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.

Observador - Avanços extraordinários para o povo no cu dos outros é refresco (Diogo Quintela)

 

Avanços extraordinários para o povo no cu dos outros é refresco

Admiro os comunistas. Todos os dias, sem excepção, apresentam-se ao serviço na Casa da Democracia, um sítio que os enoja. Como um vegan que preside a um clube de tauromaquia, pesca e caça.

José Diogo Quintela 12 mai. 2026, 00:20

Esta semana tive de actualizar o meu ranking de empregos cujos profissionais têm de vencer a mais agressiva repugnância para os desempenhar. Até 6.ª feira passada, o pódio era ocupado por: em terceiro lugar, polícias que são os primeiros a entrarem numa casa onde faleceu alguém há vários meses, ao pontos de os vizinhos terem topado pelo cheiro; no segundo posto, desentupidor de fossa séptica em pocilga industrial; e em primeiro, a larga distância, prostituta que exerce o seu mister em estrada nacional por onde circulam desentupidores de fossas sépticas em pocilgas industriais.

Porém, depois de ter assistido à prestação do grupo parlamentar do PCP no dia da visita do Presidente do Parlamento da Ucrânia, o ranking ganhou novo líder. Neste momento, considero que o funcionário que ultrapassa o maior nojo para se apresentar no local de trabalho é o deputado do PCP. O asco que lhes causa a democracia foi patente quando entraram a meio da sessão, já depois de o dignitário ucraniano ter saído. Só uma hercúlea força de vontade os impediu de se apresentarem na latrina parlamentar de galochas, luvas de borracha e uma máscara de gás.

Admiro os comunistas. Todos os dias, sem excepção, apresentam-se ao serviço na Casa da Democracia, um sítio que os enoja. Como um vegan que preside a um clube de tauromaquia, pesca e caça, têm de fingir que apreciam as actividades que lá se praticam. E, honra lhes seja feita, ao longo dos anos têm disfarçado muito bem. (E nós também, que suspendemos a descrença e fazemos de conta que eles são democratas). Participam nos debates, apresentam projectos de lei, votam quando é preciso, imitam todos os gestos de um democrata. Mas percebe-se que não estão convencidos. Como um daqueles amigos desengonçados que não gosta de dançar, mas até decorou a coreografia da Macarena.

Os comunistas estão sempre muito concentrados na mecânica do processo democrático, mas de vez em quando distraem-se e sai-lhes qualquer coisa que denuncia o repulsão que os move. Desta feita, aconteceu a Paula Santos, líder parlamentar, que enquanto operava uma das corriqueiras defesas da invasão russa, saiu-se com esta: “A União Soviética, infelizmente, já há muito tempo terminou. Infelizmente, porque de facto foram avanços extraordinários para o povo”. Foi o momento em que, agoniada com o odor a democracia que se sente em São Bento, Paula Santos pegou no seu frasquinho de Eau de Gulag e borrifou o hemiciclo.

O problema da declaração de Paula Santos é gramatical. Há que substituir a preposição. Onde se lê “foram avanços extraordinários para o povo”, devia estar “foram avanços extraordinários sobre o povo”. Nomeadamente, o povo russo, o povo ucraniano, o povo georgiano, o povo cazaque, o povo arménio, o povo azeri, o povo letão, o povo polaco, o povo húngaro, o povo checo e o eslovaco. Sobre esses povos, de facto, a URSS avançou. Aliás, avançou, fez marcha atrás, voltou a avançar, voltou a fazer marcha atrás. Já pretender que os povos gostaram desses avanços é como achar que aquelas doutorandas de sociologia desfrutaram dos avanços do Prof. Boaventura.

Na nossa democracia, condescende-se com a ligação que os comunistas insistem em manter com ditaduras torcionárias. Não é a primeira vez que um membro do PCP elogia a ditadura mais longa e mortífera do séc. XX – e espero que não seja a última: de vez em quando é preciso sermos mordidos pela ratazana para nos lembrarmos que é perigosa – sem que se dê grande sobressalto. Geralmente, a explicação para a simpatia é dever-se a derrota do nazismo à URSS. O que é verdade. Os soviéticos foram fundamentais para os Aliados vencerem a 2.ª Guerra Mundial. Mas reconhecê-lo é uma coisa, admirá-los é outra. É como ficar eternamente agradecido à diabetes por ter morto Papa Doc Duvalier, esquecendo que continua a matar 3.4 milhões de pessoas por ano. Até porque, como a diabetes antes do ditador haitiano, quando Hitler os atacou, os soviéticos também já tinham feito a folha a milhões de inocentes. Entre purgas internas, esmagamento de kulaks e subversivos de vária sorte, Holodomor e outras fomes provocadas, repressão a povos dentro das suas fronteiras, foram perto de 10 milhões entre 1922 e 1941.

Ao longo do tempo, a Assembleia da República tem servido de púlpito a vários  defensores da URSS. O que não me choca, embora lamente que, por uma questão de igualdade, não seja dado tempo de antena a proponentes de canibalismo, de roubo de órgãos ou de pedofilia com órfãos cegos que sofrem de trissomia 21. Enfim, não há espaço para todos.

Em defesa do PCP virá o argumentário do costume: de comunistas já  só têm o nome, renegam o estalinismo, na verdade são quase sociais-democratas. Só que isso é aldrabice. E, logo no dia seguinte à apologia soviética de Paula Santos, tivemos a prova. Com a morte de Carlos Brito, pudemos ler os obituários que lembram como o antigo braço direito de Álvaro Cunhal sugeriu que o partido se afastasse do marxismo-leninismo, a ideologia oficial do Estado soviético, desenvolvida por Estaline e que preconiza, entre outras maravilhas, a ditadura do proletariado. Os comunistas portugueses não acharam graça à ideia, correram com Carlos Brito e optaram por manter, até hoje, a aversão pela democracia. No entanto, aparecem todos os dias para trabalhar nela. Com uma mola no nariz, claro.

The Spectator - Why Donald Trump won’t embarrass the royals

 

(personal underlines)

https://spectator.com/article/why-donald-trump-wont-embarrass-the-royals/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020260409%20%20AL%20%20SHERBORNE+CID_2b42e246969cc23cd427710c4997ce54

Why Donald Trump won’t embarrass the royals

Robert Hardman

Elizabeth II was never particularly enthusiastic about birthdays. They were a good excuse for a parade or an honours list, but not a patch on a major wedding anniversary, let alone a jubilee. Those were a celebration of true dedication, not of mere longevity. Even so, were she still with us, the late Queen would have acknowledged that her centenary on Tuesday is a big deal. It would also have created a delightful conundrum for the Buckingham Palace anniversaries office, the department that sends out 100th-birthday congratulations from the sovereign. At the start of her reign, she was sending 385 of those each year across all her realms (by telegram). By the end, it was over 16,000 (by card).

When her own mother reached 100 in the summer of 2000, the celebrations were tinged with disappointment. Having planned live coverage of the Queen Mother’s centenary pageant, the BBC scrapped the idea late in the day. Director-general Greg Dyke and his minions, then in thrall to Tony Blair’s ‘Cool Britannia’ vibe, thought it was all a bit passé and, besides, the timings would mean shunting Neighbours from its prime-time slot. So this exuberant assembly of all the Queen Mother’s favourite things, including VCs, Colditz veterans, the Poultry Club, Vera Lynn and the Wombles, was shelved in favour of the Aussie soap. Step forward ITV which saved the day, clocking up its best early-evening viewing figures in a decade. Cue a ferocious blame game at the BBC and a public apology from Dyke and his chairman. The Queen said nothing but pointedly knighted the pageant producer, Major Michael Parker, days later. Now, a new generation of executives has set about dismantling BBC Studios Events, the tiny unit behind every great state occasion you can think of (including the Cenotaph, royal weddings, funerals – and, yes, birthday parades). Its running costs are nugatory, yet its output is the essence of public service broadcasting. If the incoming DG wants to show he ‘gets’ the BBC, he will reverse this madness on day one. If not, it will take only one bungled veterans’ march-past before he hears the rattle of pitchforks.

Withering White House attacks on Downing Street; awkward questions about Britain’s armed forces; a monarch sent to Washington to patch things up. It’s 70 years since the Suez fiasco and the late Queen’s first US state visit. The Palace has been here before. Despite predictions that Donald Trump will somehow ‘embarrass’ the King and Queen during this month’s state visit, I think not. We met four months ago at Mar-a-Lago for my new book on Elizabeth II. He had only warm words for the late Queen and her eldest son – ‘a fighter’ – while refusing to be drawn on the difficult dukes. On his official visits to the UK, he has been a model guest. He will be the same as a host.

How, then, do we square Mr Trump’s rosy view of our head of state with his rambling contempt for our Prime Minister? I think it’s because he puts politicians in one box and 250 years of US/UK history in another. His predecessor, Joe Biden, always liked to proclaim his Irish heritage. Mr Trump is half-British. Read his speech at last year’s Windsor state banquet, and it’s hard to imagine any contemporary British politician being quite as effusive about this ‘lionhearted people’ who ‘defeated Napoleon, unleashed the Industrial Revolution, destroyed slavery and defended civilisation’. Mr Trump was thrilled to have two state visits. Mr Biden had none. I’m told that discreet soundings were taken to see if he’d like one. Back came a discreet ‘no thanks’.

Will there be dancing at Mr Trump’s state banquet? It used to be the White House norm. During the USA’s bicentenary in 1976, President Ford invited the Queen to join him for the first dance and was appalled when the band chose that moment to strike up ‘That’s Why The Lady Is A Tramp’ (she found it hilarious). In the Reagan years, the late Princess of Wales strutted her stuff across the White House floor with John Travolta. Then banquets became more business like and the dancing stopped. Mr Trump, however, loves his music. During my weekend at Mar-a-Lago, he hosted a pop concert on the lawn, a homage to the 1970s and 1980s. On the packed club terrace, he became DJ and summoned up many of his favourites – from Phantom of the Opera to Elvis and a spot of opera. ‘Isn’t this just the best high note?’ he whispered to me as Pavarotti reached the crescendo of ‘Nessun Dorma’ – the theme to the 1990 football World Cup. Mr Trump is co-hosting the next one this summer. Time for a posthumous encore from Luciano?

Observador - Son of a bitch: um sarau cultural (Alberto Gonçalves)

 (sublinhados pessoais)

https://observador.pt/opiniao/son-of-a-bitch-um-sarau-cultural/

Son of a bitch: um sarau cultural

É escusado acrescentar que, como os idiotas que os frequentam e consomem, os PLAY podem e devem prosseguir. A RTP é que não.

Alberto Gonçalves 

25 abr. 2026, 00:24

Pelos vistos, e à semelhança do que acontece no “estrangeiro”, agora há uns prémios anuais da música portuguesa. São, conforme o acrónimo sugere, os PLAY. Também para imitar “o que se faz lá fora”, os PLAY consagram-se mediante cerimónia, na qual se distribuem pechisbeques por dezenas ou centenas de “vencedores” e todos ficam muito orgulhosos.

Infelizmente a cópia caseira dos Emmy americanos e de outro embaraço qualquer que os ingleses têm de certeza não se restringe à existência, não senhor. O plágio vai à minúcia e inclui os momentos que uma parte substancial dos alegados artistas aproveita para expelir “sentimentos” acerca da “actualidade”. Antigamente, neste género de pândegas, a sumidade recebia o pechisbeque, agradecia a duzentos familiares, amigos e colegas e sumia de cena. Hoje, ou para aí desde 2017, é rara a sumidade, anónima que seja, que não ande convencida de que possui coisas relevantíssimas a comunicar aos mortais. E os mortais, os mortais e pacóvios que assistem a tais infortúnios, ouvem.

Aliás, quer nos Óscares, quer nos PLAY, quer no Festival de Cinema de Carcassonne, o real objectivo de cada “evento” é justamente o de apurar quem profere a maior quantidade de barbaridades ao gosto do tempo. E provocar aquilo que os “media”, um pouco desesperados, designam por “polémica”. Sem a “polémica”, ninguém notaria que o “evento” se realizou. Com a “polémica”, quase ninguém nota que o “evento” se realizou.

Eu notei os PLAY através de artigo no Observador. Confesso que ignorei a informação alusiva aos galardões convencionais, mesmo ao prémio para a Melhor Co-Participação Vocal em Disco de Fusão Lusófona Alternativa, e, saltitando pelo texto na diagonal, fui directamente às interpretações em que os artistas dão tudo o que têm: o discurso de protesto.

Na categoria Indignação, o primeiro pechisbeque de relevo foi conquistado por Jorge Palma, que após agradecer misteriosamente “aos profissionais do SNS”, redobrou o tom críptico para exigir uma “reforma eficaz” da cultura, “para que as nossas forças não se gastem em vão” (?). A terminar, e já que vinha com um cravo na lapela, o sr. Palma recordou Abril, o espírito de Abril, a liberdade de Abril, os valores de Abril, Abril sempre, etc. De seguida, a cerimónia regressou a 2026.

O segundo pechisbeque indignado coube ao vocalista dos Mão Morta, Adolfo Luxúria Canibal, que a despropósito desatou numa cantilena sobre “a pulsão de morte que domina a miserável época em que vivemos, com as suas manifestações de ódio e de intolerância”. Terminou a pedir que se impeça “o alastrar da peste dos fascismos, essa ratazana nojenta.” Sem dúvida. Eu próprio odeio do fundo das entranhas essas larvas pustulentas que apenas sabem verter ódio. E lembro os versos de apelo à fraternidade que o sr. Canibal assinou: “Ultrapassado o limite do ultraje/Toda a violência/É legítima autodefesa/Também pelo meu relógio são/Horas de matar”. Bonito e sublime, praticamente o Larkin de “An Arundel Tomb” (“O que restará de nós é o amor.”)

Porém, o apogeu do serão ficou a cargo do afamado cançonetista Toy, que ultrapassou pela esquerda baixa os parceiros ao proferir estas palavras movidas a sobriedade: “Nunca digam que a cultura e a política não se misturam, porque a cultura é a melhor arma contra alguns sistemas políticos, como o assassino de crianças Netanyahu e o ‘son of a bitch’, filho da p*** em português, Donald Trump”. Enquanto demonstrava que, além da política, a cultura se mistura perfeitamente com uma sandes de couratos, a Festa do “Avante!” e a iliteracia funcional, o sr. Toy arrecadou três prémios fundamentais de uma só vez: o prémio Cliché para a mais apoplética intervenção anti-Trump; o prémio Anti-Sionismo para a mais escancarada declaração anti-semita a fingir que não é uma declaração anti-semita; e o prémio Calado Como Um Rato (Mas Não Uma Ratazana Nojenta E Fascista), pelo corajoso silêncio que dedicou ao Hamas, ao Hezbollah, à Rússia, ao Irão, à China e, afinal, a todos os terrorismos e ditaduras do planeta. O público presente na sala, gente das artes e do refinamento estético, aplaudiu o sr. Toy em êxtase.

A terminar, houve ainda espaço para que actores lessem, cito o Observador, “um texto a alertar para a propagação ‘online’ do discurso de ódio contra as mulheres”, que curiosamente não mencionou o Islão.

Resta esclarecer que os prémios PLAY foram transmitidos pela RTP, que a RTP é uma estação televisiva que vive da extorsão dos contribuintes, e que é capaz de haver contribuintes que não apreciam ver os respectivos rendimentos delapidados em ajuntamentos auto-congratulatórios, onde idiotas repetem toleimas que tomam por iluminações. É escusado acrescentar que, como os idiotas que os frequentam e consomem, os PLAY podem e devem prosseguir. A RTP é que não.

Livro - Sortez de l'hypnose collective

 

Mais um livro de teorias das constipações, mais do que das conspirações...

The Spectator - Do we really want our politicians to be uneducated?

 

(personal underlines)

https://spectator.com/article/do-we-really-want-our-politicians-to-be-uneducated/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=CampaignMonitor_Editorial&utm_campaign=WEEK%20%2020260226%20%20AL+CID_fe25caad40bd37a43760d703a78a4e88

Do we really want our politicians to be uneducated?

Douglas Murray

The interesting thing about political pendulums is that they always over-swing. In the campaign for this week’s Gorton and Denton by-election, one of the main lines of attack on the Reform candidate is that he used to be an academic and is therefore ill-suited to being the area’s parliamentary representative. The candidate who has suffered these attacks – Matt Goodwin – has countered that he is the first person in his family to have gone to university. He has also stressed that he was brought up in a one-parent household.

That hasn’t cut it with the class-warriors of his rivals like the Green party’s Hannah Spencer. In one of her campaign videos, Ms Spencer has gone so far as to do a speech to camera while preparing some plaster for a wall. Having been a plumber, she is, she has said, training to be a plasterer. A craft she appears to be some way off mastering, if her video is anything to go by.

In a recent interview the Green party candidate expounded on her view that someone who had taught at a university should not represent Gorton and Denton. In fact it seems that anyone who has a degree should not represent any constituency. As she complained: ‘In Westminster I think 90 per cent of MPs have at least one degree, and it’s time that we changed that.’

Warming to her theme, she declared: ‘I want to see tradespeople on the benches in parliament, cleaners, taxi drivers, people who work in takeaways.’ Personally I would be very happy to hear the views of more taxi drivers on the benches of the House of Commons. But I cannot help thinking that Ms Spencer might be alarmed by some of their more robust attitudes and promptly demand the return of more people with liberal arts degrees to the green benches.

It is a peculiar competition, however. It seems that one response to the era of poor governance we have recently gone through is to view education as the problem.

It reminds me of a recent caller to LBC who voiced the opinion that if Keir Starmer were to be swapped out as leader by his party, she would not want Angela Rayner to become prime minister. The female caller explained: ‘Angela Rayner is not a suitable person to lead the country, because she is not sufficiently educated.’ The show’s host, Tom Swarbrick, feigned utter horror at such a sentiment. ‘How well-educated do we need people to be?’ he asked. The caller said that she was ‘fiercely working-class’ herself, but that she thought Rayner did not have the education or vocabulary necessary. Swarbrick (who has a degree in theology from Cambridge) claimed to be ‘astonished’ by the views of his caller, and sent her away saying: ‘Because it’s gone really well with all the Oxbridge lot.’

And there you have it. It seems to have settled in as a view that because David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson were the products of an Oxbridge education, the problem is our top universities. As a result, the best qualification to be in politics is to have had nothing to do not only with our top universities, but with any university at all. In fact it would be preferable to be led by people who have just been hauled off a plastering job, ideally while eating a pork pie. Go a stage beyond that, and it seems to be accepted that we might be better led by people who are uneducated than those who are educated.

This seems to have become a theme on the other side of the Atlantic too. One of the main contenders to be the next Democratic candidate for president of the United States is the California governor Gavin Newsom. A man of some charm and intelligence, he also has nice hair, a lovely family and is white. So he has had to try to find a way to ride America’s own pendulum swing.

Promoting his recent memoir to a largely black audience this week, he made the following pitch: ‘I’m no better than you. You know, I’m a 960 SAT guy. I’m not trying to offend anyone, act all there if you got 940, but literally a 960 SAT guy.’

To translate this into English-English, Newsom is boasting that his test scores at school were below the national average. And therefore he is like the people, you see.

Elaborating his point, he went on to inform his audience that he cannot read. Although that is perhaps not the best way to persuade people to buy his book, he informed them: ‘You’ve never seen me read a speech because I cannot read a speech.’

This, too, was meant to make him more suited to represent the people than any of those highfalutin reading types. Newsom claims to have had dyslexia since childhood, and while there might have been a happy period when overcoming dyslexia put someone on an even plain with a non-dyslexic person, it now appears that on the left of American politics, having dyslexia and not being able to read a speech actually makes a man better qualified to lead.

So I suppose we can look forward to a future where we are led by people who never performed well at school, failed to attend university and have only just started a plastering course as a prelude to running the country. And what possible downsides could come from that?

Personally, this over-swing makes me want to swing back the other way. The more I see politicians or would-be politicians competing like Monty Python’s four Yorkshiremen, the more I lament the erasure of the hereditary peers from the House of Lords. In fact, as I watch Newsom in California and the various contenders in Gorton and Denton, I am starting to think up my own new set of standards for our elected representatives. I propose that in future nobody should be allowed anywhere near politics unless they have at least one hereditary title – no lower than a marquisate and preferably averaging out at around an earldom. That should fix things.

A gata Tri

Gosta de desenhos animados, teatro, ténis, etc.

 

Youtube - Mark Pagel: Como a linguagem transformou a humanidade

So simple and so dense!

Um Tedtalk de 2011 em Edimburgo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImQrUjlyHUg

Filme - A Peregrinação

 

Ireland, 1209. An island on the edge of the world. A small group of monks begin a reluctant pilgrimage across an island torn between centuries of tribal warfare and the growing power of Norman invaders. Escorting their monastery's holiest relic to Rome, the monks' progress is seen through the eyes of a pious young novice and a mute lay-brother with a violent past. As the true material, political and religious significance of the bejeweled relic becomes dangerously apparent, their path to the east coast becomes increasingly fraught with danger. The monks belatedly realize that in this wild land of ancient superstitions, the faith that binds them together may ultimately lead to their destruction.

Fotos - Trafaria

 Trafaria, no regresso do almoço com To Costa e Eunice