This is interesting and perhaps surprising from Anthony Blinken. Notable also that the only question from the NYT interviewer, clearly assuming/hoping that this was to be another Israel-bashing opportunity, was about Netanyahu supposedly blocking a ceasefire deal that would have led to the release of the hostages (ha!), a point which Blinken was quick to…

Something completely different. Table-tennis aficionado Howard Jacobson turns his attention to darts after Luke Littler's Ally Pally triumph. A world-champion darts player writes home… You have commented over the years on my adiposity. How can a pair of fleshless neurasthenics such as you, who chew their fingers to the bone for art’s sake, have produced…

This Telegraph report from Sam Ashworth-Hayes and Charlie Peters on the rape-gang scandal makes desperately grim reading. Across the country, in towns and in cities, on our streets and in the state institutions designed to protect the most vulnerable members of our society, authorities deliberately turned a blind eye to horrific abuse of largely white…

James Marriott in the Times gives a scathing review to The Telepathy Tapes, a podcast from one Ky Dickens: The Telepathy Tapes is animated by contempt for all the values that underpin science: respect for evidence, a willingness to be wrong, a commitment to what is actually true instead of what you wish were true. In…

BBC reporting on Israel….it's the same old story. From the JC: The BBC has apologised to a rabbi after ambushing him live on air about Israel in an interview which was pitched to be about Chanukah, the JC has learnt. Rabbi Gideon Sylvester, the United Synagogue’s Israel Rabbi based in Jerusalem, was approached by a BBC producer about taking part…

If you can understand that the woke left labelling their political opponents as "far-right, Nazi racists" was a sign of derangement, then you should recognise the parallels with "rape genocide apologist" and "complicit in the rape of Britain". — Stephen Knight 🎙️ (@GSpellchecker) January 3, 2025 https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Full text: I've interviewed survivors and criticised our…

As a follow-up to the FFRF debacle, here's Richard Dawkins in the Spectator on the myth of the God-shaped hole: In a recent interview, I imprudently said I was a “cultural Christian”, and I haven’t heard the end of it. I find myself unwillingly counted in the Great Christian Revival (translation, “We don’t actually believe…

The excuse for the blanket of silence over the rape gangs scandal – from the authorities and from the media – has been that they didn't want to give encouragement to the far right, or inflame racism against immigrant communities. Ben Sixsmith at The Critic: In 2015, the historian Tom Holland, reflecting on the Rotherham…

Kathleen Stock at UnHerd on the censorious response to a new report which suggests that the drinking habits of young women in the UK outmatch those of boys here, as well as beating most teenagers in the rest of Europe. The doomsters, she thinks, miss out the joy. Remember those first moments of alcohol-fuelled exhilaration…

Marion Post Wolcott, May 1940. Memphis, Tennessee. "Main Street at night during Cotton Carnival." [Photo: Shorpy/Marion Post Wolcott for the Farm Security Administration] Added Shorpy comment: Today it's Carnival Memphis. "Cotton" was dropped in 1987 because "our economy has become more diversified. We accomplish our mission through the four C's: Charity, Community, Commerce and Celebration."…