MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Whistleblower Dr. Marvin Rapaport Exposes Political Medicine and its Elusive “Hidden” Allergy by Linda Goudsmit

Posted By on August 18th, 2025

https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/28779/whistleblower-dr-marvin-rapaport-exposes

goudsmit.pundicity.com  and website: lindagoudsmit.com 

In my January 30, 2022 article, “A Short History of Medicine and Megalomania,” I explain how holistic medicine is actually the original western medicine established on the principle of strengthening the immune system to fight off pathogens in the environment. It is traditional western medicine that is the alternative medicine because its fundamental premise is that medications are required to be healthy:

My point is that the chemical/pharmaceutical companies are pouring toxic chemicals into the environment that destroy public health -> then the chemical/pharmaceutical companies offer more chemicals and pharmaceuticals to “cure” what they caused in the first place. It is a never-ending cycle of destruction of public health. The United States is at the bottom of the totem pole in world health because the American medical community is driven by unscrupulous globalists and the corrupt politicians who serve them.

RFK Jr.’s book, The Real Anthony Fauci, is enlightening in this regard because it connects the dots and shows how John D. Rockefeller actually set the stage for the corruption in medicine and academia today. Rockefeller funded the medical education and research that supported the germ theory, but all with his political agenda. If anyone is responsible for political medicine and monsters like Gates and Fauci, it is John D. Rockefeller.

Rockefeller politicized medicine because he understood that vaccines could be used for population control and total social control. The medical tyranny of Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci today, began with John D. Rockefeller and has spun out of control. Big Pharma IS a military wing of the government––medicine has been weaponized and is being used against innocent populations––including our own.

Until President Trump resumed office in 2025, the science was being controlled by corrupt eugenicists like Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates who offer political medicine disguised as public health. The staggering profits made by Big Pharma at the expense of public health during the COVID19 debacle is a stupefying crime perpetrated with the protection of indemnification from vaccine harm. Hopefully, with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now at the helm of the Department of Health & Human Service (HHS), this unconscionable indemnification will be terminated. But what about Big Pharma’s lesser-known crimes?

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Putin, Trump, and the Elusive “Peace” Trump’s Alaska summit with Putin yielded no ceasefire, but it revealed the contours of a possible peace—where diplomacy, exhaustion, and hard limits define the battlefield’s end. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on August 18th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/18/putin-trump-and-the-elusive-peace/

At the August 15 Alaska summit, Vladimir Putin performed as expected. He desperately wants an end to Western sanctions, détente with the U.S., and assurances that the U.S. will not impose a disastrous anti-Russian secondary boycott—and, apparently, some additional Ukrainian territory.

Consequently, Putin, in his media synopsis, talked more about restored friendship with a “neighborly” United States under Trump. He scarcely mentioned Ukraine directly—other than to imply to Westerners that he seeks not merely to annex a foreign country, but to reclaim what he views as a former Soviet province with ancient ties to the Russian people.

Trump did not get his ceasefire with Putin. But he quickly pivoted to remind us that the table is set for a supposedly comprehensive peace without first requiring a temporary cessation of arms.

Trump addressed the media more succinctly and with greater discretion than Putin, appearing more optimistic that the Russian-American hostility was thawing. And he views normalization as a necessary step toward comprehensive peace in the weeks to come.

The left lambasted Trump for speaking politely of Putin and vice versa. There was additional criticism of a Fox interview in which Trump mentioned “land swaps” and for his supposed prior naïveté in believing he could obtain a ceasefire with Putin.

Yet for all the posturing, we have known for some time the general outlines of a peace, how it could come about, and why it has not yet happened.

Ukraine will not join NATO, but will likely be fully armed by the West. Ukraine lacks the power to retake Crimea or the Donbass, but with Western aid, it can preserve most of its territory.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

The Trump-Putin 2025 Summit The battle lines are drawn. by Craig Luther

Posted By on August 18th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-trump-putin-2025-summit/

So just what was the outcome of the recent – and historic – Trump/Putin Summit at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska? Oddly enough, we still don’t know. All that we do know is that the two world leaders talked for several hours, made brief public statements, then reboarded their respective planes and hightailed it out of town, leaving behind a bewildered world press and a plethora of unanswered questions.

In the U.S. media, the details will inevitably dribble out in dribs and drabs, colored in each case by whatever “angle” confirms the interlocutor’s biases. This is already the case, of course, with Trump-loathing “journalists” at CNN bashing the president for putting that murderous international pariah, Vladimir Putin, back on the world stage (“Trump’s getting ‘played’ once again by Putin!”), while right-leaning pundits at Fox News praised President Trump for his putative leadership and efforts to bring an end to a major European war (“at least Trump’s trying to do something, while Biden never even picked up the phone to call Putin!”).

Thus have the domestic battle lines been drawn: full disclosure, I lean toward the latter perspective. Yet as a historian who has spent all of this century studying conflict in this uniquely violent corner of the world (eastern Europe), I will try to lay out my thoughts with all the objectivity I can muster.

Let me begin by pointing out that the western narrative on most everything from Putin’s health to the status of the Russo-Ukraine war is often little more than gaslighting. Perhaps you think I just violated the pledge I made directly above, but consider: For years we’ve been assured that Putin is sick, he’s even dying; he has cancer or some other dreadful malady. And, yet, after all this time, he’s still here, and he looked vigorous and athletic as he walked down the red carpet to shake hands with President Trump. So scratch that little fairytale. We’re also told that endless rounds of sanctions are bringing Russia to its knees, but somehow it has managed since February 2022 to transition to something close to a total war footing, producing more drones, tanks, artillery, missiles and munitions than the U.S. and all other NATO countries combined.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Defending Savagery in the Name of Multiculturalism A kinder, gentler child sacrifice. by Mark Tapson

Posted By on August 18th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/defending-savagery-in-the-name-of-multiculturalism/

What’s not to like about multiculturalism? After all, isn’t diversity our strength? Don’t cultural influences from around the world add spice and flavor to the bland, Eurocentric West, which some people even say has no culture of its own? Take food, for example; as everyone always points out when this topic comes up, different cultures bring a smorgasbord of vibrant cuisines to the West! Also rape gangs, no-go zones, and machete attacks, but that’s a small price to pay for a corner kebab stand.

Many years ago, when I was a musician paying no attention to politics, nothing excited and inspired me more than the mix of multicultural influences that rockers like Sting, Peter Gabriel, and Talking Heads frontman David Byrne incorporated into pop music. My favorite section in record stores was labeled simply “world music,” where I immersed myself in exotic artists like South Africa’s Johnny Clegg and Savuka, Senegalese superstar Youssou N’Dour, avant-garde Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, and the drummers of Brazil’s Olodum, all of whom found crossover success in America and Europe. That’s all the word “multiculturalism” meant to me.

I didn’t learn until many years later that multiculturalism also referred to a subversive movement, born of political correctness, that swept through academia, where so many stupid and destructive ideas are born and nurtured, and from there out into the culture at large. Multiculturalism takes the relativistic position that all cultural expressions are equally valid, that all cultures should be equally celebrated rather than judged – except for Western civilization, which is viewed as the fount of all oppression, exploitation, and genocidal violence in world history. In fact, as Keith Windschuttle wrote in The New Criterion, multiculturalism is “entirely a negation of Western culture and values.” Its raison d’etre is not to promote tolerance and diversity but to undermine the West.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Let’s Pause To Marvel At Trump’s Incredible Border Victory

Posted By on August 18th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/08/15/lets-pause-to-marvel-at-trumps-incredible-border-victory/

Earlier this month, Customs and Border Protection recorded fewer than 7,832 illegal border crossings in July. That’s a staggering number when you consider that the 25-year average for that month is 76,000.

Even more staggering is that this should never have happened. At least, not if you believed President Joe “Autopen” Biden.

For four years straight, Biden and his minions told the American public either that the border was secure, or that the problem was impossible to fix due to Republican intransigence, or some combination of the two.

Here, for the record, is a sampling:

March 2021: “It happens every single, solitary year: There is a significant increase in the number of people coming to the border in the winter months of January, February, March. That happens every year.” – Joe Biden.
March 2021: “The border is secure, and the border is not open.” – Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
June 2021: “The administration has made significant progress at establishing a well-managed and secure border while also treating people fairly and humanely. The American people support this approach.” – White House statement.
Sept. 2021: “The border is secure. We’re executing our plan.” – Mayorkas.
July 2022: “Look, the border is secure. We are working to make the border more secure. That has been a historic challenge.” – Mayorkas.
Jan. 2023: “Our problems at the border didn’t arise overnight and they’re not going to be solved overnight. It’s a difficult problem.” – Biden.
Jan. 2023: “Biden-Harris Administration today is announcing new enforcement measures to increase security at the border and reduce the number of individuals crossing unlawfully.” – White House statement.
Feb 2023: “We now have a record number of personnel working to secure the border.” – Biden.
July 2023: “Our approach to managing the borders securely and humanely, even within our fundamentally broken immigration system, is working.” – Mayorkas.
Feb. 2024: “The only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump.” – Biden.
May 2024: “The president has such limited ability to issue executive orders that would have an impact on the border. He can’t conjure resources out of thin air.” – Sen. Chris Murphy.
June 2024: “Today, I’m moving past Republican obstruction and using the executive authorities available to me as president to do what I can on my own to address the border.” – Biden.
June 2024: “Over the past three years, while Congress has failed to act, the president has acted to secure our border.” – White House statement.
Sept. 2024: “The border is secure, but we also have a broken immigration system, in particular, over the last four years before we came in, and it needs to be fixed.” – Kamala Harris.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Here We Go Again – The West’s Palestinian State Fantasy by Nils A. Haug

Posted By on August 18th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21834/palestinian-state-fantasy

Only leaders completely sold out to extremist ideologies would persist in pushing a proposal so far detached from reality and so harmful to many people — starting with the atrociously governed Palestinians — that it is almost beyond comprehension.

“If you notice, the talks with Hamas fell apart on the day Macron made the unilateral decision that he’s going to recognize a Palestinian state. And then you have other people come forward, other countries say, well, if there is not a ceasefire by September, we’re going to recognize a Palestinian state. Well, if I’m Hamas, I basically conclude, ‘let’s not do a ceasefire because we can be rewarded, we can claim it as a victory.'” — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The situation in Gaza could quite easily have been resolved many months ago if Hamas had laid down its weapons and released the hostages it had no business kidnapping in the first place. This did not happen. Nevertheless, Israel is blamed for trying to get its tortured and starved hostages released. What would France, Britain, Canada or Australia have done? The party responsible for Gaza’s collateral damage is Hamas.

Israel… is doing its best in horrendously dangerous circumstances to feed the hungry people of Gaza, while Hamas deliberately starves the hostages, and has lately photographed them digging their own graves.

A Palestinian state would, in addition, continue trying to conquer more of Israel’s historic homeland, and try to drive Jews out of it, as they openly vow to do…

That, it seems, is Macron’s view of a “just and lasting peace”.

“If France is really so determined to see a Palestinian state, I’ve got a suggestion for them: Carve out a piece of the French Riviera, and create a Palestinian state. They’re welcome to do that, but they’re not welcome to impose that kind of pressure on a sovereign nation. ” —US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, June 1, 2025.

A further reason that Western efforts to impose a Palestinian state are inadvisable is that they ignore a warning from the Trump administration that “any country that takes ‘anti-Israel actions’ will be viewed as acting in opposition to US interests and will face diplomatic consequences.”

“There was a Palestinian state. It was called Gaza. Look what we received. The biggest massacre since the Holocaust. To establish a Palestinian state after October 7 is a huge prize not only for Hamas [but] for Iran.” — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, February 6, 2025.

The question remains how any rational national leader can simply discount Israel’s attitude towards an independent Palestinian (terrorist, Jihadist) state within or alongside its borders? Would those leaders countenance an uppity ISIS or Al Qaeda on their borders? Yet, Starmer and Macron (together with leaders of Spain, Norway and Ireland) are doing exactly that. Is it possible that they are endeavouring to accommodate the millions of Muslim voters they have helped infiltrate into their own broken countries?

This irony is that many in the West who are advocating “social justice for all people” think nothing of vilifying the Jews.

At this point in history, Israel’s legitimate actions consist in defending its people — and the stunningly ungrateful West — from a horror disguised within a veneer of fake “moral clarity,” along with false charges of a supposed genocide in Gaza. As Huckabee remarked, “If Israel is trying to commit genocide, they are really, really bad at it.” In fact, Israel is defending the West — the very people undermining them — from a genocide. Publicly expressed slogans targeting Jews simply support the murderous intent of the enemies of Israel and those apparently trying to help them finish the job.

A majority of Western leaders clearly refuse to exercise integrity when it concerns the Palestinian issue. Only leaders completely sold out to extremist ideologies would persist in pushing a proposal so far detached from reality and so harmful to many people — starting with the atrociously governed Palestinians — that it is almost beyond comprehension. Perhaps this phenomena is best described as a “cognitive bias” that can “lead to a person interpreting all new information as supporting their preconception.”

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Palestinian Authority’s Human ‘Slaughterhouse’ by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on August 18th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21846/palestinian-authority-slaughterhouse

None of these countries… [France, Canada, Australia, the UK] has demanded that the Palestinian Authority halt its human rights violations against its own people. Ending financial and administrative corruption and excluding Hamas from governance is pointless as long as the PA continues to crack down on its political rivals and impose severe restrictions on freedom of speech.

Last month, Palestinian Authority security officer Ammar Saeed Abu Thahri reportedly died while in PA custody. It remains unclear why Abu Thahri was arrested by PA security forces in the first place.

“Most of the arrests were related to freedom of expression or participation in demonstrations in solidarity with the Gaza Strip.” — Palestinian human rights group Lawyers for Justice, safa.pa, July 30, 2025.

The Palestinian Authority security officers who beat political activist Nizar Banat to death in 2021 have still not been punished. Banat, an outspoken critic of the PA leadership, was beaten to death by PA security officers in Hebron.

“We have documented hundreds of cases of arrest, torture, and ill-treatment of activists and political opponents since Nizar’s killing…. Those involved in most of these crimes have not been held accountable.” — Lawyers for Justice, June 24, 2025.

If France, Australia, the UK and Canada really cared about the Palestinians, they should be demanding that the PA respect public freedoms and stop its crackdown on political and human rights activists.

The last thing the Middle East needs is another Arab dictatorship run by corrupt leaders whose main goal is to batter their own people while siphoning off still more European and international aid money into their own bank accounts.

France, Canada, Australia, the UK and other Western countries that recently pledged to recognize a Palestinian state have said that their decision is “predicated” on commitments from the Palestinian Authority (PA) to undergo critical governance reforms, as well as excluding the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group from a future Palestinian government.

None of these countries, however, has demanded that the PA halt its human rights violations against its own people. Ending financial and administrative corruption and excluding Hamas from governance is pointless as long as the PA continues to crack down on its political rivals and impose severe restrictions on freedom of speech.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

Posted By on August 17th, 2025

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

The expression “all Greek to me” means that something is incomprehensible, but Greek mythology covers every aspect of human endeavor.

Apate was the Greek goddess of fraud, deceit, trickery, deception and guile. She is the perfect symbol for the mainstream media with its anti-Israel bias churned out daily in deceptive accusations of forced starvation, deliberate targeting of children and hospitals and “genocide” against Israel.

Themis is the Greek goddess of truth and justice, the perfect symbol of Michael Ordman’s weekly report on the outsize and dazzling contributions of succor and healing which benefits the entire world. rsk

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
It must have been witchcraft! On social media. Abdollah Ganji, former editor of Iran’s state-controlled newspaper Javan, accused Israel of utilizing “Jewish witchcraft” and demonic forces during the recent war between the Jewish state and the Islamic Republic of Iran.  How else can anyone explain the Israeli victory?
https://worldisraelnews.com/israel-used-jewish-witchcraft-during-war-iranian-journalist/
 
Technion graduates celebrate. Among the 1,904 graduates who just received Technion diplomas, was Adi whose brother, Shlomi was in the audience, having survived kidnapping by Hamas. Also twin brothers Ofek and Shachaf (electrical and computer engineering graduates) who completed 500 days of reserve duty together.
https://www.technion.ac.il/en/blog/article/1904-graduates-received-their-technion-diplomas-this-week/
 
Ex-hostages celebrate daughter’s wedding. Shir Siegel waited nearly 2 years for her wedding as Hamas held her parents hostage in Gaza. Mother Aviva was released after 51 days and Father Keith after 484 days. Fellow ex-hostages Emily Damari, Liri Albag, Agam Berger, and Amit Soussana joined them under the chuppah.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-keith-and-aviva-siegel-walk-daughter-down-aisle-as-six-freed-hostages-recite-heartfelt-shehecheyanu-prayer/  https://israfan.com/p/freed-hostages-join-siegel-wedding
 
Building Weizmann back better. A month after Iranian missiles struck the Weizmann Institute, demolishing cancer, heart research and environmental labs, repair work is fast underway. And a “miracle” prevented the mass of flammable materials on site from igniting.
https://www.jns.org/israels-symbol-of-science-will-build-back-better-after-iranian-attack/
 
Agricultural school near Lebanese border. Kibbutz Yiron – an Israeli farming community in the Upper Galilee adjacent to the border with Lebanon – is opening a new Israeli agricultural boarding school this fall. It merges education with agriculture, breathing new life into the region following the war with Hezbollah.
https://www.jns.org/new-israeli-agricultural-high-school-to-open-near-the-border-with-lebanon/
 
85,000+ foreign workers. More than 85,000 foreign workers have entered Israel since Oct 7 2023. In addition, 11,000 agricultural laborers who had fled the war have returned to Israel.
https://www.jns.org/more-than-85000-foreign-workers-have-arrived-in-israel-since-start-of-war/
 
“You are my friend”. This video shows an IDF soldier giving a Gazan child puddings to share with his brother, who later thanked the soldier by calling him a friend with a good heart.
https://worldisraelnews.com/watch-heartwarming-moment-as-idf-soldier-shares-food-with-gazan-child/
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Groundbreaking cancer research.  One of European Research Council’s latest grants awarded to Israelis is for Bar-Ilan’s project targeting Protein Degradation, aiming to revolutionize how cancer and other diseases are treated at the molecular level. It specifically involves instructing cells to destroy harmful proteins.
https://www.biu.ac.il/en/article/583680
 
Swallowing your tongue? No need to worry. (TY Hazel) A new study led by a Tel Aviv Ichilov (Sourasky) Medical Center cardiologist reveals that it is wrong (and dangerous) to check if heart attack victims risk swallowing their tongue before commencing CPR. Delays can cause death or severe anoxic brain damage
https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/hjblh11avxg
https://onlinecjc.ca/article/S0828-282X(25)00384-8/fulltext
 
Cross-border operations. Two critically ill Israelis were saved thanks to the heat and lungs donated by a newly deceased patient in Cyprus. Despite a car breakdown, the organs was transported to Israel within 4 hours. In addition, in cross-donations from living donors, five Israelis and three Cypriots received a new kidney.
https://worldisraelnews.com/israeli-doctors-transplant-cypriot-heart-and-lungs-in-race-against-time/
 
How to spot those at risk of genetic diseases. Researchers at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa have rewritten the book on prenatal testing for genetic diseases. The “old” method checks for identical segments (ROH) in the DNA inherited from mother and father. The new algorithm recognizes that ethnic minorities have more ROH.
https://unitedwithisrael.org/israels-rabin-medical-center-reports-genetic-disease-breakthrough/

ISRAEL, P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

As Bono now knows, you criticise Hamas at your peril The mad backlash against U2 confirms pop music is under the spell of Islamo-fascism. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on August 16th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/08/14/as-bono-now-knows-you-criticise-hamas-at-your-peril/

Bono’s getting flak again. What’s he done now? Foisted another U2 album on iPhone users? Donned his expensive shades for yet another gurning selfie with some president or pope? Nope, it’s far worse than that – he criticised Hamas.

Yes, the U2 frontman is getting it in the neck for calling Hamas ‘evil’. It was in a statement issued at the start of this week. After nearly two years of being harangued by the keffiyeh knobs who clog up the cultural establishment, all of them wailing ‘When will U2 speak about the genocide?!’, the band buckled. But it wasn’t enough to satiate the fury of the Israel haters. In fact it riled them even more. For Bono made the fatal mistake of reminding folk that an army of Jew-loathing lunatics started this infernal war, and its name is Hamas.

Under the title ‘On Gaza’, all four band members offered their thoughts. It’s mostly typical Boomer fare on the horribleness of war. But then there’s the Hamas slamming. It is a testament to the choking conformism of our Israelophobic moment that it feels balls-out radical to see a rock act criticise that neo-fascist militia. Drummer Larry Mullen Jnr even opens his remarks with a furious dig at the ‘Hamas-led massacre of Israelis’ when ‘innocent music fans [were] slaughtered, beaten and abused at the Nova music festival’. He goes on to rail against Israel, natch, but my mouth was nonetheless agape: a musician mentioning the savagery at Nova? Can it be?

It is Bono’s comment that is most striking. He lays into Israel, which is what the pitchfork-wavers wanted. But he lays into Hamas, too. ‘The rape, murder and abduction of Israelis at the Nova music festival was evil’, he says. He dares to humanise the youth of Nova. They were ‘music lovers and fans like us’, he says. It feels like sweet moral relief from the anti-Semitic damning of those dancers in the desert as ‘settler-colonialists’ who had it coming. To think of those kids ‘hiding under a stage in Kibbutz Re’im’ is awful, writes Bono. And then they were ‘butchered’ by Hamas, he says, to ‘set a diabolical trap for Israel and to get a war going that might just redraw the map from “the river to the sea”… a gamble Hamas’s leadership were willing to play with the lives of two million Palestinians’.

I’ve done my fair share of Bono-bashing, but I’ll admit it: there is great moral clarity here. Bono recognises that Hamas started this war, that it did so with the aim of erasing Israel, and that it has zero regard for the Palestinians sacrificed at the altar of its psychotic anti-Semitic dream. ‘Yahya Sinwar didn’t mind if he lost the battle or even the war if he could destroy Israel as a moral as well as an economic force’, says Bono. His terrorists ‘deliberately positioned themselves under civilian targets’, he says, ‘having tunnelled their way from school to mosque to hospital’. Why would a terror outfit behave so insanely? Check out its charter, says Bono. ‘It’s an evil read.’

He then turns his guns on Benjamin Netanyahu. Under his rule, what was ‘once an oasis of innovation and free-thinking’ in the Middle East risks falling under the spell of ‘a fundamentalism as blunt as a machete’. He goes way over the top, accusing Netanyahu’s Israel of a ‘depravity and lawlessness’ that ‘feels like uncharted territory’. If he thought such stinging words would placate the keffiyeh mob demanding he take the knee to their demented animus for Israel, he was mistaken. They’ve still found him guilty of the greatest sin in the era of Israelophobia: nuance.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

London is in trouble and there’s no point denying it The media elites’ classist indifference to the fraying of social bonds is gross. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on August 16th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/08/16/london-is-in-trouble-and-theres-no-point-denying-it/

A new high-status opinion just dropped: London is fine. From their converted Edwardian houses in the leafy suburbs where you won’t get a burger for less than 15 quid, London’s preening opinion-shapers have taken to X to say all is well in the capital. Ignore the ‘Trumpist’ talking points about London going down the swanny, they cry between glugs of pinot noir – life’s never been better! One envisions the grimaces of people on the other side of town when they see such hot takes pop up on their mobile phones that they cling to for dear life lest some wanker on a stolen Lime bike should snatch them.

The internet is fizzing with this big question: ‘Is London a shithole?’ What’s funny is that proper Londoners have this discussion all the time. Sometimes we say it is, if we’ve had a rotten day, and other times we’ll be squaring up to any funny-accented outsider who talks shit about our city. But now the London question, like everything else, has fallen into the doom-loop churn of the culture war. It’s become fodder for digital posturing. ‘It’s a crime-ridden hellhole’, says the Very Online right. ‘It’s fine’, say rich liberals in airy flats. Not for the first time, both are wrong.

The most wrong – or certainly the most annoying – are the ‘London is fine’ lot. There’s a Marie Antoinette vibe to their digital missives. ‘Let them eat sourdough bread!’, they might as well cry. It’s typified by Lewis Goodall of The News Agents, the podcast for rich, glum liberals still not over Brexit. London, he said, is being falsely talked down as a dreadful place where ‘crime is completely out of control… fare evasion is completely rampant… [and] the Tube is looking like Gotham City’. It’s all ‘exaggerated’, he says.

I’m going to put my neck on the line and propose that Mr Goodall’s London life is rather more plush and cossested than most others’. A couple of years back he told the Evening Standard he lives in Norbury, a very middle-class and – sorry, Lewis – soulless suburb in the south-east where crime is low and deprivation virtually non-existent. Apparently he feasts on ‘Gallic fare at Pique-Nique’ – no, me neither – and loves tucking into ‘pelmeni’ in Soho with his equally starry media pals. Thankfully, for thickos like me, the Standard explained what pelmeni is: Russian dumplings.

He does boxercise in East Dulwich. He loves gardening because ‘it’s the opposite of modern life’. He wants to ban cars. Right, so he’s that London. The other London. The London I didn’t even know existed until I hit my 20s. The London where you’re unlikely to encounter a crackhead on a night bus – mainly because you can afford Ubers – or a mumbling masked prick saying, ‘Gimme your phone’. Goodall’s co-host, Jon Sopel, agreed with him that London-bashing is a ‘Trump import’. That’ll be the Jon Sopel who lives in Belsize Park, gets to work via a ‘beautiful walk across Primrose Hill’, buys his suits from Richard James on Savile Row and tells anyone who’ll listen that ‘Duke’s has the best Martini’s in London’. I wonder where he skis?