Heroic Muslims Are Not the “Antidote” to Islamist Terror
I strongly suspect the sentiments I am about to express mean this is not going to be a very popular article, and I equally strongly suspect the Daily Sceptic is one of the very few publications in this country which would actually print it. But, when it comes to Australia’s horrific Bondi Beach shooting, in which at least 15 Jews celebrating Hannukah were shot dead by a father-and-son team of presumable Islamists, it may in some ways have been better if the brave and noble actions of the man who ran up to one of the two terrorists and wrestled his gun away had not happened.
Obviously, he is a genuine hero, and it is brilliant his intervention saved lives. So perhaps I should qualify my statement here as meaning less ‘I wish he hadn’t stepped in’, and more ‘I wish his actions hadn’t been reported in the way they have been’. Because, as you just may possibly perhaps have heard, the hero of the hour was a local fruit-seller named Ahmed Al Ahmed – and he was a Muslim. So, it appears, were the two named shooters, Sajid and Naveed Akram, but most of the world’s media don’t seem to want us to dwell on this particular detail of the matter quite so much.
Jews of the World
The front pages of the majority of Britain’s newspapers the morning after the slaughter chose headlines designed to highlight less that some Muslims had shot some Jews but that another Muslim had tried to save them. Some of these newspapers were even the very ones habitually labelled as being ‘far-Right’ and ‘Islamophobic’ by the Left, like the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, Britain’s only daily news publication with a medieval Christian Crusader as its mascot.
Other outlets like the Telegraph tried to be a little more balanced, implying the very best and very worst of Islam and humanity alike were on display at Bondi that day.
Only the occasional daring publication like the Sun focused primarily on the horror and violence of the situation: no doubt, if and when Labour’s proposed new definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ is pushed through, such blasphemous presentations will be rendered completely haram.
Overall, the editorial line was quite clear: one hero Muslim saves Jews, not two Muslims kill Jews. It’s a bit like saying WWII Germany was great because of Oskar Schindler, whilst completely ignoring Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. What is the subliminal (or not so subliminal) implication of the standard media presentation of this matter, as illustrated above? That the West must import more Muslims, as only they can save non-Muslims from other Muslims. Have these people never heard of ‘The Old Woman Who Swallowed a Fly’? (I keep making this analogy, but no-one ever listens.)
Beach Bodies
Ahmed Al Ahmed is indeed a hero: he certainly deserves some kind of reward, and not only in Paradise. Happily, a billionaire American banker, Bill Ackman, has just offered him one, to the tune of $100,000. There have been calls for the Jewish state of Israel to hand him an official honour too, although whether he would really like to go and receive a gong from what many Muslims regard as the bloodstained hand of Binjamin Netanyahu, would perhaps provide the ultimate test of just how well-integrated Mr Ahmed truly is.
Rewards can consist of praise as well as money, of course. The tides had not yet washed Bondi’s sands clean of Jewish blood before ranks of liberal-minded commentators were repurposing the whole situation to stand less as an emblem of the failures of multiculturalism, more as an illustration of its complete success. A columnist in no less than the Jerusalem Post wrote:
There is another reason this matters. The Bondi Beach attack will be exploited by extremists who want to turn it into fuel for collective blame, collective suspicion, and collective hate. That road leads nowhere good. [And where does the opposite road lead, then?] Jews know what it means to be judged not as individuals but as a category, a problem, a target. Ahmed’s story is the antidote to that poison.
But it isn’t, is it? The delusional excessive elevation of Ahmed’s bravery away from belonging to himself personally, and the projection of it onto Muslims living in the West as a whole, will not act as the “antidote” to the poison of murderous Islamic extremism, but will only enable it to spread ever further.
If the warrior who had tackled the gunman had happened by remarkable coincidence to have been Tommy Robinson on a winter beach-holiday, do you think we would have been getting columns like this being pumped out everywhere? And I really do mean everywhere, even in ostensibly Right-wing publications like the Spectator, where Aussie columnist Terry Barnes argued this:
But Ahmed’s courage and bravery also serves a nobler purpose, especially today in shocked and horrified Australia. In the aftermath of Bondi, many Australians, in their anger at the perpetrators of this horrible terror act, haven’t hesitated to tar all Muslims with those men’s vile and evil brush. … They should instead be thankful that many Jewish lives were saved by a Muslim man, who could have chosen to keep under cover and save himself. Ahmed’s selfless bravery is a timely and welcome reminder… that it is wrong to conflate peaceable, faithful and devout Muslims with radical Islamists. … [Ahmed] is an antidote to the hatred the perpetrators showed to the Jews they targeted.
No, he’s not an “antidote”, he’s a politically convenient bromide in human form. Awkward though it may be to say so, although Ahmed personally had no intention to do anything but good on Bondi that day, he is inadvertently being made to serve the cause of violent global jihad nonetheless by Panglossian useful idiots like the above.
Family Bondis
What’s the best way to ensure more Jews (and others) die at the hands of Muslims in the West in the future? Import more Muslims. With that in mind, examine the interview the Australian Broadcasting Corporation rushed to carry out with Ahmed Al Ahmed’s parents. They live in Sydney and are presented as being impeccably well-integrated. If so, why does his mum still dress like this?
What does ‘well integrated’ mean in Western Muslim terms now? Wearing a hijab in nice Laura Ashley pastel colours instead of ISIS flag-black? I know absolutely nothing about how religious the pair are, but even so, the mild Islamic conservatism the mother’s mode of dress appears to indicate represents precisely the kind of comparatively bland and benign, ethno-religious sea within which killers like the Bondi gunmen can swim inside Western societies like Australia.
The pair took the opportunity to praise their son’s bravery:
When he did what he did, he wasn’t thinking about the background of the people he’s saving, the people dying in the street. He doesn’t discriminate between one nationality and another. Especially here in Australia, there’s no difference between one citizen and another.
But there demonstrably is quite a bit of “difference between one citizen and another” in Australia these days, isn’t there? For example, the difference between Australia’s sainted Muslim citizens, who are continually pandered to, and everyone else, who are subjected to Islamists going around firebombing synagogues, stabbing priests and attempting to slaughter Christmas shoppers with machetes and bombs because they thought it would be “cool”. At least their teen-speak language was fully Westernised, then.
The Boomerang Effect
The final paragraph of ABC’s interview with Ahmed’s parents is worth repeating in its entirety:
Family calls on PM for help
They fear that due to their age, they won’t be able to help their son in his recovery [from the gunshot wounds sustained during the attack]. As a result, they are calling on the… Government to help his two brothers, one from Germany and the other from Russia, to travel to Australia to support the family. “He needs help now as he’s become disabled now,” Ms Ahmed said. “We need our other children to come here to help.”
No you don’t. Besides Bill Ackman’s $100,000, the hero of the hour had received $550,000 in thoroughly deserved public donations in a mere 12 hours – I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s $1 million by now. The Ahmeds could use that to pay for professional nurses. Or move back to the Middle East and live as comparative sheiks there for the next few generations (albeit, given their son’s now famous Jew-helping exploits, he may soon find himself taking a few more bullets from distinctly more unsympathetic locals if they do). Letting any more Muslims in, even good ones like we must presume the Ahmeds are, is the last thing Australia needs right now.
Also worth reprinting in full is the final paragraph of our very own Guardian’s coverage:
For AlKahil, [an Australian Muslim the Guardian interviewed] the profound tragedy also brought a sense of fear. “As Muslims, every time there’s an attack we say to ourselves, oh no, people will say it’s Muslims that are bad,” she said. “We are scared to leave our houses if we’ll be accused. But our religion is a religion of peace and we are very peaceful people. This proves that.”
Two Muslims shoot some Jews, and the ‘correct’ official conclusion to be drawn is that this “proves” Islam is a religion of peace. Isn’t a far better lesson to be drawn that certain strains of Islam are peaceful, certain strains are outright genocidal, certain strains are somewhere in-between, and that, just to be on the safe side, absolutely all strains should be kept safely quarantined somewhere distant on the other side of the world, away from the previously peaceful West?
Not according to Kumbaya dreamers like Labour MP Lola McEvoy, whose immediate response to Bondi was as follows:
You don’t want to speculate on what the factors are that have contributed to this awful tragedy [You might not want to, Lola, but I do]. … I firmly believe that people are good, and that given the opportunity, they will look out for each other. And I just want to say that as much as possible, we should try and detoxify the way that we think of people who aren’t like us, because our diversity in this country is our strength. And I firmly am on the side of working together and celebrating our differences. Because, you know, I was a community organiser a long, long time ago, and the strongest campaigns that we ever worked on were about bringing people of different faiths and different world views and different backgrounds together to find what we had in common.
I have absolutely nothing in common with you, Lola, and nor do most of your traditional electorate. That’s a major part of why the Labour Party’s support is utterly cratering at the moment, because normal sane people are sick to the back teeth of utopian vomit like this spewing out of your stupid Islamophilic mouths after every such massacre whose supposedly mysterious “contributory factors must not be speculated on”, lest any such conjecture should happen to alienate the ever-growing Muslim vote in traditional Labour safe-seats like Bradford and Oldham. “I firmly believe that people are good,” this fool says, even when some “people” are shooting other people dead on a beach.
Still, Lola’s just an obscure English PPS in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Thank God Australia itself doesn’t have suicidally empathetic Eloi like that in positions of actual power at the current moment in time, eh? Oh no, wait. At his post-pogrom press conference, Palestine-pandering Left-wing PM Anthony Albanese paid tribute to Ahmed tackling the gunman as a paradigmatic example of “Australians coming together”. “Australians coming together?” That’s a funny way of describing a Syrian immigrant taking on some (reported) Pakistani immigrants in a gunfight over some Jews, isn’t it?
In the short term, Ahmed Al Ahmed saved dozens of Jewish lives. In the medium to long term, his fine example is going to be systematically exploited to ensure that thousands more Jews (and gays, whites, Christians, apostates, etc. etc.) are the victims of Islamist attacks. I know Ahmed is a genuine hero. But please, let’s not treat him as one, at least not in the way Albanese and McEvoy are: the ultimate cost will just be too great.
I know this column makes me sound like a heartless piece of shit. But empathy has got us absolutely nowhere. And heartlessness is generally better than brainlessness.
Steven Tucker is a journalist and the author of over 10 books.
Brace Yourselves Once Again for the Mask Madness
“They’re here.”
Many will recall the little girl from the 1982 Poltergeist film, standing in front of the TV set, announcing the return of the malevolent spirits. These iconic words seem an appropriate way to announce the reappearance of the pro-mask ghouls who, over recent days, have been beseeching us all to wear a face covering to protect ourselves (and, of course, the NHS) from the consequences of the scary-sounding ‘super flu’.
It is the usual suspects who are screaming again. A senior NHS mandarin, Daniel Elkeles, has said that the UK faces “a tidal wave” of illness and that people should “get back into the habit” of mask-wearing. Pandemic industry technocrats at the UK Health Security Agency have repeated their highly dubious claims that strapping pieces of porous plastic across our airways can protect ourselves and others from those pesky microscopic pathogens. Most predictably of all, Professor Trish Greenhalgh has popped her pantyhose-clad head above her ideological trench to broadcast the benefits of multi-layered face coverings. And of course, the BBC has been keen to amplify this nonsense in its reporting of specific hospitals that are recommending masks for their staff and service users.
It hardly warrants repeating that the more robust scientific studies, together with the bulk of the real-world evidence, show that masks constitute an ineffectual viral barrier, and no amount of evidential cherry-picking and fantastical claims about ‘source control’ will change that conclusion. And how do the muzzle mafia manage to avoid any consideration of the multiplicity of significant harms associated with ubiquitous masking? Maybe their mono-focused minds don’t care about the collateral damage of their crusade. After all, what does it matter if we:
- Torment the elderly and confused in our care homes by denying them human comfort in their final years of life;
- Stunt our children’s verbal and cognitive development;
- Re-traumatise victims of physical and sexual abuse, the autistic, and many with mental health problems;
- Plunge the millions who are hard of hearing into social isolation;
- Compromise the effectiveness and acceptability of healthcare consultations;
- Poison our citizens by contaminating waterways with chemical additives and micro-plastics?
Did we learn nothing from the Covid debacle?
Given the apparent irrationality and self-destructiveness of it all, one is left to speculate on potential motivations underpinning this insanity. A number of possibilities come to mind:
- As masks are very effective at evoking and perpetuating fear, Big Pharma and its public health allies are collaborating to inflate anxiety about contracting the flu and thereby increase vaccination rates;
- For the more conspiratorially minded: the pandemic industry has received an order from its paymasters to re-run the mass masking exercise – in the same way as the military would test a crucial weapon in its arsenal – so as to check out whether it remains fit-for-purpose as a means of controlling and enslaving the general population to comply with further imminent contractions of our rights and freedoms;
- The forever-strikers at the British Medical Association – who pushed relentlessly to mask the public during Covid – are now insisting on mass muzzling as part of their negotiations with the Government;
- An influential subgroup of healthcare policymakers, aware of the public’s declining satisfaction levels with the NHS, is yearning for a return to those glory days of 2020-21, when a mask symbolised virtuous brave troupers who were worthy of our weekly applause;
- The tyrannical muscle, evident within many infection control personnel, needs flexing again so as to satisfy the intrinsic desire of those personnel to dictate how others should behave.
The last few years have demonstrated that hard evidence (about mask ineffectiveness and harms) is insufficient to deter these blinkered fanatics. Whatever their underlying motivations, one thing is clear: the only way to counter the re-imposition of mask requirements is to refuse to comply.
Dr Gary Sidley is a retired NHS Consultant Clinical Psychologist and co-founder of the Smile Free campaign opposed to mask mandates.
At Tommy’s Carols
By Chris Larkin
The proposal to hold a carol service in Whitehall on Saturday at the instigation of Christian convert Tommy Robinson was met with a chorus of pre-condemnation from among others Theo Hobson, Giles Fraser, Fraser Nelson, several provincial bishops and any number of local pastors scared of… what exactly? Writing in UnHerd, the Reverend Giles compensated in telepathy for what he lacked in Christian brotherhood, declaring Tommy Robinson’s conversion to be “cynical”.
How many of these critics attended the event to see for themselves? I did, but I have to confess we were ourselves nearly put off; was it to be too “politicised”, wondered the Tradwife?
Needless to say, the event itself provided no justification for the media finger-wagging.
I have been to many such evangelical events over the years. The preaching from several ministers at this event was different. It was more declamatory, in the style of the great Methodists John Wesley and George Whitefield. The preaching was ambitious, drew on the gospel, and focused on Christ as King. It was a rough-edged call to Christian leadership.
Apart from the carols and the Wesleyan proclamations, there were many striking personal testimonies from those whose self-avowedly ruinous lives had been turned around through the intervention of Christ, in some cases miraculously so. Several confessed that they had been rescued from suicide. As the psalmist said: “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.”
In one such testimony a young woman told us how the n-word had been used against her by Stand Up to Racism activists when she questioned their ideology; at Tommy’s carols she had been welcomed with love. There were contributions from sharp and fearless young commentators – Bob from Speakers’ Corner compered much of it, together with courageous young Bob from Turning Point UK.
How have we arrived at a point where to proclaim that ‘Britain is a Christian country’ is regarded as dangerous and leads to wailing protestations from bishops in the House of Lords? That Britain is a Christian country is a statement of constitutional and historical fact. Show me a tree that can ‘progress’ beyond its roots. National renewal is not going to occur without Christian renewal. Yet to say so is a heresy, not against the gospels, but against postmodernism and multiculturalism which some of us feel is now the bishops’ creed.
I became a believing Christian in 2007 and was received into the Catholic Church that Christmas. As part of the charismatic wing of the church, my wife and I have been called to associate with many churches of different denominations over the years. One of the things that I have noticed as a sign of a church that is going somewhere; it attracts and is led by young men. This is the grounded church at its most authentically apostolic. This is the kind of church we saw at the event. We will be hearing a lot more from these men in future years.
As the secular philosophers have led the country away from the sacrificial, the heroic, towards a settled doctrine of self-preservation and self-interest, we are washed up in a place where all we really believe in is ‘safety’. What is there for young men in that? Postmodernism ushered in this apathetic decline. The bishops are scared of what an unapologetic proclamation of a Christian country might lead to; it might get all rather ‘unsafe’. Yet as Karen Armstrong successfully argued in Fields of Blood, authentic religious faith leads people away from conflict, not towards it. If Tommy Robinson continues on his Christian journey, he’s likely to become gentler on the surface, more deeply convicted underneath and more willing to sacrifice himself for Christ.
The leadership of the Anglican church more and more comes to resemble the Green Party at prayer. That will convert no-one.
Tommy Robinson himself appeared only briefly at the end of the event. He admitted that he knew the Quran before he knew the Bible and in an aside, he proclaimed “masculine Christianity”. He has a good point. The church in England is very maternal – that can also be a strength – but there is too little there to attract young men who know their lives bear little resemblance to Catholic ideals and know that the way they are is held in disdain by the aspirant classes.
The answer is not to abolish the Catholic ideals but to stop the lying. We are all sinners, however much we prop ourselves up with the aid of secular ideologies or self-righteous religion. And that humble, even humiliating admission of sin is what we saw being proclaimed here by speaker after speaker. Christ pours out his love on the sinner.
In this controversy the ‘Parable of the Prodigal Son’ is being played out again; the shattered, dishevelled son is welcomed home by the father, while to one side, as depicted in Rembrandt’s great painting of the scene, stands the established and respectable elder brother; elevated, superior, thin-lipped, disdainful, yet in the end just as much loved by the Father.
The Bible warns strongly against the misattribution of the work of God to malign forces. We came away from Tommy’s carols impressed, uplifted and encouraged. The bishops probably already know they have been wrong-footed by this joyous occasion.
But don’t take my word for it – join us next year in Trafalgar Square!
Chris Larkin is the pseudonym of a commercial film-maker who lives in London.
The EU’s Climate Targets Will Not Last Long Now
By Ben Pile
My last article here claimed that the EU’s commitment to the climate agenda was being reversed. Yet on the same day, it was revealed that the European Commission is about to create a policy to reduce the bloc’s CO2 emissions by 90% (relative to 1990) by 2040. That might seem to be a contradiction, but it isn’t.
The EU already had in pace a 2050 ‘climate neutrality’ (EU-speak for ‘Net Zero’) target. And it already has in place a 55% 2030 target. It even has in place a 2035 target of “66.25-72.5 % below 1990 levels by 2035”, according to the bloc’s submissions to the Paris Agreement’s ‘Nationally-Determined Contribution’ mechanism. All of these targets are summarised here.
So the 2040 announcement was not all that new. It is functionally equivalent to the UK Climate Change Committee’s five-yearly Carbon Budgets. The UK 2008 Climate Change Act requires the CCC to propose these targets to Parliament so that they can be turned into five year plans.
The 2025-2040 period therefore represents the steepest part of the EU’s ‘transition’. But the announcement gave some wiggle room – “flexibility” in the statement’s terminology. The policy allows “the use of high-quality international credits to make an adequate contribution towards the 2040 target, up to 5% of 1990 EU net emissions”, reducing the net reduction to 85%. The “flexibility” comes in the form of some new caveats, albeit currently understated, which are likely to become increasingly dominant in EU climate policy:
In October 2025, the European Council provided strategic guidance on the way forward towards establishing a target for 2040. In particular, leaders emphasised the need for a balanced approach that would preserve and boost the EU’s competitiveness, while ensuring a socially fair transition. They also stressed the need to take the uncertainties surrounding natural removals into account. The European Council also called on the Commission to further develop the necessary enabling conditions to support European industry and citizens in achieving the 2040 target.
That is to say that there is now formal recognition, at least, that “competitiveness” has been undermined, and that “social” concerns now feature in the EU’s climate machinations. In contrast, reading any correspondence between critical journalists and Ed Miliband’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero reveals the UK Government’s total climate utopianism. Climate policy is competitiveness, in the Department’s view, and climate policy is social justice, equally. It’s magical thinking, of course, equal in stupidity to Miliband’s belief that spending £40 billion a year on green energy will produce “lower bills”. And it is an intransigence that increases the tension between the EU and UK climate agendas.
“Mr Miliband has been a vocal supporter of the EV rollout, arguing that it will create a ‘global opportunity’ for domestic manufacturers,” explains the Telegraph, making plain the doublethink that Europe seems to be shaking off but which remains in Westminster. Banning things does not and cannot ‘create opportunity’. It can only drive the illusion of ‘growth’ in a sector that becomes parasitical on the rest of the economy and is driving (no pun intended) industries overseas. In this case of British automotive industries, a very mature sector with an extremely capable workforce is being legislated out of existence in favour of manufacturers elsewhere, in markets where the UK simply cannot compete. And the same is true of Europe, where policy is now becoming “flexible”. ‘Miliband isolated as EU prepares to reverse petrol car ban,’ observes the paper.
Make no mistake – the Green Blob lobby in Brussels remains incredibly strong. The idea of it being pushed out of the bloc in one go would be far-fetched. But the politics of the continent are undeniably changing at a faster pace than might be acknowledged by the British Establishment’s senses. Indeed, the fact of Europe’s changing political dynamics and how this is altering the direction of policy is at the forefront of discussions within European institutions and civil society organisations.
Meanwhile, the UK establishment remains attached to the notion that Reform, far ahead in the polls, can be smeared out of existence by reanimating decades-old Michael Crick pieces about allegations from former classmates of what jokes Nigel Farage preferred half a century ago.
Back in Europe, there is the fact that Ursula von der Leyen would, of course like nothing more than to abolish combustion tomorrow, along with all the fuel from Russia that makes it possible. But she was nonetheless forced by political reality, underpinned by economic reality, to forge a coalition of centre- and far-Right groupings in the Parliament, against centrist liberal, socialist and green contingents, to get her agenda through.
“The 2024 EP elections,” explains the Centre for European Reform (CER), “resulted in the highest-ever vote share for the far Right: 27%, or 191 seats out of the total 720, are now occupied by MEPs who belong to far-Right party groupings”, which, when seen on a per-bloc basis (not shown below) makes it the strongest single grouping within the Parliament.
This is changing climate politics, explains the CER. “Moderate and conservative parties have started moving further Right, changing positions on issues such as migration, civil society and climate,” it states, observing that opposition to the EU’s ‘Green Deal’ has become a unifying cause.
The emergence of the “far Right” in the EU Parliament reflects of course the ascendency of the tendency within its member states. And the EU has only itself to blame for creating the environment for this eventuality. As many predicted, the intransigence that it epitomised would inevitably summon up the forces of reaction, as liberal progressive policies were imposed on people without regard for either democratic legitimacy or the consequences. And, though clumsy at first, that tendency has become more capable of organisation and has begun speaking to wider constituencies, enabling it to identify policy agendas like climate and energy as the cause of its countries’ deindustrialisation and the consequences of that. In Germany, the AfD, and in France the National Rally now occupy more than the Establishments’ nightmares as they draw closer to outright electoral majorities.
The political geometry of it is now pure bunk. Terms like ‘far Right’ cannot get to the bottom of this transformation, because it’s not just about ‘ideology’; it’s about bread and butter on tables. And rather than identifying this emergent ‘other’, the use of such terms instead speaks to the contempt for democracy and the broader European public that is characteristic of an EU that summoned up its own enemy. Weird little woke-green civil society organisations with mysterious funding arrangements, though once the mainstay of the European project, cannot do anything to confront those tendencies, rampaging like Teutonic hordes through the continent’s democratic institutions. People are really pissed off. Cancellation and social media censorship – the bloc’s last remaining weapons against the onslaught – have been blunted on their first use against the most villainous platform for unauthorised opinion, X.
That process is not going to be stopped so easily. And that creates a problem for the supranational institution, whose main purpose throughout its existence, like all degenerate bureaucracies, is to expand and protect itself from the fruits of its own excesses by creating ever more drama. And that means if the EU is to save itself, its climate agenda is doomed. And yet there remains every chance that the EU Parliament itself, and the Governments and legislatures of EU member states, are going to be dominated by the climate-denying ‘far Right’ before the institution can horse-trade or fear-monger its way out of its self-made crisis.
The way out for the likes of Ursula von der Leyen is the hope that Russia (and perhaps China) can be the new consensus around which the institution can organise itself. By turning against its old energy provider and manufacturing plants, on both of which the Green Deal (and the UK’s Net Zero agenda) depended, perhaps European tensions could be calmed. And that would seal the fate of the ‘Net 85% 2040’ agenda, if physical reality is to have any say in the matter, and if the EU is to prevent ceding any more power and influence to the ugly offspring of its intransigence.
Already, however, it looks like the project has yet again overreached. In recent weeks, the EU Commission has been finalising its attempts to instruct to financial institutions to seize €210 billion of already frozen assets of the Russian state, to use to support Ukraine. A number of member states have objected, using their vetoes to block the plan, causing the Commission to respond by invoking emergency rules, such that votes are overridden by “qualified majority”. Belgium, which is at the centre of the dispute, and is the home of the greater part of the EU’s institutions, is joined by Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and Malta in objecting. An intense shock has been created at the very centre of Europe. And this time, those affected by the European project’s directives aren’t mere industrial sectors and their workforces; they are the institutions of capitalism itself.
It is extremely hard to see how the global climate agenda is going to survive such a new geopolitical transformation as the world has seen in recent years, marked not least by the USA’s re-withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. It’s hard, also, to see how, absent that global momentum, Europe’s governments can sustain their commitments in the face of increasingly resentful domestic populations. And now, despite Europe’s consolidation on the issue of Russia, a new tension has emerged between it and the USA, and between its own member states. The USA’s new National Security Strategy, and President Trump’s more forthright statements, signal growing scepticism about Europe. Similarly, though unlikely to succeed, there are even proposals to dissolve NATO. Whatever the weather, climate politics, once the top of the global agenda, is going to be relegated, and relegated hard, in the EU throughout the world in the very near future. The EU’s 2040 emissions reduction target is not going to last the course.
“Depopulation, Vaccination and Movement Restrictions”: ‘Cow Covid’ Measures Spark Revolt in France
By Will Jones
The slaughter of entire herds of cattle to combat a disease outbreak in France has sparked widespread protests and a farmers’ revolt amid comparisons to draconian Covid measures. The Telegraph has more.
After two nights of clashes, taunts and tear gas, a group of veterinarians finally step off an armoured police vehicle in Ariège, walking the last few metres on foot, past burning tyres and mobile phones filming their every move.
Their task is to euthanise cattle, hundreds at a time, to stop a contagious disease engulfing southern France.
Yet, for many farmers the vets are the sharp end of an overzealous tool of “total slaughter” reminiscent of Covid-era regulatory overkill, and they are prepared to take extreme action to stop it.
“We have experienced health crises before, but such an outburst of hatred is unprecedented,” says Matthieu Mourou, Vice-President of France’s national veterinary order. “Intervening under police escort, with hundreds of angry people waiting, is something we have never experienced at this level.”
Online abuse has escalated. Some vets are being told: “Keep going like this and we’ll put your heads on pikes.”
The stand-off has left Emmanuel Macron, France’s already embattled President, and Sébastien Lecornu, his ‘soldier monk’ Prime Minister, scrambling to avert a Christmas of discontent.
The protests have grown increasingly radical.
Near the A63 motorway in Ariège, farmers dismantled a speed camera that they said was “blocking tractors” and dumped it onto a bonfire, footage shared widely online showed.
Elsewhere, manure has been hurled at prefectures, slurry sprayed on state buildings and tyres set alight beneath motorway bridges, as tractors tore up barriers and turned infrastructure itself into a weapon of protest.
At the heart of the unrest is lumpy skin disease (LSD), a highly infectious viral disease affecting cattle. It is harmless to humans, but devastating for herds.
Since June, 113 outbreaks have been recorded nationwide, spreading from east to south-west France.
In response, the authorities have imposed a strict eradication strategy: the systematic culling of infected herds, bans on livestock movements and emergency vaccination within a 50km (30-mile) radius.
Veterinary experts insist the disease is too virulent to rely solely on vaccination. But for many farmers, the policy of wiping out entire herds for a single confirmed case has become unbearable.
For many, the fury is deeply personal. “The cows have names, they have their character, their history,” said Sarah Dumigron, a breeder in Gironde.
“I’ve cared for them at night, I work seven days a week with them. I’ll fight to the end for my cows.”
In Ariège, Florian Sabria said he had stopped sleeping. “If they slaughter our herd, we won’t start again. It’s the work of a lifetime – the genetics, the work of our parents and grandparents.”
Confédération paysanne, the Left-wing union, has branded the eradication policy “more frightening than the illness itself”, urging an end to the culls and calling for blockades “to put an end to this madness”.
The anger is being fuelled by a broader set of factors including collapsing farm incomes, regulatory fatigue, fears of cuts to the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget, and dread over the EU-Mercosur trade deal.
On Monday, the revolt spread beyond farmers themselves.
More than 200 mayors and local elected officials gathered outside the prefecture in Foix, in the Ariège, calling on the state to “urgently listen” and reopen dialogue with farmers, and demanding a rethink of the total culling protocol in favour of more targeted slaughter of infected animals.
Last week, Annie Genevard, the French agriculture minister, insisted she had no alternative.
“To save the entire industry, slaughter is the only solution,” she told Le Parisien.
She has repeatedly framed the strategy around three non-negotiable pillars – “depopulation, vaccination and movement restrictions” – arguing that this is what “science and veterinarians” recommend, and what “foreign countries have applied”. …
At issue is France’s retention of its internationally recognised disease-free status, which underpins the free export of live animals and meat. Losing it would trigger trade barriers for at least a year.
Worth reading in full.
New Homes Must be Bird-Friendly Despite Reeves War on “Green Tape”
By Will Jones
New homes will have to include special bricks for endangered birds such as swifts under Labour’s new planning rules, despite Rachel Reeves’s war on “green tape”. The Telegraph has the story.
In a shake-up of England’s planning rules, Labour will insist that new builds are fitted with nature-friendly features such as swift bricks, hollow nesting boxes for the bird species that fit into walls.
The Chancellor has railed against “green tape” holding back the economy, saying that businesses should be able to “focus on getting things built and stop worrying about the bats and the newts”.
Earlier this year, she complained that “absolutely insane” environmental regulation had become a “barrier” to investment, pointing to the £100 million spent on a ‘bat tunnel’ as part of HS2.
However, the Government has now announced that it will introduce rules, designed to protect endangered species, for new builds.
The measures are included in its proposed overhaul of England’s national planning policy framework (NPPF), hailed as the “biggest rewrite” of the planning rulebook in a decade.
Labour said the reforms would help to hit its target of building 1.5 million new homes by the end of this Parliament.
Among the “key revisions” listed on Tuesday was the statement: “New builds to include nature-friendly features, such as installing swift bricks to support wildlife – adding little to building costs whilst delivering a win-win for nature and housebuilding.”
Swifts nest in nooks and crannies in Britain’s buildings. Once a common sight in English skies, their numbers are now declining, placing them on the UK’s red list for birds.
A lack of nesting sites is thought to be one reason behind a falling population, as well as reduced food supplies because of a drop in the number of insects available to eat.
It is understood the bricks will be treated as a requirement for new homes, with developers expected to include them unless there are compelling technical reasons preventing their use or making them ineffective.
Worth reading in full.
Jimmy Lai’s Conviction Shows How Far Hong Kong Has Fallen
By Kwai Lou
The outcome of Jimmy Lai’s trial in Hong Kong was released overnight. Lai was found guilty of all charges against him. These included offences under the National Security Law of 2020, introduced after the significant pro-democracy protests of 2019 and early 2020. The most serious of the charges, collusion with foreign forces to endanger national security, carries a sentence of 10 years to life. To remind you, Lai is now a man of 78 who has been on remand before and during his trial since 2020. The process is part of the punishment yet again. The trial has been delayed on occasion for medical intervention for Mr Lai, including for heart palpitations and diabetes.
Lai made his considerable fortune from the Giordano fashion chain and then went into media, notably via the Daily Apple which was Hong Kong’s biggest selling newspaper until its forced closure in 2021. The Daily Apple was a consistent advocate of democracy in Hong Kong, including during protests in 2014 and 2019, and it was this that set up conflict with Beijing. Lai is a British and Hong Kong dual national.
Mainstream media outside Hong Kong have presented the case as an assault on free speech. The authorities here in Hong Kong have denied this, with some justification. Instead they argue that the case was about national security. Your author suggests the case was actually about the end of the existing Hong Kong legal system.
Readers may not know that the judicial system in Hong Kong is a curious hybrid of the ‘old’ common law system left by the British after 1997 and the Chinese system. For instance, High Court judges include overseas Commonwealth judges from the UK and elsewhere. This was done initially to send a message about Hong Kong’s judicial independence such that the world could be confident in the new Chinese future of Hong Kong.
But there are several features of the trial which undermine what would be regarded as proper process under common law.
The first of these is the appointment of the three judges. Judges who are to hear National Security Law cases come from a group ‘designated’ by the Chief Executive (similar to a first minister in Scotland or Wales in the UK). The Chief Executive appoints these personally on advice from the Justice Ministry. Their terms of office are unknown. In this case two of the three judges qualified to practice law in Hong Kong and the UK pre-handover in 1997. The third is apparently local. What the criteria are for ‘designation’ is also unknown. The separation of executive and judiciary is thus somewhat blurred.
The same Justice Ministry appealed against the decision to give Lai (very) conditional bail at the start of 2021 on the grounds that security issues had to imply remand in custody. Not that such a provision featured in the law passed only months earlier.
The same Justice Ministry – not the court– ruled that there should not be a jury for Lai’s trial. Secretary for Justice Paul Lam cited the “personal safety of jurors and their family members” and a “risk of perverting the course of justice if the trial is conducted with a jury”. Juries pervert the course of justice in Hong Kong, apparently.
During the trial there were many arguments as to admissible evidence. Specifically there was debate as to whether actions on the part of Lai before the National Security Law (NSL) was passed could be taken into account. The law was introduced in 2020, but charges were laid relating to actions from April 2019, over a year before the NSL was implemented. Arguments against this retroactivity were dismissed – the prosecution argued that Lai could still be criminally liable “even if the agreement was lawful when entered into”. Retrospective law is contentious at best.
As to Lai’s testimony, Judge Esther Toh told the courtroom that Lai’s testimony was “evasive” and “unreliable” and that Lai had long held “resentment and hatred” toward China. That may be a matter of opinion and could perhaps be supported by evidence. But the 855 page judgment also stated that Lai had “poisoned” the minds of people with “venomous” comments. He had wished to make China a “lackey”. This is hardly the vocabulary of an evidence-based legal judgment. Lai was also held liable for “implicit (rather than express) requests” for sanctions. An example? Lai’s comment to a Fox News journalist that “we need all the help from America” without expansion.
So a case which features handpicked judges, a Justice Ministry appealing its own judges, the same ministry implying clauses into recently passed laws, the abandoning of juries in case they might pervert the course of justice, retrospective laws, implied crimes and emotive vocabulary all feature in this sorry case. Many will feel sorry for Jimmy Lai, but there is more to be pitied than that – the Hong Kong legal system has undermined itself thus far in this case.
Thus far? Curiously, Lai may just have a better chance if the case gets to the Court of Final appeal. It is there that an overseas judge or two could still preside on the panel of three judges. Their weighting of the legal principles above might be interesting to hear. The two UK overseas judges remaining on the designated panel are Lord (Nick) Phillips and Lord Neuberger, each a former president of the UK Supreme Court. Three other British judges have recently left the panel though, including Lord Sumption. He quit because Hong Kong “was slowly becoming a totalitarian state”. Not a good sign for Jimmy Lai.
Reaction in Hong Kong has been largely predictable.
The Hong Kong and Macao Affairs office (Beijing’s representative in Hong Kong) said “the people of the whole country are filled with righteous indignation… and strongly demand that he be severely punished”. I see little evidence of this.
Supporters of Lai – many reluctant to be visible – issued statements in support of press freedom and pleas for fairness in the treatment of an old man who has already been imprisoned for five years. The Hong Kong Free Press seemed to tread carefully by giving a detailed account of events and passing, at least for the time being, very little comment. Most disappointing for your author was the response of the SCMP (South China Morning Post). For many years a highly regarded and objective newspaper, today it carries an editorial entirely supportive of the verdict. The SCMP says “the West tried to misrepresent the trial as damaging to press freedom”. This is partly true, as acknowledged above. Instead, the SCMP goes on: “The trial is about national security.” But your correspondent’s view is that it was more about dismantling Hong Kong’s judicial process and many of its safeguards.
By chance, the author today was on Hong Kong Island and recalled a famous quote by Sun Yat Sen, leader of the first China revolution in the early 1900s. Sun admired many Western ways. Hong Kong under the British, he said, “showcased.. their rule of law”. Under the Chinese, Hong Kong now showcases another country’s ‘rule of law’.
Kwai Lou is the pseudonym of a writer based in Hong Kong.
News Round-Up
By Toby Young
- “Free TV licences for benefits claimants under Labour plans” – Labour is considering giving free TV licences to benefit claimants, reports the Telegraph.
- “Public sector pay rises at fastest pace on record” – Wage growth in the public sector has now exceeded the private sector, notes the Telegraph.
- “Illegal migrants to receive ‘gold star’ NHS dental care” – Home Office Ministers have come under fire over a policy to prioritise dental treatment for illegal migrants, reports the Telegraph.
- “Grooming gangs will find plenty to love in Labour’s watered-down definition of ‘Islamophobia’” – I weigh in against Labour’s new definition of ‘anti-Muslim hatred’ on the GB News website.
- “Trump pulled UK trade deal over AI clash” – Donald Trump has frozen a major UK trade agreement after concerns emerged over Britain’s AI and online safety regime, reports the Telegraph.
- “Reeves and Starmer see personal ratings plunge to new record lows” – Confidence in the Prime Minister and the Chancellor has collapsed to record lows, according to Mail.
- “Labour tells Vince: apologise for linking Bondi attack to Israel” – The Labour Party has demanded an apology from Dale Vince after his remarks blaming Israel for the Bondi Beach attack, reports the Telegraph.
- “Bondi gunmen in Philippines for ‘military-style training’ weeks before attack” – Australian police have revealed that the Bondi Beach attackers travelled to an Islamist training camp in Indonesia weeks before the massacre, reports the Telegraph.
- “Tragic hero’s last act of bravery: Bondi Beach victim throws a brick at gunman during massacre… before ISIS-supporter coward shoots him dead” – Witnesses have described how a synagogue volunteer confronted an armed attacker in a final act of courage during the Bondi Beach killings, says Mail.
- “Pictured: The heroic couple gunned down by the Bondi Beach terrorists” – A married couple on Bondi Beach died while trying to stop the attackers, according to Mail.
- “To all those anti-Semitic morons who march through London chanting ‘Globalise the intifada’, the Bondi bloodbath is where it leads” – Anti-Israel rhetoric responsible for fuelling extremism, writes richard Littlejohn in the Mail.
- “Aussies demand Pauline Hanson be PM over fiery Bondi Beach message” – A blunt response to the massacre by an Australian politician has reignited debate over immigration, reports the Mail.
- “France is becoming a nation of sexless puritans” – Gavin Mortimer in the Spectator says French politics is engulfed by a clash between sexual libertines and moral prudes.
- “Why I pity the liberals being mugged by reality” – In the Spectator, Gareth Roberts says he feels sorry for liberals who are experiencing a brutal reality check.
- “The Left’s delusion about diversity isn’t just naive – it’s dangerous” – Western progressives should rethink multicultural dogma following the Bondi Beach killings, argues Michael Deacon in the Telegraph.
- “Zipcar’s demise is another victory for Sadiq Khan’s war on motorists” – There is hardly any form of motor transport the London Mayor does not want to fine, tax or regulate out of existence, writes Matthew Lynn in the Telegraph.
- “Drivers incorrectly fined by faulty speed cameras” – Thousands of motorists may have been wrongly penalised after technical faults triggered cameras in error, reports the Telegraph.
- “SNP abandons 50mph blanket speed limit after public outcry” – The Scottish Government has scrapped its flagship speed-limit policy after consultation responses turned hostile, reports the Telegraph.
- “Oxford student charged with stirring up hatred at pro-Palestine demo” – The Oxford University student who urged people to “put the Zios in the ground” has been charged with stirring up racial hatred, says the Mail.
- “New study exaggerates covid vaccine safety” – A new paper overstates vaccine safety while understating unresolved risks, notes the Conservative Woman.
- “The £10 million experiment that proves nothing – and was designed not to” – Britain has committed vast sums to puberty-blocker trials that have been structured to avoid clear conclusions, argues the Rationals Substack.
- “BBC could scrap licence fee, show adverts and put hits behind a paywall under Labour reform” – Radical funding changes have been floated as licence-fee income continues to fall, says the Mail.
- “Has Reform’s support peaked? Not even close” – Polling trends have suggested Reform’s rise goes on, despite Westminster scepticism, writes the Telegraph.
- “Key Letby witness accused of flawed evidence in shaken baby conviction” – A jailed father has challenged expert testimony used in a separate conviction linked to the Lucy Letby case, reports the Telegraph.
- “Female genital mutilation is abuse. Suggesting otherwise isn’t progressive, it’s racist” – A medical journal has been accused of downplaying abuse through euphemistic language, says Nimco Ai in the Telegraph.
- “Public relations employee with ADHD sacked for being ‘disorganised’ wins disability discrimination case” – An employment tribunal has ruled in favour of a worker accused of being ‘disorganised’, reports Mail.
- “Caesareans become more common than natural births” – Surgical deliveries have overtaken natural births for the first time, reports the Telegraph.
- “Hero stopped Liverpool rampage… then went for a pint” – An Army veteran stopped the car attack in Liverpool and then calmly resumed his evening, says the Telegraph.
- “I can’t take issue with any of that” – A caller gives Nick Ferrari a piece of his mind about the Bondi Beach attackers on LBC, leaving the presenter lost for words.
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