The view from the Beeb:
Jeremy Bowen calling Oct 7 a “defeat” isn’t a neutral word – it echoes Hamas’s own narrative that it was primarily a military engagement rather than a massacre of civilians. Bad enough to refuse to call Hamas terrorists – so much worse to use their own language instead. pic.twitter.com/vTbrnDfeIZ
— Dave Rich (@daverich1) October 18, 2024
Oct. 11. The order came immediately after North Korea’s foreign ministry issued a “decisive statement” through state media, according to a source in Pyongyang.
The statement accused South Korea of sending drones to drop propaganda leaflets over Pyongyang, including near the leadership headquarters, and ordered organizations to be on high alert. Calling it a grave provocation aimed at the country’s core, the government ordered the military and civil defense forces to prepare for combat to defend Pyongyang with their lives.
Factory security guards and civil defense forces, including units of the Worker-Peasant Red Guards, at every organization and enterprise in Pyongyang, including small businesses, have been conducting emergency mobilization drills since Oct. 11, the source said.
“The drills are scheduled to last for 10 days, but it was mentioned beforehand that the drills could be extended if necessary,” the source said.
In addition, the authorities said that all citizens of Pyongyang should remain vigilant in their daily lives and that if they come across any leaflets or other suspicious items, they should not touch or look at them, but should immediately inform the authorities at their local state security department, police station, neighborhood watch unit or neighborhood government office….
According to the source, residents of the capital pay little attention to North Korea’s periodic denunciations of the South. They briefly take note of the latest comments and then go about their normal routines.
“The government is trying to reinforce the ideological conformity of the people by responding harshly and creating a sober atmosphere. But in private conversations with friends and family, Pyongyang’s citizens note that South Korea must have really made a lot of progress if it’s sending unmanned aircraft all the way to Pyongyang,” the source said.
ow Hezbollah as well; and the return of the hostages. As long as Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and friends believe the endgame is the destruction of Israel, their surrender is necessary.
There was nothing then and there is nothing now to negotiate with evil.
#Hamas terrorists murdered a young Tanzanian in Israel because Islamic jihadists hate Africans like they hate Israelis.
“Stop claiming solidarity where there is none.”
– @JoshWashIBSI pic.twitter.com/jurKxMPkRD
— Dumisani Washington (@DumisaniTemsgen) October 17, 2024
Surreal and shocking. In Iran, the judicial system has sentenced a woman to be raped in her own home, sending enforcers to ensure the crime is carried out.
💔😡
And because divorce is nearly impossible in some cases, the woman may be raped constantly by her own husband under the… pic.twitter.com/8EKYsD61ve— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) October 16, 2024
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"And because divorce is nearly impossible in some cases, the woman may be raped constantly by her own husband under the regime’s supervision. This barbarism can’t be ignored."
ed. I think he’s a big fat liar.”
It's a scam. Of course it's a scam. Women suffer, but it's all worth it in the name of being seen to be "progressive" on gender issues.
of suicide.
In July, he posted on X, formerly Twitter, about an independent review by Prof Louis Appleby, a suicide expert. The review debunked trans activists’ claims that the ban on puberty blocker drugs, brought in by the previous government in May, will increase child suicides.
In the post, Mr Laverick wrote: “As a Samaritan listening volunteer, will the charity stand with Prof Appleby and condemn the false and irresponsible suicide claims around those whom are questioning their gender and reconsider our signposting list to remove harmful groups?”
In a later post, he called Gendered Intelligence an example of a “harmful group”.
Gendered Intelligence has caused controversy by giving seminars in schools to children as young as four on changing gender.
The charity says it exists to “increase understanding of gender diversity”, but parents’ groups have expressed concern that young children will become confused and could misinterpret feelings of unhappiness as a symptom of being the “wrong” gender….
Maya Forstater, chief executive of human rights charity Sex Matters, said: “Professor Appleby’s report for the Government was blistering on the dangers of misrepresenting suicide statistics in the context of trans activism.
“Organisations like the Samaritans should be taking it on board, not reprimanding volunteers for sharing it publicly.”
From Samaritans Media Guidelines for Reporting Suicide:
Steer clear of presenting suicidal behaviour as an understandable response to a crisis or adversity. This can contribute to unhelpful and risky normalising of suicide as an appropriate response to distress.
Hmm.
that Israel has had to go to war to clear out the…
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) October 16, 2024
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“The United Nations peacekeeping force known as Unifil had one job: Keep armed terrorists out of southern Lebanon, where they could shoot at Israel. It failed so abysmally that Israel has had to go to war to clear out the terrorists. So what does Unifil do now? It refuses to fight, refuses to move, and blames Israel for putting its non-peacekeepers at risk.”
khartley.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451ebab69e202e860ee2ebe200d-pi” style=”display: inline”>
1963 Mercedes-Benz 220 SE Cabriolet, $2,000 – $5,000 USD
1976 Aston Martin V8 Series III, $30,000 – $40,000 USD
1938 Mercedes-Benz 230 Coupe by Baur $30,000 – $50,000 USD
1972 Ferrari 365 GTC/4 by Pininfarina, $40,000 – $50,000 USD
1956 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL 'Alloy' Gullwing, $4,500,000 – $6,000,000 USD
1967 Porsche 911 S 'Soft-Window' Targa, $3,000 – $6,000 USD
1937 Horch 853 Cabriolet, $200,000 – $300,000 USD
1964 Maserati Sebring 3500 GTi Series I by Vignale, $30,000 – $40,000 USD
1936 Mercedes-Benz 290 Sedan, $20,000 – $30,000 USD
[Photos: Robin Adams © RM Sotheby's]
That last one, "Believed to have been originally owned by influential and controversial filmmaker, D.W. Griffith".
d church sermons.
Here we were again, the same merciless infanticides inscribed in the imaginations of medieval Christians. Only this time, instead of operating on the midnight streets of Lincoln and Norwich, they target Palestinian schools, the paediatric wards of hospitals, the tiny fragile bodies of children themselves. Even when there are other explanations for the devastation, no one really believes them. Reporters whose reports are proved wrong see no reason to apologise. No amendment of their calumnies. What is there to apologise for? It could have been true.
Ask how Israel is able to target innocent children with such deadly accuracy and no one can tell you. Ask why they would want to target innocent children and make themselves despised among the nations of the Earth and no one can tell you that either. Hate on this scale seeks no rational explanation. Hate feeds off the superstitions that fed it last time round. The narrative of these events requires a heartless villainy and who more heartlessly villainous than those who severed the arteries of Little Hugh of Lincoln?
Brendan O'Neill in the Spectator today:
Children in Gaza are dying in this ghastly war Hamas started with its fascistic pogrom against the Jewish state on 7 October last year. Yet there’s something new and strange in the discussion of child suffering in Gaza. In this war, the agony of the guiltless ones is not seen as accidental, as an awful byproduct of the fierce fighting. No, it’s seen as intentional, calculated, an actual war aim of the Jewish nation. Israel, its legion haters cry, is an infanticidal regime.
This is the first war I can remember where there’s been such a feverish urge to prove that kids are not just dying but are being murdered. Israel is ‘targeting childhood’, its critics insist. Peruse the Israelophobic toilet of social media and you will be confronted by wild cries about Israel exterminating the next generation of Gazans. ‘Infanticide’ is ‘inherent in Israel’s genocide’, some say. Leftie podcasts bristle with dark chatter about Israel’s bloodlust for innocent life.
This view of the Jewish state as a child-killing machine has even leaked into the mainstream discourse. A high-ranking UNICEF official described Israel’s war as a ‘war on children’. ‘They shoot children, don’t they?’, said a headline in Ireland recently.
Even pre-7 October, Israel was talked about as a nation that positively relishes in child death. In July 2023, in an interview with the former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett, a BBC news anchor put it to him that ‘Israeli forces are happy to kill children’. Happy. These freaks get a kick from child suffering. The BBC later apologised, but it was too late – the ugly dinner-party belief that Israel loves to kill kids had seeped into public view….
Is it anti-semitic to point out that children have died in Gaza? Of course not. Is it anti-semitic to say the Jewish State, unique among the family of nations, hunts kids down so that it might spill their blood and exterminate their kind? It kind of is. Let’s put it another way. Is it anti-semitic to criticise Israel? No. Is it anti-semitic to feverishly obsess over Israel, to brand it as uniquely murderous, to judge it by a different standard to every other state, and to hint darkly that it is sacrificing Gazan children at the altar of its demented regional ambitions? Honestly – yes.