Links - 22nd February 2026 (1 - Left and Right Wing Violence)

Lauren Chen on X - "I've come to realize the left doesn't actually oppose crime or violence on principle.  They only oppose it when it hurts their own agenda or allies. Otherwise, they actually cheer it on when it's inflicted upon their enemies, or just ignore it when it can't be exploited.  For example, killing is good when it's a health insurance CEO or Charlie Kirk. But it's bad if it's Renee Good or George Floyd (for the purpose of this argument, we will assume, as leftists do, that George Floyd was actually killed and did not OD). And killing doesn't register at all when it's someone like Iryna Zarutska being murdered by a black man.  The same goes with violence and crime as a whole. Violence against ICE is good. However, violence against ICE protestors is bad. And violence between black gangs is simply unimportant.  Furthermore, stealing from Walmarts and other big chains is good, but "stealing" from indigenous people is bad. Somalis stealing from taxpayers, on the other hand, should just not be discussed at all.  Unlike most people, the leftist views violence and crime as morally neutral tools, with acceptability or importance wholly dependent on who or what these tools are being used against.  Now, you might say, the right acts similarly! After all, weren't the ICE agent's and Kyle Rittenhouse's killings excused by conservatives?  But no, actually, these cases are not the same. The right doesn't excuse these killings because they were perpatrated by conservatives against progressives, which is how leftists view these scenarios.  It is not the "who" that provides justification for these killings in the eyes of the right, but rather, the "why," which is self-defense.  Regardless of the parties involved, conservatives, in general, recognize the right to self-defense. Leftists, conversely, might only recognize self-defense as valid depending on who is using it.  Case in point, according to leftists, the ICE agent was not justified in shooting as self-defense after being hit with a car at a protest. But somehow, self-defense has been the go-to defense for Karmelo Anthony, a black teen who stabbed an unarmed student after getting into an argument at a campus sports event.  Again, for the leftist, the justification for crime and violence comes not from "why," but from "who."  And so, why does this matter? Why is this worth discussing?  It matters because, as we saw with Charlie Kirk, regardless of how law abiding or moral you may otherwise be, as long as you are conservative, it means the left will support any and all violence or theft that befalls you. Unfortunately, the justification for harming you comes from who you are: their enemy.  This phenomenon also explains the leftist indifference to the crimes of minority groups, like Somalis, or trans people, or illegal immigrants, or whatever other protected class. Put simply, in the left's belief system, if a crime happens, but there's no way to use it to gain political power, has it even really happened at all?  Finally, with these revelations in mind, the right must stop entering into debates with leftists assuming they share the view that crime and violence are inherently bad, because though they may deny it, the truth is they do not." Florida nurse' license suspended after threatening press secretary Karoline Leavitt - "Florida has issued an emergency suspension of the license of the nurse who wished childbirth injury on Karoline Leavitt.  The emergency suspension order, obtained by Fox News Digital, reads, "Joseph A. Ladapo, MD, PhD, State Surgeon General, ORDERS the emergency suspension of the license of Alexis Backer Lawler, R.N., ("Lawler") to practice as a registered nurse in the State of Florida."   In a Wednesday post on X, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier praised the move, saying, "Effective today, Lexie Lawler is no longer allowed to practice nursing in Florida,"... Lawler, a former labor and delivery nurse at Baptist Health Boca Raton Regional Hospital, was fired last week after posting a video where she wished Leavitt permanent harm during childbirth, saying, "As a labor and delivery nurse, it gives me great joy to wish Karoline Leavitt a fourth degree tear."  She added, "I hope you f------ rip from bow to stern and never s--- normally again, you c---."  She later doubled down on her remarks, saying, "So they just murdered a man in Minnesota, they murdered a man in Minnesota, and you motherf------ are coming after me ‘cause I used bad language? F--- you. I’m on the right side of this. F--- you."... Uthmeier had previously called on the Florida Board of Nursing to revoke Lawler’s license, and told Fox News Digital in a statement, "Women shouldn’t have to worry about a politically-driven nurse who wishes them pain and suffering being in the delivery room during childbirth."" Scott Jennings on X - "DEMS: "It's not just the left that's being violent!"
"OK, who on the right is being violent?"
DEMS: 🦗🦗🦗
The left has a problem with violence, it is in its heart right now 👇" BLACK DUMPLING™ on X - "Yeah, Leftists lie about Right wing crime stats endlessly there too.  Some Aryan brotherhood shanks some dude in prison and a Leftist just like you dutifully records it as "Right Wing Political Violence".  Montez Terriel Lee melts some dude in a pawnshop he set on fire during a BLM riot and that's an abstract crime committed in a vacuum as the Biden Admin prosecutor invokes MLK *for the benefit of the Defendant*."
Naturally, this person got blocked by the left winger who was talking rubbish Meme - wanye @wanyeburkett: "It sounds like crazy, far-right, woo woo nonsense, but almost everything you're taught about the last 75 years of American history in the standard high school curriculum is if not a straightforward lie, carefully designed to produce an understanding of that history that's quite..."
Peter Conroy: "It wasn't until Bryan Burrough was doing the media rounds talking about his Days of Rage book a few years ago that I realized how absolutely insane and violent and chaotic the late 60's were. And how *wrong* the whitewashed / peacenik version portrayed a few decades later was" Meme - Thomas Chatterton Williams: "Bluesky is a platform where a person can ask in all seriousness, "who is eradicating their ideological opponents?" and it doesn't even occur to them that this is something the left has done."
Thomas Chatterton Williams: "Bluesky is such a sealed epistemic vacuum in many corners not a single person points out that just this past September Charlie Kirk literally got his neck blown open in public *by his ideological opponent.*"
Evan Bernick, a finite m... @evanbe...: "quick question, who is literally eradicating their ideological opponents"
Thomas Chatterton Willi... @chatt...: "There is a growing and palpable bloodlust and desire to see ideological opponents quite literally eradicated that should give us all extreme pause. It's been a long time since the most meaningful divide in American political and cultural life was between "left" and "right."" Meme - Thomas Chatterton Williams: "The Bluesky moral high ground:"
Corey Atad @coreyatad.com: "the Kirk thing really got to a lot of guys worried that their open veiled support for fascism might come back to harm them"
Occam's Bec de corbin @goodvers...: "if only" unseen1 on X - "Charlie Kirk gets assassinated by a leftist. The right doesn't riot. They turn to God and prayer to make sense of it all. A leftist agitator gets killed while trying to run over a law enforcement officer, the left riots and calls for mass killings. We are not the same." 42% of young liberals say Kirk’s views ‘brought violence upon himself to an extent’: poll - "Conservative Charlie Kirk’s viewpoints mean he brought violence upon himself to an extent, according to 42 percent of young liberal voters polled in a newly released survey.  Young America’s Foundation released the results of its fall survey on Tuesday, which questioned 1,021 registered voters aged 18 to 29 nationwide.  “Surveyed shortly after the assassination of Charlie Kirk this fall, 70 percent of young voters say that there is absolutely no justification for murdering someone over their viewpoints,” YAF reported. “When broken out along ideological lines, an alarming 42 percent of young liberal voters, however, say that Kirk’s viewpoints mean he brought violence upon himself to an extent.”  Kirk’s murder may have had a small chilling effect on conservative speech on campus as well.  “Compared to YAF’s previous survey conducted in January, young conservatives are now less likely to feel comfortable expressing their views, sliding from 65 percent who were comfortable at the start of the year to just 51 percent this fall,” YAF reported...   About half, 51 percent, said they believe “there is not much opportunity in America today and the average person doesn’t have much chance to really get ahead.”  But dig into those numbers, and a somewhat surprising picture emerges: “Among young white voters, just 21 percent think they have more opportunities than their parents, compared with 41 percent of young black voters and 47 percent of young Hispanic voters.”"
"What was he wearing?" Victim blaming is only wrong when it hurts the left wing agenda
The cope is that DEI just levels the playing field and young white voters just see the loss of privilege as oppression Sensurround on X - "Let's stop pretending this is complicated.  Democrats show up in the streets. Republicans show up in the tweets.   Democrats are perfectly willing to burn, smash, threaten, and intimidate to get their way. Republicans clutch their pearls, refresh their feeds, and argue about exactly how angry they should get.  Democrats understand power. Ugly, blunt, physical power. Republicans understand process, And complain about how it's being subverted.  When Democrats lose someone, they riot. When Republicans lose someone, they write a strongly worded post and ask why the police didn't do more.  Democrats are ruthless enough to scare institutions. Republicans are polite enough to be ignored by them.  One side is dangerous. The other is harmless.  In a world that rewards force and punishes hesitation, that's just losing with good manners" The Democrat Party Is A Domestic Terrorist Organization - "Decades of extreme language, calling conservatives “Nazis,” claiming existential threats are around the corner in order to feed an assassination culture, and justifying the aftermath has brought a level of violence that is only one-sided: The left tries to murder or maim their political enemies.   On Wednesday afternoon, a shooter took the life of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, just as he was answering a question about left-wing violence in the United States.  Left-wing commentators at corporate media outlets — the mouthpieces of the Democrat Party — were quick to justify the violence, suggesting it was justified or that Kirk brought it on himself, even going as far as to suggest it was really a Trump supporter firing a gun in “celebration.”  Democrats have a long history of calling conservatives the most vile things our culture can think of, and their friends in the media spread the message to anyone who watches them.  Democrats have recently been saying they “cannot be the only party that plays by the rules anymore.”  Just yesterday, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said in an interview, “Our only opportunity, our only chance to save our democracy, is to fight fire with fire.”  Murphy brushed off “the fact that we’re blowing up norms,” adding that if you spend any more than “two seconds … being sorry for the fact that the old world doesn’t exist, then your democracy is gone.”   “We’re in a war right now to save this country, and so you have to be willing to do whatever is necessary in order to save the country,” he said. Murphy’s media pal salivated over the sentiment, wondering if there were enough people who believe it.  What do Democrats think is “necessary?” Well, perhaps it is bringing a knife to a “knife fight,” in the words of Democrat National Committee head Ken Martin.  After all, as Kirk pointed out earlier this year, 48 percent of liberals say it would be at least somewhat justifiable to assassinate Elon Musk, and 55 percent say the same about President Donald Trump. “The left is being whipped into a violent frenzy. Any setback, whether losing an election or losing a court case, justifies a maximally violent response,” Kirk said at the time. “This is the natural outgrowth of left-wing protest culture tolerating violence and mayhem for years on end. The cowardice of local prosecutors and school officials have turned the left into a ticking time bomb.”  The left-wing penchant for egging on and justifying violence has long been a staple of their political movement.  Democrats did everything they could to make Trump seem like the most evil person on the planet for years, so it was no surprise when Trump was shot last year and a second gunman attempted to shoot him only weeks later.  Gov. J.B. Pritzker, D-Ill., said recently that “Republicans cannot know a moment of peace,” and then in the aftermath of Kirk’s death blamed Trump for the assassination.  All the way back in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson suggested that if Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater were to win, American families would be annihilated by nuclear weapons. He ran an extraordinarily on-the-nose campaign ad saying as much.   The 1960s was full of left-wing political violence.  President Bill Clinton granted clemency to Puerto Rican FALN terrorists who bombed and murdered their way across America, and President Barack Obama pardoned them. President Joe Biden granted clemency to those convicted of murdering police officers.  Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., threatened Supreme Court justices, and a man with a gun showed up outside Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house intent on murdering him.   Sen. Bernie Sanders’, I-Vt., existential threat language led one of his supporters to shoot at the Republican members of Congress practicing for the Congressional Baseball Game in 2017, nearly ending the life of now-House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La.  In 2013, a man intent in killing as many people as possible at the conservative organization Media Research Council went there with a gun and killed a security officer after disagreeing with the group’s stance on gay “marriage.”  Left-wing violence in Nashville, Tennessee, saw Covenant Christian School attacked by someone claiming to be “transgender,” and the Biden administration attempted to cover up the shooter’s writings, which exposed her motive.  More recently, children at Annunciation Catholic School were gunned down while they were praying by another person claiming to be “transgender” with a similarly demonic motivation.  But the left celebrated when Luigi Mangione allegedly gunned down a healthcare CEO, and they cheered even harder when Black Lives Matter brought death and destruction to America’s streets.  In the world we live in now, there is no time to try to convince the left to “tone down” their extreme rhetoric. They need to be treated like the domestic terrorists they are." ALX 🇺🇸 on X - "Someone doxxed Stephen Miller’s home address, then showed up to his house 24 hours after Charlie Kirk was assassinated to try to intimidate his wife.. These threats forced them to move out to a military base and now activist judges and prosecutors are protecting the criminal…" We Arrive At My Fear - "A philosophical festering has taken root in the minds of the left that their opponents are evil and words are violence. A permission structure formed on MSNBC and other progressive media outlets that the right must be stopped to save democracy. An exculpatory structure formed on CNN and other media outlets downplaying or excusing progressive violence. A triggering event happened with the election of Donald Trump. Then progressive politicians amped up the rhetoric to push the disturbed and violent across the line.  Writing in the New York Times in 2017, the psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett argued that, “If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech—at least certain types of speech—can be a form of violence.”... Words became violence. Concurrent to Thomas Matthew Crooks pulling the trigger on his gun in Butler, PA, MSNBC had on a commentator arguing Donald Trump was a threat to democracy and needed to be stopped. On a frequent basis, progressive historian Michael Beschloss appeared on Morning Joe on that network, decrying Trump. On Election Day 2024, Beschloss described that day to the Morning Joe crew as, “In the future, historians are gonna look back on this day and say this is the day America made the choice between freedom and democracy on one side and authoritarianism and dictatorship on the other.” Then Trump won.  On January 8, 2011, Jared Lee Loughner shot then Congresswoman Gabby Giffords of Arizona. On CNN, the conversation immediately turned to rightwing violence. CNN, the New York Times, and other outlets pointed the finger at Sarah Palin, claiming she had used the “militaristic” language of “targeting” Giffords for defeat. When it turned out the assassin had mental health issues, the network moved on. On June 14, 2017, James Hodgkinson attempted the mass assassination of Republican members of Congress. As soon as it turned out he was a progressive MSNBC viewer, CNN and other media outlets moved on.  Now, CNN will routinely talk to its audience about rightwing violence as a standalone category of violence. But all leftwing violence must be taken with a heavy dose of “both sides do it” and “why did Donald Trump provoke it.” After both Tyler Robinson assassinated Charlie Kirk and Joshua Jahn opened fire on an ICE facility, killing two detainees, CNN’s national security analyst Juliette Kayyem rushed to social media to assure the left that the shooters were not of the left. An entire media and progressive infrastructure exists to assure the left violence is never their fault. Donald Trump’s election triggered the left. Now, media outlets and Democrat politicians insist Donald Trump’s rhetoric is to blame, he is a dictator, and Democrats need to get comfortable doing things they would otherwise not do, in the words of Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy. The Atlantic, beloved by the progressive elite, is even sounding the alarm that leftwing violence is outpacing rightwing violence. Democrat politicians are forcing a government shutdown, scared that their voters might turn physically violent against them. News outlets continue making excuses, blaming Trump, and stacking bodies to see which side is more violent. California Governor Gavin Newsom, after suggesting everyone tone it down after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, went on Stephen Colbert to declare he really does believe Trump will cancel the 2028 presidential election. In the meantime, Charlie Kirk is dead. A gun control activist shot up an ABC station in California. ICE agents have been shot, and detainees killed in Texas. Mourners for Kirk were hurt in Arizona. An explosive device was placed under a local Fox TV van in Nevada. A federal facility in Oregon was vandalized, and employees were assaulted by protesters. That’s just the last two weeks. Until Democrats police their own side, the violence will only increase.  “But January 6!” they reply.  On March 1, 1954, four left-wing Puerto Rican Nationalists entered the gallery of the United States House of Representatives and rained down bullets on the members of Congress, wounding five.  On March 1, 1971, the progressive Weather Underground bombed the United States Capitol.  On November 6, 1983, the “Armed Resistance Unit,” a far-left group affiliated with the Black Liberation Army, bombed the United States Capitol to protest the invasion of Grenada.  I neither deny that some on the right have committed violence nor that Donald Trump stirs the pot.  Too many on the left, in the press, and anti-Trump voices on the center-right, however, seem to think screaming “But January 6th,” is a way to ignore what has been festering on the left and that is now spilling out into assassinations and murders across the United States."
Words the left hate are violence. Violence the left loves is speech Defiant L’s on X - "Are you feeling the love and tolerance?
Protester: "Remove this president or there will be violence""
Overturning an election is only wrong when the right does it - Left

Links - 21st February 2026 (2 - Mark Carney)

Mark Carney's bizarre insistence on using British spellings - "When Canada last had a federal budget in April 2024, the text followed the typically idiosyncratic conventions of Canadian English. Some words, such as “colour,” followed a British spelling. While others, such as “analyze,” went with an American spelling. But the 492 pages of the 2025 budget have been diligently scoured to remove U.S.-style spelling. Harmonize has become “harmonise.” Specialize has become “specialise.” Organize has become “organise.” And the budget is very much an anomaly in this regard. Official House of Commons transcripts continue to employ the prior forms of “harmonize” and “organize,” among others. The official text of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms uses the spelling of “recognize” as opposed to the budget’s spelling of “recognise.” The more than 2,000 historical plaques and memorials maintained by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada also stick to a Canadian-style spelling style at odds with the Carney government... Carney’s insistence on British spellings was made clear to his staff in his first weeks in the Prime Minister’s Office. In a profile published shortly after the April general election, the National Post’s Christopher Nardi cited reports from Liberal insiders that Carney was demanding British spelling in all official correspondence. The new prime minister also demanded a dress code of “formal business attire.” As to why Carney is doing this, it fits in with a general “Europeanization” that the prime minister has been pursuing for Canada. Carney’s first foreign trips were to meet with European leaders, he’s attempted to move Canada within the orbit of the European Union and the 2025 budget even included a promise to “explore participation in Eurovision.” It also might be simple fact that Carney was Bank of England governor for seven years and, just like a North American backpacker who comes home with a British accent following their tour of the U.K., he’s stuck to English customs out of pure Anglophilia. (He also attended Oxford University in his 20s, has a British-born wife and obtained British citizenship.) Carney wears tailored Saville Row suits, and he wasn’t shy about his love of Britishness in his 2021 book Values. Here’s how he described Bank of England headquarters, “Everything I see evokes the history of the Bank and the permanence of its mission. The entrance hall echoes the style of British imperial capitals. Everything appears solid, safe, permanent.” Charles Boberg, a McGill University linguist who has spearheaded regular surveys of the unique quirks of Canadian English, surmised that the prime minister might be trying to de-Americanize official language as a form of protest against a hostile U.S. administration. But as Boberg wrote in an email to the National Post, “it has always seemed somewhat ironic to me that those concerned with Canada’s cultural independence from the U.S. choose to symbolize this by, effectively, emphasizing Canada’s cultural dependence on Britain instead.” He also noted that Carney has thus far steered clear of the more foreign-looking British spellings, such as “gaol, tyre, or waggon.” Canadian English spelling conventions have been famously described by the linguist T.K. Pratt as a “hobgoblin.” Canada’s founding prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, decreed at the outset that Canada would follow British conventions in its English. Nevertheless, the interim 150 years have yielded an organic and somewhat inconsistent mix of both British and U.S. terms. As Pratt wrote in a 1993 survey, “Canadian spellers might claim to be among the most broadminded people writing English today.” And despite popular belief, the trend is not always towards Canadian English becoming more Americanized. A 2010 Kwansei Gakuin University study of Canadian linguistic trends determined that Canadians have been found to actively abandon U.S. spellings. One hundred years ago, for instance, a majority of Canadians regularly used the U.S.-style spelling of “honor.” But surveyors determined that this had plummeted to almost nothing by the year 2000. Other terms, such as “jewelry,” were more malleable, going up or down depending on Canadians’ views of the United States at any particular time."

Canadians will soon pay more interest on national debt than federal funds for health care and child care combined - "Prime Minister Mark Carney’s first budget is leaving some Canadian economists concerned about the mounting national debt and ballooning annual interest payments eroding more and more of scarce federal resources. The “Canada Strong Budget 2025” projects that, by 2029, federal debt charges will consume one in every eight dollars of revenue Ottawa expects to bring in.  The Liberals’ budget, released this week, not only swaps out reducing the debt-to-GDP ratio for the more modest goal of reducing the deficit-to-GDP ratio, but also projects annual interest payments on the debt to swell due to large deficits, starting with a $78.3 billion shortfall this year. In two years, interest payments on the national debt will exceed Ottawa’s annual deficit, with $66.2 billion to service the debt compared to a $63.5 billion deficit. “It’s essentially doubling down on what the Trudeau government strategy was, and in many cases, is actually accelerating spending, deficits, and debt compared to the Trudeau government’s fall economic statement,” Jake Fuss, Fraser Institute director of fiscal studies, told The Hub, adding that deficit spending over the next five years is almost double what the Trudeau government had planned last year.  By 2029, the compounding federal debt is forecasted to cause interest payments to surpass Ottawa’s combined transfer payments to the provinces for health care and child care. That fiscal year, the federal government projects public debt charges will hit $76.1 billion, while the Canada Health Transfer ($65 billion) and Canada-wide early learning and child care ($8.5 billion) will cost taxpayers a combined $73.5 billion—or $2.6 billion less. The Carney government’s inaugural budget promises “generational investments” of about $280 billion over five years on new infrastructure, productivity and competitiveness, defence and security, and housing. But some economists believe these “investments” will merely result in costly failed programs similar to the governments of Justin Trudeau and Pierre Trudeau. “During Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s tenure, [the government] thought that they could judge things best. They brought in the National Energy Program. And they started supply management…going through the list of things, you often see these things blow up,” said Jack Mintz, a president’s fellow of the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary. Mintz believes Carney’s technocratic approach, where the federal government acts as an investment banker picking winners and losers for major investments, will more than likely exacerbate federal spending, debt, and interest.  “You’re squeezing out other public expenditures. You’re also potentially squeezing out other private investment, because as the government requires more and more money from the international market, it starts bidding up interest rates in Canada,” Mintz said to The Hub. He added that as the government drives up the demand for borrowing—while also making Canada a riskier investment by making poor investments—interest rates can surge.  All in all, the Carney government plans to rack up a cumulative deficit of $320 billion over five years, growing the net debt from $1.48 trillion to $1.80 trillion (2029-30) in four years.   And on cue to the added borrowing load announced by the Carney Government, on Thursday one of the world’s three major credit rating agencies, Fitch Ratings, downgraded Canada’s credit score from triple-A to “AA+/Stable” due to “persistent fiscal expansion and a rising debt burden weaken[ing] its credit profile.” The top-three credit agency also warned Canada’s increased borrowing may “increase rating pressures in the medium term”—in other words, increase the interest rates on the growing federal debt.   Although interest payments on the national debt are projected to only inch up from 1.8 percent of GDP this fiscal year, to 2.1 percent of GDP by 2029-30, Fuss says Canada may be headed for a dire situation in the not-too-distant future mirroring that of the ‘80s and ‘90s, when interest rates skyrocketed to a point where Canada’s interest payments on national debt hit 6.5 percent of GDP in 1990-91...   Debt interest payments could be even higher if budget projections continue to underestimate actual federal spending. As C.D. Howe Institute president and CEO William Robson highlighted in The Hub earlier this week, the federal government’s spending estimates have been leaping more than $20 billion every year.   In the budget, the Carney government touts Canada as having the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7 at 13.3 percent, compared to the next lowest country, Germany, at 48.7 percent. The G7 average debt-to-GDP ratio is 101.4 percent (excluding Canada)... economists believe that Canada’s net debt is highly misleading because it includes the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Quebec Pension Plan (QPP) as assets.  “Net debt essentially looks at the total amount of debt, and then it subtracts out financial assets. But included in our financial assets in Canada are the CPP and the QPP, which are valued at about a combined $890 billion in mid-2025,” Fuss said. “And we can’t use those financial assets to actually offset total debt, because we would be compromising the benefits of current and future pensioners.”  Other G7 countries, like the U.S., include pensions as both an asset and a liability, so they aren’t subtracted from net debt like Canada does with CPP and QPP.   “A more accurate measure of Canada’s indebtedness is to look at…total liabilities or gross debt. And if we look at our total debt as a share of the economy, we actually rank fifth-highest among G7 countries at 113 percent of GDP,” Fuss explained. “That’s higher than the total debt burden in the U.K. It’s also higher than Germany, and we’re close behind France as well.”"
Clearly, the solution is to spend even more money. Meanwhile left wingers still say that debt is not high, ignoring that provincial debt is another kettle of fish

Marc Nixon on X - "CBC helped Carney win by selling his anti-America fairy tale. 🇺🇸 Now they’re awkwardly flipping the script suddenly “pro-America” because Canada can’t survive without our biggest customer. It’s not journalism. It’s paid propaganda. Defund CBC now."

John Smith on X - "So Canada via Mark Carney donate's 4.5 billion to Ukraine and Mark Carney's Corporation Brookfield is awarded a 4.2 Billion dollar rebuild contract in Ukraine. Nothing wrong going on here says Mark Carney!"

Sue-Ann Levy on X - "The Canadian $ is now at 71-cents — the lowest since 2003. That’s some economic prowess we’ve seen from Mr. Elbows Up. That’s why people won’t be going to the U.S. this winter not because his trained seals and the Boomers who voted for him say so."

Mark Carney is plunging Canada further into an Islamist-Leftist dystopia - "Canadian leadership and the culture that emanates from it has been dismal for years. Mark Carney, the former Bank of England governor and the new prime minister of Canada, is perfectly on message – if what you want is a country soused in basket-case virtue-signalling economics, woke hypocrisy and cringeworthy, dangerous kowtowing to Islamist-Leftist pressure.  Like Britain and much of the Western world, Canada suffers from flagrantly self-harming migration policies. The country finds itself pummelled by Justin Trudeau’s ruinous open-door policy. After the latter let in 1.2 million new residents in 2023, economists talked about Canada’s “population trap” in which the costs of providing infrastructure and capital that volume of newcomers could only obstruct economic growth. This number – 1.2 million – signified an amazingly irresponsible, though familiar, impulse for a Western leader, keener on selling his countryfolk down the river than letting any charges of “white privilege” stick. It is higher than the number of people living in most Canadian cities as well as eight of Canada’s 13 provinces and territories. As has been well documented, it has driven housing costs way up, and with Canada’s severe problems with Islamism, accepting high numbers of people from Afghanistan and Pakistan could well backfire. How many among this new influx are truly committed to the Western values of liberality and toleration? I doubt anyone in Canada knows, and those who want to will be afraid to ask.  The damage caused by Trudeau’s rule could take generations to correct. In the meantime, there are spasms, such as the clampdowns on immigration that followed Trudeau’s policy, such as in Quebec... It is worth lingering on Trudeau a bit longer, as he has surely set the tone of contemporary Canada more than anyone, aggressively carving out all its new sensibilities in line with the culture war. He was the embodiment of post-pandemic political morality: inverted, superficial, slippery, performative. It’s no coincidence that Canada was the first Western nation to see pro-Hamas protesting: on October 8, 2023. Canadian Jewish kindergartens, synagogues and schools have been firebombed since October 7. As the brave Canadian Yasmin Mohammed, former wife of a 9/11 plotter, has said time and again: pro-Hamas sensibilities have become increasingly embedded over a number of years. The rot goes wide as well as deep. Much like his Commonwealth sister-in-arms, Jacinda Ardern, Trudeau was hugely committed to as many harmful net-zero policies as possible, which are still crippling Canada. There are also unresolved questions about Chinese interference in the elections of 2019 and 2021. In his dealings with Mexico Trudeau focused on gender and native rights, apparently uninterested in that little question of trade. This is perhaps not a surprise given his 2014 comment that the Canadian budget “will balance itself”, and his equally telling 2021 remark to reporters, “you’ll forgive me if I don’t think about monetary policy”. He forced Canada to participate in constant collective self-flagellation over the past treatment of indigenous people, then raised eyebrows for ditching speaking engagements on the country’s first Truth and Reconciliation Day in order to go surfing in British Columbia with his family. But Mr Family is no longer: having divorced his wife, the mother of his two children, he is now popstar Katy Perry’s boyfriend. Katy Perry can have him.  As many have said, it’s a mess. And now Canada has Carney, the so-called rockstar banker, whose tenure at the Bank of England was mired in poor decisions and low growth; something that became obvious as soon as the dust settled on the novelty of his good looks and foreignness. Carney offers a parade of the same awful ideas as Trudeau, reinforcing Canada’s reputation as a woke dystopia. He’s one of the world’s keenest pushers of the Environmental, Social and Governance movement (ESG) – ruinous for businesses and based in shoddy, counter-productive greenist ideology. He spouts empty terms like “innovation economy”.  He was the first to recognise a Palestinian state, possibly the most immoral idea to come out of a Western country in the 21st century, and fell over himself to declare Canada would abide by the International Court of Justice arrest warrant for Bibi Netanyahu. Carney, like his predecessor, speaks out of two sides of his mouth. In rewarding Hamas with a Palestinian state, Carney all but gave the thumbs up to the hate-filled anti-Israel protests on Canadian streets and the terror attacks that emerged from that movement. And then he has the temerity, a week later on the anniversary of October 7, to drone in an official statement that “Canada condemns anti-Semitism in all its forms”. It’s dismal. Carney has inherited a Canada of grotesque “liberal” laws, from the handing out of hard drugs to addicts in British Columbia, to legalised euthanasia. He has inherited a country confused and burnt out by the crippling costs of a poorly thought out, Merkel-style migration tsunami. But he is not the man to do anything about this, even if he could. He’s too busy currently cosying up to China."

Steven Chase on X - "Prime Minister Mark Carney announces he expects to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at the APEC summit in South Korea this week."
Ezra Levant 🍁🚛 on X - "This has been his plan all along. He's friends with Xi Jinping from his Brookfield days. He's never called Xi a "tyrant". He reserves words like that for democratically-elected allies like Donald Trump. He's deliberately scuppering Canada-U.S. talks to pivot towards China."

terry l. on X - "I’m almost wondering if Carney is deliberately sabotaging relations with America so he can achieve major trade deals with China, a country that Brookfield has billions invested in. Why hasn’t our Conflict of Interest Commissioner red flagged his holdings in Brookfield? I know why"

Mark Carney says Canada will thrive in a new global system because govt still has money to spend, diversity is our strength, and we're committed to sustainability. : r/CanadianConservative - "Does Mark Carney understand where taxes come from and what drives this revenue?"
"I think he hopes you dont"

For rampant investment, rule of law beats cabinet rule - "So we now have the list of the first five “nation-building” projects the federal government wants to fast-track to fruition. We’ve been down this road before, except that in 1980-81, when the government of Pierre Trudeau and his finance minister Marc Lalonde were pushing mega-projects as a way of dealing with recession, you only needed to be investing $100 million to qualify... Read the parliamentary debates of the day and there’s a certain sad familiarity to it all: “Mr. Harvie Andre (Calgary Centre): “Madam Speaker, this project is not only vital to self-sufficiency, it is absolutely vital to Canada’s economic development … (D)elay has already cost Canada untold billions of dollars and untold thousands of jobs … In the interests of the billions of dollars that are being lost … will the Minister not commit to the House his assurance that this project will get underway as soon as possible so that another year is not lost while people walk the unemployment lines?” That was February 1982. The main difference between then and now is that the Liberal government of the day was actually on board with expanding Alberta’s oilsands. I don’t have anything in particular against the first five projects the Carney government has singled out for regulatory fast-tracking by the new Major Projects Office of Canada. Building a new bureaucracy to help investors through all the old bureaucracy is not the greatest strategy, but two mines, a port, an LNG terminal and a new nuclear power plant at least stand a chance of making money, which should be the test of an investment. No doubt their backers will pitch hard-to-calculate non-monetary spillover benefits but the goal here is to build a prosperous economy: If investments can’t make a monetary return, that means they aren’t sustainable without subsidies or other favours, and subsidies and favours are rickety foundations for long-term wealth creation. (The planned 60 per cent expansion of the Port of Montreal may be an exception to the “profits wanted” rule since it’s a hub for the export of stolen vehicles, a trade that, while lucrative for somebody, is not really in the national interest.) The usual Ottawa bumf explaining the choice of the Fabulous Five was full of tired, unpromising language — ad-man heroic — about Canada standing at “a defining moment … a pivotal juncture … a moment to act with ambition, confidence and purpose,” and how we need to “think big” and “build critical nation-building projects at speeds not seen in generations.” Call me old-fashioned but I figure when you’re spending literally tens of billions of taxpayer dollars you probably shouldn’t rush. Fortunately, despite all its talk, the Carney government isn’t abnormally fleet. It’s 141 days now since the election and still no budget. Speaking of the Pierre Trudeau government, there was lots of ambitious, confident, purposeful visioning surrounding Montreal’s Mirabel Airport, a behemoth built an hour from downtown to help fulfill the vision of a Montreal that was supposed to keep growing at 1950s and 1960s rates, which, thanks to separatism, didn’t happen. Mirabel was a sinkhole for money for three decades until it was finally declared a failure and shut down, its huge but chronically empty passenger terminal demolished. Governments in this country are always unhealthily fixated on visionary big projects. But what a prosperous economy requires is, not big investment in a select number of projects, but lots of investment everywhere all the time. One clear advantage of diffuse, dispersed investment is precisely that it’s harder for politicians to control. The deciders have nothing to do with government but are focused on bottom lines and doing things with as few people as possible, efficiently, and on time. Private operators have a strong profit interest in getting things done at speeds Ottawa certainly hasn’t seen in generations, not dragging projects out so as to maximize the associated employment “gains,” which are actually costs, not benefits. It is good that the Carney government now agrees with what the opposition has been saying for 10 years — though more than a little galling to have the likes of Dominic LeBlanc explain thus how there’s too much regulation. This is the same Dominic LeBlanc who was Mr. Fix-It in the government that brought in much of the excessive regulation. But which would be best for investment in Canada: a system in which you petition cabinet to give you a free pass from regulation that remains in place for everyone else? (Call it rule of cabinet.) Or a system in which you comply with the same legislated, but substantially streamlined, requirements for getting a project done that everyone else has to comply with? (Call it rule of law.) It’s not a hard question. Rule of law works best. Rule of cabinet is what they do in banana republics, and, increasingly, Washington. What Ottawa needs to do at speeds we haven’t seen in generations is de-clutter the regulations it spend the past 10 years intentionally cluttering."

Terence Corcoran: PM Carney’s destructive economic creationism - "The Carney economic agenda is a long and emerging list of interventions in the belief that the state is the entrepreneurial controller of economic activity. If the state is there, it is not capitalism. Free market creative destruction is being replaced by statist destructive creationism. Federal intervention plans seem to expand almost daily. Industry Minister Mélanie Joly told the Financial Times of London last weekend that Ottawa has plans to ride a wave of “economic nationalism” and somehow cajole Canada’s $3-trillion pension system to invest more in Canada — a move Paul Beaudry, former deputy governor of the Bank of Canada, said was “very dangerous” and risked creating a “type of crony capitalism.” The Nov. 4 federal budget will also impose major “Buy Canadian” requirements on Ottawa and eventually all Canadian governments covering everything from products and services on up to infrastructure spending, grants, contributions, loans and other federal funding streams. Foreign companies would be required to “develop and build their products and services in Canada.” One of the obvious effects of such Trumpian state-capitalist policies would be to reduce competition by removing foreign firms and products from the economy. Adding to the destruction risk will be Carney’s dedication to the “existential” climate crisis and the need to reduce fossil fuel emissions — while at the same time increasing fossil fuel production, possibly including through new exports via the Keystone XL pipeline to the U.S. and the Northern Gateway pipeline to the West Coast. To erase the obvious contradiction — produce more oil while lowering CO2 emissions — Carney continues to push carbon capture and storage to clean up Canadian oil production... The total cost, and who will pay, for all this carbon and methane capture and reduction is unknown, although government subsidies and costs to oil industry and consumers will certainly run into the tens of billions. Industry Minister Joly also has new ideas, noting recently that government funding is imminent for Canada’s softwood lumber industry — Carney once promised $1.25 billion — to respond to Trump’s tariffs. Tens of billions here, tens of billions there, and then even more tens of billions elsewhere are all part of the Carney economic and fiscal plans. Spend $159 billion over five years on infrastructure , more billions on fixing the military, plus support for industries to expand their control over the Canadian economy and increase exports. A high-risk small modular nuclear power plant program is underway , cost now set at $21 billion but expected to rise in coming years. Ottawa is also getting into the housing business, and increasing major spending as part of a $55-billion apartment construction program and $16 billion for housing for “people who need it most.” I could go on, but space is limited. A question for aspiring Nobel economists: How much of this redistributed money, through spending or regulation, is likely to achieve the kind of growth and economic improvement that would come if the money were part of a corporate capitalist model that led to creative destruction and positive economic transformation?"
Environmentalists will continue to claim that government partly cushioning the impact of their strict regulation is a "subsidy" to fossil fuels
Because to left wingers, "qualifications" are more important than achievements or good ideas, they will continue to praise Carney as a genius economist even as he pushes policies the vast majority of economists say are daft

Elected as a Trump-fighter, Carney now boasting of close Trump ties - "Prime Minister Mark Carney boasted that he speaks “regularly” with U.S. President Donald Trump after facing down criticism in the House of Commons that his government had unnecessarily alienated the United States. “I speak regularly with the president,” said Carney in a French-language reply during question period on Monday, adding that “just over the weekend” he’d been on a call with Trump on the issue of “Ukraine, Russia and China.” Carney also called it a “success” that Canada has largely dodged U.S. tariffs as a result of most Canadian exports being exempt under the terms of the Canada-United States-Mexico agreement (CUSMA). “The real situation is this; we have the world’s best deal with the Americans,” said Carney. At another point, he said to applause from Liberal MPs that “U.S.-Canadian relations are good.” Carney was responding to attacks that had come, somewhat unexpectedly, from the benches of the separatist Bloc Quebecois. Leader Yves-François Blanchet accused Carney of damaging the Canadian economy by pushing away the U.S., and even suggested the prime minister should be spending more time in the U.S. capital. With Canada posting “very bad” economic figures, Blanchet called on Carney to “commit himself now to putting an end to tariffs and prioritizing a trade deal with the United States.” Blanchet is by no means a fan of the U.S. leader, and he represents a party whose animosity to Trump is nearly total... Blanchet’s principal attack on Carney was that he had displeased U.S. leadership to the detriment of the Canadian economy. He even appeared to make specific reference to a March 27 campaign speech by Carney in which he declared that close relations between Canada and the U.S. were at an end. “The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperations is over,” Carney said at the time... Blanchet would again reference the alleged displeasure of Washington in criticizing the “rare” presence of Carney in the U.S. capital. He urged him to start “seriously frequenting the capital of our principal partner.” To this, Carney said that Trump is a “modern man” who owns a cell phone. “I speak regularly with him, and I send texts to him,” he said."
Too bad Liberal voters are unlikely to realise that they got played and will have some new cope

The 5 nation-building projects Mark Carney is fast-tracking - "Prime Minister Mark Carney says his government’s Major Projects Office is fast-tracking five nation-building projects that represent investments of more than $60 billion and create thousands of well-paying jobs by streamlining regulatory assessment and approvals and helping to structure financing."
Now imagine what they could do if they streamlined regulatory assessment and approvals for everything.

Canada’s Carney talked tough on Trump - now some say he's backing down - "Canadian commentator Robyn Urback wrote: "Maybe Prime Minister Mark Carney's elbows were getting tired."  She said government's elbows up and down approach to negotiations so far could be characterised as a "chicken dance".  Meanwhile, Blayne Haggart, a professor of political science at Brock University, argued in a recent opinion piece in The Globe and Mail newspaper that: "Nothing about Carney's US strategy, particularly his pursuit of a 'comprehensive' trade and security agreement, makes a lick of sense."  Walking back on the DST has achieved "less than nothing", he said."

The Problem with Our Response to Mass Shootings (Therapy)

This has interesting implications for victim culture:

The Problem with Our Response to Mass Shootings

"In 1999, two young men entered Columbine High School in Colorado, gunned down 12 students and a teacher, then took their own lives. Grief therapists arrived “long before the gun smoke wafted away,” wrote Washington Post columnist Jonathan Yardley. The “self-appointed priests and priestesses of this New Age of self-awareness, unctuous parasites bearing portable confessionals who swoop down wherever catastrophe strikes, chanting mantras of pop psychology . . . [attach] themselves to the stunned, bewildered survivors of affliction, demanding that they give vent to their ‘feelings.’”

Yardley’s dismissal sounds jarring today. In the aftermath of a school shooting, the therapeutic response is no longer controversial; it's so ubiquitous that it goes unquestioned...

Officials emphasized the “profound anxiety and fear” felt by whole communities, offered proactive emotional support to “those most affected,” and promoted counseling services for all. The school cancelled finals and assured students it was “normal to experience a wide range of emotions, including shock, fear, sadness, anger, numbness, or confusion. There was “no ‘right’ way to respond,” except to take care of oneself.

While offered with compassion, these services and scripts are an exercise in bureaucratized empathy. They can, and often do, undermine resilience in those whom they are meant to help, while providing cover for institutional failings.

Post-crisis mental-health support rests on the assumption that trauma is widespread and requires professional intervention—a claim often repeated by state and federal officials. But empirical evidence undermines the claimed pervasiveness of trauma and the ostensible necessity of credentialed professionals to help survivors handle it. “The idea that a dangerous or frightening event might cause lasting psychological difficulties does not appear in recorded history, literally anywhere, until relatively recently,” writes George A. Bonanno in The End of Trauma.

Bonanno directs the Loss, Trauma, and Emotion Lab at Columbia University’s Teachers College. He has studied depression, grief, and PTSD symptoms following various potentially traumatic events, including mass shootings. He and his colleagues consistently find that the average person’s normal, day-to-day feelings of stress and anxiety typically rise only modestly after difficult events—even the most violent and disturbing.

The most common experience, by far, is a “resilience trajectory,” which Bonanno describes as “when people in otherwise normal circumstances are exposed to an isolated and potentially highly disruptive event, but nonetheless maintain ‘a stable trajectory of healthy functioning across time.’” For those who experience prolonged distress (estimates run somewhere between 2 percent and 10 percent), the vast majority recover within a year, regardless of whether they receive treatment. Why? Because not all human beings who feel distraught need formal mental-health help.

In their book One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Resilience, Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel review the effects of therapeutic interventions in the face of grief and loss. “Evaluations show that intervention programs that recruit clients, through advertisements for example, or that visit families within hours of a loss are far more likely to have no effect or a negative effect than programs that wait for the bereaved person to initiate contact,” they write. For people who proactively seek therapy, the results aren’t much better: “A number of studies have reached the conclusion that grief therapies are relatively ineffective and even harmful to a minority.”

Opening up about one’s emotions is by no means the best coping mechanism. In fact, repression and distraction can have benefits. Sommers and Satel describe studies finding that unduly discussing or focusing on one’s mood, its causes, and its implications is associated with worse and longer symptoms. By contrast, those with a coping style reliant on distraction felt better, even if they had been depressed before the disaster.

Of course, suffering and distress exist. They are not uniformly disabling, though. Nor is mental-health treatment always ineffective. But the therapeutic narrative should not be unquestioningly accepted as morally unassailable and always applicable.

When schools adopt a mental-health emphasis, moreover, they send an implicit message to students: that they’re psychologically weak, that they should be affected by trauma, and that they need formal support when something bad happens.

That message has consequences. Students who are functioning healthily may feel guilty for not being a mess; they may worry about being perceived as cold or uncaring, encouraging them to adopt a victim mindset. Some may ruminate on their feelings because an authority figure implied that symptoms are expected—which may itself cause symptoms to manifest.

A better message is the old adage to be strong, keep calm, and carry on. Bonanno, sees clear benefit in what he calls a “flexibility mindset” centered on “three interrelated beliefs: optimism about the future, confidence in our ability to cope, and a willingness to think about a threat as a challenge.” Together, these beliefs can help get us “in the game” and get through bad situations.

We can also depend on our communities... Mutual obligation does what self-care cannot. 

But instead of encouraging students to be there for others, Brown’s explicit message was to put personal well-being above all else. In a communication from the vice president of human resources to faculty and staff, nonessential personnel were given permission to work from home after the lockdown ended, and managers were told to prioritize compassion. Students and faculty alike might have benefitted instead from coming together, rather than stewing on their emotions alone at home or obsessing over related news on their phones.

Empathy is not accountability—and can be a way to avoid it...

Brown, of course, is not alone in stressing empathy over accountability. Nearly all schools use this approach because it comes off as compassionate, is reputationally safe, and can be put into action immediately."

Clearly, there is no conflict of interest when the therapy-industrial complex tells us how important therapy and self-care are

Links - 21st February 2026 (1)

If I speak Québécois French could I live in France or a French speaking nation like Belgium? : r/French - "I'm not trying to defend the waiter but we correct each other all the time in France, it's not personal* and it's very often more in a helping spirit than anything* else.  I understand that this can be irritating, but you have to understand that the French are in fact very demanding when it comes to politeness, in their own way. From a young age, we learn a set of strict social rules, often misunderstood by foreigners, and we expect every adult to know and respect them, because for us, it has become second nature.  As a Frenchman told me on the same subject not long ago: "In France, criticizing is caring, and if no one criticizes you, no one cares about you."  * Thanks Byronite"

Tattoos are permanent and personal. But what happens when you outgrow them? - The Globe and Mail - "On an April afternoon, session 12 of about 24, specialist Christina Eustace aims the laser at Ms. Ahern’s right arm, targeting a cluster of images just above a Hello Kitty Band-Aid inked across the top of her hand, whose much-awaited demise will be left to another appointment.  “I hate you, Hello Kitty,” Ms. Ahern says, between teethy clicks. “I will dance on your grave when you’re gone.”... Tattoos have been a way to establish status, mark milestones, declare love or process loss since the earliest civilizations. Humans have also been rethinking their skin art for just as long: Even Egyptian mummies have been found with tattoos scraped away.  Today, tattoos have gained in popularity among younger generations. About a third of Canadians have at least one, and according to some surveys as many as half experience some regrets.  The reasons for second thoughts vary, says Ms. Eustace: the tattoo has lost meaning, a new career frowns upon them, a relationship ends. She’s taken the laser to sensitive areas such as fingers, the bottom of feet and her own wrist – an experience which she rated a seven out of 10 on the pain scale."

Dutch is named the LEAST sexy language while Italian leaves listeners hot under the collar - "Global e-learning platform Preply unveiled the languages most likely to seduce, based on the heart rates of participants who listened to flirty clips in different languages while having their pulses analysed.   The research found that Italian speakers made them increase the most, closely followed by those speaking Portuguese, while the Dutch and German language failed to excite participants.   Linguist Aleksandra Stevanovic explained that we perceive languages like Italian as more attractive because they have less consonants stacked together and are thought to be easy for singing, unlike dialects perceived as non-musical such as German.  She also revealed how to make your voice sound more seductive whatever your native language; by lowering your pitch and speaking slower.     Dutch was the language that got participants least excited, with heart rates only increasing by a mere 12 per cent, followed by German and Japanese with a 15 per cent increase. Looking at the gender divide, men are less excited about Dutch speakers with only an eight per cent increase in bpm than women. Women on the other hand are less fond of Japanese with a nine per cent increase.    The language that came out on top was Italian, with participants experiencing a 23 per cent average uplift in heart rates from 65 bpm to 80 bpm.   This was followed by Portuguese and French, while Russian and Greek also made the top five. It seems both men and women are most attracted to the Italian language. However, women seem to be more wowed by French with a 22 per cent increase in bpm - while men saw a 17 per cent increase.    So why are certain languages less tempting than others? Linguist and translator Stevanovic explained that languages which follow the pattern of one-vowel-one-consonant, like Italian, are perceived as more attractive... Jo Silverwood, head of translation and localisation at marketing and advertising company META, also claimed that it could also be cultural stereotypes about a country which make the language more or less attractive.   'By far one of the sultriest languages is French,' she said. 'It's the je ne sais quoi that makes it sound so charming, but is this down to linguistics, or social and cultural reasons?   'We have a stereotypical view of the French with their stylish haute couture, fine wines, and romantic Parisienne landmarks.   'However, the phonemes of the French language mimic the husky, "sultry" hoarseness we've grown to love.'"

Oscars bounce fails to materialize for this year's nominees as they fail to gross $1 million - "The films nominated for this year's Best Picture honors played to mostly empty theaters over the weekend, with none of them able to break more than 1 million after the Oscar picks were announces earlier in the week."
From 2023

GB Politics on X - "🚨NEW: Green party councillor Cllr Sohail Asghar has been arrested on suspicion of modern slavery in Accrington"
Winston Marshall on X - "If this had been a Reform councillor or candidate we wouldn’t hear the end of it.  But it’s Green Party and not being reported by any major outlet. Just one or two local news outlets.  A Lancashire Police spokesperson said: “We have arrested three people as part of an investigation into alleged modern slavery in Accrington”  https://lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/25705426."

Meme - @BritishLandeur: "You could dump 10,000 Europeans on Antarctica and in 100 years people would seek asylum there."
@pradahunter: "Basically Australia"
@BritishLandeur: "Actually an excellent point, yes. Basically Australia."

Meme - Babe: "Is it what I think it is? $6,499.50 out of our checking account?!?"
"Sold Sep 20, 2025. Critters Horror Movie 1986 Video Store Counter Display Pre-Owned $6,499.50 eBay.com"

Meme - "Me innocently scrolling Facebook *soldier with RPG*
Questions about Nancy Pelosi's boobs *tank*"

Meme - Pop Crave @PopCrave: "Airline IndiGo is now offering women the choice of not sitting next to men when they book seats."
Tony @TonyVask: "the way we as a society had to come to this because a lot of men behave like irrational animals"
Rob Smith @robsmithonline: "Yes, men in India, where this airline is based."

Meme - Aragorn: "Actually, I'm 87"
Eowyn: "Oh, wow. But you prefer younger women, right?"
*Evenstar*
Eowyn: "YOU PREFER YOUNGER, WOMEN! RIGHT?!"

Which pasta shape is right for your dish? - "Shapes are not just for aesthetics. They can enhance the eating experience. For example, Caputo explains, ragu with thicker pieces of meat might not stick between the ridges of corkscrew shaped pasta. But pesto will. And, Caputo adds, “A long noodle will twirl a richer sauce and chunks of meat together so that they make an impression on your memory.”"

When Do Chefs And Doctors Buy Generic? - "Pharmacists and doctors are more likely than the general public to buy generic medicine, as we reported last year. And chefs are more likely than the general public to buy generic food...   When it comes to food, chefs buy generics for baking (baking soda, brown sugar baking mix) much more often than the general public. Also, interestingly, tea.  But chefs buy name-brand yogurt, cereal and ice cream more often than the rest of us. Maybe that fancy ice cream really is worth the extra money. Doctors and pharmacists buy generic pain medicine more often than laypeople do. But they're much less likely than the rest of us to buy generic Alka-Seltzer. Is there something we should know about generic Alka-Seltzer?"

Genghis Khan, Feminist - "Genghis Khan adopted a policy of strategic marriages. He would marry off a daughter to the king of an allied nation. The king’s other wives were dismissed. Then he would assign his new son-in-law to military duty in the Mongol wars, while the daughter took over the rule of the kingdom. Most sons-in-law died in combat. "

Trump wants the U.S. to build tiny cars. Will they take off? - "It is not actually illegal to build tiny cars for the U.S. auto market. The problem is that kei cars built for foreign countries don't meet U.S. safety standards, so you can't import them unless you're willing to buy an antique. And companies could build tiny cars to U.S. standards, but given the American preference for big vehicles, they simply don't."

Bassem Youssef Acceptance Speech - Committee to Protect Journalists - "It is said that the freedom of any people can be judged by the volume of their laughter. So my wish for humanity is to have the loudest laughs ever."
Khomeini would not approve. Iran must not be free

A long list of sex acts just got banned in UK porn - "Pornography produced in the UK was quietly censored today through an amendment to the 2003 Communications Act, and the measures appear to take aim at female pleasure... While the measures won't stop people from watching whatever genre of porn they desire, as video shot abroad can still be viewed, they do impose severe restrictions on content created in the UK, and appear to make no distinction between consensual and non-consensual practices between adults.  "There appear to be no rational explanations for most of the R18 rules," Jerry Barnett of the anti-censorship group Sex and Censorship told Vice UK. "They're simply a set of moral judgements designed by people who have struggled endlessly to stop the British people from watching pornography."  More worryingly, the amendment seems to take issue with acts from which women more traditionally derive pleasure than men.  "The new legislation is absurd and surreal," Itziar Bilbao Urrutia, a dominatrix who produces porn with a feminist theme added to Vice UK. "I mean, why ban facesitting? What's so dangerous about it? It's a harmless activity that most femdom performers, myself included, do fully dressed anyway. Its power is symbolic: woman on top, unattainable.""
From 2014

7 savage quotes from the judge on S'pore influencer Rachel Wong's defamation case - "1) "The plaintiff describes herself as “a full-time social media influencer, actress, model and host”. She maintains an Instagram account that she claims has 41,400 followers. That, I suppose, entitles her, in her estimation, to be a celebrity."...
3) "By a combination of Instagram-speak and the utter failure of counsel to translate that into English, the Statement of Claim is filled with chaff."
4) "Another of her [Wu's] statements was reproduced in the Statement of Claim, with emphasis in bold and underline, by the plaintiff’s counsel. It is hard to tell whether the emphasis represented counsel’s excitement or outrage, but such emphasis is not necessary in pleadings...
5) "When asked what exactly the defamatory content of the plaintiff’s case was, Mr Clarence Lun, counsel for the plaintiff, referred to a line in paragraph 12 of the Statement of Claim which states as follows: “WHICH KIND OF BEAST FKS THE BRIDE ON HER WEDDING DAY?????”. I leave the capital font in the original text alone but removed counsel’s emphasis in bold and underline."...
7) "In many discovery applications, the party resisting often claims, as Mr Lun (Wong's legal counsel) is now doing, that the applicant is “only fishing”, and the court should not order disclosure that lends indiscriminate assistance to such unmeritorious applications.  [...]  In this case, samples of relevant material had been produced, and, just to extend the fishing analogy just a bit more, it is not a mere fishing expedition if fish has in fact been spotted.""
From 2022

Labour’s attack on trail hunting is pure spite - "When the Labour government banned hunting with dogs in 2004, the clear understanding was that an alternative existed that would protect the jobs and tradition associated with the pastime. Hunts would be allowed to follow trails across the countryside instead of foxes or stags.   For 20 years this new dispensation was accepted and largely followed. Hunters who broke the law have been prosecuted, with hundreds fined while police have issued formal cautions in other cases.  But this was not good enough for the hunt saboteurs, animal rights groups and Labour Left-wingers. They abhor the very idea of people dressing up in traditional garb and galloping across the countryside. They maintain that trail hunts are a “smokescreen” for the continued pursuit of animals and convinced Labour to put the ban in its manifesto last year.  When it was not included in the King’s Speech there was some optimism that the party was having second thoughts; but on Monday the measure will reappear as part of a new animal welfare strategy.  This is not about animal welfare, however. It is about class warfare. A Prime Minister running scared of his Left-wingers feels the need to throw them some red meat to prove his Socialist credentials. Labour’s war on rural England already includes the imposition of inheritance tax on family farms and plans to concrete over green fields with thousands of new homes. This opens another front. Of course there are people in rural areas who do not like the hunts but that is no justification for wiping out a way of life that has been around for centuries. Labour is always professing its support for minorities, but only for those whose votes it can cultivate.  In his memoirs “A Journey”, Tony Blair said the Hunting Act was “one of the domestic legislative measures I most regret”. It took up 700 hours of time in the Commons and Lords and was eventually forced onto the Statute Book only by the use of the Parliament Act. At least the supporters could justify this effort by claiming it spared animals from suffering. But a ban on trail hunting has no rationale at all and would outlaw activities that were an accepted compromise after the 2004 Act. If there is any “smokescreen” it is the pretence that this is an animal welfare matter when it is really an act of pure spite."

This is the day that ruined the joy of driving - "It was Dec 22 1965, and disgruntled motorists had gathered to protest against a new 70mph speed limit on motorways. Partly to blame for the enforced slowdown was racing driver, Jack Sears, or “Gentleman Jack”, as he was known, who had tested his AC Cobra Coupé on a new stretch of motorway in Hertfordshire the year before, reaching 185mph in the process. When his efforts made front-page news, the Government ordered an enquiry and imposed a temporary speed limit of 70mph.  But it was the former Labour transport secretary, Barbara Castle, who ultimately sounded the death knell for limitless speed when she made the 70mph cap permanent in July 1967 (before then, it had been a four-month trial). Famously, Castle was a non-driver (and was also responsible for introducing the breathalyser)... Looking back now, in the light of seemingly ever-increasing restrictions on drivers in the decades since – the 10mph zone in Islington, north London, and the blanket 20mph cap in Wales spring to mind – it appears this was the day the British state’s war on motorists began. Before that, “driving was about freedom and fun”, says one 95-year-old who was on the roads at the time the 70mph limit was imposed. “If you were young, it was about putting your foot flat on the floor. Those were the days.”... Prior to the limit, Britons had been accustomed to driving as fast as they wished on the nation’s motorway network, which began to take shape in 1958 when the Preston Bypass, an 8.25-mile stretch of road which now forms part of the M6, was opened."

Review: Post-Liberalism by Matt Sleat & Against Post-Liberalism by Paul Kelly - "Western societies might be richer than they were before, but it isn’t clear that they’re stronger. The triumph of liberal politics has coincided with societies failing to replicate themselves, turning to migration to supplement falling birth rates, and finding in turn that they aren’t always able to assimilate the new arrivals to liberal ideas. Highly intertwined with this point is the discovery that the individual pursuit of happiness is not without its issues... These points form the backbone of the post-liberal critique: the liberal order is failing to sustain itself; this failure is inherent to a politics that emphasises unguided individualism; and we must move away from this if we are to rebuild our societies by reorienting the state towards the promotion of virtue.  So far, so good. At this point, however, the post-liberals diverge. Some are devout Catholics who believe that an organisation which has lasted for 2,000 years, honing arguments and whittling traditions, might have developed a viable alternative framework of its own. Others are populists, riding in the wake of Donald Trump. Depending on how you draw the borders of post-liberalism, and whether you view the term as a catch-all for Right-wing discontent with the current order, some draw on far stranger ideas. Policy proposals can range from strengthening labour unions to reframing the state around political Catholicism. And as the critiques of liberalism have gathered force and multiplied, so too have the counter-arguments... The post-liberals, whatever else you might say about them, have reckoned seriously with liberalism. They’ve had to: they grew up in the world liberals made, served in the institutions liberals built, and write now for an audience still steeped in liberal ideas. They see in the constellation of breakdowns – birth rates, pollution, deaths of despair – a series of modern problems that might be susceptible to traditional solutions"

Meme - Andy Lee: "I just thought you should know as you try to find ways to save money to pay your bills that we sent $8.2 million to Vietnam to create gender-just rice"
"Greening our rice: gender-just, low- carbon, rice value chains in Vietnam"
Time to hate on Poilievre for wasting $2 million on a by-election

Meme - Willis Eschenbach: "I worked in Africa. This is tragically true. Only pennies reach the intended recipients. The rest is split between American NGOs and consultants, rent-seekers, local officials, bribery payments, African NGOs, Swiss bank accounts and the rest gets sold in the marketplace."
"Africa before $2.6 trillion in aid *mud hut*
Africa after $2.6 trillion in aid. *mud hut*"
Time to blame colonialism and send even more money

Meme - "Only in Pakistan
ANUS BURGER"

Meme - "Five colors of semen" (Five colors of somen)

Meme - Landshark: "I forget the details but one of the funniest cultural discrepancies I've read about was some American student going to his Indian or Chinese college professor to complain all his classmates (who were also Indian or Chinese) were in a cheating ring and had all the exam answers etc. And the professor just assumed the guy was complaining about being excluded from the cheating and said "oh no, poor you, I am sorry they are excluding you and refusing to send you the test answers, don't worry, I will talk to them and tell them to send everything to you too." Like the Oriental mindset professor just couldn't comprehend the concept that the student could complain about the cheating and corruption itself rather than about not personally benefitting from it. Two different worldviews."

Jonatan Pallesen on X - "There are 50+ million excess indian men who mathematically cannot find a wife.  That's more than the entire population of Scandinavia plus Greece plus Portugal in incel Indian men.  It is underrated how bad this is. Bad for these men, bad for the women many of them will likely harrass, and bad for the instability and emigration pressure this causes."

Is there a reason why SIA does not hire caucasians or people of non-Asian background for Cabin Crew? : r/askSingapore - "i understand the process because a friend of mine went through rounds of interviews. 1 : no visible scars on the skin that is expose outside the kebaya. 2: no tattoos or piercings marks 3: weight requirements < 55kg ( regardless of height) 4: mjn height 165Cm but now is slightly lower 160cm 5: able to be childless for 10 years once you sign the contract service 6: to have a child after the contract, you want to renew it , you need to show you can wear back your old uniform without fail 7: weight requirements throughout service 8: skin needs to be clear through service  don’t think many can afford to do 5, 6,7. and most girls these days has full tattoos arm, chest, neck , hand, thighs, shoulder, obvious nose piercings , tongue, brows during teenage age."

US comedian Sammy Obeid issued Singapore correction order over claims he was told to edit his script - "Mr Obeid claimed on Aug 27 that his script was rejected twice and he was told to remove references to the conflict in Gaza, among other things.   The Singapore authority in charge - the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) - said on Aug 28 that it had not requested any edits to the script. His show application was rejected because it was submitted 10 working days before the show, which was 30 days later than required."

Netflix's 'Squid Game' success shines light on international discounts - "Hollywood studios save millions of dollars by hiring local talent instead of Hollywood stars, collecting tax credits and rebates from hungry nations looking for bumps in tourism and recognition, and avoiding strict American union regulations, said Ajay Mago, a corporate and technology lawyer and managing partner for EM3... in the past, U.S. productions would often use international locations as stand-ins for American sets.  “They’d come around to Canada or some place that offered tax incentives, and they’d drop in some American mailboxes and street signs, change the license plates on cars, and voila,” said Romano. “What’s happening now is there is local content from these regions. Studios are no longer masquerading.”"

Wall Street Apes on X - "Illinois Lawmakers discover Democrats laundered over $1 billion dollars to “Politically connected NGOs”  “A staggering amount of taxpayer money, over a billion dollars, that's being funneled into political connected non-government organizations or NGOs — No transparency. NGOs aren't subject to the Freedom of Information Act or FOIA”  “Taxpayers can't see how their money is being spent”  Democrats are also laundering money through the official budget, “The budget language is vague and on purpose. These grants are buried under broad terms with little or no detail. Lawmakers are being asked to approve funding without knowing how the money will be used or even who's getting it.”  “The human services budget has been hijacked. It used to mean helping seniors, helping single mothers, and people with disabilities. Now it's packed with programs for politically aligned groups offering vague services like parent mentoring, immigrant support, LGBTQ advocacy, and many are race or identity-based initiatives that serve political agendas”"

Virgin planes mimic flock of geese to save fuel

Links - 20th February 2026 (2 - General Wokeness)

Man guilty of Manchester Airport attack on police officers - "A student has been found guilty of attacking two female police officers during a large violent disturbance at Manchester Airport.  Mohammed Fahir Amaaz, 20, was charged with assaulting the Greater Manchester Police officers during the fracas on 23 July last year, with mobile phone footage of the incident being widely shared on social media.  Following a three-week trial at Liverpool Crown Court, Amaaz was convicted of assaulting PC Lydia Ward, causing actual bodily harm, and the assault of emergency worker PC Ellie Cook. After 10 hours of deliberating, the jury was unable to reach verdicts on allegations that Amaaz and his brother, Muhammad Amaad, 26, assaulted PC Zachary Marsden causing actual bodily harm... Amaaz was also found guilty of an earlier assault of a member of the public, Abdulkareem Ismaeil, at a Starbucks cafe in the airport's arrivals area earlier in the day.  The court heard how PC Zachary Marsden, PC Lydia Ward and PC Ellie Cook had entered the airport car park's pay station area following reports of a male fitting Amaaz's description headbutting a member of the public. Prosecutors said Amaaz had resisted as he was grabbed from behind at a car park ticket machine, before the prolonged violence broke out.  He was seen to floor PC Ward with a punch to the face which broke her nose and also knocked PC Cook to the ground.  He was also alleged to have punched PC Marsden from behind and then had hold of him before PC Cook discharged a Taser device.  A kick and stamp by PC Marsden as Amaaz lay on the floor was also shown in the footage."

For those who immediately defended the men arrested by police at Manchester Airport last year, how do you feel about the footage released yesterday? : r/AskBrits - "The problem with this was the media. They only showed the actions of the officer in the aftermath to create a story around police brutality.  This footage showed the officer kicking a man on the ground.  This got everyone in a frenzy about the officer in question and how outrageous it was.  A week or so later the media then released 'other footage' which was the same footage from the week before, but just in its entirety.  In this footage you could see the extent of the assault on the officers and how serious the situation was.  The officer in question had been punched in the head in excess of 10 times by two men much bigger than him, seen both his colleagues punched to the floor and felt an attempt to take his firearm, while being paid less than £30k a year to 'protect the public'.  I wonder at what point he thought "fuck this"."
"That's exactly how the media operates. They don't inform people on what happens. They make stories out of what happens."
For those who immediately defended the men arrested by police at Manchester Airport last year, how do you feel about the footage released yesterday? : r/AskBrits - "Wasn't it known initially that he had punched a female officer? I feel like it was stated at the time. We just didn't have a video of it."
For those who immediately defended the men arrested by police at Manchester Airport last year, how do you feel about the footage released yesterday? : r/AskBrits - ""Yeh but still not acceptable to kick someone in the head" Yeh sure a thug has headbutted a member of the public, broken your collegues nose and him and his brother are continuing to viciously attack your collegues and have punched you multiple times in the head but YES how terrible was it for that officer to completely stop the threat they think."
For those who immediately defended the men arrested by police at Manchester Airport last year, how do you feel about the footage released yesterday? : r/AskBrits - "There are still people on social media defending these thugs, except it’s now about them “defending their mother” truly vile."

New Manchester Airport video shows violent scenes before man 'kicked' in head : r/manchester - "Am I right in seeing that the guy who got tasered punched the female officer?"
"Guy in light blue lands at least 10 hard head punches in that video, including one that knocks down the redhead, one that knocks down the blonde and a run-up full punch directly to the back of the male's head when he's not expecting it, any of those could have killed someone. The taser that knocks him down doesn't fully incapacitate him as he turns his head to look/shout at the policeman who zapped him. They're surrounded by people shouting and swearing at them, and the other bigger guy who was punching the taser guy in the head isn't restrained yet... Not good kicking him in the head but I assume they didn't want him getting back up again and carrying on."
New Manchester Airport video shows violent scenes before man 'kicked' in head : r/manchester - "Punched two by the looks of it. The first one, the redhead, who he went full on with, suffered a broken nose. He then targets the second, blonde, female officer."
"3. First he punched the blonde, then elbows the redhead, then sucker punched the male, that’s when he gets tasered." Meme BLAIRE WHITE: "Why are White people the only people who aren't allowed to prefer their own race?"
"White people prefer white people on dating apps - but that could be changed, study says. By Josh Magness. Researchers from schools like Cornell University say the "sexual racism" that plagues dating apps can be stamped out with a few simple changes. The end goal, the study says, is to promote more diverse pairings on the dating sites."

Outrage at hate speech double standard after Invasion Day protester calls for ‘white genocide’ - "An elderly woman who was verbally abused and told “I hope the white genocide does happen” by an Aboriginal protester while enjoying an Australia Day picnic in Sydney’s Hyde Park says she is “pissed off” about the apparent double standard in the application of hate speech laws.  It comes amid growing calls for NSW Police to investigate the racially charged tirade by the unidentified young man, as comparisons are drawn to the swift apprehension of an alleged neo-Nazi for an anti-Semitic speech at a March for Australia protest nearby in the city on the same day.  “I’m personally not … offended [but] I am very pissed off about the hate speech laws,” Rosemary Marshall, 71, told news.com.au on Wednesday.  “It’s one rule for them and another for us.”... The incident unfolded a few hours after the duelling Invasion Day and anti-immigration March for Australia protests.  “This little brat turned up on his expensive bike and tried to pull the flags out and rode around the park shrieking at us, so I went to film him,” Ms Marshall said... In the video, the man wearing an Aboriginal flag shirt that says ‘Justice Now!’ and riding a Norco Indie VLT 1 electric hybrid bike — which range from $2999 to $4999 — is heard calling Ms Marshall and her companions “c***s”.  “I hope the white genocide does happen, because you guys are c***s,” he says.  “F**k your flag, f**k this genocidal country. 2025, 2024, the highest years for Aboriginal deaths in custody, and you just stand there like a f**king nobody, waving around your bulls**t flag.”  “My grandfather fought at Gallipoli,” Ms Marshall says. “That’s why I’m wearing my poppies.”  “Gallipoli? Cool … we have an army that also f**king takes advantage of Indigenous people,” he replies... A woman is heard yelling at him that “the land was not stolen”.  “If you want to claim that the land was stolen, go naked into the bush and carve a f**king country out of the rock, because that’s what they did,” she says.  Another woman says, “How dare you pull our flag up? Who do you think you are to come and pull our flag up? Piss off.”  “F**k off,” the man says.  The first woman angrily tells him that the flag “is my heritage and it’s important to me”.  “You’re a f**king slave owner f**king a**hole,” he says.  “You’ve got … f**king NAIDOC Week and everything else, and I’m happy to give it because I love Aboriginal people, but how dare you come and trash our heritage? This flag is my flag,” she says."
Time to jail him for spreading this racist, white supremacist conspiracy theory!

The Slavers Call for Reparations – We Go “On Metaphor Alert” Again, as AU and EU Debate History - "During their annual late-spring meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, leaders of the African Union “launched a new push for slavery and colonial reparations” – most notably for hundreds of billions of dollars in reparations focused on “trans-Atlantic slavery and the slave trade.” Indeed, “Justice for Africans and People of African Descent Through Reparations” was selected as the overall thru-line theme for all AU events and operations in 2025.  This theme appears to be a final realization of the goals outlined in the African Union’s Abuja Proclamation of 1993. At that time, the group (then technically the Organization of African Unity) stated: “What matters is…the responsibility of those states and nations whose economic evolution once depended on slave labor and colonialism, and whose forebears participated either in selling and buying Africans, or in owning them, or in colonizing them.”  Stirring, to be sure. However, the eager adoption of anti-slavery referenda by such states as Benin, Ghana, and Ethiopia in fact highlights the bizarrely complex nature of the human past. If those names did not give the ‘punch line’ away, most of the significant African powers demanding reparations in Current Moment are themselves former merchants of life – mass-scale traders in slaves, or the direct heirs either of states that were or the colonial powers that displaced them.  Most of modern-day Benin, for example, is composed of the former Kingdom of Dahomey – which was arguably the most legendary slave-trading society in history... During the nation’s bloody prime, her King Gezo gave what may be the 2nd most memorable quote of all time about slaving (after Tippu Tipp’s “All men of all colors are welcome in my markets, as buyers or merchandise, depending on their fortunes in war). Quoth he: “The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people. It is the source and glory of their wealth. The mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery!”... Per most Africanists in my discipline, these proto-Nigerians sold roughly 850,000 slaves all-time. For purposes of comparison, well under 400,000 total enslaved persons entered the United States before the slave trade was halted in 1808.  Near Nigeria, in Ghana, we find the still-legendary Ashanti Empire, whose King drank sweet palm wine from the skulls of his former enemies and held court on a throne of pure gold – and whose national economy was based almost entirely on trading in precious metals “and in slaves.” Per one public-intellectual resource: “The army (of the Ashanti Empire) mainly served as a tool to capture more and more Africans and force them into slavery.”   Down the (surprisingly long and well-built) road, the Kanem Bornu Confederation, which encompassed huge chunks of modern Chad, Cameroon, and Niger, was no kinder. From 900 AD on, “the principal commodity of the empire was in slaves.” Like most slave traders, pimps, and similar wastrels, the Kings of Kanem Bornu were not particularly picky about their customer base. At first, “the slaves were sold in the trans-Saharan slave trade,” to Arabs and other blacks, “but eventually they took part in the transatlantic…trade as well (-) with around two million slaves having walked through the slave route in their Empire.”   The even larger powers of Northern “white” Africa, which are AU members today as well, and often maintain direct governmental continuity with the historical past, obviously traded in slaves as well...  Although this has been Intentionally Forgotten, many or most of these states sold whites as well as black Africans – and a few preferred to do so. Algeria in particular was the home base of the legendary Barbary Pirates, who were “huge players in the (global) slave trade, enslaving both Africans and Europeans.” Indeed, the scimitar-waving corsairs of Algeria and Libya ranged so far afield that they ended up inspiring the most famous line in the American Marine Corps Hymn: U.S. leather-necks traveled “to the shores of Trip-o-li” specifically to avenge Caucasian countrymen who had been enslaved or press-ganged by Muslim raiders from Northern Africa. This historical fact is not contested...   An even more fascinating and awkward point regarding historical slavery is that most civilized (in this context, “developed” might be more appropriate) black and Muslim African states STOPPED trading in slaves largely because Europeans made them do so. This point recurs throughout the academic and popular sources utilized for this article... Slavery was not banned in free India until 1954, in Nigeria until 1961, in never-colonized Ethiopia until 1969, and in Mauritania – at least at the level of criminal penalty – until 2007. At multiple points over the past 200 years, various Kings and lords from the “LDC” world met with European ambassadors to their continent, or even traveled to London or Westminster, and pitched the necessity of open slave trading as critical for the economic betterment of their realms."

Meme - "r/gamefaqscurrentevents
Left wing people are trying to gatekeep the goth subculture
I thought id make a thread on here about it, as this is a trend that is going on on Tiktok, and it also seems fairly widely shared on . Why are todays Gen Z goths trying to gatekeep the goth subculture?. Saying that you cant be goth if your conservative, right wing or a Trump or Republican supporter?. I always thought that the only thing that mattered was whether you like the music or not, and that nothing else mattered. There are quite alot of videos on this subject on Tiktok. I think i was recently blocked by a goth content creator on Tiktok (who i thought was alright with me) because she must have seen one of my other videos that advertised i was not left wing (but im certainly not far right). know that goth gets its roots from punk, and punk did begin by edifying left wing politics (particually anarchism). But Johnny Rotten however recently said this never thought I'd live to see the day when the right wing would become the cool ones giving the middle finger to the establishment, and the left wing becoming the sniveling self-righteous t**tty 'ones going around shaming everyone, I dont blame him for saying that, cause how left wing was in the late is very different to how it is now."

BBC apologises after Holocaust Memorial Day report omits Jews - "The failure to reference Jews in the introduction follows controversies over its coverage of antisemitism, Israel and the conflict in Gaza. Lord Pickles, who was the special envoy for post-Holocaust issues from 2015 until last year, said the failure to highlight Jewish victims in the introductions was “an unambiguous example of Holocaust distortion, which is a form of denial”. “This kind of obfuscation was common during the Soviet control of parts of Europe,” said Pickles, who is now co-chairman of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation. “For the BBC to use it today is shocking. They should be fighting antisemitism, not aiding it.”"

Failing by Design: A Teacher’s Warning from the Front Lines : r/CanadianTeachers - "After teaching for over twenty years in British Columbia, I can no longer stay silent. I know how to spark curiosity in a child, but I now leave work most days feeling defeated. Our classrooms are no longer defined by the quiet hum of study; instead, they are defined by a chaotic mix of noise, conflict, and digital distraction.  We are witnessing a slow-motion collapse of achievement that threatens our future in an era of rapid AI integration and economic volatility. Recent data from Ontario shows that only half of Grade 6 students met math standards, and we should not feel smug in BC. The same emergency is at our doorstep, yet I see a startling lack of urgency from our school districts and the provincial government. This crisis is not limited to math; across Canada, reading proficiency is cratering. Fewer kids read for fun, and universities report that students arrive without the reading stamina or critical analysis skills needed for the humanities. We are graduating a generation that struggles to finish a book, let alone deconstruct an argument.  The problem is a perfect storm. First, student attention has been fractured by hours of digital stimulation and rising rates of ADHD. Teachers are forced to compete with TikTok for a child’s focus.  Second, we are buckling under a dominant "progressivist" ideology that now permeates teacher training, many classrooms, and government departments. After speaking with numerous educators over the last year, I believe this ideology is a root cause of our declining outcomes. It manifests as a deep-seated aversion to exams and a resistance to the explicit instruction and practice students require. Instead, we have rejected proven methods like phonics or memorizing times tables in favor of ideas often labelled as “student-centred,” “discovery,” “inquiry,” or “project-based learning.” We are asking children to discover the world before we have taught them the basic notes and scales of the subject.  Third, a misguided sense of compassion now allows students to avoid academic discomfort rather than building the resilience needed to overcome it. In today's unstable economy, the ability to read and solve math problems is more than an academic requirement; it is a lifeline. When we abandon structured, clear teaching, we are not being "progressive." We are widening a class divide. Families with means naturally seek out private tutors, while children whose families cannot afford external supports are left to drift. This is the "Matthew Effect" at its most cruel: those with an advantage see it grow while everyone else falls further behind through no fault of their own.  To let this continue is to betray the heart of public education. We do not need more apps or vague mission statements. We need a return to the basics: explicit instruction, foundational fluency, and a restoration of the classroom as a place of focus. Our leaders talk about infrastructure, but our most important infrastructure is the cognitive capacity of the next generation. If the government continues to look away, the cost will be paid by the very students we claim to protect.  Sincerely,  A 20-year British Columbia Educator"

Indiana U. professor sanctioned for creating ‘hostile environment’ for white students - "An investigation has determined that a black professor at Indiana University created a “hostile educational environment” for white students via “comments made over the course of a semester.”  The Herald-Times reported Jan. 13 that the scholar would be sanctioned as a result, a recent decision made by the vice provost for faculty and academic affairs.  “[T]he university had found a ‘preponderance of evidence’ that Croom had created a ‘hostile educational environment for White students,’ a violation of the university’s discrimination policy,” the Times reported.  The investigation was launched in 2024 by a complaint by then-student Michael Claycamp, who reported that education Professor Marcus Croom claimed “white teachers are white supremacists” and said he would “rather not associate with white people over the course of the class.”... Claycamp provided a section from the investigation’s conclusion which notes Croom “continually defined” students “in terms of their race” such as “nice White women,” “privileged White girls,” and “White saviors.”  Croom also informed white students they all were “intrinsically” and “indirectly” racist as “nice White women can be racist,” according to the summary.  “Many of the witnesses stated [Croom] tried to make them feel bad about being White and additionally made assumptions about them as White students which were often times not true,” the investigation’s conclusion reads.  It notes “given the consistency” of the witness statements, “it is more than likely” Croom made “these or similar statements” to the white students. There also was “a preponderance of the evidence” that Croom “placed the students’ race as central to their participation and evaluation in the course.”...   According to his faculty page, Croom is a “race critical researcher” whose job is “to cultivate more human fulfillment and mitigate human suffering.”"
Damn violation of academic freedom!

Meme - "If Metroid came out today, you chuds would have a meltdown the moment you learned Samus was a woman!"
"If Metroid came out today, you snowflakes would have a meltdown at the sight of a woman in her underwear."

The Savage Curtain (episode) | Memory Alpha | Fandom - ""What a charming Negress. Oh, forgive me, my dear. I know that in my time some used that term as a description of property."
"But why should I object to that term, sir? You see, in our century we've learned not to fear words.""
Weird. Left wingers tell us that Star Trek was always woke and that those who disagree never understood it

Starfleet Academy Defenders SAY Star Trek "Was Always This Way." My Response. - YouTube - "If you read X-Men comics in the 80s, Chris Claremont, who wrote the majority of them, he would often have a minority character or a character from a culture who had historically been oppressed and mistreated. He would have them be portrayed as maybe one of the bigots, like Magneto is the biggest example. He was a Jewish man, a survivor of the Holocaust who had become totalitarian and a villain. And the entire idea behind his character is no matter what background you're from or how oppressed you've been or what culture you're from, it doesn't give you a right to take out your pain on other people. It doesn't give you a right to become the very thing you hate. Now, sometimes Chris Claremont would do that. Why? For example, a black character would be the one who was portrayed as anti-mutant or something like that. Or a black character would be one of the good guys. Basically, any character in X-Men could be a hero and any character no matter what their race or cultural background or whatever it may be could be a villain. And what Claremont was doing with that is not only saying that, you know, whatever background you have, anyone can be a bigot. Whatever pain you've been through does not give you the right to take it out on anyone else. And it was also, you know, really doing this post Martin Luther King idea. A person should be judged by their character, not just their identity... as time changed, the definition of being a bigot during the 2020s expanded to mean if you don't support gender ideology, which is what Morph, being a non-binary character, was getting into, which was not a thing in the mainstream during the time when the '90s X-Men aired. In fact, it's kind of embarrassing for them to say that people who grew up in during that time just didn't get it. When if you read late 80s X-Men comics, Jubilee actually makes what would now be considered a transphobic joke about the name X-Men.  And all of this is to say, once again, the ideology changes. The definition of what it means to be progressive changes... And I got to say, it's still changing because since X-Men 97 aired in short order, you actually see Disney removing transgender characters and storylines from their shows because it's becoming less acceptable to do that as there's becoming a lot of backlash and discussion around that ideology...
Did you know that the original Marvel comics were actually against diversity quotas? Here's a panel from Avengers 183 published in 1979 with Sam Wilson. Cap says, "It's not my idea, Sam. The government says we have to have more minority members, and if you don't join, the Avengers priority privileges will be suspended." "Oh, well then maybe I ought to change my name to the Token, huh? Blasted, Steve. I've proven myself as a superhero. And I don't like being chosen to fill a quota." And you can actually find multiple panels like that in comics from the previous decades that the progressives, and most of the people who worked on these comics were very progressive at the time. They disagreed with tokenism. They disagreed that there needed to be diversity quotas enforced. In fact, they actually saw it as wrong to do that...  it's completely disingenuous to just look take a surface level look of it and say, "Well, it's progressive, so it's the same." When it's actually not. And with a lot of these things, it isn't that the people who watched them and loved them or read these comics changed."
Clearly, the chuds never understood X-Men or Marvel

Elephants Classify Human Ethnic Groups by Odor and Garment Color
Elephants, like AI, are ignorant, and don't know that all humans are the same. This is a powerful testament to how damaging and omnipresent racism is

Lou Perez on X - "Those who don’t know history are doomed to compare everything to Hitler."

Walter Kirn on X - "Oh my you actually have to repeat the week's catechisms in order to accept a pop music award in our culture. It's so reflexively subservient it's stunning."
Willa, aka Liberty Belle, the 355 🇺🇸🔔 on X - "I will never get over the fact that all of the Leftist sycophants screeching the party dogma think that they are the resistance; the rebels; the dissenters. They truly believe they are. When your dogma is being supported, propagated, & enforced via the backing of billions of dollars, corporations, the government, state education, & the most convoluted, powerful network of NGO/globalists/domestic/ foreign government entities the world has yet known… you are not the resistance. You ARE the authoritarians."

The Washington Post on X - "Nearly half of the mortality gap between Black and White adults can be traced to the cumulative toll of stress and inflammation, a new study shows. These two biomarkers bolster the “weathering hypothesis” that links systemic racism to health disparities."
Hunter Ash on X - "This is a great example of how social science, and social science reporting, often works:
Researchers: “We observed an average difference between whites and blacks. It’s probably racism, even though we didn’t test that.”
Press: “Researchers prove racism causes this difference!”"