Best of the Web:


Bullseye

Best of the Web: Israeli opposition party leader says Israel 'killing babies as a hobby' in Gaza

Sam Sokol
The Times of Israel
Tue, 20 May 2025 19:43 UTC
Yair Gola
© Oren Ben Hakoon/Flash90Leader of The Democrats party Yair Golan heads a faction meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, May 19, 2025
Left-wing politician Yair Golan faced a wave of backlash on Tuesday from across the political spectrum after he accused Israel of killing babies in Gaza "as a hobby."

Golan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff and current head of the The Democrats party, a merger of Labor and Meretz, said in an interview with the Kan public broadcaster that "Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if we don't return to acting like a sane country."

The political leader, who is not a current member of Knesset, added that "a sane country does not fight against civilians, does not kill babies as a hobby, and does not give itself the aim of expelling populations."

Golan accused the current government of being "full of vengeful types with no morals and no ability to run a country in a time of crisis. This endangers our existence."
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Crusader

Best of the Web: The Left Turns Right

John Carter
Postcards From Barsoom
Mon, 19 May 2025 18:14 UTC
mark carney
Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada
What are we to make of the Anglosphere political leadership's abrupt narrative reversal towards immigration restrictionism and rhetorical nativism?

In the wake of America's 2024 election a curious narrative shift has been unfolding within the political leadership of Canada and Great Britain.

The moment he assumed the office of Prime Minister, Canada's Mark Carney played up the country's founding British and French (and, of course, Indigenous) heritage, referring to Canada as the 'most European of non-European countries', deploying nativist rhetoric that hasn't been heard from the country's Liberal politicians in living memory and thereby rejecting by implication the official stance of multiculturalism that has dominated Canadian politics since the elder Trudeau. To back up his commitment to Canada, Carney renounced his Irish and UK citizenships, symbolically burning his boats on the beach, and implicitly repudiating other members of parliament holding dual citizenships. As a further emphatic gesture towards Canada's historical roots, King Charles III will give the throne speech inaugurating the new parliament, the first time the monarch has delivered the throne speech in person since 1977.
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Tornado1

Best of the Web: Tornadoes, storms kill more than 30 in the US: over 5,000 homes affected after cyclonic storm hits St Louis (UPDATE)


Lokmat Times
Sat, 17 May 2025 11:06 UTC
mmmmmm
At least five people have been killed after a severe cyclonic storm landed in St Louis, Missouri, United States on Friday afternoon, May 16. Authorities are searching for others trapped inside the debris of the building. The tornado uprooted roofs off buildings, blew out windows, ripped bricks off siding, and also uprooted trees, and a power outage was also reported in the area.

As per St Louis Mayor Cara Spencer, over 5,000 homes were affected, and several people were displaced. About 100,000 residents were left in the dark in the city as a power outage was reported on Friday night. An overnight curfew was imposed in the city, and an emergency was declared after damages were reported in several places. "This is truly, truly devastating," Spencer said.


Comment: Update May 18

USA TODAY reports:
Tornadoes and severe weather tore through the Upper Midwest and the Mideast U.S. on May 16 killing more than 30 and leaving many damaged homes and downed power lines.

A day after several tornadoes reportedly touched down and caused "significant damage" in western and central Wisconsin, at least 23 are reported dead in Kentucky where tornadoes and severe storms ravaged the region on May 16. Seven more deaths were reported in Missouri. Two died in Virginia in separate incidents with trees falling on their vehicles, officials said.

Forecasts of severe weather continue throughout the weekend with about 50 million people from Texas to New York at risk for tornadoes and thunderstorms on May 17 and 18, according to AccuWeather.







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Shamrock

Best of the Web: Flood-hit outback in Australia turns lush green in stunning once-in-a-generation transformation

Katharina Loesche
7news.com.au
Sun, 18 May 2025 11:03 UTC
The revival locals want you to see
The revival locals want you to see
The unforgiving red earth of the Australian outback has undergone a jaw-dropping transformation — and locals are calling it a "once in a lifetime opportunity" to witness Mother Nature at her finest.

After months of devastating floods triggered by the double punch of Cyclones Alfred and Dianne, the vast, sun-scorched heart of Queensland has now burst into colour and life.

Where there was once dust and drought there is now grass, greenery and flowers stretching as far as the eye can see.

"Mother Nature has put on this great show for us," southwest region Quilpie Shire Mayor Ben Hall said.

"The smell ... the fragrance ... the beauty ... the vastness of the fields of wildflowers."

From above, the Channel Country of southwest Queensland resembles a network of veins — rivers and streams pumping lifeblood into the land, reviving grasses, blooms and everything in between.

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Sun

Best of the Web: Wasting Away in Wind-and-Solarville

James Varney
RealClearInvestigations
Thu, 15 May 2025 21:23 UTC
iscarded wind turbines landfill
© Benjamin Rasmussen/GettyPieces of wind turbine blades are buried in the Casper Regional Landfill in Casper, Wyoming. Around 8,000 wind turbine blades will need to be removed and disposed of every year in the United States alone
While green advocates commonly use the terms renewable, sustainable, and net zero to describe their efforts, the dirty little secret is that much of the waste from solar panels and wind turbines is ending up in landfills.

The current amounts of fiberglass, resins, aluminum and other chemicals - not to mention propeller blades from giant wind turbines - pose no threat current to local town dumps, but this largely ignored problem will become more of a challenge in the years ahead as the 500 million solar panels and the 73,000 wind turbines now operating in the U.S. are decommissioned and replaced.

Greens insist that reductions in carbon emissions will more than compensate for increased levels of potentially toxic garbage; others fret that renewable energy advocates have not been forthright about their lack of eco-friendly plans and the technology to handle the waste.

Comment:

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Cult

Best of the Web: The Manipulators' Playbook

Gigi Foster
The Brownstone Institute
Tue, 13 May 2025 15:14 UTC
greek column brownstone institute
Here is the text of my TedX talk in Australia, October 2024, which the sponsor refused to post

Every four years, when I was growing up in the US, my mother and father would go to the polling booths and cancel each other out. They'd come home and say as much, with a smirk. Then they'd clink their glasses and have "cocktail hour" together, and enjoy the end of another day of married life in each other's arms.

Mom was a lifelong Democrat and Dad a lifelong Republican. Back then, people firmly positioned on opposing sides of politics could talk to one another - and even, apparently, marry each other and produce kids! Do you think that is common today? The "cancellation" my parents joked about 30 years ago has, today, become no laughing matter.
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Syringe

Best of the Web: MAHA Hugger Mugger: Fighting The Biomedical War On The American Public

James Howard Kunstler
kunstler.com
Mon, 12 May 2025 00:00 UTC
Statue Lib Unk Sam
© softpanorama.orgThe probe of Liberty
"Those who perpetrated the greatest ruse in American presidential history by staging the Biden presidency will never tell us what their ultimate agenda was"
— Victor Davis Hanson
One baseline truth in current American life is that our bodily well-being gets worse as the so-called health care industry gets ever-larger — it is now 17.6-percent of the economy (GDP). This is clearly the basis of the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) campaign that attached itself to the Trump 2.0 program. You hear almost no arguments against MAHA itself, even from the Party of Hustles and Hoaxes, but plenty of calumny and objurgation against MAHA's chief advocate, Robert Kennedy, Jr.

Mr. Trump's initial nominee for Surgeon General, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, was pulled last week just before her scheduled Senate confirmation hearing. Her credentials looked a bit sketchy — med school on the tiny Caribbean island of St. Maarten (say, what. . . ?) and other irregularities — which she confabulated about anyway. Plus, she was a Covid vaccine cheerleader and an avid advocate of the censorship campaign to slam down debate over it.

Which leads directly to a glaring quandary in President Trump's current order-of-business: he has avoided engagement with the whole Covid fiasco that unspooled in the last year of his first term. Now, it is the opinion of this blog that Mr. Trump was played on Covid by blob-marshaled "experts" Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx, who led the White House Covid "team," and then snookered the president into Operation Warp Speed, appealing to his vanity to play the superhero. You can also surmise that the Covid operation was hatched to run Mr. Trump out of office by enabling epic election fraud, making a chump of him.
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Caduceus

Best of the Web: NIH infectious disease researcher calls for end of dangerous virus studies

Guest
The DisInformation Chronicle
Sun, 04 May 2025 19:24 UTC
fauci
Today's guest essay is by a infectious disease researcher at the National institutes of Health who wishes to remain anonymous to guard against retribution.
"I admired Fauci in his earlier career because I thought he was a strong leader with a vision for global research. But I can't say that anymore."

As a decades-long NIH insider, I wasn't surprised to see Dr. Tony Fauci go toe-to-toe with President Trump in his first term. After all, this is a man who built a $4 billion taxpayer-funded empire — the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — and transformed it into a medieval Italian Signoria, where his every word was law, his every whim obeyed. When I entered his office, I couldn't help but notice a portrait of The Godfather hung above his desk — Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone, not Al Pacino as the young, upstart Michael — a fitting tribute to his persona and leadership style.

Upon entering NIH meetings, I sometimes caught a favored capo slouching down in his chair after dutifully raising Fauci's own, so that, feet dangling, the diminutive Don would appear the tallest man in the room. From such commanding heights, the Boss often humiliated staff members, both women and men, in expletive-laden tirades. To avoid this wrath, his minions worked feverishly to anticipate his every desire and satisfy a relentless ambition to expand the Fauci's scientific dominion.
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Star of David

Best of the Web: Douglas Murray's "expertise" is a sham

Nathan J. Robinson
Current Affairs
Wed, 07 May 2025 19:43 UTC
Douglas Murray
© JRE/Current Affairs"But have you beeen there?" - Douglas Murray
In On Democracies and Death Cults, Murray offers a straightforward "good versus evil" account of the Israel-Palestine conflict. He does this by excluding every piece of information that undercuts his thesis and even spreading outright falsehoods.

Douglas Murray's On Democracies and Death Cults, an account of the Israel-Palestine conflict, accuses pro-Palestine protesters of being pro-"death" and argues that Israel is a Western outpost against barbarism. It has been hailed as a "book of monumental significance" and even "one of the most important books ever written" by a Times of Israel reviewer. Another reviewer says Murray "combines deep knowledge and sparkling intellectual capability with a confident appearance." President Donald Trump has called it a "powerful read from a Highly Respected author" and says the "Book serves as a strong reminder of why we must always stand up for America, and our great friend and ally, Israel." (Idiosyncratic caps in original, obviously.) The book is high on bestseller lists in both the U.S. and U.K. Murray has also been appearing on popular podcasts to promote his book, with an appearance on Joe Rogan's show racking up 4.2 million views on YouTube so far.
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Tsunami

Best of the Web: After wildfires, flash floods hit Israel - year's worth of rainfall in a day


en.somoynews.tv
Tue, 06 May 2025 20:26 UTC
Heavy rains and strong winds swept through southern Israel on Sunday, causing flooding in several areas.
Heavy rains and strong winds swept through southern Israel on Sunday, causing flooding in several areas.
Police closed multiple main roads, including key entrances to the southern city of Eilat, as conditions worsened by the afternoon, reports The Times of Israel.

Kibbutz Samar had received 34 millimetres (1.3 inches) of rain, while Kibbutz Yotvata recorded 17 millimetres (0.7 inches) by 4:30pm, Meteorological Service said.

Police urged the public not to enter areas that were flooded.

They said that approaching or crossing flooded roads, streams, or cisterns is strictly forbidden, stressing that doing so is "life-threatening."

The police have advised the public to avoid any non-essential travel to areas at risk of flooding.

They also urged travellers and hikers to check reliable sources for the latest updates before setting out.

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