https://www.spiked-online.com/podcast-episode/thomas/
Thomas Chatterton Williams – author of Summer of our Discontent – is the latest guest on The Brendan O’Neill Show. Thomas and Brendan discuss the exploitation of George Floyd, the hollowness of Black Lives Matter and the inevitable right-wing backlash.
https://www.thefp.com/p/in-defense-of-inequality
Earlier this week the University of Austin (UATX)—a new university, whose founding was announced four years ago in these pages—welcomed its second class of undergraduates. At the school’s convocation ceremony, UATX president Carlos Carvalho delivered an address you won’t hear at any other university: a defense of inequality.
Good evening—students, parents, and all the supporters helping us build the University of Austin. I am honored to be with you today at your convocation, at the most important and exciting university in America.
Thank you for trusting us with your education. We are thrilled to welcome you into the UATX family.
Tonight, as we gather on the threshold of America’s 250th anniversary, I want to share why this moment and UATX represent something essential about the American experiment.
Two hundred and fifty years ago this week, King George III formally declared Americans to be rebels and traitors. This dashed the colonists’ hopes for a peaceful reconciliation, and set the path to declare a new nation based on the proposition that all men are created equal.
But on the heels of America’s quarter-millennium since the Declaration of Independence, I want to do something a bit unfashionable: I want to defend inequality.
Of course, all men are created equal. But all men are not the same. We have unequal curiosity, unequal intellect, unequal talent, unequal courage, unequal drive, unequal achievement.
I want to defend this kind of inequality because I believe it is the most important way that UATX distinguishes itself, and because being honest about inequality is the most important way that UATX can help you be extraordinary.
https://conservativehq.com/post/victor-davis-hanson-and-the-daily-signal-got-it-wrong-diana-west-is-owed-an-apology-and-a-retraction
What happens when people you like and respect screw up and defame another person you like and respect? Such is the case right now between Prof. Victor Davis Hanson and Rob Bluey, President and Executive Editor of the Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal, and our good friend journalist Diana West, author of the must-read book American Betrayal.
It all started when Prof. Hanson, appearing on the Daily Signal’s podcast, smeared Ms. West by associating her and her book American Betrayal with Hitler-apologists who have recently appeared on Tucker Carlson’s program.
After watching the podcast and reading the subsequent article on the Daily Signal (where Hanson is a Senior Contributor) it was painfully obvious that Prof. Hanson and the team at the Daily Signal haven’t read American Betrayal.
I’ve actually read American Betrayal, and to associate Ms. West or the book with Hitler apologists and “World War II Revisionists,” such as Darryl Cooper and Dave Collum, is to reach a conclusion that is almost the exact opposite of the evidence presented in Ms. West’s meticulous research.
We would like to think that such respected figures in conservative politics and culture as Prof. Hanson and Mr. Bluey would own their mistake, apologize and retract the smear, but they haven’t. They have, according to Ms. West, merely said they will “look into” her request for remedial action (presented in its entirety below).
https://goudsmit.pundicity.com/28805/mimi-strategies-coping-skills-for-kids
goudsmit.pundicity.com and website: lindagoudsmit.com
On August 29, 2025, education reformer and Executive Director of FreedomProject Academy, Dr. Duke Pesta, invited me to talk with him about my illustrated children’s book series, Mimi’s Strategy. You can access the program by using this link: Mimi’s Strategies: Coping Skills for Kids. I am delighted to share the discussion with you and hope you enjoy the show!
Most sincerely,
Linda
https://www.jns.org/e1-building-plan-officials-say-this-time-its-for-real/
Israel’s government has approved the construction of more than 3,000 housing units in E1 (“East 1”), an area in Judea and Samaria whose geostrategic significance far outstrips its small size. Israel signaled its intention to build there 30 years ago. Previous attempts to realize that intention have failed. The question is: Will this time be any different?
Local government officials JNS spoke with say nearly all the obstacles are removed. Most important, they say the government’s involvement is nearly at an end, at which point the issue becomes a purely municipal matter. Once that happens, there’s no going back.
“The initial process is called ‘TABA’ [a Hebrew acronym for ‘Urban Building Plan’]. It’s the city plan. And it’s a very long governmental process,” said Israel Ganz, head of the Binyamin Regional Council and the Yesha Council, an umbrella group representing all the municipal councils in Judea and Samaria.
“It’s supposed to end this Wednesday,” he told JNS on Aug. 18, two days before the plan received final approval by a Defense Ministry planning committee. “When it’s finished, it goes to the municipality, Ma’ale Adumim. From that moment, the city can get a building permit.”
Guy Yifrach, mayor of Maale Adumim, is also optimistic. He told JNS on Aug. 27, that after the committee’s approval, there is one more stage in which the government is involved—“marketing approval.” The government signs off on letting the city plan go out to contractors who bid on the right to build and market the homes. He estimates that approval is only a month away.
“This is the last stage the government touches. As soon as it issues this approval and we put out a call for bids, it’s impossible to go back. Then it’s out of the hands of the government, including from a legal point of view, and it becomes a municipal commercial matter,” Yifrach said. “I believe that within six months, we will already see tractors working in the field.”
https://www.frontpagemag.com/mamdanis-mom-got-millions-from-a-source-that-should-make-his-supporters-think-twice-but-wont/
One thing that can be said that’s favorable about Zohran Mamdani, the avowed socialist who is almost certain to be the next mayor of New York City: he loves his parents. That fact is, however, not as heartwarming as it might be under different circumstances.
The New York Post revealed Sunday that “Hamas-backing Qatar has bankrolled film and stage projects by socialist Zohran Mamdani’s Israel-bashing movie-director mom — and one of its royals is now pushing her son’s mayoral bid.”
Now, Zohran Mamdani is his own man, and what his mother has done has nothing whatsoever to do with his mayoral bid, right? Nor does it shed any light on his own views, right? Sure. After all, the candidate’s father, Mahmood Mamdani, a Marxist professor at Columbia University, said back in June that “we hadn’t bargained for being parents of a prospective mayor,” and appeared anxious to downplay any idea that he or Zohran’s mother, Mira Nair, had influenced young Zohran unduly: “He’s his own person. Now, of course what we do as his parents is part of the environment in which he grew up, and he couldn’t help but engage with it. That doesn’t mean anything is reflected back on us.”
Zohran’s mom, however, took a sharply different view, saying: “I don’t agree! Of course the world we live in, and what we write and film and think about, is the world that Zohran has very much absorbed.”
Of course he did. And that world seems to have been to a large extent funded by Qatar, the Muslim Brotherhood-supporting emirate from which Hamas top dogs watched the Oct. 7 jihad massacres, and got on their knees to thank Allah for allowing them to murder a large number of Jews.
https://issuesinsights.com/2025/09/05/care-to-guess-how-many-of-the-safest-cities-in-the-u-s-have-a-democratic-mayor/
Earlier this week, we reported that of the 20 most dangerous cities in the country – measured by their homicide rates in 2024 – only one had a Republican mayor. We were shocked by this finding.
So, we decided to look at the other end of the spectrum. What are the political affiliations of the mayors in the safest cities in the country?
Here’s what we found.
Many cities have nonpartisan elections, but of the 20 safest cities in the country, just five have mayors who are affiliated with or supported by Democrats.
Well, you might dismiss this as simply the result of these being relatively small cities. And it’s true that these are on the small side.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21824/the-eu-elites-part-iii
The report shows how the European Commission – the unelected executive branch of the European Union – is using European taxpayer money “to promote its political agenda under the guise of advancing ‘EU values’.” In short, the EU is funding NGOs and think-tanks to spread its own propaganda. — The EU’s Propaganda Machine: How the EU funds NGOs to promote itself, brussels.mcc.hu , February 12, 2025
The EU Commission funded more than 4,400 NGOS between 2014 and 2023, but more than 40% of the total sum given to NGOS, or 3.3 billion euros, went to just 30 organizations, making it look,” in the words of the MCC think-tank. “more like a cartel
“These bureaucracies are funding NGOs not to feed hungry people or to advance a broadly agreed upon social agenda. It’s to protect their own interests and to feather their own nests.” — Peter Schweizer, author and US investigative journalist, YouTube, February 19, 2025
“The reality is otherwise: It’s more like an extortion model, it’s more like the mafia, when the mafia shows up at a corner grocery store in America and says you might want to take out insurance with us, because if you don’t your shop might actually burn down. Well, in this scenario…. the government and government officials in the United States and also in Europe threaten and pressure corporations, people who do not share their political views…” — Peter Schweizer, author and US investigative journalist, YouTube, February 19, 2025
That is just the NGOs. The EU Commission also funds an unknown number of other projects. Perhaps the most notable among them, given the enormous amounts of money diverted for it, was the funding of the terrorist entities in the West Bank and Gaza. The EU routinely boasts of being the largest provider of foreign aid to the Palestinians, although it is highly unclear how this, in any way, is in the interest of Europe’s taxpayers.
The European Union is the biggest provider of external assistance to the Palestinians which amounts to indicatively almost €1.2 billion for 2021-2024 under the European Joint Strategy,” the EU boasted in December 2023, just months after the October 7 massacre by Hamas of 1,200 innocent people in Israel.
Then there are all the cases of foreign influence operations in the EU: Qatargate, Huaweigate, and the corruption scandal of Pfizergate. There is the extreme lack of transparency within the European Union and its severely undemocratic decision-making processes, lack of transparency and no mechanism for walking away.
In April, a group of European Parliamentarians, known as the Patriots group, inspired by the US, actually proposed a “DOGE for Europe” at the European Parliament. The initiative, however, also known as TRAC (Transparency, Responsibility, and Anti-Corruption) is facing stark opposition from the mainstream parties in the European Parliament. Maybe they have a lot to hide?
The idea of a European DOGE [Department of Government Efficiency] to clean up the waste and fraud that goes on with EU taxpayer money is slowly spreading in Europe, but more than overdue. Most Europeans are completely unaware of the madness of EU spending on useless, batty projects, including NGOs that have turned out to be a way for many of the EU’s “elites” to receive nice kickbacks.
In February 2025, MCC Brussels, a European think-tank, published a bombshell report, The EU’s Propaganda Machine: How the EU funds NGOs to promote itself. The report shows how the European Commission – the unelected executive branch of the European Union – is using European taxpayer money “to promote its political agenda under the guise of advancing ‘EU values’.” In short, the EU is funding NGOs and think-tanks to spread its own propaganda.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-energy-plan-2025-climate-change
New York’s recently released Draft 2025 Energy Plan is rooted in fantasy. The plan asserts that the Empire State’s electrification and zero-emissions obsession will reduce energy costs, fight climate change, and create over 60,000 net new jobs by 2035. In reality, while the plan won’t meaningfully affect the climate, it will devastate consumers and New York’s economy.
The plan asks New Yorkers to ignore the realities before their eyes—including surging energy costs. ConEd, the state’s largest electric and gas utility, has requested double-digit rate increases for its provision of electricity and natural gas, which will cost consumers an additional $2 billion annually. National Grid has filed for similar rate increases upstate.
Those requested hikes are solely for natural gas and electricity delivery. As more fossil-fuel-generating plants close in response to the state’s net-zero Climate Action Plan, wholesale electricity costs will continue to soar, as growing demand, driven by the state’s building- and vehicle-electrification mandates, outstrips supply.
The state’s climate plan also contains a litany of dubious targets and assumptions. For example, it commits the state to former Governor Cuomo’s goal of deploying 9,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2035, despite that industry’s having sunk under its own bloated costs.
Elsewhere, the plan assumes that someone will somehow develop, commercialize, and install currently nonexistent electric generating technologies over the next 15 years. Specifically, it claims that someone will retrofit 17,000 megawatts of existing natural gas-fired generators—the equivalent of eight Indian Point nuclear plants—to burn pure hydrogen by 2040. The plan also assumes that the state will somehow manufacture enough “green” hydrogen using surplus wind and solar generation to fuel those plants and build an entirely new pipeline infrastructure to deliver hydrogen to them.
Even if developers created generators capable of burning pure hydrogen, the quantity of surplus wind and solar power generation needed to manufacture sufficient hydrogen to power those 17,000 megawatts is staggering. Producing enough energy to fuel even just the 10 percent of hours when electricity demand is highest would require building 13,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity, which would require an investment of between $25 billion and $65 billion. That doesn’t include financing costs. Nor does it include the cost of the hydrogen manufacturing facilities themselves.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/09/9_11_some_say_always_remember_but_many_have_already_forgotten.html
As we approach another somber September 11, you will frequently hear “always remember.” The fact is, many Americans have already forgotten.
When most Americans remember 9/11, they think about the Twin Towers collapsing after Muslim terrorists flew a plane into each building. But the 110-story Twin Towers (WTC), located in lower Manhattan, was part of a 16-acre commercial complex that contained seven buildings, a large plaza, and an underground shopping mall that connected six of the buildings.
On September 11, 2001, the entire complex was destroyed, killing 2,753 innocent people. Included in that count were 343 New York City firefighters, 23 New York City police officers, and 37 Port Authority officers. Many more people died prematurely in the years after 9/11 due to medical issues resulting from their participating in search and rescue operations.
American Airlines Flight 11 was the first plane to hit the WTC, crashing the North Tower at 8:46 AM. Everyone on the plane instantly died and those above the 91st floor were trapped.
Just a few minutes before United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower at 9:03 AM, passenger Brian Sweeney called his wife one final time. She was at work teaching her high school class that morning and didn’t hear the message until later in the day when she learned her husband had died.
Jules, this is Brian. Listen, I’m on an airplane that’s been hijacked. If things don’t go well, and it’s not looking good, I just want you to know I absolutely love you. I want you to do good, go have good times. Same to my parents and everybody, and I just totally love you, and I’ll see you when you get there.
At 9:37 AM, American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon, instantly killing 59 passengers and crew. At the Pentagon, 125 people were murdered.
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