- “Boris Johnson asked: ‘Why are we destroying the economy for people who will die anyway?’ during Covid” – Boris reportedly said “we’re killing the patient to tackle the tumour” in contemporaneous notes revealed at the Covid Inquiry, according to the Telegraph.
- “Keeping the beaches open” – What did we learn about Boris Johnson’s Covid response from Didactic Dom, asks Robert Hutton in the Critic.
- “We can’t lay all Covid blame at Boris’s door” – The costly Covid Inquiry is becoming a frenzied witch-hunt, unlikely to answer the most vital question: Was lockdown the right policy, writes Annabel Denham in the Telegraph.
- “‘Excess mortality’ continuing surge causes concerns” – Life insurance executives and actuaries believe excess mortality rates are alarming and could continue to drag earnings for years to come, according to InsuranceNewsNet.
- “How U.K. Government advisers helped Pfizer win $5.95 billion U.S. Covid contract” – In TCW, Paula Jardine further explores the alleged quid pro quo between American funding for the Oxford AstraZeneca Covid vaccine and U.K. assistance in authorising the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA vaccine.
- “Police hold back pro-Palestinian protesters as Starmer leaves speech” – Police were forced to wrestle back demonstrators as they attempted to mob the Labour leader as he exited the Chatham House think tank in London, says the Mail.
- “Israeli envoy wears yellow star before UN Security Council” – Israel’s Holocaust memorial body has criticised the country’s delegation to the UN for wearing yellow stars to a Security Council meeting, reports the Telegraph.
- “Is Suella Braverman wrong about pro-Palestine ‘hate marches’?” – Take a step back, and it becomes apparent that the pro-Palestinian marches themselves are constructed on infrastructure of bigotry, writes Jake Wallis Simons in the Spectator.
- “When did journalism become a hate crime?” – Spiked’s Fraser Myers on GB News’s Charlie Peters being reported to the police for investigating Islamic extremism.
- “Not ‘just Hamas’” – Evidence suggests that Hamas, or at least its policy toward Jews, is popular among Palestinians, say Eugene Kontorovich and Erielle Davidson in City Journal.
- “The normalisation of savagery” – Societies that give up on freedom will soon find it replaced by violence, writes Brendan O’Neill in Spiked.
- “Islamism is a failed ideology. Muslims must embrace the West” – Those who came here to escape tyranny are now cheering the tyrants they left behind, says Hussain Abdul-Hussain in the Telegraph.
- “The shameful silence of the ‘anti-racists’” – As antisemitism has surged, Britain’s ‘race equality’ charities have mostly looked the other way, writes Lauren Smith in Spiked.
- “Moolah from mullahs” – Arab countries are bankrolling American colleges and universities, with Qatar and Saudi Arabia leading the pack, write Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky in City Journal.
- “Miriam Cates blames increase in working women for rise in children going to school in nappies” – A Tory MP has blamed the rising number of women going out to work for an increase in infants going to school wearing nappies, reports the Telegraph.
- “Ninety-nine percent? Re-examining the consensus on the anthropogenic contribution to climate change” – In Climate, Prof. Yonatan Dubi and others have detailed the flaws in the consensus study by Lynas et al, which (falsely) claimed the 99% consensus on the anthropogenic contribution to climate change.
- “Greta Thunberg and her Gen Z friends owe Baby Boomers an apology over climate change” – Greta and friends say ‘older generations’ have let young people down. Yet a new poll on green lifestyle choices tells a very different story, writes Michael Deacon in the Telegraph.
- “Indonesia shelves decarbonisation for prosperity and security” – The strategic utilisation of fossil fuels is a key factor at the centre of Indonesia’s growth, says Vijay Jayaraj in WUWT.
- “Dictating words: The Culture-Control Left and the war against free speech” – The Institute of Economic Affairs has released a new report on the ‘Culture-Control Left’, exploring their composition, sources of inspiration and political agenda.
- “Woke campaigners are using hate speech laws to stifle free speech” – An IEA report says elements of the Left have “successfully weaponised” concepts such as hate speech to “silence their political opponents”, reports the Mail.
- “Council purges word ‘mother’ from pregnancy and maternity leave policy” – A council was accused of “writing out women” for purging the word ‘mother’ from its pregnancy and maternity leave policy to be more inclusive, says the Mail.
- “Yayoi Kusama doesn’t need a race reckoning” – Who expects Yayoi Kusama, the 94 year-old grande dame of installation art, to be woke, asks Kat Rosenfield in UnHerd.
- “Macron rejects gender-inclusive writing to ‘protect’ French language” – There’s been a long-standing debate between French Right-leaning language purists versus the Left and feminists, writes Vivian Song in the Telegraph.
- “Academic dynamite” – Professors Alice Sullivan and Selina Todd’s new book, Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader, is an important, if difficult, contribution to debates around sex and gender, says Debbie Hayton in the Critic.
- “‘Asexual rights’ and the endless quest for victimhood” – New forms of ‘oppression’ are being invented every week, writes Jo Bartosch in Spiked.
- “The woke celebrities using their popularity to influence us” – The cult of celebrity has taken on a sinister new meaning in recent times, says Dr. Shane Fudge in TCW.
- “Is the American Academy of Paediatrics placing its own members at risk?” – New lawsuits and a panel on gender and sexuality at the AAP’s recent conference signal trouble for paediatricians who rely on its guidance, writes Leor Sapir in City Journal.
- “Canadian death cult” – America’s northern neighbour has euthanised tens of thousands of its citizens, says Michael Bonner in City Journal.
- “The Vanguard interview: Peter Hitchens” – On Substack, Laura Dodsworth interviews Peter Hitchens about his new book, The War We Never Fought: The British Establishment’s Surrender to Drugs.
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Tuesday Morning South Hill Road & Bagshot Rd
Bracknell
IHT on farmers will wipe out British farming. I have posted that the impact might be within one generation. Sadly, I believe the industry will be lost within five to ten years if this horrendous law is not scrapped.
Whoever controls the food controls the people.
Message for Ian Rons – could you check ‘log on’ please as I am having to log on three to four times daily which seems a bit much.
Thanks.
Moderator here: Pls check your emails, we’ll try to sort it
Thank you.
Book tip (free download, PDF & EPUB)
David A Hughes – “Covid-19, Psychological Operations, and the War for Technocracy”. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-41850-1
Academics are on the case now, which is good to see.
Many thanks for such an essential post.
I will pass this around.
https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1856463626179092844?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
The Kursk ambush battle is now playing out very much as originally intended.
Tens of thousands of Russian troops from the best units are trying to push out Ukrainian troops and advance on the Kursk frontline.
The Russian high command have deployed 50,000 Russian and North Korean troops to retake the Kursk region before Donald Trump takes office as U.S. president. Russian reserve formations are regularly transferred now to Kursk Oblast due to the high personnel and equipment losses in that area of operations.
https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1856459956309889171?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
‘Russia will not defeat us on the battlefield. Yes, they may gain a few more kilometres, but they cannot win militarily.’
Myhkailo Samus, New Geopolitics Research Network
Russia is defeating Ukraine on the battlefield which is why the front line is slowly moving westwards – a fact that is supported by most Western coomentators now. Ukraine is still throwing increasing numbers of elite troops into what is proving to be a noose.
And that is without the involvement of those NKs who we were promised would be used by so many, or do you have some proof that they are there.
Those who know nothing of military affairs have no idea what either defeat or victory look like. The U.S. strategy of weakening Russia has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Tuesday was a record for single-day Russian losses of 1,950 troops killed and wounded as well as 104 destroyed armored vehicles all along the 800-mile front line of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine.
The ongoing battle in Kursk accounts for a disproportionate share of these losses, as the fighting there is at least twice as intense as the fighting in other sectors. “Russian forces maintain a high attack frequency in Kursk Oblast, launching assaults at intervals of 10 to 15 minutes,”.
Russia has plenty of manpower on its frontlines, with about 470,000 soldiers fighting in the war at any one time, The Economist reported. Moscow struggles to keep up with the demands on its weapons stockpiles, however: While Russia has maintained armament reserves since Soviet times, the supplies are dwindling. Sourcing materials to build new weapons has also proved challenging, as “the old Soviet armaments supply chain no longer exists,” the newspaper noted.
Russia still has more artillery than Ukraine, but its weapons are deteriorating, and it lacks the means to develop more.
Russian defense contractors are struggling to source workers as working-age men are conscripted to the military, The Bell reported. With no one to fill key roles, there are about 160,000 available positions at defense firms. “The shortfall is not only due to increased demand, but also dwindling supply,” The Bell noted. If trends continue, Russia will be short of about 2.4 million workers by the start of the next decade.
The Kremlin now faces a difficult choice: “There are social and political risks in allowing more migrants into the country. And limiting military recruitment is hardly possible when there’s a war on,”
Your report sounds like a lot of wishful thinking or projection – referring more to Ukrainian as Russian problems.
From today’s Russian MoD report, I count 2,555 AFU personnel losses and countless vehicles (sorry, I was too lazy to add them all up).
The Russian MoD report on Kursk reads as follows:
Since the beginning of hostilities in Kursk region, the AFU losses amounted to more than 32,150 troops, 202 tanks, 134 infantry fighting vehicles, 112 armoured personnel carriers, 1,146 armoured fighting vehicles, 907 motor vehicles, 274 artillery guns, 40 MLRS launchers, including 11 of HIMARS and six of MLRS made by the USA, 12 anti-aircraft missile launchers, seven transport-loading vehicles, 62 EW stations, 13 counter-battery warfare radars, four air defence radars, 27 units of engineering and other materiel, including 13 counterobstacle vehicles, one UR-77 mine clearing vehicle, five armoured recovery vehicles, and one command post vehicle.
The operation to neutralise the AFU units is in progress.
Among the 32,150 there will be many US and European citizens. For what glory did they die? To satisfy a senile US President and his State Department filled with Russian haters? To satisfy Ursula von der Leyen’s lust for power? Was it worth it?
Now that really is desparate. Are you sure it wasn’t the 50,000 NK troops that the NYT reports are now in Kursk?
Russian sources generally underestimate their own losses and overestimate Ukrainian losses. For every Russian soldier killed, Russian sources report only 0.3 losses. On the contrary, for every Ukrainian soldier killed, Russian sources report 4.3 Ukrainian soldiers killed.
As a consequence of their disastrous losses, Russia is now dredging the very bottom of the barrel.
In the Novosibirsk region, Russian soldiers staged a riot in a barracks and fled to avoid dying in the war against Ukraine.
https://x.com/wartranslated/status/1856709257086783933?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet
As I say, the U.S. strategy has succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Trump may very well be emboldened to continue it.
Of course, defence forces never release true values of own losses. But apparently there was an exchange of dead soldiers recently, with 15 times as many Ukrainian corpses exchanged as Russian ones. Who knows? It is a sick world. There should never be wars.
I see he is now not prepared to speak to you ddirectly either, adressing his replies to himself. This is not normal behaviour. and could be associated with a person who is losing a grip on reality.
Don’t panic! It’s all going famously!
‘Russian film company Mosfilm handed over 36 old tanks and armored vehicles from its warehouses to the occupiers: 28 T-55 tanks, eight PT-76 tanks, six armored personnel carriers and eight tractors from the 1950s. Previously, this equipment was used as props for filming.
In total, Mosfilm has about 190 armored vehicles, armored personnel carriers, and self-propelled artillery systems “disguised as different models of foreign military equipment from different periods.”
The Russian Army has never exercised too much diligence in recovering it’s dead.
Why?
A death is confirmed only once the body has been found, and the concerned defence ministry thereby sends a death notification to the family.
But many bodies have not been recovered and are categorised as MIA (missing in action).
If a government does not officially accept a soldier as dead, it manages to evade the obligation to pay the families of the deceased, which has become a problem in Russia.
Oops!
https://trusttheevidence.substack.com/p/forming-a-square
A very short read – not paywalled – and Professors Heneghan and Jefferson are brutally succinct in calling out the former terrorist, now WHO puppet, Guterres for his blatant lies.
Wonderful.
Bernie has started a channel (in style!): https://www.youtube.com/@Bernie-is-Artemis
https://www.businessinsider.com/ex-russian-president-medvedev-became-key-warmonger-since-ukraine-invasion-2023-1
‘A journey’
Fifteen years ago today, then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev gave an address to the country’s Federal Assembly in which he advocated for Russia’s “comprehensive modernization,” the “values and institutions of democracy,” and an economy grounded in “humanist ideals.”
2009
‘In the last century, at the cost of immense human efforts, an agrarian, practically illiterate country was transformed into one of the most influential industrial powers of its time, leading the development of a number of advanced technologies of that era: space technology, rocket technology, and nuclear technology. But in the conditions of a closed society and a totalitarian political regime, these positions could not be maintained…….We don’t build our foreign policy “against anyone” at all…..Instead of an archaic society in which leaders think and make decisions for everyone, we will become a society of smart, free, and responsible people……..An innovative economy can only form within a specific social context, as part of an innovative culture based on humanistic ideals, creative freedom, and the pursuit of improving people’s quality of life.’
2024
‘One feels a sense of hatred, contempt, and disgust. Hatred for all those involved in the collapse of the Soviet Union (and essentially the Russian Empire), a collapse that entailed the disappearance of a vast country that once balanced the world order……Unfortunately, nothing has changed in the past 160 years. Our tasks remain the same — the maximum weakening and humiliation of the West, including Europe…..This still-irregular opposition clearly sees all the flaws of the current liberal globalism and the America-centered world order. And our task is to support such politicians and their parties in the West in every way we can, helping them achieve worthy results in elections, both openly and covertly.’
And what is your point? Are you going to claim the West is not actively trying to destroy Russia? In your other post above you were praising Ukraine’s (actually NATO’s) actions in Kursk. The EU is about to launch its 15th sanctions’ package against Russia. As far as concerns the West interfering in elections affecting Russia, we have all the recent attempts to affect the vote in Moldova and Georgia; we can also mention the Maidan Coup in Ukraine and only recently we had UK interfering in the US election, with Keir Starmer sending off his trolls to support Harris! Election interference seems to be a global sickness.
Yes indeed, what is the point of Monro?
Lloyd Austin was asked if he would now define US goals:
(As well) as helping Ukraine retain its sovereignty and defend its territory……’we want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine…..(Russia should) not have the capability to very quickly reproduce (the forces and equipment that had been lost in Ukraine).’
‘Since April 2022, I have been convening the Ukraine Defense Contact Group — the coalition of some 50 countries from around the world determined to help Ukraine fight Putin’s aggression. The Contact Group has met 24 times now.
As a percentage of GDP, a dozen U.S. allies and partners now provide more security assistance to Ukraine than the United States does.
America’s goals remain clear, achievable, and principled. We seek a free and sovereign Ukraine that can defend itself from Russian aggression today — and deter Russian aggression in the future.
We seek a more secure Europe — and a reinforced commitment from nations of goodwill worldwide to an open international system of rules, rights, and responsibilities…..
Putin’s assault is a warning. It is a sneak preview of a world built by tyrants and thugs — a chaotic, violent world carved into spheres of influence; a world where bullies trample their smaller neighbors; and a world where aggressors force free people to live in fear…..
The United States does not seek war with Russia. And even as Putin makes profoundly reckless and dangerous threats about nuclear war, we will continue to behave with the responsibility that the world rightly demands of a nuclear-armed state.
The United States will uphold our sworn NATO obligations. The United States will defend every inch of NATO territory. And the United States will get Ukraine what it needs to fight for its survival and security.
Ukraine does not belong to Putin. Ukraine belongs to the Ukrainian people. And Moscow will never prevail in Ukraine.
Ukraine has chosen the course of courage. And so have we.
My friends, you walk a hard road. But you do not walk it alone.’
Austin’s hypocrisy is astounding. USA wants to weaken Russia so that only USA can invade foreign countries (as history documents). ‘America’ seeks “a free and sovereign Ukraine” that does what it is told and places nuclear missiles along its border to Russia. (It is interesting how US citizens refer to their country as America instead of USA, obviously forgetting the continent with the same name to the south.) Then he cites the always undefined “international system of rules, rights and responsibilities”.
“Putin’s assault is a warning. It is a sneak preview of a world built by tyrants and thugs – a chaotic, violent world carved into spheres of influence; a world where bullies trample their smaller neighbors …” I love it. Ask Vietnam, Iraq, Libya, Syria who the bully in the world is. Ask Lebanon, Jordan, Syria again, and they will answer ‘Israel’ but the latter is totally financed and supplied with weapons by USA.
“The United States does not seek war with Russia.” Not directly, no, because you know what would happen, but you come as close as humanly possible …
“My friends, you walk a hard road. But you do not walk it alone” until the new US President takes over.
Zelensky has led his country down the road to destruction. Utter madness.
Oh dear!
Aleksandr Kozlov, the Russian minister for natural resources and ecology, warned that the most easily accessible natural resources of those developed in Soviet times will run out over the coming decade unless Moscow changes course. He asserted the need for a massive effort to explore for new deposits and build the transportation infrastructure needed to exploit them. If this does not happen, the minister continued, Russia will either face serious shortages of key minerals or be forced to import them from abroad—something that will be increasingly difficult in the current geopolitical environment (TASS; RIA Novosti, September 11; The Moscow Times, September 12). However, the problems of doing so are enormous, hence the prospect that Kozlov’s warning will not be heeded in the Kremlin. Most of the geologically unexplored regions of the Russian Federation are in the north and Far East, areas where few, if any, roads and rail lines exist and where the rapidly melting permafrost layers underlying them make any development both expensive and controversial.
A second warning of disaster came earlier from the Russian Accounts Chamber. The influential government agency pointedly said at the end of 2022 that Russia’s transportation infrastructure outside Moscow is inadequate, aging, and underfinanced and that these shortcomings are already having a negative impact on the country’s economic and demographic development. Where roads and railways do exist, their condition is so bad that traffic moves too slowly to meet the needs of the economy. Where they do not, the situation is truly disastrous (Ach.gov.ru, December 2022; Profile.ru, December 12, 2022).
Other Russian experts have built on this warning. They have pointed to an aspect that Putin and many Western observers have seemingly ignored. While Moscow likes to talk about developing routes such as the Trans-Siberian Railway and Northern Sea Route, it rarely builds the feeder highways and rail lines that would make such “mainlines” successful. Instead, the Kremlin builds giant projects without much regard for their real utility, yet another legacy of the Soviet past that Putin’s Russia has not overcome
A third warning of disaster ahead comes from Sergey Tsivilyov, Russia’s energy minister. On September 9, he said that Russia has now exhausted the reserves of electrical power generation equipment that had been left over from Soviet times. He warned that Russia has little chance of replacing that capacity anytime soon due to Western sanctions that keep Moscow from acquiring spare parts or new equipment and the lack of Russian government spending, given the needs of its military campaign in Ukraine. Tsivilyov added that the situation in the Russian Far East is now so bad that energy production there is at a high risk of collapsing, despite all of Putin’s assurances that the situation is in hand (TASS; The Moscow Times, September 9). The Russian minister’s pessimism rests on the findings of Russian experts who suggest that in the relatively near future, even the city of Moscow will suffer from power shortages (So-ups.ru, accessed September 17). Another expert has concluded that half or more of Russia’s aging power plants and power distribution networks cannot be repaired, let alone have their capacity increased, because of sanctions and the absence of domestic funding.
Putin is going to go for peace, probably quite quickly now…….
But not quickly enough for some:
The car bombing that killed Russian Navy officer Valery Trankovsky in occupied Sevastopol on Nov. 13 was an operation carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
The statement came shortly after Russian authorities in occupied Crimea reported on a military service member dying following the blast.
Trankovsky was chief of staff of the 41st Missile Boat Brigade and a war criminal who has ordered cruise missile launches from the Black Sea against civilian sites in Ukraine.
The officer was responsible for the Kalibr missile strike against the city of Vinnytsia in July 2022 that killed 29 people and injured over 200 more. He also oversaw strikes against Odesa and other cities, leaving many civilians dead.
The SBU is another disgusting ‘intelligence’ service – actually, they probably all are. Car bombing is sick but so is war.
And now provide equivalent material on the situation in UK! Better or worse?
John le Seur over at TCW focusing strongly on reactions to Donald Trump’s post election planning – marvellous stuff. Useful items on Europe including Germany and Spain. Apparently Spain kicked off massively following the Valencia floods, report from Mahyer Tousi.
A day’s worth of reading / viewing and none of it seems to be paywalled. Excellent.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/seen-elsewhere-this-week-in-the-alt-media-7/
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/why-no-room-at-the-cenotaph-for-farage/
An absolute corker…
“The sophistry of using an apparent ‘protocol’ which no one can trace should go down as yet another marker against a failing government that makes up rules as it goes along. It shows the depths to which this government will stoop to marginalise and keep Reform UK on the back burner, trying to belittle Nigel Farage and minimise the massive rise in interest in the party since Labour took office.
It also appears this government is redoubling its efforts to gag Farage when it comes to his offer to be an interlocutor between the British Government and President Trump. Treasury Minister Darren Jones has stated that the government would be likely to reject this offer. What are they scared of? That Farage will show up the totally unsuitable David Lammy on the world stage!
What this all adds up to is that Sir Keir Starmer and his increasingly detested brethren on the Government front bench are now, ironically, Reform UK’s best recruiting sergeants, as reflected in Labour’s fluctuating support in the polls. With more and more local councillors defecting to the Reform UK, and county council elections on the horizon, they are digging a hole for themselves. Let’s see how deep they go.”
It’s just brilliant watching the antics of Labour and its cadre of halfwits under the hateful Starmer.
A slow motion car crash piloted by a Mr Magoo who still thinks he’s in the centre of the lane. It’s getting to German levels of sheer self-destruction now. Compelling viewing indeed.
👍👍👍
I do not think the provinces and regions need to be represented because Starmer as PM represents the entire United Kingdom. If the regions and provinces are to be separately represented, who represented England.
Representation by political parties in the HoC can be justified on the basis of ensuring national unity is on public display. The SNP representative and by association also PC are disgraced by showing a lack of that unity on behalf of their parties.
Perhaps Reform should ask for a full list of limitations on nthe rights of a smaller party. They are excluded from select committees and have no nominations for peerages. Now it appears they cannot take part in the nation’s main act of remembrance. What other activities are they excluded from other than as beneficiaries of Lord Alli.
When Donal Trump comes to town it will be hilarious watching the elites try to keep Nigel out of the meetings.
Read the BTL comments under the Guardian article referenced above.
Absolute pure gold, and a study in blissful ignorance.
“The BBC’s Culture and Media Editor has suggested that Gary Lineker was forced out as host of MOTD after the broadcaster refused to offer him a new contract, reports the Telegraph.”
The Editor should learn how employment and contracts work. If one party does not want to engage the other on available terms no contract can be made. Using the language “forced out” suggests the editor thinks Lineker owns the programme, which he also showed signs of believing.
If you’re not allowed to know who you offended or what offended them how are you supposed to know how to change your ways to avoid giving offence in the future?
Apparently not a conplainant but a “victim”
ps meant to type an “m” but realised CONplainant is just right
Also, if Allison doesn’t know and therefore cannot tell other people what she wrote in the post, people may think she wrote something so vile that the police have got involved, therefore the police refusing to say what she wrote is a type of defamation.
That’s what it’s designed to do
The item on the Supreme Court still trying to enforce the covid restrictions concerns me. Where are the concerns on fundamental rights to liberty etc. The article in DM only gives the name of 1 of the judges .Does anyone know the names of the other 4 who agreed with him, and the judges in the lower courts
More Michael Spicer. That X post has just cheered me up immensely and the sun is shining!