Utopia, you are standing in it!

How very odd our present public conversations have become. It’s as if we are speaking different languages. Democrats seem to lack any understanding of basic free-market capitalism and are sure it’s all about the haves and the have nots, the billionaires and the homeless. They hold positive feelings about the latter, which makes them feel as if they are good people.

This extends to their feelings about the border, immigration – legal and illegal, and things like sanctuary cities and ICE who they assume are the bad guys. Their misconceptions extend to the wall. Some Democrats believe that the wall is somehow a symbol – to Trump, of his manhood, a nonsensical huge thick concrete barrier between friendly neighbors, that we certainly don’t need for any reason whatsoever. Completely incorrect.  The wall President Trump wants is tall, steel, and slatted so it is see-through.

If you remember, in 2016 President Trump issued…

Since vegan activists in Great Britain have become more violent, the country’s counter-terrorism task force has been assigned to protect people employed with the meat industry.

The UK Daily Mail reveals that the British Poultry Council and the National Pig Association requested support from authorities after increasing threats against employees at farms and slaughterhouses from animal rights terrorists.

In recent years, vegans have been litigating in English courts seeking protections from discrimination and having their lifestyle recognized as legally protected. Sofar, they have failed since it is not the typical philosophical belief such as if one belongs to a religious organization or sect.

During May, the Daily Mail also reported that staff at a family-run butcher establishment in Kent were living in fear resulting from vegan thugs threatening to firebomb the butcher shop, with the outside of the building being covered in Animal Liberation Front graffiti.

It is good British…

In July 2013 the BBC News website produced a backgrounder intended to inform audiences about what it considered to be the five “Core Issues” of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians: Jerusalem, borders, settlements, refugees and security. Although that backgrounder is no longer available online in its original form, in a section titled ‘refugees’ the Palestinian position was presented thus:

“Formally, they maintain the “right of return”, arguing that without it a great injustice would not be put right. However, there has been regular talk among Palestinians that this “right” could be met by compensation.” 

In other words, the BBC presented the Palestinian demand for the ‘right of return’ for refugees as a formality and steered audiences towards the view that the issue would be resolved on a practical level by means of compensation.

Over the past nine months, however, audiences have seen changes in the BBC’s presentation of that…

The recent decision of the NSW Court of Appeal in Ulman v Live Group Pty Ltd [2018] NSWCA 338 (20 December 2018) raises important issues about the interaction between internal disputes within a religious community, and the “secular” court system. In this case a majority held that the threat of purely religious sanctions, to be applied if a dispute was resolved in the ordinary courts rather than in a religious tribunal, amounted to contempt of court, and imposed financial penalties on members of the tribunal. Significant questions are raised as to whether religious groups are able to apply their own religious beliefs in disciplining members of their community, or whether these decisions will be over-ridden by the ordinary court system.

Remarkable growth of ice in Bering Sea has been observed over the last three weeks as shown above.  The extent went from 57k km2 to 424k km2 during that period, and is presently 94% of the maximum Bering ice extent in March 2018.  To put this event in context, note that Bering 2018 maximum was low and pulled down the overall Arctic extent in March.  For example, 2017 Bering maximum was 725k km2 compared to 2018 max of 451k km2, or a difference of 48%.  We will be watching to see how much will be added in the coming 3 months.

Note also that Chukchi north of Bering completed freezing over on day 352,  December 18, 2018.  We can also see that Okhotsk on the left was freezing at the same rate as Bering, but added no new ice in the last week.

The Bering ice recovery coincides with the…

Throughout 2018 the BBC continued to cover the topic of ‘fake news’, creating a dedicated webpage for items tagged under that topic and producing various guides to identifying fake news, including one aimed specifically at younger audiences.

“Fake news usually comes down to two things. Firstly, false news stories that aren’t true at all. They go online or are shared on social media even though the person writing them knows that they are made up. Number two: stories that may have some truth to them but the facts aren’t clear or checked properly or the writer has exaggerated some of it to mean what they want it to.” [emphasis in bold added]

This year too BBC Watch has documented numerous examples of misinformation promoted by the BBC and has submitted dozens of related complaints. Among the inaccurate claims made by the BBC to which we have managed to secure corrections in…