A book has hit Kazakhstan like a storm and is exposing the propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party there. Turarbek Kusainov, the leader of the independent human rights organization Demos, has just published Gloom: Sunset on East Turkestan, exposing the CCP’s lies on the dreaded transformation through education camps. This is the first, exclusive interview with the author for […]
Like rivets popping on the hull of the sinking Titanic, the stresses of the pandemic are revealing unexpected weaknesses in our societies. Suddenly we’ve realised that it wasn’t a great idea to source protective masks from China, that warehousing the elderly is dangerous, that we need check-out chicks more than we need managers, and so on. But […]
Irish media often present surrogacy as an uncontroversial option for couples who struggle with infertility but we rarely hear reports about children who have been abandoned by commissioning adults, or about the poor women who have acted as surrogates and regret it. A new documentary by the Australian ABC TV covers the story of baby Bridget, who […]
Europe biggest newspaper, Germany’s Das Bild, has said the Covid-19 lockdown was a ‘huge mistake’. Critics featured in the newspaper feature said that it was important during a public crisis that people had the right to continue “warning, doubting and arguing” especially when fundamental rights of citizens were being suppressed. Prof. Klaus Püschel, a pathologist […]
Honestly, did we all miss the bit where Bill Gates headed off to university and spent a decade studying to become the world’s leading expert on infectious diseases? Because it sure seems that way. As Tim points out this morning, there’s an unfortunate habit in the press of giving more space to non-scientists who support […]
Economist, Professor Ray Kinsella, writes that a recent decision by the German constitutional court will finally force the ECB – and the EU – to confront the dire failings of the Euro, which are once again being exposed by Coronavirus. The decision by German Constitutional Court (GCC) sitting in Karlsruhe to challenge the ECJ […]
It is reported that a woman has been jailed for two years for coughing (‘Woman jailed after coughing at officers’, Sunday Telegraph, May 10, 2020). This punishment may seem a trifle harsh, especially when meted out to a woman; however, last April, 34-year-old Stacey Blackham ‘coughed and spat at police officers after threatening to infect […]
If you think you’re going around the twist at home now, be thankful (for maybe the first time in your life) that you don’t live in sunny California, with its lovely weather and scenery and friendly bears wandering around the place: “Los Angeles County’s stay-at-home orders will “with all certainty” be extended for the next […]
Several health experts have proposed a “herd immunity” strategy for managing the coronavirus pandemic. This would involve allowing the virus to spread in a controlled way so as to achieve population immunity — even though this may expose vulnerable members of the community to an increased risk of infection. While Australia has managed so far […]
Over the next few years the working-age population will decline dramatically The demographic winter continues in East Asia. As well as Japan, the other democratic, Western-leaning allies in the region are all facing similar issues: very low fertility rates, low or negative natural population growth and rapidly ageing populations. China is also grappling with these problems, […]
Chinese propaganda has launched an international offensive of fake news to counter “enormous evidence” that the virus came from a Wuhan laboratory. On March 17, 2020, Bitter Winter told the story of how a paper on the virus responsible for COVID-19 by two respected Chinese scientists, Dr. Botao Xiao from South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, and Dr. […]
There’s no doubt that most soldiers then and now are scared during the heat of battle, and rightly so as the survival instinct kicks in, but I think it highly likely that our modern aversion to intense suffering and death at any and all costs would render most of us useless on the battlefield.