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Monday, September 07, 2026

Links - 7th September 2026 (General Wokeness)

Threads - "I do not understand the flippant morality of conservatives. Apparently they need free speech to harass Christine Wonsley, mother of Nolan Wells, but we can’t quote Charlie Kirk word for word without being fired. Apparently they need to protect kids from “the liberal agenda” but not from ped*philes and the Epstein files. Apparently they do not want Sharia law but are okay with a Christian nation where women are controlled, schools have mandatory religion, and citizens are disappeared. Apparently conservatives want a government to be fiscally responsible but they’re okay spending billions for war, Isr*el, ICE, and gold bathrooms. Apparently a movie with violence and language is “destroying family values,” but criticize it, then “you’re weak” and “woke” and “kids are too soft these days.” Apparently DEI means white folks with no credentials but not Black or Muslim with all the credentials. I do not understand conservative morality except that it has no facts, only feelings."
Weird. Left wingers used to be very clear that private companies couldn't violate your free speech. This also shows the left wing playbook - obsess over "credentials" instead of achievements, merit or even simply whether someone is making sense. Because it's easy to just award credentials to undeserving people using DEI and then proclaim they are immune to criticism

Alex Godofsky on X - "There's a certain kind of person who sincerely holds to, roughly, "Woke 1 was crazy, but if you actually said Woke 1 was crazy DURING Woke 1, that's very suspicious"."
Swann Marcus on X - "People get so mad at me for pointing out I was right about literally everything when I said leftist violence in 2020 would cause the homicide rate to skyrocket, destroy urban social order, and cause a pro-policing backlash Whenever I bring up all the people leftists murdered that year I get a lot of "oh, that again? Don't you know those murders were 6 years ago? Who cares about those dead teenagers? Don't you realize all those deaths leftists in 2020 were responsible for have nothing to do with leftist ideology in 2026? They definitely won't kill thousands of people this time!""

Ecological restoration is like ‘gender confirmation surgeries,’ trans river scientist tells Princeton students - "A “queer-trans-feminist river scientist” discussed research grounded in a “queer and trans focus on love and grief for rivers and fish” at a recent Princeton University-hosted event titled “Underflows: Queer and Trans Among Rivers.” The featured speaker, Cleo Wölfle Hazard (pictured), is a “queer-trans-feminist river scientist” and assistant professor of equity and environmental justice at University of Washington, Seattle, whose work focuses on “how queer trans feminist thought can transfigure ecological science as it’s used by Indigenous and non-Native practitioners in river management,” according to Wölfle Hazard’s university page. Princeton students enrolled in the environmental studies course “Field Seminar in Regional Environmental Politics” were required to attend, according to Jerry Zee, the professor, who introduced the talk... Wölfle Hazard compared “gender confirmation surgeries” to ecological restoration, arguing transgender bodies are similar to bodies of water. “When I pay my surgeon to cut my penis into a neo-vagina, I am moving toward myself through myself,” Wölfle Hazard said, quoting gender studies theorist Eva Hayward. “What if restoration was the watershed becoming more itself through these different cuts and scars that humans might enact with bulldozers and rerouting channels?” Wölfle Hazard asked... The event drew upon the speaker’s recent book, which explains “why rivers matter for queer and trans life.” The book’s “core argument” is that “in order to become more adept at centering justice, sovereignty, and adaptability, river sciences should engage with queer and trans theory.” The book offered “innovative ways” to “disrupt settler colonialism and new visions for justice in river governance.” Wölfle Hazard began with a land acknowledgement: “[I’m] grateful to be an uninvited guest on Lenape territory here in Princeton.”... “I’m still trying to figure out what I just heard,” one attendee, an environmental engineer who graduated from Princeton, said in the question-and-answer period while asking a question about infusing environmental science with liberal arts. “I’d give it a B-minus,” he told The Fix after the event."

Claire Lehmann on X - "“Intellectual life used to be fun,” Mr. Haidt said. “There’s an emergent community, from center left to center right, of people who feel politically homeless and are recognizing that the big division is no longer between left and right, but between people who are on the extremes, who are humorless and aggressive and deluded by their passion and tribalism, versus the middle 70 percent of the country.”"
"Great quote from @JonHaidt As @jonkay says, the first sign of a cultist is someone who has lost their sense of humour"
Meme - Cathy Young @CathyYoung63: "Indeed. One of the first signs of the rise of toxic "social justice" was the 2013 feminist freakout over this NYT obit (seen as downplaying Bril's achievements rather than using a twist to highlight them). The Times caved to the shriekers and rewrote it."
"She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise three children. "The world's best mom," her son Matthew said. But Yvonne Brill, who died on Wednesday at 88 in Princeton, N.J., was also a brilliant rocket scientist, who in the early 1970s invented a propulsion system to help keep communications satellites from slipping out of their orbits."
Authoritarians have no sense of humour after all.

Meme - "MANILA *flattened in war, with impassive Jeremy Corbyn*
ROTTERDAM *flattened in war, with impassive Jeremy Corbyn*
WARSAW *flattened in war, with impassive Jeremy Corbyn*
HIROSHIMA *flattened in war, with triggered Jeremy Corbyn*
Jeremy Corbyn: "81 years ago, the US dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima - a crime against humanity.""

Tablesalt 🇨🇦🇺🇸 on X - "‼️JUST IN Canada sending 28 million dollars to South Africa and Rwanda for "gender-responsive Nature-based Solutions" to flooding."
Damn Poilievre wasting money for his by election that could've be used for healthcare!

The Lynchings That Aren't - "I guess that now, with the SPLC potentially sidelined from the business of inciting a race war, Pravda has to pick up some of the slack... Mississippi is now leading the country in turning around the literacy crisis in the black community, but that is not noteworthy to the media. Instead, the fact that black people are being fake-lynched is top of the headlines. It sure sounds bad that three black people have been found hanging from trees in the Southern state, and in human terms it certainly is a tragedy when people die by suicide or get murdered as if they were Canadians seeking healthcare, but none of this is caused by an outbreak of racial hatred from SPLC-funded Nazis or KKK members. More likely, it is a sad case of social contagion, where one incident sparks a series of others in people who are on the edge... The Left is deeply invested in the idea that America is filled with racists always on the edge of murderous outbursts of generalized hatred for minorities, when the fact of the matter is that the recent outburst of racial violence is aimed primarily at Jews and white people, inspired by hate campaigns the left itself promotes. It's now quite common to find leftists celebrating the violent deaths of prominent conservatives, or even screaming on camera about who deserves to be taken out next. While the media cheers it on or spins the story. "

The Lead CNN on X - "Police investigating after a Black woman was found hanging from a tree in Mississippi"
Sean Davis on X - "Her black boyfriend was arrested. You don’t hate CNN enough."

Michael Geist on X - "The replies to my posts about Canadian campus antisemitism read like a live enactment of its findings. The survey found 45% of Jewish students regularly encounter Holocaust denial; the replies pile on. Hate generated by calling out antisemitism overwhelms."

Plans to ban white swimmers from Berlin public pool trigger backlash - "The Volksbühne, a theatre in the city centre, was allocated €300,000 (£255,000) of taxpayers’ money to open a “people’s swimming pool”, which it initially pledged would be “open for all who are seeking to cool down in the increasingly hot Berlin summers”. But the Volksbühne advertised an event scheduled for Friday in which the pool would be open “exclusively to black communities” for six hours as part of a collaboration with the non-governmental organisation Each One Teach One... Elif Eralp, the Left Party’s candidate for mayor and the current front-runner in September’s election, defended the exclusion of white swimmers, saying: “On Friday, an association has booked the pool for its members legally. In doing so, the People’s Swimming Pool provides access for people who are frequently affected by exclusion and racism. Labelling this as a form of discrimination is very revealing.” Steffen Krach, the Social Democratic Party candidate, added: “One can debate the decision made by the [event organisers], but not at the expense of people of colour.” The event has since been cancelled, with the theatre complaining that it had become a “target of Right-wing and racist incitement”... After a spate of punch-ups and sexual harassment on hot summer days, Berlin’s swimming pools introduced a rule in 2025 that guests had to bring identification to be allowed to enter. In 2025 after a particularly violent incident, Friedrich Merz, the chancellor, blamed an “unbelievable lack of respect for women and police in particular cultural circles”, apparently referring to migrants from the Middle East."
If you are against racial segregation, you're racist and if you criticise it, you're right wing and engaging in "racist incitement"

The Democrats Can’t Just Laugh Off ‘Woke 1’ - The Atlantic - "Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made two striking remarks that seem related. First, she barely demurred when ABC News asked whether she aspired to run for president. “I haven’t ruled out the possibility,” she eventually said. Second, she tried to laugh off stances that progressives in her wing of the Democratic Party had taken in the preceding years: “‘Woke 1 was crazy,’” she said, echoing a comment that one of her allies had made about the heyday of ideas such as “defund the police.” Ocasio-Cortez represents an extremely liberal congressional district in New York City. The fact that she is declining to defend—and indeed wishing to move past—these positions shows how radioactive they have become. If only things were so easy. Over the past decade, Democratic politics have been reshaped by an ideology centered on systemic oppression and the radical policies ostensibly needed to correct it. The most common name for it is “wokeness,” which attained its cultural apogee in 2020—after the murder of George Floyd brought millions of people out to the streets to protest police killings of Black people. The established institutions of the meritocratic elite were swept over by the movement’s force: Members of Congress were photographed taking a knee while wearing African-inspired kente cloth. Companies rolled out diversity, equity, and inclusion action plans and donated huge sums to Black Lives Matter and other racial-justice causes. Universities denounced themselves as complicit in systemic racism. Staffers at news outlets revolted against colleagues they deemed counterrevolutionary, and nonprofit leaders and corporate executives treated the books of the anti-racism gurus Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo as revelatory. The Democratic Party, ever more dominated by the college-educated, absorbed these influences and let itself be perceived as the party of causes such as rejecting law enforcement, abolishing ICE, and queering gender. Years after this collective effervescence passed, many ideas that once seemed weighty look flimsy. Cities that cut police spending reversed course after murders spiked. Elite universities built up large DEI bureaucracies to manage every oppression—yet embarrassed themselves in their inability to address campus anti-Semitism after the Israel-Gaza war began. But most members of the party’s elite apparently hope that the ideas from the period will simply recede from public consciousness, mostly through silence, without their needing to repudiate “Woke 1.” Some, however, have pursued other strategies, such as retconning: For example, Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, remade herself as a leftist during her unsuccessful 2020 Democratic presidential campaign by, among other things, advocating for decriminalizing illegal border crossing. In 2024, she tried to revert to the center by prosecuting repeat offenders and restricting asylum, all while insisting: “My values have not changed.” Now Ocasio-Cortez is previewing a third strategy: laughing at past excesses. All of these avoidance strategies could fail. Woke 1 may be over, but progressives have not given up their attempt to take over the Democratic Party apparatus. Candidates aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America—who have proved ascendant in primary elections this year—still take radical positions. One DSA-aligned candidate who is expected to be elected to Congress, Darializa Avila Chevalier, is a prison abolitionist who cannot bring herself to say that murderers should go to jail. The front-runner for the Democratic nomination for governor in Wisconsin is Francesca Hong, a DSA-connected candidate who once criticized Thanksgiving for its colonialist associations. Although the DSA itself emphasizes economic policies, such as universal rent control and zero-cost health care, its national platform does not shy away from endorsing proposals widely seen as excesses of Woke 1, including paying reparations to descendants of slaves, “fully abolishing the police and prison system,” and granting amnesty to all immigrants regardless of status, along with an end to all visa caps and quotas. The rhetorical focus has shifted, but the support for old, unpopular ideas remains. Even if Democratic-primary voters were not endorsing DSA candidates, Woke 1 would still be menacing Democrats running for office, for a simple reason: Republicans will never let voters forget this. Republicans have presented themselves as the party of the common man against the party of the faculty lounge. Even as Donald Trump has, in so many respects, inverted what it means to be a Republican, anti-wokeness has worked to unify the party and has now become a core tenet of GOP dogma. By many accounts, the most effective campaign advertisement of the 2024 presidential election had the tagline “Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you.” Since that election, Democrats have broadly understood that public opinion is against them on many culture-war issues, particularly when it comes to sex-segregated sports. But only a few, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom and Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, have criticized trans women’s participation in women’s athletics. (Moulton, who is running in a Senate primary, has since walked back his remarks.) Most of their fellow Democrats seem to be waiting for the issue to blow over. Republicans have no reason to allow that. Ideas never die, but they can go dormant. The unwillingness to extirpate wokeness now may result in its resurgence later. The silence of conventional Democrats and the ascent of the DSA could make the party’s 2028 presidential-primary contest resemble the 2020 one. Then, candidates of all stripes competed to out-left one another, committing themselves to positions that caused their party electoral trouble for years. Should Ocasio-Cortez become the Democratic candidate for president, she may experience that painful lesson firsthand."
Of course, left wingers are now denouncing her for anti-black racism. Hilarious.

Meme - David Santa Carla @TheOnlyDSC: "White people commit so little crime that the biggest stories on X are a woman calling her stalker a slur and a kid stealing 2 Red Bulls."

Woke 1 was crazy. Woke 2 is worse and has already conquered Canada | National Post - "Woke 1 was rather ridiculous and provided great fuel for laughs and cheap entertainment across North America. However, Woke 1 implies Woke 2 is coming, and it will be far worse when it does. In fact, in Canada, at least, Woke 2 is already here, and the fact it is quieter is not a sign of weakness. Not only is Woke 2 turning the accommodation of Woke 1 into durable power, it is cycling in fresh causes post-pandemic. The second wave is being driven by the same people who insisted on gender-neutral washrooms, the relitigation of history, and the eradication of basic standards concerning appearance and hygiene. Now they are graduating from law schools and entering government. If Woke 1 was able to bludgeon the establishment into partial compliance, Woke 2 will complete the transformation as more and more inmates start to run the asylum. Woke 1 started in the mid-2010s, when the mediocre NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick was considered important for taking a knee during “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Alongside that came the rise of land acknowledgements and activist students ripping the gender signs off campus washrooms. The high-water mark of Woke 1 was the George Floyd riots and unrest of 2020, capped off by the first defeat of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election. There is no question that Trump’s victory in 2016 and the ascendancy of right-wing populism in western politics saw a parallel eruption on the left. People learned to roll their eyes as institutional panic gave way to corporate sermons, renamed universities, and plans to spend billions on “anti-racism” strategies. However, this was still accommodation rather than full-scale transformation. Woke 2 will have different ideological pillars on the surface, but the same agenda of deconstruction. New bosses and department heads who will swap out rants about “privilege” for removing “barriers,” which, in effect, means curtailing the career advancement for straight, white men to the benefit of everyone else. This is already happening, but Woke 2 will cement it with more professional, less politicized language, rather than leave it as a short-term circus. Persuading the public is no longer the goal of Woke 2. Rather, it will be about controlling money and sinecures and deciding who and what receives grants, contracts, and licences. Canada is uniquely exposed because, unlike almost every other western country that experienced a non-left interlude, it has not had a federal Conservative government since 2015. For almost 11 years now, the Liberals have happily incorporated Woke 1 into the “big tent” and twisted government policy to suit it. Whatever changes Mark Carney has nominally brought to the Liberals, the imprint of Justin Trudeau’s zeal for Woke 1 is found in the qualifications for Canada Research Chairs, academic advancement, and grant-making. In fact, Canada exited Woke 1 ages ago and is already deep into the quieter, more effective and insidious Woke 2. The Privy Council Office’s 2026–27 plan says “Gender-based Analysis Plus” will be thoroughly integrated into the affairs of government, including mandatory assessments in cabinet committee documents and memoranda to Cabinet. The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat is pushing through an expansive DEI plan for 2026–29, and Canada’s Anti-Racism Strategy explicitly seeks a whole-of-government approach reaching housing, immigration, justice, health and employment. Canada and the United States both now host a powerful form of diasporic politics, in which North American money and political capital is looted in the service of foreign causes. This may represent less of a convergence than the U.S. catching up to Canada given Ottawa’s long history of pandering to ethnic voters, no matter which party is in-charge. Conversely, one of the most striking divergences between Canada and the United States is the decline of prominent Black American movements and initiatives that defined the previous wave. Woke 1 was deeply tied to racial tensions between Black and white Americans, especially regarding police conduct and the presence of controversial symbols like the Confederate flag. Woke 2 features less of that, and Middle Eastern affairs have instead come to dominate it, with Muslim Americans flexing their electoral power in cities like New York and swing states like Michigan. With no Donald Trump-type figure to smash the DEI initiatives of Woke 1, Canada has continued to entrench them while allowing Woke 2 to shape foreign and domestic policy. The cleverness of Woke 2 is that cabinet ministers and other officials will quietly normalize all of it and describe it in ways that sound responsible, lawful and eminently fundable to moderates. In lieu of a right-of-centre prime minister, Canada’s Conservative premiers have offered little more than skirmishes against either Woke 1 or Woke 2. There certainly has been no organized, large-scale counteroffensive. Alberta and Saskatchewan enacted meaningful parental-rights measures, while New Brunswick’s earlier Policy 713 controversy briefly became part of the same battle before its government was replaced by a Liberal provincial government. However, all of that resistance has been confined largely to schools, names, pronouns and parental consent. Nova Scotia’s own Progressive Conservative government, despite its name, has proudly introduced a whole-of-government Equity and Anti-Racism Strategy. With few exceptions, Atlantic Progressive Conservative parties never fail to make the first word in their names shine. Canada has undergone a steady laundering of controversial, radical left-wing ideas into neutral-looking administrative obligations. There has never been a federal election fought on these issues, and what voters never expressly approved or rejected can easily become the default setting of government. Woke 2 is already alive and well here in Canada, less a sequel to Woke 1 than its second act."

Dr. Maalouf ‏ on X - "Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the biggest far-left party in France, explains why the alliance between progressives and Muslims is necessary. “If you’re counting on white Christian workers to bring about socialism in France, it won’t happen. But our Muslim brothers and sisters will.” This is the same playbook being used by the left in all Western countries."

Academic with historic links to extreme group hired in the same Cambridge faculty as 'plagiarism professor' Jason Arday - "An academic with historic links to the now banned Hizb ut-Tahrir terror group has been recruited by Cambridge University to the same faculty as ex-professor Jason Arday. Dr Farah Ahmed wrote a chapter for a pamphlet published in 2002 by the group before it was proscribed, attacking 'western education' as a 'threat' to Muslims, it is claimed. The academic is now an assistant research professor at Cambridge's Faculty of Education – the same department that recruited Mr Arday, who has stepped down following a plagiarism row. During her time at Cambridge, she has also co-authored a How Islamic Is My School toolkit, which says the Islamic concept of education is in sharp contrast to 'gaining literacy and numeracy and other disciplinary skills demonstrated through qualifications'. In 2023, she helped organise a conference on Islam, science and education to 'recognise the role of science as part of a wider modernist and colonial project', and to 'consider challenges' to the view that 'sees science as 'objective knowledge'... Dr Ahmed's chapter for the 2002 Hizb ut-Tahrir pamphlet 'Education and Identity' was republished in 2017. Hizb ut-Tahrir was proscribed in the UK in 2024. The Spectator reported that in the pamphlet, she wrote: 'The Muslim community as a whole in Britain needs to recognise that western education is a threat to our beliefs and values.' She attacked schools' 'attempts to integrate Muslim children' as seeking to 'produce new generations that reject Islam' and added: 'if society is built on kufr [unbelief], it is our duty to tackle this challenge as a community in order to protect our young from its corruption.' She also wrote that the national curriculum is a 'systematic indoctrination' to 'build 'model British citizens' who will seek to actively take part in the implementation of the secular capitalist system in British society.' And she added: 'Naturally, such a system will not be suitable to the needs of Muslim students as the aqeedah [belief system] of the Muslim is in complete contradiction to this.' Her pamphlet chapter also attacked British schools for teaching that 'polygamy or marriage under the age of 16' is 'archaic and discriminatory to women', and for telling children that 'democracy… is the only way that laws should be created.' Democracy, she said, is a 'corrupt tradition'. She also criticised how religious tolerance is 'primarily pushed' in religious schools, meaning that 'Islam is taught as a religion like any other'. English, she wrote, 'is one of the most damaging subjects' a school can teach. Fairy tales 'reflect secular and immoral beliefs, which contradict the viewpoint of Islam,' and Romeo and Juliet 'advocates disobeying parents and pre-marital relations,' she said. She also said science was a problem because in 'teaching of evolution, Muslim children will be exposed to ideas that contradict Islam'"
Time to ban Christian schools to protect secularism

Blaine Pardoe on X - "So let me make sure that I get this right. Wizards of the Coast is removing slavery from their reboot of the Dark Suns setting because it's problematic? They actually think that they are protecting us from fictional slavery, in a game based on imagination? My favorite part of this idiocy is they employed "sensitivity readers" as part of their process. What a stupid and completely worthless job! I'm glad I made the hop to Castles and Crusades for my next campaign. At least they aren't trying to protect me from fictional things! @trolllordgames"
Daddy Warpig on X - "Slavery is part of the Black experience and nobody else is allowed to write about it. It's "insensitive." There was a Chinese woman who wrote a Young Adult fantasy novel about a Chinese-inspired culture. It had slavery, because medieval China had slavery. She was destroyed by an online mob. Publisher disavowed her. Book was canceled one month before publication. These are the current rules in the mainstream of publishing culture. It's why I was able to predict this almost two years ago."

The Reality of "Settler Violence" in the West Bank

Leah Zakh Aharoni | Facebook

For thirty years, I have raised my children in Judea and Samaria. If you ask people what the hardest part of mothering here is, they will guess it’s worrying about their safety.
 
They are wrong.
 
The hardest job, the one that keeps you up at night long after the kids are asleep, is teaching your children not to hate.
 
When you raise a family here, terror is not a newspaper headline. It is the physical landscape your children play in every afternoon.
 
My kids grew up playing in Gan Shalva, a playground named for Shalva Uzana, a 24-year-old kindergarten teacher murdered at the entrance to our community on her way to work.
 
They met their friends at Nethanel Square, named for 14-year-old Nethanel Riachi, gunned down in his school dorm alongside his classmate Avraham Setton.
 
Across from my children's grandparents’ house is Zalman Shlein Street. Zalman was a contractor who employed workers from Gaza in the 1980s. Every single day, he set a table and fed them dinner. He bought clothes for their kids. He sent gifts home to their families.
 
One afternoon, his own crew murdered him at the work site.
 
Almost every community in Judea and Samaria has its own version of Gan Shalva, Nethanel Square, and Zalman Shlein Street.
 
And then there is the Fogel family. In March 2011, in Itamar, two Palestinian Arab teens climbed a fence at night and stabbed to death Ehud Fogel, his wife Ruth, their eleven-year-old son Yoav, their four-year-old son Elad, and their three-month-old baby Hadas. Killed in her crib.
 
For six months after that night, I could not sleep. I would lie awake, getting out of bed a dozen times to check the locks, the window latches, the shadows outside. A hundred times a night, fighting off an armed intruder in my own mind.
 
And around all of this, the electric fence.
 
Almost every Jewish community in Judea and Samaria is surrounded by one. Sensors. Armed guards. Infiltration sirens that go off when someone climbs the perimeter. My children have run to safe rooms during infiltration sirens their whole childhood, the same kind of siren sounded on October 7.
 
We did not walk in the surrounding hills. We did not enter Arab villages. We did not stop at gas stations in the wrong areas. For safety and by policy, we lived inside a perimeter.
 
And during these thirty years, we have watched the neighboring Arab villages expand with no control, often stopping only at the fence.
 
You try to shield your children. You turn off the news. But trauma moves by osmosis.
 
It travels through school corridors, playground chatter, and the sudden, suffocating silence of a mother holding her breath.
 
How do you explain trust to a teenager when the school bus driver, who drove the special-needs kid next door every day for a year, suddenly became the gunman who walked into Merkaz HaRav and murdered eight teenage students?
 
You do not have an answer. So you tell them the only thing you know how to tell them.
 
For over thirty years, I have sat at my kitchen table having the exact same conversation with each of my children, over and over again:
 
"Mom, do all Arabs want to kill us?"
 
"No. That is not true."
 
"I hate them and want to hurt them back!"
 
"No. We do not use violence, and we do not hate."
 
"How do we know who to trust?"
 
"I do not know."
 
And then the hardest line of all, the one I had to repeat until my voice shook:
 
"The moment we start hating them, the moment we want to kill them just because of who they are, we become like them."
 
I did not fight that battle for three decades just to watch the world rewrite our history.
 
Today, a third generation is growing up in Judea and Samaria.
 
Young. Exhausted. Sick and tired of living in the shadow of fear. They carry decades of secondary PTSD in their bones. They watched their neighbors murdered. They ran to safe rooms during infiltration sirens their whole childhood. They walked to school past the square named after the 14-year-old boy shot in his bed. They grew up inside the electric fence.
 
For sixty years, Jewish blood in Judea and Samaria was treated by the international community as white noise. Nobody wept for our sleeping children. Nobody held press conferences for babies murdered in their cots. It was taken as an acceptable baseline: Arabs kill Jews, and Jews absorb the funerals.
 
The same international community that has spent sixty years using the words "apartheid" and "wall" and "confinement" to describe what Israel does never used those words for what we actually live inside.
 
The wire was around us. We were confined. We were behind the wall. And the world called us the oppressors.
 
Now this young generation is building open farms without fences. They are refusing to act like targets. They are standing up to defend their land. They are adopting Yosef Trumpeldor’s 100-year old slogan "Where the Jewish plow stops, the border begins." More often than not they are fighting off attacks.
 
And suddenly the entire global apparatus has found its voice.
 
Suddenly every diplomat, news anchor, and human rights group is screaming about "settler violence."
 
If you care about settler violence, I am asking you to do two things. Google "West Bank terror" today. See what comes up. It will be pages and pages of "settler violence" with hardly any mention of Arab violence.
 
And now ask yourself if you have ever heard of the Fogel family, Shalva Uzana, Nethanel Riachi, Avraham Setton, Zalman Shlein or any other one of the hundreds upon hundreds of Jewish victims of terror. Then ask yourself why.
 
Let me be unmistakably clear.
 
I am not ignoring or excusing Jewish civilian violence against Arabs. Those incidents happen. I do not support vigilante violence. I do not excuse lawlessness. I spent my adult life fighting to ensure my children never adopted the tactics of our enemies.
 
And as a society, Israel investigates them, prosecutes them, and condemns them. We investigate our extremists. They celebrate theirs.
 
What I am naming is scale, silence, and inversion, that decades of unceasing terror against Jewish children was treated as an acceptable baseline, while a fraction of a fraction of that violence in the other direction became the international community's obsession.
 
I will not sit quietly while a cynical global narrative converts sixty years of unceasing terror against Jewish mothers and children into a villain arc, while ignoring the generational trauma that brought us to this hour.
 
We raised a generation to value life in the middle of a war zone. We did our job.
 
It is time the world held itself to the same standard of truth.

Sunday, September 06, 2026

Links - 6th September 2026 (2 - General Wokeness)

Hunter Ash on X - "Hunger strikes are based on the premise that your hated enemy is so moral that they care if their enemy dies by their own hand, when the hunger striker themself probably wouldn’t care in the reverse situation. It’s an admission that your enemy is a better person than you."
Wilfred Reilly on X - ""If you don't give me what I want, I will KILL myself!!!" Same vibe. Ok..."

Meme - Mike Solana @micsolana: "you will never make me care about a hunger strike. mother fucker just eat!"

Sahalie Donaldson on X - "Mayor Zohran Mamdani defends his endorsements of Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier, condemning recent attacks from Espaillat’s camp on the latter. “One thing I do want to make clear that I find unacceptable is the attempt to use the term Haitian as a slur,” he says."
Wesley Yang on X - "When minorities are openly racist toward other minorities, (which happens far more often than open racism by white people) the Woke simply claim that this a function of White Supremacy creating internecine rivalries between the races (and internalized self-hatred within minorities themselves) for the benefit of the White oppressor."

Meme - Ariel Troster: "This is inexcusable. Abandoning queer and trans kids when they government put the OCDSB under trusteeship and are calling the shots here. The school board is usually one of the biggest contingents in the Pride March."
"Ottawa-Carleton District School Board pulls out of Capital Pride parade. The OCDSB will not participate in this year's Capital Pride parade, drawing criticism from a trustee over the message it sends to LGBTQ+ students."
Taking part in Pride is obligatory, otherwise you're a bigot
Of course, left wingers would throw a fit if the government endorsed a political position they disagreed with. The cope is that pushing the left wing agenda is being a decent human being, and is not being political. Of course. Good luck if you support Jewish students, though, because that will become "supporting genocide"
Comment: "Not being in a parade isn’t abandoning anything. Unless you’re saying it’s a requirement as an ally to be in the parade and any group etc not is anti-lgbtqetc? If so, that’s exactly why they shouldn’t be a part of it , if it’s become some compulsory, pseudo-religious requirement"
"Good. We need to stop celebrating our differences and embrace our similarities. We need to stop placing people into divisive silos of hate and unite under one flag. People need to stop making their identity their personality. I wish you put half as much effort and time into economic issues as you do to Pride issues. Our city would be a lot more livable and affordable."

Alix on X - "Call a rich man broke, he'll laugh. Call a gym rat weak, he'll laugh. Call a genius dumb, he'll laugh. Call a libtard wrong and he'll argue until he's blue in the face explaining why you're a fascist. Fucking retard."

John Wright on X - "Nicklas Nilsson explains the difference between right-wing and left-wing people in spot-on text on Facebook:
"If a right-wing person is gay, then he is, and he doesn't care what others think. If a left-winger is gay, then he demands legal changes, protests against everything and everyone, and turns it into a political struggle.
If a right-winger is vegan, then he simply doesn't eat meat. If a left-winger is vegan, then he wants to ban meat, halt food production, and protest outside farms and chicken farms.
If a right-winger doesn't like guns, then he just doesn't buy any. If a left-winger doesn't like guns, then he tries to ban them, prevent everyone else from owning one, and hates those who do.
If a right-winger is worried about the climate, then he flies less, drives an electric car if it suits him, and sorts his waste. If a left-winger is worried about the climate, then he wants to ban fossil fuel cars, air travel, and meat for everyone else, protest outside factories, and demand that the state forces the change.
If a right-winger wants to give his children a good education, then he moves to an area with good schools, or chooses a private school, or gets involved himself. If a left-winger wants to give his children a good education, then he demands more tax money from everyone, equal results for all, a ban on charter schools, and protests against every inequality.
If a right-winger complains about his job or workplace.. he doesn't. He changes jobs or starts his own business. If a left-winger complains about his job – then it's the boss, the company, or the colleagues who are at fault. He demands collective agreements, strikes, changes for the whole community, and protests against the company so that it suits him.
If a right-winger is dissatisfied with his housing or rent, then he moves, renovates, or buys something else. If a left-winger is dissatisfied with his housing or rent, then he demands rent freezes, more subsidies, regulations for everyone, and protests against landlords and politicians.
If a right-winger fails with a business or an investment that goes wrong, then he gets up, dusts himself off, and tries again tomorrow. If a left-winger runs out of money on the 24th, then he blames the rich for having too much and needing to contribute more, blames the lottery win that didn't come home last week, and mutters that he has such damn bad luck.
If a right-winger sees this – then he sends it to a few friends for a good laugh. If a left-winger sees this – then he tries to argue against it, get it removed, and delete me from Facebook.""

Bachman on X - "Headline: cops kill man "in broad daylight", in front of "witnesses"
1st para: residents in "shock and anger"
2nd para: "historical trauma" from "officer-involved shootings"
Later on: man was "checking parked vehicles"
Finally: he stabbed a cop. Oh."

Madison police shooting victim identified as Corey Ruiz as protests continue - "With protests and demands for accountability growing louder in Madison, officials have identified the man who was fatally shot by a police officer this week. Corey Ruiz, who was in his 30s and a member of the Madison community, was killed Wednesday, officials said during a news conference Thursday. He was shot after he pulled out a knife during a struggle with four officers, police said. The news conference became heated, as Madison Police Chief John Patterson was interrupted by two protesters for about 20 minutes. One took over the microphone to condemn police brutality and demand the officer responsible be jailed... The mayor also called for answers about Ruiz’s shooting. “I want to be clear: It does not matter who you are or what your past is. You should not lose your life as a result of an encounter with law enforcement. That should not happen,” Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said Thursday, promising that the shooting will be “rigorously investigated.” Wisconsin public records show that Ruiz had 40 misdemeanor and felony convictions from 2009 to 2025. The crimes include robbery by force, strangulation, drug possession, vehicle theft and battery of a public safety worker, according to the records. It appears that Ruiz was most recently convicted of resisting law enforcement and drug paraphernalia possession, the records show... Ruiz pulled out a fixed-blade knife and injured an officer... Police said that a stun gun was used, but that it was ineffective. The officer who was injured with the knife then fired at Ruiz... None of the four officers who were detaining the man wore body cameras. Videos of the shooting were captured by bystanders and went viral on social media. One of them, verified by NBC News, appears to show officers holding the man as someone yells, “Let go!” Multiple shouts of “He’s got a knife!” can also be heard."
Predictably, left wingers are upset that he didn't manage to kill any police officers (not from a lack of trying) and are lying about what happened. Typical.

Meme - CaliRNG19 @CaliRN619: "Thug stabs a cop and his skinfolk are crying because they shot him. But...his rap sheet says he's white, so I'm not sure if the riots are on for tonight or not"
"Offender Detail
Name: RUIZ, COREY D
Race: WHITE"

Meme - Rachel Cheramy: "I know Corey personally - he was my ex - and he was abusive. His criminal record shows this isn't the first time he's chosen violence. He hurt me, he choked another ex, and he pulled a knife during a theft at Woodman's. He was always getting into trouble. This has nothing to do with race; it's about his behavior."

Fatal Madison police shooting lacks camera footage (aka "Why don't Madison police officers have body cameras?") - "frontline officers for the Madison Police Department are not equipped with them. Body cameras have been proposed in the city multiple times over the past decade, including less than a year ago... Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association, said the WPPA has long supported the implementation of body-worn cameras across the state, including in Madison. "Body-worn cameras are not perfect, and no recording necessarily captures everything an officer sees, perceives, or experiences," Palmer said. "But they can provide critically important additional evidence and context. The absence of that evidence here underscores why the WPPA has long believed Madison officers should be equipped with this technology... The Community Policing and Body Camera Ad Hoc Committee rejected a proposed pilot program in September 2015 after community members expressed concerns about invasion of privacy and the manipulation of footage... The Common Council voted to implement the pilot program in 2022 and it launched in April 2024. For 90 days, officers on the city's north side wore the same Panasonic body cameras as Madison police's SWAT and motorcycle patrol units. Trial analysis showed that officer behavior didn't change while wearing body cameras and that reviewed footage did not lead to any added charges"
Time to blame the police for refusing body cameras

Meme - Smirkley @Smirkley: "I was told off for lumping liberals in w/ leftists, and classical liberalism & the left are indeed very different animals. But it's 2026, and they seem to believe similar things, at least according to Pew."
"Liberals and leftists split over money. % in each Pew typology group, ranked by gap
Diversity efforts made society fairer. Leftward Progressives 88%. Loyal Liberals 88%. No Apologies Right 1%
Violent crime is very big problem. Leftward Progressives 18%. Loyal Liberals 19%. No Apologies Right 65%
National effort to deport illegals. Leftward Progressives 0%. Loyal Liberals 3%. No Apologies Right 81%
People are too easily offended. Leftward Progressives 17%. Loyal Liberals 22%. No Apologies Right 89%
Raise tax rates on large corporations. Leftward Progressives 97%. Loyal Liberals 92%. No Apologies Right 21%
Billionaires are bad for the county. Leftward Progressives 82%. Loyal Liberals 61%. No Apologies Right 4%"
This doesn't stop commies fantasising about sending liberals to the gulags and/or guillotines over minor policy disagreements
The left wing agenda is all connected

Meme - Brad Polumbo: "The leftist streamer Hasan Piker, who infamously said "America deserved 9/11," has now mockingly framed a newspaper from the day after the attacks as part of his streaming set. I don't really have words for how grotesque I find that."
DSA Watch @DSA_Watch: "Hasan Piker now displays a framed 9/12 newspaper showing the Twin Towers in flames behind him on stream"
Clearly, he's just criticising his country and showing how much he loves it

American Debunk on X - "NYU Student explains to Nick Shirley why she would let rapists walk free This is an actual NYU student explaining, on camera to Nick Shirley, why she would prefer her own rapist remain free on the streets. Suicidal empathy.
Shirley: "Let's just say somebody who has raped a woman."
Student: "Totally."
Shirley: "Would you like them to be out in the street?"
Student: "I think my answer is yes. Even though that's a challenging answer to say."
Shirley: "So if you got raped, would you like your rapist to be out in the street?"
Student: "Well, let me finish, because I have been raped and they are out in the street, and I'm not sure them going to jail is a solution to whatever's going on inside their heart or even my own heart that contributed to that experience that I'm having. And I don't want more people to get raped, but I don't know for certain that going into a jail in the United States is going to shift anything inside of their operating system so that they'll make a different choice again."
Shirley: "Wow. Well, thank you guys so much for your time. And is there one last message you'd like to give to the people about potential the rise of communism or freeing the people inside the prisons?"
Student: "Just free yourself from the prison in your heart and then maybe we.""
What are the odds she hates men for supposedly being rapists?

Meme - ""Black's sold each other to slavery." Dumbass slavery has existed since the beginning of time however it was treated as a job. However the slavery white Europeans was pure wicked a..."
CEO of correcting Shion: "This mf be like:
Slavery done by Europeans: *hate*
Slavery done by non Euros: *love*
.: "Aww sorry my dude but slavery done by non euros was not dehumanizing so cope harder"
Left wingers just hate white people

Carlo Martin on X - (Translated from Spanish) - "🇬🇧 In some UK businesses, the penny dropped, and they found the solution to thefts by Africans, by hiring other Africans to beat them up and stop them from stealing, so they don't get accused of racism. They've gone back to the 19th century."
Marco I on X - (Translated from Spanish) - "In the 17th and 18th centuries, the owners of the haciendas would put one of the slaves to watch over the rest, offering them a club or a whip, because they knew that this way they got the most radical and bloodthirsty guard, to the point that they had to call them out for not being so cruel. The progressives are going to regret it when they discover what some are capable of doing against those of their own skin color if you just give them the right incentive."
Clearly, if black employees don't let other black people steal, it's internalised racism and they're Uncle Toms

Michael Shellenberger on X - "Germany was the powerhouse of Europe. Now, it is killing itself. Industrial output is 24% lower what it should be. Mass migration is bankrupting the state and destroying the culture. Thugs beat up reporters who dare ask questions. The Left manipulates guilt to destroy the West."
John Barton on X - "With the perspective of centuries, future historians may argue that WWII ultimately killed Europe by making it illegitimate to assert the idea of and act to protect national character, culture, & interests. Westphalia->west berlin, an epilog late 20th century, and that's it."

Germany’s Suicide Is A Warning To The West - "In my mind’s eye, present-day Germany resembles a large steamship that still appears to be sailing but has just run out of fuel. When the passengers realize what is happening, there will be anarchy aboard. We are, in that way, a warning to America and the rest of the West of what happens when a civilization decides to commit suicide. While I cannot predict the future, I cannot see how the catastrophe can be averted. The reason that our current trajectory seems hopeless dates back to an ideological problem that Germany has cultivated since 1945: guilt-based self-negation. Over the last 80 years, Germans’ natural self-identity, pride, and willingness to defend their country and culture have been suppressed. This suppression has spread and infected others. Not just in Germany but also in Sweden, France, Great Britain, and the United States, public spaces have become staging grounds for terrorist and anti-state brutality, the violence of rival gangs and ethnic groups, and the recklessness of left-wing mobs that fight any opponent of immigration. For the left, immigration is no longer a political question but a crusade for its secular religion of victimhood and salvation. This is where the extreme polarization and fanatical radicalism of the German government’s “fight against the right” efforts come from. As Paul Gottfried wrote in his 2021 book Antifascism: The Course of a Crusade, Germany today exemplifies “the elevation of antifascism to a state philosophy and program of mass reeducation”—with mass immigration as its most well-known consequence. Germany’s asylum system and its anti-fascist activism have combined as part of a state-funded industry in which more and more refugees are dependent on asylum seekers’ benefits while municipal budgets collapse under the burden of welfare spending. Germany’s 2026 federal core budget of €525 billion includes 90 billion of new debt. Combined with other debts (“Special fund”), the new debt amounts to close to 180 billion euros. Public-sector spending makes up more than 50 percent of Germany’s GDP, which means rich sinecures are up for grabs. But while Germany’s economic output is falling—a thousand industrial jobs are lost every month—asylum applications remain at high annual levels: over 106,000 by November 2025, plus 100,000 visas for family reunification. And NGOs and the German media want to ensure that the country continues on its current course. German politicians, meanwhile, attack “the right wing” as the country’s main problem even as they drive the country headlong into a brick wall. The right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has not yet been banned, but it is being denounced, paralyzed, and attacked in every conceivable way. In contrast, Antifa Ost, the notorious “Hammer Gang” of Antifa radicals that has attempted to murder German right-wingers with hammers, is regarded with public goodwill. The group has been branded a terrorist organization by the Trump administration for its attacks on cars, private homes, and members of Parliament, and it is probably only a matter of time before the first deaths occur. At the end of November, an anti-fascist street mob tried to prevent the founding of the new AfD youth organization Generation Germany in the city of Giessen. At least 25,000 demonstrators engaged in sometimes violent clashes with 6,000 police officers from all over Germany. Taxpayers finance both sides — the police and the anti-AfD NGOs —of these street battles. And things are even more absurd in the Bundestag. Chancellor Friedrich Merz of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has only two items on his agenda: to ostracize the AfD and to avoid upsetting his left-wing Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), who was himself a member of Antifa as a young man. Once a pompous-sounding conservative, Merz has broken all his electoral promises in his desperate attempts to placate the SPD and keep his coalition afloat. His constant contradictions are a symptom of his self-imposed dilemma. The SPD, in turn, feels emboldened by Merz’s weakness and has become increasingly radical. Among its demands is that Merz maintain the “firewall” against the AfD. When a CDU Bundestag motion to limit migration won a majority thanks to AfD votes early last year, a left-wing street mob of SPD supporters occupied CDU party headquarters. After that, Merz fell into line. The AfD is a parliamentary pariah. The other parties refuse to let their members perform basic parliamentary functions such as chairing meetings or heading committees. One assumes the intention is to ban the AfD or to find a pretext to suspend upcoming elections. It seems unlikely the AfD will ever be permitted to govern. Even AfD’s leader, Alice Weidel, is said to be very skeptical regarding her party’s future. The same game is being played against right-wing populist parties in Paris, London, Vienna, Stockholm, Bucharest, and The Hague, albeit under different circumstances. President Donald Trump, too, faces ideologically motivated obstruction within the U.S. Congress and judicial system. This situation brings us to a sobering assessment: A decisive battle for the future of the West is being fought right now, both behind the scenes and on the streets. The violent Antifa mob is just one of many players in this game. Its advocacy for Muslim refugees (who comprise 76 percent of Germany’s immigrant population) coincides strikingly with the Islam-friendly attitude of European elites. Fighting Islamic Sharia law, femicide, and gender segregation will be just as much a part of the battle for the future as cracking down on terrorism, knife crime, and protection rackets that come with immigrant gangs."

The Drunk Republican on X - "Wokeness literally came out of nowhere. Just as race had largely become a non-issue over the course of the 80s and 90s, social science departments across the country began manufacturing cultural crises, complete with absurd terminology, out of thin air. Because without conflict the left can’t retain power we were suddenly bombarded with insane claims about “microaggressions,” “cultural appropriation,” and “intersectionality.” Peace was never an option, and with nothing to be mad about academics simply made a bunch of stuff up. Out of nowhere an entire movement was born, and it would sweep through our most hallowed institutions like a fire through Rome. Companies, universities, and government agencies would spend the next 15 years slaying imaginary boogeymen rather than accomplishing their stated missions. Corporations held struggle sessions; colleges illegally persecuted certain demographics when it came to acceptance; and governments of all stripes prioritized social justice over serving their citizens. It’s almost hard to remember how ridiculous it all was. They interrupted brunches with megaphones, put porn in elementary schools and, in the end, burned down entire cities. The price tag, in hindsight, was almost certainly enormous. How many qualified applicants were denied jobs, affecting the performance of the captured institutions? Would we have cured cancer by now? Touched down on Mars? We will never know because we were too busy ensuring that bisexual Filipino amputees could serve in combat roles! One can only imagine where we’d be if the last decade-and-a-half wasn’t stolen from us. And what did it accomplish? NOTHING! It was always doomed to collapse, of course, as it was nothing more than a pyramid scheme of oppression. But it hasn’t disappeared. Rather it has basically rebranded under the DSA. The left needs a struggle to survive and wokeness, which framed struggle in terms of race and sexuality, has fizzled out. But “eat the rich” has never been more in. Which is why we cannot allow the architects of these movements rob us of our rightful progress. Because the left doesn’t create, it only destroys. And perhaps nothing illustrates that better than our recent 15-year-long national nightmare."

Further Evidence for the Dark-Ego-Vehicle Principle: Higher Pathological Narcissistic Grandiosity and Virtue Signaling Are Related to Greater Involvement in LGBQ and Gender Identity Activism - "The dark-ego-vehicle principle (DEVP) suggests that individuals with so-called dark personalities (e.g., high narcissistic traits) are attracted to political and social activism that they can repurpose to satisfy their specific ego-focused needs (e.g., signaling moral superiority and manipulating others) instead of achieving prosocial goals. Currently, research on the DEVP is still rare. With two pre-registered studies, we sought further evidence for the DEVP by examining the associations of pathological narcissistic grandiosity with involvement in LGBQ activism (Study 1) and gender identity activism (Study 2). Socioeconomically diverse samples from the USA (Study 1; N = 446) and the UK (Study 2; N = 837) were recruited online via the research-oriented crowdsourcing platform Prolific. Individuals completed the Pathological Narcissism Inventory as well as measures of involvement in activism. Moreover, we assessed different covariates (e.g., altruism), and potential correlates within the narcissism-activism relationship (i.e., virtue signaling, dominance, and aggression). In addition, we examined potential relationships between other dark personality variables (e.g., psychopathy) and activism. In both samples, higher pathological narcissistic grandiosity was related to greater involvement in activism. As expected, virtue signaling was consistently involved in the relationship between pathological narcissistic grandiosity and activism. However, neither dominance nor aggression was related to individuals' involvement in activism. The results did also not consistently support a relationship between higher psychopathy and greater involvement in activism. Overall, the findings help to further specify the DEVP."
Woke activism is about narcissism

DR POOL on X - "🚨 TERRIFYING: These are Muslim Imams in FLORIDA “I want the governor of Florida to be Muslim. I want Muslims in the House, Muslim senators.” “We don’t apologize about jihad. We are not afraid of jihad. Jihad is who we are.” Repel Islam, Florida!"
Islamophobia!

Inflation and "Greed"

iFunny seems to have deleted the eggs chart, so I am posting a similar version and a related one on a dedicated post:


"Eggs US (USD/Dozen)
2016: *spike in egg prices* "Egg Companies Discover Greed"
2017 *drop in egg prices* "Greed Forgotten"
2018: *spike in egg prices* "Egg Companies Rediscover Greed"
2019 *drop in egg prices* "Greed Forgotten"
2020: *spike in egg prices* "Egg Companies Rediscover Greed"
2021 *drop in egg prices* "Greed Forgotten"
2023: *huge spike in egg prices* "Egg Companies Really Rediscover Greed"
2025 *drop in egg prices* "Greed Forgotten""


"Postwar greed spikes *high inflation in the late 1940s and early 1950s*
The good old days, when companies were generous *low inflation from the mid-late 1950s to the mid 60s*
The Great Greed Explosion of the 70s *high inflation in the mid-late 70s*
Gordon Gecko *slightly elevated inflation in 1990*
The Long Generosity of the 80s and 90s *low inflation from the 90s to the mid 00s*
extreme generosity in 2008 *deflation in 2008*
The return of greed *2022 inflation*"

Links - 6th September 2026 (1 - DSA)

Richard Hanania on X - "DSA has released a new platform
-Expand the House
-Abolish the Senate
-Full voting rights for criminals and illegal immigrants
Sounds promising."

Western Lensman on X - "DSA's Ashik Siddique: Our goal is "to replace capitalism with socialism." "That power is not conceded without struggle." This is the Democrat party 'Big Tent' we keep hearing about."
Western Lensman on X - "DSA Co-Chair: We Want To Abolish The Senate "We don't think that's extreme." This is now part of the Democrat party 'Big Tent.'"
Bonchie on X - "Getting kind of tired of people who immigrated from third-world, mob rule countries coming here and thinking they can tell us to do things like abolish the Senate, one of the most important facets of our system."

Richard Hanania on X - "Calling the DSA a parasite on American liberalism sounds harsh, but what else do you call a radical faction trying to use the Democrat label to eventually abolish the party?"

Stu Smith on X - "🚨 Meet the “Abolish Rent” Ideologue Teaching DSA Tenant Organizers How to Wage War on Landlords
Tracy Rosenthal co-founded the Los Angeles Tenants Union, helps politically educate DSA tenant organizers, and is currently on rent strike in New York City.  In this supercut, Rosenthal says tenants pay rent “at the barrel of a gun,” describes withholding rent as a “liberatory vision of home,” and explains how movement lawyers can use the legal system to buy tenants time.  She also endorses tactics including camping outside a landlord’s home, leaving bad Yelp reviews of their other businesses, and crashing family weddings.  As you will see, Rosenthal radically frames the relationship between property owners and tenants as inherently exploitative.  I am certainly sympathetic to anyone dealing with a bad landlord. But this goes far beyond protecting tenants from abuse. It treats the landlord-tenant relationship itself as illegitimate and pushes organizing tactics to an extreme.  Rosenthal’s ideology and organizing model increasingly permeate DSA’s tenant movement. Stick around for even more clips!"
wanye on X - "These people are much more clear-eyed about their project than centrists give them credit for. They aren't interested in the current system, in operating according to its rules or logic. They are in a power struggle for resources, which they want to take from the people with power now by any means necessary (including violence)."

Cynical Publius on X - "I am really getting sick and tired of "moderate" Democrats (as if such a thing actually exists) shouting that the DSA is some sort of new, existential threat to their party and to America.  In reality, the DSA is the entirely logical and foreseeable outcome of the way Democrats have been pandering to the most extreme and perverse elements of our society for the past 40 years.  Logical.  Foreseeable.  Stop acting surprised.  You are what you are, you get what you deserve."

David Bernstein on X - "This DSA stooge literally says that if a small business owner who has to work in the "real" economy can't compete with a grocery store owned and massively subsidized by his own government, "maybe he shouldn't be in that business." Business owners should see this as a call to war.  The government has sufficient resources to put *anyone* out of business if it decided to."

Washington Journal on X - ".@DemSocialists co-chair Ashik Siddique (@ahSHEEK) says the DSA would abolish the Senate: "We do believe that government should be proportional to the population…We just don't see the point of the Senate."
Charles C. W. Cooke on X - "The fun thing about this is that, per Article V, the Senate can’t be abolished without the consent of all 50 states, so this is functionally indistinguishable from a call to abolish the Constitution."

Gerald Posner on X - "The New York DSA co-chair says his parents fled Peru to escape what he calls “the imposition of capitalism and American imperialism.” Their solution? They moved to America. This sounds like the level of illogic that was the hallmark of my freshman year political science classes at UC Berkeley. He doesn’t realize he is not making a talking point as much as giving an example that collapses his entire argument."

Gregory K Bovino on X - "People keep asking:   “How did these hardcore radicals just sweep Democratic primaries in New York?”  Look at the winners.   One was raised in Turkey until adulthood.   The others come from Palestinian, Dominican, and Haitian backgrounds, and they’re running on “America is the problem,” “river to the sea,” and open hostility to our traditions.  Now look at who voted for them: their own communities turned out in heavy, coordinated blocs.  This isn’t random. This is what happens when you import millions from cultures that don’t assimilate.   “One man, one vote” stops working when the new arrivals outnumber the original Americans in district after district, and vote their tribe, not your country.  The result? Your neighborhoods, your schools, your future get reshaped against your will.  The only way to hit the brakes: Mass deportations of anyone here illegally, plus an immediate, total pause on legal immigration until assimilation actually happens again.  Think of it like this: Your house is flooding. You don’t negotiate with the water, you turn off the hose first.  This isn’t theory. It’s math playing out in real time. The demographic shift at the ballot box is visible. What are we waiting for?"

Bill Melugin on X - "BREAKING: Rep. Espaillat concedes. Mamdani-backed socialists have officially gone 3/3 and won all of their respective Democratic primaries for U.S. House in New York tonight. Their positions are some of the most extreme & far left Dems have seen:
Darializa Avila Chevalier (NY-13): Abolish prisons, abolish ICE, abolish borders, defund the police, and “all deportations are wrong”, including for violent criminals. She has called the U.S. an “effing disgrace”, and said in a prior social media post “I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.”
Claire Valdez (NY-7): Grant citizenship and voting rights to illegal aliens, use taxpayer funds for all transgender treatments, & eliminate private health insurance.
Brad Lander (NY-10): Abolish ICE, forgive all student loans (almost $2 trillion worth), expand the Supreme Court.
Mamdani gets a clean sweep, a bad night for Hakeem Jeffries, and big questions for where the Democratic Party is heading."

The DSA is exploiting Zohran Mamdani's NYC mayoralty for a stealth revolution - "For all his smiling charms, Mayor Zohran Mamdani is the willing tool of a movement running a very old and ugly playbook — radicals not only determined to take over the Democratic Party, but to wield state power, in this case the government of New York City, as a Democratic Socialist tool.  Start with his Office of Community Engagement — which, the city learned last week, is already costing taxpayers $53 million, a full 10 times the advertised level.  The OCE is a DSA agitprop shop, pure and simple, devoted to campaigning for political issues the radicals deem important, such as producing an illusion of massive public support for the Rent Guidelines Board final rent-freeze vote at month’s end.  The fix is in at the RGB, as the mayor has named most of its members, including the supposed landlord representatives, yet the OCE is recruiting an audience to stage on a play of “the people demanding justice” and getting it, thanks to the Democratic Socialist mayor.  And the public at large is paying for the DSA show.  Mind you, the DSA’s not limiting itself to the Soviet playbook: It’s training up its own paramilitary wing, the Red Rabbits — a street-fighting force strongly reminiscent of the Sturmabteilung, the “brownshirts” of the 1920s Nazi party. But most of its efforts in the city are more Soviet-style, as witness Mamdani’s housing plan, which quite literally aims to expropriate the property of his class enemies — in this case, mom-and-pop property owners — and hand their buildings over to nonprofits run by the politically connected.   The result, as City Councilwoman Vickie Paladino quite rightly points out, would be a real-estate portfolio potentially worth billions concentrated in the hands of DSA allies.  Assets that will remain in the movement’s hands even if it loses the next election.  No matter that nonprofit-run housing has failed for decades to deliver for tenants; it’s a success for the nonprofits themselves, and those who run them.  Heck, the DSA under Mamdani is taking over day care, too.  His push for “free” 2K seats for NYC toddlers, spinning up even now, is spending $73 million for 2,000 seats — $36,500 per kid, 50% higher than what a private day care would cost.  Why not simply give those big bucks to parents as vouchers for private day care? Because they’re not run by members of the politically connected nonprofit-industrial complex, ready allies of the socialists’ agenda, and they don’t employ unionized UFT workers — an element the DSA wants brought into its coalition by handing them your money under the guise of lifting up the downtrodden.   Plus, by jacking up wages in the sector, the plan will squeeze private providers out, leaving all but the wealthiest parents dependent on the city and social-services socialism.  As Lenin observed, the whole question of revolutionary socialism lies in the phrase “Who-whom?” — who triumphs and who faces defeat. It’s easy to laugh at the mayor’s more ham-handed efforts to reward the DSA cadre, but the movement is relentlessly exploiting his mayoralty to grow its power base at everyone else’s expense.  Traditional Democrats need to wake up and fight back just as ruthlessly before it’s too late."

Claire Valdez on X - "Art can't be a luxury made by and for the few. But the cost of living has made it impossible for so many New Yorkers to create the culture that makes this city beautiful. I joined Mayor @ZohranKMamdani at MoMA PS1 to talk about my journey in the arts and keeping NYC vibrant."
Centrism Fan Acct 🔹 on X - "This lady is like the perfect caricature of what every median voter negatively associates with Dems. Just her look alone...weird, over-academic, off-putting. Privileged failed artist, complaining about how unfair the world is. The ideal DSA candidate."

Bonchie on X - "When you realize DSA members are just a bunch of people who failed at everything, refused to get real jobs, and then decided leeching off taxpayers was the next best thing, their entire ideology starts to make more sense."
Bonchie on X - "The working class didn’t want to buy her crappy paintings, so she’ll just tax them and pay herself a grant instead. Psychotic."

NY House hopeful Claire Valdez unveils housing plan to 'take buildings away' from so-called bad landlords - "A far-left New York House hopeful backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani vowed to “take buildings away” from so-called slumlords and implement nationwide rent control if she’s elected to Congress.  Democratic Socialists of America candidate Claire Valdez — who is running for the open 7th House District seat in Brooklyn and Queens – unveiled her radical housing plan Thursday, slamming building owners and the real estate industry...   The plan explicitly calls for the government to seize property from bad building owners, declaring, “there is no right to be a slumlord.”... the agenda contains little to no details about how Valdez plans to implement her proposed socialist platform — which mirrors that of Mamdani’s administration — on a national scale.   She called for “universal rent control,” and to amend the low-income housing tax credit to protect long-term rent stabilization.  “Rent control must be expanded not just to every New York tenant but to every tenant in the country,” she said. The former labor organizer also vowed to fight to fully fund federal voucher programs and pass a national good cause eviction law — preventing landlords from evicting tenants without proof of lease violation.  Valdez is one of three DSA-backed congressional candidates that Mamdani has endorsed to take on incumbent Democrats and even other progressives in the June 23 primaries."

DSA Watch on X - "🚨 Claire Valdez, Democratic nominee for NY-7, says she wants to abolish pre-check and nationalize the entire airline industry"
Justine Bateman on X - "Can there be even a modicum of knowledge of any kind of history?   We HAD regulated US airlines and the resulting price of tickets was through the roof.   Maybe Claire is hoping that airline tickets can become wildly unaffordable? But no, she is imagining that “nationalizing the airline industry” means everyone gets to fly for free. “Democratize airline tickets!” or some other total nonsense.  The lack of education and level of ignorance is comical."

Exclusive | Mamdani-backed candidate peddled crackpot COVID-19 claim pushed by Chinese Communists - "A far-left congressional candidate backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani peddled a crackpot COVID-19 theory that said the virus originated in France — and quoted a Chinese Communist propaganda organ as evidence.  Candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier spewed the bizarre claim in an unearthed tweet from 2020, citing as her source the Qiao Collective, a known propaganda organ for China.  “So you mean that once again it was PoC who intervened and stopped the spread of a European plague? Wow. Shocked,” Avila Chevalier said in a May 10, 2020, tweet, apparently referring to “people of color.”   Qiao said earlier that day that “Hospitals in France confirmed that France had COVID-19 outbreaks in November, a month before China.”  The Qiao Collective describes itself as “a grassroots media organization of Chinese diaspora writers, artists, and researchers dedicated to challenging Western media narratives and U.S. aggression against China.”...   There’s a wide consensus in the scientific and intelligence communities that COVID-19 originated in Wuhan, China — whether from a wholesale market or a lab leak in close proximity in Wuhan.   Avila Chevalier, 32, is seeking to topple veteran Rep. Adriano Espaillat in the 13th House District that covers the northern Manhattan neighborhoods of Morningside Heights, Harlem, Washington Heights/Inwood and the northwest Bronx.  She is endorsed by Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America...   The revelation of DAC peddling Chinese Communist Party propaganda comes as the CCP tries to make inroads in New York City and the United States writ large through spies and an elaborate network of affiliated or sympathetic left-wing groups... She’s already on the defensive about other tweets posted within the past five years that Espaillat highlighted in an attack ad — including one where DAC slammed black and Arab men for “fetishizing ugly colonizer women.”  Referring to former Vice President and 2024 Democratic White House nominee Kamala Harris, DAC said, “I have no nuance to add. F—k Kamala Harris.” As for former President Joe Biden, she said, “I will never give my vote to a rapist.”  Biden has vehemently denied allegations from a former Senate aide that he sexually assaulted her in 1993 and has never been charged with a crime over the allegations. Avila Chevalier also joked about disrespecting the American flag.  “I forget to get napkins,” she said in another of many deleted social media posts. “So I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me.”  The statement was accompanied by a smile emoji."

Jeff Coltin on X - "Meet DAC. @HollyPret profiles Darializa Avila Chevalier, the "Palestine Ultra" and "millennial with an internet connection" who could unseat Adriano Espaillat."
daniela on X - "I read this entire article and there is nothing in here about the actual district of uptown Manhattan. Nothing about schools, or affordability, or transit, or public safety, or housing. Just endless blather about Palestine . It's very instructive of what kind of rep she'll be."

daniela on X - "Watch as Darializa Avila Chevalier, prison abolitionist, is asked *four times* how she would handle a murderer, and each time refuses to answer."

Apple Lamps on X - "Darializa Avila Chevalier prides herself on removing the J. Marion Sims statue in Central Park and treats that as proof of her moral superiority. In reality, it’s a perfect example of how people like her dismantle the reputations of white men who made enormous contributions by rewriting history to fit their ideology.  Sims was a 19th‑century surgeon who helped crack one of the worst medical nightmares women faced at the time... vesicovaginal fistula, a childbirth injury that left women constantly leaking urine, stinking of urine, isolated, and ashamed in a world with almost no effective treatment.   J. Marion Sims developed a surgical repair and instruments that changed gynecology worldwide and led to specialized women’s hospitals, saving or dramatically improving the lives of countless women who otherwise would have been written off as hopeless.  The modern narrative her socialist cult pushes rips all of that out of context. They zoom in on the ugliest, most painful part of the story... his experimental operations on enslaved women... without ever acknowledging that those women were brought to him already destroyed by that horrific childbirth injury.   They strip away the reality of 1840s medicine in the Deep South, where surgery was brutal for everyone and vesicovaginal fistula was a life‑ruining condition with no real cure, and then treat his crude, early attempts to fix it as nothing but sadism.   There is no serious effort to weigh how common harsh surgical practice was at the time, what options actually existed in that setting, how surgery worked before modern anesthesia, or how many women later had their lives given back by techniques and instruments that grew out of that work. Those complexities are erased and replaced with a simple, politically useful script... "Sims was just a racist butcher whose “achievements” deserve only condemnation."  It’s revisionist history aimed at degrading white men and turning our own national story into nothing but a catalog of crimes. And the fact that a congressional candidate like Darializa Avila Chevalier treats tearing down his statue as a top credential tells you exactly what kind of “leadership” she’s offering... not building anything better, but vilifying the people who built this country and teaching you to despise the civilization she’s standing on."

Kareem Rifai 🌐 on X - "Just hours after Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Darializa Chevalier blamed the US for "bullying Russia" and accused Washington of stoking the war for profit. Copy-and-paste Russian talking points. She's the Mamdani-backed challenger to Rep. Adriano Espaillat."

Hen Mazzig on X - "“It is a very visually similar situation”  Darializa Avila Chevalier, who is running for Congress, said the West Bank and Gaza are the same as her own district in New York City.   She said in both cases the displacement is caused by “corporate interests” buying up the land.   This might be one of the most intellectually dishonest things I've ever heard. Jews are not "corporate interests," those insistent on living in the West Bank do so because there is a deep cultural and religious connection to that land in particular.  Palestinians also have a deep connection to that land, thus the conflict is born.  Also, you're comparing the district you run to Gaza? Really?"
Izengabe on X - "The antisemitism behind what Darializa Avila Chevalier (D) is saying is astonishing. She's implying that Harlem is like the West Bank because Jews are buying up the land & pushing "brown people" out. This is something you would expect a Grand Wizard of the KKK to say & not a candidate for Congress in Manhattan."

NickFrank40 on X - "Its' just... You can't fucking call Gaza a genocide and then say the affordability crisis in Washington Heights is just like the genocide. You sound like a fucking crazy person who doesn't seriously think Gaza is a genocide."

Jesse Arm on X - "I am not astonished. Here are some other fun facts about Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed congressional candidate and former organizing lead for Zohran Mamdani’s campaign Darializa Avila Chevalier.
- She is a racist.
- She has committed to abolishing prisons, and legalizing prostitution and the private consumption of all drugs.
- She has called for government-run farm cooperatives, a la Stalin and Mao.
- She converted to Islam three years ago at a mosque led by a pro-Hamas, Holocaust-denying sheikh.
- She engaged in civil terrorism and helped lead the illegal “tentifada” encampments at Columbia that resulted in a $221 million settlement."

Coddled Affluent Professional on X - "Overall this may be a fortuitous development for Republicans.  Democrats in general do better with establishmentarians who project a sense of normalcy (eg Biden, pantsuit ‘moderates,’ etc) rather than loud, online, disinhibited left-wing social media narcissists even if there’s very little difference in the policy they support and effectuate (the ‘moderates’ are fully radical in practice). Electing DSA leftists in deep blue locales doesn’t really change Dem politics ideologically but it does affect the tenor.  It all kind of goes back to that Ezra Klein-TNC podcast where Ezra was like, ‘I agree with you on 99.9% of policy but don’t you think we should be careful to not to say the quiet part out loud? Just for the sake of political strategy?’ and TNCs response was, ‘No, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to do what I want and I like to say stuff out loud.’ That basically sums up what’s happening in Dem politics in 2026."

Meme - *Men with Palestine, Mexican, Iranian, Chinese flags running past open Immigration gate*
Donkey: "ARE YOU SURE THAT'S A GOOD IDEA?"
Donkey with Democratic Party T-Shirt: "RELAX, THEY WILL ONLY VOTE DEMOCRAT"
*Zohran Mamdani holding Soviet flag, with AOC in red tube top dress with hammer and sickle, with flames and pitchforks in background, Soviet flags and "no capitalism" sign*
Democrat Primary scaffold with 2 donkeys being hanged: "FRANKLY, I DIDN'T SEE THIS COMING..."

RedWave Press on X - "TERRIFYING: The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have released new policy platforms that include eliminating the U.S. Senate, granting amnesty to all illegal aliens, defunding the Department of Defense, and replacing the President and Supreme Court with an executive  and judiciary chosen by — and subordinate to — Congress."

DSA Watch on X - "DSA Members: "The most important thing we can do is take America down from within""
Hon. Vickie Paladino on X - "Plotting the overthrow of the country isn't constitutionally protected activity.  Speaking academically about how the country could be taken down is protected, but that's not what the DSA is doing. These aren't academic theories being debated in a classroom.  This is a heavily funded and highly active political party actively strategizing about how to execute plans to take the country down, while electing members to office and infiltrating American institutions.  None of this is protected by the constitution, and we have every right to dissolve the DSA and throw these people into prison for sedition.  These people aren't kidding around here. And we need to get a LOT more ruthless with them."
Time to impeach Trump for treason!

Saturday, September 05, 2026

Links - 5th September 2026 (2)

First He Came for Cancel Culture. Now He Wants to Cancel Smartphones - The New York Times - "He found that young people were experiencing a tidal wave of anxiety, self-harm and suicide. Major depressive episodes have roughly doubled for teenagers since 2010, according to Mr. Haidt’s research. Parents and teachers sometimes explain this by noting that Gen Z is facing disasters that would make anyone depressed: climate change, school shootings, threats to democracy. But Mr. Haidt argues that young people historically drew a deep sense of purpose when facing thorny challenges, whether World War II or the movement against the war in Vietnam."

The West has forgotten the art of strategy - "World-class chess players know the difference between strategy and tactics better than politicians do. To win in chess you need to start with a strategy — a long-term plan that gets you to a position of superiority. Then you close in with a sequence of tactical moves. As Max Euwe, the Dutch chess grandmaster of the 1930s, once observed: “Strategy requires thought. Tactics require observation.” The West is all tactics. The East is mostly strategy. You need both because even the most brilliant short-term moves do not add up to a strategy. Just look at the history of US military intervention since World War II. Each of them had their short-term rationale, even Iraq. But has it made the US safer? Has it made the world safer? Has it brought democracy? Has anyone become more civilised as a result?... I lost respect for virtually every single Russia or China expert in prominent think-tanks because they kept on misjudging this key element of China’s and Russia’s strategy. They still tell us that China and Russia will never align, or that China would step in and stop Putin from using a nuclear bomb. The misjudgements continue on all levels. The previous US administration misjudged the dynamics of the semiconductor ban, through which they hoped to keep China in the digital dark ages for a little while longer. They expressed surprise when Huawei succeeded in integrating a state-of-the-art chip into one of its latest models. The semiconductor ban is a classic case of the unintended consequences of sanctions. China learned how to make semiconductors, and the Russians learned how to build a payment system. Officials in the US State Department think of the dollar as a political weapon through which they can force their will on others. They got bad advice from macroeconomists who told them that no other currency in the world could ever challenge the dollar. They are not telling the whole story. What is true is that no other official currency will challenge the dollar. The euro started as the world’s second-largest currency for foreign exchange reserves and has now been pushed into third place by gold. Where the observation goes wrong is that it fails to see the true threat. It comes from alternative payment systems, crypto currencies and blockchain technologies that allow other countries to diversify away from the US without having to create new currencies of their own. Macroeconomists still live in the world of fiat money and central banks — all creations of modern industrial society. But China and Russia are changing the game. It’s not cricket anymore. The trouble with our misjudgements is they have no corrective mechanism. If you are a financial trader, your misjudgements cost you money. You cannot keep getting everything wrong and expect to stay solvent. That is not the case in foreign policy, because the people who keep on making those serial misjudgements are not the same people who are paying the price. It is also why dysfunctional economic theories persist even if there is no empirical evidence that supports them. Economists, State Department officials and journalists live in a space of mutually reinforced misjudgements. They celebrate each tactical victory — and never win wars. The West did have a strategy once, which is what put us into the position of superiority in the first place. It originated in science and was leveraged by smart political decisions. But it all happened a long time ago. The Second World War was the beginning of a breathtaking series of innovations that started with the Manhattan Project and that were co-sponsored by the US Army: the transistor, the semiconductor, the integrated circuit, the personal computer, the internet, and now AI. It was technology that gave the West a strategic advantage. European integration was in that category of big strategic moves until it turned into a sprawling mess with EU enlargement."

Mexican cartels are killing influencers live on camera - "Experts point to increasing links between content creators and powerful organised criminal gangs, which often use them to launder money or to promote their groups. In return, influencers gain notoriety for providing insight into a drug trade that has long fascinated outsiders."

Sex doll in suitcase prompts murder investigation - "Disposing of a sex doll is a difficult task, as any reader of Tom Sharpe’s novel Wilt will recognise. But cramming one into a suitcase and dumping it by the side of a road in the Australian wilderness – with it still wearing a wig, nose piercing and clothing – has to be one of the most incongruous ways to do so. The doll was so lifelike that New South Wales police launched a murder investigation hours after it was discovered by a couple on the outskirts of Oallen on Sunday."

Innocent shopper kicked out of Sainsbury’s after facial recognition error - "A shopper was thrown out of Sainsbury’s after staff incorrectly identified him as an offender flagged by its facial recognition software. Matt Arnold, a promoter at Dulwich Hamlet Comedy Club, had been waiting to pay at a store in East Dulwich, south-east London, when he was swarmed by security and told to leave."

Spain’s socialist leader pushes Europe to the edge - "the sight of tens of thousands of people streaming across Europe’s only land border with Africa prompted an extraordinary, critical response from 22 of the 27 European Union bloc members, who blamed Sánchez’s migration policy. It was just the latest controversy for the socialist Spanish leader, who finds himself increasingly isolated on the world stage. Sánchez’s opposition to Donald Trump’s war against Iran and his condemnation of Israel over the conflict in Gaza have alienated him from his counterparts in Berlin, Rome and other European capitals. The Spanish prime minister has also created divisions within the 32-nation Nato military alliance by refusing to raise defence spending beyond 2.1pc of GDP, well short of the 5pc demanded by Trump by 2035. Germany and many Nordic countries, conscious of the Russian threat closer to their borders, have promised to find the cash. Others have paid lip service to pledges to raise defence spending, concerned that angering Trump might prompt further US tariffs against the EU. Sánchez’s response to perhaps the biggest migration crisis to hit Europe in years speaks volumes about his inability to read the room. Instead of staying in the red-brick Moncloa Palace, the prime ministerial residence in Madrid, to deal with Ceuta and its aftermath, Sánchez jetted off on holiday. To the astonishment of many Spaniards, Sánchez even took the time to share his summer playlist of hits that he would listen to on the beach, including the likes of Charli XCX and Madonna. Since coming to power eight years ago, Sánchez has notched up considerable gains for Spain. The economy is on a roll and the Socialist leader can claim credit for defusing the Catalan independence crisis that caused the worst political division since the failed 1981 military coup. He has also become a darling of the European Left, both at home and abroad. As well as taking on Trump and Israel, he has announced windfall taxes on banks and energy companies, introduced rent controls and passed legislation allowing anyone over 16 to change their gender... Even former Socialist party supporters accuse him of selling out to Basque and Catalan separatists over a series of concessions to keep his minority coalition administration clinging on to power. Opponents from the Right-wing People’s Party and the far-Right Vox have demanded he step down, as corruption scandals involving his wife, brother and close aides have embroiled his government. They have all denied wrongdoing... During the pandemic, Sánchez was among five Left-wing leaders in Europe. Today he is the only social democrat remaining on the Continent, apart from the leaders of Malta and Denmark... Relations between Spain and Israel have never been good. Madrid was the last European nation apart from the Vatican City to recognise Israel in 1986, a condition of it joining the EU. This was largely owing to the close ties between Spain and the Arab world during the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, who died in 1975 after nearly 40 years in power... there have been seven migration amnesties in the past 40 years, but none have addressed the underlying problem of illegal immigration... Carlos Miranda, a former Spanish ambassador to the UK and the United Nations, believes Sánchez’s policy towards Nato is mistaken. “His attitude towards Nato is not correct,” he says. “The Americans have been asking for more support not only during Trump’s time but for 20 years. “If Europe does not support Nato then the Americans will get fed up and it will collapse. It is not a matter of being nice towards Trump, it is a matter of being prudent.”

Mexico deploys military to save avocados - "Mexico has deployed more than a thousand troops to protect its £2.2bn avocado industry from being decimated by cartel violence after Washington halted imports of the fruit over security concerns for US agricultural inspectors. Around 1,500 Mexican soldiers are being stationed across the embattled state of Michoacán to protect agricultural workers who provide the US with two-thirds of its avocado supply."

Wheat has corrupted humanity - "wheat is a slave-master, demanding in its specific and daily needs, not least the endless — or so it seems to us who have ever grown the stuff — weeding. Wheat locked us into a seasonal cycle of planting, weeding and harvesting from which we have been unable to escape ever since. It also made us more sedentary, both in terms of chaining us to static settlements, and becoming less active. Guarding a wheat field from wild boar requires less energy than hunting wild boar; the lineal ancestor of the couch potato was the campfire bun. Crop-watching may demand little energy, but it is demanding of time. With fewer hours to hunt and to forage, we settled for a restricted diet. At Abu Hereyra in Syria, archaeology records this shift: when the occupants were hunter-gatherers, they consumed 150 wild plants; as arable farmers, they ate just a handful of crops. Human health deteriorated; the human body changed. Singularly, the jaw shrunk, since the new wheaty diet required less chewing than meat. Human teeth did not reduce proportionately to the smaller jaw, so dental crowding ensued. The diet of starch — wheat’s principal component — caused cavities. And the dietetic value of wheat, which was anyway only modestly nutritious, has declined by as much as 30% under contemporary industrialised agriculture. The intriguing question is: if wheat-growing altered our corporeal structure, did it alter our brain? Did the systematic rituals and requirements of planting and harvesting wheat change our brains to make us more docile? Organised? Cooperative? Disconnected from nature? Did it turn us away from animism to praise of Ceres, goddess of grain crops, and then to an abstract, monolithic God of whom we ask our daily bread. What wheat certainly did do was facilitate the rise of the state. As James C. Scott, co-director of the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University, explains in Against the Grain, wheat became the best way to tax the people: “The key to the nexus between grains and states lies, I believe, in the fact that only the cereal grains can serve as a basis for taxation: visible, divisible, assessable, storable, transportable, and ‘rationable’.” Wheat-fields are fixed and surveillable; livestock moves about. Counting sheep is easy in bed but for a state flunky on an arid hillside, the accurate checking of ovines (which are, anyway, easy to transport, and therefore to hide) is all but impossible. Similarly, communities reliant on tubers or root vegetables such as yams as their staple were more able to evade taxation since the crop can be left in the ground and harvested when the tax collector has gone home. Such societies rarely developed into states. But where you have wheat, historically, you have state control or its like. The taxing of wheat enabled the emergence of non-productive elites, who required an armed wing to defend their regime. The food that fuelled the necessary population increase to staff the army, the fist of the state? Wheat. Nutrient poor but energy dense, fodder for the masses, it provided just enough energy and health to work, breed, fight. The early grain states were “population machines” (Scott again), domesticating people as the farmer domesticates the cow herd... To prevent the enslaved fleeing the dirty work, law and policing were invoked, even invented. The legal Code of Hammurabi (c1750 BC) has six clauses to punish the escape of slaves. Western society was eventually organised around the production and consumption of wheat. And so it became the ultimate political tool. Communism’s iconography of a hammer for the proletariat and a wheat-cutting sickle for the peasantry turned out to be one of history’s crueller ironies. The hammer was taken to the workers, the sickle to the peasant. As well as being easy to tax, wheat is easy to confiscate. And since wheat is a subsistence crop, remove it and you have starvation. During the Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine of 1932-3, Stalin deliberately deprived the country’s population — who lacked sufficient ardour for rule from Moscow — of wheat. Some 3.9 million Ukrainians, about 13% of the population, perished... Since the Second World War, the chief agricultural aim of government (and transnational governments such as the EU) has been productivity: quantity over quality. Wheat farming has become a yield-obsessed industry dependent on labour-reducing but expensive technology. Unsurprisingly, it has become a cereal-killer of small, family farms: a brand-new combine harvester can cost £100,000. Farmers who do fork out for one become indentured to an agribusiness complex, which oversees their production of wheat from cultivation to sale... Although the lobbyists and the apologists of agribusiness insist that pesticide use has declined over the last quarter of a century, this is not the case when it comes to wheat. Between 2000 and 2016, average spray passes (applications) over wheat increased from 5.5 to 6.6, while the active substances in sprays went from 14.7 to 20.5... Yearly planting requires yearly tilling and this constant churning of earth kills the soil’s living organisms, spumes CO2 from soil-stored carbon, and exacerbates climate change. And I have not even mentioned the negatives of nitrogen as industrial wheat’s mainstay artificial fertiliser, what with its polluting run-offs and its release of nitrous oxide — a greenhouse gas which, pound for pound, warms the planet 300 times as much as carbon dioxide... Why not grass over swathes of the arable prairies of East Anglia — and Ukraine — and stock them with free-range cattle and sheep? Grass requires no lashings of chemicals, and livestock dung is excellent at restoring soil fertility and biodiversity; a single cow can feed 2.2 million insects per year, which means snacks galore for the birds and the bats... An outdoor cow, on established grass, with methane-reducing seaweed supplement and low stocking density, is actually sequestering carbon. So, bovines are less of a climate problem than synthetic clothes, given that trainers alone cause 1.4% of global greenhouse gas emissions. One can only presume that the Oxford councillors who took the decision recently to go “meat free” are nudists. Or stupid. Or anti-nature. Or all three."

This Engineer Is Preparing to Feed a World Without Sunlight - "David Denkenberger wants to build a system to feed eight billion people in a world without sunlight. His inspiration: the humble mushroom. In 2011, Denkenberger was reading a scientific paper that suggested that after such a catastrophe, humans would die out, while mushrooms would thrive in the dark. According to Denkenberger, his reaction was, “Well, why don’t we just eat the mushrooms and not go extinct?” A sunless future is more possible than you might think. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists calls the world’s current risk of nuclear war “urgent.” Massive supervolcano eruptions, though rare, have threatened life on earth before. In both scenarios, the biggest threat to human survival comes not from the original explosion, but from the resulting blanket of soot that would cover the earth, blocking all or most sunlight. Without the ability to engage in conventional agriculture, common wisdom holds, billions of people would starve. Yet according to Denkenberger’s estimates, with proper planning, technological development, and international cooperation, up to 80% of the world’s current population could survive in a world without sun. To make this preparation a reality, Denkenberger, an engineer and assistant professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, co-founded the Alliance to Feed the Earth in Disasters (ALLFED). Their focus on alternative food sources has led them to leaves and wood that would be left from dying forests, protein-rich single-cell bacteria that could be farmed in methane, and “weird” deep-ocean fish that would survive from nutrients in the water."

Best Friends Turned Killers - The Murder of Skylar Neese - "Skylar Neese disappeared from her home in Star City, West Virginia at around midnight on the 6th of July, 2012. She was murdered by two girls she considered to be her best friends... Her two best friends were Rachel Shoaf and Shelia Eddy... Best Friends Turned Killers - The Murder of Skylar Neese One night during a sleepover, Skylar witnessed Rachel and Shelia having sex. She would later write about this event in her diary and relay it to several friends. Feeling as though Skylar was “in the way” of their relationship and becoming bored of her being around, Rachel and Shelia decided they would kill Skylar... Before Skylar died, she uttered the words “why?” When Rachel confessed to the murder, she claimed “they didn’t want to be friends with Skylar anymore.”... In the days leading up to the murder, Skylar’s Twitter account indicated that something had gone awry. Two days before her murder, she tweeted: “it really doesn’t take much to piss me off” and “sick of being fucking home. Thanks “friends,” love hanging out with you all too.” Then just the day before her slaying, she tweeted: “you doing shit like that is why I can NEVER completely trust you.”"

Crémieux on X - "I like using murder rates from medieval Europe to get at how insanely violent places American cities are. Baltimore has a similar homicide rate to... Italy, during the time of the Guelphs and Ghibellines, when Italy was a bunch of intermittently warring states."

Finally, an advantage to having big breasts - " In a tale that brings together sport, physics and a dash of seaside-postcard cheer, a spat has broken out ahead of the Tour de France, with female riders accused of inflating their assets to gain an aerodynamic advantage. Before Tuesday’s trials, officials frisked female competitors for breast padding, after being alerted that some upfront effrontery might be going not so much down as up, up and away. Bra boosting or “chest fairing” is not about the psychological advantage of looking buxom on a bike, but increasing the surface area of the upper body to influence airflow. By artfully moulding chest wadding, the rider’s front becomes rounder and smoother, providing a sort of fairing that strategically steers air about the body. Experts maintain that this can speed matters up by 0.78 seconds per kilometre. Across a 21-mile block, this should allow at least a 16-second edge. What is happening to our sporting world? Barely are we over the Winter Olympics’ “penis-gate” outrage, when contestants were banned for bolstering their wedding tackle for more impressive results, when a new high-camp hotspot has been declared. The situation is straight out of ‘Allo ‘Allo, peopled by Gallic bombshells all friskily plantureuse. All that is needed is a bloke in a beret to exclaim: “Oh là là, les gros lolos!”... biologically speaking, an hourglass physique is still said to reign supreme. Its proportions were established by psychologist Dr Devendra Singh at the University of Texas back in 1993. To create what the willowy Japanese wistfully refer to as a “bon-kyu-bon” (big-small-big) figure, a waist-hip ratio of 0.7 (a waist circumference 70 per cent of the circumference of one’s hips) is required, the cherry on top being the requisite rack. The effect of such extravagance can be seismic. Richard Burton’s description of his first encounter with a swimsuit-clad Elizabeth Taylor was notoriously rhapsodic: “Her breasts were apocalyptic, they would topple empires down before they withered. Indeed, her body was a miracle of construction and the work of an engineer of genius… I can think of no other word to describe a combination of plentitude, frugality, abundance, tightness. She was lavish. She was a dark unyielding largesse. She was, in short, too bloody much.”"

The anti-car blob is out of control. It’s trying to make driving impossible - "Lynda La Plante, one of Britain’s greatest crime writers, this month lost her licence after being caught driving between 24 and 27mph several times in a 20mph zone. Her defence was the “very confusing” nature of the signs signalling a switch from 30 to 20mph near her home in south-west London. That is now the norm for British motoring. You often no longer know when you’ve committed an offence. You find out about it in the post weeks later... it is all too easy to get it wrong, for the roads have been captured by a bureaucracy that is now out of control in creating completely unreasonable complexity: cycle and bus lanes, LTNs, different charging schemes, constantly switching speed limits, junctions that look like an Escher painting, and proliferating signage with the text density of a 17th-century Bible. It’s the cameras and automated enforcement that enable all this. No wonder the anti-car lobby loves them. None of this has happened by chance. It’s happening because the transport bureaucracy and its charity offshoots want it to happen. They actively want to make many car journeys slow and frustrating so you give up and get a bus or bike instead. Maybe that’s just about manageable if you live near a main route into a city. But if you have a complicated route to your weekly shop, your work, or your kids’ school, tough luck. All this stems from deliberate national policy, and both the previous Tory and current Labour governments have had basically the same approach. National legislation such as the 2015 Infrastructure Act requires the Government to deliver cycling and walking strategies. Active Travel England (ATE), an agency of the Department of Transport, controls much of the funding and helps shape policy. Government money flows to huge advocacy charities such as the Walk Wheel Cycle Trust (formerly Sustrans) or Living Streets. And behind it all, of course, sits net zero and the Climate Change Act, the justification for so much craziness. The institutional opposition to this is incredibly weak. The AA and RAC Foundation put up no ideological resistance. Car companies keep their heads down. The SW1 think tanks have too strong a London-centric perspective. The opposition is made up of a few shoestring-funded groups and angry residents. No wonder nothing gets better. In fact things get worse. Next month Oxford will finally bring in its much-derided traffic chicanes, road blocks normally only seen in areas under military occupation. Mere visitors from outside Oxfordshire will not be allowed to pass through them at all. Oxford residents will be allocated passes to do so – but only for 100 days a year. No one, of course, is suggesting you should be able to drive around the Radcliffe Camera as you could in the 1960s. But there is a happy medium. Oxford’s policy now works in the interests of well-heeled residents who live near the centre and of students. That’s not enough to sustain a city centre economically, as any visitor to Oxford can see for themselves, provided of course they have their papers in order. Bath, where the Liberal Democrats’ traffic policy is ruining a beautiful city, is heading in the same direction. But it’s not just nutty local councils. Last month Active Travel England – a government body, remember – published its Rural Design Guide, an appalling document which deserves a full read by anyone who wants to understand why getting around Britain is becoming so difficult outside cities as well as within them. Notably, it says that “where people walking, wheeling and cycling share space on country lanes with motor traffic, traffic speed should be no more than around 20mph”. Few rural roads don’t meet this criterion nowadays. Wait for those 20mph limits in the countryside, too. It’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that the people in charge of transport policy in this country think that private car use is intrinsically harmful, morally suspect, and should be progressively made harder everywhere until it is a marginal mode reserved for specific essential trips. To them, the value of freedom to travel, to go where you wish without having to do so on a state-approved public transport route, is simply terra incognita... Millions of people intensely resent the current approach. They are waiting for a party prepared not merely to complain about the war on drivers, but to dismantle the machinery behind it. Whoever offers a credible programme for doing so may discover that mobility is a more powerful political issue than SW1’s cyclists imagine."
The war on the car proceeds apace. Left wingers just want to control people

Helicopter rescues British hikers who pushed prams down Alps - "A group of nine British walkers, including babies and toddlers in pushchairs, had to be rescued after straying from a path in the Austrian Alps. The Britons were among a group of 36 walkers who embarked on a walk above the resort town of Sölden. They took the Wildspitz cable car up to the top of an 8,694ft-high mountain and had planned to walk back down to the town. But they took the wrong path during their descent and soon found themselves in steep, exposed terrain at an altitude of 7,628ft... One rescuer said the group was woefully equipped for such tough terrain. The suitability of their footwear and clothing was “equal to zero”, he said. Babies in prams were being pushed along a trail that mountain rescue officials described as “completely unsuitable for strollers”."

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