Byron and Vizla

 

In Siena Park. Discovery Bay. Hong Kong 

This way lie Dragons, Demons and Hell: the Murderous Lunacy on the Left | Briget Phetasy

 

If we celebrate killing people more people will be killed. If you make it heroic, the guillotines will be set up in town squares. 

I remember when the disgruntled insuree, Luigi Mangioni, killed Brian Thompson in cold blood, on the streets of New York. He was cranky that a claim for medical reimbursement had been denies by his insurer, whose boss was said Mr Thompson. 

I remember reading about this, and assuming that Mangioni would be severely criticised. That it's be something like "you may have your issues with the insurer, but killing the CEO is not the way to resolve them". Or something. 

But, nothing like it. The left immediately was on Mangioni's side and said that the killing was "understandable" and "justified". 

Famous people agreed. I remember, to my horror, seeing comedian Bill Burr on Colbert throwing up a peace sign and shouting "Free Mangioni". To cheers from the audience. 

Then came the killing of Charlie Kirk. Again, I assumed that this would be called out. Nothing like it. At least from the Left. Who could not stop themselves from celebrating. 

Donald Trump was nearly killed by an assassin. The Left was only disappointed tht the bullet was just a shade too far to the left, that it missed his brain. 

All of this is shocking. Though now, months later, I'm no longer shocked. Just depressed and horrified at where the Left in the United States has got to. 

That promoting, that celebrating, that enabling, that encouraging, violence for political ends, is not just fine, but noble and heroic. 

That way lies Hell. I've seen it in China. I've read about it in Soviet Russia. In North Korea. In Vietnam. 

Yet here we are in today's America, with the New York Times giving a fawning interview to a Merchant of Death, the radical Marxist Thug, Hasan Piker. 

Briget Phetasy is sound, common sensical. As is Mike Solana of Private Wires.   

Immigration: Lifetime contribution of immigration by country of origin

In the red: Middle East, Africa, Latin America...
See spreadsheet below for detail

This is just for the record. For reference. 

From a 2025 Netherlands IZA study of the net contribution of immigrants to the European Union, over the lifetime, by country of origin. Those in the red are countries of origin of immigrants to Europe who end up taking more from the state than they contribute to the economy. 

In short, all those coming from the countries above in red, are net takers from the state, over their lifetimes in the EU. Other studies, both in the United States and Europe, show the same pattern. 

It's not fully clear from the above chart, so here's the spreadsheet:

I meant to post this at the time of the debates over the corruption in Minnesota, tied mainly to Somali immigrants, hence highlighting them above. They're the largest drain of any group on the public purse. They also were the most involved in the multi-billion dollar fraud that was uncovered in Minnesota, the investigations of which are ongoing, at the Federal level. 

One must ask, surely, if such groups are not only a major drain on the state, but are also engaging in massive fraud, what on earth is the country doing continuing to let them into the country, let alone to encourage them. In spite of which, the pushback is always that to question the policy -- in America or the EU or Australia -- is that you're being "racist". Sure. 

Also for the record. Views of Mainstream Democrats re immigration and deportation: 

Mainstream Democrats THEN. Republican policy NOW

Why the different views now? 

Wow! Virginia referendum will hit HARD! Nuremberg ahoy!

1812 cartoon of the first "gerrymander" redistricting, favouring
Democrats, approved by governor Gerry. A dragon-like monster
later likened to a salamander, hence "Gerry-Mander".

Whaaaa? 

Have I landed on the most boring topic of the day? What referendum? Where? Why? WTF?!

Yeah, well. It was all about “redistricting”. Or, more honestly, about redistricting's evil twin: gerrymandering. 

A super quick primer: the United States lower house, the House of Representative is made up of 435 seats. The idea is that the number each party has broadly represents the country's voter split. 

So: in 2024 it was Trump 50%, Kamala Harris 48%. And that’s how the House seats broadly split: 220 to Republicans and 215 to Democrats. 

Each of the 50 states has a certain number of Representatives, based on its population, one representative for every 700k residents. So, a state with 7 million population gets 10 Representatives to the House. And it divides the electorates in the state (“districts” in the United States) so that they broadly represent the split between the main parties.

So far so good? 

Now to Virginia. With its population of 8 million it gets to choose 11 Representatives. Right now they’re split 6 Democrats and 5 Republicans. That’s in a state that voted 52% Democrat and 48% Republican in the last election. So the 6-5 split seems fair and reasonable, right? Just a bit more for the Dems. Per the overall vote.

Ok, so what’s the problem? 

It's the Gerrymander, Stupid!

Just two days ago, on 21 April, they held a referendum in Virginia to approve a proposal to change the borders of the 11 electorates. It passed by a slim margin. The result is that at the next elections, due this coming November, that the split of seats in VA will be 10-1. That’s 10 Democratic seats to just one Republican seat. 90% of the Representatives will be Democrats just 10% Republicans, in a state that’s purple, more or less split down the middle.

Plus four to the Dems; Minus four to the Reps. That's a swing of 8 right there. Enough, just by itself, to flip the House. To 219-216 to the Dems. On that one state alone. That's the HARD hit of this week's referendum. 

That's the gerrymander. The redistricting, not to get a fair outcome, but to get a partisan result. And here in VA it's been done to the max. 

How can this be fair? Is it legal?

No, of course it’s not fair. But it is legal. 

Current districts, (6-5) top, are to change to the bottom:
four divisions shifting from Red to Blue, (10-1), bottom

So what's the problem? 

If you're a Democrat, nothing. If you're a Republican, lots. 

This could be the start of other gerrymandering in other Democratic-controlled, but purple states (that is, evenly split Dem-Rep). 

The most immediate impact is on the November mid-term elections. 

This one state, this one move in Virginia, flips the House. Gives it to the Dems. That gives them leadership of all the House Committees. And of the majority vote in the House. That will stop dead what Trump is trying to do: keeping the border closed, deporting illegal aliens, reducing taxes and regulations, pushing meritocracy vs DEI, finishing Iran... 

More seriously it's the first step to the Dems winning the Trinity: presidency, senate and house in 2028. Then they will move to stack the Supreme Court with four more Justices, all Democrat, with converting Washington DC and Puerto Rico into States, giving them four more Senators and control of the Senate forever. 

James "it's the economy, stupid!" Carville, senior Dem adviser, has openly advised this. And more. 

This will lead to the Unaparty for America. A place run by a single party. This may be very congenial for Democrats, but obviously not for Republicans. It's not what we've always been told in western democracies that we're about: namely multi-party democracy. I like the fact that there's at least two parties. In my lifetime it's been one a bit left and another a bit right. And if you don't like one or the other, you can always, as Don Chipp said "kick the bastards out". What happens when you can't do that? Would even centrist Democrats like it if the only choice was a far-left Dem party, which is the way they're headed? 

Then there's the revenge. Democrats have said they're going to "go after" Republicans who "are complicit" in supporting Donald Trump and his administration. 

Nuremberg Redux?

Democrats have so convinced themselves that Trump is Hitler, that ICE agents are his Gestapo goons, and his MAGA supporters all Nazis, that they are now talking of a "Nuremberg-type" set of hearings to "bring to account" and jail all those who were "complicit" in helping the Trump administration. Including hangings, as per the original Nuremberg? Who knows. They're sufficiently deluded and filled with rage for revenge that nothing's out of court. 

They're saying it out loud. And who can doubt that any craziness is possible, in today's febrile climate?

A "Binational, Democratic, State" in Israel run by Hamas?? | Einat Wilf

 

Dr @EinatWilf

This is a response to all those who think that if Hamas takes over Israel, if the Intifada does work to overthrow the Jewish state, if Islamists rule "from the River to the Sea", then all will be fine and well. That there will be a return to some pre-1948 time when apparently all was sweetness and light between Muslims and Jews in this area of the Levant. 

People believing this, calling for this, include pretty much all the Left in the west, the media, all of Europe, all the Muslim countries. ie, pretty much everyone. Including the loopy fringe group of fundamentalist Jews, the Naturei Karta, recently seen on New York streets, together with Hamas and other "Palestinians" calling for the downfall of Israel, and shouting Allahu Akbar. Go figure. 

Einat Wilf I've posted about before. She's super shart. Intelligent, eloquent. And not blinded by any false delusions about what might happen if Hamas or the PA took over. Which, to be clear, would be genocide -- and actual genocide -- of all Jews in the area, just as a first up, followed by killing all Jews and all non-Muslims they could get their hands on. 

How do I know this? Because they say so. Over and over. It's part of their founding document, the Charter of Hamas. 

Fun stories about Islam: Angels & Demons. Slavery & Conquest | William Federer

 

I know most of this stuff. I learned something, after all, from 17 years of writing about it. From the Koran, to the Hadith, from Ibn Ishaq's Life of Muhammad, to the Umdat al-salik, the sacred manual of Islamic Sharia law. 

I've not heard Dr William Federer before. He's good at telling a fun and compelling story. A scary one, too. 

One we need to understand and treat seriously. Because, bottom line, it's "Islam must conquer the world".  That's the aim of the religious ideology foundd by Muhammad. Only then, according to pious Muslims, will there be peace. Islam style. 

That's it. That's the story of Islam and its aims. One we're witnessing, at a surge, in front of us now. 

Over to you, Dr Will. 

"THE ISLAMIC SLAVE TRADE IS WORSE THAN YOU THINK" | Ali Tabrizi

 

Ali Tabrizi is an Iranian-Australian YouTuber and everything he says on here about the Islamic slave trade is true and verifiable. 

Slavery in the Islamic states lasted far longer, and was far higher in number, than ever the Atlantic slave trade was. It was those hated European colonialists who stopped the slave trade in the Islamic middle east. 

It is revealing that the Left in the west refuses to acknowledge, let alone condemn, the Islamic slave trade. Which continues to this day. Eg, openly and legally in Mauritania. 

Just more hypocrisy. And wanting to highlight anything that weakens the West, like the now-defunct slave trade, while ignoring anything nasty about the Islamic world, like the still-continuing slavery. 

Hasan Piker the "rancid communist" | Rich Lowry

 

Rich Lowry does a good job here of taking down the horrid Hasan Piker. 

It's hardly believable, but the mainstream Democratic Party— the likes of the very mainstream Ezra Klein, editor of Vox — have taken to Piker. It's not just Piker”s visceral hatred of Jews. But his love of Mao, of Castro, of Stalin, of the most vile of the murderous communist tyrants, and his obvious desire to see this tyranny extended to the United States. 

What is wrong with these Dems?? This is waaaay different from the Dem Party of Bill Clinton or of Barak Obama. Even of a Hillary Clinton for goodness sake. It's off the charts Left.

The most I can do here, about this Dem insanity is... shake my head... Oh dear. 

And spread the insights of Rich Lowry. He's spot on. 

Hong Kong Sevens: win third Melrose Claymores

The new stadium for the famous Sevens Rugby tourney was sold out. 60,000 seats, chocker. 

Everyone had fun. The crowds were big, boisterous and behaved. 

Hong Kong won the Melrose Claymores Cup. A new comp for the Asian teams. 

That's a fun thing for us, and to raise our spirits. 

"Hong Kong Sevens a treat for the fans"

America is winning in Iran. And the Left hates it

 

Historian, Classicist, Stanford Hoover Institute Fellow, Victory Davis-Hanson, talking of the winning going on in Iran. 

But the wish for losing -- of America losing, of the West losing -- the wish for "Gleeful Defeat" amongst the Left and other Trump haters. Who hate a man more than they love their country. 

Phuket, Thailand. 2011

 

Anchored on our boat Xena, at Karong Beach, Phuket. Looking west over an Andaman Sea sunset.

Global Gender Divide

Just posting for Reference.

From a Financial Times article a few years ago by John Burn-Murdoch. It's here but paywalled.

It's a trend everywhere. Women going Left, men going (or staying) Right. 

More evidence: Young women are trending liberal. Young men are not, The Hill. 

Waymo is cooked! Tesla’s cooking!

Smooth, cool dude Tesla > carbuncled Waymo

Haven’t heard of Waymo? 

It’s a driverless taxi. Currently operating in a number of cities in the U.S. and expanding. It’s owned by Google. Deep pockets. So how could it go wrong? 

Answer: by being the car version of Kodak, which stuck by 35mm film when digital was the go. By being the car version of Blockbuster when Netflix was the go. By being the car version of a flip phone when iPhone was the go. By sticking with multiple, brainless, sensors when cameras and a brain are the go.

Waymo has got too many sensors. Not just cameras, but Lidar, Radar… gaydar and sonar…. Heh! 

They make the car look like a warty carbuncle. All these sensors and systems don’t make the nav better and safer. They make it more complex and more often conflicting. Which is the opposite of what the naysayers, the Elon-haters have been saying for years. And now have to eat crow. Elon was right all along. And Waymo was wrong all along. 

Tesla has cameras and a brain. Like humans with our two eyes and a brain. As @brivael notes:

Sébastien Loeb throws a 208 T16 at 180 kph down a muddy Corsican path in the rain with zero LIDAR. Two eyes, one brain. Evolution gave predators eyes for 500 million years, not lasers. There's a reason.

LIDAR is the equivalent of Marxism applied to the economy. More…

Elon commented on @brivael’s post:  

“People oddly assumed that I didn’t understand LiDAR, even though I oversaw the custom LiDAR development that Dragon uses to dock with the Space Station.”

In short: I confidently predict that Waymo will fail. If not in a year, then within five. And that Tesla with its FSD will dominate the driverless market. Which will be, per the cartoon above, a tsunami. A good tsunami! Getting around will be easier, safer, more efficient, better for the environment, and … cheaper!

And it will be so for everyone. As the Chinese say, for 男女老少, Nánnǚ lǎoshào, for Men and Women, for Young and Old. 

Dover, 2015

The new military superpower: Ukraine!

Ukraine is not just adapting to the new battlefield realities of robots, drones and AI. It's writing the text book. 

So says military expert Philip Ingram. I've seen other similar vids recently. We're seeing something new in war and we're seeing it most focussed in Ukraine. In Iran too, of course, but most advanced in ukraine. 

Who'da thought? 

And all of a sudden, it's Ukraine that's on top. Russia is losing more men per day than it can recruit. 400 a day it’s losing. To drones and robots. 

Ukraine’s 'drone wall', its “robot infantry” is rewriting the rules of modern warfare. 

In this week's episode of Battle Plans Exposed, military expert Philip Ingram MBE reveals a staggering new statistic: drones were responsible for 96% of Russian losses in March. 

From the surgical destruction of $25 million Tor-M2 air defence systems to the incineration of 'stolen grain' vessels in the Sea of Azov, the battlefield has become a 'panopticon' where Russian forces are constantly watched and relentlessly struck. 

Video Chapters 

00:00 Intro 

01:26 Ram II vs. Tor-M2 

02:21 TOS-1: Russia’s most feared weapon 

03:12 VOLGO-BALT 138: burning stolen grain 

04:36 Ukraine’s AI digital artillery 

07:22 Swedish RBS15 missiles 

08:44 Ukraine frontline update 

10:18 Fortress belt & Yampil chokepoint 

11:46 Russia's 96% losses 

12:22 Ukraine's drone wall 

13:16 Ukraine's drone units 

14:38 Ukraine's strategic strikes: Hitting Russia 1,000km deep 

15:39 Strike 1: Wiping out Orion UAVs at Kirov Airbase 

17:33 Strike 2: Drone Strike on Svitlodarsk 

19:08 Strike 3: Crippling Putin’s Armour Steel Production 

20:25 Strike 4: Penetrating Novorossiysk to Hit the Admiral Makarov 

21:45 Strike 5: The Sea of Fire at Nizhny Novgorod 

24:01 Technical Breakdown: Ram II & FP2 Long Range Drones 

26:37 Conclusion 

In this episode: 

The Drone Revolution: How $500 FPV drones are turning multi-million dollar Russian assets into "paperweights."
Digital Artillery: A look inside the "Crypt" - Ukraine’s AI-driven fire control system that’s outperforming Western legacy systems.
Deep Strikes: Ukrainian drones hitting Russian refineries and factories 1,000km behind the front lines.
Naval Shift: Swedish RBS 15 missiles and maritime drones making the Black Sea a "no-go zone" for Putin.

ADDED: “Russia thought it could win a war of muscles. It’s turned out to be a war of mathematics”. i.e. : Drones > Missiles. Robots > Men.

Saudi Arabia will attack Iran …

Click above for the Short. Prince Faisal in his perfect English accent

 Saudi Arabia will attack Iran …

… if attacks against Saudi continue. But Iran “doesn’t want diplomacy” says Saudi Prince Faisal, above. “I’m doubtful they have the wisdom” to stop war and negotiate instead. 

Arab nations are united against Iran. They support U.S. and Israeli actions against the Iranian regime. 

As the Riyadh Statement shows. Not just Arab, but nearby Islamic nations as well. 

The Prince Faisal Short, above.

Salt & Vinegar Chips. Spitting Chips. Sour Grapes.

Salt & Vinegar Chips. Spitting Chips. Sour Grapes. 

Take your pick. 

I'm talking about how pissed off China is that the largest high-end chip-maker in the world, TSMC, has done a deal with the United States to make their chips there. Beijing are super pissed off. 

How do they show their anger? Reveal their saltiness? Display they're spitting chips? 

Why, through the voices of pro-Beijing columnists in the South China Morning Post, of course! There's plenty of them these days. 

The most pro-Beijing, the most of a sock-puppet for Beijing is long-time columnist Alex Lo. Who writes two days ago, in his column: KMT Chief shows way forward to avoid blind confrontation with Beijing. [Internet Archive page]

Taiwan’s political pendulum is reversing. The government led by Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) William Lai Ching-te is increasingly discredited, not least for selling out the jewel of its semiconductor industry to the United States under pressure from President Donald Trump.

"Selling the family jewels"?? Hardly. They're increasing Chip capacity by manufacturing in the United States. Does it make sense? Surely it does. 

America is the largest customer of TSMC by a long way. America takes some 75% ot TSMC's output. Next largest customer is Taiwan itself with 9%.  Only then comes China, with 8%, a figure that's actually fallen in recent years. IOW America takes ten times the amount China does of TSMC's output. Of course it makes sense to manufature some of your product in your dominant customer's home. 

Committing some $US 500 billion to build facilities in America is just smart. 

But it smarts for China too. This is not TSMC "selling family jewels". It's TSMC being smart.

From China, from  Alex Lo, the OG Beijing sock-puppet, it's just... Sour Grapes. 

===================

ADDED: My post on TSMC: the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.

Who's TSMC? From Grok:

TSMC produces the vast majority of the world's most advanced semiconductor chips (over 90% of leading-edge nodes below 5nm or so), which serve as the foundational "brains" powering everything from smartphones and consumer electronics to AI accelerators, high-performance computing, data centers, and modern military systems.

Without TSMC's manufacturing capacity and technological leadership, global supply chains for AI innovation, digital infrastructure, and countless high-tech products would grind to a halt, making the company a critical chokepoint for the modern economy and technological progress.

In short, TSMC is the indispensable engine behind today's digital world and the AI revolution.

You’re Not Allowed to Say This… The REAL Reason This War Exists | Mosab Hassan Yousef

 

I post this as a history lesson in Islam as the "final revealed religon". And what this means for all non-Muslims in the world.

A history lesson in "Why the Muslims try to kill or subjugate all Jews". 

I've been banging on about this since the beginning of this blog. 

Why? 

Because it's in all the doctrines of Islam -- the Koran, the Hadith, the Sirah, the life of Muhammad, the Sharia -- and in all the actions of Muslims when they attack via terrorist acts in the west. They make it clear. "We are not here in [the U.K., Europe, wherever] to take part. We're here to Take Over". 

Mosab Hassan Yousef is the so-called "Son of Hamas". Because he's the son of one of Hamas' foundational leaders. He's a hafiz -- one who has memorised the whole of the Koran. He knows whereof he speaks. 

Muslim believe, because Mohammad told them so, in the Koran, that Islam is the latest revealed Abrahamic religion and it abrogates -- it cancels -- the previous religions of Judaism and Christianity. This is a very dangerous belief because it leads to their attempts to physically silence, to kill, those Christians and Jews who continue to believe that they have the right, the obligation, to carry on with their religion. 

Iran Crumbles...

 

... and it's good news for the West. 

I am most certainly aware that that's not the view of the legacy media. That they're taking every opportunity to big up any perceived negatives against America; and to diminish any of the achievement of Operation Epic Fury. 

I find it disgusting that the European West, the American media, the media in Australia, the UK, the EU, can be against winning a defensive war on Iran -- defence against a burgeoning Islamist caliphate -- because they don't like the man waging it. 

I'm fully on side with winning this war. I know that America and Israel are trouncing Iran. But also that Iran's is not a finished regime. And that the main battle now is against the headwinds from the West itself. Weird and disturbing. And should not be so. 

Shame on pusillanimous leaders like France's Macron, Britain's Starmer, Italy's Meloni, Germany's Mertz and the Spanish socialist shill whose name I can't be bothered to remember. But who seems happy to have the Modern Moors reconquist Andalusia. Which, bottom line, is what this war is all about. Pushing back Islamist Jihadi attacks, of which Iran, its Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, are just the tip of the spear. 

Is that too tough to read? Too difficult to acknowledge? So be it. 

00:00 Long View on Iran War 03:02 Iran Weakened Militarily 04:24 Winners and Losers Russia Gulf 06:22 Global Fallout China Europe NATO 09:16 US Outlook and Conclusion

Victor Davis Hanson is an American classicist, military historian, and political commentator. He has been a commentator on modern and ancient warfare and contemporary politics for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the National Review, the Washington Times, and other media outlets.

Beach Barbecue

 

Great news for Tesla! | Herbert Ong & Brian Lutz

 

Great news for Tesla!

Great news for the world! 

The beginning of the transport revolution is here!

The Dutch regulator, RDW, just gave permission for Tesla's Full Self Driving (FSD) software to be used there. That will mean the rest of the EU 27 will soon do the same. The Dutch, and its RDW, are known as the gold standard in testing and licencing vehicles. 

About the Tesla FSD, the RDW said more than just "OK". They said Tesla's FSD was "the best system" they've tried and tested, rigorously, over 18 months. 

Likely other countries outside the EU will follow. China. Japan. Hopefully us here in Hong Kong, where Tesla's are super popular. 

The revolution is not just to the ease and increased safety in driving cars. It's another step to fully autonomous cars. And then to a whole new paradigm of how we get around. Cities will change. They'll get better, as we don't need so many private cars and so many buses and so many parking lots. Cities will get cleaner, more friendly, more relaxed. 

Things is gonna get better!

EV Sales, U.S. Q1 2026. For info post

 EVs ranked by total unit sold in the U.S. in Q1 2026.

1) Tesla Model Y: 78,591

2) Tesla Model 3: 31,672

3) Toyota bZ: 10,029

4) Hyundai Ioniq 5: 9,790

5) Chevrolet Equinox EV: 9,589

6) Rivian R1S: 5,494

7) Ford Mustang Mach-E: 4,600

8) Lexus RZ: 4,456

9) Tesla Cybertruck: 3,519

10) Cadillac Lyriq: 3,370

11) Honda Prologue: 3,319

12) Rivian EDV: 3,213

13) Subaru Solterra: 3,041

14) Cadillac Optiq: 2,847

15) Kia EV9: 2,740

16) Tesla Model X: 2,346

17) BMW i4: 2,184

18) Kia EV6: 2,023

19) Hyundai Ioniq 9: 1,990

20) Cadillac Vistiq: 1,902

21) BMW iX: 1,788

22) Rivian R1T: 1,658

23) GMC Hummer EV: 1,653

24) Lucid Gravity: 1,631

25) Cadillac Escalade IQ: 1,432

There’s more. Courtesy Sawyer Merritt on X.

Steven Mark Ryan comments on his "Solving the Money Problem" YT Channel.

Shall I make the obvious point? Oh, go on then. Well, it's this: that Tesla's top models outsold the rest of the top 25 by 33%. Tesla's single top selling car, the Model Y, outsold the rest of the top 20 put together. 

Plus, not shown here: Tesla was the biggest selling EV in the whole world in Q1. Yes, they did outsell China's BYD! Tesla outsold Chinese EV cars even in China. While costing 3 to 4 times as much as Chinese made EV and hybrid cars, in China. 

Hezbollah is the model for Iran proxies world wide | Loay Alshareef

Lebanon was known as the "Pear of the Levant", "the Paris of the Med"... the "Switzerland of the East". Now it's a basket case. Terrorised by well-armed murderous religious lunatics. 

It was Palestinian terrorists wot done it. In the shape of Hezbollah, the "Party of Allah". Hezbollah invaded Lebanon after being kicked out of Jordan -- a Palestinian state itself! -- for being too radical even for Jordanians. 

Hezbollah proceeded to be a parasite on the body of Lebanon, to change its character, to ruin it for Lebanese and foreigners alike. 

This is the Iranian IRGC's model. A state within a state. An armed group stronger than the military of the country it parasitizes on. All funded by Iran.  

All of which non-US westerners seem happy to go along with. 

Iran's ambitions don't stop with the Middle East. They explicitly go to Europe and then to the rest of the west. That's what this war, Operation Epic Fury, is all about. Preventing more Hezbollahs all over the world. More Hamas' all over the world. More Houthis all over the world. More Palestinian Islamic Jihads all over the world. 

We don't have to guess or speculate about this. Iran has been saying it clearly for fifty years. It says it still. It will go on saying it until their last breath. 

The guy in the Short clip above is Loay Alshareef (Arabic: لؤي الشريف; born 11 November 1982), a UAE-based Saudi-born Egyptian activist who advocates for the Arab world to normalise relations with Israel.

Get that! There are Arabs willing to have better relations with Israel. If you can imagine it, it would be a huge improvement to having a terror state bent on killing everyone that doesn't accept their radical Shia Twelver Islam. 

German Nuclear shutdown: me ALSO called it out!

Not just Elon Musk. Me too! I also said it was crazy for Germany to shut down its nuclear power stations!

But seriously, folks. It was blindingly obvious that it was a crazy decision. Even to a midwit like me, sitting in Hong Kong. Let alone to a quixotic genius like Elon in America. But German politicians and bureaucrats did it anyway. And are now suffering.

Why did they do it? One word: Greens. The Greens are so wildly, so obsessively and I must say, so ignorantly anti clean-green-safe nuclear power and they have been so influential over such a long time in Germany, that they overrode common sense and science. They threw 25% of Germany's clean, green, safe and cheap nuclear power into the bin. 

The same is true in Australia. We have abundant uranium resources. We are quite happy to export it. But we refuse, by law, to use it ourselves.  Sheer insanity. All our Green bodies are against it. Challenged that their views are ideological and out-of-date, they respond with ideological and out-of-date diatribes. 

In Australia too, being anti-nuclear energy is “total madness”. [Though, of course, it's seen as being a virtue by most on the Left].

Xfreeze on X:

Elon Musk warned Germany in 2022 about shutting down their nuclear power plants

He called it "total madness" years before the current crisis peaked

"It’s crazy to shut down nuclear power plants... especially if you are in a place where there are no natural disasters" — Elon Musk

Germany shut them all down anyway in 2023

And now the consequences have become undeniable:

- Energy prices skyrocketed with German households paying the highest electricity bills in the EU in 2025.

- The grid became increasingly unreliable

- Germany is now burning billions in subsidies just to keep the lights on - money that wouldn't be needed if they'd listened

Now, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has officially admitted that the nuclear phase-out was a "huge mistake" and a "serious strategic error" that left the country without enough generation capacity

What's even worse is that the exact same EU bureaucrats who pushed for the shutdowns are now actively campaigning to build MORE nuclear power plants

Elon was right. Again

Population collapse the greatest threat to humanity | Xfreeze & Stephen J.Shaw

Courtesy @Xfreeze. The dotted line is
replacement level, and all these are below it

Elon Musk — and Demographers— have been warning about this. 

It’s NOT the population "bomb” we must fear. It’s the population bust. 

Note how the very lowest birth rates are in East Asia. Where we live…. If I were a bit younger I'd try to give it a nudge along.

Demographer Stephen J.Shaw explains how immigration is not the answer to low birth rates. Neither for the country losing the emigrants nor for the country hosting the immigrants. 

Shaw also explains how it is that humans survived major population declines in wars and plagues. But how and why it’s different today. We are circling down a population plug hole. We ignore it at our extreme peril.

It's a long video. But then complex issues need complex explanations. 

"Hong Kong enters Zombie economy!" | China Economy

 

Errrhh... No. It's not true. No way Hong Kong is a "Zombie economy".  

I'm posting the video above as what the Chinese call "a negative example". It's the most untruthful, the most lying, the most ... just the most off-the-planet Disinformation and Misinformation that I've ever seen. In any video. Anywhere. 

And that's from me, who's no fan of the China Communist Party. Hong Kong is jsut not like they (mis)represent. And, By the way, I do know Hong Kong in previous difficult times. During the 1997 financial crisis. During the 2008 Financial Crisis. And during the Covid lockdown. So I know what it looks like when shops everwhere are closed down and the city is struggling. That's not the case now. No way. 

I’ve lived in Hong Kong since 1990, so when I watched that China Observer video claiming the city has collapsed into a “zombie economy,” I knew straight away it was a very negative, one-sided take that doesn’t match the place I see every day. It’s still alive, vibrant, and far from finished. The real problem is the factual errors that undermine the whole story.
First, the video says the Hong Kong dollar “no longer can be converted to $US.” That’s simply wrong. The Linked Exchange Rate System has been rock-solid since 1983. The HKMA still guarantees full convertibility at around 7.8 to the dollar. You can walk into any bank or use any forex app today and it works exactly as it always has. No capital controls, no change.
Second, the claim that “half a million flee” suggests an ongoing mass exodus. Yes, there was significant emigration after 2019 and COVID, but the numbers are not a current collapse. Official data show the population has stabilised around 7.5 million with net inflows from talent schemes and mainland arrivals. It’s not the uncontrolled flight the video paints. We know many friends who departed to Europe in the wake of Covid and the 2019 riots, but who have since returned.
Third, “9 out of 10 shops empty” and neon lights “flickering out like dominoes” is pure exaggeration. Vacancy rates in core districts like Causeway Bay and Mong Kok are around 8–12 per cent — elevated, yes, but nowhere near 90 per cent. Retail sales have been recovering and new tenants are moving in. Again, it's nothing like the downturns of 1997, 2008 and 2020. 
The video downplays Hong Kong’s financial strength. It ignores that we’re on track to be the world’s largest IPO market in 2026, with HK$110 billion already raised in Q1 alone. And capital is still flowing in — including big money from the Middle East shifting to Hong Kong, not just Singapore.
These aren’t small slips. They turn real challenges (higher costs, cross-border spending) into a false narrative of total collapse. Just because some sources are paranoid about Beijing doesn’t make every claim accurate. From where I stand after 34 years here, Hong Kong is adapting and still very much open for business.
ADDED: the "China Observer" channel is run by Falun Gong-affiliated groups, so it's no surprise their take on China is the most negative, the most anti, the most vitriolic to the CCP. 

Brobdingnagian Banyan

Massive electoral fraud AND the rape scandal. "All at levels never seen" | Raja Miah

 

Surely the Labour Party, surely Keir Starmer & Co, cannot go on ignoring this. 

This may be the most important video you will watch this year. Please share widely. 

Britain thought it got rid of the corrupt politics of "rotten boroughs" in the 19th century. According to Raja Miah, they are alive and well in the Pakistani & Bangladeshi communities of the North of England, the Midlands, Tower Hamlets, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds. All the major cities in England. 

Worse still, Labour is fully aware of going on but as it has been the beneficiary of these practices, many politicians have turned a wilfully blind eye to it all - just as they did with the grooming gangs. He joins Rafe Heydel-Mankoo to discuss the widespread corruption and political intimidation in these communities as well as broader issues such as the origins and root causes of the grooming gangs.

Smart Tesla crushes Dumb Toyota…

… And Dumb Ford, and Dumb Mercedes, and Dumb Kia. And Dumb any car. 

“Dumb” is any car that’s not Smart. That can’t drive itself. That can’t update its OS overnight. That can’t deliver energy to the grid, for money. That can’t be ten times safer than humans driving. 

Flashback to 17 years ago, in Antarctica. We’re there in Christmas Day 2009. We’re sitting on the deck of a smallish expedition ship, the Ocean Explorer. We’re anchored in Half Moon Bay on the Antarctic Peninsula. The sea is calm. Overhead a cloudless sky, a windless day. A rarity in Antarctica. It’s so calm and peaceful, it’s almost surreal. Anchored for Christmas amidst icebergs, penguins and assorted sea creatures.

We’re sitting on an outside deck, enjoying the pale midsummer sun. It’s a balmy zero centigrade. We’re sipping our pre-lunch champagnes in shirtsleeves.

Time for present giving. I give Jing the newly-released “iPhone”, the one that everyone’s been talking about. The very first model. Which you may recall now as clunky and buggy. But was super hyped at the time. The other presents I don’t recall, but don’t matter to this story. Which is about the iPhone. Which (to remind) I gave Jing. Who professed satisfaction.

A few weeks later, back in Hong Kong. It’s my birthday and I find my present from Jing is an iPhone. Jolly good, I thought. She’s so enjoyed the one I gave her that she’s gone and got me one too. We can share experiences! 

But no! The one I’m holding is the very same one I gave her in Antarctica a few weeks ago! She explains. She’s just too wedded to her Nokia Foldable phone. She can’t give it away, so best that I have this newfangled iPhone thingie.

OK. Fine. NP.

I take it on board our boat Xena and show to our crew. It gets passed around. There’s been a huge amount of hype,people want to see it. The conclusion is almost unanimous, in line with what Herbert Ong describes above. Versions of:  “This keyless keyboard thing won’t work. I’ll stick to my Blackberry”. 

And here we are today. Blackberry is bankrupt and iPhone is dominant. A phone which redefined what a phone was and could be.

Tesla is in the same place as Apple was then. We’re in another iPhone moment. When a car is about to redefine what a car is. If you believe this, then Tesla is the best stock to buy for the next half century. At least.

Oh. There’s a follow up to Jing’s re-gifting the iPhone to me. I’m sitting in bed, doing stuff in my new iPhone. The one I gave her and which she boomeranged back to me. She looks over my shoulder, trying not to seem interested, but can’t help herself. Asks to have a look. I show her. Next week she’s bought her own iPhone. We’re not in model 13 now…. In how many homes did that happen? 

Watch the video above, and imagine the same happening to Tesla. As a robotics and AI company, not as a car company. 

ADDED: Tesla Full Self Driving approved in The Netherlands, described as “the best system”. Soon to be approved in rest of Europe.