The Spectator - The intifada has arrived in London

 

(personal underlines)

https://spectator.com/article/the-intifada-has-arrived-in-london/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=BOCH%20%2020260328%20%20HENRY%20POOLE%20%20AL+CID_d34a107f02b7dfb3ce2da395d34a2862

The intifada has arrived in London

23 March 2026, 9:53am

The charred remains of four Hatzola ambulances that were set on fire overnight in Golders Green, north London (Getty images)

At first I thought it was a scene from one of the battlefronts in the Middle East. The hellish glow of an out-of-control fire. A thunderous explosion. And innocents fleeing in terror. Only this was no warzone. It was Golders Green. It was that peaceful Jewish enclave in north-west London. And last night it was subjected to what seems to have been an act of apocalyptic Jew hatred, a fiery pogrom designed to terrify London’s Jews.

This was a blazing statement of loathing for Britain’s Jews

Actually, scrap that – this was a warzone. Last night’s sickening assault was the latest vile strike in a war on the rights of Jews. Four Hatzola ambulances were set on fire. Hatzola is a non-profit organisation that provides emergency medical care to the Jewish community and others. In the dead of night, three masked men approached the ambulances, doused them in flammable liquid, and destroyed them. All that remains this morning is twisted, blackened wreckage – the debris of racial hatred.

The Metropolitan Police are treating it as an anti-Semitic hate crime. If they are right – and there’s no reason to doubt that they are – then we need to speak plainly. This was an act of fascistic savagery. This was a blazing statement of loathing for Britain’s Jews. It was an act of staggering disregard for the sanctity of Jewish life: homes surround the carpark where the fascist fire was lit, and it is thanks only to merciful luck that no one was injured.

Today we will hear much stern criticism of this brutish terrorising of London’s Jews. Keir Starmer has rightly called it  “horrific” and “deeply shocking”. Yet condemnation without reflection is worthless. Every decent Brit whose mind and soul have not been fried by the malady of Israelophobia will know this was a despicable act. The question we need to ask ourselves is why things like this are happening in 21st-century Britain.

The barbarous assault on Hatzola did not take place in a vacuum. It follows two-and-a-half years of surging anti-Semitism. In the wake of Hamas’s 7 October pogrom, acts of Jew hatred in the UK reached dizzying and terrifying new heights. Jewish schoolkids were attacked. Synagogues were daubed with bloodcurdling graffiti. And two Jews were slain by a knife-wielding Islamist at a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur.

Then there have been the hate marches. Almost every weekend, unholy assemblies of affluent socialists and radical Islamists trudged through our cities to damn the Jewish nation as the most evil nation. From behind their keffiyehs they barked about the evils of Zionism. They called Zionists “baby-killers” – the same words Jews would have heard in twelfth-century England before they were murdered by the mob. They agitated for the destruction of Israel all the way “from the river to the sea”. They hollered for more intifada just weeks after an intifada had laid waste to more than a thousand Jewish lives in Israel.

“It’s just criticism of Israel”, they said. Stop it. The anti-Semitism crisis is too pressing for such slippery moral evasion. The truth is as bright as those fires that engulfed Golders Green: when you demonise the world’s only Jewish nation as the world’s wickedest nation, you endanger Jews. When you brand Zionism as a uniquely murderous ideology, you hang a target sign around the necks of Zionists – and the majority of Britain’s Jews identify as Zionists.

Even more chilling than the rise in Jew hate has been the nonchalance about it in polite society. Self-styled “anti-racists” said nothing as Jewish schoolkids were pelted with bottles and Jews were advised by cops to hide their Star of David necklaces. That section of society that sees “fascism” everywhere – in the vote for Brexit, in Donald Trump’s oafish commentary – has had nothing to say about the truly fascist vibe of this swirling animus for the Jewish homeland and the Jewish people.

For me it was summed up by the events of the past week. At the Al Quds gathering in London a week ago, I saw with my own eyes a mob of Islamists singing the praises of an anti-Semitic tyrant (the late Ayatollah Khamenei) and chanting for the death of Jewish soldiers. And yet what have the chattering classes been wringing their manicured hands over this past week? Nick Timothy’s polite, principled criticism of mass Muslim praying in public. We live under a cultural establishment that is more horrified by criticism of Islamic practices than it is by mob bloodlust for the violent demise of the Jewish state and its people.

Last year I visited the site of the Nova music festival massacre. The young woman who showed me around – a survivor – told me the horrific story of Hamas firing a rocket at an ambulance. The young Jews who had taken refuge in the ambulance were burnt to death. And now we have anti-Semitic ambulance attacks right here in London. Listen. If you said “Globalise the intifada” after an intifada that entailed the burning of Jewish ambulances, then we don’t want to hear a word from you about the burning of Jewish ambulances in London. For here it is, in all its fiery horror, your intifada.

The Spectator - The real reason the left hates Israel

 

(personal underlines)

https://spectator.com/article/the-real-reason-the-left-hates-israel/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020260326%20%20AL%20%20EXPRESS%20VPN+CID_2fc6186b73335eb122cd8c4c27c265d6

The real reason the left hates Israel

Rod Liddle

‘Listen to what the man on the left of the camera has to say about Israel, the man who is addressed as Nick,’ a radical Corbynista friend suggested to me the other day in a social media message designed to change my mind about the Middle East. It’s part of a sustained campaign on his part which dates back at least ten years and is usually conducted with good grace, if never accord. So I listened to what this chap Nick had to say, with growing hilarity. Not because of what he said – which was what you might expect from a rank anti-Semite, but because of who he was. For it was none other than Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National party.

Mr Griffin has, in the past, referred to the ‘Holohoax’ which he believes was fabricated by wartime propaganda and has been an ‘extremely profitable lie’. My friend had never heard of Nick Griffin. But how interesting that this is where the left is now getting some of its bullets from. Its anti-Jew bullets. Hitherto, directly quoting from Nazis, or neo-Nazis, was kind of verboten for them, except of course among the Palestinians themselves, who at least have the decency to make it absolutely clear that they wish the entire Jewish race to be wiped from the Earth and whose pre-eminent political movement, Hamas, has that goal written at the heart of its founding constitution.

Not any more. The Overton window on Jew-hating has shifted so far that even the most extremist comments from people who have pictures of Adolf pinned up in their basements are now considered… well, I suppose kosher isn’t the word – halal, maybe.

For another example of the shifting far-right-wards of the narrative, let me present to you Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. Now, it is true that she is one of the most stupid and sanctimonious people I have ever had the misfortune of meeting, and quite how she has survived as a ‘commentator’ almost wholly defeats me. Fifteen years ago she was a columnist for the Independent and I mentioned to the paper’s editor back then that I thought she was a woman of unparalleled idiocy. The editor smiled and revealed that his most august and talented columnist had once asked him why he had employed Alibhai–Brown. The editor had replied that he was very proud that the first national newspaper to employ a woman of Asian descent should be the Independent. The columnist shook his head sadly and said: ‘Of all the teeming billions of Asian women – and you had to choose her.’ A fair point and well made.

But still. She has tenure. She even won the Orwell Prize – which is handed out solely to people whom Orwell would have detested, but there we are. Anyway, she recently posted the following comment: ‘Uber Zionist Margaret Hodge will, we hear, become Ofcom chair after uber Zionist Michael Grade steps down. A two-step solution to ensure the Palestine & Palestinian suffering are denied proper coverage. And the Israeli state gets away with atrocities.’

My colleague Charles Moore has mentioned this grotesque spewing of racist bile and I would concur with his gentle puzzlement: what is an uber-Zionist? I suppose David Ben–Gurion might qualify, ditto Ariel Sharon and even Golda Meir. But Margaret Hodge or Michael Grade? A bit questionable, isn’t it? I think what Alibhai-Brown meant by ‘uber-Zionist’ was ‘Jew’. And further to that, I would suggest two things. First is that Alibhai-Brown would not have tried to get away with tweeting that sentence ten or even five years ago: there would have been a furore. And second, that the far-left narrative is moving so quickly towards outright Goebbelism that it wouldn’t surprise me much if, in a year or two’s time, she did actually use the word ‘Jew’. Given that almost all Jews are Zionist, the conflation will, one day soon, be absolute and the left can say what it really means with pretty much impunity.

I had previously been of the generous – and naive – opinion that the white left hates Jews because it hates Israel. That through the inevitable contact with the people who call themselves Palestinian and their Muslim supporters, there was a gradual erosion of the boundaries between loathing Israel and, as so many Muslims do, loathing the people who live there. You end up nodding along when they say the Jews control the media and armaments and capital, and eventually you end up painting virulently anti-Semitic daubs in an art gallery in Margate and thinking how clever and right on you are and down with the Pallys.

But this was wrong, I think. It is the other way about. They hate Israel because they hate Jews. We all need somebody to hate and for the left, Jewish people have come to represent a plethora of things they already hated: capitalism, the West, military competence, industrial competence, education and a hostility to the religion which they come close to worshipping themselves, Islam. In a sense Israel is simply an embodiment of those already-present loathings.

It is true the Overton window had already moved quite sharply over the past ten years or so in tandem with the rapid growth of our Muslim population and its growing political weight. That is in there somewhere – but perhaps only to the extent that this growing section of our community gives licence to the real feelings the white left already had. A white left which can show you racism in a handful of dust – except where the Jews are concerned. Then, it simply doesn’t exist.

So when four ambulances are set on fire, it is easy to spot the anti-Semitic white lefties. They are the ones asking why the Jews have their own ambulances, or the ones suggesting it was a false flag attack by Mossad, or that this wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for Gaza. These idiots are not only enemies of the Jews – they are enemies of the rest of us too.

Cartoon - on stupidity

 God, how I know this feeling...

Reflexão (Intelectuó- bandalheiró) - Portugal no seu melhor (LBC) 2026

(sublinhados pessoais)

PS ACUSA GOVERNO DE CONDUZIR O PAÍS A “HUMILHAÇÃO DE DIMENSÃO PLANETÁRIA”

No mesmo debate requerido pelo PCP, o líder parlamentar do PS, Eurico Brilhante Dias, confrontou o ministro Carlos Abreu Amorim com a posição do secretário de Estado norte-americano sobre Portugal. "O Governo acabou por conduzir o país a uma humilhação de dimensão planetária. O Governo português agachou-se sempre, ficou sempre nas encolhas. Nunca foi claro", acusou o presidente da bancada socialista.

“humilhação [do país] à escala planetária” - PS dixit

Palavras para quê?...apenas se dirá que foi - uma vez mais -, "brilhante"...

Felizmente existe um Assis...

Reflexão (Intelectuó- bandalheiró) - Portugal no seu melhor (LBC) 2025

(sublinhados pessoais)

Novo aeroporto pode ser construído até 2030 se houver bom planeamento (Junho 2024). São estes os nossos técnicos excelsos?

Portugal vai construir um avião?(Set 2025). 

Portugal apoia a Palestina? (22.09.2025). E amanhã, com outro governo?

Israel expulso da eurovisão? (Outubro 2025). Quando admitirão a Palestina?...

CP vai comprar 200 comboios (incluindo para a alta velocidade) e pode precisar de "outros tantos" nos próximos anos (Outubro 2025). E ninguém pensou nisto antes?

Santa Maria. Outros dois dermatologistas faturaram mais de 200 mil euros em cirurgias extra em apenas dois anos (Outubro 2025) Agora? E quem tinha a responsabilidade de fiscalizar??

Funcionárias de USF de Cortegaça detidas por suspeita de inscrição fraudulenta de 10 mil imigrantes no SNS saem em liberdade (Novembro 2025) Agora? E quem tinha a responsabilidade de fiscalizar??

Carris contratou inspeções aos elevadores da Bica e do Lavra, mas ainda não se conhece auditoria sobre acidente na Gloria Avaliação ao estado dos trambolhos nos elevadores da Bica e Lavra foi entregue ao Catim, centro tecnológico da indústria metalomecânica. Auditoria independente ao acidente da Glória não é conhecida. (Dezembro 2025) - Agora? Depois de acontecer o desastre??

PSP realizou operação de prevenção criminal no Martim Moniz para "tirar as armas da rua" Pelo menos 50 pessoas foram revistadas e duas foram levadas pelas autoridades para "diligências pendentes": uma por situação irregular no país e outra por posse de droga. (Dezembro 2025) Agora? Depois de dúzias e dúzias de avisos?

The Spectator - How Pope Leo XIV is quietly reshaping the Vatican

 

(personal underlines)

https://spectator.com/article/how-pope-leo-xiv-is-quietly-reshaping-the-vatican/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020260402%20%20AL+CID_2b322b124226a123246c5bd82b3c587a

How Pope Leo XIV is quietly reshaping the Vatican

Damian Thompson

On the afternoon of Easter Sunday last year, Pope Francis was driven through St Peter’s Square in an open-topped Popemobile. A few weeks earlier he had nearly died from pneumonia, so pilgrims were thrilled to watch him blessing babies. They told journalists that it was a miracle to see the 88-year-old Argentinian in such good shape.

At 9.45 the next morning the Vatican announced that Francis had just died from a stroke. And so began the preparations for a conclave that elected the second pope from the Americas. Cardinal Robert Prevost – ‘Bob’ to his friends – was a Chicago-born dual citizen of the United States and Peru. Until 2023 he’d been bishop of the Peruvian diocese of Chiclayo. He wasn’t exactly an obscure figure, having previously been head of the Augustinian order. But it was a surprise when Francis catapulted him into the Vatican as Prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops.

Prevost had been a cardinal for only 19 months when he became Pope Leo XIV. Easter is early this year, so we’re still some weeks away from the anniversary of his election on 8 May. But that is long enough, surely, to anticipate the direction of his pontificate? Not necessarily. The press like to call Leo ‘the Quiet American’, intending it as a compliment. They presumably haven’t read Graham Greene’s novel, in which Vietnamese civilians are blown to pieces by the criminally naive CIA operative of the title. Leo is certainly quiet: at 70 years old, he has the gauche smile of a student at a junior prom. But he isn’t naive. He knows – though he’d never say so – that in some respects the 12-year pontificate of his predecessor was cynically divisive. It is his job to repair the damage. But how?

Pope Francis went out of his way to provoke his critics by promoting campaigners for LGBT rights and women’s ordination. He didn’t personally support either of these causes but he relished their disruptive power. He threw a withered bouquet to gays in the form of ‘non-liturgical’ blessings for same-sex couples – but took it back when the African cardinals went nuclear. He encouraged a debate over women deacons and then abruptly declared in a television interview that change wasn’t possible.

By contrast, Francis genuinely disliked the traditional Latin Mass and especially its priests, whom he believed were riddled with frociaggine (roughly translated as ‘faggotry’). In 2021 he issued Traditionis Custodes, which imposed restrictions on the celebration of the Old Mass so sadistic that they stiffened the resolve of traditionalists. He also favoured allowing divorced and remarried Catholics to receive communion. Here, however, his nerve failed him. His 2016 document Amoris Laetitia waffled about ‘the joy of love’ with the profundity of a Hallmark card. The paragraph apparently changing the rules on communion was relegated to a footnote. Asked about it later, Francis conveniently couldn’t recall its details.

In short, Pope Leo inherited a mess. Since he is naturally meticulous and by training a canon lawyer, there was never any doubt that he would attempt to clean it up. But would he do so by streamlining Francis’s botched ‘reforms’ or by discreetly shelving them?

The newly elected Pope Leo in May last year. getty

When Leo was elected, conservatives broke into a cold sweat. Many orthodox Catholics were convinced that he was really a Francis II who would push the Church in a liberal Protestant direction, but cunningly, eschewing the histrionics of his predecessor.

Meanwhile the old guard known as ‘Francis’s widows’ – a cabal of far-left Vatican officials and journalists whom the late pontiff indulged in order to goad traditionalists – were pushing the Francis II line for different reasons. Prevost was the Argentinian pontiff’s chosen successor, they insisted. That wasn’t true. Like Woody Allen, Francis didn’t want to achieve immortality through his work; he wanted to achieve it by not dying. There was no dauphin.

Nor had Prevost been the candidate of the leftists. They preferred the ostensibly moderate Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who despised the Old Mass and would give them their ultimate prize, a total ban on its celebration. Even so, the widows have claimed Leo as their man. In consequence, he risks being caught in a pincer movement between opposing lobbies both trying to squeeze him into a progressive mould.

His response has been one of Zen-like calm. As a diocesan bishop and cardinal, he kept an eye on Twitter; he’s learned to ignore social media loudmouths. Also, he remembers how popes behaved before Francis turned everyday disputes into a Latin American soap opera. For example, they often took a long time before replacing senior officials. Unfortunately, Leo found himself in the middle of a sinister clown show. His chief lieutenants were Parolin, the secretary of state who gave Beijing control over the appointment of Chinese bishops, effectively handing over Chinese Catholics to their communist persecutors; Arthur Roche, the ambitious Yorkshireman whom Francis employed as witchfinder-general against traditionalists; and ‘Tucho’ Fernandez, the sex-obsessed Argentinian whom Francis made doctrinal watchdog despite knowing he’d once written a book about the theology of orgasms. Roche, thank God, will soon be retiring, but why are the other two still in their jobs?

Bob Prevost was always hard to read, though his colleagues never doubted his intellect or holiness. His mixture of charm and inscrutability healed wounds in the Augustinian order. ‘He’s seen enough people being hurt and he doesn’t like it,’ says a priest who has worked with him in Rome. No pope in living memory has been so reluctant to throw bishops under a bus. More-over, he is aware that the liberals, who are far more deeply embedded in the Vatican than conservatives, know how to destroy a pontificate they suspect of ‘turning back the clock’: he saw them do it to Benedict.

Does Leo want to turn back the clock? There’s no simple answer. On Palm Sunday he declared that Jesus ‘does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them’, a statement that appeared to ditch centuries of Catholic teaching on the concept of a just war. It’s not clear whether it was a serious attempt to move the Church in the direction of pacifism or merely carelessly phrased. Either way, there is no simple factional correspondence between the Pope’s politics and his theology.

‘He’s left-wing on the environment, clearly doesn’t like Trump’s foreign policy, but instinctively conservative on sexual morality,’ says the priest. ‘We shouldn’t expect the translucent theology of Benedict or the charismatic presence of John Paul II. But he’ll restore the rule of law’ – a reference to the decision by Vatican judges to reconsider the conviction of Curial officials whose trial for corruption appears to have been rigged by Francis.

Change will come surreptitiously, and there are increasing signs that it will be conservative. Leo is unlikely to tear up Traditionis Custodes, but his friendly overtures to French enthusiasts for the Latin Mass imply that it will become a dead letter. He chose the Norwegian monk-bishop Erik Varden, a scholar with a cult following among young orthodox Catholics, to preach the Lenten lectures at a retreat for the Roman Curia. He has abandoned Francis’s habit of parachuting obscure or discredited progressives into major sees. Liberal dioceses get familiar liberals while mildly conservative dioceses (there are no very conservative ones) get mild if uninspiring conservatives.

The most noticeable differences are ones that traditionalists – growing in numbers but still a tiny proportion of Catholics – tend to dismiss as window-dressing. Leo wears far more elegant vestments than Francis, whose copes looked as if they had been rescued from the wardrobe of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and often sports the red satin mozzetta, or shoulder-cape, that was ostentatiously ditched by his predecessor. This might seem surprising, given that the former ‘Father Bob’, even as a cardinal, was happy to be photographed in a checked sports shirt.

‘You have to understand this is about restoring respect for the papal office,’ says a Vatican insider. ‘Leo has moved back into the Apostolic Palace, bringing an end to the expensive “humility” of Francis living in a hostel, with all its extra security costs. We’re back to traditional protocol at papal audiences and ceremonies, which is a relief for everyone. Priests can walk through the streets wearing cassocks without worrying someone will dob them in to the liberal Stasi. None of this is superficial. The restored sense of decorum is good for the city of Rome and for the morale of Catholics. Pope Leo knows that nothing good can happen until pulses return to normal. That’s his first gift to the whole Church and, irrespective of our differences, we should just be grateful.’

The Spectator - The shameful lies about Israel’s attack on Hezbollah

 

(personal underlines)

https://spectator.com/article/the-shameful-lies-about-israels-attack-on-hezbollah/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=BOCH%20%2020260411%20%20BEXPRESS%20VPN%20%20GK+CID_4ad87c870cdfc2705acfdf5e5a0e4e56

The shameful lies about Israel’s attack on Hezbollah

10 April 2026, 6:01am

(Photo: Getty)

Imagine there was a virulently Francophobic militia on the doorstep of the French Republic. Imagine it had fired nearly a hundred thousand missiles into France these past three years. Imagine if the France-loathing maniacs had caused the deaths of hundreds of French people and forced almost half a million to flee their towns in terror. France would respond, right? It would take action, no?

Why, then, does President Macron not extend the same right to fight to his supposed ally of Israel? Hezbollah has inflicted every one of those bloody horrors on Israel since 7 October 2023. I’ve scaled up the numbers to account for France’s population of 70 million, compared to Israel’s ten million. Yet this is what the tiny Jewish state has experienced at the hands of that self-styled Party of God – ceaseless, indiscriminate violence. 

In solidarity with Hamas’s Nazi-like pogrom of 7 October, Hezbollah started raining projectiles on Israel the very next day. It has fired around 12,000 missiles, rockets and drones at its neighbour. Scores have been slain, including 12 Druze children playing a game of football. Tens of thousands in Northern Israel have been forced into internal exile, leaving ghost towns behind them. Jew-free swathes of territory – just as the anti-Semites of Hezbollah like it.

There is not one country on earth that would tolerate such apocalyptic goading. Even France, for all those spicy memes about its tendency to surrender in the face of the fascist menace. And yet Macron this week rebuked Israel for striking back against Hezbollah. We condemn Israel’s ‘indiscriminate strikes’ in ‘the strongest possible terms’, he said, to the glee of every twit in a keffiyeh.

He’s being gushed over, naturally. The fastest route into the affections of the bourgeois left is to take a swipe at Israel. Yet to those of us whose moral compasses have not been shattered on that wheel of hysterical hatred for the world’s only Jewish nation, Macron’s comments are mad. Immoral, even. Reprimanding a democratic state for pushing back against the racist militia that has subjected it to such savage fire? Who does he think he is?

I know France has a ‘special relationship’ with Lebanon. But if anything that should make Macron favourable towards Israel’s righteous rebuffing of Hezbollah. Hezbollah is a cancer on Lebanon. It is essentially an expeditionary force of the Islamic Republic. It has made Lebanon into a basket-case outpost of Tehran’s Islamist lunacy. Oh the irony of witless leftists calling Israel a ‘coloniser’ when it is fighting a militia that has colonised vast swathes of Lebanon with a foreign-born Islamism. 

There is something nauseating about this vision of cosseted Parisian elites, whose only daily struggle is getting their hands on a chouquette, as they lambast Israel for fighting for its life against Islamist tyrants. And it’s not just the French. Across much of the media, and of course the entire left, Israel is being scolded for having the temerity to strike back against its anti-Semitic tormentors in Lebanon.

Peruse social media, mingle with anti-war types, switch on the BBC, and you could be forgiven for thinking Israel is bombing Lebanon for sport. It’s that ‘genocidal bloodlust’ again, say the Israelophobes of the left, blind to how unhinged and pre-modern such libels against the Jewish state sound to the rest of us. These are lies of omission. To obsess over what Israel is currently doing to Hezbollah without mentioning what Hezbollah has already done to Israel is to engage in flagrant acts of deceit. 

The left’s obsessive hatred for the Jewish state, which often crosses over into outright sympathy for its anti-Semitic enemies, is a betrayal of everything the left once claimed to stand for. Hezbollah is an army of bigots. It dreams of annihilating the ‘cancerous’ Jewish state. Its goal is a pogrom that would put into the shade those of the 1930s – it has promised to keep waging holy war against the Jews of the Holy Land, and those who survive ‘can go back to Germany, or wherever they came from’.

The war of attrition it launched against Israel after 7 October was the latest stage in its fascistic vision of a Middle East free of those cursed Jews, who are the ‘descendants of apes and pigs’, in the words of the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. For so-called progressives to demonise Israel and take the heat off these literal Jew-haters is an unforgivable inversion of truth and morality. The western left needs to explain why it thinks criticising the Koran is ‘bigotry’ but plotting the violent expulsion of Jews from their homeland is ‘resistance’.

Any coverage of the Lebanon crisis that leaves out these facts is not worth the paper it’s written on. Macron, Keir Starmer and every genuine progressive should be making one demand and one demand only: for the full surrender of Hezbollah and the liberation of both Lebanon and Israel from its hateful, violent ideology.

The Spectator - Reform's real race problem

 

(personal underlines)

https://spectator.com/article/reforms-real-race-problem/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020260115%20%20AL+CID_9385d1427bf41ede627097f6fdc4c64c

Reform's real race problem

Douglas Murray

I think it was Zadie Smith who I first heard point out that race is in America what class is in Britain: the conversation underneath every conversation.

When I first heard that remark I slightly baulked. Not least because one had rather hoped that class would be less of a thing in Britain in the 21st century. I suppose it is, although you do still meet people who treat the English language as though it is a minefield in which one incorrect vowel will suddenly take them out.

But if the class stuff still lingers in Britain, the good news is that we now have the American race obsession too.

For anyone who hasn’t lived in America, it is hard to describe just how permeated race is into every conversation in the culture. For example it is perfectly normal for US politicians to state that they need a black candidate to run, or a Hispanic. When Joe Biden said he wanted a vacant seat on the Supreme Court to be taken by a black woman it caused minimal disturbance. And it was also accepted that Kamala Harris did not choose Governor Josh Shapiro as her presidential running mate because he is Jewish.

If this sort of thing were said openly in the UK, there would still be some turmoil. And yet the same racial and other sectarian equations that dictate American life seem to be more quietly dictating things here too. Since at least the time of Tony Blair’s first administration there has been a generalised feeling that parliament must better reflect the general public. And there is plenty of sense in that – not least because thanks to Blair the general public has changed.

Still, Britain prides itself on not making a fuss about race. It was accepted as nothing much when Rishi Sunak became prime minister. I remember back then an American friend asking me what the British people were saying about our first Indian-origin PM and I told her that frankly I didn’t think that was an issue. ‘Oh you should see the press back home in India,’ she said (she is from there herself). ‘They are treating it as a great victory for India.’

Likewise, it went without much comment – and certainly no congratulation – when the Conservative party elected its first black leader in Kemi Badenoch. There were even some on the right who seemed to suggest that the election of a black woman to lead the party might snooker the left, although if any of them seriously thought that then I have a bridge to sell them. The entire membership of the parliamentary Conservative party could consist of black female former nurses and the left would still claim that the Conservatives are a patriarchal, racist party whose sole desire is to destroy the NHS. But I digress. The point is that even as we think these things don’t matter, they are starting to matter more and more.

Everybody knows, for instance, that in order to stave off any claims of racism or bigotry, the best thing you can do is to have some prominent brown or black faces at the front of your party. Nigel Farage has always understood this. He has long been in the habit of promoting racial minority figures, presumably because it is an easy, shorthand way to dismiss an easy, shorthand insult. And it works – up to a point. For instance when Reform is represented on Question Time by the usually excellent Zia Yusuf, it is quite funny to see various white, male Labour MPs, my old friend Zack Polanski and others desperately trying to wield the racism and bigotry accusation against the only non-white person on the panel. Though Mr Yusuf should be careful not to get high on his own supply, as he did last week when trying to accuse Rachel Reeves of racism.

In any case, I do wonder whether there isn’t a moment at which the whole right-wing counter to identity politics doesn’t end up being identity politics itself? For instance, there is a minor kerfuffle around the edges of Reform at the moment because of their choice of candidate for mayor of London. Laila Cunningham has a fair amount going for her. She is attractive, a good performer and has only been out of the Conservative party for a matter of months. She is also a Muslim. In her nomination, several things become apparent.

Perhaps it is inevitable that if Reform fielded a ruddy-faced white man as their candidate for mayor of our wonderfully diverse capital then it would just be too easy to dismiss him. It does make a certain ‘aha’ type of logic to think: ‘You have a Muslim man? We will raise you a Muslim woman. Let’s see how you get around that one, lefties.’ Except that – as mentioned above – the left can get around anything when they want to. And meanwhile another problem starts to come along.

It might be said to have been exacerbated this week by the defection of Nadhim Zahawi to Reform. Zahawi is not a stranger to political inconstancy. But I wonder what the average Reform volunteer who is going to be knocking on doors for the next few years will think about all of this?

After all, if it is true that you need a Muslim candidate to counter a Muslim candidate, does that mean that for the foreseeable future it will be impossible for the political right to put up white, male, heterosexual candidates? The majority of people in Britain are still white, and half of the population is still nominally male. When it comes to the proportion of heterosexuals it is increasingly hard to tell, but on balance they still seem to dominate.

Around the edges of Reform, and among some would-be members and voters, this is all becoming understandably vexing. The unwise will decide to dismiss their concerns. But you can’t dismiss them forever.

Or perhaps you can. Perhaps Britain in the 21st century is simply going to be a place where race and identity dominate everything.

Cartoon - Jim Unger

 

Reflexão - Prinz Eugen

 Jorge Basílio ofereceu-me o Prinz Eugen.

Almoço - A.A.L.G.Vicente

 

The Spectator - How to brainwash the British public

 

(personal underlines)

https://spectator.com/article/how-to-brainwash-the-british-public/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020260326%20%20AL%20%20EXPRESS%20VPN+CID_2fc6186b73335eb122cd8c4c27c265d6

How to brainwash the British public

Douglas MurrayTuesday 14 April 2026, 7:00pm

During the Cold War I am fairly certain that films, TV dramas and other popular entertainment did not remain silent on the threat posed by the Soviets. In fact my memory from those times was that popular culture was filled with Russian baddies, drunken homosexualist double–agents and great western super-heroes who were intent on taking down the commie threat.

As cineastes know, this culminated in David Zucker’s 1988 master-piece The Naked Gun. In the opening scene, Lieutenant Frank Drebin of Police Squad disrupted a meeting in Beirut where an attack on America was being planned by Idi Amin, Yasser Arafat, Colonel Gaddafi, Mikhail Gorbachev and the Ayatollah Khomeini. Our hero duffed up each of them one by one.

Even after the fall of the Berlin Wall, movies and TV series still relied on Soviet or post-Soviet villains. When they started to run out of steam, the more butch movie franchises resorted to North Korean villains, which seemed tolerable, and certainly wasn’t in the realm of outright fantasy.

I only mention this because, as I have noted here before, in the era of Islamic terrorism there is nothing that our creative communities want to shy away from more than the main security threat of the day. This isn’t my security estimate, but the estimate of the British security services themselves. Despite Muslims constituting around just 6 per cent of the UK population, Islamic extremism accounts for more than three-quarters of MI5’s casework. As far back as 2020 it was revealed that roughly 40,000 Islamic extremists in the UK were on the security services’ watch-lists as likely to engage or re-engage in terrorism. I wonder whether that number has gone up or down since 2020.

If I were a television dramatist I might suggest a drama about this threat. Except that I would do so in the knowledge that I would almost certainly be committing reputational harakiri. I have been there before. Almost a decade ago, when I published my book The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, I was booked onto one of the main BBC shows. But just before my scheduled appearance I was suddenly pulled from the line-up. A few days earlier a young Muslim had carried out the suicide bombing at Manchester Arena, killing 22 mainly young people and injuring scores more. Pushing the BBC booker as to why this might not be a good time for me to outline my book’s main argument, I suddenly realised the reason. ‘It’s too relevant, isn’t it?’ I pointed out. The booker agreed.

That problem of relevance seems to remain the case – nowhere more so than in television drama. If you were to commission a BBC drama in which, say, a radical Islamic cell chose to target the Jewish community or others in the UK then the problem is that the whole thing might chime a bit too much with that day’s news. Better by far to commission something which is unlikely to bear any resemblance to reality but at least helps embed the counter-narrative that the commissioning authorities would like to exist.

Which brings me to this week’s attempt at brainwashing the British public. It comes in the form of a BBC drama called The Capture. In this week’s episode our brave agents are on the trail of a dastardly villain – a white working-class man by the name of Whitlock. What is this villain guilty of? Well, one thing is that he has been found to have put in Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to the UK government in the belief (as one of the agents puts it) that it is ‘covering up the true stats on undocumented migrants’. When two of our agents learn this they immediately turn around their car and get on the chase. That’s great TV drama for you, right there. Not an FoI request!

As we can all agree, only a very perverted mind would ever suspect the UK government of covering up any such thing as migration stats. Everybody with a scintilla of common sense knows that consecutive governments have only ever been honest and open with the public over the levels of documented and undocumented immigration. It is one of the reasons why we have such up-to-date and detailed information on – for instance – the amount of money it costs to house the latest arrivals by boat across the channel. And it is why the government does not have to try to cover up which hotels they are putting illegal migrants in.

But the BBC’s dramatists are not content with a mere FoI-requesting wrong ’un as the chief villain of the story. No – this man must end up taking up a rifle, heading to Dover and trying to sharp-shoot a boatload of illegal migrants, including a young child of the type who almost never make the journey in question. I say ‘almost never’ based on the photographs and evidence I have seen. Most of the people who arrive in these boats are young males who you are also not allowed to describe as being of ‘fighting age’. If I am wrong on this question of age-demographics then I am happy to be corrected. Certainly I would rather be corrected than put in an FoI request and immediately make myself suspected of terrible far-right activity.

It reminds me of the great brouhaha that erupted when Netflix aired its drama Adolescence and we all had to pretend there was a serious problem of young white working-class boys from nice homes stabbing their female schoolmates to death because of toxic masculine online influencers.

For now the BBC is content to continue presenting illegal migrants as exemplified by a poor young child seeking shelter, and any questioning of the same as leading to actual terrorism. The evening news carries a different type of story. But somewhere it seems to have been agreed that during this particular war, it is easiest if we make sure that the baddies are ourselves. And so there is a certain logic to the fact that it is also ourselves that we must forever be beating up.

Fotos - Fragas de S. Simão e Azeitão

 Quatro dias em casa do José Larião (antigo colega no Valsassina)

The Spectator - The slow death of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

 

(personal underlines)

https://spectator.com/article/the-slow-death-of-diversity-equity-and-inclusion/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=BOCH%20%2020260509%20%20KYN%20%20AL+CID_44c0a7516c3ec01d34b592069a0b51e8

The slow death of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

6 May 2026, 5:45am

A Black Lives Matter protest (Getty images)

For the past few years, woke has been on life support. Back in 2020, police officers knelt for Black Lives Matter, children were taught that boys could become girls, and the trans-inclusive Pride flag seemed to fly from every building in the country. Since then, there has been something of a retreat. The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) industry still has a pulse and is more than capable of reinvention, but it is less confident and more defensive.

Why the change? Donald Trump’s second term in office is one reason for the vibe shift. The US President punctured all manner of sacred convictions as he signed executive orders to keep DEI out of education and men out of women’s sports. There have been legal challenges in the UK too, such as the Supreme Court ruling that ‘woman’ means a biological female.

The economic downturn is another explanation for the demise of woke. It is one thing to fund white privilege workshops and pay for pronoun badges when times are good; it is more difficult to justify such expenses when times are hard. (Although the NHS has clearly not got the memo on this one yet.)

But something else has happened, too. With less fanfare, but surely more impact, employees have been asking awkward questions and refusing to comply with DEI strictures that have nothing whatsoever to do with the job they signed up for.

This opposition was always there, of course. But while woke reigned supreme, criticism could lead to people being dragged through workplace disciplinary processes, losing their livelihoods, or being publicly shamed and cancelled. With complaints reduced to eye-rolls and whispers between friends, Human Resource officers were able to rule the roost.

Now comes proof that resistance towards DEI is not only on the rise, but that managers are taking note. A YouGov poll has found that more than one in three HR ‘decision-makers’ have faced pushback against equity, diversity and inclusion initiatives over the past year as both bolshy workers and parsimonious CEOs have made their feelings known.

Gone, it seems, are the days when employees could be compelled to attend Maoist-style struggle sessions and be forced to bare their souls, confess to wrong-think, and repeat mantras (trans women are women, black lives matter) until relenting with pleas for their own rainbow lanyard. With workers less willing to comply, and bosses less confident that this is the best use of company time, HR officers have been forced to rethink their game plan.

Unfortunately, not all companies are learning the right lessons. The YouGov poll was carried out for Working Chance, a charity which aims to secure employment for women with convictions. It is concerned that pushback against DEI could lead to companies scaling back inclusive hiring practices and that this will undermine efforts to get people with criminal records back into work. But when we look at those who came a cropper for challenging DEI during the years of peak woke, it is impossible to find anyone who was disciplined for complaining about companies hiring female ex-convicts.

Few people oppose second chances or rehabilitation. But this was never what woke was about. I’m sure I am not the only one who would far rather share a workplace bathroom with a woman with a criminal record than with a man in a dress. I would rather a woman who has struggled be given an opportunity to work than see her being lectured about white privilege. And I would prefer doors to be opened for female ex-offenders rather than Oxbridge graduates well-versed in identity politics and their own victimhood.

DEI initiatives always focused on currently fashionable groups. Often, this meant middle-class black or brown people, rather than those with physical disabilities. Or men convinced they were women rather than ex-convicts. Or expensively-educated transgender women rather than working-class men. To suggest otherwise, now that the tide is beginning to turn, is simply disingenuous.

Some organisations, it seems, are taking a different lesson from the pushback against DEI. Instead of ditching politicised and divisive initiatives, they are rebranding yesterday’s bad ideas. HR managers now discuss “pivoting away from explicitly using ‘EDI’ language and adopting terms such as ‘engagement’, ‘belonging’ or ‘culture’”. In other words, woke business as usual, but dressed up in new language. Thankfully, the bottom-up challenge to workplace hectoring suggests that HR managers can change words all they like, but DEI will still be rejected.

For too long, the workplace has been tyrannised by the cult of diversity, equity and inclusion. This has been to the detriment of free speech, individual rights and solidarity between colleagues. It is great to see that HR managers are now on the defensive, thanks not just to legal changes and economic pressure, but also to staff resistance.