot reveal anything about human behavior. In the past I called it "performance art." Reading Le Texier's book reinforced that view.

➡️The protocols were erratic, changed often (and haphazardly). Almost nothing in the Stanford Prison Experiment was systematic.
➡️Data collection was irregular, resulting in sloppy data. In the months and years after the experiment, Zimbardo's assistants and students warned him that the data were hard to interpret. He ignored them all.
➡️Zimbardo started the study with a predetermined goal in mind. He published a press release on the second day of the study, touting its results(!). He testified to Congress and gave dozens of interviews before he had even analyzed his data.
➡️The demand characteristics must have been overwhelming--especially for the guards, who were coached in their behavior. Everyone knew (or had a pretty good idea) of the purpose of the study and what Zimbardo wanted to see. There was almost constant supervision from Zimbardo and his assistants.

 

The conditions only superficially resembled a real prison. This has two consequences:
1⃣Running this experiment was sometimes cruel and definitely unethical (even by the standards of the time)
2⃣The Stanford Prison Experiment does not tell us anything about the effects of real imprisonment.

Among the conditions that were worse than those of a real American prison were:
➡️Prisoner uniforms were gowns worn without underwear, which sometimes exposed prisoners' genitals
➡️Conditions were unsanitary. Bathroom access was severely limited. At night, prisoners had to urinate and defecate in a bucket. Sometimes prisoners even had to clean out the buckets with their bare hands. The prisoners were worried about disease.
➡️The prisoners could not shower and were only allowed to shave or have a sponge bath if outside visitors were expected.
➡️The prisoners had no access to fresh air or exercise
➡️Access to recreation was almost zero. Books were taken away, and prisoners were not allowed to have any personal effects or mementos.
➡️The "parole board" was a total sham that had no power to release prisoners early.
➡️Prisoners wore chains almost constantly, which caused discomfort and injury.

For Zimbardo, the lesson of the Stanford Prison Experiment was that potential for cruelty and evil lurks inside everyone, and the right (or wrong) situation could let out that inner monster. I think Zimbardo thought this message resonated because he actually did do cruel things to other people. The conclusion that everyone had evil inside them probably greatly assuaged Zimbardo's guilt. Sorry, Phil. You and I are not the same. 

 

The book joins other recent works that question Zimbardo's narrative about the Stanford Prison Experiment. For example, last fall, Disney+ and Hulu released a documentary about it that took a distinctively skeptical tone about the study and Zimbardo's conclusions.

 

The skepticism about the Stanford Prison Experiment started when Le Texier published the French edition of his book, and an American journalist summed up the conclusions in an article in Medium in 2018. Zimbardo spent the last 8 years of his life defending the study, and I understand why: Nothing else Zimbardo did in his career was as impactful, memorable, or infamous as the SPE. If the SPE is debunked, then Zimbardo is no longer a luminary... he's another run-of-the-mill researcher who published some articles. 

The SPE really does overshadow everything else in Zimbardo's career, and he had a good run for 53 years, riding its wave of popularity. But, fundamentally, Zimbardo was a one-hit wonder. That's why I got a kick out of this quote in the book: "And Zimbardo's Twitter feed sometimes reminds one of those rock stars who released a cult song in their youth and continue to tour 40 years later, simply because the public still enjoys listening to that song."

 

The only deficiency in Le Texier's book is that it doesn't fully explain why the study was ended on Day 6. Clearly, Zimbardo's story of his then-girlfriend persuading him to end it isn't true. Nor is the claim that the study was growing increasingly dangerous.

Le Texier states, "My hypothesis is rather that Zimbardo interrupted the experiment because he was exhausted, had obtained the results he wanted and Clay Ramsay's hunger strike was challenging the authority of the guards. He probably also feared the legal complications that the lawyer could create . . ." (p. 102). But he doesn't know for sure. 

I think the lawyer's visit is a stronger reason than Le Texier implies. On Day 4, a Catholic priest visits the "prison." He contacts the mother of a prison and urges her to call her nephew (the prisoner's cousin), who is a lawyer. On Day 5, the lawyer makes an appointment to visit the following day. After the visit, the study suddenly ends.

Le Texier never states what happened during the lawyer's visit, and there is no record of explicit legal threats. But Zimbardo had denied access to a lawyer to a different prisoner. He could have been sued and possibly criminally charged with false imprisonment for his behavior (which would have been deliciously ironic). 

 

So, I highly recommend the book. There are a lot of details about Zimbardo, the study, and its aftermath that I didn't know before. Zimbardo thought that his study revealed disturbing universal truths about the human condition. Instead, it teaches the most about him.

Links - 19th April 2025 (1 - General Wokeness: Anti-Islamic Blasphemy Laws)

Free Speech and Islam — The Left Betrays the Most Vulnerable - "When surveying the ill-informed, shoddy work that at times passes as in-depth journalism regarding Islam these days, a rationalist may well be tempted to slip into a secular simulacrum of John Bunyan’s Slough of Despond. In reputable press outlets, articles regularly appear in which the author proceeds from an erroneous premise through a fallacious argument to a fatuous conclusion. Compound all this — especially in the main case I’m about to discuss, that of the British former Islamist turned reformer, Maajid Nawaz — with the apparent intent to defame or cast aspersions, and you get worthless artifacts of journalistic malfeasance that should be dismissed out of hand, but that, given the seriousness of the subject, nevertheless merit attention... Calling the noun Islamophobia “sinister,” Ali A. Rizvi, a Canadian Pakistani-born physician and prominent figure among former Muslims in North America, told me via Skype recently that the word “actually takes the pain of genuine victims of anti-Muslim bigotry and uses that pain, it exploits it for the political purpose of stifling criticism of Islam.” In fact, denying Islam’s role in, for instance, misogynist violence in the Muslim world, said Rizvi, is itself racist and “incredibly bigoted, because you’re saying that it’s not these ideas and beliefs and this indoctrination [in Islam] that cause” the “disproportionately high numbers of violent, misogynistic people in Muslim majority countries, it’s just in their DNA.” Also, remember that Islam claims jurisdiction not just over its followers, but over us all, with a message directed to humanity as a whole. Which means Islam should be susceptible to critique by all... No better evidence of this strain of illogical, muddled intolerance of free expression exists than the suspicion and ire regressive leftists reserve for former Muslims and Muslim reformers working to modernize their religion. In her moving, 2015 must-watch address, Sarah Haider, who is of Pakistani origin, recounts being called everything from Jim Crow to House Arab to native informant by American liberals for having abandoned Islam — by, that is, the very folk who should support women, regardless of their skin color, in their struggle for equality and freedom from sexist violence and chauvinism... The latest cases of regressive leftist skullduggery target Maajid Nawaz himself. With the neuroscientist and groundbreaking “New Atheist” Sam Harris, Nawaz (who, again, is Muslim) recently co-authored Islam and the Future of Tolerance — a book of dialogues between the two men covering the prospects for reforming the faith that is the leading cause of terrorism the world over. For engaging in this much-needed conversation — probably the most-needed conversation imaginable these days — Nawaz has suffered a hail of abuse from regressive leftists. “Well-coiffed talking monkey,” “porch monkey,” “House Negro” and “House Muslim” are just some of the insults he has had hurled at him. He also finds himself the object of an insidious attempt at discreditation — an essay in The New Republic entitled “What Does Maajid Nawaz Really Believe?” written by Nathan Lean. Lean’s screed is wordy and rambling, and leaves the gullible among its readers bewildered, thrashing about in thickets of innuendo, and inclined to conclude Nawaz is a disreputable character, if not demonstrably guilty of anything outright reprehensible. The bio note at the foot of the page describes Lean as the author of a book about Islamophobia (so, yes, the spirit of Hitchens’ “stupid term” will permeate his piece), but it makes no mention of his employment at the Saudi-funded Prince Alaweed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, where he directs research at the “Pluralism, Diversity and” — yes — “Islamophobia project.” This is something readers should at least be aware of. Anyway, so, according to Lean, what does Maajid Nawaz really believe? Lean cannot tell us, since he nowhere offers Nawaz’s own words on the subject, which are a matter of public record and are (for example) available here... Nawaz has stated that, “There is no such thing as ‘Islamophobia.’ No idea should be immune from scrutiny.” Coming from a Muslim who slogged through five years in an Egyptian prison for Islamism (specifically, for association with the radical Hizb ut-Tahrir organization), such a declaration carries weight... Lean spills much more ink trying to convince us that Nawaz may not have really been an Islamist, but only posed as one, and may not have renounced the Islamism in which he may never have actually believed because he actually turned against it. (You should be confused after reading that.) What could have motivated Nawaz to give up those Islamist views he possibly never held? “State dough,” and oodles of it, doled out to the Quilliam Foundation (a think tank Nawaz established in London to counter Islamist extremism). “Last year,” writes Lean, “Nawaz drew a salary of more than $140,000.” But how on Earth can receiving remuneration for working to end Islamist violence be held against Nawaz — or anyone else?"
From 2016

Why Does Everyone Want To Silence Ex-Muslims? - "After every Islamist terror attack, we liberals go into overdrive with our hashtag empathy. #IllRideWithYou and #TerrorismHasNoReligion start trending from Calgary to Canberra. Non-Muslim women, who cannot tell a Surah from the Shahada, upload selfies on Instagram in their £4.80 floral headgear from Cherry Blossom Hijabs (plus £3.25 Royal Mail standard delivery), in solidarity with their Muslim sisters. The irony of choosing this grody regalia of repression as a symbol of camaraderie is so thick, I will require a separate 1000-word post to dissect it. Liberals have consistently taken the onus of protecting Muslims from bigotry (and rightly so), often suppressing the debate on radical Islam in the process. However, there is a minority within this minority -- the ex-Muslims, whose existence we seldom acknowledge. This small group of freethinkers have broken the fetters of dogma, committing the most egregious infraction in Islam - apostasy, a crime for which they face imprisonment or execution in more than 20 countries... Folks like Armin Navabi, Maryam Namazie, Ali Amjad Rizvi and Eiynah, articulate that it is possible to criticise religious ideologies while simultaneously denouncing bigotry against its practitioners; that human life is sacrosanct, but ideas are not. You'd think these secular warriors (non-jihad variants) would be the darlings of Western liberals, but instead, the political left treats them as pariahs, as much as their own native community does. Ignored by the mainstream media (and browbeaten on University campuses), they have primarily used social media platforms to get their stories out. However, YouTube and Facebook -- which were considered to be bastions of free expression thus far -- have begun stifling these dissenting voices...
'We are cast out of conversations about our own communities and lives, we are refused platforms in mainstream media to avoid offending Muslim sentiments, and more recently we are viciously targeted on social media. Where enough complaints against content can not only have it removed for no real reason, but also have our social media accounts suspended entirely; it leaves us abruptly cut off from the only place we've safely managed to tell our stories and form an outspoken community... There is an organised, systemic effort to silence the voices of those who critique Islam from within. It only serves to demonstrate how much weight our voices carry in such a political climate.'"

Imtiaz Mahmood on X - "It's incredible how people worry about not offending Muslims while Muslims have no problems offending everyone else. That's a big Islamic victory."

Angela Rayner on X - "The rise in anti-Muslim hate crime is unacceptable and has no place in our society. Today I am launching a new working group, chaired by Dominic Grieve KC, to define Anti-Muslim Hatred/Islamophobia."
Paul Golding on X - "An utterly tone-deaf post for a country suffering with endless Islamic terror attacks, grooming gangs, sharia courts and extremism. 50,000 Muslims on a ‘terror watchlist’ and you’re moaning about imaginary ‘islamophobia’ 🤯"
Chris Rose on X - "Roughly 38,700 Islamist Extremists on the MI5 watchlist. Two men have been arrested and charged for burning a Quran. Batley schoolteacher is still in hiding after 4 years for showing an image of Muhammad. A 14 year old was threatened after smudging a Quran. Wrong priorities."
Nick Timothy MP on X - "Your reminder that the original proposal for an official definition of “Islamophobia” gave the rape gangs as an example of “Islamophobic” narratives."

David Atherton on X - "Dep PM @AngelaRayner  announces a "new working group, chaired by Dominic Grieve KC, to define Anti-Muslim Hatred/Islamophobia." It begins with "It is the first duty of government to keep its citizens safe."  Out of 100 terrorist murders since 2000, 97 were committed by Islamists.  Estimates of girls who were groomed range from 250,000 to 1 million, the latter comes from Rotherham Labour MP @SarahChampionMP .  MI5's watchlist is comprised of 90% Islamists, with 75% of investigations being Islamic terrorism.   Don't you think you are looking down the wrong end of your telescope?"

Allison Pearson on X - "Politicians have got a huge problem they have no idea how to solve so they introduce a law to criminalise people who mention it."

Islamophobia laws are just censorship. Britain’s Muslims already have solid protection - "Anybody could tell them that there are already more than enough laws in this country that protect people from abuse. And there are more than enough laws that prevent acts of criminality. For instance, it is already illegal to attack a mosque, like any other building. It is also already illegal to harass or harm someone.  Furthermore, the woeful expansion of the “non-crime hate incident” as a part of the non-laws of this country has already allowed the police to come knocking on the front doors of people perceived to have said something mean online.  But for those pushing for a definition of “Islamophobia” none of this is enough. They do not want more laws to protect Muslims or Islam. They want special laws to protect one particular religion – and this is intolerable. It would be as though there was a large drive in this country to protect the feelings and views of Catholics. If there was a vast push, led by the government, to come up with a special working definition of “Catholic-ophobia” then people might start to suspect something. And they would be right to do so.  What would be the aims of such a move? Surely it would be to give extra protection to people of one faith? Protections above and beyond those which already protects citizens of any faith or none.  What would be the societal repercussions? I can say with some certainty that it would introduce – among much else – a nervousness among elected representatives, newspaper editors and other public figures about exposing any mistakes or crimes carried out in the name of the Catholic Church, or by a Catholic.  The average citizen in the pub or on social media would soon feel that pressure, too. Wonder about making a lame joke about all Catholic priests being child-abusers and you would have to wonder if there wasn’t going to be a knock on the door from some low-grade police official.  So it will be if this push to define “Islamophobia” gets what it wants. After all, it is not as though there is already a level playing field when it comes to religious offence in this country.  Ever since the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie by the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989 every writer in this country has known that Islam is out of bounds when it comes to criticism. There is a reason why this age has not seen an outpouring of novels satirising the origin story of Islam. Likewise, cartoonists and others – who are often on the front lines of free-speech disputes – all know one thing above all: mock Christianity and attack Jews, but don’t under any circumstances draw anything that might offend the sensibilities of Muslims. Their slain colleagues at Charlie Hebdo in Paris stand as a stark reminder of what happens if you poke that particular hornet’s nest.  In other words, none of this is theoretical. Everybody in Britain who has any care for using their free-speech rights in this country already knows that there is a religion and a subject which has been put assiduously off-limits by men of violence. And now comes the kicker. Which is that with that piece of censorship by the sword already put in place, this Government now seeks to put in place legislation which will without doubt prevent anyone from noticing the violent ways in which parts of the Muslim world already go about their business.  If you were to notice that large crowds of Muslims in Bradford approved of the murder of Salman Rushdie would you be guilty of “Islamophobia”? What if you noted that after the 2015 massacre at the offices of Charlie Hebdo almost 80 per cent of British Muslims said they found images depicting the founder of Islam as offensive and 27 per cent of British Muslims said that they had “some sympathy” for the motives of the jihadists who carried out the attack? There will be softer cases which will come to hand even faster than these. Earlier this month there were huge celebrations in Piccadilly Circus with the turning on of the now traditional “Ramadan lights”. The Muslim Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, was joined by other Muslim celebrities as tens of thousands of lights appeared across the centre of London celebrating a Muslim religious event. Mayor Khan told media: “If you had told me all those years ago that, within my lifetime, we would have lights in London celebrating Ramadan like we do Christmas, I wouldn’t have believed you.”  Well, me neither. But I can’t say that I am especially thrilled by this “progress”. I don’t see it as especially desirable that a tourist travelling through central London should be under the impression that they were in Islamabad, just with better lighting. But that would almost certainly be “Islamophobic”.  What of the football fans who have had to start to get used to the new tradition of the match stopping so that Muslim players can break their fast during Ramadan? Is this something to be desired? If Catholic players insisted that they had to halt the game in order to celebrate the Holy Eucharist would everyone be expected to accept this with equanimity? I don’t know. Try it at a Rangers-Celtic game some day. But in the meantime, people on the terraces will have to get used to the idea that feeling irritation (let alone expressing it) about this new tradition could itself become a crime. Say that you’re not keen on an ultra-religious Muslim being the new head of Ofsted and you’ll wade into equally tricky waters."

Matt Goodwin on X - "Islamism “is responsible for 94% of all deaths from terrorism in Britain since 1999, 88% of all injuries, 80% of police counter-terror work last year & 75% of MI5’s” (source: Andrew Gilligan) We have lost sight of the fact that Islamism, not the “far right”, is the main threat."

Laura✡️Marcus🇬🇧🇮🇱🤟🎗️ on X - "They have a great deal more protection than Jews. Do mosques or Muslim schools need guards the way synagogues & Jewish schools do? Are people allowed to march thru central London calling for the death of all Muslims the way people allowed to openly call for the death of all Jews?"

Thread by @CapelLofft on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Here's a story (I won't name the person who told me this) that illustrates where we are in modern Britain. Someone who was a Labour Party agent in a town in Britain with a sizeable Muslim population was asked to meet a 'community leader' to discuss the next election. He went and sat down at a table. The person threatened to withhold the votes of the hundreds of postal votes he controlled because the Labour candidate had not satisfied him on a particular issue. To illustrate that this was not an idle threat, he brought in shoeboxes full of postal votes from the last election, all filled in for Labour but unposted. 'This will happen again unless you do as I say' was what he pretty much explicitly said. This agent (a decent person who is no longer in Labour) just left & refused to have anything to do with it. I'm afraid that not all Lab agents etc who find themselves in a similar position react similarly. Sometimes the threat isn't made as blatantly, it's more implicit. But we have imported the corrupt sectarian politics of clientelism into this country & then let it fester. It stinks
I also spent years canvassing for Labour. One road in my ward had a lot of Muslim voters. Hundreds of times this is what happened. A woman in a veil opened the door. She spoke no more than a few words of English. When I managed to get across to her that it was an election, she would say 'Ask my husband' or 'My husband is not in'. Once I got a woman who spoke reasonable English. She was quite explicit and said 'My husband tells me how to vote, I obey him as a good Muslim'. The idea she would be allowed a political opinion of her own was outlandish
This wasn't just one or two. This was the default. Occasionally you might get a younger Muslim woman who appeared to defy this. But 98% of the time this was the reality. I am sorry, it's not on. We shouldn't accept this as ok. This is Britain, not rural Pakistan
So you can see why, when I see Labour politicians blithering on about Islamophobia and how we need to restrict free speech to 'tackle' it, I see red. They are ignoring reality and putting on an act to curry favour with corrupt Islamic vote-harvesters. It is rotten. If thinking that all of this is not ok, if thinking that Muslims should either adapt to our basic social and political norms (e.g. not being corrupt, not being misogynists) or not be here, makes me an 'Islamophobe' or whatever, so be it. I don't care. The hour is late. Wake up
Also, the silence of most 'feminists' on these issues is shameful. There are lots of women right under your noses who are oppressed. But because they wear hijabs & you're too cowardly to criticise Islam, you ignore it & blither on about 'tampon poverty' or whatever instead"

Inevitable West on X - "A Muslim doctor in Leeds was caught trying to blow up an entire maternity ward for Allah. The government didn’t even bother informing their citizens about this. It’s just everyday stuff now. Britain is fucked."
Leeds hospital bomb plotter guilty of terror charge - "A man who plotted to bomb a hospital in Leeds and an RAF base has been found guilty of preparing acts of terrorism.  Mohammad Farooq, 28, targeted St James's Hospital in January 2023 but was stopped by a member of the public.  A trial at Sheffield Crown Court heard how the clinical support worker had planned to "kill as many nurses as possible" by detonating a pressure cooker bomb... Farooq was arrested outside the hospital with the pressure cooker bomb, which was designed to be twice as powerful as those used by the Boston Marathon bombers in 2013.  The court was told he had immersed himself in an "extremist Islamic ideology" and went to the hospital to "seek his own martyrdom" through a "murderous terrorist attack"."
Clearly, this is the fault of Islamophobia

Charity watchdog chided for letting off mosque accused of misogyny - "The Charity Commission closed an investigation into a mosque that posted a video of a preacher saying a man is allowed to hit his wife if she refuses sex, and instead sent it “advice and guidance”. The An-Noor Masjid and Community Centre in Birmingham, a registered charity, posted a video on its YouTube channel in September of a sermon explaining the circumstances in which it is acceptable for men to beat their wives. The video shows Mahamed AbdurRazaq, a volunteer lecturer, telling the congregation about a scenario in which a wife refuses to have sex with her husband... The National Secular Society (NSS) campaign group complained to the Charity Commission, which investigated the video but chose not to launch a full inquiry. The watchdog told the NSS last week that it had closed the case after sending the mosque statutory guidance governing the procedures for hosting speakers. It said the charity had since removed the video and suspended AbdurRazaq from further speaking engagements. Megan Manson, the head of campaigns at NSS, said it was wrong that the regulator had not taken stronger action against the mosque, and accused it of exploiting its charitable status to promote violence against women... Lord Walney, the former anti-extremism tsar, said last week that a climate of fear at the Charity Commission was stopping it taking on organisations that try to undermine British values and sow division."
Reporting this increases Islamophobia. The Times needs to be stripped of its licence for hate speech

Germany's Leftist Government Refuses to Confront Islamism - "In September 2022, [German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser] discontinued the so-called Expert Group on Political Islamism (Expertenkreis Politischer Islamismus). The group, which consisted of eleven people from a variety of academic disciplines, had been established by the previous government to identify measures to counter the spread of Islamism in Germany."
German interior minister admits country has Islamophobia problem - "Interior Minister Nancy Faeser admitted that Germany has an Islamophobia problem"
German gov’t vows to combat Islamophobia, discrimination - "The German government will take resolute measures to combat Islamophobia, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said"

Britain's new blasphemy laws are a return to empire - "It was the British rulers of India who introduced blasphemy laws to the subcontinent. The 1860 Indian Criminal Code outlawed “uttering words, etc., with deliberate intent to wound religious feelings”. This was not because the British had acquired religion — any more so than they arrived with, at any rate — but because they were sick of handling the violence and disorder that resulted from religious provocation in a diverse community.  “Empire”, Talleyrand supposedly said, is “the art of putting men in their place”. Nation states are “ruled in the name of a nationally defined people”, neatly slotted into cultural institutional frameworks that suit them. Empires, on the other hand, spread and sprawl. They govern culturally, linguistically, and religiously diverse groups of people. They require ways of controlling the disparate groups within their borders, of functioning with diversity, and are rarely particularly subtle about it. Quietly, and almost unnoticed, Britain has become an empire again. In keeping with modern decolonial thought its ambitions are no longer external but internal. Rather than governing cultures spread across a quarter of the earth, it governs cultures from across the world gathered in its core; an empire in its own land... You may think that people in Britain retain the liberty to treat their own private property as they wish, so long as their actions are not undertaken with the intent of hurting others. You would be wrong. The primary objective of the modern British state is managing the tensions between the constituent parts of its empire.  This priority goes a long way to explaining the behaviour of politicians and state officials. It explains, for instance, the asymmetric nature of liberalism — where religious views are decried based on who holds them — or the strange emphasis on investigating right wing views critical of the current social consensus. Anything which would disrupt the structures of empire is a risk to peace and order. The new blasphemy laws are the price of governing diverse cultures without assimilation. Some are overt; we have laws against inciting religious and racial hatred, or speech which is “grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene, or menacing character”. Others are tacit, and take the form of social taboos. What they have in common is the aim of suppressing intergroup tensions. This might be broadly acceptable if people were generally aware that this is now the way the state functions. The problem is that they aren’t. Time and time again, we find someone pushing the boundaries — showing a cartoon, making an unwise comment, or simply stumbling unawares into an area of ‘cultural sensitivity’ — and suddenly finds that the state, far from a neutral arbiter of the law or the protector of their liberties, is mostly interested in ‘managing community tensions’. People are generally unwilling to spell out the ‘soft’ blasphemy laws explicitly, or state outright that the state now sometimes views enforcing the religious sensibilities of conservative minorities as part of its remit. This makes the topic hard to engage with in public life...  Often they end up with the idea that it’s playing into the hands of the far right, despite the obvious objection that in no other realm would they use this to oppose a policy (“No, we can’t have more immigration, it just plays into the hands of-”).  Nobody particularly wants to engage with the fact that Britain has fundamentally changed the nature of both its country and its state. Decades of politicians have maintained a collective pretence that we can simultaneously shift to historically unprecedented levels of immigration without assimilation, that nobody will need to change anything in their lives or behaviour because of this, and that the state will remain unchanged. This was not true, and soft blasphemy laws are an inevitable consequence.  If you’re going to be an empire, you need to act like an empire."

Sam Ashworth-Hayes on X - "Britain has de facto blasphemy laws because it's the easiest way to suppress "community tensions". Having imported groups that don't sign up to liberal tenets, it finds it easier to police everyone else's behaviour than to assimilate them. This is why the rules only go one way."

Globe Eye News on X - "BREAKING: Anti-Islam extremist Salwan Momika, known for burning the Quran several times, was shot dead in Sweden."
🙏🌧🌍 on X - "Leftists: "Yes, well he was asking for it, purposefully being provocative, should respect people's religion etc etc."
The same Leftists: "Stupid dumb Christian bible-bashers, look at this cartoon of gay Jesus LOLOLOL.""

Yasmine Mohammed 🦋 ياسمين محمد on X - "The way the media just loves to describe @Salwan_Momika1  as a ‘man who burned a Quran’ is truly indicative of the dumpster fire the west is embroiled in. No mention of the fact that his family were tortured and killed by ISIS for being Christian in Iraq- a formerly Christian country before it was colonized by Muslims. No mention of how he was seeking asylum and being mistreated by the ‘free and secular’ European countries that preferred to pander to the terrorists who want them dead vs protecting the brave man who was trying to warn them. I’m tired. I’m tired of screaming. Since 2019 when I published @unveiledxx , I’ve been repeating myself. And for what? I’m silenced and cancelled more this year than ever. Two events where I was scheduled to speak next month got cancelled- one in the UK and one in Canada. You don’t want to know. You don’t want to hear. You want to be left alone as you slowly march to the death of your societies. You want to step over bodies and swim through rivers of blood only to emerge screaming about Islamophobia. So that’s what you deserve then. When you choose to pander to extremists braying over some burned paper over supporting those who value freedom of expression and belief, then you will get what you are begging for. You’ve earned it."

Meme - Nuriyah Khan @nuriyahk: "Some of you may disagree, but for an allegedly “moderate” Muslim, she harbours some extremely problematic and disturbing views, perfectly in line with Islamists who can justify killing in the name of blasphemy.   Or, she just happens to be even dimmer than we initially thought and clearly mistakes the rest of the world for Pakistan?  Nevertheless, if these are Islam’s “moderate” followers, imagine the extremists!"
Bushra Shaikh @Bushra1Shaikh: "Some of you may disagree but the public desecration of any holy book should be viewed as a hate crime and the offender should face consequences."
Readers added context they thought people might want to know: "This post was written after the assassination of Salwan Momika, known for burning copies of the Quran. Given the timing of her claim, it can be inferred that Bushra is referring to the murder of Salwan whose actions were legal. Sweden does not have any blasphemy laws.">

Chris Rose on X - "At a hate march the Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, the tea towel idiots ripped up Union flags right in front of @gmpolice officers who did nothing. Isn’t this ‘inciting hate’ of the country they live in? The officers would move if someone was ripping apart or burning a Quran."

James Harvey on X - "Of course, they sent two muslim police officers to arrest the man setting fire to the Quran in Manchester. Imagine that... Muslims arresting British people for criticising Islam, in Britain."

Man arrested after live video of Quran being burned in Manchester : r/unitedkingdom - "UK police are 90% motivated by fear of being called racist"
Man arrested after live video of Quran being burned in Manchester : r/unitedkingdom - "Why aren't all the Palestinian protesters arrested then? They cause distress to a lot of people."

Man arrested after live video of Quran being burned in Manchester : r/unitedkingdom - "If he burned a Bible the police would ignore him and the Guardian would write a piece calling him stunning and brave."
UK rabbi-politician burns Christian Bible, sparking ire - "A high-profile rabbi and aspiring politician stirred up controversy in British media when he burned a Bible on the eve of Passover.  Rabbi Shneur Odze, a 33-year-old United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) candidate for mayor of Manchester, tweeted a photo of the burning bible"
Church in Wales inquiry after rector burns Bible pages - "The Church in Wales says it is investigating after a Gwynedd rector burnt some pages from the Bible.  The Reverend Geraint ap Iorwerth of St Peter ad Vincula Church, Pennal, also cut up pages from the King James Bible to create an artwork."
Of course, people will still deny that there's two-tier policing

Man arrested after live video of Quran being burned in Manchester : r/unitedkingdom - "A lot of times if you do report a burglary, the police don't even show, they will give you a crime reference number for insurance purposes and that will be it.  I'm reminded of that Dr Lawrence Newport video where his bike was stolen, right outside Scotland Yard HQ, near the Houses of Parliament, in full view of numerous CCTV, he reported the stolen bike (which had GPS tracking), the police closed the case within 1 hour of it being reported, gave him a crime reference number and told him to stop wasting police time by trying to get them to actually investigate."

Nick Timothy MP on X - "I asked the Home Secretary if it should be a criminal offence to desecrate a religious text. She said we have no blasphemy laws in Britain. But in two recent cases people have been charged using the Public Order Act for damaging the Quran in protest. What will she do about it?"