<![CDATA[Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum

<![CDATA[Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum - Do-It-Yourself]]> https://www.scivillage.com/ Sat, 03 Oct 2026 06:26:07 +0000 MyBB <![CDATA[Beware any group or ideology crusading for immediate paradise? (DIY saviors)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21456.html Wed, 30 Sep 2026 18:07:34 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21456.html As a side note, those who feel that the female assassins or crime gun-women and bombers in today's movies/shows are ludicrous fictions or comic book exaggerations... Need to sample actual history like the Red Army Faction or watch the fairly accurate 2008 film about that left-wing organization (trailer at bottom). Radical egalitarianism really does break down the most obstinate gender barriers (and also truly desperate conventional wars of the past).
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The allure of Eden on Earth
https://theamericanscholar.org/the-allur...-on-earth/

INTRO: When Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another was released last year, some critics and online pundits took issue with how the film portrayed the members of the French 75, the fictional group of socialist revolutionaries fighting against American imperialism and authoritarianism. One character ends up killing someone during a robbery gone wrong, and in an effort to stay out of prison, she turns to the military man she’s been sleeping with for help. Real revolutionaries, the detractors wrote, would not snitch on their comrades to avoid a prison sentence, they would not kill a security guard, and they would not abandon their children to go on the run.

What started as a marginal grumble soon came to include professors, political consultants, and high-profile members of the new American left. It was part of a larger nostalgia for the great groups of “resistance” and political radicals of the late 1960s. When campus protests were organized against Israel’s war in Gaza, they were modeled directly on Vietnam war-era campus takeovers. And then of course there was Beyonce, dressed as a Black Panther, performing at the Super Bowl.

But people in revolutionary groups did do all those things, and more. A few recent releases and reissues have me thinking about this mythologized period of revolution, and the hangovers that followed. Jason Burke’s The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s, published this January, documents the various leftist groups that embraced violent resistance in the hopes of bringing on revolution. Many of the men and women who waged armed combat were true believers in socialism and the Palestinian cause, but some just got pulled in by charismatic leaders like Carlos the Jackal and Andreas Baader, and others were just enchanted by the violence and spectacle of it all, eager for an opportunity to blow up a shop or take a plane full of people hostage.

Principled people like Ulrike Meinhof, a journalist who abandoned her children and husband to join the Red Army Faction and fight for revolution, were outnumbered by the likes of her collaborator Baader, whom Burke describes as “spoiled, arrogant, and lazy.” Baader took credit for other people’s work, quoted Marxist rhetoric to get laid, and waged campaigns of humiliation and manipulation on fellow members of the group. Other groups were similarly run into the ground, starting off fighting for “revolution”—vaguely defined—and ending up in drug trafficking or assassination-for-hire schemes.

Burke focuses mostly on revolutionary groups in Europe and the Middle East because they were the most active, long-lasting, and interconnected. German groups collaborated with Palestinian networks, Japanese revolutionaries showed up in North Africa. Trinidadian novelist and journalist Shiva Naipaul focuses on the Americans, who were less interconnected and less effective: “the children of a prosperous middle class [who] exploded into a semblance of a revolt. They were well nourished, they were more or less educated, they were sentimental, they were spoiled, they were bored, they were looking for kicks, they were touched with half-digested idealisms, they were scared of dying in a war in Southeast Asia.” These were the young people who protested Vietnam, amassed guns and bombs, blew up a few buildings, did time in prison, and then—some of them at least—became tenured professors at prestigious universities.

That is not to say that their protests were not valid. As Burke documents, there existed a real desire among those active in European leftist groups to liberate Palestine, root out the legacy of Nazism in Germany, and bring an end to imperialism and exploitation. Naipaul is clear about the entrenched racism, police brutality, and warmongering that drove young Americans into organizations like the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. But their methods were nonsensical, their goals were impossible, and their organizations were infiltrated by egomaniacs, psychos, and informants.

There’s an uncomfortable scene near the end of Naipaul’s Journey to Nowhere: A New World Tragedy (first published in 1980 and reissued this year by Outsider Editions) in which he visits Huey Newton at the Black Panther headquarters in Oakland, California. It’s the late ’70s at this point, so Malcolm X and MLK have been assassinated, Cointelpro has been unleashed and uncovered, and the massacre at Jonestown has just happened. The Black Panthers have been decimated and reduced to a few social programs—providing buses so that loved ones can visit family members in prison, establishing a small school, offering some health clinic hours.

Newton and Bobby Searle had originally written the Black Panther manifesto, which Newton claims took them only 20 minutes to compile. “We want full employment for our people,” the manifest read. And: “We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society.” They are mostly utopian ideas that would take decades to implement, but they are being presented by people who, when going on armed patrol, have agreed to go down fighting in any confrontation with the police.

Naipaul writes that “none of [these demands] were realizable. Only the truly powerless could be so detached from reality, could write a manifesto in twenty minutes that demanded everything.” Less than a decade after their encounter, Newton would be dead, shot by a member of a rival Marxist Black empowerment paramilitary group... (MORE - details)

The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) ... https://youtu.be/OJal4tCQlpM

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/OJal4tCQlpM]]> As a side note, those who feel that the female assassins or crime gun-women and bombers in today's movies/shows are ludicrous fictions or comic book exaggerations... Need to sample actual history like the Red Army Faction or watch the fairly accurate 2008 film about that left-wing organization (trailer at bottom). Radical egalitarianism really does break down the most obstinate gender barriers (and also truly desperate conventional wars of the past).
- - - - - - - - - - - -

The allure of Eden on Earth
https://theamericanscholar.org/the-allur...-on-earth/

INTRO: When Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another was released last year, some critics and online pundits took issue with how the film portrayed the members of the French 75, the fictional group of socialist revolutionaries fighting against American imperialism and authoritarianism. One character ends up killing someone during a robbery gone wrong, and in an effort to stay out of prison, she turns to the military man she’s been sleeping with for help. Real revolutionaries, the detractors wrote, would not snitch on their comrades to avoid a prison sentence, they would not kill a security guard, and they would not abandon their children to go on the run.

What started as a marginal grumble soon came to include professors, political consultants, and high-profile members of the new American left. It was part of a larger nostalgia for the great groups of “resistance” and political radicals of the late 1960s. When campus protests were organized against Israel’s war in Gaza, they were modeled directly on Vietnam war-era campus takeovers. And then of course there was Beyonce, dressed as a Black Panther, performing at the Super Bowl.

But people in revolutionary groups did do all those things, and more. A few recent releases and reissues have me thinking about this mythologized period of revolution, and the hangovers that followed. Jason Burke’s The Revolutionists: The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s, published this January, documents the various leftist groups that embraced violent resistance in the hopes of bringing on revolution. Many of the men and women who waged armed combat were true believers in socialism and the Palestinian cause, but some just got pulled in by charismatic leaders like Carlos the Jackal and Andreas Baader, and others were just enchanted by the violence and spectacle of it all, eager for an opportunity to blow up a shop or take a plane full of people hostage.

Principled people like Ulrike Meinhof, a journalist who abandoned her children and husband to join the Red Army Faction and fight for revolution, were outnumbered by the likes of her collaborator Baader, whom Burke describes as “spoiled, arrogant, and lazy.” Baader took credit for other people’s work, quoted Marxist rhetoric to get laid, and waged campaigns of humiliation and manipulation on fellow members of the group. Other groups were similarly run into the ground, starting off fighting for “revolution”—vaguely defined—and ending up in drug trafficking or assassination-for-hire schemes.

Burke focuses mostly on revolutionary groups in Europe and the Middle East because they were the most active, long-lasting, and interconnected. German groups collaborated with Palestinian networks, Japanese revolutionaries showed up in North Africa. Trinidadian novelist and journalist Shiva Naipaul focuses on the Americans, who were less interconnected and less effective: “the children of a prosperous middle class [who] exploded into a semblance of a revolt. They were well nourished, they were more or less educated, they were sentimental, they were spoiled, they were bored, they were looking for kicks, they were touched with half-digested idealisms, they were scared of dying in a war in Southeast Asia.” These were the young people who protested Vietnam, amassed guns and bombs, blew up a few buildings, did time in prison, and then—some of them at least—became tenured professors at prestigious universities.

That is not to say that their protests were not valid. As Burke documents, there existed a real desire among those active in European leftist groups to liberate Palestine, root out the legacy of Nazism in Germany, and bring an end to imperialism and exploitation. Naipaul is clear about the entrenched racism, police brutality, and warmongering that drove young Americans into organizations like the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. But their methods were nonsensical, their goals were impossible, and their organizations were infiltrated by egomaniacs, psychos, and informants.

There’s an uncomfortable scene near the end of Naipaul’s Journey to Nowhere: A New World Tragedy (first published in 1980 and reissued this year by Outsider Editions) in which he visits Huey Newton at the Black Panther headquarters in Oakland, California. It’s the late ’70s at this point, so Malcolm X and MLK have been assassinated, Cointelpro has been unleashed and uncovered, and the massacre at Jonestown has just happened. The Black Panthers have been decimated and reduced to a few social programs—providing buses so that loved ones can visit family members in prison, establishing a small school, offering some health clinic hours.

Newton and Bobby Searle had originally written the Black Panther manifesto, which Newton claims took them only 20 minutes to compile. “We want full employment for our people,” the manifest read. And: “We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society.” They are mostly utopian ideas that would take decades to implement, but they are being presented by people who, when going on armed patrol, have agreed to go down fighting in any confrontation with the police.

Naipaul writes that “none of [these demands] were realizable. Only the truly powerless could be so detached from reality, could write a manifesto in twenty minutes that demanded everything.” Less than a decade after their encounter, Newton would be dead, shot by a member of a rival Marxist Black empowerment paramilitary group... (MORE - details)

The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) ... https://youtu.be/OJal4tCQlpM

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/OJal4tCQlpM]]> <![CDATA[NYT writer used her own daughter in ideology experiment? (DIY fun in the franken lab)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21441.html Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:18:12 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21441.html She deserves kudos for being a true believer, though. One might have to go back to the old comrade days of militants wearing the same social-class-blind clothing to find one of the revolutionary elites willing to send their kid to a literal prole dump.
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ACCESSIBLE BACKGROUND ARTICLE: NYT writer Nikole Hannah-Jones’ daughter says she only turned out fine after fighting for better high school than her mom wanted

MATT WALSH
https://youtu.be/CV3HTFqCYiE

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Nikole Hannah-Jones barely writes anything anymore. She's basically like an unofficial figurehead now, kind of like the Meghan Markle of journalism. But somehow even more devoid of talent and personality. But she returned this week with an extremely long op-ed in the New York Times. Where she writes about her decision to send her daughter to a terrible school in New York.

Now she had the money to send her daughter to a good school. But the good schools rather inevitably don't have a lot of Black students. They were too white, too privileged. So she deliberately sentenced her child to languish in a dysfunctional institution. That was more likely to make her dumber instead of smarter, like a kind of anti-education.

Which is exactly what happened. And all of this to strike a blow against white supremacy. Yes, a Black woman was going to make her black daughter dumber. In order to score a point against white people. Very similar to the strategy often employed by BLM to burn down their own neighborhoods out of spite against white people who don't even live in those neighborhoods.

But she apparently believed that because she worked at the New York Times, she could single-handedly turn the bad school around. She seemed to believe that all the students at this school had extraordinary potential and that the only thing holding them back was the school leadership. Which she could influence as a high and mighty New York Times employee. Eight years ago Jones made it very clear that in her view being a New York Times employee meant that she could fix anything, everything. Watch...

[...] So, for ideological reasons, she sabotages her kids' own education, by her own admission. And of course, when she talks about the seemingly hopeless battle for school integration, she's not clarifying exactly what that battle entailed. We did two episodes of our real history series on the civil rights movement, and we focused extensively on school integration.

[...] In virtually every documentary on bussing, the documentaries that children are forced to watch in public schools today, none of this black-on-white racial violence is discussed. Instead, white parents are cast as racist for not wanting the government to take their children, put them on a bus, and drive them an hour away to a school that's much more dangerous and much more dysfunctional than the one they're paying property taxes to attend. So, this is the side of integration that you're not really told about.

[...] Anti-white race hustlers like Jones would prefer you never talk about any of this. They'd prefer to call you racist for sending your child to a mostly white school, and apparently they'd prefer to send their own children to mostly Black schools to really prove you wrong. Except in this case, Jones inadvertently proved the other side right. But not before she unloads a bunch of false statistics to muddy the waters.

[...] Tragically. At some point Jones' daughter realized her mother was torturing her on purpose and attempting to ruin her life so that, you know, she would have something to brag about in the New York Times break room [...] But one day after school, her daughter said, quote, "Did you know my school was this bad when you decided to put me here?" And then eventually she puts her daughter in a mostly white school where she keeps failing her tests even though she thought she got an A.

And then she gets a tutor, and she starts doing better, and yeah, that's the gist. Among other things, this op-ed perfectly demonstrates the perverse, almost exactly inverted priorities of leftists like Nicole Hannah-Jones.

You know, for decent, functional, civilized human beings, the order of personal priorities starts at the most localized level and stretches out in concentric circles from there. So, your immediate priority is the well-being of your family, your spouse, your children, and then from next there would be like your parents, your siblings, and then your extended family, and then your neighborhood, and then your broader community, and out from there.

Well, leftists, they turn this exactly around. So, for them, your priority should start at the broadest and most abstract level possible. You should value the collective, or at least the preferred demographic collective, above your own children. Even sacrifice your child's well-being for the sake of this broad, ambiguous collective. And Jones apparently took this perverse philosophy literally and put it into practice, and it's ended exactly where any rational person would expect it to...

https://youtu.be/CV3HTFqCYiE

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/CV3HTFqCYiE]]> She deserves kudos for being a true believer, though. One might have to go back to the old comrade days of militants wearing the same social-class-blind clothing to find one of the revolutionary elites willing to send their kid to a literal prole dump.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -

ACCESSIBLE BACKGROUND ARTICLE: NYT writer Nikole Hannah-Jones’ daughter says she only turned out fine after fighting for better high school than her mom wanted

MATT WALSH
https://youtu.be/CV3HTFqCYiE

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Nikole Hannah-Jones barely writes anything anymore. She's basically like an unofficial figurehead now, kind of like the Meghan Markle of journalism. But somehow even more devoid of talent and personality. But she returned this week with an extremely long op-ed in the New York Times. Where she writes about her decision to send her daughter to a terrible school in New York.

Now she had the money to send her daughter to a good school. But the good schools rather inevitably don't have a lot of Black students. They were too white, too privileged. So she deliberately sentenced her child to languish in a dysfunctional institution. That was more likely to make her dumber instead of smarter, like a kind of anti-education.

Which is exactly what happened. And all of this to strike a blow against white supremacy. Yes, a Black woman was going to make her black daughter dumber. In order to score a point against white people. Very similar to the strategy often employed by BLM to burn down their own neighborhoods out of spite against white people who don't even live in those neighborhoods.

But she apparently believed that because she worked at the New York Times, she could single-handedly turn the bad school around. She seemed to believe that all the students at this school had extraordinary potential and that the only thing holding them back was the school leadership. Which she could influence as a high and mighty New York Times employee. Eight years ago Jones made it very clear that in her view being a New York Times employee meant that she could fix anything, everything. Watch...

[...] So, for ideological reasons, she sabotages her kids' own education, by her own admission. And of course, when she talks about the seemingly hopeless battle for school integration, she's not clarifying exactly what that battle entailed. We did two episodes of our real history series on the civil rights movement, and we focused extensively on school integration.

[...] In virtually every documentary on bussing, the documentaries that children are forced to watch in public schools today, none of this black-on-white racial violence is discussed. Instead, white parents are cast as racist for not wanting the government to take their children, put them on a bus, and drive them an hour away to a school that's much more dangerous and much more dysfunctional than the one they're paying property taxes to attend. So, this is the side of integration that you're not really told about.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/CV3HTFqCYiE]]> <![CDATA[Warren Smith: the JK Rowling video that altered everything (DIY career change)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21429.html Fri, 25 Sep 2026 19:52:38 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21429.html BACKGROUND FROM 2024: A high school teacher has been fired from his job months after he encouraged a student to think for himself and examine his assumptions [...] Warren Smith’s video-recorded conversation with a unnamed student went viral back in February...

[...] In the video, which Smith posted on his YouTube channel, the student criticizes the famous author for her “bigoted opinions” about transgender women competing in female-only sports. Reacting to that accusation, the soft-spoken teacher gently challenged the unseen student to participate in a “thought experiment,” beginning with defining what “bigoted opinion” means.

[...] Challenged by Smith to give an example of Rowling’s transphobia, the student reads a Twitter post from Rowling from 2019 [...] “Do you find that transphobic yourself?” Smith asks the student.

“I myself don’t really have an opinion,” the student amazingly replies. “I’m just going with what a lot of other people have said.”

THE DAILY HERETIC (guest Warren Smith)
https://youtu.be/GHbWiMiXE40

VIDEO EXCERPTS: What was that JK Rowling situation? What happened in the classroom?

[...] There were a lot of people at the school that were not happy. ... I've never disclosed its name because it just feels weird to dox a school. If they want to do it, that's fine.

And just seeing the number of people trying to get me fired from there ... I got an email from the dean or the head of the chair saying, "Hey, our social media team has picked up a massive amount of activity targeting you. You're being targeted online, and we have a policy. If we detect a faculty member being targeted, we offer to step in and blah, blah."

Like if you need support, let us know. I appreciate it, guys. That's nice of you. And I was surprised because I'm sure they were aware of the whole thing. And that was their response. They didn't do anything beyond that. [...] A few weeks, a few months went by, and I did end up still getting fired as a result of it. But it turned out to have been a blessing.

Yeah. Well, now you have a successful YouTube channel, and it's maybe a job that you are more passionate about.

Yes. I enjoy it a lot. Though there are things I miss about teaching.

What was it about JK Rowling that was being said in that video?

A student asked me, "What are your views on JK Rowling? Have your views on Harry Potter changed given her bigoted opinions?"

And there's a presupposition there. What are you basing that on? And he didn't have anything, and then his mind was changed by the end of it. Five-minute exchange.

[...] You get so annoyed. You go through graduate school, and you have friends and family that are just in tears over JK Rowling. And they're saying, "How could you? And sorry you got fired, Warren, but you did say JK Rowling is not bigoted."

[Laughter] Did you have people actually say that to you?

Yeah. Friends, best friend, childhood friend.

How did that go? That conversation?

I feel bad talking about it. I'm keeping his identity private, but I don't think he'll see this. He was in tears that night because, "What are you doing, Warren? You've changed."

That was the first time I'd come back to North Carolina since that viral video. I remember him and his brother on the porch, and we were talking about it. He'd had a few beers, so that might have had something to do with it. But yeah, he was literally in tears.

What condition were you in?

Like I always am. I was like, I will talk to you, man. We can walk through it step by step. I don't care if you want to be trans. But do you understand that tomorrow, given the framework you're proposing, I could decide I'm a woman and now have legal access to all these spaces? Do you see how if anyone can do that, that could be problematic?

[...] He's like, I don't understand what you're saying. I said, okay, which part do you not understand?

The JK Rowling viral video that absolutely changed everything ... https://youtu.be/GHbWiMiXE40

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/GHbWiMiXE40]]> BACKGROUND FROM 2024: A high school teacher has been fired from his job months after he encouraged a student to think for himself and examine his assumptions [...] Warren Smith’s video-recorded conversation with a unnamed student went viral back in February...

[...] In the video, which Smith posted on his YouTube channel, the student criticizes the famous author for her “bigoted opinions” about transgender women competing in female-only sports. Reacting to that accusation, the soft-spoken teacher gently challenged the unseen student to participate in a “thought experiment,” beginning with defining what “bigoted opinion” means.

[...] Challenged by Smith to give an example of Rowling’s transphobia, the student reads a Twitter post from Rowling from 2019 [...] “Do you find that transphobic yourself?” Smith asks the student.

“I myself don’t really have an opinion,” the student amazingly replies. “I’m just going with what a lot of other people have said.”

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/GHbWiMiXE40]]> <![CDATA[The making of Roger Scruton (DIY transformation)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21394.html Sun, 20 Sep 2026 20:03:52 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21394.html https://firstthings.com/the-making-of-roger-scruton/

EXCERPTS: Cambridge, October 1964. A new undergraduate named Mary Hoffman is sitting in the corner at a party, feeling sorry for herself. She doesn’t know anybody, the friends she arrived with have disappeared, and she is just about to go home when a third-year student comes over to introduce himself. He has flame-red hair and craggy features that put her in mind of the nouvelle vague heartthrob Jean-Paul Belmondo.

And as they talk, it dawns on her that she’s never met anybody like this in her life. [...] At the age of twenty, he seems to have the world at his feet ... that year they become, in an on-and-off way, boyfriend and girlfriend. Sixty-two years later, she shares her reminiscences with me.

[...] Not that anybody believes her. “When I tell people I used to go out with Roger Scruton they say, ‘What?!’ And I say: ‘Ah, but you don’t know what he was like when he was twenty.’”

People who knew Scruton in his early years have sometimes asked themselves the question Hoffman now puts to herself: What on earth happened to him? Within a few decades, the kind, sweet-natured, and apolitical young man had become perhaps Britain’s most hated thinker, a granite-faced provocateur known for his fierce conservatism, his sympathy for Mrs. Thatcher, and his taste for foxhunting.

[...] The question of Scruton’s intellectual development has a broader interest, too. His mind was formed by the experience of the 1960s, the decade in which the modern world came of age.

And Scruton is, without compare, the intellectual renegade of Europe’s ’60s generation—progenitor of a highly sophisticated conservative philosophy not only of politics, but of law, religion, culture, sex, music, architecture, the environment, the nation, and a dozen other subjects. No author has done more to shape the imagination of the European right, from Viktor Orbán and Giorgia Meloni to much of the leadership of both Reform U.K. and the Conservative Party.

From where, one wonders, did this extraordinary and unique figure—“a rebel against rebellion,” as he called himself—emerge?

[...] Scruton’s case exacerbated by his relationship with his father, Jack, a primary school teacher and class warrior who was the local rep for the National Union of Teachers. ... Age fourteen, Roger subscribed to the Daily Worker, simply because the socialist Jack loathed Soviet communism ... At other times Roger would mercilessly probe his father’s political philosophy (“So, Dad, justice doesn’t mean equality?”) until Jack stomped off ... The father-son relationship was “just awful,” says Grillo, who dated the teenage Scruton.

[...] For a teenager who knew he was unusually gifted and energetic and yet was wracked with uncertainty, Nietzsche’s amoral individualism had a seductive appeal. Nietzsche viewed pity for the weak as a morbid hangover from Christianity; Scruton was tempted to agree, until one day he saw High Wycombe’s town bookseller, a disabled man, struggling to carry a load of books from his car. Scruton simply could not feel contempt for this faithful servant of literary culture. Nevertheless, the Nietzschean spirit-the reckless individualism, the willingness to shock and provoke-was part of Scruton’s makeup.

[...] He was rescued ... by discovering Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. ... The other key influence from his studies, and probably the major inspiration for Scruton as a philosopher, was Immanuel Kant. ... More generally, Cambridge philosophy gave Scruton a sense of the distinction between real thinking and fake thinking, a BS detector that alerted him to dud arguments.

[...] He used the money to go to Rome, hoping to write a novel. On that trip Scruton discovered that he was more a bourgeois than a bohemian. ... Scruton took other, less traumatic, memories from Rome. He had visited Bernard Brown and his girlfriend Maria-Teresa, a couple who would remain his close friends all his life. Scruton and Maria-Teresa toured the churches of the city, seeing Bernini’s sculptures, Cavallini’s frescoes, and Borromini’s churches—one of which, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, the older Scruton would name as his favorite building.

Maria-Teresa was astonished at Scruton’s aesthetic perceptiveness, his understanding of light and structure. “Do you realize,” she asked Bernard, “your friend Roger is a genius?” Scruton, for his part, was astonished by the beauty all around him and its contrast with the hippies’ empty politics. He was starting to draw conclusions about where his allegiance lay.

One fellow Cambridge philosophy student believes it was around now that Scruton decided he was on the right. The undergraduate Scruton had been an “unremarkable left-liberal” in his politics, like 95 percent of his contemporaries. But coming back from Italy, the student says, “Roger knew he wanted to be a right-wing intellectual.” So around 1966 the student introduced him to the most pronounced conservative in his circle, the literary critic John Casey...

[...] In May 1968, then, as he visited Danielle in Paris, with his friends spending their days on the barricades, what Scruton saw shocked him. The atmosphere of that month was genuinely revolutionary. Ordinary life practically stopped, replaced by strikes, occupations, demonstrations, meetings, and spontaneous theater events. The entire city seemed to be involved in a mass political conference.

[...] When the bricks started hitting the windows and the cars went up in flames, Scruton felt, at one level, a “literary critical” distaste: The whole performance was shallow and vulgar. More viscerally, he experienced an anger, a desire to fight back on behalf of what was most precious to him.

[...] And so we come to the celebrated moment, described many times and most vividly in Gentle Regrets, when looking down from the little flat on the Rue de Bérite, Scruton recoiled with all his mind and heart from the revolutionary spirit of 1968. Probing his friends’ politics in the following days, he became convinced that whatever he believed, it was the opposite of that. “I came back to Cambridge,” he once said, “determined to reanimate a political outlook for the modern world.” (MORE - missing details)]]> https://firstthings.com/the-making-of-roger-scruton/

EXCERPTS: Cambridge, October 1964. A new undergraduate named Mary Hoffman is sitting in the corner at a party, feeling sorry for herself. She doesn’t know anybody, the friends she arrived with have disappeared, and she is just about to go home when a third-year student comes over to introduce himself. He has flame-red hair and craggy features that put her in mind of the nouvelle vague heartthrob Jean-Paul Belmondo.

And as they talk, it dawns on her that she’s never met anybody like this in her life. [...] At the age of twenty, he seems to have the world at his feet ... that year they become, in an on-and-off way, boyfriend and girlfriend. Sixty-two years later, she shares her reminiscences with me.

[...] Not that anybody believes her. “When I tell people I used to go out with Roger Scruton they say, ‘What?!’ And I say: ‘Ah, but you don’t know what he was like when he was twenty.’”

People who knew Scruton in his early years have sometimes asked themselves the question Hoffman now puts to herself: What on earth happened to him? Within a few decades, the kind, sweet-natured, and apolitical young man had become perhaps Britain’s most hated thinker, a granite-faced provocateur known for his fierce conservatism, his sympathy for Mrs. Thatcher, and his taste for foxhunting.

[...] The question of Scruton’s intellectual development has a broader interest, too. His mind was formed by the experience of the 1960s, the decade in which the modern world came of age.

And Scruton is, without compare, the intellectual renegade of Europe’s ’60s generation—progenitor of a highly sophisticated conservative philosophy not only of politics, but of law, religion, culture, sex, music, architecture, the environment, the nation, and a dozen other subjects. No author has done more to shape the imagination of the European right, from Viktor Orbán and Giorgia Meloni to much of the leadership of both Reform U.K. and the Conservative Party.

From where, one wonders, did this extraordinary and unique figure—“a rebel against rebellion,” as he called himself—emerge?

[...] Scruton’s case exacerbated by his relationship with his father, Jack, a primary school teacher and class warrior who was the local rep for the National Union of Teachers. ... Age fourteen, Roger subscribed to the Daily Worker, simply because the socialist Jack loathed Soviet communism ... At other times Roger would mercilessly probe his father’s political philosophy (“So, Dad, justice doesn’t mean equality?”) until Jack stomped off ... The father-son relationship was “just awful,” says Grillo, who dated the teenage Scruton.

[...] For a teenager who knew he was unusually gifted and energetic and yet was wracked with uncertainty, Nietzsche’s amoral individualism had a seductive appeal. Nietzsche viewed pity for the weak as a morbid hangover from Christianity; Scruton was tempted to agree, until one day he saw High Wycombe’s town bookseller, a disabled man, struggling to carry a load of books from his car. Scruton simply could not feel contempt for this faithful servant of literary culture. Nevertheless, the Nietzschean spirit-the reckless individualism, the willingness to shock and provoke-was part of Scruton’s makeup.

[...] He was rescued ... by discovering Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations. ... The other key influence from his studies, and probably the major inspiration for Scruton as a philosopher, was Immanuel Kant. ... More generally, Cambridge philosophy gave Scruton a sense of the distinction between real thinking and fake thinking, a BS detector that alerted him to dud arguments.

[...] He used the money to go to Rome, hoping to write a novel. On that trip Scruton discovered that he was more a bourgeois than a bohemian. ... Scruton took other, less traumatic, memories from Rome. He had visited Bernard Brown and his girlfriend Maria-Teresa, a couple who would remain his close friends all his life. Scruton and Maria-Teresa toured the churches of the city, seeing Bernini’s sculptures, Cavallini’s frescoes, and Borromini’s churches—one of which, San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane, the older Scruton would name as his favorite building.

Maria-Teresa was astonished at Scruton’s aesthetic perceptiveness, his understanding of light and structure. “Do you realize,” she asked Bernard, “your friend Roger is a genius?” Scruton, for his part, was astonished by the beauty all around him and its contrast with the hippies’ empty politics. He was starting to draw conclusions about where his allegiance lay.

One fellow Cambridge philosophy student believes it was around now that Scruton decided he was on the right. The undergraduate Scruton had been an “unremarkable left-liberal” in his politics, like 95 percent of his contemporaries. But coming back from Italy, the student says, “Roger knew he wanted to be a right-wing intellectual.” So around 1966 the student introduced him to the most pronounced conservative in his circle, the literary critic John Casey...

[...] In May 1968, then, as he visited Danielle in Paris, with his friends spending their days on the barricades, what Scruton saw shocked him. The atmosphere of that month was genuinely revolutionary. Ordinary life practically stopped, replaced by strikes, occupations, demonstrations, meetings, and spontaneous theater events. The entire city seemed to be involved in a mass political conference.

[...] When the bricks started hitting the windows and the cars went up in flames, Scruton felt, at one level, a “literary critical” distaste: The whole performance was shallow and vulgar. More viscerally, he experienced an anger, a desire to fight back on behalf of what was most precious to him.

[...] And so we come to the celebrated moment, described many times and most vividly in Gentle Regrets, when looking down from the little flat on the Rue de Bérite, Scruton recoiled with all his mind and heart from the revolutionary spirit of 1968. Probing his friends’ politics in the following days, he became convinced that whatever he believed, it was the opposite of that. “I came back to Cambridge,” he once said, “determined to reanimate a political outlook for the modern world.” (MORE - missing details)]]> <![CDATA[Russia threatens strikes on UK military facilities over weapons in Ukraine (DIY beep)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21377.html Fri, 18 Sep 2026 23:38:53 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21377.html https://uawire.org/russia-threatens-stri...in-ukraine

Moscow has again threatened the United Kingdom with strikes on British military facilities in Ukraine and potentially beyond, linking its warnings to Ukraine’s use of British-supplied weapons in attacks on Russian territory. Russian officials said British military installations and equipment in Ukraine could become targets in response to Ukrainian strikes involving British weapons.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also warned of “necessary retaliatory measures,” according to a ministry statement. These types of threats from Moscow have previously surfaced, including at the end of August.

Russian authorities said British military sites in Ukraine, which could be used to launch attacks on Russian territory, are “legitimate targets,” according to their claims. The Foreign Ministry placed responsibility on London for any potential escalation and stated that Russia reserves the right to take “necessary retaliatory actions”.

On August 27, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that British military facilities and equipment in Ukraine or elsewhere could be targeted in response to Ukrainian strikes using British-made weaponry.

Separately, in early September, Russian President Vladimir Putin did not rule out the possibility of strikes on British military facilities, calling this a “military secret”. He also stated that Russia considers any military facilities in Ukraine, including British ones if present, to be legitimate targets.

The threats from Moscow come against the backdrop of continued British military support for Ukraine. The UK has said it will maintain its assistance for Ukraine and has condemned Russian aggression.

Russia recently warned the UK of unspecified “consequences” following reports that Ukrainian forces had used British-made drones to strike targets inside Russia. Previously, Zakharova accused Germany of supporting Ukraine and raised the possibility of countermeasures.

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said that if Poland were to enter the conflict against Russia, Moscow would use “the full arsenal of available forces and means,” leading to what he claimed would be the end of Polish statehood “within two or three days”. In response, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said Russia should consider the consequences of its threats and pointed to its experience in the war against Ukraine.]]> https://uawire.org/russia-threatens-stri...in-ukraine

Moscow has again threatened the United Kingdom with strikes on British military facilities in Ukraine and potentially beyond, linking its warnings to Ukraine’s use of British-supplied weapons in attacks on Russian territory. Russian officials said British military installations and equipment in Ukraine could become targets in response to Ukrainian strikes involving British weapons.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also warned of “necessary retaliatory measures,” according to a ministry statement. These types of threats from Moscow have previously surfaced, including at the end of August.

Russian authorities said British military sites in Ukraine, which could be used to launch attacks on Russian territory, are “legitimate targets,” according to their claims. The Foreign Ministry placed responsibility on London for any potential escalation and stated that Russia reserves the right to take “necessary retaliatory actions”.

On August 27, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that British military facilities and equipment in Ukraine or elsewhere could be targeted in response to Ukrainian strikes using British-made weaponry.

Separately, in early September, Russian President Vladimir Putin did not rule out the possibility of strikes on British military facilities, calling this a “military secret”. He also stated that Russia considers any military facilities in Ukraine, including British ones if present, to be legitimate targets.

The threats from Moscow come against the backdrop of continued British military support for Ukraine. The UK has said it will maintain its assistance for Ukraine and has condemned Russian aggression.

Russia recently warned the UK of unspecified “consequences” following reports that Ukrainian forces had used British-made drones to strike targets inside Russia. Previously, Zakharova accused Germany of supporting Ukraine and raised the possibility of countermeasures.

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said that if Poland were to enter the conflict against Russia, Moscow would use “the full arsenal of available forces and means,” leading to what he claimed would be the end of Polish statehood “within two or three days”. In response, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski said Russia should consider the consequences of its threats and pointed to its experience in the war against Ukraine.]]> <![CDATA[Carney sacrificing Canada's sovereignty to the EU? (DIY emotion over reason)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21354.html Wed, 16 Sep 2026 18:56:48 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21354.html Trump's MO is getting an opponent to become so enraged at him that they abandon careful decision-making for pursuing spiteful choices, automatically rejecting anything Trump advocates, and restlessly indulging in whatever they believe will annoy Trump. MAGA is only one-half of the satellites rotating fixatedly around Trump. An all-consuming fetish is a fetish, whether worship or unbridled rage.
- - - - - - - - - - -

LILLEY UNLEASHED (Toronto Sun)
https://youtu.be/C3nwlipVGIQ

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Canada should be expanding trade with the European Union, but by no means should we become a member, an associate member, or anything close to it.

[...] First is the issue of sovereignty. We would have to give up an awful lot of sovereignty to get the kind of access that Mark Carney's talking about. This isn't speculation. This is based on agreements that already exist.

Secondly, right now, we simply don't trade enough. We don't make the kinds of products that the Europeans want to buy. Our major exports are all built for the US. It would take us a long time to pivot in this direction.

And thirdly, the EU economy is not doing well and hasn't been for quite some time. In part due to kinds of regulations we would be subject to if we got what we're looking for.

[...] As I said, there is no associate member status within the European Union, but there are countries that are not full members but have deep trading access, which is what Carney's looking for, beyond a free trade agreement. [...] Well, let me just look at the Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein agreement for a moment.

[...] Are we going to accept that kind of language? Because that's what Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein had to do. The EU wants to control the regulations around products, around the environment, around consumer protection, around privacy. And some of those changes, if we were to accept European regulations, might be good. But some of them would be bad.

Either way, it's not our decision. It'll be made in Brussels. It'll be made in Strasbourg. From one of the agreements on the EU website, the same rules and conditions apply to all businesses within the EEA. That's the grouping of the EU and these other countries. EU legislation relating to the internal market is part of an EEA's countries' legislation.

The EU is the final arbiter of legislation, the final arbiter of regulation. They make the decisions. That's part of why Britain left the EU. Brexit was driven in part by crazy EU regulations. They wanted to get rid of fast-boiling kettles, and the British love their tea. They wanted to make all kinds of regulations that the British people said, "No, we're not in favor of that. We're in favor of free trade, but we don't want you regulating every part of our lives."

What level of integration is Mark Carney willing to give up? We don't know. He hasn't informed the Canadian public. He definitely hasn't informed Parliament, which hasn't sat in getting close to 100 days now, and won't sit until next week after he's already made his announced deals in Strasbourg at the European Parliament. He's speaking to the European Parliament about this before speaking to our own. On no planet does that make sense.

I know what the polling says. Mark Carney is at almost 50% according to the latest poll. That's driven in part because he's fighting Donald Trump. I know other polling is out. It shows 49% of Canadians want Canada to become a full EU member. Yeah. Let's ensure our sovereignty by giving it all up to Brussels. Makes no sense, but Canadian media is always telling you how bad the United States is and how great the EU is. So, no wonder that's kind of the thinking that we have.

80% of Canadians believe we should draw closer to Europe. Yes, but not this close. What? I don't want to get married to Europe. We are not Europe. But it's only going to help Carney's polling, and he's going to be going up as a result of this. But is it the right direction? I'm going to be the one on the outside saying, "No." I know it's not a popular view, but this is not the direction that Canada should be taking. It's going to be the popular one, but it's not the well-informed one.

Carney’s Euro dreams headed in the wrong direction ... https://youtu.be/C3nwlipVGIQ

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/C3nwlipVGIQ]]> Trump's MO is getting an opponent to become so enraged at him that they abandon careful decision-making for pursuing spiteful choices, automatically rejecting anything Trump advocates, and restlessly indulging in whatever they believe will annoy Trump. MAGA is only one-half of the satellites rotating fixatedly around Trump. An all-consuming fetish is a fetish, whether worship or unbridled rage.
- - - - - - - - - - -

LILLEY UNLEASHED (Toronto Sun)
https://youtu.be/C3nwlipVGIQ

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Canada should be expanding trade with the European Union, but by no means should we become a member, an associate member, or anything close to it.

[...] First is the issue of sovereignty. We would have to give up an awful lot of sovereignty to get the kind of access that Mark Carney's talking about. This isn't speculation. This is based on agreements that already exist.

Secondly, right now, we simply don't trade enough. We don't make the kinds of products that the Europeans want to buy. Our major exports are all built for the US. It would take us a long time to pivot in this direction.

And thirdly, the EU economy is not doing well and hasn't been for quite some time. In part due to kinds of regulations we would be subject to if we got what we're looking for.

[...] As I said, there is no associate member status within the European Union, but there are countries that are not full members but have deep trading access, which is what Carney's looking for, beyond a free trade agreement. [...] Well, let me just look at the Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein agreement for a moment.

[...] Are we going to accept that kind of language? Because that's what Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein had to do. The EU wants to control the regulations around products, around the environment, around consumer protection, around privacy. And some of those changes, if we were to accept European regulations, might be good. But some of them would be bad.

Either way, it's not our decision. It'll be made in Brussels. It'll be made in Strasbourg. From one of the agreements on the EU website, the same rules and conditions apply to all businesses within the EEA. That's the grouping of the EU and these other countries. EU legislation relating to the internal market is part of an EEA's countries' legislation.

The EU is the final arbiter of legislation, the final arbiter of regulation. They make the decisions. That's part of why Britain left the EU. Brexit was driven in part by crazy EU regulations. They wanted to get rid of fast-boiling kettles, and the British love their tea. They wanted to make all kinds of regulations that the British people said, "No, we're not in favor of that. We're in favor of free trade, but we don't want you regulating every part of our lives."

What level of integration is Mark Carney willing to give up? We don't know. He hasn't informed the Canadian public. He definitely hasn't informed Parliament, which hasn't sat in getting close to 100 days now, and won't sit until next week after he's already made his announced deals in Strasbourg at the European Parliament. He's speaking to the European Parliament about this before speaking to our own. On no planet does that make sense.

I know what the polling says. Mark Carney is at almost 50% according to the latest poll. That's driven in part because he's fighting Donald Trump. I know other polling is out. It shows 49% of Canadians want Canada to become a full EU member. Yeah. Let's ensure our sovereignty by giving it all up to Brussels. Makes no sense, but Canadian media is always telling you how bad the United States is and how great the EU is. So, no wonder that's kind of the thinking that we have.

80% of Canadians believe we should draw closer to Europe. Yes, but not this close. What? I don't want to get married to Europe. We are not Europe. But it's only going to help Carney's polling, and he's going to be going up as a result of this. But is it the right direction? I'm going to be the one on the outside saying, "No." I know it's not a popular view, but this is not the direction that Canada should be taking. It's going to be the popular one, but it's not the well-informed one.

Carney’s Euro dreams headed in the wrong direction ... https://youtu.be/C3nwlipVGIQ

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/C3nwlipVGIQ]]> <![CDATA[Pat Heaton on the once secret 3,000 member cabal in Hollywood (DIY non-Democrat club)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21314.html Sat, 12 Sep 2026 01:29:04 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21314.html Even when comedy wants to avoid politics, it still stifles writing today
- - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE DAILY HERETIC (with guest Patricia Heaton)
https://youtu.be/4RcEbeZdU3o

VIDEO EXCERPTS: I love Hollywood. I loved everybody I worked with. They were so wonderful. Very different political backgrounds, but really lovely people. And the point was just to go in, know your lines, be nice to the crew, respect the writers and do a good job. Make it as easy as possible, and try to make the best show you could. Didn't matter what anybody's political views were. That's what you do on Raymond, that's what we did on The Middle.

[...] But especially when Obama was president, it was kind of like Democrats ruled, and there were a lot of people that felt like they couldn't say anything who were conservative. And we ended up having to make a secret group. Called FOA, Friends of Abe, as in Abraham Lincoln.

[...] If you were gay in the '40s in Hollywood, they would say, "Oh, is he a friend of Dorothy?" As in The Wizard of Oz. So, ours was Abraham Lincoln, who was our first Republican president. So, we were Friends of Abe. So, you could say to somebody, "Are you a friend of Abe?" Or, "Are you FOA?"

And if they said, "Yeah," then you knew there was another conservative or independent or libertarian or apolitical someone [Bruce Willis] who doesn't always vote Democrat. You could talk without feeling like you were going to get in trouble at your job.

[...] In the beginning, how did you find other people associated with this?

It was actually Gary Sinise, wonderful actor. who approached me and my husband and said, "Hey, would you guys host a couple people to come over?" And it was like Kelsey Grammer and Jon Voight. And Ben Shapiro. So, 80 people later we had at our house.

Wow, so you outed them all as well.

It was really fun, and it was just fellowship. We weren't raising money for candidates, we didn't go protest anything. It was just to go hang-out and be able to talk freely without worrying about losing your job. To let other people know who was safe on a studio set.

So, people would come to these FOA meetings and they would see people that they worked with and they were like, "Oh, my God, you're FOA."

Because nobody would talk if you were a conservative Republican or libertarian, etc. You wouldn't talk about it at work. And so it was a really interesting time. It ended up being 2 to 3,000 members. You would just pay a little bit of money, and that was just so you could go have lunch together with a bunch of people, you know.

[...] Could someone have come to that gathering if they were pro-choice?

Yeah, I think there's much more of a range of political opinions and views in the Republican Party than there is in the Democratic Party. People on the Republican side might disagree a lot, but you're allowed to disagree. ... Like, you know, there's that alternative to X called Blue Sky. Apparently it's brutal. I don't know. I'm not on it, but I hear it's really brutal, you have to conform...

Kelsey Grammer & Hollywood’s secret 3,000-member "cabal" ... https://youtu.be/4RcEbeZdU3o

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/4RcEbeZdU3o]]> Even when comedy wants to avoid politics, it still stifles writing today
- - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE DAILY HERETIC (with guest Patricia Heaton)
https://youtu.be/4RcEbeZdU3o

VIDEO EXCERPTS: I love Hollywood. I loved everybody I worked with. They were so wonderful. Very different political backgrounds, but really lovely people. And the point was just to go in, know your lines, be nice to the crew, respect the writers and do a good job. Make it as easy as possible, and try to make the best show you could. Didn't matter what anybody's political views were. That's what you do on Raymond, that's what we did on The Middle.

[...] But especially when Obama was president, it was kind of like Democrats ruled, and there were a lot of people that felt like they couldn't say anything who were conservative. And we ended up having to make a secret group. Called FOA, Friends of Abe, as in Abraham Lincoln.

[...] If you were gay in the '40s in Hollywood, they would say, "Oh, is he a friend of Dorothy?" As in The Wizard of Oz. So, ours was Abraham Lincoln, who was our first Republican president. So, we were Friends of Abe. So, you could say to somebody, "Are you a friend of Abe?" Or, "Are you FOA?"

And if they said, "Yeah," then you knew there was another conservative or independent or libertarian or apolitical someone [Bruce Willis] who doesn't always vote Democrat. You could talk without feeling like you were going to get in trouble at your job.

[...] In the beginning, how did you find other people associated with this?

It was actually Gary Sinise, wonderful actor. who approached me and my husband and said, "Hey, would you guys host a couple people to come over?" And it was like Kelsey Grammer and Jon Voight. And Ben Shapiro. So, 80 people later we had at our house.

Wow, so you outed them all as well.

It was really fun, and it was just fellowship. We weren't raising money for candidates, we didn't go protest anything. It was just to go hang-out and be able to talk freely without worrying about losing your job. To let other people know who was safe on a studio set.

So, people would come to these FOA meetings and they would see people that they worked with and they were like, "Oh, my God, you're FOA."

Because nobody would talk if you were a conservative Republican or libertarian, etc. You wouldn't talk about it at work. And so it was a really interesting time. It ended up being 2 to 3,000 members. You would just pay a little bit of money, and that was just so you could go have lunch together with a bunch of people, you know.

[...] Could someone have come to that gathering if they were pro-choice?

Yeah, I think there's much more of a range of political opinions and views in the Republican Party than there is in the Democratic Party. People on the Republican side might disagree a lot, but you're allowed to disagree. ... Like, you know, there's that alternative to X called Blue Sky. Apparently it's brutal. I don't know. I'm not on it, but I hear it's really brutal, you have to conform...

Kelsey Grammer & Hollywood’s secret 3,000-member "cabal" ... https://youtu.be/4RcEbeZdU3o

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/4RcEbeZdU3o]]> <![CDATA[Climate policy is getting quieter, and that’s good? (the DIY "hushing" transition)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21294.html Wed, 09 Sep 2026 15:45:43 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21294.html Wow -- who knew? The para-religious approach of shrieking and preaching on the mountaintop, activists blocking traffic, castigating the "ignorant masses" and opportunistically seizing climate change to advance leftangelical agenda turns people off? But even with this enlightenment trend toward modesty, does the discipline really exist to persist long-term with "silent but effective"? The holy roller urge to get up there like Moses and proclaim commandments and condemn the idolaters like morally superior demigods is pretty much built into the political DNA.
- - - - - - - - - -

Climate Policy Is Getting Quieter, and That’s Good
https://www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/cl...-quiet-and

EXCERPTS: Last week, Breakthrough’s Executive Director, Alex Trembath, wrote in The Argument that so-called “climate hushing”-Democrats’ retreat from climate change as a central issue-is not a defeat for decarbonization and climate policy, but a return to the quieter, bipartisan, technology-and-abundance politics that actually has a track record of emissions reductions.

[...] That outright rejection of scientific consensus has largely lost in the court of public opinion: Recent surveys show strong majorities of Americans accepting the reality of climate change. With such denial in retreat, today’s climate activists have a new pejorative specifically for the Democratic elected officials and analysts who are conspicuously less outspoken on climate change during the second Trump era: climate hushing.

These so-called hushers are “meekly shying away from righteous and winnable fights against evildoers,” according to Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. Party moderates are the canonical hushers, at times directly urging Democrats “don’t say climate change,” as Searchlight Institute did last year. But the ranks of the hushers appear to grow larger by the day: The Washington Post recently reported that the word “climate” has vanished almost entirely from public statements by Sen. Ed Markey, a longtime Green New Deal champion who is now locked in a tense primary election against a more moderate challenger.

Democrats’ descent into infighting is most often taken as a sign of retreat for the causes of decarbonization and climate resilience. But that need not be the case.

Indeed, there are reasons to think that climate hushing will promote more ambitious and durable climate action than what came before. Unlocking the next wave of U.S. clean energy will require a return to the bipartisan compromise politics that have historically driven the country’s decarbonization. Maximalist climate activism can only harm these efforts.

Alex’s essay stands as an important intervention in the “climate hushing” debates, but its origins reach far further back than the current discourse. For years, Breakthrough has advocated for a quiet climate policy. In 2021, almost the entire Breakthrough staff put together research for a report advocating for a “quiet” climate policy that “swims with the tide of existing sociopolitical institutions and economic growth…uses technology and infrastructure as its main lever, and…disrupts, rather than exploits, political partisanship.”

“Historically, the US government has accelerated decarbonization through strategic investments in technology and infrastructure. Decarbonization of the American economy has depended upon the increasing affordability and scalability of lower-carbon alternatives to incumbent technologies: nuclear power plants, shale gas unlocked by the fracking revolution, solar photovoltaic and onshore wind plants, lithium-ion batteries, and biotechnology and other innovations that have improved the productivity of American agriculture. These were all enabled by decades of sustained, technology-specific research, development, demonstration, and deployment efforts made by the federal and state governments.”

And the idea of quiet climate policy goes even further back. In an essay for Foreign Policy from 2019, Breakthrough Founder and President Ted Nordhaus argued that both carbon pricing and the Green New Deal-popular “solutions” to climate change at the time-wrongly assumed that public concern about climate would be strong enough to sustain a partisan, economy-wide approach to decarbonization. Instead, Ted argued, enduring climate progress needed to be made through quiet policymaking:

“In contrast to most current climate advocacy efforts, which seek to raise the salience of the climate problem in order to motivate politically difficult and economically costly climate action, quiet climate policy seeks to deescalate the political controversies associated with climate change and break up the costs of climate action."

Examples include establishing a federal clean energy standard that would require utilities to gradually transition entirely to zero-carbon technologies over the coming decades. Or government procurement at the U.S. Defense Department and national laboratories could be used to create initial markets for promising small nuclear reactors and geothermal and energy storage technologies. Providing U.S. farmers with technology and incentives to become more carbon efficient could bring huge benefits for the climate, as could government investment to develop zero-carbon technologies for industrial heat and power.

Working toward decarbonization, technology by technology and sector by sector, on a bipartisan basis and through careful negotiation with key stakeholders is the sort of thing that Congress still occasionally manages to do-as recent legislative efforts to support commercialization of advanced nuclear and carbon capture technologies demonstrate.

While quiet climate advocacy, or “climate hushing,” has, for years, been the more effective approach to actually passing and enacting policy, it would be a mistake to understand the current climate hush as a tactical and strategic choice amongst the climate-pilled Democrats... (MORE - missing detaisl)]]> Wow -- who knew? The para-religious approach of shrieking and preaching on the mountaintop, activists blocking traffic, castigating the "ignorant masses" and opportunistically seizing climate change to advance leftangelical agenda turns people off? But even with this enlightenment trend toward modesty, does the discipline really exist to persist long-term with "silent but effective"? The holy roller urge to get up there like Moses and proclaim commandments and condemn the idolaters like morally superior demigods is pretty much built into the political DNA.
- - - - - - - - - -

Climate Policy Is Getting Quieter, and That’s Good
https://www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/cl...-quiet-and

EXCERPTS: Last week, Breakthrough’s Executive Director, Alex Trembath, wrote in The Argument that so-called “climate hushing”-Democrats’ retreat from climate change as a central issue-is not a defeat for decarbonization and climate policy, but a return to the quieter, bipartisan, technology-and-abundance politics that actually has a track record of emissions reductions.

[...] That outright rejection of scientific consensus has largely lost in the court of public opinion: Recent surveys show strong majorities of Americans accepting the reality of climate change. With such denial in retreat, today’s climate activists have a new pejorative specifically for the Democratic elected officials and analysts who are conspicuously less outspoken on climate change during the second Trump era: climate hushing.

These so-called hushers are “meekly shying away from righteous and winnable fights against evildoers,” according to Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. Party moderates are the canonical hushers, at times directly urging Democrats “don’t say climate change,” as Searchlight Institute did last year. But the ranks of the hushers appear to grow larger by the day: The Washington Post recently reported that the word “climate” has vanished almost entirely from public statements by Sen. Ed Markey, a longtime Green New Deal champion who is now locked in a tense primary election against a more moderate challenger.

Democrats’ descent into infighting is most often taken as a sign of retreat for the causes of decarbonization and climate resilience. But that need not be the case.

Indeed, there are reasons to think that climate hushing will promote more ambitious and durable climate action than what came before. Unlocking the next wave of U.S. clean energy will require a return to the bipartisan compromise politics that have historically driven the country’s decarbonization. Maximalist climate activism can only harm these efforts.

Alex’s essay stands as an important intervention in the “climate hushing” debates, but its origins reach far further back than the current discourse. For years, Breakthrough has advocated for a quiet climate policy. In 2021, almost the entire Breakthrough staff put together research for a report advocating for a “quiet” climate policy that “swims with the tide of existing sociopolitical institutions and economic growth…uses technology and infrastructure as its main lever, and…disrupts, rather than exploits, political partisanship.”

“Historically, the US government has accelerated decarbonization through strategic investments in technology and infrastructure. Decarbonization of the American economy has depended upon the increasing affordability and scalability of lower-carbon alternatives to incumbent technologies: nuclear power plants, shale gas unlocked by the fracking revolution, solar photovoltaic and onshore wind plants, lithium-ion batteries, and biotechnology and other innovations that have improved the productivity of American agriculture. These were all enabled by decades of sustained, technology-specific research, development, demonstration, and deployment efforts made by the federal and state governments.”

And the idea of quiet climate policy goes even further back. In an essay for Foreign Policy from 2019, Breakthrough Founder and President Ted Nordhaus argued that both carbon pricing and the Green New Deal-popular “solutions” to climate change at the time-wrongly assumed that public concern about climate would be strong enough to sustain a partisan, economy-wide approach to decarbonization. Instead, Ted argued, enduring climate progress needed to be made through quiet policymaking:

“In contrast to most current climate advocacy efforts, which seek to raise the salience of the climate problem in order to motivate politically difficult and economically costly climate action, quiet climate policy seeks to deescalate the political controversies associated with climate change and break up the costs of climate action."

Examples include establishing a federal clean energy standard that would require utilities to gradually transition entirely to zero-carbon technologies over the coming decades. Or government procurement at the U.S. Defense Department and national laboratories could be used to create initial markets for promising small nuclear reactors and geothermal and energy storage technologies. Providing U.S. farmers with technology and incentives to become more carbon efficient could bring huge benefits for the climate, as could government investment to develop zero-carbon technologies for industrial heat and power.

Working toward decarbonization, technology by technology and sector by sector, on a bipartisan basis and through careful negotiation with key stakeholders is the sort of thing that Congress still occasionally manages to do-as recent legislative efforts to support commercialization of advanced nuclear and carbon capture technologies demonstrate.

While quiet climate advocacy, or “climate hushing,” has, for years, been the more effective approach to actually passing and enacting policy, it would be a mistake to understand the current climate hush as a tactical and strategic choice amongst the climate-pilled Democrats... (MORE - missing detaisl)]]> <![CDATA[UK left-wing activist gets attacked by his fellow luddites for using AI? (DIY sin)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21266.html Fri, 04 Sep 2026 21:37:45 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21266.html https://order-order.com/2026/09/04/owen-...-using-ai/

Owen Jones has apologised after getting piled on for using AI in one poster. The revolution eats itself…

The aged author was publicising a talk on his latest agitprop book titled “The Fall of the West.” He initially justified his use of AI on social media:

“Because I can’t do graphic design and it’s not my video producer’s job to do graphics for my book tour.”

After a pile-on instigated by the leftist Instagram account The Left Bible, Jones apologised in the comments:

“I am very sorry to have used an AI generated image for an upcoming event at the Manchester Literary Festival. It’s not an event I’m organising, and I was just trying to notify people in a colourful way. I’ve deleted the image and replaced it with a screenshot. I won’t use AI generated images like this again and I am sorry for any upset that has been caused.”

Guido, for one, commends Jones for using frontier technology to increase productivity and reduce labour time. Can’t keep the luddites happy though…]]> https://order-order.com/2026/09/04/owen-...-using-ai/

Owen Jones has apologised after getting piled on for using AI in one poster. The revolution eats itself…

The aged author was publicising a talk on his latest agitprop book titled “The Fall of the West.” He initially justified his use of AI on social media:

“Because I can’t do graphic design and it’s not my video producer’s job to do graphics for my book tour.”

After a pile-on instigated by the leftist Instagram account The Left Bible, Jones apologised in the comments:

“I am very sorry to have used an AI generated image for an upcoming event at the Manchester Literary Festival. It’s not an event I’m organising, and I was just trying to notify people in a colourful way. I’ve deleted the image and replaced it with a screenshot. I won’t use AI generated images like this again and I am sorry for any upset that has been caused.”

Guido, for one, commends Jones for using frontier technology to increase productivity and reduce labour time. Can’t keep the luddites happy though…]]> <![CDATA[The Iran War is the biggest strategic blunder in US history? (DIY screw ups)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21228.html Mon, 31 Aug 2026 23:33:18 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21228.html https://youtu.be/xPfO5fsxnKg

INTRO: John Mearsheimer breaks down the current state of the Iran War, and how the conflict increasingly appears to look like the most dire strategic mistake in US history.

https://youtu.be/xPfO5fsxnKg

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/xPfO5fsxnKg]]> https://youtu.be/xPfO5fsxnKg

INTRO: John Mearsheimer breaks down the current state of the Iran War, and how the conflict increasingly appears to look like the most dire strategic mistake in US history.

https://youtu.be/xPfO5fsxnKg

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/xPfO5fsxnKg]]> <![CDATA[The U.S. chooses favorites: North Korea over South Korea (DIY spite?)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21201.html Thu, 27 Aug 2026 22:14:48 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21201.html Delayed by a week on YouTube.
- - - - - - - -

PETER ZEIHAN (geopolitics)
https://youtu.be/qjzqManP4hg

VIDEO EXCERPTS: I was just listening to the radio, and I had to pull over because I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was listening to some sort of satire radio, but no. Donald Trump is in the process of functionally ending the alliance with South Korea; specifically, the South Koreans and the United States have annual exercises to basically prepare for a North Korean invasion.

And Trump has largely ended U.S. participation in it, which is a long-standing North Korean propaganda demand. In his Truth Social post, Trump said a lot of bad things about South Korea, specifically called out Chairman Kim of North Korea, the despot, as one of his good friends and as a respectful leader and whew…

Three big things here. Number one. Bothers me that I have to say this out loud, but North Korea is not a friend. North Korea is literally pointing their nuclear weapons at us, and is one of the world’s greatest contributors of cybercrime, specifically crypto crime that disproportionately attacks Americans. So the idea that Trump has a personal relationship with the dictator Kim, and that is somehow benefiting the United States, is delusional at best.

Number two, yes, South Korea is a beneficiary of the United States. But I would argue in a post-globalized world, South Korea is one of the top five countries that we really, really want to have a strong relationship with. Once you get past the trade disputes that the Koreans and the Americans have, which were largely addressed by a free trade agreement negotiated by Trump 1.0.

There are two really big things that we need them for. Number one, South Korea is one of the world’s best shipbuilders, and the US Navy was relying upon Korean tech, Korean technicians, and Korean modules in order to jumpstart U.S. naval ship building. We can probably now kiss that goodbye, which means that the rate of building new ships is going to continue to be very slow.

The second piece is in computers. Everybody obsesses about GPUs, which are primarily the product of Taiwan, high-end processing nodes. People forget that you also need something called DRAM, dynamic random access memory. It’s a high-end memory chip, and the Koreans make almost all of those, all the good ones anyway, and are really the only ones researching how to make better ones. So whereas Biden and now Trump are pushing to get GPUs produced in the United States, they have kind of forgotten about the other piece of high-end computing. And without the Koreans, that just goes away.

Third, yes, Korea is a security beneficiary, but they’re not a free rider. [...] So Trump called out in his Truth Social post about how the Koreans refused to assist in the denuclearization of Iran. [...] The South Koreans -- guess how many ships they have that can make it to the Strait of Hormuz? Zero. So, I mean, what were they supposed to do? Swim? ...

The U.S. chooses favorites: North Korea over South Korea ... https://youtu.be/qjzqManP4hg

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/qjzqManP4hg]]> Delayed by a week on YouTube.
- - - - - - - -

PETER ZEIHAN (geopolitics)
https://youtu.be/qjzqManP4hg

VIDEO EXCERPTS: I was just listening to the radio, and I had to pull over because I couldn’t believe it. I thought I was listening to some sort of satire radio, but no. Donald Trump is in the process of functionally ending the alliance with South Korea; specifically, the South Koreans and the United States have annual exercises to basically prepare for a North Korean invasion.

And Trump has largely ended U.S. participation in it, which is a long-standing North Korean propaganda demand. In his Truth Social post, Trump said a lot of bad things about South Korea, specifically called out Chairman Kim of North Korea, the despot, as one of his good friends and as a respectful leader and whew…

Three big things here. Number one. Bothers me that I have to say this out loud, but North Korea is not a friend. North Korea is literally pointing their nuclear weapons at us, and is one of the world’s greatest contributors of cybercrime, specifically crypto crime that disproportionately attacks Americans. So the idea that Trump has a personal relationship with the dictator Kim, and that is somehow benefiting the United States, is delusional at best.

Number two, yes, South Korea is a beneficiary of the United States. But I would argue in a post-globalized world, South Korea is one of the top five countries that we really, really want to have a strong relationship with. Once you get past the trade disputes that the Koreans and the Americans have, which were largely addressed by a free trade agreement negotiated by Trump 1.0.

There are two really big things that we need them for. Number one, South Korea is one of the world’s best shipbuilders, and the US Navy was relying upon Korean tech, Korean technicians, and Korean modules in order to jumpstart U.S. naval ship building. We can probably now kiss that goodbye, which means that the rate of building new ships is going to continue to be very slow.

The second piece is in computers. Everybody obsesses about GPUs, which are primarily the product of Taiwan, high-end processing nodes. People forget that you also need something called DRAM, dynamic random access memory. It’s a high-end memory chip, and the Koreans make almost all of those, all the good ones anyway, and are really the only ones researching how to make better ones. So whereas Biden and now Trump are pushing to get GPUs produced in the United States, they have kind of forgotten about the other piece of high-end computing. And without the Koreans, that just goes away.

Third, yes, Korea is a security beneficiary, but they’re not a free rider. [...] So Trump called out in his Truth Social post about how the Koreans refused to assist in the denuclearization of Iran. [...] The South Koreans -- guess how many ships they have that can make it to the Strait of Hormuz? Zero. So, I mean, what were they supposed to do? Swim? ...

The U.S. chooses favorites: North Korea over South Korea ... https://youtu.be/qjzqManP4hg

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/qjzqManP4hg]]> <![CDATA["Something is not quite right in Europe" (Survival Lilly DIY)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21159.html Sat, 22 Aug 2026 21:03:40 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21159.html EU's insane packaging regulation will destroy small businesses

SURVIVAL LILLY
https://youtu.be/d-nzHifmvic

VIDEO INTRO: Do you also have the feeling that something is not just quite right anymore? Everything feels off. Nothing is normal anymore. And it started around the pandemic. Later on there were some wars, inflation, people cannot afford food anymore. We have a complete insane energy policy here in Europe, especially in Germany. Which is artificially making everything so much more expensive. We have politicians where you really have to question their sanity.

We get more and more surveillance in Europe. Now in Germany for example, cars must give their data to the German government. 6G is now acting like a radar and they can actually track your heartbeat and breathing. They can even recognize your facial features same as the Wi-Fi which is basically a router inside of your house. We have AI data centers being built. One is being built in Austria and this one data center will need the electricity of 670,000 households.

So actually we have a lack of electricity and our grid is already performing at the maximum but still they are building data centers which will increase the price again of electricity and also this data center will be used to surveillance.

So it's really crazy what's going on here in Europe. You can really feel that people don't have a lot of money anymore. 20% cannot afford a vacation anymore. Food is getting more expensive and now also meat is going to get more expensive because we got a severe drought in Austria and now farmers have to slaughter their animals and in 2027. Therefore, we will have not enough of animals and the price will rise again.

And on top of that, we also now have a lot of wildfires....

Something is off - it should not be like this ... https://youtu.be/d-nzHifmvic

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/d-nzHifmvic]]> EU's insane packaging regulation will destroy small businesses

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/d-nzHifmvic]]> <![CDATA[Wave of bombings & gun killings in Sweden is Western Europe's future? (DIY woes)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21134.html Wed, 19 Aug 2026 20:13:59 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21134.html These gangs emerged years ago from the lax migrant policies of past party administrations. Despite the current Moderate Party and its alliance putting the brakes on receiving migrants and taking other measures, it's too late because these gangs are now an entrenched part of the population and thereby continue the violence. Swedish voters are ironically blaming the current administration and threatening to reinstall the left-wing tendencies that facilitated this outcome in the first place.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Organized crime in Sweden: Deaths involving guns tripled in between 2012 and 2020. In 2021. The Swedish teen rapper Einár was shot several times and killed in a suburb of Stockholm. Sweden’s former National Police Commissioner Anders Thornberg told the Financial Times the rising gang violence in Sweden could potentially be a “threat” to its democracy if “certain groups” continue to “stand outside” of society, referring to multicultural people in poorer neighborhoods.

In 2015, 10,000 people a week arrived in Sweden from the Middle East. Root causes of the rise of organized crime are thought to be tied to Sweden's open-door immigration policy and lack of integration of these migrants. Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has also blamed "irresponsible immigration policy" for the surge of organized crime. In the last 15 years immigrants made up 53% of people serving long-term prison sentences.

Bombings in Sweden: Bombings in Sweden are attacks and sabotage using explosive devices by criminals in Sweden. The weapons used are weapons such as hand grenades and explosives intended for either civilian or military use. [...] This crime was not categorized separately prior to 2017. In 2018 there were 162 explosions, and in the first nine months of 2019, 97 explosions were registered, usually carried out by criminal gangs. According to Swedish police commissioner Anders Thornberg in 2019, there is no international equivalent to Sweden's wave of bombings.

MICHAEL HEAVER
https://youtu.be/juUa6JpwsR4

VIDEO EXCERPT: What you have seen in Sweden in recent years is a right-wing government [probably moderate by US standards] basically getting a handle on this from all of the measures we can see. For instance, they've reduced the age of criminal responsibility to 14. And you can see the end results of some of the things they've been doing going after the gangs. You can see homicides in Sweden hitting their lowest level in over a decade. The lowest since 2012, shootings halved in 2025.

You can see a large reduction in terms of immigration. More people left than arrived in Sweden for the first time in over 50 years. Asylum applications dropped to a 40-year low under this government. You can see they're at their lowest level in Sweden since 1985.

Nuclear investment has gone forward with new nuclear power reactors, and the military or defense budget being increased 18% in 2026. So you've got all these things going on. And yet you see the latest piece of research showing the left-wing alliance, the opposition, having a 10-point lead over this current governing coalition.

In fact, you can see there the quote that only a miracle could now prevent the defeat of the current administration. The Social Democrat leader Magdalene Anderson seems likely to become prime minister again. ... news article: Swedish opposition holds big lead ahead of September vote, poll shows

Fractured Sweden's dramatic U-Turn ... https://youtu.be/juUa6JpwsR4

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/juUa6JpwsR4]]> These gangs emerged years ago from the lax migrant policies of past party administrations. Despite the current Moderate Party and its alliance putting the brakes on receiving migrants and taking other measures, it's too late because these gangs are now an entrenched part of the population and thereby continue the violence. Swedish voters are ironically blaming the current administration and threatening to reinstall the left-wing tendencies that facilitated this outcome in the first place.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Organized crime in Sweden: Deaths involving guns tripled in between 2012 and 2020. In 2021. The Swedish teen rapper Einár was shot several times and killed in a suburb of Stockholm. Sweden’s former National Police Commissioner Anders Thornberg told the Financial Times the rising gang violence in Sweden could potentially be a “threat” to its democracy if “certain groups” continue to “stand outside” of society, referring to multicultural people in poorer neighborhoods.

In 2015, 10,000 people a week arrived in Sweden from the Middle East. Root causes of the rise of organized crime are thought to be tied to Sweden's open-door immigration policy and lack of integration of these migrants. Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has also blamed "irresponsible immigration policy" for the surge of organized crime. In the last 15 years immigrants made up 53% of people serving long-term prison sentences.

Bombings in Sweden: Bombings in Sweden are attacks and sabotage using explosive devices by criminals in Sweden. The weapons used are weapons such as hand grenades and explosives intended for either civilian or military use. [...] This crime was not categorized separately prior to 2017. In 2018 there were 162 explosions, and in the first nine months of 2019, 97 explosions were registered, usually carried out by criminal gangs. According to Swedish police commissioner Anders Thornberg in 2019, there is no international equivalent to Sweden's wave of bombings.

MICHAEL HEAVER
https://youtu.be/juUa6JpwsR4

VIDEO EXCERPT: What you have seen in Sweden in recent years is a right-wing government [probably moderate by US standards] basically getting a handle on this from all of the measures we can see. For instance, they've reduced the age of criminal responsibility to 14. And you can see the end results of some of the things they've been doing going after the gangs. You can see homicides in Sweden hitting their lowest level in over a decade. The lowest since 2012, shootings halved in 2025.

You can see a large reduction in terms of immigration. More people left than arrived in Sweden for the first time in over 50 years. Asylum applications dropped to a 40-year low under this government. You can see they're at their lowest level in Sweden since 1985.

Nuclear investment has gone forward with new nuclear power reactors, and the military or defense budget being increased 18% in 2026. So you've got all these things going on. And yet you see the latest piece of research showing the left-wing alliance, the opposition, having a 10-point lead over this current governing coalition.

In fact, you can see there the quote that only a miracle could now prevent the defeat of the current administration. The Social Democrat leader Magdalene Anderson seems likely to become prime minister again. ... news article: Swedish opposition holds big lead ahead of September vote, poll shows

Fractured Sweden's dramatic U-Turn ... https://youtu.be/juUa6JpwsR4

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/juUa6JpwsR4]]> <![CDATA[Astonishing German poll results trigger panic in the establishment (DIY last appeals)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21126.html Tue, 18 Aug 2026 20:32:50 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21126.html Merz is apparently singing the right stuff far too late. And remember that a "conservative in Europe" is like what a moderate Democrat is in the US. That's what Merz's CDU party is. The AfD is the opposition that horrifies the establishment outlets. But even minus the massive weight of the latter's green and social engineering bureaucracy that's been choking the life out of Deutschland enterprise... Industry in Germany isn't taking off anywhere unless factories are granted more electricity.
- - - - - - - - - - -

AfD opens 20-point lead a month before crucial state elections
https://europeanconservative.com/article...elections/

INTRO: The right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has surged to a record 42% in a new poll in Saxony-Anhalt, putting the party 20 percentage points ahead of the governing centre-right CDU just four weeks before the state election. The Insa survey, published on Monday, August 10th, puts the AfD up one percentage point from its previous result, while the CDU of Prime Minister Sven Schulze has fallen two points to 22%. Insa chief Hermann Binkert said there is no chance the CDU will overtake the AfD by September 6.

MICHAEL HEAVER
https://youtu.be/prB-9RoKF_I

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Well, these are truly some of the most extraordinary poll results I've ever seen. They have really shaken at Germany to the core because Germany actually has state elections later on this year in September. So, not far away now. And in Germany you're seeing this industrial massacre continue. 42,000 jobs in the car industry gone in six months. You see Volkswagen set to shut down four German factories. That could be a further 100,000 jobs going.

And so it leaves the conservative German Chancellor Merz in a very weak position indeed. In fact, just 13% of the country is satisfied with his work. 85% not happy with the German chancellor.

Merz: . . . in our efforts to finalize trade agreements with Mexico and Indonesia. In order to make best use of these new partnerships, we need to put our house in order at home. We are aware of those problems. Both Germany and Europe have wasted incredible potential for growth in recent years by dragging feet on reforms and unnecessarily and excessively curtailing entrepreneurial freedoms and personal responsibility. We are going to change that now. Security and predictability take precedence over excessive regulation and misplaced perfection. We must reduce bureaucracy substantially in Europe. The single market was once created to form the most competitive economic area in the world. But instead, we have become the world champion of overregulation. That has to end.

Astonishing German results trigger panic ... https://youtu.be/prB-9RoKF_I

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/prB-9RoKF_I]]> Merz is apparently singing the right stuff far too late. And remember that a "conservative in Europe" is like what a moderate Democrat is in the US. That's what Merz's CDU party is. The AfD is the opposition that horrifies the establishment outlets. But even minus the massive weight of the latter's green and social engineering bureaucracy that's been choking the life out of Deutschland enterprise... Industry in Germany isn't taking off anywhere unless factories are granted more electricity.
- - - - - - - - - - -

AfD opens 20-point lead a month before crucial state elections
https://europeanconservative.com/article...elections/

INTRO: The right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has surged to a record 42% in a new poll in Saxony-Anhalt, putting the party 20 percentage points ahead of the governing centre-right CDU just four weeks before the state election. The Insa survey, published on Monday, August 10th, puts the AfD up one percentage point from its previous result, while the CDU of Prime Minister Sven Schulze has fallen two points to 22%. Insa chief Hermann Binkert said there is no chance the CDU will overtake the AfD by September 6.

MICHAEL HEAVER
https://youtu.be/prB-9RoKF_I

VIDEO EXCERPTS: Well, these are truly some of the most extraordinary poll results I've ever seen. They have really shaken at Germany to the core because Germany actually has state elections later on this year in September. So, not far away now. And in Germany you're seeing this industrial massacre continue. 42,000 jobs in the car industry gone in six months. You see Volkswagen set to shut down four German factories. That could be a further 100,000 jobs going.

And so it leaves the conservative German Chancellor Merz in a very weak position indeed. In fact, just 13% of the country is satisfied with his work. 85% not happy with the German chancellor.

Merz: . . . in our efforts to finalize trade agreements with Mexico and Indonesia. In order to make best use of these new partnerships, we need to put our house in order at home. We are aware of those problems. Both Germany and Europe have wasted incredible potential for growth in recent years by dragging feet on reforms and unnecessarily and excessively curtailing entrepreneurial freedoms and personal responsibility. We are going to change that now. Security and predictability take precedence over excessive regulation and misplaced perfection. We must reduce bureaucracy substantially in Europe. The single market was once created to form the most competitive economic area in the world. But instead, we have become the world champion of overregulation. That has to end.

Astonishing German results trigger panic ... https://youtu.be/prB-9RoKF_I

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/prB-9RoKF_I]]> <![CDATA[Wachowski wants to make a trans sci-fi movie (adapting to the DIY indie funding road)]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21101.html Sat, 15 Aug 2026 02:02:12 +0000 C C]]> https://www.scivillage.com/thread-21101.html Works with cult possibilities, as "Rocky Horror Picture Show" demonstrated over a half-century ago. If it was set in the far future where everybody belongs to some transhuman species, then an all-transgender cast on a spaceship or planet would fit right in. Or just adapt John Varley's Steel Beach to the big screen (though not every character would be trans -- primarily just Hildy and Cricket transitioning back and forth).

But if this is really just a laxative for Lilly's rage or yet another left-angelical sermon film, then that's going to put regular moviegoers to sleep. Even some Christians get bored watching religious flicks and Savonarola's lecture series. And as mentioned, Wachowski films keep underachieving at the box office since those "glory days".
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

JON DEL ARROZ
https://youtu.be/oTVvAbeh56k

VIDEO EXCERPTS: There's trouble in the Matrix. Now, Andrew Wachowski, who goes by the name Lilly these days, has been trying to make this all trans sci-fi movie and was bragging about it, pushing this on everybody last year as the greatest thing ever. Turns out that it's not greenlit, that nobody's funding it, and nobody's willing to fund it. This is a pretty interesting situation right here.

Now, what we're finding in 2026 is that these films, these books, these video games, etc used to be funded by the government. And the government would give all these grants for the social engineering that they were attempting to do on everybody. Those grants are all gone now under the Trump administration, and all of these people -- their grift is up -- basically is how it goes.

Because they can't make money off this stuff and so nobody's willing to finance it. [...] This is just not a marketable asset. But hey, we're going to look at Lilly's own words in just a moment. [...] So, let's get into this. Lilly Wachowski says, "Hollywood won't fund his trans-cast thriller." Exciting stuff. A trans-cast thriller. Just what everybody was looking for.

So, of course, we know him as the co-director of the Matrix trilogy, and he says Hollywood is freezing out his film because every lead role is played by a transgender actor. [...] People like it, he says, but they don't want to make it because it's got a wall-to-wall trans cast. He has to get creative and figure out different ways he can get this in front of people.

He said, "This is a script that was extremely important for me to write. It was a response to what's happening in the world for trans people, and it gave me a hugely cathartic receptacle to dump all of my anger and rage and frustration into."

[...] It's always anger and rage and frustration, if you notice. [...] Here's the problem with the discrimination framing, though. Wachowski is not an outsider that Hollywood has shut out. He's one half of the directing team behind the Matrix franchise. But he's spent two decades since being handed big studio budgets for things like Speedracer, Cloud Atlas, and Jupiter Ascending. Three films with a combined budget well north of $250 million, and combined box office that never came close to earning it back.

What's interesting here is I saw a comment from a transgender person on Twitter earlier today saying like, "How is it that the Wachowskis are not just given a blank check for everything?"

Well, they have been. And the lack of profit was the death knell for that. [...] Don't forget the Netflix Sense 8 creepy program as well. Nobody wanted to watch these because they're weird fetish, nonsense things...

Hollywood isn't rejecting The Matrix director over her trans-cast: Here's the real reason ... https://youtu.be/oTVvAbeh56k

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/oTVvAbeh56k]]> Works with cult possibilities, as "Rocky Horror Picture Show" demonstrated over a half-century ago. If it was set in the far future where everybody belongs to some transhuman species, then an all-transgender cast on a spaceship or planet would fit right in. Or just adapt John Varley's Steel Beach to the big screen (though not every character would be trans -- primarily just Hildy and Cricket transitioning back and forth).

But if this is really just a laxative for Lilly's rage or yet another left-angelical sermon film, then that's going to put regular moviegoers to sleep. Even some Christians get bored watching religious flicks and Savonarola's lecture series. And as mentioned, Wachowski films keep underachieving at the box office since those "glory days".
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

JON DEL ARROZ
https://youtu.be/oTVvAbeh56k

VIDEO EXCERPTS: There's trouble in the Matrix. Now, Andrew Wachowski, who goes by the name Lilly these days, has been trying to make this all trans sci-fi movie and was bragging about it, pushing this on everybody last year as the greatest thing ever. Turns out that it's not greenlit, that nobody's funding it, and nobody's willing to fund it. This is a pretty interesting situation right here.

Now, what we're finding in 2026 is that these films, these books, these video games, etc used to be funded by the government. And the government would give all these grants for the social engineering that they were attempting to do on everybody. Those grants are all gone now under the Trump administration, and all of these people -- their grift is up -- basically is how it goes.

Because they can't make money off this stuff and so nobody's willing to finance it. [...] This is just not a marketable asset. But hey, we're going to look at Lilly's own words in just a moment. [...] So, let's get into this. Lilly Wachowski says, "Hollywood won't fund his trans-cast thriller." Exciting stuff. A trans-cast thriller. Just what everybody was looking for.

So, of course, we know him as the co-director of the Matrix trilogy, and he says Hollywood is freezing out his film because every lead role is played by a transgender actor. [...] People like it, he says, but they don't want to make it because it's got a wall-to-wall trans cast. He has to get creative and figure out different ways he can get this in front of people.

He said, "This is a script that was extremely important for me to write. It was a response to what's happening in the world for trans people, and it gave me a hugely cathartic receptacle to dump all of my anger and rage and frustration into."

[...] It's always anger and rage and frustration, if you notice. [...] Here's the problem with the discrimination framing, though. Wachowski is not an outsider that Hollywood has shut out. He's one half of the directing team behind the Matrix franchise. But he's spent two decades since being handed big studio budgets for things like Speedracer, Cloud Atlas, and Jupiter Ascending. Three films with a combined budget well north of $250 million, and combined box office that never came close to earning it back.

What's interesting here is I saw a comment from a transgender person on Twitter earlier today saying like, "How is it that the Wachowskis are not just given a blank check for everything?"

Well, they have been. And the lack of profit was the death knell for that. [...] Don't forget the Netflix Sense 8 creepy program as well. Nobody wanted to watch these because they're weird fetish, nonsense things...

Hollywood isn't rejecting The Matrix director over her trans-cast: Here's the real reason ... https://youtu.be/oTVvAbeh56k

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/oTVvAbeh56k]]>