Read it.

The official UK COVID Inquiry will be ignored by the public and will do nothing to inform future pandemic responses unless it urgently works to change the impression that its mind is already made up on lockdowns, campaigners have warned.

Don’t hold your breath.

Read it.

While it may once have been scandalous for employers to exclude white men from their recruitment process, fast forward to 2023 and most hiring panels appear to have decided it’s riskier to include them. Infuriated by the failure of equality to produce equal outcomes, our liberal culture demands a bogeyman, and in the straight, white male, it found the pantomime villain of its dreams. Whatever your grievance, the patriarchy will shoulder the blame because any alternative culprit is simply too ‘offensive’ to countenance—no matter how well the facts support their claim.

The American Mind.

Ever since anti-Trump forces began to weaponize the legal system to achieve political objectives through litigation rather than the ballot box, the former president has been attacked on multiple fronts. One major national effort has been to attempt to disqualify Trump from running as a candidate in Republican presidential primaries this year. Altogether there have been about a dozen such challenges, and more may be coming.

To date, these efforts have been unsuccessful. Trump has beaten back challenges in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. Most of those decisions have not reached the question whether Trump is, in fact, legally barred from running. The Minnesota Supreme Court, for instance, ruled only that the challenge was untimely and could be renewed at a later stage.

Only the Colorado case reached the merits. That case, therefore, is the most significant so far. And it gave the victory to Trump.

Read it.

Back in 2021, the University of Pittsburgh garnered national media headlines after reports were leaked that the school was using fetal tissue for research assignments.

Now, documents obtained through a FOIA request by the pro-life group Center for Medical Progress (CMP) and the conservative group Judicial Watch revealed that Pitt was at one point under federal investigation for harvesting baby parts.

There’ve been numerous public record requests by those two pro-life groups, and more and more information is corroborating the malicious ways that Planned Parenthood worked with the University of Pittsburgh to use the body parts of babies who were aborted late in gestation in what was called “The GenitoUrinary Development Molecular Anatomy Project,” (GUDMAP). While the GUDMAP Project was supposedly intended to research and develop therapies for diseases of organs like kidneys, the bladder, ureter and urethra, its methods were inhumane.

Read it.

The Feminist Majority Foundation, along with Feminist Campus, Equal Rights Advocates, Girls Inc, Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, Trust Women, United State of Women, and the National Organization for Women, and numerous feminist groups signed a letter attacking the federal ‘Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act’ for daring to protect women from suffering the way that Payton and other female athletes had.

A dozen organizations with “women”, “girl” or “feminist” in their names were dedicated to the proposition that womens’ sports should be eliminated and that any women or girls who play should be ready to suffer catastrophic injuries from 220-lb. ‘transgender’ male athletes.

Beating women and denying their existence is the new feminism. So is raping women.

In the wake of the Hamas rapes during the invasion of Israel on Oct 7, some have wondered where the feminist organizations are. The answer is that they’re supporting the rapists.

Read it.

The large data sets on the cost of living and the cost of children are instructive. But nothing compares with the anecdotes you hear from people who once thought they were prosperous but now wonder if they can really get by while completely ruling out the idea of having and raising children. It’s a genuine shift and one that is devastating for the future.

Read it.

The House Oversight investigation into President Joe Biden and his family’s influence peddling schemes digs all the way back to ties to the late-90s big tobacco settlement, including James Biden’s deal-working caught on FBI tapes in an unrelated 2008 bribery scheme.

James Biden’s deal-making getting picked up on FBI tapes in 2008, as The Washington Post reported Sunday, are resurfacing amid the House Oversight investigation and the official impeachment inquiry.

Mississippi trial attorney Richard Scruggs admitted to paying James and Sara Biden’s “consulting firm” $100,000 to help grease the wheels for the Senate to pass a 1997 big tobacco law that would ultimately fail. James Biden was key, because he was the brother of then Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Joe Biden.

Read it.

Once nearly impenetrable for migrants heading north from Latin America, the jungle between Colombia and Panama this year became a speedy but still treacherous highway for hundreds of thousands of people from around the world.

Driven by economic crises, government repression and violence, migrants from China to Haiti decided to risk three days of deep mud, rushing rivers and bandits. Enterprising locals offered guides and porters, set up campsites and sold supplies to migrants, using color-coded wristbands to track who had paid for what.

Enabled by social media and Colombian organized crime, more than 506,000 migrants — nearly two-thirds Venezuelans — had crossed the Darien jungle by mid-December, double the 248,000 who set a record the previous year. Before last year, the record was barely 30,000 in 2016.

Read it.

A majority of Palestinians support Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, according to a poll from a research organization based in the West Bank.

Seventy-two percent of Palestinian respondents to a poll the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research released Wednesday said they believe the attacks were the correct decision given the outcome. Support was more prominent among West Bank residents, 82 percent of whom said the attacks were correct. In Gaza, 57 percent said the attacks were the correct decision, compared to 37 percent who said it was incorrect.

Researchers said the poll does not indicate support for atrocities Hamas committed during the attacks. Majorities of Palestinians in both Gaza and that West Bank correctly said attacking or killing civilians in their homes violated international law. Eighty-five percent, however, said they did not see videos of Hamas terrorists committing those atrocities, and only 7 percent said they believe Hamas committed them.

There are no ‘innocent civiliams’ in Gaza.

Read it.

On Wednesday, December 13th, the Dubai-hosted UN climate summit, COP28, concluded by presenting its final declaration. All 198 participating countries reached a non-binding deal which—in a world first—makes explicit mention of weaning countries off fossil fuel use.

Following two weeks of intense negotiations, the deal aims to reduce or wholly avoid the negative byproducts of climate change and was praised by COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber as “historic.” Amid the celebrations, delegates are avoiding the real implications of phasing out oil, gas, and coal.

At times COP28 presented itself as threatened by some its participants, with the Saudi Arabia-led oil producer group the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) threatening to veto the adoption of a ‘green’ agenda, arguing that the world economy can slash emissions while continuing to use specific hydrocarbon-based fuels. After necessitating an additional day of negotiations, OPEC relented and Al Jaber was able to tell a jubilant plenary session that “we must take the steps necessary to turn this agreement into tangible actions.”

Read it.

Former President Donald Trump issued an urgent call for action to his fellow Republicans over what he called “the biggest story of the year,” namely a survey showing that 20 percent of mail-in voters admitted to committing at least one kind of voter fraud in the 2020 election.

The Heartland/Rasmussen poll, released on Dec. 12, suggests concerning levels of voter fraud in the 2020 election, bolstering President Trump’s longstanding claim that he was cheated out of a victory amid an explosion in mail-in ballots combined with state-level moves by the courts that made it easier to cheat.

 

The American Mind.

The explosion of support for Hamas’s assault on human decency could well turn out to be the high-water mark of the progressive Left. The authoritarian multicultural ideology generated on campuses and transmitted dutifully by the established media has reached its apex and may now begin to descend.

The signs are tentative but some are unmistakable. Corporate and university Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) departments are being slashed, and increasingly seen as both burdensome and discriminatory toward whites, Jews, and Asians. One-third of DEI professionals lost their jobs in 2022. Brands that posted Pride month messages in 2022, such as Lego and Miller Lite, have abandoned such posturing. Even the Navy deleted Pride-related messaging from Instagram and Twitter.

Perhaps more significant may be the rebellion of donors to the leading universities, prime movers of the ideology that drives everything from the DEI establishment. Money is the mother’s milk of politics and universities and foundations alike. The overt hostility toward Israel on campuses, and the resulting feeling of threat among Jewish students, makes Jewish and non-Jewish donors wonder where their money is going.

Read it.

Controllers like to control. Many things need to be controlled (and some things don’t), but once there is an obligation to secure some level of planning permission, the applicant is a hostage to the decision-maker. And, as controllers are often frustrated by the limitations of their powers, they are naturally tempted to push for their extension.

Rules and regulations are always done with the best of intent. But once some apparent improvement is put in place, however ill-conceived or impractical it transpires to be, it establishes a benchmark from which any relaxation is seen as a drop in standards.

This article is from the U.K., which is worse in most respects than the U.S., but you can find equally insane conditions in this country, especially in Blue states.

Read it.

Rasmussen Reports has polled voters on, among other things, their use of mail-in ballots in the 2020 election, in conjunction with the Heartland Institute. The results, if even remotely representative, are stunning. Cheating may be far more widespread than is generally assumed.

Niall Ferguson.

In 1927 the French philosopher Julien Benda published La trahison des clercs—“The Treason of the Intellectuals”—which condemned the descent of European intellectuals into extreme nationalism and racism. By that point, although Benito Mussolini had been in power in Italy for five years, Adolf Hitler was still six years away from power in Germany and 13 years away from victory over France. But already Benda could see the pernicious role that many European academics were playing in politics.

Those who were meant to pursue the life of the mind, he wrote, had ushered in “the age of the intellectual organization of political hatreds.” And those hatreds were already moving from the realm of the ideas into the realm of violence—with results that would be catastrophic for all of Europe.

Read it.

Some years ago, I was in Boston on business, and invited a European friend to lunch. The man was finishing a year-long fellowship at Harvard University, and was about to head back to Europe. Over a spread of delicious New England raw oysters, I asked my friend what the most important lesson he learned from his year at America’s most prestigious university.

He thought for a moment, then said, “How fragile the American elites are.”

The European explained how shocked he and his fellow Europeans on the program were to see so many American students unable to confront ideas that gave them anxiety—and how eager professors were to accommodate their intellectual and emotional fragility. This expressed itself as an ideological phenomenon—the students were all on the left, and coughed up the usual woke hairballs (e.g., “Transphobia is triggering”) told me that when he read in the Harvard student newspaper that more than three-quarters of the university’s student population was taking anti-depressants, he understood that their intellectual fragility was tied to their mental fragility.

Read it.

Researchers in a landmark new study have discovered a sequence within the Pfizer mRNA vaccine that produces an “unintended immune response” in the body, which experts are calling a massive “developmental and regulatory failure.”

Read it.

Japan has approved the world’s first self-amplifying mRNA (sa-mRNA) COVID-19 vaccine, although the manufacturer has not published safety or efficacy data for the shot.

Tokyo-based Meiji Seika Pharma received approval for manufacturing and marketing its Kostaive sa-mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, the company announced in a Nov. 28 press release. The mRNA in the vaccine is designed to self-amplify when delivered into cells, which generates a “strong immune response and the potential for extended duration of protection.” The vaccine is intended for primary immunization (2 doses) as well as booster immunization in adults. Kostaive is the “world’s first approved product applying self-amplifying mRNA technology,” according to the press release.

Both mRNA and sa-mRNA are RNA vaccines that use a virus’ genetic code against it. When an mRNA vaccine is injected into an individual, the mRNA instructs cells to make a specific protein and thus stimulates immune response. An sa-mRNA vaccine takes this concept

Reuters.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made immigration his main weapon to blunt Canada’s big challenge of an aging and slowing population, and it has also helped fuel economic growth. That drove Canada’s population up at its fastest clip in more than six decades this year, Statistics Canada said.

But now a reversal of that trend is gradually taking hold. In the first six months of 2023 some 42,000 individuals departed Canada, adding to 93,818 people who left in 2022 and 85,927 exits in 2021, official data show.

The rate of immigrants leaving Canada hit a two-decade high in 2019, according to a recent report from the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC), an immigration advocacy group. While the numbers went down during pandemic lockdowns, Statistics Canada data shows it is once again rising.

Read it.

The Philippines and China traded accusations on Sunday over a collision of their vessels near a disputed shoal in the South China Sea as tensions over claims in the vital waterway escalate.

The Philippine coast guard accused China of firing water cannons and ramming resupply vessels and a coast guard ship, causing “serious engine damage” to one, while China’s coast guard said the Philippine vessel intentionally rammed its ship.

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, a conduit for more than $3 trillion of annual ship-borne commerce, including parts claimed by the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 said China’s claims had no legal basis.

Politico.

City elections are officially nonpartisan in Houston, the country’s fourth-largest city with more than 2.3 million people, but Democrats have held the office since 1982.

Note that they include a picture of her but not one of him, perhaps  because he is not a Person of Color.

Read it.

America is witnessing a seismic shift in its demographic landscape. Recent data from Idaho reveals an unprecedented trend: people are migrating not just for jobs, schools, or lifestyle,but for political alignment. The movement is reshaping the country, according to the Seattle Times.

Read it.

Violent crime is quickly spreading to suburbia. A new report shows gangs from South America have targeted mansions in wealthy neighborhoods across the Detroit metro area. This comes as the Biden administration’s disastrous open border policies have flooded the country with millions of illegal migrants, as well as progressive cities fail to enforce ‘common sense’ law and order.

WXYZ Detroit reported at least 30 to 40 homes in upscale neighborhoods across Detroit have been targeted by “highly functional and well-trained” gangs from South America this fall.

Thieves are using high-tech “jammers” to disable WiFi home security systems. They’re primarily after cash, jewelry, and expensive handbags.

Cory Doctorow.

20 years ago, Chris Anderson told me that it was unrealistic to expect tech companies to refuse demands for DRM from the entertainment companies whose media they hoped to play. My argument – then and now – was that any tech company that sells you a gadget that can have its features revoked is defrauding you. You’re paying for x, y and z – and if they are contractually required to remove x and y on demand, they are selling you something that you can’t rely on, without making that clear to you.

But it’s worse than that. When a tech company designs a device for remote, irreversible, nonconsensual downgrades, they invite both external and internal parties to demand those downgrades. Like Pavel Chekov says, a phaser on the bridge in Act I is going to go off by Act III. Selling a product that can be remotely, irreversibly, nonconsensually downgraded inevitably results in the worst person at the product-planning meeting proposing to do so. The fact that there are no penalties for doing so makes it impossible for the better people in that meeting to win the ensuing argument, leading to the moral injury of seeing a product you care about reduced to a pile of shit.

Read it.

French farmers are dumping vast quantities of manure on government buildings to protest against excessive environmental regulations that threaten their way of life.

Read it. 

To some people, at least.

On the south side of Taipei, nestled in the hills behind the Gongguan Metro Station, is a community with a rather unusual history. Once a military outpost, it’s now a cluster of gray concrete, red brick, and sheet metal stacked haphazardly, rising some 260 feet (80 meters) above the surrounding city. Steep staircases lead to twisting alleyways filled with graffiti and confusing sculptures. In one courtyard, tourists can often be seen sitting on a pair of giant fortune cookies.
This is Treasure Hill–a prototype for what one architect believes is the future of sustainable urban living.

Note the key buzzword. Sustainable. This is the world the “Urban Planners” have in mind for us–living like Eastern European immigrants in the early 1900s.

Read it.

Imagine that you grew up and lived your whole life protected by an invisible, magical shield that kept out the armies of foreign conquerors. The shield had been there before you were born, and there was no reason to think it ever wouldn’t be there — it was simply a background fixture of your Universe. And then one day imagine that this invisible shield vanished. You wouldn’t notice right away. And the conquerors, lurking patiently behind that shield, might also take a while to realize that your land now lay open and vulnerable to their armies. You would go about your life for a while unaware that anything important had changed.

If you live in a democratic country, I worry that this pretty much describes the situation you’re in right now.

Read it.

The schoolyard bullies are back at it again. Russia is funneling waves of migrants into the Finnish border, and China has wreaked havoc on the Gulf of Finland by dragging an anchor across the sea floor.

Read it.

Harvard President Gay is Weasel of the Year and the competition has never been steeper. She edged out past winners FBI Director Wray and USAG Garland at the last minute with a truly appalling performance before Congress. When asked to comment when contacted this afternoon in his retirement home in the UAE Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf (AKA “Baghdad Bob”) simply replied “LOL. Amazing!”

Read it.

…now they are coming for your meat. Global warming, the universal excuse for left-wing policies designed to make your life worse, demands that modern agriculture be shut down. If you think that is an exaggeration, talk to anyone in Sri Lanka or the Netherlands.

Read it.

Gun manufacturer RemArms, previously known as Remington Arms, will close its manufacturing facility in Ilion, New York, next year, a decision that Republicans are blaming on Democrats’ anti-gun policies.

Read it.

Having a day off work for Christmas and Easter is evidence of Canada’s ‘colonialist’ history, a publicly funded human rights body has claimed.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission, which is funded by the federal government, said that the public celebration of major Christian festivals is rooted in religious intolerance.

“Discrimination against religious minorities in Canada is grounded in Canada’s history of colonialism,” the group said. “An obvious example is statutory holidays in Canada.”

Read it.

As any observer of contemporary geopolitics will have noticed, the values upheld by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) are diametrically opposed to the values of democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, free enterprise, and the rule of law, which conservatives in Europe seek to defend. Since 2004, China has successfully undertaken a large-scale initiative of cultural diplomacy, through which it seeks to undermine these quintessentially Western values. The primary means by which the CCP is putting this plan into action are the Confucius Institutes (CIs), which have proliferated globally within a mere two decades, creating CCP footholds within academic institutions throughout the West.

Washington Free Beacon.

The presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT appeared before Congress on Tuesday to discuss the rising anti-Semitism on their campuses. It did not go well for them.

Faced with hostile questions from the Republican-controlled House Committee on Education and the Workforce, whose members include Harvard alumna Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), the presidents struggled to explain why their institutions—which have repeatedly denounced, disinvited, and punished professors for airing conservative views—suddenly discovered the value of free speech when students and faculty began defending Hamas.

“In what world is a call for violence against Jews protected speech, but a belief that sex is biological and binary isn’t?” Rep. Tim Walberg (R., Mich.) asked Harvard president Claudine Gay. The school’s diversity administrators had thrown a fit when Carole Hooven, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, stated on Fox News that there are only two sexes, causing such a firestorm that she had to take a leave of absence. Gay didn’t answer the question.

Doudenal ulcer. Not Fun.

Hospital dreams are strange dreams.

Again, blogging will be light and variable until these issues are resolved.

My apologies.

Read it.

On April 27, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree that provides a path to Russian citizenship for people living in the parts of Ukraine which are under Moscow’s control. Those who opt out face the prospect of losing their property rights, and risk being displaced from their homes.

The decree covers four Ukrainian regions that Russia has occupied: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia. Individuals holding ‘passports’ issued by the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic will be considered foreign nationals if they fail to obtain Russian passports by July 1, 2024. Oleksandr Pavlichenko, the executive director of the Ukrainian Helsinki Union for Human Rights, claims that those who fail to register will be removed, resulting in the loss of property ownership: “This property ownership right can be declared invalid. It can be revoked, meaning they will lose their rights to that real estate.” Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing war has had a massive impact on civilian property and energy infrastructure, to say nothing of other human rights concerns in the country.

Gates of Vienna.

One of the conclusions emerging from the International Crisis Summit 4 in Bucharest is that the experimental mRNA treatment intended to mitigate the effects of infection with the Wuhan Coronavirus actually increased the incidence of mortality due to COVID-19.

Read it.

You’re not paranoid. The global ruling class really does want to stop you from eating beef. And pork. And chicken.

Freeberg nails it.

When the communists switched from hot wars to propaganda as their tools of trade, Americans, who thought they’d defeated the scourge for good, were swamped with TogetherWeCanDoThis agitprop. Being a proud people with good hearts, they generally took this as benign advice on how to be good stewards of the earth. There arose a common theme: If you change your household management and consumer behavior, it may seem like a negligible effect, but imagine the cumulative result of all of us doing it. We can save the planet! So recycle!

And…get you some new light bulbs with mercury powder on the inside, that create a hazardous spill site if they ever shatter. Multi-use heavy plastic grocery bags. Paper straws. Electric cars. If you want to keep your gas-powered car, all sorts of new gizmos and doodads under the hood for “environmental regulations” that wear out & kick on your check-engine light…just when you thought you were about to have all your bills paid.

TogetherWeCanDoThis!! Toad tunnels under the freeway so the frogs don’t get run over by the cars when they cross. Little tiny trampolines under the trees so the squirrels don’t hurt themselves when they fall. It’s the only planet we have!

Surcharges built into everything. Sweet, sweet surcharges. Upon your power bill, your gas bill, your water bill, your sewage bill, your cable television bill…America has become the perfect mixing pot for communism and capitalism. We promote the communism, being very careful to never use the actual word, and then we use it to rake in the moolah making just a few people fabulously wealthy, at the expense of everyone else. Interesting. It’s exactly the opposite result from what communism is supposed to achieve. With capitalism as the tool. But it isn’t really capitalism if we didn’t order it; we’re just repeatedly falling for it.

I don’t want to save this planet anymore.

Read it.

The National Health Service in the UK has come under increased scrutiny after it rolled out a new £450 million IT system that only allows midwives to register the ‘gender identity’ of newborn babies, rather than their biological sex.

The Foundry.

A new report is documenting a drastic rise in anti-Christian hate crimes across Europe. The Observatory on Intolerance and Discrimination Against Christians in Europe published its annual report last week, detailing a 44% increase over the course of 2022 in social hostility toward and violent attacks against Christians as well as acts of vandalism and desecration against churches.

According to the report, 748 anti-Christian hate crimes were committed in Europe last year, 38 of which were violent physical attacks and three of which were murders. Arson attacks were also more common than in years past, and churches were targeted for firebombings and vandalism, especially in France and Germany. In fact, arson attacks nearly doubled over the course of one year, rising from 60 attacks in 2021 to 106 in 2022.

The report noted that “there had been a surge of clear extremism-motivated attacks.” The majority of these attacks were committed by groups with far-left, satanic, Islamic, feminist, or LGBT affiliations.

Doctor’s appointments.
Hours and hours and hours waiting for government employees.
Medical tests.
Waiting all day for a plumber or electrician to show up.

Read it.

A demonstration for the International Day of Violence Against Women in Rome over the weekend turned violent itself when the feminist protesters vandalized and threw Molotov cocktails at the national headquarters of the pro-life group Pro Vita & Famiglia.

“The mask has fallen, showing the true face of transfeminism: an aggressive, violent, dangerous and ideological movement that does not tolerate those who think differently than them and that does not care about poor women who are victims of femicide,” Pro Vita & Famiglia said in a statement.

Organizers of Saturday’s march and local politicians responsible for allowing the demonstration have failed to commend the violence of this group of participants, the Italian newspaper Il Giornali noted.

The Register.

China is offering foreign influencers access to its vast market in return for content that sings its praises and helps to spreads Beijing’s desired narratives more widely around the world, according to think tank the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

In a policy brief [PDF] published today titled “Singing from the CCP’s songsheet,” ASPI analysts Fergus Ryan and Daria Impiombato – along with independent contractor on contemporary Chinese politics and media Matt Knight – analyzed the output of over 120 foreign influencers who operate active accounts on Chinese video-streaming platforms such as Bilibili, Douyin, Xigua, and Toutiao.

Some, the report observes, have tens of millions of followers on Chinese social media, after discovering that “appealing to Chinese audiences’ sense of nationalism can provide a fast track to gain popularity, increase their online presence and, ultimately, generate more revenue.”

“Indeed, China’s internet regulations encourage users to actively promote party propaganda – so many influencers have adapted to thrive in that system,” the policy brief adds.

So far, so entrepreneurial.

But also not possible – unless influencers are enthusiastically pro-Beijing.

Read it.

A. Gun owners are never trained enough so are dangerous and shouldn’t be armed at all.

B. Gun owners who do train are crazy psychos living out their wannabe fantasies itching to shoot someone.

C. Even though it takes orders of magnitude more effort to become marginally effective with martial arts than a gun, you are better off using martial arts and not having a gun.

D. *Real Men* use their hands. This is why your mom and grandma shouldn’t have guns either.

E. Twitter randos who have never been punched in the face are experts on real life violence, and whatever you have personally experienced doesn’t count.

Larry Correia is pretty hardcore.

Quilette.

“The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” This observation, which seems to have already receded over history’s lost horizon, came courtesy of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan barely one week before Hamas’s barbaric invasion of Israel. Speaking at the Atlantic Festival at the end of September, Sullivan described a new Middle East in the making. In recent years, he explained, a burst of diplomacy had established the political and economic conditions for a new equilibrium from the Persian Gulf to Gaza. The implications for the de-escalation of old conflicts were profound. A truce in Yemen, Iranian attacks against US forces down, American involvement in Iraq “stable.” Although regional problems remained, the diminished chaos of the Middle East was allowing the Biden administration to turn its attention to more pressing concerns in other parts of the world.

Read it.

Intersectionality red in tooth and claw.

Read it.

There are two annual traditions that make up Thanksgiving. One is the ancient and venerable tradition of thanking the Creator for our bounty while the other is the more recent leftist tradition of turning the day into a festival of grievances, a ‘festivus’ during which they pick political arguments with family members and launch into screeds about how Thanksgiving is the product of imperialism and colonialism.

The Nation magazine recently proposed replacing it with a ‘Truthsgiving’ during which we will all confess our crimes and ponder how much better life would be if the Pilgrims had never come to America, and the Nazis and Communists had won WWII and gone on to exterminate 70% of the population of the planet.

Wrecking Thanksgiving, like the family, womens’ sports and Star Wars is just one of those things lefties do. The perpetual teenage tantrums that began with Karl Marx and ended with Cousin Jan screaming at the Thanksgiving table about how nobody understands Hamas and how inspiring she found Osama bin Laden’s letter are the essence of the movement.

Read it.

The European Parliament will most likely approve a report on Wednesday, November 22nd, that seeks to amend the treaties of the European Union, liquidating member states’ veto rights, and giving more power to EU institutions in what conservative forces are describing as a dangerous power grab.

As we previously reported, the proposals were put forward by the so-called ‘Verhofstadt Group’, a circle of MEPs led by the Eurofederalist Guy Verhofstadt from the liberal Renew group. The plans would see a massive transfer of competences from a national to an EU level, and the unanimity voting system—veto rights of member states—would almost completely be abolished, to be replaced by majority or qualified majority voting.

The EU would be exclusively responsible for issues concerning the environment, public health, industry, and education. There would be shared competences with member states in the areas of energy, foreign affairs, external security and defence, and external border policy.