‘Gas blackmail’: how Putin’s weaponised energy supplies are hurting Europe
… Less gas sold in Europe means less money for the Kremlin’s war chest, and the EU has committed to cutting Russian imports by two-thirds by year end on that basis. However, despite EU leaders agreeing a partial embargo on Russian oil, any outright ban on its gas appears unlikely given how much many of its members rely on it. So which countries are most vulnerable to Putin’s pressure as he turns the screw?
In promoting my new film and accompanying book, Michelle Obama 2024: Her Real Life Story and Plan for Power, I am asked one question far more often than any other. Is Michelle Obama a dude?
Is this a government or a travelling road show?
What an unholy mess and farce this all is.
Is this a government or a travelling road show?
The prime minister darts around like a summer fly, off to useless summits one day, on a European photo-op mission the next, drops in to Ukraine to pose with Madame Joly for the obligatory photo with the beleaguered Volodymyr Zelenskyy, flits back home for a while, off to Calgary, back to Nova Scotia (the quotient of apologies must be maintained), then on to Ontario for an EV announcement, and then off to a police-guarded lunch in Montreal.
White people shouldn’t post to tiktok to make space for BIPOC people to thrive because every day is a white person day.
She wants to silence people based on their skin color. Thousands in the comments agreed. pic.twitter.com/ockxgZ0CWd
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) July 11, 2022
Did you spend any time on Twitter last weekend? If not, you missed a good one.
Apparently Anne Frank had white privilege. Yes, that Anne Frank. The Jewish girl murdered by Nazis at the age of 15.
TMZ reports that it’s “[u]nclear how this toxic discourse first started,” but the gist is that “Jews had the benefit of their skin color to go unnoticed in public, if only temporarily, during that bleak time in history,” while “POC, historically, haven’t been able to do so.”
Our Problems Aren’t Procedural
… Like many centrist arguments of our age, Haidt’s essay emphasizes the procedural over the substantive. Missing from the 8,000-word argument, though, is an acknowledgement that meaningful national problems might also account for the fracture of American democracy. Credentialed experts, smart centrists, and small-l liberals of all stripes held the reins of power right up to 2016. They presided over a catastrophic misadventure in Iraq, two decades of defeat in Afghanistan, a hollowed industrial base, an earth-spanning recession, a secret surveillance regime, an opioid epidemic, and stagnating livelihoods in both the black communities of America’s inner-cities and the white communities of America’s rural hinterlands. With events like these, retweets are hardly needed to explain faltering faith in the American creed.
A new report from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity claims that most of President Biden’s top officials have no business experience at all.
Economists Stephen Moore and Jon Decker analyzed the work records and resumes of 68 officials, including Biden himself and his Cabinet members, advisers and regulatory officials.
Moore has been a frequent commentator on tax issues and advised Trump on his tax plan, along with former GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain. Along with Larry Kudlow, he helped pen the Trump 2017 tax cuts.
h/t RM
“A Monmouth University poll released on July 5 reveals that 57% of Americans believe that U.S. federal government actions over the last six months have directly hurt their families. In that same poll, Monmouth compiles the 22 most important priorities of the American people. Neither Russia’s war in Ukraine nor Congress’s January 6 Committee hearings appear anywhere on the list; instead, the top four issues all deal with skyrocketing inflation and economic uncertainty.”
What do we do with really difficult issues? In America we have them out. Because we have the right to do so — given to us by the Founders, and noisily exercised ever since. We discuss things, debate them and in the process hopefully solve some problems.
But today there are people everywhere trying to shut things down. People who want to pretend that their view is the only view it should be possible to hold.
Kyiv and its Western allies should not focus on a “self-indulgent” Nuremberg-style tribunal to try Russians for their crimes against Ukraine, the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor said on Friday.
Some have called for Vladimir Putin and his top generals to be prosecuted over their invasion of Ukraine in an international court similar to that set up to try Nazi war crimes after the Second World War.
Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, earlier this week urged European and ICC officials to open a “special tribunal” to hold the Kremlin to account for its February 24 invasion of his war-torn country.
Chinese researchers recently developed artificial intelligence technology that can gauge Chinese officials’ loyalty to the ruling Communist Party. The technology could be a tool for Beijing’s anti-corruption campaign to monitor further and purge “corrupt” Party members, indicating the regime’s growing fear of losing its legitimacy and power.
More than 4.7 million officials at all levels were investigated, subjected to various forms of disciplinary punishment, or prosecuted in the past 10 years, according to data released by China’s top watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), on June 20.
After about 36 hours Xavier began his return to normalcy and is recovering nicely from his Vet trip trauma.
Bear in mind that “normal” for this moggie is being a demanding little so and so.
I can tell he’s better cuz he’s back to biting me when I call time on his snuggles/naps in my arms.
And he’s really his old self when he scrambles to the top of his cat tree so he can fight me like he’s King Kong Kitty on the Empire State Bldg.
Beside him is his can of toys, not all them just the ones he forces me to play catch with.
If I don’t start tossing on demand he’ll knock it over. I am so owned.
He loves chasing the curly springs I toss for him and when he needs a rest from running those down he jumps into his favourite box and bats at the sponge balls I throw his way.
I am expected to gather them all up and repeat until he decides he’s bored.
His appetite has returned to normal and he just finished off a piece of ham.
Thanks to everyone for their Cat Whisperer advice.
I learned new stuff and it really helped me to be patient and less frazzled with concern.
The grooming-gang scandal shows us that there is nothing noble about silencing uncomfortable truths.
One-thousand girls. That’s the stark figure at the centre of the inquiry into grooming gangs in Telford, which released its landmark report this week. It is believed that more than 1,000 girls have been abused and raped by grooming gangs in the West Midlands town since 1980. The inquiry was sparked by a Sunday Mirror investigation in 2018. Back then, the authorities dismissed the 1,000 figure as ‘sensationalised’ and suggested the newspaper had ‘made it up on the back of a fag packet’. This week, inquiry chair Tom Crowther QC described the Sunday Mirror’s estimate as a ‘measured, reasonable and non-sensational assessment’.
“This is a big deal,” says Punchbowl, breathlessly.
Is it? A bill that’s going straight down the toilet in the Senate sounds like the opposite of a big deal to me.”
A judge in the Canadian province of Alberta has ruled that a woman did not have her rights violated when she was denied an organ transplant due to not being vaccinated against the Wuhan coronavirus.
Court of Queen’s Bench Justice Paul Belzil ruled that Edmonton, Alberta woman Annette Lewis had not had her fundamental character of Rights and Freedoms rights violated by being denied an organ transplant over her vaccination status.
Mengele’s mindset lives on. – Why Did So Many Doctors Become Nazis?
