An offshoot of the conservative Heritage Foundation is suing the Central Intelligence Agency, accusing it of withholding records detailing payoffs to analysts to bury findings that a lab leak was the most likely explanation for the COVID-19 pandemic.
A woman describes herself as an ‘ecosexual’ – and says she’s an ‘erotic’ relationship with an oak tree.
Sonja Semyonova, 45, has always felt lonely but says her new relationship with the tree has filled a void.
Sonja, a self-intimacy guide, even says that the feelings she experiences with the tree are what she has always looked for in a person.
China’s national chess champion has been stripped of his title over allegations he used anal beads to cheat and celebrated his sham victory by defecating in a bathtub.
Yan Chenglong, 48, beat dozens of contenders to become “Xiangqi King” at a Chinese chess tournament on December 17.
But his joy was short-lived after the sport’s governing body, the Chinese Xiangqi Association (CXA), on Monday announced Yan would have his title revoked and prize money confiscated due to inappropriate celebrations.
And your UBER Driver … inspired by Hamas perhaps?
Border officials reported the highest number of migrant crossings ever, with a seven-day average of more than 9,600 in December, a Homeland Security official told CNN.
The record-smashing figure is the average across the entire southern border of the country. In November, the figure sat at 6,800 – meaning the southern border has seen an influx of 3,000 more arrivals per day as migrants continue to pour through the border.
‘That is a historic number,’ Texas Rep. Tony Gonzales said last week from crossing hot-spot of Eagle Pass, Texas. ‘Yet, more people are coming. And there’s more people in the pipeline.’
A government bill to restrict underage access to pornography may hinder the privacy of Canadians and give Ottawa stronger online censorship control, according to an internet expert.
Law professor and Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-Commerce Law Michael Geist recently raised concerns about the enforcement measures tucked into Bill S-210.
When it comes to understanding his opposition, Justin Trudeau has revealed he holds a cartoon caricature view of the Conservative Party. That’s one of the main takeaways from Trudeau’s year-end conversation with his longtime friend and former radio host Terry DiMonte.
Michael Shellenberger’s first brush with social-media censorship came in 2020 when he was censored by Facebook for sharing accurate information about climate change.
In the years since, Shellenberger has reported extensively on what he calls the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” a network of government agencies including the Department of Homeland Security, government contractors, and social-media platforms that conspired to censor ordinary Americans and elected officials for holding disfavored views.
Apologies for this seasonal downer. Had the website such a listing, this column would surely soar to number one in The Spectator’s “Least Popular” roster. For just now, few topics are a bigger turn-off than Ukraine.
Following Russia’s invasion, I got caught up in the same waves of emotion that washed over most western publics, and I say that with no regret. After relentlessly battling the prevailing cultural winds these past few years, I was relieved to feel a sense of solidarity for once. Most of us were revulsed by the gratuitous aggression, allied with an underdog whose bite proved surprisingly fierce, thrilled by a former comedian’s unexpected rise to his nation’s occasion and consumed by a weirdly addictive loathing for Vladimir Putin. Kyiv’s repelling Russia’s clumsy invasion of the capital was exhilarating. Like so many of you, in those early months I read about Ukraine every day.
With the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) making good progress in their attempts to destroy the Islamist Hamas terrorist organisation, this is not the moment for the Biden administration to soften its support for Israel.
On the contrary, with the IDF exposing the true extent of Hamas’s underground terrorist infrastructure in Gaza, with many of the terrorists’ key command and control systems located either within or beneath hospitals, schools and mosques, Washington needs to give Israel the backing it needs to finish its declared objective of wiping Hamas from the face of the earth.
A Tesla engineer was attacked by a robot during a brutal and bloody malfunction at the company’s Giga Texas factory near Austin.
Two witnesses watched in horror as their fellow employee was attacked by the machine designed to grab and move freshly cast aluminum car parts.
The robot had pinned the man, who was then programming software for two disabled Tesla robots nearby, before sinking its metal claws into the worker’s back and arm, leaving a ‘trail of blood’ along the factory surface.
h/t Mauser
There is a misunderstanding that brainwashing, a technique of mental and psychological reprogramming conducted in an environment of ideological totalism, is irresistible and permanent. However, social isolation, sensory and sleep deprivation, torture, and psychological manipulation in a dystopian environment do not transform most subjects into passive automatons that are amenable to any and all suggestions.
Isn’t it high time for more nuanced picture of the populist voters who have been decisive in reshaping politics across the West?
On November 22nd, the Netherlands found itself at the centre of worldwide press coverage as a political earthquake struck its parliament. The Party for Freedom, led by populist ‘radical-right’ politician Geert Wilders (whom many caricature as the ‘Dutch Trump’), won 37 seats in the 150-seat Second Chamber. Hundreds of left-wing voters immediately gripped banners firmly in their fists and took to the streets of Utrecht and Amsterdam to protest his dramatic victory.
As the face of the party he helped found in 2006, Wilders has slowly established himself in the Dutch political scene. For two decades, he has seduced the electorate with his incendiary rhetoric, desperately seeking to curb immigration (mostly of Muslim Moroccans), leave the European Union, and “put the Dutch first.” It seems all too familiar. In this election victory, as in many other moments that punctuated European political history in the last decade, the populist radical-right vote and abstention rate have reached historic highs. This has profound implications for the political balance at the upcoming European elections in June 2024.
Even as America increasingly highlights humanitarian suffering in Gaza, planning for the “day after” there will require re-examination of past misconceptions, such as calling the Strip the world’s “largest open air prison.”
That moniker, often promoted in press accounts and pushed hard by the Qatari-owned pan-Arab network Al Jazeera, led to unprecedented foreign aid to the Palestinian territories. While Arabs in Syria, Yemen, Sudan, the Sahel, and other war-besieged territories were clamoring for outside help, Gaza received lopsided attention.
Didn’t Trudeau just rescue a whack of so called “Canadians” who lived voluntarily in the world’s ‘Largest Open Air Prison’?
Knife crime in London is rising at its fastest rate in five years with more than 40 incidents reported to the police every day, the Telegraph can disclose.
Warfare between rival drug gangs combined with spiralling street robbery rates are contributing to the surge in violent offences.
Gun crime in the capital is also on the increase with shootings up more than six per cent on the same period in 2022.
