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How many goodly creatures are there here! – William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I Hillel Neuer welcomes the New Year in with a look at the newly elected members of the U.N.’s highest human rights body. January 2nd, 2022 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Telling people to ‘follow the science’ won’t save the planet. But they will fight for justice”, writes Amy Westervelt in the Guardian:
— The most recommended comment was by someone called “Pilotchute”. It started by quoting Ms Westervelt’s claim that the the US entering the Second World War was an example of “social change driven by moral outrage at the power being wielded by the few over the many”. Pilotchute responded:
December 28th, 2021 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
As the author says, this is a long thread, but in these days of uncertainty when so many yearn for examples of selfless effort for the common cause, well worth your time. I found #15… disturbing. Edit: Hat-tip to Duncan S in the comments – the original creators of this inspiring drama were Phil Shearrer and his son Kyle Shearrer back in 2015. December 26th, 2021 | 5 comments - (Comments are closed)
Yarvin hilariously beleives that “mandatory covid tracking apps” are the way out of this, because “the state needs a precise, high-frequency idea of everyone’s location … to know who is infecting whom.” You shouldn’t worry about this, unless “your government is … a nest of perverts, clowns, thieves and rascals,” which our governments very clearly are. Yarvin writes that “A regime which is unnecessarily intrusive for perverse or nefarious reasons will do other bad things for perverse or nefarious reasons,” and we know this is true, because our governments are already doing perverse and nefarious things under the pretence of containment. In Germany, Corona hysteria has been a means of driving stodgy conservative boomers into the arms of lunatic socialist parties, of enforcing ever greater reliance on culturally destructive technology and making the smart phone a mandatory daily accessory, of pouring billions of Euros into the coffers of scamming manipulative pharmaceutical enterprises, of stifling not only political but cultural expression, and of turning our cities into drab humourless work camps. We aren’t in charge, our enemies are. I don’t care if it means dying of the bubonic plague—these people and their dumb hygiene house arrests are to be opposed now and forever. December 9th, 2021 | 12 comments - (Comments are closed)
December 4th, 2021 | 22 comments - (Comments are closed)
Old rules die, new ones are born. Belarus border crisis: EU suspends asylum rules to speed up deportations Omicron variant: EU should encourage compulsory vaccines, says Ursula von der Leyen Both Times reports are behind a paywall, but the headlines make the point well enough. As the late Brian Micklethwait – I still cannot quite believe that I am writing that – said in a post called “On the future of photography in public (and on what I think of the EU)”:
December 2nd, 2021 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
Things descended into absurdity when A. abruptly asked:
I was totally dismayed by her open cluelessness. Had she slept through these world-historical moments? Did she have no idea that lockdowns were demonstrably imported from China, with the help of the WHO and other actors? Was her implication that all these restrictions had arisen in spontaneous response to conditions, and that everything must therefore be in order? In any event, she called me “naive,” because I naturally answered her question with “yes.” A. and B. are both intelligent and competent people in their fields, and I value both for different reasons. Nevertheless, they are swimming in these currents as if hypnotised, like countless others, and with their complicity our country has devolved into a dystopian dictatorship. November 20th, 2021 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
Lin Jinyue, designer of China’s totalitarian social credit system explain how it would have prevented Gilets Jaunes & any other protests. (via Alan Miller) October 23rd, 2021 | 24 comments - (Comments are closed)
– Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand When I first clicked on the video of Jacinda Ardern saying those words that is embedded in this tweet from “Darren of Plymouth” via Not the Bee, I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. All of us sometimes say things that “come out wrong”. By “single source of truth” I thought she might have meant no more than “convenient one-stop place you can go to get truthful information”. Apparently there is a concept in information systems design that goes by the name “Single Source of Truth (SSoT)”; perhaps she had picked up this piece of jargon somewhere. However I only had to wait until 1:02 in the video to see Ms Ardern demonstrate that she meant it exactly the way it sounded:
Edit: I assume the “Not the Bee” link got Darren’s tweet enough engagement to alert Twitter’s censorship team. When I first made this post two and a half hours ago the link to the tweet worked, but commenter ‘Dyspeptic Curmudgeon’ has pointed out that it has now disappeared. Here is a YouTube clip of the same speech filmed from a different angle and here is another YouTube clip that seems to be the same one I saw. A couple of points to note: – The speech is older than I thought, from May 2020. – The silence of the press. This all takes place at a press conference. The room is full of cameras and microphones wielded by journalists, news providers. Yet not one of them protests when the prime minister of their country says that they should not be trusted as a source of news. Have they no pride in their profession? October 8th, 2021 | 30 comments - (Comments are closed)
Ian Birrell in the Mail on Sunday asks,
October 3rd, 2021 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Berlin’s vote to take properties from big landlords could be a watershed moment”, writes Alexander Vasudevan in the Guardian. Judging by the history of such schemes it could be. But not in the way he thinks. The vote in Berlin is not legally binding, but it does show the popularity of such a measure (the popular appeal of taking their stuff and giving it to us is eternal), and as the Guardian says it will “serve as a template and inspiration for activists in Europe and elsewhere”. Professor Vasudevan (he is an associate professor in human geography at Oxford) continues,
I have little doubt that the large scale institutional landlords such as the property company Deutsche Wohnen that the initiative targets have transformed the Berlin housing market, and not for the better. But it is worth asking why it paid them to to go on a speculative property buying spree in the last few years when it did not pay them to do this earlier? I would guess it is because they have taken advantage of artificially low interest rates created by government. What about compensation? For obvious historical reasons, German law frowns on confiscation without compensation. The article says,
When fair compensation is “balanced” with something else, it means unfair compensation. When the normal operation of law is suspended we are always told that it will apply only to people or groups that few would leap to defend. It never stops there. October 1st, 2021 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Schools are accused of ‘brainwashing’ students as children as young as 12 take part in mock trial of Tory MP Richard Drax for ‘benefitting from slavery’ because of his ancestors.” September 24th, 2021 | 14 comments - (Comments are closed)
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