Well, the Olympics television viewership ratings are in for NBC and, boy, are they ugly:
NBC’s primetime coverage of the Tokyo Olympics on July 26 averaged 14.7 million viewers — for a 49% drop compared to the equivalent night from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games and 53% less than the 2012 London Olympics. The opening ceremonies saw their lowest viewership since 1988.
In international politics, what do you do when you don’t know what to do but wish to appear to be doing something?
The answer is: you convene an international conference.
The gimmick started with the notorious Versailles Conference after the First World War that morphed into a series of photo-ops while real decisions were taken elsewhere and behind the scenes. More recently we had the grand Madrid Conference that was supposed to produce an unlikely peace in the Middle East but became an introduction to a new era of conflict in the war-torn region. Last week we have had a virtual version of the international conference on Lebanon, the second in 12 months and designed to mark the anniversary of the deadly explosion that tore Beirut apart.
I think Lebanon is safely slotted into the pantheon of permanent failed states. Should the west even bother?
Thursday marked the 151st birthday of the most successful revolutionary of all time, Vladimir Lenin. With only a tiny cabal of diehard followers, Lenin seized control of the world’s largest country and inaugurated a reign of darkness and terror that lasted seventy years.
There are many lessons to draw from the blood-soaked life of Lenin. But one of the most important is this takeaway for the terrifying “woke” moment America is living through right now. Things are not going to naturally get better. Things will not organically “calm down.” Until there is a fundamental reset of America’s treasonous leadership class, today’s unthinkable witch hunt is merely a prelude of an even darker globalist terror to come.
The tragic reality is that today’s United States is no longer Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill. It is, instead, a republic in decline
LONDON — It was the land of capitalism, freedom, the melting pot and the American dream: its deep imperfections notwithstanding, I always held it to be a self-evident truth that there was much the United States of America could teach Britain. On visits during my teenage and student years, I was enthralled by the dynamism, the can-do attitude, the work ethic, the quality of life of the middle classes, the commitment to religious freedom and civil society, the brilliance of the universities, the romance of its great cities and the lifestyle epitomized by the homes and cars of its suburbs.
I remain hopeful that the USA will regain its senses. Trump was revitalizing America, teaching it to have a backbone again. The Pharisees chased him from the Temple.
The Iranian government called out the United States in a statement commemorating the 76th anniversary of the US nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and called for a world without nuclear weapons.
Saeed Khatibzadeh, a spokesperson for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, declared on Saturday that the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, showed the world that the US “spares no inhumane efforts and acts to achieve its illegitimate and irrational objectives.”
Pakistani exiles living in London who have criticised the country’s powerful military have been warned that their lives are in danger, raising fresh concern over authoritarian regimes targeting foreign dissidents in the UK.
British security sources are understood to be concerned that Pakistan, a strong UK ally – particularly on intelligence issues – might be prepared to target individuals on British soil.
Pakistan a “strong ally?” Now that’s a laugh.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York has come under fire following an investigation into his conduct by New York Attorney General Letitia James, which found 11 counts of sexual harassment. Following the release of this report, prominent democratic politicians from the speaker of the New York State Assembly all the way up to President Joe Biden have called for his resignation. Yet while people across the country are surprised, this is not the first time the governor has shown us who he really is.
The New York government has long been corrupt. And while Cuomo has vowed to rid Albany of the moral and political rot that has plagued New York for so long, he has been contributing to it.
Local preservationists fight to save Civil War sites from solar energy execs
HENRICO COUNTY, Va.—The speed limit sign posted inside the barbed wire fence says 15 miles per hour. If you are driving over unmarked graves it is best to proceed with caution, all the better to avoid the yellow excavator bucket lying idle on the gravel roadway. Tree saplings have been planted the length of the perimeter to eventually obscure from public view hundreds of solar panels that rest on what was once a landscape of misery for boys from Georgia and Pennsylvania. The field, known as Savage’s Station, owes its name to the at least 900 Union and Confederate soldiers who killed each other here in Henrico County in 1862. The site is now filled with the ambitions of environmentalists, politicians, and solar energy executives.
A woke corporate ad campaign shows that there are many ways to exploit the young.
If you want your revolution to succeed, recruit the kids—they are easy to brainwash. Totalitarians have always sought to indoctrinate the young and even get them to turn in their parents. Kids become the conduits of ideology, bringing government orthodoxy into the home and ridding it of heresy.
The vaccination mandates are starting to roll out at all levels now, including one for all federal workers. State and municipal governments are following suit, as are some private employers. Simply saying that you’ve been vaccinated isn’t enough, however. You have to have some form of proof. In the United States, the most common form of such identification is the flimsy, white, cardboard card from the CDC that most people receive after getting their jab(s). Since vaccination records are not routinely tracked in any sort of national database, that’s basically all the proof that’s available.
TORONTO — The next edition of the Olympic Games are only half a year away, and more than half of Canadians say they support or somewhat support a Canadian boycott of the event, according to a new survey from Nanos Research for CTV News.
The idea of boycotting the Beijing Games has been floated for years. The Conservatives are on the record as calling for a Canadian boycott as part of a “wider plan” among Western allies, while human rights groups have urged the International Olympic Committee to move the event out of China.
They are aggressive, territorial, noisy and excrete more than a kilogram of faeces a day. Now huge flocks of Canada geese have made parts of rural New Zealand their home, bringing havoc in their wake.
The introduced birds are polluting waterways, damaging pasture and are so numerous in some places that they pose a threat to aircraft, but little is being done to curb the problem.
I call it magic wand thinking; the idea that all a government has to do to replace fossil fuels with “green” alternatives is wave a magic wand (and a few trillion dollars) and – presto! – the world will have a low-carbon future.
A 29-year-old female Chicago police officer was killed and her partner was seriously wounded during an armed confrontation with three suspects on the city’s South Side.
Ella French has just returned from maternity leave, and leaves behind a two-month-old daughter.
The two officers were fired upon after a vehicle carrying two men and a woman had been pulled over at 9pm, said Eric Carter, Chicago police first deputy superintendent, at a news conference early Sunday.
More – Two Chicago police officers among 44 people shot in weekend violence that left one officer dead.
