When Charles II was restored in 1660, it was widely assumed that it would be on the condition of a new regime of (relative) religious tolerance. Charles himself had promised as much in his ‘Declaration of Breda’, a list of (vague) promises to his soon-to-be subjects made as a prelude to his reclaiming the throne. Given that the Presbyterians (one of the major Puritan sects that had caused his father so much trouble in the 1640s) were, by 1660, willing to acquiesce in his Restoration, this was hardly surprising. Certainly the Presbyterians themselves saw it as a quid pro quo: we’ll support your return if you give us freedom of worship. ‘Dissenters’ – that is, Protestant Christians who disagreed with the doctrines and rites of the Church of England, usually on the grounds that the latter was not Protestant enough – were to be allowed to exist in some reasonable degree of freedom.
This was not how things turned out. Charles’s promises came with two caveats. Firstly, “liberty to tender consciences” was promised on the condition that the religious views tolerated did not “disturb the peace of the kingdom”. Secondly, it was all conditional on the consent of parliament.
The parliament elected in 1661 was dominated by high-flying Anglican cavaliers. They had suffered themselves from religious persecution at the hands of the Presbyterians and then the Commonwealth regime in the 1640s and 1650s, and were in no mood to compromise or show ‘indulgence’ on matters spiritual. In their minds, Protestant Dissent was, by definition, incompatible with “the peace of the kingdom”. They passed a series of laws which, cumulatively, effectively made Protestant Dissent illegal. All members of the realm were legally obliged, in theory, to be members of the Church of England: to attend their parish church on a Sunday, pay tithes, and be baptised according to the rite of the Book of Common Prayer. ‘Conventicles’, i.e., Dissenting religious meetings, were banned, on pain of imprisonment or even transportation. Holding municipal office was made conditional on taking communion within the Church of England. These laws became known (rather unfairly) as the Clarendon Code (Clarendon, Charles’s chief minister, actually did not support most of it).
In practice, these laws were applied very unevenly. Charles II vacillated between patchy and ineffective enforcement of the code, more active attempts to live up to the promises of Breda and impose toleration by royal fiat (in reality, more because he wanted toleration for Roman Catholics than Dissenters), and furious reversions to persecution by means of rigid enforcement of the penal laws. At various points one policy or the other was more politically convenient for him. In the 1670s, the Test Act was passed, which actually tightened these restrictions further: it made Anglicanism compulsory for anyone holding any public office of any kind.
By the end of his regime, he had adopted a policy of whole-heartedly throwing his lot in with the Anglican establishment and the strict enforcement of the Clarendon Code (largely because they were the safest bulwarks of his regime in face of the threat from the Whigs, who were attempting to exclude his brother and heir, James, from the throne). When James acceded and became James II, he attempted to reverse this policy by giving indulgence to both Dissenters and Roman Catholics. He paid for the attempt with his crown.
James had been far more interested in toleration for his Roman Catholic co-religionists than for Dissenters, and this was incendiary in a country in which Protestant fear and hatred for ‘Popery’ united both Dissenters and Anglicans. The triumph of the revolution of 1688 in the face of (in the view of most contemporaries) the threat of rampant Popish rapine, murder and tyranny led to something of a pan-Protestant reapprochement: the common enemy of James II’s papism and the fact that the Dissenters had, in general, spurned James II’s offer of toleration made it hard for the Church of England to maintain the hardline position it had taken before 1688. The result was what is usually called the Toleration Act of 1689, which finally made Dissent legal (sort of).
The Toleration Act was not what it might appear, however. There is a widespread assumption that after the Glorious Revolution, toleration reigned and England suddenly gained complete freedom of worship and religion. This is one of those comforting fictions held by many with a superficial grasp of English history: it isn’t remotely true.
The Toleration Act was a very limited legal provision. It wasn’t even called ‘The Toleration Act’ – its actual title was ‘An Act for Exempting their Majestyes Protestant Subjects dissenting from the Church of England from the Penalties of certaine Lawes’. It did not repeal the penal laws against Dissent: it merely exempted from their penalties some of those who were prepared to take certain oaths pledging allegiance to the regime. It specifically excluded from its terms Roman Catholics and Protestant Dissenters who did not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity. Dissenters still had to register their conventicles with the authorities. And as for non-Christians – well, they gained precisely nothing from the Act. It allowed people to recuse themselves from Anglican services only if they went to a Dissenting one instead.
Perhaps most significantly, it did not give non-Anglicans full civil or political rights. The Test and Corporation Acts, which made it illegal for anyone other than Anglicans to hold any public office, ranging from being a member of a municipal corporation (effectively a local councillor) or a lord lieutenant through to being a judge or a minister of the crown, were not repealed. They were to remain the law of the land for another 139 years. By the late 1820s, the laws against Dissenters and even Roman Catholics had been repealed, and over the next few decades the vestigial elements of the Anglican monopoly (e.g. in the universities) were also dropped. It’s true that the Church of England is still the established church, but the practical political implications of this are now limited to, essentially, some ritual and ceremonial role and a few Bishops in the Lords. The confessional state ceased to be in the mid-19th Century.
It’s true that in practice elements of the 1689-1828 legal and political settlement were softened and bent over the years. Walpole ensured that the Corporation Act didn’t apply to newly founded corporations. ‘Occasional Conformity’ – where Dissenters took Communion in Anglican Churches in order to qualify for public office, while still predominantly worshipping as Dissenters – was practised by some to evade the Test Act. But the basics of what we call the ‘confessional state’ held. The state had an official religion that it actively encouraged. It discriminated against those who did not adhere to it and membership of the state apparatus at all levels (including the universities, which were a particularly pronounced example of total Anglican monopoly) was conditional on at least pretending to conform to it. But, in a modification to the older idea of Church-State relations, where being a subject of the realm and a member of the Church were merely two different ways of looking at the same thing, it was prepared to recognise and tolerate the existence of (at least some – in practice the majority of) non-adherents and give them some basic rights and freedoms.
Whatever else one might say about this, it was fairly clear. The beliefs that were officially sanctioned and those that attracted civil and political penalties were openly stated and precisely defined. Adherence to the doctrines, morals and rites of the Church of England, as expounded in the 39 articles, the Book of Common Prayer and the Church’s other official formularies and practically expressed by baptism and taking Communion a certain number of times per year was the condition of being a full member of the state and many state-aligned institutions. A hierarchy of beliefs outside of that was maintained and outlined in law: in effect, being a non-Anglican Trinitarian Protestant gave you second-class membership, being a Roman Catholic or non-Trinitarian Protestant gave you third-class membership, and anyone else was effectively in the fourth class (although that was generally practically irrelevant).
A confessional state of some kind – whether akin to the ‘full-fat’ pre-toleration version or the post 1689-version – has been the norm in human history, and remains the norm in much of the world. In many ways, the condition that flourished in England between around the mid-19th Century until quite recently, and in some other (largely western) countries around about the same time is quite exceptional. Indeed, even for quite a large chunk of that period in England – until around, say, the mid-20th Century – there remained a vague cultural and in some senses even implicit legal and political privilege accorded to, broadly, Christian (if not really specifically Anglican) doctrines and ethics. It fell some way short of a confessional state, but it was at least a fairly loud echo of it.
The short period when the state got about as near to genuine neutrality as is possible – from around the mid-20th Century, arguably somewhat earlier, until quite recently – was, I would argue, a sort of interregnum, a period that saw something like a balance of power between different world-views in which none was strong enough to enforce their own privilege or monopoly. This was the brief flourishing of something like free speech, freedom of conscience, full freedom of religion and so on.
That period is – has been for some years – drawing slowly but inexorably to a close. We are seeing the emergence of something like a new confessional state underpinned by a new orthodoxy – but with crucial differences relative to the last one.
What I’m referring to is a new(ish) set of doctrines, belief in which is effectively the condition of holding public office, elite status or full membership of a number of other powerful institutions. It would be tedious to go into this precisely, but the outlines are pretty clear. One must believe that the individual is a completely autonomous being, obliged to fashion themself according to their ‘real’ nature. This individual nature is shaped, paradoxically, by one’s membership of various identity groups – one’s sexuality, gender or race (with a few other identity categories having similar status). Certain identity categories – being ‘LGBT+’, being non-white, being Muslim – are, by virtue of their historical (and according to its adherents contemporary) status of being victims, absolutely sacred. For some reason, some of these categories are purely a matter of self-identification (gender most obviously), others (race most notably) are not. The highest good is to not only accept but actively celebrate and promote these sacred identities.
It seems fairly self-evident to me that this orthodoxy is riven by contradictions and logical absurdities, but probing those is not my purpose in this article. What I think is obvious – and this is hardly an original point, but it is important – is that these beliefs amount to a religion. A form of theology is the only way of really understanding them. The belief in individual autonomy, self-fashioning, the existence of some ‘authentic’ inner self (“Free to be me!”), and the sanctity of certain groups are all predicated on certain metaphysical beliefs that are essentially religious in nature: they are no less dogmas than the Chalcedonian definition of the nature of Christ or the Holy Trinity. They are not predicated on the existence of God, but rather the worship of other things: self, some inner gendered ‘soul’, victimhood and so on. This orthodoxy has its own religious symbols (the rainbow or ‘Progress Pride’ flag rather than the Cross); its own liturgy (LGBT History Month, Black History Month and so on); even its own rites (taking the knee, etc.).
Now, it seems to me that the fact that this world-view is essentially religious-metaphysical (and therefore ethical) and based on dogmatic premises that are difficult to empirically validate is not, in itself, the problem. I would argue that it is impossible not to hold such a worldview if one is a sentient human being, even if one holds one passively or mostly unthinkingly. There is no neutral space. The state must always embody some comprehensive worldview that is ultimately rooted in dogmatic, faith-based premises. Naturalism, empiricism, materialism: they are no less rooted, ultimately, in certain fundamental dogmas. The ‘golden age’ of ‘state neutrality’ was really more a question of the elite being sufficiently divided over which of those worldviews was correct to prevent any one becoming dominant to the point of having overwhelming and formal institutional privilege. This is a contingent situation, and one that is definitely unusual and almost certainly difficult – maybe impossible – to maintain indefinitely.
The problem with the orthodox worldview – call it ‘wokeism’, call it ‘critical social justice’, call it ‘rainbow flag orthodoxy’, call it what you like – is not that it is like all other similar worldviews in this respect: based on dogmas rooted ultimately in faith, seeking to promote and spread its doctrines, seeking state sanction and even monopoly. The problem is that it’s wrong. Its fundamental assumptions and dogmas are mistaken. But that is not my central point – that’s an argument for another day.
The most strikingly different and practically pernicious thing about the new orthodoxy is that it its priests and prophets are unable to take responsibility for or even admit what it actually is. Because part of its ideological and spiritual dynamic is rooted in the idea that is essentially oppositional – that it is inherently subversive – it can never acknowledge its own victory or status as an orthodoxy. That was, like or hate it, never a problem with the pre-Reformation Catholic Church or the post-Reformation Church of England. True, at various times – chiefly in their early stages – they had a subversive dynamic – against the Pagans, against the medieval Catholic Church. However, they were quite comfortable, after a while, with putting themselves forward as a complete, objectively true (albeit faith-based) framework for thinking about the nature of morality and reality, based on certain clear doctrinal statements and theological propositions, that could order our common life and, essentially, become the establishment. The new orthodoxy has to pretend to itself that it is always against any orthodoxy or establishment, even as it obviously becomes one to any external observer.
This is why the new orthodoxy imposes and enforces its dictates in the haphazard, often informal way that it does. People who deviate from the orthodoxy are sacked, blocked from advancement or cancelled all the time, but because the precise nature of its current contours is always unclear and because admitting their status as priests or state functionaries would run against the self-image of the orthodoxy’s supporters, it can’t be enforced in a clear or well-defined way. It is imposed in official ways that are arbitrary, confusing and often inconsistent; or in informal ways using mechanisms of social disapproval or semi-official pressure or self-censorship. Its adherents will swear blind that their opponents are imagining things or are hysterical and misinformed – then five minutes later they will admit that their opponents are quite right about what is happening, but what is happening is actually good. It manages to be an ideology that is shape-shifting, clear in outline but difficult to pin down exactly, forever denying its own status while it’s in the process of fulfilling it. It’s a turbo-charged dynamic force – and a dynamic force is, as Stanley Baldwin said, ‘a terrible thing’.
The confessional state we had between 1689 and 1828 was actually rather preferable.
Firstly, it existed in an era where the state had fair less power, particularly over non-state bodies. Dissenters may have been excluded from public office, but there were large realms of social and economic activity that were relatively free from government regulation, and therefore the sway of the confessional state, which meant they were able to dominate certain areas (commerce; finance, etc.). Given the close relationships that now exist between the state and many large corporations and employers – a necessary function of the long-term growth of the role of the state, but also a more recent development which we see in, for example, the weird private-public partnership between the U.S. state and the large tech firms that exists to censor social media – the new quasi-confessional state has more power to impose its orthodoxy over broader swathes of society.
Secondly, the old confessional state had pretty clear parameters and was, generally, applied quite consistently. The Church-State establishment rarely had serious qualms about using its power to promote its well-defined orthodoxy, and so it didn’t have to work by misdirection, constant shape-shifting and bad faith denials of its own power. Accommodations were made and loopholes allowed for practical reasons, but even they worked in a fairly predictable fashion.
All of this makes it very tempting to say: if we are going to live under a new official state-sanctioned religion, which promotes it own worldview and discriminates against those who demur from it – which it seems we are, whether I or you like it or not – then can we please have a proper, legally-defined, precise confessional state? Can we have a modern-day equivalent of the Test and Corporation Acts, of the Clarendon Code, so that we know precisely what we have to believe to be allowed to hold public office, work in universities, work for the government, etc.? At least then we would know where we stood and have some degree of legal and political certainty, which would be preferable to the ever-shifting soft-authoritarian theocracy that we are currently more than half-way towards. Then we could perhaps also have our own Toleration Act, which might let us know what legal and political rights we latter-day dissenters are still allowed.
The reality is that, for the reasons I outlined above, this is highly unlikely. The new orthodoxy, with its metaphysical underpinnings of subversion and never-ending progress, cannot face up to the responsibilities of being the establishment. They might not even have a stable or coherent enough doctrine to even be a conventional confessional state. They must exist in a weird double state, Schrodinger’s Orthodoxy – both the orthodoxy (in reality) and not-orthodoxy (in their own minds) at the same time.
And that is perhaps the most worrying thing: it seems possible that they will end up having the ultra-dynamism, the dream-logic and ideological doublethink of something far more akin to Stalinist totalitarianism than the old-fashioned Anglican confessional state, which in comparison seems positively mild.
George Owers is the editorial director of Forum Press, an imprint which aims to promote free debate and challenge cultural and political groupthink. He tweets and blogs under the name Capel Lofft. This piece was first published on his blog, The Tory Socialist.
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“The Big Short” was an excellent movie – anything with Christian Bale is worth a look – although the central role of the Federal government (Barney Fwank et al) in creating the housing crisis was passed over without the slightest reference.
Michael Burry has been wrong far more often and costly than right since then.
A bit like Odey.
He wasn’t a fan of lockdowns
Where’s the outrage?
How come the DS doesn’t cover Julian Assange?
It seems to me that his persecution is the single most important event in journalism in the last 10 years. In fact, could it be the reason that mainstream journalists have become enthusiastic cheerleaders of the establishment and have ceased to question authority properly?
Assange definitely showed what the establishment will do to you if you embarrass it really badly.
I’m with you 100%….He has now spent his fifth birthday (in July) in Bellmarsh..it’s an absolute travesty….and an egregious stain on reputation of the United Kingdom…..
Every single MSM platform should do the Convid thing and have his days imprisonment in the top corner ticking down, and they should have regular updates about him..the fact they say and do nothing speaks volumes….and every time they talk about the plight of journalists throughout the world, they sounds insincere, stupid and hypocritical….
A couple of days ago Steve Bell did a cartoon for the Guardian..you can see it before it goes to a paywall here…
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2023/aug/14/steve-bell-reports-julian-assange-offered-plea-deal-cartoon?CMP=fb_cif
Assange Plea Bargain: For What Crime Exactly?…”
Caitlin Johnson hit the nail on the head for me…
“It really is nuts that there’s talk of Assange being offered a “plea bargain” for rightly exposing US war crimes. What’s he meant to plead guilty to? Good journalism?”
FREE ASSANGE NOW!
Caitlin’s article..
https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/an-assange-plea-deal-for-what-crime
Hear, hear, Stewart! Assange continues to languish in a high security prison despite never being formally charged. Five years now! His extradition case lingers on in vain hope of reprieve and every day is a step closer to being bundled into plane and across the oceans to rot in a maximum security hellhole that could only ever designed and devised by the cruellest minds. The fact that so few journalists want to talk about Julian Assange shows how utterly spineless they are and how corrupt their editors are. This is about freedom of speech and they are in the free speech business, the opinion business, but of course they are not. The Overton window only allows so much lateral movement after all. It’s sort of obvious that orders come from above never to touch this story but to try and pretend it doesn’t matter. Just how an ambitious journalist can live with this set of conditions placed upon them is probably explained by the fact that they have debts, mortgages, bills, families and children and it’s so easy to have your life destroyed just as Julian Assange’s life was destroyed. He is the cautionary tale of journalism, the dark woods you should never venture into because there are monsters in there and they are real.
On the news in NL:
Plans to create a pipeline to pump CO2 under the seabed are to go ahead. The pipeline will run from the Rotterdam harbour (apparently responsible for 1.5 % of Dutch CO2 emissions) to the North Sea bed.
What could possibly go wrong?
Interview with Gambian asylum seeker…’I will go on holiday to Gambia as soon as I can’…
The CO2 carbon capture industry seems like the perfect scam, how will anybody ever know if you actually ever captured or stored anything? Whether it works or not? it will make no difference to ourselves or our lives, we will just all be poorer paying for a pointless industry to do nothing of any consequence. Nice work if you can get it.
Yes, just a few important looking pipes and some bubbling water and ‘hey presto!’ you could even get a government grant and become rich beyond your wildest dreams…just like every other self-serving government contractor!
The people behind bottled fresh air businesses will be sensing an opportunity: –
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2021/mar/01/take-a-deep-breath-how-cornish-air-sells-for-60-a-bottle-even-if-its-from-devon
‘The great replacement’ appears to be going great guns and has already succeeded in some European cities, and there are data to demonstrate this is so;
”The fear of the peoples of Europe in the face of mass immigration is constantly described as “xenophobia”. This is the fear that the camarillas in charge can denounce as “racism”, raising the specter of a democratic apocalypse, while the accepted “narrative” evokes an inclusive majority and an excluded minority which, thanks to hyper-tolerance policies, will benefit from it.
But only the blind can deny the ongoing disintegration which validates the sociological thesis of the disappearance of the majority and the birth of a cottage cheese society.
“Buying vegetables from the Moroccans, meat from the Turks and olives from the Greeks is nice, but that’s not enough. If we really want to live together, even people without a migration background will have to do their best. Now they are the minority in many cities”. Such are the findings in a study by Professor Maurice Crul (VU University Amsterdam). He examined six major cities in five countries: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Malmö, Hamburg, Vienna and Antwerp.
“The selection is not random”. This is where native Europeans are no longer the majority.
In three out of four provinces in Spain there are more arrivals of migrants than births. Most of the new Spanish population now comes from abroad. In 2037, one in four Spanish residents will be born abroad. Already today, 8 percent of all those born in Spain are Moroccans. And the total number of Muslims in Spain has increased tenfold in thirty years.
And in Italy? We’re getting there. 100,000 migrants have landed since the beginning of the year alone, an average of 450 foreigners a day and an increase of 135 percent compared to the same period in 2022.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/375483
If anyone wishes to nerd-out here is the 2021 paper Professor Crul et al wrote on which he subsequently wrote a book ( ‘The New Minority ) this year, but I can only find it in Dutch so here’s the study;
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01419870.2021.1906925
Not great news from NZ;
”There were 38,442 deaths among all ages for July 2022-June 2023 compared to 33,753 deaths in the 2018/19 comparable period. This is an increase of 4,689 deaths (up 14%) which occurred at a rate of 90 excess deaths per week.
Working age people were also affected. Deaths among 15 to 64 year olds were up by 6%. Figures released by the Household Labour Force Survey reports rates of disability sufficient to preclude joining the workforce among this age group has increased by 37.5% over the same period and now stands at 14.3% of the workforce. That is huge. Why?
Alarmingly, natural live birth increase (births minus deaths) fell from 26,500 in 2018/19 to 19,185 in 2022/23 a decrease of 7,400 or 28%. This is an absolutely unprecedented drop. Nothing even remotely like this has been recorded previously.
Covid deaths over this whole period reported by Our World in Data appear insufficient to explain the increase in deaths. Nor is an ageing population sufficient explanation for the figures that is a long term gradual trend, this is a sudden rise.”
https://hatchardreport.com/deaths-are-up-natural-births-are-down-and-disability-is-up/
Jinx!…..was just putting this on from Australia….very similar….
https://news.rebekahbarnett.com.au/p/all-cause-mortality-started-trending
All-cause mortality started trending upwards with vax rollout, not Covid, report finds
Prior to the pandemic, Australians were living longer, with death rates amongst older Australians trending downwards. But in 2021, that trendline upturned, and Australia started chalking up excess mortality at rates not seen since WWII.
The numbers are truly frightening….
You’re right, gums, it is frightening. It’s all in line with what Ed Dowd is reporting from the US data but also the UK data, whereby he demonstrated significant increases in disability in working age people. All of this correlating data from various countries…
Well this may not go far..even Buckhault’s classes himself as a ‘nobody’….…but if you have been following Kevin McKernan’s discovery of the fact that the vaccines are contaminated with Plasmid DNA..you’ll know that Buckhault’s has repeated Kevin’s experiments and confirmed them…
Just putting that up so you will understand the context of the tweet…and I really believe every little thing helps..especially if it’s based on a purely scientific basis?
Phillip J. Buckhaults, Ph.D.
@P_J_Buckhaults
An open appeal to health care workers around the world. The Pfizer vaccine is contaminated with plasmid DNA. I want to test tissue and blood samples from people recently vaccinated and see if there is any evidence of this DNA integrating into host genomic DNA. PM me if you would like to help. Thanks. -Dr B.
https://twitter.com/P_J_Buckhaults
“The real cause of the Maui wildfire disaster”
So a strong wind blows down a mountain side and a town below bursts into flames?!
Also stated are strong winds that snap off power poles and rip rooves of! Compare the ariel photos of the Maui fires/hurricane winds to real hurricane damage , the roads are blocked by debris within seconds, why are all the roads in the town perfectly unaffected by debris? Was there a wind or wasn’t there? swimming pools clear of debris, tarmac unaffected by searing heat, buildings raised to the ground while trees around them still have their leaves! I didn’t see and power poles down in the pictures and not a one of them laying across a road!
I think it seems to be arsonist season in various countries; Canada, Greece, Maui ( Jeff Bezos’ place is apparently untouched, as is Oprah’s, so that’s OK then ) and now Tenerife. What happened in Maui though is extreme and especially bad due to the loss of lives, including many kids, and also still so many unanswered questions. Like why did their warning system not go off, why did they have no water and where were the fire brigade? And apparently the vulture estate agents are already offering residents money for their properties.
”A wildfire that ignited within a mountainous national park on the Spanish island of Tenerife on Wednesday has rapidly expanded, officials said.
Hundreds firefighters are trying to bring the major blaze under control on the largest of Spain’s Canary Islands.”
https://www.dw.com/en/wildfire-on-spains-tenerife-burning-out-of-control/a-66555063
Arsonists season is a very real explanation.
Best way to check wether it’s a natural fire or not: if it’s naturally caused look for a reported volcanic event, a lightning storm or on the infinitesimally small chance of a meteor impact!
Non of those? = Human causes !
Agreed, Dings. But I’m a bit ignorant on the whole subject of wildfires. We’ve obviously always had countries which are prone to them due to having longer spells of hot, dry weather, creating a dry tinder environment, so what would cause a naturally-started wildfire without any human involvement whatsoever, aside from your above examples? I don’t know what the score is in Tenerife and were the fires in Greece established arson? The problem is when it’s a huge area, like the case with the Canadian fires, or somewhere out in the sticks, even if arson was suspected how on earth would you even ever catch the culprits? Apparently Maui has previous form for arsonists starting fires, according to Ed Dowd.
Another reminder, if one were needed, of the immensity of the ‘scam’..it’s enough to make your head explode..and frankly I’m not sure what I am now, as I’m beyond ‘incandescent with rage’….
https://brokentruth.com/nihgate/
Does the NIH have a process in place to ‘take down’ studies, papers, or people that go against the NIH’s financial interests? Is a member of the NIH who works on a US Army Base colluding with researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
Apparently, yes. Read on to find out what we’ve uncovered so far in our developing NIHgate series.
WHY aren’t people going to jail?
More on the horrific sexual assault in France. It appears that the monster that did this was known to the authorities and had previous form, including the sexual assault of his little sister. FFS though! And they let this dangerous psychopath roam free to strike again at will?!! Can we expect some rioting any time soon do you think??
”The 18-year-old suspect in custody for the barbaric rape of a 29-year-old woman in the French port city of Cherbourg-en-Cotentin already had a rap sheet consisting of 17 offenses involving violence, theft, and the incestuous sexual assault of his younger sister.
Oumar Ndiaye was arrested by French authorities on Aug. 10 for an attack that has rocked the nation and prompted several interventions from high-ranking politicians.
Dubbed “the monster of Cherbourg” by French conservative activist Damien Rieu, Nidaye allegedly broke into his victim’s home before subjecting the young woman to multiple counts of rape, which included the use of a 29-inch broomstick to penetrate her and inflict life-threatening injuries.
Several high-profile politicians across France have expressed their anger over the attack with conservative lawmakers warning that such crime is on the rise in the country.
“Courage to the 29-year-old victim, the umpteenth life shattered by the barbarism that is gaining in France,” tweeted Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally.
“I dream of a France where a young woman is not in danger of ending up in a coma after being robbed, raped and horribly tortured by Oumar, a repeat offender, in her own home,” added former presidential candidate Éric Zemmour.”
https://rmx.news/crime/teen-suspect-for-barbaric-rape-of-french-woman-with-broomstick-was-already-being-investigated-for-sexually-assaulting-his-minor-sister/
“It’s time to abolish the university”
A pretty poor attempt at satire by Eagleton IMHO (who unfortunately was required reading on my last uni course). The comments section (especially the first ‘by Pil Grim’) is far better.
As a related aside, two independent organisations I’ve done short courses with recently have both been thrown off their platforms with no notice and had to scramble to relocate. It seems that any attempt to break from the stranglehold of The Narrative™ is in the firing line.
The problem of the “university” is not new:
What’s a’ your jargon o’ your schools-
Your Latin names for horns an’ stools?
If honest Nature made you fools,
What sairs your grammars?
Ye’d better ta’en up spades and shools,
Or knappin-hammers.
A set o’ dull, conceited hashes
Confuse their brains in college classes!
They gang in stirks, and come out asses,
Plain truth to speak;
An’ syne they think to climb Parnassus
By dint o’ Greek!
– Robert Burns (1785)
Yea Gods I thought he was long gone!! I remember doing a ‘Marxist reading of Frankenstein’….LOL! There’s a few hours I’ll never get back!!
Although this was way back at Sheffield University..the home of Labour/Socialism…so he was considered to have deity status!! LOL!
You too eh?! I had to wade through The Idea of Culture – what a joy. Not. He did a good take-down of Richard Dawkins though. (According to Wiki he’s still at it at U Lancaster at the age of 80. Don’t these people ever let go??!!)
Births in 2022 in England and Wales ONS publication just out
https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/birthsinenglandandwales2022
There were 605,479 live births in England and Wales in 2022, a 3.1% decrease from 624,828 in 2021 and the lowest number since 2002
Don’t have time to look at it properly, but I’m posting up so others can see.
This is the ONS chart showing live births, note this doesn’t adjust for female population size in childbearing ages
Thanks for taking the time to post these…I just don’t know what to make of it all…
I do know that right back at the beginning of this crap shoot I was looking at the 6 monthly Pfizer Vaccine Updates as they released them….and they never once said anything other than they didn’t have enough data for pregnant and lactating women…..
I have never known how that translated so quickly into ‘all pregnant women need to be jabbed’….?
Where did the people who decided to jab get their data if it wasn’t from the vaccine manufacturer?…….and who made those decisions…and why? Seems like someone should answer it doesn’t it?
It would be ironic if court action resulted in the staff of the Leith Arches living under the arches in Leith.
https://off-guardian.org/2023/08/16/isis-are-back-and-theyre-faker-than-ever/
Kit Knightly with another excellent take-down of the return of ISIS.
Desperation.
Paul Weston´s latest talk today on YouTube spells it all out – in his inimitable fashion.
I gather he´s been debanked and fled England. Where to?