The Court of Appeal in Britain has ruled that free speech includes the right to offend, finding that “Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having”. The landmark ruling was handed down in the case of a mother, Kate Scottow, who was arrested in front of her children because she described a trans activist who had […]
If you’ve looked at the world news at all lately, you probably will have seen that Sweden’s king claimed that his country “failed” to save lives with its no-lockdown approach to the covid-19 pandemic, describing 2020 as “a terrible year”. The scandinavian country has been blasted by many in the international community this year for […]
In last year’s federal budget, the Australian Government assumed a fertility rate of 1.9 children per woman in the 2019-20 year. If it eventuated, this would have represented a rise in the fertility rate, but the Government was banking on a boost in babies to help the future economic viability of existing welfare plans and […]
A few days ago, the lower house of the Argentinian parliament voted to legalise abortion. While the legislation has yet to pass the Argentinian Senate (where the vote is expected to be on a knife edge), the celebrations from the pro-choice side were familiar, to anybody who lived through the Irish referendum of 2018: Cheers […]
Most requests for euthanasia in the Netherlands come from people suffering from cancer. But the number of patients who have dementia, psychiatric disorders, or multiple geriatric syndromes (MGS) is growing steadily. An article by Dutch physicians in JAMA Internal Medicine examines the kind of geriatric syndromes which motivate a person to ask for euthanasia. They found that […]
According to leaked documents revealed in the Washington Post, Huawei, China’s giant telecom, has helped to develop an AI system to identify Uyghurs, its oppressed Turkic minority in the province of Xinjiang. Allegedly the facial recognition system is programmed to send “Uyghur alarms” to the police when Uyghurs are spotted by security cameras. The documents say […]
An Austrian film called The Trouble with Being Born is winning high praise from critics at film festivals. It received a special jury award at the Berlin International Film Festival earlier this year. On Rotten Tomatoes, it scores 100% amongst critics. It’s a “hidden gem”, according to Hollywood Reporter. “A powerful and revelatory achievement,” wrote a critic for Screen […]
This is one of those stories that an awful lot of people will cheer, with very good reason. Regardless of your views on pornography in general, and whether it should be legal, or illegal, it shouldn’t be much of a matter of controversy to note that Pornhub, or, more accurately, it’s parent company, Mindgeek, is […]
A good, old-fashioned, spy thriller this morning, courtesy of – where else – the United States, where outspoken progressive Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell stands accused of getting, well, rather too close, to an attractive Chinese intelligence asset: California congressman Eric Swalwell has refused to say whether he had a sexual relationship with a Chinese honeytrap […]
It really is remarkable, how little these big tech companies understand about the way that people who believe in conspiracies think. If you ban discussion of something, the average true believer doesn’t suddenly wake up and realise that they might have been wrong. No. It’s evidence that big tech is part of the cover-up. Here’s […]
On November 7, 2020, the Sunday Express published an article by Patrick Basham, an American conservative, entitled: “Stalin said it’s not important who votes, but how they are counted.” The piece alleged “widespread ballot fraud” in the US Presidential election. The Express’s link to the piece now returns a 404 message — page missing — but a copy is still available on […]
Normally, when stories about people talking to Aliens from outer space pop up in the news, my approach is to write them off as the ravings of a madman, or madwoman. And in general, that’s not a bad rule. But when the claim that Aliens have been contacting humans for years comes from a retired […]