Links - 11th February 2026 (2)

Thread by @matt_vanswol on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Give it enough time and every conspiracy theory from the "Right" becomes true...  ...DHS just confirmed in a 22-page report that FEMA staff recorded DISASTER VICTIMS’ political beliefs and skipped over their homes because of it  That’s not a rumor, it’s in the official report🧵
It started after Hurricane Milton in Florida.  A FEMA supervisor literally told staff to “avoid homes advertising Trump.”  At least 20 families were skipped for aid before others were sent back later. FEMA staff weren’t just logging storm damage to people's homes like they were supposed to... they logged what people believed.  “Trump signs.” “Pro-gun.” “Anti-Biden.”  These were things they put IN WRITING FOR FEMA CASES!!!  How long have they gotten away with this??? This wasn’t just Florida, it happened across the country, according to the report.  The same pattern showed up in multiple states between 2021-2024.  That includes reviews after Hurricane Helene, right here in Western North Carolina.
They said it was about “avoiding hostile homes.”  But DHS found FEMA never even defined what “hostile” meant.  So some staff just decided certain Trump signs made a home unsafe.  And get this... FEMA never reported ANY of it as a privacy breach.  That’s required BY LAW!!!
Honestly, I’m not even shocked anymore.  I hoped this wasn’t true… but deep down, I think a lot of us all suspected it was, even when we were all called conspiracy theorists at the time."
The cope is that Trump's DHS is corrupt and cannot be trusted and made this all up

Meme - Dean @DeanS0717: "Was talking to a girl and i wasnt feeling it anymore but she was dead nice and i didnt wanna hurt her. So tried putting her off me by sending her a video of me having a poo. 10 minutes later she sent me one back"

Rachel Gilmore on X - "The kids are calling it “Quebecmaxxing”: two anglos in Montreal having an entire interaction in French without realizing they’re both anglos"

Meme - Katie Miller @katiemiller: "This is how the US spent over $5 trillion on healthcare last year. Healthcare is the largest category of federal spending outpacing both Social Security and Defense."
Rachel Bitecofer @RachelBitecofer: "I know this is becoming redundant but do you know who else was super focused on forcing people to be healthy??? BTW: Hitler grew these kids to feed them into the war machine he was building while talking about world peace. Most of the boys in this pic died"
Left wingers hate being healthy, and especially physical fitness. This ties into glorifying obesity
Left wing logic: if you encourage people to be healthy, you're forcing them to be healthy. But if you fire them for not taking a new vaccine, that's not forcing them to do anything

Meme - Iran Military News @ThelranMilitary: "Stunning in pink! Loving this bold and glamorous look! #BillieEilish"

Meme *Dinosaur attacking Little Green Man*
Little Green Man: "I say we take off and nuke the entire planet from orbit!"

Meme - "Wow, right in the feels..."
*payphone*
"This Telephone is no longer in operation. It is an Historical Artifact. Take pictures or remember Old days."

Meme - "Brian - Used x box controller. %60"
"These are $60 brand new"
"So send me a lower offer. Do yk how market place works"
"$20"
"Okay come pick it up"

Meme "Guys?"
*two guys on a bus, without the guys*
"this is literally the first time i've seen this meme with the artist's signature not blurred or cropped, so I looked him up and learned that he is Genildo Ronchi, a 56 year old Brazilian artist. He created this on his birthday in 2013 after changing his usual seat in his bus ride home and realizing he had a much nicer scenary to look at from the sunset- facing seat. Genildo said in an interview that he is happy to see his piece doing the rounds on the web, but adds: [the piece] being turned into a meme is great for sharing my work, but it's important that you keep my signature."

Meme - @libsoftiktok: "This is a police chief in the UK who will arrest you for memes. Not kidding"
"Deputy Chief Constable Rachel Swann *spiky hair*"

Meme - Mike @SkullKidMikeK: "Someone told me that the most realistic thing about Avatar was that a Stanford grad would make a giant Stanford shirt for her alien avatar so that the aliens would know she went to Stanford"
Takes Of Vesperia @coolranchzaku: "I actually saw Avatar (2009) for the first time earlier this year and it was mostly uninteresting mush to me but it did contain exactly one image that will haunt me forever"

Meme - YAT: "I wish I was Asian. I wish I looked Asian. I wish I had an Asian name. I wish I could go to an Asian school"
@P3RaynorEnjoyer: "wish granted you are now born as the child of a single mother in the slums of the Philippines"

Restoring Your Faith in Humanity on X - "As Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen prepared to speak to the press, her baby in her arms, Congressman Jim Clyburn quietly stepped in. With calm kindness, he offered to hold the child so she could speak with ease - a simple, beautiful gesture of support. ❤️"
Wilfred Reilly on X - "This is all totally performative. Congress has an in-house day care, there are 20+ others nearby, and almost literally every single person at the level of "Congress" has both a caring spouse and a nanny/au par back home."

Collar & Comb Pet Grooming is Coming to West Hollywood on Santa Monica Boulevard - "The up-and-coming business is already making an attention-grabbing statement with their racy banner taglines (that some may find offensive) like “We’ll Scrub Your Pussy” and “Bitches Love Bubbles”, of course, referring to cats and dogs."

To avoid paying land tax, this tiny house was built on a bridge in the 17th century by Braithwaite family. The Bridge House, Amblesire (England). As it is built over a watercourse of the river Stock Beck, it is not ‘technically’ on land. : r/Damnthatsinteresting

ILLUMINAUGHTY on X - "STOP BLAMING YOURSELF FOR YOUR FAILURES. LEARN ASTROLOGY AND BLAME THE PLANETS."

A kid kept kicking my sandcastle, so I built the next one with a rock. : r/pettyrevenge - "So I was about 11 or 12 at the time and on vacation. We were staying at a lake in Alberta, and it was honestly a good time. I built an amazing sandcastle, it had walls, towers, and even a drawbridge made out of driftwood. Plus I built it on a platform made of rocks, halfway into the lake, like a little island. I mean come on, I even made decorative trees out of seaweed. Then the teenagers struck. This one kid went and kicked the sandcastle to bits, and even before I got a picture. My next sandcastle, I buried the heaviest, most jagged rock in the base. The teenager went up to it and kicked it again. Let's just say, the castle lasted longer than his foot. My castles didn't get knocked down ever again. Now, as a teenager myself, I still vividly remember this event and it makes me laugh. Don't ruin people's work, kids."

Meme - "To be truly fluent in English, you must know your shits
Shits
Dogshit - Very poor quality
Bullshit - Not true
Horseshit - Nonsense
Apeshit - Rambunctious
Batshit - Insane
Chickenshit i- cowards
Ratshit - poor quality
No shit - Obviously
Holy shit - mind blowing/unbelievable
Hot shit - very good
Dipshit - a total dumbass
Tuff shit - Take it or leave it.
Jack shit - nothing
The shit - perfection"

The sentence "Don't objectify women" has "women" as the object of the sentence. : r/Showerthoughts

hersch on X - "the last stroke makes you nut. this doesn't mean the first stroke was useless. success is a result of continuous effort"

Has anyone told you how beautiful you are today? : r/Jokes - ""No."
Better luck tomorrow."

Meme - "New Epic of Gilgamesh dropped before The Winds of Winter"
Archaeological Photography @archaeolog...: "A new chapter of the Epic of Gilgamesh is revealed when the fragment of Tablet was finally recovered. It was written in Standard Babylonian and dates back to the Neo-Babylonian period (626-538 BC), according to researchers."

Meme - "Amazing sign I saw walking by the local magic: the gathering store yesterday
Players: - > DO NoT ENTER unless you are WEARING DEODORANT and have SHOWERED ON THE LAST 24 HOURS. YOU WILL BE ASKED TO LEAVE IF YOUR ATTITUDE OR SMELL IS DISRUPTIVE"

Wonder Woman on X - "He: you are my drug
Me: aww, you can't live without me?
He: no, you cost too much and you're ruining my life.
BLOCKED 😡"

Meme - "WHEN YOU TAKE YOUR KIDS TO McDONALDS & ONE OF THEM SAY
"FUCK MCDONALDS! DADS NEW GIRLFRIEND KNOWS HOW TO COOK THAT'S WHY HE DUMPED YO LAZY ASS""

Meme - "Babe look at this cute trend! They're painting their faces like their cats!"
"Aw cute!"
"We should do that with ours!"
"Yeah!"
*Black cats*
"On second thought.. maybe it's not such a good idea.."
"Yeah, you're probably right.."

🇬🇧𝑀𝓇 𝒯𝑀𝒶𝓇𝓈𝒽-𝒞𝑜𝓃𝓃𝑜𝓇𝓈🇬🇧 on X - "Being called far right today is like being called a witch in the middle ages. No evidence needed and it helped the authorities get rid of the ones they didn't like."

cile on X - ""Pamela Anderson’s LONGTIME makeup artist and dear friend died of breast cancer in 2019. It broke her heart. And she said: “She was the best. And since then, I just felt, without Alexis, it’s just better for me not to wear makeup." 🥹🫶"

Fanning the flames of revolution | The Spectator Australia - "  Spare a thought for KP Sharma Oli. The prime minister of Nepal learned what happens when you deprive people of the most important thing in the world: the internet. While he did not suffer the same public humiliation as Louis XVI, he was emasculated in a different and less decapitating way. Oli resigned this week after nationwide protests sparked by a social media ban erupted into chaos and bloodshed. Thousands of people carrying placards identifying themselves as Gen Z took to the streets of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, and attempted to scale the parliament’s walls. Hundreds of people were injured in clashes with police, who used water cannons and live rounds to restore order and control. A total of seventy-two people have reportedly been killed in what is the Himalayan nation’s worst and deadliest outbreak of protests in nearly 20 years.  In response to the police action protesters ransacked government buildings in Kathmandu, set fire to the country’s parliamentary building, which is home to the Nepali Congress party, and attacked state institutions in the city. Several prominent politicians’ residences were also targeted. Rajyalaxmi Chitrakar, the wife of former Nepalese premier Jhalanath Khanal, was killed after rioters set fire to their home. Following days of unrest, Nepal’s military chief General Ashok Raj Sigdel sent troops to the capital, vowing to ‘take control of the situation’.  The protests were sparked by the government’s decision to implement a nationwide blanket ban on 26 social media platforms, a vital source of networking and communication for roughly 40 per cent of Nepal under the age of 18. Nepal has one of the highest per capita rates of social media use in South Asia. It also provides a living – the social media economy is worth $26.5 million. These platforms are also used by dissidents and political opponents, including Balendra Shah, who the Nepalese youth describe as ‘Gen Z’s great hope’. ‘Balen’, as he is known online, is a 35-year-old rapper-turned-politician who regularly uses his social media reach to highlight the widespread allegations of corruption among politicians.  Naturally, the social media ban was seen as the state clamping down on free expression, crushing dissent and silencing the opposition, igniting a broader populist movement against the ruling elite. ‘We want to see an end to corruption in Nepal,’ one 19-year-old college student told BBC Nepali. Another reinforced the frustration: ‘Gen Z will not stop now. This protest is about more than just social media – it’s about silencing our voices, and we won’t let that happen.’   It shares similarities with recent uprisings in South Asia. In Sri Lanka, the Populist movement was defined by allegations of nepotism and corruption against President Gotabaya Rajapaska. Rajapaska’s green ideological capture resulted in a restriction on the import of artificial fertiliser, causing rice crop yields to decrease 30 per cent and forcing the government to spend $450 million importing enough rice to meet demand after its price fell 50 per cent. Thousands stormed the capital, Colombo, and burned down the ceremonial palace. Unfortunately, there appears to be a global consensus on keeping kids off the internet. Denmark, Greece, Spain, Italy, and, of course, France are all testing an age-verification app, paving the way for a mandatory EU-wide implementation. Even the United States is considering a federal Kids Online Safety Act, which has been introduced with bipartisan support. Other countries have already done this. Britain’s Online Safety Act is the latest in a long line of state-approved censorship. Other notable countries include Ireland and, of course, the eSafety Commissioner’s imminent ban here in Australia, legislated with Coalition support.  In Nepal, the ban has now been lifted;  all it took were charred buildings and scores of bodies lining the streets. Although I doubt Australia’s youth would man the barricades, it’s a powerful and tragic story of what happens when you try to silence people as the elite live in opulence and enrich themselves at the expense of the common man."

Meme - "Bro forgot to turn on Anonymous tag"
"Degenerates like you belong on a cross. Sukdeep Pandya"
"As a white women i felt safe in India. But i felt unsafe in Phillipines, Pakistan, Bangladesh."

Meme - Ruby @rubydice100: "I once met someone who believed it was unreasonable to expect everyone to be monogamous, but also that polyamory was bad and destabilizing for society. His preferred solution is a system where everyone pretends to be monogamous but secretly has affairs"
Daisy Alioto @daisandconfused: "so you met a French person"

Meme - Johnny Storm: "Hey Reed have you seen Sue anywhere?"
*Invisible Woman sitting on Reed Richards's face with her ass cheeks flattening his face*
Reed: "I've got no idea where she could be!"
Johnny: "right.."

Japanese minister resigns after saying he's never bought rice because he gets it free - "Japan's agriculture minister has resigned after saying he has "never had to buy rice" while the country struggles with shortages and rising costs of its staple grain.  Taku Eto offered his resignation to Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Wednesday after he made the comments at a party seminar on Sunday.  Mr Eto said his supporters have always gifted him rice, meaning he does not have to buy it himself."

YouTube shuts down ad-blocker loophole, tightens restrictions | More Firefox users have been impacted : r/technology - "And before the article was even published, uBlock Origin worked again(?) assuming it ever even got successfully blocked."

Meme - "What is your sexual fantasy that will remain a fantasy?"
"Threesome with my wife and Jennife..."
""I wanna fuck an elf"
"What about fucking a friend?"
"Aye I could do that"

Calgary man tunnelled into upstairs neighbours unit, police say - "Officers responded to reports of a break-and-enter in the southwest community of Coach Hill last Friday.  Investigators say the victim reported ongoing issues with a downstairs neighbour that had intensified in recent weeks.  The woman said she had been away from home, and when she returned, she discovered ‘significant disturbances’ in her unit — including a large hole in the floor — even though her door was locked.  Police believe the person living below the woman, the same individual she reported having issues with, had tunnelled a large hole from his suite into hers through an open space behind a fireplace... Ben Edward Maize, 46, has since been charged with one count of break-and-enter with intent to commit criminal harassment, mischief to property over $5,000, and two counts of disobeying a court order."

Lollipop man banned from giving children 'high fives' because it 'upsets drivers' - "A beloved lollipop man has been told he can no longer give 'high fives' to children as they cross the road.  Neil Cotton, 57, who assists primary and secondary pupils in Howden, near Hull, East Yorkshire, claims he's been instructed to stop the friendly gesture as it "upsets some drivers having to wait another ten seconds""

Meme - "My dentist is gonna need a different logo if he wants me to trust him
KEEP CALM AND TRUST YOUR DENTIST *man working on woman in chair, looking like sex position*"

Meme - "I hate when celebrities refuse to sign a picture. *Emma Watson and photo of her getting out of car, exposing her genitals*"

Ford government to allow alcohol on ‘pedal pubs’ : r/ontario
Left wingers hate choice and they hate other people being happy

Teachers Talk Radio on X - ""For our English and Maths exam, we needed 77 rooms! 54 rooms for individuals to sit alone.. they are saying they are too anxious to take the exam in a room with everyone else" Alun Francis on TTR earlier:"
Steve Loftus on X - "Every student that's ever done exams was anxious. They just didn't live in a society that coddled them. They were expected crack on."

Former Houston Rockets player Zhou Qi advises Yang Hansen, the 16th pick of the 2025 NBA draft - Black NBA players looks down on Asian players : r/NBATalk - ""On the show, Yang Yi asked Zhou Qi if he had any advice for Yang Hansen as he prepares to play in the NBA. Zhou Qi thought for a moment and said:  "If I were to give any advice, I think the most important thing is to maintain a balanced mindset. The U.S. and Australia are quite different. In the U.S., there are a lot of Black players. Their playing style, physicality, and ways of expressing themselves are all very different from ours. Once you get to the NBA, to be honest, they don't really respect us deep down. They may not say it outright, but they'll express it in other ways."  Hearing this, Yang Yi immediately said, “So he’s definitely going to get bullied!”  Zhou Qi nodded and continued, "Exactly. That’s why mindset is especially important at that point. How you perceive your own role or position will shape your mentality over there."  Zhou Qi then added, "Later on, I spent some time in Australia, and it was only after coming back to China that I truly felt the difference. There aren’t many Black players in Australia, and I also played there for a while.""

What thing has happened to you IRL that you used to think only happened in pornos? : r/AskRedditNSFW - "Once after making out with a hookup from a bar the guy went to go down on me. Instead of gently initiating he pulled back his arm and open had slapped my pussy. He whispered "that's a bad little pussy ain't it?" into her. I got up and left."

New York man suffered worst death imaginable after being thrown down manhole and cooked ‘like a lobster’ - "A man suffered from what's been called the 'worst death imaginable' after falling down a manhole in New York.  Dr Judy Melinek, who is a former medical examiner, has spoken about some of the worst cases she's ever seen.  In her book, Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner, co-authored with her husband, T.J. Mitchell, Melinek has spoken about some of the most shocking moments of her career.  Explaining that people ask her, 'What’s the worst way to die?', Melinek usually tells them: “You don’t want to know.”  However, if they push for an answer, she tells them about Sean Doyle.  In a chilling admission, Dr Melinek explained that she suffered from some of the 'worst nightmares [she] ever had' after one specific post-mortem of Doyle.  The devastating incident occurred when Doyle had been out drinking in the city with a friend and his friend's partner in 2002.  An argument started on their way home, in which Doyle's friend accused him of flirting with his girlfriend. The pair started fighting, and this resulted in the friend throwing Doyle down a manhole that had an 18-foot drop.  Although Doyle survived the fall with minimal injuries, he was plunged into boiling water, which was the result of a broken mains pipe.  Although emergency services attended, the manhole was filled with steam measuring 300°F. After Doyle's body was recovered, Dr Melinek examined him to discover no broken bones or head trauma, but severe burns to his body.  Doyle's body temperature measured 125 degrees (51C). However, Dr Melinek adds the body was likely even hotter, due to the thermometer only reading up to 125 degrees.  The outer layer of his skin had peeled away, while his internal organs were cooked.  When Dr Melinek saw Doyle, she said she thought he’d 'been steamed like a lobster'... the medical examiner also had a warning for people who live alone with their cats and why it might be wise to choose a canine companion instead.  “Your faithful golden retriever might sit next to your dead body for days, starving, but the tabby won’t,” she wrote.  “Your pet cat will eat you right away, with no qualms at all. I’ve seen the result.”"

UK nurse awarded £25,000 after colleague rolled her eyes at her - "A dental nurse who experienced repeated 'eye-rolling' from a colleague at work was awarded over £25,000 in an employment tribunal.  Maureen Howieson was given £25,254 after the tribunal heard that she suffered 'bullying and belittling' at the Great Junction Dental Practice in Edinburgh.  The 64-year-old's relationship with Jisna Iqbal, a new dental therapist, became 'strained' shortly after she joined the practice last July."

What if Trump is painfully right?

What if Trump is painfully right?: Stephen Nagy for Inside Policy
Trump’s methods offend, but his diagnosis of freeloading allies and a failing international order may be uncomfortably closer to reality.

Few allies and partners of the United States want Donald Trump to be right. His methods are cruel, his rhetoric exhausting, his personalization of diplomacy genuinely dangerous. When Prime Minister Mark Carney received a standing ovation in Davos for defending multilateralism after flying to Beijing to sign agreements with Xi Jinping, the global commentariat cheered precisely because it represented everything Trump is not – elegant, principled, institutionally minded.

But wanting Trump to be wrong is not the same as him being wrong. And the uncomfortable possibility Canadian policymakers and other allies and partners of the US must now confront is that beneath the bluster, the threats, and the performative chaos, Trump may have identified something true about the world that Carney’s vision obscures.

The core of Trump’s worldview is brutally simple. For Trump, the postwar international order became a mechanism for transferring American wealth and security to partners who offered little in return. Allies enjoyed protection while underspending on defence. Trading partners accessed American consumers while protecting domestic industries. China exploited every opening the liberal order provided to become a strategic rival funded by Western investment and technology transfer. This is not a sophisticated argument. It lacks nuance, ignores American benefits from the system, and treats complex relationships as simple ledgers. But the sophisticated arguments that dismissed these concerns for decades produced the present situation – where America’s principal strategic competitor grew powerful enough to threaten the order itself while allies remained dependent and underinvested. The experts were subtle and the experts were wrong.

Michael Beckley and Hal Brands made a version of this case in Foreign Affairs, arguing that assumptions about convergence and integration were always more aspirational than analytical. China did not liberalize. The Global South did not adopt Western norms. Russia did not become a satisfied partner. The institutions Carney celebrates were designed for a world that never fully arrived. Trump lacks the vocabulary to articulate this, but his instincts point toward the same conclusion. The system stopped working, and pretending otherwise benefits everyone except Americans asked to sustain it. When he demands that allies pay more, contribute more, and align more closely with American strategic priorities, he is not abandoning alliances. He is insisting they function as alliances rather than as charity.

Canada illustrates the problem precisely. The Commission on Foreign Interference documented years of Chinese influence operations – intimidation of diaspora communities, cultivation of elected officials, economic espionage – met with systematic Canadian inaction. Ottawa knew and did little. Defence spending remains below NATO commitments despite decades of promises. Arctic security is underfunded despite Russian and Chinese interest in the region. When Trump treats Canada as unreliable, he is not manufacturing grievance. He is responding to a documented record of a country that enjoyed American security guarantees while failing to secure itself against the very adversary America now confronts. This is not paranoia dressed as policy. It is observation.

Carney’s Davos speech offered an alternative vision, middle powers banding together to uphold rules, constrain great power excess, and preserve space for independent action. It sounds appealing. It flatters countries like Canada by suggesting their preferences matter independently of their power. But the Lowy Institute’s Asia Power Index offers a corrective. Canada sits at the lower end of middle power rankings, behind Japan, Australia, India, and South Korea. Rising states like Indonesia and the UAE are gaining ground while traditional middle powers stagnate. The coalition Carney imagines may lack the collective weight his strategy assumes. More fundamentally, middle power coalitions historically succeeded when underwritten by a great power willing to absorb costs on their behalf. That great power was America. Trump is explicitly unwilling to continue the arrangement on previous terms. Carney’s vision requires a sponsor who no longer wishes to play that role.

Then there is China itself. Carney’s Beijing visit assumed Canada could balance between great powers, maintaining productive relationships with both Washington and Beijing while preserving freedom of manoeuvre. Research from the Central European Institute of Asian Studies on Chinese economic statecraft suggests this middle path may be illusory. Beijing punishes countries that cross its interests regardless of prior engagement – export bans, tourism restrictions, regulatory harassment applied suddenly and without appeal. Japan, Australia, South Korea, and others discovered that economic interdependence with China creates vulnerability, not leverage. Canada has now positioned itself to face American tariffs for courting Beijing and eventual Chinese coercion when interests inevitably diverge over Taiwan, technology, or territorial disputes. The balanced position Carney seeks may not exist as a stable equilibrium. It may simply be a way station between alignment choices that cannot be permanently deferred.

Trump’s transactional approach violates every norm of alliance management. It treats partners as contractors rather than friends, measures relationships in dollars rather than shared values, and substitutes threat for persuasion. These are genuine costs. Kori Schake’s recent Foreign Affairs essay argued that America under Trump is becoming neither feared nor loved – merely unreliable. Allies are learning to hedge, diversify, and doubt. But this critique assumes the previous arrangement was sustainable, that allies would eventually meet their commitments voluntarily, that China would moderate with engagement, that institutions would address their own failures given enough time and goodwill. If none of that was true – if allies were already free-riding, if China was already exploiting openness, if institutions were already failing their stated purposes – then Trump’s disruption is less vandalism than demolition of a condemned structure. Breaking what no longer works may be prerequisite to building something that does.

The hardest part of this argument is separating Trump’s possible correctness about the world from his obvious unfitness to navigate it. He may be right that allies have underinvested. He may be right that China exploited Western naïveté. He may be right that multilateral institutions became mechanisms for diffusing responsibility rather than solving problems. None of this means his methods will produce better outcomes. Cruelty alienates. Unpredictability frightens. Personalized grievance substitutes ego for strategy. Trump could be directionally correct about the failures of the old order while being catastrophically wrong about how to build a new one. These possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

I do not admire Trump’s methods. The cruelty is real, the damage to diplomatic relationships genuine, the risks of miscalculation heightened by his chaotic approach to statecraft. But strategy must be judged by whether it aligns with reality, not whether it pleases editorial boards or conference audiences. Carney offered a vision that earned applause in Davos. Trump offered threats that earned condemnation everywhere polite people gather. The question is which better describes the world as it actually operates – a world where middle powers can chart independent courses through rhetorical solidarity and institutional loyalty, or a world where power remains concentrated, choices remain binary, and countries like Canada must ultimately align with the great power on whose security and market access they fundamentally depend.

Nobody wants Trump to be right. The possibility offends. But wanting is not analysis, and offence is not refutation. The painful possibility that Canadian policymakers must sit with is that Trump’s crude assessment of allies, adversaries, and the failing international order may be closer to truth than the elegant alternative Carney presented to standing ovations in Switzerland. Sometimes the rude guest sees what the polite ones have agreed not to mention.

 

Links - 11th February 2026 (1 - China's 'Peaceful' Rise)

China’s youth unemployment hits 11-month high as army of graduates joins job hunt | South China Morning Post - "China’s youth unemployment rate rose to its highest level in 11 months in July, as a record number of graduates enter an already shaky labour market.  The urban jobless rate for the 16-24 age group, excluding students, rose to 17.8 per cent last month from 14.5 per cent in June, putting an end to four straight months of decline and marking the metric’s highest level since last August, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday."

China Mulls Helping Local Governments With $1 Trillion of Bills - Bloomberg - "China is preparing to tackle the significant backlog of unpaid bills owed by local governments to the private sector, according to people familiar with the matter, an amount of arrears some have estimated at over $1 trillion.  The government is considering asking state lenders and policy banks including China Development Bank to lend to local authorities so they can make the payments in arrears... President Xi Jinping warned in a February speech made public last month that the government’s delayed payments to companies risks undermining people’s trust in the authorities. Underscoring the importance Beijing is placing on the issue, China’s top leader said unpaid bills could “cripple” affected businesses in the embattled private sector and was hurting “society at large.”... Local government-related entities in China are estimated to owe 10 trillion yuan, or about $1.4 trillion, to corporates and civil servants — equivalent to 7% of the country’s gross domestic product last year, according to economist David Li Daokui’s estimate... Chinese banks are struggling with their profitability after being enlisted over the past few years to help prop up the economy with cheap loans, driving their margins to a record low. At the same time, their balance sheets are under pressure from a growing pile of bad loans. In the first half of this year, the five biggest commercial banks set aside allowances for losses on loans of 3.51 trillion yuan, up almost 6% from the end of last year."

Calvin Cheng  | Facebook - "The huge military parade celebrating China’s victory in WW2 is truly ironic.  China would never have been so easily liberated from Japanese occupation if not for the Americans.  Before Japan’s unconditional surrender after the US dropped 2 atomic bombs , this was the situation in China: Japan controlled all the major city cities and coastal areas ; the Chinese resistance fought them to a stalemate in the countryside.  The KMT was making some slow gains in Guangxi and Hunan.  Without American being drawn into the war against Japan, China would have been occupied for a much longer time.   But America was not invited to this massive victory parade.  Worse , the parade was used as a chance to gather America’s rivals. And showcase military equipment that could possibly be used to challenge America.  What an irony."

Simulated Chinese blockade of Taiwan reveals Singapore as lifeline - "Southeast Asians account for about 94% of the almost 1 million foreign nationals resident in Taiwan, according to Taiwan's National Immigration Agency. Indonesians, Vietnamese and Filipinos make up the vast majority of those foreigners, with comparatively small numbers of Japanese and Americans."

Lord Bebo on X - "🇹🇼🇨🇳🇯🇵 Taiwanese blogger Gym Boss warns not to get too close to Japan! "If it's Taiwan alone, mainland China probably will not attack, 80%. But If Taiwan stands with Japan, I can guarantee they will 10000% attack. … Japan has slaughtered over 35 million Chinese. All the Chinese attach great importance to this period of history.""
Dan Collins on X - "Taiwan gym bro is correct. Mainland just didn’t forget WW2. At one time I remember just browsing thru the 🇨🇳TV channels to count how many programs were set in the “Kang Ri” 抗日 period. (Resist Japan) It was about 1/4. Even kids cartoons."
涵瞰世界/杨涵 Han Yang on X - "Dan, the reason you see so many anti-Japanese war dramas on Chinese TV is, first, the government promote them for their propaganda values, falsely setting up the Communists as the main fighting force against Japanese invaders (they weren't), whipping up patriotic fervor among the masses; second, along with historical palace intrigues dramas, they are the safest topics for producers, since more contemporary themes touch too many censorship minefields."

Melissa Chen on X - "Let me sum up the Japan -China row that has now made it to the UN:
China: Taiwan belongs to us - reunification is a matter of when, not if. Here, look at our unprecedented military buildup!
Japan: if warships and the use of force are involved to take Taiwan, that threatens Japan’s survival. We may have an obligation to get involved.
China: you should be beheaded! As a defeated WWII Axis power, Japan must reflect on its historical crimes and stop making provocative statements, and withdraw Takaichi’s erroneous remarks immediately. Japan is behaving “dangerously” so we hereby cite UN Charter Article 53 which allows us to take military action without the UN Security Council approval against Japan
******
This is the classic inversion where the perpetrator plays the victim.   There’s a Chinese idiom that goes 贼喊捉贼(zéi hǎn zhuō zéi) - it translates to "the thief cries 'catch the thief!’”  It describes a tactic where the real culprit (the thief) deliberately shouts to catch the thief in order to shift suspicion away from themselves, or even to frame someone else.  This is what’s happening here"

David Walpiri on X - "Here’s a reminder: China has destroyed 20,000 acres of coral reefs in the South China Sea, mostly in Philippine and Vietnamese waters. If they can wreck reefs at home and in neighboring countries, they could do worse in Latin America or Africa."
Michael Ron Bowling on X - "David's video shows how China is destroying the environment of its nearest neighbors. Clams and coral reefs devastated in the waters of the Philippines and Vietnam. The map below shows how it's state subsidized fishing fleet is expanding this destruction around the world."
Kangmin Lee | 이강민 on X - "China is responsible for a global-level catastrophe that is destroying natural ecosystems & biodiversity all across the world. And no one is talking about it. Instead, all the "environmentalists" continue to nag the West. The Right needs to reclaim environmental  / X

Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 on X - "“Greenpeace needs to do what they did to Japanese whalers in the 1980s to Chinese fishing trawlers today”. They won’t do this because China is not aligned with the West. Greenpeace types were vaguely critical of China and supported Tibet in the 90s, when America supported China.  Now that America and China are opposed, they no longer care. They only care about opposing the West"
NERV2nd Branch on X - "Japanese whalers couldn't shoot back."

China’s War on Dissidents Comes to the United Kingdom - The Atlantic - "he was walking down a quiet street in London, three masked men jumped him and beat him unconscious. Now 31, Lau still has a faint scar on his boyish face. British authorities called the incident a hate crime, but Lau was convinced that Beijing had sent the men to silence him. He wasn’t being paranoid: Last year, Chinese authorities declared that Lau would be “pursued for life.” They froze his remaining assets in Hong Kong and offered a bounty for information leading to his arrest. Since then, fake journalists have approached Lau seeking interviews, dozens of social-media accounts have impersonated him, and he’s received death threats. A group on Telegram posted his address in London, forcing him to move multiple times. The intimidation extended to his family members in Hong Kong. Eventually they had to flee too. Lau is one of thousands who fled Hong Kong to Britain once the protests started—and particularly since June 2020, when China passed a national-security law that led to often-violent suppression. I’ve spoken with more than 30 activists like Lau who have come to the United Kingdom, where the harassment and surveillance they tried to escape has followed them. Assailants have stalked them in public and smeared them online. Letters have shown up at their neighbors’ doors promising a reward for turning over dissidents to the Chinese embassy. Back home, government authorities have suspended their retirement savings and interrogated their families. Some have been attacked. Their stories illustrate a campaign that China is waging against dissidents across the globe. Not all of the incidents in the U.K. can be tied directly to the Chinese government, but the tactics mirror those Beijing has used to discredit and silence critics in Europe, Canada, Australia, and the United States. Last month, Freedom House found that China was responsible for more recorded cases of repression beyond its borders than any other country over the past decade. The nonprofit had already concluded that the Chinese Communist Party’s war on exiles is “the most sophisticated, global, and comprehensive campaign” of its kind in the world. “This is the product of a top-down system, ordered by Xi Jinping,” Yaqiu Wang, a senior researcher at Freedom House, told me. “Whether this comes directly from Beijing or from Hong Kong, it’s ultimately a part of the CCP’s global, transnational campaign to silence anyone who is critical.” Even though China’s responsibility is an open secret, Western governments have struggled to deter the country from interfering on their soil. Xi’s crusade appears so brazen and far-reaching that it suggests he has little fear of provoking the West. By the same measure, it seems to reveal that something else really does scare him: China’s exiles. The United Kingdom is home to the largest Hong Kong diaspora in the world. Since relinquishing its former colony in 1997, the country has admitted hundreds of thousands of Hong Kongers, who represent a growing threat to China’s leaders. Thanks to globalization and social media, dissidents can organize and inspire political opposition from abroad more easily than before. That helps explain why the Hong Kong government has steadily escalated its campaign against exiles. Last year, it enacted another national-security law, called Article 23, which carries penalties that extend to activists outside the country; authorities have used it to sanction organizers overseas and revoke their passports. Many exiles told me they no longer feel safe returning to Hong Kong because they fear interrogations, imprisonment, or the confiscation of  their passports. They worry that Hong Kong authorities have started importing elements of Xi’s surveillance state in order to track them abroad. Xi “feels threatened by any kind of collective action,” Wang told me—whether it originates at home or overseas. Since 2019, more than 5,000 emigrants have moved to the South London borough of Sutton, where a local group organized a camp in 2023 to educate children of the Hong Kong diaspora about Chinese repression. Then the former chief executive of Hong Kong heard about it—and warned on social media that the organizers would be reported to British and Hong Kong police. Accounts of intimidation and harassment have emerged from virtually every corner of Britain where Hong Kongers have gathered... She showed me a video on her phone of a Chinese man shouting death threats at her during a protest she helped organize in November. After another demonstration, two Asian men followed her into a restaurant; she alerted the police, who opened an investigation. On Instagram and X, strangers send her sexually explicit messages written in Mandarin. Friends have asked her to stop contacting them, worried that ties to her could create problems for their relatives in Hong Kong. “It feels impossible, suddenly, to meet new people or apply for jobs,” she said. “I have no idea who I can trust.”... Police had summoned some of his extended family to tea, where they unfurled printouts of Alvin’s posts on Telegram and photos of him demonstrating in London. One team of officers had traveled from mainland China to treat Alvin’s parents in Hong Kong to an extravagant dinner. The officials said he could face a lengthy prison sentence for helping “high profile” activists—a charge that could extend to his mother and father, too, unless they persuaded their son to become an informant... China has two main goals when it targets activists online: to encourage self-censorship and to “discredit the targets in the eyes of the audience hosting them.”... In 2022, someone hacked the artists’ page and replaced their profile photo with an image of an ISIS flag, which prompted Facebook to remove them. “That account held all our important connections from the past five years. They disappeared overnight,” Lumli and Lumlong told me. “It was like a company going bankrupt.”

Scottish Labour MP warns Chinese Communist Party to keep 'hands off Hong Kong Scots' - "Blair McDougall said many of his constituents "live in fear of repression" from China. The East Renfrewshire MP said this was partly because of a 'secret police station' run by the Chinese state in a Glasgow restaurant.  It was revealed in 2022 that the Scottish Government and Police Scotland were aware of a secret Chinese outpost operating out of the Loon Fung restaurant on Sauchiehall Street. A report from the time claimed the station was part of an attempt to force Chinese dissidents to return to the country. It shut last year.  McDougall said in the House of Commons on Tuesday afternoon: "My constituency is home to a new and growing population of Hong Kongers, who, although they live in a free country, live in fear of the repression."

Are Hong Kong trade offices just Chinese propaganda machines? | The Spectator - "Bill Yuen, the office manager of the Hong Kong trade office in London and a retired Hong Kong police officer, was arrested and charged under Britain’s new National Security Act. He and two others were accused of espionage, including gathering information and surveillance of Hong Kong exiles, during which they allegedly broke into a residential address in the UK.   At the time, Regina Ip, a former security chief and convener of the Hong Kong’s executive council, declared that it was reasonable and legal for trade office staff to conduct intelligence on ‘anti-China MPs and Hong Kong exiles’. The territory’s government offered a reward of 1 million Hong Kong dollars (£100,000) for information about wanted fugitives, while John Lee, its chief executive and himself a former Hong Kong policeman, said that fugitives should be treated like ‘rats in the street’, who would be ‘pursued for life’ and ‘spend their days in fear’. He has embraced with enthusiasm the role of Communist party enforcer, and there is plenty of reason to fear that he expects the territory’s de-facto embassies to do the same."

Boko Haram Destroyed Chinese-made VT-4 Temu Tanks in Nigeria using RPG - "The Chinese VT-4 is touted as an advanced main battle tank, but the Nigerian Army questions its performance. Pakistan and Nigeria reported significant mechanical failures by both export customers.  The Nigerian Army purchased 35 VT-4 tanks under a reported $152 million agreement with Norinco and received the initial tanks in April 2020. These tanks were intended to fight back against the terrorist group Boko Haram, but instead, Boko haram is blowing up these Chinese tanks like a tin can... Nigerian defence sources have reported critical failures. During a military demonstration observed by high-ranking army officials, a VT-4 reportedly failed to fire its main cannon. Nigerian media outlets confirm the VT-4 fleet suffers from persistent breakdowns and difficulties obtaining necessary spare parts, leaving numerous tanks non-operational. A similar incident occurred publicly in November 2024 when a VT-4 reportedly broke down during a dynamic display at the Zhuhai Air Show in China.  These recurring issues raise concerns about the tank’s build quality and Norinco’s commitment to providing adequate after-sales support to its international clients.  Pakistan, another major customer for the VT-4, is experiencing similar difficulties"
The cope is going to be that they didn't maintain them properly

Melissa Chen on X - "🚨Breaking: US and UK universities collaborated with Chinese state + military-linked AI labs that are embedded in or linked to China's surveillance and security system.  The 20+ institutions include MIT, Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and Oxford.  This report is based on tens of thousands of publications, grant records and institutional documents from 2020-2025.  We trace how Western expertise and public funding connect to state-backed Chinese labs through co-authorships, joint projects, and shared grants.   Major public funders acknowledged in this work include the US National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), UK Research and Innovation’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (UKRI/EPSRC), and Horizon Europe.   What this means:
- US and UK taxpayers are funding the development of dual-use AI technologies in collaboration with PLA-linked Chinese universities and research institutes
- These technologies are already being deployed in China's surveillance state apparatus on its own people, political dissidents and Uyghurs in Xinjiang
In collaboration with @HRF , we examined two Chinese AI labs:   Zhejiang Lab and SAIRI (Shanghai AI Research Institute).
These state-backed labs partner with defense conglomerates and work on surveillance technologies. Crucially, both labs have collaborated with leading Western universities since 2020.  Zhejiang Lab partners with CETC (China Electronics Technology Group Corporation) the defense conglomerate and state-owned enterprise sanctioned by the US for building IJOP, the mass surveillance platform used to detain Uyghurs in Xinjiang.  SAIRI is run by a senior CETC scientist and partners with iFlytek and SenseTime - both sanctioned for Xinjiang abuses.  Western taxpayers funded Zhejiang Lab and SAIRI’s work:
> National Science Foundation - 106 acknowledgments; >UK's EPSRC - 31 acknowledgments (including formally listing Zhejiang Lab as partner) > @NIH - 27 acknowledgments; Horizon Europe - 26 acknowledgments.
Out of ~30 major AI ethics centers worldwide, only 2 publicly condemned Chinese AI practices: Ada Lovelace Institute and Stanford HAI.  The rest were silent on these collaborations, which is ridiculous if you consider that their telos is to weigh in on the ETHICAL dimension of AI development.  Our report details the extensive network of collaboration between Western universities and institutions linked to China's state security apparatus and military. Western institutions lend credibility, knowledge, and resources to China's surveillance apparatus.  Funding bodies such as the US National Science Foundation (NSF) have no due diligence procedures, instead relying on universities themselves, which often have a strong financial incentive to defend these collaborations and the traditional scientific culture of openness and transparency, even though this is being systematically exploited by Beijing.   This isn't about blocking all research collaboration. It's about recognizing the structural reality that you are simply not in a neutral academic space when you partner with labs embedded in authoritarian surveillance infrastructure, when there is no separation between academia, the military and the state. You're simply enabling repression.  And this further begs the question: if we are indeed in an AI race, why are US taxpayers funding AI research in a nation considered a geopolitical adversary? During the Sputnik era, Americans were not funding and collaborating with Soviet scientists and researchers.   US taxpayers were rightly incensed when it was revealed that American public money was used to fund risky research on coronaviruses at the PLA-linked Wuhan Institute of Virology through shady NGOs.   Now, it's been revealed that taxpayer resources are being used to generate knowledge that flows into institutions embedded in China’s apparatus of repression, and develop cutting-edge AI technologies while our nations are locked in a competitive AI race.  It's time for the Trump administration to mandate transparency and for these universities to be subjected to greater scrutiny.   @SecRubio  @DrJBhattacharya  @SenateForeign  @ChinaSelect  @DOJNatSec  @StateDept"

Michael A. Arouet on X - "German carmakers‘ business model was based on growing sales in China to subsidize overblown, unions protected structures at home. Guess what, the party is over. Good luck negotiating with the unions and the workers councils."
Melissa Chen on X - "Germany escaped the first China shock that hit the US economy because it produced higher end goods and because China needed the machinery that the Germans produced.   The core of German industry is being threatened by China now because China has moved up the value chain, producing the machinery that it once had to import. The German-China shock will be even more severe than the US shock as machinery and cars are the heart of German industry.  I hope Germans wake up to how their leaders sold their country out under the guise of promoting trade and "win-win" business opportunities with China. The list of culprits include Helmut Schmidt, Gerard Shröder and Rudolf Scharping. An export nation was seeking a huge market of consumers but the truth of the matter is, China never wanted to consume foreign goods.   This was a Faustian bargain all along. Germans should re-read Goethe."

Lim Tean | Facebook - "The Great Myth Of China Never Having Invaded Other Countries !
Nothing irks me more than to hear the persistent claim, often repeated in public debate, and even by renown scholars such as Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, that China has never invaded other countries and that there is nothing to fear from her unparalleled military build-up over the past 2 decades, and that she is a benign power. This assertion does not withstand serious historical scrutiny and should be rejected plainly and without equivocation.  China’s own imperial history tells a very different story. For more than 2 thousand years, successive Chinese dynasties expanded their territory through military conquest, occupation and coercion, just as other great powers have done throughout history. The Han dynasty pushed Chinese armies deep into Central Asia, conquering the Tarim Basin and waging sustained offensive wars to secure strategic depth and trade routes. The Tang dynasty projected military power across much of Inner Asia, subjugating Turkic states and repeatedly intervening by force in Korea and Vietnam.  The Yuan dynasty launched large-scale invasions across East and Southeast Asia, including Korea, Vietnam and Burma. The Ming dynasty occupied Vietnam for 2 decades, following military conquest while the Qing dynasty- the most territorially expansive of all- used force to absorb Xinjiang, Tibet and Mongolia, effectively doubling the size of the Chinese state. These were not defensive actions. They were wars of expansion, conducted to secure dominance over China’s periphery.  Some argue that these campaigns were softened by so-called tributary system. That, too, is a distortion. Tributary relations were not partnerships of equals ; they were hierarchical arrangements enforced by the credible threat and frequent use of military force. States that resisted were punished. Those that complied did so under pressure. This was order imposed by power, not harmony achieved by consent.  Those who promote the myth of China’s historical exceptionalism ignore one of the most enduring insights of human experience. The great Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote the history of the Peloponnesian Wars, warned us that human nature does not change, and that fear, interest and power drive the behaviour of states across all eras and cultures. Winston Churchill put it even more starkly when he observed that “the story of the human race is war”. China, like every civilisation before it, is not exempt from these truths.  We must be clear-eyed instead of viewing China through rose-tinted glasses. Power, when unchecked, has always sought expansion. That lesson is as relevant today as it was in antiquity. China’s rise to become a powerful country was never peaceful. It is therefore pointless to pontificate whether her continued rise will be peaceful. It can never be. If we ignore this simple truth and choose to be hypnotised by the smiling Tiger mouthing multi-literalism, we do so at our peril.  In a subsequent post, I shall explain how China has continued with her hard-edged expansionism even in the 20th and 21st centuries."

The West has woken up to China’s threat far too late - "A Pentagon report in 2021 warned that concentrated supply chains, offshoring and a “business climate that has favoured short-term shareholder earnings” had all “severely damaged” America’s ability to arm itself.  Suppliers went from two to one to none, in critical defence sectors ranging from milling to chemicals.  It’s what Karl Marx identified when he predicted, “the last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope”.  He was saying that greedy businessmen can’t resist a deal, even if it’s a deal that ultimately kills them.  Alas, the modern, monopoly-friendly, globalist version of capitalism has left us in the same spot. A war with any adversary will be very short indeed."

Hundreds of British buses have Chinese ‘kill switch’ - "Hundreds of electric buses on Britain’s roads could be remotely switched off by China with a “kill switch”, Britain’s security services have found.  The buses are connected to the internet by onboard SIM cards that are intended to be used for software updates, but could also be vulnerable to meddling by Beijing, officials at the Department for Transport (DfT) and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) believe.   The security experts launched an inquiry in November after concerns were raised in Norway that Yutong electric buses from China could be remotely “stopped or rendered inoperable by the manufacturer”. The NCSC, the public-facing branch of Britain’s GCHQ, said it was “technically possible” for the buses to be remotely shut down from China.  But Whitehall sources said that ministers are not able to block the sale of the buses in Britain because there is no concrete evidence of Chinese subterfuge and that banning them could cause further diplomatic tension with Beijing...  the findings will fuel concern about the level of Chinese control over British infrastructure, after calls from Labour MPs for Beijing to be shut out of industry, rail, water and power.  Downing Street has instead pushed for more foreign investment from China, which ministers believe will boost economic growth and provide private sector capital for Labour’s green power plans."

Links - 10th February 2026 (2 - Migrants)

Fury in Ireland over hundreds of asylum seeker 'minors' found to be adults - as suspect accused of killing boy at a unit for migrant children 'is found to be a grown man' - "the suspect charged with the murder of the 17-year-old Ukrainian boy at a facility for minors is now believed by authorities to actually be an adult. Almost 200 adults were placed in children's accommodation operated by the Irish Child and Family Agency, Tusla, over the last three years before it was discovered that they were over the age of 18. The number of immigrants who applied for international protection as minors but were subsequently deemed 'ineligible' because of their age has more than doubled since 2023, according to the Irish Independent... The Dublin suburb of Saggart exploded with anti-migrant protests in October after local media alleged a ten-year-old Irish girl had been sexually assaulted in the grounds of a hotel housing asylum seekers... Vadym Davydenko died after being stabbed during an altercation at a Tusla-run emergency accommodation centre in Grattan Wood, Donaghmede on October 15. The 17-year-old had only been in Ireland for four days before the fatal incident. He had been staying at a facility for juvenile international protection applicants separated from their parents. A suspect, understood to be a teenager also residing at the children's facility, was later arrested and charged with Vadym’s murder. While the suspect's age was given at 17 in his first court appearance, inquiries have allegedly led the police to believe that the suspect is in fact an adult male. Investigators examined his background and procured a birth certificate from his relatives, indicating that the suspect was over the age of 18 at the time of the fatal incident."

MichaeloKeeffe on X - ""Let's drop this whole thing of Ireland belonging to the Irish, this is something people need to unlearn now.""
Corey Walker on X - "Why did Ireland import people who hate their nation and want to dispossess the native population? Ireland never had an empire so there's no justification for this, even from the usual woke excuses. No wonder the far right is surging all over Europe. Who wants this?"

Martin Sellner on X - "In human history, huge migration of foreign males to a certain area ofte led to the total extinction of the indigenous male population.
- Iberia (Bronze Age): Steppe groups triggered a near-total male-line replacement in ~200 years. Native male lines went extinct.
- Levant (Bronze Age): Kura-Araxes migration brought Y-haplogroup J, displacing earlier male lines.
- Britain (Anglo-Saxons): Eastern England saw 50–100% replacement of native Y-chromosomes by continental migrants.
Maybe something to take into consideration when you wonder why males are voting for parties who want to reduce mass migration."

Rebecca Mistereggen on X - "Iran has already deported over 1.5 million Afghans in 2025. Pakistan has sent back more than 1 million. While Europe debates “diversity” and let them rape their way through our nations, other countries carry out mass expulsions in the millions. When a nation wants to protect its people and its borders, it does."
Is it racist to condemn Iran and Pakistan for expelling Afghans?

Seth Frantzman on X - "Maybe they aren’t “asylum seekers” The Orwellian term “asylum seeker” was invented so that every person who arrives immediately claims “asylum” and are a “seeker” when in fact data shows most of them are men, and many come from majority groups back home; far from being persecuted, many are actually from the persecuting group; while actual people who need asylum, such as women, minorities and the vulnerable are pushed aside. The goal was to turn a huge majority of men who want to immigrate into “asylum seekers”. We should abolish the use of this term. And we should abolish the concept of asylum being an option for every person. Instead countries should automatically put women, young children and minorities at the front of the line. 19-30 year old men shouldn’t be at the front. Asylum used to be something a small number of people received and requested. It wasn’t something that everyone sought. But an army of NGOs went out and told people they should all apply for asylum; they also encouraged people to meet certain criteria, claiming to be under 18 or “unaccompanied” minors. A huge Orwellian nomenklatura has grown up around this, from “undocumented” migrants to “asylum seekers”. Better to begin the process of removing these terms from our lexicon. When data shows that the vast majority of “asylum seekers” are young men …it’s clear they are not ; when the data shows women actually have a HARDER time getting asylum, including women who are trafficked and exploited by those men"

Fugitive Caesar on X - "pretty wild that in both America and England, the government limits how many citizens are allowed to study in medical schools, then uses that self-imposed restriction in order to complain about a shortage of qualified workers, which can only be solved with cheap foreign labor."
The solution is to subsidize medical school even more so governments will impose even lower quotas to save money

Spencer Hakimian on X - "JD Vance: “It’s totally reasonable to not want neighbors who speak another language.”"
Hunter📈🌈📊 on X - "That’s actually not reasonable at all."
James Stevens 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧 on X - "funny how the same ppl object to the Brits who go the south of Spain, set up British enclaves (pubs, chips shops etc) & don't learn the language"
Misquote aside, there's a hierarchy of white people to hate

Meme - End Wokeness: "Pictures from a riot today in Mexico City "Pay taxes. Learn Spanish. Respect my culture" "Not your home""
It's only racism and xenophobia in one direction

Reflections on United Arab Emirates
Melissa Chen on X - "We can talk about UAE / Singapore versus Australia and the West more broadly as model states in how they deal with Islamist extremism but let's actually look at an example that demonstrates the point. In 2002, Singaporean Zulfikar Shariff fled to Australia after getting charged for his activities organizing and campaigning against a hijab ban in schools, and defending and promoting Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Australia welcomed him with open arms, and provided him with scholarships and a place to further postgraduate study, despite not having an undergraduate degree, even after his work with Al-Qaeda financiers was made public in 2006 by the left leaning ABC. He was granted Australian citizenship in 2011. He continued to receive state grants and unemployment benefits from the Australian government, all the while continuing his activism from there. He made videos posted on various social media sites where he said things like Chinese Singaporeans were colonial settlers, not migrants, and that Singapore's ideology had insulted, degraded and oppressed Muslims. In 2016, he gets arrested when he returned to Singapore and detained under the Internal Security Act. He then renounces his Singaporean citizenship and returned to Australia where he now resides with his family. If this is the kind of immigrant Australia accepts, is the Bondi massacre really such a surprise? Why does Australia grant citizenship to people who are not compatible with the values they claim to embrace? Shariff's case highlights differences in how Singapore and Australia approach these issues. The West embraces high-minded ideals of tolerance and pluralism which is commendable, but has its trade-offs in terms of balancing security and freedom. It's time to have that difficult conversation:
which way, Western man?"

Meme - "I need you all to start asking leftists what is the difference between a colonizer and an immigrant?"
mitra @persianmama111: "What you're referencing is colonization. White people who aggressively try to colonize another country deserve what's coming to them in that regard... and Europe is where white people belong if we're gonna start segregating people. The US has never been a white country. It was built on indigenous peoples blood"
mitra @persianmama111: ""They didn't come here legally" I don't give one single fuck"
"just the reminder... the pilgrims weren't colonizers. they were fleeing the same big-government tyranny the Left romanticizes today"
Basically a colonizer is white and an immigrant is non-white

Restore Britain on X - "Multiculturalism has failed."
Will Tanner on X - "This is very much incorrect, and shows a misunderstanding of what happened The point of mass migration and the "multiculturalism" that resulted from it was not to make life better for Westerners; were the goal better lives, the old empires would still be intact Rather, the goal was total destruction. Destruction not only of public beauty and cohesion, but of our shared sense of religion, culture, history, and outlook. The goal was to create no go zones in Paris, grooming gangs in Britain, firebombs in Sweden, and so on. Such is seen as justified revenge for the supposed ravages of colonialism and, in the process, makes a divided base of subjects easier to rule and exploit So, multiculturalism has succeeded wildly, as it has brought about all that and more"
As they say, the purpose of a system is what it does

Vietnamese community rallies together to fight back against Sudanese gangs terrorising their shops - "Young Vietnamese people are vowing to take action after video of their elders being attacked by thugs went viral. The shocking footage shows people, believed to be shopkeepers, defending themselves with chairs against a group of men of African appearance. Screaming, shouting and smashing can be heard as the group of Vietnamese people try to push back against the group, who allegedly attacked them after asking for a cigarette and being rejected. The clip left many young Vietnamese people in the area furious, and they have vowed to band together and fight back... Another Vietnamese man said it was 'time to prove who we are'. 'This message to all Vietnamese people in west Melbourne! 'You rather just stand there and watch your children or family member been [sic] robbed, bashed, raped then do nothing - or join us to protect our love [sic] one from this.'"
From 2020

Mike Jones on X - "🚨The case for Third World immigration, refugees included, has effectively collapsed. The experience of Somali communities in the United States, and the Mirpuri grooming-gang scandal in Britain, have brought the argument to a close. The debate is over. At this point, anyone still arguing for Third World immigration is doing so on one of two grounds: naked ethnocentrism, or a kind of John Lennon–style utopian fantasy. There is no serious, grown-up case left to make."

Meme - Erik Dale @EuroDale: "Actually, there is a third, much darker, type of pro immigration fanatic."
Torgeir Salih Holgersen @SalihTorgeir: "The West is built solely on racism and genocide, and must be destroyed as a political and identity- based cultural community in order for the world to become peaceful and just. To achieve that, someone must take on the job of working to destroy the West from within. I am on the case."
Tsotha: "This is just a communist, it's always about destroying the system they live in, Migration is just one of their tools to do so"
Torgeir Salih Holgersen on X - "The West has never been about anything else than genocide and exploitation of other peoples. The destruction of the West as an identity project and political block is therefore great news to the vast majority of the world's population."
We're still told that left wingers don't have their countries

Melissa Chen on X - "What we have learnt is that the key to thriving as a criminal syndicate in the West today is PROTECTED status.  Something that the Somali daycare owners in Minnesota and the Pakistani grooming gangs in the UK have in common is immunity because of the magical thing both groups possess - melanin. Notice that no one bats an eyelid when you talk about the Italian mafia, the Irish mob or even Albanian thugs? You can discuss these things so flippantly, and discuss their brazen crimes without being accused of racism or xenophobia, simply because they’re white. The walking on eggshells, not-wanting-to-be-called-racist dynamic shielded Somali and Pakistani immigrants from scrutiny and justice for more than a decade. The latter has been going on for several. The consequences? Billions in tax fraud. Young women being raped. In both cases, there had been a slow drip of journalists and government employees trying to bring attention to these problems. In both cases, DEI sensibilities were too strong to allow the signal out EVEN when the whistleblowers were themselves recognized as friendly to the left (read: minorities). Only after populist anger bubbles up (thanks to X and @elonmusk ) did the authorities try to appear responsive. We are still nowhere close to understanding the depth and scope of these crimes, let alone achieving restitution."

Kambree on X - "It takes a special kind of lunatic to think that importing welfare recipients who want to kill us is a good idea #ThursdayThoughts"

Richard Hanania on X - "The UAE as a capitalist, open borders utopia. Americans could live like gods if not for small minded nationalism."
Thread by @jonst0kes on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "I've worked there, so I know something about this, & I imagine many or most of the MAGA right would actually go UAE-style labor mobility if the whole, entire system were really a possibility -- but you won't understand what I mean from this excerpt. What I mean is this: You can leave your wallet laying out in a cafe, and nobody will steal it. Nobody is ever going to take something from your hotel room. You won't get into a fight there, or really see any of the foreign-born workers breaking the law. Why? Instant deportation for breaking the law. They will absolutely scoop up a foreign-born janitor, waitress, or petroleum engineer and yeet them back across the border if they break a law. In other words, it's not "open borders" in the sense of anyone can come and go as they please. They know who's in the country, and they will remove you from it if you get crossways with the authorities even just a tiny bit. Somehow I don't think this is what the left-libertarian "open borders" crowd is really proposing, though. But I think the right would probably be ok with it.
The other thing that I pretty strongly dislike about this post -- apparently it's by @bryan_caplan so I will tag him here since I follow him -- is the idea that people are coming there because tolerance and diversity and hope and better life etc. You would not learn this in a one-day layover the UAE chatting with some friendly locals, but when you work there enough to get a feel for the regional dynamics & how people who live there talk when they're at dinner, you learn the real reason why people leave behind the ancestral homelands where their families & tribes have dwelt for millennia to go to the UAE and wait tables or scrub floors: The whole region is a hot mess, and is often destabilized, and every time a new country over there gets shaky and violence breaks out (often because the US is mucking about in some way with it), people head for the UAE as the central island of stability where they can hold down a steady job and send money back to their ancestral homeland where they would actually be happy to stay and live if it weren't in some state of collapse or turmoil. Anyway, that whole post is terrible and I would urge Caplan to reconsider this approach of, "I had a one-day layover and chatted with some people and took some pictures, so here is why this place is great and we should be more like it" genre of... well, I don't even know what to call this. When I landed in the UAE, there were armed guards in the airport and as I crossed through this one section after getting my bags from the baggage claim, they approached me and took me aside into a room and were like, "Where is the knife. Get it out of your bag." They screen every single bag that comes into the country down to the smallest detail -- a friend of mine said there was a good documentary about this and how insane the level of scrutiny is at the airport -- and they found my Leatherman and I had to give it up. I also had to show them I was there to work and give them phone numbers and where I was staying etc. "Open borders" lol pleeze. I'm so cheesed at how bad that article was I can't even. The UAE is a monarchy. And if you criticize the monarchy they will send you right back across the "open borders" and you won't be able to get back in. So you do not, under any circumstances, criticize the government while you are there. Even white-collar startup guys & VCs etc do not criticize the UAE government while they are on UAE soil. Everyone knows better than this. If you have some negative thoughts about the monarchy, you keep it to yourself while you're there. But hey, tolerance!
I was about to say that I don't think Caplan has ever lived in a place with a ruthless set of codes around what's off-limits to say, where you get un-personed instantly for a single slip-up, but then I remembered he's an academic so he should be better calibrated than this. This doesn't shock me at all. Again, it's a monarchy, & if you're on their soil & are not a member of their monarchy or possessed of some other form of massive leverage then you are there at their arbitrary pleasure & they will do what they like with you.
Just to be clear: I don't actually dislike the UAE. It's a lovely enough place, & I'd go back to Dubai for vacation or whatever. If one of my kids grew up & went there for work, I'd be like "cool have a good time, just be careful." I also don't dislike Caplan, the post's author. What I dislike is "open borders" in both its libertarian and lefty anarcho-tyranny manifestations, & I especially dislike that extremely creepy and bad substack post."

Basil the Great on X - "🚨 President Trump has just released the data on what percentage of immigrants by country are receiving benefits Keir Starmer still refuses to do this in the UK"
Hans Mahncke on X - "The insanity of this is that a foreign family visiting Disneyland for a week has to prove hotel bookings, return flights, enough money for the entire stay, and a stable job back home. That is for a few days. You would assume that the bar for people who want to stay forever would be far higher. Instead, it effectively does not exist at all. This is a complete inversion of basic logic."

Tyler Oliveira on X - "100 days of your working year gets taxed to fund the importation and enrichment of 3rd world parasites that hate you, hate your culture, hate your religion, hate your language, hate your history, hate your heroes, hate your success, and hate your laws."

Thread by @MattWalshBlog on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Everything you need to know about the immigration debate can be found in this one fact: immigration enforcement is only ever considered controversial when predominately white countries do it. Non-white, non-western countries frequently have very strict immigration policies, ruthlessly enforced, and nobody objects. Only the United States and Western Europe are expected to have open borders. Every other country on Earth can close their borders and punish intruders and nobody will say a word about it. Go to Japan or India and argue for “open borders” and you’ll be laughed out of the room. They might debate some of the finer details of their immigration policy but the idea that there shouldn’t be borders or enforcement at all isn’t even considered, and it shouldn’t be. We’re the only ones who are expected to take that kind of madness seriously."

Meme - "Who wants obnoxious diaspora nationalism?" *everyone raising their hands*
"Who wants to actually live in the country they are nationalistic about?" *no one raising their hands, looking down dejectedly*

AF Post on X - "Almost 40% of Australian boys aged 13-17 support "right-wing extremism" according to the University of Melbourne. Follow: @AFpost"
Jonatan Pallesen on X - "Is there any bound for the degree to which they will keep calling normal citizens who are skeptical of mass immigration “right-wing extremists”? It does not make any logical sense to call 40% of the population “extremists”, but yet they continue. If eventually most of the population who are not recent immigrants are against continuing the mass immigration, will they keep calling them all extremists?"

Teen-killing refugee to stay after visa ruling - "A Sudanese refugee involved in a vicious bashing that left an 18-year-old dead has been spared deportation after the Administrative Review Tribunal overturned the cancellation of his visa, in a setback for the government’s attempts to toughen visa decisions in the wake of the Direction 99 ­debacle. The man, who migrated to Australia at the age of four and who can be identified only as BCQR, was himself 18 when he joined three other men in the late-night pursuit of the victim through Melbourne streets in 2021."

The British Patriot on X - "85% of the worlds refugees are Muslim. Not one of the 56 Muslim countries are taking in refugees. 11 of these countries are the richest in the world. If Islam is so great; why are Muslims countries not taking care of their own?"

Matthew Camenzuli on X - "It's funny... the biggest advocates for mass uncontrolled immigration into Australia, also think Australia is unceded Aboriginal Land. How do they sleep at night?"

Wall Street Mav on X - ""Greenland belongs to Greenlanders"
The Left: "I stand with Greenland"
"Ireland belongs to the Irish"
The Left: "That's racist" 😡"

The rise of homonationalism - spiked - "Conservative MP Katie Lam was speaking, and she made a remark that would once have been uncontroversial, but now feels borderline taboo. LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage, she argued, are the product of particular cultures. Britain and the West built the legal and cultural framework that made LGBT equality possible. It did not happen by accident. Around the same time, a video from France went viral. It shows a young, very camp man, wearing make-up and sporting truly impressive eyebrows, being approached by a Muslim influencer who offers him cash to say ‘salam aleykoum’ – or ‘peace be upon you’ – on camera. The young man recoils and snaps back: ‘No. We’re in France here.’ It showed a refusal to play along. An assertion of cultural confidence. No apology offered. His reaction felt like part of a trend that’s been building for some time in France. Last year, Nicolas Scheffer of Têtu – France’s biggest LGBT magazine – reported that of all the parties represented in the National Assembly, it was the hard-right National Rally that sent the largest number of openly gay MPs to parliament in 2022. By cross-referencing public sources, between 20 and 25 of National Rally’s 89 MPs are believed to be gay. Spain offers an even more explicit example. Natalie Donback, a reporter at Coda, describes the rise of Carlitos de España – a gay YouTuber originally from Bolivia and now based in Barcelona’s Eixample district. ‘Islam keeps me up at night’, he says. ‘They want me dead.’ Along with other influencers, Carlitos helped form Las Marifachas, a deliberately provocative group whose name fuses a slur for gay men with a slur for fascists. Alongside InfoVlogger, a YouTuber, and Madame in Spain, a drag queen from Alicante, they have built a bridge between parts of Spain’s LGBT community and the radical-right Vox party. Their content is not polite. It is not sanitised. Yet it expresses real fears. Germany offers perhaps the sharpest data point of all. The leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, Alice Weidel, is a lesbian woman in a long-term civil partnership with a Sri Lankan – a fact that causes some progressives to short-circuit. A poll of over 60,000 users of gay-dating app Romeo found the AfD to be the most popular party among respondents, with nearly 28 per cent support. The Greens followed on around 20 per cent. The centre-left SPD trailed on just 12.5 per cent. The gay vote, if there is such a thing, is clearly not wedded to the kinds of left-wing parties that we might once have expected it to be. This trend has acquired a name: homonationalism. Progressive politics has spent years insisting that all cultures are equal, that borders barely matter, and that any concern about immigration is morally suspect. In doing so, it has refused to confront a basic reality. Attitudes to homosexuality vary dramatically across the world, and large numbers of migrants to Europe come from countries that remain deeply hostile to gay people. Britain’s gay community knows this better than most. In 2020, three gay men, James Furlong, David Wails and Joe Ritchie-Bennett, were murdered in Reading, in what prosecutors described as an act of religious jihad by Libyan refugee Khairi Saadallah. The killer was known to have made homophobic comments to friends and had said that gay people were not accepted in Libya... Homonationalism is not about nostalgia, or gratitude for same-sex marriage. It is about the present, and about a growing sense that polite society is unwilling to defend the conditions that made LGBT freedom possible in the first place."
Time to ban the "far right" to protect gay people

NGO funding being channeled to Hamas, Monitor says

NGO funding being channeled to Hamas, Monitor says

"Documents captured by the IDF in Gaza over the past two years provide new details on how Hamas allegedly monitored and influenced humanitarian organizations and hospitals, according to Gerald Steinberg, founder and president of NGO Monitor. 

Speaking to The Media Line, Steinberg said the records describe Hamas-installed “guarantors” embedded inside NGO structures to collect information, pressure staff, and steer aid toward the group’s priorities. He said the material moves long-running claims about Hamas diversion and infiltration from suspicion to what he described as documented internal protocols, while noting that most of the cache remains unreviewed.

Steinberg pointed to the seized material as the basis for his argument that allegations now rest on internal paperwork, not inference. “The documents that we have examined recently that [we] reported on were found [and] captured by the IDF in Gaza during the last two years in operations,” he said. “There are thousands, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of such documents, most of which have not been examined or been sorted through.”...

The documents reflect a wider system in which Hamas used civilian frameworks while building military infrastructure beneath them. “There are many, many examples of the way that Hamas planted their people… not just in humanitarian organizations… but also in the frameworks of hospitals,” he said. “They used the hospitals, they used the mosques, they used all this massive underground network under schools, all of that.” 

Foreign staff working in Gaza were aware of Hamas’ influence, Steinberg argued. “Many of the foreign workers, foreign officials from organizations, were obviously aware of this.”

At the center of his account is what he called a “guarantor” system - Hamas-appointed liaisons assigned to aid organizations. “These documents consist of protocols of meetings that were held with what they call guarantors,” he said.

Steinberg said the arrangement placed a Hamas-linked figure inside NGO operations. “Oxfam, Norwegian Refugee Council, Doctors Without Borders… across the board, these organizations had assigned to them by Hamas an individual who was both reporting to Hamas and part of the organization’s structure itself.”

NGO Monitor has described the “guarantor” structure as a tool for monitoring and influencing NGO activity. Steinberg characterized it as a coercive mechanism that went beyond coordination. “Hamas first of all used these people to spy on, to collect information that they could use to manipulate the organizations and the leaders of those organizations,” he said. He added that the information could be used “to manipulate and blackmail officials, staff members of the organizations, and also to direct aid to the areas that Hamas emphasized and prioritized.”

Aid organizations did not publicly raise alarms about operating under pressure, Steinberg contended. “None of the NGOs, in any way, manner, or form, said publicly, or to the Israeli officials, ‘Hey, you know, Hamas is putting the squeeze on us in various ways, and that makes us uncomfortable.’”

To illustrate diversion claims and disputes over oversight, Steinberg pointed to a case predating the current war: World Vision.

In 2016, Israel arrested Mohammad El Halabi, the head of World Vision’s Gaza operation. He was “accused of taking $50 million in aid… and transferring them directly to Hamas for very specific military operations,” Steinberg said, including money “allocated for fishing” that went to “Hamas’ military undersea terror framework.”

Steinberg contrasted that allegation and Israel’s legal outcome with World Vision’s public stance. “For years, he was tried, he was convicted, and the World Vision framework… repeatedly said, this was a show trial, that he was innocent, that Israel had no evidence,” he said. He then cited what he viewed as a politically telling detail: “One of the first people that Hamas demanded to be released in the prisoner exchange… was El Halabi.” Steinberg said documents now describe closer coordination between Hamas and El Halabi and efforts to pressure the Israeli legal process.

Hospitals and clinics were similarly embedded within Hamas governance and operations, Steinberg argued, shifting from NGOs to the medical sphere. “The entire medical framework that operated in Gaza, hospitals, clinics, and doctors, was permeated by Hamas and controlled by Hamas,” he said. He claimed Hamas used areas of hospitals “both for command-and-control and terror operations,” adding, “hostages were brought into those wings.” Steinberg also asserted that foreign staff knew. “Every doctor and foreign worker that was at those hospitals knew that they were permeated.”

One person Steinberg cited was Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, a Palestinian pediatrician and hospital director who wrote op-eds for The New York Times. Steinberg said he could not fully map Abu Safiya’s personal networks but claimed there was visual evidence tying him to Hamas.

“We don’t know at this stage what the various individuals, like Abu Safiya, who they were in connection with,” he said. “But we do know, because we now have pictures of him sitting with Hamas military leaders, we know what his rank was.” Abu Safiya is currently held in Ofer prison in Israel.

Writer and commentator Eitan Fischberger located early material, Steinberg said, and additional photographs reinforced the claim. He framed the issue as one of credibility and ethics: Abu Safiya wrote publicly “as a doctor, as an expert in theory,” while “at the same time, he was a colonel in Hamas.” Steinberg called such conduct, and the use of hospitals for armed purposes, “absolutely a violation of all medical ethics and international law.”

Another allegation raised by NGO Monitor involved Ahmed al-Kahlout, a hospital director and Hamas officer, according to Vincent Chebat, a senior researcher at NGO Monitor. Chebat told The Media Line that a Facebook post pictured al-Kahlout alongside other Hamas officials, including Safiya.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement citing information from the IDF and Shin Bet (Israeli Security Agency) that said al-Kahlout, a director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalia in northern Gaza, was a member of Hamas and admitted that the group “turned Gaza hospitals into military facilities under their control.”

“I was recruited to Hamas in 2010,” the statement quotes al-Kahlout, “with the rank of brigadier general. There are employees in the hospital who are military operatives of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades – doctors, nurses, paramedics, clerks, and staff members.”

Steinberg argued that the documents, taken together, point to a persistent donor problem: large spending without enforceable monitoring. Funding rose sharply after October 7, he said, and oversight did not keep pace. “After October 7… every government involved in providing aid massively increased… by hundreds of millions of dollars… again, with no oversight,” he said. “There is no mechanism for oversight.”

Beyond wartime funding, Steinberg said the underlying weakness is structural. “There is a very thin layer of oversight in the United States. It’s called the Internal Revenue Service, the nonprofit framework, 501c3 and 501c4 regulations,” he said. “And basically, all they can do under current legislation and regulations is to ensure to the best that they can that proper audits are being done.”

A change in the US administration altered the landscape, Steinberg said. “When President Trump started his second term a little bit over a year ago, the USAID budget was frozen,” he said. He added that an inspector general was appointed and investigations were conducted, and he cited scrutiny of communications and alleged links to Hamas-related structures, including “propaganda and promoting the genocide blood libel,” adding, “the NGOs were involved in that as well.”

In Steinberg’s view, donor questions also intersect with Israeli regulation and diplomatic pushback. He described an Israeli requirement instituted “over almost a year ago,” under which “every NGO that operates in Israel as an aid source must register and provide certain information.” He framed the move as a response to failed due diligence and described staff background checks as “routine and certainly justified.”

Steinberg said some European governments, joined by Canada, demanded that Israel allow NGOs to operate without meeting registration requirements, and that Israel refused to waive them.

Those rules will remain in place regardless of political changes in Jerusalem, Steinberg predicted. “No Israeli conceivable leadership or government, even in what we might call the post-Netanyahu era, is going to be able to relax those requirements and to waive them, precisely because of October 7.”

International bodies also came in for criticism. Steinberg named “the UN and UNRWA and OCHA and UNICEF,” and said: “They all knew what was being built and what was being done in the hospitals, and they all stayed silent.”...

He argued that international security forces have not demonstrated a record of disarming entrenched armed groups, pointing to “no precedent, no successful precedent, of a foreign force, an international force, disarming a terror organization,” and citing UNIFIL in Lebanon and Hezbollah’s rearmament as a cautionary comparison...

Beyond Gaza, Steinberg widened the lens to what he described as a broader ecosystem of NGO funding and political influence. He called NGOs “a massive industry,” measured in “billions of dollars,” and argued that oversight is thin compared with other regulated spheres. In the US, he described the nonprofit framework - ”501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) regulations” - as focused largely on audits, and he said NGOs are “easy takeover targets,” pointing to ideological shifts within major organizations.

A separate thread in the interview focused on protest funding and the WESPAC Foundation. Steinberg described it as “a major, what’s called a pass-through for the IRS,” adding: “We don’t know who the donors were. Again, it could have been a foreign government. It could have been Qatar.” He described lawsuits and heightened scrutiny: “WESPAC now is in deep trouble and may not be able to function anymore.”

NGO Monitor’s reporting on WESPAC’s IRS filing described large funding flows, including a $1 million transfer to a framework listed as “Honor the Earth,” designated for a Palestinian youth movement.

Steinberg said NGO Monitor has remained in contact with members of Congress and their staff regarding possible changes to IRS regulations and investigations into nonprofit political activity and foreign funding. Regarding Qatar, he said the limits of current disclosure rules leave a central question unanswered: “In terms of Qatar’s involvement in NGOs, precisely because the IRS regulations allow these massive organizations to hide, not to report on their foreign and foreign government funding, we do not have concrete evidence.” Steinberg added, “No nonprofit organization registered in the government should be allowed to have secret funding from foreign governments.”

Media ecosystems can amplify narratives tied to state influence, Steinberg argued, naming Al Jazeera and outlets he said were “reported to be connected to Qatar, like things called Middle East Eye and Middle East Monitor,” and urging scrutiny of how those channels shape what NGOs and prominent figures treat as credible reporting."