Links - 11th July 2026 (2 - Women)

Speaking as a gay man, why are women taking over all of the *very* few spaces we have? : r/MensRights - "Women sued every men’s only clubs out of existence. They can’t stand not being around men whom they hate. They chose the bear but won’t leave us alone."
"What gets me is the double standard.  They attack men’s clubs and spaces, demanding “admittance”. Then promote ever more women’s only spaces and say it’s “not the same”. And then have the gall to come out and deny that men aren’t allowed their own spaces and it’s “all in our heads”! Gaslighting? You bet! And the excuse it’s about women having “equal access to power” is a red herring. Yes, those big London and New York clubs were a place where the elite made connections. But they don’t limit themselves to them. The Men’s Shed movement is anything but high end. But that in no way slows them down from demanding admission!  I think the truth is that women in general, and feminists in particular, get suspicious and jealous of men spending time together. They assume there’s something important they’re being shut out of. Or that men are up to something “nefarious” when they’re alone and need female supervision! Many wives resent their husbands being absent “with the guys”. The “golfing widows” syndrome. How many apply the same rules to their own activities I wonder? Well “that’s different” isn’t it!"
"They cannot stand the idea that there could be places where they are not the center of anything."

Only 15% Of Women Show Interest In 5'8" Men On Dating Apps, According To Survey - "we all know the age-old stereotype that women prefer tall men. While there might be some truth to this claim, the recent data from the dating app Bumble brings this into sharp focus, providing quantifiable evidence of women's height preferences in dating.  A survey from Bumble found that 60% of women indicate that they are looking for a man over 6 feet tall in their search filters. However, that number drops steeply as the height of men lowers. 30% of women want to date men who are 5'11" and only 15% of women are willing to date men who are 5'8" or shorter. In fact, more women are willing to date extreme heights such as 7 feet tall rather than a man who is 5'11". Anyone who is under 6 feet tall tends to be overlooked generally by the majority of women.  While the data paints a somewhat gloomy picture for those under 6 feet tall, it is essential to put these findings into perspective. Not all women filter by size, meaning that those who prioritize height are overrepresented in the statistics. Furthermore, online dating environments tend to amplify superficial attributes like height and appearance, perhaps more than they would be in real-life dating scenarios. This can potentially skew perceptions, especially in the context of surveys. The preference for tall men isn't limited to dating, though. The data echoes studies in other areas of life, showing that tall men are overrepresented in high-paying leadership roles and are, on average, happier. Various studies, including a 2013 survey, have delved into why women are more attracted to men who are approximately eight inches taller than themselves. Experts like John Malouff, Ph.D., propose evolutionary psychology as an explanation, positing that taller men may have been historically seen as better protectors and providers. This height preference could also translate to psychological perceptions of tall men as dominant leaders. Societal constructs and media also often portray tall men as attractive and masculine.  Some research also points to the possibility that short men may have less than desirable personalities. A study published in the Elsevier journal Personality and Individual Differences, conducted by a group of Polish scientists on 367 men and women, has found intriguing results concerning short men's behavior. The research, titled "The Napoleon complex, revisited: Those high on the Dark Triad traits are dissatisfied with their height and are short," suggests that shorter men might compensate for their height with antagonistic behaviors, exhibiting traits known as the Dark Triad—psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism."

Darth Powell on X - "Its easy to explain what's happening here:
1. 99% of women want to date that 1% guy on Instagram who's attractive, rich and doesn't work for a living.
2. That guy goes through a list every night. I've seen this live. Text 20 girls to come over, of the 5 that respond, pick top 1. Do this 5-7 nights per week.
3. Girl thinks that guy is now her level (he never calls her or wants to take her on dates, in his mind its biological satisfaction for the evening, not dating).
4. Cycle repeats.
5. Girls ignore 99% of men.
6. 1% men have no reason to ever change their ways. ZERO.
7. Media asks why no one is dating, getting married or having kids."

Blk_Chauvinist on X - "If there is supposed to be a "male loneliness epidemic," why is every social media platform filled with single women complaining about being lonely, asking "Why won't men approach us," & "Where are all the good men?" The only ones talking about "lonely men" are lonely women""

‘Beautiful and clever’ girl, 16, killed in London Underground station : r/gbnews - "Girl suffers horrific tragedy. When making a statement attempting to define the loss, her family calls her 'Beautiful'. Something families have been doing for centuries.  All of a sudden, people come out the gate with: "oh so now we can find sixteen year olds attractive?"  Shut up."
"As a man one of the more difficult things to accept was how men dying isn't really seen as a tragedy. You can even make jokes about it especially given some of the ways men die. I was a Royal Marine in the 00s and people talked about deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan as just numbers really. If a woman dies and she's beautiful it really is considered far more of a tragedy. Watch a movie and your hero can kill an infinite number of men but killing a woman is usually considered a really big deal. It's terrible this girl has died and I'm not trying to take anything away from it. It's just when people say "she was beautiful" it kind of implies that less visually pleasing people like men aren't that big a deal if they die."

Man drinks 3 glasses of wine on plane. Minds his own business. Woman feels “unsafe”. : r/MensRights - "She should consider that the man may have had a valid excuse for drinking. After all, he was seated next to her!"
When the guy next to me on the flight downed his third bottle of wine, I felt unsafe
Good luck if you police how much wine a woman drinks

Meme - Woman: "I'M SO GLAD FINALLY GOT A MAN I DESERVE WHO MAKES SIX FIGURES"
"LATER"
Woman: "UGH, WHY DO YOU WORK ALL THE TIME? MY BROKE EX WAS ALWAYS AVAILABLE DURING THE DAY!"

Attraction Matriarch @TheXMatriarch on X - "Men are expected to understand every nuance of female desire while women are allowed to dismiss male desire with one irritated sigh. That imbalance is part of the problem."

Meme - "Reaching levels of "every single time" never seen before"
"Photographing something you want to show everyone
Males: OBJECT
Females: *woman blocking most of object*"
Ellie Sleightholm: "Artemis II launch... caught in my glasses reflection"

Meme - Basil the Great: "Even Female NASA astronauts do the meme" *Women taking photos of themselves when the photos are supposed to be of other things*

Meme - Attraction Matriarch @TheXMatriarch @TheXMatriarch: "We've raised a generation of women to be excellent employees and terrible wives."
CallMeRoy @CallMeRoy635404: "They're also awful employees."

Millions Of Women Are On Antidepressants And No One's Asking Why - "The scale of antidepressant use among adult women is staggering on its own. But the story becomes even more unsettling when we turn to the next generation. Teen girls, in particular, are being medicated at unprecedented rates. For girls aged 12–17, one study showed monthly dispensing rates of antidepressants post-March 2020 increased by 129.6 percent compared to before the pandemic. This is highly controversial. UK guidelines state that young patients should be sent to therapy and evaluated by a psychiatrist before receiving medication. Yet in both the UK and U.S., many doctors are bypassing those safeguards and prescribing antidepressants anyway. Has anyone stopped to consider what kind of damage this could do to a developing mind?  Why do we think it’s wise to give potent antidepressants to teenagers when even adults can barely tolerate them? Not all doctors are to blame, but trust in the medical system is fading, and pharmaceutical lobbying isn’t helping. Whether in public or private healthcare, the story is the same: overwhelmed clinics, five-minute appointments, and antidepressants tossed out like Band-Aids for deep emotional wounds. Therapy could offer a therapeutic healing space, yet long waits and high prices keep it out of reach for many. What’s clear is that antidepressants do not address the root cause of the symptoms women are facing and perhaps are even making them worse... One of the most frequently cited reasons people come off antidepressants is emotional blunting, a symptom that dulls a patient’s ability to feel both positive and negative emotions. Many describe feeling “numb,” “flat,” or “detached.” And while it’s natural to wish we could erase negative feelings, part of life is learning to push through hard times; they make the good moments meaningful and give us a sense of accomplishment when we overcome them.  The symptoms don’t stop there. Many patients also report sexual dysfunction, loss of libido, difficulty becoming aroused, or trouble feeling any sexual pleasure. In one large sample, nearly eight in ten antidepressant users reported sexual dysfunction, with almost two-thirds experiencing it at moderate to severe levels. Sex and attraction are an important part of life, and with so many women on SSRIs, it’s worth asking whether this plays a role in why so many are staying single. For women, our interest in sex often comes from feeling confident and connected to our own femininity. SSRIs can disrupt that, dulling desire and making it harder to feel attracted, not just to a partner but to ourselves. While it seems like an oxymoron, antidepressants can also cause more depression and more anxiety. This is especially heightened for young people under the age of 25, with the FDA’s own analysis concluding a doubling of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in adolescents and young adults compared to placebo... A 2008 meta-analysis by Irving Kirsch and colleagues found that much of the benefit patients feel from antidepressants can be attributed to expectations rather than the drug’s chemical action. Kirsch concluded that roughly 75 to 80 percent of the apparent benefit of antidepressants is reproduced by placebos... women in previous eras faced serious challenges, but many were grounded by strong values, faith, and community anchors that helped them weather hardship. Modern women often don’t have those same supports. As liberalism pushed society toward secularism and hyper-individualism, the moral and communal frameworks that once gave women direction and belonging have slowly disappeared.  Women have been handed a platter of freedoms that were supposed to make us happy. Hookup culture became the norm, encouraging women to act like men while simultaneously criticizing men for doing the very same thing. It asks women to detach from their emotions, downplay their need for connection, and treat intimacy as a weakness. This creates a deep internal conflict: on one hand, she offers her sexuality in exchange for male acceptance, and on the other, she’s left with a profound sense of emptiness that this so-called freedom never fills. Feminism has pushed many women to suppress their natural instincts to nurture, bond, create, and build meaningful relationships. Instead, we’re encouraged to be “strong,” “independent,” and endlessly productive for a soulless corporation. Marriage and motherhood may not be the right path for every woman, but for many it’s the environment in which the feminine actually thrives, a life rooted in love and connection. Yet the rise of casual dating has made it increasingly difficult for women who want marriage. It may be called social media, but the apps in and of themselves have made everyone less social. People live more isolated lives than ever: fewer friendships, weaker communities, and almost no interdependence. Loneliness has quietly become one of the most widespread emotional struggles among women, yet it hides beneath clinical labels like “anxiety” and “depression.” If people had the opportunity to form closer, more meaningful bonds I believe a lot of the mental health struggles would disappear. In this emotional landscape, medication has become more than a treatment. For some, it becomes their identity. Online, women celebrate “Sertraline anniversaries” or post about their SSRI journey like other people would celebrate one year of marriage or their baby’s first words. Women of the past were criticized for depending on their families or husbands, but modern women have simply traded one dependence for another. And now, this new dependence is treated as normal, while any attempt to question why women are so unhappy is quietly pushed into the background. If we truly care about women’s well-being, we need to stop medicating the symptoms and start confronting the societal forces that are making women so profoundly unhappy."

Meme - "MEN DO NOT HAVE TO;
Be muscular
Do laundry
Have a beard
Be masculine
Pay for dates
Be feminist
Be over 6 foot tall
Believe in the wage gap
Give up their seat for pregnant women
Pay child support"

Meme - "Actual needed PSA"
@tinopo19 Translated from Japanese: "The Reason Why Big-Breasted Women Wear Tight Clothes"
*Woman in loose blouse hiding breasts looking fat*
*Woman in tight tee showing breasts looking thin*

Winnie M Li on X - "18 yrs ago, I was violently assaulted & raped while walking alone. Every year on the anniversary of that day, I go on a solo hike to remind myself that there is still beauty in this world & I can enjoy it. This yr, I pushed myself & did a few days of the Southwest Coast Path…"
N I M B ❂ on X - "Treat her well, she will forget you in a week. Rape her, she will create an anniversary for you 🤵🏻‍♂️🥂"

PoIiMath on X - "I'm kind of in awe of the phrase "pick-me girl". I can't believe they made up an epithet for being friendly... It's such a bizarre insult. I asked my daughters about it and it seems to mean "being nice to a boy for any reason whatsoever""
Clearly, misandry is a misogynistic myth

𝒢𝒾𝓁𝒷ℯ𝓇𝓉 on X - "I refuse to believe men being unable to find the clitoris is actually a thing. You open it up and it's literally right there like a video game boss critical hit zone."
Wilfred Reilly on X - "I have never, as a guy who spent 8-10 younger years, in locker rooms heard a man privately express ANY confusion about this. Any guy who feigns confusion here just doesn't much like head-for-her."

Arrests in France after scores report being attacked with syringes at street music festival - "The feminist influencer Abrège Soeur warned online before the festival that calls had been made on social media for women to be targeted with syringes. It was not certain where such posts would have been made or by whom. The interior ministry said 145 victims across the country had reported being stabbed with needles during outdoor music events across the country. Paris police reported 13 cases in the capital.  Officials did not say if these were cases of so-called needle spiking with date-rape drugs such as Rohypnol or GHB, used by attackers to render victims confused or unconscious and vulnerable to sexual assault.  “Some victims were taken to hospital for toxicological tests,” the ministry said.  In Paris, investigations were opened after three people, including a 15-year-old girl and an 18-year-old male, reported being stabbed in separate incidents across Paris, prosecutors said. All three reported feeling unwell.  Across France, 12 suspects have been arrested, the interior ministry said. Among them were four people in the south-western city of Angoulême suspected of having targeted about 50 victims, a police source said. Two men were also arrested in the centre of the north-eastern city of Metz on suspicion of syringe attacks. The regional public broadcaster France 3 reported that one man had been caught with a syringe and a woman who complained of being stabbed with one had recognised the other... There was a wave of reports in 2022 about alleged syringe attacks against women and men in clubs, bars, music events and even theatres. The government put out messages at the time for people going out at night to be vigilant and advising them that they should go immediately to the police and also have a toxicology test if they thought they had been drugged by a syringe prick.  Some complaints were made by women during the 2022 Fête de la Musique, and over the course of the year several hundred complaints were made in cities including Nantes, Grenoble and Toulouse.  Agence France-Presse reported on a 2022 police memo stating that syringe marks were generally on the arms, buttocks or back, without victims seeing the alleged attacker. More than 370 people were detained during this weekend’s nationwide music festival on various charges, including nearly 90 people in Paris.  Fourteen participants in the festivities were seriously injured, including a 17-year-old hospitalised after being found sitting on the street with stab wounds to the lower abdomen."
From 2025

Syringe attacks at France-wide music event: How panic spread on social media - "After the evening of Fête de la Musique, nearly 145 suspected cases of 'random syringe attacks' were reported. Yet, to date, not a single case of drug injection has been confirmed... You can share an article by clicking on the share icons at the top right of it.  The total or partial reproduction of an article, without the prior written authorization of Le Monde, is strictly forbidden.  For more information, see our Terms and Conditions.  For all authorization requests, contact syndication@lemonde.fr.   https://www.lemonde.fr/en/pixels/article/2025/06/27/syringe-attacks-at-france-wide-music-event-how-panic-spread-on-social-media_6742787_13.html  Online, throughout the night and in the days that followed, alarming messages proliferated. On its Instagram discussion channel, ActuReact shared several alerts, reporting syringe attacks in various French cities and even the hospitalization of "about 20 women in Les Sables-d'Olonne [on the Atlantic coast] after knife attacks." This information was false. "We are aware that sharing such information can help create a climate of anxiety. That's why we always try to add warnings and clarifications to our posts," the teenager said. "Our approach is journalistic and aims to alert as many people as possible to this issue." In several cities, fear of syringe assaults grew rapidly. In southwestern Angoulême, for example, as the first concerts were getting underway, multiple messages on social media described scenes of panic and even one or more deaths. In reality, no one was killed. Over the course of the evening and night, 22 young women went to the police station and hospital with suspicions of syringe attacks. Doctors examined them, but two days later, the prefecture stated that, "at this stage, no clinical evidence of injection nor symptoms suggesting the administration of a psychoactive substance have been found." Four men suspected of being "injectors" and arrested during the festivities were released for lack of evidence.  Elsewhere, such as in Lorient, Rouen and Alençon, medical examinations quickly identified the real culprits: mosquitoes. Their bites, amid heightened fear fueled by rumors, were mistaken for syringe marks. Many people who reported being "injected" and spoke to the media described sudden, intense fatigue and voiced fears of having been exposed to drugs. However, no toxicology tests detected any drugs.  From a judicial standpoint, the outcome has so far been minimal. More than a dozen people were arrested on suspicion of syringe attacks during the Fête de la Musique, but according to Le Monde's tally, no indictments have been reported... Amid the chaos of the evening, at least one person was reportedly targeted by the crowd and falsely accused of being an "injector." The incident took place in the southwestern commune of Agen, according to France 3, where a deaf and mute man had his photo shared on social media before being violently attacked by about 10 people. The local prosecutor's office did not respond to Le Monde's inquiries. Another widely circulated video, said to have been filmed in Les Sables-d'Olonne, apparently showed an "injector" being caught and beaten by the crowd during the festival. While at least two complaints for syringe attacks were filed, "I am not aware of any 'beating,'" said Gwenaëlle Coto, prosecutor in Les Sables-d'Olonne. "I'm all the more sure of this as I was on duty and patrolling on foot with the police."...  This frenzy recalls a previous incident. In 2022, hundreds of alleged syringe attacks were reported at concerts, bars and nightclubs. Even then, it was difficult to distinguish fact from fiction amid the flood of warnings. Some legal proceedings at the time did result in indictments. These included a man accused of syringe attacks at a concert and two others in a southern nightclub in Var, one of whom was found with several syringes at home, according to Ici. In the first case, the local prosecutor's office was unable to provide Le Monde with additional information; in the second, the two suspects' cases were dismissed "because toxicology tests of the victim were negative," according to prosecutor Samuel Finielz. In almost all cases that year, no substances were detected in the analyses. Authorities remained cautious, all the more so as experts have noted that chemical submission by injection is extremely difficult to carry out. A subsequent investigation by the National Agency for Medicines Safety (ANSM) also downplayed the scale of the phenomenon. After analyzing nearly 2,200 reports of possible chemical submission by various means, it ruled out the vast majority of suspected syringe attacks. Among cases studied by the ANSM where an assault did occur, 27 involved possible syringe attacks. The agency pointed to a possible "cognitive bias" among victims, "linked to the anxiety generated by the 2022 alert about malicious syringe attacks." It concluded: "In reality, the harmful substance was most likely administered through the usual channels identified in the investigation," such as drinks or food."
Clearly, this is misogynistic gaslighting and they need to believe women. This is just allowing men to drug and abuse women. Women being more prey to social contagion and moral panic definitely does not explain why so many young women are FTMs nowadays - that's just proof that trans people have always existed and society is transphobic and suppressing them

Pins, Needles, and Paranoia: The French Needle Panic of 2025 - "Despite the scary headlines, not a single spiking was ever confirmed. Some were determined to have been caused by toothpicks; others were attributed to mosquito bites. Blood tests were unrevealing. The events in France have all the hallmarks of a social panic triggered by social media. For the average person learning of the claims of syringe attacks in France, it would have been alarming to hear that 145 people were assaulted, as the assumption would have been that so many people can’t all be wrong. But like all social panics, it is vital to understand the context. These scares just don’t happen organically; there is always a specific social and cultural backdrop that drives them.   Social panics reflect prevailing fears, and in this case, it is the danger posed by unchecked immigration. There was a lot of discussion on French social media immediately prior to the "attacks" that young male migrants from North Africa and the Middle East were planning to inject women with HIV-infected needles to gain revenge for having rejected them. This is remarkably similar to an urban legend that has been circulating since the 1980s. Those accused are always unpopular groups on the margins of society, with the content of the legend reflecting popular fears. This incident and several similar scares at European music festivals in recent years appear to be part of a wider moral panic over the exaggerated dangers posed by migrants... Attacks at public music festivals have been reported for the past several years across Europe, and, unsurprisingly, no one ever gets convicted.  Of course, anyone who reports being spiked with a needle should have their claim taken seriously and thoroughly investigated, but the statistics are revealing. Since the summer of 2021, more than 2,000 police reports have been investigated across the United Kingdom of needle-spiking in public places. It was even the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry. To date, not a single person has been convicted. It is a similar story in Europe, with more than a thousand reports being investigated by police on the continent since 2022 and no convictions.   Scares involving syringe attacks have been going on for well over a century. In the early 1900s, there were similar scares in cities like New York and London involving hundreds of police reports, yet no one was ever convicted"
Of course, you can't talk about the feminist moral panic about men. When even the Guardian doesn't blame this on xenophobia, calling this a manifestation of anti-migration sentiment is... interesting

Meme - "situationship breakups are so crazy bc why did this man just tell me the only person he wants to be with is his ex and then immediately make me eggs on toast. he *nut*ed in me like 10mins after this. what in god's name is happening"
Clearly, if you think most men and women treat casual sex differently, you're a misogynist and a rapist and proof of why women choose the bear

Rita🎀 on X - "I once offered to buy a guy food, he refused. Later I heard him telling his friend he hadn’t eaten all day. Men hate accepting help from women I don’t know why."
OurFaveOnlineDoc 🇬🇧 🇳🇬 on X - "Because even though he didn’t accept your offer, you still came here to tweet this. Now imagine if he let you buy him food, you will release a music video."

Meme - "Wtf
So my boyfriend and I have sex once a month, it's not like I don't like sex but I don't want our relationship to be centered around sex every time we meet. I love him very much so I need to set standards for him to see value in me but deep down I crave sex everyday. Recently I've been seeing this guy, I don't love him, I don't see my future with him so I feel comfortable having sex with him everyday, I don't mind if he sees me as a whore I'm just using him to satisfy my urge."

The wave of violent teenage girls unleashed by Covid - "Since 2019, the number of women and girls aged 20 or under arrested for violent crimes has increased by almost 24 per cent, from 7,885 to 9,755."
I like how people still found a way to blame men for female violence

Book Review: Crazy Like Us (Mental Health)

Time for more "awareness" about mental health. Clearly, there is no such thing as overdiagnosis or encouraging mental illness:

Book Review: Crazy Like Us

"We talk a lot about falling biodiversity. Sometimes we apply the same metaphor to the human world, eg “falling linguistic biodiversity" when minority languages get replaced by English or whatever. In Crazy Like Us, Ethan Watters sounds the alarm about falling psychiatric biodiversity. Along with all the usual effects of globalization, everyone is starting to have the same mental illnesses, and to understand them in the same way. This is bad insofar as greater diversity of mental illness could teach us something about the process that generates them, and greater diversity of frameworks and responses could teach us something about how to treat them.

He makes his point through four case studies, starting with:

I. Anorexia In Hong Kong

Until the 1990s, there was almost no anorexia in Hong Kong. There were lots of patriarchal beauty standards, everyone was very obsessed with being thin, but anorexia as a disease was basically unknown.

At least this is the claim of Sing Lee, a Hong Kong psychiatrist who studied in the West. He learned about anorexia during his training in Britain, then went back to Hong Kong prepared to treat it. He couldn't find anybody. He tried really hard! He put out feelers, asking if anyone knew anybody who was having some kind of psychiatric problem where they were starving themselves. With apologies for the unintended offensive pun - nobody bit.

After a while, he was eventually able to scrounge up a handful of cases. But this was almost more infuriating than nothing at all: the few anorexics he was able to find couldn't be less interested in thinness or beauty standards or anything like that. Also (unlike in the West) they weren't delusionally sure that they were fat. They were very aware that they were starving themselves to death, and they were against this. They just felt like they had some sort of nausea or stomach disease which made it impossible for them to eat. The stomach doctors said they were fine, and usually this started during some time of profound stress, so it was reasonable to think this was a mental disorder - and given that, it was probably reasonable to call it anorexia. It just didn't look like the typical Western version where people were scared of being fat and really wanted to be thin so they could be be ballerinas or whatever. The would-be ballerinas were just dieting normally and becoming ballerinas, and other people with unrelated stresses were getting anorexia.

This lasted until November 24, 1994, when a photogenic schoolgirl collapsed and died on a busy Hong Kong street in the middle of rush hour. The cause of death appeared to be anorexia, a condition most Hong Kongers had never heard of. News cameras caught the whole thing, covered it out of morbid fascination, and it became a sort of national panic. Western experts were flown in to hold public awareness campaigns where they went on TV and said that anorexia was a debilitating condition where patriarchal-beauty-standard-obsessed women dieted to death, and no doubt it was rampant in Hong Kong, and it was important that everyone be aware of how rampant it was so that the problems of ignorance and underdiagnosis could be fixed. Experts would go into girls' boarding schools and lecture the students about how much anorexia they probably had and how publically aware of it they needed to be.

(the few Hong Kong experts who were consulted mentioned that they basically never saw anorexic patients, that none of their anorexic patients seemed especially fixated on beauty or thinness, and that they suspected the dead girl was just a rare outlier)

Anyway, after a few months of this, psychiatrists reported loads of anorexia cases, hundreds of times as many as there had been before the public awareness campaigns, and all the patients said it was definitely because they were afraid of being fat. The doctors were left extremely suspicious that the public awareness campaign had been a vector for the condition.

Weirdly enough, all of this had happened before. According Watters, pre-industrial Europe had the same pattern of anorexia as Hong Kong - rare, extremely scattered cases, mostly for stress reasons unrelated to beauty standards (plus or minus a couple of weird nuns). At the dawn of scientific psychiatry in the 19th century, most neurotic illnesses among women were classified under the general heading of "hysteria". Common hysterical symptoms were nervous tics, sudden inexplicable paralysis of the limbs, on-and-off blindness, convulsions, amnesia, and inability to walk (none of which are typical symptoms of depression/anxiety today!) Around the 1850s, some hysterics started also having something like anorexia. Psychiatrists found this fascinating, wrote a bunch of well-received papers about it, and it became a common topic of discussion in Victorian salons. As interest in the disease spread, so did the disease itself, with anorexia going from one of the rarest hysterical symptoms to one of the most common. Incidence peaked around 1900, after which it slowly trailed off, until around 1940 it was vanishingly rare again. Watters quotes medical historians who attribute this to decreasing interest: once it became so dirt-common that doctors stopped writing papers about it and high-society types stopped talking about it in hushed voices, it became boring and gradually died out. The disorder came back in the 1970s and 80s, for a bunch of reasons. First, a famous singer, Karen Carpenter, collapsed on stage from anorexia, making the news in the same way as the Hong Kong schoolgirl case. Second, terrible 1970s feminists learned about it and started romanticizing it as some sort of brave hunger strike against the patriarchy. Third, and probably most important, US obesity rates went like this:

*going up*

By the late 1980s, anorexia had “caught on” a second time, and people were getting it at higher rates than ever. 

Here Watters is working off a theory, sometimes raised by psychiatrists and medical historians, that I think of as a kind of Kantian perspective on mental illness. Kant, remember, said that we have no idea what actual reality is; we see reality through the filter of our own preconceived notions and mental categories, and although there is an external world, we shouldn't claim to know very much about it. In the same way, Watters suggests, there probably is some base-level objectively-real mental illness. If you have to think of it as something, you can think of it as formless extreme stress, looking for an outlet. But the particular way the stress finds an outlet is based on the patient's cultural preconceptions. If you believe that stressed people go blind, you'll go blind. If you believe that stress people act possessed by demons, you'll act possessed by demons. And if you believe that stressed people become obsessed with being really thin and starve themselves, you might become obsessed with being really thin and starve yourself. A few people will have some natural tendency towards one outlet or another - there are a tiny handful of anorexics even in societies like pre-1990 Hong Kong that don't recognize anorexia, just as there are a few modern Westerners who still act possessed by demons. But unless you're especially predisposed towards some method or another, your stress will take the outlet already worn to a deep groove by your cultural milieu.

Does this explain what happened in Hong Kong? I'm not sure. 

First, my own theory of anorexia (discussed here) is that it's a natural (though hard-to-explain) response to any extreme ego-syntonic dieting - if you extreme-diet long enough, and enjoy it, and maybe have a certain predisposition, your body will "get stuck" in extreme dieting mode and refuse to go back. This would explain why medieval nuns who got too into fasting got it. It would explain why modern Westerners who get too into looking beautiful get it. It would explain why pre-1990 Hong Kongers who were really depressed and couldn't eat got it. It would even explain why Sing Lee got it. Lee (the psychiatrist whose work on Hong Kong anorexia frames the chapter) had a proper old-school experimental temperament, and decided that he wouldn't be able to treat anorexics unless he really understood them. So he decided to starve himself, and for the first three months it was just as unpleasant as you would expect, and then after that it started being really fun, and he felt great about it, and he had to call off the experiment because he didn't want to actually give himself anorexia...

Second, there's something weird about which societies have weight problems to begin with. Mid-20th-century America had low rates of overweight and obesity. Around 1970, rates began to grow very quickly; the same happened in other countries with various time delays. I don’t have a graph for Hong Kong, but here’s China:

*going up* 

So sure, 1980s Hong Kong had thinness-based beauty standards without any anorexia. But maybe that’s because everyone met the thinness-based beauty standard easily. Once this became hard, and “what if I’m too fat?” became a serious concern, people started getting anorexia. For all I know this happened in the 1990s, although if it’s true that doctors started seeing orders of magnitude more anorexics over the space of a few months I guess that’s still a bit fast for this explanation. Still, it’s worth keeping in mind...

II. Depression In Japan

The frame story here is about a top anthropologist invited by GlaxoSmithKline to a lavish conference at a five-star resort in Japan. They asked him a bunch of questions about the cultural construction of mental illness. He pressed deeper and learned they were trying to “raise awareness of” depression in Japan as part of their effort to market the antidepressant Paxil there. This had, Watters thinks, much the same effect as “raising awareness of” anorexia in Hong Kong.

Here I’m less sure about where Watters is going. It seems like a stretch to argue that 1990s pharma companies introduced depression to Japan - a country where committing suicide is basically the national pastime. But Crazy Like Us tries its best... although pre-1990s Japanese people sometimes got, let’s say, “spells of low mood”, they thought of this as a normal part of life which it’s important to go through and probably learn lessons from.

The pre-1990s Japanese word for depression was utsubyo, which meant a lifetime tendency to extremely severe depression that would probably land you in a mental hospital. Utsubyo was considered a rare but severe mental illness much like schizophrenia, one that a few unlucky people had, probably for genetic reasons, but that most people would never have to worry about.

(I don’t remember if Watters mentions it, but this is also the pre-mid-20th-century American/European conception of depression - there’s nothing particularly Japanese about it. The usual term for this idea is melancholia, sometimes used to mean an especially severe endogenous depression, although other people use the word in different and confusing ways. Better historians than I can debate whether the West saw the concept of melancholia fade gradually into modern depression, or whether it had to do with SSRI-induced marketing campaigns here too; I suspect there was a gradual halfway transition from 1900 - 1990, followed by an extremely sudden transition after the invention of SSRIs and the publication of Listening To Prozac. But let’s go back to pretending this is an exotic Japanese phenomenon.)

As part of GlaxoSmithKline’s marketing work, they replaced utsubyo with a new idea, kokoro no kaze, “cold of the soul”. This was supposed to mean that depression was a minor illness (like a cold), something everyone got occasionally (like a cold), and something that was purely biological and could/should be controlled with medication (like a cold). Japanese people were extremely excited about this and bought Paxil by the bushel, and now they use SSRIs at a rate close to Americans.

I was kind of unimpressed with this chapter. It seems pretty obvious that Japanese people got depressed before Paxil’s marketing campaign, including depressed to the point of suicide. GlaxoSmithKline comes off looking a bit manipulative, but it does kind of seem like the rush to get Paxil after their advertising campaign was less “sinister pharma company invents a new disease” and more “oh my god, there’s a name for this thing that I’m suffering from and maybe someone can help me!” There’s certainly a philosophical issue here - do you shrug off depression as just a part of life, or medicalize it? - but it’s not obvious that there’s anything different or uniquely Japanese about this question, or that Westerners made anything worse by exposing Japan to our solution.

Much more fun was the history of Japanese mental illness, which focused on neurasthensia. This was another one of those fully-generic late-1800s diagnoses like hysteria (I assume late-1800s psychiatrists just sort of flipped a coin: heads you were neurasthenic, tails you were hysteric). Around the Meiji Restoration, when everyone was obsessed with how great foreign stuff was, Japanese medical students went to Germany, learned psychiatry, came back to Japan, and told everyone they were neurasthenic. Being neurasthenic became first a fashion, then a class marker. The idea was that neurasthenics were people who were working too hard (good, admirable), and who were so smart and doing so much furious intellectual activity that it was straining their nerves (impressive). Also, they were probably sensitive souls too pure for this world. The most embarrassing extreme of this happened in 1903, when some photogenic Japanese youth carved a poem in a tree, went to a beautiful waterfall, and leapt to his death. Everyone praised him for how sensitive and artistic and neurasthenic this was, and turned him into a posthumous national hero. Meanwhile, “in 1902 an article reported that fully one-third of patients visiting hospitals for consultations were suffering from the new disease.”

Eventually Japanese psychiatrists got fed up, and started announcing that actually neurasthenia sucked and you should not have it...

Finally everyone struck a compromise and agreed that most of the lower-class patients weren’t real neurasthenics (hard-working, intelligent, sensitive, admirable), but had a similar condition, imitating the symptoms of neurasthenia, based on being too weak and pathetic to cope. This seemed to do the trick, and people stopped coming to the hospital with neurasthenia symptoms...

III. PTSD In Sri Lanka

In 2004, a magnitude 9 earthquake struck the Indian Ocean. The resulting tsunami devastated Southeast Asia. One of the worst-affected countries was Sri Lanka, where 30,000 people died and millions were left homeless.

Foreign aid agencies sprung into action to try to support the survivors. Joining in the general mobilization were Western mental health professionals, who predicted a [insert some term other than “wave”] of post-traumatic stress disorder cases.

I cannot do justice to Crazy Like Us’ excellent portrayal of these people. They combined a genuine and admirable desire to go halfway around the world to help people in need, with a burning desire to be “culturally sensitive” and reject “white savior narratives”, with a total lack of even the tiniest amount of actual knowledge about Sri Lanka. The island nation was [insert some term other than “inundated” or “flooded”] with a [insert some term other than “tide”] of counselors, therapists, and psychiatrists, holding public awareness campaigns, appearing on TV/radio/etc, browbeating Sri Lankan officials for not caring enough about the mental health aspect of recovery. Through this whole process they were all tripping over each other to look culturally aware despite having no clue what they were doing. My favorite anecdote was the training lectures, where earnest sensitivity counselors would tell play therapists not to play “Go Fish” with young survivors - given that many of their parents had just been swallowed by the sea.

According to [insert some author name other than “Watters”], mostly things went like this: foreign counselors would go into a refugee camp and tell everyone that they had to speak openly about their trauma and emotions. The survivors would say that it sucked a lot that their families had just been killed, but wouldn’t seem very emotional about it, or really confess to having “trauma” as classically understood. The therapists would say this was very bad, and they were keeping all of their emotions “bottled up”, and they really had to “let it out” or else it would fester and they would end up with PTSD. The refugees, who were never exactly clear which sets of white people were giving out free food and which ones weren’t, figured they ought to do what these people wanted in case they were the free food ones. So they would say, fine, they all felt very emotional and had lots of trauma. The therapists would be delighted and move on to the next camp... 

Watters points to research showing that “psychological debriefing” - the practice of sending mental health professionals to talk to recently traumatized people and have a single brief session where they “process” the trauma - is counterproductive and makes trauma worse. This is true in Western countries, and it’s probably true in Sri Lanka as well. So the psychological relief effort itself probably did more harm than good. Darn...

The part I found most enlightening was the history of trauma. Although cultures throughout history have included some people with bad reactions to traumatic events, it’s controversial whether this has happened at anywhere near the levels of today. Historians can hunt down some things Romans said that sounded vaguely PTSD-like, but the fact is that a very large segment of their society was going into a bunch of pitched sword battles and/or crucifying people for fun and profit, and mostly pretty blase about it. We don’t have great records for historical traumatized populations, but it would surprise me if eg antebellum slaves had classic PTSD symptoms at the same rate as Afghan War veterans.  

In fact, at the very beginning of the emergence of modern PTSD - around the Vietnam War - the original researchers of the condition called it “post-Vietnam syndrome” and tried to define it as a distinctly Vietnamese experience. The idea was that soldiers in past “good” wars had been fighting for something they believed in , had the support of the population back home, and didn’t have psychological problems. Since soldiers in Vietnam were developing all these new symptoms, that was yet more evidence that it was a “bad” war which had to be stopped. Over the course of decades (plus lots of marketing by enthusiastic therapists), PTSD expanded from a Vietnam-only problem, to all wars, to all natural disasters, to abuse and sexual violence, to the modern understanding where people say they got PTSD from a bad boss, a bad roommate, or an insufficiently woke college reading assignment...

(this is starting to feel less like true deep cross-cultural differences, and more like a couple of decade lag between an idea taking over America and it taking over somewhere else)

IV. Schizophrenia In Zanzibar

If you want an objectively real psychiatric illness with no culture-bound component, schizophrenia is as close as you’re going to get. For one thing, it’s mostly genetic (80% in twin studies). For another, it has pretty uniform prevalence: everywhere from Abhkazia to Zanzibar, 1% of the population gets schizophrenia...

The interesting cross-cultural aspect of schizophrenia is prognosis. Studies in the 80s and 90s suggested that developing countries had better outcomes than developed ones. This sparked some interest in figuring out what developing countries were “doing right” and whether we could replicate it...

Watters focuses on two things he thinks Zanzibaris do right. First, they minimize schizophrenia. Because of the spirit-possession aspect, instead of being marked apart as ill and unusual, they’re treated as on a continuum with everyone else (since we all get possessed by spirits sometimes). Even when they take a more medicalized perspective on schizophrenia, they call it by extremely vague terms that don’t differentiate it from mild illness, eg “an attack of the nerves” (this seems to be a universal developing-world euphemism for schizophrenia, shared by eg Latin Americans). Zanzibari schizophrenics never feel that different from anyone else - everyone gets possessed by spirits sometimes, everyone gets attacks of the nerves sometimes, lots of people never leave their family homes.

Second, Zanzibar is low expressed emotion. Lots of studies have shown that schizophrenics do best in low-expressed-emotion households. Sometimes this is glossed as “people don’t yell at them or criticize them”, but other times it’s taken more broadly, to also include fussing over them and praising them and getting excited about them. At its worst, this line of research sometimes bleeds into the bad old theory that schizophrenia is caused by overly-attached mothers, but some studies suggest it has value - schizophrenics in high-expressed-emotion households seem to have many more relapses, and some studies show that schizophrenics separated from their families do better than those who stay with them (presumably because staff are less emotional). 

Anyway, according to scientists, America has the highest expressed emotion, Europe and other developed countries are also really high, and developing countries are mostly really low. 67% of Anglo-American families studied qualified as high-expressed-emotion, compared to 48% of Brits, 42% of Chinese, 41% of Mexican-Americans, and 23% of Indians... I hear woke people talk about how demanding a calm, quiet, low-expressed-emotion environment is white supremacy because only white people care about that kind of thing. But nope, according to Crazy Like Us scientists have determined that white Americans are the highest-expressed-emotion culture in the world...

Anyway, according to Watters, Zanzibar’s low expressed emotion and lack of differentiation between schizophrenics and neurotypicals suggest that these are part of the “secret sauce” that the developing world uses to beat First World schizophrenia outcomes. As with his other case studies, western psychiatrists are coming to Zanzibar and telling everyone that schizophrenia is purely biological and getting everyone really worked up about it, and probably this is bad.

One background part of this chapter which I enjoyed was the section on biological views of mental illness. Westerners tend to spread these in order to reduce stigma - “has a brain chemical malfunction” sounds better than “is possessed by demons”, or even than “is just inexplicably lazy and weird”. But studies generally show that the biological view of mental illness makes people less sympathetic to the mentally ill, more concerned about them being violent, more interested in avoiding them, etc...

V. Conclusion: Towards Mental Health Unawareness Campaigns

Overall I was only moderately interested in the book’s thesis that we are globalizing American concepts of mental health. With the exception of the genuinely interesting anorexia chapter, the depression/PTSD/schizophrenia chapter all showed societies with pre-existing recognizable versions of these disorders. America got really interested in and heavily medicalized these disorders in the mid-20th century, and now these other societies are getting really interested in and heavily medicalizing them. People who like calling things “colonialist” should call this colonialist...

I was more interested in a sort of sub-thesis that kept recurring under the surface: does naming and pointing to a mental health problem make it worse? This was clearest in Hong Kong, where a seemingly very low base rate of anorexia exploded as soon as people started launching mental health awareness campaigns saying that it was a common and important disease (as had apparently happened before in Victorian Europe and 70s/80s America). But it also showed up in the section on how increasing awareness of PTSD seems to be associated with more PTSD, and how debriefing trauma victims about how they might get PTSD makes them more likely to get it. And it was clearest in the short aside about the epidemic of neurasthenia in Japan after experts suggested that having neurasthenia might be cool, which remitted once those experts said it was actually cringe. A full treatment of this theory would go through the bizarre history of conversion disorder, multiple personality disorder, and various mass hysterias, tying it into some of the fad diagnoses of our own day...

I find myself imagining a culture that holds Mental Health Unawareness Campaigns. Every so often, they go around burning books about mental illness and cancelling anyone who talks about them. If they must refer to psychiatric symptoms in public, they either use a complicated system of taboos (like Sri Lankans) or maximally vague terms like “an attack of nerves” (like Zanzibaris). Whenever there is a major natural disaster, top experts and doctors go on television reassuring everyone that PTSD is fake and they will not get it. Whenever there’s a recession or something, psychiatrists tell the public that they definitely won’t get depressed, since “depression” only applies to cases much more severe than theirs, and if they feel really sad about losing all their money then that’s just a perfectly normal emotion under the circumstances. 

(if anyone asks why there are psychiatrists, the psychiatrists will say they’re sticking around to treat anyone who believes in mental illness, which is a delusion, and incidentally the only delusion that exists. Secretly the psychiatrists will still treat anybody who comes to them, they’ll just make them swear an oath of secrecy first. “Doctor patient confidentiality” will get redefined to mean that the patient has to keep it confidential that doctors exist.)

I’m not sure if this culture would have more or less mental illness than our own. But we’re trying the opposite experiment now, so I guess we’ll get to see how that turns out."

 

Links - 11th July 2026 (1 - Migrants: UK [including Belfast Unrest, Dundee Scotland Axe Girl)

Labour announces social media crackdown 'in times of crisis' after Belfast attack - "Labour will crack down on Britons' social media use in times of "crisis", the Technology Secretary has threatened.  Liz Kendall last night vowed to strengthen the Online Safety Act, granting Ofcom enhanced powers to throttle social media users during periods of heightened tension.  The proposed amendments come in response to this week's knife attack in Belfast and the ensuing chaos across the city... Reform UK's Matt Goodwin argued that ministers should address the root causes of public discontent rather than attempting to regulate online discourse.  "It's not social media that's 'inflaming tensions'," he said. "It's not Elon Musk. It's not Nigel Farage. It's not the 'far-right'. It is the very deliberate policy of mass uncontrolled immigration and open borders.  "This policy has to end or it will destroy Western nations.""
Riots are only the voice of the unheard when they push the left wing agenda

BRITAIN IS BROKEN 🇬🇧 on X - "I’ve just heard paramilitaries are now ready to get involved in tonight’s protests in Belfast and across Northern Ireland Now, there’s some people you really don’t want to piss off….."

Adnan Hussain MP on X - "When a person recently granted leave to remain attempts to behead someone in the street, public concern is entirely legitimate. Silencing that concern doesn't make it disappear. It simply stores up anger that will ultimately be directed at innocent refugees/minority communities."
Adnan Hussain MP on X - "And this is what we get when the concerns of the majority are supressed over and over again. Leadership and policy decisions have to have absolutely failed for us to arrive at this point as a nation. This should terrify us all, and shock us enough to pay real attention."
Damn far right Islamophobe!

Meme - "POLICE. WHAT TO DO IF YOU BEGIN TO BE BEHEADED
*Stephen Ogilvie with Hadi Alodid trying to behead him*
Step One - Don't be racist
Step Two - Don't be Islamophobic
Step Three - Patiently wait for the police to come and arrest you
Step Four Do not react in anger. Use the incident to being us all together
Issued by the Ministry of Community Cohesion. Stay Calm & Carry On. Report Hate incidents"

Inevitable West on X - "🚨BREAKING: The Daily Mail has revealed that a government propaganda unit, named RICU, is intervening to write statements by families of victims of horrific migrant crime to "prevent inflaming tensions" They are manipulating the masses."
Proof that if you oppose the government, you're a fascist

Tommy Robinson detained under counter-terror laws

Britain can't trust Ireland to manage its borders - "Why does it seem that the only land border in the whole of Europe that can’t be policed is the land border on the island of Ireland? The EU’s other external borders have barbed wire across them. EU airports are happy to hold Britons in queues for several hours under their new entry control scheme. And if there are problems within the Schengen zone, internal EU border controls can be, and are, put in place “temporarily”. Only the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, it seems, must be left wide open for anyone to wander across at will... Just as the Spanish police get to stand behind Gibraltar border officers, supposedly to give them “confidence” that Gibraltar won’t allow illegal entry into the Schengen area, so we could demand a Border Force presence at Dublin Airport. It would be enjoyable to turn onto the Irish their arguments to us during Brexit, and insist that since policing couldn’t be done at the land border, it would have to be done at the Irish point of entry. Sadly, few national negotiators are as feeble as Britons faced with the European Commission, so we can hardly expect the Irish to roll over as ours have done to facilitate such a solution. So the only other choice is to come back to the land border. Why should it remain control-free for ever? Why can’t we have more checks, closer to the border? Why are third-country residents of Ireland allowed across paperwork-free? Why can’t we do as the Irish do, and visibly check movements south across the border when they think it necessary? We can’t be complacent. We should start asking these questions. For we can’t be taken for granted for ever."

How migration surge changed Belfast - "A surge in migration across Northern Ireland had already caused racial tensions to spiral long before Monday night’s knife attack.  The country’s foreign population has risen at almost twice the rate of that of mainland Britain. Race crimes are at a record high in the year to this March – up from 1,806 in the previous year to 2,367. Before tensions boiled over into violence this week after a Sudanese asylum seeker allegedly launched a knife attack in Belfast, Northern Ireland had already seen two successive summers overshadowed by protests about immigration. In 2024, there was disorder following the Southport murders, and the following year riots gripped Ballymena after two teenage Romanian boys were accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl. The charges were later dropped... In east Belfast, residents described how Protestants and Catholics had “joined forces” on Tuesday night to target homes belonging to non-white families.   The words “local homes for local people” were scrawled on a wall near a burnt-out house from which a family had been forced to flee... for some, it is confirmation that Northern Ireland’s sectarianism does not offer protection against anti-immigrant sentiment.  Jack Crangle, a social historian at Queen’s University Belfast, said: “Some commentators and researchers believed, especially during the Troubles, that people in Northern Ireland were too preoccupied with fighting one another to bother with racism."

Sudanese Belfast stabbing suspect is former policeman

Belfast knife suspect won asylum in Britain under 'fast-track' scheme introduced by Rishi Sunak's government - "Hadi Alodid was given permission to stay here after completing a 10-page Home Office questionnaire rather than undergoing the standard – and far more rigorous - face-to-face interview process.  It prompted new calls to re-think the 'streamlined' programme set up when Rishi Sunak was prime minister as part of his pledge to clear a backlog of 92,000 asylum cases. Then home secretary Suella Braverman and immigration minister Robert Jenrick – who have both since defected to Reform - oversaw the introduction of the scheme.  It was privately described within the Home Office as the 'grant factory', in reference to the huge numbers of asylum seekers granted refugee status.  Asylum seekers from countries like Sudan were allowed to access the streamlined system – reducing the backlog - because the vast majority of their claims were eventually granted in any case due to conflict in their home nations. But the scheme was dubbed a 'dangerous folly' and an 'asylum amnesty in all but name' by Migration Watch UK, which campaigns for tougher border controls, after its launch in February 2023, the month Alodid travelled by bus from Dublin to Belfast.  Four months later, in June 2023, it was extended to Sudanese nationals and Alodid was granted a five-year refugee visa in September that year... Known as the 'Streamlined Asylum Process', or SAP, it was also open to Eritreans, Syrians, Afghans, Libyans and Yemenis. A Tory source said: 'The Home Office at the time did not want to do the fast-track scheme but Rishi forced it on them.  'It was the worst of both worlds because he failed to stop small boats across the Channel and, at the same time, made it easier to win asylum.  'It was totally illogical and they should have been working to disincentive asylum seekers.'  Ms Braverman was sacked from the Home Office by Mr Sunak in October 2023 and in a blistering resignation letter accused him of betraying both her and the nation, particularly on immigration.  Accusing him of 'magical thinking' and of repeatedly 'compromising' on tough changes to asylum law, she wrote: 'This irresponsibility has wasted time and left the country in an impossible position.' A Daily Mail analysis of latest Home Office data shows the number of asylum claims from Sudanese nationals has soared from 2,853 in 2022 to 5,112 last year... the number of Sudanese coming here by small boat and then claim asylum has nearly tripled from 1,525 in 2022 to 4,537 last year – as migrants know that under the SAP scheme they are almost certain to be handed refugee status.   Dr Rakib Ehsan, senior fellow at the think-tank Policy Exchange said of the Alodid case: 'This raises serious questions over the immigration and asylum policy of successive governments of all parties. 'With the possibility that his asylum claim was granted under efforts to streamline decision-making processes to reduce the backlog of cases, this course of action has risked undermining public security of local communities across the home nations. 'The UK must toughen its border security and reform the asylum system in a way that has the safety of established communities at heart – even if this means extricating itself from international conventions and treaties.'... The Daily Mail revealed in 2023 that civil servants warned ministers the SAP would fail to identify 'bad guys' including terrorists and serious offenders who, as a result, would receive the right to remain in the UK instead of being refused asylum and put on a deportation list... Alodid was able to cross from the Republic of Ireland to Northern Ireland thanks to the Common Travel Area (CTA), which means there are no identity checks on travellers... Britain's independent reviewer of terrorism legislation Jonathan Hall KC called for wider debate on how migration was affecting national security and 'destabilising to the nation'.  He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: 'It does raise the question if certain countries are more likely either to commit very serious offences or to get involved in state threat activity, do we need to start thinking about migration now not simply in terms of the economy or housing but also in terms of national security?'  He added: 'At the moment there are people who happen to be black and brown but are as British as you or me who probably feel they can't go about their business. That is destabilising to the nation.'"
Too bad making the UK a less attractive place for migrants violates human rights, so they couldn't have taken that approach to reduce the backlog
If they'd turned down his application, he could just have sued on human rights grounds The entire population of Sudan, Eritrea, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya and Yemen should just claim asylum in the UK
Given that Braverman was sacked for not being soft enough on immigration, it's rich for people to criticise her for causing the problem
Too bad revoking the CTA will, we are told, cause civil war to break out again in Northern Ireland
Time to fire the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation for dog whistling and jail him for encouraging "fascists"

Badenoch blames Reform defectors for Belfast migrant failings - "a Reform source said: “Kemi has the architect of mass immigration in her shadow cabinet. If Kemi had any shame, she’d sack Priti Patel and grovel to the public for forgiveness.  “Rob and Suella were the only ones to resign and be kicked out of Government for standing up to the blob in the Tory Party and Civil Service. Unlike Kemi, who stayed until the bitter end, endorsing every single destructive policy... Ms Braverman said the fast-track scheme had been forced on the Home Office. “I never liked it but kept trying to persuade Conservative colleagues on leaving the ECHR to fix the whole problem. Kemi, Rishi, James [Cleverly], Priti, they all opposed leaving the ECHR when the Tories had the power. I warned them time and time again but was ignored,” she said.  “Ultimately my attempts to try to change the Conservative Party from within failed and that is why I left the party. I was let down but more importantly, millions of British people were betrayed. I will never trust them again.”  A former Home Office official said: “This was another madcap policy cooked up by Rishi and imposed on the Home Office,” said a former mandarin. “You could never have stopped this bloke getting asylum within the European Convention on Human Rights – but leaving was a red line for him and the Tory party.”"

Belfast knife suspect won asylum in Britain under 'fast-track' scheme introduced by Tory gov : r/uknews - "Yeah, what shocks me most is after terrible events like the attempted behending, they give 0 solutions. Their solution to it is to basically tolerate it and supress critisim of migration or asylum.  The public pays in blood for bourgeoisie virtue."
"Imagine looking at the history of Northern Ireland and thinking that what they need is forced immigration of new groups, including new religious extremists and inverted lunatics from foreign war zones who see the West as the cause of their problems. Any politician in history right up until the 2000s would have known that was rank lunacy."

Furkan Gözükara on X - "🚨 DISGUSTING: A terrified Belfast father reveals his children were trapped inside their home as smoke from a bus set ablaze by racist rioters filled their street. He describes horror of protecting his kids on Sky News. UK establishment is actively enabling these fascist mobs."
Daniel Concannon on X - ""Belfast father-" LET ME STOP YOU RIGHT THERE...:"
Not just are many Americans unable to tell the difference between race and nationality, now they can't even tell the difference between race and coming from a city

Andy Ngo on X - "Remember the viral video last year of the young Scottish girl who brandished a knife and axe at a violent migrant to protect herself and her sister? The video was called “propaganda” and dismissed as far-right lies by liberal media and leftists.  A trial showed the girls weren’t lying. A migrant pursued sexual activity with one of the children and came back to violently assault them with his migrant sister after he was rebuffed. Both the migrant siblings were convicted.   @France24_en  @VedikaBahl , the French state-funded news broadcaster, called the girls liars and blamed @elonmusk  and Tommy Robinson."
Jonathan B on X - "Well this is going to get completely memory holed by all the people saying it was an example of dangerous misinformation"
Fat Conservative on X - "I was shocked at the attitude that a lot of people in the UK had toward her because she was "working class". It did shed some light on the rape gang scandal for me... Some seemed to think if Americans knew what class she was we'd stop defending her. One person told us to associate her with "ghetto". What they didn't get is that it doesn't matter what social class she is - a grown man shouldn't be following, harassing, and filming little girls and if they have to find some sharp household implements to protect themselves, then the girls should be applauded for it."
Charleswoods on X - "The only thing the government/media does is gaslight and twist the truth. If you don't like us importing infinity 3rd world immigrants, don't like being raped, stabbed and murdered, even if you just want to discuss this...then you're the problem, you're causing division!"

Humza Yousaf breaks silence after conviction in 'Dundee axe girl' case as he warns 'Muslims are a target' - "Humza Yousaf has commented publicly for the first time since a Bulgarian national was convicted of assaulting a 12-year-old girl in Dundee, as he said Muslims were now a "target" in the UK. The former first minister has faced criticism for claiming the far right was pushing "misinformation" in relation to the case last year... At the time, Mr Yousaf tweeted: "But Stephen-Yaxley Lennon (Tommy Robinson) and his racist far-right mob told me migrants tried to sexually assault the girls? Who would have guessed the far-right were full of bulls**t?"... Belov, 22, was also convicted of behaving in a "threatening or abusive manner" towards four girls, all of whom were aged between 12 and 14. His sister Nadjedzha Belova, 20, earlier pleaded guilty to one charge of assaulting a 13-year-old girl in the incident, which happened in the Lochee area of the city in August 2025."

Swinney apologises over wrongful arrest of girl harassed by sex pest - "John Swinney, the First Minister of Scotland, has apologised to a girl who was wrongly charged after being targeted by a Bulgarian sex pest.  Lord Offord of Garvel, Reform UK’s Scotland leader, said the girl had been falsely described as “a liar, right-wing and a racist” following the encounter in Dundee in August 2025.  Online footage posted at the time of the incident showed the girl with an axe and a knife. It was alleged that she and her friends had been harassed and followed by immigrants.  Police Scotland initially charged the 12-year-old with possessing weapons, prompting Elon Musk to post on X: “What kind of government arrests little girls who try to defend themselves?”  The force then criticised “misinformation online in relation to an incident where a Bulgarian couple were approached by youths”.  However, last week, Ilia Belov, 22, was found guilty of making sexual remarks to a group of girls aged between 12 and 14 before grabbing and pushing one of them to the ground. Lord Offord told First Minister’s Questions that the 12-year-old had been “wildly vilified for wielding an axe and a knife”, which she had used to “fend off a Bulgarian migrant and his sister”.  He said the girl’s mother had demanded an apology from the police and Mr Swinney after they had appeared to cast doubt on her version of events... During Belov’s trial, the court heard that he had said “hello sexy, I’ll show you a good time” to the girls while walking past them in the Lochee area of Dundee.  After one of the girls called him a creep, he had returned to confront the group and called his sister, who arrived shortly afterwards and assaulted one of the girls."
"Misinformation" is anything that threatens the left wing agenda

Meme - ""Sophie" was protecting her sister who had been hit, had her hair pulled and had been sexually harassed. Her sister was taken to the local hospital to be treated and yet the police initially denied that had happened. The police however could not deny the hospital records recording the fact."

Benonwine on X - "The Police drove her to hospital. The police saw her injuries. Yet, the police, the Tele/Courier, the council, the politicians, the TV, all said the Bulgarian was innocent. Let that sink in... They made the families life hell, to protect a Bulgarian migrant who is actually well know to both the council and the police.   There was also no mention of the migrant needing to be restrained and a spit hood placed on him, nor him urinating in the back on the police van. Dundee City Council Dundee Evening Telegraph Police Scotland Scottish National Party (SNP) Rupert Lowe The Courier UK Even after the Hospital Admission letter for concussion was posted online, they all stuck to the narrative the wee girls were being racist towards an innocent migrant, and his wife. The innocent migrant asked the wee girls if they wanted a good time. The innocent migrants wife was his sister, who was clearly seen running over and grabbing the 13yo's hair and throwing her to the ground. This case was an open and shut case from the onset.  Yet, they put the family and girls through months of hate and death threats. Even now, people are still calling the family scumbags, saying the verdict means nothing. Instead, focussing on the girl and the weapons, not the beast who tried chatting them up and then assaulted them when they told him he was a "fucking creep, we're 12". 2 young girls, children, were assaulted before any weapons entered the equation.   I genuinely hope the family sue the lot of them. I hope Elon Musk finances her court costs, or the family are crowd funded"

NewstalkFM on X - "Labour has said they fear releasing data on the nationalities of people allocated social housing could lead to “disgusting” abuse on social media."
Fella Writes on X - "Can’t release migrant crime data. Can’t release housing allocation data. Both apparently show no issues at all, and releasing both would then disprove all these ‘racist conspiracy theories’…but we just can’t release them, because *reasons*."
MichaeloKeeffe on X - "In other words - "A load of foreigners are getting houses in Ireland and we've been covering it up for decades.""
Chatnoir on X - "I'll repeat. My Step mum lives in Glasgow high rise. It was mostly single parents and elderly, very peaceful..the odd druggie would appear and die or be removed...now as they leave it's all immigrants. ALL. Her upstairs neighbour died and an African family moved in. No carpets. Four of them thumping about it was really loud and they often thumped about seemingly all through the night too. After 4 months of going out her mind, getting ear plugs, really trying, she had friends round who hears the thumping and it was really really bad...so she took some sweets up and knocked on door, a grumpy African man answered she said kindly, hello I live downstairs, i know you're new and don't have carpets, perhaps I can give you a number to help you get some or some help to..it's just really very loud downstairs in my home and i can't sleep so please if you could be a little mindful....she added these are for your bairns offering the sweets.  he slammed the door in her face. She also volunteered for the immigrants programmes and arranged free reiki and yoga and art and all sorts trips..only to find out on a trip to highlands she was looking forward to it was for 'women of colour only' yeah...thanks a fucking bunch huh? She said there is constant rubbish thrown out windows, that's a thing..the bins are a disgrace and hallways get filled with it, never seen anything like it. mess"
The truth is dangerous. No wonder they're banning social media, supposedly for kids, while creating a backdoor that will mean anonymity is impossible

Hon. Vickie Paladino on X - "Socialized housing in the UK, which was meant to give the English people an affordable place to live — particularly the elderly, veterans, and the working poor — has turned almost exclusively into free housing for foreigners, and housing costs in the UK have never been higher. It solved nothing. And in fact made everything much worse.  Remember this when Zohran and the DSA lecture us about how ‘social housing’ is going to make New York ‘affordable’ as they seize property from homeowners.  It won’t fix anything."

People are finally waking up to the threat our open borders pose - "The British state has been idealistic for decades. It insists that there is no contradiction between mass migration, human rights and national security. This has been sustained despite the fact that our open borders and often non-existent deportations system allow terrorists, hostile state agents and organised criminals to enter and remain in this country at will. But now, at last, it seems the delusion is ending.  Today Jonathan Hall KC, the government’s Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation and Independent Reviewer of State Threats Legislation has brought some realism to the discussion. He has made a rare public statement, stating that immigration needs to be treated as a national security threat, because violence by newly arrived migrants is “becoming more relevant” after a Sudanese asylum seeker was charged over a knife attack in Belfast, and violence spread across the province in response. Hall noted that “if [people from]] certain countries are more likely either to commit very serious offences or particular offences, or to get involved with state threat activity, do we need to start thinking about migration now, not simply in terms of the economy and housing, but also in terms of national security?” He also noted that there was the added factor that many asylum seekers from war-torn states had suffered serious trauma which potentially increased the risk that they could be more likely to commit violence. In making these assessments, Hall is correct. Mass migration risks destabilising Britain beyond repair, not just because migrants, especially those from regions such as the Horn of Africa are disproportionately likely to commit sexual and violent offences – foreign nationals accounted for one in seven sexual convictions in 2024 – but also because of how migrant crime is destroying the state’s legitimacy.  So Jonathan Hall is right – the state needs to wake up, fast, and become realistic about mass migration, the threats it poses to our security and the conflict between it and human rights culture. His intervention is very significant. I believe Hall hopes to begin a serious awakening in the establishment. We must hope that others follow, and it proves to be the first step in the British state waking up and getting real."

Migrant crisis: More than 150 kebab shops given Home Office licenses to hire workers from overseas in 'absurd' scheme - "A total of 159 kebab shops across Britain have been granted Home Office licences allowing them to sponsor overseas workers under the skilled worker visa scheme. The licences enable businesses to recruit workers from abroad, with sponsored employees often able to bring family members with them to the UK... Official records also show that 79 vape shops and 16 car washes also hold licences permitting them to sponsor overseas workers."

My 20-year-old daughter can’t find a job, and the reason is making me furious - "Since the start of 2020, for every additional young Briton who found a payrolled job, employers took on 27 young workers from outside the EU... My generation – the lucky one, the paid-to-study one – did not merely climb the ladder. We pulled it up behind us, then hired someone from abroad to carry it away. We did this by policy, as a choice; we did it licence by licence, each one signed off by someone who will never watch a 20-year-old nearly weep because she cannot find a toilet to clean. And when she walks into a supermarket or a chain pub suddenly, it seems, every employee is a 47-year-old man recently arrived from Bengal."

NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 on X - "Here is the loophole, step by step.
Step 1: hold dual British-Pakistani citizenship while committing your crimes.
Step 2: when Britain strips your British citizenship to deport you, renounce your Pakistani citizenship too.
Step 3: declare yourself stateless. International law forbids deporting the stateless.
Step 4: remain in Britain. Indefinitely.
This is exactly what Rochdale's convicted ringleaders did. One tore up his passport days before a Court of Appeal ruling — and secured his right to stay by doing so. Pakistan says it has "no basis to accept" people who are no longer its citizens. London negotiates. Years pass. A tribunal even noted it would be "relatively easy" for them to reclaim Pakistani nationality. They are simply "unwilling". A paperwork manoeuvre defeated the entire British state. Why has this loophole outlived every minister who swore to close it?"
raltheon on X - "International law is largely bunk. I don't know why anyone in the West abides by it. If you declare yourself "stateless", that should be fair game to send you to the middle of the African continent."

Links - 10th July 2026 (2 - Hamas Attack Oct 2023)

No evidence of genocide in Gaza found — ICC Chief Prosecutor - "International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan currently sees insufficient evidence of genocide by Israel in the Gaza Strip. He stated this in an interview... He emphasized that prosecutors should not act under the influence of political slogans or public pressure, but must rely solely on evidence.  Hasan pointed out that many experts, as well as his predecessor Luis Moreno Ocampo, already refer to Israel's actions in the war as genocide. However, Khan made it clear that the ICC needs a specific evidentiary basis for such conclusions — and at the moment, he does not see it."

Matthew Taub: Supersizing the fight against Canadian Jew hate | National Post - "antizionism has evolved far beyond criticism of Israeli government policy.  It has become a social, political, academic, and institutional movement that increasingly treats Jewish self-determination as uniquely illegitimate among the nations of the world. That distinction matters because the consequences are no longer theoretical.  Over the last several years, Canadians have watched Jewish schools shot at. Synagogues vandalized. Jewish students harassed on campuses. Businesses targeted. Community centres threatened. Jewish neighbourhoods subjected to weekly demonstrations that would never be tolerated outside almost any other minority community in the country.  At the same time, much of Canada’s institutional class continues insisting that antizionism and antisemitism are entirely separate phenomena.  One of the most powerful discussions came during the panel on Islamic antizionism, featuring Rawan Osman, Abraham Hamra, and Loay Alshareef.  These are voices the West desperately needs to hear more often: individuals from Middle Eastern and Muslim backgrounds willing to speak openly about extremism, indoctrination, antisemitism, authoritarianism, and the weaponization of anti-Israel narratives inside parts of the Arab and Islamic world.  These conversations require courage because dissent in these spaces often comes with enormous personal cost. A panel also examined the collapse of public trust in legacy institutions that many Jews believe have failed to report on antisemitism and anti-Zionist extremism with consistency or moral clarity.  That panel, featuring Lizzy Savetsky, Eve Barlow, Jesse Brown, and moderated by Emily Austin, highlighted a growing reality in modern Jewish advocacy: independent voices are increasingly filling the vacuum left by institutions and media organizations unwilling to confront anti-Jewish extremism directly or consistently. Savetsky and Barlow in particular have become prominent public voices willing to endure enormous online harassment, intimidation, and reputational attacks simply for speaking openly about antisemitism, Jewish identity, Zionism, and the climate many Jews are experiencing across Western society. Whether one agrees with every position they take or not, their willingness to continue speaking publicly in an increasingly hostile environment reflects a broader shift taking place globally — Jews becoming less willing to remain silent simply to preserve social acceptance... At a time when trust in media institutions is collapsing across the political spectrum, discussions around what is happening inside journalism, activism, and digital discourse have become central to understanding why so many Jews increasingly feel abandoned by institutions that once claimed to champion minority protection and human rights universally...  For too long, many institutions have attempted to fight antisemitism while refusing to directly confront antizionism itself — largely out of fear, political discomfort, or ideological confusion.  That strategy is failing.  The World Symposium Against Antizionism was significant because it signaled something larger: the emergence of a growing international movement no longer willing to speak about this issue in euphemisms."

McGill withdraws amnesty offer, toughens tone with pro-Palestinian protesters : r/canada - "McGill just announced they’re expanding and continuing their program to train Saudi doctors. Saudi Arabia 1) guns down African migrants trying to reach their country by the hundreds, 2) is involved in the civil war in Yemen that killed 400,000 civilians and starved 100,000 children to death, 3) enforces a gender apartheid on their women, 4) puts homosexuals in prison (after lashing them).  Seems like that would be a perfect target for a divestment campaign by students. I wonder what’s different…"
"The orgs supporting these protests are all being funded by Muslim associations.  With the recent worldwide investigations into MAC, Muslim Association of Canada, and Qatari funded universities, who’s surprised ?"

Hamas Co-Founder’s Son Rips Pro-Jihadi UK Government - "Mosab Hassan Yousef, who defected from his father’s Hamas terror group to Israel and converted to Christianity, has a message for the antisemitic UK government: “October 7 didn’t happen because ‘Palestinians’ were denied a state, it happened because they were given one.”  The Muslim Arabs always refused to share a state with the Jews, and the British in the 20th century tried to appease them by arbitrarily creating the Muslim nation of Jordan. That simply allowed the Muslims to launch Jihad against the newly refounded state of Israel. Then Israel tried to appease the Muslims who had begun to call themselves Palestinians by giving them the Gaza Strip. And all that did was provide another base of terrorist operations right on Israel’s doorstep. The two-state solution was tried and failed — spectacularly. Yet the UK and French governments are gung-ho on trying it yet again.  It is no doubt excessively frustrating to have seen up close the reality of Hamas and Palestinian jihad and not be able to convince cultural imperialist Westerners of the truth. Yousef wrote on X on July 29, “‘UK to recognize ‘Palestinian’ state unless Israel end war and commit to peace.’ How about no ‘Palestinian’ state unless ‘Palestinians’ release the hostages, elect a moderate leadership, drop their violence, hand over those who planned and participated in war crimes and apologize to the Jewish people.” Britain’s Keir Starmer and France’s Emmanuel Macron simply want to reward jihadis for committing the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Yousef challenged, “Before proposing a state we need to know who are the ‘Palestinians’? Are they jihadists, communists, con artists, mafia savages, rapists? How can anyone propose a state without being able to know who would run it? Another important question: on what land? What’s the capital, what’s the constitution?” It would be on Israeli land, of course, and the Palestinians would not be satisfied until the only Jewish nation in the world is destroyed. In conclusion, Yousef rejected the claim that the UK is working for peace: “Pleasing Muslim voters in the UK and France at the expense of another democracy is rude, provocative, and will not bring peace.”  Yousef has repeatedly tried to warn the West about how the Palestinians are overwhelmingly pro-jihad, and that most of them are fully brainwashed into the Muslim religious teachings about raping and killing non-Muslims. As he said last year on Dr. Phil‘s show, if the so-called Palestinians did not have Jews to kill, they would simply be fighting each other based on different tribal groups. Israel is not committing genocide; it is combating attempted genocide.   This was why Donald Trump‘s previous plan to deport many people from Gaza and let it be under the control of Israel again was so excellent. Unfortunately, that is not likely to happen as Israel keeps trying to make leftist governments happy with it, hundreds of aid trucks line up for the people who teach their five-year-olds to aspire to terrorism, and Hamas terrorists still control much of Gaza and continue to kill Israeli soldiers."

Mosab Hassan Yousef on X - "“Palestinians” should be held accountable for their war crimes. Not rewarded for weaponizing civilians in pursuit of political and financial gain. “Their” unconditional support behind Hamas doesn’t indicate willingness to accept any type of responsibility.   And let’s not forget that “Palestinians” placed booby traps in populated areas to maximize civilian casualties, a strategy to gain global sympathy. Unforgivable crime.   To take an anti war stance is acceptable, but to support the use of human shields is partnering in the crime."

Mossad Commentary on X - "🚨 BREAKING: A USAID Inspector General review reportedly identified 101 additional UNRWA teachers, principals, and staff members as Hamas terrorists who took part in the October 7 massacre. The U.S. is now considering whether to designate UNRWA as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.  @UNWatch"
Lee Humphrey on X - "This has been clear for almost 20 years & was why the Harper gov cut all funding to UNRWA.   Fast forward to 2016, it’s still clear that UNRWA supports Hamas, teaches antisemitic hate in their schools & allows Hamas to hide weapons, ammunition & fighters in their facilities yet Trudeau restores their funding. In 2017, he doubles it. In 2025, Carney not only extends the UNRWA funding but adds a one time extra $60 million dollar payment to the annual $50 million.   Why is Canada funding terrorism & the teaching of hate to children? Why @liberal_party  gov?"

Australian Jewish Association on X - "ANOTHER 70 UNRWA STAFF FIRED DUE TO TERROR LINKS - Credit: UN Watch  AJA conducted a major campaign to expose the terror links of UNRWA and the nexus with Australian foreign aid. The previous LNP govt substantially cut UNRWA aid but as soon as Labor was elected it restored and increased our foreign aid to UNRWA.  Now although UNRWA has tried to resist responding to the strong evidence, it has been embarrassed and reportedly forced to sack 70 of the worst and most obvious - still probably just the tip of the iceberg.  So why does Labor insist on pouring even more $ millions into UNRWA?  And credit to our friends at UN Watch for their tireless efforts gathering "

Alaa From Gaza on X - "Last Thursday, as a former @UNRWA   employee myself, I received an email from UNRWA's Commissioner-General ad interim, Christian Saunders @CFSaundersUN , informing staff that he had decided to terminate the employment of 70 UNRWA employees in Gaza with immediate effect. He stressed that the decision was neither a disciplinary measure nor a validation of the allegations made by Israel, noting that UNRWA had repeatedly requested evidence from the Israeli authorities and had received none. Instead, he said the dismissals were intended to mitigate what the Agency considered growing security risks to its staff, beneficiaries, premises, and operations.  There is something deeply unjust about dismissing 70 people while admitting that no evidence was ever provided against them. Allegations are not proof. When accusations alone are enough to end careers and devastate families, due process ceases to be a principle and becomes a privilege.  PS: @UNRWA   terminated my contract, along with those of 621 of my colleagues, simply because we escaped the genocide in Gaza and didn't want our children to be killed in front of our eyes. Many of my colleagues were injured and left on medical evacuations. Others accompanied family members who were seriously wounded. We were all terminated in January 2026 after spending an entire year on forced exceptional leave, despite the fact that many of us continued working online throughout that period.  The funny thing is that "Western" UNRWA employees were not terminated, even though many of them are also outside Gaza. They continue to receive salaries that are at least 15 times higher than ours, not to mention the benefits that come with them. An agency established to care for Palestinian refugees ended up firing Palestinian refugees like myself while retaining and generously paying international staff.  It's a joke. Except it's not funny, because it's real. @UNWatch"
Not that any evidence will ever be enough for terrorism supporters. Like they claim Israel has a Greater Israel project and the proof is invading Lebanon to clear out Hezbollah. But when you point out they don't invade Egypt and Jordan because no one is attacking Israel from there, the cope is that it's proof Mossad control Egypt and Jordan. Which is revealing because that's a tacit admission that they think Israel needs to be violently attacked till it's destroyed, even if they pretend Israel is and has always been the aggressor, and that Muslims who don't do that are traitors

Ex-TDSB legal executive claims antisemitism in lawsuit against board | National Post - "The lawsuit, filed by Paul Koven, the interim general counsel for TDSB since January 2023, argues that the school board failed “to address rampant antisemitism affecting TDSB students and staff, while prioritizing other forms of racism”... Koven, whose lawsuit claims he “was the only Jewish executive at the TDSB before his medical leave,” accused Leola Pon, the board’s associate director of organizational transformation and accountability, of sidelining him and making “overtly antisemitic and racially divisive remarks.”... Among the incidents alleged in the lawsuit are Pon’s alleged refusal “to support a Jewish lawyer for an award because he was a ‘Zionist’” and her alleged insistence that “no Black or Jewish investigator be used in an incident involving a Board Superintendent using the ‘N-word’ due to a supposed ‘race war’ between Jewish and Black staff.”...  Canada’s most populous school board has been plagued by several high-profile antisemitic incidents since late 2023, including high schoolers giving Nazi salutes and bathroom graffiti of swastikas, “Hitler was right” and “#KillTheJews.” Figures released by TDSB from 2024 show that Jewish students in the board made up just three per cent of the student body but 15 per cent of all recorded racist incidents. Koven’s lawsuit placed his treatment in the broader context of TDSB’s attempts to combat antisemitism since October 7. The legal filing accused TDSB of “systemic indifference” in the wake of the Hamas atrocities, which has “had a direct and severe impact on his physical and mental health and that of other Jewish employees at TDSB.”"

Banning Palestine Action was lawful, Court of Appeal rules - "The decision to ban Palestine Action as a terrorist group was lawful, the Court of Appeal has ruled.  Five senior judges said Palestine Action was no “ordinary protest group” after siding with the Government over the proscription.  The Lady Chief Justice Baroness Carr said the group had engaged in a criminal campaign of direct action against “key national infrastructure and defence firms”, including those providing support to Ukraine and Nato.  The proscription, which began on July 5 last year, made membership of, or support for, the direct-action group a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison.  Judges at the High Court ruled in February that the decision to proscribe Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act 2000 was unlawful, following a legal challenge from Huda Ammori, the group’s co-founder.  The Home Office appealed the ruling, arguing that criminal sanctions for dealing with the group had become “insufficient” following an “escalation” in the scale and intensity of its actions... In their 44-page judgment, the judges said Palestine Action encouraged its activists, in its Underground Manual, to “cause serious damage to property”.  They added: “It presented a very real risk of injury not only to property but also to members of the public. Its campaign was intended to close down the operations of a company pursuing a lawful business by intimidation, not persuasion”... The judges said people were free to express support for the Palestinian cause, opposition to Israel and the Israel Defense Forces.  They said: “But it is a fundamental mistake to overlook the fact that Palestine Action overtly promotes unlawful violence amounting to terrorism.  “It is not – as claimed – a direct action civil disobedience protest group like the suffragettes, operating transparently in the open. Palestine Action has little or nothing in common with the suffragettes or the anti-apartheid or Iran War protest groups.”... The Court of Appeal’s decision comes days after four Palestine Action activists were jailed following a on Israeli defence firm Elbit Systems’ UK factory. The group used sledgehammers and crowbars to destroy computers, drones and other equipment before police and security intervened. The Elbit raid, near Bristol, was one of the triggers for Palestine Action being banned as a terrorist organisation.  The judges said the decision to proscribe it also came in the wake of an attack at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire in June 2025, in which two military aircraft were damaged.  They said: “Palestine Action’s campaign was intended to close down Elbit and other lawful businesses. It took direct criminal action against businesses and institutions, including key national infrastructure and defence firms that provide services and supplies to support Ukraine, Nato, the ‘Five Eyes’ allies and the UK defence enterprise.”"
The terrorism supporters are very upset, of course
The suffragettes were terrorists also, so

New pro-Palestinian group should be banned, says former anti-extremism tsar - "The Government’s former anti-extremism tsar has called for the People Against Genocide protest group to be banned.  Lord Walney, a former aide to Gordon Brown and ex-government adviser on political violence, accused People Against Genocide of being a “successor group” to Palestine Action.  People Against Genocide has claimed credit for raids on sites linked to Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms company, and other businesses... People Against Genocide also promotes Direct Action Training, whose website states: “Direct action is for everyone who is committed to the anti-colonial struggle. If you would like to gain the skills to dismantle the Zionist machine brick by brick, drone by drone, then register.”  Posters on the website include calls to “smash the supply chain”, “pick up a sledgehammer”, “occupy the death factories” and “join the resistance”... Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, said: “Political violence of this kind is totally unacceptable. In this country, we decide things through debate and elections, not smashing up property and attacking a police officer with a sledgehammer.  “If a new group replicates what Palestine Action has done, then they should be treated the same way.”  David Taylor, a Labour MP, said: “Anyone joining organisations like this aren’t virtuous activists – they are dangerous criminals, plain and simple. The Government must crack down on any group that promotes committing violent crimes in the name of a political cause.”"

Court of Appeal’s Palestine Action judgement: Are juries still willing to do their duty? - "Menon’s defence strategy – that those on trial should be judged not by what they do but by how they (and jurors) feel – has been proving increasingly successful. It threatens to upset the delicate balance that makes trial by jury worth protecting from a Government seeking to limit its use. That risk was all too obvious last Friday when the pro-Palestine protest outside the court was addressed by Maud Dromgoole, a juror from the initial trial, who claimed that Mr Justice Johnson’s decision to treat the defendants as having a terrorist connection amounted to a “secret extra charge”. “I feel really sorry for the jury that did [convict]. They didn’t know what they were convicting the defendants of,” she said, having also urged social media followers to “mobilise” and join her at the protest. Jurors are instructed by the judge not to let any sympathy they may feel for a defendant influence their verdict. A summary of the law in the Crown Court Compendium handbook says: “The jury need to be directed that they are responsible for decisions of fact; the judge for decisions of law.” This division of responsibilities lies at the heart of our jury system. If juries make up the law as they go along – if they rely on the defendant’s view of the law rather than the judge’s – then people on trial will be wrongly acquitted. There will be no consequences for individual jurors; but trial by jury as a concept will be slowly poisoned. Such toxicity took on particular significance on Monday, when Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, won her appeal against a High Court ruling in February overturning the ban on Palestine Action, the group to which Head and her fellow defendants belonged.  Prosecutors will now have to decide how to handle thousands of people arrested after expressing support for Palestine Action after its initial proscription in July last year – including scores more arrested outside Woolwich court on Friday. It remains to be seen whether Palestine Action activists carry out further acts of criminal damage. And if they do, we may see them – and their defence lawyers – appealing to the consciences, prejudices or political predilections of juries... As with so much in the United Kingdom’s unwritten legal-constitutional framework, this tension remains usefully unresolved because it is thought to produce an acceptable outcome. Jurors generally strive to respect judges’ directions. And past occasions when juries appeared to acquit in the face of the evidence have been seen as a warning to over-enthusiastic prosecutors.  One of the clearest examples is the case of Pat Pottle and Michael Randle, two peace activists who helped the Soviet spy George Blake escape from Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1966. After owning up in a book they had published in 1989, they were tried and acquitted in 1991. Another “perverse verdict”, as they are sometimes called, came in the form of Clive Ponting, a civil servant who had leaked secret documents about the sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano during the Falklands war, being found not guilty of breaching the Official Secrets Act in 1985.  Lord Devlin, the judge who in 1956 famously described trial by jury as “the lamp that shows that freedom lives”, told me after Ponting’s acquittal that a jury had a right to be perverse in the exercise of what he called its legal and constitutional spirit: “If it’s asked to enforce law which it really feels is against its conscience, it says no and it acquits. And that’s to my mind our proudest constitutional achievement.”  But these were exceptional cases. Now juries are routinely facing pressure to let conscience rule their decisions in trials involving pro-Palestine and eco-activists. One such case involved David Lambert, a parks and gardens conservationist from Stroud, who was one of six defendants cleared by a jury of criminal damage after a two-week trial in 2021. As part of the Extinction Rebellion protests, he and others had broken windows, spilt fake oil over the front of the Shell building on the South Bank and sprayed messages on the wall about the climate crisis... We have seen other such acquittals in recent years. Four protesters accused of damaging a monument to the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston, which had been pulled down in 2021 and thrown into Bristol harbour, were acquitted by a jury the following year after claiming they had lawful excuses for their actions. Two of the defendants said they believed that the people of Bristol would have consented to any damage caused by the statue’s removal. In 2023, an un-named activist was cleared of conspiracy to damage a building after asserting that those responsible for the premises would have consented to the damage if they had known its purpose was to alert them to the nature and extent of man-made climate change... six medical professionals were acquitted of criminal damage after a retrial. They had damaged windows at the European headquarters of a bank, arguing that they were attempting to save lives in the face of a climate and ecological emergency... When Parliament said that anyone accused of criminal damage would have a lawful excuse if they believed the property-owner would consent, it was not authorising unlimited damage based on a subjective belief about how to solve some of the world’s most intractable problems.  Criminal damage has to be paid for – either through larger insurance premiums or increased taxes, both of which lead to higher prices. Such offending is selfish and solipsistic, allowing perpetrators to feel good about themselves while disrupting public services and making the environment more miserable for the rest of us... there are legitimate concerns about how willing juries are to do their duty.  Is this because we now show too much respect to the feelings of others? Has the distinction between facts and opinions become so blurred that objectivity has been replaced by the concept of “my truth”? Has society become so fragmented that members of the public are no longer willing to take direction from those who society has placed in a position of authority? Perhaps all of the above.  How else can we explain why thousands of ordinary folk – just the sort of people you might expect to find on a jury – allowed themselves to be arrested after expressing support for a banned terrorist organisation?... the biggest threat to trial by jury is the perception by too many potential jurors that the ideological end justifies the legal means."
Basically, you can break the law if you push the left wing agenda

The Green Party could be about to get even more sinister - "The dangerous cause of Palestine, which has been adopted by countless progressive grifters to render baying mobs spell-bound to their venal ambitions, is now at the heart of the growing struggle between the traditional Greens and their newly acquired allies in the green-headband faction – now bizarrely dubbed the “Global Majority Greens”, or GMG.  What values does the GMG stand for? In a nutshell, it wishes to saturate every aspect of the party with an obsession with race. Slavery reparations are a must, as is (according to their website) the wholesale elevation of the interests of “people from African, Caribbean, Asian, Latin American and others of Global Majority ethnic descent in England and Wales” above those unlucky enough to have been born in the racial majority. Predictably, all of this is most vividly expressed in a rabid hatred of “Zionists”.  Enter Zack Polanski. The big softie may never tire of reminding us of his identity as Britain’s only Jewish political leader, but he has played the Islamist game with grim commitment.  No bigotry, it seems, has been beyond the pale for the former breast hypnotist, from claiming that Israel “kills a child every 45 minutes” to defending the “globalise the Intifada” chant, to condemning the police for being too rough with the alleged Golders Green stabber while placing him under arrest. This has won him significant polling success. Even this performance, however, is apparently not “anti-Zionist” enough for the GMG and its tribune – deputy leader Mothin Ali. Here is a man who greeted news of his election as Leeds councillor with a cry of “Allahu Akbar”, and who defended Hamas’s October 7 atrocities on social media (he later apologised).  According to transcripts of messages obtained by the Spectator – Ali has been fomenting a GMG mutiny against Britain’s only Jewish political leader because of his supposed favouritism towards the Jews.  At the heart of the matter is allegedly Ali’s resentment of the way Polanski suspended party members accused of levels of anti-Semitism too grotesque even for the Greens. To give you a sense of the tone here, one example is the case of Sabine Mairey, who shared a post that included a picture of a man holding a placard that read “ramming a synagogue isn’t anti-Semitism. It’s revenge.” Just healthy anti-Zionism, am I right? More than 30 local election candidates were accused of spreading such venom on social media last month, leading to nearly a dozen suspensions and two arrests. Yet this, the GMG insists, is an example of persecution of “Global Majority candidates and those who support Palestinian liberation”, supporting an atmosphere that supposedly “demonises migrants and Muslims” as well as “women”. Why all the focus on anti-Semitism? If the GMG had its way, there would seemingly be no limit to the hatred permitted towards the “Zionists” (Jews, the GMG concedes – by which I suppose it means that small number of Jewish Leftist cranks who are shoved into the vanguard at Gaza marches – must be kept “safe”), coupled with a greatly magnified pre-occupation with perceived slights against anybody non-white... if the “Israel lobby” were so powerful, would the Government have recognised a state of Palestine? Methinks the growing power lies elsewhere. All this raises the dilemma of our times: How can liberal democracies stop their freedoms from being subverted from within without sliding into authoritarianism? Depressingly, our political leaders have not even started asking this question, let alone answering it."
If you don't support the killing of Jews, you're guilty of anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia

‘Pro-Hamas’ TV channel blamed Israel for Golders Green attack - "A “pro-Hamas” TV channel blamed Israel for provoking the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green.  Campaigners are demanding a clampdown on Al-Hiwar TV after guests claimed the attack in north London was not the result of anti-Semitism, but a reaction to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.  The Ofcom-licensed channel, which has more than 6.4 million followers on Facebook and 1.9 million subscribers on YouTube, has also been accused of peddling Hamas propaganda.  One of its presenters described the Oct 7 attacks as “like a fantasy”, and it has broadcast sympathetic interviews with supporters of the banned terror group... One argued that the incident was not anti-Semitic but an act of opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza and that the Jewish state bore “the lion’s share” of responsibility for what happened. Jafaar El-Ahmar, a London-based journalist, told the channel: “This is not anti-Semitism but rather an expression of his [the attacker’s] rejection of the Israeli attacks against the Palestinian people.” Contributors to Al-Hiwar also described last December’s Bondi Beach attack in Australia – when 15 civilians were shot dead at an orthodox Chabad event – as a reaction to Israel’s military offensive in Gaza rather than an anti-Semitic attack on Jews. Campaigners have called on Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator, to examine whether the channel, which is also available to British audiences via a number of foreign satellite TV providers and through multiple websites and apps, has breached UK laws against promoting terror groups. Azzam Tamimi, Al-Hiwar’s co-founder and chairman, has previously called on Muslims to support the Tehran regime against Israel... Bilal and Mr Tamimi also described the Oct 7 terrorists – along with the IRA – as individuals who “struggle for the sake of freedom”.  The interview with Bilal took place in Turkey, following his release from an Israeli prison in exchange for hostages held in Gaza.  Bilal had been jailed by Israel for his part in two suicide bombings in 1995, with the attacks killing 12 – 10 of them civilians – and injuring another 140 people. He admitted to having prepared the explosives and provided transport for the suicide bombers. Since the Oct 7 attacks the station’s presenters have described Hamas and Hezbollah fighters as “martyrs” and “the resistance”, described suicide bombings as “legitimate resistance under international law” and called for the “dismantling of Israel”... The channel was previously found by Ofcom to have breached its broadcasting code on two occasions, in 2009 and 2018, after it broadcast “highly offensive” comments by guests encouraging violence without being challenged."
So following terrorist supporter logic, we can blame Islamist terrorists for "Islamophobia"