Links - 3rd March 2026 (2 - Schools in the US)

Meme - 𝐆𝐫𝐞𝐠 @HarmfulOpinion: "In 1979, the percentage of people ages 14 and older who were illiterate, was less than one percent. Today, it’s upwards of 16%. And 19% of high school graduates in the US can't read.   This is what 45 years of government education has given us."
The Democrats: "45 years ago today the Department of Education was created. Trump and Vance's Project 2025 will eliminate it."
Clearly, the problem is not enough money!

Meme - Mike The Mad Scientist @MadMikeOfficial: "When you’re trying to save the department of education but accidentally make the best case for eliminating it."
mony @moneycaa: "oh btw middle schoolers can't read, high schoolers can't write a proper essay, college students can't differentiate a scholarly based article vs propaganda, and adults cant tell when a picture is AI but sure, get rid the dept. of education LOL"

Rhyen Staley on X - "The Biden Department of Education gave Philly schools roughly $4m for restorative justice programming. One of the “project advisors” was Angela Davis’ sister, who runs a RJ nonprofit. She also helped create Oakland Unified’s RJ program feature RJ circles on “white privilege.”"

Meme - "If talking bout sex at work is harassment but talking to kids at school bout sex is ok that's when u know shit ant ok" *Professor X using telepathy*

Meme - Niels Hoven 🐮 @NielsHoven: "This is the former deputy attorney general of California and an influential voice in education, saying that if your child is stuck doing work below their ability, then you must be a Tech Bro and your child’s learning needs don’t matter"
Andrew Bunner @andrewbunner: "Our district is as Niels describes. Our daughter got in trouble for working on her outside-school advanced math during class even though she finished the worksheet they were assigned."
Niels Hoven @NielsHoven: "the audacity of a student! to try to learn something while in school"
Benjamin Riley @benjaminjriley: "It's so weird how this keeps happening to the children of the Tech Bro community. Will no one speak for them?"

wanye on X - "I don’t think you have to read statements like this and pretend that you can’t tell that he thinks some constituencies are more important than others. I think you’re allowed to draw the obvious conclusion. This is what progressives would in other contexts describe as a, “dog whistle” and they would encourage you to derive from it a host of things this person likely believes about the group the statement is applied to. I think you’re totally allowed to do that here, too."

Chicago Teachers Union president claims standardized testing 'rooted in White supremacy' - "The president of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) earlier this month called standardized testing a “junk science rooted in White supremacy."  Stacy Davis Gates said in an Aug. 5 interview with the Chicago-based radio station WVON that the exams originate from the early-20th century eugenics movement, which centered around the belief that segregation and social exclusion would rid society of people thought to be inferior... A 2023 report from the Illinois State Board of Education found that roughly 26% of Chicago Public Schools students met or exceeded their English language arts performance level, while only 17.5% did so for math. In February, though, a study by Harvard and Stanford researchers determined that the city’s students in grades 3-8 ranked third in reading growth among the 100 largest school districts from 2019 to 2023. The CTU has pushed Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez to increase funding for the classrooms, claiming that doing so would protect progress made in the district."
Hide the metrics and always demand more money

Meme - "Figure 1: Time high school students spend on homework by race and parent's income
*most by Asians, then Whites, then Hispanics, then Blacks. More by non-low income than low income*"
Weird. We keep being told that homework is useless

Meme - Frank DeScushin @FrankDeScushin: "A Texas cheating scandal led to 200 unqualified teachers in the classroom, at least two of whom were sexual predators.  How the scheme worked:  Prospective teachers worried they couldn't pass Texas' certification test paid the pictured man, Vincent Grayson, $2500 to have someone take the test for them. Grayson then gave 20% to certifying official, Tywana Gilford Mason, to allow the racket, and Nicholas Newton, assistant principal at Booker T. Washington High School, took the test for unqualified candidates.  Grayson pocketed over a million dollars in the scheme.  In New America, noticing a pattern in these scandals where teachers and school administrators collude for fraudulent certification or to change students' grades is often treated as bad as the scandals themselves."
"200 TEACHERS CAUGHT: CHEATING SCANDAL. Who's Been Charged: Vincent Grayson, 57: Head boys basketball coach at Booker T. Washington High School in Houston ISD, Grayson is accused of organizing the scheme. 'Tywana Gilford Mason, 51: Former director and certifying official at the Houston Training and Education Center, Mason allegedly helped conceal the proxy scheme as a test proctor. Nicholas Newton, 35: Assistant principal at Booker T. Washington High School, Newton reportedly acted as a proxy test-taker in the cheating ring. Darian Nikole Wilhite, 22: Proctor at TACTIX, Wilhite is accused of taking bribes to allow proxy testing. LaShonda Roberts, gp: Assistant principal at Yates High School, Roberts is alleged to have recruited nearly 100 teachers to participate in the scheme."

Meme - pagliacci the hated 🌝 @Slatzism: "hey guys guess what ?  Mr. “more kids need to have their lives ruined” works for the Department of Child Services in Florida and is a former substitute teacher for Miami-Dade County Public Schools. 🌞"
joeycon @seasalt_bae: "Actually more kids need to have their lives ruined for not taking bigotry and discrimination seriously and genuinely believing that they're untouchable or the world will never hold them accountable for their actions"
ryan @scubaryan_: "this little girl was being racist and instantly regretted it when she found out he was livesteaming"

Meme - Wesley Yang @wesyang: "The sex education NGO the Future of Sex Education Initiative explains:  “not only are younger children able to discuss sexuality-related issues but that the early grades may, in fact, be the best time to introduce topics related to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, gender equality, and social justice related to the LGBTQ community before hetero- and cisnormative values and assumptions become more deeply ingrained and less mutable.”"
Nicki Neily @nickineily: "Why are kindergarteners — who are 6 years old — being forced to learn about “gender identity” and why can’t their parents opt them out?"
"Parents in Massachusetts School District Can't Opt Out of 'Sexuality,' 'Gender Identity' Lessons"

Oregon school principal charged with felonies amid allegations she covered up child sex abuse scandal - "The principal St. Helens school in Oregon has surrendered to the Columbia County Sheriff's Office on felony criminal charges amid a damning child sex abuse scandal. Dr. Kathryn "Katy" Wagner, 45, was booked into Columbia County Jail... Wagner, the principal of St. Helens High School, was indicted Tuesday by a Columbia County grand jury on two counts of felony first-degree criminal mistreatment, two counts of first-degree official misconduct, and two counts of second-degree official misconduct, court documents show. She has been accused of failing to disclose child sex abuse allegations and intentionally withholding essential and adequate physical care from the minor student victims, detectives with the St. Helens Police Department said following a lengthy investigation.  The school district placed Wagner on administrative leave on Nov. 15, along with district superintendent Scott Stickwell. The principal's arrest follows a two-month probe into a history of minor sex abuse complaints at St. Helens High School. Under Oregon's mandatory reporter law, public officials and civil servants are required to report minor sex abuse allegations to law enforcement, which Wagner reportedly refused to do."
Time to bash the Catholic Church for covering up child sexual abuse again!

Libs of TikTok on X - "Meet Andrew Stewart, a teacher at @WestBroadwayMS in Rhode Island. After threatening to attack a store owner with a wooden board, Andrew destroyed a Trump sign while wearing a "Proud Trans Teacher" shirt. Parents, these are the kinds of teachers "educating" your kids."

Crémieux on X - "I just learned the OECD had a conference around the release of the latest round of PISA scores.  Everyone was giving presentations, talking about reforms and whatnot, and then someone showed my graphs showing America performs well when split by race.  They paused the conference.
They came back and banned the topic.  But then, it was all anyone talked about."

Scarlett Johnson on X - "A white child with dyslexia is denied essential reading intervention due to the Wisconsin State Superintendent and Green Bay Area Public School Administration prioritizing identity politics over the needs of children. CRT hurts our kids."
Frank DeScushin on X - "If a school states they prioritize resources to non-white students and then denies resources to a white student, the legal burden shouldn’t be on the student to prove discrimination. It should be on the school to prove they didn’t act in accord with their discriminatory policy."
Mother claims Wisconsin school discriminated against her white dyslexic son - "A Wisconsin school board has launched an internal investigation after a mother claimed her son was denied access to additional reading resources because he is white.  Colbey Decker has accused Green Bay Area School District of discriminating against her dyslexic, elementary school-aged son by prioritising racial minority pupils for access to specialist educational services.  In a letter threatening legal action against the school board, Ms Decker said last week that her son was denied entry to the school district’s literacy programme for almost a full year because he was not a racial minority.  “The school implied to me that my child would already be receiving one-on-one reading support if he were black, Hispanic, or First Nation,” she said.  “I was speechless. I think we need to help every student in need, and using the guise of ‘diversity’ simply creates more division and hurts all students.”... According to an excerpt from what appears to be a school success plan for Green Bay’s King Elementary School, seen by The Telegraph, one of the “high priority strategies” for literacy is “prioritising additional resources to First Nations, Black, and Hispanic students”."

Daniel Buck, “Youngest Old Man in Ed Reform” on X - "The largest SEL conference in the country. A few sessions:
- "Exemplary white teachers"
- "Gender inclusive schools"
- "Climate change and SEL"
- Using SEL to advance social justice
SEL has just become a trojan horse for boilerplate progressivism in the classroom"

Thread by @Erin4Parents on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "As Colorado legislators continue to pass laws to be LESS transparent (and even “republicans” like @SoperMatthew and Janice Rich sign onto them) — It’s time to talk about WHY government transparency is necessary.  I’ll start…
In 2021, my little girl was sexualized, groomed and transitioned to a boy in her 6th grade classroom. Then the district ignored me, tried to justify it, LIED to me, and had unthinkable conversations about my family & child & how I must be abusive and deserve a CPS visit because I disagreed with what they did.  It was only because of exercising my right to public records that I was able to see their true intentions, actions, and agenda.  Here are some examples of the things I discovered through public record that no one EVER would have known that my lying, scheming school district was doing:
The school board president colluded with my child’s abuser (an outside party who runs “Skittles” and splashnoco.org ) to keep me *quiet* … referring to parents who find out as “barriers” that the school board has removed at other middle schools and claiming we have no rights. *Here’s a visual of the 2 people scheming against my family behind closed doors in this email — 3 days after they hurt my child. Here they are discussing sending a mandated reporter to my home for a “well-child check” because I removed my girl from their abusive environment. (And yes, they did send someone to my home.)  They high 5 each other for being “allies” — for their brave, admirable, hard (but rewarding) work undermining parents & sexualizing little kids. Here I discovered that someone else was invited in to groom and sexualize my daughter …. A self-proclaimed “genderqueer shapeshifting blood witch” who plays in her own blood, mutilates her own body, and publicly writes about her experiences in Aleister Crowley sex dungeons.  Her names Charlie, but she now goes by “Silen Wellington” ((Read full story on her here: theepochtimes.com/us/after-scand… )) Oh! And here is the invite for my child (and other 11 & 12-year-olds) to secretly connect with her skittles/splash groomer and the shapeshifting witch PRIVATELY on Discord (after “friending” them and agreeing to the confidentiality “rules” of course.)  When I went public — Here is the district’s lgbtqia+ coordinator checking in on the teacher: saying it must be so hard to face backlash for supporting her students!  And the teacher saying she “feels awful” for my daughter having to experience this (THIS meaning her mother publicly standing up against the harm they caused her.)  Public records show that the teachers were *celebrated* and *supported* for harming my child and others.  Meanwhile, the district had waged a public campaign to discredit and smear me: the mom whose child they hurt and then refused to take accountability for it when I tried for nearly a year to handle it privately.
Here are my child’s abuser Art teacher & school counselor many months AFTER WE RAISED CONCERN still bragging about their GSA “art club” and inviting collaboration from the genderqueer shapeshifting blood witch in their secret gender & sexuality meetings in the classroom.  Here is the witch being invited to privately meet off site with a student to help “decrease their barriers”. Here is a middle school counselor scheming with district LGBTQ lady about keeping SECRET lists of kids’ names & pronouns at school (with a column for how to lie to their parents when communicating home.)  They make sure to vilify parents & double-down on the secrecy policy.
Just for fun, here’s another crazy story about my school distirct’s deceit and lies by the Fox News— Again, I found these emails of them transitioning an ELEMENTARY student even after parents found out and said STOP IT.  The principal learned from the *shapeshifting witch* in district staff training that rights lie with children, not parents. And then the district’s legal department even confirmed this policy & practice of lying to parents.  foxnews.com/media/elementa…
Again, this was ALL intentionally done in secret: the club, the communications, the attack on my family and others.  Without CORA law, I would not have known about any of this. No one would.  And now former PSD school board member Cathy Kipp is trying to run this anti-transparency law again.  Why? Because they don’t like it when parents like me expose their own behavior in their own words.  They want to keep us in the dark and silence us while they trample our rights and violate our children.  Don’t let them. #Fight4CORA"

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "43 percent of all students in DC public schools were chronically absent during the 2022-2023 school year."
Damn racism keeping minority students behind!

Libs of TikTok on X - "Teacher shows off a “social justice” day in her school. Students spend an entire day learning about "banned books", climate change, LGBTQ rights, resistance, and protesting. This school would be stripped of their funding under Trump's new Executive Order."

Buck Sexton on X - "Had a teacher friend years ago who was assigned to a special program public school in a rough nyc area. Straightforward idea- flood this one school with top teachers and ample resources-then the low-income kids in it will excel. Replicate it elsewhere. She said the classrooms had brand new Mac computers, iPads, All the bells and whistles. Plus low student-teacher ratio.   But nothing changed for the kids, scores or behavior issues, over years and years while she was there. Why?   Well, she said out of 30 kids, maybe 3 would have parents show up for parent teacher conference day- often a grandparent. Without parental support, fostering a culture of learning, it won’t get better.   You’ll never hear the truth from Randi W. and the rest of the Ed cartel though. They don’t care about the kids, only “more resources” (taxpayer dollars) for adults."
Clearly, they didn't spend enough money and schools are underfunded

Meme - "Americans: why do police unions protect bad cops and keep them employed?
Teachers unions:"

Connecticut high school graduate alleges she can’t read or write in lawsuit - "Aleysha Ortiz is 19 years old and dreams of one day writing stories and maybe even a book. That may sound like a reasonable aspiration for a teenager recently out of high school, but for Aleysha it will be much harder.  Despite graduating last June from Hartford Public High School in Hartford, Connecticut, and earning a scholarship to college, Aleysha is illiterate. She says she cannot read or write... She graduated with honors, which usually means a student has demonstrated academic excellence. But after 12 years of attending public schools in Hartford, Aleysha testified at a May 2024 city council meeting that she could not read or write. Suddenly, she says, school officials seemed concerned about awarding her a diploma.   Two days before graduation, she says, school district officials told her she could defer accepting the diploma in exchange for intensive services. Aleysha didn’t listen.  “I decided, they (the school) had 12 years,” she says. “Now it’s my time.”  Aleysha is now suing the Hartford Board of Education and the City of Hartford for negligence, as well as her special education case manager, Tilda Santiago, for negligent infliction of emotional distress."
If they hadn't let her graduate, she'd have sued for discrimination

Arjun Panickssery on X - "Mississippi has the best demographic-adjusted NAEP (4th & 8th grade) scores now The "Mississippi Miracle" started in 2012 when the Republican governor/legislature introduced phonics-based instruction and began to hold back ~10% of 3rd graders per year who fail a reading test"
Arpit Gupta on X - "Phonics — teaching kids to sound words out — is a better method for earning to read, but offers less autonomy to teachers who often don't like it MS first passed a law mandating phonics, and saw reading scores go up a lot. Many, but not all states, followed"
𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖊 🕯 on X - "I like how there’s no way to defend teachers’ irrational dislike for phonics. It’s just entirely baseless and evil. It reflects so poorly on them both as a profession and individually. It’d be like if firefighters refused to use water, and literally couldn’t explain why."
Trust the Experts!

Thread by @panickssery on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Mississippi has the best demographic-adjusted NAEP (4th & 8th grade) scores now.  The "Mississippi Miracle" started in 2012 when the Republican governor/legislature introduced phonics-based instruction and began to hold back ~10% of 3rd graders per year who fail a reading test. In contrast, Oregon, with the lowest demographic-adjusted scores, has a Board of Education that has indefinitely "paused" since 2020 the use of any standardized test as a graduation requirement.  Most of this stuff isn't rocket science"
I saw a left winger claim that Mississippi improved because of throwing more money at the problem. Time to mock red states and praise blue ones

Nicholas Kristof on X - "It's astonishing to witness the improvement in public education--reading, math, attendance, grad rates--in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. But we're busy fighting culture wars rather than scaling up what these three states have done. Please do read:"
Daniel Friedman on X - "The reason this is happening is that conservative states use academic tracking and remove behavior problems from the classroom. Having a few chronically absent behavior problems who are years behind grade level in a classroom slows everyone’s progress.  Schools eliminated disciplinary punishment, academic failure and tracked classes because the students removed from the classroom by these policies were disproportionately black.  But the students whose education is derailed when you keep all these problems in the classroom are also black."

The Push for Phonics-Based Reading Instruction in Schools | TIME - "As a teacher in Oakland, Calif., Kareem Weaver helped struggling fourth- and fifth-grade kids learn to read by using a very structured, phonics-based reading curriculum called Open Court. It worked for the students, but not so much for the teachers. “For seven years in a row, Oakland was the fastest-gaining urban district in California for reading,” recalls Weaver. “And we hated it.”  The teachers felt like curriculum robots—and pushed back. “This seems dehumanizing, this is colonizing, this is the man telling us what to do,” says Weaver, describing their response to the approach. “So we fought tooth and nail as a teacher group to throw that out.” It was replaced in 2015 by a curriculum that emphasized rich literary experiences. “Those who wanted to fight for social justice, they figured that this new progressive way of teaching reading was the way,” he says."
Madame Fragonard on X - "k-12 education now attracts narcissistic wannabe creative types who think they’re too good for normal jobs the end result is that they’ve bullied their way into constructing a curriculum solely concerned with providing an aesthetically gratifying experience for the teachers"
This explains why US teachers keep complaining. School is not primarily about educating students
Progressive teaching is about sabotaging your students' skills. Maybe so when they fail in life, they will be radicalised into being left wingers

Niels Hoven 🐮 on X - "Why would educators be opposed to teaching kids to sound out words? Well, the faculty at Minnesota State's college of education object to the "promotion of teaching methods developed [...] during the Jim Crow era""
Seasonal Clickfarm Worker on X - "There are so many domains in which a racial justice framing has been used as a shortcut to getting whatever unrelated thing progressives want, because arguing against racial justice was impossible. This problem continues unabated."

Niels Hoven 🐮 on X - "We have illiterate teenagers because schools tell kids to guess at words instead of sounding them out"
James Lindsay, anti-Communist on X - "Sooner or later, we need to reckon with the fact that once the Critical Pedagogues took over education schools (arguably by the 90s, certainly by the early 2000s), they started breaking education completely.  The failures they generate are then fed back into the system to provide further justifications for their broken and traumatizing methods, like "Social-Emotional Learning" to help kids deal with the frustrations of failing to learn.  Because government (the Department of Education under Bush 43, in this case) decided that what education needed more than anything were measuring sticks placed everywhere, their accountability approaches became tools by which the Critical Pedagogues could tie money to their broken and damaging methods.  What we see here is teaching normal children to read using a technique designed to help dyslexic kids bridge the gap because phonics often doesn't work well with dyslexia. Now every kid has to learn this way, which will get them recognized as struggling, which will justify more money and special budgets for the learning challenges under this whole broken grift.  Worst of all, the teachers themselves are put into a position where they think they're genuinely expressing care and concern for kids who they think need special attention when in fact what they need are the old reliable methods that work with most kids without frustrating them.  I hear from teachers all the time who try to explain to me why Social-Emotional Learning is so important with all these kids who are struggling, and they ask rhetorical questions like, "what are we supposed to do, just not care about these kids?"  The answer is that they need to get off the treadmill of broken methods, but they can't. They don't know other methods, the funding and administration demand these methods, and the crisis of broken kids is right in front of them."

Breaking Point (Mass Migration and Managed Decline in the UK)

Breaking point

What makes a nation? I’d suggest six things.

A people who share a common territory, who feel a shared identity, who have a collective memory or history, speak a common language, have a similar set of values, and as a result of all these things, have a distinctive culture and way of life.

Yes, economic prosperity matters. But much more important than money, than GDP, as philosopher Sir Roger Scruton once said, is a deep and powerful sense that ‘we belong together and that we will stand by each other in the real emergencies’.

A nation, in other words, requires a “we” —a deep sense of unity that transcends politics and markets.

And for that you need something else —social trust. For a nation to work and survive, its people must be willing to trust others in the community they do not know but who they support because they see them contributing to the collective pot, playing by the rules, and preserving and passing on the same cultural inheritance.

Which raises a different question. How, then, might you destroy a nation?

You would undermine all these things. You would, either gradually or suddenly, strip away this belief among people that they share a distinctive identity, history, and culture. You would flood the national community with outsiders who do not contribute to the collective pot, who do not play by the rules, and who hold radically different if not incompatible identities, histories, religions, cultures and ways of life.

And in this way, slowly but surely, you would erode and then finally destroy that much deeper sense of “we” which lies at the very heart of a nation, has been built up over countless generations and holds it together.

Sound familiar?

I ask because I suspect that’s how many people in Britain will be feeling today when they cast their eyes over the latest statistics, released yesterday, about how mass, uncontrolled immigration is fundamentally changing the nature of their country.

What we can see in the shocking numbers is a national community and a people that are now being subjected —against their wishes— to an extreme policy that is transforming, undermining, and hollowing out the country they once knew.

They are astonishing and alarming in equal measure.

In the year ending June 2024, some 1.2 million people —equivalent to a city the size of Birmingham—migrated into Britain.

And more than 1 million of them came from outside Europe —from countries that have completely different if not incompatible histories, religions, and cultures.

Here’s just one of many mind-boggling statistics I could put before you.

Astonishingly, today, some 86% of all immigration into Britain comes from outside Europe —typically from India, Nigeria, Pakistan, China, and Zimbabwe.

In fact, in every year since 2022 immigration from outside Europe represented more than 80% of all immigration into Britain.

Just think about that for a moment.

The vast majority of immigrants flooding into Britain are now coming from countries that have much lower levels of education, skills, and prosperity, as well as religions and cultures that are utterly different from those that incubate European nations.

How can you build an integrated, cohesive, prosperous, and high-trust society on this? Can anybody in the expert class tell me? Does anybody even have a plan?

Meanwhile, the rate of ‘net migration’ into Britain, meaning the number of people coming in minus the number leaving, remains at an all-time high of 728,000.

728,000 people all looking for homes to buy, flats to rent, places in schools, doctors appointments, treatments on the National Health Service, and more, at the same time as recent governments have slashed spending and failed to build sufficient houses.

This number is more than twice the number when the British people voted for Brexit, in 2016, believing their elected politicians when they said this would help “lower the overall numbers”, and more than three times the number when the Tories came to power in 2010, similarly promising to slash net migration to the “tens of thousands”.

In the last four years alone, remarkably, net migration added more than 2.5 million people to Britain’s population, while more than 3.5 million people overall migrated into the country. It is simply the biggest wave of immigration on record.

Despite nobody in the political class speaking openly about what all this might mean for housing, infrastructure, the environment, and social cohesion, this extreme policy of mass immigration has now added the combined populations of Leeds, Liverpool, Sheffield, Manchester, and Bristol to the country in the space of just one parliament.

And if you take an even wider view then, since 2012, net migration has added 4.5 million people to the country, equivalent to four cities the size of Birmingham.

At what point, one might ask, did our mainstream politicians on both the Left and Right decide they would not only consistently ignore people’s request for lower immigration but also completely destroy people’s trust in the entire system?

Because that’s what they’re doing. They’re treating hardworking, tax-paying people with contempt, promising one thing only to then do the complete opposite while lying to their face. Full-scale revolutions have started from less.

While all this is further hollowing out the shared sense of “we” that has long guided our nation, it’s also unquestionably making us poorer, too —even if the pro-migration zealots in the Treasury, charities, universities, and the elite class refuse to accept it.

For example, here’s another shocking statistic you won’t hear about on BBC Verify. What percentage of immigrants who have come to Britain since 2018 came on work visas —to do decent jobs, on decent money, making a net contribution to the pot?

16%.

That’s right. Just 16%.

The rest are relatives of migrants, students, asylum-seekers, and migrants on other visas that are not actually driving prosperity at all.

Since 2021, for example, more than 1 million Indians have migrated into Britain but less than half of them, only 44%, came here to work. Nearly half a million Nigerians migrated in but only one in three came on work visas. And nearly 300,000 Pakistanis have come too but only one in ten are on work visas.

As I pointed out on X, the situation is now so absurd that last year relatives of migrant workers outnumbered actual migrant workers!

This is, put simply, insane. Nobody voted for this. No serious economist or historian of nations would look at this extreme policy and think: “yes, this makes sense. This is how you create prosperous and cohesive nations”.

But this is what’s being imposed on us from above, and what is now pushing Great Britain, the country we all love, into managed decline.

Because what we’re now living with is what I call “immigration austerity” —a policy that’s pushing us all into a low-growth, dismal, and unproductive Deliveroo economy with shabby and declining public services to go with it.

A place that works well for global corporations addicted to cheap labour and radical woke progressives for whom pro-immigration is a new religion, but which does not work at all for the Forgotten Majority in this country who are left to pay the price.

And the economic price is clear for all to see.

As even the Office for Budget Responsibility has been forced to point out, every low-wage, low-skill migrant entering Britain today, usually from outside Europe, costs the British taxpayer, on average, between £150,000 and £1 million.

But look too at the astronomical economic cost of our broken asylum system, released yesterday. Last year, the British people paid —wait for it— £5.4 billion on the asylum system, which is visibly failing to deal with illegal migration.

To put that in perspective, we just took winter fuel payments off British pensioners to save £1.5 billion. That’s 27% of the asylum budget.

Local councils cut frontline services to save £564 million, meaning no more Meals on Wheels for grandma and no libraries for kids. That’s 10% of the asylum budget.

Our hapless Labour government just smashed family farms up and down these islands to raise £520 million when Mum and Dad die. That’s not even 10% of the budget.

And police in London face £450 million in cuts, meaning burglaries, shoplifting and gang violence will likely remain de facto legal. That’s 8% of the asylum budget.

Get the picture?

All these numbers reflect political choices and our leaders on both the Left and Right have clearly chosen to represent anybody and everybody except the British people.

We’re now having to say goodbye to winter fuel payments for our grandparents, family farms that have been here for generations, public services in our communities, and safe streets all so we can put illegal migrants from places as different as Vietnam and Iraq, who have already broken our laws, including a not insignificant number who go on to commit further crimes, into fancy-looking hotels with cash cards, phones, and private healthcare. And over time we’ll have to say goodbye to many other things, too.

Because when a nation so visibly stops putting its own people first, when its leaders stop cultivating that shared sense of identity, history, culture, and way of life that has long held it together, you have to wonder what will happen to that deeper sense of “we”. And in the end, I suspect that this will be the price we are forced to pay. The price will not just be measured in money but in the destruction of all those things that make a nation and which have long held us together in this place we call home.

Links - 3rd March 2026 (1 - China's 'Peaceful' Rise: Mark Carney)

Mark Carney on X - "The Canada-China relationship has been distant and uncertain for nearly a decade. We’re changing that, with a new strategic partnership that benefits the people of both our nations."
Tristin Hopper on X - "I'm trying to think of a Liberal principle that *isn't* betrayed by this. It betrays Ukraine. It betrays their supposed love of the climate and the world's oceans. It erases any lip service they've ever given to human rights or the rule of law. It's evil, is what it is."
Melissa Chen on X - "Many pro-democracy Chinese liberals who end up immigrating to Canada are often stunned by the strange misalignment of the stated progressive beliefs of the Liberal Party with their warm embrace of the CPP, an authoritarian regime that governs in opposition to every value that progressives claim to hold dear.  I believe Trudeau accidentally blurted out part of the truth back in 2013. Carney isn't far off - he too admires the China model and he's supercharging its implementation in Canada."

Isaac Stone Fish on X - "Many Chinese Canadians are far more hawkish on China than their non-Chinese descent peers. They often know the country better, and they often understand the problems with the Chinese Communist Party. Politicians need to be very careful in implying that diaspora Chinese want closer relations with China. It's disingenuous and dangerous."

Rick Perkins on X - "It’s amazing how all the Carney Elbows up crowd who want everyone to buy Canadian are cheering 70,000 EVs coming from China and displacing Canadian and North American assembled cars and crushing our auto industry jobs. Hypocrites much?"

Carney’s China pivot raises risks for Canada’s democracy | Toronto Sun - "Walking through Lafayette Park and across the north side of the White House on Monday afternoon, there was the usual gaggle of people taking selfies. There were also the usual protesters, people with signs reading “not my president” and of course given the recent news, protesting ICE in Minnesota.  Regardless of who is in the White House, there are always protesters outside expressing their displeasure with the president of the day. Across Washington you can see signs of support for Donald Trump and signs of opposition. Democracy, despite reports of its demise, is not dead in America. When Mark Carney arrives in Beijing to meet with President Xi Jinping there won’t be any protesters outside as he arrives. No one will hold up signs that claim Xi is not their president and if they tried, they would be arrested or worse.  It’s important to keep these distinctions in mind as Carney travels to China to “pivot” our trading relationship away from the United States.To many Canadians this is welcome news since they see the United States under Donald Trump as being authoritarian, dictatorial, against democracy and an unreliable trading partner. Every single one of those descriptions already applies to China and yet in reaction to the election of Trump our elite class want to embrace an actual authoritarian dictatorship that has already snuffed out democracy in Hong Kong and is threatening to do so in Taiwan... Many Canadians will be old enough to remember Nortel, at one point Canada’s biggest tech success. The company was taken down in large part due to Chinese industrial espionage designed to hurt Nortel and help Chinese firms.  Ask anyone who has been involved in joint ventures with Chinese firms. Often, once the technology from the Canadian firm has been transferred to China, the Canadian firm is eventually cut out.  On direct trade on current issues such as canola, China is an incredibly unreliable partner. They disrupted trade back in 2013-14, they slapped tariffs on Canadian exports in 2017 and had a two-year ban starting in 2020 over the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the heiress of Huawei.  Their push for cheap electric cars, heavily subsidized by the Chinese government is all part of a plan for industrial dominance. Flood the market with cheap product, take market share, undermine domestic production, leave Canada dependent on Chinese made products — that is the plan in a nutshell... “China has never threatened our sovereignty,” is the common retort from those defending the move.  Of course, China has threatened our sovereignty and continues to do so.  They have meddled in several of our federal and provincial elections to ensure the outcome of their choice. They have established secret police stations to intimidate Canadian citizens, especially those who have immigrated from China — a move that puts Beijing’s power in the heart of Canada.  In our Arctic, China continues to ignore our sovereign waters and probe throughout our territorial waters with both ice breakers and ghost ships.  But sure, China never threatens our sovereignty.  It’s also a country that threatens democracy. They took Hong Kong from a beacon of freedom to a police state rather quickly, even imprisoning people like Jimmy Lai who dared to speak out. They continue to repress Tibet and Uyghur Muslims and are threatening the independence of Taiwan.  As Prime Minister Carney is heading to China, two Liberal MPs cut their trip to Taiwan short so as not to anger President Xi and the other dictators in Beijing. Trump and his policies are a challenge for Canada, no doubt about that. To pretend that he is running a dictatorship that we can’t possibly work with while cozying up to China is beyond ridiculous."
When you just hate the US and Trump. This is like how "pro-Palestine" left wingers love it despite it embodying almost everything they otherwise hate

How Carney's trip to Beijing struck a surprising new tone with China - " The Carney government says its taking precautions in its dealing with China, described by Canada’s national security agencies as the most sophisticated and able threat actor facing the country.  Carney said Canada discussed its expectations and “red lines” with the Chinese government last week with respect to foreign interference and other public safety issues. He also promised that the government was going into this new “strategic partnership” with “clear eyes” and guardrails preventing China from investing in certain sensitive industries. He recently cited artificial intelligence and critical minerals as examples.  But will that be enough to prevent China from continuing to be the most sophisticated and prevalent cyber and foreign interference actor against Canada, as described by Canada’s national security agencies?  In the meantime, the public service’s concerns about security while in China were certainly obvious from the start of the trip.  One hour before Can Force One entered Chinese airspace Wednesday, all public servants and political staff were required to power down their usual work and personal devices and stash them in a Faraday bag.  While in Beijing, they all used “burner” devices, which were promptly returned as soon as the delegation’s plane left Chinese airspace Saturday.  There’s no need to use burners in Qatar and Switzerland — the next stops on the eight-day trip — showing that not all allies are on equal security footing."

What they’re saying an independent Alberta would look like - "Prime Minister Mark Carney gave a press conference announcing that Canada would “increase cooperation” with Chinese law enforcement in order to “better combat narcotics trafficking, transnational crime, cyber crime and money laundering.” According to Canadian law enforcement, a disproportionate amount of all those categories can be blamed on the very Chinese authorities Carney is looking to partner with. As one of several examples, the Chinese military was the chief suspect in a devastating hack of the Canadian telecom firm Nortel. More recently, a Canadian subsidiary of the state-owned Industrial and Commercial Bank of China was identified as a habitual violator of Canadian money laundering regulations."

Thread by @MichaelKovrig on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "What to make of PM Carney’s first official visit to China? This was never just a courtesy call. Xi Jinping framed the visit as a “turning point” because the CCP wants concrete things from Canada, including market access for its hypersubsidized EVs, stable energy supplies, and geopolitical deference. With Canada–U.S. relations under strain, the General Secretary smelled blood in the water and seized a moment of increased leverage.  Carney secured limited relief for farmers and reopened dialogue channels, but Xi kept his pressure tools and is sure to keep using them. So Canada needs to treat this as a rope-a-dope in an ongoing trade slugfest, and redouble its efforts to reduce dependence on China by diversifying markets for vulnerable sectors. And it needs a plan for how its domestic car industry and cybersecurity defences will cope with Chinese EVs. Guardrails for national security, sovereignty, political interference, and harm to Canadians will need to rise. More on this in my conversation with David Cochrane on @CBCNews @PnPCBC. Full video link here:"

Tristin Hopper on X - ""All Carney did was sign a trade deal. Everyone trades with China." That's not what he did, though. It's literally on video that this isn't what he did. It's international headlines that this isn't what he did. Do you idiots even listen to yourselves?"
BTN1973 on X - "Everyone conveniently leaves out the security cooperation and New World Order part. I told my wife that today (she's left of centre) and she was actually very concerned with the pivot to China. She listens to CBC daily and had no idea about the security part of the conversation."
Brian Forbes on X - "Not a lot of people have called a trade agreement "the new world order"..."

Meme - Mark Carney giving Trump an upturned finger: "CANADA WILL Never BE THE 51T STATE!"
Mark Carney hugging Xi Jinping: "WE'RE CHINA'S 24th PROVINCE"

Meme - "Communist China:
Interferes in our elections
Places bounties on Canadians' heads
Sets up secret police stations on our soil
Kidnaps our citizens
Steals our tech
Tariffs our goods
Donald Trump:
Made some 51st state jokes
Also tariffs our goods"
WHY ARE THE CARNEY LIBERALS MOVING TOWARD CHINA?"

Melissa Chen on X - "It's funny how so many libs are hailing Carney's WEF speech as one of the greatest political speeches ever. Here's a recap:
> He described the old post-WWII order as a "useful fiction" propped up by US hegemony, now over, requiring middle powers to band together, diversify dependencies, and prioritize withstanding coercion from larger powers
> "They'll buy insurance, increase options in order to rebuild sovereignty – sovereignty that was once grounded in rules, but will increasingly be anchored in the ability to withstand pressure."
> "We accept what's offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It's the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination."
Carney's speech uses sovereignty as a central, muscular theme in a way that feels unusually nationalist and realist for a WEF setting, which typically emphasizes global cooperation, integration, and stakeholder capitalism. That rhetorical shift from "global rules" to "real sovereignty through resilience and options" and resistance to external pressures sound familiar, don't they? It sounds strikingly like a speech that could have been made by Viktor Orbán who Western libs and Eurocrats have despised for precisely holding these views and running his country this way."
Meaghan Mobbs on X - "This whole thing would be far more credible if he hadn’t just bent the knee to Beijing.   How exactly does partnering with China square with his talk of “ad hoc coalitions based on shared values and interests”? Or do his newfound “principles” about standing up to great powers and no longer tolerating violations of international norms apply only to the United States?  China has waged a far more aggressive, years-long pressure campaign against Canada itself, including intimidation and targeting of Canadian MPs on Canadian soil. That record is conveniently ignored.  It would also help if Canada weren’t consistently near the back of the pack on NATO defense spending, or if it had demonstrated even baseline seriousness about investing in its own defense.  At best, this speech reads as thinly veiled frustration with Trump and the U.S., dressed up as moral clarity. At worst, it will become the “sophisticated” excuse adopted by every wavering Western country looking to justify accommodation with China while outsourcing real risk and responsibility to Washington."

Jason James on X - "I watched this speech in full last night. Here's the takeaway:  The EU and it's subordinates (Canada, Australia, etc) are committed to this narrative of Trump as a Hitlerian figure.  Carney begins his speech by asserting that the western rules based order was always a façade—which is correct.  He then evokes Václav Havel's Power of the Powerless—one of the great dissenting pieces on Soviet era communism. The irony here is insane considering he just signed Canada into a partnership with China—the nation that adopted Stalinist communism and turned it up to a degree that would've even made Stalin sweat—while Canada is adopting much of the authoritarianism in the Chinese system.  The rest of the speech is a diatribe against America as the global hegemon. He uses a lot of fancy WEF style phrases like "value based realism", which don't really mean anything other than "we're not afraid to show our hand now." He spends much of his speech justifying the middle powers clinging to the Chinese globalist machine by contextualizing Trump and the United States as global bullies.  Which is historically true. But in this context, US hegemony is actually the wall holding back the China-led "new world order" global finance bloodsuckers like Carney and Larry Fink are desperate to introduce. They're all in on China because China's version of communo-fascism (public private partnerships) is the system that will deliver them the neofeudal future they seek (Carney, Fink, Gates, etc as the aristocracy and the rest of us as techno-slaves).  I'm convinced Mark Carney was installed as an economic assassin for China. His close financial proximity to the Trump family ($1 billion loan to Jared Kushner via Brookfield) and his connection to London makes him the perfect weapon against the Reagan era free markets Trump is trying to restore.  Juxtapose this speech against Howard Lutnick's comments on the WEF economics panel, and you get a full view of what's happening here. Canada and the EU are shilling for China, the United States is trying to isolate the American continent before the hammer drops.  The American Empire is messy, but it's far more preferential to what Carney and his China-fueled globalist creep club have planned for us. The world will have a superpower whether we like it or not, and America has to win."

Dean Allison on X - "Carney is wrong.  While the overwhelming approval of the chattering class in Canada’s state funded/subsidized media of Carney’s speech was expressed in a planned, coordinated unison, the content of the speech was inaccurate in many respects.   Let’s face it: Carney has barely done anything as Prime Minister since he was elected last April. Whatever little he’s done is overshadowed by his performative and drama inducing rhetoric, very much like this speech in Davos. Reminiscent of someone?   Reality is, the US will continue to be Canada’s neighbour, sharing the longest land border in the world, our closest economic ally, with the most powerful military in the world. These are the facts.  Given this reality, where is the desperately needed deal Carney promised by July 21, 2025? Today is January 21, 2026!   Is he prioritizing China over the US? Is he aligning with China over the US? Does he think the dictatorship in China is a more trustworthy and reliable partner than the US? Because those are the signals he’s sending out.  Another reality. The world started materially changing (yet again) about a decade ago, while successive Liberal governments made things here exponentially worse in domestic and international matters. Guess who was Trudeau’s advisor since 2020? Our current and dear Prime Minister Carney.   So, Mr. Prime Minister, spare us the performance for your pals in the state funded/subsidized media with rhetoric only they clap to and approve of.   Get the real work done, in reality - you know, where Canadians live and work and raise families. These folks can’t afford homes, and find it hard to buy food. They can barely afford to heat their homes. This is largely because of your advice to Justin Trudeau, Mr. Prime Minister.   So go out there and speak with the real people of Canada. In reality. Not the Davos fantasyland you’re used to, Mr. Prime Minister. Land in reality because Canadians here at home are desperate for solutions, while you jet set around the world pretending to understand their struggles, just to get your rich and powerful pals’ stamp of approval."

Carney's warning against U.S. misses mark in Switzerland - "he spoke about how middle powers, which Canada once was, can work together to try to shape the world.  “The middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” Carney said.  It’s a good sound bite but also sounds like a slogan, the kind that Carney formerly railed against... Much of his speech was about the great power rivalry that is happening between the United States, Russia and China. The problem is that he was highly critical in the Americans walking away from the international rules-based order while not acknowledging that China and Russia walked away from it years if not decades ago... Sure, the Russians took Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and did a full invasion in 2022. And yes, China has been occupying Tibet for decades and has oppressed Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang district of the company, but let’s be worried about the Americans. As American Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent pointed out at Davos, the Europeans have not stopped buying Russian oil and gas even as Putin wages war against Ukraine.  The big problem with Carney’s speech is that he described the Americans as abandoning from the rules-based order while never acknowledging that both China and Russia did the same years if not decades ago. A big part of why Trump was elected is that he promised not to let China and Russia grow at the expense of America.  Carney then stated that the rules-based order was dead due to the Americans. “Stop invoking the rules-based international order as though it still functions as advertised. Call it what it is, a system of intensifying great power rivalry, where the most powerful pursue their interests, using economic integration as coercion,” Carney said.  The problem is, his warning against the United States would more likely be applied to China. Carney has decided to align our country with China rather than the United States and that is unlikely to play well for us long term."

Harrison Lowman on X - "Why is the Carney government rolling out the red carpet for Chinese propaganda media?... A 2024 National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians report states when looking at covertly influencing Canadian opinion through media, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been the “most capable." They found that China is “interfering with Canadian media content via direct engagement with Canadian media executives and journalists.” A 2018 Guardian investigation states, “China is trying to reshape the global information environment with massive infusions of money—funding paid-for advertorials, sponsored journalistic coverage and heavily massaged positive messages from boosters…to exploit the vulnerabilities of the free press to its advantage.” In 2012, Xinhua news service, while operating in this country, was accused by their own employee of “working as agents of the Chinese government" while in Canada, after allegations they had that Canadian journalist spy on the Dalai Lama. They were also accused of attempting to collect the names and addresses of people who protested a Chinese premier in Ottawa. They've since been banned from Parliament military briefings. They deny wrongdoing. In China, foreign journalists are repeatedly spied on, censored, intimidated, with sources often whisked away in vans by government minders. Media tycoon Jimmy Lai was just convicted of sedation and foreign collusion in Hong Kong. Canada currently has no permanent correspondents based in mainland China, nor are we seemingly permitted to. During Carney’s recent trip to China, Canadian journalists admitted they used burner phones for the first time, lest they be spied on by the Chinese government. So...why are we rolling out the welcome mat to Beijing-controlled media?"
Howard Anglin on X - "Great catch, and great point. Carney's deal with the Chinese Communist Party says: "The two sides consented to provide mutual support and convenience for media to work in each other's countries ..." But, because we know that Canadian journalists can't operate freely in the PRC, this "deal" can only redound to the benefit of Chinese state media, to whom Carney is giving more access here in Canada.   Why, this one-way deal?   Are any Canadian media asking?"

Mark Carney's dalliance with dictators - "Carney’s choice of China as the signature stop on his trip should not surprise avid observers of Canadian politics. Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien made no less than four voyages to the Middle Kingdom, as part of his legacy-building Team Canada missions to open China to the Canadian market. After the Liberals returned to power in 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau attempted to follow suit, travelling to China twice between 2016 and 2017, before Sino-Canadian relations soured with the abduction of Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor the following year. In the intervening time, the Communist Party of China has emerged as the single greatest threat to western democracies. It is a staunch ally of Russia, which has been waging an unprovoked war against Ukraine since 2022 and is threatening its European neighbours, Iran, the world’s leading exporter of terrorism, and North Korea, a nuclear-armed state run by a certifiable madman. China was responsible for unleashing the COVID pandemic on the world and hampering international efforts to determine how it originated. It then used the cover of a global health crisis to crush Hong Kong’s democracy, in clear violation of its treaty with the United Kingdom. It has militarized the South China Sea and is actively threatening Taiwan. All the while, Beijing has been spying on the West, interfering in western democracies, including Canada, and intimidating Chinese expats living abroad. It was less than a year ago that a public inquiry found that China is “the most active perpetrator of foreign interference targeting Canada’s democratic institutions” — a warning Carney seemed to take seriously during the election campaign... Through a combination of subsidies, tax breaks and other policy incentives, China has become a world leader in the production of EVs, controlling roughly 70 per cent of the global market. And it has been accused of dumping excess vehicles, along with cheap metals, in foreign markets at rock-bottom prices, in an effort to further hollow out the West’s manufacturing base. Moreover, Chinese vehicles potentially represent a massive security threat. In the United Kingdom, the Defence Ministry banned Chinese cars from sensitive military sites, and defence contractors have told employees not to discuss classified information in them or connect their mobile devices to their vehicles’ Bluetooth. I personally would have been happy to let Chinese taxpayers backstop Canada’s climate commitments by providing us with cheap EVs — espionage concerns could surely have been assuaged by banning factory-installed transmitting devices — but Canadians and their political leaders need to be clear-eyed about how the Chinese do business. The Chinese government does not make a distinction between politics and economics, or between state and private enterprises: everything it does is designed to further the Communist party’s geopolitical goals and its grip on power. For decades, Chinese spies have been stealing trade secrets from western countries to give domestic industries a competitive edge. The most notable example in this country was a targeted campaign to steal intellectual property from Nortel Networks, which ultimately succumbed to competitive pressure from China’s Huawei Corporation. Despite this long history of state-industrial espionage, western intelligence agencies are only recently waking up to the insidious threat posed by Chinese spies, who simultaneously work to gather information on foreign governments, steal proprietary information from private companies and influence elections in favour of Beijing-friendly candidates. While it makes sense that Carney would want to broker a truce with the world’s second-largest economy, he needs to realize that any gains made by his Chinese counterparts will be intended not just to increase the economic well-being of their citizens, but to achieve global economic dominance at the expense of our own standard of living. China’s share of global manufacturing output increased from five per cent in 1980 to 28.9 per cent in 2023, while America’s dropped from over 20 to 17.2 per cent. In 2000, China’s net exports of manufactured goods was lower than the European Union’s and Japan’s; 23 years later, it had outpaced both, and is now double that of the EU’s. The data clearly shows that its strategy of positioning itself as a manufacturing powerhouse and hollowing out its competitors’ industrial base is working. China’s economy is too large to ignore, and it certainly has to be part of our strategy to diversify away from the U.S. But Carney could have come to China with a much stronger hand if he had first worked to shore up trading relations with our allies. The free trade agreement we signed with the EU a decade ago has still not been fully ratified. We still don’t have a free trade deal with the U.K., despite sharing a king and a constitution based on common principles. Numerous countries — including democratic allies like Taiwan and Ukraine — have applied to enter the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but are waiting in limbo. Working on these files could help open friendly markets to Canadian goods and services, while giving consumers a wider range of non-American products to choose from on store shelves. Most importantly, improving trade relations with these allies would expand the West’s economic clout and help build a broad coalition to counter malevolent actors like China. Instead, Carney showed a distinct lack of imagination, running, like the Liberal prime ministers who came before him, cap-in-hand to China, which is already our second-largest trading partner (not exactly a “new market”), before jetting off to kiss the ring of Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, whose government has for years harboured the leaders of Hamas and, like China, has an atrocious human rights record. Rather than “building strength at home,” the prime minister’s dalliance with dictators will only serve to strengthen the hands of our enemies."

Links - 2nd March 2026 (2)

Meme - "Look at Me. I'm your boyfriend now." *Rabbit vibrator with two fingers up gesture*

wretchardthecat on X - "What has changed is that in the past you could always count on the left to keep up the pressure until their foes got tired and became 'reasonable'. Now, through some self sustaining chain reaction the right can stay angry indefinitely. This has not happened before."

Steven Pinker on X - "Bombshell: Oliver Sacks (a humane man & a fine essayist) made up many of the details in his famous case studies, deluding neuroscientists, psychologists, & general readers for decades. The man who mistook his wife for a hat? The autistic twins who generated multi-digit prime numbers? The institutionalized, paralyzed man who tapped out allusions to Rilke? Made up to embellish the stories. Probably also: the aphasic patients who detected lies better than neurologically intact people, including Ronald Reagan's insincerity."
Jeff Bograd on X - "Sacks, Gino, Arieli, Covid lockdowns except for BLM protests... Is it any wonder that trust in "experts" has cratered?"
Greg Lukianoff on X - "Let's not forget the Stanford prison experiment and the Kitty Genovese story. Or that Marx's historical research was essentially bull. And Foucault's history on which he based many of his assumptions was bad, and so much more that has been canceled or cajoled, and we are standing on a mountain weak, or even fabricated, assumptions."

Ilhan Omar’s Somalia stance draws scrutiny as Minnesota fraud scandal grows - "Rep. Ilhan Omar’s defense of Somalia’s territorial claims and her opposition to the recognition of an independent Somaliland has been criticized as authorities ramp up investigations into alleged mass fraud in her home state.  One analyst argued the corruption scandal allegedly involving Somali communities in Minnesota is relevant when contrasting failures in Somalia and the stability of Somaliland, an autonomous region that Omar has opposed recognizing.  Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, claimed highlighting the difference between the two regions "mattered."  "The corruption exposed in Minnesota mirrors the governance failures that have plagued Somalia for decades"... "Somaliland has charted a different course entirely, relying on internal accountability rather than international assistance and that distinction matters right now," he said... Omar’s broader worldview on Somalia also raises questions about her goals.  "Ilhan Omar left Somalia, but Somalia never left her," Rubin said. "In her Somali-language speeches, she refers to Somalia as her home, not America and so it is clear she appears to seek to advance Somalia’s interests on the global stage."  He claimed Omar’s opposition to recognizing Somaliland is driven by internal Somali politics rather than U.S. strategic interests. "Clan dynamics shape Somali politics, and that same lens appears to inform her position on Somaliland," Rubin said, arguing that Omar has opposed policies that would legitimize the breakaway region.  "American interests don’t appear to factor prominently into that calculation," he added.  Meanwhile, Somaliland continues to attract growing international attention.  After more than three decades of de facto independence, the self-governing territory has maintained internal security, built democratic institutions, and followed closer diplomatic engagement with Israel.  Somaliland has signaled interest in joining the Abraham Accords, positioning itself as a potential partner for U.S. and Israeli interests in the Horn of Africa... "The more people learn about Somaliland’s record, the more they will question why the U.S. continues to send billions to Somalia’s internationally recognized government while overlooking a more reliable partner"... "The case for Somaliland does align with Trump’s broader foreign policy approach," Rubin said.  "It is business-friendly, security-focused, and takes responsibility for its own territory. It wants partnerships, not perpetual aid. By any reasonable metric, recognizing Somaliland makes sense.""

Favour Ayorinde on X - "Did the IMF threaten to cut off funding from Botswana if it acquired a majority stake in De Beers?  Lmao, no, of course not. The entire tweet and video are blatant misinformation.  What's actually happening then?  Well, De Beers is up for sale. That's, first of all, a red flag: who sells a profitable mining extraction business? But anyway, Botswana is looking to use this opportunity to expand its stake from 15% to a majority stake. i.e at least 35% additional stake.  This purchase is going to cost Botswana roughly $2B dollars.   Botswana is currently running a deficit, the economy shrank last year, and the total foreign reserves have dropped to about $3B dollars.  So yeah, they're going to have to borrow the money to buy this. Likely the entire sum.  Given their economic fundamentals, they'll be lucky if they get away with 8% interest rate. So that means they'll be paying $160m annual in interest at least if this deal happens.  Does 50% of De Beers make at least $160m? No.  De Beers is struggling. Their annual profits are between weak and negative. So, in exchange for acquiring a majority stake in De Beers by tying up billions of borrowed money, the government can expect annual losses as a reward.  The IMF pretty much implies this in their report.  Meanwhile, here's a list of things that Botswana could do with a $2B loan instead:
1. Invest in local power generation, be it gas, coal, solar, nuclear, and reduce import dependence on imports from South Africa
2. Invest in the growing tourism sector
3. Invest in becoming a financial/services center
4. Invest in light manufacturing(goes well with 1.)
5. Invest in Education and human capital development
Then, they could just wait for De Beers to continue declining for another 10 - 20 years while the rest of the economy expands around it, and then pick up the entire company at distressed prices from Anglo for peanuts.
OR, they could just do like every other SSA country and pick the immediate gratification option:
Borrow 1.5 to 2 billion dollars, buy a failing business and get saddled with losses, lose creditworthiness in the international market, enter a commodity slump that tanks the economy, and go begging to the IMF, which will gleefully make them sell all that stake ANYWAY.  And then they can whine about how the IMF hates them and wants them to suffer for the next 50 years."

Rolf Degen on X - "People with dark personality traits have a bleak view of the world, perceiving it as devoid of meaning, beauty and interest.            Aversive (“dark”) personality traits are traditionally studied as predictors of harmful or manipulative behavior, yet their underlying cognitive-affective structures remain underexplored. This research investigates whether the Dark Core of personality (D)—the common aversive essence of all dark traits—is associated with primal world beliefs, which are deep-seated assumptions about the nature of the world.           In sum, D was negatively associated with the beliefs that the world is safe and enticing, indicating that high-D individuals tend to perceive the world as uncooperative, unjust, unpleasurable, uninteresting, meaningless, and lacking beauty. The belief that most experiences and interactions in life are meaningless specifically introduces an all-encompassing bleakness         Whereas it was anticipated and is not particularly surprising given prior findings that individuals high in D view the world as dangerous, competitive, or uncooperative, […] individuals high in D not only view the world as dangerous, competitive, and uncooperative, but also as less pleasurable, less stable, less regenerative, and less meaningful—extending well beyond prior findings.           Primals such as Interesting and Meaningful seem to reflect a kind of meta-justificatory framework, in which anti-social actions appear legitimate not because others do the same, but due to an all-encompassing pointlessness. Indeed, what is the point in upholding any (injunctive) social norms if human interactions are generally meaningless or pointless?"

Jason James on X - "Chrystia Freeland is on the Board of Trustees at the World Economic Forum.  Mark Carney was a member of the World Economic Forum's governance board until January 2025.  Chrystia Freeland was Deputy Prime Minister of Canada and Finance Minister under Justin Trudeau.  Mark Carney is currently Canada's Prime Minister.  Chrystia Freeland stepped aside in the Liberal leadership race to make way for Mark Carney.  Mark Carney is godfather to Chrystia Freeland's son.  Mark Carney was (is) Chair of Brookfield Asset Management.  Mark Wiseman is a BlackRock executive, advisor to Mark Carney and the new Canadian Ambassador to the United States.  BlackRock is invested in both defense and rebuild contracts in Ukraine.  Brookfield Asset Management is invested in Ukrainian energy infrastructure.  BlackRock owns part of Brookfield.  Chrystia Freeland is now economic advisor to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.  See how it works now?"

Meme - "That sex in Brokeback Mountain disturbs me."
"Isn't that a little homophobic?"
"Raw-dogging, no PrEP, after eating beans? I think not."

Wilfred Reilly on X - "The old toaster-(lover) problem from Economics really does sum up almost every online pattern, from silly stuff like being "auragender" to major male/female relationship trends like "He Don't Deserve All That." Social media allows highly atypical groups - white supremacists, hoteps, bitter recent divorcees - to gather in millions, hector everyone else, and...most importantly...appear normal."
Aka "i want to fuck a toaster"

Tourist swept away by Arctic river current while taking part in 'ice floating' health treatment on 'bucket list' holiday - "The 57-year-old tourist was carried away by a strong current during a group session floating on the Tuloma River, in Russia’s extreme north. The unnamed Belarusian woman went missing last week near the Arctic town of Kola on what was her dream New Year holiday.  Since then, search teams have been battled thick fog, bone-cracking -30C frost and near-total darkness during the region’s polar night to look for her.  After rescuers searched out at sea and across the river without any luck, the tourist was assumed dead.  It’s thought she could not have survived longer than a few hours floating in the intense cold. Locals claimed the river section used for the tourist sessions can be treacherous as a result of tide patterns and strong underwater currents.  The timing of the 57-year-old’s floating expedition may have coincided with low tide, when water movement can intensify dangerously.  Ice floating is a tourist activity marketed across the Arctic as a safe way to experience the near-frozen sea without actually swimming.  Participants wear bulky insulated flotation suits, designed to keep the body warm in icy water. The suits ensure buoyancy, letting participants float on their backs, to enjoy the ocean without freezing to death.  Promos claim it is “almost impossible to drown” while ice-floating.  Organisers advertise the chance to “swim with seals, if you’re lucky” promising an unforgettable adventure with professional guides, photographs and hot tea afterwards.  Because the suits are stiff and movement is difficult, ice-floaters are usually tethered or supervised closely in a controlled section of water, especially in rivers where currents can change quickly...   A similar incident reportedly took place on Boxing Day, when Indian and Chinese tourists were swept away during an ice-floating session – they were later rescued “by chance” when a boat happened to be nearby.  Russia’s Investigative Committee announced that the organiser had been charged, after investigators said the equipment used did not meet safety standards.  Officials said seized thermal suits were unsafe, with their service life expired and no required annual certification carried out."

Alberta boy, 9, sues 11-year-old for injuring finger with toy dinosaur - "Usually, if a child swats another child with a toy dinosaur, it does not cause catastrophic injury.  Usually, if a child gets hurt at a daycare, it is the daycare owners who get dragged into court.  And usually, if someone goes to court claiming someone else owes them thousands of dollars to compensate for a finger that three years ago was “essentially severed at the bone but still attached,” they bring along some medical records to illustrate such a gruesome claim.  A court case newly decided in Grande Prairie, Alta., bucked all these trends."

Hwa Chong teacher warns students against sharing bento photos after backlash: 'We know what the consequences are' - "A text message sent in a Hwa Chong Institution (HCI) class chat warned students against sharing photos of canteen bento meals online, following criticism over school meals provided by airline caterer SATS.  In response to Stomp's queries, the school said that the reminder was not meant to discourage students from offering feedback through appropriate channels. Photos of the bento sets surfaced on the subreddit r/singapore on Jan 3, showing a large portion of rice with vegetables and what looked like meat submerged in sauce. On Facebook, netizens compared the meals to prison food and army cookhouse meals. After initial complaints, an HCI spokesperson told Stomp that the photos did not accurately reflect the typical food offerings or portion standards provided. However, The Straits Times reported that students confirmed the images were accurate, adding that the meals tasted bland or soggy.  Another post shared by Facebook user @Kuanyewism on Jan 8, showed a message sent at 1.51pm advising students to refrain from participating in the "canteen food controversy".  "Please do not circulate photos, messages and social media posts — we know what the consequences are," the message read. "Keep your opinion to yourself."  The sender added that students require parental and school consent to be interviewed by the media, concluding: "For your compliance please". A Reddit post by the user @Hopeful-Calendar9369, who identified themselves as a current HCI student, said that the administration was unwilling to entertain students' concerns.  The claims were posted on the subreddit r/SGExams on the same day that the text was sent, saying that students "receive generic responses or outright dismissal" when they raise issues, to which several commenters agreed.  In October 2025, HCI announced that SATS would operate both their high school and college canteens from Jan 2, providing freshly cooked meals from on-site stalls and pre-packed options prepared in a central kitchen.  The institution is also one of 13 schools engaging external food operators to replace traditional canteen stallholders... HCI did not respond to queries about the tone of the message or the "consequences" referred to in it."
They should've included "non compliance will be severely dealt with"

Meme - ""Gentlemen, I need to remind all of you not to participate in the canteen food controversy. Please do not circulate photos, messages and social media posts - we know what the consequences are. Keep your opinion to yourself. If the media wants to interview you, you need parental and school consent. For your compliance please""

Food that we tried Vs food that was inplemented : r/SingaporeRaw - "Hi everyone, throwaway account here. As a Hwa Chong Students who took part in the SATS food tasting program BEFORE our whole sch shifted into a central kitchen program, this was the food they gave us to try VS the food they actually gave us when the system was implemented  Also for anyone wondering whether the statement made by the principal saying no students were punished; it was just pure blatant lying. The school REMOVED the link for us students to see our demerit points, so that they can't screenshot and show it to the media.  This school all went downhill after our new principal joined the school last year, and made several new changes to our sch including no class t-shirts, no more exemptions, removing many facilities in our school just to maximise profits.  Top pic is food we tried and bottom pic is food that was implemented Second pic was before the drama, third pic is after. Clearly removed the section to see our displicine history"

I thought Canada was cold. And then I moved to England - The Globe and Mail - "The British are a proud people. They are justifiably proud of their history, still dwell on their memories of empire, can celebrate literary icons like Chaucer and Shakespeare, and more recently still have vestiges of waning pride in their rejection of Europe during Brexit. But more than all of that, the British find their greatest pride in being cold... What I’ve learned since arriving in Britain is that yes, everyone wears layers of clothing indoors, and that yes, likely only one room in the house is heated at any time. Old houses are drafty, and the heating systems are unlike anything I experienced in Canada. Our cottage has “storage heaters,” which take advantage of half-price overnight electricity rates (charging double the rate we paid in Vancouver) to heat large, heavy ceramic blocks inside of a radiator. In the morning when electricity prices jump (to triple Vancouver rates!) that stored heat is allowed to escape and heat the room. At least until around dinner time, when the stored heat has run out... I’m reminded of our home in Canada. Homes there have big gas or oil-fired furnaces, double glazed windows, and (oh how I miss it) under-floor heating. I remember being able to walk from room to room and stay warm no matter where I went. I look back fondly on turning up a thermostat without a moment’s hesitation, making everything just a little bit warmer because, really, it costs so little. Like a lot of Canadians, we’ve spent many evenings watching programs like The Crown and Downton Abbey. In both series the most memorable set pieces show people deep in discussion beside a roaring fireplace. What I now realize is that 10 feet away from the hearth people were likely shivering frigidly. Even the wealthy and powerful in Britain live half the year in the cold. Because the heating systems in British homes are so spartan, almost every single room in the house – including the bathroom – has a small, plugged in, electric heater to “take the edge off” the cold. These inefficient little boxes do warm things up a bit, but are an expensive solution. Although their homes and apartments may be cold, the British people are genuinely warm and helpful. When we’ve complained about being chilly, they’ve been quick to suggest solutions. “Layer the floor; even newspapers under a rug stop the cold coming up.” “Eat something warm and calorie-dense before bed to keep core temperature steady.” “Cafés with poor ventilation tend to be warmest; linger.” And my favourite: “A small pet is effectively a mobile heat source. Cats are the most efficient, but anything warm-blooded helps.”"
Renwewable mania doesn't help, of course

For Jewish communities, Chinese food is more than a Christmas tradition – they’re also walking the wok - The Globe and Mail - "In the mid-20th century, Chinese restaurants often functioned as rare neutral zones in cities divided by rigid social hierarchies. For Jewish immigrants, these spaces offered a dual sanctuary: Chinese cuisine’s typically dairy-free menus happened to also be kosher – or at least kosher in appearance, with pork that was minced or hidden – and a social environment free of antisemitic gatekeeping allowed people to eat with dignity. In the geography of the outsider, the Chinese restaurant was a safe place where no one looked twice at a family that didn’t belong in a cathedral or a country club. By 2025, however, this narrative of passive consumption has grown stale. The Jewish-Chinese relationship has moved beyond the quiet refuge of “safe treyf,” that practised avoidance of blatant non-kosher transgressions. Now, we are seeing the emergence of the “Jewish Wok”: a practitioner-led movement where Jewish Canadians are commanding the Chinese kitchen, moving from loyal customers to custodians of a craft. Critics might call this cultural appropriation, but that framing misses the mutual exchange at work."
It's only cultural appropriation when "white" people do it

Germany challenges Turkey’s protected status claim for the doner kebab - "Germany and Turkey have crossed swords over the doner kebab, with Berlin appealing Ankara’s attempt to have the beloved street food given the same protected EU status as Spain’s serrano ham and Neapolitan pizza. The food fight began in April when Turkey applied to register the name doner as its “guaranteed traditional speciality” across Europe, meaning the label could only be used by those conforming to designated production methods and specifications for the meat inside. Germany argues this would create big bureaucratic hurdles and drive up the price of its most popular snack. With so-called doner inflation already an explosive cost-of-living issue on voters’ minds in the run-up to pivotal state elections in September, Berlin filed its veto... If Ankara’s application is successful, only beef and lamb “horizontally sliced into cutlets with a thickness of 3-5 mm” could be sold as doner. Chicken cutlets could be thicker in the poultry variety, while ground meat would be banned entirely. The age of the animals of origin and the knife for slicing would also have to meet distinct specifications, as well as the spices for marinating the meat, according to the application sponsored by International Doner Federation in Istanbul, which argues that the dish is an integral part of Turkey’s “culinary heritage”. The stakes are high, with German kebab sales totalling around €7bn a year. An estimated one in three Germans eat at least one doner a month, but it is becoming increasingly hard on their wallets. The far-left Die Linke party, which has called for parliament to introduce a Dönerpreisbremse or doner price cap, says kebab prices have surged to €10 in some German cities, up from €4 just two years ago. Both Turkey and Germany, with its 2.7-million-strong Turkish diaspora, stake claims to being the birthplace of the doner kebab as it is now widely consumed. The delicacy of thinly sliced meat grilled on an upright rotisserie was introduced to Germany by Turkish migrants, who topped it with chopped vegetables and slathered it with garlic or chilli sauce. Its bicultural significance touched off a spat in Germany during a state visit by the president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, to Istanbul in April with a doner skewer in tow. If Turkey is successful in its registration attempt, the new rules would have “catastrophic consequences for gastronomy businesses as well as consumers,” Ingrid Hartges, head of the German Hotel and Restaurant Association, told local media. She said there was no need for EU involvement in doner kebabs, which already fall under “clear and detailed” national standards set in 1992. New European regulations would constitute “an intervention in the German market with a tangible economic impact”, the agriculture ministry led by Cem Özdemir, a Green politician with Turkish roots, told the German edition of Politico. “It’s an attack on Germany’s cultural identity,” said Berlin sociologist Eberhard Seidel, who wrote a book about the history of the doner, in the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Germany nevertheless produces a dizzying variety of riffs on the homegrown doner kebab including veal and vegetarian options, satirical potato-based varieties in Oldenburg and leberkäs meatloaf kebabs in Bavaria. Some shops even offer chocolate doners for dessert."
Turkey abandons food fight to force doner kebab rules on Europe - "The German variant of a kebab often uses veal in a flatbread packed with vegetables including red cabbage, pickles, red onions and topped with sauces - and so could be viewed as a European take on the Turkish classic. The Turkish federation failed to consult Germany's kebab industry, which hit back with the support of the government in Berlin. The German food and agriculture ministry told the BBC last year that it had taken note of the Turkish bid "with some astonishment". Former German food and agriculture minister Cem Özdemir, a veteran politician of Turkish origin, said it was up to everyone to decide how a doner should be eaten in his country, and that there was no need for guidelines from Ankara. "The doner belongs to Germany," he insisted. If Udofed had followed through with its bid, then a European industry dominated by the Turkish diaspora would have been affected."
Too bad they won't learn the more important lesson about regulation

Newborn In Australia Dies After Mother Uses Home-Birthing Pool Hired From Instagram Influencer - "A newborn baby in Australia died after her mother gave birth at home using a birthing pool rented from Instagram influencer Emily Lal... the mother, Ms. E, rented a birthing pool from Emily Lal, also known as The Authentic Birthkeeper, who describes herself as being "disillusioned with the medical system". The incident happened in December 2022. After giving birth, Ms. E messaged Lal saying, "I did it", and planned to have a postpartum visit. However, she struggled to deliver the placenta until the next morning. It was then that she realised something was wrong with her baby."
This is not the only fatal case Emily Lal was involved in

What is the hair-flipping ritual performed by women to welcome Trump in UAE? All about Al-Ayyala - "Social media is curious about the traditional dance performed by a group in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to welcome US President Donald Trump. In visuals going viral, women are seen flipping their hair from side to side while chanting poetry. What they are doing is known as Al-Ayyala."

On the Iranian Occupation

Shane Gill | Facebook

Iran is often flattened into slogans. A theocracy. A rogue state. A problem to be managed. Those labels are shortcuts. They allow governments and commentators to reduce a civilisation to a headline, and they allow power to hide behind simplicity when the situation is anything but simple

 

If you want to understand why so many Persians speak about their own government as if it were an occupying force, we have to understand this story didn't start in 1979. The Islamic Republic is not the origin. It is the latest layer in a much older struggle over identity, sovereignty, and legitimacy.

 

Before Islam, Persia was one of the great civilisations of the ancient world. The Sasanian Empire governed through bureaucracy, codified law, taxation systems, and infrastructure that rivalled Rome. Zoroastrianism functioned as a state religion with an elaborate moral cosmology. Kingship carried divine symbolism. Language, literature, and imperial memory were already deeply rooted. Persia did not lack identity. It possessed one of the most self-conscious identities in the ancient world.

 

In the seventh century, Arab Muslim armies expanded out of the Arabian Peninsula and defeated the Sasanian state in a series of decisive battles. Persia fell through war. Political authority shifted to rulers whose power originated elsewhere, as it did in many regions of the old world. Arabic became dominant in administration. New legal frameworks emerged. Islam entered Iran in the context of conquest.

 

Conversion, however, was not instantaneous or uniform. It unfolded over centuries, shaped by social mobility, taxation policy, elite integration, intermarriage, and genuine belief. Zoroastrians paid the jizya tax. Conversion opened bureaucratic and military pathways. Empires rarely convert populations at sword point en masse. They rearrange incentives. Over generations, belief follows power.

Conquest came first. Faith spread later. That distinction matters.

 

Persia did not disappear inside the caliphates of the Rashidun, Umayyads, and Abbasids. It adapted and reshaped. Persian administrators became indispensable to Islamic governance. Persian scholars and poets shaped philosophy, mysticism, and court culture. The Persian language survived and eventually reasserted itself in literary form. What began as military subjugation evolved into cultural fusion.

 

A critical turning point arrived in the sixteenth century under the Safavid dynasty. The Safavids imposed Twelver Shi’ism as state doctrine, differentiating Iran sharply from its predominantly Sunni neighbors. Shi’ism became intertwined with Iranian state identity, martyrdom theology merged with political sovereignty, and clerical authority gained structural weight. From that point forward, Iranian nationalism and Shi’a religious identity developed in parallel rather than in opposition.

 

Fast forward to the twentieth century. Iran was ruled by the Pahlavi monarchy. The Shah was secular, Western aligned, and committed to rapid modernization. He was also authoritarian. The SAVAK secret police crushed dissent. Political parties were tightly controlled. Economic inequality widened. Cultural Westernization moved faster than many communities could absorb.

 

Then came 1953. Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized Iran’s oil industry. In response, the United States and the United Kingdom supported a coup that removed him and restored the Shah’s authority. That intervention embedded a durable memory of foreign interference in Iran’s political consciousness. Anti Western rhetoric did not originate in clerical sermons alone. It drew legitimacy from lived history.

 

By the late 1970s, opposition to the Shah cut across ideological lines. Clerics, Marxists, liberals, students, bazaar merchants, and workers mobilized simultaneously. The revolution was broad based. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini provided symbolic leadership from exile, but he was not the only current within the uprising. Many factions believed they were participating in a pluralistic revolution whose direction would be negotiated after victory.

 

That calculation proved fatal.

 

Revolutions are not won by abstract theory. They are won by networks. Mosques provided nationwide infrastructure. Sermons traveled further than pamphlets. Clerical authority penetrated neighborhoods where secular ideology struggled to organize. When the monarchy collapsed in 1979, the clerical establishment possessed the deepest, most disciplined structure in the country.

 

The Islamic Republic that emerged was not improvised. It was engineered. The office of Supreme Leader was placed above electoral institutions. The Guardian Council gained veto power over candidates and legislation. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) evolved into a parallel military, economic, and intelligence powerhouse. Over time it embedded itself in construction, telecommunications, energy, and regional security operations.

 

Religion ceased to function solely as belief. It became a governing architecture. Leftist parties were outlawed. Political rivals were imprisoned, executed, or exiled. Universities were purged during the Cultural Revolution. Mandatory hijab laws were enforced. Morality policing institutionalized the state’s claim over public behavior and female dress. The system consolidated itself not by accident but by design.

 

This is where the language of occupation enters contemporary Iranian discourse. The leadership is ethnically Iranian. The institutions are domestically built. Yet coercion always produces psychological distance. When authority claims divine legitimacy, suppresses dissent, filters elections, and criminalizes protest, it can feel alien even if it speaks the same language as the governed.

 

Today Iran’s crisis is not reducible to religion. It is not reducible to foreign hostility. It is not reducible to economic sanctions, though sanctions have severely strained ordinary life. It is a legitimacy crisis. That crisis expresses itself in protest waves, from the Green Movement in 2009 to the nationwide demonstrations following the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022. It expresses itself in generational divides, capital flight, brain drain, and quiet civil disobedience. It also expresses itself in geopolitical posture. Regional militias, nuclear brinkmanship, and confrontation with Israel and the United States function externally, but they also reinforce internal narratives of siege and resistance. When foreign powers threaten Iran militarily, the regime gains temporary cohesion. When domestic repression intensifies, the legitimacy deficit widens. This is the tension at the heart of modern Iran. External conflict can delay internal reckoning. It cannot erase it.

 

Many Iranians invoking pre Islamic heritage are not calling for cultural erasure of Islam. They are signaling historical depth. They are asserting that Iranian identity is older than the current political order. That memory is not anti Muslim. It is an anti monopolisation of faith by the state.

 

Iran has been imperial, conquered, Islamic, secularizing, revolutionary, sanctioned, and regionally assertive. It has endured Arab conquest, Mongol invasion, dynastic collapse, foreign intervention, and ideological upheaval. Civilizations that survive that many ruptures develop a long memory. Force can govern for decades. It can arrest, censor, and deter. What it cannot manufacture indefinitely is consent.

 

The Islamic Republic frames itself as the culmination of divine history. Many citizens increasingly frame it as a temporary chapter. Empires have misunderstood Iran before. So have ideologues. So have we. The lesson is consistent. Iran is not a slogan. It is a civilization with a memory longer than any regime that claims to own it.

 

Iran remembers.

 

What comes next will test whether power can reform itself or whether history will force the question. We've all seen what can emerge from regime change meddling. And it's never good. Whatever it is, it must be up to the Iranian people to decide. That right is theirs and theirs alone.

 

May the people of Iran have a free and peaceful future.