God, family, fatherland – how Giorgia Meloni has taken Italy’s far right to the brink of power
Brothers of Italy poised to triumph in next weekend’s elections in alliance with Salvini’s League and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia
Determined, stubborn, sarcastic and with a shrewd knack of casting aside her enemies, a trait developed after being bullied over her weight as a child, Giorgia Meloni, 45, is on the verge of becoming Italy’s first female prime minister.
Her Brothers of Italy party, an offspring of fascism, is riding high in opinion polls, edging up even further in final polls to widen the gap with the centre-left Democratic party. The lead is forecast to give Meloni and her alliance, composed of Matteo Salvini’s far-right League and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, a comfortable victory in general elections on 25 September.
Trying to Prove You’re Not a Racist
Since I started writing this newsletter, once about every couple of weeks I have received a missive from someone troubled by a controversy involving race, usually in the workplace.
These readers feel that their opponents in these fusses are unfairly tarring them as racist. Typical disputes they find themselves embroiled in include whether a school program should devote itself centrally to antiracism, whether it is fair to hire people ranking skin color over qualifications, whether reparations for slavery in a local context are appropriate and what they should consist of, and whether a piece of art should be deemed racist.
Why Orwell matters
His defence of freedom flies in the face of all that is woke and regressive today.
Most people think that George Orwell was writing about, and against, totalitarianism – especially when they encounter him through the prism of his great dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
This view of Orwell is not wrong, but it can miss something. For Orwell was concerned above all about the particular threat posed by totalitarianism to words and language. He was concerned about the threat it posed to our ability to think and speak freely and truthfully. About the threat it posed to our freedom.
Pierre Poilievre suffered a week of self-inflicted damage
MONTREAL — Until last Tuesday, Richmond-Arthabaska MP Alain Rayes was one of the Conservative party’s best-known and most influential members in Quebec.
Before spending the past six months in a leading role in Jean Charest’s leadership campaign, he had twice served as Quebec lieutenant, first for Andrew Scheer and more recently for Erin O’Toole.
In the last three elections, he bucked the Quebec trend by winning a riding that boasted little previous conservative history.
Queen’s death is reminder of disappearing WWII generation
LONDON (AP) — The long good-bye for Queen Elizabeth II is a reminder of a broader truth playing out with little fanfare across Britain: The nation is bidding farewell to the men and women who fought the country’s battles during World War II.
The queen, who served as a mechanic and truck driver in the last months of the war, was a tangible link to the sailors, soldiers, airmen, marines and others who signed up to do their bit in a conflict that killed 384,000 service personnel and 70,000 British civilians.
But like the queen, even the youngest veterans of the war are now nearing their 100th birthdays, and a steady stream of obituaries tells the story of a disappearing generation.
The Aftermath of the Invasion: Travelling to Irpin and Bucha
Spring of 2022 was a challenging period for Ukraine, particularly for those territories that were invaded by the Russian army. It was a time of uncertainty. Striking from Belarus, the invading forces came dangerously close to the capital. They moved more slowly than anticipated, meeting heavy resistance every step of the way. Still, they were greater in number, and the Ukrainian military was not as prepared as it should have been, given the threat dating back to 2014. Russian casualties did not stop their convoys from moving south. One by one, small towns and villages were occupied. Kyiv, however, proved to be a much tougher target; Russians were stopped a few kilometres away from the city’s outskirts.
Uber Woke Ceeb Asks: So who’s ‘woke,’ what does it mean and how is it being used in Canadian politics?
The word “woke” — originally used to describe awareness of discrimination — has been adopted by figures on the political right to discredit policies and politicians they consider too progressive, experts say.
The word was directed earlier this week at the Liberals and NDP by Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. And some Liberals have been dancing around the term when asked about it by journalists.
“It’s a term that’s been evolving fast,” said Jennifer Saul, a professor who specializes in the philosophy of political language at the University of Waterloo.
h/t DM
How Pierre Poilievre captured the hearts of Canada’s Conservatives
OTTAWA – Pierre Poilievre began his Conservative leadership campaign with a video featuring him alone, dressed in a dark suit and crisp white shirt, seated at a heavy wooden desk, shelves crammed with books and photos behind him.
His campaign’s final video showed him on a stage in a rumpled blue shirt, sleeves rolled above his wrist, surrounded by thousands of cheering fans.
What took him from one to the other is the story of a politician who had long thought about what he’d do if he became prime minister, and finally decided to give it a try.
WTF?
5th grade teacher claims multiple students have come out to her because she’s “out and proud.” 10-year-olds are coming out as trans and non-binary to their teachers… pic.twitter.com/OsMdolAggS
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) September 16, 2022
Fraudulent Dr. Fauci Bows Out Way Too Late
His “lies and lockdowns” response sets the stage for future pandemics.
The story may or may not be apocryphal. A medical lecturer was taking questions after a talk and was asked, “Doctor, at what point did physicians start saving more lives than they took?” Came the reply: “Soon. Very soon.”
The need for both medical treatment and prevention even when none was available or in any case unknown has made the medical profession on par with politics for flimflammery and general deceit, albeit with an added element of just plain ignorance compounded by arrogance of the ignorance.
San Francisco’s Slide
Disorder poses a danger to its future.
This past spring, activity in downtown San Francisco reached just 31 percent of its 2019 level, as measured by comparing visits to points of interests such as restaurants, retail shops, and grocery stores between the two years. No other North American city of the 62 reviewed in a University of California, Berkeley analysis fell that far. Is “the City,” as its residents like to call it, destined to hollow out and become synonymous with urban decay? Or can it reverse its decline?
Will Japanese people ‘cease to exist’?
Declining fertility is turning the country into one big retirement home
In May of this year that keen observer of future trends Elon Musk caused a storm when he observed that, if their ultra-low birthrate were to continue, the Japanese would eventually ‘cease to exist’. He was responding to an eleventh consecutive drop in population numbers caused by a lack of births and the ever-increasing longevity. Japan now has a record 86,000 centenarians, and adult diapers have outsold those for babies since 2011.
Musk was accused of alarmism but more evidence to support his grim hypothesis emerged recently with a survey of attitudes to marriage among the Japanese young.
Far-right takeover? No, Swedes who are concerned for their country
WITH almost all the votes counted in Sweden’s general election, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson resigned when it became clear that her centre-left government had lost to a right-wing bloc by three seats in the 349-seat parliament.
A close result, but hardly the ‘right-wing takeover’ the media prophesied with dread in order to send shivers up the spines of latte drinkers in Notting Hill. The Times lamented ‘the rise of the Sweden Democrats, a hard-right party with Nazi roots’ who have become the second largest party in Sweden with 20.06 per cent of the vote. The Sweden Democrats replaced the Moderate Party as the leading right-wing party. This is a spectacular advance from the low of 0.4 per cent in 1998 or the 1.4 per cent they gained in 2002.
Thanks to the Biden Administration’s and EU’s Appeasement, Iran’s Mullahs Go Big on Cyberattacks
Not only is the Biden administration is turning a blind eye to the Iranian regime’s terror activities and plots abroad, it has also been completely silent about the mullahs’ escalating cyberattacks.
The small country of Albania appeared to have more courage and stronger leadership than the Biden administration: it recently sent a strong message to the Iranian regime after Iran’s cyberattacks against Albania in July. Albania severed diplomatic relations with Tehran and ordered Iranian diplomats and embassy staff to leave within 24 hours.