Women were 'not at risk of harm' when a transgender double rapist was placed in a female-only prison, a review has concluded.

However, the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) has made four recommendations - including better communication between justice partners - into the management of transgender prisoners.

The urgent case review was ordered by Scotland's Justice Secretary Keith Brown in the wake of a public outcry after Isla Bryson, 31, was initially housed in segregation at Cornton Vale prison near Stirling following her conviction last month.

A U.S. F-22 fighter jet shot down an unidentified cylindrical object over Canada on Saturday, the second such instance in as many days, as North America appeared on edge following a week-long Chinese spying balloon saga that drew the global spotlight.

Separately, the U.S. military also scrambled fighter jets in Montana to investigate a radar anomaly that triggered a brief federal closure of airspace.

"Those aircraft did not identify any object to correlate the radar hits," the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) said in a statement.

The Church of England is considering changing the scriptures so that the Lord is no longer a 'he'.

At a time when Church membership has hit an all-time low in the Western world, it might seem odd that Christian leaders appear more determined than ever to alienate what's left of their dwindling flock through woke nonsense.

In December, for example, the Dean of Trinity College left an assembly of worshippers in tears after he argued that the body of Jesus Christ appeared to be "trans." Part of the reasoning was due to the wound on his side, made by a Roman spear as the son of God hung dying on the cross, which had a "decidedly vaginal appearance." I will let the reader make of that what they will.

Now, not to be outdone as far as possible heresies go, the Church of England, under pressure from liberal Christians, is considering declaring God gender-neutral. In other words, no more 'Our Father' in the Lord's prayer, while 'God the Father' will be a meaningless 'they' or 'them'. This may require some divine intervention, since the very first words of the Old Testament are 'B'reshit bara Elohim' - 'In the beginning God created'. The verb bara (created) agrees with a masculine singular subject. Could it be the case that the Bible - the very word of God - got it all wrong?

A toxic combination of an increasingly stressed NHS, fallout from the pandemic and unhealthy lifestyles is to blame, they believe.

The fall bucks a long-term trend in which life expectancy had risen rapidly year after year - and raises the possibility it has now peaked. For some experts fear the obesity epidemic is at last catching up with us. But optimists think the setbacks are temporary and lifespans will start rising again in a few years.


Men aged 65 in 2012 could expect a retirement lasting 23.5 years, according to analysts. Women of the same age could look forward to 26 more years of life.

The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine will likely continue for up to three more years, depending on the goals Moscow actually pursues, Wagner private military group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin has said. The businessman made the remarks in an exclusive interview with Semyon Pegov of the independent WarGonzo project on Friday.

"If we need to cover the DPR and LPR, then we need to work for at least another year and a half or two," Prigozhin stated, referring to the territories of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, which were recently incorporated into Russia.

Should Russia seek to "go toward the Dnepr," a major river separating Ukraine into roughly two halves, the conflict will last even longer and drag on for up to three more years, Prigozhin suggested. At the same time, the founder of the private military group noted that in any conflict, the destruction of the enemy's army must be the priority, rather than a desire to seize territories from the adversary.

Prigozhin also revealed, apparently jokingly, that should Moscow also seek to reach all across Europe toward the English Channel, he already has a perfect plan for such an endeavor. To achieve that goal, everyone in Russia must drop any leisure activity, put on their "working suits," and work tirelessly. Some spoils of the campaign, however, including "France, Italy, Bulgaria and something else," should be ceded afterwards to Ukrainians, since they are set to "suffer here with us" much more.

Gov. JB Pritzker has a new solution for Illinois' shrinking population: Freedom seeking people and companies, he said Monday, will want to come to Illinois because it doesn't ban books and interfere in the education process. The Washington Post reported last week that he will amplify that case and grow more vocal on it in coming months.

Pritzker's Illinois is among the last places with standing to make such a claim. Before reviewing his record on that and free speech matters in general, here's some of what he said Monday, the full video of which is here:

Well, I think broadcasting our values here in Illinois is good for the state of Illinois. That we are opposed to banning books in the state of Illinois is something that people ought to know about us. That we are not interfering with the education system in the state and the way that a teacher presents, you know, their information to their classroom, their kids, you know, that we are, we're lifting up education, we're not tearing it down....

Pritzker on Monday. Video here.

As opposed to his homeland, Canada, where Dr Jordan Peterson is being threatened with the withdrawal of his licence, Hungarian President Katalin Novák awarded him with the civilian class of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary last June.

On 3 January, the Ontario College of Psychologists (OCP) demanded that the famous Canadian clinical psychologist, Dr Jordan Peterson, undergo a 'mandatory social-media communication retraining', or they would suspend his clinical licence. Peterson should pay 250 dollars per hour for the retraining that, as he said, is 'not a scientific nor a clinical speciality by any standing'. The board regulating psychology practice in Canada has become so politicised that their disciplining fervour is based solely on political disagreements, as no complaints have been cited that were brought by people Peterson interacted with in a clinical context.

Reviewing Michael Rectenwald's excellent new book

Michael Rectenwald's new book, The Great Reset and the Struggle for Liberty: Unraveling the Global Agenda isn't just his best book yet. It's one of the most important books of this generation.

Part of this has to do with Rectenwald's own tonic intersectionality — what makes him the man for the job. He's a true scholar — the type that mostly used to exist, back when the word really meant something. He knows how to think, and he knows how to write: clearly, effectively, and comprehensively. He reads the primary sources, draws out the connections that aren't clear when they're read in isolation, and thus provides us with a key to the jargon and misleading doublespeak. He was a Marxist academic, so he's intimately aware of the philosophical foundations of the ideologies in question. He ties together all the threads. He's also intellectually fearless, which, when combined with critical thought, packs a powerful punch. In Rectenwald's hands, writing about semi-open conspiracies like the Great Reset leaves the domain of crazy people and enters a realm of smart sophistication. And, of course, he wrote the foreword to the new edition of Political Ponerology, so he knows what's really going on.

The other part has to do with his subject matter. The Great Reset isn't just a "conspiracy theory," or a current political fad of ineffectual elites. It is a century-long program tying together a handful of the biggest political programs and cultural trends of our times: climate change catastrophism, emerging economic systems, global governance, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, transhumanism, Woke ideology (or as we Neo-Gonzos cheekily like to call it, Marxcissism). It involves national and economic leaders, international organizations, big corporations, and activists. And this has all come together in the last three years of the covid crisis, which Klaus Schwab and his associates saw as an "opportunity" to further implement their already pre-ordained plans for "a fairer, greener future." These are big ideas, relevant to everyone.

I want you to buy the book and read it, so my summary will be relatively brief. After distilling down the content of each section, I'll draw out some of the points of particular relevance for my Substack's main theme: political ponerology.

A coalition of Republican attorneys general led by Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares expressed shock and outrage Friday at a leaked FBI memo that proposed investigating traditional Catholics for links to white supremacy.

In a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Miyares and 19 other Republican AGs said they were "horrified" to learn that the FBI's Richmond field office had circulated a report that linked "radical traditionalist Catholics" to white supremacists and violent extremism and said the agency should explore intelligence gathering in certain Catholic parishes.

The report cited a number of left-wing sources, including a Southern Poverty Law Center report, as evidence of the emergence of white supremacy among "radical traditionalist Catholics." Traditional Catholic religious orders such as the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, which maintains a parish community in the Richmond area, were listed as possible locations that could warrant surveillance.

There is an acute terrorist threat in America's southern underbelly which the US government has so far failed to identify as a crisis, 21 state attorneys general in the US have claimed in a letter. In it, they are calling on authorities in Washington to officially designate Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations, arguing that various criminal groups across the border have effectively created their own armed forces.

The letter, dated February 8 and spearheaded by Attorney General of Virginia Jason S. Miyares, opens up with a grim picture of a US drug problem that, the AGs claim, has killed more than 100,000 Americans over the past year. The officials noted that some 66% of these deaths were linked to synthetic opioid fentanyl and its equivalents, which they describe as a "deadly scourge."

The representatives of 21 states, citing US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reports, wrote that the main manufacturers of fentanyl and similar synthetic opioids are Mexican drug cartels, most prominently the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG).

"The Mexican drug cartels are essentially conducting chemical warfare on everyday Americans affecting every community, town, and city in our nation," the attorneys general declared.