Reader’s Links for October 20th, 2022

Here is a link to the VladTepesBlog social media Mastodon Pod. Please feel free to check it out and sign up for an account if you are sufficiently annoyed with Twitter and Facebook to try something new.

Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.

This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.

So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.

This is the new Samizdat. We must use it while we can.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

35 Replies to “Reader’s Links for October 20th, 2022”

    • Targeted attacks against whites and Easy Asians have already started in NYC. They will get worse after the November election, the Dems will turn ANTIFA loose.

      It will be bad if the Dems win and much worse if the Republicans win. The Dems want an excuse to suspend the rule of law and cancel all elections until “after the Right Wing” violence has been stopped and those responsible have been punished.

  1. Even Drag performers think sexualizing kids is wrong: Drag Queen Kitty Demure: They think they’re being ‘inclusive’

  2. global news – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith apologizes for comments on Russia Ukraine war

    Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has apologized for comments she made about the Russia-Ukraine war before winning the United Conservative Party (UCP) leadership contest.

    The apology came just over 48 hours after Smith accused the Opposition NDP of an “attempted politicization” of the war, and it came the day after she tried to downplay statements from her past.

    Some of those “ill-informed comments” were made earlier this year during a live-streamed question-and-answer session on a social media site, in which she suggested the only way for the war to end was if Ukraine remained “neutral.”

    “I think the only answer for Ukraine is neutrality,” Smith said in April. “There are thriving nations that have managed with neutrality.”

    On Sunday, Smith accused the Alberta NDP of trying to politicize the Russian invasion by criticizing her comments, something she called “offensive and inappropriate.” She claimed her Ukrainian great-grandfather “fled communism” and immigrated to Canada after the First World War – claims Global News has not been able to verify.

    • CBC – Zelensky urges Russians and world to stand up to Putin

      Zelensky talks to Canadian journalists in Kiev about the increase in attacks on the capital, the prospect of peace with Russia and Canada’s contribution to the war effort.

    • CBC – ‘We’re like relatives’: Zelensky on Ukraine’s relationship with Canada

      + comments on the YT page

    • US Lawmakers Seek To Pass $50Bln Military Aid Package To Arm Ukraine For A Year – Reports

      WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik – 20th October, 2022) US lawmakers are looking to pass a new $50 billion military aid package for Ukraine before January amid concerns that the upcoming midterm elections in November could usher in a new Congress that seeks to reduce assistance to the country, NBC reported on Thursday, citing legislators and aides familiar with the effort.

      US House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has pledged that if the Republicans become a majority in the lower chamber of Congress in the midterm elections, Ukraine will not get a “blank check” for assistance given the looming recession in the United States

      In response to McCarthy’s warning, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is working to pass the $50 billion aid package, most likely as part of an omnibus spending bill, before a new Congress takes office in January.

      https://www.urdupoint.com/en/world/us-lawmakers-seek-to-pass-50bln-military-aid-1581688.html

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

      NBC: U.S. may approve $50bn aid package for Kyiv by year-end

      The US Congress may approve the allocation of a new aid package to Kyiv totaling about $50 billion, NBC reports on October 20, citing sources.

      According to the channel, a decision is planned to be made before the end of this year, since the new composition of the Congress, which will be formed after the midterm elections in November, may take a more restrained position on the issue of supporting Kyiv.

      At the same time, sources note that so far lawmakers have not received a corresponding request from the White House.

      https://oopstop.com/nbc-u-s-may-approve-50bn-aid-package-for-kyiv-by-year-end/

      ============================
      DAILY MAIL – Biden says he IS worried about Republicans cutting funding for Ukraine if they take the majority – as he stops for a Primanti’s sandwich with Fetterman and Congress considers sneaking in a $50billion package before January

      President Joe Biden expressed concerns Thursday afternoon that Republicans would cut funding for Ukraine’s war effort if they take the majority

      ‘I am worried,’ he told reporters who accompanied him inside a Primanti Brothers sandwich shop en route back to the airport in Pittsburgh

      Biden made two stops in Pennsylvania Thursday, talking about infrastructure at the site of the Pittsburgh bridge collapse and raising money in Philadelphia

      He was raising cash for Pennsylvania Democratic Senate hopeful, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who accompanied him to the popular Pittsburgh sandwich shop

      House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has expressed that Republicans ”not going to write a blank check to Ukraine’ if he becomes House speaker

      NBC News reported Thursday that lawmakers from both parties want to slip $50billion in Ukraine aid in a spending bill to get passed before January

      https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11337905/Biden-says-worried-Republicans-cutting-funding-Ukraine.html

  3. NYT – France Returned 24 Skulls to Algeria. They Weren’t What They Seemed.

    The restitution of the remains, said to belong to 19th-century freedom fighters, was hailed as a symbol of reconciliation, but papers obtained by The Times reveal a gesture muddled by politics.

    PARIS — When the French government returned — and Algeria accepted — the skulls of 24 people taken as trophies during France’s brutal colonial rule, both nations celebrated the powerful gesture as a milestone in their efforts to rebuild ties.

    The remains, part of one of Europe’s biggest skull collections at the Musée de l’Homme, or Museum of Mankind, in Paris, were presented by the Algerian government as “resistance fighters,” national heroes in Algeria for their sacrifice in chasing out French colonizers.

    As recently as this month, when France’s prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, arrived in Algiers for a two-day visit, her Algerian counterpart, Aymen Benabderrahmane, expressed his satisfaction with the repatriation, which took place in 2020.

    But documents from the museum and the French government, which were recently obtained by The New York Times, show that while six of the skulls returned were clearly identified as those of resistance fighters, the rest were not or were of uncertain origin. And all have remained France’s property even after they were handed over. Neither government has publicly acknowledged those facts as they seek to wring diplomatic benefit from the restitution.

    The flawed return, whatever its intention, has instead emerged as an example of what several French academics and lawmakers say is a broader problem of often secretive, muddled and politically expedient repatriations by France that have fallen short of ambitions to right colonial-era wrongs.

    “Diplomatic matters prevailed over historical matters,” said Catherine Morin-Dessailly, a center-right French senator who has long worked on restitutions of remains. “It was botched, done on the sly.”

    Algeria’s government did not respond to requests for comment, and it remains unclear why it accepted some skulls that were not those of resistance fighters, especially as it has been strongly critical of aspects of President Emmanuel Macron of France’s policy toward the country, at least until a recent thaw.

    Mr. Macron’s office declined to comment, redirecting questions to the Foreign Ministry, which said that the list of the returned skulls had been “approved by the two parties.”

    Indeed, the bones were returned under an agreement signed by both governments on June 26, 2020, that included a four-page appendix detailing the remains’ identities. Among them, the document obtained by The Times showed, were imprisoned thieves and three Algerian infantrymen who actually served in the French Army.

    At a time when France is trying to reshape its relationship with Africa, in part through commitments to repatriate colonial-era artworks and remains, some academics and legislators have grown increasingly concerned over restitutions that seem to escape scientific and legislative rigor.

    The French Foreign Ministry said that the government planned to work on a sweeping law to regulate future returns. But Mr. Macron’s parliamentary majority rejected a proposal by senators to establish a scientific advisory council on restitutions. The government has yet to examine a bill to facilitate the return of remains, which was passed by the Senate in January. And Mr. Macron’s coalition in Parliament did not endorse a bill, put forward last week by a leftist lawmaker, to return all of the Algerian skulls.

    Senators, along with several scholars, cited an ornament recently returned to Madagascar, which, similar to Algeria, did not gain full ownership of the item because of the absence of a law. They also pointed to a 19th-century sword handed back to Senegal and to statues and thrones returned to Benin under similarly cloudy circumstances.

    A Senate report said that those restitutions had been carried out “under great opacity, giving the impression that diplomatic matters outweighed everything else.”

    The scale of the problem remains largely obscured, particularly when it comes to human remains; the Museum of Mankind has nearly 18,000 remains from around the world.

    A confidential report produced by the museum in 2018, obtained by The Times, confirmed that it held hundreds of “potentially litigious” remains that could be requested in the future.

    They include bones belonging to the wife of the founder of the 19th-century Toucouleur Empire of West Africa, remains of a Sudanese warlord who ruled over part of Chad in the 1890s, and the bones of a family of Canadian Inuits exhibited in a “human zoo” in Paris in 1881.

    “It’s the skeleton in the closet,” Pierre Ouzoulias, a French senator from the Communist Party, said. “No one knows how to get out of this.”

    The existence of the Algerian skulls first came to light in the early 2010s, when Ali Farid Belkadi, an Algerian historian, started researching at the Museum of Mankind.

    Dated from early human history to the 20th century, the museum’s skulls were collected during archaeological digs and colonial campaigns, and were once prized by scientists exploring racial differences. They include dozens of West African tribal chiefs, Native Americans and Cambodian rebels.

    Mr. Belkadi discovered that the museum still had skulls of resistance fighters and civilians beheaded during France’s 19th-century conquest of Algeria. Kept in cardboard boxes, they included resistance leaders from the battle of Zaatcha, a village that French troops violently crushed in 1849. The heads were displayed on poles and later taken back to France as war trophies.

    Mr. Belkadi described the find as a “monstrous discovery, which spoke volumes about colonial barbarism.”

    He and others campaigned for years for the repatriation of the fighters’ remains. In 2017, after the Algerian authorities said that they wanted them back, Mr. Macron announced that he had approved “the restitution of the Algerian martyrs’ skulls.” A French-Algerian committee was set up to identify the remains that could be returned.

    It was a key step in Mr. Macron’s efforts to reconcile with Algeria through symbolic acts of recognition of French colonial crimes.

    But it also meant stepping onto sensitive ground.

    Unlike other countries, such as Germany, France has never articulated a clear policy regarding its collections of colonial-era remains, according to the Senate report. Only about 20 sets of remains have been returned over the past two decades, to countries like South Africa or New Zealand, after years of stiff resistance.

    Part of the reason is that objects in French public collections are considered France’s property and cannot change ownership unless the return is voted into law — a cumbersome and time-consuming process.

    But Klara Boyer-Rossol, a historian who has studied remains from Madagascar, said that despite recent efforts for more transparency, the skull collections at the Museum of Mankind were kept under “a certain opacity” out of fear that research could open the floodgates for restitution requests and cast a harsh light on France’s colonial legacy.

    The committee on returning the skulls to Algeria started working against that fraught background in late 2018. By June 2020, it had identified 24 that could be sent back, out of a total of 45 dating from French colonization.

    But the research was cut short by Mr. Macron’s office, which wanted the skulls returned by July 5, Algeria’s Independence Day. Mr. Macron was about to give a more ambitious push to his rapprochement efforts with Algeria by commissioning a report addressing colonial-era grievances and apparently hoped to persuade the Algerian president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, to collaborate.

    “There are political stakes that are beyond our control,” said Christine Lefèvre, a top official at the National Museum of Natural History, which overviews the Museum of Mankind. “It’s clear they’re not all fighters,” she acknowledged, referring to the remains.

    Mr. Ouzoulias, the French senator, said that Mr. Macron had needed to give an olive branch to Algeria. “There were the skulls. He used them for that,” he said.

    Of the 24 skulls that were returned, only six were clearly identified as belonging to resistance fighters, according to museum memos and the return agreement, which The Times obtained.

    Several skulls of war prisoners and preachers may belong to anticolonial fighters, but the museum never explicitly identified them as such in its memos.

    Even as French and Algerian authorities knew of the skulls’ questionable origins, they kept that information silent. France called the return a gesture of “friendship” and Algeria said that the two countries were moving toward “appeased relations.”

    The agreement said that the remains had been loaned to Algeria “for a period of five years,” pending a proper restitution enshrined in law, which still does not exist.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/17/world/europe/france-algeria-restitution-skulls.html

  4. CBC – Wider booster uptake needed to avoid COVID-19 outbreaks: experts

    Health experts are urging Canadians to keep up-to-date on their boosters in order to avoid significant COVID-19 outbreaks this fall and winter.

  5. Tucker has had Tulsi Gabbard many, many times in the last year. Tulsi has left the Democratic Party and is now out politicking with Republicans. Hmmm now the seed has been planted, she may be Trump’s running mate.

    Really? Slide, slide

  6. europravda – Farmers protest ‘unworkable regulations’ of New Zealand’s proposed farm levy

    Farmers would have to pay a levy on emissions from farm animals, such as burps and gases from their urine, by 2025 under the new proposals from Jacinda Ardern.

  7. Caroline Glick Show: Why is Australia’s Labour government assaulting Jerusalem and Israel?

    Australia’s Labour government’s decision to “celebrate” Simchat Torah by renouncing Canberra’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is an assault on Israel, Caroline Glick argues in the latest episode of the “Caroline Glick Show.”

    Joining Glick ahead of the Israeli elections is also MK Simcha Rothman. The two discuss legal reforms and the Religious Zionism Party legal platform. In her remarks, Glick also discusses the Israel-Lebanon deal and the protests in Iran.
    _______________
    She lost her editorial position at Israel Hayom. Pro-Bibi, PTrump, pro-Israel. 0biden pressure.

  8. John Ioannidis just came out with a paper October 13, 2022 saying that the median IFR is 0.0003 % for kids 0 – 19 – – what that means is in the event YOUR CHILD does get COVID, the chance of your child will die is 3 in 1 million.

  9. Mark P Mills, energy analyst, provides a comprehensive overview on renewable energy, hydrocarbons, European deindustrialization, mining, and the future of where we get the raw materials to run civilization:

    https://youtu.be/MjKhXHHTErQ

  10. the hill –Megyn Kelly faces backlash over COVID tweet

    Conservative media personality Megyn Kelly sparked criticism this week with a tweet expressing outrage at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) decision to add a coronavirus inoculation to the required list of vaccinations for school children.

    “A scary # of kids are dying after taking the Covid vax — from myocarditis among other injuries,” Kelly wrote in her post on Wednesday afternoon. “HOW DARE THE CDC ADD THIS TO ITS LIST OF SCHOOL VACCINATIONS? Don’t listen. Be v careful w/ your teenage boys in partic but girls too. These are not honest brokers. This is dangerous!”

    https://twitter.com/megynkelly/status/1582854900836290560

    The former cable news anchor turned podcaster was met with a swarm of backlash in the hours that followed her post, with critics pointing to a lack of evidence Kelly had provided.

    Some Twitter users noted the lucrative television contracts Kelly was given by a number of large news companies before she left the mainstream media to pursue a podcasting career.

    “Seems like a good day to remind people that NBC wound up paying Megyn Kelly more than $30 million (the time left on her contract) NOT to do journalism there,” wrote Brian Lowry, CNN’s media critic.

    “Do you have a link to a source showing that ‘scary # of kids?’” the prominent pollster Frank Luntz wrote in response to Kelly. “Also, the CDC doesn’t have authority to mandate vaccines for schoolchildren — school vaccination lists are left up to states and local jurisdictions.”

    Kelly separately sparked pushback this week with comments blasting Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, over her statements that she felt objectified while serving as a suitcase holder on the popular gameshow “Deal or No Deal.”

    https://thehill.com/homenews/media/3696973-megyn-kelly-faces-backlash-over-covid-tweet/

    DeSantis Angrily Responds To CDC Advising COVID-19 Vaccine Addition To Children’s Schedule

  11. NEW STUDY: 1 in 780 German Children Under 5 REQUIRES HOSPITALIZATION Due to Severe Adverse Event Following Pfizer’s mRNA COVID shots
    By Jim Hoft
    Published October 20, 2022 at 8:56pm
    18 Comments
    According to the findings of German research, one in every 700 children under the age of five who received the Pfizer mRNA Covid vaccine was hospitalized with severe adverse events (SAE), and one in every 200 children had ‘symptoms that were currently ongoing and thus of unknown significance.’

    The study, “Comparative Safety of the BNT162b2 Messenger RNA COVID-19 Vaccine vs Other Approved Vaccines in Children Younger Than 5 Years,” was published in JAMA on Tuesday, two days before the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted to recommend COVID-19 to be included in the 2023 childhood immunization schedule.

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/10/new-study-1-780-german-children-5-requires-hospitalization-due-severe-adverse-event-following-pfizers-mrna-covid-shots/

  12. Douglas Macgregor:
    War and Regrets in Ukraine
    […]
    No one in the White House, the Senate, or the House consciously set out to turn the proxy Ukrainian war with Moscow into a contest of “competitive societal collapse” between Russia and NATO. But here we are.

    No one imagined that the Biden administration and the bipartisan war party would drive Americans and Europeans into a political, military, and economic valley of death, from which there is no easy escape. Yet that is precisely what is happening….

    The Ukrainian-victory narrative admittedly benefits hugely from Western media that actively “tune out” opposing views and depict Russia and its armed forces in the worst possible light. The fact that nearly half a century of the Cold War conditioned Americans to think the worst of Russians certainly helps.

    Yet there is also a measure of “true faith” at work, a condition of national narcissism, inside the Beltway that believes Washington can control what happens thousands of miles away in Eastern Ukraine….

    The stupefying air of self-righteousness the Biden administration assumes when it attacks erstwhile strategic partners such as Saudi Arabia or delivers moralizing lectures to Beijing’s leadership, or when its media surrogates express contempt for the Russian state, is downright dangerous…

    The ongoing buildup of 700,000 Russian forces with modern equipment in Western Russia, Eastern Ukraine and Belorussia is a direct consequence of Moscow’s decision to adopt an elastic, strategic defense of the territories it seized in the opening months of the war. It was a wise, though politically unpopular choice in Russia.
    ULTRA-infuriating to Russophone armchair generals here.

    Yet, the strategy has succeeded. Ukrainian losses have been catastrophic and by November, Russian Forces will be in a position to strike a knockout blow.
    ~Maybe. Or else…[*]

    Today, there are rumors in the media that Kiev may be under pressure to launch more counterattacks against Russian defenses in Kherson (Southern Ukraine) before the [U.S.] midterm elections in November.
    ~which the Commander-in-Chief of the UAF, Gen. Zaluzhnyi, strongly opposes~

    At this point, expending what little remains of Ukraine’s life blood to expel Russian forces from Ukraine is hardly synonymous with the preservation of the Ukrainian state. It’s also doubtful that further sacrifices by Ukrainians will assist the Biden administration in the midterm elections….

    In view of Ukraine’s bleak prospects of ever regaining lost territory and its deteriorating strategic health, Ukraine’s future now rests in Russian hands… Kiev should stop the bloodletting and make the best possible peace with Moscow it can. Unfortunately, for Washington this solution is unthinkable….

    https://www.theamericanconservative.com/war-and-regrets-in-ukraine/
    ………….

    [*] If not, that's Zaluzhnyi's cue for the coup. Horrible person, but he knows what's what.

    • Indian journalist, M. K. Bhadrakumar:
      Ukraine war is ‘Biden’s war’ now

      Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Oct 18, 2022 that evidence of military personnel of United States and other Western countries having their boots on the ground in Ukraine is mounting.

      The most obvious explanation to the mysterious air dash of the UK Defence Minister Ben Wallace to Washington on Tuesday could be that he was canvassing for the support of the Biden Administration for his pitch to succeed Liz Truss as Britain’s next prime minister.

      But another plausible explanation can be that the secret, hurried trip marked a defining moment in the conflict in Ukraine, which is showing all signs of turning into a full-fledged war…

      Enter President Biden. The reports from Moscow suggest that Russians have hard intelligence to the effect that Washington has demanded from President Zelensky some spectacular performance on the battlefield as the midterms in the US on November 8 is round the corner…

      As British politics descends to skulduggery that will extend into months, the US will be a stakeholder. Historically, since the World War 2, Britain led the US from the rear in critical situations involving Russia…

      Biden has sent a powerful message to Britain’s political class signalling that he expects them to come up with a new prime minister who will faithfully adhere to the compass set by Boris Johnson on Ukraine. In immediate terms, what does it signal for the Anglo-American project in Kherson? Will it go ahead? That is the big question…

      In political terms, with the UK bogged down in a domestic quagmire, Biden has the option to shift to diplomacy. This is “Biden’s war” now. He is about to script his presidential legacy as the fifth of the 14 American presidents in office since World War II to “own” a war — after Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, George HW Bush and George W. Bush.

      https://www.indianpunchline.com/ukraine-war-is-bidens-war-now/