The Government has been caught shamefully playing hardball with the victims of Covid vaccine injuries, refusing to settle payouts despite devastating harms, as legal bills mount.
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THEODORE DALRYMPLE: Orwell’s Arresting Ambiguities.
Occasionally [Orwell biographer D.J Taylor], whose own judgment is pretty good, misses something important. For example, he describes the effect that Orwell’s time in Spain had on him:
Spain, it is safe to say, politicised Orwell in a way that his exposure to homegrown socialism in the previous five years had not. To begin with, it offered him a vision of how an alternative world, founded on the principles of freedom and equality, might work.
Orwell told the general litterateur, Cyril Connolly, who had been with him at Eton, that he had seen “wonderful things” in Barcelona, then a revolutionary city in the control of the Trotskyist POUM. Taylor continues:
It was, he declared, “the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle.” Churches were being systematically demolished by gangs of workmen. Shops and cafes bore inscriptions saying that they had been collectivised. Tipping was forbidden by law, all private motor cars had been commandeered, and all the trams and taxis had been painted in the anarchist colours of red and black. “In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist.”
Everyone dressed the same too, in drab overalls, Maoist avant la lettre.
Barcelona, then, was a Catalonian Pyongyang: and it is important to recall that Orwell approved of it. At this stage of his development, he was an enthusiastic totalitarian, and the shallowness of his belief that such uniformity was a triumph for freedom and equality is rather startling in a man who, a very few years later, was to be the greatest literary scourge of totalitarianism in the world.
In his 2000 essay, “In the Land of the Rococo Marxist,” Tom Wolfe wrote that the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the subsequent publication of the Venona transcripts “made it damned hard to express your skepticism, your cynicism, your contempt, in Marxist terms… Not to mention the Spanish Civil War—archives! Turns out the Loyalists secretly called in the Soviets at the very outset of hostilities—and if they’d won, Spain would have been the first Soviet puppet state!”
In “Orwell’s Bad Republicans,” a 2007 book review at the American Spectator, Hal G.P. Colebatch noted:
When the heroics of the Spanish Civil War come up — Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, Hemingway’s fictions or the effusions of various poets — there is a very large and usually unremarked elephant in the room: Orwell, who actually fought, and Hemingway who wrote about fighting, were on the wrong side.
The strategic point is simple: had the Stalinists won war, then during the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact from 1939 to mid-1941, they would have allowed Hitler to cross Spain and seize Gibraltar. Had this happened, the British forces in the Mediterranean, including the British Empire’s last remaining field army in action, would have been cut off. The British army and fleet could probably have been supplied through the Suez Canal, at least for a while, but their positions would have been immeasurably weakened, and the enemy’s position immeasurably strengthened.
Fortunately, as Dalrymple wrote, “It was all to the credit of Orwell that he changed his opinion of totalitarianism so diametrically, but had he died just after the publication of Homage to Catalonia, not living long enough to write his anti-totalitarian masterpieces, he would have been remembered, if he was remembered at all, as a literary forerunner and praise-singer of some of the worst features of communist regimes.”
IF THE WEST’S RULING CLASS WANTED TO WRECK THE COUNTRIES IT RULES, WHAT WOULD IT DO DIFFERENTLY?
Wanna see what economic self-sabotage looks like? pic.twitter.com/acqyEcbAzc
— Alec Stapp (@AlecStapp) April 26, 2024
REMINDER THAT TODAY IS VICTIMS OF COMMUNISM DAY. It’s disgraceful that this dishonest, murdering ideology is still celebrated in academia and in our media. When you see someone celebrating that, remind them that they’re apologists for mass murder and theft.
Meanwhile:
🧵(1) I was inside the massive UCLA encampment.
There is communist symbolism EVERYWHERE pic.twitter.com/6YGkn6Od9a
— Cam Higby 🇺🇸 (@camhigby) April 29, 2024
Jts5665She won the name lottery.
LOL:
So the press conference jihadist is a PhD student named Johannah King-Slutzky (really) and this is what she's working on. Dying. Absolutely dying. Beyond parody. @TheBabylonBee couldn't top this if they tried. https://t.co/xMhbmez881 pic.twitter.com/2mI5orclZx
— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) April 30, 2024
Leading free speech writers association PEN America has cancelled a major literary festival and awards ceremony amidst a boycott by the pro-Palestine far Left in a further sign of the death of irony.
The post Free Speech Writers Association Cancels Festival and Awards Ceremony Amidst Far Left Boycott appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
FIRST, DENVER FORCED WOLF REINTRODUCTION IN COLORAD’S RURAL AREAS. THEN THE INEVITABLE HAPPENED, AS IT ALWAYS SEEMS TO DO: Another calf death reported at ranch where 4 cattle were killed by wolves.
“We’ve got to keep up the pressure,” Ritschard said. “That’s all we can do right now, putting pressure towards CPW, but I don’t know. I really don’t know where we go now.”
Ritschard said the ranch where the most recent kill occurred is going to continue trying nonlethal methods to prevent attacks.
“How many more are we going to have until something’s done?” he asked. “Are we gonna have a yearling, or two yearlings, killed every 10 days?”
A map released Wednesday by CPW shows that gray wolves have crossed into watersheds east of the Continental Divide and onto the Front Range.
“They’ve still been in the area, and we’ve still been seeing them at night,” Ritschard said.
The new CPW map shows collared wolf activity between March 26 and April 23. The map shows that over the past month, at least one wolf with a GPS collar traveled in watersheds in Larimer County.
CPW also said on Wednesday that it has launched a website for wolf depredation reports to keep the public informed about confirmed livestock deaths by wolves.
CPW confirmed the latest cattle death Sunday evening on its website. The agency did not respond to 9NEWS’ questions.Wolves have now killed six cattle in Grand County this month.
“At the rate this is going, there isn’t going to be any livestock left in this country,” Ritschard said.
Denver-Boulder Democrats don’t care what happens to the livestock, so long as the ranchers are eventually driven out.
FROM THE BIRTHPLACE OF ENGLISH LIBERTY: Iranian Arrested in UK for Calling Hamas ‘Terrorist’ Praises Israel, Jews.
Larry shared this on Facebook about something he thought of while on TwitterX, so I thought I’d put it here on the blog. -Jack
Because I’ve been arguing with morons today on twitter who don’t know anything at all about history, it brought to mind this memory.
As a kid I was a massive history nerd. I devoured books, a few a week, and the best thing in the world was library loan. I went to a shit tier rural public school K-8 (my 8th grade class of 20 kids, half of us could speak English, and only half of those could read), but that didn’t matter because I read so much on my own anyway that made up pretty much the entirety of my early education.
When I went to high school (I lived so far out in the sticks that was an hour and a half bus ride every morning, which was actually awesome for me, because that was time I didn’t have to work with cows, and could read more books) I was actually super pumped for history class… and they all turned out to be super lame, because we’d spend 45 minutes tops talking about a topic that I’d already read an entire book about.
And the other kids were friggin STUPID. Like holy moly, dumb. Yes, this was the California Public Penal Academy For Gifted Drive By Shooters, but still. Nobody gave a crap. They paid no attention. They were bored. They just didn’t care. Fuck school. Let’s get high. (my high school also had the second highest teenage pregnancy rate in America my senior year, so we had that going for us too)
Thirty something years later and I get to watch these exact same mouth breathers bitch on Twitter about how they didn’t learn about (topic X) so clearly that’s a conspiracy by the man to keep them down.
Most of the history teachers I had knew less than I did about most of the topics and it was pretty obvious they were just phoning it in because their real job was coaching. Total waste of time.
I had one amazing history teacher though. Mr. Guerra. Great guy, actually loved history, was obviously totally burned out by teaching listless dorks the same thing over and over for twenty years with them being too dumb to listen, but he tried. I loved his class because he actually knew stuff and liked to research the stuff he didn’t know.
Every Friday Mr. Guerra would have a trivia game about the topic of the week. He’d break the class into two halves and we’d compete Jeopardy style. Winning side got bonus points for the test.
How much of a nerd was I? After the first few sessions he had to make a new rule. Larry can’t answer every single question. He can only answer every other question. When that was insufficient it was Larry can only answer one out of every four questions. Eventually he just gave me permission to just skip class and screw around on Fridays.
One of the best educational experiences I actually had in high school was the few days we had on the war in the Pacific, but not because I learned anything about the topic. Instead, Mr. Guerra recognized that was my favorite nerd fixation at the time so he asked me if I’d like to actually teach the class for a few days. I jumped at the chance… and realized that wow, high school kids are fucking stupid and apathetic, and it shattered any illusion I ever had that I might want to be a teacher… which was has been great for me long term. 
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE:
Anti-Israel protestor clashes with pro-Israel students at Columbia University.
“I’ll kill your ass, you’re a white f*ggot!”pic.twitter.com/bubSFBzXSM
— MRCTV (@mrctv) April 26, 2024
IT’S GOOD TO BE IN THE NOMENKLATURA: Arrogant DA refuses to stop for cops after being caught speeding because she ‘didn’t feel like it’ and ‘doesn’t really care.’
An arrogant New York District Attorney refused to stop for a cop after she was caught speeding because she ‘didn’t feel like it’ and was stressed from dealing with murders all day.
Monroe County DA Sandra Doorley had a tense interaction with a Webster police officer on Monday after the cop tried to pull her over for driving 55 miles per hour in a 35 miles per hour zone.
Bodycam footage shows the heated exchange – in which Doorley said ‘I didn’t feel like stopping on Phillips Road at 5:30.’ The officer responded ‘That’s not your choice… you know that.’ Doorley quipped back ‘I made it my choice.’
According to Doorley, instead of pulling over at the time she decided to call Webster Police Chief Dennis Kohlmeier to say she was not a threat and would talk to the officer back at her house.
As the officer informs her that she made the situation a bigger deal than it needed to be by refusing to pull over, Doorley can be heard responding with ‘just write me the traffic ticket.’
The officer reminded her that it was no longer just a traffic ticket – and that not complying with an officer’s order to stop and pull over is an ‘arrestable offense.’
Doorley explained that she didn’t see the point in pulling over when she was so close to her driveway. ‘I thought it would be easier. I was wrong,’ she said.
As she refuses to step outside her garage, she hands the cop the phone to speak with the police chief telling him ‘leave me alone, this is ridiculous’.
The officer can be heard telling her: ‘What do you want us to do? Not do our job because it is you? You broke another law because of that. You should know better.’
Footage of Doorley reminding voters that there are two classes of people in America. Don’t try this if you see red lights in your rearview mirror:
NEW: Monroe County DA refuses to stop for police after she was caught speeding; ‘I didn't feel like stopping…’
Sandra Doorley was driving 55 mph in a 35 mph zone on Phillips Road in Webster when she chose not to pull over
Instead, she called Webster Police Chief Dennis… pic.twitter.com/IOxFbRXm9D
— Unlimited L's (@unlimited_ls) April 26, 2024
I’m pretty sure that Mike Judge didn’t intend for Office Space to be a how-to guide for good government:
IMAGINE BEING A VOCIFEROUSLY ANTI-ISRAEL CONGRESSMAN, AND BELIEVING THAT GAZA HAS A CHIEF RABBI: Progressive NY Rep. Jamaal Bowman duped by fake ‘Chief rabbi of Gaza’.
NOTHING SAYS NOTHING TO HIDE LIKE THREATS TO DISCIPLINE WHISTLEBLOWERS: UCLA Med School Launches Review Of ‘Health Equity’ Course But Warns That Whistleblowers Could Be Disciplined.
PROTESTERS CALL FOR ISLAMIC STATE IN GERMANY:
More than 1,000 people marched through Hamburg on Saturday calling for a caliphate in Germany.
Protesters gathered in the northern city for a mostly peaceful demonstration against Islamophobia, but among the masses were calls for an Islamic state.
Joe Adade Boateng, leader of Muslim Interaktiv which organised the march, said in a speech at the march that Germany needed a “righteous caliphate” to remedy the misrepresentation Muslim groups have faced in the media.
He was greeted with cheers of “Allahu akbar”, or God is great, by a mostly male crowd, some of whom were holding up signs reading “Caliphate is the solution” and “Stop the media hate”.
Forcing a totalitarian statist religion upon the German volk – what could possibly go wrong?
COMING SOON TO AMERICAN AUTOMOBILES AS WELL? Cars will slow down if drivers are speeding under EU safety tech in new cars.
Cars will beep, vibrate or slow down if drivers are speeding under new mandatory safety technology which comes into effect this summer.
From July 6, new vehicles sold in the European Union and Northern Ireland will be fitted with intelligent speed assistance (ISA) to prevent accidents.
Although the UK has opted out, meaning it will not be a requirement on British roads, the technology will still be installed in most cars, and drivers can choose to switch it off on a daily basis.
Steve Gooding, director of the RAC Foundation, an independent research organisation, told the Sunday Times: “I think many motorists will tire of switching off ISA and they will just learn to live with it.”
Mr Gooding said it would take autonomy away from drivers, with cars increasingly deciding what drivers can and can’t do, and said it was the beginning of the end of people choosing cars based on top speed.
ISA has a forward-facing camera that can recognise speed limit signs and is integrated with GPS mapping data so the car always knows what limit applies to its location.
When fitted, the technology will send a warning beep or the steering wheel will vibrate when drivers pass the speed limit. If the driver does not take action, the accelerator will ease up, reducing the speed to keep in line with the limit.
Manufacturers including Ford have been offering ISA as an option on new cars since 2015, and it has been mandatory on all new cars sold in Europe since 2022, but could be switched off.
Flashback to Charles Cooke in 2017: The War on Driving to Come. Or as Iowahawk warned right around the same time, America “needs a Second Amendment protecting the right to keep and bear cars.”
OCEANIA HAS NEVER BEEN AT WAR WITH ISRAEL: Pro-Hamas Protesters Seek Amnesty, Pardons to Protect Careers.
Maryam Alwan figured the worst was over after New York City police in riot gear arrested her and other protesters on the Columbia University campus, loaded them onto buses and held them in custody for hours.
But the next evening, the college junior received an email from the university. Alwan and other students were being suspended after their arrests at the “ Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” a tactic colleges across the country have deployed to calm growing campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war.
The students’ plight has become a central part of protests, with students and a growing number of faculty demanding their amnesty. At issue is whether universities and law enforcement will clear the charges and withhold other consequences, or whether the suspensions and legal records will follow students into their adult lives.
As noted above, the students are fearful that their arrest records and suspensions will “follow them into their adult lives.” Based on their recent actions, I realize that we’re not dealing with the fastest set of tractors on the farm here, but I have a news flash for these rioters. Nearly every one of you is at least 18 years old and some of the juniors and seniors are in their twenties. You are already in your “adult life,” despite the fact that you’re not acting in a very mature fashion.
In 1993, at a Cato Institute dinner, P.J. O’Rourke famously said, “There’s only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”
Why aren’t today’s college protestors willing to live the consequences of their actions? It’s almost as if they’re still in the Marlon Brando, “What are you rebelling against? Whaddya got?” Jurassic school of reactionary protests, and don’t actually believe in the cause du jour.
UPDATE (FROM GLENN): This is what they’re worried about: Dox ’em! Let’s make the Ivy kids have to choose between their support for baby beheaders and those cushy jobs after graduation. Big business is ready to withdraw the job offers; all they need are the names…
The 1968 Columbia protesters asked for, and got, amnesty, as I recall. It set a bad precedent.
Related: Education Apocalypse Now?
ALL THE CLIMATE BS IS FRAUD AND CORRUPTION ALL THE WAY DOWN. EVERYWHERE: New document release reveals the astounding fraud, deception and idiocy accompanying the German nuclear phase-out.
LESSONS:
In the same month, the Fed missed its target for the consumer-price index; inflation registered 8.2%, some six percentage points higher than the 2% reading at which the central bank was taking aim. Behold physics—and behold economics."
— GRANT'S (@GrantsPub) April 24, 2024
THE HAMAS/STUDENT PROTESTS AND MISNINFORMATION: Earlier this morning, I read Professor Glenn’s squib here about how press access to these encampments is being controlled by the little terrorist supporters.
It rang a bell for me, and I though I would share a commentary I wrote for The Daily Caller six years ago that touches on the same thing. In the interview with Judith Miller, she explained how the quality reporting there is challenged because you need permission from the IDF to get into Gaza, but Hamas demands that they control access (through “minders” tagging along at all your visits and interviews) and Hamas filters out as much negative news as they can.
Now please, don’t get lost in the weeds bickering about whether Miller was right or wrong or good or bad, or whether we should be in or support Gazans, Hamas, or Israel.
I think the salient — and timely — point here is that smarter people are beginning to ask about the college frenzies being coordinated both financially and strategically.
I’ve seen pictures of a few of these encampments and noticed that in one shot, at least 2 dozen of the tents are identical pop-up types. Who and how logistics could be very revealing.
ANYTHING TO HURT AMERICAN MANUFACTURERS: War on Guns: Biden Commerce Dept. Will Make Small Arms Export Pause Permanent.
TRY THAT IN A RED STATE: Watch: Texas DPS Shows Up at a Pro-Hamas ‘Encampment,’ and Beautiful Chaos Follows.
Extremists part of the @Columbia CHAZ-style occupation chant support for Hamas terror:
“Al-Qassam, you make us proud, take another soldier out”
“We say justice, you say how? Burn Tel Aviv to the ground”
“Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets too”pic.twitter.com/YtNwzqYvNd
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) April 20, 2024
Palestinian activists TACKLED to the floor and arrested as Texas DPS troops make dozens of arrests as an unruly mob surround the officers and scream.
Hundreds of students have occupied the University of Texas- Austin and have been ordered to disperse.
Video: @RyanChandlerTV pic.twitter.com/lE3RIpgzEr
— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) April 24, 2024
BRAZIL VERSUS X IS GETTING INTERESTING: We Exposed Censorship By Brazil’s Supreme Court, And Now President Lula Is Persecuting Me.
Jts5665Pillage and plunder.
STREISAND EFFECT: Watch the Video That the House the Sergeant at Arms Wants to Fine Rep. Massie for Sharing.
This is the U.S. House of Representatives under the direction of Speaker Mike Johnson. Democrats are celebrating his total capitulation with no victory for securing our border. #MTV pic.twitter.com/TtaIgnX9eg
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) April 20, 2024
This author isn’t inherently offended by someone flying the flag of another country. We could imagine some Americans (including Congresspersons) waiving British flags during World War II as a sign of friendship and solidarity even before we entered the war, and many friends have been flying the Israeli flag, particularly since October 7, 2023.
But this author has yet to hear someone rationally explain why we should care so much about Ukraine. It is no longer a republic versus a dictatorship, as it was at the start of the war. It has devolved into deciding which dictator rules Ukraine: Putin or Zelenskyy. We find it hard to care about that question. We suppose we prefer Zelenskyy but not enough to go further into debt over it. Many say this will weaken Putin, as if our bigger problem isn’t China. Putin isn’t trying to tell us what movies we can watch, but China is and they are taking other steps to actively subvert our Republic. And don’t even get us started when they unleashed a plague that screwed up most of the world. All things being equal, we would rather ally with Putin against China, rather than drive Putin into China’s arms.
But whatever you think of the display, We the People have a right to see it and evaluate it for ourselves, right? The people who vote for these people have a right to decide if this is appropriate behavior for a Congresscritter and vote according to their views.
However, Massie posted that the House Sergeant at Arms threatened to fine Massie for informing the American people of the display they put on[.]
Last year, Newsweek ran a story headlined, “The Startling Similarities Between Joe Biden and Lyndon Johnson.” LBJ couldn’t sell those on his own side of the aisle on why Vietnam was a necessary war in the mid-1960s, and Biden at age 81 lacks the ability to rally those on the opposite side of the aisle on why Ukraine is a necessary war in 2024. Particularly after a half century of his own party pulling the rug out from nations we had previously given our support to. No wonder many in the GOP are skeptical.
Let me remind you that this person can vote.
