Dave J

Can't believe I forgot to celebrate Justin Webb Day yesterday. Must have been distracted by all that normality in America

This makes me so angry.

The eradication of diseases like measles and polio was one of the great achievements of the 20thC. They blighted millions of lives. Things got better.

And we've chosen to abandon that achievement through ignorance, bad faith and lies.

The takeaway here is : 1) Xi is deadly serious about taking Taiwan by force; 2) the PLA is not going to be ready on his timeline.

Opinion | I spent the last ten years criticizing the excesses of the left. Today's ICE shooting has convinced me that the right is almost as bad.

Which according to some members of her new party is either Kenya or Mauritius

🗞️ Some news!

The Trump Action Tracker now has a bot that automatically posts new actions to Bluesky, along with link to news story & authoritarian categories.

Follow to stay up to date! We are adding about 10 actions a day at the moment 😢

bsky.app/profile/trum...

Sajid Javid: why I wouldn’t let people like my parents into the UK now.

I really understand very little about the current version of reality.

This is one of the biggest stories in America, comparable in scale to what’s happening in Minnesota. The largest social media platform is transferred to Trump’s allies and immediately forbids you from saying anything bad about him. Absolutely totalitarian in nature. No different than China.

If it is fascism now it was fascism then but if you were wrong no need to pause to make a special effort to admit your error -- we don't have that much time now, please act right away, get organized, and then tell your followers what you are doing to stop fascism and what they too can do.

unlike all the strident leftists who were correct too early, i am correct at exactly the right time

I also feel that there is not the necessary urgency on this side of the Atlantic. So far our strategy for dealing with the racist idiots with wrecking balls is to concede the point but say that we will handle it better.

Should I write to Jon Rauch and congratulate him on a great title

This "conflicting accounts" narrative of the BBC's is a much bigger problem than they seem to think.

The huge issue is not false balance - it's that they're NOT reporting the biggest story of today: the fact the US Government is lying about its own forces killing a US citizen.

Yes, It’s Fascism Until recently, I thought it a term best avoided. But now, the resemblances are too many and too strong to deny.

This is the last call for the "Ah, but…" people. Applications will be closing soon
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Fascism isn't a state, it's an ideology and it's one that rarely announces itself. The entire point of our post-WWII education in history — driven by people like Hannah Arendt — was to spot the tenets of fascism before it could amass total power.

The events of the last 24 hours show why it's important to build functional verification structures in public and counterpublic spaces to resist the authoritarian erosion of our democratic systems, as described in this thread.

"Canada, of course, will bring at least 10 new states when it joins with us someday" Mr. Douthat states the above as if it is an obvious fact. It prompts me to ask a question: Mr. Douthat, are you proud to be an American? Yes? I imagine that you are. Now here's another question: Can you conceive of the people of another country feeling as proud to be its citizens? Can you somehow imagine that Canadians are as proud to be Canadian as you are to be American? It's true that the U.S. could militarily take over Canada. After all America, with less than 5% of the world's population, accounts for 35% of global military spending. But do Americans really have the stomach for never-ending guerilla warfare along a 3,000 mile border? It's hard to look at Mr. Douthat's words and not see a sort of casual American arrogance and dismissiveness. But if polling was done on the topic of states and provinces wishing to join each other's countries, I feel confident that there are close to a dozen American states that would show real interest in joining Canada, while absolutely no province, not even Alberta, would have any interest in joining the U.S.

A reminder to the news media: “conflicting accounts” is what you say BEFORE the incontrovertible video evidence appears. After that, your job is to ask why one side is lying, not to repeat the lie and pretend no one knows the truth.

Videos Contradict U.S. Account of Minneapolis Shooting by Federal Agents See how immigration officers escalated a fatal confrontation on Saturday.

Worth noting that the @wsj.com has joined with the @nytimes.com and Bellingcat to say that ICE is lying in its description of the shooting of Alex Pretti. The video evidence more and more supports the view that this was a gratuitous execution. www.wsj.com/us-news/vide...

7yo gave me an unpleasant shock y’day by chiming in on Greenland saying “Donald Trump didn’t actually use violence and he only wants to protect it from Russia & China” - after I’d calmed down I tried to work out where he’s been hearing this bullshit. Turns out it’s bloody BBC Newsround!

They killed him, and then they immediately set to concocting lies about him. I know the killing is worse, and yet I can't escape the thought that the lying is what reveals the deeper abyss.

Trump and his outriders are intentionally trying to destroy even the idea of truth

Trational media strictures - reporting he said, she said; not reporting more ‘extreme’ claims by those not in power - plays right into this

It’s a playbook, and it’s already in U.K. (cf Farage’s Dulwich racism)

(I’m not sure this makes much difference to Keir Starmer’s prospects of surviving the year as prime minister either way tbh. He was choosing which set of problems he wanted, not whether to have a problem or not. And a Manchester mayor by-election was a *big* extra problem.)

Shooting mothers, nurses, while arresting priests and toddlers - this is what comes of that. Their terror campaign is completely backfiring on them. People aren't backing down, they're just getting enraged and radicalised.

Sunday’s @thetimes.com cartoon times.newsprints.co.uk/morten-morla...

In three years either ICE will be abolished or the USA will be a police state. Hard to see it ending any other way.

If this is what they do when they're out on the street with people pointing cameras at them, what do you think is happening inside the ICE prison camps that they keep denying Members of Congress access to?

AG Bondi demands access to Minnesota voter rolls after fatal Border Patrol shooting Her demand came as Minneapolis was reeling from a second fatal shooting by a federal agent this month.

If you want proof that Trump is going to try to rig the elections, here it is:

In a letter to Gov. Tim Walz Saturday, Bondi claimed that Walz could “restore the rule of law” by complying with a list of demands, including giving the Department of Justice (DOJ) the state’s voter registration records.

BBC apologism for state sanctioned murder in the US will inevitably become BBC apologism for state sanctioned murder in the UK in three years' time. The far right has definitively taken control of our news media.

The task for political leadership now is not just to tell the truth, but to make people care about what is true and what is not.